Documents: CIA warned of plane bomb plot

Yahoo! News
Documents: CIA warned of plane bomb plot
By ANDREW O. SELSKY, Associated Press Writer

An anti-Castro militant now in a Texas jail warned the CIA months before the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that fellow exiles were planning such an attack, according to a newly released U.S. government document.

The document shows that Luis Posada Carriles — who had worked for the CIA but was cut off by the agency earlier that year — was secretly telling the CIA that his fellow far-right Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro's communist government were plotting to bring down a commercial jet.

The document does not say what the CIA did with Posada's tip. A CIA spokesman said he had no comment on Monday, a federal holiday.

The CIA had extensive contacts with anti-Castro militants and trained some of them, but has denied involvement in the bombing.

The documents were posted online Thursday by the National Security Archive, an independent research institute at George Washington University that seeks to declassify government files through the Freedom of Information Act.

The Cubana Airlines plane, on a flight from Venezuela to Cuba, blew up shortly after taking off from a stopover in Barbados on Oct. 6, 1976, killing all 73 aboard, including Cuba's Olympic fencing team.

The bombing remains an open wound in Cuba. Weeping relatives of the victims met in a Havana cemetery on Friday, the 30th anniversary of the bombing. They demanded that Posada — who is now 78 and in a Texas detention center on an immigration violation — be put on trial.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is seeking the extradition of Posada, a naturalized Venezuelan who served as the country's counterintelligence chief. He accuses the U.S. government of protecting a terrorist.

The National Security Archive's Peter Kornbluh urged the U.S. government to tell everything it knows about Posada.

"Now is the time for the government to come clean on Posada's covert past and his involvement in international terrorism," Kornbluh said. "His victims, the public, and the courts have a right to know."

Separating deception from truth in the intelligence world is notoriously difficult, and the newly released documents contain mixed messages about Posada. Much remains murky.

In a report dated a month after the bombing, then FBI Director Clarence Kelly told Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that a confidential FBI source ascertained the bombing had been planned in Caracas by Posada, Venezuelan intelligence agency official Ricardo Morales Navarrete and Cuban exile Frank Castro, who is not related to the Cuban leader.

Two Venezuelan employees of Posada's private security agency were arrested in Trinidad the day after the bombing, and one of them — who said he had worked for the CIA — admitted the two had planted the bomb, documents posted by the National Security Archive show.

Posada trained with the CIA for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and served in the U.S. Army in the early 1960s. In 1965, he allegedly plotted to overthrow the Guatemalan government and blow up a Soviet or Cuban freighter in Mexico, according to the FBI. In 1967, he moved to Venezuela, eventually leading its counterintelligence agency, and was running his own security firm in the mid-1970s.

In 1973, Posada was investigated by the CIA for allegedly smuggling cocaine, but was cleared after he convinced interrogators he was "guilty of only having the wrong kind of friends," a declassified document says. The same document says the CIA "formally terminated" its relationship with him on Feb. 13, 1976.

Yet Posada still contacted the agency.

"After 2/76 contacts with (deleted by censors) were at Posada's own initiative to volunteer information in exchange for assistance U.S. visa for self and family," said the document, an annotated list of still-secret records on Posada's CIA career that was marked "sanitized."

It tells how Posada contacted the CIA in February 1976 to describe an assassination plot by Orlando Bosch and Frank Castro, two fellow right-wing Cuban exiles, against leftist Andres Pascal Allende, the nephew of slain Chilean President Salvador Allende. Posada worried that his allies would discover he was giving up their secrets.

"Posada concerned that Bosch will blame Posada for leak of plans," the report says. Andres Allende was not assassinated, and it is unclear whether the Cuban exiles ever made an attempt on his life.

Then, four months later, Posada came back to tell of a sinister plot to blow up an airliner.

On June 22, 1976, "Posada again contacts (deleted by censor) reptd info concerning possible exile plans to blow up Cubana Airliner leaving Panama and requested visa assistacne," read the document, filled with typographical errors.

Shortly after, a bomb aboard a Cubana Airlines plane leaving Panama failed to detonate, and the following month, a bomb in a suitcase exploded before being loaded onto a Cubana plane leaving Jamaica, according to a confidential State Department memo previously posted by the National Security Archive.

The day after the Cubana Airlines flight was bombed near Barbados, the CIA tried unsuccessfully to contact Posada, according to the annotated list. Five days later, Posada was arrested in Venezuela. He denied involvement in the bombing and escaped from prison in 1985 before a civilian trial was completed.

Allegations that he masterminded mass murder did not keep U.S. covert operatives from hiring Posada again. Within months, he was delivering weapons to Nicaraguan Contra rebels in an illegal Reagan administration operation. Posada also acknowledged, and then denied, a role in Havana hotel bombings in 1997 that killed a tourist.

And in 2000, Posada was arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate Castro during a summit in Panama. He was pardoned in 2004 by then Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso.

Posada was detained in Florida in May 2005 for entering the United States illegally. A U.S. immigration judge has ruled that he cannot be sent to Cuba or Venezuela, citing fears that he would be tortured.

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On the Net:

National Security Archive: http://www.gwu.edu/nsarchiv/

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To Military Families of America: Jack Murtha Speaks for the Military and Deserves a Presidential Medal Of Freedom

Huffington Post
Brent Budowsky
To Military Families of America: Jack Murtha Speaks for the Military and Deserves a Presidential Medal Of Freedom

I consider these words the most important I have ever written on this site because of the enormous implications they suggest.

I know far more than I can say publicly, about what our commanders and our intel people really believe, because I was told things in confidence and unlike most in Washington I honor confidences.

I have posted what I know from public sources,
far more is emerging in the news today, and still more will be public soon.

I will add, that Jack Murtha was around when I worked for the Congressional Leadership, he would probably laugh if he reads this, but we always considered him a solid guy but a pain in the ass because of the number of times he supported President Reagan and Republicans in the House. At the whip meetings there was always a moment when someone would say: "OK, who wants to talk to Murtha?" Not many hands would be raised.

In Washington today there is a hard time in distinguishing between the truth and the lie. Lying is epidemic. But the good answer to the Big Lie is the Big Truth, and the Big Truth is this: Congressman Jack Murtha is a man of staggering honor and integrity, a man of enormous physical and moral courage, a United States Marine of the first order of magnitude and he speaks for the overwhelming majority of active duty American commanders who cannot speak publicly for themselves.

In a city of moral midgets, Jack Murtha is a giant. I repeat this for emphasis because it is the heart of the matter with Iraq today: if the active duty commanders in the Unites States Marine Corps, the United States Army, and our Guard and Reserves were permitted to say publicly what they believe privately, in my estimation at least 80% to 90% of them would say they fundamentally agree with Jack Murtha, and have time and time again been beaten down and disresepcted by civilians when they tried to turn in the policy in a Murtha-like direction.

Additionally, Jack Murtha has spent a lifetime speaking for and fighting for our troops. This is not new for Congressman Murtha, nor is it politics. This is in Jack Murtha's blood, in his personal history, in his life, in his heart, in his soul, in his spirit and in the depth of his being with a passion and honor that others in the Congress would do well to emulate.

Whether it was defying the Democratic Leaders often when I worked for the Leadership, or now defying the President and Secretary of Defense Jack Murtha always did what he believed was right and true, and always did what he believed was in the interests of our commanders and troops, and was always seen as their truest authentic voice in either the legislative or the executive branches.

When Jack Murtha opposes torture, he is speaking for them.

Jack Murtha leads the fight for body armor and the whole list of protections for our troops in combat, he is speaking for them, and he is fighting for them.

When Jacik Murtha leads the fight for new policies towards Iraq that would redeploy forces to places where they would be more effective and more safe at the same time, he is speaking for them, and fighting for them.

