On Jan. 24, 2003, a new law enforcement and investigatory agency whose duties include functions taken from as many as 22 other federal agencies came into existence. The reorganization of these operations reportedly marks the biggest government bureaucratic shake-up since the creation of the Department of Defense half a century ago.
Even before the new Department of Homeland Security opened its doors, controversies arose over not just how it would operate and exercise its powers, but what level of access to information it would allow, and how it would respond to news media requests. Will new exemptions be carved out of the FOI Act, either by law or by practice? Will officials and agents feel free to tap phones of journalists, or subpoena their records during investigations? Will the new director consider procedural safeguards, like those adopted years ago by the Department of Justice, to ensure that freedom of the press will not be denied? And will those practices be followed?

But "homeland" security is not the only concern for journalists covering anti-terrorism initiatives; military actions abroad often present a greater challenge, as questions over disclosure of information, access to troops, and restraints on reporting seem to resurface anew with each conflict.

Questions and issues like these led the Reporters Committee to launch this "weblog," so that there will be a centralized site on the Internet for journalists who want to follow these issues and pass along information they learn while covering — or worse, being covered by — the new department and other anti-terrorism actions. Please submit comments and pass along tips to make this project as useful, thorough and up-to-date as possible.

A few words about what this project will not do. We do not intend to cover many of the issues that will undoubtedly come up as the Department takes shape, even if those issues are the ones generating headlines. We will cover information access and free press issues, but will not follow debates over many civil liberties issues that, while important, are outside of our domain.

Funding for the launch of this site was provided by The Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation.

Aug. 29, 2003

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT NOT GIVING LOCAL GOVERNMENTS ENOUGH TERRORISM INFORMATION. State and city government officials don't think the federal government tells them enough about terrorist threats, congressional investigators said in a report released this week. The General Accounting Office said that while steps have been taken to improve the way governments share information to prevent terrorism, many of the initiatives were put in place by states and cities and not necessarily coordinated with federal agencies. None of the three levels of government surveyed thought the system was effective, the GAO found. Information on threats, methods and techniques of terrorists is not routinely offered, and the information that is given is often not timely, accurate or relevant, the report said. — Posted at 3:41 pm

BLAIR TESTIFIES THAT BBC REPORT WAS FALSE. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday he would have had to resign if there had been any truth in a media report claiming that his government distorted information about Iraqi weapons. Blair said a British Broadcasting Corp. report that his office had exaggerated estimates of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was not true and that it questioned his credibility. "It was an extraordinary allegation to make and an extremely serious one," he told an inquiry in to the apparent suicide of a government weapons expert who was caught up in the political storm over the government's Iraq policy. — Posted at 3:39 pm

PORT AUTHORITY RELEASES TRANSCRIPTS OF EMERGENCY CALLS. The New York/New Jersey Port Authority released transcripts Thursday of emergency calls from those trapped inside the burning World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The transcripts were released after a New Jersey judge granted The New York Times' request for the transcripts under the state's open records law. The Times and the New York Daily News published portions of the transcripts Friday. — Posted at 3:26 pm

BLAIR'S TOP IMAGE STRATEGIST RESIGNING. Alastair Campbell, the influential and combative director of communications and strategy for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, announced Friday that he was resigning. Often portrayed as the second most powerful man in the British government, Mr. Campbell spent nine years at Mr. Blair's side, creating a sophisticated and tough-minded media strategy that was credited with helping get the Labor Party back into office in 1997 and gaining firm control over the news agenda once it got there. — Posted at 3:24 pm

Aug. 28, 2003

HALLIBURTON DETAILS EMERGE. The secret deals for Iraq contracts continue to come to light. The Washington Post reported today that "Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion under Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to make hundreds of millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to newly available documents." — Posted at 7:12 pm

NO QUESTIONS FROM PRINT JOURNALISTS. On the Philadelphia stop of John Ashcroft's pro-PATRIOT Act tour, at least one reporter is alleging that print journalists are being excluded from press conferences that the Attorney General holds with TV reporters. "I am sorry," an assistant told Howard Altman of the Philadelphia City Paper. "But he is not talking to print. Only talking to television." Could it be due to the list of questions we prepared for journalists and distributed to daily newspapers? — Posted at 6:03 pm

Aug. 27, 2003

SOUTH ASIAN COUNTRIES WANT TO KNOW WHAT U.S. IS DOING WITH TERRORISTS. The longer suspected bombing mastermind Hambali stays under wraps in U.S. custody, the more Washington risks irritating allies and losing an opportunity to convince doubters about the reality of terrorist networks. Southeast Asian governments welcomed the capture earlier this month of the alleged senior al Qaeda operative and boss of the regional militant group Jemaah Islamiah, but where U.S. authorities took Hambali and what they intend doing with him remains a secret. But Malaysia's foreign minister told a press conference the key issue was that suspects were treated transparently. "Wherever they are tried, it doesn't matter," he said. "It is a crime against the international community. I think the most important thing is that the laws must be respected, that there must be transparency in dealing, so that the public in each country is satisfied with the way this matter is being handled." — Posted at 11:24 am

BBC'S CREDIBILITY AT STAKE. The Baltimore Sun's David Folkenflik reports that the U.K.'s most eminent media organization - the BBC - has much to lose in connection with its report in late May that a senior government analyst alleged Prime Minister Tony Blair's dossier arguing in favor of war against Iraq had been "sexed up" by the prime minister's public relations chief. According to the BBC report, there was no hard evidence for claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that could be launched within 45 minutes of a decision, the source contended. After the source's identity came to light, the analyst was swamped by media attention and was pressured by the government to repudiate Gilligan's story. In mid-July, the analyst, David Kelly, was found dead, an apparent suicide. The BBC - sort of - stuck by its story: The media corporation is holding fast to the claim that the government exaggerated the threat from Iraqis to win public support. Meanwhile, the Blair government - more or less - stood by what it claimed in the dossier, saying the reporter manipulated the facts. Each side has effectively accused the other of acting in bad faith on the most visible public stage imaginable. — Posted at 11:16 am

TRANSCRIPTS OF EMERGENCY CALLS TO BE RELEASED THURSDAY. A New York state judge ruled last week that the transcripts of emergency calls made from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 must be released by the close of business Thursday, rejecting a bid by Port Authority, which owned the trade center, to back out of an agreement it made last month with The New York Times. The agency had argued it was trying to protect the privacy of victims' families by preventing release of the transcripts, which cover radio transmissions and calls to Port Authority police on the morning of the attack. The Port Authority decided Monday not to appeal but urged the news media to "refrain from publishing gruesome, gratuitous or personal details." — Posted at 11:10 am

WHY DID IRAQI YOUTH DIE? TWO VERY DIFFERENT STORIES. Stories about murderous civilians and brutal soldiers are becoming endemic in Iraq, according to the New York Times' John Tierney. The truth is generally impossible to ascertain because many incidents are not even formally reported, much less investigated. As in the death of Ali Muhsin, the details of the story about how and why he died vary dramatically based on whether you talk to U.S. soliders or his family and neighbors. — Posted at 11:00 am

