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Hot Spot! US 'War on Terrorism'

Pages 1 2 3

Supplement to Sept. 11 Links

  • No-fly blacklist snares political activists
    Alan Gathright (Sept. 27, 2002) SFChronicle
    A federal "No Fly" list, intended to keep terrorists from boarding planes, is snaring peace activists at San Francisco International and other U. S. airports, triggering complaints that civil liberties are being trampled....

    "I think it's a combination of an attempt to silence dissent by scaring people and probably a lot of bumbling and inept implementation of some bad security protocols," said Rebecca Gordon, 50, a veteran San Francisco human rights activist and co-founder of War Times, a San Francisco publication distributed nationally and on the Internet.

    Gordon and fellow War Times co-founder Jan Adams, 55, were briefly detained and questioned by police at San Francisco International Airport Aug. 7 after checking in at the American Trans Air counter for a flight to Boston. While they were eventually allowed to fly, their boarding passes were marked with a red "S" -- for "search" -- which subjected them to more scrutiny at SFO and during a layover in Chicago.


  • F.B.I. Account Outlines Activities of Hijackers Before 9/11 Attacks
    James Risen and David Johnston (Sept. 27, 2002) NYTimes

    The account said a hijacker who crashed into the Pentagon and who was tracked by the Central Intelligence Agency in the months before the attacks, Khalid al-Mihdhar, organized the travel to the United States for the hijackers who helped seize the flights and who in some instances herded passengers to the rear of the aircrafts....

    In January 2000, the C.I.A. found that Mr. al-Mihdhar had attended a meeting of suspected operatives for Al Qaeda in Malaysia and that he was traveling with Mr. al-Hazmi. By January 2001, the agency concluded that the two were probably Qaeda operatives, but the agency did not ask until late August that they be placed on a State Department watch list to prevent their entry into the country. By then they were both in the country.


  • Five Minority Agents File Bias Lawsuit Against Bureau
    David Johnston (Sept. 26, 2002) NYTimes

    Beyond the specific complaints, the letter and a filing in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia depict a corrosive, demoralizing and racially insensitive environment in the New York office, the largest of the 56 field offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The New York office is often regarded by senior managers as the bureau's flagship local operation. It has hundreds of experienced agents skilled in investigations of organized crime, terrorism and espionage.

  • US Military Operating a Secret Chemical Weapons Program: Sunshine Project provides evidence for US violation of international law
    News Release (Sept. 24, 2002) Sunshine Project

    The Sunshine Project today accuses the US military of conducting a chemical weapons research and development program in violation of international arms control law. The charges follow an 18 month investigation of the Department of Defense's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD). The investigation made extensive use of the US Freedom of Information Act to obtain Pentagon records that form the primary basis of the allegations. An array of documents, many of which have been posted on the Sunshine Project website, demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that JNLWD is operating an illegal and classified chemical weapons program....

    JNLWD's secret program is not focusing on highly lethal agents such as VX or sarin. Rather, the emphasis is on "non-lethal" chemical weapons that incapacitate. JNLWD's science advisors define "non-lethal" as resulting in death or permanent injury in 1 in 100 victims.(1) JNLWD's Research Director told a US military magazine "We need something besides tear gas, like calmatives, anesthetic agents, that would put people to sleep or in a good mood." (2) These weapons are intended for use against "potentially hostile civilians", in anti-terrorism operations, counterinsurgency, and other military operations.


  • Statement of Kristen Breitweiser, Co-Chairperson, September 11th Advocates, Concerning the Joint 9/11 Inquiry
    (Sept. 18, 2002) Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

    Washington Air Traffic Control Center knew about the first plane before it hit the World Trade Center. Yet, the third plane was able to fly "loop de loops" over Washington D.C. one hour and 45 minutes after Washington Center first knew about the hijackings. After circling in this restricted airspace--controlled and protected by the Secret Service who had an open phone line to the FAA, how is it possible that the plane was then able to crash into the Pentagon? Why was the Pentagon not evacuated?