And the honest truth is, because the stakes are so high this truth must be told: when George W. Bush accuses Jack Murtha and others using various phrases, George W Bush is lying through his teeth, because he knows damn well what the commanders really think, and what the overwhelming majority of them think, is what Jack Murtha says, not what George W. Bush falsely claims they think.

Finally, for now, this is the truth:

George W. Bush knows that the policy is failing. He knows that the overwhelming majority of commanders believe the policy is failing.

He knows that the commanders want major changes in the policy.

He knows that Senator Warner speaks for the commanders as Jack Murtha speaks for the commanders, when they both state major changes are needed.

He knows that major changes in the policy are mandatory and inevitable yet the man who brags about being a wartime President is committing two historic sins that are unworthy of the Presidency, which are these:

He is lying about his political opponents such as Jack Murtha when he knows they speak and fight for commanders and troops, and;

George W. Bush is delaying the changes in the policy so he can use the issue for personal and partisan politics, while troops risk and give their lives today for the political benefit of a morally decayed Republican Party and a President who knows the policy must change, maneuvers the decision for political reasons, in a way that no commander in chief has ever done except Nixon and Kissinger in Vietnam.

If there is one man in America who deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom it is not George Tenet, and not Paul Bremer, but Congressman Jack Murtha who stands like a tower of honor, in a Republican Congress of Shame.

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The Truth and Anna P.

Huffington Post
Jayne Lyn Stahl
The Truth and Anna P.

On Thursday, Bob Schieffer, renowned CBS newsman who has covered events in D.C. for more than three decades, said that he can't recall "a time when it's been more challenging for journalists." Schieffer was referring, of course, to the Bush administration's program of domestic surveillance, as well as a rash of frivolous grand jury subpoenas, over the past five years, coercing journalists to give up their confidential sources.

Schieffer is right. There is no way news of extraordinary rendition, secret prisons, and Abu Ghraib would reach our shores were it not for reporters. The press, in this country, has acted as the watchdog for governmental transgressions; indeed, were it not for two Washington Post reporters, Richard Nixon might not have been forced to resign.

Less than 36 hours after Bob Schieffer made the above remarks, alas, in Russia, a 48 year old celebrated investigative journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, who has been working copiously to expose the travesties of her government, under Alexander Putin, was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment building in Moscow. Ms. Politkovskaya had received nearly a dozen awards from human rights, and international journalist groups such as Reporters without Borders, over the years, for her ongoing exemplary work exposing, and documenting, the slaughter, torture, and harassment of innocent civilians by Russian soldiers in Chechnya. "People sometimes pay with their lives for saying out loud what they think," Ms. Politkovskyaya has been quoted as saying. (AP) Clearly, too, they pay the ultimate price for writing what they think as a book that she recently wrote which takes issue with Putin's campaign against "terror" in Chechnya, and reveals "widespread abuse of civilians by government troops" (AP) surely didn't win her any fans among Moscow's military elite.

Still, this was not the first attempt on the life of this 48 year old mother of two.

Back in 2004, she experienced symptoms of food poisoning after drinking tea during a Moscow flight to south Russia where she was covering a hostage crisis in a school. A few years before this incident, she reportedly received e-mail death threats seeking to avenge the reputation of a member of Russian law enforcement who she accused of torturing civilians. (AP) Still, nothing deterred her from her lifelong commitment to investigating, and exposing the travesties visited upon the Russian people by their government.

Anna P. was one of the few allowed into a theatre in Moscow held hostage by Chechen rebels, back in 2002, and she tried to negotiate with the militants. The fact that many of those who were in the theatre, at the time, later succumbed to gas poisoning served as the focus of much of her most recent investigative work, as well as her ongoing inquiry into the Putin regime's campaign of torture against Chechen "terrorists."

Nearly two dozen journalists have been killed in Russia over the past 8 years, many in Chechnya, making Russia among the most dangerous countries for journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. (AP) Still, the syllabus for Journalism 101 doesn't include serving in a war, an undeclared war, no less, against the free flow of information, and a free press.

Notably, Human Rights Watch, in a report more than two years ago, reports that of the seven Russian detainees, at Guantanamo Bay, who were released by the U.S. government, six urged the U.S. not to release them saying they were afraid they'd be "tortured, or mistreated" when they got back home. "They were right," asserts HRW, "All seven have been variously harassed, detained, mistreated, and beaten since they set foot on Russian soil. Two have been convicted of terrorism after highly irregular trials. One was tortured in pre-trial detention. Three are in hiding after campaigns of intimidation and harassment by Russian law enforcement authorities." So, given how the Russian government harasses its citizens, it should come as no surprise then how it treats one who exposes its campaign of beating, and intimidation of its civillians.

Over the past 50 years, much of the world has the words "made in the USA" stamped all over it, which may explain why the Cold War ended not with a bang, but a whimper. Since the Berlin Wall came down, and the U.S.S.R was dissolved, a dreadful mimesis has maimed, and forever defaced, the autonomy of many autonomous states. Only dogs bark at their own reflection in the mirror. Monsters often embrace what they see that most resembles themselves, and do the best they can to destroy anything that differs.

So, while Russian prosecutors open an investigation into who, or what, killed this prominent reporter, and while they concede that "the killing could be linked to her work," (AP) it is up to those of us who care about getting the truth out to continue Anna Politkovskaya's mission to uncover those crimes that come within the parameters of normal governmental practice. We, in this country, can best do justice to her memory, as well as the memory of all those who keep us informed in these dark times, by acknowledging universally that torture must not be allowed to breed under the badge of terror, and demand that crimes against journalists be seen, and punished, as crimes against humanity.

Anna Politkovskaya was a foot soldier in the campaign for truth, a free press, and a multidimensional view of global politics, as was Daniel Pearl, and others who have received no accolades, and who will not be remembered except as a footnote in a history book yet to be written. It is up to each and every one of us to celebrate members of the press, one and all.

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"Stay-the-course" not U.S.'s only Iraq option: Baker

Reuters
"Stay-the-course" not U.S.'s only Iraq option: Baker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - James Baker, a former U.S. secretary of state and close political associate of the Bush family, said on Sunday there are alternatives in Iraq for the United States other than the "stay-the-course" policy of President George W. Bush's administration.

Baker -- the co-chair of a high-level panel of prominent former officials charged by members of Congress with taking a fresh look at America's policy on Iraq, which has support from the White House -- said it would be a mistake for the United States to withdraw from Iraq over the next year.

But, in an interview on ABC's "This Week," he added, "I happen to think, and I think it's fair to say our commission believes, that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives ... of stay-the-course and cut-and-run."

Bush and his top officials say the United States must press on with war in Iraq. They accuse critics, including some Democrats, who call for a U.S. troop pullout or a timetable for withdrawal, of advocating a policy of "cut-and-run."

"I think that if we picked up and left right now that you would see the biggest civil war you've ever seen and every neighboring country would be involved in there doing its own thing," Baker said.

He said the panel, co-chaired by former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton, probably would issue its report some time after the November 7 congressional election and hoped to come up with a bipartisan consensus.

In response to questions, Baker said the task force was weighing the pros and cons of a number of ideas, including one that would create a new power-sharing arrangement in Iraq that would give more autonomy to regional factions.

Baker, a Texan lawyer, served as secretary of state and White House chief of staff for President George H. W. Bush. In 2000, he served as chief legal adviser for George W. Bush's presidential campaign and played a key role in the legal battles over the Florida vote recount that resulted in Bush's victory.

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South Dakota Nears Historic Nov. 7 Referendum on Ban of Virtually All Abortions

ABC News
South Dakota Nears Vote on Abortion Ban
South Dakota Nears Historic Nov. 7 Referendum on Ban of Virtually All Abortions
By DAVID CRARY
The Associated Press

WESSINGTON SPRINGS, S.D. - Circled around a living room, sipping coffee, five long-acquainted couples grappled with their stark differences on a topic they would have skirted in the past but now cannot avoid abortion.

