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.

Apr. 28, 2005

MILITARY REPORTERS TO RUMSFELD: ALLOW UNFETTERED ACCESS TO COURT MARTIAL. Fourteen military ground rules that reporters must agree to before covering the court martial of U.S. Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar at Fort Bragg, N.C., sparked a coalition of media groups to write Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The rules are "an affront to the First Amendment rights of free speech and press" and should be immediately lifted, the letter says. Signed by Military Reporters & Editors and supported by other groups, including The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the letter blasts the ground rules, which range from a ban on interviewing soldiers to constant escorts to being subject to unannounced searches: Press access to U.S. courts, including military courts, is protected constitutionally and is essential to public confidence in government. For these reasons, the Manual for Courts-Martial United States recognizes that openness of court-martial proceedings is the default rule. We understand the right of access is not absolute. When presented with an appropriate compelling interest a judge can, upon notice to the public and an opportunity to be heard, order limited closure of a courtroom. This can be done only after finding no reasonable alternative will safeguard that interest and after providing for a narrow closure based on specific findings that can be reviewed on appeal. The purported "agreement" does not meet that test. — Posted at 11:07 am

Apr. 27, 2005

ITALIAN JOURNALIST BLASTS U.S. MILITARY PROBE. Guiliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist shot by U.S. troops last month as she was being whisked to freedom after being held hostage in Iraq, criticized a report that U.S. military generally followed rules of engagement and should not be charged with dereliction of duty. In a front page editorial in the left-wing paper she works for, Il Manifesto, Sgrena called on Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, to respond what she called a "slap in the face for the Italian Government." She claimed that the Americans had not listened to either her testimony or that of another Italian agent: "Obviously, our two testimonies given to the American commission were useless. Or will I be charged with perjury? "The greatest disappointment would be if our authorities were to accept this insult without reacting." — Posted at 12:09 pm

READERS, VIEWERS BECOMING NUMB TO IRAQ STORY, SAYS KR CORRESPONDENT. A clampdown on press access and lack of security in Iraq could eventually alienate readers and viewers, Knight Ridder's Baghdad bureau chief, Hannah Allam, told Brooke Gladstone of National Public Radio's "On the Media" program. During a visit to the U.S., Allam said a lot of readers and viewers are "numb to the story." "Readers have told me they're tired of reading car-bombing story after car bombing story. But to get out and to get out the really meaty features that we want, or to cover the reconstruction process, we would have to have levels of security that just isn't there. "So, I think we, we run the risk of boring our readers with the story, and they'll turn elsewhere, and perhaps there will be a significant troop withdrawal, and then the media will go with them, and then maybe we'll have an Afghanistan type situation.a place with still a lot of unrest, and no one really paying much attention." — Posted at 12:08 pm

Apr. 26, 2005

DANGER OF PASSPORT SKIMMING THE FOCUS OF FOI ACT REQUEST. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for government documents relating to computerized information chips the U.S. plans to place on all passports, GovExec.com reported today. The group is concerned about how far away a third party could stand and still be able to "skim" passport holders' private information. — Posted at 6:16 pm

ACCOUNTABILITY LIP SERVICE ALLEGED. The Army has sanctioned impunity in exonerating all but one senior officer in its last investigation of prisoner abuse, despite a "trail of documents" showing that abusive interrogation techniques were approved by senior military commanders and the defense secretary, an editorial in The Washington Post said today. Numerous senators promised accountability when Abu Ghraib first came to light, and now, the newspaper asked, "Have the senators forgotten their words?" — Posted at 6:14 pm

DECLASSIFICATION BOARD HAS CASH FLOW PROBLEMS. The Public Interest Declassification Board seems to be "hovering on the brink of extinction" for lack of funding, the Federation of American Scientists reported on its Web site today. The board's statutory purpose includes, among other things, recommending the "declassification of information of extraordinary public interest that does not undermine the national security of the United States." — Posted at 6:13 pm

STATE DEPARTMENT CLAMS UP AS TERRORIST ATTACK TALLY BOOMS. Congressional aides briefed on the number of terrorist attacks worldwide in 2004 say that it has risen to 650 from 175 in 2003, Reuters reported today. After the State Department recently announced it will no longer publicly release that figure, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., wrote a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying that "large increases in terrorist attacks reported in 2004 may undermine administration claims of success in the war on terror, but political inconvenience has never been a legitimate basis for withholding facts from the American people." — Posted at 6:12 pm

ARMY PINS BLAME ON KARPINSKI, NO ONE ELSE. An Army inspector general's report singles out one Army general officer, Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, for an administrative reprimand for dereliction of duty pertaining to military prisoner abuse, but essentially exonerates all others, The Washington Post reported. Although past investigative inquiries found senior leadership indirectly responsible for prisoner abuses via lapses in oversight, the inspector general's report is intended to be the last word on the issue. The findings, which have yet to be officially announced, are the result of "very thorough investigations," an Army spokesman said. — Posted at 11:15 am

FBI AGENT SPEAKS OUT, GETS CANNED. FBI agent Robert Wright, who in 2003 criticized the U.S. for not prosecuting Hamas activists domestically, has been told he is being fired in part for making those statements, The Washington Post reported. Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) have contacted FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to say they are worried about reports that Wright was being fired for whistleblowing activity, the newspaper said. — Posted at 11:13 am

FEDERAL AIR MARSHALS HAVE SPEECH RIGHTS, TOO A federal air marshall, Frank Terreri, has sued the Federal Air Marshal Service for "muzzling" him by prohibiting marshals from speaking to the public or the press, even about government policies that are public knowledge, court papers filed last week allege. Terreri wants to continue openly criticizing such rules as the air marshal dress code, which makes them easily identifiable to fellow passengers. The point in the lawsuit, said one of the lawyers representing Terreri, is to "return us to the constitutional model of robust public debate." — Posted at 11:12 am

INSURGENT ATTACKS NUMBER 40 TO 50 EVERY DAY. During a Defense Department briefing last week, spokesman Larry Di Rita estimated the number of insurgent attacks on coalition or Iraqi forces to be 40 to 50 every day. "More Iraqis are being killed than coalition forces," he said, because "they are trying to attack Iraqi elements of progress." — Posted at 11:10 am

\'NO FLY\' RECORDS INSPIRE HEAD SCRATCHING. A Freedom of Information Act request for information on the government's "no fly" list criteria unearthed some bizarre, not-too-helpful documents in October, The Monterey County Herald reported. Among the documents the Justice Department finally released, after being scolded by federal district Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco for not responding, was an email that vaguely pronounced that "no fly" criteria "involve things passengers might do which also might be things a terrorist would do." — Posted at 11:07 am

PORTLAND YANKS OFFICERS FROM FBI TASK FORCE THAT DISABLES LOCAL OVERSIGHT. After butting heads with the FBI over its grant of top-secret security clearance to two of its local police officers but not the city mayor or police chief, Portland, Ore., will become the first city to pull its police force out of the federal agency's Joint Terror Task Force, The New York Times reported Saturday. The lack of security clearance disabled normal departmental oversight because it left the high-ranking city officials in the dark as to what their own police officers were doing. Eventually the FBI said it would compromise and give security clearance to Portland's police chief, but still not the mayor. The city refused the offer and withdrew. — Posted at 11:04 am

BUSH SECRECY RILES... THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION? An article in Sunday's edition of The Boston Globe reported that since Sept. 11, Americans have lost vast quantities of formerly public information that isn't even sensitive enough to be considered classified under decades-old rules with clear criteria. Critics of the deepening secrecy include conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, which recently co-wrote a report lamenting that the Bush administration has never conducted a systemic review of hidden information to determine when openness might enhance public safety. Various examples of continuing needless secrecy cited by the article bear out that claim. — Posted at 11:02 am

