White House wins fight to keep drone killings of Americans secret

RussiaToday

A federal judge issued a 75-page ruling on Wednesday that declares that the US Justice Department does not have a legal obligation to explain the rationale behind killing Americans with targeted drone strikes.

United States District Court Judge Colleen McMahon wrote in her finding this week that the Obama administration was largely in the right by rejecting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times for materials pertaining to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to execute three US citizens abroad in late 2011 [pdf].

Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, both US nationals with alleged ties to al-Qaeda, were killed on September 30 of that year using drone aircraft; days later, al-Awlaki’s teenage son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was executed in the same manner. Although the Obama administration has remained largely quiet about the killings in the year since, a handful of statements made from senior White House officials, including Pres. Barack Obama himself, have provided some but little insight into the Executive Branch’s insistence that the killings were all justified and constitutionally-sound. Attempts from the ACLU and the Times via FOIA requests to find out more have been unfruitful, though, which spawned a federal lawsuit that has only now been decided in court.

Siding with the defendants in what can easily be considered as cloaked in skepticism, Judge McMahon writes that the Obama White House has been correct in refusing the FOIA requests filed by the plaintiffs.

"There are indeed legitimate reasons, historical and legal, to question the legality of killings unilaterally authorized by the Executive that take place otherwise than on a 'hot' field of battle," McMahon writes in her ruling. Because her decision must only weigh whether or not the Obama administration has been right in rejecting the FOIA requests, though, her ruling cannot take into consideration what sort of questions — be it historical, legal, ethical or moral — are raised by the ongoing practice of using remote-controlled drones to kill insurgents and, in these instances, US citizens.

"The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me; but after careful consideration, I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules — a veritable Catch-22,” she writes. “I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reason for their conclusion a secret.”

Throughout her ruling, Judge McMahon cites speeches from both Pres. Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder in which the al-Awlaki killings are vaguely discussed, but appear to do little more than excuse the administration’s behavior with their own secretive explanations.

“The Constitution’s guarantee of due process is ironclad, and it is essential — but, as a recent court decision makes clear, it does not require judicial approval before the President may use force abroad against a senior operational leader of a foreign terrorist organization with which the United States is at war — even if that individual happens to be a US citizen,” McMahon quotes Mr. Holder as saying during a March 2012 address at Chicago’s Northwestern University. “Holder did not identify which recent court decisions so held,” the judge replies, “Nor did he explain exactly what process was given to the victims of targeted killings at locations far from ‘hot’ battlefields…”

And while both Mr. Holder and Pres. Obama have discussed the killings in public, including one appearance by the president on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the Justice Department insists that going further by releasing any legal evidence that supports the executions would be detrimental to national security.

While Judge McMahon ends up agreeing with the White House, she does so by making known her own weariness over how the Obama administration has forced the court to rely on their own insistence that information about the attacks simply cannot be discussed.

“As they gathered to draft a Constitution for their newly liberated country, the Founders — fresh from a war of independence from the rule of a King they styled a tyrant — were fearful of concentrating power in the hands of any single person or institution, and most particular in the executive,” McMahon writes.

Responding to the decision on Wednesday, ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer issued a statement condemning the White House’s just-won ability to relieve itself from any fair and honest explanation as to the justification of Americans.

“This ruling denies the public access to crucial information about the government’s extrajudicial killing of US citizens and also effectively green-lights its practice of making selective and self-serving disclosures,” Jameel writes. “As the judge acknowledges, the targeted killing program raises profound questions about the appropriate limits on government power in our constitutional democracy. The public has a right to know more about the circumstances in which the government believes it can lawfully kill people, including US citizens, who are far from any battlefield and have never been charged with a crime.”

The ACLU says they plan to appeal Judge McMahon’s decision and are currently awaiting news regarding a separate lawsuit filed alongside the Center for Constitutional Rights that directly challenges the constitutionality of the targeted kills.

“The government has argued that case should also be dismissed,” the ACLU notes.
In a Wednesday afternoon statement from the Times, assistant general counsel David McCraw says the paper will appeal the ruling as well.

"We began this litigation because we believed our readers deserved to know more about the US government's legal position on the use of targeted killings against persons having ties to terrorism, including US citizens," McCraw says.

Although she ruled against the plaintiffs, Judge McMahon, says McCraw, explained "eloquently … why in a democracy the government should be addressing those questions openly and fully."

