Homeland Security

Collapsing Bridges, Sinking Levees. It’s (Past) Time to Invest

Eric Lotke — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 10:47:02 -0400

Last year on August 1, the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed during rush hour. Thirteen people died and more than 100 were wounded. A school bus carrying 52 children teetered on the brink but did not fall.

This bridge is not alone. Our nation’s infrastructure is deteriorating, dying of old age and neglect.

Making Sense Alert:
Invest in America Now
How to talk about the need
for investment in our
common assets in tough
economic times.

Bridges and roads. The U.S. Department of Transportation reports that nearly 25 percent of bridges in the U.S.—over 152,000 bridges—are “structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.” Heavier vehicles, like school buses and delivery trucks, are forced to take lengthy detours for safer bridges. Nearly one in four miles of urban interstate is in “poor” or “mediocre” condition.

Levees and waterways. Earlier this year, thousands of homes and millions of acres of crops were destroyed after heavy rains overwhelmed obsolete levees along the Mississippi River. In 2007, the American Society of Civil Engineers found more than 150 levees to be at high risk of failing due to poor maintenance. Over a quarter of the dams overseen by the Corps of Engineers have exceeded the lifespan for which they were designed and need major repairs to ensure their safety.

Water and steam. A steam pipe explosion in Manhattan last year launched a tow truck 12 feet in the air, killing one person and injuring dozens more. The blast opened a 40-foot-diameter crater and spread toxic asbestos, closing off 40 square blocks for five days. Almost every state—from California, Hawaii, and New York to Alaska and North Carolina—has reported record breakdowns in water infrastructure. In the words of one expert, “an epidemic of breaking pipes is causing unprecedented havoc.”

These are just illustrations of the deadly danger of letting our infrastructure go unmaintained. America’s electric power grid, dams, water treatment plants, airports, and railways are all in dire need of repairs and improvements.

The solution is obvious. Repair and rebuild. Rebuilding our infrastructure provides jobs—good jobs that can never be outsourced—and an economic shot in the arm that we desperately need. The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that every $1 billion in federal highway investment creates 47,500 new jobs and generates more than $2 billion in economic activity.

The “greatest generation” built the Interstate Highway System and laid the groundwork for decades of economic expansion. Now it’s our turn to rebuild the highways and add high-speed rail to boot. We’ll be faster, safer and more efficient. Yes, it will cost money, and yes, we’re running deficits. But this is no time to run scared. These are long-term investments and they will pay off over time.

Don’t fall for the “pay as you go” trap or fear the “tax and spend” label. Real people are smarter than that. A new poll by Time Magazine and the Rockefeller Foundation finds 83 percent of the public supports “increasing government spending on things like public works projects to help create jobs.” Support is at 83 percent among the baby-boom generation who built the interstates, and a surprising 90 percent among the young generation Y who are watching them fall apart.

Let’s invest now to turn the economy around.

Rights Come with Responsibilities; the Right Shirks Theirs

Leo Gerard — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 10:27:43 -0500

Five years ago, a 47-year-old Missouri woman began a duplicitous on-line courtship through MySpace with a 13-year-old neighbor who once had been friends with the woman’s daughter.

The adult, Lori Drew, flirted with the 13-year-old, Megan Meier, through the guise of a fictitious, 16-year-old character named Josh Evans. Suddenly, “Josh” broke up with Miss Meier, writing to her, “the world would be a better place without you.” Just hours later, Miss Meier hung herself in her bedroom.

Words have consequences.

Drew wasn’t charged with the child’s death. In fact, a judge reversed her conviction on computer fraud charges, saying the law was intended to deal with hacking, not murder. But for most Americans, there is something deeply disturbing, something morally, if not criminally, wrong with deliberate torment, with predatory viciousness. Drew eluded accountability the same way conservatives are seeking to evade culpability after their irresponsible speech has provoked the delusional to violence.

It’s hard to draw a line directly from Drew’s cruel words to the noose around Miss Meier’s neck. Similarly, it’s difficult to directly link violent political rhetoric like Sarah Palin’s illustration showing gun sight cross hairs on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ Arizona district to the shattering of Giffords’ office door after her vote for health insurance reform last March or Jared L. Loughner’s shooting spree last weekend that left six dead and Giffords and 13 others wounded.

What is clear, however, is that vile and threatening communication that becomes so repetitive that it’s routine has the effect of sanctioning an atmosphere of violence.

Conservatives are yammering that they’re not the only ones who engage in brutal rhetoric. That’s true. But in a contest for production of violent words and images, Republicans would, to use their words, “kill” the Democrats.

