Trumps rejects an FBI investigation into the Khashoggi murder

(June 24)Trump claims the issue if Jamal Khashoggi's murder never came up during his recent talk with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman even though it has been a major topic in the US Congress with respect to Saudi US relations.

Trump opposes FBI investigation into Khashoggi murder

A recent UN report suggested that a proper investigation by the US FBI could clarify the situation regarding Jamal Khashoggi's murder. However, Trump immediately rejected the idea as it could jeopardize US arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Trump had earlier dismissed the murder as threatening over $100 billion in arms sales to the kingdom. Now Trump is insisting that the Saudis will spend $400 to $450 billion over a period of time creating many jobs.

Even though the UN report suggests that the Crown Prince was probably involved in the murder and the US Senate has voted against arms sales specifically because of the Khashoggi murder and other issues, Trump did not bother to bring up the issue in his meeting with the Crown Prince. The UN report is featured on the appended video.

CIA had already decided that bin Salman was involved in the Khashoggi murder

An article last November notes: "The CIA has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month, contradicting the Saudi government’s claims that he was not involved in the killing, according to people familiar with the matter."

Trump immediately contradicted the report and did not blame the Crown Prince but continued to stress that the Saudis were US allies who purchased large quantities of US arms profiting US companies and creating jobs in the US : "US President Donald Trump has contradicted the CIA's reported assessment that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, insisting that the agency had "feelings" but did not firmly place the blame for the death."

Trump has made it clear that the arms sales to the Saudis are far more important for him than holding the Crown Prince responsible for the murder of Khashoggi.

Previously published in the Digital Journal

Three quarters of Americans unwilling to give up internet privacy

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on April 4th found the majority of Americans are not willing to share their personal emails, text messages, phone calls and other online activity with US counter-terrorism investigators even to help foil terror plots.

The poll shows that concern about privacy had increased from four years ago. In June 2013, 67 percent of those polled said they would not let investigators tap into their Internet activity to help the U.S. combat domestic terrorism, but in the recent poll the number has jumped to 75 percent. According to the survey that was taken from March 11 to the 20th, 32 percent of Americans polled said that the FBI and NSA were conducting "as much surveillance as is necessary". Seven percent thought there should be more surveillance. However, 37 percent said that the two agencies are "conducting too much surveillance on American citizens". Another 24 percent did not know. A graphic of all the survey results can be found here.

Later in the year, the US Congress is set to decide whether to reauthorize a key section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that will expire on December 31 this year. The section has been allowing U.S. intelligence agencies to collect huge amounts of Internet communications of foreigners but results in incidental collection of communications of Americans. The issue now has increased political importance as Susan Rice, former Security Adviser for ex-president Obama, asked that the names of Trump campaign operatives be unmasked. Their communications had been monitored incidentally as part of spying on foreign operatives. The appended video discusses this. Americans' communications can be collected incidentally without there being any warrant for the collection. Although Democrats and Republicans in Congress have expressed some interest in limiting any warrantless searches of such data, apparently the Trump administration does not support such changes. Perhaps after the Rice revelations the Trump administration may change its mind. The photo of Rice shows her while she was still National Security Adviser to Obama.

The poll was conducted in all 50 states. The survey included 3,307 people, of whom 1,209 Republicans and 1,355 Democrats. The entire poll results can be accessed here.

Those polled came from continental USA plus Alaska and Hawaii and all those polled were 18 years of age or older.

Obama to nominate former Bush official and Republican for FBI director

President Obama will nominate James Comey to serve as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The date when Obama will make the nomination is not known.

Obama apparently is anxious to please Republicans, Wall Street, and the military-industrial complex. Comey was a former counsel for Bridgewater Associates, a huge hedge fund , and also a senior official in the Bush administration:"As Deputy Attorney General, Comey was the second-highest ranking official in the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and ran the day-to-day operations of the Department, serving in that office from December 2003 through August 2005."

