How a US Senator thinks the Internet works (or why Congress should not be allowed to vote until they understand what they are voting on)

blog.wired.com
How a US Senator thinks the Internet works (or why Congress should not be allowed to vote on Net Neutrality until they understand what they are voting on)
Ryan Singel

The Senate Commerce Committee deadlocked 11 to 11 on an amendment inserting some very basic net neutrality provisions into a moving telecommunications bill. The provisions didn't prohibit an ISP from handling VOIP faster than emails, but would have made it illegal to handle its own VOIP packets faster than a competitor's.

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) explained why he voted against the amendment and gave an amazing primer on how the internet works.

There's one company now you can sign up and you can get a movie delivered to your house daily by delivery service. Okay. And currently it comes to your house, it gets put in the mail box when you get home and you change your order but you pay for that, right.

But this service is now going to go through the internet* and what you do is you just go to a place on the internet and you order your movie and guess what you can order ten of them delivered to you and the delivery charge is free.

Ten of them streaming across that internet and what happens to your own personal internet?

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.

So you want to talk about the consumer? Let's talk about you and me. We use this internet to communicate and we aren't using it for commercial purposes.

We aren't earning anything by going on that internet. Now I'm not saying you have to or you want to discrimnate against those people [¿]

The regulatory approach is wrong. Your approach is regulatory in the sense that it says "No one can charge anyone for massively invading this world of the internet". No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time. [¿]

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Now we have a separate Department of Defense internet now, did you know that?

Do you know why?

Because they have to have theirs delivered immediately. They can't afford getting delayed by other people.

[¿]

Now I think these people are arguing whether they should be able to dump all that stuff on the internet ought to consider if they should develop a system themselves.

Maybe there is a place for a commercial net but it's not using what consumers use every day.

It's not using the messaging service that is essential to small businesses, to our operation of families.

The whole concept is that we should not go into this until someone shows that there is something that has been done that really is a viloation of net neutraility that hits you and me.

**The full audio can be found here
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/497
on a Public Knowledge blog.

(**Hat Tip: Alex Curtis and Art Brodsky at Public Knowledge)

* Update: A little internet forensics work explains why the internet took 5 days to travel from the Senator's staff to his inbox:
http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/index.blog?entry_id=1513010

I also fixed a transcription error so that the sentence which reads "But this service isn't going to go through the interent" now reads "But this service is now going to go through the internet." The error was mine (thanks to reader Marc).

**Update 2: I updated the link to the audio and the Hat Tip to more accurately reflect that this mp3 was posted by Public Knowledge's Alex Curtis and brought to my attention via a press release.)


The original article can be found here:
http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/?entry_id=1512499

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Suspects Were Terrorist "Stooges," Say Officials

huffingtonpost.com
RJ Eskow
Suspects Were Terrorist "Stooges," Say Officials

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced the foiling of "a terrorist plot" by an obscure and eccentric cult called "The Star of David," while acknowledging that there was no imminent danger of an attack ... "In terms of plans, it was an aspiration, not an operation," an FBI agent said.

The Attorney General today announced that a successful sting operation resulted in the arrest of a terrorist cell known as the "Three Stooges." The cell's members are believed to be part of an offshoot of Al Qaeda known as "Why I Oughta," a phrase that appears regularly in their verbal communications.
The President hailed today's arrest as "a major breakthrough in the global war on terror."

Details of the plot are sketchy, but officials painted a portrait of three desperate men tormented by a violent leader who routinely attacked them without provocation. These assaults included hammer blows, knocking their heads together, and injuring their toes with a foot or heavy object. In a particularly gruesome ritual, he would often poke them in the eyes after forcing them to choose the fingers with which they would be punished.

The men allegedly possessed a very long ladder, which officials explained could have been used to "attack a tall building, possibly the Sears Tower." The plot might have succeeded, agents added, if the men hadn't kept knocking each other down while attempting to move the ladder.

The conspirators were nabbed shortly thereafter for a plot that the Attorney General described as "an aberration, rather than an operation."

An FBI official told reporters that the cell leader's name is "Moe," which intelligence officials suspect is short for "Mohammed." The other members of the cell are known as "Curly" (or "Qurli") and "Larry." The official also discussed the possible existence of a mysterious "fourth terrorist," who may be named "Abu Shemp."

The Attorney General interrupted the FBI spokesman to interject: "Or, is that 'a rumination rather than an operation'?"

Officials said that the terrorists exchanged coded messages by employing sounds that included high-pitched whines and "repeated glottal vocalizations" such as "whoop" and "nee-yuk."

The three men were lured into the plot by a government agent who gained their trust by teaching them to play piano. "Hey, it's Paganini!" one of the conspirators shouted on a secret wiretap, only to be chastised: "That's page nine, you idiot!"

"Perhaps it's 'an implication rather than an operation,'" Mr. Gonzalez mused.

The government agent soon joined with the violent sect, and encouraged them in their scheme to hijack a rocket ship and send themselves into orbit around the earth. The agent suggested they submit a request for materiel to Al Qaeda's high command. They responded with a note that read as follows, according to officials:

"Dear Mr. Al Kinda: We want boots, three periscopes, a large rubber mallet, eyeglasses with little mirrors so you can look behind you, those other glasses that make pretty girls look like they're naked, a knuckle-cruncher, and one of those whistles that makes all the dogs in the neighborhood bark."

"Could it be 'a gene-mutation rather than an operation'?" "Ssh, sir."

This arrest follows a series of recent arrests in a program the government labelled "Operation Street Sweeper." That initiative yielded a number of "aspirational terrorists," according to sources, including someone from the planet Bok and a homeless man who had been monitoring CIA radio transmissions using the fillings in his teeth.

Also arrested in "Operation Street Sweeper" was a person in pasty makeup, described only as a "mime." Officials said the suspect refused to give his name.

The silent suspect's interrogation was conducted with the aid of an "interpreter for the speaking-impaired." The mime declined to answer any questions directly, but complained about jail conditions. "He says he's in a box," the interpreter explained. "The box is getting smaller. Now he's going downstairs ..."

The Attorney General was then heard to ruminate in a half whisper, "maybe it's a 'dance sensation that's sweepin' the nation,' rather than an actual, uh, operation ..."

The press conference dissolved in confusion when an intelligence official squeezed the red rubber nose impounded from another recent raid, creating a sound that drew a squadron of policemen on unicycles and a bright red firetruck filled with clowns.

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Hamdan, NSA and the New York Times

huffingtonpost.com
Geoffrey R. Stone
Hamdan, NSA and the New York Times

The Bush administration and its allies continue their drumbeat attack on the First Amendment with repeated threats to prosecute the New York Times for disclosing the President’s secret surveillance programs. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has suggested a criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act, Congressman Peter King and Senator Jim Bunning have accused the Times of treason, and Republicans in the House of Representatives have passed a resolution condemning the Times for putting “the lives of Americans in danger.”

All this is rank hypocrisy designed to intimidate the press and rally the party faithful, at no small cost to our democracy. The decision of the Times to reveal the secret
NSA spy program may have embarrassed the President, but it was a great service to the nation. Any doubt there might have been about the illegality of the NSA program was effectively put to rest by the recent decision of the Supreme Court in the Hamdan case. The administration’s only plausible argument that the NSA surveillance program is lawful, even though it plainly violates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is that FISA unconstitutionally limits the authority of the President as “commander in chief of the Army and Navy.” Even before Hamdan, this claim was weak, at best. After the Court’s five-to-three decision in Hamdan, that claim is frivolous. In declaring unlawful Bush’s military commissions, the Court in Hamdan reiterated what it said plainly two years ago in Hamdi – even a state of war does not grant the President a “blank check” to run roughshod over the law.

The continuing assertion that the government of the United States can criminally prosecute the New York Times for disclosing to the American people the existence of an unlawful program of surveillance is nothing short of shocking. What does the First Amendment mean if not that the press can inform the American people that their elected representatives have violated the law?

Not only does the Bush administration continue to maintain that the government has the authority to punish the revelation of the administration’s own illegality, but they boldly assert that such punishment is justified because the publication of such information put “the lives of Americans in danger.” With all due respect, the publication of information that our nuclear power plants are insecure puts “the lives of Americans in danger.” Disclosure of the torture at Abu Ghraib put “the lives of Americans in danger.” Even criticism of the war in Iraq puts “the lives of Americans in danger.” What makes this danger any different?

Presumably, the administration and its defenders believe that disclosure of the NSA spy program not only put “the lives of Americans in danger,” but created a “clear and present” danger of “grave” harm. But no one in the administration has ever explained how or why this is so. Moreover, the administration knew full well that the Times was aware of the NSA surveillance program for many months before the Times published the story. If the danger of disclosure was truly “clear,” “present,” and “grave,” why didn’t the administration seek an injunction again publication?

Certainly, as in the Pentagon Papers incident more than twenty-five years ago, the Times would have withheld publication in the face of such an injunction. Moreover, as in the Pentagon Papers case, the government could have litigated an injunction without revealing to the public the secret information at issue. But in all the time the administration knew that the Times was considering publication, it did not seek an injunction against publication.