Like other South Dakotans, people in this tiny farming town are confronting a historic opportunity on Nov. 7. They'll sway a tortuous national debate by making a choice no statewide electorate has faced before: whether to approve a sweeping ban on virtually all abortions.

"None of us think abortion is a desirable thing," said Tom Dean, a family physician who hosted the discussion along with his wife, Kathy. "But it's not a problem for government to solve by passing a rigid law."

Yet Lynn Ogren, who helps her husband run a sheep and cattle ranch, choked up with emotion as she explained her support for the ban.

"I value every child's life, whether it's from a rape or not," she told her friends. "Who's fighting for these kids?"

The measure would allow abortions only to save a pregnant woman's life. It makes no exception for other health concerns, or for cases of rape or incest; a doctor performing illegal abortions could face five years in prison.

The Legislature passed the law overwhelmingly in February, expecting it to be challenged in court and perhaps lead to a U.S. Supreme Court reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. Instead of suing, opponents swiftly collected signatures to force a referendum; the law will be scrapped if voters reject it.

Each side depicts the other as dominated by out-of-state groups and indeed such forces are active, viewing the vote as an unprecedented gauge of public sentiment on abortion. The Rev. Jerry Falwell has urged his conservative followers to donate in support of the ban; Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America have raised funds to oppose it.

"We're David, they're Goliath," contended Leslee Unruh, head of the campaign group supporting the ban. Parked outside her VoteYesForLife.com office in Sioux Falls were cars with a blunt bumper sticker: "The Killing Stops Here."

The most recent independent poll, in July, found 47 percent of voters opposed the ban, 39 percent favored it, 14 percent were undecided. When asked if they would approve a ban with exceptions for rape and incest, support rose to 59 percent.

Unruh, who had an abortion years ago that she now regrets, says momentum is turning as more voters hear her side's core message: Abortion hurts women. In the event of defeat, she vows to keep fighting.

"Sometimes it's not about votes it's about the truth," she said.

Jan Nicolay, a former school principal and Republican state legislator, is co-chair of the campaign to keep abortion legal. She knows the stakes are high.

"People from other states are telling me, 'You're in the limelight. Good luck. Please do everything you can to defeat it,'" she said.

Among her colleagues is Russ Tarver, a retired Methodist minister who signed a statement against the abortion ban along with 16 other ministers. "Some legislators were stunned to learn there were pastors on the other side of the issue," he said.

If the ban is defeated, anti-abortion activists might try again later with a milder version making exceptions for rape and incest, but the outcome would be heralded nationally as a major victory for abortion rights. If the ban is approved, several other state legislatures might follow South Dakota's example building momentum for a possible Supreme Court review of Roe v. Wade.

Each side has recruited South Dakota rape victims to aid their campaigns. Connie Pich, impregnated by a rapist as a teenager in 1973, said victims must be able to choose freely whether to bear the child. On the pro-ban side, Megan Barnett has spoken at the Legislature and in campaign videos about how glad she is to have borne a daughter resulting from a rape.

Barnett, in a telephone interview, expressed empathy with women in comparable plights, but said abortion shouldn't be an option.

"Two wrongs don't make a right," she said. "It's a baby, whether you're raped or not. You need a choice both you and your baby can live with."

The ban's supporters note that the measure allows rape and incest victims to get emergency contraception, which is effective if taken within 72 hours. Opponents say emergency contraception isn't widely available in South Dakota, and argue that many victims are too overwrought to seek prompt help.

"It's a sham," Nicolay said of the contraception provision. She noted that anti-abortion lawmakers quashed a measure this year that would have required hospitals to inform raped women that emergency contraception is available.

One of the legislators responsible for the toughly worded measure is House Majority Leader Larry Rhoden, a Republican cattle rancher. He was swayed by women's testimony that their abortions left emotional scars, but now aware of polls showing his side behind he has second thoughts.

"I've spent a great deal of time and thought wondering if it would have been wiser to write in the exceptions," he said. "We have a long row to hoe based on the numbers I've seen."

In some ways, South Dakota is an odd venue for the showdown. It has had no resident abortion provider for 10 years, and most of its 800 or so annual abortions are performed at an often-picketed Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls by doctors flying in once a week from Minnesota.

Sarah Stoesz, president of Planned Parenthood's Minnesota/Dakotas chapter, said even people on the sidelines of the abortion debate rallied to help the petition drive after lawmakers approved the ban.

"It was a political moment like I've never seen, a spontaneous uprising of grass-roots fury," she said. "Abortion isn't a subject people normally discuss, but this has forced ordinary mainstream people to talk about it."

A case in point is Wessington Springs, a town of 1,000 where pride in its seven churches and Shakespearean Gardens mingles with worries over business failures and an exodus of young people.

Tom Dean, whose family's local roots date to 1882, and his wife, Kathy, a nurse-midwife, decided to serve on the anti-ban campaign's statewide board, then placed a small ad in the local paper explaining their stance.

"We were a little concerned not for our safety, but of offending our friends," said Kathy Dean, a longtime abortion-rights supporter.

For several years, the Deans have hosted a monthly discussion group, broaching an array of topics. Its members recently convened to wrestle with the abortion ban.

Near the end, after listening in silence, Evelyn Bradley spoke out.

"Life isn't always black and white," said Bradley, the wife of an Air Force retiree. "There are situations where it would be really difficult to have another child, and I'd resent the law saying you have to have it. Shouldn't I be allowed to make that choice?"

The issue has been raised at the town's Roman Catholic church by the priest, Jim Friedrich, who fervently supports the ban.

"So far no one (in the parish) has spoken against it," he said quietly in his rectory. "The way I spoke, I doubt they'd have the guts to tell me otherwise."

John Paulson, minister at nearby Our Savior's Lutheran Church, takes a different tack.

"We can't read God's mind on this," he said. "As pastor, I'd support people voting their conscience with a prayerful heart."

On the Net:

Anti-ban campaign: http://www.sdhealthyfamilies.org

Pro-ban campaign: http://www.voteyesforlife.com

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Lotsa Bush Books Out

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Where Have You Been Woodward?

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Never Mind. Wrong Number.

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Disgraced Congressmen Don't Need Lawyers . . .

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With me as an advisor . . .

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Election Commission Alters Rule on Money Used for Recounts

The New York Times
Election Commission Alters Rule on Money Used for Recounts
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 (AP) — Changing nearly 30 years of election policy, federal regulators said Wednesday that money used to pay for vote recounts and legal challenges was subject to campaign finance restrictions on contributions and expenditures.

The 4-to-2 decision by the Federal Election Commission affects House and Senate candidates as well as state parties. It could be especially significant this year when both political parties are bracing for potential postelection challenges to results in tight Congressional races.

“This is going to make them work a little harder to raise the money,” said Ellen L. Weintraub, a commissioner and a Democrat, who offered a compromise to break a 3-to-3 deadlock. “But it’s doable.”

At issue was whether a 2002 campaign finance law that did away with unrestricted and unlimited giving to the political parties altered regulations adopted in 1977. The decision redefined those regulations.

The commission’s chairman, Michael E. Toner, the commission chairman, and Hans von Spakovsky, a commissioner, both Republicans, voted against the compromise, saying that the campaign finance law applied only to the election, not recounts. Mr. Toner also objected to the timing of the change, noting that it came only five weeks before the Nov. 7 elections.

In making its decision, the commission recognized that recounts were expensive. As a result, the contributions that candidates raise from individuals for their recount accounts will not count against their fund-raising for the election. Under current law, a candidate can receive donations up to $2,100 from an individual for each election.