No doubt Democrats will play up Comey's role in refusing to reauthorize a program for eavesdropping without warrant when he served as acting attorney general during the Bush administration. This event is played up by the PBS news report appended.However, an even stronger recommendation will be his role in the Arar case where a Canadian citizen was rendered to Syria for torture and interrogation and then tried to sue the US attorney general. Comey deftly stopped the suit in its tracks by invoking the state secrets privilege:" The privilege was invoked against a case where Maher Arar, a wrongfully-accused and tortured victim, sought to sue Attorney General John Ashcroft for his role in deporting Arar to Syria to face torture and extract false confessions. It was formally invoked by Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey in legal papers filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The invocation read, "Litigating [the] plaintiff's complaint would necessitate disclosure of classified information", which it later stated included disclosure of the basis for detaining him in the first place, the basis for refusing to deport him to Canada as he had requested, and the basis for sending him to Syria."

At present Comey teaches at Columbia Law School, but for several years he was also General Counsel and Senior Vice President of Lockheed Martin. The law, hedge funds, and military contractors, all prime references to serve in a government that serves the military-industrial complex not to mention the fact that he is a good Republican who donated to the McCain and Romney campaigns. Choosing Comey will no doubt ensure that Obama will not face problems from Republicans at confirmation hearings.

Comey may face questions about his three years working as counsel for the world's largest hedge fund, a job he gave up just earlier this year. Senator Charles Grassley notes:“The administration’s efforts to criminally prosecute Wall Street for its part in the economic downturn have been abysmal, and his agency would have to help build the case against some of his colleagues in this lucrative industry."No doubt Comey will continue the good work of doing an abysmal job of convicting his former colleagues.

FBI director Mueller visits Yemen

In a sign that the U.S. is becoming more deeply involved in the Yemen civil strife FBI director Robert Mueller visited the capital yesterday. The government took the opportunity to announce that an air strike had killed an important Al Qaeda leader who was involved in an attack on a French oil tanker. No doubt this was a U.S. drone strike but as usual Yemen does not admit such strikes. However U.S. sources say that the strike was carried out by a CIA operated drone.

During a meeting with the new president who was elected recently in a one person race Mueller pledged support for Yemen "with full force" . The original protesters for democracy have been unable to hold the former president Saleh or anyone else responsible for the deaths during the democracy protests. All were given immunity under the GCC brokered deal for the former president to step down.

A Yemen embassy spokesman in Washington said. "President Hadi emphasized that he is strongly committed to combating extremism and working with the U.S. to counter the mutual threat of terrorism." For more see this article.. The Yemeni armed forces along with some local tribes people opposed to a Qaeda or perhaps funded by the government have been trying to take back territory occupied by militants. The U.S. could very well be used by the Yemeni regime to fight forces opposed to the regime who are separatists rather than militants. Branding any group as militants is a sure fire way to gain U.S. support for eliminating them.

Democracy Now interview with former NSA whistle blower William Binney

The war on terror has given the U.S. government and agencies such as the National Security Agency vastly increased powers. Anyone who questions or reveals corruption or violation of rights by the government can expect to be harassed and intimidated.

This is what happened to the three people interviewed on "Democracy Now". Jacob Applebaum is an internet security expert who works with Wikileaks and Laura Poitras is an Oscar nominated documentary film maker. However, the video portion I have included is an interview with William Binney.

Binney was a top NSA official. He worked at NSA for 40 years. He resigned because he found that the agency was collecting information about Americans with no judicial oversight. He considered those actions unconstitutional. Notice that he does not seem to worry that the same data collection violated non-Americans privacy rights!

When Binney went to the Senate Intelligence Committee and reported this illegal spying by NSA there was immediate retaliation. FBI agents raids his home--while he was in the shower--They pointed guns at him and warned him he would not do well in prison. Poitras has been searched and interrogated every time she enters the U.S. and had her laptop seized. Applebaum too is stopped and interrogated. None of course have been charged with a crime. They are not even on the no fly list. For more see the full video or here.