SENATORS DEMAND TO KNOW WHY NEW YORKERS WERE NOT GIVEN INFORMATION ABOUT 9/11 POLLUTION. In a sharply worded letter to President Bush, Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) Tuesday demanded to know why New Yorkers were given incomplete information about the potential dangers from the polluted air caused by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. The senators' letter was in response to a report released last week by the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency. The Washington Post reported that the report concluded that agency warnings about the potential hazards from the World Trade Center towers' collapse were toned down by the White House. The IG noted that the EPA had not done some of the cleaning that it should have, and that all information about the cleanup had initially been vetted by the White House and its National Security Council. — Posted at 10:56 am

SCIENTIST SUES JUSTICE DEPARTMENT. Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, whom senior government officials have identified as a "person of interest" in their investigation into the 2001 anthrax mailings, filed a lawsuit Tuesday accusing Attorney General John Ashcroft and other Justice Department officials of having violated his constitutional rights and the agency's own rules by making him a "fall guy" in their inquiry. In the 40-page civil suit filed in Federal District Court in Washington, Dr. Hatfill asserted that Mr. Ashcroft and other Justice Department employees had ruined his life and violated his rights to free speech and privacy by making public information about him to cover their failure to make progress in the investigation of the anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001. — Posted at 10:51 am

Aug. 26, 2003

GAO TAKES SHOT AT CHENEY'S ENERGY TASK FORCE. Secrecy News reports that the General Accounting Office (GAO) issued its final report on the Vice President's Energy Task Force with a parting shot at the Bush Administration's secrecy. "The Office of the Vice President's unwillingness to provide the [Task Force] records or other related information precluded GAO from fully achieving its objectives and substantially limited GAO's ability to comprehensively analyze the [Task Force] process," the report stated. White House refusal to disclose information concerning meetings of the Task Force was one of the early, pre-9/11 harbingers of the Bush Administration's restrictive secrecy policies. — Posted at 5:00 pm

EPA REPORT INFURIATES COLUMNIST. Op-ed columnist Paul Krugman of The New York Times takes the Environmental Protection Agency to task in response to that agency's Inspector General's findings in a report this week that New Yorkers were systematically misled about the dangers to their health from pollution in the wake of the collapse of the World Trade Centers. Detailing from the report the toxins that remain in the city after the events of 9/11,and recalling broken promises by the administration, Krugman says that the government has done more to protect the average resident of Wyoming from terrorists than it has done to to help the average resident of New York. He urges New Yorkers to remind Republicans at their New York City convention next year how the city was lied to and shortchanged. — Posted at 4:56 pm

Aug. 25, 2003

DRONES AND DISINFORMATION. More evidence of disinformation by the administration: the Associated Press is reporting that a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles found in Iraq weren't designed to dispense biological or chemical weapons, and Air Force and other officials had disputed such claims early on. But, according to the AP report, "in building its case for war, senior Bush administration officials had said Iraq's drones were intended to deliver unconventional weapons. Secretary of State Colin Powell even raised the alarming prospect that the pilotless aircraft could sneak into the United States to carry out poisonous attacks on American cities." — Posted at 4:37 pm

Aug. 22, 2003

SECRET TRIALS FOR DETAINEES UNACCEPTABLE. An editorial in today's New York Times says the almost two-year delay in bringing detainees at Guantanamo Bay to trial is unacceptable. While the Bush administration has indicated that it intends to start putting the detainees before military tribunals soon, the editorial says the procedures that have been adopted for these proceedings are unfair. The trials themselves may be held in secret, and lawyers can be prevented from speaking publicly about the proceedings. Secret trials make it impossible for the outside world to determine whether justice is being done. — Posted at 3:51 pm

Aug. 21, 2003

JOURNALISTS SHOULD ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT PATRIOT ACT -- BUT ASHCROFT WON'T ANSWER. In response to Attorney General John Ashcroft's nationwide campaign to talk up the USA PATRIOT Act and his order for all U.S. Attorneys across the country to do the same with their local media, The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press today released a list of questions that journalists should ask about the Act's application to journalists and newsrooms. "The attorney general is touring the country in an effort to convince the public that the PATRIOT Act has been 'mis-reported' by the media," said Reporters Committee Executive Director Lucy A. Dalglish. "But there are portions of the act that could make it more likely that the FBI will execute search warrants on newsrooms where agents believe reporters have been working on stories about terrorism. Newsrooms need to be aware of this possibility." The primary section of the Act that should concern journalists is Section 215, which allows prosecutors to obtain "any tangible thing" -- not just "business records," as the Department of Justice keeps saying -- from anyone for investigations involving foreign intelligence or international terrorism. (The pre-PATRIOT law applied to specific types of business records of agents of foreign powers.) A Justice department official acknowledged last year in a letter to Congress that such an order could be applied to a newsroom, but the department will not answer questions about whether or how often it has been. Justice also will not acknowledge that the Privacy Protect Act, which protects against newsroom searches or documentary seizures, takes precedence in such situations. Meanwhile, on the first day of the road portion of his PATRIOT Act tour designed to teach the public about the Act, Ashcroft "heard no dissent -- and invited no questions -- at the new National Constitution Center yesterday as he ballyhooed the anti-terrorism legislation to an invited audience of law-enforcement officials," The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. — Posted at 5:09 pm

Aug. 20, 2003

COMBAT OPERATIONS END, OR AT LEAST THE BIG ONES DO. The Memoryhole Web site reported that text and photos of a President's speech in May published by the White House bore the headline "Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended." But on a revisit to that story Aug. 19, researchers found the revisionist headline "Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended" over the same speech text. — Posted at 4:41 pm

STATES WANT INTELLIGENCE-SHARING CENTERS. Homeland security officials in 10 northeastern states want to establish intelligence-sharing centers that would better disseminate terrorist-related information between federal law enforcement and local police officers, according to a report on stateline.org. Homeland security officials in the states have asked Congress and the U.S Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to establish intelligence-sharing centers in the Northeast that would give police access to federal databases containing information on individuals with terrorist links as well as other related intelligence. The system would be based at the New York Intelligence Center in Albany, which currently connects all law enforcement agencies in New York. Under a pilot program proposed to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the system would expand to connect law enforcement agencies in every northeastern state, from Maine to Delaware, with the federal government. — Posted at 4:09 pm

