Tuesday, March 23 2010   -   Legal Response to 9/11

>March 22, 2010
by Stephen C. Webster
RawStory.com

A terror war prisoner, once considered of such high value by the Bush administration that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered he be tortured, has taken his first step toward freedom thanks to a federal district court judge, who ordered the government to free him after nearly 10 years of imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay.

Though 39-year-old Mohamedou Slahi, an alleged 9/11 conspirator, won his habeas corpus appeal before U.S. District Judge James Robertson on Monday, he likely does not know it yet. That's because the judge's decision was classified, according to published reports.

"After the [9/11] attacks, he was fingered by a senior al Qaeda operative for helping assemble the so-called Hamburg cell, which included the hijacker who piloted United 175 into the South Tower," The Wall Street Journal reported in 2007.

After being captured and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, he was repeatedly subjected to torture by his American captors, with Rumsfeld himself ordering "special" interrogation tactics be set aside for Slahi.

 

Sunday, March 21 2010   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

March 21, 2010

 

Sunday, March 21 2010   -   First Responders/Health Effects

Orders Renegotiation of Settlement for People Sickened by Dust from World Trade Center; Says $657M Insufficient

March 19, 2010
CBSNews.com

A federal judge on Friday rejected a legal settlement of more than a half-billion dollars for people sickened by ash and dust from the World Trade Center, saying the deal to compensate 10,000 police officers, firefighters and other laborers didn't contain enough money for the workers.

"In my judgment, this settlement is not enough," said U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein.

The judge also said he was concerned too much of the deal would be eaten up by legal fees and that ground zero responders were going to be pressured into signing on before they knew how much they stood to receive.

 

Sunday, March 21 2010   -   Resistance

March 20, 2010
from Debra Sweet, World Can't Wait

Racist bigots with the "Tea Party Movement" aren't the only ones in the streets, as we proved today with coast to coast protests against the wars and torture the U.S. is still carrying out.

There were thousands marching in DC today. Read AP report. Watch the AP video. Watch the local video coverage:

You can read my speech here. After the march, several protesters were arrested in front of the White House, including Cindy Sheehan, Elaine Brower, and Matthis Chiroux. They are sitting in jail tonight and we are told they won't be arraigned until Tuesday.

 

Saturday, March 20 2010   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

A Visibility 9-11 Podcast
Interview by John Bursill
March 20, 2010

Listen here

In this motivating interview I talk to organiser, activist and philanthropist Betsy Metz. We ask Betsy about the highly successful conference she organised and facilitated this month. The March 2010 "Treason in America: 9/11, the Wars & Our Broken Constitution" Conference was a milestone in the history of the 9/11 Truth Movement. For the first time in America, Peace Activists, Government Whistleblowers, Journalists and 9/11 Truth Activists explored recent American history together with open minds and hearts, searching for the shocking truth. See: www.treasoninamericaconference.com

So who is Betsy Metz?

Betsy Metz is the quintessential all-American gal! She is a well-educated and fiercely patriotic mother of four and a devoted and loving wife of her husband for 26 happy years. Her husband is also the all-American, being a college quarterback and a former Marine Corps Officer. Together as a family they want for nothing and by any standard have had an excellent and prosperous life. This life would be impossible in nearly any other country in the world and it is fair to say they are living the "American Dream"!

 

Thursday, March 18 2010   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

March 17, 2010

"I know a lot of truthers will join me at Camp OUT NOW in Washington, D.C., and they're welcome".

For more information on Camp OUT NOW click on this banner.

 

Thursday, March 18 2010   -   9/11 A/V Galleries

By Sahil Kapur
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
RawStory.com

Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to a document recently obtained by the ACLU.

The notification came in a letter dated January 6, 2004, addressed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA Director George J. Tenet. The ACLU described it as a fax sent by David Addington, then-counsel to former vice president Dick Cheney.

In the message, the officials denied the bipartisan commission's request to question terrorist detainees, informing its two senior-most members that doing so would "cross" a "line" and obstruct the administration's ability to protect the nation.

"In response to the Commission's expansive requests for access to secrets, the executive branch has provided such access in full cooperation," the letter read. "There is, however, a line that the Commission should not cross -- the line separating the Commission's proper inquiry into the September 11, 2001 attacks from interference with the Government's ability to safeguard the national security, including protection of Americans from future terrorist attacks."

 

Thursday, March 18 2010   -   9/11 Commission

March 16, 2010
WashingtonsBlog.com

FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley was interviewed by Scott Horton, professor at Columbia Law School and Contributing Editor of Harper's Magazine.

Rowley said that in her testimony to the Joint Intelligence Committee regarding 9/11, she was "minded". Specifically, she said that "FBI minders" listened to her every word, to trail her and make sure that she didn't tell government personnel with top secret clearance even higher than her own anything which the FBI did not want to be told.

While this might sound fantastic, it is nothing new.

Rowley said the same had happened to Daniel Ellsberg went to members of Congress with the Pentagon papers.

