Most voters dissatisfied with Congress: poll

Reuters
Most voters dissatisfied with Congress: poll

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With the congressional election less than two months away, an overwhelming majority of Americans expressed a negative opinion of the Republican-led Congress in a poll by The New York Times and CBS News released on Wednesday.

Only 25 percent of respondents said they approved of the way Congress was handling its job, and 77 percent -- including 65 percent of the Republicans polled -- said they did not believe current members of Congress deserved re-election.

The Times said public approval of Congress was at its lowest level since 1994 when Republicans wrested control of both the House of Representatives and Senate from Democrats for the first time in four decades.

Few could name a major piece of legislation Congress had passed and two-thirds said lawmakers had accomplished less in the past two years than in other congressional sessions, the Times said.

An overwhelming majority, 73 percent, said members of Congress were more interested in serving special interest groups than in meeting the needs of their district. Only 20 percent said they put the public first. Sixty-nine percent said lawmakers did not understand the problems faced by the public.

But the newspaper said the poll results did not indicate a sure victory for Democrats on November 7, when the party tries to pick up the six Senate seats and 15 House seats that would give it majorities in each chamber.

While 61 percent said they did not approve of the work of Congress, only 29 percent disapproved of the job being down by their own representatives, while 39 percent said their representatives deserved re-election. Forty-eight percent said it was time to elect someone new.

The poll found 50 percent of voters intended to select a Democrat in November, while 35 percent said they would support a Republican. Still, 45 percent said Republicans had a clear plan for the country, compared with 38 percent who said Democrats offered such a clear view.

President George W. Bush had an approval rating of 37 percent in the poll conducted Friday to Wednesday, no change from a poll in August. Approval of the way he handles terrorism also remained unchanged at 54 percent, and approval of the way he has handled the war in Iraq rose to 36 percent from 30 percent, the poll showed.

A USA Today/Gallup poll released on Tuesday showed Bush's approval rating had bounced up to 44 percent from 39 percent.

Strategists in both parties have said the glum mood of the public has created a desire for change and given Democrats the edge in the autumn campaigns.

Asked whether the coming election was about the president, 46 percent said it was not, while 35 percent felt it was a vote against him and 16 percent saw it as a vote for him.

The poll showed greater trust in Democrats than Republicans to tell the truth about the war in Iraq, 44 percent to 23 percent, and about terrorism, 42 percent to 28 percent.

Regardless of how they planned to vote, 54 percent of those polled expected Democrats would win more seats in November and 32 percent thought Republicans would.

About 40 House seats and a dozen Senate seats are seen as important battlegrounds with all 435 House seats and 34 of 100 Senate seats at stake in the November election.

The nationwide telephone poll of 1,131 adults, of whom 1,007 said they were registered voters, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Three-fourths of the respondents said they would "definitely vote" in the upcoming election.

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HACKED: VIRUS IMPLANTED, SPREAD ON DIEBOLD TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING MACHINE!

Here is the beginning of my post.


BradBlog.com
HACKED: VIRUS IMPLANTED, SPREAD ON DIEBOLD TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING MACHINE!

New, First-of-Its Kind, University Study Reveals Malicious Code Can Be Easily Inserted into Voting Machine, Spread from One System to the Next, Resulting in Flipped Votes, and Stolen Elections…All Without a Trace Being Left Behind
Study Also Confirms that Voter Access Cards Can Be Created At Home to Defeat Security Protocols, Allowing Voters to Vote Multiple Times in a Single Election!

– Brad Friedman, EXCLUSIVE
– (Salon.com has posted a shortened version of the following report:
"Hack the vote? No problem")

A vote for George Washington could easily be converted to a vote for Benedict Arnold on an electronic voting machine and neither the voter, nor the election officials administering the election would ever know what happened. It wouldn't require a "conspiracy theory" or a "conspiracy" at all. It could be done by a single person with just a few moments of access to the voting systems.

Those new findings are detailed, and illustrated on video-tape, in a new first-of-its-kind study released today by computer scientists and security experts at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy.

(The version of the video demo at the Princeton website is being hit hard, and thus, slow to download and view currently. We've got a quick flash version available here for your convenience, courtesy of David Edwards.)

The scientific study has revealed, for the first time, that a computer virus can be easily implanted on an electronic voting machine which could, in turn, result in votes flipped for opposing candidates. The virus, as well, could be written to then spread itself from one machine to the next resulting in a stolen election. The malfeasance would likely never be discovered, the scientists have said.

Though the concept of stolen votes via electronic voting systems has been widely regarded as theoretically possible by experts up until now, a top-secret four-month long hands-on study of an actual touch-screen voting system, by the scientists at Princeton, has confirmed the worst nightmares of elections officials and American voters…not to mention a voting machine company known as Diebold.

The BRAD BLOG has had exclusive access to the scientists and information being tested as the team's various hack attempts have been designed and carried out over the course of the study.

Working directly with a Diebold AccuVote TS touch-screen voting system, the computer scientists have been able to implant a nearly-undetectable virus onto a touch-screen voting system, managing to successfully alter a voter's ballot — after it's already been confirmed and cast — in order to flip the vote so that it is recorded for a candidate other than the one the voter had intended.

According to the study's team leader, Edward W. Felten, a professor at Princeton's Department of Computer Science, the report confirms – and records in a video-taped demonstration – that such a malicious virus could be easily inserted onto a Diebold touch-screen voting system by a single individual "with just one or two minutes of unsupervised access to either the voting machine or the memory card" used with the system to store ballot definitions and vote tabulations.

The virus, as programmed by the Princeton team, could then spread from one voting system to the next depending on the way the machine in use is configured, or the way in which votes are tabulated in any particular jurisdication.

…NO 'CONSPIRACY' NECESSARY…

"We've demonstrated that malicious code can spread like a virus from one voting machine to another," said Felten in an exclusive interview, "which means that a bad guy who can get access to a few machines — or only one — can infect one machine, which could infect another, stealing a few votes on each in order to steal an entire election."

The question of such unsupervised access to voting systems has been widely debated since access was quickly granted by an election official in Emery County, Utah to a Diebold touch-screen system last March. When the information revealed by that brief investigation [PDF] was made public just days prior to this year's primary election in Pennsylvania, elections officials were sent scrambling for last minute security mitigation procedures.

The Emery County report, arranged by election watchdog organization BlackBoxVoting.org and carried out by computer scientist Harri Hursti and the firm Security Innovation, revealed that a "feature" built into Diebold's touch-screen system could allow a malicious individual to completely overwrite the election software, operating system and computer firmware with just a minute or two of unsupervised access to the machines – no password necessary.

…NO LONGER JUST A 'THEORY'…

What sort of danger could be caused by that access, however, has been hotly debated — and largely speculative — until the revelations of the Princeton report which detail exactly how the system might be compromised by viral computer code which could change vote tabulation, replicate itself across the entire system and hide its own tracks after the election.

After news of the Emery County study was released, dozens of scientists, including Carnegie Mellon computer scientist, professor Michael I. Shamos – an examiner of electronic voting systems for the commonwealth of Pennsylvania – described the newly discovered vulnerability as "The most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system." The discovery sent elections officials in states across the country scrambling for temporary emergency security mitigation procedures prior to upcoming primary elections.