The Department of Homeland Security concluded in an April 2009 internal report that right-wing extremism, with a growing potential for violence, was on the rise. That was followed last spring by Capitol security officials reporting a tripling of threats against members of Congress – almost all from opponents of health care reform – in other words, from Republicans, right-wingers or people influenced by GOP TV and radio front men like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, who personally profit from the hostile climate they generate.

They didn’t stop though they had fair warning about the consequences. Consider the case of Byron Williams. He launched a 12-minute shoot out with California Highway Patrol officers last July after they stopped him for erratic driving. A police affidavit filed the following day said Williams intended to “start a revolution by traveling to San Francisco and killing people of importance at The Tides Foundation and the ACLU.”

The Right has for decades slammed the ACLU, whose sole purpose is to protect constitutional rights, but Glenn Beck had made the Tides Foundation, once an obscure progressive organization, famous by attacking it repeatedly – at least 29 times between January and the July shoot out last year, including two tirades the week before Williams began his assassination mission.

Williams, who was armed during the shootout with a handgun, shotgun, rifle and body armor, said he watched FOX News to see Beck, who blew his mind, and who he viewed as a “schoolteacher.”

Still Beck, expressed no remorse and tried to squirm out of any responsibility for inciting Williams, saying on his show:

“I am the only one that has mentioned the Tides Foundation. . . So that’s what they’re using. This guy couldn’t have found this out on his own; it had to come from me. . .America, if you don’t think that they will use anything, they will. They absolutely will.”

Words do have consequences, Mr. Beck, no matter how many times you cravenly shout denials.

The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives insisted on reading the U.S. Constitution on the opening day of the new Congressional session. It was, however, nothing but political theatre because conservatives disassociate the rights it grants from the incumbent responsibilities. Right-wing leaders like Beck disavow responsibility altogether.

When it was Arizona Rep. Giffords’s turn to read, the chamber had come upon the First Amendment, which guarantees, among other things, the right to free speech. It even guarantees Republican Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl the right to go on television the day after the shootings and contend that Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff Clarence Dupnik didn’t have the right to speak about the complicity in the crime of vile, hateful and threatening political speech.

The courts have established the “crowded theater” test to determine when free speech ends and responsibility begins. Americans are responsible to refrain from yelling “fire” in a crowded theater when, in fact, there are no flames. The freedom to yell ends at the point when it endangers others.

Republicans are recklessly yelling. During the fall campaign, Arizona Tea Party candidate Sharron Angle suggested her supporters consider their Second Amendment rights if Sen. Harry Reid were re-elected. Florida radio host Joyce Kaufman said at a Tea Party rally on July 4, “If ballots don’t work, bullets will,” and then was hired by new GOP Congressman Allen West to serve as chief of staff. Tea Party contender Jesse Kelly held a fund raiser in June asking his supporters to “get on target to . . . remove Gabrielle Giffords from office” by shooting a “fully automatic M16” with him.

Republicans bear responsibility for the consequences of this kind of brutal discourse – a political atmosphere charged with violence. Just like Glenn Beck, though, Republicans guard their rights, but shirk the concomitant responsibilities.

Imperial Blues

Robert Borosage — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:34:17 -0500

..."[O]ur troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended -- because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own."

—President Obama

But Afghanistan comes first?

President Obama made the best possible case for dispatching more troops to Afghanistan last night. But his speech left me with a haunting foreboding. Surely this is the way that great imperial powers decline. Their soldiers police the ends of the earth. There is always another enemy, always a threat—sometimes imagined, often real—that must be faced. And meanwhile, the productive economy declines, the rich live increasingly off investments abroad, the poor depend on public sustenance, the middle declines. No battle is so costly that it cannot be afforded; no battle so unimportant that the nation must not be mobilized. The soldiers become professionals, "volunteers" in our terms. The institutions of the Republic—the Congress, the Senate—are scorned, often deservedly so. The executive decides the questions of war and peace. The secret state expands. The country finds itself constantly at war. New presidents inherit the wars of their predecessors. They are faced not with deciding to go to war, but whether to accept defeat in one already in progress.

And slowly, the great power declines from the inside out. The wars are costly, running up national debts. Vital investments are put off. Schools decline. Sewers leak. For a long time, circuses distract from the spreading ruin. Other societies become productive centers, capturing the new industries. Some begin providing better education and support for their citizens. Their taxes, not drained by the cost of wars past and present, can be devoted to what we used to call "domestic improvements."

The escalation in Afghanistan, so inevitable, so logical, so thoughtfully considered, surely is but a chapter in this saga. The president committed the country to spend about $250 billion in Afghanistan over the next 18 months. For a wealthy country, this isn't a lot. We can afford it. We will chase the devil in South Waziristan. Our soldiers will repel the Taliban, providing a "breathing space" for a corrupt government whose writ barely reaches the outskirts of the capital city.