DON\'T GET MAD, ACCUSE YOUR EMPLOYEES OF BIOTERRORISM! According to papers filed in federal court, an animal-nutrition researcher at the University of Nevada-Reno, blew the whistle on alleged animal abuse in the college's farms and labs and the school turned around and reported him to the FBI for what he calls a doctored charge of bioterrorism, The Associated Press reported. After Egypt-born Hussein S. Hussein reported animal abuse to the U.S. Department of Agriculture last year, the University of Nevada police department told the FBI that he could be housing dangerous microbes in his lab. Hussein told the AP that the university has approached him numerous times to settle, but that he will go to court to expose the truth. — Posted at 10:59 am

U.S. SOLDIERS CLEARED IN SHOOTING ITALIAN SECURITY AGENT, JOURNALIST. U.S. soldiers are not to blame for the March shooting that wounded Italian reporter Giuliana Sgrena and killed an Italian security agent, according to a Pentagon investigation into the matter. The U.S. soldiers involved will face no disciplinary action, a military official said. Italian officials, meanwhile, are blasting the report and calling for a fuller investigation, Reuters reported: Greens member of parliament Laura Cima called the findings "a big slap in the face for the Italian government" and said it should press for the truth "if it can find any pride at all." — Posted at 10:57 am

Apr. 25, 2005

AP CAMERAMAN KILLED, PHOTOGRAPHER WOUNDED IN MOSUL. Post-explosion gunfire in the northern city of Mosul killed a television cameraman working for The Associated Press and wounded an AP photographer Saturday. AP identified the victims, both Iraqis and brothers-in-law, as Associated Press Television News cameraman Saleh Ibrahim and photographer Mohammed Ibrahim. AP President and CEO Tom Curley ... said AP would ''fully investigate this tragic happening so we can understand the circumstances under which it occurred.'' The U.S. military released photographer Ibrahim Sunday after detaining him in the wake of the shooting, AP reported. — Posted at 5:21 pm

ONLY SLIGHTLY BEHIND THE THIRD WORLD. In a column in the Los Angeles Times, Floyd Abrams, attorney for reporters Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper in the Valerie Plame investigation, points out that when it comes to protecting journalists from revealing confidential sources, the U.S. lags behind much of the world. "This is a sad and ironic moment in the history of free speech," Abrams wrote. "What's ironic is that most other democracies have learned enough from the United States about the critical importance of free-speech protections that they know better than to punish journalists for keeping their promises." — Posted at 5:20 pm

Apr. 22, 2005

DISCONTINUATION OF STATE DEPARTMENT TERROR REPORT RAISES EYEBROWS. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., asked for an investigation this week after the State Department announced that after 19 years, it would no longer annually publish terrorist attack numbers, Reuters reported Thursday. The decision "denies the public access to information about the incidence of terrorism," he said in correspondence to the acting State Department inspector general in which he asked what political concerns, if any, motivated the discontinuation. The 2004 statistics contradicted the Bush administration's claims that the war on terror was making progress. A spokesman for the State Department, Richard Boucher, answered the press corps' questions about the decision on Monday morning, saying that responsibility for the report has simply been shifted to the National Counterterrorism Center because "the 9/11 Commission recommended and the Congress passed legislation called the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 that established the National Counterterrorism Center as the primary organization in the U.S. Government for analysis of global terrorism." — Posted at 3:53 pm

GOVERNMENT\'S USE OF STATE SECRETS PRIVILEGE \'RADICAL,\' ACLU SAYS. The American Civil Liberties Union argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit yesterday that the government's invocation of the state secrets privilege to shut down former government whistleblower Sibel Edmonds's retaliation lawsuit against the FBI was "radical," the organization's Web site reported. The state secrets privilege permits the government to block evidence disclosure that would harm national security. It is extremely rare that the government would use it to "dismiss an entire case at the outset," as it did with Edmonds's litigation. The FBI had not even filed an answer to her complaint when the case was dismissed. — Posted at 3:52 pm

PUBLIC HAS RIGHT TO KNOW WHERE CHEMICALS ARE STORED, STATE OFFICIALS SAYS. Members of local emergency planning committees should be prepared to answer citizens questions about what kind of chemicals are stored in their neighborhood, how much is there, and what emergency plans have been developed for them, an official with the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management told the [Arkansas] Courier News in an article that was published Thursday. Local emergency planning committees are currently being trained in Arkansas to comply with a recently issued executive order establishing a National Incident Management System. NIMS makes the receipt of federal emergency preparedness funds contingent on a jurisdiction's compliance with its guidelines. — Posted at 3:50 pm

BIN LADEN PRIVACY CONCERNS OUTWEIGH AMERICAN RIGHT TO KNOW. The FBI redacted data pertaining to Osama bin Laden in a recent FOI Act document production, invoking Exemption 6 to protect bin Laden's privacy, World Net Daily reported on its Web site yesterday. "It is difficult for me to imagine a greater insult to the American public," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. — Posted at 3:49 pm

Apr. 21, 2005

MORE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT DOCUMENTS REVEAL \'COMMAND CLIMATE.\' A batch of documents, newly released by the Defense Department in response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act request for detainee information, indicates that U.S. soliders abused detainees under a "command climate," the ACLU's Web site reported Tuesday. A staff sergeant accused of overseeing an abusive interrogation said, for instance, that senior-level comments that Geneva Conventions didn't apply created an atmosphere where it is a "short jump" for harsh interrogations "to become not only tolerated but encouraged." — Posted at 11:47 am

TSA SPENDING FACES CRITICISM, SUGGESTIONS. A new Transportation Security Administration operations center has been outfitted with silk plants and artwork to the tune of $500,000, according to a Homeland Security Department inspector general's report, The Washington Post reported. The three-year-old security agency has been accused of lavish spending in the past. On the same day, a second Homeland Security Department inspector general's report was released criticizing TSA screeners for missing knives and guns at security checkpoints. "The TSA has said it has been constrained by its limited budget to deploy new technologies," the paper reported. "That's why they can't afford to waste any money on $500,000 artwork and silk plants," a former Homeland Security inspector general quipped. — Posted at 11:45 am

FOI ACT LAWSUIT FOR \'ENEMY COMBATANT\' STATUS HEARING DOCUMENTS. The Associated Press sued the Defense Department on Tuesday under the Freedom of Information Act for documents pertaining to "enemy combatant" status hearings conducted by the U.S. military, the news wire reported Wednesday. The lawsuit, filed in federal court, calls the FOI Act request "a matter of urgent concern," considering individuals' constitutional rights are involved. The Associated Press first made a request for the documents in the fall, and has yet to receive any records. — Posted at 11:43 am

Apr. 20, 2005

HUMANITARIAN AID WORKER TO MEDIA: BONE UP ON MATH. Marla Ruzicka, a 28-year-old humanitarian aid worker who was killed Saturday in Baghdad, maintained in an op-ed piece in USA Today that the U.S. military can and does track civilian casualties. Much of the statistics involve piecing together U.S. military reports, Ruzicka reported: A good place to search for Iraqi civilian death counts is the Iraqi Assistance Center in Baghdad and the General Information Centers set up by the U.S. military across Iraq. — Posted at 1:46 pm

