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.

Dec. 31, 2003

DETROIT TERRORISM CASE IN TURMOIL. The verdict in the nation's first terrorist trial after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks left both sides claiming victory: two men guilty of terrorism charges and two others cleared of them. But The Washington Post reports that several recent developments - including revelations that prosecutors may have withheld key exonerating evidence - have thrown the case into turmoil. U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen is considering throwing out the convictions and starting over. Federal prosecutors acknowledged this month that they did not turn over at least two key pieces of evidence that defense lawyers said would have helped their cause. Rosen issued a rare public rebuke of Attorney General John D. Ashcroft for violating his gag order and exhibiting "a distressing lack of care" in his public statements about the case. The two chief prosecutors, unceremoniously removed from the "sleeper cell" case, have entered into a public spat with their bosses. — Posted at 10:34 am

ALGERIAN DETAINEE MAY BE RELEASED SOON. If a federal judge agrees to lower or waive his $25,000 bond next week, Benamar Benatta could step out of his prison cell for the first time in 27 months, according to a story in today's Washington Post. Benatta is one of the last lost men of 9/11. Jailed on the day of the 2001 attacks, the Algerian air force lieutenant has spent more than two years in federal prisons - much of that time in solitary confinement - even though the FBI formally concluded in November 2001 that he had no connection to terrorism. Benatta was among 1,200 men detained in the weeks after the terrorist attacks. Save for a possible unknown material witness, no detainee has remained locked up as long as Benatta. — Posted at 10:28 am

TRIBUNAL REVIEW PANEL CHOSEN. The Pentagon announced Tuesday the last major steps in creating a military court system to try suspected terrorists, including approximately 600 detainees held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Defense officials said they have appointed four civilian lawyers to serve on a review panel that will hear appeals of decisions made by military tribunals, or commissions, as U.S. officials call them. They are Griffin B. Bell, who was attorney general during the Carter administration; former transportation secretary William T. Coleman Jr.; Frank J. Williams, chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court; and Edward G. Biester Jr., a former Pennsylvania attorney general and member of Congress who is a judge in the Court of Common Pleas in Bucks County, Pa. — Posted at 10:25 am

SPECIAL COUNSEL WILL INVESTIGATE PLAME LEAK. Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself Tuesday from the Justice Department\'s investigation into the leak of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame, as a special counsel was appointed to lead the case. Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, Jr. named Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney in Chicago, as the special counsel in charge of directing the investigation. According to The Washington Post and The New York Times , Ashcroft\'s decision has led some to speculate that the investigation is moving closer to key White House officials, many of whom have close ties to Ashcroft. The investigation began after unidentified senior administration officials revealed Plame\'s identity to columnist Robert Novak, who published her name in a July 2003 column. Plame\'s husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, had publicly criticized the Bush administration for asserting that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger after he travelled to Africa on a CIA mission in 2002. — Posted at 09:45 am

Dec. 30, 2003

FBI ISSUES ALMANAC ALERT. The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular annual reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning. In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs "to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning." It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways. — Posted at 12:50 pm

Dec. 29, 2003

JOURNALISTS TAKE FLAK IN IRAQ. In the past year, the "embed" system, which integrated reporters into military combat units, allowed for an unusual degree of immediate and uncensored coverage. Journalists understood that those who imperiled the security of troops with their reports would be expelled. A modicum of trust grew on both sides. But as combat gave way to enforcing a dangerous peace, relations between the U.S. military and the media became increasingly sticky, according to an article in the Baltimore Sun. Numerous examples of military harrassment of journalists are chronicled in The Nation. — Posted at 12:03 pm

Dec. 23, 2003

A BANNER WEEK FOR SECRECY. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank reports that last week "was a banner week for government secrecy." Last Monday, the Supreme Court announced it would consider an effort by Vice President Cheney to keep private the records of the energy policy task force he ran. On Friday, the White House announced that it has known for two weeks about an attack on a convoy carrying Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer -- but had decided not to divulge the information. Later that day, President Bush announced a isarmament deal with Libya reached during nine months of secret negotiations. Also last week, it emerged that the government was acting to keep more Pentagon information out of the public domain and that it has removed from the U.S. Agency for International Development Web site remarks by an administration official that had badly understated the cost of Iraqi reconstruction. In the meantime, however, the chairman of the federal Sept. 11, 2001, commission, in remarks released last week, criticized needless government secrecy. "I've been reading these highly, highly classified documents. In most cases, I finish with them, I look up and say, 'Why is this classified?' " said the chairman, former New Jersey governor Tom Kean, a Republican. "And so one of the things that I hope is that maybe out of our work and maybe others, a lot of these documents that are classified, will be unclassified." — Posted at 12:34 pm

Dec. 22, 2003

JOURNALIST KICKED OUT OF U.S. LA Weekly reports on the all-too-common experience of journalist Sue Smethurst, a 30-year-old Australian, who works as an associate editor for the women's magazine New Idea. Despite numerous previous trips to the United States, Smethurst was kicked out of the country by an officer from the Department of Homeland Security's newly minted Customs and Border Protection (CBP) bureau because she did not have a special journalists visa. In recent years, virtually no foreign journalists got the special visa and relied on tourist visas. That approach won't work any longer. — Posted at 3:38 pm

WOUNDED AND EVACUATED SOLDIERS NEARING 11,000. The total number of wounded soldiers and medical evacuations from the war in Iraq is nearing 11,000, according to new Pentagon data provided in response to a request from United Press International. The military has made 8,581 medical evacuations from Operation Iraqi Freedom for non-hostile causes in addition to the 2,273 wounded - a total of 10,854, according to the new data. The Pentagon says that 457 troops have died. The Pentagon's casualty update for Operation Iraqi Freedom listed on its Web site, however, does not reflect thousands of the evacuations. It is a toll the country has not seen since Vietnam, said Aseneth Blackwell, former national president of Gold Star Wives of America, Inc., a support group for people who lose a spouse from war. — Posted at 3:33 pm

