Two weeks ago an Afghan court convicted two former U.S. soldiers and an Emmy Award-winning journalist and sentenced them to 8-10 years in prison for torturing Afghan prisoners in an illegal, private jail. Their U.S. attorneys are accusing the Afghan court system of conducting a sham trial. At the trial the attorneys attempted to introduce video evidence that indicates one of the defendants, Jonathan "Jack" Idema had close ties to the Pentagon and made personal calls to the office of Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, who has a history of leading special operations. But the Afghan judge refused to play the video. Today, in a broadcast exclusive, we air these tapes and speak with an attorney in the case, the brother of the jailed journalist as well as officials from the Pentagon and inside Gen. Boykin's office. [includes rush transcript] We're going to spend the hour today looking at a story that hasn't gotten much attention here in the United States. Last Wednesday, a court in Afghanistan convicted three Americans of torturing Afghans in an illegal private prison. The alleged ring leader of the operation is a former Green Beret named Jonathan "Jack" Idema. He was sentenced to 10 years, as was another former US soldier Brent Bennett. An Emmy-award winning journalist who spent extensive time filming the men received an 8-year sentence. On the surface, the story appears to be a case of private bounty hunters operating independently. In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "The Afghan government held the trial in accordance with Afghan law. Their decision was handed down by an Afghan court after a full trial had been conducted."

But Jack Idema, the former Green Beret tells a very different story. He says he was working with the US military with the approval of the Pentagon and the Afghan government. His lawyers have produced videotape showing Idema meeting with several key commanders of the Northern Alliance. Among them, the commanders of the Northern Front, the Southern Front and a number of commanders from Eastern Afghanistan. The tapes also show Idema meeting with the Afghan Minister of Defense Marshal Fahim. On the tape, Idema is describing to the Minister an assassination plot against Fahim that Idema says he has uncovered. Idema also had in his possession a letter of introduction addressed to an Afghan commander. The letter was on army stationary and signed by a New York based officer.

During the trial Idema's attorney planned to play a video shot by Caballero as part of his documentary project in an attempt to establish a connection between Idema and the Pentagon.

But the judge ordered the screening to be stopped before a portion that purportedly shows Idema calling the office of the controversial General William Boykin. In the video, Idema speaks with a Pentagon employee named Jorge Shim who promised someone from the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, would call Idema back on his cell phone.

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• Jonathan "Jack" Idema speaking from Kabul, Afghanistan to Jorge Shim of Gen. William Boykin's office.
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We contacted Shim yesterday and he confirmed that he had spoken to Idema on more than one occasion.

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• Jorge Shim, employee at Gen. William Boykin's office
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At the trial attorneys for Idema and Caraballo also attempted to show another clip of Idema speaking with someone identified as Shim"s supervisor from General Boykin's office. Idema made the call after wanted posters for his arrest were put up around Kabul. During the conversation the unnamed official indicates the Pentagon is attempting to put up a firewall between his boss -- that is General Boykin -- and Idema in order to shield Boykin from more press criticism.

After Democracy Now obtained copies of these tapes yesterday we contacted Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Christopher Conway to clarify the connection between the Pentagon and Idema. Conway said "We did not employ, sanction or sponsor Mr. Idema."

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• Lt. Col. Christopher Conway, Pentagon spokesperson
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While Conway claimed that the relationship between Idema and the Pentagon was largely one sided, attorneys for Idema have released a video that appears to show Idema making arrangements with a Pentagon official about handing over a suspected terrorist that he had caught.

Democracy Now! asked Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Christopher Conway about this and he confirmed that Idema had indeed helped the Pentagon capture a suspected terrorist. But again Conway denied any formal relationship between Idema and Pentagon.

In our studio today we speak with attorney Robert Fogelnest who as just returned from Afghanistan as well as Edward Caraballo's brother, Richard.

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• Robert Fogelnest, attorney for journalist Edward Caraballo. In April and May of this year Fogelnest worked in Kabul with Legal Aid Afghanistan where he mentored, trained and supervised a team of eight Afghan public defenders. He is the former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
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• Richard Caraballo, brother of jailed journalist Edward Caraballo
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AMY GOODMAN: Our guest is Robert Fogelnest, an attorney for journalist Edward Caraballo. In April and May of this year, he worked in Kabul with Legal Aid Afghanistan where he mentored, trained and supervised a team of eight Afghan public defenders. He's the former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Welcome.

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Good morning, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to go to all of these tapes that were not admitted into the Afghan court; but give us an overview of the case.

ROBERT FOGELNEST: The case in general involves the fact that Jack Idema went to Afghanistan to fight terrorism. Idema had, when he was there fighting previously side by side with the Northern Alliance, developed assets, is what he calls them. We call them informants in the United States. In other words, he has moles within the al Qaeda that were providing him with information about terrorist activities that permitted him to arrest people that were engaged in this sort of behavior. Ed Caraballo was nothing more than a journalist who was in the process of preparing a documentary on what the war on terrorism looked like on the ground in Afghanistan. He made more than 100 hours of videotape of Idema's activities. The United States, we believe, caused these men to be arrested and railroaded through the Afghan -- what passes for a legal system in Afghanistan. I can explain that to you in more detail at an appropriate time or I could do it now.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let's go to the first tape. During the trial, Jack Idema's attorney planned to play a videotape shot by Caraballo as part of his documentary project in an attempt to establish a connection between Idema and the Pentagon, but the judge ordered the screening to be stopped before a portion that purportedly shows Jack Idema calling the office of the controversial General William Boykin. In the video, Idema speaks with a Pentagon employee named George Shim, who promised someone from the D.I.A., the Defense Intelligence Agency, would call Idema back on his cell phone. We're going to play the video.

JUAN GONZALEZ: That was Jack Idema speaking with George Shim in General William Boykin's office. We contacted Shim yesterday and he confirmed that he had spoken to Idema on more than one occasion. At the trial, attorneys for Idema and Caraballo also attempted to show another clip of Idema speaking with someone identified as "Shim's supervisor from General Boykin's office." Idema made the call after wanted posters for his arrest were put up around Kabul, he believes at the behest of the F.B.I. During the conversation, the unnamed official indicates the Pentagon is attempting to put up a firewall between his boss, that is General Boykin, and Idema in order to shield Boykin from more press criticism.

AMY GOODMAN: That was former green beret Jack Idema speaking with someone who George Shim identified as his supervisor from General Boykin's office. Yesterday, we reached George Shim, who works as an assistant to General William Boykin.

AMY GOODMAN: That was George Shim in General Boykin's office. We'll talk about General Boykin's controversial past. And also we'll speak with a Pentagon spokesperson as they directed us to do. We'll hear more videotape and speak with both the lawyer -- one of the lawyers in the case, continue speaking with Robert Fogelnest, as well as the brother of the jailed journalist Edward Caraballo, will speak with Richard. This is Democracy Now! [break]

AMY GOODMAN: Juan has written two columns in the New York Daily News, the last one today, again about a case where last week, a court in Afghanistan convicted three Americans of torturing Afghans in an illegal private prison. The alleged ringleader of the operation, a former Green Beret named Jonathan "Jack" Idema, sentenced to ten years as was another former US soldier, Brent Bennet, and a four-time Emmy Award-winning journalist, who was following them in Afghanistan, was also sentenced. He is Edward Caraballo. We're going to go back to the conversation with Jorge Shim, the assistant to General William Boykin. He put me on hold and he came back.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Jorge Shim of General William Boykin's office. We did speak with Pentagon Spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Conway to talk about whether or not there was a connection between the Pentagon and Jack Idema.

JUAN GONZALEZ: That was Pentagon Spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Conway. While Conway claimed that the relationship between Idema and the Pentagon was largely one-sided, attorneys for Idema released a video that appears to show Idema making arrangements with a Pentagon official about handing over a suspected terrorist that he caught. This recording contains only Idema's side of the conversation.