Apr. 19, 2005

DEMS DEMAND GONZALES GIVE PLAME PROGRESS. CNN reports that the nine Democratic members of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee have asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to explain why no charges have been brought in the investigation into who leaked undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity to the news media. An April 14 letter to Gonzales expressed "grave concern" that "Nearly two years have elapsed, and nobody has been held accountable for this serious violation of law." Gonzales, who handled the Bush administration's response to the investigation while serving as White House counsel, recused himself from the case upon being appointed as Attorney General. Gonzales responded to the representatives that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is "proceeding on a basis that he thinks is appropriate and that at the appropriate time the matter will come to a head." Fitzgerald noted in court documents filed earlier this month that the investigation is essentially complete except for the questioning of reporters Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller, who are fighting Fitzgerald's attempts to reveal their confidential sources. — Posted at 6:24 pm

RIGHT NAME, WRONG PERSON. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reports that The Associated Press has been added as a defendant in a lawsuit against CBS by a man whose photo was mistakenly identified as depiciting a terrorism suspect. Asif Iqbal, a 32-year-old Pittsford, NY, software engineer shares the same name with a British citizen nearly ten years younger who was held as a terrorism suspect by the U.S at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The younger Iqbal was released last year and is suing the U.S. government for abuse. A photo of the elder Iqbal was published in the Democrat and Chronicle in 2002 to illustrate a story about his mistakenly being placed on the government's "no fly" list over confusion between the identity of the two men. CBS and AP later used the photo but mistakenly said it depicted the younger Iqbal. — Posted at 6:21 pm

STATE DEPARTMENT SNAFU WON\'T BE REPEATED. After this year, the State Department needn't worry that it will publish incorrect terror statistics again because it will relinquish responsibility for the 2006 report to the newly created National Counterterrorism Center, Yahoo's Web site reported Monday. Last year, the State Department reported a decline in world terrorism when in fact terrorism had increased during the studied period, sparking accusations that the Bush administration was trying to doctor its record. — Posted at 6:20 pm

GOVERNMENT DIDN\'T PROVIDE SUFFICIENT SECURITY INFORMATION TO GET INJUNCTION, COURT SAYS. Federal Judge Emmet G. Sullivan refused to issue an injunction against Washington, D.C.' s ban on hazardous rail traffic due to the "absence of key facts" relating to irreparable harm to the railroad's balance sheet or federal security, The Washington Post reported Monday. The injunction was sought in federal litigation challenging the constitutionality of the D.C. rail traffic ban on the basis of federal control of interstate commerce. The federal government said it planned to appeal Sullivan's decision. — Posted at 6:18 pm

STATE SECRETS PRIVILEGE BEFORE D.C. CIRCUIT ON THURSDAY. An ACLU press release, posted online by the Federation of American Scientists today, reported that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will convene oral arguments Thursday morning to consider whether the U.S. can invoke the state secrets privilege to prevent disclosure of information relevant to government whistleblower Sibel Edmonds's retaliation lawsuit against the FBI. The ACLU will hold a briefing on the issue on Wednesday. — Posted at 6:16 pm

PUT THE WAR IN THE BUDGET. Senators approved 61-31 a non-binding resolution that calls for projected war costs to appear in the budget instead of in the series of stop-gap spending bills that so far have paid for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The measure amends a bill to provide $81 billion in "emergency" funds. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) introduced the bill which Reuters News Service says expresses the Senate's distaste for the way the war has been funded but does not force the White House to provide the information in annual budgets. Byrd said that funding the war piecemeal and unbudgeted has caused a "thoroughly disjointed and discombobulated federal budget." — Posted at 6:14 pm

AL-JAZEERA OUT IN IRAN. Al-Jazeera offices in Tehran have been closed by Iranian authorities, according to a news item first reported today by the United Kingdom's Media Guardian, which wrote that Al-Jazeera said it had been told to stop broadcasting in Iran and that it has appealed to the Iranian government to reverse that decision. The Arabic network reported unrest in Iran near the Iraq border that has led to 200 arrests and discussed it on talk shows, triggering a government investigation. — Posted at 6:13 pm

SUPREME COURT MAY BE NEXT STOP FOR PLAME CASE. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., declined to rehear the case of two reporters held in contempt for refusing to reveal their confidential sources to the grand jury investigating the leak of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity, Reuters reports. In February, a three-judge panel of the court ordered Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine to testify in the investigation under subpoenas issued by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. The only remaining avenue of appeal is for the U.S. Supreme Court to agree to hear the case. Both Miller and Cooper have previously said that they would appeal to the high court. — Posted at 6:11 pm

\"I (CENSORED) YOU, DAD.\' A letter written by small children to their father at Guantanamo Bay was heavily censored by the U.S. military before being given to him, the Gulf Daily News reported Monday, leading the detainee's lawyer to claim that there need to be more checks on the powers exercised by Americans at the facility. "We are missing one thing and that's you. We want you to be sitting with us, eating dinner. (censored). laughing and being happy." — Posted at 6:10 pm

WMD COMMISSION VIOLATED FACA, LAWSUIT ALLEGES. The Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation sued the WMD Commission earlier this month alleging that the panel did not comply with the Federal Advisory Committee Act's openness requirements, the Federation of American Scientists, which published the complaint, reported yesterday. — Posted at 6:09 pm

COMMISSION SPEAKS OUT ON LEVERAGING GOVERNMENT ANSWERS TO INFO REQUESTS. Even though the WMD Commission did not have subpoena powers, the commissioners created an equally effective way to assure White House responsiveness to their inquiries: the threat of en masse resignation if their questions were not answered, The Washington Times said in an article last week. Commission co-chair Laurence Silberman confirmed that he "did occasionally have to remind the White House of the commitment I had made to resign to focus their attention." The article also discusses the commission's decision to craft an unclassified version of its report instead of redacting a classified version with black boxes. Its goal was simply to create a "more readable" public report, but freedom of information advocates complained that at least with black boxes, the reader knows that something is being hidden from him. — Posted at 6:07 pm

GOVERNMENT SAYS THAT MAPS HAVE TO GO. An article in Sunday's New York Times reported on many novel tech issues, among them the federal government's security-motivated removal, as of Oct. 1, of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's topographic maps from the public domain. — Posted at 6:07 pm

SOUTHERN COMMAND RELEASES SUMMARY REPORT WITH DETAINEE DETAILS. The military recently declassified a report summary revealing details about Guantanamo Bay detainees, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday. The official explanation of the release is that the report was meant to answer "general questions from the public about the operations of the joint task force," but the article speculated it was more of a propaganda tool to drum up public support for the idea that the continuing value of Gitmo interrogations should not be interrupted by courts. The summary reveals many previously unknown detainee details, such as their education levels and alleged connections to Al Qaeda. — Posted at 5:26 pm

SECRECY DOES NOT SECURITY MAKE. In an editorial yesterday, The Washington Post criticized President Bush's recent statement at the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention that his administration's use of secrecy is becoming more and more attuned to security needs. "What's less recognized," the Post asserted, "is that secrecy can be harmful" to security. The newspaper recounted the National Academy of Science's recent experience that restrictions on information "are hindering progress in addressing potential [nuclear] vulnerabilities." — Posted at 5:25 pm

Apr. 18, 2005

A YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY. Reporters in Iraq remain in danger, despite recently held elections and a drop in the number of American deaths, according to a panel of war reporters. Editor & Publisher reported that many correspondents find reporting from Iraq "dangerous and difficult" and have trouble leaving their bureaus for more than 20 minutes at a time. Hannah Allam, Baghdad bureau chief for Knight Ridder Newspapers, ... said that until two weeks ago she used to hang out at a salon in a relatively upscale, safe neighborhood of Baghdad. It was a respite from the violence of the country, and she could converse in Arabic with locals. "It was a watering hole where you gather story ideas," she said. "Kinda my refuge." But on a recent trip her cell phone rang and she answered with a very American "hello," which blew her cover. "It was like in a movie where the forks drop and everyone stops," Allam said. — Posted at 5:57 pm