Appeals Court: Tortured US Whistleblowers Can’t Sue

AntiWar
Jason Ditz

The 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals has thrown out a lawsuit by two US whistleblowers, Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, who were tortured by the US military after coming forward with evidence of wrongdoing by the contracting company they were working for.
The court ruled that US military commanders“enjoy broad immunity” in cases of torture abroad and that the military chain of command “couldn’t be responsible” just because detainee abuse crossed a legal boundary. The ruling added that torturing detainees is “a part of human nature that is very difficult to control.” They added that being liable for the torture would “distract” the military’s leadership.
US Court of Appeals Judge James Gwim had previous rejected Obama Administration arguments to this effect, saying that torture lawsuits could continue against officials and that US citizens were always entitled to due process related to their detention. The administration condemned Gwim for “second-guessing” the military.

Vance and Ertel approached the government about an illegal program dubbed “beer for bullets,” in which the company they were working for smuggled liquor into Iraq to trade to US soldiers for their weapons and ammo, and then sold those weapons on the open market. When the company learned they were whistleblowers, they had their papers confiscated and the military captured them when they attempted to return to the US.

Dissenting Judge David Hamilton blasted the ruling, saying that there were clear avenues for handling torture cases inside the US, and there was no good reason to “erect hurdles” just because the US citizens were tortured by the US outside of the country.

“That disparity attributes to our government and to our legal system a degree of hypocrisy that is breathtaking,” Hamilton added. Vance and Ertel’s lawyer says the two have not decided whether or not to appeal to the next level, but said he believes the ruling’s grant of blanket immunity will eventually wind up in the Supreme Court.

The Dilemma of False Terrorism

The Daily Bell
Anthony Wile

A New York Times article has attracted attention in alternative media circles for its portrait of Bernard von NotHaus, the "Rosa Parks of the constitutional currency movement."

Bernard von NotHaus

Entitled, "Prison May Be the Next Stop on a Gold Currency Journey," the article describes von NotHaus and his current predicament.

Mr. von NotHaus was convicted of using precious metals to back a currency he called the Liberty Dollar, which he says was "a private voluntary currency" for those conducting business outside the government's purview
.
His name is Bernard von NotHaus, and he is a professed "monetary architect" and a maker of custom coins found guilty last spring of counterfeiting charges for minting and distributing a form of private money called the Liberty Dollar.

... Mr. von NotHaus managed over the last decade to get more than 60 million real dollars' worth of his precious metal-backed currency into circulation across the country — so much, and with such deep penetration, that the prosecutor overseeing his case accused him of "domestic terrorism" for using them to undermine the government.

This is, of course, the crux of the matter. Is von NotHaus a "terrorist"? Here's his answer, according to the article: "This is the United States government ... It's got all the guns, all the surveillance, all the tanks, it has nuclear weapons, and it's worried about some ex-surfer guy making his own money? Give me a break!"

Of course, in a sense this is disingenuous. Simply by circulating honest money, von NotHaus WAS undermining thepower elite that apparently runs the US and much of the rest of the world.

It is this elite that has undermined money in the US, starting with experiments in monopoly fiat that increased after the Civil War. Before the Civil War, people in the US were relatively free to do what they wanted with money. Formally minted gold and silver were put into circulation via the US mint but plenty of privately circulated gold and silver made its way into the economy in non-coin form.

Gold and silver WERE money and banks that warehoused that money offered receipts that were circulated in lieu of the actual money metals. There were various problems with this system, but it was relatively free compared with what came later and granted a good deal of independence to the people using the system.
The end for any kind of sound money came with the Civil War and the rise of the US fedgov. As time passed, the power of the fedgov when it came to money expanded. Eventually, in 1913, the US Federal Reserve was formed.

The Fed was created by various supporters of money power. It was a private/quasi-public system of monopoly money that acquired its power by virtue of its close association with the government. But it was evidently and obviously controlled privately.

This private control has funded the expansion of the globalist agenda ever since. Essentially, the power elite has built a seamless construct of military, corporate and educational control that controls the world. Every part of this larger construct constantly evolves towards bigness and complexity.

The mantra, endlessly chanted, is one interconnected, "small" world and the enforcers of this meme are the West's Intel agencies and the larger judicial system.

Think of the power elite as a kind of metaphorical cuckoo bird. The cuckoo lays eggs in the nests of other birds and tricks the parents into raising the cuckoo chicks instead of their own. The entire Western demos has been hollowed out from the inside. The cuckoos are everywhere. Nothing is as it seems. Society's resources have been taken over and their purposes perverted.

