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Thursday, April 25, 2013

Late Boston Marathon Suspect Was on Terrorism Watch List

More details have emerged on how U.S. intelligence agencies handled warnings about one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects well before the attacks. The National Counterterrorism Center added Tamerlan Tsarnaev to the government’s main terrorism watch list more than a year ago at the CIA’s request. The move came after the Russian government relayed concerns about Tsarnaev to the CIA, as it had also done with the FBI. The FBI had interviewed him but had found no evidence of wrongdoing. On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney defended the FBI’s claim it did everything it could with the information it had at the time.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney: "You know, all of these — all of these issues are obviously under investigation. What we do know is that the FBI took action in response to that notification, investigated the elder brother, and investigated thoroughly, and came to the conclusion that there was no derogatory information, no indication of terrorist activity or associations, either foreign or domestic, at that time."

News that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was on the intelligence radar is spurring calls for federal agencies to re-examine their priorities, particularly a focus on sting operations that critics say constitute entrapment. In an editorial, The Washington Post writes: "The FBI has devoted considerable resources to sting operations against people it judges to be terror suspects, sometimes on what look like dubious grounds. ... [I]t’s not clear that a sometimes far-fetched plot would have gone forward without the encouragement and help of FBI informants."

Justice Department “Reclassifies Documents,” Fights to Withhold Ground-breaking Immigration Court Decision on El Salvadorian Vides Casanova

April 15, 2013

tags: Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, doj, FOIA, freedom of information act, National Security Archive, New York Times, United States, United States Department of Justice

by Emily Willard

The Department of Justice (DOJ) continues to earn its second annual Rosemary Award for Worst Open Government Performance with its abysmal performance regarding a ground breaking decision in an immigration case of Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, former defense minister of El Salvador who is implicated in dozens of cases of torture and extrajudicial execution. To withhold this information from the public the DOJ made up FOIA procedures and erroneously withheld previously declassified information in its misguided attempt to preserve secrecy surrounding the case.
The New York Times filed a FOIA request, numerous appeals, and eventually filed suit against the DOJ, for copies of Judge Grim’s final decision regarding the U.S. Immigration Court case against Vides Casanova. Last week, the New York Times partially won the FOIA case by getting a copy of Judge Grim’s February 2012 decision released, but with redactions. Among the redactions were all of the witnesses’ names, even though it was a public hearing and their names are available thanks to extensive news coverage. Additionally, the expert witness report, which includes hundreds of pages of declassified U.S. documents obtained by the National Security Archive and used as evidence in the court is being held from the public as “confidential.” These documents remain confidential despite the fact that they were released through the FOIA and through President Clinton’s executive orders for declassification in response to the El Salvador Truth Commission request.

Example of “reclassified” document – Reports meeting of Ambassador White and leaders of El Salvador Armed Forces during which officers attempt to deny military involvement in and subsequent cover-up of American churchwomen killings. See full document here.

Here is the chronology of the New York Times battle to get the written decision of a public trial released:

September 2012 – NYT submits a FOIA for the full release of both decisions written by Judge Grim in February and August of 2012.
October 2012 – DOJ denies request claiming that the decisions were “preliminary,” and the agency had not issued a final agency decision. The DOJ also cited personal privacy concerns. [This is absurd. The hearing was public, and the general outline of the decision was made public in February of 2012, while the details were withheld.]
November 2012 – NYT files an administrative appeal, arguing that it knew “nothing about the FOIA exemption determination that would turn on the absence or existence of a final decision,” arguing that the denial was improper.
January 2013 – DOJ denies the appeal, simply citing the B6 exemption, making no reference to whether the decisions were preliminary or not.
February 2013 – NYT submitted a letter to the DOJ stating that the denial of access is contrary to the First Amendment and common law rights of access.
April 2, 2013 – NYT files suit against the DOJ in the District Court of New York after receiving no response to February letter.
April 4, 2013 – DOJ responds to February letter without mention of lawsuit, treating the February letter as “request for reconsideration” (which does not exist as a procedure of the FOIA) and releases a redacted version of Judge Grim’s February 2012 decision.