JUAN GONZALEZ: That was a recording of Jack Idema, purportedly speaking with an official at the Pentagon about the handover of a suspected terrorist. Yesterday we asked Pentagon spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Conway if Idema had indeed helped the Pentagon capture a suspected terrorist.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Conway, speaking to us yesterday, Pentagon spokesperson. This is Democracy Now! We are joined by one of the lawyers in the case, who's just returned from Afghanistan. Robert Fogelnest is the attorney for the four-time Emmy Award-winning journalist, Edward Caraballo. Talk about the trial. How long was it, how did it go in Afghanistan?

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Let me preface it in this way. The institutions of Afghanistan have been destroyed, including the legal institutions. So, to characterize what occurred there as a trial is a gross misstatement. There is not a fully developed legal system yet. The International Commission and the jurors commissioned a study that came to that conclusion. Amnesty International has expressed concerns. Human Rights Watch has expressed concerns. And if you take an attorney or a judge that's practiced for 20 years in Afghanistan, an experienced person in the legal system, their experience has been under Russian domination, which had no legal system, a devastating civil war where all of the institutions were destroyed, the Taliban, and three years of American occupation. That's someone who's experienced. With that as a foundation, this was not a trial. There were hearings that were scattered about. The rules that have been generated in Afghanistan were not followed, primarily because no one knows what they are yet. When I was there before, I saw things that were silly, that were attempts at trials. There was not a single witness sworn except for Jack Idema. Witnesses would stand -

JUAN GONZALEZ: He had to swear on the Koran, didn't he, and he had to -

ROBERT FOGELNEST: They did not want to permit him to be sworn because he was not a Muslim. And he demanded to be sworn in respect of the Koran, because he has that respect. Following his swearing, the crowd erupted in the courtroom saying Allah Akbar, on the assumption they had seen a conversion to Islam. It was surreal and bizarre. Witnesses would stand up and scream out their accusations. They were never put on a witness stand. They were certainly never confronted and questioned by the defense.

JUAN GONZALEZ: So, you were not able to cross-examine any witnesses?

ROBERT FOGELNEST: I wasn't even able to ask a single question. And there weren't any witnesses. With respect to the United States' denials that they had an affiliation of some sort with Idema, that they knew of what he was doing, approved of it, and in fact assisted him, the evidence at this Afghan zoo was their denials in the press. No witness ever came in from the United States. No document was ever presented. They just said, well, they denied it in the press. Now, we could explore Lieutenant General Connelly's denials, and Shim's denials, and the way they came out so that we could evaluate their credibility, if we were in a real courtroom in a real trial. Couldn't do that.

AMY GOODMAN: The State Department spokesperson, Richard Boucher said, quote, "The Afghan government held the trial in accordance with Afghan law. Their decision was handed down by an Afghan court after a full trial had been conducted."

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Well, with all due respect to Mr. Boucher, I don't know what he knows about Afghan law, but I studied it for two months as I was training other Afghan lawyers to attempt to teach them how to be lawyers, because they still don't know.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, this is before you were representing?

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Oh, yeah. I went over on a fellowship with the International Legal Foundation on a pro bono basis, that my contribution to the war on terrorism, as it were, to train afghan lawyers in the skills of defending people. And as a component of that, I was obligated to learn the new Afghan constitution, which has only been in existence since January of this year, as well as the Interim Criminal Code, which was drafted by the Italians who have been charged with the responsibility for redeveloping the legal system in Afghanistan, by the United Nations. So, I learned their law. I don't think Mr. Boucher knows what their law is, and I don't think that -- well, let me be candid. He doesn't know what he's talking about. I saw the trial. They didn't follow their own law, which requires that witnesses be sworn, which requires that witnesses be confronted, and many other procedural defects.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the videotapes that you tried to have allowed in the court? And what was your point in trying to introduce evidence of Jack Idema, the former Green Beret, communicating with General Boykin's office, among other tapes?

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Well, these were intended -- let me put it another way. The court in Afghanistan, if you can call it that, was prepared to accept a press report of the US officials denying any sort of connection with Idema. This was false. We had videotapes that you have played with him on the phone with Boykin's office. We had videotapes of a United States arm captain, named B. J. Donnelly, introducing Idema to a department of defense contractor -

AMY GOODMAN: You just, for the radio audience, the listening audience, did a wink.

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Gee, did I? And explaining, and I think you may have the tape, this man is working with people way, way, way above my pay grade out of New York where the anti-terrorist office is based, and what he's doing would be a good link-up for you, Mr. Department-of-Defense-Contractor. It would be good for you, it would be good for him, and it would be good for what we're all doing.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to roll the Donnelly for a second, what you were talking about. Set up this clip that didn't get shown in the Afghan court. Explain again what exactly it is.

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Sure. Captain B. J. Donnelly, who was some sort of a liaison with Idema and U.S. forces -

AMY GOODMAN: U.S. captain?

ROBERT FOGELNEST: U.S. captain. Walks Idema into a meeting with the Department of Defense contractor, and I have just winked again for the radio audience, and says you need to link up, because what he's doing and what you are doing and what we're doing can all work together and will be good for all of us.

AMY GOODMAN: Let's roll the tape.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Captain B. J. Donnelly with Jack Idema, the former Green Beret, who has been convicted of running a private jail in Afghanistan, torturing detainees. Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: I'd like to ask you, in terms of one of the most bizarre moments in the case, I have mentioned this in my column today, was that another charge that they were accused of was of having entered Afghanistan illegally by crossing the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. And yet you had a videotape which you showed at the trial of the three men entering, landing by plane in Kabul and being welcomed by an official delegation of top officials of the Afghan government, including the Chief of Police of Kabul, who then later arrested them. And according to you, he was at the trial when these false allegations of them entering illegally occurred?

ROBERT FOGELNEST: It's even more bizarre than that. The prosecutor stood up and said that they entered using false Indian passports. Now, once again, no evidence was introduced, but in this sham of a trial a statement by the prosecutor was taken as evidence. Well, it was entirely false. They went to Delhi where they were meeting with the Afghan ambassador to India, a man name Khalili. Their hotel bill was paid by at Ariana Airlines, which is the Afghan national airline. We had copies of their boarding passes and their airline tickets from Delhi to Kabul. They land in Kabul. Ed, who was doing a documentary, documents the entire thing on video, including handing over passports, filling out disembarkation forms; the head of the airport, a man named Haji Timor, hugging and greeting them; Jack Idema going up to the huge picture of Masood, the great Northern Alliance leader who was assassinated two days before September 11, and kissing the poster; Baba Jan, the chief of the national police and Kabul police being there and hugging Jack, if I remember correctly on the tape. Now, in the proceedings that occurred before John Tiffany and I arrived in Kabul, Baba Jan was sitting in the audience for, I'm told, three sessions, watching what was going on and sitting silently as the prosecutor was claiming that they snuck in with false Indian passports into Afghanistan. If it weren't so serious, if these men were not currently confined in an eight by six cell that's filthy, sleeping on the floor with six other men, many of whom are al-Qaeda terrorists themselves, and if their lives weren't in danger, this would be hysterically funny, but it's not. It's very serious.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you're talking about them being in jail with some of the members of the same organization that they were hunting?

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Two days before I left, one of Ed Caraballo's cellmates threatened to set him on fire.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking with Robert Fogelnest, one of the attorneys in the case of the three Americans who have just been sentenced to a number of years, up to ten, for running an illegal detention center in Kabul, Afghanistan.

AMY GOODMAN: We're joined by one of the lawyers, Robert Fogelnest, he is the attorney for the journalist, Edward Caraballo, as well as Richard Caraballo, who is the brother of the jailed journalist. Juan, can we talk now about what they're charged with doing?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, as I understand it, they were charged originally with, one, entering the country illegally, two, detaining -- illegally detaining Afghan civilians in a private jail and torture of those civilians as well. Those were the main charges.