ASHCROFT KICKS OFF PATRIOT ACT TOUR. Attorney General John Ashcroft, in his most forceful defense of the Bush administration's antiterrorism efforts, said Tuesday that any attempt to strip law enforcement agents of their expanded legal powers could open the way to further terrorist attacks. Ashcroft's remarks at the start of a national speaking tour were an acknowledgment of the momentum achieved by opponents of the USA Patriot Act, as the law that grew out of the 9/11 attacks is called, as well as a declaration of the administration's commitment to preserve and possibly expand that law. Some members of Congress and civil liberties groups say the act has given federal agents too much power to pursue suspected terrorists, threatening the civil rights and privacy of Americans. Ashcroft's speech before the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group, was the first in a series of appearances that will take him to more than a dozen cities in the next month to speak in defense of the Patriot Act. He will speak before law enforcement groups but is not scheduled to address any public groups, officials said. That task will be left to federal prosecutors around the country, whom Ashcroft has asked to organize town-hall-style forums on the Patriot Act in their cities. Ashcroft will be speaking in several states considered political battlegrounds for President Bush in his 2004 re-election campaign, including Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Iowa. Justice Department officials said the itinerary was not politically motivated, but some critics of the department questioned that assertion. In another element of the campaign, the Justice Department Tuesday posted a new Web site on the Patriot Act. Officials said that the site, www.lifeandliberty.gov, was aimed at "dispelling some of the major myths perpetuated as part of the disinformation campaign" by critics of the act. — Posted at 4:02 pm

PRIVATE BUSINESSES REPORTING MORE SUBPOENAS. Private businesses such as phone companies, banks and retail stores are facing more requests from law enforcement agencies for information about their customers, forcing many to deploy staff and upgrade equipment to meet the demand. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the subpoenas and court orders, many stemming from new government powers to search for terrorists, have alarmed civil rights groups and privacy advocates, who say that the government is secretly snooping on innocent citizens. — Posted at 3:55 pm

LAWYER CHALLENGES GOVERNMENT HANDLING OF SURVEILLANCE RECORDS. A defense lawyer in a New York terrorism prosecution has accused the government of mishandling the computerized surveillance records of thousands of phone calls, faxes and computer data collected in the case, a secret filing shows. The lawyer, Michael E. Tigar, has asked for a hearing on whether such evidence should be declared inadmissible. He contends that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used computer techniques that altered or corrupted the surveillance files. The allegations were made in a court filing by Tigar, the lawyer who represents Lynne F. Stewart, the prominent attorney who faced charges of supporting terrorism before a federal judge dismissed them against her and two co-defendants last month. Stewart and her co-defendants still face trial on other charges in the long-running legal battle, in which the government has said that it intercepted more than 85,000 calls since the mid-1990's. The judge in the case has ordered Tigar's filing placed under a court seal, along with a letter from prosecutors that was attached to it detailing how the F.B.I. intercepts, stores and retrieves such evidence. The New York Times found the documents in the public court file late last week, and sought comment on them. The court later removed the documents from the file. — Posted at 3:38 pm

AFFIDAVIT OUTLINES SAUDI CONTRIBUTIONS TO ISLAMIC CHARITIES. Islamic charities based in Northern Virginia and sponsored by the government of Saudi Arabia invested millions of dollars in a company suspected of funding al Qaeda and the Islamic Resistance Movement, the government alleged publicly for the first time Tuesday. An affidavit made public in federal court in Virginia contends that the Muslim charities gave $3.7 million to BMI Inc., a private Islamic investment company in New Jersey that may have passed the money to terrorist groups, the Washington Post reported. The money was part of a $10 million endowment from unnamed donors in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, according to the affidavit filed by David Kane of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. — Posted at 3:33 pm

U.S. INTELLIGENCE OFFICIALS SKEPTICAL OF PLAN TO IMPLEMENT DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ. U.S. intelligence officials cautioned the National Security Council before the Iraq war that the American plan to build democracy on the ashes of Saddam Hussein's regime - as a model for the rest of the region - was so audacious that, in the words of one CIA report in March, it could ultimately prove "impossible," the Boston Globe reports. That assessment ran counter to what the Bush administration was saying at the time as it sought to build support for the war. President Bush said a democratic Iraq would lead to more liberalized, representative governments, where terrorists would find less popular support, and the Muslim world would be friendlier to the United States. — Posted at 3:19 pm

CERTAIN SURNAMES VIRTUALLY GUARANTEE YOU'LL BE STOPPED. Certain Garcias, Martinezes, Gonzalezes and Sanchezes who travel abroad and invariably find themselves escorted to a detention room for questioning when reentering the United States, according to a story in the Miami Herald. The reason: a name that matches or is similar to that of someone sought by authorities for, usually, criminal activity. Jose Luis Alvarez has been detained at Miami International Airport perhaps 50 times because a fugitive shares his name. After a recent Herald report detailing the mistaken-identity travails of Alvarez, a frequent international business traveler, similarly afflicted South Floridians were eager to share their frustrations. — Posted at 3:15 pm

RIDGE ADVOCATES SHARING INFORMATION WITH THE GOVERNORS. Secrecy News observed Tuesday that when Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge told the nation's governors Monday that "sharing information" was "at the heart of what we need to do," he meant sharing with the governors and their designated homeland security representatives and not sharing with the public. He was talking about "the authorized sharing of confidential information on an official, often classified basis" and was not talking about "general transparency and openness." The newsletter noted Ridge's remarks that all governors have now signed non-disclosure agreements and his entreaty that five more people in each state be cleared for the sharing of the secret information with the federal government. — Posted at 09:13 am

Aug. 19, 2003

BLAIR DECIDED TO PUBLISH DOSSIER. Prime Minister Tony Blair's communications director, a key figure in a controversy over the government's case for war in Iraq, said Tuesday that it was Blair who decided to publish a contentious dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Alastair Campbell told an inquiry into the death of a government weapons inspector that Blair wanted to make the information public last September as a way of informing people about the threat posed by Iraq while calming fears that a military attack was imminent. He said Blair "was seeing all this intelligence material coming in which made him more and more concerned about Iraq as a threat and he wanted to put some of that into the public domain." Meanwhile, testimony also showed that Blair's chief of staff warned that the British intelligence dossier used to justify war against Iraq failed to provide evidence that President Saddam Hussein posed a military threat. In an e-mail sent one week before the dossier was published last September, Jonathan Powell described the draft document as "good and convincing for those who are prepared to be convinced," but said it "does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam." — Posted at 5:19 pm

SCIENTISTS ASK PENTAGON TO RELEASE UNCLASSIFIED ANTHRAX REPORT. The Federation of American Scientists has asked the Defense Department to release an unclassified report on lessons learned from the 2001 anthrax attacks that the Department has withheld for over a year. The report emerged from a December 2001 meeting organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). The meeting explored medical and public health issues related to bioterrorism; law enforcement and national security concerns; and an integrated approach to crisis management and response, according to a brief description on the CSIS web site. The resulting report, "Lessons from the Anthrax Attacks: Implications for U.S. Bioterrorism Preparedness," presented "a whole series of specific recommendations and policy proposals," said David Heyman of CSIS, the report's author. Yet few of those recommendations have been implemented or even received a public airing because the Defense Department has blocked the release of the unclassified report. — Posted at 5:15 pm