The debate about security for the systems grew even louder when, in California's June election (and since then other states as well) those hastily enacted security procedures were largely ignored by the administrators of the election. Diebold voting machines were sent home unsupervised overnight with poll workers in the days and weeks, prior to the election by San Diego County's Registrar of Voters.

The security breaches in the so-called voting machine "sleepovers" in San Diego County led to a contest of the U.S. House Special Election held that day between Francine Busby and Brian Bilbray to replace jailed congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham in California's 50th congressional district. The legal suit, brought to contest the reported results of the election, charged that the unrestricted access to the machines by poll workers compromised the election in addition to violating both state and federal law.

David Jefferson, a lead voting systems technology advisor for the California Secretary of State and a computer scientist at Livermore National Laboratory told The PBS News Hour just after California's primary election, that "You can affect multiple machines from a single attack, that's what makes it so dangerous." He was right.

At the time, Jefferson was speaking in the wake of the Emery County investigation. Jefferson's comments were largely theoretical back then, though shared by the bulk of the country's election systems experts. The theory, however, had never actually proven and carried out on an actual machine. The Princeton study puts an end to such speculation, showing conclusively for the first time how a single malicious person could insert a virus into a single machine which could both flip votes and then be passed from machine to machine.

"We've also found how malicious code could also modify its own tracks [afterwards] and remain virtually undetectable by elections officials," says Felten. "It wouldn't be found in the standard tests performed either before or after an election."

The Princeton study is the first such extensive, independent, publicly-released investigation of the hardware, software, and firmware of a Diebold AccuVote DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) system of the type used in Maryland, Florida, Georgia and many other states. In all, such touch-screen voting systems made by Diebold, will be in use in nearly 40 states across the country this November.

The study, which also reveals a number of other troubling vulnerabilities – including the confirmation that voter access cards used on Diebold systems may be created inexpensively on a personal laptop computer, allowing a voter to vote as many times as they wish – was released this morning in full on Princeton University's website along with video demonstrations of some of the most disturbing revelations of the report.

Though all electronic voting systems currently in use in the United States employ similar secret software to count the votes in America's public elections, Diebold Inc., of North Canton, Ohio, has long been the target of election integrity advocates since its former CEO had promised in a fundraising letter to Republican supporters that he was committed "to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes" to George W. Bush prior to the 2004 election.

A number of reports over the last several months on various aspects of the Diebold voting system have revealed startling vulnerabilities to hacking along with failures to record election results accurately. Those reports have sent federal, state and county elections officials scrambling to either deny the magnitude of the problem, or develop last minute security mitigation procedures prior to this November's mid-term election.

While previous reports have examined a limited set of vulnerabilities, this is the first such study – conducted under extraordinary security measures — to look at the entire system as a whole over an extended period.

"These are, by far, the most serious electronic vulnerabilities that have been published to date," explained Felten. "It's far more serious than even the very serious vulnerabilities that have been published" in previous studies and reports.

…IT TAKES A THIEF…

After previous studies, both Diebold officials as well as some elections officials have downplayed the significance of the type of security vulnerabilities revealed today by Princeton, claiming that normal security procedures should sufficiently ward off any such malicious attack. Though the recent examples of security breaches in the contested Busby/Bilbray race, and primary elections elsewhere this year, demonstrate that officials have little basis for such confidence.

They certainly have no scientific evidence to back up their claims that all is well.
When San Diego County Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas was asked about the security breaches in the Busby/Bilbray election and whether they might have put the election at risk, he downplayed the dangers.

Though he admitted such hacks were possible during the voting machine "sleepovers" that he allowed, he told The BRAD BLOG during an interview just after the election that he felt it "highly improbable" that anyone would do anything untoward in such a situation.

"You'd have to want to commit a felony, which knocks out most of our poll workers," Haas explained.

"I'm sure they could stick something in the system…Whether it's detectable or not, I'm pretty sure that it is. But again, you're tampering with election equipment, so it seems unlikely."

Such wishful thinking has similarly long been shared by Diebold in public statements.

Diebold spokesman, David Bear did not immediately return our call for comment, but he has, in the recent past, denied that such security concerns are notable.

"[Our critics are] throwing out a 'what if' that's premised on a basis of an evil, nefarious person breaking the law," Bear told NEWSWEEK after the march Emery County study. "For there to be a problem here," he explained to the New York Times, "you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software…I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

Unfortunately, such "evil elections people" do exist. During a radio interview I conducted with Monterey County, California Registrar of Voters Tony Anchundo prior to the November 2005 election, the 13-year election official explained, when asked which results would be official in the event that their new voting machine "paper trails" didn't match up with the machine-reported totals that, "There is obviously going to have to be some trust and faith in the elections official, or in this case, it's me."

Several months later Anchundo was charged with 43 criminal counts including charges of forgery, misapplication of funds, embezzlement, falsification of accounts and grand theft to the tune of $70,000 charged on county credit cards.

Add that misplaced "trust and faith in elections officials" to the many other cases of felony indictments for elections officials including three recently in Ohio where Cuyahoga County election workers were found to have gamed the Green and Libertarian party sponsored 2004 Presidential recount in the crucial Buckeye State.

And add to that a recent report [PDF] from the U.S. Dept. of Defense which, as Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) pointed out in a speech last month, "noted that a total of 1,213 public officials had been federally charged with corruption in 2004, that 1,020 of them had been convicted of corruption, and that 419 cases remained pending."

…DIEB-THROAT SAYS: 'WE PUT OUT JUNK'…

Electronic voting systems such as those made by Diebold and a hand-full of other private corporations now litter the electoral landscape across the nation as the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), passed by the U.S. Congress in 2002, kicks in in full for the first time as of this year. Major problems with the systems have been previously confirmed by independent scientists, revealing dozens of vulnerabilities and many problems and meltdowns have cropped up on the machines throughout the 2006 primary season, affecting elections in dozens of states.

Critics have charged that the systems, which are disallowed from full, independent testing and so-called "red team" hack attempts by computer security professionals at either the federal, state or county level, were rushed out by the companies in order to take advantage of the $3.8 billion in federal money made available by HAVA to encourage jurisdictions to "upgrade" their older voting systems in light of the 2000 election debacle in Florida. Ironically enough, it was a Diebold electronic system which reported some negative 16,000 votes in Volusia County, Florida on election night which then kicked off the eventual 36-day firefight surrounding the counting of the older punch-card systems in the Sunshine State back in 2000.

"We put junk out there when HAVA came out, and now they've gotten caught," explained one of the Diebold insiders who The BRAD BLOG has reported on for some time. The source — code-named "DIEB-THROAT" due to their sensitive relationship with the company – said, "They hate this, they don't want publicity. They want to run this [their election division] like their banking side. Quietly. Hoping nobody will notice."

But Americans have noticed.

Computer scientists and security experts, as well as a vocal election integrity activist community, have been reporting on, and revealing vulnerabilities in systems made by Diebold as well as ES&S, Sequoia Voting systems and Hart InterCivic for some time. The mainstream media, however, as well as the political parties — and certainly elections officials who have staked their reputations on the accuracy and security of such machines — have been slow to catch up with the extraordinarily detailed and documented threats.