LAWYER SAYS PROSECUTORS TOOK PATRIOT ACT TOO FAR. The lawyer for a Georgia poultry operation has accused federal prosecutors of misusing the USA Patriot Act in an effort to link his client to terrorists, according to a story on Law.com. Wilmer "Buddy" Parker III, attorney for Mar-Jac Poultry Inc., is seeking a showdown with those prosecutors in a hearing before U.S. District Senior Judge William C. O'Kelley in Gainesville. Parker, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney, claims federal prosecutors "knowingly made false statements" in order to obtain a search warrant for the Gainesville poultry plant. He also claims that prosecutors released sealed documents allegedly linking Mar-Jac to international terrorist financing in order to aid a confidential federal informant whom Mar-Jac has sued for libel. — Posted at 3:28 pm

JUSTICE DEPT. TERRORISM TALLY INFLATED. The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that the Justice Department tally of more than 280 suspects detained for prosecution after Sept. 11 is inflated with dismissed and unrelated cases. Although the Justice Department has repeatedly cited the cases as examples that the War on Terrorism is succeeding, a Times review of a sampling of the cases behind the numbers, based in part on internal Justice documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, paints a more ambiguous picture. — Posted at 3:17 pm

PRAISE MAY BE TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE. Although the CIA got accolades from the President last week when he announced the capture of Saddam Hussein, praise for the intelligence community from the administration has been scarce. Spencer Ackerman of The New Republic reports that the president's words came at a time when many at Langley -intelligence analysts especially -remain furious at the Bush administration. And that acrimony is unlikely to be soothed by a few laudatory words. — Posted at 3:09 pm

WHERE WILL ALL THE UP-TEMPO WAR STORIES COME FROM? Jack Shafer, editor at large of Slate wrote Friday in "Who's Afraid of a Little Propaganda" that critics should not bemoan the government's plan to broadcast 24-hour government-scripted news by satellite. He said he doubts that "modern news consumers are too sophisticated to swallow propagandistic swill," and he reiterates an idea of Christopher Allbriton that "not all regional journalists are pushovers." Already, Shafer says, the government: propagandizes the public in a sub-rosa fashion by limiting access to vital information that should be public. "It overclassifies documents, denies too many FOIA requests, aggressively deletes previously public information from federal Web sites, restricts access to decision-makers, filibusters at news conferences, punishes whistle-blowers, leaks convenient "scoops" to press corps toadies, demands that all requests for interviews be run through official press offices for vetting, just to begin. The government's creation of its own record will force it "to produce "compelling, coherent, consistent, and persuasive" accounts of its programs. No easy task, he writes. "How many up-tempo briefings" on Iraq can it give? — Posted at 2:02 pm

Dec. 20, 2003

BOSTON STATIONS CRITICIZE WHITE HOUSE NEWS FEED PLAN. Boston Globe reporter Mark Jurkowitz examined the "decidedly unenthusiastic" reactions of Boston television stations to a Bush administration plan to transmit news footage from Iraq for local TV outlets to supplement media coverage. The administration's satellite link, dubbed "C-SPAN Baghdad," is designed to present more positive coverage of the war by circumventing major networks and allowing regional and local media outlets to cover press conferences, interview troops, etc. The White House has denied that the link represents an attempt to manage the news, but it comes at a time when the administration has been critical of news media coverage of deaths resulting from the Iraqi conflict rather than on attempts to rebuild the war torn country. News executives interviewed by Jurkowitz were uniformly critical of the move. — Posted at 11:23 am

Dec. 19, 2003

9TH CIRCUIT: GITMO DETAINEE HAS RIGHT OF ACCESS TO COURTS. A federal appeals court in San Francisco (9th Cir.) yesterday ruled that a detainee of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp has the right to a lawyer and to the U.S. court system. In a 2-1 decision authored by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, the court rejected the Bush adminstration's position that federal courts have no jurisdiction over non-U.S. citizens captured by the military abroad and held outside the United States. The court reasoned that Guantanamo is under the exclusive control and jurisdiction of U.S. authorities, even though it is not physically located in the United States. The decision is likely to have little impact, as the Supreme Court has already said it will decide the issue in the spring. A story on the decision is available at The Washington Post 's website. — Posted at 3:49 pm

PENTAGON AUDITORS CANNOT GET HALLIBURTON RECORDS. A01:The Wall Street Journal Thursday reported accusations by Pentagon auditors that Halliburton has refused to hand over documents that show its awareness of "significant internal control weaknesses" in an Iraqi fuel contract that may already have overcharged taxpayers by more than $100 million. The article quotes a Dec. 10 letter from the Defense Contract Audit Agency to Kellog Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary handling more than $5 billion in Iraqi contracts. The refusal to turn over its internal audit "is not in the spirit of open communication," the government told the company. The government has let two major contracts without competition to Halliburton, the company run by Vice President Dick Cheney until 2000. — Posted at 3:41 pm

BUSH: SO, WHAT\'S THE DIFFERENCE? When ABC's Diane Sawyer asked President Bush on Tuesday about the now largely descredited estimate last year that Iraq had large stocks of chemical and biological weapons and a reconstituted nuclear bomb program, the President responded "So, what's the difference?" He said "The possibility that [Saddam Hussein] could acquire weapons. If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger." A Washington Post editorial today calls "shocking" the President's "cavalier dismissal" of the difference between action based on knowlege of actual weapons and action based on contemplation of how dangerous Iraq might have been had it acquired them. — Posted at 3:04 pm

DEFENSE INSPECTOR GENERAL CURBS ACCESS TO INFORMATION. Defense Week reported Thursday that the Pentagon's Office of the Inspector General has issued a new policy that actually prohibits Web site postings of "information not specifically approved for public release" and "information of questionable value to the general public." The previously unpublished memorandum dated Dec. 5 also prohibits, as might be expected, posting of information stamped "classified" or "for official use only." Finally it prohibits posting of "information for which worldwide dissemination poses an unacceptable risk to national security or threatens the safety or privacy of the men and women of the Armed Forces." Inspector General Joseph Schmitz wrote that the guidance is pending "a more thorough review" of what inspector general information ought to be posted in light of the Defense Department's policy to "make available timely and accurate information so that the public, Congress and the news media may assess and understand the facts about national security and defense strategy." Steven Aftergood, editor of the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News, speculated that the new policy could damage the Inspector General's own interests because the OIG derives much of its influence and authority from the fact that its findings are published and made widely available. Without publication, the office's investigative and oversight function will only be weakened, Aftergood wrote. — Posted at 2:41 pm