U.S.: Activists videotaping animal abuse may be tried as terrorists

   Law enforcement officials are fond of finding new uses for anti-terror laws. For some time the Joint Terrorism Task Force of the FBI has suggested that activists carrying out undercover operations on farms to reveal animal abuse should be tried as terrorists.
  The act under which activists could be charged was originally called the Animal Enterprise Protection Act. Note that it was the enterprises not the animals being protected! Now the act is called the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. The penalties associated with conviction under the act are much more severe than for crimes that activists have sometimes committed such as trespass and theft (of animals).
    An example of  the activism involved is exhibited in the actions of  the Group Gourment Cruelty. The group went to a fois gras farm and videotaped how the ducks were overfed and also took a few ducks. The group said these were acts of Civil Disobedience protesting the cruelty to the ducks. The leader of the group did not object to the trespassing charges taking them as a reasonable price to pay for his civil disobedience. However, he considers it outrageous to classify any such act as terrorism.  However, that seems to be exactly what some law enforcement officials and the law want to call it. For much more see this article
 

FBI illegally collected phone records

There is little in the mainstream news about this. Imagine the FBI just made up stories about terror investigations to justify their fishing expeditions. If this had been done by the old Soviet intelligence operatives in the USSR it would be spread wide and far as an example of Bad Big Brother at work. The article also shows how terror legislation can be misused by intelligence authorities. No doubt no one will be held accountable for these breaches of the law.

- News From Antiwar.com - http://news.antiwar.com/2010/01/20/justice-department-report-details-egregious-fbi-crimes/print/ -

Justice Department Report Details ‘Egregious’ FBI Crimes

Posted By Jason Ditz On January 20, 2010 @ 8:46 pm In Uncategorized 1 Comment

The Justice Department Inspector General today issued a highly anticipated report on the FBI’s illegal collection of phone records, declaring the crimes an “egregious breakdown” of the system involving “startling” methods of violating privacy laws and established policy.

The 289-page report detailed hundreds of FBI demands for phone records between 2002 and 2006, in which agents sent letters claiming phony “terrorism emergencies” so as to circumvent the need for subpoenas.

In many cases, the FBI entirely made up the claims of an ongoing investigation, and the report suggests that in several cases they explicitly lied to courts about where the data obtained from illegal searches came from.

The problem was compounded by the fact that employees for three major telecom companies had offices at the FBI’s communications analysis unit, and there was virtually no oversight over actions between them and the FBI officials.

The report says that over 3,500 phone numbers may have been involved in the illegal searches, but the full extent will never be known, according to the report, because of “sketchy record-keeping” by the FBI.

The powers abused by the FBI stem from a provision in the Patriot Act, and several members of Congress suggested the report would add momentum to efforts to revise the law, set to expire in February, President Obama has demanded that the law be extended, but officials have said he would consider limited civil rights protections “as long as they don’t weaken” the president’s power.

CIA monitoring EU bank accounts

The war against terror is also a war against privacy. Imagine what would have happened back in the old days when the Soviet Union was the Evil Empire. If the Soviet Secret Police had demanded this type of power even within the Soviet Union itself it would be evidence of Big Brother invading private life and poking into business that should be kept private unless one had been charged with a crime. This is from presstv.

CIA pulls SWIFT one to get peak at your bank records
European Union governments have given in to the pressure and appear set to make a last-minute agreement with the United States to allow its intelligence agencies to monitor bank accounts and transactions across the bloc.

Actually, the EU has been clandestinely allowing US intelligence agencies to have access to these financial records since 2001, allegedly to fight terrorism.

However, EU citizens were outraged when this invasion of privacy was revealed in 2006.

Now, however, interior ministers and security officials of the 27-member bloc are going to meet on November 30 to make a decision on legally allowing the United States to have access to bank data across the EU.