VIOLATE MILITARY COURT RULES, LOSE ACCESS. To cover the court martial of Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar, accused of killing two military officers in Kuwait in March 2003 during the opening days of the Iraq war, a reporter from The (Pennsylvania) Express-Times had to agree to 14 ground rules. They range from being subject to unannounced searches to being almost constantly escorted. "When I go to the men's room, my military escort waits patiently outside." — Posted at 5:55 pm

INTEL NOMINEE SAYS HE WILL NOT ALLOW POLITICAL SPIN TO COLOR DATA. Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, poised to become the principal deputy director of national intelligence pending Senate confirmation, told the Senate Intelligence Committee last week that he has been blunt in providing intelligence assessments during his 35-year military career, even when that meant facing "unpleasant facts," The New York Times reported on Friday. It was the intelligence community's obligation to prevent policy makers from manipulating intelligence data for political purposes, he said. — Posted at 5:53 pm

BUSH DISCUSSES FOIA AT ASNE CONFERENCE. In his speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors last Thursday, President Bush said of the Freedom of Information Act that "I know there is a feeling that we are too security conscious. I think we are becoming balanced," Editor and Publisher reported. In response to a question about why so many government documents were withheld, he said that he believed in open government, but "you are not entitled to read my mail between my daughters and me." "There are three-and-a-half million FOIA requests a year. That is a lot. I would hope that those who examine FOIA documents realize the difference between that which is necessary to release and that which would be a security risk." — Posted at 5:48 pm

GAO SAYS MILITARY IS WASTING BILLIONS, PROPOSES ACCOUNTABILITY REFORM. Comptroller General David Walker of the Government Accountability Office, Congress's nonpartisan and investigative arm, told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee that the military is wasting billions of dollars a year due to ineffective business management, Reuters reported on Thursday. Though Defense Department officials claim a commitment to improving their accounting, he said, no real progress has been made. Walker recommended that the Defense Department create a "chief manager," who would be the third-ranking official at the Pentagon, to assure more financial transparency and accountability. "That is the last thing we need," responded Under Secretary of Defense Michael Wynne, "another layer." — Posted at 5:46 pm

SUIT SEEKS GITMO ABUSE VIDEOTAPES. Last week's federal Freedom of Information Act lawsuit demanding information pertaining to Guantanamo Bay detainee abuse alleges that the government probably videotaped the beatings and should produce the tapes, The Washington Post wrote on Thursday. The military videotapes detainee disturbances and makes written accounts of the tapes' contents, the newspaper said. — Posted at 5:44 pm

Apr. 15, 2005

ROBB-SILBERMAN COMMISSION SECRECY PROBED. Washington Post writer Dan Froomkin reported on a discussion by President Bush of the tension between making things public and jeopardizing the war on terror and putting people's lives at risk, using as an example of the proper balance the Weapons of Mass Destruction report by the Robb-Silberman Commission where people would be "surprised" to learn that 90 per cent of the report was declassified. Froomkin wrote that some people were instead surprised at how secretive the commission was all along. Its meetings were entirely closed to the public. Its deliberative procedures were a mystery. Even the location of its offices was never disclosed. Official witnesses were almost entirely from within the ranks of current or recent administration officials. Last week the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation sued the Commission claiming it violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act, one of two federal laws requiring open meetings. — Posted at 7:34 pm

NEW REPORT ON TILLMAN\'S DEATH KEPT SECRET. Because the family of the late Cpl. Pat Tillman does not want made public a report on the friendly fire that killed him, the U.S. Army will not release its second report on Tillman's death, a military spokesman said today. Because the family of Tillman raised questions about his death, investigators spent four months gathering information and preparing the now-secret report on what happened to Tillman who died in a remote canyon in Afghanistan. The spokesman said that the family had been briefed on the report, which essentially substantiated findings in a report released in May, but asked that it not be made public. Tillman left a professional football career with the Arizona Cardinals to join fight with Army Rangers. The Army's first publications about his death attributed it to enemy fire. — Posted at 7:20 pm

ITALY SAYS, AMERICA SAYS. An American-Italian inquiry into the March shooting by U.S. troops that wounded Italian reporter Giuliana Sgrena and killed an Italian security agent is being stymied by Italian investigators' reluctance to accept the U.S. version of events, Italian newspapers reported, according to The Associated Press. Italy agrees that the shooting was an accident, but disputes key elements of the U.S. account, the news service reported. Sgrena, shot as she was being driven to freedom after being held hostage in Iraq for a month, gave a detailed account of the shooting on "60 Minutes Wednesday," saying that the Pentagon's version of the shooting is "a lie" and that soldiers opened fire on her car without any warning. — Posted at 7:12 pm

CASE OF KENYA TERROR SUSPECT MAY BE ON SECRET DOCKET. U.S. officials are planning to try to extradite two men allegedly in connection with the 1998 bombing of the American embassy in Kenya, a lawyer for one of the suspects told The Associated Press. A suspect must first be indicted in the U.S. before he can be extradited, but Mohamed Ali Saleh Nabhan's name does not appear in the federal court system's electronic index, according to the AP. Indictments "can be filed under seal and made public at a later date," AP noted. — Posted at 7:10 pm

ABRAMS WEIGHS IN, BUSH BOWS OUT. Judith Miller and Mattew Cooper's attorney in the Valerie Plame investigation, Floyd Abrams, believes that the U.S. Supreme Court is likely to rule in favor of reporters' ability to protect confidential sources if it agrees to take the case, Editor & Publisher reports. At panel discussion on freedom of information at the American Society of Newspaper Editors conference in Washington, D.C., Abrams said, "I think there are six positive votes and three not positive. I would say our chances are better of getting something good out of the court than having the court take it. I think the very interest in the case has been very helpful." At least four justices must vote to accept the case for the court to hear it, and Abrams did not identify which justices he thought would vote to accept or decline the case. At a Q&A after a speech a few hours later at the conference, when asked whether he thought Miller and Cooper should have to testify, President Bush answered "Why don't we let the courts decide." Bush said, "You think I'm going there, you're crazy. I'm not going to talk about it. We are all under the microscope on this issue." — Posted at 7:07 pm

Apr. 14, 2005

NEW FOI ACT LAWSUIT DEMANDS MORE DETAINEE TORTURE INFORMATION. A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in federal court in Massachusetts this week seeks information pertaining to U.S. detainee torture at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, The Boston Globe reported Wednesday. The information requested by Bosnian detainees claiming abuse includes their medical and psychiatric files. They have been waiting since September for a response from the Justice and Defense Departments. — Posted at 5:27 pm

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SECRECY ANGERS SPECTER. The Justice Department has not adequately produced information relating to its use of the USA PATRIOT Act, despite the fact that Congress has accommodated its secrecy needs with classified hearings, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., complained this week, The New York Times reported Wednesday. Specter is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over the hearings, and claimed that Justice Department officials have now "got the message" and would produce more information. — Posted at 5:26 pm

\'POOR PERFORMANCE\' POORLY EXPLAINED, NEWSPAPER SAYS. A State Department report given to Congress last week didn't explain the poor performance and excess spending that motivated the U.S. in January to threaten to terminate a reconstruction contract with KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary, The New York Times reported. KBR has since taken steps to resolve what a company spokesperson called "cost reporting issues." — Posted at 5:24 pm