Dec. 18, 2003

SADDAM ENTERS SECRETIVE PRISON SYSTEM. Saddam Hussein is now prisoner No. 1 in what has developed into a global detention system run by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, The New York Times reported today. The secretive universe is made up of large and small facilities scattered throughout the world that have sprouted up to handle the hundreds of suspected terrorists of Al Qaeda, Taliban warlords and former officials of the Iraqi government arrested by the United States and its allies since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the war in Iraq. Many of the prisoners are still being held in a network of detention centers ranging from Afghanistan to the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Officials described it as a prison system with its own unique hierarchy, one in which the most important captives are kept at the greatest distance from the prying eyes of the public and the media. — Posted at 4:27 pm

JUSTICE IG SEES DETAINEE VIDEOTAPES NOT PREVIOUSLY PROVIDED. Although officials at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn had assured the Justice Department's inspector general that no further tapes still existed showing its treatment of detainees held after Sept. 11, 2001, hundreds of videotapes not previously provided have been made available, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine announced today. He said that the tapes further confirm physical and verbal abuse of the detainees. A Washington Post account of the newly released report quotes from it that "some officers slammed and bounced detainees against the wall, twisted their arms and hands in painful ways, stepped on their leg restraint chains and punished them by keeping them restrained for long periods of time." The report also details findings that jail personnel taped meetings between the detainees and their lawyers and punished the detainees with strip searches. The Inspector General had reported in June that the detainees at the Brooklyn facility endured "excessively restrictive and unduly harsh" conditions. None were charged with terrorism-related crimes. Bureau of Prison policies require that videotapes be held for two years but there are many gaps reported, according to the Post story. — Posted at 1:51 pm

PRESIDENT CANNOT HOLD PADILLA AS ENEMY COMBATANT, COURT SAYS. A federal court of appeals in New York City (2d Cir.) ruled today, by a 2-1 vote, that President Bush lacks the authority, under Article II of the Constitution, to detain as an enemy combatant an American citizen "seized on American soil outside a zone of combat." The court's 53-page decision means that Jose Padilla, an American citizen whom the government has accused of plotting to detonate a "dirty bomb" dispersing radioactive materials, must be released from military custody within 30 days, at which point he may be transferred to civilian authorities or held as a material witness. The government had argued that the President has the authority to designate any person as an "enemy combatant" and to detain that person indefinitely without access to civilian courts. Early press accounts, such as this report from the Associated Press, do not indicate whether the government has said it will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, though an appeal seems likely. — Posted at 11:48 am

Dec. 17, 2003

PENTAGON PLANS TO BYPASS THE NETWORKS. The Pentagon is hoping to take its version of the news directly to viewers, the New York Times reported today. It is making briefings from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq directly available - sometimes free, sometimes for a fee - to network affiliates, cable stations and government agencies, bypassing the networks. Some critics see it as a not so subtle campaign to counter skepticism among Americans about the Iraqi operation in the months before a presidential election. They note that the taxpayer-financed Voice of America, which broadcasts news about American policies around the world, is explicitly barred from broadcasting to the United States. Even some administration officials said they worried about the apparent propaganda value. — Posted at 5:28 pm

PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE BROADENS PROTECTION FOR CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE INFORMATION. President George W. Bush today issued an order to all federal agencies concerning their handling of "voluntarily submitted information" as well as information that terrorists could use. It extends the mandate of the Homeland Security Act that critical infrastructure information submitted voluntarily to the Department of Homeland Security be exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. The Presidential Directive, without mentioning the FOI Act, orders all federal agencies to handle voluntarily submitted information as well as information that might be useful to terrorists in line with the Homeland Security Act. The critical infrastructure provisions in the act were highly controversial. Intended to keep terrorists from learning about vulnerabilities, the secrecy provisions also cut off the public's ability to learn about and protest what could go wrong. They also protect businesses that submit the information from liability for wrongdoing they may reveal in their voluntary submissions. Proposed regulations issued by the Department in April would extend the act's coverage by requiring other federal agencies who receive voluntarily submitted information to, in turn, submit that information to the Department of Homeland Security, which would stamp it "CII" and give it back. The regulations anticipated that the information then would be exempt from disclosure because it had been received by the Department of Homeland Security. Numerous commenters, including the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, objected to the proposals as promoting sleight-of-hand secrecy beyond what Congress had allowed. Final CII regulations have not been published by the agency. The following language, contained in the nine-page Presidential Directive, is apparently intended to extend the law: (10) Federal departments and agencies will appropriately protect information associated with carrying out this directive, including handling voluntarily provided information and information that would facilitate terrorist targeting of critical infrastructure and key resources consistent with the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and other applicable legal authorities. — Posted by Rebecca Daugherty, FOI Service Center Director, 4:39 pm

MATERIAL WITNESS WILL BE TRANSFERRED TO NEW YORK.. The (Minneapolis) Star Tribune reports that Mohammed A. Warsame, the Minneapolis man detained as a material witness last week, will be transferred to New York City for further federal court proceedings. The decision came in a closed hearing yesterday before Magistrate Judge J. Earl Cudd in Minneapolis. When asked what had happened at the hearing, Warsame's attorney, Daniel Scott, told the Star Tribune , "Whatever the government wanted, the government got." Scott said his client has not been charged with a crime. — Posted at 3:18 pm

REPORTERS QUESTION DEFENSE\'S \'GENEVA CONVENTION\' STANCE ON PHOTOGRAPHS Reporters at Tuesday's operational update meeting at the Pentagon questioned the Defense Department's willingness to allow coverage of Saddam Hussein after his capture. They contrasted the department's eager publicity on Hussein's capture with its earlier and continued refusal to allow photographs of the detainees captured in Afghanistan ostensibly because "putting them on display" might violate their rights under the Geneva Convention. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld responded that Hussein was not "held up as a public curiosity in any demeaning way," that it is important for the public to see that this representative of a replaced regime is captive, that lives can be saved by physical proof that he is "off the street, out of commission, never to return." No way, Rumsfeld said, can that be considered a violation of the Geneva Convention. Asked if this means that reporters can now get pictures of the detainees, Rumsfeld said, "We don't have, as a practice, photos now of detainees." Asked, then, if the media could now take pictures of the detainees, Rumsfeld asked, "No, No. I mean a common detainee? Why would one want to do that?" When the reporter suggested that there is an interest in the conditions in which they're kept, Rumsfeld responded, "Oh, come on, now. The International Committee of the Red Cross is crawling around down there, people from all those countries. There's no issue about how those people are being treated. They're being treated very, very well by fine young men and women who went to the high schools that you went to. And any implication to the contrary would be false." — Posted at 2:53 pm

