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. 31, 2004

WHAT\'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CII, SSI, SBU, CEII AND UCNI? In a guest column in Government Computer News, Washington privacy and information policy consultant Robert Gellman explains the complicated and nonsensical categories of sensitive government information. — Posted at 5:58 pm

DIPLOMAT\'S PHOTOS SEIZED. A high-level Russian diplomat was questioned by local and federal authorities Sunday after a 911 caller became suspicious of a man photographing a liquefied natural gas terminal on the waterfront in Calvert County, Maryland State Police told The Washington Post. The man's digital camera card and videotape were confiscated by Trooper David Whipp and will be forwarded to the State Department or the Department of Homeland Security. If federal authorities find the items not to be a threat, they will be returned to the man. — Posted at 5:55 pm

JORDAN WANTS TO KNOW CHARGES. Jordan has asked the United States to reveal the charges it has levelled against six Jordanians held in the U.S. military detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher told Al Dustour daily. — Posted at 5:52 pm

LEAHY: AS GOVERNMENT EXPANDS SECRECY, THE PUBLIC LOSES. In a guest column for The Detroit Free Press, U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) writes, "Secrecy has its place in government, but government is always too easily tempted to overuse the secret stamp. When that happens, it comes at the cost of the public's stake in other important values such as safety, clean air and water, and even national security." — Posted at 5:44 pm

INDUSTRY PUBLICIZING LESS INFORMATION ABOUT NATURAL GAS LINES. Private industry and local governments have spent much of the last several decades trying to make natural gas pipelines safer by publicizing where they are. Natural gas, highly explosive and transported in pipes underneath unknowing residents or uncharted along waterways, has been the cause of scores of lethal accidents - fiery explosions caused by misdirected backhoes or wayward boat anchors. But The New York Times reports that national security concerns have pushed in the opposite direction. Increasingly, gas companies have been clearing their Web sites of pipeline maps previously used by contractors before excavating. Almost all nautical charts once indicated where gas pipes run. Fewer do now. — Posted at 5:41 pm

ACLU CALLS OVERSIGHT ORDER AN \'ILLUSION.\' The American Civil Liberties Union today urged Congress to reject the model for a civil liberties oversight board laid out in a new executive order. Despite the president's laudable attention to these matters, the board as proposed would be comprised only of the government officials it is meant to oversee, would have no investigative authority and would be utterly beholden to the White House. "There is a real danger that this will be worse than useless," said Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director. "Not only will it provide the illusion of oversight without any real power to effect change, its membership includes some of the very people in the national security establishment who are part of the problem. Missing are any independent voices who are not beholden to the president or the political establishment." — Posted at 11:48 am

Aug. 30, 2004

ANOTHER SPY SCANDAL UNFOLDS. A Pentagon official under suspicion of turning over classified information to Israel began cooperating with federal agents several weeks ago and was preparing to lead the authorities to contacts inside the Israeli government when the case became publicly known last week, government officials told The New York Times on Sunday. The disclosure of the inquiry late on Friday by CBS News revealed what had been for nearly a year a covert national security investigation conducted by the F.B.I., according to the officials, who said that news reports about the inquiry compromised important investigative steps, like the effort to follow the trail back to the Israelis. As a result, several areas of the case remain murky, the officials said. One main uncertainty is the legal status of Lawrence A. Franklin, the lower-level Pentagon policy analyst who the authorities believe passed the Israelis a draft presidential policy directive related to Iran. On Friday, The Times reported that Franklin (who was not named in the early stories) was one of two department officials who traveled to Paris for secret meetings with Iranian dissidents, including Manucher Ghorbanifar, an arms dealer. Ghorbanifar was a central figure in the Iran-contra affair in the 1980's, in which the United States government secretly sold arms to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages in Lebanon and to finance the fighters, known as contras, opposing the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. — Posted at 6:18 pm

REPORTERS: NUREMBERG IT WAS NOT. The New York Times' Neil Lewis reports from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that the contingent of nearly 70 journalists covering military tribunals includes reporters from the three Arabic satellite stations: Al Jazeera, sponsored by Qatar; Al Arabiya, a privately financed network based in Dubai; and Al Hurra, sponsored by the United States government as kind of a latter-day Radio Free Europe. The three Arabic-speaking reporters have been instrumental in escalating the issue of poor translations during the proceedings. They have been vociferous in asserting that the translations provided by the government-hired interpreters have been significantly flawed, something the military authorities acknowledge and have promised to improve. USA Today's Toni Locy reports that the awkward debut of the first U.S. military tribunal in more than 50 years may force the Pentagon to change some of the more controversial rules in the system of justice that was created for suspected terrorists. The Los Angeles Times' John Hendron reports, "Nuremberg it was not." Scott Higham of The Washington Post writes that military and civilian defense lawyers spent much of the week lambasting the commissions as legal relics and creating a record of what took place at the Navy base here for possible U.S. court review. Finally, the BBC's Daniel Lak reports that the tribunals are "legally obscure, often complex and ridden with military acronyms, but redeemed always by the chance to see the detainees from Guantanamo Bay in the flesh - men accused of horrible crimes - as human beings, rather than stereotypes." — Posted at 6:03 pm

HOW DO YOU APPEAL TO A COURT THAT WON\'T LET YOU IN THE DOOR? The Justice Department has argued in a recent court case that librarians, booksellers and other businesses can easily challenge a controversial provision of the USA Patriot Act by appealing to a super-secret court that approves surveillance of terrorists and foreign intelligence agents. The only problem, The Washington Post reports, is that the same court does not allow anyone but government attorneys and agents inside its doors. The rules governing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court also do not include procedures for outside litigants to file memorandums or otherwise influence a case, according to a copy of the rules obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union. The five-page list of rules gives a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the FISA court, outlining the powers available to each judge and the procedures for applying for warrants and other operational details. The rules were provided to the ACLU by the FBI, which indicated they were the most recent FISA court rules in the agency's possession, Jaffer said. — Posted at 5:58 pm

SECRECY UPHELD IN HAMAS MATERIAL WITNESS CASE. A federal judge on Friday upheld the government's right to impose secrecy in court proceedings for Ismail Selim Elbarasse, the Virginia man who has not been charged with a crime but is being held in Baltimore as a material witness in a Chicago case involving the militant group Hamas. Elbarasse was arrested after his wife's videotaping of the Bay Bridge caught the attention of police officers. In his ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul W. Grimm said that in this case the importance of grand jury confidentiality trumps the public's right to access - a stance that continues a national pattern of secrecy surrounding these types of witnesses. "I am mindful of the extraordinarily important issues here," the judge said in denying a request by The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post to open a planned detention hearing for Elbarasse. "It is a very close issue." — Posted at 5:51 pm

OVERCLASSIFICATION TESTIMONY DESCRIBED AS \"REMARKABLE.\" An editorial in Saturday's Washington Post described as "remarkable" the testimony last week of two government officials at a House subcommittee hearing on overclassification. J. William Leonard, director of the National Archives' Information Security Oversight Office, and Carol A. Haave, undersecretary of defense for counterintelligence and security, both estimated that an astounding percentage of secret material is improperly classified. — Posted at 5:48 pm

RIDICULOUS REDACTIONS. According to documents posted on thememoryhole.org, the Department of Justice blacked out as a threat to national security, a quotation from the U.S. Supreme Court. The offending quotation, "The danger to political dissent is accute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent," is from a 1972 case, U.S. v. U.S. Dist. Ct. , and was cited by the ACLU in their suit over the use of the USA PATRIOT Act. Because of the sensitive nature of the case, the Justice Department is allowed to censor the ACLU's court filings, but in this instance the U.S. District Court in New York overturned the redaction. — Posted at 4:51 pm

Aug. 27, 2004

GUANTANAMO CENSORSHIP RULES EXPLAINED. The Boston Globe's Charlie Savage filed a story today describing the censorship policy in place at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that limits the openness of the first military commissions since World War II. Although independent observers are at the base, portions of the trials are closed to them. Network cameras and news photographers are not allowed in the courtroom. A military security officer can go through photographs and footage, and can order the deletion of images deemed sensitive. Each of the observers also had to sign a five-page list of "ground rules." They agree not to publish or discuss anything mentioned in open court that the presiding officer decides should have been kept secret. The military reserves the right to seize notebooks from human rights observers. — Posted at 5:05 pm