RELEASED PRISONERS CLAIM ABUSE. Prisoners released from the military camps at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Bagram air base in Afghanistan have said in a series of interviews with Amnesty International that they were subjected to human rights abuses. An Amnesty official said it was impossible to independently judge conditions at the camps, as the organization had been denied entry. A spokesman for the National Security Council declined to comment Monday, saying he had not seen the report. NSC spokesmen have challenged previous claims. — Posted at 5:04 pm

U.S. APPOINTS MEDIA COMMISSIONER IN IRAQ. U.S. authorities have appointed a media commissioner to govern broadcasters and the press, establish training programs for journalists and plan for the establishment of a state-run radio and television network -- part of an effort to regulate Iraq's burgeoning news media while dodging allegations of heavy-handed control. The Washington Post reports that the new media commissioner will be Simon Haselock, a spokesman and media supervisor for U.N. authorities overseeing Kosovo. In June, he drafted a proposal to regulate journalists' activities through a panel that officials here have dubbed a "complaints commission." The commission, which would include journalists, would levy fines. Alleged transgressors could appeal. The system is similar to one functioning in Kosovo. — Posted at 4:57 pm

CPJ ASKS RUMSFELD TO INVESTIGATE. Click here to read a letter from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asking for a full investigation into Sunday's death of Palestinian cameraman Mazen Dana, who was shot by American troops. Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid reports from Baghdad that a military spokesman called the death of the award-winning Reuters journalist "a terrible tragedy." — Posted at 4:48 pm

Aug. 18, 2003

TROOPS WOUNDED IN ACTION NOT COUNTED AS CASUALTIES. The Salt Lake Tribune reported Sunday that soldiers wounded in action in Iraq are not listed under casualty postings from the U.S. Central Command or the Pentagon. Reporters must specifically ask for those tallies. So far, 1,007 U.S. military personnel have been wounded since March 19 when U.S. troops crossed the border into Iraq, said Lt. Ryan Fitzgerald from Central Command. That number compares with 467 "nonmortal wounds" in the 1991 Gulf War, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. "I know of no other war in which WIAs have not been listed among the casualties," said Robert Voyles, director of the Fort Douglas Museum. "I have no idea why this conflict would be any different." Fitzgerald said WIA numbers are not publicized because the military has no way of determining the severity of the wounds. — Posted at 5:16 pm

JOURNALISTS AND GENERALS DISCUSS WAR COVERAGE. Journalists who covered the war in Iraq and the generals who waged it met in suburban Chicago last week in an unusual, informal gathering to debate the successes and failures of the media's reporting on the conflict and how the war changed the relationship between reporters and the military, according to the Chicago Tribune. The discussion, which was organized by the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation and held Thursday and Friday at Cantigny Park in Wheaton, revealed deep divisions among journalists over whether the coverage of the war was slanted in this country to promote the U.S. military's objectives, and whether the images broadcast from the combat zone to American homes were, in the words of one participant, "sanitized" to avoid confronting viewers with the realities of war. All parties were in agreement on one point: The Pentagon's decision to "embed" reporters with combat units represents, for better or for worse, a sea change in combat reporting. — Posted at 5:12 pm

MEDIA GROUPS ASK FOR INVESTIGATION INTO JOURNALIST'S DEATH. World media groups demanded a public inquiry on Monday into the killing by U.S. troops of a Reuters television cameraman, the second journalist from the international news agency to be killed in Iraq in four months. The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) in Paris urged Washington to investigate how, by the official U.S. account, a soldier mistook Mazen Dana's camera for a grenade launcher on Sunday. — Posted at 5:07 pm

Aug. 15, 2003

GERMAN DEFENSE ATTORNEYS DEMANDING ACCESS TO WITNESSES IN SECRET CUSTODY. Germany has opened its second trial of an alleged member of the Hamburg terror cell that investigators say led the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a proceeding that promises to be more politicized and protracted than the country's first, successful prosecution of an al Qaeda functionary. Abdelghani Mzoudi, a 30-year-old Moroccan student, is charged with 3,066 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization for allegedly providing critical logistical support to cell members who carried out the suicide hijackings. The Washington Post reports that defense attorneys have signaled that they plan an aggressive defense that will demand that the United States turn over key witnesses who are in secret custody, and will force prosecutors to prove through physical or other explicit evidence what the state calls basic accepted facts, such as the presence of cell member Mohamed Atta on the first plane that hit the World Trade Center. — Posted at 4:33 pm

DEAN ARGUES NEWSLEAKS ARE CRIMINAL. Findlaw columnist and former counsel to the President John Dean discusses legal aspects of the recent controversy about the disclosure -- apparently by two senior Administration officials -- of the identity of an apparent covert CIA operative. The woman is the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who told the truth about the bogus claim relating to Saddam Hussein and Niger uranium. Dean argues that the newsleaks are likely criminal, pursuant to several federal statutes. — Posted at 4:28 pm

BRITISH JOURNALIST THREATENS LEGAL ACTION AGAINST NEWSWEEK. Veteran British TV journalist Tom Mangold is taking legal action against Newsweek magazine for alleging that a BBC News story of his scuppered an FBI plan to infiltrate the al-Qaida terrorist network. The Guardian reports that Mangold has instructed a top law firm, Mishcon de Reya, to begin legal proceedings against newsmagazine over an article published on Wednesday. The Newsweek article, written by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, claimed senior US justice department officials were unhappy with Mangold's report about the arrest in New Jersey of a British national trying to sell a missile to FBI agents posing as terrorists, which was the lead story on BBC1's Tuesday night Ten O'Clock News. — Posted at 4:20 pm

Aug. 14, 2003

HOMELAND SECURITY TO CLASSIFY SOME PROCUREMENTS. A quasi-classified system of procurements is being considered by the Homeland Security Department's research division, Federal Computer Week reported Aug. 11. Jane Alexander, deputy director of the department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, said it will likely model announcements after the Pentagon's handling of classified projects. She told the publication that the secrecy is necessary to avoid revelation of U.S. vulnerabilities and plans to protect the country against terrorist acts. — Posted at 5:07 pm

U.S. AUTHORITIES BACK OFF CLOSED IMMIGRATION HEARING. U.S. immigration authorities have dropped a request to completely close a deportation hearing in Detroit for a man once suspected of links to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, the Detroit News reports. Instead, only parts of the hearing relating to a memorandum written by an FBI agent will be held in secret. A Sept. 10 deportation hearing is set for Nabil al-Marabh, who once was No. 27 on the government's terror watch list. He formerly lived in southwest Detroit and was arrested outside Chicago on Sept. 19, 2001, eight days after the terrorist attacks in New York and Pennsylvania and near Washington, D.C. The government's reversal came a day after Michigan news media filed a legal challenge to the government's attempt to close the proceedings. — Posted at 4:46 pm