  • Statement of Stephen Push, Treasurer, Families of September 11, Inc., Washington, D.C., Concerning the Joint 9/11 Inquiry
    (Sept. 18, 2002) Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

    Initially I thought 9/11 would be a wake-up call for the intelligence community. But I was mistaken. The intelligence agencies and the White House have asserted that no mistakes had been made. That they couldn't possibly have conceived that anyone would use commercial jets in suicide attacks on buildings. That al-Qaeda is impossible to penetrate. Such a "can't do" attitude is profoundly un-American. It also raises the question of why taxpayers should continue to provide the intelligence community with tens of billions of dollars if it cannot protect us.

  • Joint Inquiry Staff Statement, Part I, Eleanor Hill, Staff Director, Joint Inquiry Staff
    (Sept. 18, 2002) Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

    The Director of Central Intelligence has declined to declassify two issues of particular importance to this inquiry:
    • Any references to the Intelligence Community providing information to the President or White House; and
    • The identity of and information on a key al-Qa'ida leader involved in the September 11 attacks.
    According to the DCI, the President's knowledge of intelligence information relevant to this Inquiry remains classified even when the substance of that intelligence information has been declassified. With respect to the key Al-Qa'ida leader involved in the September 11 attacks, the DCI declined to declassify his identity despite an enormous volume of media reporting on this individual.


  • U.S. Trying to Market Itself to Young Arabs
    Jane Perlez (Sept. 16, 2002) NY Times

    Public opinion surveys in Egypt and Jordan - rarely published in these countries but reviewed by officials and foreign diplomats - show that many people feel under assault by American policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and now on Iraq, American and Arab officials who have seen the surveys said.

  • U.S. Trying to Market Itself to Young Arabs
    Jane Perlez (Sept. 16, 2002) NY Times

    Public opinion surveys in Egypt and Jordan - rarely published in these countries but reviewed by officials and foreign diplomats - show that many people feel under assault by American policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and now on Iraq, American and Arab officials who have seen the surveys said.

  • Saudis Indicating U.S. Can Use Bases if U.N. Backs War
    Todd S. Purdum (Sept. 16, 2002) NY Times

    The Saudi foreign minister indicated this weekend that his country would let the United States use its military bases in a United Nations-backed attack on Iraq, a sign that Arab nations may be dropping their resistance to an attack on Saddam Hussein.

  • 5 U.S.-Born Terror Suspects Charged / Pakistan Questions Terror Suspects
    AP (Sept. 14, 2002) via ABC News

    According to the criminal complaint unsealed by the judge Saturday, all five men Shafal Mosed, 24; Faysal Galab, 26; Sahim Alwan, 29; Yasein Taher, 24; and Yahya Goba, 25 live within a few blocks of each another in the Buffalo suburb of Lackawanna and trained together.

    FBI Special Agent Edward J. Needham wrote in the complaint that unindicted co-conspirators told him Goba, Alwan, Mosed and Taher attended al-Qaida's al-Farooq terror training camp near Kandahar, Afghanistan, where they were trained to use Kalashnikov assault rifle, handguns and long range rifles....
    Pakistan confirmed Saturday it was holding about a dozen foreigners arrested this week on suspicion they were al-Qaida members, including one who U.S. authorities say was a key planner of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

    A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were "very, very strong suspicions" that the group included Ramzi Binalshibh, a roommate of hijack leader Mohamed Atta in Germany. The FBI believes Binalshibh was to have been the 20th hijacker but was denied entry into the United States....


  • The Crimes of 'Intcom'
    Noam Chomsky (Sept.-Oct., 2002) Foreign Policy

    Similarly, one does not read that the United States defies the international community on terrorism, even though it voted virtually alone (with Israel; Honduras alone abstaining) against the major U.N. resolution in December 1987 harshly condemning this plague of the modern age and calling on all states to eradicate it. The reasons are instructive and highly relevant today. But all of that has disappeared from history, as is customary when Intcom [a US-led faction] opposes the international community (in the literal sense).