Dec. 16, 2003

SENATOR NELSON QUESTIONS CLASSIFIED BRIEFING BEFORE VOTE ON FORCE IN IRAQ. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) in a press conference Monday revealed that, shortly before the congressional vote last October authorizing the use of force in Iraq, the Bush administration told him and about 75 other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but the means to deliver them to East Coast cities. In that classified briefing, senators were told that Iraq had both biological and chemical weapons and could deliver them to east coast cities by unmanned aerial, Nelson said, according to a report Monday in Florida Today. Nelson said that briefing preceded his vote for use of force, but that nothing that resembles that capability has been discovered. Other senators contacted by the publication refused to discuss the classified conference. — Posted at 5:20 pm

MAGAZINE, PBS REPORT ON INCREASED FEDERAL SECRECY. U.S. News and World Report has published an extensive report on increased secrecy during the Bush administration. Reporters Christopher Shmitt and Edward Pound examined the administration's commitment to increased secrecy including actions to shore up information in a convenient 'homeland security' vault. Just one example: After the U.S. Army's Aberdeen (Md.) Proving Ground caused a toxic rocket fuel ingredient called perchlorate to enter the aquifer that feeds the town's water supply, a coalition of citizens began working with the army to clean it up - but the Army began censoring maps saying information tracking the contamination might be useful to terrorists. Bill Moyers' NOW previewed the article Dec. 13 on PBS in a report entitled "Veil of Secrecy." — Posted at 4:55 pm

U.S. BACKS OFF PLANNED CONTRACT TO FUND NEWS OUTLETS. The U.S. decision last month to transfer political power to Iraq by July will delay and may kill Pentagon plans to award a $100 million contract for a national Iraqi newspaper and radio and television networks, Washington Post writer Walter Pincus wrote today. The Coaltion Provisional Authority took over the broadcasting outlets and newspaper after the ouster of Saddam Hussein. The accelerated timetable for creating a provisional government has forced Pentagon officials to rethink their plan for granting a year-long contract to run Iraqi media, officials said. After the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority took over broadcasting outlets and the newspaper and are now telling the Iraqi Governing Council how they think the organizations should be run. Pincus said that in some ways the CPA has run the media as a mouthpiece for itself and, in Iraqi eyes, has not broken the mold. He quotes CPA official Gary Thatcher's thought that the Middle East is biased toward state broadcasting and that the Iraqi government might want to assert control over its press. — Posted at 4:05 pm

TERRORISM PANEL RECOMMENDS CIVIL LIBERTIES OVERSIGHT BOARD. A federal commission on terrorism issued a report yesterday calling on the White House to create a "civil liberties oversight board," according to The New York Times. Led by James S. Gilmore III, former Republican governor of Virginia, the panel said that the federal government must "make special precautions, take extra steps, to ensure that we do not cross the line" while fighting terrorism and recommended that an independent bipartisan panel should review new laws and regulations for potential civil liberties infringements. The panel noted that it was especially concerned about civil liberties as the use of military surveillance technology in domestic counterrorism operations increases. — Posted at 10:55 am

Dec. 15, 2003

JUDGE SAYS PROSECUTORS SHOULD HAVE TURNED OVER DOCUMENTS IN TERROR CASE. A U.S. District Court Judge in Detroit told Justice Department lawyers Friday that they should have given two documents to defense attorneys in a Detroit terrorism trial. But Judge Gerald Rosen said that his opinion on the matter is by no means a guarantee that he will order a new trial. The documents included a letter written Dec. 30, 2001, by a convicted drug dealer that raised questions about the credibility of a key government witness and the transcript of two interviews by the FBI with a former roommate of two of the defendants. Rosen ordered U.S. Attorney Jeffrey G. Collins and the FBI to conduct a thorough review of every document in the terrorism file and ensure that nothing was withheld from the defense that should have been turned over. The Detroit News reported that the judge repeatedly criticized the government for overreaching its authority by unilaterally deciding that the two documents shouldn't have been given to the defense. — Posted at 3:14 pm

AUSTRALIAN RADIO REPORTS ON U.S. MEDIA RESTRICTIONS. Journalists in Australia have frequently reported (and complained about) on the restrictions limiting their ability to cover the incarceration of David Hicks, an Australian being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. ABC radio correspondent Leigh Sales reports that it takes days to get questions answered and sometimes weeks and months to negotiate with U.S. officials for interviews. — Posted at 3:08 pm

PROSECUTION OF CHAPLAIN CALLED \'MEAN-SPIRITED.\' Calling the U.S. military's prosecution of Capt. James Yee "mean-spirited and incompetent," Sunday's New York Times called for officials to drop the case against Yee, a former Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After holding Captain Yee in solitary confinement for nearly three months, and smearing him with adultery and pornography charges, the military is now uncertain whether the documents whose confidentiality he is charged with breaching were even confidential. — Posted at 3:01 pm

NEW FBI RULES ALLOW MORE SECRET SEARCHES. The Washington Post reports that the FBI has implemented new ground rules that fundamentally alter the way investigators handle counterterrorism cases, allowing criminal and intelligence agents to work side by side and giving both broad access to the tools of intelligence gathering for the first time in decades. The result is that the FBI, unhindered by the restrictions of the past, will conduct many more searches and wiretaps that are subject to oversight by a secret intelligence court rather than regular criminal courts, officials said. Civil liberties groups and defense lawyers predict that more innocent people will be the targets of clandestine surveillance. — Posted at 2:56 pm