PAKISTANI MEN ARRESTED IN SEATTLE. Two Pakistani men were arrested at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Saturday after their names were flagged on an anti-terrorist "no-fly" list. The Washington Post reported that they are being held on immigration charges as federal authorities try to determine what they were doing in the United States. The arrests were first reported in Wednesday's Seattle Times. Federal officials refused to identify the two men by name, referring to them as "Pakistani male aliens." In Washington, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration confirmed that both were on the no-fly list, which was created shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. — Posted at 4:34 pm

STATE AND LOCAL OFFICIALS STILL CAN'T GET INFORMATION FROM FEDS. Nearly two years after the Sept. 11 attacks, local and state officials say they are still having trouble getting information they need from the federal government to prevent terrorism or respond to a threat. A report Wednesday by the Democratic staff of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee found that poor communications, slow security clearances, and fragmented terrorist watch lists continue to hamper law enforcement, The Associated Press reported. The report said a key problem is that local police who stop a suspect can't easily access the 12 terrorism watch lists compiled by the State Department and eight other federal agencies to see if the person is a potential terrorist. State officials also said they continue having problems getting security clearances. Major Gen. Timothy Lowenberg, Washington state's adjutant general, said if he got classified information about a biohazard threat, he couldn't share it with the state's top public health officials, who don't have proper clearance. — Posted at 4:28 pm

PENTAGON MAY BEND ON TRIBUNAL RULES. It appears the Pentagon is prepared to bend a little as friends and critics alike are pressing the Bush administration to change its new rules for trying suspects in military tribunals. The Associated Press reports that on Tuesday, the Pentagon's top lawyer held a third round of negotiations through which Britain is seeking special treatment for its two citizens facing trial - talks that critics say smack of political favoritism. The American Bar Association said Tueday the administration should drop plans to let agents eavesdrop on conversations between terrorism suspects and defense lawyers and should ease other restrictions to ensure military tribunals are fair and open. — Posted at 3:30 pm

U.S. MILITARY ISSUES, THEN RESCINDS ORDER RESTRICTING JOURNALISTS. The U.S. military briefly issued an order Thursday that could have restricted journalists from accompanying American troops on all but routine missions in Iraq, including operations aimed at capturing or killing Saddam Hussein. The directive told commanders throughout Iraq that reporters, photographers and television crews would be prohibited from traveling with the military on some operations as so-called ``embedded'' journalists. The U.S. military headquarters in Baghdad rescinded the order shortly after The Associated Press reported on it. No explanation was given. — Posted at 3:20 pm

9/11 WIDOWER WANTS INFORMATION. R. William Harvey was married just one month before his wife died in the World Trade Center attacks. Now he wants information from the Bush administration about what went wrong. In an opinion piece on the subscription-only site Salon.com, Harvey challenges the Senate to take action to declassify the 28 pages that were redacted from the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry report on pre-9/11 intelligence failures. "The 28-page redaction is especially galling to the Sept. 11 families because we know the Bush administration has fought any serious inquiry into the events of that terrible day almost from the start," Harvey writes. "It opposed the formation of the 9/11 commission until it realized that the political groundswell that had developed following testimony before the JICI made it inevitable. Once the 9/11 commission was created, the administration did everything it could to neutralize it." — Posted at 1:34 pm

Aug. 13, 2003

JOURNALISTS ARRESTED NEAR RUNWAY. A New York Times reporter and photographer were arrested for getting too close to a runway at Kennedy International Airport, the newspaper reported. The two were in a boat on the adjoining bay, following up on a story about lost fishermen who had "walked undetected for about a mile near a runway" on Sunday. "They were operating within a safety and security zone established by the U.S. Coast Guard to safeguard critical port infrastructure and coastal facilities," an official said. — Posted at 6:04 pm

SECRET EVIDENCE IN DEPORTATIONS. The Miami Daily Business Review reports that a Florida man "who is believed to be the first person ordered out of the United States for alleged terrorist activities" is appealing that order through a habeas corpus motion. The paper notes that the proceedings against Adham Amin Hassoun have been "blanketed in secrecy," and because he was involved in an immigration proceeding rather than a criminal trial, he was not allowed to see most of the evidence against him, which was gathered under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). — Posted at 5:57 pm

INVESTIGATION: SHOTS FIRED WERE JUSTIFIED. U.S. Central Command released a statement Wednesday on its investigation into the shelling that killed two foreign journalists at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad in April. It found that troops were justified in firing at what they had reason to believe was an enemy position. According to a Tuesday New York Times story on the investigation report, "Soldiers saw what they believed to be an enemy observer and sniper on the upper-story balcony of a tall, tan-colored building, and 'they also witnessed flashes of light, consistent with enemy fire, coming from the same general location as the building,' the statement said." — Posted at 5:36 pm

Aug. 12, 2003

SENATE TENSIONS WITH JUSTICE AIRED. The New York Times reports on tensions between the Justice Department and the Senate over accountability and oversight issues. The story notes that in recent weeks, Judiciary Committee member Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) "blocked Senate votes on the nominations of three assistant attorney general nominees," and that "Members of Congress have complained repeatedly about what they see as the Justice Department's failure to heed their concerns on the Patriot Act and other issues." — Posted at 6:02 pm

AIR MARSHALS FEEL HEAT FROM "WITCH HUNT." MSNBC.com reported that "the Transportation Security Administration is conducting a 'witch hunt' to ferret out and discipline employees in the federal air marshal program who have talked to the media" about cost-saving moves that would have removed air marshals from some flights. Sources told MSNBC that officials threatened use of the wiretap and computer trace provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act to find the talkers. — Posted at 5:58 pm

HIGH MARKS FOR MCCLELLAN, BUT QUESTIONS REMAIN. A New York Times article on Scott McClellan's first few weeks as White House press secretary says reporters give him "high marks for changing the atmosphere in the briefing room." In contrast to former spokesperson Ari Fleischer, who could be combative and strict, McClellan is described as a "teddy bear." Nevertheless, White House reporters question whether McClellan has enough access to the president and other key officials to provide them with important information. And they worry that McClellan's friendly demeanor may work in the White House's favor, by making it more difficult for journalists to ask tough questions. — Posted at 5:01 pm

Aug. 11, 2003

DISINFORMATION ALLEGATIONS. More questions arise over the administration's "disinformation" campaigns related to Iraq. The New York Times reported that "Engineering experts from the Defense Intelligence Agency have come to believe that the most likely use for two mysterious trailers found in Iraq was to produce hydrogen for weather balloons rather than to make biological weapons, government officials say. . . . The Defense Intelligence Agency's engineering teams had not concluded their work in Iraq at the time the white paper was drafted, and so their views were not taken into account at that time, the government officials said." Meanwhile, Newsweek reported that the nuclear scientist who had been ordered to bury a refining centrifuge in his yard was also claiming that Saddam had not restarted a nuclear program, saying he would have known of such plans. "And he stuck by his story, despite persistent questioning by CIA investigators who still believed he was not telling the full truth," according to the account. Now, he is being held incommunicado in Kuwait, with no word on the asylum in the United States that he had been promised for his family. — Posted at 6:28 pm