CLASSIFIED REPORT IMPLICATES TOP GENERAL. The New York Times reports that classified portions of the Army report on abuses at Abu Ghraib prison implicate the top U.S. commander in Iraq of approving severe interrogation practices that violate the Geneva Conventions. According to the report, Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez approved interrogation techniques that were supposed to have been limited to use in Afganistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the Bush administration has claimed the Geneva Conventions do not apply. Classified parts of the report also fault Sanchez for sowing confusion by revising the guidelines three times in 30 days. Sen. John Warner (R-Va), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is leaving open the possibility of a congressional investigation into the matter. A list of the completed and pending investigations into prisoner abuse in Iraq, Afganistan and Cuba is available from the Los Angeles Times. — Posted at 4:20 pm

LUDICROUS AND LETHAL. Witnesses at a House subcommittee hearing into the Sept. 11 commission finding that secrecy undermines anti-terrorism efforts cited numerous examples of wrongful classification, The Associated Press reports. Examples include a dictator's cocktail preferences, a plot against Santa Claus and a study that showed that 40 percent of Army gas masks leaked. Other examples were given of classification made in error or to save face. "We have too much overclassification: it's an outrage," Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn) told Government Executive. "I will get classified briefings that are silly. They tell me nothing I don't already know, but then they prevent me from discussing what I already know." — Posted at 3:25 pm

TERRORISM EXCEPTION INVOKED. The (Staunton) Daily News Leader reports that the Staunton, Va., City Council used a terrorism exception to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act to hold a closed session to discuss criminal gang activity. "Some type(s) of gang activity are terrorism because you are terrorizing the people," said City Manager Bob Stripling. According to the city, there is currently no significant gang activity in Staunton, but there is "within a few hundred miles." The city used the closed session to be briefed by the police department on training they had recieved to combat the problem, should it arise. After the meeting Councilman Richard Bell said, "Much of what was discussed could have been aired publicly." — Posted at 2:13 pm

SECRET TAPES UNDERWHELMING IN LYNNE STEWART TRIAL. The New York Times reports that secret videotapes of a prison meeting between defense lawyer Lynne Stewart and her client, Shiekh Omar Abdel Rahman, show that Rahman "did not issue any furious call to jihad," as prosecutors had suggested. Stewart is charged with providing material support to terrorism for supposedly acting as a go-between for communications between Rahman and members of his organization, the Islamic Group. The trial is in progress in a Manhattan federal district court. — Posted at 2:09 pm

Aug. 26, 2004

LEAVING THE DOTS UNCONNECTED. The New York Times editorialized today that a report issued this week on Abu Ghraib by a civilian panel selected by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is "an indictment of the way the Bush administration set the stage for Iraqi prisoners to be brutalized by American prison guards, military intelligence officers and private contractors," but fails to connect the "dotted lines" of accountability to the leaders who set the policies that led to the brutality against prisoners almost from the beginning of the war. The Times complains that the report describes unnamed Pentagon officials who issued confusing memos and did not monitor things as exhibiting "leadership failure" and makes no mention of reprimands even for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whom it said should have resigned over this disaster months ago. — Posted at 6:23 pm

ARMY DETAINEE REPORT POINTS FINGER AT CIA. The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times today reported that the U.S. Army's internal investigation into the abuse of detainees in Iraq cast a new spotlight yesterday on alleged wrongdoing by a government agency that has until now turned aside external inquiries - from the military as well as the media - into the actions of its personnel in Iraq: the CIA. An analysis by The Washington Post's Bradley Graham said the report by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay was an unusually harsh criticism of CIA's detention and interrogation practices in Iraq that "led to a loss of accountability, abuse, reduced interagency cooperation, and unhealthy mystique that . . . poisoned the atmosphere" in the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, in which detainees were mistreated. The reports have served to undercut earlier portrayals of the abuse as largely the result of criminal misconduct by a small group of individuals. As recently as last month, an assessment by the Army's inspector general concluded the incidents could not be ascribed to systemic problems, describing them as "aberrations." — Posted at 6:15 pm

HICKS SAYS HE WAS ABUSED BY U.S. FORCES. Australian terrorism suspect David Hicks appeared before a military commission in Guantanamo Bay for the first time Wednesday - pleading not guilty to all charges against him - as his lawyers moved to have the controversial tribunal shut down. The Age (Australia) reported that Hicks had an emotional early-morning reunion with his father Terry and stepmother. During the two tearful encounters, Hicks told his father he had been physically abused by US forces after his capture in Afghanistan and had suffered mental abuse at Guantanamo Bay. The physical abuse claim has been challenged by the report of a US investigation, released yesterday, which concluded that there was no evidence that either Hicks or Mamdouh Habib, the other Australian detained at Guantanamo Bay, had been abused by their U.S. captors. The Washington Post reported that Army Col. Peter E. Brownback III, who is presiding over the proceedings, adjourned the military commission for the case until Nov. 2, giving defense lawyers time to file motions seeking to have the charges dismissed. Brownback scheduled the trial to begin Jan. 10. Hicks could face life in prison if convicted. Meanwhile, the American Forces Information Service reports that the prosecutions against detainees charged with crimes will exceed the international standard for such tribunals. Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Hemingway, in an interview with the Pentagon Channel and American Forces Press Service, said the commissions are not unique and have a long history in America. — Posted at 5:46 pm

HALF OF GOVERNMENT SECRETS UNNECESSARILY CLASSIFIED. Half of all government secrets may be unnecessarily or improperly classified, a Pentagon intelligence official told a congressional hearing this week. Pressed by Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT) to estimate what percentages of all classified information are and are not correctly classified, Carol A. Haave, the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for counterintelligence and Security, said: "How about if I say 50-50?" Secrecy News reported. "I do believe that we overclassify information," Haave said. "I do believe that it is extensive [but] not for the purpose of wanting to hide anything. But I will tell you that with respect to military operations, people have a tendency to err on the side of caution." Click here to read the hearing transcript. The August 24 hearing was held by the House Government Reform Committee Subcommittee on National Security to consider the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission with respect to overclassification and information sharing. — Posted at 5:41 pm

YEMENI MAN SEEMS TO ACKNOWLEDGE BELONGING TO AL QAEDA. A Yemeni accused of guarding Osama bin Laden with explosive belts seemed to acknowledge his al Qaeda membership on Thursday before a U.S. military tribunal hearing fraught with translation problems, according to a Reuters report. An Arabic-English translator quoted defendant Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al Bahlul as telling the U.S. war crimes tribunal, "I am from al Qaeda and the relationship between me and Sept. 11..." The Washington Post reported that Bahlul asked to act as his own attorney and Brownback said no, because the rules required defense attorneys to be U.S. citizens and military officers licensed to practice law and with security clearance. Bahlul then requested a Yemeni lawyer and was again told the rules did not allow that. — Posted at 5:35 pm

REPORT CARD SAYS SECRECY HAS DRAMATICALLY INCREASED. A "Report Card" issued today by OpenTheGovernment.org says government data confirm what many openness advocates have suspected: secrecy has increased dramatically in recent years under policies of the current administration. For every $1 the federal government spent last year releasing old secrets, it spent an extraordinary $120 maintaining the secrets already on the books. "Secrecy Report Card: Quantitative Indicators of Secrecy in the Federal Government," is an initial effort to establish measurable benchmarks for evaluating the level of secrecy in government. The study was released by a coalition of more than 30 organizations, including the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, calling for more democracy and less secrecy in government. — Posted at 5:32 pm

Aug. 25, 2004

AP IDENTIFIES TRIBUNAL MEMBERS. Although members of the military tribunals in Guantanmo Bay and prosecutors asked the media not to use the names of the panel members, fearing possible retribution, The Associated Press today named the panel members who are hearing the case of Osama bin Laden's chauffeur, 34-year-old Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen. The AP said the names were previously made public and had been published. — Posted at 5:39 pm