AUDITS SHOW HALLIBURTON OVERCHARGE, WAXMAN URGES INVESTIGATION. Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., released five audit summary reports this week corresponding to U.S. military contracts with KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary, The Washington Post reported. In one of the audits, the propriety of nearly 50 percent of the contract total was questioned. Waxman urged a congressional investigation. A Halliburton spokesperson said that the auditors had not considered that KBR had had to maneuver in a wartime environment. — Posted at 5:20 pm

Apr. 13, 2005

SECRECY HOSPITABLE TO CORRUPTION. Commenting on the record high number of classified "black budget" items for Defense Department acquisitions, Secrecy News editor Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists writes: >From a public policy perspective, the concern raised by classified spending is that it sharply diminishes the quality and quantity of independent oversight, and provides a hospitable environment for corruption, waste or mere incompetence. Aftergood recalls the October 2001 directive from senior Air Force acquisitions official Darleen A. Druyan that "Effective immediately, I do not want anyone within the Air Force acquisition community discussing any of our programs with the media (on or off the record)," and he suggests that her "devotion to strict secrecy" might have been less than patriotic given her conviction last year of corrupt practices accompanied by a sentence to nine months in the Marianna, Fla., women's prison. — Posted at 4:26 pm

BOSNIAN DETAINEES FILE FOI LAWSUIT. Lawyers for six Bosnian detainees of Algerian descent filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Bonston today saying the government ignores Freedom of Information requests concerning the alleged torture of clients who have been held at Guantanamo since October 2001. The Associated Press reported the court filings today. — Posted at 1:46 pm

SECRET SERVICE INVESTIGATES ART EXHIBIT. A college art exhibit in Chicago that includes a postage stamp depicting George Bush with a gun pointed at his head and bearing the phrase "Patriot Act" drew a visit last week from Secret Service agents, who photographed the exhibit and asked for the artist's contact information. The work, part of an exhibit entitled "Axis of Evil: The Secret History of Sin," was not confiscated, but the exhibit's curator told The Associated Press he was frightened all the same. Publicity surrounding the incident has caused a sharp rise in attendance at the Columbia College art gallery, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The college defended its decision to host the "controversial" exhibit today in the Chicago Tribune. — Posted at 11:04 am

Apr. 12, 2005

FEDS MUM ON WHY TEENAGED GIRL HELD AS \'SUICIDE BOMBER.\' The New York Times reported Monday that teachers and classmates of a 16-year-old Guinean girl are mystified as to why the FBI has called the popular teen, now being held in a Pennsylvania immigrant detention center, a would-be suicide bomber. A federal official gave the Times a government document last week alleging that the girl and another 16-year-old, both Muslim, are "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based on evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers." There was no evidence cited and federal officials refuse to comment. An editorial in today's Times, said "the post-9/11 world involves two competing nightmares. One imagines another terrorist attack that occurs because authorities fail to respond to signs of danger. The other is about innocent people who are arrested by mistake and held indefinitely because authorities are too frightened, or embarrassed, to admit their errors. We have to be equally vigilant against both." — Posted at 3:05 pm

MAN CLAIMS HE WAS WRONGLY TARGETED AS ISLAMIC MILITANT. Authorities are investigating an allegation by a Lebanese-born German citizen who claims he was kidnapped in Macedonia, beaten, blindfolded and transported to Afghanistan, where American intelligence agents questioned him for hours on end, The Los Angeles Times reports. Khaled el-Masri, who disappeared while on holiday in Macedonia and did not return for five months, was never charged with a crime. — Posted at 2:17 pm

AP SEEKS TO DISMISS SEAL SUIT. The Associated Press reports that it has asked a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Navy SEALs and the wife of one of the soldiers for AP's publishing of photos of the men allegedly abusing prisoners in Iraq. AP obtained the photos after the wife of one of the soldiers posted them on a Website she mistakenly believed to be private. The suit alleges invasion of privacy and copyright violations. Five SEALs originally sued, but one has dropped out. — Posted at 2:15 pm

WISCONSIN COUNTY PUBLICIZES CHEMICAL STORAGE. Since the 1980's Waukesha County in Wisconsin has protected the public's right to know by requiring public filings whenever hazardous chemicals are housed inside county lines, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. In addition to letting residents know what they're living near, the disclosure law also gives firefighters and other emergency response workers the knowledge they need to protect themselves when going on a call. Local companies, who have generally embraced the law, say that they consider disclosing details about their chemical stashes to be a "good business practice." — Posted at 2:13 pm

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION OPERATES OUT OF \'COCOON,\' NEWSPAPER SAYS. An editorial in Saturday's New York Times criticized the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's incorrect determination - made from its "hermetically sealed cocoon" - that spent-fuel pools at reactor sites pose an extremely low nuclear terrorism risk. The NRC "endlessly" fought a congressionally commissioned follow-up investigation of the issue by the National Academy of Sciences, the Times noted, by refusing to share information with the panel on numerous issues. — Posted at 2:11 pm

U.S. NO-FLY LIST FORCES TRANS-ATLANTIC FLIGHT TO DO U-TURN. The U.S. ordered a trans-Atlantic KLM flight back to Europe last week just as it was about to enter American airspace because two passengers appeared on its top secret no-fly lists, the MSNBC Web site reported on Sunday. The passengers' names weren't released, and a KLM spokesman noted the irregularity of the incident, since European no-fly lists usually catch individuals whose names appear on the U.S.'s. — Posted at 2:10 pm

SATELLITE PHOTOS OF WHITE HOUSE AND CAPITOL BUILDING ARE CENSORED. Google maps offers a new satellite feature where users can see close-up photography of the addresses they're searching for, John Cook wrote on his Reference Tone Web site on Apr. 6, but images of the White House and Capitol have been doctored and blurred. — Posted at 2:09 pm

Apr. 11, 2005

DISCLOSURE PROMOTES RISK REDUCTION. The Congressional Research Service's report to Congress on Chemical Plant Security, updated in February, was just made available by the Federation of American Scientists. Assessing federal requirements for reducing risks at chemical facilities, CRS describes the reporting and disclosure requirements of the Emergency Response and Community Right-to-Know Act, passed in the wake of the 1984 Bhopal accident. An aid to planning, disclosure also promotes the reduction of risk: For example, facility managers concerned about community relations sometimes reduce use of particularly toxic or otherwise hazardous materials, sometimes to the point that they no longer have to report, because they no longer handle reportable quantities of EPCRA chemicals. In other cases, the public disclosure requirement may encourage them to change chemical processes and handling in order to reduce the risk of reportable spills. — Posted at 5:01 pm

BLACK BUDGET BACK AND STRONG. Washington Times reporters Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough reported Friday that 'black" budget items - secret classified budget entries - in the Bush administration's proposed budget Fiscal Year 2006 reach $28 billion, the highest figure since the 1988 budget near the end of the cold war. The reporters credit the finding to Stephen M. Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. — Posted at 3:34 pm

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT STILL REFUSES TO DIVULGE RAIL SECURITY STRATEGY AROUND D.C. Thwarting a judge's efforts to encourage negotiations in a private railroad company's lawsuit challenging Washington, D.C.'s impending ban on hazardous rail cargo traffic through the city, top federal officials have decided that they do not want to share their secret safety plans with the city, The Washington Post reported on Friday. The nation's capital had been willing to postpone its ban to consider the adequacy of the federal government's rail security around the city, but city council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3) said that she wasn't surprised at the secrecy-prone Bush administration's decision refused to share the information. "I can't remember the last time parties in my court refused to even talk about settlement," U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said. — Posted at 10:36 am