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Well, we have never been told exactly what the charges were. One of the problems with what passes for a legal system in Afghanistan is that they are not yet ready to provide translation and while their law and international treaties and their Constitution requires that we -- that we -- a person who is charged be given a copy of the charges in a language they can understand, this was never done. So, to this day I don't know exactly what the legal charges were, what the elements of those crimes were, but in general, we were made to understand pretty much as you described it, but apparently Mr. Boucher, who said that they had a fair trial -

AMY GOODMAN: Boucher -

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Boucher? Maybe -

AMY GOODMAN: The State Department spokesman.

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Maybe he got an English translation of the charges, and he knows what they were. And if he did, I would like him to forward them to me, so I can understand them at least now.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I'd like to ask Mr. Richard Caraballo, to talk about your brother. How did he get involved in all of this? He lived in New York. He worked for many -- as a cameraman for networks as well as local television, and how did he get involved with Idema in the first place?

RICHARD CARABALLO: Well, Ed worked for WWOR, the investigative unit back in the early 1990's with a fellow by the name of Gary Circa, who was a producer and a writer. Together, Gary and Ed, worked with WWOR's I-team. And they had a professional relationship and they were also friends as well. Mr. Circa met Mr. Idema in the mid 1990's on another case, that I don't remember exactly what. Over the years, Mr. Circa has remained in contact with Mr. Idema, and Ed and Gary being friends and professional colleagues. Ed was introduced in that way.

JUAN GONZALEZ: How did he get to end up working particularly in this -- on this documentary on fighting terrorism?

RICHARD CARABALLO: Well, there was a book that came out, actually this book here The Hunt for Bin Laden, that came out in 2002. Basically, sometime in 2002 or 2003, I think that there was some discussion of a video - some kind of a documentary based on the material. And Eddie had been working on it for about a year.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And that's because Idema was a main character in the book?

RICHARD CARABALLO: Yes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: For our viewers and listeners who may not understand, Idema has a long history of involvement with the variety of journalists, including Dan Rather and 60 Minutes. He works on a piece with them on some Bin Laden training tapes years ago.

RICHARD CARABALLO: Yes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: He had also been a major source for U.S. News and World Report, as well as for CNN on a big story about smuggled nuclear material out of the -- out of the former Soviet Union. So, he was known to quite a few journalists, who covered the Middle East and terrorism, but at the same time he also a history of making some wild and extravagant claims at times. So, there was some journalists who didn't trust him and others who swore he was an excellent source on Middle East terrorism. And there were always questions about what his relationship was with the U.S. government on his many stories into the Middle East.

RICHARD CARABALLO: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to the brother of Edward Caraballo, as well as his attorney, Robert Fogelnest. So, there's two issues. One is what they were convicted of, that they were torturing detainees and in fact in one case handed over someone they said worked for al Qaeda at Bagram Airbase in May. The question is, one, what were they doing? Were they torturing people? And two, were they working for the U.S. Government? This whole issue of the connection of General Boykin. Juan, talk a little about this controversial general, who was getting quite a lot of attention in the press a while ago.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, well, Boykin is probably best known to most Americans as being the Christian fundamentalist general who at various times has made outrageous statements about -- that there's a war -- there's a religious war going on between Christianity and Islam in the Middle East, that -- and detrimental remarks about Islam in general that's gotten him in hot water in the past.

AMY GOODMAN: That it's a fight with Satan, among other issues?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Right. At the same time he has a long history of special operations. He was a former commander of the Delta Force. He goes way back to the original attempt to free the American hostages in Iran under Jimmy Carter. He was part of the commando unit that failed in the attempt to rescue the hostages. He has been involved in Somalia. He has been involved in a variety of hot spots around the world and the first Persian Gulf War. And so he is one of the most experienced special operations commanders in the U.S. military, and he's currently a Deputy under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence under Cambone, the guy who got all of the heat for the Abu Ghraib scandal -- prison scandal.

AMY GOODMAN: Let's go to a clip of general Boykin, who was giving a public speech.

AMY GOODMAN: General Boykin recorded in a speech that he had given.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah, I think the other thing to note -- I know, Bob, you may have some comments on this, the allegation by the lieutenant colonel that we spoke to from the pentagon yesterday that -- and also by Jorge Shim, that the contacts were between Idema and the Pentagon were sporadic and according to Shim began sometime in May or June with some emails. But you had documents that you tried to introduce at the trial that showed that these contacts go at least way back with the F.B.I. and with the Pentagon through -- from early January of this year, right?

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Sure. I think I have provided them you. We had these documents. They predate May. And if you just look at it slightly below the surface, how does somebody get Shim's and Boykin's private numbers at the Pentagon? What do you do? Do you call information and say I'd like to talk to general Shim? He was calling direct.

JUAN GONZALEZ: George -- Jorge Shim -

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Jorge Shim or Jerry Boykin or all of these other people. And if they were merely making contacts -- let's say Amy decided to call and say, I have captured a terrorist. Do you think that the Pentagon would then call Bagram base and say, go meet Amy out in the middle of the desert. She's going to turn a terrorist over to you. I mean, it's with the slightest bit of evaluation, their statements are nonsense. Perhaps that's why they wanted it tried in an Afghan court where there wouldn't be any sort of scrutiny?

AMY GOODMAN: What about the charges that they tortured detainees?

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Now, remember, I represent Ed Caraballo. He filmed what was occurring. Idema tells me that all of the interrogation techniques he used are consistent with the Department of Defense guidelines. That he was taken to a secure facility, something called a "scif", S.C.I.F, which unfortunately I cannot remember what the acronym stands for, where there should be records and videotape of his entering, unless someone's chosen them and destroy them. Where he sat down and read current guidelines on aggressive interrogation techniques. He was required to sign an acknowledgment as to what the scope of what he could do and could not do. I have read other things about that they have developed techniques probably similar to what the government is doing in Guantanamo. And that his actions were within those guidelines. Now, if the United States' current Department of Defense guidelines on aggressive interrogation constitute torture, then indeed, Idema may have been torturing people consistent with the Department of Defense guidelines. However, we have also seen videotapes of the terrorists, and don't think for a moment these people weren't terrorists. That evidence is there. Sitting quietly, drinking orange sodas, being offered bribes. That is, we'll relocate you and your family to the United States so that you can tell us what happened, and then agreeing -- and them agreeing to be turned -- to become additional informants for Idema. So -

JUAN GONZALEZ: So, those tapes were never admitted into the court?

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Oh, no, no, no, no. The Afghans didn't want to accept this sort of evidence, and apparently the American authorities didn't want it to emerge, either.

AMY GOODMAN: Richard Caraballo, what kind of communication does your family have with Edward now in Afghan jail?

RICHARD CARABALLO: Since Wednesday's conviction, we haven't had any contact with Eddie, and I understand it, the State Department has not been able to visit with Eddie, as they normally would have prior to the conviction.

AMY GOODMAN: And what has the State Department told you, the U.S. Government, with your brother in an Afghan jail? How did they deal through the trial?

RICHARD CARABALLO: Well, initially, they told me that there were a great many concerns that they had had, that they were keeping a log of. Now, you have to remember that this case has -- it's run for three months and it's a long period of time, and up until very recently, they had been telling me they were keeping the log. After the conviction, they said there was nothing that was going to happen with the log and they would forget about the whole thing.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Now, you went to the Committee to Protect Journalists as I understand it, and they declined to get involved because apparently there's been some allegations that your brother was not only a journalist, but was actually sort of a business partner in trying to get this film or this thing -- this documentary out with Idema. Could you talk about that and why the Committee to Protect Journalists?