Now a contributor who had already reached the donation limit with a candidate could contribute also to the recount account.

Similarly, while the state parties would have to abide by the $10,000 contribution limits that apply to them, they would not have to live within limitations on spending for so-called coordinated expenditures with federal candidates.

As before, neither candidates nor state parties will be able to raise money from labor unions, corporations or foreign citizens.

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Security Gaps in Medicare and Medicaid

The New York Times
Security Gaps in Medicare and Medicaid
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 — Federal investigators say they have found serious computer security flaws that could lead to the improper disclosure of sensitive medical information on people enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid.

In a new report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said “key information security controls were missing” from a huge communication network used by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

As a result, they said, sensitive, personally identifiable information “could be improperly modified, disclosed or deleted.” Moreover, the report said, “these weaknesses could lead to disruptions in services” to millions of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries.

The network is used to pay claims and to communicate with state Medicaid agencies, health care providers and many private contractors.

Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said none of the flaws had led to “actual security breaches.” Dr. McClellan said he was taking steps to fix the problems.

But the G.A.O. said Medicare officials would not necessarily know if a security breach had occurred because they had no “audit trail” to document use of the computer network, or a reliable way to detect intrusions into their computers.

In their report, the investigators described several problems:

¶The potential for unauthorized users to gain access to the agency’s computers because of a lack of strict password controls. Passwords are often so simple that outsiders can guess them.

¶Medicare and Medicaid data not being encrypted. “This could allow an attacker to view medical information” on beneficiaries.

¶A failure to keep complete records of who uses the network, so it cannot be determined who views or modifies files.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who requested the investigation, said Medicare officials needed “to get on top of these shortcomings immediately.”

“Beneficiaries not only rely on Medicare for their health care coverage,” said Mr. Grassley, chairman of the Finance Committee, which oversees Medicare and Medicaid, “they expect that the private information they entrust to the government is kept private, safe and secure.”

Concern about computer security has increased since May, when the Department of Veterans Affairs reported a laptop computer with personal information on millions of veterans had been stolen from the home of an agency employee.

Dr. McClellan said, “We are very concerned about the specific control weaknesses” identified in the latest report. The computer network carries immense amounts of data with personal information on beneficiaries, including name, sex, date of birth, Social Security number and home address. The network also transmits medical and financial information, showing the diagnosis of a patient’s illness, prescriptions, names of doctors and hospitals, services provided and the amounts paid.

Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, and his predecessors have expressed concern about weaknesses in Medicare computer security. The weaknesses “could ultimately result in unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information, improper Medicare payments or disruption of critical operations,” Mr. Levinson warned last year.

The computer network connects the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services with banks, insurance companies, hospitals, nursing homes, health plans, other federal agencies and private contractors that pay claims for the government.

Medicare paid more than 1.1 billion claims last year. The size of its computer network and the number of transactions increased this year with the addition of a prescription drug benefit. The new program fills more than three million prescriptions a day. Insurers must file detailed data on each transaction.

In June, Medicare officials warned Humana after a company employee left personal information on 17,000 Medicare beneficiaries unsecured on a hotel computer in Baltimore.

The Bush administration is encouraging adoption of electronic health records and is urging doctors to send prescriptions electronically to drugstores. It is also asking beneficiaries to keep track of their health information, including Medicare claims and prescriptions, by using a new online service at www.MyMedicare.gov. In fine print, the government says it “does not warrant the accuracy” of information on the Web site.

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Republican Coward of the Day: Tom Kean Jr.

Huffington Post
Bob Geiger
Republican Coward of the Day: Tom Kean Jr.

After a debate this morning at CBS studios in Manhattan with New Jersey Senatorial candidates Robert Menendez and Tom Kean Jr., JoAnn Sohl, a member of the anti-war group Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), tried to talk to Republican Kean about his "stay the course" strategy for Iraq.

Sohl, whose son is serving in Iraq, got the usual, cowardly brush-off given to military families by Republicans when spouses or parents of troops demand answers on the lies that put our people in Iraq and the Republican goal of keeping them smack-dab in the middle of a civil war.

A few months ago, MFSO requested meetings with both Menendez and Kean Jr. to talk to them about the war. Both accepted the meetings, but Kean Jr. decided to get up and walk out in the middle of his meeting, saying that he'd get back to the military families in writing. He never did.

When Sohl again attempted to talk to Kean Jr. after the debate, Kean scampered off and left his Rove-like campaign manager, Evan Koslow, to blow her off.

Watch the video and you'll see that Kean Jr. goes to the back of the room, stands alone and cowers while his campaign hack continues to tell a military Mom whose questions have clearly not been answered, that they have.

It's disgusting, but it's precisely what we've come to expect from the GOP at this point.

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Cheney Back Delivering the Grim Campaign Speech

washingtonpost.com
Cheney Back Delivering the Grim Campaign Speech
Democrats Cast As Foils to the Nation's Security
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer

MILWAUKEE -- Vice President Cheney sometimes starts speeches with a Ronald Reagan quotation about a "happy" nation needing "hope and faith." But not much happy talk follows. Not a lot of hope, either. He does, though, talk about the prospect of "mass death in the United States."

The not-so-happy warrior of the past two campaign cycles is back on the road delivering a grim message about danger, defeatism and the stakes of the coming election. If it is not a joyful exercise, it is at least a relentless one. Even with poll ratings lower than President Bush's, Cheney has become a more ubiquitous presence on the campaign trail than in the last midterm election.

He takes on not only the traditional vice presidential assignment of slicing up the opposition but also the Cassandra role of warning about dire threats to the nation's security. While others get distracted by Capitol Hill scandal, Cheney remains focused on the terrorists, who are, as he says in his stump speech, "still lethal, still desperately trying to hit us again." Bush, he says, is "protecting America" while the Democrats advocate "reckless" policies that add up to a "strategy of resignation and defeatism in the face of determined enemies."

But the message is carefully targeted. More than half of Cheney's fundraisers in this two-year cycle have been behind closed doors. Even at a lunchtime speech to Wisconsin Republican donors that was open to reporters, gubernatorial candidate Rep. Mark Green did not stand on stage, ensuring no pictures of the two together on the news, and some other Republican candidates did not attend at all.

That is okay with the White House, which at a perilous moment is counting on Cheney's under-the-radar campaign to rally the base, not the broader public. "The fact that he's willing to go after Democrats as harshly as the Democrats are going after the White House gets the party faithful going," said GOP strategist Glen Bolger.

It happens to inflame the Democratic faithful as well, and party strategists consider him a prime target for their own pitch to voters. "When he threatens Democrats and calls them names, it's something that really fires up our base," said John Lapp, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's independent expenditure program.

Cheney's fundraising visits often end up as fodder for opponents of those he tries to help. "Dick Cheney, Big Oil and Big Drug Companies Threw Curt Weldon a secret Washington thank you party," reads a Democratic brochure targeting the Republican Pennsylvania congressman. "And we got stuck with the bill."

The campaign comes at a pivotal moment for Cheney. His influence within the administration is widely perceived to be waning as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's star rises. The president in his second term has adopted a more diplomatic approach to problems such as Iran and North Korea than insiders believe would be to Cheney's liking. And as the 2008 presidential sweepstakes heat up, he will be the first vice president in a generation not to be seeking a promotion, leaving him on the sidelines of the most important national discussion.

But White House aides said it would be a mistake to underestimate Cheney even now. Although he is viewed favorably by just 34 percent of the public in the most recent Wall Street Journal-NBC poll, he remains a champion of conservatives at a time when the right has been angry at Bush over issues such as deficit spending and immigration. So Cheney's mission is to bring home core Republican voters when they are needed most.