According to Spiegel Online, the EU interior ministers gradually succumbed to the “massive” pressure exerted by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US ambassadors in Europe, who pressed governments like door-to-door salespeople.

“They pulled out all the moral and political stops,” one EU foreign minister quipped.

Germany was initially opposed to the agreement but came around this week, and a recalcitrant Austria, one of the last holdouts, followed suit.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, who is from the new coalition government, told German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberg, who belongs to the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), that he would not block the US proposal in Brussels.

There will not be a German “no” vote, but instead, he will simply abstain, Spiegel Online reported.

In what many Europeans say is a surreptitious move, the final decision on the issue is going to be made one day before the Lisbon Treaty comes into effect on December 1, since the treaty would allow the European Parliament to have a say in the matter.

However, the issue will definitely face opposition in the EU Parliament anyway since a majority of MEPs are opposed to the idea of disclosing the bank data to the US.

The new treaty envisages a host of security measures and has paved the way for many inexperienced but obedient people like Catherine Ashton, a former EU commissioner for trade, to be elevated to the very apex of European politics.

Many analysts view the entire process as an attempt by Washington to realize its security goals.

The US involvement in the EU's banking system started after it illegally got its hands on the private bank data via the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication or SWIFT.

Over 8,000 financial institutions in over 200 countries are affiliated with SWIFT. The cooperative organization is not a bank and it lacks funds but operates a network of international financial messages.

The firm is registered in Belgium but one of its two major computer servers is located in the US.

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the White House decided to intercept the bank data of people suspected of involvement in terrorist activities via the SWIFT server in the US.

The CIA, the FBI, the US government, and major banks all put pressure on SWIFT until the organization “voluntarily” began to hand over millions of pieces of data.

Privacy advocates and liberal politicians are opposed to the “SWIFT agreement” because it would give US intelligence agencies access to the personal information and financial records of all EU citizens.

FBI ignores key evidence in Blackwater shooting

This is from Rawstory.
Note that the employees involved in the shooting are long gone back to the US and out of reach of Iraqi authorities. The new law to make employees accountable under US law will not apply to these employees. Murder in the service of the US empire is no crime. Well it wasn't in the past. It may be in the future.

CBS: Three weeks after Blackwater shooting, FBI ignores key evidence David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Wednesday October 10, 2007





CBS News reported on Tuesday that the FBI's investigation of last month's Blackwater shooting incident in Baghdad appears to be ignoring evidence that might support the Iraqi government's version of events and hold Blackwater at fault.

"The FBI investigation is supposed to wrap up in days, not weeks, but there's still a lot of work to do," reports CBS. "Our investigation turned up many witnesses who haven't yet been interviewed, not to mention vehicles that are key evidence still driving around the streets of Baghdad."

According to the CBS reconstruction of events, based on "remarkably consistent" eyewitness accounts, the September 16 incident began when a four-vehicle Blackwater convoy heading around a traffic circle found its way blocked by a barrier protecting a maintenance crew. The convoy tried to warn nearby cars to stop but also opened fire on one car that continued to inch forward, instantly killing the driver. The Blackwater vehicles then pushed the barrier aside and moved ahead, firing on other cars and a city bus as they went.

CBS found that not only is the bus, on which at least one woman was killed, continuing to follow its regular route -- with a driver who is happy to show off the bullet-holes and smashed-out windows -- but "astonishingly, that car [that was first to be shot at], full of forensic clues, is still sitting by the side of the road three weeks later."

Military analyst Col. (ret.) Steve Lyons told CBS that with relations between the United States and the Iraqi government in a delicate state, much hinges on a successful resolution of the incident. However, he indicated the best hope was for the US to "show that there was either an anomaly, in that it was an accident that shouldn't have happened, or that perhaps the evidence does show that they were defensive in nature and that there was more firepower that was at that location."