RICHARD CARABALLO: Well, I thought their reaction was very interesting because it kept changing as the weeks go by. Their initial reaction was that Eddy -- they didn't want to do the story, because I tried urgently to reach this them and to reach out for them for their help. Because Eddie is a journalist. They said at first Eddie's work was not journalism, basically. They said basically they had no indication based on what they were reading in the reports that Eddie was involved in journalism. So, weeks would pass and I continued to try to reach out to them. Recently, this new point came out where they said, oh, well, the reason we're not going to help now is because a apparently Mr. Idema funded some of the film or whatever for Eddie's documentary, and basically, my analysis is that although many people put credence in the CPJ, my view is that they just wanted to avoid getting involved with the case.

AMY GOODMAN: Bob Fogelnest, if Jack Idema and the others or not were working with the Pentagon, what responsibility does the Pentagon have in, and you are saying this was a black ops case, that this was a black operation?

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Certainly appears to be a black op, based upon what Ed Caraballo captured on videotape. What responsibility the Pentagon has, boy, what are we talking about, the moral responsibility of the United States military? That's a tough one for me to comment on, but I can tell you this -- the United States government knows that there is not a functioning legal system in Afghanistan. They certainly have a responsibility to take these three men out of this sham conviction under this farce of what the Afghans would characterize as a trial, to invoke the provisions of an international treaty to which both countries are signatories, and bring them home. They have a moral responsibility they have a legal responsibility and one can only question what their agenda is in not doing that.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Why in your opinion or in Idema's opinion was he basically if he was working for the government, why was he basically cut loose and allowed to be arrested, apparently at the request of the United States government, because they put out -- within a day of their putting out information that he was not working or connected with the U.S. Government, the arrest came July 5?

ROBERT FOGELNEST: Idema has a theory. I tend to agree with it, but I cannot prove it. Let me give it you to.

AMY GOODMAN: With 30 seconds.

ROBERT FOGELNEST: The F.B.I. was jealous because he was capturing terrorists, and they did nothing. They wanted him to give up his sources, his informants. He refused to do so. The F.B.I. agents in Afghanistan, went off like loose cannons and didn't realize the can of worms they were opening. Then the Pentagon says, we need a firewall. We don't need this scrutiny. It's a typical government S.N.A.F.U.

AMY GOODMAN: And on that note, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Robert Fogelnest, attorney for journalist Edward Caraballo, as well as Richard Caraballo, Eddie's brother.

Idema, who was paying an Emmy Award-winning cameraman to document his activities, even distributed a sample tape of himself arresting people and interrogating hooded suspects. In one scene he is shown blocking a road and emptying passing vehicles. "Put your fucking hands up or I'll blow your fucking brains out," he screams at a group of men who have shuffled bewilderedly off a bus and are standing with their flimsy tunics whipping in the wind.

In exchange for footage and access, Idema wanted a minimum of $250,000 and prominent play. He asked that ABC send Peter Jennings or Cristopher Cuomo to cover the story. Ultimately ABC turned the story down, as did CNN. A CBS spokesperson, Kelli Edwards, says the network "never seriously considered" it, although Idema was regularly e-mailing Dan Rather's office and in June the network sent two employees to Idema's Kabul headquarters to pick up the sample tape.

It appears that Idema still hadn't sold the taxicab story by July 5, when his situation took a turn for the worse. The Afghan police raided his headquarters and discovered eight prisoners, some of them tethered to chairs in a back room, which was littered with bloody cloth. The men later told reporters that they had been starved, beaten, doused with scalding water, and forced to languish for days in their own feces. Afghan authorities determined that none of the detainees had links to terrorism and set them free. Idema, on the other hand, was arrested, along with two other Americans (the cameraman and a former soldier) and four Afghans, and charged with running an unauthorized prison and torturing its inmates. After a cursory trial, he was sentenced to serve ten years. (This case is on appeal.)

For all its outlandish twists, the saga of the taxicab plot was not extraordinary for Idema, who over the years had fed the press a variety of sensational material that seemed to shed light on the shadowy world of secret soldiers, spies, and assassins. This time the story never ran, but Idema has been a key source for numerous questionable stories that did. A self-proclaimed terror-fighter who has served time for fraud, Idema took a willing media by storm, glorifying his own exploits, padding his bank account, and providing dubious information to the American public.

In January 2002, Idema sold CDS sensational footage, which he called the "VideoX" tapes, that purported to show an Al Qaeda training camp in action. The tapes became the centerpiece of the bombshell 60 M&mfes Tf piece, "Heart of Darkness," reported by Dan Rather and touted as "the most intimate look yet at how the world's deadliest terrorist organization trains its recruits." Idema also sold video stills to a number of print outlets, including The Boston Globe. MSNBC1ABC, NBC, the BBC, and others later replayed the tapes. Questions are now emerging about their authenticity, some of which were detailed in a piece by Stacy Sullivan in New York magazine in October.

Idema also served as an expert military commentator on Fox News and was a lead character in Robin Moore's best-selling book The Hunt for Bin Laden, which was supposed to chronicle the exploits of U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan. And he fielded hundreds of interviews with major newspapers, television networks, and radio stations, which seemed to take his swaggering claims - that he was an active-duty Green Heret in Afghanistan, an undercover spy, an explosives expert, and a key player in the hunt for Osama bin Laden - at face value. Idema used the platform the media provided to spread dubious information, much of it with crucial implications for national security and foreign policy. For example, he claimed to have uncovered a plot to assassinate Hill Clinton; that bin Laden was dead, and that the Taliban was poisoning the food that the United States was air-dropping to feed hungry Afghans. (In fact, people were getting sick from eating the desiccant packed with the food.)

Idema's career as a media personality reached its peak during the final breathless weeks of the run-up to the war in Iraq. Much of the information he provided during that period echoed the Bush administration's hotly contested rationale for war. He told MSNBC that the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda was "common knowledge" on the ground in Afghanistan, and claimed in an interview with WNYC radio's Leonard Lopate that "Iraq has been involved in supporting Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations with money, with equipment, with technology, with weapons of mass destruction." He told other wide-eyed journalists that there was ample evidence linking "Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia to Al Qaeda and to the attacks on September 11 " and professed to have firsthand knowledge of nuclear weapons being smuggled from Russia to all three members of the "axis of evil" - Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Few in the media questioned Idema's claims, much to the alarm of some who knew him.

"The media saw this outfitted, gregarious, apparently knowing guy, and they didn't check him out," says Ed Artis, chairman and founder of the humanitarian organization Knightsbridge International, who met Idema in Afghanistan in late 2001 and later tried to warn the government and media organizations that Idema was misrepresenting himself. "They ran story after story that furthered the cachet of a self-serving, self-aggrandizing criminal."

Idema's U.S. office is tucked inside a hulking brick warehouse in Fayetteville, North (Carolina home to Fort Bragg, America's largest military base and command center for the U.S.Army Special Operations. There's little to distinguish the building from its industrial surroundings except the dark-tinted windows, and the red "Restricted Access" plaque that clings to the front door. Inside, the cavernous space is cluttered with evidence of Idema's Afghan mission: crumpled boxes of medical supplies, a lime-green presentation board bearing an organizational chart for Al Qaeda, a massive topographical map of Afghanistan. Movie posters of scowling, leather-clad action heroes plaster the surrounding walls, including a particularly large one from Men in Black over Idema's desk. It shows two movie stars clutching super-sized guns and reads, "Protecting the Earth from the Scum of the Universe."

The décor reflects Idema's decades-long quest to fashion himself an action hero. He joined the Army in 1975 and qualified for the Special Forces, but his performance was often lacking. In an evaluation report dated July 7, 1977, Captain John D. Carlson described him as "without a doubt the most unmotivated, unprofessional, immature enlisted man that I have ever known." In 1978 he transferred to a reserve unit where he served until 1981, when he was relieved of his duties, in part for his "irrationality" and "tendency toward violence." His military records indicate that he never saw combat.