On Thursday, the President will convene a jobs summit. Already, his aides have sent out the word that deficits will limit what can be done. Or as the head of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, Christine Roemer writes in The Wall Street Journal today, "Given the budget deficits this administration inherited, it is critical to leverage scarce public funds."

The collapse of revenues at the state and local level will force states to make cuts and layoffs that are projected to cost another 900,000 jobs over the next year. But more aid to the states and localities, unpopular in the polls, is apparently not on the president's agenda. Anyone traveling in America runs into the growing costs of our aging and outmoded infrastructure, from collapsing bridges to exploding sewer pipes, to slow trains on bad tracks, to schools in such disrepair that they pose dangers to the students. But a bold program of investment in our infrastructure is considered a bridge too far.

Far worse in many ways than the money squandered on wars abroad is the attention consumed, the values distorted. This president understands that Americans are focused on the economic troubles here at home. In his speech last night, he argued "as we end the war in Iraq and transition to Afghan responsibility, we must rebuild our strength here at home. Our prosperity provides a foundation for our power. It pays for our military. It underwrites our diplomacy. It taps the potential of our people and allows investment in new industry. And it will allow us to compete in this century as successfully as we did in the last."

Note the order of priority. Our "strength here at home" is needed because it (1) is the foundation of our power; (2) pays for our military; (3) underwrites our diplomacy. It also taps the potential of our people and allows us to compete globally. Stunningly absent in that martial list is any sense of creating a society that has eradicated hunger and poverty, that has secured the American dream for its citizens.

This attention disorder undermines our security as well. Next week the president will travel to Copenhagen, where he will boldly call for setting standards on carbon emissions, in essence promising to deliver a Congress that is not nearly ready to make that commitment. This president, more than any other, has the vision and the capacity to rally this country to meet the real security challenge posed by catastrophic climate change and to grasp the vital economic opportunity of leading the impending green industrial revolution. The speech to the cadets of West Point might have dramatically made that national security case, begun a campaign to run up to the Copenhagen global summit and culminated in a Nobel Peace Prize address that framed the new challenge. Instead, the president had little choice but to focus his attention and his speech on Afghanistan, with critics already accusing him of dithering, daring to question the generals' "requirements."

This is a very rich country, despite the years of conservative misrule. But even wealthy countries must choose. We can afford to police the word—to sustain 800 bases across the globe, to station troops in Korea, in Japan, in Bosnia, in Europe, fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, sustain fleets to police the seas.

In his speech, the president called us to that mission:

"The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly, and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan... unlike the great power conflicts and clear lines of division that defined the 20th century, our effort will involve disorderly regions and diffuse enemies.... We will have to be nimble and precise in our use of military power. Where al-Qaida and its allies attempt to establish a foothold—whether in Somalia or Yemen or elsewhere they must be confronted by growing pressure and strong partnerships."

South Waziristan, Yemen, Somalia, Kosovo, the Taiwan straits, the North Korean border, the seven seas—we can do this. But the result is that we are continually at war. And the wars cost—in money, in lives, in attention. Inevitably, domestic priorities, as well as emerging security threats that have no military answers, get ignored. A rich country, Adam Smith wrote, has a lot of ruin in it. We seem intent on testing the limits of that proposition.

Silicon Valley Sabotage a Window to Vulnerability

Armand Biroonak — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:43:02 -0400

Last week’s communication disruption in Silicon Valley—caused by vandals simply cutting fiber-optics—calls to attention the susceptibility of America's infrastructure. From cyberspace to our ports and plants, major gaps in security still exist. The Bush promise to "keep America safe" appears to be all but hollow in light of the following persistent gaps in security.

Here are some areas that are cause for concern:

• Information. It has been found that cyberattacks “do more real damage every day to the economic health and national security of the United States than any other threat.” A recent GAO report brings to light the extreme risk of attacks faced by both the government and private sectors and how steps toward safeguarding networks are only in infancy. Security experts emphasize that more funding, regulation and coordination are essential.

• Ports. Despite significant improvements since 9/11, the TSA is able to inspect only around 50% of cargo on passenger aircraft and lacks the resources and staff to achieve the 100% inspection of cargo required by 2010.

• Only nine compliance inspectors are working abroad to enforce cargo inspection standards, yet international cargo makes up more than 40% of all port traffic.

• At seaports it is unknown what percentage of cargo is secure, while numerous challenges continue to prevent the required scanning of all incoming cargo.

• Mass Transit. According to the American Public Transportation Association more than $6 billion in additional security funding is needed to adequately protect the nation’s transit systems. In 2009, Homeland Security will only assign 100 surface transportation security inspectors to protect our nation’s mass transit and railway networks, compared to the tens of thousands assigned for air travel.