ANOTHER SECRET DETENTION REVEALED. The government announced charges Friday against a Pakistani man, Uzair Paracha, after holding him in secret detention for more than four months. "The criminal complaint filed yesterday marks the first public acknowledgement by U.S. officials that they had detained Paracha, who was arrested as a material witness March 31 and whose case had been under seal since then," The Washington Post reported. — Posted at 6:23 pm

EPA PRESSURED ON AIR QUALITY STATEMENTS. The New York Times is reporting that an "investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general into official statements about air quality after the collapse of the World Trade Center has found that White House officials instructed the agency to be less alarming and more reassuring to the public in the first few days after the attack." — Posted at 5:54 pm

BRITISH REPORT: U.S. USED NAPALM. The (U.K.) Independent is reporting that U.S. fighters confirmed they used napalm in Iraq, in spite of Pentagon assurances that the weapon was not used. "They said napalm, which has a distinctive smell, was used because of its psychological effect on an enemy," the newspaper reported. — Posted at 5:48 pm

THREE FORMER OFFICIALS DOUBT IRAQ-AL QAEDA LINKS Peter Stone reports in the Aug. 8 National Journal "a new wave of accusations" by former government officials that the Bush administration hyped claims about links between Al-Qaeda and Iraq in an effort to sell the public on the war. In the article, three former officials offer their views that the connections sold the public were very tenuous. — Posted at 5:27 pm

TENENT DISCUSSES INTELLIGENCE WEAPONS ESTIMATE In responding to written questions by Washington Post writer Walter Pincus over the administration's credibility regarding the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, CIA Director George Tenent discussed the intelligence community's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate of whether Saddam Hussein had these weapons. He did not have weapons, Tenent said, but he had ambitions. After United Nations inspectors were pushed out in 1998, intelligence collection efforts increased, and assessments were the best available at the time. Tenent on Aug. 11 issued a statement saying: Much of this commentary has been misinformed, misleading, and just plain wrong. It is important to set the record straight. Let me make three points. We stand by the judgments in the NIE. The NIE demonstrates consistency in our judgments over many years and are based on a decade's worth of work. Intelligence is an iterative process and as new evidence becomes available we constantly reevaluate. We encourage dissent and reflect it in alternative views. — Posted at 4:55 pm

Aug. 8, 2003

SECRECY REQUESTED AGAIN. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati (6th Cir.) ruled almost a year ago that across-the-board closure of immigration hearings is unconstitutional. But federal prosecutors are now asking an immigration judge in that circuit to close a deportation hearing, and media organizations are challenging the motion. — Posted at 3:11 pm

COMPLAINING SOLDIERS RECEIVE "A GOOD TALK." The Washington Post reported that the Army soldiers who complained in media interviews when their tours of duty were extended "have not been punished but have received warnings about respecting the chain of command, according to a senior Army officer." Gen. John Keane, the Army's vice chief of staff, told reporters that the incident was not being pursued by the military, but "reiterated the warning to troops to watch what they say about leaders." — Posted at 1:21 pm

SEALED MOTION REVEALED. So what's in all those filings in the Zacarias Moussaoui case that justify probably the greatest amount of secrecy in modern American judicial history (at least for those actually charged -- nobody is certain how many "material witnesses" are currently secreted away)? One indication comes from year-old filings finally released, which an AP report says disclosed the fact that "federal marshals had jailhouse conversations with the defendant last year about terrorism, airline security and bomb-making" without advising him of his right to remain silent. The defense motion to keep those statements out of the trail was sealed, even though the motion did not actually include details of the conversation. — Posted by Gregg Leslie, Legal Defense Director, 12:58 pm

Aug. 7, 2003

HOSPITAL PREPAREDNESS The General Accounting Office released a report Wednesday in which it found that most urban hospitals are incapable of handling the number of patients that likely would result from a bioterrorism attack. In addition, "four out of five hospitals reported having a written emergency response plan addressing bioterrorism, but many plans omitted some key contacts, such as laboratories outside the hospital." The report was based on a survey of more than 2,000 urban hospitals. In our own reporting on the issue, the Reporters Committee has found that journalists around the country have experienced difficulties gaining access to those local emergency reports, which outline whether local hospitals would be capable of handling terrorist attacks. — Posted at 6:49 pm

Aug. 6, 2003

CHARGES EXPECTED AGAINST PAKISTANI MAN. Federal authorities expect to file terrorism charges soon against a detained Pakistani man with ties to the shipping industry and links to a senior al Qaeda leader, law enforcement officials told the Washington Post on Tuesday. Uzair Paracha, 23, has been secretly detained as a material witness since his arrest March 31 in the offices of a New York clothing import firm owned by his father, sources said. Authorities believe the Paracha family business may have been used as cover for attempts to smuggle al Qaeda operatives or weapons into the United States, according to several sources familiar with the case. Paracha's father, who owns a Pakistani textile company that routinely shipped large containers of clothing and other goods into Newark, was last seen as he tried to board an airplane in Karachi a month ago. He was arrested by Pakistani police and has been held incommunicado ever since, according to local press reports and two U.S. officials with knowledge of the case. — Posted at 5:03 pm

SECRET 28 PAGES ALLEGEDLY CONNECTS SAUDIS TO AL QAEDA-LINKED CHARITIES. Since the joint congressional committee investigating September 11 issued a censored version of its report on July 24, there's been considerable speculation about the 28 pages blanked out from the section entitled "Certain Sensitive National Security Matters." The section cites "specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers," which most commentators have interpreted to mean Saudi contributions to Al Qaeda-linked charities. But an official who has read the report tells The New Republic that the support described in the report goes well beyond that: It involves connections between the hijacking plot and the very top levels of the Saudi royal family. "There's a lot more in the 28 pages than money. Everyone's chasing the charities," says this official. "They should be chasing direct links to high levels of the Saudi government. We're not talking about rogue elements. We're talking about a coordinated network that reaches right from the hijackers to multiple places in the Saudi government." The official also tells the magazine, "If the people in the administration trying to link Iraq to Al Qaeda had one-one-thousandth of the stuff that the 28 pages has linking a foreign government to Al Qaeda, they would have been in good shape." He adds: "If the 28 pages were to be made public, I have no question that the entire relationship with Saudi Arabia would change overnight." Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that a delegation of senior U.S. counterterrorism authorities is in Saudi Arabia this week to press government officials there to do more to crack down on the financing of terrorism. — Posted at 4:48 pm

BLAIR TESTIMONY WILL NOT BE TELEVISED. Although last week a senior British judge, Lord Hutton, opened a formal inquiry into weapons expert David Kelly's death and allowed the opening session to be broadcast on television, Lord Hutton ruled today that subsequent hearings, set to include testimony from Prime Minister Blair and the senior managers of the BBC, would not be televised. — Posted at 4:38 pm