After leaving active-duty service, Idema ran a series of businesses related to special operations - including a counterterrorism training school and a traveling special-operations exposition - in partnership with another ibrmer Green Beret, Thomas Bumback. During this period, which spanned the 1980s and early '90s, he claims to have been involved in a series of "black ops," or secret military missions.

He was also compiling a long arrest record on charges including bad checks, assault, possession of stolen property, and discharging a firearm into a dwelling. Then, in 1994, Idema was tried and convicted of defrauding fifty-eight companies of about $260,000, according to The Fayetteville Observer. He served three years in prison. It was while awaiting sentencing that Idema launched his first media offensive, trying to sell a story about nuclear material being smuggled out of Russia. Gary Scurka, an investigative journalist and recipient of numerous prestigious awards, eventually produced a 60 Minutes piece based, at least in part, on information Idema had provided.

Over the next decade, Idema continued to court the media with help from a faithful cadre of friends - among them Scurka, the best-selling author Robin Moore, and Edward Caraballo, the cameraman who would later be imprisoned with Idema in Afghanistan. He met with little success, though, until September 11, 2001, when a shell-shocked public, desperate to make sense of the senseless, began groping for information. Idema gladly obliged.

On September 12, 2001, Idema appeared on KTTy Los Angeles's Fox affiliate, which billed him as a "counterterrorism adviser." He told audiences that three Canadian jetliners might have been hijacked, along with the four U.S. planes. By late October, Idema was in Afghanistan, telling associates that he planned to help two humanitarian groups - Partners International Foundation and Knightsbridge International - distribute food to hungry Afghans, and he brought along a National Geographic film crew, headed by Scurka, to make a film about his efforts. (Both aid groups say he misrepresented his plans in order to get them to cooperate.)

Idema, a stocky man who even in the Afghan hinterlands kept his salt-and-pepper hair died black, quickly adopted a quasi-military look - dark sunglasses, dust-colored fatigues, a black-and-white kaffiyeh draped around his neck. The style reflected his expanding repertoire of roles. Along with the human rights work and the documentary making, he claimed he was offering military advice to the Northern Alliance, which was fighting the Taliban. Meanwhile, he sold a variety of services to reporters, telling them he was Donald Rumsfeld's special representative to the Northern Alliance, or insinuating that he was working for the CIA or the Army Special Forces.

By December, Idema was serving as a commentator for Fox News, which paid him $500 per appearance, and charging journalists $1,000 a head for tours to Tora Bora, the sprawling cave complex where U.S. forces were battling Al Qaeda troops. According to reporters, the trips included press conferences with Idema himself. Some of Idema's media schemes showed extraordinary enterprise. In one case, he reportedly lured a local warlord named Hazrat AIi to the Spin Ghar hotel in Jalalabad for a press briefing and charged reporters $100 each to attend. It later emerged that he had told AIi that the journalists were Pentagon officials.

It's not difficult to understand why Idema - a self-proclaimed government operative with a silver tongue, striking looks, and a love of the spotlight - would appeal to reporters who,in late 200!,poured into war-ravaged Afghanistan desperate for stories. The war was being fought largely by Special Forces soldiers, who call themselves "quiet professionals" and assiduously avoid the press. Lack of information bred a sense of urgency. "The media were in a frenzy," explains Artis of Knightsbridge International. "They were interviewing each other about what they'd interview someone about if they had someone to interview." Idema also seems to have capitalized on the U.S. military's increasing reliance on contractors, and the confusion over who had authority to speak on the government's behalf.

In addition to courting reporters, Idema sometimes threatened them. Tod Robberson of The Dallas Morning Wezis reported that Idema shot at him "point-blank" during an argument. And some journalists were put off by his violent tendencies and overblown swagger. A group of photographers referred to Idema, who adopted the nickname "Jack" in Afghanistan, as Jack Shit.

After only two months in Afghanistan, Idema claimed to have found what would become the lynchpin of his widening media offensive: seven hours of footage that purportedly shows Al Qaeda training camps in action. Before long, Idema had sold video stills to several publications and enlisted the William Morris Agency to auction off the first-time U.S. broadcast rights."The intent is to sell the tapes to the highest bidder at terms that are ultimately satisfactory to Mr. Idema," explained a letter signed by Wayne S. Kabak, chief operating officer of William Morris, and hand-delivered to Fox News's New York offices on January 9 - one day before the auction was slated to take place.The terms included giving Idema "on-air credit as the person who procured these tapes" and the right to refuse any bid under $150,000.

These conditions, along with Idema's dark past, gave some networks pause. NBC Nightly News was put off by the hefty price tag and the lack of signs of authenticity, such as a logo from As-Sahab,Al Qaeda's video production house, which appears on the tapes Al Qaeda releases to the public."There was no way to verify them," says Robert Windrem, investigative producer for NRC Nightly News. "It was either you trust Keith Idema or you don't."

CNN backed off precisely because it decided Idema could not be trusted. This was after the network's national security analyst, Ken Robinson, searched Google and LexisNexis and discovered that Idema not only had a criminal record, but also liked to batter his rivals with lawsuits. In addition to turning down the tapes, the network decided to shun Idema as a source. It was the only network to do so.

On January 17,CBS's 60 Minutes II ran a story about the tapes. Dan Rather traveled to Afghanistan to interview Idema and visit the dusty, bullet-scarred compound called Mir Bacha Kot, where the filming had been done. At a time when workers were still sifting through the gnarled wreckage of the World Trade Center, the story reinforced the prevailing sense of panic. Men in camouflaged tunics and ski masks were shown storming buildings, staging drive-by shootings, and laying siege to golf courses. Sometimes the men laughed as they rehearsed maneuvers, which Rather interpreted as evidence that they approached their grim mission with "glee." The footage also contained numerous exchanges in English, "a sign," Rather told viewers, "that they want to take scenes like this to the West."

ABC, MSNBC, NBC, and the BBC subsequently paid thousands of dollars to air the training-camp footage, according to Idema's bank records. These records, interviews with Idema's associates and Idema's own emails, suggest that money from media activities, including the tapes, helped fund his 2004 operations in Afghanistan.

Along the way, Idema gave varying accounts of how he got the tapes. He told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Eric Campbell that he bought them from one of his intelligence assets after a series of "back-alley meetings at midnight." In contrast, he told NBC's Today show that he and a group of Northern Alliance fighters "took over" Mir Dacha Kot, then went to the house of the camp's commander, where they found some of the tapes. They then hunted down "soldiers" (presumably Al Qaeda recruits) to get the others.

Tracy-Paul Warrington, former deputy commander of a Special Forces counterterrorism team and a civilian intelligence analyst for the Defense Department, believes there's a good reason Idema's story changed. "In a nutshell, the videotapes are forgeries," he says. He explains that the tactics shown in the tapes (such as the way the trainees handle their weapons) were developed in the 1970s but abandoned shortly thereafter, and are not used by modem-day Al Qaeda troops. Also, Warrington points out that the tapes depict mostly raids, whereas "Al Qaeda almost exclusively uses bombs." Finally, Idema claimed in most accounts to have found the tapes around Mir Hacha Kot, an area that Warrington contends was already under coalition control and had been thoroughly searched by coalition forces. "This man who was convicted of fraud says he finds these tapes where nobody else found them," says Warrington. "That should have set some alarm bells off."

There are conflicting reports about the CIA's stance on the tapes. A retired senior special operations officer with nearly two decades of counterterrorism experience says that while he was on active duty he learned from a CIA contact that the agency had evaluated the tapes. "They did a voice analysis and a technical analysis," reports the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Not only were they staged, but you could single Idema's voice out directly." On the other hand, the CIA public affairs office says the agency "did not conduct voice analysis of the tape or draw any conclusion regarding its authenticity."