Lyons said there is little chance the US government will meet Iraqi demands either by severing all ties with Blackwater, which is by far the largest and most competent of the many security contractors in Iraq, or by turning over the gunmen responsible for the shooting. Even the Iraqi demand of $8 million in compensation for each of the victims is uncertain.

"These contractors are long gone," Lyons stated. "They're back in the United States. They've scattered, really, to the four winds. ... They're not going to get any money from those individuals."

Lyons explained that Blackwater employees in Iraq are protected from arrest or demands for restitution by an order known as CPA 17 -- put in place by the Coalition Provisional Authority just days before its authority expired in June 2004 -- which exempts US solders, consultants, and contractors from all Iraqi legal processes.

He said the order crucially lacks a "flip side," which is common in such arrangements, whereby Americans who commit crimes in Iraq could be subject to prosecution under US law. The House of Representatives has now approved a bill that would do just that, but it would not apply retroactively.

Lyon's statements suggest that the US is hoping for a positive, or at least inconclusive, outcome to the FBI investigations. "A lot of that evidence has been destroyed," he noted. "It's been on the ground for a few days, so from a forensic perspective, they won't be able to really go back and recreate certain things. ... It's going to be difficult for them to be exact with enough evidence to prove that either we did something wrong or not."

When the FBI team set off for Baghdad last week, Senator Patrick Leahy made a special request that they not be guarded by Blackwater, writing to Secretary of State Rice, “This step would help alleviate the appearance of a conflict of interest and hopefully contribute to the credibility of this investigation in the eyes of the people of Iraq."

Gonzales and Mueller: FBI broke the law.

Note that the Bush administration objected to this audit. It is a bit strange that Mueller, the head of the FBI accepts responsibility for the infractions but does not resign nor has he been asked to resign. This is the new accountability paradigm it seems. Empty verbal formulas replace genuine action. It remains to be seen whether or what punishment the individual perpetrators may suffer. Perhaps any disciplinary action will not even be reported.

Gonzales, Mueller admit FBI broke law By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 21 minutes ago



WASHINGTON - The nation's top two law enforcement officials acknowledged Friday the FBI broke the law to secretly pry out personal information about Americans. They apologized and vowed to prevent further illegal intrusions.



Attorney General Alberto Gonzales left open the possibility of pursuing criminal charges against FBI agents or lawyers who improperly used the USA Patriot Act in pursuit of suspected terrorists and spies.

The FBI's transgressions were spelled out in a damning 126-page audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. He found that agents sometimes demanded personal data on people without official authorization, and in other cases improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances.

The audit also concluded that the FBI for three years underreported to Congress how often it used national security letters to ask businesses to turn over customer data. The letters are administrative subpoenas that do not require a judge's approval.

"People have to believe in what we say," Gonzales said. "And so I think this was very upsetting to me. And it's frustrating."

"We have some work to do to reassure members of Congress and the American people that we are serious about being responsible in the exercise of these authorities," he said.

Under the Patriot Act, the national security letters give the FBI authority to demand that telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, credit bureaus and other businesses produce personal records about their customers or subscribers. About three-fourths of the letters issued between 2003 and 2005 involved counterterror cases, with the rest for espionage investigations, the audit reported.

Shoddy record-keeping and human error were to blame for the bulk of the problems, said Justice auditors, who were careful to note they found no indication of criminal misconduct.

Still, "we believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities," the audit concluded.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller said many of the problems were being fixed, including by building a better internal data collection system and training employees on the limits of their authority. The FBI has also scrapped the use of "exigent letters," which were used to gather information without the signed permission of an authorized official.

"But the question should and must be asked: How could this happen? Who is accountable?" Mueller said. "And the answer to that is, I am to be held accountable."

Mueller said he had not been asked to resign, nor had he discussed doing so with other officials. He said employees would probably face disciplinary actions, not criminal charges, following an internal investigation of how the violations occurred.