• Plants. Although physical security at nuclear facilities has markedly improved, other plants remain exposed. The Tennessee Valley Authority—the largest public provider of electricity in the nation—has failed numerous physical and cybersecurity inspections.

• Weak regulation by the Department of Homeland Security leaves safety gaps at over 15,000 chemical plants nationwide. Over 90% of these facilities transport hazardous chemicals by rail or truck, placing 80 million Americans at risk of a chemical attack.

Unfortunately, the policy with domestic security too often is wait and see (that nothing terrible happens). The Obama administration has committed billions more to strengthening domestic security, though that money could go further if it were coupled with stronger legislation and tighter regulation. It is now largely up to Congress to enact stricter laws, such as the Cybersecurity Act recently introduced in the Senate. Looking forward, key chemical regulations expire this year and will surely spark a battle between environmental groups and lobbyists paid for by large chemical corporations such as DuPont.

US Combat Troops in Iraq repatriated to "help with civil unrest"

Philip Palij — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:02:38 -0400

It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. ...

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

Citizen Padilla (Part V: Judge and Jury)

lzkoch@comcast.net — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:37:30 -0500

(Written with Brad Jacobson. Part 5 of a series.)

The law is filled with all kinds of nooks and crannies.

In federal court cases, it is illegal for the prosecution to go “judge shopping.” Which judge presides over a case is supposed to be determined by a spin of the wheel. It is, however, possible to judge shop simply by indicating one case is related to another already in the court system.

Two pathways existed to further prosecution of Jose Padilla: indict him on separate charges or via a superseding indictment to an ongoing case. The ongoing case, involving Adham Amin Hassoun of Ft. Lauderdale and Kifah Wael Jayyousi of Detroit, had already been assigned a judge, one the prosecution believed was a sure thing -- Marcia G. Cooke.

So instead of indicting Padilla on his own account, he was added via a superseding indictment to the ongoing case of Hassoun and Jayyousi. The charges in this indictment lacked so many of the alleged criminal elements that originally inspired President Bush to designate Padilla an “enemy combatant,” they became known around the courthouse as “Padilla lite.”

Why was the prosecution so confident Judge Cooke would do its bidding?

Cooke began her legal career as a public defender and registered Democrat, but later became a Republican (where there were better pickings), eventually making a good impression on then Florida governor Jeb Bush, to whom she reported directly while operating as Florida’s chief inspector general. It was Brother Jeb who recommended that Brother George appoint Cooke to the Federal bench, making her one of the few blacks appointed to a position of consequence during the president’s eight-year term. (There was speculation that Cooke had dreams of becoming the first black woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court.)

Her relative inexperience (only three years on the bench), and her willingness to play the supporting role the government sought, made her ham-handed from the very start of the trial.

In an extraordinary move, Cooke had her overbearing marshals obstruct reporters from doing their job by, in effect, granting “observer status” to reporters. They could sit quietly and take notes but were actively and physically prevented, during recess, from asking any question of a prosecutor or defense attorney, even the correct spelling of the name of a witness.

Cooke made two attempts at appearing to have some independence: the first was to rule that Padilla could not to be brought into her courtroom in chains and shackles. While her thug-like marshals had totally intimidated the press, the spectacle of a manacled Padilla might have been too on-message. Thus, this ruling, which stood, actually may have aided the prosecution, shielding it from overplaying its totalitarian hand.

Her second attempt (possibly made for the same reason) occurred early in the proceedings: she dismissed the most serious charge in the indictment – conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas -- saying it was “duplicative” of other charges in the case.

But the result would set the tone for the remainder of the trial.

The prosecution immediately appealed to the ultra-conservative 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which responded almost instantaneously, reinstating the charges in a swift and public way. The message to Cooke was clear. It would be her last significant ruling for the defense (arguably, until she rejected the prosecution’s wish to sentence Padilla for life).

Judge Cooke’s highly questionable courtroom extended to the jury as well.

An often overlooked event, which in more equitable proceedings might have led to a mistrial, occurred just prior to the July 4th recess: the Miami jurors filed into the jury box -- first row,
second, and third. But in what could only be a clear signal of its lack of impartiality, the first row of jurors that day were dressed all in red, the second row all in white, and the third row all in blue. This overt act, antithetical to a democratic judicial process, should have made any respectable judge livid and any responsible media outlet vocal. But it did neither.

Thus, it was no surprise this jury of red, white and blue -- having been denied the facts about the government’s ever changing charges, Padilla’s torture and illegal imprisonment, along with the denial of his other constitutional rights – such as the right to a swift trial -- took only a day and a half to review and consider three full months of testimony before finding Padilla and the other two defendants guilty on all counts.

Meanwhile, some in the legal community have defended Cooke, citing she was handed a difficult, high-profile case and that her final verdict, denying prosecution’s attempt to put away Padilla for life, showed a deserved leniency.