CDS employees received the tapes from Idema directly, and vetted them on the ground in Afghanistan at a time when the country was still in shambles and the network's Kabul bureau was operating out of a house with spotty phone service. The network's spokesperson, Kelli Edwards, says CBS nevertheless went to great lengths to ensure the tapes were authentic before airing them. This included "confirming with U.S. military officials that the camp in the video was, in fact, an Al Qaeda training camp ... showing the tapes to three former British Special Forces officers, who verified the tactics being practiced in the video were consistent with those of Al Qaeda, and to a top U.S. military official in Afghanistan who told us that, in his opinion, the video was authentic." The network says it can't reveal those officials' names because they offered their opinions on condition of anonymity.

Of all the networks, CBS had the longest-standing relationship with Idema. It had used him as a source or consultant on two projects before his arrival in Afghanistan. The first was the 1995 nuclear-smuggling story, called "The Worst Nightmare," which was produced by Scurka and aired on 60 Minutes.

Scurka had initially heard that Idema, who was then awaiting sentencing on fraud charges, had a lead on a hot story about the smuggling that he had picked up while operating his traveling exposition. Idema agreed to share information with Scurka. Scurka, meanwhile, lent a sympathetic ear to Idema's story about an injustice he felt he had suffered. Idema claimed the FBI had framed him on the fraud charges because he had refused to tell the agency where he learned about the nuclear smuggling, fearing leaks could hurt his sources.

The 60 Minutes piece, and a companion story in U.S. News & World Report, won that year's Renner Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. Idema never got any credit, though. This came as a blow to Scurka, who has maintained Idema was a key source and that CBS decided to cut any reference to him largely because he was imprisoned for fraud by the time the story aired. Edwards, the CBS spokesperson, suggests Idema's contributions didn't necessarily merit credit, since the final story, which took six months to investigate, was "much different than the story we initially began pursuing."

After "The Worst Nightmare" aired, Scurka and Caraballo started work on a film about Idema, called Any Lesser Man, "the Real story of one lone Green Beret's private war against KGB Nuclear Smuggling, Soviet Spies, Arab Terrorists, and the FBI," according to promotional materials. Despite years of effort, they were never able to scrape together enough money to complete it.

In 2000, Idema hooked up with CBS again.This time he and Scurka served as consultants to 48 Hours, then anchored by Dan Rather. They worked on an investigative story about Colonel George Marecek, a highly decorated Special Forces officer accused of murdering his wife, Viparet. But the two were eventually fired from the project. "48 Hours determined they had taken on an advocacy role for the defense," explains Edwards of CBS. Indeed, Idema and Scurka had opened a "Free Marecek" office in Wilmington, North Carolina, where the trial was taking place, and one witness alleged that Idema and another man came to his house to harass him the night before he was slated to testify. Idema also told several associates he was detained for impersonating a police officer in an effort to get into a Detroit prison and convince a convicted serial killer to confess to Viparet's murder. Despite concerns about Idema and Scurka's objectivity, in December 2000,48 Hours ran a story on Marecek, with much of the exculpatory evidence drawn from their research.

After being sacked by 48 Hours, Idema and Scurka launched a Web site called Point Blank Network News, or PBN, where they ran their own version of the Marecek story. The piece won a 2001 National Press Club award for online journalism. Despite the media attention, Marecek was convicted.

If the coverage of the Al Qaeda training camp tapes lent Idema credibility and renown, his old friend Robin Moore further lionized him by making him one of the lead characters of his blockbuster book, The Hunt for Bin Laden, published by Random House

Moore, a seventy-nine-year-old with clear blue eyes and bushy eyebrows, wears houndstooth blazers and leans on an ivory-handled cane. Like Idema, he has long straddled the divide between the media and military camps. To get access for his first best-seller, The Green Berets, he went through the grueling Special Forces qualification course, something no other civilian has ever done. He later covered the Vietnam War for Hearst Newspapers, and, because of his combat skills, was allowed to travel with operational detachments that were closed to other reporters. This meant he was sometimes forced to fight. On his living room wall Moore has hung a black-and-white photo of himself gripping the sagging body of a Vietnamese boy he had killed.

It was after seeing The Green Berets, a 1968 film based on Moore's book, that twelve-year-old Keith Idema decided he would join the Special Forces. But it wasn't until years later, when he was peddling special operations equipment, that he actually met Moore. Over time, a deep bond developed between the two men. "Robin is ... not only my friend," Idema wrote Scurka while he was imprisoned on fraud charges."He is my idol, almost my creator in a way."

Idema got involved in the Hunt for Bin Laden book project in July 2002, not long after returning to the United States. Moore said he asked Idema to help with the book because at the time lie was one of the few people in the United States with up-to-date knowledge about the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. Idema, he says, was only supposed to help ensure the book's accuracy. But he soon started adding information.

According to Moore, Idema wrote only select sections of the book. Marianne Strong, the agent who represented Moore on The Hunt for Bin Laden, tells a different story. "Jack wrote the book," she says. "Robin Moore started the book, but Robin Moore couldn't write the book, for a number of reasons" - among them a case of Parkinson's disease so advanced that he has difficulty signing his name. Idema, in fact, gets a credit line on the cover of the British version, and has filed a claim with the Library of Congress for sole copyright on it and on the American version. He also receives a portion of the royalties. A review of a manuscript draft of The Hunt for Bin Laden provided by Moore and dated June 1, 2002, just before Idema returned from his first trip to Afghanistan, suggests that the truth lies somewhere in between Strong's and Moore's accounts. Idema doesn't appear to have written the whole book, but the manuscript did change dramatically after he got involved.

The Hunt for Bin Laden was published on March 3, 2003, and within weeks it was number four on The New York Times bestseller list.To date, it has sold nearly 150,000 copies. The book portrays Idema, by turns, as a superhuman warrior, undercover spy, and rough-and-tumble cultural ambassador. He rescues injured children, removes bullets from "dozens" of Northern Alliance soldiers, and embarks on intelligence-gathering missions that the CIA shuns because they're too dangerous. Armed with a Russian assault rifle, he holds a band of hostage takers off for hours. He also uncovers a plot to assassinate former President Bill Clinton, nearly nabs Osama bin Laden, and captures a trove of documents detailing the Oaetla leader's "terrorist plans."

Some of the heroic scenes don't match eyewitness accounts. This includes a detailed description of Idema rescuing his longtime friend Gary Scurka, who was hit by shrapnel in a Talihan artillery attack. The book describes Idema taking command of the chaotic situation, fixing the sloppy bandage applied by journalists Tim Friend and Kevin Sites, and whisking Scurka to safety. Others who were present - including Friend and a former Special Forces soldier, Greg Long - describe a different scene.They say Sites, Friend, and Long applied a proper dressing. Friend, in fact, had worked as a surgical technician for six years. Hut when Idema arrived he ripped off the bandages and put on new ones, as the National Geographic cameraman recorded his every move."It was only in retrospect that I realized he was acting for the camera," Friend says.

Moore had collaborated with Idema on several projects before The Hunt for Bin Laden, and even secured an agent for a book, Any Lesser Man, about Idema's life. He also contributed $2,500 to the film project of the same name. During that period, Moore, highly respected by Green Berets, started getting warning emails from members of the Special Forces community. "Mr. Idema is not near the man/hero that he is being made out to be," wrote retired Captain William J. Adams in August 1999 "Lots of information provided by him doesn't wash according to eyewitness accounts and his demonstrated performance on active duty."

In the media push that followed the release of The Hunt for Bin Laden, Idema became its spokesman.This period, which marked the crescendo of his career as a media personality, came during the run-up to the Iraq war, and in the dozens of interviews Idema fielded, he often doubled as an expert on the looming conflict.

Many of Idema's claims, such as the Iraq-Al Qaeda connection, have since been discredited by the 9-11 Commission and UN weapons inspectors, but by billing him as a government official, the media lent them credence. NPR called him a "U.S. intelligence operative," while Northeast Public Radio dubbed him "the longest-serving Green Beret in the Afghanistan war." Others implied that Idema was working in an official capacity by saying he played an "integral" role in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and that he fought "alongside" U.S. Special Forces, or by calling him as a "former Green Beret who served in Afghanistan."