STEWART JURORS WATCH TAPE ON CONVERSATION WITH IMPRISONED SHEIK. The facts surrounding the alleged conspiracy among defense lawyer Lynne Stewart and others trying to help an Egyptian terrorist group began to take shape Tuesday for jurors in a federal courtroom in New York. For more than an hour, the jury watched a surveillance tape from her visit to imprisoned Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman at a Minnesota prison in May 2000. The meeting was between Stewart, Mohamed Yousry, her interpreter, and the blind sheik, who is serving a life sentence from his 1995 conviction for seditious conspiracy. Although typically lawyers meet in private with their clients, the surveillance tape was made under authority from Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant. — Posted at 5:32 pm

FIRST MILITARY TRIBUNAL IS UNDERWAY. The first military tribunal since the end of World War II convened Tuesday in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a case against a 34-year-old Yemeni who is accused of conspiring to commit acts of terrorism. The New York Times's Neil Lewis filed a colorful description of the days proceedings, in sharp contrast to the rather clinical official report prepared by the Defense Department. — Posted at 5:22 pm

Aug. 24, 2004

TIME REPORTER INTERVIEWED BY PROSECUTOR. Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper has avoided the threat of jail by agreeing to be interviewed yesterday by Justice Department prosecutors investigating whether White House officials illegally leaked the identity of a covert CIA operative to journalists. Time said in a statement today that Cooper agreed to give a deposition "because the one source the special counsel asked about," Lewis I. "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Cheney, had waived a confidentially agreement he had with Cooper. The statement from Time spokesperson Diana Pearson said that Libby also had agreed to allow the magazine to disclose its agreement with him. — Posted at 5:58 pm

REPORTERS AND OBSERVERS DESCEND ON GUANTANAMO. The Defense Department reports that 65 journalists are at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to cover military tribunals. Each day, eight media members will be chosen by lottery to actually sit in the courtroom as first-hand observers. One of these will be a sketch artist. Media are not allowed to bring cameras or any recording devices into the courtroom building. A spokesman said no photos or video recordings will be made of any court proceedings at Guantanamo, not even by military documentary photographers. The remaining media representatives will be allowed to observe all court proceedings on closed-circuit television in a nearby conference room. The closed-circuit broadcast will be set on a digital buffer with a two- to three- minute delay. The signal will be shut off if there is an inadvertent disclosure of classified information in the courtroom, so the information will not be relayed to the main body of media. Meanwhile, The Wire, a newspaper for military personnel at Gitmo, last week advised troops on how to handle interactions with the media. Finally, The Washington Post today reported an amusing and disturbing story about the lack of security with ACLU Executive Anthony Romero arrived in Guantanamo over the weekend as an observer. — Posted at 5:49 pm

THE \"OTHER\" GUANTANAMO TRIBUNALS. While the military tribunals for four detainees charged with war crimes are getting far more attention, the U.S. is quietly disposing of cases at a much faster rate through its Combatant Status Review Tribunal. Since it began on July 30, the tribunals have held hearings for 31 detainees, according to The New York Times. They have upheld the Bush administration's enemy combatant designation in all 14 of the cases that have been decided. Legal experts tell the Times that the review process falls well short of meeting the Supreme Court's requirement that the detainees be given an opportunity to challenge their captivity before a judge or other neutral decision-maker. — Posted at 5:30 pm

Aug. 23, 2004

LAWSUIT FILED FOR REDACTED DETAINEE RECORDS. People For the American Way Foundation, a national civil rights and constitutional liberties organization, and the law firm of Arnold & Porter have filed suit against the U.S. Department of Justice seeking the release of redacted DOJ records relating to secret court proceedings against post-9-11 detainees. A press release from PFAWF said the organization hopes that release of these records will help determine the extent to which the DOJ has taken the highly unusual step of trying to seal habeas corpus cases of detainees who challenge the legality of their detentions. Habeas corpus cases, used to determine whether or not a person is imprisoned lawfully, are traditionally open to public scrutiny. — Posted at 5:46 pm

SECRECY DIVERTS ATTENTION FROM SAFETY. A lab supervisor at the chief U.S. biodefense lab told Army investigators that the lab's safety plan "may be more about insulating the institute from criticism than from protecting the workers," the Los Angeles Times reports. The statement is from a 2002 report on anthrax leaks at the Fort Detrick facility near Fredrick, Maryland, which served as the main forensic lab for the investigation into the 2001 anthrax mailings that killed five people. The report was recently released under the Freedom of Information Act. — Posted at 3:49 pm

AMERICAN JOURNALIST RELEASED BY KIDNAPPERS. A kidnapped American journalist was released Sunday after the intervention of the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, even as his Shiite militia engaged in heavy fighting in an effort to fend off a renewed American assault near the holiest shrine in Najaf. The freed journalist, Micah Garen, and an Iraqi interpreter, Amir Doushi, were turned over to Americans and reported to be in good health in the southern city of Nasiriya on Sunday night by Sadr's representatives. — Posted at 3:27 pm

ARMY MEMO SAID \"GLOVES ARE COMING OFF\" TO EXTRACT PRISONER INFORMATION. A memo issued last summer by a U.S. Army military intelligence officer appealed for suggestions on how to extract information from prisoners in Iraq and called for tougher means of getting intelligence. "The gloves are coming off gentleman regarding these detainees," said the memo, which carried the signature of Capt. William Ponce Jr. The source of the memo, who refused to be identified, said it was sent by the intelligence staff of Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was then commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, to all concerned military intelligence personnel in Iraq. In an apparent reference to Sanchez's head of intelligence, Col. Steven Boltz, the memo asserted that "Col. Boltz has made it clear that we want these individuals broken. Casualties are mounting and we need to start gathering info to help protect our fellow soldiers from any further attacks." The memo asked for a list by Aug. 17, 2003, of "what techniques would they feel would be effective" and could be reviewed by legal experts. The document was obtained by The Washington Post on Sunday, one day before pretrial hearings of four military police officers charged with abusing detainees late last year at Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad — Posted at 3:21 pm

REPORTING FROM INSIDE GUANTANAMO BAY. The Oregonian reports that 46 Oregon Army National Guard soldiers work as prison guards at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station. They are volunteers called to active duty in May. After a month of training in New Jersey, they've been guarding the worst of the detainees inside Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay. A reporter and photographer from The Oregonian spent five days with the unit, given access to Camp Delta after agreeing to certain conditions, including not divulging classified information or showing identifying photos of detainees. Throughout their time at Guantanamo Bay, the reporter and photographer said they were accompanied by military public affairs officers. — Posted at 3:16 pm

DOUBTS PERSIST AS MILITARY TRIBUNALS APPROACH. With preliminary hearings set to begin tomorrow, doubts remain about the fairness of the proceedings by which suspected terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay will be tried. The Miami Herald reports that four of the five commission members who will serve as "judge and jury" have no legal experience. The Pentagon is withholding the names of most commission participants, and, according to The Age (Australia) , the military has not even granted permission to the courtroom sketch artist to draw the defendants. On the plus side, the Pentagon has reversed course and will allow representatives of several human rights organizations to observe. Also, New York Times reporter Neil Lewis explains how the tribunals will operate. — Posted at 11:53 am

Aug. 20, 2004

AMERICAN HOSTAGE SPEAKS ON TV. An American journalist being held hostage in Iraq spoke for the first time Friday about how his captors have been treating him. Micah Garen appeared on Al-Jazeera television and said he was being treated well by his captures, although his location is unknown. "I am being treated well," Garen said. — Posted at 5:46 pm

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT CONTINUES TO FILE SECRET EVIDENCE IN ACLU CASE. The Justice Department is using secret evidence in its ongoing legal battles over secrecy with the American Civil Liberties Union, submitting material to two federal judges that cannot be seen by the public or even the plaintiffs, according to documents released Thursday. In one of the cases, the government also censored more than a dozen seemingly innocuous passages from court filings on national security grounds, only to be overruled by the judge, according to ACLU documents. The Washington Post reports that among the phrases originally redacted by the government was a quotation from a 1972 Supreme Court ruling: "The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect 'domestic security.' Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent." Click here to read some of the documents the government has tried to file in secret. — Posted at 5:44 pm