FIRST RESPONDERS\' RIGHT TO KNOW HAZARDS TRUMPS TERRORIST BULLS-EYE THEORY, CHERTOFF SAYS. Noting that "the input of the first responder community" played an important role in the decision, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced last week that trains with hazardous cargo would continue to be placarded, Congressional Quarterly's Homeland Security Review reported. In a speech at the National Fire and Emergency Services Dinner in Washington, Chertoff said that even though he recognized how placards could give terrorists a bulls-eye to target, he also was aware of "the need that [first responders] have to understand the hazards that they are going to face." — Posted at 10:32 am

FORGED DOCUMENT ACCUSES OUTSPOKEN REPORTER OF ESPIONAGE. An interview transcript published on National Public Radio's "On The Media" Web site on Mar. 25 chronicles what journalist Bill Arkin believes was an attempt to use a fabricated document to intimidate him from continuing to report on "what the public has a right to know and what the military should keep secret." The document, which has since been confirmed to be a forgery by the Defense Department, alleged that Arkin had been a spy for Saddam Hussein. When asked to comment on the plight of modern whistleblowers, Arkin said: "I think what is happening now in the Bush administration is that we see sort of three things happening at the same time. One is this trend towards greater personal attack; two is a tremendous increase in secrecy, even trivial secrecy, particularly at new departments, like the Department of Homeland Security; and then, three, I think, is the dilution of the protection of federal employees who might step forward to speak about improprieties." — Posted at 10:29 am

MORE PUBLIC PARTICIPATION DESIRABLE IN ADDRESSING AMERICAN VULNERABILITY TO TERRORISM, NAS SAYS. A National Academy of Sciences committee report urges more public participation in addressing American vulnerability to terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities, the Federation of American Scientists reports. "Sharing information with the public is essential in a nation with strong democratic traditions. for reducing the potential for severe environmental, health, economic, and psychological consequences from terrorist attacks should they occur," the committee opined, advising "more constructive interaction with the public." — Posted at 10:26 am

DEFENSE DEPARTMENT DISABLES WEB LINK TO CRITICIZED DRAFT DOCUMENT. One day after Human Rights Watch criticized a proposed Pentagon policy on U.S. detainee operations, the Federation of American Scientists reported that the draft, which had until then been available on the Defense Department's Web site, had suddenly been replaced by "File Not Found." The proposed policy on U.S. detainee operations states that an individual who is an "enemy combatant" is "not entitled to the privileges and protections of the Geneva Conventions," Human Rights Watch reported on its Web site last week. The organization warned that "this policy could strip hundreds of thousands of people worldwide - including civilians - of their basic rights not to be detained." The Joint Chiefs of Staff-authored document, which is currently only in draft stages, will eventually be submitted to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for approval. Whether a detainee is considered an enemy combatant has to do with his or her affiliation with "terrorists or terrorist groups" listed in a 2001 Executive Order from President Bush. The proposal also seeks to delineate a clear chain of command that would address the confusion over who was responsible for detainee abuses in Iraq, The Washington Post reported on Friday, noting that soldiers at Abu Ghraib claimed not to have known who was in charge. — Posted at 10:21 am

SQUATTERS SET UP SHOP IN IRAQI \'SCHOOL\' PAID FOR BY U.S. A government report stamped "Official Use Only" details how an Army trip to distribute school supplies to children at a U.S.-built school in Mosul turned into a fiasco, The Washington Post reported. Seeing as how the heart-warming event was "of the type the Pentagon says it wants the media to cover more often," the Army took a reporter along for the ride. But when the group arrived, a solitary Iraqi family was found squatting in the building, instead of the anticipated throngs of needy students. The Army report practically breathed a sigh of relief when the embedded reporter decided not to write a story about the excursion, "which could have made us look bad, since we didn't know what was going on with the school after we funded its construction." — Posted at 10:19 am

LIBRARIES GIVE RECORDS WITHOUT PATRIOT ACT, TESTIMONY REVEALS The PATRIOT Act provision giving the government power to investigate an individual's library records has never been used because libraries have granted access to such records voluntarily, FBI Director Robert Mueller told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on April 5, The Christian Science Monitor reported last week. The oversight hearing testimony came just one day after the Justice Department released information about its use of the controversial law, much of it for the first time. Upon hearing that some libraries had voluntarily surrendered patrons' records, the American Library Association's Deputy Director Patrice McDermott said, "It's a core principle of our profession that user records are confidential. If you're not free to read and research and think, you don't have freedom of speech." — Posted at 10:16 am

Apr. 8, 2005

U.S. MILITARY DETAINS CAMERAMAN FOR SUSPECTED INSURGENCY. U.S. military officials said Friday that they detained a cameraman with CBS press credentials in Iraq on suspicion of insurgent activity, The Associated Press reported. The cameraman, whom the military said Tuesday was shot by U.S. forces after his camera was mistaken for a weapon, was detained under suspicion of posting "an imperative threat to coalition forces," the military said Friday. CBS is investigating. — Posted at 4:53 pm

MISCOUNT MISLEADING ON MILITARY CASUALTIES. Salon correspondent Mark Benjamin told National Public Radio's "On the Media" that the Defense Department is undercounting casualties in Iraq by ennumerating only persons who are directly hit in combat. For instance, if a driver is hit he will be counted, but if others in the vehicle are wounded or killed as a result of the hit, they are not counted as casualties. Benjamin said this violates the department's own policies on counting the dead and wounded. — Posted at 4:51 pm

APPEALS COURT QUESTIONS DETAINEE\'S RIGHT TO ATTEND TRIAL. A three-member federal appeals court panel in Washington, D.C., questioned whether Osama bin Laden's driver - whose military-commission trial was halted last November after a federal judge declared it illegal - has a right to attend his own trial in its entirety, The Associated Press reports. Prosecutors, in the name of national security, want to bar Salim Ahmed Hamdan from part of his trial so they can present classified evidence that only his lawyers would be able to see. The Nov. 8, 2004 ruling by U.S. District Judge James Robertson in Hamdan's favor is one of the legal and judicial events pertaining to Guantanamo Bay in a timeline published by The Miami Herald . — Posted at 4:49 pm

FEDS TO UNSEAL RECORDS IN DETAINEE BEATING CASE. Federal prosecutors have agreed to a media coalition's demand to unseal unclassified documents in the case of a CIA paramilitary team member charged with beating an Afghan deatinee who later died while in U.S. custody. The News & Observer, The Washington Post and The Associated Press had asked a federal judge last month to unseal the unclassified information in the case against David Passaro, claiming the government was secretly prosecuting the first U.S. citizen charged under the PATRIOT Act. — Posted at 4:47 pm

SENATE HEARING ON PATRIOT ACT PUTS SPOTLIGHT ON JUSTICE DEPARTMENT CONTRADICTIONS. During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the desirability of renewing provisions of the PATRIOT Act, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to explain the Justice Department's failure to responsibly produce information for congressional oversight of the statute's use, an article on the Wired.com Web site reported. As an example, Leahy pointed to a Defense Department email that had been produced heavily redacted pursuant to one FOI Act request, and completely unredacted pursuant to another. Gonzales said he needed time to justify the vastly different FOI Act responses. Gonzales had used the hearing to argue that critics of the PATRIOT Act have never been able to point to instances of abuse or misuse, a claim that is directly contradicted by a recent ACLU letter, written at the behest of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., which chronicles alleged abuses. — Posted at 4:45 pm

HALLIBURTON SUBSIDIARY WON\'T RECEIVE $55.1 MILLION ON CONTRACT FROM ARMY. A billing dispute between the U.S. and KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary providing food services for troops in Iraq, has been resolved with the Army keeping $ 55.1 million on a food services contract, the Los Angeles Times reported. The billing confusion resulted from the Army's belief that KBR would charge only for food it actually served to troops. KBR, on the other hand, thought that since it had to be prepared to serve certain minimums at each dining hall, it should be compensated for that food. — Posted at 4:43 pm