As Idema was blazing a trail through the talk show circuit, Ed Artis, who felt that Idema's actions in Afghanistan had put his employees in danger, went on a fax and e-mail blitz to alert the media that there were questions about Idema's credibility. (Idema has since filed suit against Artis.) Several shows canceled interviews after receiving the warning, something Strong, the book's agent,resents. "The Hunt would have made it to number one if it weren't for that," she says.

Around the same time,Wayne Lawley, then the president of the Special Forces Association, a fraternal organization for past and present Green Berets, sent an e-mail to association members about the book saying: "The knowledgeable reader may be irritated by fiction used to fill in research and outrageous claims by Keith Adema [sic], one of the book's advisors." The message was far more measured than some of the replies it prompted. Idema "is doing all he can to besmirch the name of Special Forces, and all we stand for," wrote Billy Waugh, a former Green Beret and CIA operative, who has detailed his own experience in a 2004 book called Hunting the Jackal. "This man has lied to the nth degree, and all for self-aggrandizement." Gradually, Moore came to see Idema in a similar light. "He wants to be the hero of every story," Moore says. "He tries to portray himself as a hero, even if he has to lie."

A series of events caused the shift in Moore's opinion. A "Hunt for Bin Laden" Web site registered to Idema began advertising an upcoming Robin Moore book about Idema entitled An Army of Owe. Moore said the site was unauthorized and that he never planned to write such a book. Idema also charged about $10,000 worth of books to Moore's account at Random House. Moore says Idema did this without his permission and that Idema also slipped the names and post office boxes of two groups into a list of charities that appear in the back of the British version of the book (because a percentage of the royalties were to be directed to these groups). One of the addresses was for U.S. Counter-Terrorist Group (Counterr), the umbrella organization for Idema's own Afghanistan operations. (At least one reader sent a donation to Counterr, according to Idema's bank records.) The other address was supposed to be for a charity that helped the fami lies of killed or wounded Green Berets, but North Carolina's postal inspector determined that the post office box was actually controlled by Idema, and was investigating him for mail fraud before his Afghan arrest.

Moore eventually submitted a host of corrections that he wanted made to The Hunt for Bin Laden, based largely on input from Special Forces contacts, but many were never incorporated. Carol Schneider, Random House's spokesperson, said the publisher made all changes that it received in time, but a number of them came after the deadline had passed.Then, in late October, Robin Moore gave Random House a proposal for a scathing second book on Idema, Smoke ane Mirrors: Jonathan Keith Idema and his Great Media Swindle, but Random House turned it down. Tm not going to do this," Bob Loomis, vice president and executive editor for the publisher, said to Moore, as QR's reporter sat listening over a speakerphone in Moore's living room. "It's too negative on Jack. It reflects badly on The Hunt because of his role in it."

Idema headed back to Afghanistan in mid-April 2004, accompanied by Caraballo, who would claim after their arrest that he was a journalist working on an independent documentary. But according to bank records, Idema was paying him.

Idema's lawyer, John Edwards Tiffany, says that by the end of April Idema had arrested his first prisoner, whom he turned over to U.S. officials on May 3. But two months later the man was released after the United States Central Command determined that he was not the high-ranking Taliban official Idema had claimed he was. The command began to investigate Idema, and shortly thereafter Wanted posters for Idema went up in Kabul. He and his cohorts nevertheless made a series of arrests in June, according to Tiffany. It wasn't until July 5 that Afghan police finally nabbed him, along with Caraballo, the former U.S. soldier Brent Bennett, and four Afghans who were working with them. At the time, the Abu Ghraib scandal was raging. Idema claimed he was working with the knowledge and approval of the U.S. government (something the Central Command and the State Department adamantly deny) and presented some evidence to support this claim during his trial. But none of it seems to point to definitive links to the Afghan or U.S. governments. Among the material is a video of meetings between Idema and two Afghan ministers. But both reportedly said they met with Idema to discuss his claims about the taxi-bomb plot only because they believed he was a member of the U.S. military.Tiffany also played tape-recorded conversations of Idema purportedly talking to officials in Deputy Undersecretary of Defense William G. Boykin's office. In one of the conversations, recorded after the Wanted posters for him went up, Idema threatens to give some unidentified material to the press. "Someone's got to do something within twelve hours or I'm going to e-mail this fucking thing to Dan Rather," he warns. "Do you think I would rot in prison if there's a problem?"

Most of the evidence, though, is one-directional communication, with Idema offering information or asking for assistance. There may he a reason for this: According to Bumback, and Idema's own e-mails, Idema had been trying desperately to secure a Pentagon contract, but hadn't been able to do so. Bumback says that's why Idema largely relied on the media to fund his operations. "Somebody had to replenish the till," he says. "Uncle Sam wasn't doing it."

Despite his problems, including a December shootout in his cell block, Idema continues to hatch ever-more creative schemes to ensure that history portrays him as a swashbuckling hero. From his jail cell he is telling associates that he plans lawsuits against Tod Robberson of The Dallas Morning News and the freelance journalist Stacy Sullivan, two reporters who have written investigative pieces about him since his arrest in Afghanistan. Idema made it clear in a recent letter to one of his attorneys (who was instructed in the letter to distribute it to other members of Idema's inner circle) that his goal was to influence future coverage. "Whatever we sue them for doesn't matter" he wrote."It puts all the others on notice that 1) we will and can sue; 2) I still have fangs, and lawyers, even from an Afghan prison cell; 3) other people better check their stories...." Idema is also apparently trying to sway coverage by making reporters sign detailed contracts in order to get an interview with him.Tiffany, Idema's attorney, says at least one journalist has already done so. Idema wouldn't speak with CJR because the magazine refused to sign such an agreement.

Meanwhile, Idema is negotiating with an agent regarding a film about his exploits. And Strong, Moore's former agent, recently received a 12,000-word installment of Idema's book, which she said she has already discussed with dozens of publishers. Its working title: Army of One.

Perhaps these developments explain the optimism pouring out of Idema's Afghan prison cell. "When Caesar crossed into Italy with his legion ... he said, 'let the dice fly high,' "he wrote in a recent letter."Well, we did, and although we are down, I know I will prevail in the end."

Mariab Blake is an assistant editor at CJR. Additional reporting on this story was provided by A. G. Basalt in Afghanistan. CJR gratefully acknowledges support for this article from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Copyright Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism Jan/Feb 2005

Let’s begin by acknowledging up front that Zalmay Khalilzad was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University from 1979-1986, which might explain quite a bit about this piece to begin with.

Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad was confirmed on June 16, 2005 and sworn in on June 22, 2005 as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq.

Dr. Khalilzad was U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and also served as Special Presidential Envoy to Afghanistan.
Before becoming Ambassador to Afghanistan, he served at the National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Islamic Outreach and Southwest Asia Initiatives, and prior to that as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Southwest Asia, Near East, and North African Affairs. He also has been a Special Presidential Envoy and Ambassador at Large for the Free Iraqis.
Dr. Khalilzad headed the Bush-Cheney transition team for the Department of Defense and has been a Counselor to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.
Between 1993 and 1999, Dr. Khalilzad was Director of the Strategy, Doctrine and Force Structure program for RAND's Project Air Force. While with RAND, he founded the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.
Between 1991 and 1992, Dr. Khalilzad served as Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning. Then-Secretary of Defense Cheney awarded Dr. Khalilzad the Department of Defense medal for outstanding public service.
Dr. Khalilzad also served as a senior political scientist at RAND and an associate professor at the University of California at San Diego in 1989 and 1991.
From 1985 to 1989 at the Department of State, Dr. Khalilzad served as Special Advisor to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs working policy issues, advising on the Iran-Iraq war and the Soviet war in Afghanistan. From 1979 to 1986, Dr. Khalilzad was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University.
Dr. Khalilzad received his bachelor's and master's degree from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. He went on to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Dr. Khalilzad is the author of more than 200 books, articles, studies, and reports. His work has been translated in many languages including Arabic, Chinese, German, Japanese, and Turkish.

