We meant to bring this to your attention the other day, but got sidetracked by something – the squirrels or the spam, who knows…

One of my old favorites, Harper’s magazine, is evolving once again with some new investigative stuff and more of a blog-style daily update. If you are seriously into all the sorted details of the debauchery behind the scenes at CIA parties, the one’s that brought down Peter Goss, you should be following this site.

The Loss of Goss

I don’t have the stomach for some of it myself. It’s just good that another failed Bush appointee is out of the picture.

If you need even more excruciating details, this chick is on it.

Since the 9/11 terror attacks, the U.S. government has tried both structural and personnel changes to fix the nation’s intelligence services – including now the ouster of CIA Director Porter Goss – but the remedies have failed because they’ve missed the core problem, according to the independent ConsortiumNews.Com.

What’s wrong with the U.S. intelligence community is that over the past three decades its ethos of telling truth to power has been corrupted by politics to such a degree that George W. Bush now sees the Central Intelligence Agency as virtually his family’s fiefdom, with the Langley, Virginia, headquarters even named for his father, George H.W. Bush, a former CIA director briefly in the late 1980s.

So, when analysts at the CIA were viewed as undercutting George W. Bush’s case for war with Iraq, the White House launched a counter-attack against these intelligence professionals for perceived disloyalty.

Read the full story at ConsortiumNews.Com.

by Glynn Wilson

U.S. Rep. Terry Everett, a back bencher Alabama Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told the Birmingham News Monday that he supports Gen. Michael Hayden’s nomination as CIA director.

“He’s the best guy in the country for the job and he probably knows more about intelligence than anybody in the country,” Everett said.

Hayden was nominated Monday by President Bush to replace Porter Goss, who resigned under a cloud of scandal involving late night gay poker parties.

Everett, who claims to have been an Air Force intelligence specialist in Germany in the 1950s, according to the News, took issue with critics – Democrat and Republican – who argue that Hayden’s active duty military status would conflict with his CIA role.

Hayden most recently was the deputy under National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, a job that also required Senate confirmation, although the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that held hearings indicated Hayden’s responses were less than totally forthcoming.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., told a reporter on National Public Radio this morning that he was not satisfied with Hayden’s answers about the NSA domestic spying program and would use his confirmation hearings to try to obtain more and better answers.

Negroponte, best known for directing the covert funding of the Nicaraguan Contras and the coverup of human rights abuses carried out by CIA-trained operatives in Central America in the 1980s, was Bush’s pick for the new position of Director of National Intelligence after the uproar that erupted when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq and then-CIA director George “Slam Dunk” Tenet resigned in early June, 2004.

Everett, who used to be the publisher of Gulf Coast Newspapers in Baldwin County in the early 1980s but sold out to Worrell Enterprises, the now defunct weekly newspaper chain started by a former FBI agent, told the news: “To say this will be disturbing the balance between the (Department of Defense) … and the intelligence community is a red herring. I just find it frankly disappointing that this kind of rationale has sprung up.”

Everett’s position is in sharp contrast with the Republican chairman of his committee, Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, who called Hayden the “wrong man” for the job.

Hayden’s confirmation will also involve additional scrutiny of the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program, which he directed at NSA. Everett said the controversy over the program may be troublesome during confirmation hearings but shouldn’t derail Hayden’s appointment. But then, what does he know?

When contacted in Washington last year on a visit there, it became clear that Everett spends most of his time working to speed America into the space weapons war against China. That’s a big mystery, unless there is some secret space weapons manufacturing plant somewhere near Enterprise.

Everett defended NSA’s ability to listen in on communications between Americans and suspected terrorists, which so far has bypassed review by the secret court that oversees government wiretapping.

“I feel like that, whatever the method, if somebody in this country is talking to al-Qaida, I want to know about it and I think most of the public feels that way,” Everett said.

Well, Mr. Everett should read more polls. A majority of Americans now list warrantless domestic spying as one of the reasons they support Bush’s impeachment.

Although Everett said he’s satisfied with the NSA program, he would “feel better” if the law was changed to clearly define it. So why hasn’t he done some work to do just that?

Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Huntsville, the other Alabama member of the House intelligence panel, would not take a position on Hayden’s nomination. He issued a written statement that said:

“Through my position on the intelligence committee, I have worked with General Hayden and have a great deal of respect for him. The next CIA director needs to understand the relationship the agency has within the DNI (Office of the Director Of National Intelligence), and I think General Hayden recognizes this and the other challenges that face the CIA.”

But who cares, really, what Alabama’s Congressional delegation thinks on these issues? They are all a bunch of featherweights anyway – who mostly just kiss Bush’s ass…

by Glynn Wilson

Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, a potential anti-war candidate in the 2008 presidential field, according to AP, urged fellow Democrats on Monday to show more backbone in challenging President Bush on his decision to invade Iraq.

“We must get out of our political foxholes and be willing to clearly and specifically point out what a strategic error the Iraq invasion has been,” Feingold told an audience at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Watch the re-run on C-SPAN on TV, or watch the video online here.