Apr. 6, 2005

GONZALES ADMITS PATRIOT ACT USED IN MAYFIELD PROBE. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales corrected himself before Congress yesterday, acknowledging what the Associated Press reported last week: that feds used portions of the controversial Patriot Act to secretly investigate Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield, who was wrongly accused in the Madrid train bombing. Gonzales said section 218, which removes the necessity of probable cause to secure a search warrant in certain cases, was used "in some sense." Wired News offers a description of other controversial sections of the Act, including 213 and 215. On the same day that Gonzales urged Congress to renew the 16 Patriot Act provisions set to expire at the end of the year, three Democratic senators and one Republican proposed the SAFE Act to scale back some of the Patriot Act's most hotly contested provisions, the Durango Herald reports. — Posted at 6:31 pm

SHARING INFORMATION ESSENTIAL. In a public version of a report on safety and security of stored spent nuclear fuels issued today by a committee sponsored by the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science, authors delineate the problems of communication between the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the nuclear power industry on vulnerability analyses by the agency; about classification restrictions that prevented the committee from seeing safeguards information; about the frustrations of commission staff at not being able, for security reasons, to provide useful information to the industry. The committee wrote that more information could be shared without compromising national security -- sharing information with industry is necessary to ensure actions to reduce vulnerabilities. Further it said: [S]haring information with the public is essential in a nation with strong democratic traditions for sustaining public confidence in the Commission as an effective regulator o the nucleqar industry, and for reducing the potential for severe environmental, health, economic, and psychological consequences from terrorist attacks should they occur. — Posted at 6:30 pm

BUSH ADMINISTRATION THWARTS CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT.. The Bush administration thwarts congressional oversight of secret terror suspect detentions by limiting information access to a mere handful of congressional members, The New York Times reported on Wednesday. The information about secret detentions is so sensitive, according to the White House, that it only permits the top Republican and Democrat on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to have access to it even though it claims to take Congress's oversight role "very seriously." Rep. Rush Holt, D-NJ, scoffed at the idea that letting two members of Congress "sometimes get briefed" is enough. "It's too much to expect them to do oversight on things they can't talk about to anyone else, including other members," he said. — Posted at 1:29 pm

GOVERNMENT CONTINUES TO INCREASE SECRECY, ISOO REPORT SHOWS. The Information Security Oversight Office's 2004 annual report, which can be found posted on its Web site, has been sent to President Bush. In an accompanying letter, the report's stated goal is to provide "information on the status of the security classification program," and to that end ISOO has found that the federal government took 15.6 million classification actions in 2004, trumping what has previously been its record, 2003's 14.2 million classifications. — Posted at 1:28 pm

STILL NO RULING ON PATRIOT ACT CHALLENGE. Sixteen months after hearing arguments in the ACLU's challenge to the constitutionality of the PATRIOT Act, U.S. Distrcit Judge Denise Page Hood has yet to rule in the case, reports Metro Times of Detroit. The ACLU's Michigan chapter filed its suit in July 2003, arguing that the Act's section 215 - set to expire this year - violates the First and Fourth Amendments. Section 215 allows the FBI to search and seize records and belongings without probable cause, and forbids those ordered to produce such records or belongings from talking about it. — Posted at 1:26 pm

PATRIOT ACT DATA DEBATED, PROBLEMS SHOWN. The Justice Department has released data summarizing its use of the PATRIOT Act's search-and-seizure power during the past 22 months, The Boston Globe reported yesterday. The release of the data came on the eve of a Senate Judiciary Committee investigating whether the PATRIOT Act's provisions should be renewed. The ACLU has says the data shows that the Justice Department overuses the powers, often in contexts beyond its intended scope. An article in Monday's The Kansas City Star elaborated that theory, noting that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has been trumpeting the PATRIOT Act's success by using the example of how it helped to safely recover "a baby cut from her murdered mother in December in Missouri." Critics say that in a case such as that, "the defendants are run-of-the-mill criminals, not the terrorists who were supposedly the act's chief targets." — Posted at 1:23 pm

EDITORIAL: SECRET COURT HEARING OK TO DISCUSS TRAIN SECURITY. A judge's decision to hold a closed-door hearing Monday to examine federal security plans for trains carrying hazardous materials through Washington, D.C. was "understandable," The Washington Post said in an editorial. The hearing before U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan was part of the federal government's lawsuit against the District challenging a ban on the shipping of most toxic chemicals within 2.2 miles of the Capitol. The law, due to take effect next week, was born of a "legitimate" concern for a terrorist attack on trains, the paper said. — Posted at 1:22 pm

AS MANY AS FOUR CIA \"GHOST\" CIA DETAINEES DIED AT ABU GHRAIB. Testimony from Abu Ghraib military intelligence and police indicate that as many as four "ghost" CIA detainees died at the prison, Reuters reported on Monday. Until now, the CIA has only officially admitted that one unregistered detainee died at the prison. CIA officials have dismissed the allegations as unsubstantiated hearsay, Reuters said. — Posted at 11:29 am

FEDS: SEALED RECORDS MAKE IT HARD TO RESPOND TO FOI REQUEST. Dan Christensen of the Daily Business Review in Miami reports that although the Justice Department dropped its controversial $373,000 pricetag to comply with a Freedom of Information request by People for the American Way, the feds will still have trouble responding because sealing entire cases is "not as rare as it seems," a federal lawyer told a judge in Washington, D.C. last month. The group has asked for information on the frequency of government-hidden court cases involving immigrant detainees after 9/11. — Posted at 11:25 am

CAMERA OR WEAPON?: JOURNALIST SHOT BY U.S. TROOPS. A U.S. soldier who mistook a television news camera for a weapon shot an Iraqi journalist working for CBS News in northern Iraq, according to the network and Reuters news service reports. Abdul Amir Younis Hussein, a freelance reporter and cameraman, was taken to a military hospital for minor wounds after being shot in the hip. The incident, which the Pentagon is calling a "complex and volatile situation," is under investigation. — Posted at 11:23 am

PLAME PROBE NEARLY COMPLETE. Newsday reports that according to court documents recently filed by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald in the Valerie Plame investigation, the only thing left to be completed is the questioning of reporters Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller. Miller and Cooper are appealing contempt citations for refusing to testify in the investigation about their confidential sources. In two motions filed in in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., Fitzgerald disclosed that his investigation has been "for all practical purposes" complete since October, and that only the reporters' refusal to testify is holding up the probe's final conclusions. "It's hard for me to believe that everything or almost everything is dependent on their testimony," Miller's and Cooper's attorney Floyd Abrams said. — Posted at 10:17 am

Apr. 5, 2005

FEDERAL AGENCY WITHHOLDS SAFETY DATA. The Transportation Security Administration is hiding data that pilots and state and local officials need to make safety certain around nuclear power plants and hazardous chemicals, OMB Watcher reports. The agencies labeling of information as "Sensitive Security Information" is excessive and unreasonable and defies common sense, the watchdog newsletter asserts. — Posted at 5:27 pm

DAMNING EMAIL ABSENT FROM WMD COMMISSION REPORT. When the veracity of Curve Ball, a source of pre-war intelligence who claimed to have seen mobile biological-weapons labs in Iraq, was questioned in 2003, a CIA official sent an email that said "Keep in mind that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say and that the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about," Newsweek reported in its April 11 issue. The WMD Commission made no mention of the email in its recent report because they felt that its contents were already known, a commission spokesperson said. Newsweek, on the other hand, has a different take on the email's exclusion: It "raises questions of whether the Silberman panel may have 'cherry-picked' evidence to exclude anything politically embarrassing to the 'Powers That Be.'" — Posted at 12:05 pm