The reason, to me, seems obvious. The lawyers in the administration knew they could not prove the existence of a danger sufficiently “clear,” “present,” and “grave” to justify an injunction. Rather than test the matter in a court of law, the administration sat passively on its hands and allowed the story to be published. Then, after–the–fact, it accuses the Times of disloyalty and browbeats the press with threats of a criminal prosecution. It makes one wonder exactly who is playing fast-and-loose with the truth – and with the nation’s security.

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With only a letter, FBI can gather private data

USA TODAY
With only a letter, FBI can gather private data
By Richard Willing, USA TODAY

When the FBI office in New Haven, Conn., received an e-mail in February 2005 that looked like a terrorist threat, agents followed a familiar routine. They asked the service provider, a group of Connecticut public libraries, for the real name, street address and Internet logs of the sender.

They had no search warrant, grand jury subpoena or court order. Instead, a local FBI official hand-delivered a National Security Letter — one of more than 9,000 sent to finance, telephone and Internet companies last year — that described the records needed.

Under a federal law expanded by the anti-terrorism USA Patriot Act of 2001, the written request was all the authority the FBI needed. The Patriot Act also barred the librarians from disclosing the request to anyone.

The librarians refused to hand over the information. Instead, they filed a federal lawsuit challenging the secret letters as an unconstitutional infringement on free speech.

The e-mailed threat proved to be a hoax. Yet the lawsuit it sparked, only the second legal challenge to National Security Letters in their 20-year history, provides a rare public glimpse of the vast amount of banking, credit, telephone and Internet records that anti-terrorism or counterintelligence investigators can have simply by asking.

National Security Letters are the key to the trove of personal data. When the law authorizing them was passed by Congress in 1986, the letters could be authorized only by a high-ranking FBI official in pursuit of an "agent of a foreign power."

The Patriot Act, passed six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, expanded the letters' reach. Now they can be issued if a local FBI official merely certifies that the information sought is "relevant" to an international terrorism or foreign intelligence investigation.

"People have no idea how much of what they probably consider their private information is readily available to government," says Susan Brenner, a University of Dayton law professor who advises the U.S. Secret Service on technology and privacy. The letters, she says, raise the question: "How do we balance law enforcement's needs with what's left of privacy in an age where technology permeates everything?"

According to Michael Woods, chief of the FBI's national security law unit from 1999 to 2002, National Security Letters can be used to retrieve:

•Internet and telephone data, including names, addresses, log-on times, toll records, e-mail addresses and service providers.

•Financial records, including bank accounts and money transfers, provided the FBI says they are needed to "protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities."

•Credit information, such as an individual's banks, loan companies, mortgage holders or other financial institutions.

•Consumer, financial and foreign travel records held by "any commercial entity," if the investigation's target is an executive branch employee with a security clearance.

Only FBI agents can obtain phone, computer and financial records. Other federal agencies that gather intelligence on international terrorism can get consumer credit reports and credit agency data. They include the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency and Transportation Security Administration.

9,254 letters served in 2005

The government swears by the National Security Letters. In papers filed last year in the Connecticut case, David Szady, the FBI's assistant director for counterintelligence, said the letters are vital to the bureau's post-9/11 mission: to disrupt terrorist plots and other national security threats before attacks occur.

The letters, Szady said, are especially valuable in providing leads because they establish relationships between suspects who may be linked only by records. Letters help investigators move "from target to target, unearthing the different layers and conspirators of an international terrorist or foreign counterintelligence organization," he said.

According to U.S. Justice Department figures, the FBI served 9,254 National Security Letters concerning 3,501 individuals in 2005.

By comparison, the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorizes search warrants and electronic surveillance in terrorism and spying cases, approved 2,072 warrants and wiretaps and 155 applications for business records last year.

Before the Patriot Act was revised in March, the FBI was not required to disclose how many letters it issues. The number of letters from previous years, and whether they led to successful terrorism prosecutions, remains classified.

Details of success story

Because the recipients of National Security Letters are hardly ever named, little is known about how the letters have been used.

The details of one successful computer surveillance operation can be pieced together from public records:

In the spring of 2004, federal investigators noted that Mohammad Junaid Babar had a home computer yet frequently visited the New York Public Library to use its Internet service. The library's records showed Babar, a Pakistani-born U.S. citizen and suspected al-Qaeda associate, was e-mailing "other terrorist associates around the world," Ken Wainstein, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said last year while lobbying Congress to reauthorize the Patriot Act.

After his arrest in April 2004, Babar told the FBI that because the library's hard drives were erased after each use, he believed he could use the system without being monitored. Even so, investigators were able to learn Babar's name, address and e-mail destinations through records the library had stored.

Babar has pleaded guilty to providing material support for terrorism and faces a sentence of up to 70 years in prison.

"Libraries should not be carved out as safe havens for terrorists and spies," Wainstein told a congressional committee in April 2005.

Present and former government lawyers say the letters are on firm legal ground. They've been validated by several votes of Congress and used "thousands of times," says Kevin O'Connor, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut.

Woods, the former FBI lawyer, says that in most cases the letters allow access to information that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled is not private. Requiring a National Security Letter, he says, was considered a "step up" in privacy protection from the way federal investigators previously sought records: simply visiting banks and phone companies and asking for the information, which was almost always provided.

The American Civil Liberties Union and some privacy advocates do not agree. Ann Beeson, an ACLU lawyer who represents the Connecticut librarians, says the letters are a "dangerous" and underexamined threat to civil liberties.

Giving the FBI authority to decide what's "relevant" to its own investigations, Beeson says, "is an open invitation to perform fishing expeditions" that trample the privacy rights of citizens. Because the Patriot Act allows checks of individuals who are not an investigation's target, Beeson says, the FBI is free to gather "sensitive information about innocent people."

Lee Tien, an attorney with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group that opposed many elements of the Patriot Act, says the secrecy requirement contained in the law makes it impossible for the public to know how intrusive the letters are or how often they help stop terrorists.

"The government has always had a door (to access) private records, but it has gotten a lot larger," Tien says. "Now the lock has been taken off the door. Patriot (Act) did that."

Requiring recipients of letters to remain silent is a particular concern, says George Christian, director of the Library Connection, the consortium that received a letter in the New Haven case.

"Being gagged has been an extremely frustrating experience," he said on the ACLU website in May, after a federal appeals court allowed the names of recipients of letters to be made public for the first time.

"The entire Patriot Act was up for renewal last winter, and I very much wanted to focus public attention ... on my concerns. ... I was shocked by the restraints the gag order imposed on me."

In papers filed in the Connecticut case, FBI espionage and terrorism specialist Szady wrote that letters must be kept secret to keep targets from learning that they are being watched.

'God forbid it isn't a hoax'

The New Haven case shows how the conflict can play out.

FBI agents, U.S. attorney O'Connor says, suspected the threatening e-mail was from a "crank" but believed they had an "obligation" to pursue it. "We weren't tying up librarians or reading through books," he says. "All we wanted was identifying information. God forbid it isn't a hoax."

For librarian Christian, however, the records request, and the fact that he had to keep it secret from his colleagues for more than a year, left him "shocked," "incensed" and feeling "compromis(ed)."

"The idea that the government can secretly investigate what the public is informing itself about is chilling," Christian says.

The lawsuit, and a separate case begun in 2004, already have produced some changes in how the letters are administered.

In September 2004, after a still-unidentified Internet provider filed suit, a federal district court judge in New York City found that the letters were unconstitutional because they provided no way for a recipient to challenge them in court. The judge also struck down the letter's non-disclosure provision as a violation of the First Amendment's protection of free speech.

The judge in the Connecticut case went further, granting an injunction that allowed the librarians served with letters to disclose that fact, as well as their names.

The government appealed and made concessions. In Connecticut last April, the FBI and Justice Department dropped their opposition to letting the librarians identify themselves and disclose they had been served with a letter.

In March, while both appeals were pending, the Justice Department proposed changes to the Patriot Act to bring the letters in line with the lower court decisions. Now, recipients are permitted to challenge a letter in court and to petition to have their names made public, though a judge need not grant the requests. So far, the Connecticut and New York cases are the only known challenges.

In May, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York cited those changes in dismissing the Connecticut appeal and returning the New York case to the district court. One judge, Richard Cardamone, said retaining the provision that keeps letters secret forever is "antithetical to democratic concepts."

Continuing battle in court

The ACLU plans to continue its fight in the lower court. Beeson says the laws are still unconstitutional because they allow the FBI to launch "phony investigations" under the guise of national security if "they just promise what they want is relevant."

Christian, the Connecticut librarian, says the FBI's "ineptitude," not the end of the supposed terrorist threat in New Haven, caused the government to allow his name to be made public. By failing to black out all identifying information in the legal papers, Christian said, the FBI unwittingly allowed his name to be deduced by some reporters before the appeals court acted.