FORMER MATERIAL WITNESS PLEADS GUILTY. The Associated Press reports today that Oregon software engineer Mike Hawash has pleaded guilty to helping the Taliban and agreed to testify against other suspects in "exchange for dropping of other terrorism charges." According to AP, "In March, federal agents seized Hawash, 38, from a parking lot outside Intel Corp., where he worked, and simultaneously searched his home. He was held as a material witness until charges were filed five weeks later. In what supporters called an abuse of civil rights, federal officials did not publicly confirm he was being held during those five weeks. The case highlighted the government's controversial practice of using the "material witness" detention statutes to hold suspects without charges while prosecutors prepare a case against them, as they did earlier with James Ujaama. — Posted at 4:18 pm

Aug. 5, 2003

IRAQI TELEVISION DIRECTOR QUITS. Reuters reported today that a disillusioned post-war director of the U.S.-backed Iraqi Television resigned and returned to London after three months The news service quotes Ahmad Rikabi, an Iraqi born in exile who had worked for Radio Free Iraq, as saying that he believes the U.S. is losing the propaganda war, that Saddam Hussein is doing better at marketing himself, and that the U.S. government needs to listen more to the Iraqi people and less to media influences. The California-based company SAIC holds the contract with the government to produce Iraqi television. — Posted at 4:39 pm

TREASURY DEPARTMENT REFUSES TO GIVE SENATE LIST OF SAUDI SUSPECTS. The Treasury Department said Monday that it would not provide the Senate with a list of Saudi individuals and organizations the federal government has investigated for possibly financing Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. The New York Times reports that the action was the second in two weeks to set the White House and Congress at odds about the Saudis and federal intelligence-gathering related to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The move contradicts an assertion made last week by a senior Treasury official, Richard Newcomb, who told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in a hearing on Saudi sponsorship of terrorism that the list was not classified and that his agency would turn it over to the Senate within 24 hours. — Posted at 2:44 pm

ALLEGED TERRORISTS WIN RIGHT TO APPEAL DETENTIONS IN U.K. Thirteen suspected foreign terrorists imprisoned indefinitely without charge in high-security prisons in the United Kingdom won the right to take their cases to the House of Lords Monday. They were rounded up under legislation rushed through shortly after the 11 September terrorist attacks on America. The Independent says that legislation allowed David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, to waive his obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, which bans detention without trial under article 5. The British government insisted that the measures were essential to stop Britain becoming a safe haven for terrorists, but lawyers acting for the suspects argue that their human rights have been breached. — Posted at 2:37 pm

WILSON SAYS ADMINISTRATION USING INTIMIDATION TACTICS. Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a key figure in the Iraq-Niger uranium controversy, accused the Bush administration on Monday of using intimidation tactics to stifle criticism about its handling of prewar intelligence on Iraq. Reuters reports that Wilson, on a panel of speakers at the National Press Club, said there had been several attempts to discredit him for his public comments on bad intelligence - the most serious being an article by Chicago columnist Robert Novak that said two senior administration officials said Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the uranium report. Novak's column named Wilson's wife and said she was a CIA operative on weapons of mass destruction. "The reason for it was not to smear me or to even smear my wife," Wilson said. "The reason was to intimidate others from coming forward." — Posted at 2:31 pm

IRAQIS STRUGGLING TO FIGURE OUT WHICH NEWS SOURCES TO BELIEVE. More than 100 newspapers are being published in Iraq. The New York Times' Richard A. Oppel, Jr., reports that by early afternoon it is impossible to find a copy of what by many accounts is the most credible daily paper in Baghdad: Azzaman, circulation 75,000. Internet cafes also dot the street. Baghdadis now freely surf the Internet and send e-mail without a government official pacing behind them. The nascent Iraqi media offers evidence that a free market can thrive here. Yet it has also left Iraqis in Baghdad and in other cities overwhelmed by the choices and struggling to figure out which news sources are believable. — Posted at 2:26 pm

"NO FLY EASILY" LIST MAY TARGET FREE SPEECH. The United Kingdom's Independent discusses an admission last week by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration that airport security is targeting people it deems worthy of special scrutiny - including anti-war activists - on a list separate from the "no-fly" list of persons believed to have criminal or terrorist ties. The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the agency to learn more about the second list and how it has been used to target free speech and legal protests. Anti-war activists Rebecca Gordon and Jan Adams, who work for the pacifist magazine War Times found that they were on the list when they tried to travel from San Francisco to Boston. The Independent reported that conservative activists have been similarly targeted. — Posted at 10:34 am

Aug. 4, 2003

POST CALLS FOR FINANCIAL CANDOR. Today's Washington Post editorial calls for the Bush administration to level with lawmakers and the American people about the likely financial costs of U.S. involvement in Iraq. The Post says the "evasion" has a familiar feel. In the weeks leading up to the war, the administration "treated anyone who had the temerity to ask about cost as a boob who failed to comprehend that such figures were, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said, "not knowable."" Then, five days into the fighting, the administration produced a remarkably precise figure for the size of the check it needed Congress to cut -- instantly. — Posted at 5:15 pm

BRITISH JUDGE WILL HEAR TESTIMONY FROM BLAIR REGARDING DEAD WEAPONS EXPERT. A senior British judge says he will take testimony from Prime Minister Tony Blair as well as Mr. Blair's top aide, Alastair Campbell, Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon and BBC chiefs and correspondents on the circumstances behind the death of the weapons expert David Kelly, the New York Times reports. The death of Dr. Kelly, a former United Nations inspector in Iraq, is tied to a bitter struggle between the government and the BBC over the BBC's coverage of Mr. Blair's justification for going to war in Iraq and has given Mr. Blair the biggest crisis of his six years in office. Meanwhile, Britain's Daily Mirror reported that defense ministry chiefs were preparing to burn paperwork with Dr. Kelly's name on it three days after his death, it emerged last night. MoD security guards who found the papers labelled "media plan" called the police. — Posted at 5:02 pm

AMERICAN CASUALTIES GROSSLY UNDERREPORTED. U.S. military casualties from the occupation of Iraq have been more than twice the number most Americans have been led to believe because of an extraordinarily high number of accidents, suicides and other non-combat deaths in the ranks that have gone largely unreported in the media, according to The Guardian. Since May 1, when President George Bush declared the end of major combat operations, 52 American soldiers have been killed by hostile fire, according to Pentagon figures. But the total number of U.S. deaths from all causes is much higher: 112. The other unreported cost of the war for the United States is the number of American wounded, 827 since Operation Iraqi Freedom began. — Posted at 4:56 pm

BILL WOULD LIMIT PATRIOT ACT ACCESS TO LIBRARY RECORDS Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) introduced legislation on July 31 designed to limit the government's ability to secretly view library and bookstore records under the USA Patriot Act. The Library, Bookseller and Personal Records Privacy Act (S. 1507) would restore pre-Patriot Act requirements that the FBI make a factual, individualized showing that the records sought pertain to a suspected terrorist, and limits the agency's subpoena to only relevant library records, such as borrowing records or computer sign-in logs. . — Posted at 4:10 pm