But this argument does not account for the fact that once the prosecution failed to provide that mysteriously missing 88th videotape (of Padilla’s interrogation at the Naval brig in South Carolina), Judge Cooke had the option of dismissing one or more of the charges against him. Yet she never exercised it, even after she had previously attempted to throw out the most serious charges against Padilla at the beginning of the trial. After Padilla’s gross mistreatment by the government – physical, mental and legal – which Cooke herself cited when she ultimately rejected the prosecution’s desire to lock him away for life, dismissing one of the charges after that 88th videotape happened to go missing would have been the just action to take.

Moreover, while Judge Cooke denied her jurors any knowledge of Padilla’s hellish abuse at the hands of the government or of the government’s series of legal bait and switches, she did cite these state abuses while rendering her sentence. Even if such maneuvering is an example of one of those nooks and crannies in our legal system, where is the justice in this? Why should a judge be ruling on something about which her jury is completely in the dark, about which might have meant the difference between freedom and nearly two decades of incarceration for a U.S. citizen whose constitutional rights were violated in a shockingly unprecedented manner.

Undoubtedly, a fair trial would have impelled Cooke to mete out justice that included more than a rebuff to the government’s suggested draconian prison term, a relatively stingy display of mercy for a man who, on the basis of charges that were never proven, had been treated worse than an animal for three and a half years by his own country.

The travesty of justice in this case also extends to those foot soldiers in Bush’s Justice Department who have thus far dodged any accountability for Padilla’s nightmarish journey.

John Ashcroft, who brought the “dirty bomb” charges, currently earns tens of thousands of dollars for his lectures. James Comey, who introduced the blowing-up-apartment-buildings charges, is now General Council for Lockheed Martin Company, earning hundreds of thousands in salary and hundreds of thousands more in stock options. Alberto Gonzales, who presented the conspiracy charges, is now disgraced, working at home, developing a trust fund to help pay for his legal expenses to defend against charges of perjury and improperly tampering with a congressional witness.

Jose Padilla will spend the next 17 years and four months of his life in prison (the prosecution’s appeal notwithstanding), where he will likely further descend into madness.

Citizen Padilla (Part III: The Radioactive Patsy)

lzkoch@comcast.net — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:44:52 -0500

(Written with Brad Jacobson. Part 3 of a series.)

In his adolescence, Jose Padilla -- just sentenced to seventeen years for conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim individuals outside the United States -- was filled with an uncontrollable narcissistic rage. No father was present in the house, just his mother and two brothers and two sisters.

He had a classic Chicago gang-banger record: trespassing, drug possession (marijuana), armed robbery, battery. At 14 or 15 (there are conflicting reports), he was found guilty of participating in a savage robbery-murder by other gang members. When police asked him why he continued to kick the victim (who had lain unconscious on the street) with such ferocity that he died, Padilla reportedly said, “I just felt like it.”

Padilla, a juvenile, was given the maximum sentence allowable and released from juvenile jail when he was 21. A series of meaningless fast-food jobs in Chicago and Ft. Lauderdale followed. As did trouble. He punched a policeman in a dispute over a doughnut. In 1990, Padilla found himself in adult Florida prison, serving 303 days for a more serious charge -- firing a handgun at a motorist who cut him off on a highway. It was in prison that Jose Padilla found direction, an outlet for that rage: radical Islam.

U.S. prisons have become the hothouses for growing hardened criminals and more than one Islamic extremist. Not unlike their counterparts in the Middle East, these young men live in poverty and filth. And like their “brothers” in the Middle East, they are often desperate, hopeless and filled with rage that could be channeled outward in acts condoned and even celebrated by radical Islam. Radical recruiters in the Middle East and in England have been successful introducing alienated, desperate youth new pathways to Heaven and a means to live in the hearts of all Islam, their bodies and words depicted in photos and videotapes, their sacrifice praised as heroic. There has been smaller but similar success in sections of Great Britain.

Given the time and effort and large pool from which to choose, it’s surprising, however, how unsuccessful prison imams in the United States appear to have been in recruiting such vulnerable targets. Blacks in the United States comprise 13 percent of the national population and 49 percent of those in prison. While there may be some temporary gain in popularity while serving time, dedication to Islam among blacks in prison appears to wane with release. There are exceptions, of course, but even those exceptions differ significantly from the results produced by radical imams in the Middle East.

Not one case exists of another prisoner in the Broward County jail from 1989 on -- or, for that matter, in any prison in the United States during this period -- as having had a jail conversion to Islam who, after being released back into society, then carried out acts of terror against the United States of America.