Aug. 19, 2004

JUDGE ORDERS RELEASE OF DETAINEE RECORDS. A federal judge in Manhattan has ordered the government to release information on the treatment of detainees held at military bases or other facilities overseas, including official policies and records requested months ago by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act. The judge signed the order on Tuesday. It was made public yesterday and was hailed as a victory by the A.C.L.U., which originally sought the information last October. In June, the organization and various other civil liberties groups filed a lawsuit against the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation among other agencies, demanding the release of the information. The judge gave the government until next Monday to release about 70 documents. It must also produce a log with explanations for documents that it says are exempt from release, that cannot be located or that will be produced after the deadline. — Posted at 4:51 pm

MATERIAL WITNESS STATUTE USED IN NEW, MYSTERIOUS WAYS. New York Times reporter Adam Liptak today reported on Abdullah al Kidd, a Saudi graduate student, and about 60 other men who have been held in terrorism investigations under the federal material witness law since the Sept. 11 attacks. Such laws, meant to ensure that people with important information do not disappear before testifying, have been used to secretly hold people briefly since the early days of the republic. But scholars and critics say the government has radically reinterpreted what it means to be a material witness in recent years. These days, people held as material witnesses in terrorism investigations are often not called to testify against others; instead, frequently they are charged with crimes themselves. They lack constitutional protections like the requirement that criminal suspects in custody be informed of their Miranda rights. Moreover, they are often held for long periods in the same harsh conditions as those suspected of very serious crimes. — Posted at 4:46 pm

GROUP THREATENS TO KILL MISSING AMERICAN JOURNALIST. A group calling itself the Martyrs Brigade said it had kidnapped a missing American journalist and would kill him if U.S. forces did not leave Najaf within 48 hours, the al-Jazeera satellite television network reported today. The network broadcast a video that depicted a man resembling the missing journalist, Micah Garen, kneeling in front of five masked men armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. The hostage, who had a mustache, looked down throughout the video. — Posted at 4:29 pm

MORE SECRECY LEADS TO MORE REPORTERS HELD IN CONTEMPT. With five reporters involved in the Wen Ho Lee case being held in contempt of court and a contempt order against Time's Matthew Cooper, who refused to disclose confidential sources to a grand jury investigating the leak of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity, there is a dangerous trend toward government secrecy for journalists and a weakening of the reporter's privilege. Furthermore, an increase in government secrecy and a tightening of access to government documents will lead to more leaks, The New York Times reports. "You're going to see an increase in reporter's privilege cases, because you're going to have a lot more leaks," Kevin Goldberg, a lawyer for the American Society of Newspaper Editors told the Times . — Posted at 4:00 pm

ILLINOIS GROUPS SUE FOR DETAINEE INFORMATION. Illinois groups have filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to seek information about the number and nationality of people detained or deported by the federal government in the state of Illinois. The litigation, filed after the government failed to respond to FOI requests, specifically seeks records on individuals including long-time residents who voluntarily participated in the government's "special registration" program and were then detained or deported. It also seeks information on federal operations aimed at non-citizens working at Chicago-area airports or in high-profile office buildings. The state's American Civil Liberties Union chapter is the lead plaintiff in the case also filed by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the Midwest Immigrant and Human Rights Center, and the Muslim Civil Rights Center are also plaintiffs. — Posted at 12:04 pm

STRICT MEDIA \"GROUND RULES\" FOR MILITARY TRIBUNALS. Preliminary proceedings begin next week for the first four detainees to face military tribunals at Guantanamo, but the media will operate under a heavy set of restrictions. As set forth in the Pentagon's "ground rules," reporters can be excluded from any hearing at any time without explanation; any information deemed classified or otherwise "protected" will not be released; and no audio or videotaping or photography is allowed. Additionally, the identities of prosecutors, defense counsel, witnesses, and commission personnel cannot be released without prior approval. Journalists attending the proceedings are required to sign the ground rules. Further details are available in this Associated Press story and this press briefing by John Altenburg, Jr., the appointing authority for the tribunals. — Posted at 11:36 am

Aug. 18, 2004

PROSECUTORS SEEKING TO KEEP EVIDENCE SECRET IN ALBANY TERROR TRIAL. The Albany Times-Union reports that federal prosecutors want to keep secret some of the evidence in their case against two Muslim men arrested there in an FBI counterterrorism sting. The U.S. attorney's office moved Tuesday to invoke a rarely used secrecy law on the day the Times Union revealed in a front-page article that Army intelligence experts had apparently misinterpreted a document that prosecutors cite as a link between one of the men and terrorists in Iraq. In a 12-page motion, invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act in seeking to shut off the flow of "classified material in this case which may be subject to disclosure in advance of trial. CIPA is most often invoked in cases involving suspected terrorists, spies or military personnel charged with crimes. Defense lawyers have criticized the 1980 law because it limits the information prosecutors must give defendants for use in preparing their defense. Prosecutors often are required to submit only a summary of classified information. Even if a judge orders a more detailed release, the government can refuse, citing national security concerns. — Posted at 6:03 pm

COALITION SUES FOR IMMIGRATION INFORMATION. A coalition of civil liberties and immigrant rights groups filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday in an attempt to force the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to hand over information on immigration crackdowns in Illinois since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. According to the Chicago Tribune, the lawsuit contends that the information was sought under the Freedom of Information Act in September, but that the government has not responded. The suit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the Midwest Immigrant and Human Rights Center and the Muslim Civil Rights Center. — Posted at 5:55 pm

REUTERS PHOTOGRAPHER WOUNDED IN IRAQ. An Iraqi photographer working for Reuters new agency was shot in the leg during fighting in the holy city of Najaf, journalists in the agency's Baghdad bureau said. The Associated Press reported that the photographer, who was not identified, was shot during a firefight between U.S. forces and fighters loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The wounds were not life-threatening and the photographer was being treated at a U.S. Army combat hospital. — Posted at 5:50 pm

Aug. 17, 2004

FBI MONITORING CITIZEN WEB SITES. ABC News reports that John Young, a 68-year-old activist, says the government has been monitoring a Web site he runs ever since agents showed up at his door late last year. Young caught law enforcement's attention in Manhattan by what he described as an innocent attempt to expose gaps in national security through his Web site, cryptome.org. Recent postings feature diagrams, maps and photos of rail tunnels and gas lines leading toward Madison Square Garden. The goal, he said, was "to point out what's not being protected." In November, two FBI agents arrived at his apartment and told him they believed information on his site "could be used to harm the United States," he said. "They were very polite," he said. "They made it clear that nothing I was doing was illegal." The agents also suggested he could help them identify threats an idea he rejected as "an invitation to be an informant." — Posted at 4:31 pm

FBI TURNS OVER INFORMATION FOR \"VIGILANTE\" TRIAL IN AFGHANISTAN. Three Americans on trial Monday in Afghanistan on charges that they ran a vigilante jail and interrogation operation here accused the FBI of removing evidence needed for their defense, and they were given a seven-day extension to prepare after the agency returned the evidence later that day, The New York Times reported. One of the defendants, Jonathan K. Idema, a former Special Forces soldier who says he was running a legitimate counterterrorism effort, said that the FBI had taken videotapes, photographs and documents that had been seized from his house by Afghan authorities after his arrest on July 5, and that the American Embassy in Kabul had then blocked all access to it. Idema said the evidence would show that the FBI, the CIA and the military had approved his operation, even though the United States government has denied any connection with it or the defendants, The Washington Post reported. — Posted at 4:23 pm

SECRET HEARING HELD FOR GUANTANAMO PRISONER. A U.S. military review panel on Monday heard the case of a Guantanamo prisoner accused of training with a militant Islamic group, officials told The Associated Press. The man, whose name and nationality were not released, has been held at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for about two years, said military spokeswoman, Navy Cmdr. Beci Brenton. The man did not call any witnesses. Details of the detainee's testimony weren't available, nor was the recommendation of the three-member tribunal. There were no journalists present. — Posted at 4:19 pm

AMERICAN JOURNALIST AND INTERPRETER KIDNAPPED IN IRAQ. Micah Garen, an American journalist who was investigating the looting of ancient artifacts in Iraq, was missing along with his Iraqi interpreter on Monday after the two were led at gunpoint on Friday from a shop in the southern city of Nasiriya, according to news reports and the men's families. Garen's family, in New Haven, said they had received information that he was still alive, but declined to release any further information, saying that his well-being required them to say as little as possible. According to APTN, the television arm of The Associated Press, a shopkeeper in Nasiriya said in an interview on Monday that two armed men had entered his shop on Friday evening and led away Mr. Garen and his interpreter, Amir Doshe. The Committee to Protect Journalists said Garen would be the 11th journalist abducted by an armed group in Iraq in 2004. The previous 10 were eventually released. Since March 2003, at least 30 journalists and as many as 11 media workers have been killed in Iraq by Iraqi forces, armed groups, and U.S. troops. Garen works for Four Corners Media. — Posted at 4:14 pm