"The fact that I can speak now is a little like being permitted to call the Fire Department only after a building has burned to the ground," he says.

O'Connor says he doubts the letters will be found unconstitutional. Still, he worries that the lawsuit and the "unfortunate way" in which the FBI has been accused of censorship could lead other companies and institutions to resist "perfectly legitimate" demands for sensitive information.

"Ninety percent (of threatening e-mail) is going to be nothing," he says. "But the good men and women of the FBI are inundated every day with that kind of stuff, and they've got a responsibility.

"If there's information on a potential terrorist that can help, wouldn't you want them to have it?"



Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-07-05-fbi-letters_x.htm?csp=34

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Or did he really die under mysterious circumstances?

When certain persons died during the Clinton administration, rumors abounded, originating from the republican spin machine, that somehow the president orchestrated some of the deaths. So, perhaps, we should suspect that the current president orchestrated the death of his formerly close friend who had become an embarrassment, was soon going to jail, and who might possibly have written a tell-all book about the president.

Reuters
Enron founder Ken Lay dies of heart disease
By Matt Daily

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Enron Corp.'s founder Ken Lay died of heart disease on Wednesday while vacationing near Aspen, Colo., six weeks after being convicted of fraud and conspiracy in the financial scandal that brought down the once-mighty energy conglomerate.

Lay, 64, who was awaiting sentencing, faced decades in prison in connection with Enron's 2001 bankruptcy.

"There was no evidence of foul play," Dr. Rob Kurtzman, the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy told reporters in Grand Junction, Colorado.

"The cause of death is coronary artery disease," he said, adding that the post mortem showed that Lay had previously suffered a heart attack.

Lay and another former Enron chief executive, Jeffrey Skilling, were found guilty of hiding the financial ruin at Enron, the company they built into the seventh largest in the United States.

Once a confidant of former President George H.W. Bush and dubbed "Kenny boy" by President George W. Bush, Lay often appeared fatigued during the four-month trial. At one point, he told the jury from the witness stand: "I guess you could say in the last few years I've achieved the American nightmare."

Skilling was not available for comment, although his lawyer Daniel Petrocelli said the former protege of Lay was deeply saddened by Lay's death.

"He's distraught over Ken's passing," Petrocelli said. "He was a very good friend and a good colleague."

In Washington, White House spokesman Tony Snow said he had not spoken to Bush about Lay's death, but distanced the president from the former Enron chief who was once a major contributor to the Bushes' political campaigns.

"The president has described Ken Lay as an acquaintance, and many of the president's acquaintances have passed on during his time in office," Snow told reporters.

At the Enron offices in Houston, where a small crew of workers was selling off the company's assets to pay creditors, Enron Corp. spokesman Harlan Loeb said: "We extend our sympathies to the Lay family in this time of sadness."

Pitkin County sheriff's deputies and an ambulance were called to the Lay vacation home in Old Snowmass, Colorado, early on Wednesday morning. Lay was taken to Aspen Valley Hospital where he was pronounced dead shortly after 3 a.m. Mountain time.

The pastor at the Houston church attended by Lay and his family said he was stunned by Lay's death. "The family called early this morning to say that he had died last night," said Dr. Steve Wende, pastor of First Methodist Church of Houston.

Lay had attended church there on the previous Sunday.

"He looked good. He was with people. He had family there ... he looked healthy," Wende said.

On Friday, federal prosecutors asked a federal judge to force Lay to forfeit $43.5 million they said he had received because of his crimes at Enron.

A spokesman at the Department of Justice declined to comment on Lay's death and said prosecutors would release a statement in the coming days on how they would proceed with the claims for the money.

Lay and Skilling had maintained their innocence, and planned to appeal the guilty verdicts.

Lay, whose wealth once totaled more than $100 million, claimed he had little money after Enron's bankruptcy, although prosecutors have said he had millions in annuities and other investments.

Born into poverty as the son of a Baptist preacher in Missouri, Lay excelled in school and advanced quickly in the worlds of government and business before taking the helm of the company that would become Enron.

Enron began as a small pipeline operation in 1985 and under Lay's guidance it rapidly grew into an international energy powerhouse.

During Enron's glory days, Lay basked in Houston's limelight and was a fixture on the charity circuit, donating millions of his own money and Enron's funds.

After his indictment, Lay was usually only seen in public on Sunday mornings for church services.

Another Enron executive, Cliff Baxter, a close confidant of Skilling, committed suicide weeks after Enron's bankruptcy.

Lay is survived by his wife, Linda, five children and step-children and 12 grandchildren. Information on funeral arrangements had not yet been announced by early Wednesday evening.

(Additional reporting by Ellen Miller in Grand Junction, Colorado, and Bruce Nichols, Jeff Franks and Eileen O'Grady in Houston)

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Army charges officer for refusing to fight in Iraq

Reuters
Army charges officer for refusing to fight in Iraq
By Daisuke Wakabayashi

SEATTLE (Reuters) - The U.S. Army filed three charges on Wednesday against an officer who refused to fight in Iraq due to objections over the legality of the war.

First Lt. Ehren Watada, who supporters say is the first commissioned U.S. officer to publicly refuse to serve in Iraq and face a military court, remained at Fort Lewis base in Washington state when his unit shipped out to Iraq on June 22.

Watada called the war and U.S. occupation of Iraq "illegal" and said participation would make him a party to war crimes.

In a statement, the Army said it had charged Watada, 28, with missing movement, contempt toward officials and conduct unbecoming an officer.

"Officers are held to a high moral and legal standard. Acts contrary to this standard may be tried by court-martial," said the Army statement.

If found guilty of all charges, Watada could face several years in confinement, dishonorable discharge and forfeiture of pay, according to the Army. The missing movement charge carries the heaviest punishment of confinement of up to two years.

Watada's lawyer said he expected the missing movement charge, but was somewhat surprised by the decision to charge the officer with contempt toward officials and conduct unbecoming an officer, because it raises free speech issues.

"What he said about the war and the way the war began and the misrepresentations by the Bush administration are all true. Not only does he have a right to make those statements, he has an obligation to make those statements," said Eric Seitz, Watada's Honolulu-based attorney.

"The reasons why they are going after him for the things he said is because they want to muzzle him," Seitz said.

Watada's objection to the war sparked rallies in support and protest near Fort Lewis, Seattle and in other U.S. cities.

Watada, who had said he did not apply for conscientious objector status because he isn't against war in general, now faces a pre-trial investigation and will continue to work at the base, Army officials said.

He first attempted to resign in protest over the war in January, but the Army refused to accept his resignation, according to his supporters. Watada has said he would be willing to serve in Afghanistan, but not Iraq.

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Republicans continue to be in disarray

Reuters
Bush pushes guest worker plan as Republicans duel
By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Wednesday vowed to keep working for immigration legislation including a guest worker program, as Republicans held dueling hearings to build support for rival bills.

Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter assembled employers and sympathetic politicians to testify in Philadelphia about the country's dependence on the estimated 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

Meanwhile, House Republican leaders convened a public hearing at a Border Patrol station in San Diego to highlight the need for stricter enforcement along the U.S. border with Mexico to prevent illegal immigrants entering the country.

Bush took a short trip from the White House to Alexandria, Virginia to weigh in on the debate, buying coffee at a Dunkin' Donuts with dollars borrowed from an aide. He told reporters the country needed a guest worker program.

"I know there needs to be a worker program that says you can come here on a temporary basis and work here legally for jobs Americans aren't doing," he said.

Bush had hoped that lawmakers from the Senate and the House of Representatives would be sitting down by now to reconcile the vastly different bills they passed so that he could sign a new law into effect before the November mid-term elections.

Instead, House Republican leaders decided to hold a series of hearings across the country to drum up support for their bill that includes money to construct hundreds of miles of new fencing along the Mexican border and defines illegal immigrants as felons.

The competing hearings dramatized Republican divisions on what has become an emotional issue, stirring strong feelings throughout the country on both sides.

Top House leaders have vowed not to accept the Bush-backed Senate bill which they say contains an amnesty for illegal immigrants.

BLOOMBERG SPEAKS

In Philadelphia, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was among the witnesses. Our city's economy would be a shell of itself if they (immigrants) had not come," he said.

"The idea of deporting 11 or 12 million people is pure fantasy," Bloomberg said. "If we attempted it, it would perhaps the largest roundup and deportation in world history. America is better and smarter than that."

Pennsylvania State Rep. Arthur Hershey said about 75 percent of the state's farm workers are illegal immigrants.

"Without immigrant workers, we would not have a labor force. It is that simple," he said.

In San Diego, California Republican Rep. Ed Royce criticized Senate bill for failing to secure the border.

"The House bill requires more miles of fencing while the Senate bill hinders fencing our southern border by requiring ... unprecedented and problematic consultation with Mexican authorities," he said.

California Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman denounced the hearing as a Republican "dog and pony show," adding, "They've got really ugly dogs and really mangy ponies."

The practical effect of the competing hearings may be to kill any chance of passing a bill before the election and deprive Bush of success on one of his major agenda items.