The main modern lever of this ongoing takeover is the "terrorist." One who has come of age in the 2000s may well be aware of how this meme has been cultivated. In fact, the theme (as with many dominant social themes) goes back decades.

This meme would be expanded after 9/11 – a tragic attack that is commonly held to have been caused by an apparent CIA asset, Osama bin Laden. The "terrorism" theme has been expanded aggressively ever since.
The beauty of the expanding terrorism meme is its vagueness. "Birthers" and "truthers" and now "preppers" are all accused in various contexts of being "terrorists." The term terrorist is constantly evolving because it is meant to be a catch-all term.

Ultimately, anyone who challenges the authority of the state (and thus the money power that stands behind it and controls it) is at risk for being labeled a terrorist. This explains why US prosecutors can label von NotHaus a terrorist. The term is merely a convenient nomenclature. It has been purposefully "evolved" so that an extracurricular judicial system can be brought into effect.

Simply by redefining definitions over time − and manufacturing events to buttress the terminology − the elites have been able to bring into being a new class of felon (the terrorist) and a new and oppressive judicial system, as well.

Here at the Daily Bell, we call this evolution "directed history." The elites, having cleverly created a new kind of criminal and an extra-curricular judicial process, are eager to generate the next phase of directed history − the show trial to illustrate how things have changed.

The purpose is intimidation. Elites – panicked by the Internet and what we call the Internet Reformation – are attempting to realize their apparent plans for world government at breakneck speed. Nothing must stand in their way, certainly not alternative currencies that threaten their monetary chokehold.

My perspective would be that this wholesale creation will not be any more successful than other elite memes now foundering. The Internet has exposed the power elite and made their manipulations ever more questionable.
That doesn't mean they won't continue to try, however. The terrorist meme is an especially useful one. Over time it could be applied – via certain show trials – to almost anyone who challenges elite plans. Perhaps this is how the elites REALLY intend to deal with the threat of the Internet Reformation.

I will end with the observation that while I think this is a very clever plan (if I have analyzed it correctly), I am not sure it will work. Many people already understand the nature of elite manipulations. Directed history tends to work well when it is created in secret.

Like a magic trick, once its mechanism is exposed, it tends to be a great deal less convincing. Sure, the terrorist meme is a ubiquitous one but the more it is applied, the more people will likely see through it.
The more money power tries to oppress and manipulate citizens, the more it drives people to the Internet where they begin to discover the truth.
It is said the bigger the lie, the more people believe it. But perhaps the Internet is bigger than the biggest lie.

I certainly hope so.

Rewarding Impunity

Why is President Obama's attorney general handing out prizes for sweeping torture under the rug?

Foreign Policy
David Cole

On Oct. 17, Eric Holder handed out the Justice Department's annual awards for distinguished service to a slew of department employees. Featured at the top of the awards announcement were the men and women who successfully prosecuted 10 New Orleans police officers for killing innocent civilians in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and a U.S. marshal who risked his life to protect a victim from a violent fugitive during the fugitive's capture. But buried at the bottom of the list -- the 13th of 14 "distinguished service awards" -- was a more unusual awardee: Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham. Durham and his team received the award not for bringing anyone to justice, but for declining to hold accountable anyone in the CIA for its brutal interrogations of detainees at secret prisons, or "black sites," in connection with President George W. Bush's "war on terror."

"In order to conduct the investigations," the citation reads, "the team had to review significant amounts of information, much of which was classified, and conduct many interviews in the United States and at overseas locations."

There's no question that Durham worked hard for a long time, and that the investigation was complex and substantial. After all, more than 100 men were "disappeared" into the CIA's black sites for extended incommunicado detention and interrogation. Because the CIA prisons were a secret, everything that happened there is classified, complicating investigation still further. And because the investigation itself is secret, we can't know precisely what evidence Durham considered, what roadblocks he faced, what judgment calls he made.

But here's what we do know. Many of those "disappeared" into the CIA's black sites were tortured and/or illegally subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, for example, were waterboarded 83 and 183 times, respectively. They and other detainees were stripped naked, doused with water, beaten about the face and stomach, slammed into walls, deprived of sleep for days on end, forced into painful stress positions, and confined in small dark boxes for hours at a time. And these were just the "authorized" torture tactics, given a green light by a secret memo written in August 2002 by John Yoo and Jay Bybee from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and specifically okayed by President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, among others.