GOVERNMENT WANTS TO EAVESDROP ON DETAINEES\' TALKS WITH LAWYERS. The Justice Department on Monday asked U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to let it monitor conversations between 12 Kuwaiti detainees at Guantanamo Bay and their lawyers, The Associated Press reports. The Justice Deparmtment says the step is necessary to prevent detainees from using lawyers to transmit "dangerous" information to family members. According to Bloomberg, Judge Kollar-Kotelly appeared skeptical, saying "National security doesn't trump everything," but she has not yet ruled. Bloomberg also reports that one of the defense attorneys has been denied permission to meet with his client, Mamdouh Habib, to investigate allegations that the U.S. sent Habib to Egypt for torture moving him to Guantanamo. — Posted at 12:03 pm

Aug. 16, 2004

JOURNALISTS COALITION ASKS DHS TO REWRITE ENVIRONMENTAL DIRECTIVE. The Coalition of Journalists for Open Government, made up of 12 journalism-related organizations, has asked the Department of Homeland Security to rewrite a new directive that they say could deny the public critical oversight information on environmental hazards. The coalition said the new directive outlining environmental planning procedures wrongly allows the department to sidestep required impact studies that seek public knowledge and comment on environmental safety issues. The Coalition said DHS appears to be acting on the assumption that "a choice needs be made between the environment and security" when, "most often, there is no conflict." — Posted at 2:51 pm

PENTAGON REVEALS LITTLE ABOUT DETAINEE REVIEWS. The Defense Department has announced that it will no longer release the nationalities of Guantanamo Bay detainees as their cases come before military review tribunals, The Associated Press reports. The military says it changed its policy after some countries objected. So far, 25 of the approximately 585 detainees have had hearings before the Combatant Status Review Tribunal, which determines whether a detainee should continue to be held as an enemy combatant. In its first decisions, the tribunals ruled Friday that four terror suspects - whose names or nationalities were not released - were classified properly as enemy combatants. The New York Times reported Saturday on flaws in the process, including a lack of due process protections and a definition of "enemy combatant" that is substantially broader than that used by the U.S. Supreme Court. — Posted at 2:48 pm

STUNNING SPECIAL KR REPORT FOCUSES ON ONE MARINE COMPANY. Editor & Publisher reports that in one of the most ambitious and effective projects to come out of the Iraq war, Knight Ridder has produced a stunning print and multimedia package published in its chain of newspapers on Sunday. The effort focused on the final weeks of 12 U.S. marines from one company and the impact of the deaths on their families. A feature player in the report was Philadelphia Inquirer photographer David Swanson, who was embedded with Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, this past April. Echo Company, based at Camp Pendleton in California, has lost 22 of its 185 men, more than any other Marine or Army Company. John Walcott, KR Washington Bureau chief, calls the package an "an unprecedented perspective on the war through the eyes of the soldiers and their families." — Posted at 2:28 pm

FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY SAYS HE REFUSED TO SUBPOENA REPORTERS. Former U.S. attorney Joe diGenova told The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz that he declined to subpoena reporters for Newsweek and The Post when he was an independent counsel investigating who leaked information from Bill Clinton's passport file during the first Bush administration. "I deemed the crime, if it had been committed, insufficiently grave to warrant such an egregious intrusion into the First Amendment confidential source area," he says. "This is a very dangerous area for prosecutors." DiGenova was commenting on recent developments in the contempt case brought against Time magazine's Matt Cooper, who is poised to go to jail for refusing to identify confidential sources in connection with a story that outed an undercover CIA operative. — Posted at 2:21 pm

OREGONIAN REPORTER SAYS EMBEDDING LED TO EXCLUSIVE ABUSE STORY. Oregonian reporter Mike Francis believes the only reason he was able to report last week's story about prison abuses in Iraqi prisons was because of connections built with the Oregon National Guard through the military embedding program. Francis is convinced that if he had not been embedded with the unit, the story of prisoner abuse never would have been told. The soldiers grew comfortable with him, and trusted him. "I had the luxury of being in a place with a lot of access, a lot of time and no competition," he says. — Posted at 1:41 pm

Aug. 13, 2004

JUDGE ORDERS PRISONER RECORDS RELEASED. A federal judge in Manhattan Thursday said federal agencies must begin producing records on the treatment of detainees and prisoners in Iraq by Aug. 23 to the ACLU and four other watchdog organzitions. The government must produce the records except where exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act apply. The nonprofit groups brought suit under the FOI Act in June after the Departments of State, Defense and Justice had ignored their requests and after news of the abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib came to light, according to a report by The Associated Press. — Posted at 4:53 pm

CONTRACTOR SAYS ITS EMPLOYEES NOT INVOLVED IN PRISON ABUSE. CACI International Inc. said Thursday that an internal investigation of its operations in Iraq turned up no evidence that its employees were involved in the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, according to reports in today's Washington Post and New York Times. The Arlington, Va., government contractor has been under scrutiny since one of its employees, Steven A. Stefanowicz, was named in an internal Army report made public in April. The report said Stefanowicz, an interrogator working with the Army, encouraged soldiers to set conditions to facilitate interrogations and said he "clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse." CACI said its investigation, conducted by the Washington office of Steptoe & Johnson LLP, has not found "credible or tangible" evidence supporting the claims in the report prepared by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. The findings are based "on a combination of interviewing CACI personnel, obtaining publicly available documents and asking the government for information," CACI spokeswoman Jody Brown said. — Posted at 4:40 pm

GUANTANAMO LAWYERS WANT EVIDENCE MADE PUBLIC. Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees going before the first military tribunals since World War II are seeking to delay the trials, disqualify a key official, and make public as much of the evidence against their clients as possible, motions posted on a Pentagon website this week reveal. The Boston Globe reports that four detainees who have each been held for more than two years since being captured in Afghanistan are set to go to trial this fall or early next year for their alleged involvement with Al Qaeda. The motions will be decided by the presiding officer, retired Army Colonel Peter Brownback III, at hearings at Guantanamo Bay the week of Aug. 23. — Posted at 4:34 pm

CONFIDENTIAL REPORT SAYS AIRPORT INSPECTORS INTIMIDATED ASYLUM SEEKERS. A confidential report conducted by the United Nations in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security has found that airport inspectors with the power to summarily deport illegal immigrants have sometimes intimidated and handcuffed travelers fleeing persecution, discouraged some from seeking political asylum and often lacked an understanding of asylum law. Homeland Security officials say they have responded to the problems identified in the report, which was completed late last year and obtained this week by The New York Times. But the study highlights the challenges facing the department as it grants Border Patrol agents sweeping new powers to deport illegal immigrants from the borders with Mexico and Canada without providing them the opportunity to make their case before an immigration judge. — Posted at 4:30 pm

FEDERAL COURTS MORE RELUCTANT TO RECOGNIZE REPORTERS PRIVILEGE. Federal judges appear increasingly reluctant to recognize a First Amendment privilege for journalists to shield their sources and notes, Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, told The Associated Press. And, she said, ``prosecutors are getting more aggressive in going after journalists.'' First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams has seen an increase in investigations of leaks. Many of those cases don't become public because they are shrouded in grand jury secrecy. — Posted at 4:10 pm

KIDNAPPED BRITISH JOURNALIST RELEASED IN IRAQ. Militants in the southern Iraqi city of Basra today released a British journalist they kidnapped and threatened to kill, after aides to militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demanded he be freed, The Associated Press reported. The journalist, James Brandon, was brought to the Basra's office of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and freed. He was later handed over to the British consulate by Brig. Mohammed Kadhem al-Ali, the head of Basra police. — Posted at 3:52 pm