Unlike the House bill, the Senate bill includes a guest worker program that would ultimately grant a path to citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants.

"We cannot kick people out who have been here for a while," Bush said. "And so I look forward to working with Congress on a rational plan as to how to make sure people who have been here, the 11 million or so people who have been here for a while, are treated with respect and dignity."

(additional reporting by Jon Furlong, Sarah Tippit, Donna Smith)

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Panel orders Abu Ghraib documents from Pentagon

Reuters
Panel orders Abu Ghraib documents from Pentagon
By Kristin Roberts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. congressional panel has ordered Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to turn over documents on the probe into abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison after the Pentagon failed to respond to an earlier request.

The House Government Reform Committee issued a subpoena to Rumsfeld last week and said the Pentagon must produce a raft of documents, including all drafts of the report on the Abu Ghraib investigation, by the end of business on July 14.

The subpoena follows Rumsfeld's failure to respond to a March 7 letter from the congressional panel requesting the same documents.

The Pentagon said it had already provided many of the requested documents to its oversight committee -- the House Armed Services Committee -- and has now also delivered documents to the Government Reform Committee.

"We have delivered to the House Government Reform Committee many documents previously provided to the House Armed Services Committee ... in the matter under discussion," said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a Pentagon spokesman.

Images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, including naked detainees stacked in a pyramid and others cowering before snarling dogs, first became public in April 2004, triggering international condemnation of the United States.

The country's image has been further tarnished by a string of accusations that U.S. servicemen have murdered Iraqi civilians, including the massacre of 24 civilians in Haditha.

"When the Committee requests information from executive branch departments and agencies, we try to be reasonable and accommodate their legitimate concerns about the volume and the sensitivity of what we're asking for," said Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican and chairman of the committee.

"But if the department won't even return a call, after three months, and begin that dialogue, we really have no choice but to subpoena the material and compel their attention to our request."

The subpoena comes as a subcommittee of the Government Reform Committee investigates allegations by Army Spc. Samuel Provance that his attempts to give investigators information about abuse at Abu Ghraib were "rebuffed" and he was retaliated against for providing unclassified information to the media.

Provance testified before the subcommittee in February.

The panel called for all drafts of the investigation report on the prisoner abuse and all communications related to information provided by Provance about Abu Ghraib.

It also requested all communications related to cases in which detainees' family members were involved in interrogations after Provance said children of detainees were used to "break" the prisoners and force them to cooperate with investigators.

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Cuban officials charge US planning regime change

Reuters
Cuban officials charge US planning regime change

HAVANA (Reuters) - Two senior Cuban officials charged on Wednesday that a report on the communist nation delivered to the Bush administration's National Security Council amounted to a blueprint for an Iraq-style regime change in the Caribbean.

"We are facing a real threat of aggression," National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon said of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba's report, flashing a draft he said had appeared briefly on the U.S. State Department's web page, to a national television and radio audience.

The report, ordered by President George W. Bush and delivered but not made public on Wednesday, focuses on insuring communism ends when President Fidel Castro, who turns 80 in August, can no longer govern the Caribbean island nation, according to draft seen by Reuters.

Cuban Defense Minister Raul Castro, 75, in line to succeed his older brother Fidel, recently insisted the Communist Party would continue to rule the country after he and his brother were gone.

An earlier commission report delivered in 2004 and since implemented led to further tightening of U.S. economic sanctions and travel restrictions established in the 1960s and increased support or dissidents. It also outlined what a post-Castro Cuba might look like and established a Cuban Transition Coordinator to oversee preparations.

The new report supports the earlier one and calls for building an international coalition to support a transition, increased organizational and financial support for dissidents and a further tightening of economic sanctions, among other measures.

The first chapter, entitled "Hastening the End of the Castro Dictatorship: Transition not Succession," includes a separate "classified annex" of recommended actions.

"You can't accomplish what they propose without an invasion, without a war. ... This plan implies a U.S. military invasion of Cuba, a direct U.S. intervention," said Bruno Rodriquez, First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The United States denies it has any military designs on Cuba. Western diplomats generally discount a U.S. military threat, pointing out the country is bogged down in the Middle East and the large number of Cubans living in the United States who would oppose a military venture because of family and friends on the Caribbean island.

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High court intervenes in fight over cross

USA TODAY
High court intervenes in fight over cross

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court intervened Monday to save a large cross on city property in southern California.

A lower court judge had ordered the city of San Diego to remove the cross or be fined $5,000 a day.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, acting for the high court, issued a stay while supporters of the cross continue their legal fight.

Lawyers for San Diegans for the Mt. Soledad National War Memorial said in an appeal that they wanted to avoid the "destruction of this national treasure." And attorneys for the city said the cross was part of a broader memorial that was important to the community.

The 29-foot cross, on San Diego property, sits atop Mount Soledad. A judge declared it was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

The cross, which has been in place for decades, was contested by Philip Paulson, a Vietnam veteran and atheist.

Three years ago, the Supreme Court had refused to get involved in the long-running dispute between Paulson and the city.

Kennedy granted the stay to the city and the cross' supporters without comment pending a further order from him or the entire court.

The cross was dedicated in 1954 as a memorial to Korean War veterans, and a private association maintains a veterans memorial on the land surrounding it.

Mayor Jerry Sanders has argued that the cross, sitting atop Mt. Soledad in La Jolla, is an integral part of the memorial and deserves the same exemptions to government-maintained religious symbols as those granted to other war monuments.

In May, U.S. District Court Judge Gordon Thompson, Jr., ordered the city to take down the 29-foot cross before Aug. 2 or pay daily fines of $5,000.

Thompson's ruling, which he described as "long overdue," found the cross to be an unconstitutional display of government preference of one religion over another.

Last year, San Diego voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot proposition to transfer the land beneath the cross to the federal government. The measure was designed to absolve the city of responsibility for the cross under the existing lawsuit. But a California Superior Court judge found the proposition to be unconstitutional.


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Bush vows to stay course in Iraq

Reuters
Bush vows to stay course in Iraq
By Matt Spetalnick

FORT BRAGG, North Carolina (Reuters) - President George W. Bush, trying to tap into Independence Day patriotism to revive domestic support for an unpopular war, vowed on Tuesday that U.S. troops would not leave Iraq until their mission was complete.

In a Fourth of July speech here, Bush took a veiled swipe at Democrats who have pressed for a timetable for withdrawal more than three years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

"Setting an artificial timetable would be a terrible mistake," Bush told more than 3,000 military personnel in a speech interrupted repeatedly by cheers at the home of the storied 82nd Airborne Division and U.S. Army Special Operations Command.

He reiterated his pledge to base any U.S. troop withdrawals on "the measured advice of our military commanders."

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, who serves as Bush's top military advisor as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said earlier in the day that September could be a "reasonable" time to start transferring more responsibilities to Iraqi government forces.

"I think we need to be careful not to put specific timelines on troop turnover of responsibilities to the Iraqis," he said in an interview on NBC's "Today" program. "September is certainly a reasonable date but we need to make sure that conditions on the ground warrant that."

Bush pledged to the flag-waving crowd, "I'm not going to allow the sacrifice of 2,527 (U.S.) troops who've died in Iraq to be in vain by pulling out before the job is done."

He warned Americans they would face "more tough fighting and more sacrifice."

Bush, citing the precision-bombing last month that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al Qaeda leader in Iraq. said U.S. and Iraqi forces were on the offensive, having captured more than 700 enemy operatives.

"We will never back down. We will never give in and we will never accept anything less than complete victory," he said.

Bush soaked his olive green long-sleeve shirt with sweat as he spoke from a sun-baked stage.

After the visit to Fort Bragg, Bush was returning to the White House for Independence Day festivities. He was also to celebrate his coming birthday at a private party with friends and family. He turns 60 on Thursday.

As he lunched with troops, soldiers surprised Bush with a red, white and blue birthday cake and a rendition of Happy Birthday.

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CIA disbands bin Laden unit

Reuters
CIA disbands bin Laden unit
By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA has disbanded a unit set up in the 1990s to oversee the spy agency's hunt for Osama bin Laden and transferred its duties to broader operations that track Islamist militant groups, a U.S. intelligence official said on Tuesday.

The bin Laden unit, codenamed Alec Station, became less valuable as a separate operation as counterterrorism operations eliminated top al Qaeda operatives and the movement's focus shifted more to regional networks of militants, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Al Qaeda is no longer the hierarchical organization that it was before 9-11. Three-quarters of its senior leaders have been killed or captured," said the official, referring to the U.S.-led response to the September 11 attacks.

"What you have had since 9-11 is growth in the Islamic jihadist movement around the world among groups and individuals who may be associated with al Qaeda, and may have financial and operation links with al Qaeda, but have no command and control relationship with it," he added.

The official described the ending of the bin Laden unit as a "reallocation of resources" within the CIA's Counterterrorism Center. But he said the spy agency still has staff devoted full time to the tracking and analysis of intelligence related to bin Laden and other senior al Qaeda leaders.