…ELECTIONS OFFICIALS STILL IN DENIAL (MOST OF THEM ANYWAY)…

Study after study has found scores, if not hundreds of vulnerabilities in such systems. The Princeton study radically ups the ante in its first-hand, explicit, before-your-very-eyes hack of one such system. Even while the issue has been largely ignored over the past several years by both the media and the political parties, many of those elections officials continue to publicly deny the concerns of scientists and activists in the face of what is now a towering mountain of evidence documenting the insecurity of these systems.

Deborah Hench, Registrar of Voters in San Joaquin County, California has gone on record denying the vulnerabilities and failures of the systems even after California conducted the largest mock-election test ever held in her own warehouse, on her own Diebold touch-screen voting systems. That test, conducted in July of 2005 found that the systems failed to operate properly nearly 30% of the time.

Later, after the California Secretary of State's office issued their own scientific study [PDF], conducted at UC Berkley and finding more than 16 new vulnerabilities, Hench was, remarkably enough, quoted telling a local San Joaquin paper; "The state tested this system seven ways to Sunday…They didn't find anything wrong."

Hench furthered the denial and public misinformation when she told the PBS News Hour that a virus hacked into a Diebold voting system by a single person simply couldn't work, because "You're going to have to break into my warehouse before we deploy. You're going to have to change 1,660 units." Neither of those requirements, we now learn, are necessary according to Princeton.

Once again, the latest study proves Hench, an election official who has succeeded in encouraging her county to allocate millions of dollars for these systems, is entirely wrong.

On the other hand, there are some elections officials, such as Leon County, Florida's Ion Sancho and Yolo County, California's Freddie Oakley who have been far more honest in their public comments.

Sancho, who was forced by the state of Florida to use Diebold voting machines even after he allowed computer hackers the opportunity to test – successfully – their theoretical hack, which flipped a mock election on an optical scan paper ballot system manufactured by Diebold told an election integrity gathering last May that the public should "Trust no one," when it comes to our electoral system. "If it can't be verified, it can't be used," he told the enthusiastic crowd.

Oakley was even more to the point in an email sent to The BRAD BLOG as the "sleepover" controversy erupted after the June elections in California: "If, as a practical matter," she wrote about the Diebold electronic voting machines used in the election, they "can't be secured, then perhaps they ought not be used at all. Period."

In the meantime, there is also a notable lack of computer scientists or security experts who are willing to declare the current systems being used across the nation are a secure way to carry out our precious democracy. In two-plus years that The BRAD BLOG has been reporting on these issues, we've yet to come across a single one who is willing to declare these systems are secure and ready for prime time voting.

The Diebold voting system obtained by Princeton for use in their investigation was obtained in cooperation with the election integrity umbrella group VelvetRevolution.us. As explained in their report, the machine was "obtained from a private party." The details of that acquisition, however, reveal even more damning information about the way in which Diebold rushed these systems to market. A full report on that background, including exclusive insider details obtained by The BRAD BLOG, will be forthcoming in the near future.

While virtually all of the systems manufactured by all of the major American voting machine companies currently set for use this November have been found to be vulnerable to hacking, tampering, inaccuracy and error, various elements of the Diebold voting systems have found their way into more independent hands-on investigations than any of the other companies' systems to date. As access is gained by private individuals to machines made by the other manufacturers, more vulnerabilities on those systems as well are likely to be revealed. A recent landmark report issued by NYU's Brennan Center for Justice detailed some 120 threats to e-voting security across all such systems. So the worst is likely still ahead.

But for now, Diebold once again finds itself in the cross-hairs of election integrity advocates and computer scientists.

Said Johns Hopkins computer scientist and elections-security expert, Aviel Rubin recently – one of the original voices to declare the dangers of Diebold's systems after he analyzed source code from their voting machines which was left, by the company, unsecured on a public Internet site — "If Diebold had set out to build a system as insecure as they possibly could, this would be it."

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The Let America Vote Act: Call on Congress to Pass 'Emergency Paper Ballot Legislation' Now

Huffington Post
The Let America Vote Act: Call on Congress to Pass 'Emergency Paper Ballot Legislation' Now
Brad Friedman

Given this year's primary election meltdowns and train wrecks that we've been reporting since March 7th of this year, in which electronic voting machines have failed to start up and thousands of American voters have been turned away from the polls when they came to vote, but couldn't...

Given the fact that one such meltdown occurred last Tuesday in Maryland, where many of the DC media and politicos live...

Given VelvetRevolution's new Princeton Diebold Virus Hack report demonstrating conclusively that electronic voting machines may be hacked in a minute's time resulting in flipped elections without a trace left behind...

Giving that American democracy and the right to vote in that democracy ought to be a beacon to the world...

It is NOW time for Emergency Paper Ballot Legislation to be brought and passed immediately by both houses of the U.S. Congress, in order to at least mitigate the coming train wreck this November 7th.

Call it the Let America Vote Act (LAVA) of 2006...Let democracy flow!

The legislation can, and should be, as short as a single paragraph so that it can be read and passed quickly by every U.S. Congress member. It can apply only to this November's general election, if that is needed to get it passed and signed quickly.

It should read something like this...

LET AMERICA VOTE ACT (EMERGENCY PAPER BALLOT MANDATE OF 2006)

Emergency paper ballots shall be made available at every voting jurisdiction in the United States during the November 7th, 2006 General Election. These paper ballots shall be available in sufficient numbers for optional use by voters who prefer to use them, and by all voters in the event of voting machine failure or unavailability. These paper ballots are not to be provisional ballots, but regular paper ballots that shall be counted immediately upon the close of polls on election night along with all other votes cast by properly registered voters.

Note: At this point, I don't give a damn how the Emergency Paper Ballots will be counted; by hand, by optical scanner, whatever. So long as voters are not disenfranchised by the millions -- as thousands have already been so far in this year's primary elections across the country -- by showing up to the polling place only to be told they can't vote at all, or by being told they must vote provisionally (provisional ballots are not counted on election night, and frequently not at all) because the new voting machines are broken or otherwise unavailable.

States such as Texas, Arkansas and other have already had to do this this year when Secretaries of State put out emergency notices to Elections Administrators to create such Emergency Paper Ballots after the voting machine companies failed to provide programmed ballots or working machines.

All states are already required by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to have such paper ballots available at every polling place as Provisional Ballots, so those can be copied NOW if need be for use as Emergency Paper Ballots (which is better than the scraps of paper some counties reportedly have tried to use in emergency situations so far this year!)

BOTTOM LINE: With the passage of this Emergency Legislation, at least properly registered American citizens will be able to vote on Election Day if they choose to!

Feel free to call it the "Hail Mary Emergency Election Protection Act" if you want. I don't much care, so long as it's passed by Congress in time to ensure that voters can actually vote this November!

I've spoken with a number of people on the Hill and within the Election Integrity movement...scientists, activists, politicians, in DC and around the country, and they have all been in favor of this legislation and have pledged their support.