N.Y. TIMES REPORTER SUBPOENAED IN PLAME CASE. The New York Times reported today that one of its reporters, Judith Miller, was subpoenaed Thursday by a Washington grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a CIA undercover officer to the syndicated columnist Robert Novak and other journalists. The subpoena to Miller was only the most recent of a series issued to journalists in a politically sensitive inquiry that has on several occasions led investigators to question White House officials. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The Times, said the paper would move to quash the subpoena, issued at the behest of Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor heading the investigation. "We regret that the special prosecutor has chosen to issue a subpoena that — Posted at 3:48 pm

TV CREW ARRESTED IN ILLINOIS. Broadcasting & Cable reports that an NBC News crew was arrested Wednesday in southern Illinois while working on an investigative story about helicopter security. A producer and a cameraman from the network attempted to rent a helicopter at the Downtown St. Louis Airport in Sauget/Cahokia, Ill. They carried an assortment of potential weapons in their luggage, including a leatherman tool and a boxcutter that were purchased with a credit card at a local Wal-Mart. The two were arrested when a rental company employee alerted authorities, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. After their arrest, the news crew was questioned by the FBI and released once their identities were confirmed. — Posted at 3:43 pm

PROPOSALS WOULD ZAP NEPA REQUIREMENTS. The Homeland Security proposals to set aside National Environmental Policy Act controls to enhance national security comprise "yet another" list of enivronmental sacrifices the Bush administration has proposed lfor the War on Terror, Amanda Griscom writes in Grist Magazine. The "unprecedented, sweeping wartime request was unaccompanied by any evidence that America's military strength is at odds with environmental protection," she writes, noting that the department has proposed allowing a raft of agencies to eschew requirements for environmental reviews and assessments - which involve considerable disclosure to the public - when agency officials feel that the reviews would impinge upon efficacy. — Posted at 11:36 am

Aug. 12, 2004

MAN PLEADS GUILTY IN SECRET TO AIDING AL QAEDA. A Pakistani American man admitted in a closed court hearing to supplying al Qaeda with money, night-vision goggles and other equipment to be used against U.S. forces in Afghanistan, according to a transcript unsealed this week. Mohammed Junaid Babar, 29, of Queens revealed his role while pleading guilty to multiple counts of providing material support to a terrorist organization. Transcripts of the guilty plea, which was entered in U.S. District Court in Manhattan in June, were released by prosecutors this week. In his secret plea deal, Babar admitted to meeting with a high-ranking al Qaeda official in South Waziristan, Pakistan, near the Afghan border, earlier this year and turning over equipment, including goggles and waterproof socks. — Posted at 5:35 pm

JUDGE ASKED TO FIND PROSECUTOR IN CONTEMPT FOR TALKING TO MEDIA. Defense lawyers in a Detroit terrorism case have asked a judge to find the former lead prosecutor in contempt of court for repeatedly violating a gag order. U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen temporarily lifted the gag order to allow the government and defense attorneys to respond to recent public statements by Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino, The Detroit Free Press reported. Rosen said in his order that Convertino "potentially" had violated the gag order. Convertino, whose conduct during the trial is the subject of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department, has made a flurry of public statements in recent days, some of which were televised, The Detroit News reported. He suggested during interviews that the Justice Department officials hindered the prosecution of the first terror case to go to trial following the September 11 attacks. The defense team asked Rosen to hold a hearing in which Convertino would be required to explain his recent media interviews. Convertino, who has been removed from the case and is under investigation for possible misconduct in the case, recently accused the Justice Department of hindering the prosecution of four men accused of operating a terror cell in Detroit. — Posted at 5:25 pm

TERRORISM WARNING ELICITS PUBLICITY AND SECRECY. When presented with tapes showing terrorist surveillance of local landmarks, officials in San Francisco reacted with public warning, while officials in Las Vegas reacted with secrecy, the Associated Press reports. The tapes, uncovered in Spain and Detroit, were shown to local officials by the Department of Justice. San Franciso issued public warnings and increased security at the locations shown on the tape. Las Vegas privately briefed casino security chiefs and issued no public warnings. Federal prosecutors in Detroit and FBI agents alleged that Las Vegas did not issue public warnings over concerns it would hurt tourism. Las Vegas officials gave varying reasons why no public warning was made - the information was classified, not corroborated, or the threat was not imminent. — Posted at 4:00 pm

AUDIT SHOWING MISSING FUNDS MISSING. An internal Pentagon audit of the Halliburton Company shows that the company failed to account for contract money paid to a subsidiary to support troops in Iraq, but it has not been made public, The New York Times reports. The Wall Street Journal obtained a copy of the report, and reported that over $1.8 billion of $4.2 billion paid out to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root was disputed. — Posted at 3:12 pm

Aug. 11, 2004

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT ARRESTED WITH VIDEOS OF DOWNTOWN BUILDINGS. Federal authorities are conducting a terrorism investigation into an illegal immigrant from Pakistan found with videotapes of downtown buildings and transit systems in four Southern states and of a dam in Texas, officials told The New York Times on Tuesday. Officials acknowledged that they had no direct evidence linking the suspect, a former Queens resident named Kamran Shaikh, to terrorism. But they said they remained keenly interested in determining why he made the extensive videos, which included narratives in Arabic. "These were not your normal tourist videos," said a senior law enforcement official in Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation. "This could turn out to be something legitimate and innocent, but it's raised our suspicions, and we think there's something else going on here. We don't like the look of it." — Posted at 6:16 pm

U.S. RELEASES INTERROGATION INFORMATION TO GERMAN COURT. A key al Qaeda captive in U.S. custody told interrogators that a Moroccan on trial for helping the Hamburg-based Sept. 11 suicide pilots had no knowledge of the plot, according to a summary of the questioning of two key terror suspects presented Wednesday for the first time in court. Mounir el Motassadeq, accused of giving logistical aid to the Hamburg al Qaeda cell that included hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan al Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, is being retried after his conviction was thrown out in March. The appeals court ruled he was unfairly denied testimony from U.S.-held suspects including Ramzi Binalshibh, believed to be the Hamburg cell's contact with al Qaeda. The Washington Post reported that the new trial opened Tuesday with a U.S. pledge to provide evidence, but no direct testimony. The Hamburg state court received a fax from the Justice Department dated Aug. 9, containing summaries of the interrogations of Binalshibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, believed to have masterminded the Sept. 11 plot. The Justice Department's summary of interrogations presented in the Hamburg state court said Binalshibh maintained that el Motassadeq was not part of the plot. It was the first time that statements by al Qaeda captives in U.S. custody were presented in a German court and they would suggest that the Hamburg cell was smaller than investigators have believed. — Posted at 6:08 pm

POST PLANS TO MOVE TO QUASH SUBPOENA. The Washington Post plans to file a motion later this month seeking to quash a subpoena served on reporter Walter Pincus, according to a statement read to Editor & Publisher on Tuesday. The subpoena compels Pincus to testify before a grand jury investigating how the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame was leaked to the press. "The special counsel is attempting to compel Mr. Pincus to reveal the identity of a confidential source," the statement said. "The Post intends to file a motion to quash, challenging that subpoena. The motion will be filed Aug. 20." Pincus received a subpoena Monday ordering him to testify in the investigation, which is being directed by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Time reporter Matthew Cooper already has been held in contempt of court for failing to reveal sources in the same case. — Posted at 6:04 pm

AUDIT OF HALLIBURTON NOT MADE PUBLIC. Citing a news story by The Wall Street Journal , Reuters today reported that a 60-page Aug. 4 Pentagon audit of Halliburton, which has not been made public, concludes that Halliburton Co. has failed to adequately account for more than $1.8 billion spent on work in Iraq and Kuwait. — Posted at 2:23 pm

Aug. 10, 2004

OREGON NATIONAL GUARD TURNS TO NEWSPAPER TO GET STORY OUT. A team of Oregon Army National Guard troops "frustrated and infuriated" after witnessing the torture and abuse of prisoners in Iraq earlier this summer, has turned to The Oregonian in Portland to get their story told, according to Editor & Publisher. This has led Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) to demand that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld investigate whether the soldiers were improperly ordered by superior officers to leave a detention area after they intervened to stop Iraqi guards from beating handcuffed prisoners. — Posted at 5:51 pm