"The bin Laden effort has been absorbed into a larger effort. It's now one part of an effort that looks at all of these jihadist organizations," the official said.

Alec Station, established in 1996 after bin Laden's initial calls for global jihad, employed about two dozen people. The operation was bolstered after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the bin Laden unit was disbanded late last year and quoted its first director, author Michael Scheuer, as predicting the move would denigrate the CIA's effort to find bin Laden.

Bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed hiding in the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

John Negroponte, the U.S. director of national intelligence, told the Senate in February that al Qaeda was a "battered" organization but that it remained the top concern for the intelligence community.

Negroponte noted the rise of other organizations inspired by al Qaeda. But he told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: "These groups pose less danger to the United States homeland than does al Qaeda, but they increasingly threaten our allies and interests abroad and are working to expand their reach and capabilities."

The Times said the decision to close the CIA's bin Laden unit was made by former Counterterrorism Center chief Robert Grenier, who decided the agency needed to reorganize to better address constant changes in terrorist organizations.

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Tracking W's war on terror

New York Daily News
Tracking W's war on terror
Insiders debate author's account of Al Qaeda hunt
BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - The severed head brought here on a Learjet in 2002 supposedly belonged to Al Qaeda's No.2, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Afghan tribesmen hoping to collect $25 million said the prayer callous on the forehead was proof of Zawahiri's identity.

President Bush even joked that he hoped agents would show him the skull, according to the new book, "The One Percent Doctrine."

But DNA tests proved that it wasn't the hoped-for victory against terrorists, just a mud-covered head of some hapless Afghan. It was quietly shipped off to an FBI warehouse on Staten Island.

Author Ron Suskind's account of Bush's war on terror has added to the catalogue of exasperating dead ends, suspects that turned out to be ghosts, and scrambles to thwart crank threats in the murky war on terror.

The book also has sparked debate among shadow warriors about incidents Suskind reveals, such as the 2003 plot to pump cyanide gas into New York City subways.

Few top U.S. counterterrorism officials knew about the plot and many deny Suskind's claim that a panicky Bush White House sent "alerts through the government."

One reason for the lack of alarm was that soon after discovering Al Qaeda blueprints for a homemade cyanide sprayer, the feds learned Zawahiri had nixed the plot because "it wasn't big enough," a former CIA official told the Daily News.

The device was also an unreliable weapon of mass destruction. "Cyanide is sexy, but difficult to weaponize," a senior counterterrorism official said.

The cyanide plot demonstrates that Al Qaeda also goes down a lot of dead ends, but the U.S. often responded to rumors of plots by mobilizing its agents or with unnerving public alerts.

"They have fantasies of poisoning a water supply. You can't imagine how difficult that would be. Did they fantasize about a cyanide attack? Most likely," the counterterrorism official said.

Al Qaeda, while lethal, is like a think tank concocting countless ways to kill Americans - yet few ideas go "operational," which became plain once top terrorists were captured and interrogated after 9/11.

"There was frequently a blurred distinction between reality and myth because a lot of Al Qaeda 'ideas' were simply that - ideas," said an official who monitored interrogations.

Some ideas that reached the planning stage - like a plan to cut the Brooklyn Bridge's suspension cables - often seem absurdly difficult to pull off. One official said, "The difference between planning to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge with a cable cutter and doing it is a distance of considerable imagination."

Suskind also claims terrorist Abu Zubaydah, caught in 2002, was built up by the Bush administration as a top Al Qaeda planner. In actuality, Suskind claims, Zubaydah was a midlevel associate who was quite insane and fed the CIA bogus plots.

But sources with direct knowledge of his interrogation insist Zubaydah was lucid and difficult to crack.

"He was tough and smart," said an agency veteran.

Sources concede Zubaydah knew about ideas, but not operations and fed the CIA disinformation. But he eventually revealed Al Qaeda's interest in a nuclear bomb and gassing subways.

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Lieberman Plans Independent Bid if Primary Fails

The New York Times
Lieberman Plans Independent Bid if Primary Fails
By WILLIAM YARDLEY

HARTFORD, July 3 — Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut said on Monday that he would run as an independent Democratic candidate if he loses the state Democratic primary next month. The announcement by Mr. Lieberman, a political moderate and longtime party leader seeking his fourth term, underscores the increasing vulnerability he feels over his support for the Iraq war.

Reacting to a strong challenge from Ned Lamont, a wealthy businessman and political newcomer who has criticized him for supporting President Bush on the war and other issues, Senator Lieberman said that he would begin gathering the 7,500 petition signatures necessary to put his name on the ballot should he lose the primary on Aug. 8.

He said that even if elected as a petition candidate, he would remain "a proud Democrat" and would caucus with other Democratic senators. Still, the prospect that Mr. Lieberman may challenge his own party's nominee is a startling turn for the senator, who has spent his entire three decades in politics within the Democratic Party and ran as its vice-presidential nominee in 2000 alongside Al Gore.

The senator's announcement signaled his growing concern over Mr. Lamont's candidacy. Left-leaning Internet bloggers have marked Mr. Lieberman for defeat, drawing national attention and money for Mr. Lamont — and posing a difficult choice for Democratic leaders, who have vigorously backed Mr. Lieberman.

But Mr. Lieberman's move also reflected his apparent belief, hinted at in his remarks and borne out by polls, that his popularity with independents and Republicans would make him a strong challenger in the fall if Mr. Lamont were to win the primary.

"While I believe that I will win the Aug. 8 primary, I know that there are no guarantees in elections," Mr. Lieberman said at a brief news conference at the State Capitol with his wife, Hadassah, beside him. The results, he said, could be skewed by a low turnout in a sultry August, or a last-minute media barrage by his opponent, who has already spent more than $1 million on his campaign.

"My friends," the senator said, "after 18 years of working for, fighting for and delivering for all the people of Connecticut, I want the opportunity to put my case before all the people of Connecticut in November."

For months, Senator Lieberman, 64, has refused to rule out an independent run as his support in the party waned. Mr. Lamont, who announced his candidacy in March, won a surprising one-third of the votes at the party's state convention in May; a June 8 Quinnipiac University poll found him drawing to within 15 percentage points of the senator among likely primary voters.

Senator Lieberman's decision to announce that he would gather signatures was determined in part by the tight election calendar this year: Petitions must be submitted by 4 p.m. on Aug. 9, just a day after the primary.

Mr. Lamont's campaign seized on the announcement as evidence that Senator Lieberman was both vulnerable in the primary and disloyal to his party.

"If he wants to run as a Democrat then run as a Democrat — stop trying to game the system," Mr. Lamont said in a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Meriden. "I don't see why he needs the extra insurance policy."

He added, "I think he is trying to have it both ways, and on an awful lot of important issues over the last 18 years, he's tried to have it both ways."

Mr. Lamont, 52, said he was confident that Democratic voters would remain loyal to the winner of the August primary and that if Mr. Lieberman were to run as an independent candidate he would only split the Republican vote.

Still, Senator Lieberman so far has the public support of every prominent elected Democrat in the state, and he said that many had promised to redouble their support in a round of phone calls he made to state and national party leaders on Monday morning.

He remains ahead in primary polls, although his lead has steadily slipped, according to Quinnipiac's polls. He led 55 percent to 40 percent among likely Democratic primary voters in the June poll, and his lead was wider, 57 to 32, among all registered Democrats. But a month earlier, a poll showed a spread of 65 to 19 among all Democrats.

If the senator loses in August, he will be in a three-way race in November, facing Mr. Lamont and the Republican nominee, Alan Schlesinger, a relatively little-known former state representative.

The June poll showed that Senator Lieberman had a higher approval rating among Republicans and independents, the state's largest voting bloc, than he did among Democrats. And in a potential three-way race, with Mr. Lieberman running as an independent, the poll showed the senator winning 56 percent of the vote, compared with 18 percent for Mr. Lamont and 8 percent for Mr. Schlesinger.

Some Democrats said on Monday that Mr. Lieberman would damage his standing with Democratic voters, and perhaps others, by effectively saying he would ignore the primary results if he lost.

"He's going for two bites at the apple," said George Jepsen, the immediate past chairman of the State Democratic Party, who recently endorsed Mr. Lamont. "It violates people's fundamental sense of fairness."

But in his announcement, Senator Lieberman described the primary as an incomplete reflection of voter will, hinting that he feared a strong turnout from the impassioned supporters of Mr. Lamont.

"If 30 percent of the Democrats come out and vote, that's about 210,000 people," Mr. Lieberman said. "That means 105,000 plus one will win the primary. There's 2 million voters, registered voters, in the state of Connecticut. That would mean that 5 percent of the registered voters would have the opportunity to decide whether I continue to be Connecticut's senator or not."

Democratic Party leaders said they supported the senator in the primary, but would not say much more.

"We aren't going to speculate about what happens next because that would undermine our candidate," said Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Nancy DiNardo, the current chairwoman of the state party, said that she supported Senator Lieberman, the party's endorsed candidate, but that in the general election she would back whoever won the primary.