DETAILS EMERGE ABOUT CLASSIFIED PORTION OF CONGRESSIONAL REPORT. The classified part of a Congressional report on the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, says that two Saudi citizens who had at least indirect links with two hijackers were probably Saudi intelligence agents and may have reported to Saudi government officials, people who have seen the report told The New York Times. These findings help to explain why the classified part of the report has become so politically charged, causing strains between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Senior Saudi officials have denied any links between their government and the attacks and have asked that the section be declassified, but President Bush has refused. Meanwhile, a group of U.S. Senators led by Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) have asked the President to reconsider his decision not to release 28 classified pages of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001. — Posted at 4:00 pm

INTERNATIONAL JOURNALISTS EVALUATE WAR COVERAGE. New York Magazine's Web site posted a digest of comments from journalists working the Iraq beat who participated recently in a July 24 forum hosted by the magazine, The Guardian and The New School. — Posted at 1:00 pm

FAMILY PROTESTS IRANIAN REPORTERS Family members of two Iranian television reporters held for a month by U.S. forces in Iraq protested Monday outside the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which handles interests of the U.S. in Iran, Reuters reported. The reporters, Soheil Karimi and Saeed Abutaleb, who work for Iran's state broadcasting company, IRIB, insist that they were in southern Iraq to work on a documentary film on Iraqi life, but U.S. officials told Reuters they held them for questioning because of suspicious behavior. Abutaleb's wife, Faranak Dalpy, told the state's news agency IRNA, "It's not clear how the United States, the so-called advocate of human rights, is justifying the arrest of the television reporters." His mother told IRNA, "We should ask the American troops whether making a documentary film is a crime." — Posted at 11:22 am

Aug. 1, 2003

BRITISH BROADCASTERS SEEK TO TELEVISE KELLY INQUEST. A prominent British media lawyer representing U.K. broadcasters argued today that the court inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of government scientist Dr David Kelly should be televised because TV provides "a truer and more accurate picture" than the print media. Geoffrey Robertson, representing ITN, Sky News and Independent Radio News, argued that newspapers could distort their report of the proceedings because they are not subject to the same strict impartiality rules as broadcasters, according to The Guardian. However, the solicitor representing Kelly's family said he was opposed to any part of the proceedings being televised because it would "only serve to intensify the ordeal the family faces and the pressure on them". — Posted at 4:14 pm

IRAQI SCIENTISTS IDENTIFYING NEW ALLEGED WEAPONS SITES. Iraqi scientists and documents from Saddam Hussein's regime are leading investigators to new sites suspected of being part of Iraq's alleged program to produce banned weapons, the CIA's special adviser on the weapons search said Thursday. USA Today reported that in closed-door testimony, adviser David Kay said no chemical or biological weapons have been found in six weeks of intensive searching, and details of the new findings will remain classified until U.S. intelligence concludes they amount to an irrefutable case that can be presented to the public. — Posted at 3:53 pm

TSA SETTLES LAWSUIT BROUGHT BY DOCTOR. The Transportation Security Administration has agreed to change procedures and pay $50,000 as part of a settlement of a lawsuit alleging that armed air marshals detained a physician of Indian descent solely because of his dark skin. Dr. Bob Rajcoomar, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, filed a civil rights lawsuit against the government in April after he was detained four hours by air marshals following an Aug. 31 flight from Atlanta to Philadelphia. He was eventually released and no charges were filed. He said one of the agents explained by saying, "We didn't like the way you looked." The Associated Press reports that the agency's report to the court on its revised policies and procedures is sealed. TSA spokesman Mark Hatfield said he could not comment. — Posted at 3:46 pm

JUSTICE REPORTS REVEAL DISTURBING IMMIGRATION PRACTICES. Findlaw.com columnist Anita Ramasastry says two reports issued by the Office of the Inspector General for the United States Department of Justice relating to the treatment of certain immigrant detainees after September 11 reveal some very disturbing practices. Perhaps most upsetting, she writes, is the government's use of "preventive detention" - the practice of imprisoning immigrants against whom there is no evidence of terrorist activity, purportedly as a means of preventing future attacks. Detention without evidence is not the hallmark of a free society, she says. Visitors to the U.S. were locked up for months in cells that were lit up 24 hours a day - merely because their visas had expired. They had no connection at all to terrorism, nor had they committed any crime. There were not informed of the charges against them for significant periods of time. (RCFP note: Nor have they ever been publicly identified.) — Posted at 1:54 pm

BLAIR TO TESTIFY IN KELLY INQUIRY. Reuters reports today that British Prime Minister Tony Blair will take the rare step of appearing before a judicial inquiry that begins investigating the suicide of Iraq weapons expert David Kelly later this month. Blair, already suffering a collapse in public trust over his case for war in Iraq, will be grilled by inquiry head Lord Hutton about how Kelly came to be named as the source of a BBC report that Britain exaggerated the weapons threat from Iraq. Blair has agreed to appear and has even offered to break off his Caribbean holiday, if necessary, to give evidence. — Posted at 1:40 pm

TAKING THE WHITE HOUSE TO TASK. The Nation magazine takes the White House to task for seemingly being unwilling - at least in public - to do much to determine whether administration officials blew the cover of an undercover CIA operative in order to mount a political hit job. — Posted at 1:36 pm

COURT UNSEALS AFFIDAVIT IN MUSLIM PROBE. A federal judge has unsealed an affidavit from a U.S. customs agent that was filed in support of last year's raids on at least 16 Muslim homes, schools and businesses in Northern Virginia. Much of the affidavit from Senior Special Agent David Kane was redacted because the investigation is continuing. But the Washington Post reports that the affidavit seeks to tie the finances of the raided businesses with such terror organizations as Hamas and Islamic Jihad and with Sami al-Arian, the Florida college professor charged this year with conspiracy to commit murder via suicide attacks in Israel. Media groups and the raided organizations themselves had long sought to unseal the document. — Posted at 1:30 pm

SUPPORT FOR THE FIRST AMENDMENT UP. Support for the First Amendment is on the rise and many Americans want more information about how the government is fighting the war on terrorism, a survey released today by the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center shows. The nationwide telephone poll of 1,000 adults found that 19 percent of respondents strongly agreed that the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees. That number was down sharply from the 41 percent found on last year's survey, conducted nine months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Nearly half of those questioned believed they had too little access to information about the government's war on terrorism, according to the annual survey commissioned by the Nashville-based First Amendment Center and American Journalism Review magazine. — Posted at 1:23 pm

COLUMNIST SAYS U.S. MEDIA TOO DEFERENTIAL TO BUSH. In a column in today's Newsday, author Norman Solomon takes the U.S media to task for "routinely lagging behind and detouring around key information" regarding the Bush administration's pursuit of the war in Iraq. Solomon says the British press has been far more "vigorous in exposing deceptions about Iraq." — Posted at 10:28 am