We also know, thanks to the CIA's own Inspector General, that CIA interrogators in the black sites went beyond even the illegal brutality authorized by high-level officials. One detainee was threatened with a handgun and a power drill. A mock execution was staged next to a detainee's cell. Interrogators threatened to kill the children of another detainee if he didn't tell them what they wanted to know.

We also know that in 2005, CIA higher-up Jose Rodriguez ordered the destruction of videotapes of two of those interrogations, shortly after the Washington Post revealed the existence of the CIA secret prisons where the interrogations took place, and while the tapes were under request from several courts and a Senate committee looking into charges of abuse.

Durham cleared everyone in the CIA of accusations of wrongdoing. Does he deserves a medal for that? Maybe so, but then there are a few other recipients the attorney general left out. Surely John Yoo and Jay Bybee deserve medals for making the interrogations possible in the first place, by issuing a memo that Jack Goldsmith, director of the Office of Legal Counsel after Bybee, has called a "get out of jail free card." Goldsmith himself, along with his successors as OLC heads under Bush -- Daniel Levin and Steven Bradbury -- also deserve medals for secretly allowing the torture tactics to continue even after the administration rescinded the initial memo when the Post published it. Tellingly, the Bush administration could not publicly defend, even for a moment, what everyone had signed off on in secret; but Goldsmith, Levin, and Bradbury ensured, in subsequent secret memos and authorizations, that the CIA's illegal program could go on.

Judge Bans the T-Word in 9/11 Hearing

Huffington Post
Daphne Eviatar

It didn't take long for the word "torture" to rear its ugly head in the September 11th terrorism case, as pre-trial hearings began today with a slew of procedural issues. Though the question of whether the five accused men have to actually show up in court every day wouldn't seem all that exciting or controversial, as soon as one of the defense lawyers started to say his client was traumatized by having been tortured at the hands of his U.S. interrogators, the judge shut him up.

"We have to talk about torture," said defense attorney Captain Michael Schwartz, who represents Walid Bin Attash, claiming it's relevant to whether the accused should be "forcibly extracted" from their prison cells.

"No we don't. I'm telling you I don't think it's relevant to this issue," said Judge James L. Pohl, presiding over the military commission case of the five 9/11 co-defendants. "I'm not going to keep revisiting the issue I told you is not relevant."

Schwartz tried to explain. "There is the physical and emotional strain that is relevant to the decision of whether they're going to come to court. Those things are inextricably linked."

Pohl quickly interrupted. "The issue before me is whether or not the accused has a right to voluntarily choose to not come to court for these proceedings. The issue of why is not before me... I don't think that's relevant."

Schwartz looked bewildered, but persisted. "The issue of my client's ability to participate in his defense is relevant," he insisted.

Judge Pohl: "No it's not. When I say it's irrelevant, we're done." Pohl refused to allow Captain Scwhartz to even make his claim for the record, which he presumably wanted to do to preserve a later right to appeal.

Ultimately, Judge Pohl ended the discussion by ruling in the defense lawyers' favor, saying he'd allow the defendants to waive their right to attend their hearings and trial so long as they did it knowingly and following a set of procedures he would set out this afternoon.

That short exchange gives us an interesting clue of how the word "torture" and related claims of detainee mistreatment are likely to be treated as this September 11 terrorism trial finally gets underway.

Secrecy surrounding the detainees' treatment in U.S. custody -- including their having been subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" that amount to torture -- will play a much larger role in motions expected to be argued tomorrow.

DOJ SEEKS DISMISSAL OF ‘FAST AND FURIOUS’ LAWSUIT THAT COULD FORCE HOLDER TO COUGH UP WITHHELD DOCUMENTS

The Blaze
Jason Howerton

The Justice Department on Monday night sought dismissal of a lawsuit by a Republican-led House committee demanding that Attorney General Eric Holder produce records about the botched law enforcement probe of gun-trafficking called Operation Fast and Furious.

President Barack Obama has invoked executive privilege and the attorney general has been found to be in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over documents that might explain what led the Justice Department to reverse course after initially denying that federal agents had used a controversial tactic called gun-walking in the failed law enforcement operation. The tactic resulted in hundreds of illegally acquired weapons purchased at Arizona gun shops winding up in Mexico, where many of them were recovered from crime scenes. Two guns in Operation Fast and Furious were found on the U.S. side of the border at the scene of a shooting in which U.S. border agent Brian Terry was killed. In a Feb. 4, 2011 letter to Congress, the Justice Department said that agents made every effort to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally and prevent their transportation to Mexico, which turned out to be incorrect. Ten months later, the department withdrew the letter.