The DOJ is the agency in charge of enforcing the FOIA. How can the DOJ appropriately enforce the FOIA if it does not follow the FOIA itself? This is also especially worrisome considering the rosy report on the state of FOIA presented by Melanie Pustay, director of the Office of Information Policy at DOJ.
Why this all the more important…
Carolyn Patty Blum, a human rights attorney of the Center for Justice and Accountability explains that “this [Vides Casanova] may be the highest military commander of any country” who has been subject to a new law stating that a commander can be ordered removed from the United States, if he has “ordered, assisted or participated in torture or extrajudicial killing. Key to the ruling is that it is sufficient to know or have reason to know about the acts of subordinates and then fail to prevent or punish those acts.” The New York Times reports that this is the first time that a high-ranking foreign military commander will be deported under the new human rights violations law which was passed in 2004.
This is also the first time to have a ruling about very specific cases of torture, extrajudicial killings and/or disappearance. Judge Grim’s finding that General Vides Casanova “assisted or otherwise participated” in the killing of four churchwomen is probably the best known case in the US.
The implications that this case has on the human rights world are huge, and important precedents have been set – all the more important that the DOJ moves to release the report in its entirely, along with expert witness reports and accompanying documentation, rather than going out of its way to act contrary to DOJ’s very own Attorney General Eric Holder’s memo calling agencies to act with a “presumption of openness.”

THANK YOU LORD JESUS 'Department of Homeland Security Must Surrender Their War Weapons to Department of Defense'... Says Retired Army Officer

'Department of Homeland Security Must Surrender Their War Weapons to Department of Defense'... Says Retired Army Officer

Submitted by SadInAmerica on Tue, 04/23/2013 - 9:52pm.

military-retired-Capt.-Terry-Hestilow-cropped

On Saturday March 23, Terry M. Hestilow, a retired Army officer with nearly 30 years of service under his belt, posted this letter he sent to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) this week. Hestilow wants DHS to hand over their war weapons to the Department of Defense.

A letter by retired Capt. Terry Hestilow to his US Senator John Cornyn.

The Honorable Senator John Cornyn, State of Texas
United States Senate
517 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Re: Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and that agencies preparation for war against citizens of the United States of America
Dear Senator Cornyn,
It is with gravest concern that I write to you today concerning the recent appropriation of weapons by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that can only be understood as a bold threat of war by that agency, and the Obama administration, against the citizens of the United States of America.
To date, DHS has been unwilling to provide to you, the elected representatives of the People, justification for recent purchases of almost 3,000 mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) armored personnel carriers, 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition (with associated weapons), and other weapons systems, when, in fact, the DHS has no war mission or war making authority within the limits of the United States of America.
Significant is the fact that at the same time the Obama administration is arming his DHS for war within the limits of the United States against the People of the United States in accordance with his 2008 campaign speech claiming,

“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve gotta (sic) have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded [as the United States military]”–Candidate Barack Obama, 2008.

The Obama administration is deliberately defunding, overextending, and hollowing the Department of Defense; the only legitimate agency of the U.S. government with a war mission.
This act of the Obama administration stands as a glaring threat of war against our nation’s citizens! This act of the Obama administration can only be understood as a tyrannical threat against the Constitution of the United States of America!
If left unresolved, the peace loving citizens who have sworn to defend the United States Constitution “against all enemies, both foreign and domestic” are left no option except to prepare to defend themselves, and the U.S. Constitution, against this Administration’s “coup” against the People and the foundations of liberty fought for and defended for the past 238 years. We have no choice if we honor our oaths.
The only proper response to this threat against the American people is for the representatives of the People, the members of the U.S. House and Senate, to demand in clear terms that the Administration cannot ignore, that the Department of Homeland Security immediately surrender their newly appropriated weapons of war to the Department of Defense (DoD).
Further, since the DHS has assumed a position in the Administration to enforce the tyrannical acts of this president against the People of the United States against the limits of the United States Constitution, it remains for the United States Congress to exercise its limiting power in the balancing of powers established by our founding fathers, to disestablish and dissolve the DHS as soon as possible.
One needs only to look to the rise of Adolf Hitler, and his associated DHS organizations, the SA and the SS, of 1932-1934, to see the outcome of allowing an agency of government this kind of control over the free citizens of a nation.
The people of Germany could not have imagined, until it was too late, the danger of allowing a tyrant this kind of power. We must not be so naïve as to think it will not happen to us as well if we remain passive toward this power grab by the Marxist Obama administration!
Finally, for more than two centuries the nation has lived in peace at home because of the protections of our legitimate military and the many appropriate state and federal law enforcement agencies, supported by Constitutional courts.
We stand today at a cross-road. Will we allow this present Administration to overthrow our United States Constitution and its legal processes to amend injustices, or, will we honor our obligations to defend the Constitution against a “domestic” enemy?
Our Constitution lays out the proper methods of resolving our differences; and it does not include its overthrow by a rogue agency of a Marxist leadership at home.
You, sir, are our constitutionally elected agent to defend our Constitution at home. We are counting upon you. We remain aware, however, of this present threat and will not expose ourselves as an easy prey to the authors of the destruction of our nation.
I know that this letter demands much of you. We elected you because we, the citizens of the State of Texas, believe that you are up to the task at hand and will, against all threats, honor your oath and office.
We are also writing to your fellow members of the House and Senate to stand in integrity with the Constitution and against this present threat by the Obama administration and his DHS.
We refuse to surrender our Constitution or our nation!
Resolved,
Captain Terry M. Hestilow
United States Army, Retired
Fort Worth, Texas
March 23, 2013