One longtime supporter of Mr. Lieberman said on Monday that the senator should have announced his petition bid weeks ago.

"I think he never should have played with the unelectable lefties to begin with," said John F. Droney, who was chairman of the state party in 1988, when Senator Lieberman won his seat by upsetting Lowell P. Weicker Jr., the three-term Republican incumbent. "The thought of having your fate decided by 5 percent of voters is absurd."

Senator Lieberman and Mr. Lamont are to have their first debate on Thursday. Mr. Lieberman has portrayed his rival as a rich man trying to buy a Senate seat and running on only one issue, the war.

Mr. Lamont, however, says the senator's support for the war is simply the most egregious of his betrayals of the Democratic Party. Mr. Lamont has accused Mr. Lieberman of failing to push for universal health care, of supporting privatizing some aspects of Social Security, and of backing school vouchers and other plans Democrats frequently oppose.

Mr. Weicker, who helped galvanize opposition against the senator in December when he said he would consider running for his old Senate seat, said Monday that Senator Lieberman was putting his personal interests above those of his party.

"We all know that the business of politics is that we make decisions and then we're held accountable for those decisions," said Mr. Weicker, who left the Republican Party and was elected governor in 1990 as an independent. "Now Mr. Lieberman's being held accountable and he doesn't like it."

Jennifer Medina contributed reporting for this article.

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Anti-war protesters begin July 4 fast

Reuters
Anti-war protesters begin July 4 fast
By Amanda Beck

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - About 150 protesters sat in front of the White House on Monday to savor their last meal before starting a hunger strike that some said will continue until American troops return from Iraq.

The demonstration marking the Independence Day holiday was organized by CodePink, a women's anti-war group that called on volunteers to abstain from eating for 24 hours from midnight on Monday.

Some protesters said their fast would continue beyond July 4th.

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, said she would drink only water throughout the summer, which she said she would spend outside President George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

"This war is a crime," Sheehan told a crowd of clapping, cheering protesters. "We represent millions of Americans who withdraw their support from this government."

The demonstrators crouched in the muggy evening next to a piece of pink plastic, spread down the road as a table and table-cloth in one. It was covered with wilted pink sunflowers and plates of vegetarian curry, white rice, and beans.

The demonstration aimed at highlighting the costs of the war, in which more than 2,500 U.S. soldiers and thousands of Iraqis have died, said CodePink spokeswoman Meredith Dearborn.

"We have to put our own lives on the line, and I'm willing to do that," said activist Diane Wilson, who pledged to fast until the United States withdraws from Iraq.

Dearborn said 2,700 other activists nationwide, including actors Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, would work as a relay team passing the fast daily from one to another.

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Britons tire of cruel, vulgar US: poll

Yahoo!News
Britons tire of cruel, vulgar US: poll

People in Britain view the United States as a vulgar, crime-ridden society obsessed with money and led by an incompetent president whose Iraq policy is failing, according to a newspaper poll.

The United States is no longer a symbol of hope to Britain and the British no longer have confidence in their transatlantic cousins to lead global affairs, according to the poll in The Daily Telegraph.

The YouGov poll found that 77 percent of respondents disagreed with the statement that the US is "a beacon of hope for the world".

As Americans prepared to celebrate the 230th anniversary of their independence on Tuesday, the poll found that only 12 percent of Britons trust them to act wisely on the global stage. This is half the number who had faith in the Vietnam-scarred White House of 1975.

A massive 83 percent of those questioned said that the United States doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks.

With much of the worst criticism aimed at the US adminstration, the poll showed that 70 percent of Britons like Americans a lot or a little.

US President George W. Bush fared significantly worse, with just one percent rating him a "great leader" against 77 percent who deemed him a "pretty poor" or "terrible" leader.

More than two-thirds who offered an opinion said America is essentially an imperial power seeking world tion. And 81 per cent of those who took a view said President George W Bush hypocritically championed democracy as a cover for the pursuit of American self-interests.

US policy in Iraq was similarly derided, with only 24 percent saying they felt that the US military action there was helping to bring democracy to the country.

A spokesman for the American embassy said that the poll's findings were contradicted by its own surveys.

"We question the judgment of anyone who asserts the world would be a better place with Saddam still izing his own nation and threatening people well beyond Iraq's borders," the paper quoted the unnamed spokesman as saying.

"With respect to the poll's assertions about American society, we bear some of the blame for not successfully communicating America's extraordinary dynamism.

"But frankly, so do you (the British press)."

In answer to other questions, a majority of the Britons questions described Americans as uncaring, divided by class, awash in violent crime, vulgar, preoccupied with money, ignorant of the outside world, racially divided, uncultured and in the most overwhelming result (90 percent of respondents) ted by big business.

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Supreme Court ruling reminds voters of Republican administration's desire to ignore the law

Yahoo! News
Supreme Court ruling troubles GOP senators
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer

Of all the steps the Supreme Court could have taken to undercut President Bush's legal position in the war on terror, applying international law to al-Qaida probably would have been the worst.

That development came to pass Thursday and now Republicans are rushing to protect the cornerstone of Bush's thinking: Suspected terrorists are not entitled to protection under the Geneva Accords.

Sens. Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham said Sunday that Congress must address the Supreme Court ruling embracing Article 3 of the conventions in the military commission case of Osama bin Laden's former driver.

Article 3 prohibits outrages upon personal dignity, "in particular humiliating and degrading treatment," and bars violence, including murder, mutilation and torture.

In an election year, declaring that international law governs the war on terror reminds voters of some of the Republican administration's lowest moments: controversies over Justice Department "torture" memos and allegations of abuse against detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

McConnell, R-Ky., the second-ranking GOP leader in the Senate, said the 5-3 court decision "means that American servicemen potentially could be accused of war crimes."

"I think Congress is going to want to deal with that," McConnell said on NBC's "Meet the Press." He called the ruling "very disturbing."

The Geneva Conventions' Article 3 is "far beyond our domestic law when it comes to terrorism, and Congress can rein it in, and I think we should," said Graham, R-S.C., assigned as a Reserve Judge to the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals. Graham spoke on "Fox News Sunday."

Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., also expressed concern about the decision, saying it "is somewhat of a departure, in my view, of people who are stateless terrorists." McCain appeared on ABC's "This Week."

McConnell wants Congress to deal with the Geneva Accords issue at the same time it addresses the court's overturning of the military commissions created to try a limited number of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Addressing the commission issue, McCain and Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Congress might devise broader changes than the White House wants in trials of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

As a starting point for debate, McCain said Congress should embrace the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the bedrock of military law protecting the rights of accused soldiers. The Bush administration has skirted the code for nearly five years in dealing with Guantanamo Bay prisoners it has classified as enemy combatants.

Specter said "we have to reconcile" what the Bush administration thinks it can do and what the Supreme Court decision says. Specter spoke on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Many Republicans in Congress say detainees in the war on terror should not have the same legal protections as those in the military. Congress, they say, should give its imprimatur with little or no change to the Pentagon's military commissions.

McCain agreed that justice afforded to enemy combatants "shouldn't be exactly the same as applied to a member of the military." He added, however, that the Uniform Code of Military Justice is "a good framework."

The Supreme Court said Bush's military commissions violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the four Geneva Conventions signed in 1949.

Under military commission rules, the court noted, such panels may block an accused and his civilian lawyer from ever learning of evidence the prosecution presents that is classified. In addition, commissions can permit the admission of any evidence it deems to have probative value to a reasonable person.

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"I'm The Decider!"

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Constitutional Limits

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There are certain things Nixon doesn't do!

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Extinguished

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Time To Rededicate Ourselves To Independence

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Not Giving Away My Inheritance, Is He?

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Free Market Health Care

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Red Cross laptop with donor data — including Social Security numbers and medical information — stolen

USA TODAY
Red Cross laptop with donor data stolen

DALLAS (AP) — A laptop containing personal information from thousands of blood donors — including Social Security numbers and medical information — was stolen from a local office of the American Red Cross, but officials said the information was encrypted.

The data included matching names and birth dates of donors from Texas and Oklahoma, as well as donors' sexual and disease histories.

"We haven't viewed this as a security breach at this point," Darren Irby, spokesman for the national American Red Cross office, told The Dallas Morning News for its Saturday editions.

The laptop was one of three stolen from a locked closet in the Farmers Branch office of the American Red Cross in May, but the two others did not contain the personal information. There was no sign of forced entry, said Red Cross spokeswoman Audrey Lundy.

Local officials alerted police and national Red Cross offices, Lundy said. Donors were not notified about the missing information, and the Red Cross had no legal obligation to do so.

The laptops disappeared on two separate occasions in May, according to police reports. They could have been gone as long as a week before being reported missing.

Gordon Bass, acting chief information security officer for the national Red Cross, said supervisors have their own user names and passwords. Access is time-and-date based, so information can be accessed only during blood drives or when new information is uploaded to a central database.