I am attemping to find sponsorship for this bill in Congress, and I'm calling on all Election Integrity organizations and concerned citizens who may have better connections than I to help find such Congressional sponsorship immediately.

I am calling on these same people to then call on Congress to pass this legislation immediately!

I am hoping to have an official version/wording of the bill posted shortly. It will, of course, be available as a new item here at The BRAD BLOG no later than tomorrow. It will spell out, in official "bill-like" language, precisely what I've posted above.

Democracy is at stake. After at least two years of reporting in exhaustive details on these matters here, and at this late stage of the game, I believe the above "reform" is, unfortunately, the most we can likely hope for in time to have any real impact in mitigating a full-on train wreck during this November's crucial excercise of the rite of democracy.

Please forward this item to everybody you know, cross-post it or link to it as you see fit (this is the URL: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3495)...And please contact your Congress person and ask them to support and/or sponsor this initiative today!

Originally posted at The BRAD BLOG

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Attorney General Gonzales Defends Interrogation Methods, Says Geneva Conventions Too Vague

ABC News
Gonzales Defends Interrogation Methods
Attorney General Gonzales Defends Interrogation Methods, Says Geneva Conventions Too Vague
By ANNE PLUMMER
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The White House told lawmakers it would send Congress a revised proposal late Monday for dealing with terrorism suspects as the number of GOP senators publicly opposing President Bush's initial plan continued to grow.

A Republican-led Senate committee last week defied Bush and approved terror-detainee legislation that Bush vowed to block. Sen. John Warner, normally a Bush supporter, pushed the measure through his Senate Armed Services Committee by a 15-9 vote.

John Ullyot, a spokesman for Warner, said the Virginia senator expected to receive another draft of the legislation. No details were immediately available.

The White House was adamant last week that the Senate proposal would end the CIA program to interrogate terrorists. Top officials spoke with reporters and senators in a bid to shore up support for Bush's legislation instead.

Whether Bush would have enough votes to win on the Senate floor remained unclear. On Monday, Warner appeared to have the majority of support in the Senate, with at least 52 votes in their favor if Democrats backed them as expected.

GOP Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Olympia Snowe of Maine said they favor Warner's bill, joining Warner and three others who voted for it during the committee meeting last week.

There are 44 Democratic senators plus a Democratic-leaning independent, Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont.

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Holocaust survivor siblings reunite 65 years later

Reuters
Holocaust survivor siblings reunite 65 years later
By Allyn Fisher-Ilan

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - "This is my sister, my darling baby sister," said Simon Glasberg through tears as he hugged Hilda Shlick, 75, who he had not seen for 65 years since their family split up in a bid to flee the Nazi Holocaust.

The two were hosted on Monday by Israel's Yad Vashem, a national memorial in Jerusalem to the six million Jews slain in World War II, just days after Glasberg, 81, flew in from Canada to meet a sister he was sure had died during the war.

Shlick's Israeli grandchildren had tracked Glasberg down through the Internet, after coming across their grandmother's name in Yad Vashem's database of Holocaust victims in mid-June.

Besides finding each other, brother and sister were also surprised to learn as a result that two other brothers and a sister survived the Holocaust, more than each had thought, though one sister and a niece had apparently perished.

"My sister, I've waited 65 years for this kiss," Glasberg, a retired furrier said, meeting Shlick, a former hairdresser, at Yad Vashem's Hall of Names, whose walls are lined with black files listing the details of millions of Holocaust victims.

"I am very happy to see you," the delicate-framed Shlick said, her words translated from Russian by a grandson.

While it is rare for sibling survivors to take so long to find each other, many Holocaust survivors take years to locate relatives scattered around the globe since fleeing Nazi Europe.

Many couldn't even begin to search for relatives until the Soviet bloc began to crumble in 1989.

The Glasbergs split up in 1941 when the Nazis invaded their native Romania. Shlick fled their hometown Chernowitz with an older sister to the Soviet Union and changed her name. Later she married and became Hilda Shlick.

NAZI CAMP SURVIVORS

Shlick later moved with a sister to Estonia, then a part of the Soviet Union, and in 1998, to Israel. The sister, Bertha, died after the war.

Glasberg remained in Romania during the war with three brothers and their parents. All survived a Nazi camp.

They moved to Canada after a brief stay in Israel where Simon Glasberg and a brother fought in the 1948 Independence War. Glasberg never knew what happened to any of his sisters, and Shlick feared all her brothers and parents had perished.

That was until last June, when her grandson, David Shlick, looked at the Yad Vashem database put online two years ago, and found her name -- listed erroneously as a war victim.

It took him some weeks to track down the uncle in Canada who had made that entry. The uncle had since died. But two of his brothers, including Glasberg, were still alive, Shlick discovered, and his grandmother hadn't been aware.

Plans for a reunion were partly delayed by Israel's month-long war with Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon that ended on August 14. One brother was too ill to make the trip, but Glasberg finally arrived last Friday.

Their first meeting was in private. "I couldn't even talk, after 65 years, what could I say?" Glasberg said.

For Shlick, the reunion contained two surprises, since she also learned through him that their parents had survived the war and lived into their 90s, but died about two decades ago.

Now she dreams of visiting their gravesites in Montreal.

"This is a very unique and exciting moment," Avner Shalev, the chairman of Yad Vashem said, welcoming the reunited siblings. "A grandson has searched the Web and linked up two parts of a family that didn't know each other still existed."

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Carter says Bush backs torture, shrinks U.S. influence

Reuters
Carter says Bush backs torture, shrinks U.S. influence
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said on Monday the Bush administration had eroded America's global influence with its conduct in Iraq and by condoning the torture of terrorism suspects.

"They have redefined torture to make it convenient for them," Carter said of the Bush administration in an interview with Reuters.

"Things that are unanimously almost or globally assumed to be torture, they claim that this is not torture. I don't think there is any doubt that is what they are doing," said Carter, a Democrat who was president from 1977 to 1981.

He has since been a leading voice on global human rights issues and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Carter, 81, said he was "filled with admiration" for Republican Sens. John McCain and John Warner and former Secretary of State Colin Powell for their effort last week to block President George W. Bush's policies on the treatment of suspected terrorists. The White House and senators are continuing talks in search of a compromise.

"We've lost the support and trust and confidence and admiration that we've had for generations," Carter said, adding the administration "has stonewalled so they can continue to perpetrate this illegal punishment."

"They have obviously subverted facts, that has been proven, and subversion of the law is now becoming more and more apparent," he said, referring to the administration's repeated appeals of court rulings concerning the treatment and legal rights of prisoners at the Guantanamo prison in Cuba.

CARTER SEES AMERICA LESS SAFE

Carter, who has called treatment of detainees at Guantanamo an embarrassment and disgrace, said Americans were less safe since September 11 because Bush mishandled the Iraq war and failed to promote peace efforts between Israel and Palestinians.

Those two factors, he said, "combined to stir up additional animosity and threats of violence not only against us but against allies like Great Britain."

Carter, who is serving as the honorary chairman of Democrats Abroad, said in the telephone interview from his home in Plains, Georgia, that he would encourage Democrats overseas to vote in November, when the party must pick up six Senate seats and 15 House seats to reclaim majorities.