"He's a good carrier of the Republican message," said Michigan GOP Chairman Saul Anuzis, noting that a Cheney visit to Grand Rapids last month raised between $750,000 and $1 million, a record for western Michigan. "He exudes a confidence. He makes you feel good and comfortable that he's vice president of the country."

Cheney's job is "a lot of volume, a lot of what we call McFundraisers," GOP lobbyist Ed Rogers said. Cheney has headlined 111 fundraisers so far in this two-year cycle, bringing in more than $39 million and already surpassing his total of 106 events for the entire 2002 cycle. Cheney is also regularly dispatched to conservative radio shows hosted by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. He takes the shots the White House does not want Bush to take or wants to test out first. When Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) was defeated by antiwar challenger Ned Lamont in a primary, Cheney called reporters to say the result would encourage "al-Qaeda types" who want "to break the will of the American people."

Out here on the hustings, Cheney does not come across as the most natural campaigner. A Cheney speech does not draw its audience to its feet. It plods through an argument that is more sobering than inspiring. He delivers even red-meat lines in a flat monotone, sounding more like a chief executive reporting to shareholders than a politician issuing a call to action.

The vice president, though, goes after Democrats by name in a way Bush rarely does, including Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.) and party Chairman Howard Dean. At a fundraiser in Sarasota, Fla., last week, he also singled out Sens. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.) and Reps. John Conyers (Mich.), Henry A. Waxman (Calif.) and Barney Frank (Mass.).

He talks mainly about terrorism and Iraq, arguing that U.S. withdrawals from Lebanon after the Marine barracks bombing in 1983 and from Somalia after the "Black Hawk Down" ambush in 1993 emboldened terrorists. "If we follow Congressman Murtha's advice and withdraw from Iraq the same way we withdrew from Beirut in 1983 and Somalia in 1993, all we will do is validate the al-Qaeda strategy and invite even more terrorist attacks," Cheney said in Milwaukee. In Houston last week, he accused Democrats of "apparently having lost their perspective concerning the nature of the enemy."

The crux of his pitch is what he calls the continuing "danger to civilization." Cheney, who warned in 2004 that the United States would be hit by terrorists if Democrat John F. Kerry was elected president, has not gone that far this time but does say that it "is not an accident" that the country has not suffered another attack since Sept. 11, 2001, giving Bush credit.

Democrats regularly punch back, suggesting Cheney is out of touch and desperate. "At a time when the Bush Administration finds itself increasingly isolated on Iraq, Vice President Cheney today went on the attack," Senate Democrats said in a statement last week. "Instead of ranting and raving on the campaign trail, Bush and Cheney should spend their time on the trail of Osama bin Laden."

Five years after Sept. 11, Cheney's message may be wearing. Some find it too limited. "To tell you the truth, I was a little disappointed," David Huibregtse, head of Wisconsin's Log Cabin Republicans, a group of gay party members, said after a speech. "Too much on how great President Bush is doing and very little on why we should vote for the Republicans."

Yet it still resonates in certain quarters. Between fundraisers, Cheney addressed a Michigan National Guard rally, an ostensibly nonpartisan event that nonetheless provided helpful photos of him surrounded by soldiers in uniform.

Dick Szymanski, a manufacturing executive whose son serves in the Marines, applauded the vice president's message. "We respect him," Szymanski said. "It's a very, very hard job that he and the president have, that they've had handed to them. You can belittle people for the things they should or should not have done. But they're there trying to take care of the public."

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U.S. Casualties in Iraq Rise Sharply

washingtonpost.com
U.S. Casualties in Iraq Rise Sharply
Growing American Role in Staving Off Civil War Leads to Most Wounded Since 2004
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer

The number of U.S troops wounded in Iraq has surged to its highest monthly level in nearly two years as American GIs fight block-by-block in Baghdad to try to check a spiral of sectarian violence that U.S. commanders warn could lead to civil war.

Last month, 776 U.S. troops were wounded in action in Iraq, the highest number since the military assault to retake the insurgent-held city of Fallujah in November 2004, according to Defense Department data. It was the fourth-highest monthly total since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

The sharp increase in American wounded -- with nearly 300 more in the first week of October -- is a grim measure of the degree to which the U.S. military has been thrust into the lead of the effort to stave off full-scale civil war in Iraq, military officials and experts say. Beyond Baghdad, Marines battling Sunni insurgents in Iraq's western province of Anbar last month also suffered their highest number of wounded in action since late 2004.

More than 20,000 U.S. troops have been wounded in combat in the Iraq war, and about half have returned to duty. While much media reporting has focused on the more than 2,700 killed, military experts say the number of wounded is a more accurate gauge of the fierceness of fighting because advances in armor and medical care today allow many service members to survive who would have perished in past wars. The ratio of wounded to killed among U.S. forces in Iraq is about 8 to 1, compared with 3 to 1 in Vietnam.

"These days, wounded are a much better measure of the intensity of the operations than killed," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The surge in wounded comes as U.S. commanders issue increasingly dire warnings about the threat of civil war in Iraq, all but ruling out cuts in the current contingent of more than 140,000 U.S. troops before the spring of 2007. Last month Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top commander in the Middle East, said "sectarian tensions, if left unchecked, could be fatal to Iraq," making it imperative that the U.S. military now focus its "main effort" squarely on Baghdad.

Thousands of additional U.S. troops have been ordered to Baghdad since July to reinforce Iraqi soldiers and police who failed to halt -- or were in some cases complicit in -- a wave of hundreds of killings of Iraqi civilians by rival Sunni and Shiite groups.

U.S. commanders have appealed for weeks for 3,000 more Iraqi army troops to help secure Baghdad but as of Thursday had received only a few hundred, according to military officials in the Iraqi capital. Mistrust of Iraqi police in Baghdad remains high, Abizaid said. Last week, an Iraqi police brigade with hundreds of officers was removed from duty over its involvement in sectarian killings.

"The Baghdad security plan and the general spiral of operations is driving us to be more active than we have been in recent months," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. "We have more people on patrols and out of base, so we get more people hurt and killed in firefights," he said, explaining that U.S. military offensives -- more than other factors such as shifting enemy tactics -- tend to drive the number of American casualties.

In March, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that Iraqi forces -- not U.S. troops -- would deal with a civil war in Iraq "to the extent one were to occur." Today's operations in Baghdad demonstrate that that goal was not realistic, experts say.

"In a sense, the Baghdad security plan is a complete repudiation of the earlier Rumsfeld doctrine where he said the Iraqis would prevent the civil war," said O'Hanlon.

Despite the mounting cost in U.S. wounded and dead -- including 13 American soldiers killed in combat in Baghdad in three days last week -- Pentagon officials say aggressive military operations in the Iraqi capital are at best a short-term and partial solution, buying time for political compromise, which they call the only way to arrest Iraq's disintegration.

"The Baghdad security plan will only be a temporary fix," said a Pentagon official who has served in Iraq. "You need to address the root causes," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

The rising toll of wounded reflects ongoing heavy combat in Anbar as well as in Baghdad, where U.S. troops face an escalation of small-arms and other attacks as they push into the city's most violent neighborhoods to rein in sectarian death squads, militias and insurgents, officers say.

"Attacks against the coalition have definitely increased as . . . the enemy is trying to come in and reestablish themselves" in a dozen religiously divided districts in east and west Baghdad, said Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, a spokesman for the U.S. military command in the city. "There's a lot of weapons in Baghdad," contributing to an increase in enemy attacks using small arms, he said.

Withington said he was not authorized to release the number of U.S. military personnel wounded in Baghdad or the number of attacks in the city, although the military has released such data in the past.

A survey of reports on combat deaths from August through early October, however, shows an increase in those killed in Baghdad from small-arms fire as well as bombs along roads. Dense urban terrain in the city of 6 million people, where enemy fighters have many places to hide and can attack from close quarters, reduces the advantage of the better-trained and better-equipped U.S. forces.