    At the time, Washington was undermining Latin American efforts to bring about a peaceful settlement in Central America and had been condemned for international terrorism by the International Court of Justice, which ordered the United States to terminate such crimes. The U.S. response was escalation. Again, none of this history nor similar episodes since bear on Intcom's attitude toward terrorism....


  • Exclusive: The Informant Who Lived With the Hijackers
    Michael Isikoff (Sept. 16, 2002) Newsweek

    At first, FBI director Bob Mueller insisted there was nothing the bureau could have done to penetrate the 9-11 plot. That account has been modified over time--and now may change again. NEWSWEEK has learned that one of the bureau's informants had a close relationship with two of the hijackers: he was their roommate.....

    But the belated discovery has unsettled some members of the joint House and Senate intelligence committees investigating the 9-11 attacks. The panel is tentatively due to begin public hearings as early as Sept. 18, racing to its end-of-the-year deadline. But some members are now worried that they won't get to the bottom of what really happened by then. Support for legislation creating a special blue-ribbon investigative panel, similar to probes conducted after Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination, is increasing. Only then, some members say, will the public learn whether more 9-11 secrets are buried in the government's files.


  • Senator Shelby Faults the Intelligence Agencies
    Alison Mitchell (Sept. 10, 2002) NYTimes

    Grimly, Mr. Shelby promised that the nation would someday learn of other lapses, which he could not yet divulge.

    "There are a lot of other things that I believe we don't know," he said. "As a matter of fact I believe that there will be more - there will be more information coming out of this joint inquiry. Some, I know, will be very, very sensitive. Some should be brought to the attention of the American people."

    He suggested that the information would prove explosive. "I think there are some more bombs out there," he said, adding, "I know that." ....


  • 'The Cell': Cops and Plotters
    Jeff Stein (Sept. 8, 2002) NYTimes Book Review

    The Nosair case [1990 assassination of Meir Kahane in a New York hotel] was just the beginning of a string of similar instances of ineptitude that would become all too familiar in the weeks following Sept. 11, as shocked and grieving Americans learned of years of official indifference in the so-called war on terrorism -- from the Kahane case though the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the attacks on the United States housing complex at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the bombing of two American Embassies in Africa in 1998 and the Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000, right up to the last few weeks before Sept. 11, when the F.B.I. leadership in Washington ignored evidence that Qaeda fighters were planning to turn passenger jets into airborne firebombs. One of the few top F.B.I. officials to take Al Qaeda seriously, the longtime counterterrorism chief, John O'Neill, a brash bon vivant, was forced out of the bureau in July 2001 -- and killed in his second day at work as director of security for the World Trade Center.

  • Overview of Changes to Legal Rights Since Sept. 11, 2001
    AP (Sept. 5, 2002) Newsday

    * FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION: Government may monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity to assist terror investigation.

    * FREEDOM OF INFORMATION: Government has closed once-public immigration hearings, has secretly detained hundreds of people without charges, and has encouraged bureaucrats to resist public records requests.

    * FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Government may prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation.


  • FindLaw Forum: Why Ashcroft's plan to create internment camps for alleged enemy combatants is wrong
    Anita Ramasastry (Sept. 4, 2002) CNN

    We now are faced with a scary prospect -- indefinite detention of multiple citizens because the government decides they are dangerous. The mere suggestion of camps or group detention facilities implies that the Executive is, in fact, considering using its newfound citizen-combatant detention program on a broader scale.