In its court papers, the Justice Department says the Constitution does not permit the courts to resolve the political dispute between the executive branch and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that is seeking the records. The political branches have a long history of resolving disputes over congressional requests without judicial intervention, the court filing said.

If the lawsuit is allowed to go forward, “countless other suits by Congress are sure to follow, given the volume of document requests issued by the dozens of congressional committees that perform oversight functions,” the Justice Department’s court filing stated. “This case thus illustrates vividly why the judiciary must defer to the time-tested political process for resolution of such disputes.”

The Justice Department cited a Supreme Court ruling which said the court lacked jurisdiction to decide a challenge brought by several members of Congress to the constitutionality of the line item veto law.

In the current dispute over records from Operation Fast and Furious, the House asked the court to reject a claim by the president asserting executive privilege, a legal position designed to protect certain internal administration communications from disclosure.

The failure of Holder and House Republicans to work out a deal on the documents led to votes in June that held the attorney general in civil and criminal contempt of Congress.

In Fast and Furious, ATF agents abandoned the agency’s usual practice of intercepting all weapons they believed to be illicitly purchased, often as soon as they were taken out of gun shops. Instead, the goal of the tactic known as “gun-walking” was to track such weapons to high-level arms traffickers, who had long eluded prosecution, and to dismantle their networks. Federal agents lost track of many of the guns. The operation identified more than 2,000 illicitly purchased weapons, and some 1,400 of them have yet to be recovered.

Brief history of Pima County’s election reform struggle

Arizona Daily Independent
Bill Risner

Bill Risner

This timeline is designed to give people new to the issue an understanding of why we think there’s problems, what we’ve done about it so far and why we need to keep going after eight years of hard effort. A few items refer to happenings outside of Pima County but directly related to the issues here.

I’ve attempted to set out a time line and story from my viewpoint. Several persons have been key to a joint effort to achieve an honest count of votes. The effort has been long, costly and difficult. It was initially centered in the Pima County (Tucson) Democratic Party. Eventually heavy pressure from major contributors and the party’s candidate for governor caused the Democratic Party to drop out of the struggle.

November 1996. At this election part of the ballots in Pima County were counted on optical scanners using GEMS software and another part of the county used punch cards. The data from the different systems needed to be “merged” so the company sent an expert to Tucson to teach the county computer operator how to use Microsoft Access to accomplish that task outside the constraints of the software. Thus, the county learned that data could be manipulated outside the software constraints and re-inserted without leaving any fingerprints. All the “fingerprints” could be simply erased before re-insertion.

This “off-line” work could be done on any computer that used Microsoft Access, a common program. Testimony established that Pima County’s election computer operator regularly took home with him copies of election data where such data manipulation could easily be accomplished.

First Phase: Study, Reform and Cooperation

November 2000. The Florida ballot counting highlighted the necessity of looking for cheating. Bill Risner had obtained a complete recount of punch card ballots in a City of Tucson election 1990 and offered his experience and help to Gore’s lawyers in Florida. The offer was among many and was not accepted.

Bill Risner, a Tucson personal injury lawyer, had handled various election cases on and off throughout the previous thirty years. He had twice been hired by the county government as a special election lawyer. He was functionally the county Democratic Party lawyer in election law matters.

Bill asked to be appointed as the Democratic Party’s observer at the next election. He knew the party historically had not looked for cheating and wanted to observe the entire ballot handling process to see where one could cheat. Everything looked good at the 2002 election up until the actual tabulation where all that could be seen was a couple of blinking lights in a black box containing a computer. Bill knew nothing about election software or computers.

2003: Pima County Democratic Party chair Paul Eckerstrom at the request of a concerned Democrat created an election integrity committee and appointed Bill Risner and Tom Ryan to the committee.

Dr. Tom Ryan, Ph.D., was at or near retirement from a career as a computer specialist. He knew computers and was interested in the role they played in the election process. Tom lead the investigation of the computer system and wrote a report on the vulnerabilities of our computerized system. The County Democratic Party adopted his report as its policy.

2004: Tom Ryan identified the “early ballot” processing as a critical point because it constituted one-half of the ballots and had no auditing of accuracy at any point.