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS IN MOHAMMED WARSAME CASE. Mohammed A. Warsame, the Minneapolis man arrested last week as a material witness with possible ties to Zacarias Moussaoui, may be compelled to testify before a federal grand jury in New York, The Washington Post reports. The Post quotes one official as saying that Warsame does not appear to be "a crucial part of understanding the case or Moussaoui's involvement in it" but that he is under investigation in his own right. The case has been conducted entirely in secret, and U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger in Minneapolis has said he will seek to prosecute law enforcement officials who provided Warsame's name to the media. Meanwhile, The (Minneapolis) Star Tribune reports that friends and family of Mohammed Abdullah Warsame are shocked over his arrest as a material witness, and are skeptical of the government's actions. — Posted at 12:17 pm

Dec. 12, 2003

IDENTITY OF MINNEAPOLIS AL QAIDA SUSPECT IS REPORTED. The (Minneapolis) Star Tribune reports today that the al Qaida suspect detained earlier this week in Minneapolis is Mohammed A. Warsame, a 30-year old student at Minneapolis Community Technical College. Warsame was arrested Monday as a "material witness" and has not been heard from since, his wife told the Star Tribune. Law enforcement officials told the Star Tribune that Warsame has knowledge of Sept. 11 defendant Zacarias Moussaoui's alleged activities in an al Qaida training camp in Afghanistan, but they apparently have not indicated whether he will be charged with a crime himself. Warsame is a Canadian citizen of Somali descent. — Posted at 11:10 am

LESS DECLASSIFICATION (AND ACRONYMS). CIA Director George Tenet, in the first use of a new declassification veto power, has blocked the release of a 1968 President's Daily Brief (PDB) approved for disclosure by ISCAP, the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, Secrecy News reports. The PDB, to President LBJ, concerned a Soviet manned moon mission and was requested by historian Peter Pesavento. Before President Bush authorized the veto power this year, ISCAP decisions on declassification were not reviewable by the CIA, but now Pesavento is SOL. — Posted at 09:09 am

Dec. 11, 2003

SECRECY PERSISTS IN DETAINMENT OF AL QAIDA SUSPECT IN MINNEAPOLIS The detention of an unidentified man in Minneapolis for alleged ties to al Qaida, first reported yesterday by The (Minneapolis) Star Tribune, is now generating coverage in the national media. CNN reports that the man, whose identity is being kept secret by the government, is being held as a material witness. The New York Times says the man is "accused of having ties to the terrorist network of al Qaida and Zacarias Moussaoui," although it is unclear whether he has actually been charged. A follow-up story in today's Star Tribune emphasizes the secrecy surrounding the man's detention. — Posted at 5:51 pm

FEDERAL PROSECUTORS ORDERED TO APPEAR BEFORE DETROIT JUDGE. U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen in Detroit has ordered FBI agents and federal prosecutors to appear Friday at an unusual hearing after the government acknowledged it failed to turn over to the defense a potentially significant piece of evidence in a terrorism-related case. A Dec. 30, 2001, letter from a notorious convicted drug dealer, Milton "Butch" Jones, raised questions about the government's key witness in the trial of four Metro Detroit men accused of forming an underground cell to support terrorism. A federal official told The Detroit News on Wednesday that the Justice Department believes the two prosecutors in the trial were told by a superior to turn over the letter from Jones to the defense, but they didn't do so. — Posted at 5:16 pm

ARAR GIVES FIRST-PERSON ACCOUNT OF TORTURE IN SYRIA Yesterday's Los Angeles Times featured a commentary by Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen who was jailed and tortured in Syria for 10 months after U.S. authorities delivered him to the Middle East. Arar's nightmarish experience included repeated beatings and confinement in a grave-like cell. He was never charged with a crime, though he says American officials continue to allege that he has unspecified ties to al Qaida. The U.S. flew Arar to the Middle East in shackles as part of an operation known as a "rendition," in which detainees are transported to other countries - including those that are known to engage in torture - for interrogation. — Posted at 5:12 pm

MAGAZINE JOURNALISTS INJURED IN IRAQ. Two veteran Time magazine journalists, senior correspondent Michael Weisskopf and award-winning photographer James Nachtwey, were injured Wednesday in Baghdad when a grenade was thrown into the military vehicle they were traveling in while accompanying U.S. soldiers on patrol, the magazine confirmed today. — Posted at 5:06 pm

MISSOURI ENTERTAINS HOMELAND SECURITY BILL. A measure to exempt private security plans shared with state or local governments in Missouri from the state's open records law has been proposed by Missouri's homeland security adviser, Associated Press writer David A. Lieb reported today. The proposal, appearing in a draft report of legislative proposals discussed Tuesday by the Joint Committee on Terrorism, Bioterrorism and Homeland Security, mimics the secrecy enjoyed by the federal Department of Homeland Security which, under a new law, can keep secret any information that might alert terrorists to vulnerabilities described in information shared with the department. — Posted at 4:42 pm

IRAQI HEALTH MINISTRY STOPS DEATH COUNT. The Los Angeles Times reported today that Iraqi Health Ministry officials ordered a halt to a civilian death count and told workers not to release figures that they had already compiled. The Times said Dr. Khodeir Abbas, health minister, denied that either he or the U.S.-occupation authority had issued the order. However, the head of the ministry\'s statistics department said she was told that the order was issued on behalf of Abbas and that the U.S. authority overseeing the ministry did not like the idea of the count. The U.S. military does not issue a count of civilian casualties. — Posted at 4:00 pm

Dec. 10, 2003

MILITARY EMBARRASSED IN ESPIONAGE CASE AGAINST ARMY CHAPLAIN. The government's case against Army Capt. James J. Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for allegedly mishandling classified data appears to be going nowhere. According to a report in The New York Times, military prosecutors Tuesday acknowledged that the documents found on Yee may not have been classified, and agreed to postpone the hearing until Jan. 19 to allow for a "classification review" of the documents. Also yesterday, Yee's lead defense attorney, Eugene R. Fidell, refused to meet behind closed doors with the presiding judge, Col. Dan Trimble, saying the case "should not be dealt with as a friendly and cozy agreement between us lawyers." — Posted at 3:19 pm