  • Newsmagazines downplayed opposition voices after Sept. 11, researchers find
    Press Release (Aug. 19, 2002) U Washington

    A content analysis of news coverage in the five issues of Newsweek and Time published immediately after the attacks found that the newsmagazines minimized voices of opposition and instead focused on American unity, highlighted the importance of core American values, shifted blame away from the U.S., emphasized the U.S. role as the only superpower on the international stage, and demonized the enemy. David Domke, an assistant professor of communication, and the three graduate students who conducted the analysis refer to such language as national-identity rhetoric. The Bush administration, they say, used such language to restore public confidence and rally support for a war on terrorism.

    Further, they found that while government and military officials used this nationalistic language more than people in other segments of society, journalists’ reports closely mirrored those comments and, relatively speaking, ignored the comments of non-government opinion leaders – interest group leaders, think-tank researchers and university professors – who were more apt to offer critical analysis.


  • Labor Ambushed
    Jack Smith (Aug. 1, 2002) Mid-Hudson Newsletter

    A recent Senate hearing on the rights of unions and workers in the U.S. made clear that enormous impediments have been erected by the business community and political structure to discourage labor organizing and the functioning of unions. And the Bush administration is doing its best to make a bad situation worse -- this time insisting on weakening or even destroying union protection for federal workers under the guise of protecting "homeland defense" while conducting a war on terrorism.

    The hearing at the end of June by Sen. Edward Kennedy's (D-Mass.) Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions heard stirring testimony from labor organizers about the legal maneuvers and violence deployed by business to prevent workers from joining unions. The predicament of American workers and unions was such that Human Rights Watch considers the situation a violation of the UN's Declaration of Human Rights. In a report to the committee, the group charged that "the right to freedom of association is seriously under threat in the United States."


  • Boston Mob Informant Scandal Involved Highest Levels of FBI, Documents Show
    Jeff Donn (July 28, 2002) AP via Truthout

    For more than 20 years, FBI headquarters in Washington knew that its agents in Boston were using professional killers and mob leaders as informants and shielding them from prosecution for serious crimes including murder, the Associated Press has learned....

    Headquarters also knew that the informants were being shielded from other police agencies by its agents in Boston. It knew, for example, that one informant who masterminded a murder was allowed to go free as four innocent men were sent to prison in his place.


  • No Cooperation with the US Stasi
    Wayne Madsen (July 16, 2002) PetitionOnline.Com

    We refuse to spy on our neighbors, denounce people who have different religious and political beliefs than our own, or use our positions of employment as truck drivers, couriers, parcel deliverers, ship captains, train conductors, letter carriers, utility workers, private security guards, school teachers, book sellers, librarians, janitors, sanitation workers, telecommunications workers, clergy, journalists, social workers, doctors, nurses, web site managers, chat room moderators, pharmacists, sales clerks, or other positions where we interface with the public to assist law enforcement and intelligence agencies in creating files on people exercising their constitutional rights.

  • US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies
    Ritt Goldstein (July 15, 2002) Sydney Morning Herald

    Highlighting the scope of the surveillance network, TIPS volunteers are being recruited primarily from among those whose work provides access to homes, businesses or transport systems. Letter carriers, utility employees, truck drivers and train conductors are among those named as targeted recruits.

  • In Tough Times, a Company Finds Profits in Terror War
    Jeff Gerth & Don Van Natta Jr. (July 13, 2002) NYTimes via Truthout

    The Halliburton Company, the Dallas oil services company bedeviled lately by an array of accounting and business issues, is benefiting very directly from the United States efforts to combat terrorism.

  • What are we celebrating on the Fourth of July?
    Robert Jensen & Rahul Mahajan (July 1, 2002) History News Network

    If the Fourth of July is to continue to have any meaning, we must transform it into a celebration of values that are truly universal, by making it a celebration of the right of self-determination of all peoples rather than another occasion to invoke a mythology that masks our true role in the world today.

  • Before 9 - 11, Terror Was Low Priority For Bush Administration
    AP (June 29, 2002) Truthout

    President Bush's national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions, officials say.

Hot Spot! US 'War on Terrorism'

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