October 2004: Tom Ryan and Bill Risner, on behalf of the Democratic Party, met with Pima County’s Election Director Brad Nelson to ask for changes in the early ballot vote counting so as to have auditable results. Nelson later reported that the software “doesn’t permit it.”

November 2004: John Brakey worked at Precinct 324 as a poll observer. John suspected cheating among a couple of poll workers and conducted a personal investigation that proved it. After official disinterest in his proof, he started a group called AuditAZ. He has remained a driving force in pushing for fair and honest elections.

November 2005: Bill Risner and Tom Ryan obtained the City of Tucson’s agreement to audit its early ballot counting at the city election. The same auditing that Brad Nelson said couldn’t be done. The city and county use the same software.

May 16, 2006: A Special Election was held in Pima County to approve a one-half cent sales tax to generate $2 billion to pay for a 20 year road plan favored by “growth lobby” business interests and the county board of supervisors. The same sales tax had been defeated in four prior elections. The four prior losses were by a 60% – 40% margin. This victory was reported as a 60% – 40% approval. None of the election activists claimed the election was fraudulent.

But, they did object to the lack of monitoring and the questionable use of a Microsoft Access manual by the election operator during counting, as it violated election procedures. Local Democratic activists consulted by telephone with Jim March of Black Box Voting during the count that evening. Pima County refused to permit any political party to monitor that bond election.

Later, the county party brought Jim March from California to Tucson for expert consulting. He eventually joined the local election activist team. Jim is a Libertarian and a board member of Black Box Voting. He is applying his computer skills full time to election computer issues and was an invaluable addition to the citizen team. Jim consults with election activists nationwide.

Summer 2006: The Democratic Party election team was joined by Michael Duniho (“Mickey”), a retired National Security Agency (NSA) master programmer who had been a Republican Party election monitor for many years in Maryland before retiring to Tucson. Mickey became the local Democratic Party point person in recommending and achieving many procedural and equipment security changes for the fall general election.

November 2006: At this point the Democratic Party “team” included four people with extensive computer election expertise: Tom Ryan, Michael Duniho, Jim March and John Brakey and one lawyer with election law expertise. After the general election they used Arizona’s public record laws to request computer audit logs from the election. The county provided the audit logs that revealed that the county illegally printed summaries showing actual vote counts of “early ballots” more than a week before election day.

A public record request was made for the entire county electronic database of past elections. The county refused to provide that database. The citizen computer experts knew there was not a valid reason for the refusal and the county gave none.

Second Phase – Lawsuits and Discovery that a major election had been rigged.

January 2007: The Pima County bi-annual organizing convention of the Pima County Democratic Party unanimously passed a resolution requesting the Democratic dominated county board of supervisors to turn over the database and not force their own political party to sue them.

The board of supervisors still refused.

Bill Risner, hoping to avoid a more complicated lawsuit over the database, sued the county board on behalf of the Democratic Party to obtain the illegally printed vote summaries made before election day and videotaped discovery depositions of the county election director and computer operator.

April 17, 2007: The “summary report” lawsuit depositions revealed further illegalities and a lawsuit was then filed by the Democratic Party against the county board seeking the entire electronic database.

The County furiously defended that lawsuit. Its lawyers initially sought a “stay” in the lawsuit discovery because they claimed no one in the election department could testify because they all might assert their Fifth Amendment Right to avoid self-incrimination.

This “Database” lawsuit was defended by the County using all their resources. I estimate that the county spent more than $1 million in defending that public record request.

That lawsuit represented a new phase in the struggle, because it was abundantly clear that the County was hiding something very big and it could only be that it had fraudulently rigged the May 16, 2006 RTA election. The depositions and other discovery solidified our conclusion.

During the pendency of that case, the initial lawsuit was concluded when the county agreed to open the ballot boxes from the November 2006 general election where they claimed all the “summary reports” could be located. The subsequent examination confirmed the illegal printing as alleged by the Democratic Party.

At the four-day Superior Court trial in the database case, the county’s defense was that the Democratic Party could print fake results in the future if they learned the font and page layout used by the GEMS software and thus could create “chaos and mayhem” by “spoofing” the actual results. That absurd claim and thus lack of any defense re-confirmed that the county would fight to the last taxpayer dollar to prevent discovery of its election secrets.