SECRET SUBCONTRACTOR SUBVERTS SCRUTINY. A New York Times article points to questions about the identity of Halliburton's Kuwaiti subcontractor for providing fuel to Iraq. The Army Corps of Engineers refuses to disclose the identity of the subcontractor, citing security concerns. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Cal) says that government officials identified the contractor as Altanmia Commercial Marketing Company, but petrolium experts say they have never heard of such a company. Halliburton has been criticized for charging the U.S. government higher than market prices for gas it imports into Iraq under a non-competitive contract awarded in March. Not knowing who is supplying the gas makes it difficult to determine if too much is being paid. — Posted at 11:22 am

UNIDENTIFIED AL QAIDA SUSPECT ARRRESTED IN MINNEAPOLIS; CLOSED HEARING HELD. The (Minneapolis) Star Tribune is reporting that FBI agents in Minneapolis have arrested a suspected al Qaida associate who allegedly has knowledge of some activities of accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, including Moussaoui's participation in a terrorist training camp in Afhghanistan. The man, whose name was not released, was brought before U.S. Magistrate Judge Earl Cudd yesterday for a closed hearing. It was unknown whether he has been criminally charged. The detainee's name has also been kept off of the public roster of inmates at the Hennepin County jail. — Posted at 09:45 am

CONGRESSMEN CALL FOR IRAQ ACCOUNTABILITY. Congressmen Frank Wolf (R-Va) and Christopher Shays (R-Ct) are calling on President Bush accept an independent auditing panel for U.S. contracts in Iraq, Reuters reports. Wolf and Shays recently returned from a trip to Iraq, and may be the only U.S. Congressmen to have toured the country without the military. The Congressmen also urged President Bush to admit mistakes in the recovery process, allow Iraqis and other countries a bigger role, and show more "humility" in power sharing. — Posted at 09:17 am

Dec. 9, 2003

HERE\'S NAVY JAG\'S TAKE ON FISA. Today's issue of Secrecy News published by the American Federation of Scientists, posts a memo from the Navy's Deputy Assistant Judge Advocate General discussing the impact of the USA Patriot Act on the search and surveillance procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). — Posted at 3:54 pm

DIFFERING TESTIMONY PRESENTED ON TERRORISM AND CIVIL LIBERTIES. Former Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson, an architect of the government's legal battle against terror defended the USA Patriot Act, telling a federal commission on Monday the law rightly empowers investigators to "wage a coordinated, integrated counterterrorism campaign." Two law professors offered dissenting views, contending the Bush administration has gone too far toward tipping the balance between national security and civil liberties. The daylong hearing by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States focused on the difficult balance between security and liberty, among the most timely topics within the commission's broad mandate. — Posted at 3:50 pm

CHALLENGES TO ACADEMIC FREEDOM DISCUSSED IN SPECIAL AAUP REPORT. The American Association of University Professors has issued a special report discussing the challenges posed to academic freedom and free inquiry by the post-September 11 security environment. A major section of the report is devoted to restrictions on information. It reviews the evolution of federal regulation of classified research and the persistent uncertainty about the extent and location of such research within the academic world. The report recognizes the limited circumstances under which such restrictions may be warranted but points out that secret research is fundamentally at odds with the free circulation of research results. The report expresses reservations about the expansion of such constraints in response to national security concerns." — Posted at 3:36 pm

IRAQI TRIBUNALS MAY BE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Observers from the United Nations or foreign countries may sit in on Iraqi tribunals when former officials begin going on trial for crimes against humanity, a senior Iraqi official said. Several thousand Iraqis are in U.S. custody, including 40 of the 55 most wanted officials of Saddam Hussein's ousted Baathist regime. Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, head of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council, said in a Reuters interview late Sunday the council hoped to approve setting up the tribunals in two weeks. "They will be in the hands of Iraqis, with an Iraqi criminal law. It's possible that there could be judges from abroad, the United Nations or other countries, as observers. These trials can be public, with representation by lawyers," he said. Meanwhile, The Associated Press reports that the Iraqi interim government voted Tuesday to establish a war crimes tribunal to prosecute top members of Saddam Hussein regime. The tribunal will be formally established on Wednesday, when the U.S. administrator for Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, temporarily cedes legislative authority to the Iraqi Governing Council so that it can create the court. One council member, Younadem Kana, told the AP that the court's proceedings would be open to the Iraqi public -and possibly broadcast on television. — Posted at 3:32 pm

GOVERNMENT DESTROYED SEALED FILES IN TERROR CASE According to reports from The Chicago Tribune and The Associated Press, a federal magistrate has disclosed that the search warrants used to support collection of evidence against an alleged fundraiser for the Islamic Jihad were shredded. U.S. Magistrate Thomas McCoun said in a letter to lawyers for Sami Al-Arian, a former professor at the University of South Florida, that in 1998, clerks in Tampa "began shredding magistrate judge files more than five years old ... This shredding included sealed files kept in the court's vault," according to the AP account. It is unclear from the news accounts why such shredding would have affected the search warrants, which were executed in 1995 - less than five years before their destruction. — Posted at 3:29 pm

SHOW ME THE MONEY, OR AT LEAST THE RECEIPTS. Author and former investment banker Nomi Prins in a Newsday Op-Ed warns that the current Iraqi contracting situation could become the next Enron. Vast amounts of tax money are being distributed to private companies by a growing number of government agencies, but without adequate reporting and accounting rules to assure that the money is being spent wisely. Prins criticizes the administration for adding more layers of bureaucracy in answer to criticism instead of allowing more oversight, and warns that the lack of accountability combined with the increasing number of organizations involved could permit the type of "financial shell games" used by Enron to hide losses from the public. — Posted at 09:22 am

IGNORANCE IS BLISS Unsatisfied with current state FOI exemptions for "security measures," the city of Overland Park, Kansas is seeking to have the state Legislature amend the law to provide more exemptions to block access to information about "terrorism," The Associated Press reported Monday. Officials want to block disclosure of the security risks of city events and plans for responding to terrorism. Critics point out that "terrorism" is increasingly being used broadly to deny the public access to information, and that when the public is kept in the dark about the dangers of terrorism, they cannot demand that something be done about it. — Posted at 08:51 am