There is little doubt that Jose Padilla, the Chicago street gang member of the Latin Kings who was nicknamed “Pudgy,” became a dedicated student of radical Islam. Padilla had great difficulty learning the classical Arabic script, the language of the Qur'an and classical literature, but he persisted.

Between his release from prison in 1988 and 1991, Padilla became a serious, if not able convert. Following his release from prison, he demonstrated his commitment to Islam, visiting and studying at the Masjid A Imam mosque in Ft. Lauderdale. He filed for an official name change to Ibrahim and later began to refer to himself as Abdullah Al Muhair. At that Ft. Lauderdale mosque, he was befriended by an outspoken supporter of Palestinian causes and charities, Adham Hassoun, later to be called his mentor. Now there was a “conspiracy” of two.

There are two other main sources for Padilla's alleged terrorist training. The first came from an unsworn "Mobbs declaration" (written by then under secretary of defense Douglas J. Feith's lackey advisor Michael H. Mobbs) offered to Judge Michael Mukasey in 2002 as a reason for denying Padilla his own attorney. The second declaration was said to have been authored by Mobbs, but was released May 28, 2004 under the signature of Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense. This was a far more detailed statement of Padilla's terrorist activities, “leaked” to the public in 2004, shortly after Deputy Attorney General James Comey brought the new exploding-stoves-in-high-rises charges against Padilla. The leak helped to sustain Comey’s new allegations. There was more detail in the second document -- where Padilla went during his years abroad, who he met, the weapons he trained on, etc.

But this tool remained only a government document that we were supposed to trust. By 2004, after it was found that there were no WMD in Iraq, “trust us” was no longer enough.

What appears to true, but still somewhat unproved in an American courtroom, is that Padilla was likely, if you will, up to no good when he was in the Middle East. But even here the evidence is tangled and contradictory. The FBI had been taping the phone conversations of Adham Hassoun, Padilla’s Islamic mentor, since the early 1990s. Out of 300,000 calls, the FBI managed to capture only seven conversations with Padilla’s voice talking in clear language , which included a discussion about the death of his grandmother and how his new 18-year-old Egyptian bride was willing to wear a veil.

Incidentally, these were calls overheard five years before he was arrested in Chicago for the alleged “dirty bomb” plot.

According to government claims, calls with other defendants used coded language. As Deborah Sontag of The New York Times put it, “...other defendants refer to their jihad‑related plans as ‘getting some fresh air,’ ‘participating in tourism,’ ‘opening up a market,’ ‘playing football,’ and so on. This leads to silly‑sounding exchanges where ‘the brothers’ discuss going on ‘picnics’ in order ‘to smell fresh air and to eat cheese’ or using $3,500 to buy ‘zucchini.’”

In other words, it was the kind of coded language employed by adolescents who hang out in secret tree houses, or dialogue Woody Allen might use if he were to pen a comedy about a gang of bungling jihaddists.

Yet, even more importantly, testimony showed that Padilla himself was never heard using any of this alleged coded language.

According to official U.S. documents, “In 1998, he [Padilla] moved to Egypt and was subsequently known as Abdullah Al Muhajir. In 1999 or 2000 Padilla traveled to Pakistan. He also traveled to Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan….While in Afghanistan in 2001, Padilla met with senior Usama Bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah.” The document then alleges that in 2002 “at Zubaydah's direction, Padilla traveled to Karachi, Pakistan to meet with senior Al Qaeda operative to discuss Padilla's involvement and participation in terrorist operations targeting the United States. These discussions included the noted ‘dirty bomb’ plan and other operations including the detonation of explosives in hotel rooms and gas stations.”

Much is made of the CIA-acknowledged “confession by torture” of Abu Zubaydah in May, 2002, a “prize” that sent George Tenet scurrying to the Oval Office to receive a gold star from George Bush – four years after the FBI had Padilla on tape planning to travel to the Middle East.

According to Ron Suskind’s book, The One Percent Solution, Padilla’s name first surfaces while Abu Zubaydah is being tortured by the CIA in Guantanamo Bay, in May 2002. Zubaydah, in the same set of confessions, also coughs up al Qaeda plans for blowing up banks and supermarkets and water systems, nuclear plants and apartment buildings and just about anything else he can think of to make the pain stop.

Zubaydah also, according to Suskind, fingers Padilla as a terrorist-in-training. Padilla is then found in Pakistan (where he’s en route to Chicago via Zurich). But by whom --
agents of the CIA? FBI? -- Suskind doesn’t say. On May 8, 2002, Padilla was arrested at
Chicago’s O’Hare airport with $10,000 in cash.

A month later, the arrest of Jose Padilla -- a terrorist mastermind on the cusp of setting off a lethal radioactive device that would result in “mass death and injury” -- was announced to the world.