The Farmers Branch Red Cross also lost a laptop with encrypted donor information in June 2005, Lundy said, but she could provide no details on circumstances of that incident or any follow-up investigation.

Security in the Farmers Branch office was tightened after the most recent disappearances, Lundy said.


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Publishing "Secrets" : June 30, 1971 US Supreme Court abolished the government's power to censor the press

The New York Times
When Do We Publish a Secret?
By DEAN BAQUET, editor, The Los Angeles Times, and BILL KELLER, executive editor, The New York Times

SINCE Sept. 11, 2001, newspaper editors have faced excruciating choices in covering the government's efforts to protect the country from terrorist agents. Each of us has, on a number of occasions, withheld information because we were convinced that publishing it could put lives at risk. On other occasions, each of us has decided to publish classified information over strong objections from our government.

Last week our newspapers disclosed a secret Bush administration program to monitor international banking transactions. We did so after appeals from senior administration officials to hold the story. Our reports — like earlier press disclosures of secret measures to combat terrorism — revived an emotional national debate, featuring angry calls of "treason" and proposals that journalists be jailed along with much genuine concern and confusion about the role of the press in times like these.

We are rivals. Our newspapers compete on a hundred fronts every day. We apply the principles of journalism individually as editors of independent newspapers. We agree, however, on some basics about the immense responsibility the press has been given by the inventors of the country.

Make no mistake, journalists have a large and personal stake in the country's security. We live and work in cities that have been tragically marked as terrorist targets. Reporters and photographers from both our papers braved the collapsing towers to convey the horror to the world.

We have correspondents today alongside troops on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others risk their lives in a quest to understand the terrorist threat; Daniel Pearl of The Wall Street Journal was murdered on such a mission. We, and the people who work for us, are not neutral in the struggle against terrorism.

But the virulent hatred espoused by terrorists, judging by their literature, is directed not just against our people and our buildings. It is also aimed at our values, at our freedoms and at our faith in the self-government of an informed electorate. If the freedom of the press makes some Americans uneasy, it is anathema to the ideologists of terror.

Thirty-five years ago yesterday [June 30], in the Supreme Court ruling that stopped the government from suppressing the secret Vietnam War history called the Pentagon Papers, Justice Hugo Black wrote: "The government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people."

As that sliver of judicial history reminds us, the conflict between the government's passion for secrecy and the press's drive to reveal is not of recent origin. This did not begin with the Bush administration, although the polarization of the electorate and the daunting challenge of terrorism have made the tension between press and government as clamorous as at any time since Justice Black wrote.

Our job, especially in times like these, is to bring our readers information that will enable them to judge how well their elected leaders are fighting on their behalf, and at what price.

In recent years our papers have brought you a great deal of information the White House never intended for you to know — classified secrets about the questionable intelligence that led the country to war in Iraq, about the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, about the transfer of suspects to countries that are not squeamish about using torture, about eavesdropping without warrants.

As Robert G. Kaiser, associate editor of The Washington Post, asked recently in the pages of that newspaper: "You may have been shocked by these revelations, or not at all disturbed by them, but would you have preferred not to know them at all? If a war is being waged in America's name, shouldn't Americans understand how it is being waged?"

Government officials, understandably, want it both ways. They want us to protect their secrets, and they want us to trumpet their successes. A few days ago, Treasury Secretary John Snow said he was scandalized by our decision to report on the bank-monitoring program. But in September 2003 the same Secretary Snow invited a group of reporters from our papers, The Wall Street Journal and others to travel with him and his aides on a military aircraft for a six-day tour to show off the department's efforts to track terrorist financing. The secretary's team discussed many sensitive details of their monitoring efforts, hoping they would appear in print and demonstrate the administration's relentlessness against the terrorist threat.

How do we, as editors, reconcile the obligation to inform with the instinct to protect?

Sometimes the judgments are easy. Our reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, take great care not to divulge operational intelligence in their news reports, knowing that in this wired age it could be seen and used by insurgents.

Often the judgments are painfully hard. In those cases, we cool our competitive jets and begin an intensive deliberative process.

The process begins with reporting. Sensitive stories do not fall into our hands. They may begin with a tip from a source who has a grievance or a guilty conscience, but those tips are just the beginning of long, painstaking work. Reporters operate without security clearances, without subpoena powers, without spy technology. They work, rather, with sources who may be scared, who may know only part of the story, who may have their own agendas that need to be discovered and taken into account. We double-check and triple-check. We seek out sources with different points of view. We challenge our sources when contradictory information emerges.

Then we listen. No article on a classified program gets published until the responsible officials have been given a fair opportunity to comment. And if they want to argue that publication represents a danger to national security, we put things on hold and give them a respectful hearing. Often, we agree to participate in off-the-record conversations with officials, so they can make their case without fear of spilling more secrets onto our front pages.

Finally, we weigh the merits of publishing against the risks of publishing. There is no magic formula, no neat metric for either the public's interest or the dangers of publishing sensitive information. We make our best judgment.

When we come down in favor of publishing, of course, everyone hears about it. Few people are aware when we decide to hold an article. But each of us, in the past few years, has had the experience of withholding or delaying articles when the administration convinced us that the risk of publication outweighed the benefits. Probably the most discussed instance was The New York Times's decision to hold its article on telephone eavesdropping for more than a year, until editors felt that further reporting had whittled away the administration's case for secrecy.

But there are other examples. The New York Times has held articles that, if published, might have jeopardized efforts to protect vulnerable stockpiles of nuclear material, and articles about highly sensitive counterterrorism initiatives that are still in operation. In April, The Los Angeles Times withheld information about American espionage and surveillance activities in Afghanistan discovered on computer drives purchased by reporters in an Afghan bazaar.

It is not always a matter of publishing an article or killing it. Sometimes we deal with the security concerns by editing out gratuitous detail that lends little to public understanding but might be useful to the targets of surveillance. The Washington Post, at the administration's request, agreed not to name the specific countries that had secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons, deeming that information not essential for American readers. The New York Times, in its article on National Security Agency eavesdropping, left out some technical details.

Even the banking articles, which the president and vice president have condemned, did not dwell on the operational or technical aspects of the program, but on its sweep, the questions about its legal basis and the issues of oversight.

We understand that honorable people may disagree with any of these choices — to publish or not to publish. But making those decisions is the responsibility that falls to editors, a corollary to the great gift of our independence. It is not a responsibility we take lightly. And it is not one we can surrender to the government.

— DEAN BAQUET, editor, The Los Angeles Times, and BILL KELLER, executive editor, The New York Times

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GOP Seeks Advantage In legal defeat Ruling On Trials; National Security Is Likely Rallying Cry, Leaders Indicate

washingtonpost.com
GOP Seeks Advantage In Ruling On Trials
National Security Is Likely Rallying Cry, Leaders Indicate
By Michael Abramowitz and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers

Republicans yesterday looked to wrest a political victory from a legal defeat in the Supreme Court, serving notice to Democrats that they must back President Bush on how to try suspects at Guantanamo Bay or risk being branded as weak on terrorism.

In striking down the military commissions Bush sought for trials of suspected members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, the high court Thursday invited Congress to establish new rules and put the issue prominently before the public four months before the midterm elections. As the White House and lawmakers weighed next steps, House GOP leaders signaled they are ready to use this week's turn of events as a political weapon.

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) criticized House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's comment Thursday that the court decision "affirms the American ideal that all are entitled to the basic guarantees of our justice system." That statement, Boehner said, amounted to Pelosi's advocating "special privileges for terrorists."

Similar views ricocheted around conservative talk radio -- Rush Limbaugh called Pelosi's comments "deranged" on his show Thursday -- and Republican strategists said they believed that the decision presented Bush a chance to put Democrats on the spot while uniting a Republican coalition that lately has been splintered on immigration, spending and other issues.

"It would be good politics to have a debate about this if Democrats are going to argue for additional rights for terrorists," said Terry Nelson, a prominent GOP political strategist who was political director for Bush's reelection campaign in 2004.

Mindful of this thinking, Democrats were measured in their comments about how to respond to the ruling, which held that Bush's policy was not authorized by law and violated the Geneva Conventions.

Brendan Daly, Pelosi's spokesman, said Democrats "want to work with" the administration in fashioning new rules for terrorism suspects, and he dismissed Boehner's comments as a sign of desperation. "[Bush] is not a king -- he has to follow the law," Daly said. "That's all we're saying."

Democrats seemed to gain some support from a few Senate Republicans, who said politics should not dictate how Congress responds to the Supreme Court. "This should not be a party fight," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). "I'm a proud Republican senator, but my nation needs both parties working in collaboration with the executive branch to solve the military commission problem, and both parties will be rewarded by the public if we're seen as working for the common good."

The issue is not without complexity for Republicans. A Washington Post-ABC poll this week suggested that while Americans continue to favor holding suspects at the U.S. military installation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, they are leery of an administration policy that has resulted in almost all of the 450 detainees being held without charges. Of those polled, 71 percent said the detainees should be either given POW status or charged with a crime.