Republicans rejected Carter's criticism and said Bush would not change course.

"While Jimmy Carter is committed to attacking this administration's efforts to keep us safe, President Bush remains committed to waging an aggressive battle with those whose stated goal is to harm Americans," said Tracey Schmitt, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.

Carter criticized Bush's approach to foreign diplomacy as the president headed to the United Nations for a general session expected to highlight by international skepticism over U.S. policies toward Iran and Iraq.

The White House has ruled out a meeting between Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who will also address the General Assembly, and says there will be no lower-level contacts with the Iranian delegation.

"Our government now has a strange and unprecedented and pervasive policy of not speaking to anybody who doesn't agree with us in advance on controversial issues. So we close the door, we go into a closet and pout," Carter said.

"So we don't talk to Iran, we don't talk to Syria, we don't talk to the Palestinian government, we don't talk to North Korea, we don't talk to any leaders around the world who disagree with us and this is where the problems arise," he said.

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Gore says tax pollution, not payrolls

Reuters
Gore says tax pollution, not payrolls
By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore on Monday suggested taxing carbon dioxide emissions instead of employees' pay in a bid to stem global warming.

"Penalizing pollution instead of penalizing employment will work to reduce that pollution," Gore said in a speech at New York University School of Law.

The pollution tax would replace all payroll taxes, including those for Social Security and unemployment compensation, Gore said. He said the overall level of taxation, would remain the same.

"Instead of discouraging businesses from hiring more employees it would discourage business from producing more pollution," Gore said.

Gore, a longtime environmentalist, also proposed that the United States re-join any successor to the U.N. Kyoto Protocol for curbing global warming beyond 2012.

Scientists believe global warming is caused by the trapping of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, in Earth's atmosphere. The consequences of this climate change include rising seas, stronger storms and intense heat waves.

Under the Kyoto global warming treaty, 35 industrialized nations -- but not the United States -- have agreed to cut carbon dioxide emissions to below 1990 levels.

President George W. Bush withdrew from the Kyoto pact in 2001, saying its caps on greenhouse gases would cost jobs.

"The absence of the United States from the treaty means that 25 percent of the world economy is now missing. It is like filling a bucket with a large hole in the bottom," Gore said.

Gore's proposals may be too radical to gain much support and are likely to be opposed by some business interests.

Many power companies are watching the U.S. government's every step on global warming. Any future national plan in the United States, the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases, to regulate such gases could force many companies to shut down coal-fired generation or add expensive carbon-capturing devices to their equipment.

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The Politics of Torture; Lost amid the legal wrangling over how to interrogate detainees are the techniques used in the war on terror.

The Politics of Torture
Lost amid the legal wrangling over how to interrogate detainees are the techniques used in the war on terror.
By Michael Hirsh and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek

Sept. 25, 2006 issue - Waterboarding, which dates back to the Spanish Inquisition, is an interrogation method that involves strapping a prisoner face up onto a table and pouring water into his nose. The idea is to create the sensation of drowning so that the panicked prisoner will talk. According to The New York Times, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded by the CIA. He eventually confessed what President Bush described last Friday as "information about terrorist plans we couldn't get anywhere else." Neither Bush nor any other administration official has acknowledged, on the record, the use of waterboarding or any other specific CIA method. But at a White House news conference, Bush passionately defended the once secret CIA interrogation program involving such "alternative" techniques as "vital."

The question is whether waterboarding, however effective, is torture—and whether Americans ought to be doing such things at all. Some leading Republican senators, John McCain, John Warner and Lindsey Graham, believe it should be clearly banned under new legislation. The Bush administration has proposed its own bill seeking to redefine the Geneva Conventions—which set out the rules of war—in order to preserve the CIA's right to use some harsher methods. But even Bush's former secretary of State, Colin Powell, publicly questioned last week whether the administration's stance might lead the world to "doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism." And recently Bush administration officials, in private negotiations with the Senate, have agreed to drop waterboarding from a list of approved CIA interrogation techniques, according to a Senate source involved in the dispute. (He, like the other administration officials and congressional sources quoted in this story, asked not to be identified owing to the sensitivity of the negotiations over classified information.)

The Bush administration wants to maintain seven other approved CIA interrogation methods, however, for use against suspected high-level terrorists, according to one congressional source and a lawyer involved in the negotiations. A senior administration official said he could not discuss what CIA methods are still being considered. But the official added that "one should not assume all techniques used previously will be used in the future." He also noted that the new U.S. Army field manual bans waterboarding. Two other sources, one a U.S. legislator and the other a counterterrorism official, told NEWSWEEK that the total number of CIA detainees subjected to the "most rigorous" interrogation techniques was less than five. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the only one among them whose identity has been acknowledged by former government officials.

The GOP's intraparty dispute centers on a single provision of the Geneva Conventions. The president has criticized a Supreme Court decision last June that ruled all suspected terrorists, even those detained secretly by the CIA, are protected under Geneva's Common Article 3, which forbids "outrages upon personal dignity" and "cruel treatment."

Bush says that, under such vague rules, CIA professionals will not know if the interrogation techniques they are using are legal, and they could be vulnerable to war crimes prosecution. He's proposing a new law that will more narrowly define Common Article 3 to mean only "serious" violations. McCain and the other GOP senators have indicated they would be willing to amend domestic U.S. law, especially the War Crimes Act, to permit at least some "enhanced" CIA techniques. They are also willing to pass legislation that would deny many rights to detainees at Guantánamo Bay and allow them to be held indefinitely. But the senators, who appear to have the support of a majority of their colleagues, want to keep the Geneva restriction broadly defined in order to protect U.S. troops abroad. "What is billed [by Bush] as 'clarifying' our treaty obligations will be seen as 'withdrawing' from the treaty obligations," Graham said. "It will set precedent, which could come back to haunt us."

Neither administration nor congressional sources would describe the other interrogation methods in dispute. As NEWSWEEK has previously reported, various CIA techniques such as open-handed slapping were first discussed in Alberto Gonzales's office in 2002 before the then White House Counsel became attorney general. Scott Horton, a New York City Bar Association lawyer who has advised the Senate on the legislation, says Capitol Hill aides have told him that the CIA has sought to use the following techniques: (1) induced hypothermia; (2) long periods of forced standing; (3) sleep deprivation; (4) the "attention grab" (the forceful seizing of a suspect's shirt); (5) the "attention slap"; (6) the "belly slap"; and (7) sound and light manipulation. Tom Malinowski, the Washington director for the group Human Rights Watch, says that Hill sources working on the legislation have described the same list to him.

Some human-rights activists view only the first two methods, hypothermia and forced standing, as outright torture. But Malinowski said there is a reason why U.S. military interrogation manuals consistently ban physical abuse of any kind. "The Army's experience has taught them that once you allow physical contact once, even if it's mild, it's very difficult to prevent much more violent physical contact," he said.

CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden told agency personnel last week in an e-mail that he was not asking for a "CIA carve-out"—in other words, an exception for CIA interrogators. But critics say the administration is trying to achieve just that.