So did the FBI, as far back as the mid 1990s, know Jose Padilla dreamed about getting his beginner’s permit in the terrorist business? Or, as Suskind writes, did Padilla first appear on the Government’s radar in 2002, when a tortured Abu Zubaydah offered up Padilla’s name for CIA chief George Tenet to give to President Bush? Or was this just another case of bureaucratic one-upmanship, of the FBI keeping secrets from the CIA? These questions remain unanswered.

Finally, did Padilla wish to inflict pain and suffering on the United States? The key word is wish. If one can believe the first and second Mobbs declarations, the answer is yes, since he received terrorist training. But was Padilla capable of pulling it off? Could he have actually built a “dirty bomb”? The resounding answer from nuclear experts is no. In fact, he was not only technically incapable of building such a complex device, but the Government failed to provide evidence that he posed any serious ability to undermine the security of the United States.

Did he talk about it? Did he dream about it? Sure. But in a way more akin to an extremist version of the hapless dreamers in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh.

According David Johnston of The New York Times:

“... Mr. Zubaydah dismissed Mr. Padilla as a maladroit extremist whose hope to construct a dirty bomb, using conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials, was far‑fetched. He [Zubaydah] told his questioners that Mr. Padilla was ignorant on the subject of nuclear physics and believed he could separate plutonium from nuclear material by rapidly swinging over his head a bucket filled with fissionable material.”

Maybe no better image captures the leap of imagination necessary to believe the Government’s case against Jose Padilla.

Army Recruiting Off Target

OurFuture.org Staff — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 09:54:15 -0500

The percentage of Army recruits who are high school graduates hit a new low in 2007, evidence that the military has had to lower its standards to keep enough troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is also evidence that the pool of recruits is disproportionately poor.

Citizen Padilla (Part II: Manufacturing a Terrorist Mastermind)

lzkoch@comcast.net — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 04:54:06 -0500

Written with Brad Jacobson. Part II of a series. Read Part I.

The case of Jose Padilla came to public attention five years ago and concluded January 22 when he was sentenced to serve 17 years and four months for conspiracy. Along with Padilla, “conspirators” Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi were sentenced to 16 years and nine months, and 12 years and eight months, respectively.

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke rejected the prosecutors' contention that the crimes deserved life prison sentences, noting that while they were "serious," there were no acts of terrorism on U.S. or foreign soil, no attacks on officials, nor any plot to overthrow the U.S. government. “There is no evidence that these defendants personally maimed, killed or kidnapped anyone in the United States or elsewhere," said Cooke.

Federal prosecutor John Shipley said the government will appeal the sentence as too lenient. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has the reputation of being the most conservative appeals court in the nation.

The prosecution’s appeal notwithstanding, Padilla’s sentence yesterday was the final act in the government’s five-year sideshow of unconstitutional bait-and-switches and Kafkaesque legal procedures, all beginning with the announcement of Padilla’s arrest on June 10, 2002. Not once did then Attorney General John Ashcroft use the words “alleged” or “reportedly” in his hastily convened news conference in Moscow, where he first leveled the implausible and ultimately unprovable charges.

“We have captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device or ‘dirty bomb’ in the United States,” Ashcroft said, claiming Padilla’s arrest had “disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot,” one that would have caused “mass death and injury.” Charges that nuclear weapons experts would later confirm to be highly exaggerated.

Ashcroft, in earlier testimony before Congress, shortly after 9/11, laid down an iron curtain around any criticism of government policies and decisions concerning President Bush’s declared but never Congressionally sanctioned “War on Terror”:

We need honest, reasoned debate and non fear-mongering. To those who pit Americans against immigrants and citizens against non-citizens, to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies, and pause to America’s friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.

And with that one swipe, the American press stood at attention, saluted and, like lemmings, marched in lockstep off the cliff.

Thus it came as no surprise that newspaper headlines and lead stories on television and radio announced Padilla was “guilty” of planning to create and ignite a radioactive device or a so-called “dirty bomb.” Padilla’s “capture” at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, eight months after 9/11, proved to Americans and the rest of the world that the United States was capable of taking firm steps to win its “War on Terror.” Any serious questioning about the evidence or legality of the Government’s charges was effectively silenced, including voices dedicated to the protection of civil liberties, like those of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Claiming that Padilla showed “conduct in the preparation for acts of international terrorism,” President Bush declared him an “enemy combatant,” a concept inserted in the little read or understood USA Patriot Act that had recently been passed by Congress. (Later, the U.S. Supreme Court would judge that Bush’s actions were more in keeping with a “king” than a U.S. President.) Bush also denied Padilla the basic Constitutional rights accorded every U.S. citizen -- access to an attorney.