The audit incensed lawmakers in Congress already seething over the recent dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys. Democrats who lead House and Senate judiciary and intelligence oversight panels promised hearings on the findings. Several lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats alike — raised the possibility of scaling back the FBI's authority.

"It's up to Congress to end these abuses as soon as possible," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The Patriot Act was never intended to allow the Bush administration to violate fundamental constitutional rights."

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said the audit shows "a major failure by Justice to uphold the law."

"If the Justice Department is going to enforce the law, it must follow it as well," said Hoekstra, of Michigan.

The American Civil Liberties Union said the audit proves Congress must amend the Patriot Act to require judicial approval anytime the FBI wants access to sensitive personal information.

"The attorney general and the FBI are part of the problem, and they cannot be trusted to be part of the solution," said ACLU's executive director, Anthony D. Romero.

Both Gonzales and Mueller called the national security letters vital tools in pursuing terrorists and spies in the United States. "They are the bread and butter of our investigations," Mueller said.

Gonzales asked the inspector general to issue a follow-up audit in July on whether the FBI had followed recommendations to fix the problems.

Fine's annual review is required by Congress, over the objections of the Bush administration. It concluded that the number of national security letters requested by the FBI skyrocketed in the years after the Patriot Act became law. Each letter issued may contain several requests.

In 2000, for example, the FBI issued an estimated 8,500 requests. That number peaked in 2004 with 56,000. Overall, the FBI reported issuing 143,074 requests in national security letters between 2003 and 2005.

But that did not include an additional 8,850 requests that were never recorded in the FBI's database, the audit found. A sample review of 77 case files at four FBI field offices showed that agents had underreported the number of national security letter requests by about 22 percent.

Additionally, the audit found, the FBI identified 26 possible violations in its use of the letters, including failing to get proper authorization, making improper requests under the law and unauthorized collection of telephone or Internet e-mail records.

The FBI also used exigent letters to quickly get information — sometimes in non-emergency situations — without going through proper channels. In at least 700 cases, these letters were sent to three telephone companies to get billing records and subscriber information, the audit found.

___

FBI violates Patriot Act guidelines

From abc news blog.
Violations such as these do not impact on the lives of most ordinary Americans. This makes it difficult to generate public outrage and pass laws that make violators accountable. The agencies just wait for the brief media furor to die down and then they carry on as before.

Exclusive: Report Says FBI Violated Patriot Act Guidelines
March 08, 2007 8:26 PM

Brian Ross and Vic Walter Report:

The FBI repeatedly failed to follow the strict guidelines of the Patriot Act when its agents took advantage of a new provision allowing the FBI to obtain phone and financial records without a court order, according to a report to be made public Friday by the Justice Department's Inspector General.

The report, in classified and unclassified versions, remains closely held, but Washington officials who have seen it tell ABC News it documents "numerous lapses" and describe it as "scathing" and "not a pretty picture for the FBI."

FBI Director Robert Mueller is scheduled to brief Congress on the report at noon.

The officials say the inspector general found the FBI underreported by at least 20 percent the use of the controversial provision, known as National Security Letters, NSLs, in required disclosures to Congress.

The Patriot Act gave FBI agents the ability to demand telephone, bank, credit card and library records by issuing an administrative letter, bypassing the need to seek a warrant from a federal judge.

.

Civil liberties groups have long opposed the provision, saying the lack of oversight could lead to the kinds of problems apparently uncovered by the inspector general.

In a report last year, the Justice Department said there were 9,254 NSL requests on 3,501 persons in the calendar year 2005.

Some officials say the actual number is substantially higher.

The inspector general's report reportedly found "systemic" failures in the issuance, tracking and accountability of the controversial NSLs, although a Justice Department official said there was no finding of "willful or criminal misconduct."

FBI officials said they could not comment until the report was made public but said the FBI welcomed the findings because several of the reported problems were unknown to senior management.

"Expect a weekend firestorm," said one Justice Department official.