With Michael Isikoff in Washington

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14871154/site/newsweek/

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In Politics, Aim for the Heart, Not the Head

washingtonpost.com
In Politics, Aim for the Heart, Not the Head
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer

In 1935, researchers from Columbia University fanned out around the city of Allentown, Pa., and handed out leaflets ahead of local and state elections. What residents did not know was that they were part of an experiment in political persuasion -- an experiment whose results came to mind last week as Adrian M. Fenty stormed to victory in the District's Democratic primary.

Researchers first divided Allentown into sections. Five thousand campaign leaflets in some wards asked residents to answer a series of questions about policy matters. For example, it asked them whether they thought all children should have access to higher education irrespective of income, whether banks should be run on a nonprofit basis like schools and whether workers ought to have more say in running their workplaces.

Another set of 5,000 campaign leaflets went to a different set of wards. These leaflets contained a heartfelt letter -- supposedly from the young people of Allentown -- which said that with "Dad working only part-time on little pay, and Mother trying to make last year's coat and dress look in season," the future for young people in the city looked bleak.

The researchers looked at how many voters in the two sections they could persuade to vote for the Socialist Party, rather than the Republicans or Democrats. (The Socialist Party was chosen because it had no chance of winning the elections.)

What the researchers wanted to study was the contrast between rational and emotional appeals in political persuasion. The questionnaire's appeal was rational. It asked people who wanted a more egalitarian society to vote their views on policy matters. The letter's appeal was emotional: "We beg you in the name of those early memories and spring-time hopes to support the Socialist ticket in the coming elections!" it said. When the election was over, the Socialist vote increased by 35 percent over the previous election in the sections of the city that received the rational appeal. In the sections that received the emotional appeal, the Socialist vote increased by 50 percent.

Given the enormous proliferation of policy questions today, surfing the emotional wave nowadays may be even more important than it was in 1935. George E. Marcus, president of the International Society of Political Psychology, said modern research confirms that unless political ads evoke emotional responses, they don't have much effect. Voters, he explained, need to be emotionally primed in some way before they will pay attention.

The research is of importance to politicians for obvious reasons -- and partly explains the enduring attraction of negative advertising -- but it is also important to voters, because it suggests that the reason candidates seem appealing often has little to do with their ideas. Political campaigns are won and lost at a more emotional and subtle level.

The District's Democratic mayoral primary, for instance, turned on which candidate seemed freshest and most energetic. By that measure, Fenty, 35, bested a field of same-old, same-old insiders, including his nearest rival, Linda W. Cropp, 58.

But why should that issue have been the one that voters cared about? Why not maturity and experience, in which case Cropp may have looked like the natural winner?

The success of the Fenty campaign, several political psychologists said, was in making energy the central emotive issue in the campaign. Once it was the top item on the agenda, Fenty had to win. (Besides being amid a whirlwind of activity, the candidate made sure he said the words "energy" and "energized" every chance he got. Reporters followed Fenty's lead, attaching the adjective "energetic" to news reports about his campaign.)

The Fenty machine essentially took advantage of what the Allentown study found: It is comparatively difficult to persuade anyone to change their mind on an issue. What works much better, because it influences people at an emotional and subtle level, is to get people to focus on a different issue -- the one where the candidate is the strongest.

"The agenda-setting effect is what we are talking about," said Nicholas A. Valentino, a political psychologist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. "The ability of a candidate not to tell people how to feel about an issue, but which issue they should focus on -- that is the struggle of most modern campaign managers."

"Campaigns have been much more successful at shifting people's attentions to different issues rather than shifting people's positions," he added.

A political scientist who lives in the District, Lee Sigelman, pointed out that as Fenty put the question of energy at the top of the agenda, Cropp tried to strike back with ads painting Fenty as inexperienced.

But it was too late. As many politicians before her have realized, no one notices when the first nimble candidate changes the agenda. It's always the candidates who come late to the agenda wars who look like they are trying to manipulate voters.

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Republican Bloomberg to help Lieberman

Yahoo! News
Republican Bloomberg to help Lieberman

Republican New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will host a fundraiser for Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., at the mayor's Manhattan town house, Lieberman's campaign announced Sunday night.

Lieberman, who lost the Democratic primary to Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont, is running for re-election as an independent, a move that has alienated many Democrats.

Dan Gerstein, a spokesman for Lieberman's campaign, said the fundraiser will be held Nov. 1 and will be co-chaired another New York Republican, former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, and former Democratic New York Mayor Ed Koch.

Bloomberg also will appear with Lieberman's wife, Hadassah, at an Oct. 25 fundraiser in Chicago and is hoping to do another appearance on Lieberman's behalf in Connecticut, Gerstein said.

"Senator Lieberman is extremely grateful to Mayor Bloomberg for being so generous with his time," Gerstein said. "The mayor is renowned as a leader who puts people ahead of politics and gets things done for his constituents and his support and validation mean a lot to our campaign."

Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser said, "The mayor thinks the world of Senator Lieberman, because he speaks his mind and does what he thinks is right."

Lamont spokeswoman Liz Dupont-Diehl said the fundraiser represents the kind of politics Lamont is trying to change.

"Ned Lamont is not accepting PAC money and is speaking out against the influence of lobbyist money," she said. "Joe Lieberman is attending fundraisers thrown by those very same lobbyists."

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The More Bush Talks, The Less We Have To Do. We're About To Offer Him Honorary Membership.

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According To President Bush's Reading Of The Geneva Conventions, What We Are Doing Is Acceptable

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It's To Stop The Terrorists From Going After Our Way Of Life

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I'll Tell You Whatever You Want To Hear

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Band-aids

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Texan works to impeach president

Texan works to impeach president
By Mike Belt / Lawrence Journal-World

Since he arrived in Lawrence a week ago to collect signatures from people who would like to see President Bush impeached, Jim Goodnow has received a mostly positive or at least tolerant response.

“There have been 15 peace signs for every one-fingered salute,” Goodnow, 67, said Thursday as he sat at tables filled with petition lists in South Park.

Goodnow has been with his bus, which he calls the Yellow Rose, during most of his stay in Lawrence. The old bus has anti-war slogans and other signs painted on it, and Goodnow has been driving for most of the past year across the country as part of a grass-roots effort to gauge support for a Bush impeachment. In July, Goodnow, and others like him calling themselves the Committee to Impeach President Bush, started collecting petitions.

Goodnow did the same thing 33 years ago in an effort to get Congress to impeach President Nixon because of the Watergate scandal. Nixon ended up resigning instead of facing impeachment.

“I never thought I’d be doing this again,” said Goodnow, of Terlingua, Texas. “Bush makes Nixon look like a Boy Scout.”

Bush should be impeached because of “lies and deceptions” in taking the United States to war in Iraq, Goodnow said. He also says that the Bush administration is breaking the law with its domestic surveillance activities.

Goodnow said he’s collected several thousand signatures during his travels the past few months and others like him have collected thousands more. Those petitions will eventually be collected and turned over to Congress, he said. It’s a way to make sure Congress knows how upset the country is, Goodnow said.

“The people are fed up,” he said.

But some don’t particularly care for Goodnow’s cause.