Dec. 8, 2003

OPEN GOVERNMENT IN IRAQ? HOW IRONIC. An Op-Ed in Sunday's Alameda Times Star concludes there's a disturbing irony in an administration that claims it intends to establish democracy in Iraq - while systematically dismantling democracy here at home. Access to information about government actions, the ability to share that information with other citizens, and the right to protest government policies are all fundamental to a representative democracy. Yet U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, with the blessing of the Bush administration, has stifled the flow of information and its sharing - in the name of national security. — Posted at 4:45 pm

TERROR SENTENCES BRIEF, STUDY FINDS. An analysis of the terrorism prosecutions by the Department of Justice following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks shows that of the more than 6,400 criminal terrorism-related referrals since then, only 123 have received sentences of a year or more and the average sentence is 14 days. The study by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) reflects how the Justice Department has adopted "an aggressive and expansive view of what consitutes potential terrorist activity in the aftermath," according to researcher David Burnham who heads TRAC. The Los Angeles Times reported that in its two-year war on terrorism,the Justice Department "trumpeted a number of high-profile convictions and lengthy prison terms" won against alleged terrorist sympathizersand supporters in federal courtrooms, but that the study showed that in the most serious cases sentences are actually shorter. Click here to read the full TRAC report. — Posted at 4:37 pm

REDACTED FOI RESPONSE LEAVES QUESTIONS ABOUT \'NO-FLY\' LISTS. The Transportation Security Administration on Dec. 4 released 94 heavily redacted pages on it's "no-fly lists" to the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, which requested them last year. An ACLU press release says that the documents fail to show how innocent Americans falsely listed as potential terrorists can get their names cleared. It also says that the records fail to show if Americans are being punished on the basis of First Amendment-protected activities. — Posted at 4:35 pm

Dec. 5, 2003

SOUND FAMILIAR? PENTAGON DESIGNING STRATEGIC INFLUENCE CAMPAIGN. Early last year Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld disbanded the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence after it became known that the office was considering plans to provide false news items to unwitting foreign journalists to influence policymakers and public sentiment abroad. But today's New York Times reports that a couple of months ago, the Pentagon quietly awarded a $300,000 contract to SAIC, a major defense consultant, to study how the Defense Department could design an "effective strategic influence" campaign to combat global terror, according to an internal Pentagon document. — Posted at 3:24 pm

WHY AL-ARABIYA WAS CENSORED. Jalal Talabani, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council and secretary general of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, explained in an Op/Ed column in Thursday's Washington Post why he "temporarily" banned the Arab satellite channel al-Arabiya from using satellite uplink facilities to transmit news reports from its Baghdad bureau. Talabani says he was not acting against legitimate and objective journalistic activities. Rather, he was taking steps to prevent psychological warfare and incitement to murder. "No country would do less," he says. — Posted at 3:18 pm

DISCLOSING INFORMATION COULD COMPROMISE ANTHRAX PROBE, FBI SAYS. Disclosing information about the FBI's investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks as part of a lawsuit could compromise the probe, alerting potential suspects that they are being watched and possibly leading to the estruction of evidence, the FBI has warned in court papers, according to the Washington Post. FBI supervisor Richard L. Lambert, responding to a lawsuit filed by Stephen Hatfill, a scientist labeled "a person of interest" in the anthrax investigation, told a federal judge that releasing information about the widespread probe would afford possible suspects "a voyeur's window into an active, pending and ongoing criminal investigation." — Posted at 3:02 pm

Dec. 4, 2003

FOURTH CIRCUIT HEARS APPEAL OF MOUSSAOUI ORDER. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., (4th Cir.) yesterday heard oral arguments in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the accused Sept. 11 conspirator. The appeals court will decide whether to uphold U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema's order barring the government from seeking the death penalty or introducing evidence that Moussaoui had a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, as a sanction for the government's refusal to give him access to three detained al Qaida witnesses. The New York Times reports that the three-judge panel gave little indication of how it will rule, though it aggressively questioned lawyers for both sides. The Washington Post's story, however, suggests that the judges may have been hinting at a possible compromise in which the courts would help fashion a substitute for live testimony. The hearing was conducted in an unusual bifurcated format, with an open session in the morning and a closed session in the afternoon, in an arrangement that was won by the media before the last Fourth Circuit hearing in this case. — Posted at 5:38 pm

NEW YORK GIVES ACCESS TO TAPES TO A FEDERAL COMMISSION. In the face of a subpoena obtained by the federal government, New York City has backed down from its refusal to provide a federal commission access to the emergency 911 tapes from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Tom Perotta of the New York Law Journal reported today that the commission investigating the attacks reached a settlement agreement and will now have unrestricted access to the tapes; however, it may not copy or remove them. Mayor Michael Bloomberg had refused to give the tapes to the commission because they contained "emotional and personal words -- and sometimes final words -- of victims and firefighters." He said that giving up the tapes would violate the privacy of victims and their families. The agreement does not give reporters access to the records but New York Times counsel David McGraw speculated that, even though the decision does nothing directly to help journalists get the records, it makes it harder for the city to continue to claim the need for strong secrecy. The newspaper has sued for copies. — Posted at 5:31 pm

Dec. 3, 2003

HAMDI WILL BE ALLOWED A LAWYER, PENTAGON SAYS The Pentagon announced today that Yaser Esam Hamdi, detained as an "enemy combatant" in South Carolina since Nov. 2001, will be allowed access to an attorney, subject to unspecified "appropriate security restrictions." The announcement states that Hamdi will be permitted access to counsel because he is a U.S. citizen, but that the decision is "a matter of discretion and military policy" and "should not be treated as a precedent." It further specifies that even U.S. citizens who are detained as enemy combatants will have access to counsel only subject to various qualifiers, such as a determination by the Defense Department that such access will not compromise national security. The Washington Post reports that Frank Dunham, the public defender seeking to represent Hamdi, will continue to press his Supreme Court challenge to Hamdi's detention. — Posted at 5:44 pm

MILITARY INFORMATION AGAIN IN DISPUTE. Editor and Publisher today looks into the controversy over how many Iraqis died in fighting in Samarra over the weekend, and whether they were civilians, noting that many of the initial accounts did not note that the information came from military officials and was unconfirmed. — Posted at 3:50 pm