"September was horrific" in terms of the toll of wounded, and if the early October trend continues, this month could be "the worst month of the war," said John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Virginia-based Web site that tracks defense issues.

The worsening violence in Baghdad has led some Pentagon officials to criticize decisions by the U.S. military since early 2005 to transfer responsibility for security in large swaths of Baghdad to Iraqi forces while cutting back on American patrols.

"We made decisions to take an indirect approach, which is great if you want low U.S. casualty rates," said the Pentagon official. However, he said: "Passing responsibility to Iraqis does not equal defeating terrorists and neutralizing the insurgency. Period."

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Evangelicals Fear the Loss of Their Teenagers

The New York Times
Evangelicals Fear the Loss of Their Teenagers
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Correction Appended

Despite their packed megachurches, their political clout and their increasing visibility on the national stage, evangelical Christian leaders are warning one another that their teenagers are abandoning the faith in droves.

At an unusual series of leadership meetings in 44 cities this fall, more than 6,000 pastors are hearing dire forecasts from some of the biggest names in the conservative evangelical movement.

Their alarm has been stoked by a highly suspect claim that if current trends continue, only 4 percent of teenagers will be “Bible-believing Christians” as adults. That would be a sharp decline compared with 35 percent of the current generation of baby boomers, and before that, 65 percent of the World War II generation.

While some critics say the statistics are greatly exaggerated (one evangelical magazine for youth ministers dubbed it “the 4 percent panic attack”), there is widespread consensus among evangelical leaders that they risk losing their teenagers.

“I’m looking at the data,” said Ron Luce, who organized the meetings and founded Teen Mania, a 20-year-old youth ministry, “and we’ve become post-Christian America, like post-Christian Europe. We’ve been working as hard as we know how to work — everyone in youth ministry is working hard — but we’re losing.”

The board of the National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group representing 60 denominations and dozens of ministries, passed a resolution this year deploring “the epidemic of young people leaving the evangelical church.”

Among the leaders speaking at the meetings are Ted Haggard, president of the evangelical association; the Rev. Jerry Falwell; and nationally known preachers like Jack Hayford and Tommy Barnett.

Genuine alarm can be heard from Christian teenagers and youth pastors, who say they cannot compete against a pervasive culture of cynicism about religion, and the casual “hooking up” approach to sex so pervasive on MTV, on Web sites for teenagers and in hip-hop, rap and rock music. Divorced parents and dysfunctional families also lead some teenagers to avoid church entirely or to drift away.

Over and over in interviews, evangelical teenagers said they felt like a tiny, beleaguered minority in their schools and neighborhoods. They said they often felt alone in their struggles to live by their “Biblical values” by avoiding casual sex, risqué music and videos, Internet pornography, alcohol and drugs.

When Eric Soto, 18, transferred from a small charter school to a large public high school in Chicago, he said he was disappointed to find that an extracurricular Bible study attracted only five to eight students. “When we brought food, we thought we could get a better turnout,” he said. They got 12.

Chelsea Dunford, a 17-year old from Canton, Conn., said, “At school I don’t have a lot of friends who are Christians.”

Ms. Dunford spoke late last month as she and her small church youth group were about to join more than 3,400 teenagers in a sports arena at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst for a Christian youth extravaganza and rock concert called Acquire the Fire.

“A lot of my friends are self-proclaimed agnostics or atheists,” said Ms. Dunford, who wears a bracelet with a heart-shaped charm engraved with “tlw,” for “true love waits,” to remind herself of her pledge not to have premarital sex.

She said her friends were more prone to use profanity and party than she was, and added: “It’s scary sometimes. You get made fun of.”

To break the isolation and bolster the teenagers’ commitment to a conservative lifestyle, Mr. Luce has been organizing these stadium extravaganzas for 15 years. The event in Amherst was the first of 40 that Teen Mania is putting on between now and May, on a breakneck schedule that resembles a road trip for a major touring band. The “roadies” are 700 teenagers who have interned for a year at Teen Mania’s “Honor Academy” in Garden Valley, Tex.

More than two million teenagers have attended in the last 15 years, said Mr. Luce, a 45-year-old, mop-headed father of three with a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Business Administration at Harvard and the star power of an aging rock guitarist.

“That’s more than Paul McCartney has pulled in,” Mr. Luce asserted, before bounding onstage for the opening pyrotechnics and a prayer.

For the next two days, the teenagers in the arena pogoed to Christian bands, pledged to lead their friends to Christ and sang an anthem with the chorus, “We won’t be silent.” Hundreds streamed down the aisles for the altar call and knelt in front of the stage, some weeping openly as they prayed to give their lives to God.

The next morning, Mr. Luce led the crowd in an exercise in which they wrote on scraps of paper all the negative cultural influences, brand names, products and television shows that they planned to excise from their lives. Again they streamed down the aisles, this time to throw away the “cultural garbage.”

Trash cans filled with folded pieces of paper on which the teenagers had scribbled things like Ryan Seacrest, Louis Vuitton, “Gilmore Girls,” “Days of Our Lives,” Iron Maiden, Harry Potter, “need for a boyfriend” and “my perfect teeth obsession.” One had written in tiny letters: “fornication.”

Some teenagers threw away cigarette lighters, brand-name sweatshirts, Mardi Gras beads and CD’s — one titled “I’m a Hustla.”

“Lord Jesus,” Mr. Luce prayed into the microphone as the teenagers dropped their notes into the trash, “I strip off the identity of the world, and this morning I clothe myself with Christ, with his lifestyle. That’s what I want to be known for.”

Evangelical adults, like believers of every faith, fret about losing the next generation, said the Rev. David W. Key, director of Baptist Studies at the Candler School of Theology of Emory University, in Atlanta.

“The uniqueness of the evangelical situation is the fact that during the 80’s and 90’s you had the Reagan revolution that was growing the evangelical churches,” Mr. Key said.

Today, he said, the culture trivializes religion and normalizes secularism and liberal sexual mores.

The phenomenon may not be that young evangelicals are abandoning their faith, but that they are abandoning the institutional church, said Lauren Sandler, author of “Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement” (Viking, 2006). Ms. Sandler, who calls herself a secular liberal, said she found the movement frighteningly robust.

“This generation is not about church,” said Ms. Sandler, an editor at Salon.com. “They always say, ‘We take our faith outside the four walls.’ For a lot of young evangelicals, church is a rock festival, or a skate park or hanging out in someone’s basement.”

Contradicting the sense of isolation expressed by some evangelical teenagers, Ms. Sandler said, “I met plenty of kids who told me over and over that if you’re not Christian in your high school, you’re not cool — kids with Mohawks, with indie rock bands who feel peer pressure to be Christian.”

The reality is, when it comes to organizing youth, evangelical Christians are the envy of Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants and Jews, said Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, who specializes in the study of American evangelicals and surveyed teens for his book “Soul Searching: the Religious and Spiritual lives of American Teenagers” (Oxford, 2005).

Mr. Smith said he was skeptical about the 4 percent statistic. He said the figure was from a footnote in a book and was inconsistent with research he had conducted and reviewed, which has found that evangelical teenagers are more likely to remain involved with their faith than are mainline Protestants, Catholics, Jews and teenagers of almost every other religion.

“A lot of the goals I’m very supportive of,” Mr. Smith said of the new evangelical youth campaign, “but it just kills me that it’s framed in such apocalyptic terms that couldn’t possibly hold up under half a second of scrutiny. It’s just self-defeating.”

The 4 percent is cited in the book “The Bridger Generation” by Thom S. Rainer, a Southern Baptist and a former professor of ministry. Mr. Rainer said in an interview that it came from a poll he had commissioned, and that while he thought the methodology was reliable, the poll was 10 years old.