In many respects, the Guantanamo Bay facility has become an albatross for the Bush administration since its creation in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as a prison for terrorism suspects picked up in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Bush signed an executive order in November 2001 establishing military commissions to try the inmates, but the process has been in a legal limbo and no suspect has gone through a full trial.

Meanwhile, the United States has attracted intense international criticism for holding the detainees in limbo, and Bush has said repeatedly that he wants to close the prison.

Some lawmakers want Congress to endorse a plan to have the commissions operate by the rules of a regular court-martial, which would give the detainees more rights than they would have under the current commission structure. But administration lawyers have been concerned that it would be difficult to win convictions under that scenario, in large measure because the standard of proof would be higher.

White House spokeswoman Dana M. Perino said the administration is reviewing how to respond to the court.

A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the issue is still being debated internally, seemed to hint at the potential political implications in Congress. "Members of both parties will have to decide whether terrorists who cherish the killing of innocents deserve the same protections as our men and women who wear the uniform," this official said.

The House and Senate Armed Services committees and the Senate Judiciary Committee have called for hearings as soon as Congress returns from the week-long Fourth of July break.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) yesterday outlined his plan to conduct military tribunals in a manner consistent with the court's decision.

Under the Specter bill, a three-judge panel of military lawyers would preside. Defendants would be present in court with their lawyers, who would be granted the right to gather evidence, cross-examine witnesses and review classified information after it had been reviewed by a judge. Defendants would be granted the right to appeal verdicts to a court of military appeals and, ultimately, the Supreme Court.

"I would suggest that the rhetoric be cooled at least long enough for people to read the opinion," Specter said of the Supreme Court decision. "We're going to have to dot all the i's and cross all the t's on this legislation to make sure it passes muster."

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), a key figure on detainee policy, noted that the court pointedly ruled that military tribunals had to comport with the Geneva Conventions, so any effort to simply grant Bush the power he wants would not pass the scrutiny of the court. If Republicans ignore the court's prescription, military lawyers would be quick to speak out, granting Democrats political cover, he predicted.

"That kind of excess, I think, backfires," Levin said of the House Republican broadsides. "The American public has too much common sense to put much stock in that kind of diatribe. Americans respect the Supreme Court."

But some GOP allies said they suspect that the decision will help energize a Republican base that has been angry at some Bush policies. Tom Liddy, a conservative talk show host in Phoenix, said that the decision has been a big topic on his show and that it could be another terrorism issue that works to the GOP's advantage.

Liddy noted that House Republicans pushed through a resolution Thursday, over Democratic objections, criticizing the news media for publishing classified information about a secret anti-terrorism program that monitors bank transactions.

"It will be worse for the Democrats to be seen as favoring the terrorists than favoring the New York Times," Liddy said.

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Secrecy, Security, the President and the Press

The New York Times
The Public Editor
Secrecy, Security, the President and the Press
By BYRON CALAME

THE Bush administration's unusually harsh attacks on The New York Times for exposing a secret banking-data surveillance program have turned a glaring spotlight on the paper's decision to publish the article.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Republican legislators have singled out The Times in recent days for disclosing the counterterrorism program, even though The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal published articles the same day. Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky called on the attorney general to investigate The New York Times for treason.

The flood of reader e-mails reacting to the June 23 article has left hundreds of messages in various newsroom in-boxes at The Times. Roughly 1,000 e-mails have come to me, about 85 percent of them critical of the decision to publish the story and a large fraction venomous. It was time to take a close look at the handling of the article in search of answers.

My close look convinced me that Bill Keller, the executive editor, was correct in deciding that Times readers deserved to read about the banking-data surveillance program. And the growing indications that this and other financial monitoring operations were hardly a secret to the terrorist world minimizes the possibility that the article made America less safe.

The banking-data surveillance program, set up in 2001, is run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department. It provided access to records of transactions routed through a Belgian consortium by banks and financial institutions around the world. More than 11 million transactions involving about $6 trillion are routed daily through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift.

So what were the most solid reasons to publish the story?

There was a significant question as to how secret the program was after five years. "Hundreds, if not thousands, of people know about this," Mr. Keller said he was told by an official who talked to him on condition of anonymity. The 25 bankers from numerous nations on the Swift board of directors, and their predecessors going back to 2001, knew about the arrangement. So did some consortium executives and staff members — a group that probably expanded during this period. Starting in 2003, Swift representatives had to be stationed alongside any government intelligence official searching the data.

Further support for the conclusion that the Swift program hasn't remained totally hidden from terrorists, or anyone else, emerged last week. A former State Department official who has served on a United Nations counterterrorism group pointed to a 2002 United Nations report noting that the United States was monitoring international financial transactions. Swift and similar organizations were mentioned in the publicly available report, although there were no details. "The United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions," the report noted.

The Times's June 23 article "awoke the general public" to the Swift program and "in that sense, it was truly new news," Victor Comras, the former State Department official, wrote on The Counterterrorism Blog last week. "But," he added, "the information was fairly well known by terrorism financing experts back in 2002."

The administration has sometimes invited press attention to its effort to track terrorist financing. In September 2003, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and a team of his aides took reporters from The Times and other papers on a six-day tour on a military aircraft "to show off the department's efforts," Mr. Keller and Dean Baquet, the editor of The Los Angeles Times, noted in a joint Op-Ed commentary that appeared yesterday. The aides "discussed many sensitive details of their monitoring efforts, hoping they would appear in print and demonstrate the administration's relentlessness against the terrorist threat," according to the two editors.

Another reason Times editors were right to proceed with the 3,550-word Swift story was the skimpy Congressional oversight of the program. Secrecy is vital for intelligence and national security programs, but so is oversight by the courts or elected legislators. The Swift program, however, doesn't seem to have any specific Congressional approval or formal authorization. The Treasury Department has not provided a list of who in Congress was informed, or when, The Times has reported.

Eric Lichtblau, one of the two reporters who wrote the Swift story, told me the administration briefed a limited number of Congressional leaders — apparently from both parties, but not the full intelligence or banking committees — toward the beginning of the program. It wasn't until the Treasury Department learned that The Times was working on the story, Mr. Lichtblau said, that the administration apparently briefed all members of the intelligence committees. Whether there are official standards established for the Swift program or not, the weak Congressional oversight over the past five years deserved public scrutiny.

Temporary emergency measures cloaked in government secrecy can too easily become permanent shortcuts. That's why oversight is important. It is also a reason to publish the article. The reservations expressed by some of the 20 current and former government officials and industry executives who were disturbed enough to talk to The Times were based on this concern: "What they viewed as an urgent, temporary measure had become permanent nearly five years later without specific Congressional approval or formal authorization," in the words of the article.

The most fundamental reason for publishing the article, of course, was the obligation of a free press to monitor government and other powerful institutions in our society. "Our default position — our job — is to publish information if we are convinced it is fair and accurate," Mr. Keller wrote in a letter to readers posted online last weekend, "and our biggest failures have generally been when we failed to dig deep enough or to report fully enough." He added:

"The question we start with as journalists is not 'why publish?' but 'why would we withhold information of significance?' We have sometimes done so, holding stories or editing out details that could serve those hostile to the U.S. But we need a compelling reason to do so."

What about the administration's reasons for demanding that The Times not publish?

Mr. Keller said the "central argument" senior officials gave against publishing the Swift article was that international bankers would stop cooperating. In his weekend letter, he cited two reasons that argument didn't stop him from publishing the story: First, the consortium provides data to comply with administrative subpoenas issued by the Treasury Department — a legal obligation. "Second, if, as the administration says, the program is legal, highly effective, and well protected against invasion of privacy, the bankers should have little trouble defending it." So far, Swift hasn't publicly indicated any intention to stop cooperating.

For me, the most substantial argument against running the story was the acknowledgment that the Swift program was letter-of-the-law legal, had helped catch some terrorists and had a clean record on privacy abuse. But full-bore oversight would have had to be part of that picture to make a convincing case that the program deserved to continue in secrecy, with its access to Swift's mother lode of financial data.

Often obscured in the past week's hot rhetoric over The Times's decision to publish the Swift article were the occasions when the paper's editors have chosen to hold or modify a story when warned by government officials that lives or national security might be endangered. "Few people are aware when we decide to hold an article," noted Mr. Keller and Mr. Baquet in their joint commentary. Apart from The Times's decision to hold the December story about the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping for more than a year, it turns out the paper has decided not to publish stories that "might have jeopardized efforts to protect vulnerable stockpiles of nuclear material," according to the joint commentary. The Times has also held stories about "highly sensitive counterterrorism initiatives that are still in operation," the Op-Ed piece noted.

"There is no magic formula, no neat metric for either the public's interest or the dangers of publishing sensitive information," the two editors concluded. "We make our best judgment."

The best judgment of these two editors served their readers well in the case of the Swift story. In the face of intense administration pressure in a country that's unusually polarized politically, they correctly decided to make sure their readers were informed about the banking-data surveillance.

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