April 23, 2013 - posted at 12160

This article was posted at Gateway Pundit, by Jim Hoft

Justice Department “Reclassifies Documents,” Fights to Withhold Ground-breaking Immigration Court Decision on El Salvadorian Vides Casanova

April 15, 2013

tags: Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, doj, FOIA, freedom of information act, National Security Archive, New York Times, United States, United States Department of Justice

by Emily Willard

Here is the chronology of the New York Times battle to get the written decision of a public trial released:

September 2012 – NYT submits a FOIA for the full release of both decisions written by Judge Grim in February and August of 2012.
October 2012 – DOJ denies request claiming that the decisions were “preliminary,” and the agency had not issued a final agency decision. The DOJ also cited personal privacy concerns. [This is absurd. The hearing was public, and the general outline of the decision was made public in February of 2012, while the details were withheld.]
November 2012 – NYT files an administrative appeal, arguing that it knew “nothing about the FOIA exemption determination that would turn on the absence or existence of a final decision,” arguing that the denial was improper.
January 2013 – DOJ denies the appeal, simply citing the B6 exemption, making no reference to whether the decisions were preliminary or not.
February 2013 – NYT submitted a letter to the DOJ stating that the denial of access is contrary to the First Amendment and common law rights of access.
April 2, 2013 – NYT files suit against the DOJ in the District Court of New York after receiving no response to February letter.
April 4, 2013 – DOJ responds to February letter without mention of lawsuit, treating the February letter as “request for reconsideration” (which does not exist as a procedure of the FOIA) and releases a redacted version of Judge Grim’s February 2012 decision.

Story of B-53 'bunker buster' is a lesson in managing nuclear weapons

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By Walter Pincus

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 18, 2010; 10:33 PM

Outside of the nuclear weapons communities, little notice was paid last week to the announcement that authorization had finally come through to begin dismantling the last of the minivan-size B-53s, the most powerful thermonuclear bombs ever deployed in the active U.S. stockpile.
A terror weapon if there ever was one, the 10,000-pound B-53 was designed to deliver an explosion of nine megatons. That is the equivalent of 9 million pounds of TNT, or 600 times the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
Believe it or not, the last 50 B-53s were not retired from the active stockpile until 1997, and even then some were held as a "hedge" in case a new threat emerged.
The two nuclear bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, termed military targets at the time, immediately killed more than 200,000 people and resulted in the deaths within five years of an additional 100,000. They won the war against Japan and none has been used since.

Why did the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s need to build more than 300 B-53s? And why were as many as 50 kept through the late 1990s, while the U.S government built and deployed thousands of other nuclear weapons with less powerful warheads?
What did war planners have in mind? It's a tale that should have lessons for today as the Obama administration considers spending more than $180 billion over the next decade modernizing the nation's nuclear stockpile and replacing the intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic submarines and aircraft that would deliver them.
There are steps being taken to win Republican votes for a treaty with Russia designed to reduce nuclear weapons. The lesson: Don't build more weapons than you need or could use.
From the start, the first B-53s built in 1962 were thought of as bunker busters, needed to attack deep underground shelters near Moscow that U.S. intelligence said were built to protect the Soviet leadership. The bomb had a rear compartment that contained five parachutes; they were designed to lay the bomb down softly on the surface so that its explosive power would send a shock wave through the earth to collapse the underground shelters, crushing the people within them. When production was halted in mid-1965, more than 300 B-53s had been built.
The test of the first U.S. thermonuclear fusion device took place in 1952 as a surface shot on Enewetak Atoll in the South Pacific. Called Ivy Mike, the bomb, like the B-53, had a yield of nine to 10 megatons.
Its radioactive fallout on Marshall Islanders living on Rongelap Atoll 140 miles away caused any number of health issues. They included miscarriages and thyroid losses among teenagers who played in the coral flakes that fell like snow on the beaches. The test shot even delivered low-level radiation to an atoll more than 300 miles away.