Padilla was then transferred to New York City, where his case came under the jurisdiction of Federal District Court Judge (now Attorney General) Michael Mukasey. Though Mukasey almost immediately -- much to the near hysterical distress of the Government -- ruled Padilla must be given access to an attorney and even assigned a specific federal public defender to assist in Padilla’s defense.

In an effort to persuade Judge Mukasey that Padilla was a serious and immediate threat who should be denied Constitutional rights granted to all U.S. citizens, the Government handed him an unsworn “declaration” by Michael H. Mobbs. This declaration later known as the “Mobbs declaration,” was a six-page, double-spaced document detailing Padilla’s alleged activities with al Qaeda. In part, it read:

Padilla and his associate conducted research in the construction of a "uranium‑enhanced" explosive device. In particular, they engaged in research on this topic at one of the AI Qaeda safe houses In Lahore, Pakistan...Padilla's discussions with Zubaydah specifically included the plan of Padilla and his associate to build and detonate a "radiological dispersal device” (also known as a “dirty bomb") within the United States, possibly in Washington, DC. The plan included stealing radioactive material for the bomb within the United States. The "dirty bomb" plan of Padilla and his associate allegedly was still in the initial planning stages, and there was no specific time set for the operation to occur.

Mobbs was a faceless Richard Perle acolyte, a Pentagon political waterboy-advisor to Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense, the same Doug Feith who, according to General Tommy Franks in Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack, is “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.”

Several days after the Mobbs declaration was delivered, when it became clear that Mukasey was holding to his decision to grant Padilla his own attorney, Padilla was spirited away in the middle of the night to a Naval brig in Charleston, S.C., out of the reach of civilian-judicial authority. In the brig, Padilla would be subjected to sensory deprivation techniques over the next three and a half years. Only in the last months of his solitary confinement would he be allowed to speak with his lawyer. By that time, his lawyers observed radical changes in his mental stability.

The five-and-a-half-year legal saga of Jose Padilla is unequaled in its denial of a U.S. citizen’s rights. It represents one of the most significant battles in a war on the Constitution masked by the “War on Terror.”

This war on the Constitution has been waged by a whole team (none of whom had served a day in combat): Ashcroft; Vice President Dick Cheney; his chief of staff David Addington, Cheney’s extra-smart bully and Èminence grise; and behind them a Department of Justice lackey, David Yoo, who churned out legal memos that supported every contention, including torture, all of which later were found to be unconstitutional concepts.

In Padilla’s case, a game plan was developed to convince a fearful American public that this low-grade thug, this simple-minded gang member from the Southwest side of Chicago, a recent convert to Al Qaeda, was capable of unleashing radioactive hell in the United States.

As it turned out, the government couldn’t have picked a better patsy.

lew.koch@gmail.com

Human Rights Daze

OurFuture.org Staff — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 12:02:29 -0500

Norman Solomon is a columnist and author. His latest book is "Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State."

The chances are slim that you saw much news coverage of Human Rights Day when it blew past the media radar -- as usual -- on Dec. 10.

Human rights may be touted as a treasured principle in the United States, but the assessed value in medialand is apt to fluctuate widely on the basis of double standards and narrow definitions. Every political system, no matter how repressive or democratic, is able to amp up public outrage over real or imagined violations of human rights. News media can easily fixate on stories of faraway injustice and cruelty. But the lofty stances end up as posturing to the extent that a single standard is not applied.

When U.S.-allied governments torture political prisoners, the likelihood of U.S. media scrutiny is much lower than the probability of media righteousness against governments reviled by official Washington.

But what are "human rights" anyway? In the USA, we mostly think of them as freedom to speak, assemble, worship and express opinions. Of course those are crucial rights. Yet they hardly span the broad scope that's spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

That document -- adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on Dec. 10, 1948 -- affirms "human rights" in the ways that U.S. media outlets commonly illuminate the meaning of the term. But the Declaration of Human Rights also defines the rights of all human beings to include "freedom from fear and want" -- and not only as generalities.

For instance, the first clause of Article 23 states: "Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."

And: "Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work"; the right "to form and to join trade unions"; and, overall, "an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection."

Perhaps the farthest afield from the customary U.S. media parameters is Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which insists: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."

Measured with such yardsticks for human rights, the United States falls far short of many countries. If American news media did a better job of reporting on human rights in all their dimensions, we'd be less self-satisfied as a nation -- and more outraged about the widespread violations of human rights that persist in our midst every day.

The human consequences of those violations are incalculable, but they're largely removed from the center stage of dramas that fill news pages and newscasts. This downplaying of economic human rights is not mere happenstance. The violations are systemic -- within a system that thrives on extreme inequities, creating enormous profits for corporations and enriching some individuals along the way. Within the boundaries of dominant news media and mainline political discourse, the "issue" of human rights is in a narrow box. It severely limits the humanity of our social order.