January 27, 2008: Tucson Resident Zbigniew Osmolski went with friends to the Boondock’s Lounge where he had a candid conversation with Bryan Crane, who confessed that he “fixed” the RTA election on the instruction of his bosses and he did what he was told to do. Crane expressed his concern about being indicted and said he’d like to talk but couldn’t trust anyone. Affidavit of Zbigniew Osmolski: http://electiondefensealliance.org/files/Osmolski_Affidavit.pdf

May 23, 2008: The court ordered the County to turn over its database and to pay $234,347.20 to the Democratic Party’s lawyer as fees and costs.

An additional $19,161.05 in fees and costs was ordered to be paid by the county for the “summary report” case.

July 24, 2008 – Meanwhile, the ballots from the RTA election were in storage under the control of the Pima County Treasurer. The ballots are the definitive evidence of the fraudulent RTA election. The County wanted to destroy the ballots. A lawsuit was filed by the Pima County Treasurer for “guidance” by the court as to whether she was required to destroy the ballots.

The Libertarian Party and the Democratic Party filed a counterclaim alleging that substantial evidence existed to show that the RTA election was fraudulent and, therefore, the court should take control of the ballots and have them examined. That evidence included a confession by the county computer operator that he had rigged the election at the instruction of his bosses.

December 23, 2008: The optical scanners used at precincts print a “results tape showing the votes cast at each precinct at the closing of the polls on election day. Those scanners can be programmed by a machine called a “cropscanner” to print fake results. Pima County purchased such a machine two weeks after being alerted by a Black Box Voting Organization national alert on July 4, 2005. Invoice for the cropscanner Pima County Elections:

http://electiondefensealliance.org/files/crop_scanner_invoice.pdf

Strong evidence was uncovered that Pima County may have used its newly purchased hack tool to rig the RTA results. The Democratic Party filed a third lawsuit – a public record lawsuit requesting to examine the poll tapes because the tapes might have clues showing they had been fraudulently programmed. After lengthy litigation, the tapes were produced and some 44% of the poll tapes were found to be “missing” or didn’t match the final database.

January 27, 2009: Superior Court Judge Charles Harrington ruled that the Arizona Courts lacked subject matter jurisdiction to consider evidence of a fraudulent election for the purpose of an injunction to prevent cheating in the future. He dismissed the case without requiring the County to answer the allegations because he found the Democratic and the Libertarian parties did not state a claim.

November 17, 2009: The Libertarian Party filed an appeal to the Arizona Court of Appeals of that ruling. The Democratic Party was pressured by Democratic elected officials and contributors to not appeal as the case could embarrass its candidates. The Libertarian Party asked Bill Risner to join its lawyer in continuing the case the Democratic Party now wanted killed.

October 28, 2010: In a Memorandum Decision, the Arizona Court of Appeals reversed Judge Harrington and ruled that the Libertarian Party had stated a claim and that they could pursue their claim that the RTA was fraudulent and obtain injunctive relief.

November 12, 2010: Pima County requested the appellate court to reconsider its ruling, claiming the Libertarian Party had alleged nothing more than “a discrete incident of past wrongdoing.” Its request was denied.

November 29, 2010: Pima County petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court for review. Review was denied. The case was sent back to Pima County.

May 4, 2012: The County Board of Supervisors requested that the case again be dismissed because they claimed they had not cheated in any subsequent election after the $2 billion road plan and tax increase and that the Libertarian Party had not specifically alleged they had a “good faith belief” that they would cheat again. Pima County Superior Court Judge Kyle Bryson dismissed the Libertarian case a second time, claiming that the most the court could do would be to issue an order that Pima County just “obey the law” and that it could not consider actual procedural changes. Therefore, he ruled that the Libertarian Party had not stated a claim that any court could consider.

July 11, 2012: The Libertarian Party requested Judge Bryson to reconsider his ruling.

August 13, 2012: Judge Bryson confirmed his ruling.

September 10, 2012: Libertarian Party filed its notice of appeal to the Arizona Court of Appeals. The local election activists fully understand that the stolen election in 2006 will not be reversed. That is not the issue. Their goal is to prevent cheating in the future. There are many steps the court could order to prevent cheating. Court intervention is needed because the county administration will not agree to changes that would prevent them from cheating. However, the county court won’t permit evidence to be presented.

We recognize that the same system used here is used in thousands of jurisdictions across the nation. Our goal is to help protect democracy at our home and hope that it helps others in our state and country.

The following are some additional links to related information: http://www.alternet.org/story/92366/arizona_activists_outline_evidence_of_2006_electronic_vote_theft

Army Corps not liable for Katrina damage: court

Reuters
Nate Raymond

A U.S. appeals court has reversed itself and found that the Army Corps of Engineers cannot be held liable in property owners' lawsuits over flood damage during Hurricane Katrina.