Story of B-53 'bunker buster' is a lesson in managing nuclear weapons

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Imagine for a moment the impact radioactivity would have had on the world if several B-53s had been dropped on the Soviet Union. The Strategic Air Command (SAC) had models of what the fallout could have been though they never have been made public. Inside SAC, during the Cold War years the B-53 was known as "a crowd pleaser," a former senior officer told me recently.
Some early versions of the B-53 were retired as early as 1967. In the 1970s, the United States was dismantling 1,000 to 3,000 nuclear weapons a year, using their fissionable material to build thousands more modern and safer ones.
Through the 1970s, 50 B-53 bombs and 54 Titan liquid-fueled ICBMs, with identical nine-megaton warheads, had the high-priority responsibility to destroy the Soviet underground bunkers. But in September 1980, after a Titan exploded accidentally in Arkansas, the decision was made to retire the remaining deployed Titans. That left the B-53s alone with the task, causing Pentagon planners to begin developing a new nuclear bunker buster.

By 1987, there were 25 of the B-53 bombs in the active stockpile. They were considered so dangerous that only dummies were used when crews practiced loading and unloading them on B-52s.
In the spring of 1987, with development of a replacement bomb delayed, the Reagan Pentagon decided to activate 25 more B-53s, so that 50 would be available if needed. It was not until 1997, when the bunker-busting B-61-11s were deployed, that retirement of B-53s began- but not disassembly.
Disassembly of nuclear weapons is a costly and dangerous process. Safety studies and special tools are needed just to handle the chemical explosive elements of the bomb, according to a 1994 Department of Energy report. "This study does not include study of disassembly of the B-53 primary [its nuclear package] since tooling and procedures are still being developed for this process," the study said.
More recently, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which runs the nation's nuclear weapons complex, completed safety studies that will permit its Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Tex., to begin dismantling the B-53s.
The process includes separating the high explosives from the nuclear material. The second stage calls for the nuclear materials and other components to be shipped to NNSA's Y-12 plant at Oak Ridge, Tenn., where a building has been upgraded to handle the job. There the enriched uranium components will be removed and stored. Then other nonnuclear components will be sent to other NNSA plants for final disposition.
The current dismantlement program for retired U.S. nuclear weapons has a completion date of 2022 because thousands of them await dismantlement. One cause of the bottleneck is that the Pantex plant is the only NNSA facility that can assemble and dismantle nuclear weapons. More than half of Pantax's tasks involve putting together warheads in the life-extension program so that they can be among the more than 1,000 the United States can keep deployed over the next 20 years.

Declassified Documents and the B-53 Bunker Buster

October 21, 2010

tags: b-53, nuclear, overclassification, pincus, vance

by William Burr

B-53 Bunker Buster. US AF photo.

Walter Pincus’s Washington Post article, “Story of B-53 ‘bunker buster’ is a lesson in managing nuclear weapons,” provides a fascinating look at the arcane and highly secret history of U.S. nuclear weapons planning. Pincus shows that the highly dangerous, massively destructive B-53 stayed in the nuclear arsenal for decades because of its mission: the destruction of underground bunkers. Weapons designers concocted the B-53 after U.S. intelligence had identified the underground installations that would house Soviet leaders in time of superpower crisis and war. Yet the B-53 was so dangerous that practice loading of them on B-52 bombers was forbidden. If a substantial quantity of B-53 had been used in war, their radioactive fallout would have caused worldwide environmental damage. Production of some 300 B-53s began in 1962, but by the end of the Cold War the Pentagon kept only 50 in the active stockpile. They were not retired until the late 1990s when a replacement, the B-61-11, came on line. Until recently the B-53s could not even be disassembled like other retired weapons; Washington had no plan for safely disaggregating the dangerous chemicals and highly-enriched uranium in the weapon’s core. Such problems informed Pincus’s lesson: “Don’t build more weapons than you need or could use.”

"For attack of very hard targets."