MISHANDLING CLASSIFIED INFORMATION WAS AN ACCIDENT, TRANSLATOR SAYS. The Boston Globe published an in-depth article on Ahmed Mehalba, the Guantanamo Bay translator who recently completed an 18-month prison term for mishandling classified information. Mehalba was convicted after being discovered travelling from Egypt with classified information in 2003. Now working as a car salesman, Mehalba told the Globe that he had taken the classified information with him to Egypt by accident, after having initially removed it from the office to do extra translation work at home. Upon his release from jail, the FBI accidentally returned the classified information to Mehalba along with his personal effects. — Posted at 11:01 am

PRIVILEGED PRESIDENTIAL DOCUMENT WILL NOT BE DISCUSSED, WHITE HOUSE SAYS. The New York Times reported Sunday that, according to the WMD Commission report, "the grave shortcomings" of the President's Daily Briefs before the Iraq war continue unabated. When the Times contacted the Bush administration to ask its response to the criticism of its morning intelligence briefings, such as one that the reports were "disastrously one-sided," it was told that no questions would be answered regarding a "privileged presidential document." — Posted at 10:56 am

Apr. 4, 2005

REPORT REVEALS RECORD NUMBER OF SECRET WARRANTS. The number of special warrants for secret wiretaps and searches of terror and espionage suspects has increased noticeably since 9/11, The Associated Press reports. In 2000, there were 1,003 warrants approved under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but last year, thanks to the Patriot Act, 1,754 warrants were approved, according to a report by Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella. — Posted at 4:04 pm

SOLDIERS TESTIFY THAT DETAINEE ABUSE WAS WIDESPREAD. Higher-ups were complicit in the abuse of Iraqi detainees, soldiers have testified during a preliminary hearing for four Army soldiers charged with killing an Iraqi general during interrogation. The so-called Article 32 hearing being held at Ft. Carson, Colo., was originally closed to the public, but opened after The Denver Post successfully challenged the closure to the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals. A transcript of the first part of the hearing, whch began in December, has been released. — Posted at 3:33 pm

DOES MEMO\'S CLASSIFICATION JUSTIFY SANCHEZ\'S ALLEGED PERJURY? In light of a recently released September 2003 memorandum, signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, in which he authorized 12 interrogation techniques beyond those officially sanctioned by an Army field manual, it appears Sanchez may have committed perjury in his testimony before the Senate on U.S. detainee abuse in which he said he "never approved any of those measures," Mother Jones's Web site reported Friday. At the time of his testimony, however, the memorandum was classified national security information, and the article's author, Onnesha Roychoudhuri wonders whether "the Bush administration [will try] to defend Sanchez by claiming that the commander obscured the truth to protect national security interests." — Posted at 3:30 pm

MEDIA LEAKS AID U.S. ENEMIES, COMMISSION SAYS. The Justice Department does not adequately prosecute leaks of classified information to reporters, according to the presidential commission that last week released a report on U.S. intelligence failures, The Associated Press reported. Press experts warned against suggestions that journalists could be fined or imprisoned for publishing even classified information. "Excessive secrecy is far more harmful - and far more costly - than the leaks of classified information deplored in the report," said David Tomlin, general counsel for the Associated Press. "We hope any response to the commission's findings stays focused where it belongs - on the reliability of that information." — Posted at 3:28 pm

BUSH EXECUTIVE ORDER SAYS NO LAWSUITS AGAINST FRAUD IN IRAQ. Even though military authorities have concluded that government contractor Custer Battles overcharged the Coalition Provisional Authority millions of dollars, the Bush administration refuses to prosecute, Molly Ivins reported in a recent column. President Bush further chipped away at the accountability of contractors in an executive order on May 22, 2003, that says: "I hereby order any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment or other judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void, with respect to the following: a) the Development Fund for Iraq and b) all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products." Legal director Tom Devine of the Government Accountability Project said that the EO is an effective "blank check for corporate anarchy," and an "outlandish cancellation of the rule of law." — Posted at 3:25 pm

Apr. 1, 2005

SPOTLIGHTING SOLDIERS. After returning from Iraq, Army 1st Lt. Paul Rieckhoff saw a void in American news reports about the war and created Operation Truth, a program to link rank-and-file military members with journalists, Editor & Publisher reported. Even with reporters on the scene, the ongoing system of embedding reporters actually limits the stories they can tell. "You need access from the military for your story," Rieckhoff says. "At its very foundation, as long as the military is controlling access to your story, you've got to play ball. Not to say that they're totally in bed, but you have to play along. If you don't, next time they'll deny you access. "I've seen how [journalists] have really been intimidated by the military and by the White House," he continues. "Also, I think they're at times intimidated by a need to protect the soldiers." — Posted at 10:25 pm

FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER PLEADS GUILTY TO DESTROYING GOVERNMENT RECORDS. Former National Security Adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger pleaded guilty Friday to destroying government records pertaining to the Clinton administration's terrorism record. Berger visited the National Archives twice in 2003, as a Clinton administration representative for the 9/11 Commission, where he took records detailing what the Clinton White House knew about the rising threat of terrorist attacks on the U.S. He allegedly used scissors to shred the documents, though he claimed to have simply misplaced them or unintentionally thrown them away. — Posted at 10:19 pm

AGENCIES SPAR OVER REPORT SECRECY. The National Academy of Sciences and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are dueling over how much of an NAS report can be made public, The New York Times reported this week. The NAS analysis considers whether spent-fuel pools at nuclear reactors are vulnerable to terrorism. In addition to disputing some of the substantive claims in the report, the NRC is arguing for more secrecy than the NAS, because "although no secret facts appear in the academy version, piecing together the material disclosed would provide useful information" to terrorists. — Posted at 10:17 pm

FBI\'S JOINT TERRORISM TASK FORCES INSULATE LOCAL POLICE OFFICERS FROM INTERNAL REVIEW. Local police officers who work in tandem with the FBI on its Joint Terrorism Task Forces are not accountable to their own departments for their on-the-job behavior, according to an article published by The Denver Post on Wednesday. "FBI rules prohibit [JTTF-affiliated local officers] from disclosing investigation details to anyone without proper security clearance," effectively insulating the local officers from supervision by their own chiefs of police. — Posted at 10:15 pm

STOP SHOWING THOSE PICTURES. Reasononline associate editor Matt Welch predicts "we'll never see" the second round of Abu Ghraib photos or other filmed prisoner abuses, writing "the real motivation is obvious: Torture photos undermine support for the Iraq war." He delineates roadblocks to their disclosure by legislators of both parties, by the Defense Department studies that their releas could damage diplomacy, and by the legal hurdles requesters who seek the photos through the Freedom of Information Act use. Jameel Jaffir who has been litigating the ACLU's request for detainee information is quoted: The vast majority of those photographs and videotapes don't relate to ongoing criminal investigations; on the contrary they depict things that the government approved of at the time and maybe approves of now. Welch is also a columnist for the Canadian National Post . — Posted at 10:13 pm

MEDICAL EXAM FOR TORTURE MUST BE SECRET. The Washington Post reported today that the American student charged in a conspiracy to kill President Bush can be examined by his own doctor for evidence of the torture he says he suffered while in Saudi custody, under a federal judge's ruling. However, his doctor may not speak with media under the court's rules for the examination. A federal appointed doctor said he found no evidence of torture but defense attorneys say he his scars to prove it. — Posted at 10:10 pm