Feingold, who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees, said some Democrats in Congress gave in to “intimidation” by the Bush administration when they voted to authorize the war in 2002.

“If we do not show both a practical and emotional readiness to lead in the fight against terrorism, we will lose in ’06 and we will lose in ’08, just like we did in ’02 and ’04,” he warned.

Feingold called for the censure of Bush over the administration’s warrantless surveillance program back in March. So far, only two Democrats, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Barbara Boxer of California, have signed on as co-sponsors. Some on the hard left, and even some Republicans, have said censure is not the answer, impeachment is…

Feingold has also proposed that U.S. troops leave Iraq by the end of the year, rejecting criticism that such a move could lead to chaos there.

“I believe the situation would probably get better” if U.S. troops left, he said. “The lesson of insurgency is when the occupying power leaves, it tends to lessen, rather than increase, the level of violence.”

He said people ask him at every stop he makes out in the country, including Montgomery, Alabama, why Democrats won’t stand up publicly for what they believe – especially against President George W. Bush. This includes Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, rather than pursuing al Qaeda.

Iraq was not on the administration’s list of countries where al Qaeda was operating on 9/11, he pointed out.

“It was not even on THEIR list,” he said.

Feingold, who cast the lone vote against the USA Patriot Act in the Senate, also said he has no confidence in the assurances issued Monday by Bush’s new appointee to the CIA, Gen. Michael Hayden, that the NSA has not been spying on American citizens without warrants.

Now hear this! Get the scoop!

Gen. Michael Hayden of the NSA will never be confirmed to head the CIA.

Bush Turns to Gen. Hayden to Lead CIA

Why? Because the Senate will never confirm him, and he approved the illegal wiretapping of American citizens without warrents.

Key Lawmakers Wary of Likely CIA Pick

We predict this nomination will never make it to the Senate. Hayden will step down when it becomes apparent that a military general is not suited to run the civilian CIA. Of course Bush wants another loyalist to head the agency. The bureacracy will never approve of it.

Remember, you heard it here first!

Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration’s domestic operations – Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy.

Read the whole sad story at Consortium News.Com

The U.S. House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations held a series of hearings this week that did not receive much play in the news. In fact, I cannot find a single news story about these important hearings. Nor have I been able to find a link to them on the C-SPAN Web site, even though I’ve watched the replay a couple of times on late night and weekend C-SPAN.

Here’s one blog that is talking about it:
The Project on Government Oversight (POGO)

Here’s the subcommittee’s Web site:
U.S. House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations

Here’s the committee press release:
Hearing on Protecting National Security Whistleblowers in the Post-9/11 Era

The upshot of the hearings is that the Bush administration has been trying to silence numerous officials from all branches of the military and intelligence communities who are standing up for the truth about illegal spying and U.S. intel failures before and after 9/11.

Let me know if you see a good news story about this and I’ll throw up the link for all of our readers to see.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales faced strong questioning today by Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and other members, in the attempt to determine whether President George W. Bush’s program to spy on Americans via the National Security Agency is legal – or not.

Gonzales Faces Tough Questions on Spying

If you care about individual liberties, watch it live on C-SPAN and make up your own mind as to whether the program is legal or warranted.

It is pretty clear to me that the president has already admitted breaking the law. He just doesn’t admit that what he did and is still doing is against the law. He is asserting, through the Justice Department, that he is above the law, while saying he is NOT above the law.

This is classic double-speak right out of George Orwell’s book 1984. This is Big Brother, and it is a mystery why anyone calling themselves a conservative could support the administration on this issue. I thought conservatives and libertarians wanted the government out of our bedrooms, not listening in on our telephone conversations, land lines and cell phones, and reading our mail and e-mail.

The misleading defense of this specific NSA program is that only calls to and from abroad are included. But that ignores the larger issue of other agencies of the federal government, including the Pentagon, spying on peace groups, environmental groups, journalists and yes even bloggers.

If the Senate Judiciary Committee wants to get to the bottom of how this administration has broken the law rising to the level of impeachment of the president and the vice president, the inquiry should be exanded to include the other domestic spying programs. The probe should not just be limited to an inquiry of the NSA’s sweeping program of searching for key words in phone calls and e-mails.

As has already been reported widely, most of the NSA’s requests for a followup investigation by the FBI have been dropped because the target was clearly not associated with any real terrorists or al Qaeda.

But what I have been saying over and over again since before this Web site was started is that the Bush administration is intent on characterizing as a “terrorist” any activist who disagrees with Bush’s policies.

Carefully read this post from Sept. 26, 2004, along with the links.

No One Likes a Critic; Democracy Demands Criticism

We suspect, although it is not yet coming out in the press, the media, or in the questioning of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that when administration officials say they are only looking at “al Qaeda” and “terrorists” and “their associates,” what they mean is any opponent of the administration, especially peace advocates, animal rights activists and groups and individuals who oppose the administration’s radical views that pose a grave risk to the national and global environment.

By a margin of 52 percent to 43 percent, a majority of Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he authorized the wiretapping of American citizens without a judge’s approval, according to a new Zogby poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.Org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003.