As I wrote a year ago:

9/11 Commission chair Thomas Kean points out that if "minders" had been present during the Commission's investigation, that would have been intimidation, which would have stemmed the flow of testimony from the witnesses:

I think the commission feels unanimously that it's some intimidation to have somebody sitting behind you all the time who you either work for or works for your agency. You might get less testimony than you would.

read more

 

Tuesday, March 16 2010   -   Anthrax

March 15, 2010
WashingtonsBlog.com

In a bizarre, Soviet-style move, the White House has threatened to veto the intelligence budget unless everyone accepts the FBI frame up of Dr. Bruce Ivins.

As Bloomberg writes:

President Barack Obama probably would veto legislation authorizing the next budget for U.S. intelligence agencies if it calls for a new investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, an administration official said.

A proposed probe by the intelligence agencies' inspector general "would undermine public confidence" in an FBI probe of the attacks "and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions," Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a letter to leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

Given that an FBI investigation into a specific crime has nothing to do with the budget or any of OMB's other core responsibilities, it seems that Orszag simply drew the short straw for this little assignment.

 

Monday, March 15 2010   -   Research/Evidence

by James Corbett
The Corbett Report
15 March, 2010

FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds joined The Corbett Report last Friday to discuss the deplorable state of whistleblower "protections" in the United States, including S.372, a bill making its way through the Senate that would allow the FBI and other "national security" agencies to dismiss whistleblowers' claims without any form of oversight.

Click here to download an mp3 of the conversation or watch the YouTube video in the player below:

 

Monday, March 15 2010   -   Civil Liberties-Police State

by Marc Ambinder
March 5 2010
TheAtlantic.com

Why is the national security community treating the "Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010," introduced by Sens. John McCain and Joseph Lieberman on Thursday as a standard proposal, as a simple response to the administration's choices in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt? A close reading of the bill suggests it would allow the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens without trial indefinitely in the U.S. based on suspected activity. Read the bill here, and then read the summarized points after the jump.

According to the summary, the bill sets out a comprehensive policy for the detention, interrogation and trial of suspected enemy belligerents who are believed to have engaged in hostilities against the United States by requiring these individuals to be held in military custody, interrogated for their intelligence value and not provided with a Miranda warning.

(There is no distinction between U.S. persons--visa holders or citizens--and non-U.S. persons.)

 

Monday, March 15 2010   -   Truth Movement News

March 14, 2010
Posted at 911blogger.com - Watch this blog for more.

On the 8th of March 2010 Cynthia McKinney (a former US Congresswoman and 2008 Green Party Presidential nominee) and Dr. Nafeez Ahmed (best selling author and political scientist) address a meeting of Members of Parliament on the subject of the need for an independent investigation into the events of September 11th 2001.

Click 'Read More' for video and a press release from Reinvestigate911.org which hosted Rep. McKinney and Dr. Ahmed.

 

Monday, March 15 2010   -   Other Important News

By Philip Messing
March 14, 2010
New York Post

On Nov. 28, 1953, Frank Olson, a bland, seemingly innocuous 42-year-old government scientist, plunged to his death from room 1018A in New York’s Statler Hotel, landing on a Seventh Avenue sidewalk just opposite Penn Station.

Olson’s ignominious end was written off as an unremarkable suicide of a depressed government bureaucrat who came to New York City seeking psychiatric treatment, so it attracted scant attention at the time.

But 22 years later, the Rockefeller Commission report was released, detailing a litany of domestic abuses committed by the CIA. The ugly truth emerged: Olson’s death was the result of his having been surreptitiously dosed with LSD days earlier by his colleagues.

The shocking disclosure led to President Gerald Ford’s apology to Olson’s widow and his three children, who accepted a $750,000 civil payment for his wrongful death.

 

Monday, March 15 2010   -   Open Letters

March 14, 2010
As many of you may already know, Cindy Sheehan and Jon Gold are in Washington protesting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They, along with many other anti-war activists, are camping out at the Washington Monument.

It surely is not easy to “keep the flame of protest’ when the media and special interest groups fight us at every juncture. But, as Cindy and I both know all too well, life is precious and we have lost too, too many young lives already.

Cindy and Jon, I cannot be with you, but I am truly there in spirit. May God keep you safe.

Bob McIlvaine
Father of Bobby McIlvaine

[Read More to continue with Jon's letter]

 

Saturday, March 13 2010   -   First Responders/Health Effects

By Mireya Navarro
March 12, 2010
New York Times

Sgt. Dawn Sorrento says she looks on the years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as a blur of doctor's visits, ambushes by illnesses she had never heard of and growing resentment toward the city that challenged her injury claims.

Yet on Friday, Sergeant Sorrento, a police officer who is among some 10,000 rescue and cleanup workers at ground zero who sued the city for health damages, felt a grim sort of satisfaction. She had expected her case to be among the first to go to trial this spring; instead, both sides announced a legal settlement of up to $657.5 million Thursday night.

"It's nice that someone took responsibility, finally," said Sergeant Sorrento, 43, who helped coordinate the movement of cranes, dignitaries and cadaver-hunting dogs in and out of ground zero in September 2001. "The city finally acknowledges that 9/11 diseases do exist and that people are suffering."

Officials cast the settlement as righting a historic wrong on Friday and predicted that it would assure speedy and just compensation to the workers, who have waited more than six years for a legal resolution. But significant hurdles remain.

Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, of the United States District Court in Manhattan, has made clear that he intends to play a role in assuring that individuals are compensated fairly.