U.S. SAYS IT HAD NO ROLE IN CLOSING AL-JAZEERA. Voice of America reported today that a U.S. official says Washington had nothing to do with Iraq's decision to close the Baghdad office of the Arabic television channel al-Jazeera for 30 days. U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters Monday Washington is not about to second-guess a "difficult" decision by Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. — Posted at 5:48 pm

TIME REPORTER SENTENCED TO JAIL IN PLAME CASE. As many observers had predicted, the Plame investigation has turned to journalists for answers to questions about the leak of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity. On August 6, Time reporter Matthew Cooper was held in contempt of court after he failed to comply with a recently released July 20 federal court order requiring him to testify before the grand jury investigating the leak. Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. ordered Cooper to jail after he refused to testify and fined the magazine $1000 per day until Cooper complies with the order, according to The New York Times. The sanctions were stayed pending appeal. NBC's Tim Russert, host of "Meet the Press," was also ordered to testify in the July 20 order, which rejected Cooper and Russert's motions to quash the subpoenas requiring their testimony. According to the Times, Russert was questioned under oath by prosecutors on Saturday. In a statement, NBC said that Mr. Russert only testified about what Mr. Russert said during a conversation with Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler agreed to a similar interview with prosecutors earlier this summer. According to The Post, lawyers involved in the case say that with Hogan's opinion, the special prosecutor "is now armed with a strong and unambiguous court ruling to demand the testimony" of columnist Robert Novak, who first disclosed Plame's identity, and Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus, who wrote that a Post reporter received information about Plame from a Bush administration official. Pincus was subpoenaed yesterday. The paper says it plans to file a motion to quash the subpoena. Click here to read Judge Hogan's Memorandum and Order. — Posted at 12:01 pm

Aug. 9, 2004

IRAQ CLOSES AL JAZEERA\'S BAGHDAD BUREAU. Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi on Saturday ordered the temporary closing of the television network Al Jazeera's Baghdad bureau, the Arab world's primary source of news from Iraq, saying its extensive coverage of kidnappings has encouraged militants. He said at a news conference that the network's office here would be shut for a month and that it would be allowed to reopen if the network addressed the government's concerns, The New York Times reported. — Posted at 4:13 pm

JOURNALISTS TOLD THEY CAN\'T TAKE PHOTOS ON CAPITOL HILL. U.S. Capitol Police officials said Sunday officers were wrong to tell two representatives of a small D.C. newspaper that they could not take photographs of security barricades on Capitol Hill. However, photographing anti-terror measures is cause for questioning, and the officers were right to approach the editor and reporter about their actions, spokeswoman Sgt. Contricia Sellers-Ford told The Washington Times. Officers have been rebriefed on proper procedures since Kathryn Sinzinger, editor and publisher of the Common Denominator newspaper, took public her complaint that she and intern reporter Michael Hoffman were "unlawfully detained" and Mr. Hoffman's camera, film and notebook confiscated. — Posted at 4:09 pm

SEATTLE JUDGE UNSEALS GUANTANAMO DOCUMENTS. Documents containing allegations of beatings and psychological abuse of prisoners taken to Guantanamo Bay, along with a first-person account of life there, were unsealed last week by a federal judge in Seattle. "Despite the fact that I cooperated with the Americans," prisoner Salim Ahmed Hamdan wrote in one of the unsealed affidavits, "I was physically abused." The Defense Department said Thursday that Hamdan, one of four detainees who have been referred for trial, will face the military tribunal for the first time at the end of this month. Documents in the case were sealed. In May, several news organizations asked U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik to unseal them, saying the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, which had recently come to light, made it a matter of grave importance. The government took custody of the documents to determine whether they contained classified information, and, earlier this week, the Defense Department decided they could be released. — Posted at 4:03 pm

GRASSLEY CITES RETALIATION AGAINST FEDERAL ATTORNEY. The Associated Press reported today that Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has written Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft and his deputies concerning the investigation of Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino that began shortly after he was subpoenaed to testify before Congress. The letters accuse Justice Department officials of investigating the prosecutor in reprisal for his cooperation with Congress. Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino, now detailed to Grassley's office, came under department investigation after he was asked to testify. Convertino had successfully prosecuted three terrorism trials. He has sued the department claiming that it interfered with the case and retaliated against him, but his attorney said that he had planned to testify narrowly and only about terror financing schemes. — Posted at 3:11 pm

Aug. 6, 2004

SHELBY DENIES HE LEAKED CLASSIFIED INFO. Sen. Richard Shelby (R.-Ala.) accused federal law enforcement officials of abuse Thursday after The Washington Post reported that federal investigators had concluded he leaked to the media classified messages from the eve of the Sept. 11 attacks. Citing anonymous sources familiar with the investigation, the Post reported that the Alabama Republican's role had been confirmed to FBI investigators by Fox News chief political correspondent Carl Cameron. Cameron denied that. — Posted at 2:58 pm

GERMANY CONTINUES TO PRESS U.S. FOR INFORMATION ABOUT SEPT. 11 PLOT. Germany said today it was urgently pressing the United States to release evidence that could help convict a Moroccan accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. targets. A Justice Ministry spokeswoman said Berlin was in "very intensive contacts" with Washington over the case of Mounir El Motassadeq, who faces a retrial Tuesday on conspiracy and terrorism charges, according to a Reuters report. Motassadeq, 30, was part of a circle of Arab students in Hamburg which included three of the Sept. 11 hijackers and Ramzi bin al-Shaibah, a leading al Qaeda figure who has boasted of masterminding the attacks. Germany has been pressing the United States to let judges question bin al-Shaibah, who was captured in Pakistan in 2002, or allow the use in court of transcripts from his interrogation. Washington has so far resisted on security grounds. In a speech in June, Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries called the U.S. stance understandable but regrettable, adding that defendants must be given the benefit of the doubt if key evidence is withheld. — Posted at 2:29 pm

GUANTANAMO PROCEDURES EXPLAINED. BBC News Online has posted an explanation of the two different legal processes getting under way at the US Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba. Prisoner status review hearings have already begun to allow detainees to challenge the rules under which they are being held and determine if their detention is legal. Later this month military tribunals - akin to criminal trials - are also scheduled to begin for a handful of men who have already been charged. — Posted at 2:24 pm

COST CLASSIFICATION CAPRICIOUS, INCONSISTENT. The Federation of American Scientists' newsletter Secrecy News reported the capricious classification of the cost of aluminum tubes by CIA reviewers vetting the Senate Intelligence Committee report on pre-war intelligence in Iraq. The report states on page 115: "Iraqi agents agreed to pay up to U.S. $17.50 each for the 7075-T6 aluminum tube. Their willingness to pay such costs suggests the tubes are intended for a special project of national interest." Editor Steven Aftergood wrote: "It hardly needs to be pointed out that the Iraqis know what they agreed to pay, the tube vendors know what they agreed to pay, and those who monitor such transactions . . . know what they agreed to pay." Iowa State University political scientist Christopher L. Ball spotted the inconsistency. — Posted at 11:21 am

Aug. 5, 2004

AFGHAN MAN CHARGED WITH KILLING JOURNALISTS. Authorities have charged an Afghan man with killing four foreign journalists in Afghanistan as the former Taliban regime collapsed at the end of 2001, a prosecutor said Thursday in Kabul. The man, identified as Reza Khan, faces charges including murder, rape and highway robbery over the incident, Gen. Abdul Fatah, a prosecutor attached to the Afghan intelligence service, told The Associated Press. The journalists were traveling in a convoy from the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad to Kabul when a group of armed men dragged them from their cars and shot them dead on Nov. 19, 2001. The victims were two employees of Reuters new agency - Australian television cameraman Harry Burton and Afghan photographer Azizullah Haidari - and Maria Grazia Cutuli of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera and Julio Fuentes of the Spanish daily El Mundo. — Posted at 2:22 pm

CIA CURBS COMMENTS BY BEST-SELLER AUTHOR. A senior CIA official who has written a best-selling book critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war on terror has been ordered to sharply curtail his interviews with news organizations in connection with the book, his publisher told The New York Times on Wednesday. The author of "Imperial Hubris," who wrote the book anonymously, is a longtime counterterrorism official at the C.I.A. who previously ran the agency's unit that concentrated on Osama bin Laden. Since the book was published on July 15, the anonymous author, known publicly only as Mike, has granted numerous interviews to discuss his book and his views. Christina Davidson, his editor at Brassey's Inc., Mike was told in a meeting with senior C.I.A. officials at the agency's headquarters on Wednesday that effective immediately he was prohibited from taking part in more interviews without prior written approval. — Posted at 2:17 pm