About 9:30 p.m. Wednesday near Ninth and Vermont streets, a man in a late model car stopped and issued a threat, Goodnow said. The man called him a derogatory name and directed him to get out of town in 30 minutes or face “serious consequences.” The man was possibly in his 50s, dressed in a sports shirt and wore glasses, Goodnow said.

Goodnow called Lawrence Police. Although no details about the incident were available Thursday afternoon, a police spokeswoman did confirm that officers responded to a threat call in that area.

The incident angered Deb Rowden, a Lawrence woman who talked to Goodnow Thursday morning at Wheatfield’s Bakery, 904 Vt.

“At first I was scared; then when I was driving home I got mad,” Rowden said. “I don’t appreciate that someone was threatened.”

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CC Goldwater on what her grandfather would make of today’s GOP

Goldwater Today
CC Goldwater on what her grandfather would make of today’s GOP.
By CC Goldwater
Special to Newsweek

Sept. 16, 2006 - As the granddaughter of Barry Goldwater, I am often asked what I think my grandfather would have felt about the direction of today’s Republican Party. What I found in the past year I spent making a documentary about the man, “Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater,” is that my grandfather is one person for whom it is pretty hard to speak. He was vocal about his opinions, which he presented with a rare clarity.

Still, those opinions have echoes today, and as the documentary shows, while my grandfather didn’t leave his party, his party has left him. Though he’s often depicted as the father of conservatism, Barry Goldwater would be considered a moderate today. He was firmly pro-choice, a supporter of gay rights and, in his later years, said that he thought it was okay for gays to serve in the military.

Fundamentally, it’s clear that Barry would not have been comfortable with the increasing influence of the Christian right over the GOP. My grandfather would have been appalled by the whole political grandstanding of the Terri Schiavo mess.

The Constitution was Barry’s bible. He felt strongly about what it represented and the guidance it gave to establishing our government. And he thought that most U.S. citizens took it for granted. “Most Americans have never even read it and that’s a shame,” he once said. “Kids are not learning about it because it’s not honored the way it used to be.”

We need to remember the true values and freedoms the Constitution guarantees us. The main lesson I learned from my grandfather: “Government needs to stay out of personal lives, and do the job that we entrusted them with—to run and govern our country efficiently and truthfully, according to the laws our forefathers crafted.” That’s a message worth remembering today.

Throughout my life, I was encouraged to be honest and truthful to all those I came in contact with. We need to encourage our youth to do the same. That begins with the people we look up to, our parents and government. We have to have something that we can trust and believe in and not fear. “Trust and fear cannot coexist at the same time,” Barry said. Anyone who motivates our decisions by fear cannot restore the principles of a country founded in freedom. “I will support whoever is running our country as long as they abide by those principles and will run our country and not our lives.”

CC Goldwater was five when her grandfather, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, ran for President in 1964. Her documentary, “Mr. Conservative,” features interviews with major public figures and never-before-seen home movies and photos. It premieres Monday, Sept. 18 at 9 p.m., ET, on HBO.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14863898/site/newsweek/

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Worried CIA Officers Buy Legal Insurance; Plans Fund Defense In Anti-Terror Cases

washingtonpost.com
Worried CIA Officers Buy Legal Insurance
Plans Fund Defense In Anti-Terror Cases
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer

CIA counterterrorism officers have signed up in growing numbers for a government-reimbursed, private insurance plan that would pay their civil judgments and legal expenses if they are sued or charged with criminal wrongdoing, according to current and former intelligence officials and others with knowledge of the program.

The new enrollments reflect heightened anxiety at the CIA that officers may be vulnerable to accusations they were involved in abuse, torture, human rights violations and other misconduct, including wrongdoing related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They worry that they will not have Justice Department representation in court or congressional inquiries, the officials said.

The anxieties stem partly from public controversy about a system of secret CIA prisons in which detainees were subjected to harsh interrogation methods, including temperature extremes and simulated drowning. The White House contends the methods were legal, but some CIA officers have worried privately that they may have violated international law or domestic criminal statutes.

Details of the rough interrogations could come to light if trials are held for any of the approximately 100 detainees who were held in the prisons. President Bush announced last week that he had transferred the last 14 detainees in the facilities to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and had submitted a proposal to Congress for the rules under which the administration would like the suspects to be tried.

Terrorism suspects' defense attorneys are expected to argue that admissions made by their clients were illegally coerced as the result of policies set in Washington.

Justice Department political appointees have strongly backed the CIA interrogations. But "there are a lot of people who think that subpoenas could be coming" from Congress after the November elections or from federal prosecutors if Democrats capture the White House in 2008, said a retired senior intelligence officer who remains in contact with former colleagues in the agency's Directorate of Operations, which ran the secret prisons.

"People are worried about a pendulum swing" that could lead to accusations of wrongdoing, said another former CIA officer.

The insurance policies were bought from Arlington-based Wright and Co., a subsidiary of the private Special Agents Mutual Benefit Association created by former FBI officials. The CIA has encouraged many of its officers to take out the insurance, current and former intelligence officials said, but no one interviewed would reveal precisely how many have bought policies.

As part of the administration's efforts to protect intelligence officers from liability, Bush last week called for Congress to approve legislation drafted by the White House that would exempt CIA officers and other federal civilian officials from prosecution for humiliating and degrading terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. Its wording would keep prosecutors or courts from considering a wider definition of actions that constitute torture.

Bush also asked Congress to bar federal courts from considering lawsuits by detainees who were in CIA or military custody that allege violations of international treaties and laws governing treatment of detainees.

The proposals have won mixed reviews in the Senate, where they are generally opposed by Democrats and a group of dissident Republicans. The proposals were deliberately omitted, for example, from competing legislation circulated last week by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).

Several former intelligence officials who said CIA officers do not need insurance because they can rely on the government to defend their lawful actions depicted the growing number of policies as a barometer of the uncertainty officers have of the legality of their work.

A recently retired CIA officer who said he had not bought insurance contended that "if an individual does get sued in the course of their official duties, then you get the biggest law firm in the world to step in" -- the Justice Department. Justice regulations allow defending federal workers if the conduct is within the scope of an employee's job and doing so is in the government's "interest."

The insurance, costing about $300 a year, would pay as much as $200,000 toward legal expenses and $1 million in civil judgments. Since the late 1990s, the CIA's senior managers have been eligible for reimbursement of half the insurance premium.

In December 2001, with congressional authorization, the CIA expanded the reimbursements to 100 percent for CIA counterterrorism officers. That was about the time J. Cofer Black, then the CIA's counterterrorism chief, told Bush that "the gloves come off" and promised "heads on spikes" in the counterterrorism effort.

"Why would [CIA officers] take any risks in their professional duties if the government was unwilling to cover the cost of their liability?" asked Rep. Rob Simmons (R-Conn.), a former CIA officer, during congressional debate that year.

Although suing federal officials for their actions is not easy, it is possible; the Supreme Court left the door ajar in two rulings. It ruled in 1971 that six narcotics agents could be sued for monetary damages arising from a warrantless search. Eleven years later, it held that government officials should be immune from civil liability only if their conduct does not violate clear statutory or constitutional rights that should be known by "a reasonable person."