More than 400 property owners had filed lawsuits after the August 2005 hurricane, many targeting the Corps of Engineers. The plaintiffs had said the Corps of Engineers had delayed armoring the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet shipping channel against flood damage due to incorrect scientific decisions rather than public policy considerations.

In an unusual move, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Monday withdrew its earlier ruling in March that had been in the plaintiffs' favor. Monday's ruling came after the federal government sought review of the panel's earlier decision by the full appeals court.

Judge Jerry Smith, writing for the court, said the Corps of Engineers was immune from being held liable for property damage under the "discretionary function exception" to the Federal Tort Claims Act, which governs litigation against the U.S. government.

The exception bars lawsuits against the government for conduct arising from statutes and regulations that do not require an agency's action but involve its discretion.

The 5th Circuit decision reverses a 2009 ruling by U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. in New Orleans, who found that the federal government did not have immunity from lawsuits arising out of Katrina's flood damage in 2005.

New Orleans is still struggling to recover completely from the devastation of Katrina, which swept across the city on August 29, 2005, killing more than 1,800 people and causing billions of dollars of damage along the coast.

Joseph Bruno, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in an email that his clients were "devastated."

"The fact that the judges reversed themselves deserves an explanation," he said. "The decision is a slap in the face of the people devastated by the Corps' gross negligence and an endorsement to the Corps to continue to put considerations of costs ahead of safety."

Major Jenny Willis, a spokeswoman for the Corps of Engineers, said it was "analyzing the decision in anticipation that litigation will continue."

The case is In re: Katrina Canal Breaches Litigation, 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, 10-30249

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Claudia Parsons and Lisa Von Ahn)

Dozens of Saudi judges resign in protest at regime pressure

PressTV

Saudi protesters hold portraits of political prisoners during an
anti-regime demonstration in the Qatif region of Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia.

At least 50 Saudi judges have resigned in protest at the pressure exerted on them by the Riyadh regime to sentence political activists, Press TV reports.

The judges said in a statement that they made the decision in protest at the regime pressure.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Saudi regime “routinely represses expression critical of the government."

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information has called on regional and international organizations to take action against Saudi Arabia’s crackdown on rights activists.

Since February 2011, protesters have held demonstrations on an almost regular basis in Saudi Arabia, mainly in Qatif and Awamiyah in Eastern Province, primarily calling for the release of all political prisoners, freedom of expression and assembly, as well as an end to widespread discrimination.

However, the demonstrations have turned into protests against the repressive Al Saud regime, especially since November 2011, when Saudi security forces killed five protesters and injured many others in the province.  

DOJ secretly halts FBI investigation into Israel nuclear spying/funding

Veteran News Now

The US Department of Justice has refused to publicly release a memo that outlines why an Israeli entity caught spying on the U.S. would not be investigated further.

Documentation of Israeli nuclear spying 20 years ago

In 1992 the FBI discovered that the Weizmann Institute of Science of Rehovot in Israel penetrated secure U.S. computer systems at the Yuma Proving Ground with the help of a U.S. computer science student.

Yet on May 18, 1993 the Justice Department Office of Intelligence Policy and Review ordered the Assistant FBI director to terminate their Weizmann Institute counterintelligence investigation.

Department of Justice refuses to release the memo

IRmep fought for public release of the Justice Department termination order via a Mandatory Declassification Review.  Three days ago, on August 21, 2012, the National Security Division claimed it had declassified the memo, but then refused to publicly release it.

Such a tactical move keeps the memo from being publicly reviewed to see what justification (or lack thereof) existed for calling off the Weizmann investigation.  If the memo isn’t classified, it cannot be reviewed for declassification release by the outside Interagency Security Classifications Appeals Panel (ISCAP).

If the entire memo is protected by a number of dubiously applied “privacy” and law enforcement exceptions, the public will never be able to fit the investigation into a larger pattern of suspicious DOJ forbearance into conventional and nuclear arms related smuggling, quashed espionage investigations of AIPAC, (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee), clandestine public relations campaigns and Israel lobby attempts to subvert the U.S. electoral process.

Although Mark Bradley–who issued the Justice Department National Security Division MDR decision–asserts it can be appealed to the Department Review Committee , the final decision will likely be made by the DRC’s chairman… Mark Bradley.