JOURNALISTS GET PARTIAL ACCESS TO GUANTANAMO HEARINGS. Journalists were being allowed to watch review tribunals for terror suspects for the first time Thursday, after five of eight Guantanamo Bay detainees have refused to appear for hearings on whether they should be kept in prison, The Associated Press reported. While lifting the cloak of secrecy surrounding the hearings, U.S. military officials were set to release information on the first eight hearings Thursday afternoon but only after authorities review it for classified information. Reporters remain banned from reporting the identities of the prisoners, and the military maintains it is not obliged to make information public because the hearings are administrative and not legal. — Posted at 2:07 pm

SECRECY IN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT RISING WITH EXTRAORDINARY FREQUENCY. Secrecy News, a publication of the Federation of American Scientists, reports that new barriers to public access to government information are rising with extraordinary frequency. While any one of them is probably of interest to only a limited community of concern, collectively they "represent an ongoing mutation of American political culture in favor of secret rule by bureaucracy." The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced Wednesday that "certain security information formerly included in the Reactor Oversight Process will no longer be publicly available, and will no longer be updated on the agency's web site." Also, new controls may be imposed starting October 1 on space surveillance data that are currently made available on the NASA web site. And at the request of the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Communications Commission Wednesday agreed to restrict public access to reports of telecommunications disruptions, CQ Homeland Security reported today. DHS argued that information about communications outages could provide "a roadmap for terrorists." Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported today that "nearly 600 times in recent years, a judicial committee acting in private has stripped information from reports intended to alert the public to conflicts of interest involving federal judges." The newspaper cited a new Government Accountability Office report. — Posted at 1:58 pm

SOURCES SAY SEN. SHELBY LEAKED CLASSIFIED INFORMATION. Federal investigators concluded that Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) divulged classified intercepted messages to the media when he was on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sources familiar with the probe told The Washington Post. The sources said Fox News chief political correspondent Carl Cameron confirmed to FBI investigators that Shelby verbally divulged the information to him during a June 19, 2002, interview, minutes after Shelby's committee had been given the information in a classified briefing. Cameron did not air the material. Moments after Shelby spoke with Cameron, he met with CNN reporter Dana Bash, and about half an hour after that, CNN broadcast the material, the sources said. CNN cited "two congressional sources" in its report. In an interview with The Post, Cameron acknowledged speaking with the FBI, but said he doesn't talk about his sources. Bash would not comment on the report. — Posted at 1:50 pm

Aug. 4, 2004

GUANTANAMO PRESS RULES ARE INCONSISTENT. The rules regarding press access to a variety of legal proceedings in Guantanamo Bay remain murky, according to a report by The Associated Press. Preliminary hearings are planned late this month for the first four terror suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay to be tried before military tribunals, a U.S. military official said Tuesday. That announcement came as the military conducted review panels meant to assess whether the approximately 585 prisoners at the camp in eastern Cuba should be classified as ``enemy combatants,'' a designation giving them fewer legal protections. Two hearings were held Tuesday, although they were closed to the press and no details were immediately available. However, the military apparently plans to allow the media to witness the tribunal panels but has imposed several restrictions, including use of the names of detainees. — Posted at 5:15 pm

NEW REVELATION OF OLD THREAT BREEDS CYNICISM. Washington Post staff writer Glenn Kessler called the White House's "failure to make it clear that the dramatic terrorism alert Sunday was based largely on information that predated the Sept. 11 attacks" a case study in the difficult management of warnings for an administration "whose credibility is a central issue in a difficult presidential campaign." He said that experts credited the Department of Homeland Security with targeting the warning narrowly, to selected buildings in three cities, but that the finding was undercut by the revelation that the surveillance of the buildings, referred to by one official as "Al Qaeda's homework," was several years old, predating the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Former FBI and CIA director William H. Webster, who heads the advisory committee to the Department of Homeland Security, said "they obviously have a way to go" and projected that the revelation "opens the door for people to be suspicious and cynical," according to the Post. — Posted at 3:42 pm

Aug. 3, 2004

FEDERAL CONTRACT INFO CONTRACTED OUT. Raw contracting data will not be sent to the General Services Administration but to a private company, which will charge for its release, The Washington Post reported today. The new system will effectively remove information about government contracts from the reach of the federal Freedom of Information Act. Global Computer Enterprises of Reston, Va., now receives contract information from federal agencies and, as a private company, is not bound by the FOI regulations of government agencies that limit how much FOI responses will cost. — Posted at 4:36 pm

Aug. 2, 2004

TERRORISM FEARS STIFLE ACCESS. Open records requesters from the Contra Costa Times who conducted a six-week audit of numerous California government agencies were met with suspicion, defensiveness, intimidation, needless delays, incompetence and ignorance, the paper reports. The requesters identified themselves only by name. One official who denied access said she did so partly because she is "told always to watch over my shoulder for terrorists." Other officials reportedly used the Internet to research and track down the requesters. — Posted at 6:21 pm

CONTRACTOR CASUALTIES IN IRAQ ACCELERATING. The Washington Post reports that at least 110 contractors working for U.S. firms have died in Iraq. Experts say the number of casualties could be far higher, given the tens of thousands of private contractors who have taken over duties for the military. The Pentagon does not keep an official count, and many companies do not announce when their employees in Iraq are killed. By comparison, there were seven contractor deaths in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, according to a report by the General Accounting Office, now the Government Accountability Office. The deaths have created an overlooked subculture of war-related grief, one in which contractors' families confront a bureaucracy that is largely inventing procedures on the fly. The Post reports that "inconsistent corporate responses and murky government procedures exacerbate families' already raw emotions. Unlike when soldiers and officers die in the line of duty, few fixed rules apply to contractor casualties." — Posted at 5:59 pm

FBI WHISTLEBLOWER CLAIMS RETALIATION. The Justice Department's inspector general is investigating claims by a former FBI Agent who says he was retaliated against after voicing concerns about how management problems at the agency had impeded terrorism investigations since the September 11 attacks, The New York Times reported today. Mike German left the bureau in mid-June after 16 years and is now going public for the first time. He is the latest in a string of FBI whistle-blowers. — Posted at 5:48 pm

DETAINEES ASSERT RIGHTS IN GUANTANAMO. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Friday ordered the government to explain why a Libyan national detained at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should not be released immediately - setting up a showdown this week between the court and the Bush administration over the fate of alleged enemy combatants locked up on the island, the Los Angeles Times reported. Separately, the Pentagon announced Friday that preliminary hearings would be held in August for four other detainees, marking the first steps toward military tribunals that will be conducted in a newly built courtroom at Guantanamo Bay. Meanwhile, The Associated Press reported that for the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks, a prisoner picked up as a potential terrorist and held nearly incommunicado at a U.S. prison in Cuba got a chance Friday to persuade his jailers that he should go free. The hearing at the Navy prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is the government's most visible response to a Supreme Court ruling last month that granted legal rights to about 600 foreign-born men held at the U.S. base. Finally on Friday, the Justice Department filed its first detailed response to lawsuits from Guantanamo detainees, The New York Times reported. The detainees have no constitutional rights, including the right to see a lawyer, the government said in federal court filings. The Supreme Court's ruling gave the Guantanamo prisoners a means to challenge their captivity in federal court, and the government will allow outside lawyers to help them, but that does not mean that wider constitutional protections apply, government lawyers wrote. — Posted at 5:37 pm

IG ISSUES REPORT ON IRAQ CONTRACTS. The Washington Post reports that an inspector general's audit has found significant cases of mismanagement, fraud, missing paperwork and manipulation in the award and execution of Iraqi rebuilding contracts. The report by the inspector general for the Coalition Provisional Authority, the Department of Defense entity that ruled Iraq until the recent transfer of sovereignty, does not name individuals or companies involved, but notes that 69 criminal investigations have resulted from the inspector's work. Many of the reconstruction contracts at issue were awarded without competitive bidding and without oversight. — Posted at 4:01 pm