“I would have to, with integrity, say there has been no significant follow-up to see if the numbers are still valid,” Mr. Rainer said.

Mr. Luce seems weary of criticism that his message is overly alarmist. He said that a current poll by the well-known evangelical pollster George Barna found that 5 percent of teenagers were Bible-believing Christians. Some criticize Mr. Barna’s methodology, however, for defining “Bible-believing” so narrowly that it excludes most people who consider themselves Christians.

Mr. Luce responded: “If the 4 percent is true, or even the 5 percent, it’s an indictment of youth ministry. So certainly they’re going to want different data.”

Outside the arena in Amherst, the teenagers at Mr. Luce’s Acquire the Fire extravaganza mobbed the tables hawking T-shirts and CD’s stamped: “Branded by God.” Mr. Luce’s strategy is to replace MTV’s wares with those of an alternative Christian culture, so teenagers will link their identity to Christ and not to the latest flesh-baring pop star.

Apparently, the strategy can show results. In Chicago, Eric Soto said he returned from a stadium event in Detroit in the spring to find that other teenagers in the hallways were also wearing “Acquire the Fire” T-shirts.

“You were there? You’re a Christian?” he said the young people would say to one another. “The fire doesn’t die once you leave the stadium. But it’s a challenge to keep it burning.”

Correction: Oct. 7, 2006

A front-page article yesterday about evangelical Christian teenagers gave an incorrect academic credential for Ron Luce, the founder of Teen Mania, a youth ministry that organizes “Acquire the Fire” stadium events. He is a graduate of the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration, where he received a certificate from the Owner President Management program. He did not earn a master’s degree from the school.

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Anti-U.S. Attack Videos Spread on Web

The New York Times
Anti-U.S. Attack Videos Spread on Web
By EDWARD WYATT

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 5 — Videos showing insurgent attacks against American troops in Iraq, long available in Baghdad shops and on Jihadist Web sites, have steadily migrated in recent months to popular Internet video-sharing sites, including YouTube and Google Video.

Many of the videos, showing sniper attacks against Americans and roadside bombs exploding under American military vehicles, have been posted not by insurgents or their official supporters but apparently by Internet users in the United States and other countries, who have passed along videos found elsewhere.

Among the scenes being viewed daily by thousands of users of the sites are sniper attacks in which Americans are felled by snipers as a camera records the action and of armored Humvees or other military vehicles being hit by roadside bombs.

In some videos, the troops do not appear to have been seriously injured; in one, titled “Sniper Hit” and posted on YouTube by a user named 69souljah, a serviceman is knocked down by a shot but then gets up to seek cover. Other videos, however, show soldiers bleeding on the ground, vehicles exploding and troops being loaded onto medical evacuation helicopters.

At a time when the Bush administration has restricted photographs of the coffins of military personnel returning to the United States and the Pentagon keeps close tabs on videotapes of combat operations taken by the news media, the videos give average Americans a level of access to combat scenes rarely available before, if ever.

Their availability has also produced some backlash. In recent weeks, YouTube has removed dozens of the videos from its archives and suspended the accounts of some users who have posted them, a reaction, it said, to complaints from other users.

More than four dozen videos of combat in Iraq viewed by The New York Times have been removed in recent days, many after The Times began inquiries.

But many others remain, some labeled in Arabic, making them difficult for American users to search for. In addition, new videos, often with the same material that had been deleted elsewhere, are added daily.

Russell K. Terry, a Vietnam veteran who founded the Iraq War Veterans Organization, said he had mixed feelings about the videos.

“It’s unfortunate there’s no way to stop it,” Mr. Terry said, even though “this is what these guys are over there fighting for: freedom of speech.”

One YouTube user, who would not identify himself other than by his account name, facez0fdeath, and his location, in Britain, said by e-mail that he posted a video of a sniper attack “because I felt it was information the U.K. news was unwilling to tell.”

“I was physically sickened upon seeing it,” he said, adding, “I am wholly opposed to any form of censorship.”

The video he posted, which had been viewed more than 33,000 times, was removed earlier this week.

Another YouTube user, who said he was a 19-year-old in Istanbul and who posted more than 40 videos of Iraq violence, said via e-mail that “anti-war feelings and Muslim beliefs (the religion of peace) motivates me.”

Neal O. Newbill, a freshman at the University of Memphis who viewed some of the YouTube videos and posted comments on them, said in an interview that he was enraged by the recorded chants of “Allahu Akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” that follow some of the sniper attacks.

But Mr. Newbill added that he was awed by the size of the blasts from the improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, used against American vehicles. A son, nephew and grandson of American veterans, Mr. Newbill said he had sought out the videos, searching on YouTube for “I.E.D.,” “because I like watching stuff blow up.”

The Web sites also contain a growing number of video clips taken by American soldiers. One shows the view from the back of a truck containing several members of a platoon, whose vehicle then hits an I.E.D. and is turned on its side. A few videos also show American servicemen or private security guards firing at attackers, and one shows an American rocket-propelled grenade hitting a building from which insurgents are firing.

A spokesman for United States Central Command, which oversees troops in Iraq, said the military was aware of the use of common Internet sites by both insurgent groups and American military personnel.

“Centcom is aware we are facing an adaptive enemy that uses the Internet as a force multiplier and as a means of connectivity,” Maj. Matt McLaughlin, the spokesman, said by e-mail.

While posting of Web logs, pictures and videos by American troops is subject to military regulations, Major McLauglin said, “Al Qaeda uses the Internet and media to foster the perception that they are more capable than they are.”

Some of the videos are obvious propaganda, with Arabic subtitles and accompanying music, while others simply have scenes without sound or graphics. They appear to be real, though the results of attacks are not always clear.

One frequently posted video shows individual photographs of several hundred American soldiers allegedly killed by a Baghdad sniper referred to as Juba. But a television news report from the German weekly Der Spiegel that also has been posted on the video sites shows an interview with one American soldier whom the insurgent group claimed to have killed but whose protective vest stopped the sniper’s bullet.

Geoffrey D. W. Wawro, director of the Center for the Study of Military History at the University of North Texas and a former instructor at the United States Naval War College, said the erosion of the command structure of terrorist and insurgent groups had led them to increase their reliance on the Internet and videos to gain recruits.

American troops, too, have always sent snapshots home from the front, Mr. Wawro said, and digital pictures and video are simply a new incarnation of that.

“This is how the new generation does things,” he said.

“It results in a continued trivialization of combat and its effects,” Mr. Wawro added, “but no one feels completely comfortable saying, Don’t do it.”

YouTube does feel comfortable saying so, however, as does Google Video. Both have user guidelines that prohibit the posting of videos with graphic violence, a measure that spokeswomen for each service said was violated by many of the Iraq videos.

Julie Supan, senior director of marketing for YouTube, said the company removed videos after they were flagged by users as having inappropriate content and were reviewed by the video service.

In an e-mail message, Ms. Supan said that among the videos removed were those that “display graphic depictions of violence in addition to any war footage (U.S. or other) displayed with intent to shock or disgust, or graphic war footage with implied death (of U.S. troops or otherwise).”

David Gelles and Omar Fekeiki contributed reporting from Berkeley, Calif.

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ABC mistakenly releases ID in page probe

Yahoo! News
ABC mistakenly releases ID in page probe

ABC News' fleeting, inadvertent publishing of a computer screen name enabled a blogger to track down and make public the supposed identity of a former congressional page who traded salacious messages with former Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record).

In breaking the story of the now-burgeoning scandal, the network last Friday posted on its Web site a series of instant message exchanges between Foley and the teen-ager. The name of the page was not included.

But in one exchange the network inadvertently left the victim's screen name on. It was quickly discovered and removed, replaced by a version with the name redacted.