Mr. Pincus noted that a retired senior military officer was one of his sources. Interview sources are essential, because the story of high yield weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenals is not an easy one to tell using declassified documents. A heavily excised Defense Department memorandum makes the point. It is from Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance to President Lyndon B. Johnson, dated 10 April 1964 on “High yield nuclear weapons.” The previous year, President Kennedy had asked federal agencies to investigate the possibility of developing a “very high yield nuclear weapon.” The proposed explosive yield of the projected “very high yield” weapon is excised, but it was probably substantially higher than the 9 megaton B-53, perhaps in the order of 15 or 20 megatons (or more). Vance may have been referring to the B-53 when he discussed which weapons–or how many–could be used for attacking “very hard targets,” and that an unspecified high yield weapon would “offer only a slight margin of superiority” over the equivalent unspecified weapon type. The numerous excisions make it difficult to grasp the argument. Vance recommended against the development of very high yield weapons, but in the event that the Limited Test Ban (1963) broke down, he endorsed preparations for atmospheric testing of high yield weapons as a way for scientists to draw conclusions about the effects of weapons with even higher yields.

History of the Phase Out of Large Yeild Weapons.

Another excised document, a Defense Department briefing paper from September 1967, “History of the Phase Out of Large Yield Weapons,” provides some prehistory for the B-53. The Mk-36 was an earlier massive nuclear weapon, weighing over 8 tons and with the same 9 megaton yield as the B-53 (which weighed about 5 tons). [i] The Mk-36 accounted for a huge share, some 40 percent, of the total explosive yield of the nuclear weapons stockpile during the late 1950s. Unlike the B-53, however, the Mk-36 may have been a general purpose weapon, not slated for a specific mission. By the end of the 1950s, U.S. defense planners believed that the nuclear arsenal needed larger numbers of a relatively smaller weapon, with a yield in the one megaton range (possibly the B-43). Such weapons would be more appropriate for target planning because they could be used for “multiple loading, highly selective and low altitude bombing.” Consequently, President Eisenhower and Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates approved plans to phase out the B-36, which finally occurred during Fiscal Year 1962. As the table on page 2 shows, from FY61 to FY62 total megatonnage for all U.S. nuclear weapons dropped from a high of 21,400 to 12,400, a huge decrease. The introduction of the high yield B-53 may partly explain the uptick in the following fiscal years, but not the drop to significantly lower megatonnage numbers during FY 1965-1967.
Excessive secrecy accounts for the significant excisions from these documents. The source for the Vance memorandum is obscure and it is unclear which exemptions the Pentagon invoked to withhold data from it. It was classified under the Atomic Energy Act so it is possible that the Pentagon used the rules for “Formerly Restricted Data” to withhold some of the information. Important classes of nuclear secrets (e.g., weapons design or technology for producing fissile material) are worth protecting, but it is unlikely that the information withheld from Vance’s memorandum would help a would-be profliferant. From the document on the “Phase Out of Large Yield Weapons,” the size of the Mk-36 force is sanitized as is the explanation for the “dip in FY62.” The Defense Department justified the excisions on the grounds that the information related to war plans “still in effect” and that the information would “impair the application of state of the art technology within a U.S. weapon system.” Of course, neither of those exemptions seems plausible. The document is under appeal at the Information Security Classification Appeals Panel.
Perhaps if secrecy had not protected the B-53’s checkered history for so many years, public pressure might have led to a far earlier retirement for such a dubious weapon system.

[i] The predecessors of the B-36 had an even great yield. The Mk-17 (B-17)’s, was between 10 and 15 megatons as was the B-24’s. Both were in the arsenal during the 1950s for only a few years. See Stephen I. Schwarz, ed., Atomic Audit: The Cost and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1998), 86-87.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Late Boston Marathon Suspect Was on Terrorism Watch List

Justice Department “Reclassifies Documents,” Fights to Withhold Ground-breaking Immigration Court Decision on El Salvadorian Vides Casanova

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THANK YOU LORD JESUS 'Department of Homeland Security Must Surrender Their War Weapons to Department of Defense'... Says Retired Army Officer

'Department of Homeland Security Must Surrender Their War Weapons to Department of Defense'... Says Retired Army Officer

Justice Department “Reclassifies Documents,” Fights to Withhold Ground-breaking Immigration Court Decision on El Salvadorian Vides Casanova

Story of B-53 'bunker buster' is a lesson in managing nuclear weapons

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Story of B-53 'bunker buster' is a lesson in managing nuclear weapons

Network News

Declassified Documents and the B-53 Bunker Buster