Dec. 2, 2003

MILITARY PROSECUTORS MISTAKENLY RELEASE SECRET RECORDS. Military prosecutors may have mistakenly released secret materials in the lead up to a hearing for a Muslim Army chaplain accused of mishandling classified information. The possible mistake led to the postponement of a hearing at Ft. Benning, Ga., where an Army colonel is to decide whether U.S. Army Capt. James ''Youseff'' Yee, 35, should face court martial for violating the military code at the military prison in Cuba. The hearing was delayed from today until next week, according to the Miami Herald. Military officials said the potential mistake would not affect the case, but Yee's civilian defense lawyer said it should be dismissed. "If they don't know that something they are releasing is classified, how's anyone else supposed to know?" said Eugene Fidell, Yee's attorney and president of the nonprofit National Institute of Military Justice. "One of their people - an attorney, probably - has violated the same general order that my client allegedly has," Fidell told the Boston Globe. "I don't know how my client can be expected to know the rules if the Defense Department doesn't know them." — Posted at 4:47 pm

"SUPERSEALED" CASES TAKE SECRECY TO NEW LEVELS. In today's Miami Daily Business Review, Dan Christensen describes a growing trend toward "supersealing" federal cases - that is, keeping secret the very existence and nature of a judicial proceeding, often without conducting a hearing or making findings in support. As Christensen reports, this practice appears to be on the rise, particularly (but not exclusively) in cases that bear an alleged connection to terrorism. Examples discussed by Christensen include the case of Mohammed K. Bellahouel, whose habeas corpus challenge has been conducted in almost total secrecy, as well as that of Colombian drug lord Fabio Ochoa. The story also discusses secrecy practices under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court and the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA). — Posted at 3:53 pm

Dec. 1, 2003

POST CALLS FOR INDEPENDENT MEDIA IN IRAQ. An editorial in today's Washington Post points out that since the fall of Saddam Hussein there has been an explosion of information sources in Iraq. More than 200 newspapers are being published, and Iraqis have rushed by the tens of thousands to acquire satellite equipment allowing them to watch Arab and other international news stations. Meanwhile, the coalition's own attempts to broadcast news and information have been woefully deficient. Iraq's Governing Council last week shut down the Baghdad operation of one of the two leading Arab broadcasters. The Post concludes that censorship will only reinforce biases while driving up Arab television's viewership. The only effective way to attack the problem is to offer an alternative - or many alternatives - that give Iraqis and other Arabs access to quality programming and credible information, provided by professional journalists who are independent of the governing authority. — Posted at 4:53 pm

SENATOR COLLINS DECRIES FBI INFORMATION SHORTAGE. In a Wall Street Journal opinion column today, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) details the catch-as-catch-can, unsuccessful efforts of her staff on the Governmental Affairs committee to learn anything about suspected terrorists being granted citizenship or permanent residency while the FBI was investigating them for involvement in terrorism, the subject of an NBC report. She said: "We know some terrorists and supporters of terrorism seek out the protective guise of American citizenship. We know a lack of coordination between the relevant agencies allowed this unacceptable situation to occur. What we don't know is how many times it has happened, how broad this problem is, how many people are involved, and, most important of all, what has been done to stop it." Collins says that her repeated requests to the Justice Department for information about the allegations resulted in delays and denials from the FBI based on "national security," and that once the Immigration and Naturalization Service was moved to the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI refused even to share the information she requested with the new agency. Later excuses included a concern that providing Congress with information that could help it understand and remedy a situation so potentially damaging to our nation's security could "gravely damage the nation's security." — Posted at 4:32 pm

MEDIA FREEDOM IN THE U.S. THREATENED. President Bush, speaking in Great Britain last week, said coalition actions have ensured 150 newspapers in Iraq are "openly publishing what they choose." He said freedom of the press had been "scarce" under Saddam Hussein. But journalism professor WIlliam Greer writes in the Tri-Valley Dispatch (Casa Grande, Ariz.) that news media freedom in the United States and the ability to openly publish what American photojournalists see as news are also scarce. Greer says that media watchers are upset because the Pentagon, with the thought that there has been too much bad news arising from Iraq, has closed off photojournalists and reporters who want to document the returning flag-draped coffins containing dead U.S. soldiers. Pictures of the coffins are forbidden. And photojournalists who were embedded with troops during the invasion of Iraq were told they could not photograph casualties. — Posted at 4:29 pm

WELCOME TO GUANTANAMO. The latest issue of Time Magazine takes a rare look at the operations of the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, currently housing 660 suspects from 44 countries who were scooped up in the war on terrorism. — Posted at 4:17 pm

ALGERIAN MAN DETAINED SINCE SEPT. 11, 2001 DESPITE NO CONNECTION TO TERRORISM. Saturday's Washington Post recounts the story of Benamar Benatta, a 29-year-old Algerian who has been held in U.S. custody since the evening of Sept. 11, 2001. In what has become a common scenario, Benatta was arrested on an immigration violation - overstaying his U.S. visa - and, apparently based on his ethnic background, was secretly detained in a high-security detention center in Brooklyn, where he spent most of his time in solitary confinement. The FBI formally concluded in November 2001 that Benatta has no connection to terrorism, but he continues to be held on immigration charges to this day. Benatta's case was known only to authorities until a public defender was assigned in April 2002. — Posted at 12:31 pm

PREVIOUSLY SECRET MEMO DETAILS FBI'S SUSPICIONS OF MOUSSAOUI. Greg Gordon of the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune reports on the contents of newly disclosed FBI documents showing that, nearly a month before the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency suspected that Zacarias Moussaoui was conspiring to commit a terrorist act using an airplane. Gordon cites a "lengthy memo" sent by Minneapolis FBI agents to FBI headquarters, describing "previously secret details of investigators' only interviews with Moussaoui." The memo reportedly indicates that on Aug. 17, 2001, FBI agents specifically asked Moussaoui whether he was preparing to use an aircraft to commit a terrorist act, and "demanded that he reveal the name of his religious leader and describe the plan." In response, Moussaoui reportedly asked for a lawyer. — Posted at 11:12 am