However, ABC said Thursday that a blogger was able to retrieve the deleted file. The blogger, known as "Wild Bill' from the "Passionate America" site, went on a computer detective mission he describes in detail on his site to discover the name.

[Editor's note: Click here to see the blog entry that describes how Wild Bill, with help, tracked down the information.

"To be clear, no one visiting our Web site would have simply stumbled on the old version," ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said. "We thank the blogger and (Matt) Drudge for bringing this to our attention."

ABC has taken additional steps to make sure no one can access the deleted messages, he said.

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Voters say scandals will affect votes

Yahoo! News
Voters say scandals will affect votes
By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writer

In yet another hurdle for Republicans, the scandals that have dogged Congress for the past year are prominent in the minds of many voters who say corruption will significantly influence their vote in November.

With midterm elections less than five weeks away, the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that about half of likely voters say disclosures of corruption and scandal in Congress will be very or extremely important when they enter the voting booth.

About two out of three of those voters said they would cast their ballots for Democrats in House races, further complicating the political landscape for Republicans already struggling against negative public perceptions.

The poll was conducted this week as House Republican leaders came under increasing pressure to explain what they knew of sexually explicit messages from former Rep. Mark Foley of Florida to teenage pages. Last month, another Republican, Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio, admitted that he accepted trips, meals and other gifts in exchange for legislative favors.

In that roiling environment, the poll found that by a margin of nearly 2-to-1 likely voters say Democrats would better combat corruption than Republicans. More troubling to Republicans, likely voters in some key Republican groups were split on whether to trust Democrats or Republicans to clean up corruption.

Voter perceptions about corruption underscore a strong sense of dissatisfaction, if not outright anger, toward Congress. And they help explain the pessimism with which some Republicans in and outside Congress now view their chances on Election Day.

Among likely voters, 28 percent said they are angry at the Republican leadership in Congress and 35 percent said they were dissatisfied but not angry.

Rep. Mike Simpson (news, bio, voting record), R-Idaho, told the Associated Press that Republicans had been somewhat upbeat in early September, believing they would only lose a handful of House seats and still retain their majority. But after Foley's electronic exchanges with teenage boys became public on Friday, Simpson said he now is "not confident" they can keep control of the House.

"From Thursday it went (from) fairly confident we were going to keep the majority to a real tossup," he said.

The Foley scandal, with its proximity to the elections and its simple set of facts, has sent Republican leaders and GOP candidates on a political detour just as they were preparing their final offensive against Democrats to save control of Congress. Since Friday, the Foley affair has broadened amid questions about who in the GOP leadership had been warned about his behavior.

Like other Democrats, Joe Courtney, who is challenging Republican Rep. Rob Simmons of Connecticut, has called for the resignation of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., over the Foley matter. But he said voters raised the subject without prompting during campaign stops last weekend.

"This Congress wasn't exactly held in high regard before this incident," he said. "It has a life of its own."

Lawrence Nuccio, a 78-year-old Republican from Glen Cove, N.Y., said he would vote for Democrats for the first time out of frustration with Republican congressional leaders.

"I'm a registered Republican, but when I turn around and see them trying to cover up — and that's what they're doing — and try to pass the buck to the Democrats, that's not right," Nuccio said. "You have elected officials who are running the country and you assume are doing the right thing, but they're not."

Whether they live in the suburbs or cities or rural areas, likely voters tended to trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle corruption. That didn't necessarily mean they would vote for Democratic candidates, but the results highlighted a vulnerability for Republicans. Even suburban men, traditionally a strong Republican voting bloc, were divided about which party could better address the problem of corruption.

Overall, Democrats maintained a 10-percentage point lead over Republicans in House races. Fifty-one percent of likely voters said they would vote for the Democrat in their congressional district; 41 percent said they would vote for the Republican. That's essentially unchanged from last month.

The number of adults who say the country is on the wrong track remained virtually unchanged from last month at 64 percent. That's still lower than in August, when it was 71 percent or May when it reached 73 percent.

The leading issue among likely voters remained Iraq, followed closely by the economy.

But the poll also found that President Bush's efforts to depict the war in Iraq as part of a larger campaign against terrorism and to portray Democrats as weak on national security was not altering the political landscape.

Approval of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq was at 37 percent among likely voters, down slightly from 41 percent last month. Bush's rating on handling foreign policy and terrorism also fell slightly, from 47 percent last month to 43 percent this month.

Similarly, recent good news on the economic front — from lower gas prices to a rising stock market — did not appear to pierce through the public's downbeat view of the economy. Fifty-six percent of likely voters disapproved of Bush's handling of the economy, compared to 59 percent who held that view last month.

The low approval ratings that have dogged the president and Congress were essentially unchanged from last month. Among likely voters, 24 percent approved of the way Congress was handling its job and 39 percent approved of Bush's job performance.

While many voters aim their antipathy at Republicans, who control Congress, others blame both parties for refusing to work together.

John Hart, a 47-year-old materials manager from Norwalk, Ohio, said he would prefer neither party controlled Congress after next month's elections.

"I've become much more cynical about the whole process just because it's no longer about what's your plans for the good of the country, now it's what can we throw at the other side and avoid getting tossed back at us," he said.

The poll of 741 likely voters was conducted Monday through Wednesday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

___

AP Manager of News Surveys Trevor Tompson and Associated Press Writers Philip Elliott and Kasie Hunt contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

Ipsos: http://www.ap-ipsosresults.com

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Ex-page says he got messages from Foley

Yahoo! News
Ex-page says he got messages from Foley
By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press Writer

A former congressional page said Thursday he received sexually suggestive messages from then-Rep. Mark Foley in 1997.

Tyson Vivyan's account appears to show the earliest exchange of suggestive messages reported so far between Foley and teens who had served in the Capitol page program. Previous accounts placed the earliest contacts in 2003.

Vivyan, 26, told The Associated Press that Foley began sending him instant messages about a month or two after his nine-month stint as a page ended in June 1997.

Vivyan, who gave interviews this week to other media, said he never met Foley personally during his stint as a page, other than brief greetings while working in the cloakroom beside the House chamber where members take breaks.

A few months later, he said, he started getting instant messages via computer from a person with the screen name MAF54, which has been linked in news reports to Foley. He said he wasn't sure who it was, but the person knew his name and physical description. He said the person asked personal questions, such as his sexual orientation.

Vivyan said he figured the person had to be on Capitol Hill, and began looking up initials in a congressional guide. He said that when he found Foley's initials — MAF, born in 1954 — he realized who it was.

"It was almost surreal. Not only was I conversing with a congressman in a personal manner, I was conversing in a sexual manner," Vivyan said.

After he guessed it was Foley, the person continued to contact him. Vivyan said he tried to turn the talk to politics. Foley would often stop talking and contact him a week later with suggestive messages.

Vivyan also said he was invited to Foley's brownstone in Washington. Vivyan said he didn't want to go alone, so brought a fellow page with him. He said they had pizza and soft drinks, and nothing sexual happened.

David Roth, attorney for the Florida Republican former congressman, declined to comment on the allegations.

Foley, 52, resigned Friday. He has since entered an alcohol rehabilitation facility at an undisclosed location. Through his lawyer, he has said he is gay but denied any sexual contact with minors.

Vivyan said he was nominated as a page by Rep. John. J. Duncan, R-Tenn. Don Walker, Duncan's deputy chief of staff, confirmed Thursday to the AP that Vivyan was a page from Duncan's district.

"We did not get any complaints form him while he was a page or after he was a page or anytime thereafter until Monday," Walker said. "As soon as we learned of it we turned it over to the authorities."

Vivyan said he was interviewed this week by the FBI. FBI spokesman Stephen Emmett in Atlanta declined comment.

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