William L. Bransford, a senior partner at the law firm that defends people who take out the insurance, said he is unaware of any recent increase in claims. But agency officials said that interest has been stoked over the years by the $2 million legal bill incurred by CIA officer Clair George before his 1992 conviction for lying to Congress about the Iran-contra arms sales; by the Justice Department's lengthy investigation of CIA officers for allegedly lying to Congress about the agency's role in shooting down a civilian aircraft in 2001 in Peru; and by other events.

One former intelligence official said CIA officers have recently expressed concern that lawsuits will erupt if details of the agency's internal probe of wrongdoing related to the September 2001 attacks become public.

In his report, CIA Inspector General John L. Helgerson recommended that the agency convene an accountability board to examine the actions of senior officials. But last October, then-CIA director Porter J. Goss rejected the advice and decided the report should remain secret.

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said Friday that "it's fair to say that more employees have chosen to get this insurance, including those who work in counterterrorism." He said the agency's office of general counsel "advises employees to consider it" and called it a "prudent measure, in case of legal claims." But he said more employees at other federal agencies are also enrolling.

CIA employees outside the counterterrorism field who are eligible for reimbursement include the agency's supervisors, attorneys, equal-opportunity- employment counselors, auditors, polygraph examiners, security adjudicators, grievance officers, inspectors general and internal investigators, he said. One in 10 eligible employees sought reimbursement last year, Mansfield said, adding that the fraction from previous years and a breakdown on those in the counterterrorism field were not immediately available.

Brian Lewis, president of Wright and Co., confirmed that the number of new policies "has gone up, especially in the last two years." But he said that the company lumped CIA officers with Justice Department employees who also have the insurance and that he did not have exact numbers for the CIA.

Robert M. McNamara Jr., the CIA's general counsel from 1997 to November 2001, said he advised station chiefs to buy the insurance. "The problem is that we are the victims of shifting winds here," McNamara said he told the officers. "I can't sit here and tell you in all cases that I will be able to defend you."

However, McNamara's predecessor as CIA general counsel, Jeffrey H. Smith, said: "I'm deeply troubled that CIA officers have to buy insurance. . . . There should be clear rules about what the officers can and can't do. The fault here is with more senior people who authorized interrogation techniques that amount to torture" and should now be liable, instead of "the officers who carried it out."

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Four-Star General - or Disobedient Houseboy?

Huffington Post
Martin Lewis
Four-Star General - or Disobedient Houseboy?

There are some people who have contended that George W. Bush never had any real regard for his first Secretary Of State - Colin Powell.

• That he dropped hints about Powell joining his administration during the 2000 election campaign as a shameless ploy to dupe independents into voting for him.

• That he cynically exploited the deep patriotic commitment to his nation of a highly-regarded and decorated soldier merely because he was an African-American - and less than 9% of the African-American population had voted for Bush in 2000.

• That he regarded Powell as a convenient token black man to place in his administration as a gossamer-thin veneer for his disinterest in striving for racial equality.

• That he thought of Powell as a wafer-thin cover for his own shameful lack of knowledge of international matters (especially for a then 54-year-old politician who had been elected President).

• That he saw Powell as a "moderate" cover for the neo-con policies he actually believed in and was determined to pursue.

• That all-along he had intended to 'caponize' Powell and vest actual power in Cheney and Rumsfeld - and use Powell merely as a front to appease the international community and the UN.

• That he tricked or manipulated Powell into making the fabricated case for the Iraq war at the United Nations because he knew Powell's reputation for integrity might convince wavering nations.

In other words a "patsy".... A fig-leaf... A tool... A houseboy.

As Harry Belafonte said in October 2002:

"There's an old saying in the days of slavery. There are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master. Colin Powell was permitted to come into the house of the master."

But I don't think that George W. Bush has ever thought that way!

Because George W. Bush has repeatedly told us that he is an upstanding, God-fearing, Christian man who has restored honor and dignity to the White House. And therefore I always take George W. Bush at his words.

And here they are:

"I know of no better person to be the face and voice of American diplomacy than Colin L. Powell. An American hero, an American example, and a great American story. ...providing good counsel, strong leadership and an example of integrity for every one for whom he serves."

- December 17th 2000. Crawford, Texas.

Now George W. Bush wishes to abrogate the Geneva Convention.

And in response to Colin Powell's carefully-worded objections that this would harm America's moral position - and might cause harm to America's troops - George W. Bush responds by saying that General Colin Powell - doesn't understand the Geneva Convention!!!

"Article III of the Geneva Convention is hard for a lot of citizens to understand..." - George W. Bush - September 15th 2006

If the views of four-star General Colin L. Powell - the "American hero" who Bush personally selected to serve as Secretary Of State because of his "good counsel, strong leadership and integrity" - are not to be respected on the very topic that he knows most about (having actually served his country in the military with valor) - well then how does George W. Bush REALLY regard him?

Four-Star General or Disobedient Houseboy?

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Georges Bush and Clooney - who's doing the hard work these days?

Huffington Post
Jane Wells
Georges Bush and Clooney - who's doing the hard work these days?

George Clooney gave a superb, impassioned and deeply moving speech to the Security Council at the UN on Thursday. He spoke on behalf of those who are voiceless in Darfur. He spoke with a depth of understanding of the complex issues in Sudan that would have been impressive in a diplomat but appears to be lacking in the highest levels of this administration.

The other George, one George Bush, President of the United States of America famously declared: "Not on my watch" when the atrocities in Rwanda penetrated his murky consciousness. He has spoken out about genocide in Darfur from time to time, but on his watch another genocide has unfolded and is about to reach its darkest hours.

On September 30th the insufficient African Union forces that have been trying to bring some measure of relief and protection to the 3 million Darfurians whose lives have been uprooted over the last 3 years will have to leave Sudan. A bloodbath will follow. Jan Engelund of the UN predicts that 100,000 people will die each month. By the New Year that will add up to as many deaths as in Rwanda in 1994.

Clooney deserves much credit for taking up the mantle that should be worn by our political leaders.

There is a rally in Central Park in New York tomorrow, organized by the Save Darfur Coalition to coincide with the general assembly of the UN. The organizers ask the UN and the Bush administration the following:

• Strengthen the understaffed and overwhelmed African Union peacekeeping force already in Darfur.
• Push for the deployment of a strong UN peacekeeping force.
• Implement the Darfur Peace Agreement.
• Increase humanitarian aid and ensure access for aid delivery

There are other rallies and events across the country and across the globe. This is not a hidden genocide. It has taken place in plain view, at least in the plain view of those who have the empathy, curiosity and compassion of George Clooney, the members of the Save Darfur Coalition and the thousands of people across the globe who want to stop genocide. Why is this not enough?

When I stop putting this issue on the front burner I only have to think of a man I met last year, a refugee from unspeakable atrocities in Darfur, his name was Adam. He was my translator. He is gone now....gone with his wife, five children and an orphaned niece and nephew. No-one knows what happened to them, they fled into the desert in the night. We are probably too late to save this family, but what about the others? They must be protected. Write the President, go to the rally tomorrow, send money, join the Save Darfur Coalition, play the mtvU video game Darfur is Dying...do Something. We all should. See you there.

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