Ok, now for some fun.

In April, 2004, a former US Special Forces Soldier named Jonathan Keith Idema started shopping a sizzling story to the media.

Is that so? So in those few sentences you have set the stage and have pinned him as some sort of of a con man “shopping a sizzling story”…

He claimed terrorists in Afghanistan planned to use bomb-laden taxicabs to kill key US and Afghan officials, and that he himself intended to thwart the attack.

So he if I’m to swallow what you’re saying here, I’m to follow the assumption that Jack had a crystal ball and planned all this out head of time? Where is your proof that he was saying this before the fact or are we to accept what you’re saying merely at face value?
That’s the problem with so much of this, the statements are made but no verfiable facts are offered so we’re just supposed to blindly believe and go along with it.

Shortly thereafter, he’s headed to Afghanistan, where he spent the next two months conducting a series of raids with his team, which he called Task Force Saber 7. By late June, he claimed to have captured the plotters, and started trying to clinch a deal with television networks by offering them “direct access” to one of the terrorists who, he said, had agreed to tell all.

hmmm. My recollection of these early events are that Idema was in Afghanistan in 2001, before these events and it was reported by your buddies in the AP. You know, Nahrin Earthquake (where he was depicted as a hero), Anaconda (where he was depicted as a hero), etc.
But all that aside, here’s the true story in a nutshell: Gulumsaki was nabbed getting off a bus, and was caught red-handed with a letter from his brother at Gitmo in his pocket. The real news is what all of that intelligence led to.
And contrary to news reports and blogging frauds, CBS had a representative present who was recording everything in addition to Caraballo. You see, CBS originally had an interest in this story. They were interested in reporting on how Idema’s methods were different than those demonstrated by the idiots at Abu Grhaib. In essence, their intention was to report that Abu Ghraib was the exception and not the rule.

In exchange for footage and access, Idema wanted a minimum of $250,000 and prominent play. He asked that ABC send Peter Jennings or Cristopher Cuomo to cover the story. Ultimately ABC turned the story down, as did CNN, a CBS spokesperson, Kelli Edwards, says the network “never seriously considered” it, although Idema was regularly e-mailing Dan Rather’s office and in June, the network sent two employees to Idema’s Kabul headquarters to pick up the sample tape.

That’s interesting, because Idema didn’t talk to anyone but CBS about this. It was Caraballo who had a relationship with ABC and nobody talked with CNN. And to be sure, there is so much more to CBS’s involvement in this story!
CBS wanted to confirm reports that Idema and his team had captured the brother-in-law of bin Laden’s chief of security and the terrorists responsible for the murder of Canadian ISAF Corporal Jamie Brendan Murphy. Corporal Murphy had been murdered in a bombing on Darlaman Road in Kabul on January 27, 2004. Once CBS confirmed this, they saw it as an important story against the war on terror.
Idema told CBS that approval for the story would have to be obtained by the Department of Defense before he could discuss his relationship with Bagram or Task Force 180. Idema told CBS that any story should focus on the United Front Military Forces’ continued efforts to combat Al Qaeda and why Massoud’s UFMF needed continued American supported in their counter terrorist operations.
CBS’s bureau chief, with the approval of Andrew Hayward and others, were inside Sabre 7’s compound during the period when several terrorists were in custody an awaiting transfer to Bagram. CBS’s Michael Brandenberg was at the compound on numerous occasions, and even spoke directly with Osama Bin Laden’s chief of security’s brother in law.
CBS said they wanted to show how co-opting a terrorist accomplished more than humiliation by untrained interrogators. Idema allowed CBS to transmit interrogation video back to the US from the CBS Kabul office.

Idema, who was paying an Emmy Award-winning cameraman to document his activities, even distributed a sample tape of himself arresting people and interrogating hooded suspects. In one scene he is shown blocking a road and emptying passing vehicles. “Put your fucking hands up or I’ll blow your fucking brains out,” he screams at a group of men who have shuffled bewilderedly off a bus and are standing with their flimsy tunics whipping in the wind.

Jack did not pay Caraballo to be a cameraman in Afghanistan. My sources tell me that Jack did not even want to bring Caraballo, or any journalist, and the Army asked him to bring three different journalists, all of which Jack turned down.
Wow, Mariah, pretty dramatic screenplay you’re writing there. I wonder why you completely turned around on this. You didn’t mention how impressed you were with Idema and how you were talking about how great Idema was after viewing those tapes.
Jack dictated a legal contract and within a day or so, there was a response from Columbia Journalism review that it didn’t meet with their “objective” hoity-toity “truth telling” standards. HA! And that they would not comply. AND, they contacted Polaris images to get the same photographs licensed for use that Stacy Sullivan had used (if I’m not mistaken) ILLEGALLY in HER hit piece. So someone is trying to cover for Stacy Sullivan’s putting her neck out there on this one.
The clip where their robes were ‘whipping in the wind” (if I’m not mistaken) was the one where Ghulamsaki was caught red-handed with the Red Cross letter from his brother at Gitmo in his pocket as he got off a bus. The only reason that Idema and his men got the guy was because they had excellent intelligence on where he would be and when. Some guys claim they just drive around and see what happens. Idema isn’t one of those.

These captured terrorists were working with and/or for; Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida, Gulbideen Hekmatyar, Hezb-i-Islami, and the Taliban. Specifically, these terrorists had participated in, supported, and/or personally conducted terrorist bomb attacks against foreign and domestic persons in Afghanistan. A prime target of these terrorists was U.S. military forces at Bagram Airbase north of Kabul in Afghanistan. In fact, the American FBI later confirmed Task Force Saber/7’s intelligence reports that several of the terrorists were going to drive fuel trucks into Bagram and explode them into U.S. military barracks in a terrorist bomb attack similar to the bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983 in which 244 U.S. Marines were killed. Using a rare incendiary explosive to detonate fuel tanks on the gas trucks entering Bagram daily, and taxis, the terrorists expected to kill more than 500 American soldiers, two ministers, and two ambassadors in at least five separate coordinated attacks. These same terrorists had already made at least one attempt on the Defence Minister, and two failed attempts on the 3rd Corps commander, General Attiquallah Lodeen, a close friend and trusted ally of the United States and a candidate for Parliament.

Several of the captured terrorists were directly involved in the killing of Canadian Lance Corporal Jamie Murphy on January 27, 2004 in Kabul, the killing and wounding of election and aid workers in Nangahar and other provinces in Afghanistan, the attack of NATO ISAF forces in Kabul, and were currently planning and coordinating the assassinations of several of Karzai’s key political opponents in the Jamiat Party, including his Minister of Defense, Minister of Education, several Corps Commanders (former Northern Alliance Generals), and at least two Afghan Ambassadors (in Delhi and London) who supported the U.S. War on Terror. The Minister of Education, Yunis Qanooni, was the lead opponent to Karzai in Afghanistan’s new election under the Bonn Agreement, and was a prime target of the terrorists, along with Marshall Fahim, the Minister of Defence, and General Rashid Dostum.

All of the terrorists had been arrested by Task Force Saber/7 with either actual explosives, detonators, bomb parts, and/or bomb plans in their possession, as well as documents and correspondence proving their links and association with the Taliban, Hezb-i-Islami, and al-Qaida, including handwritten maps and diagrams of a past bomb attack on General Lodeen, a Shabnama “night letter” calling for a jihad against Americans authored by none other than Mullah Omar himself, and in the case of a terrorist named Ghulamsaki a coded Red Cross letter from his brother (Mohammed Asef), an al-Qaida detainee in Cuba. Additionally, one of the terrorist’s taxis tested positive for explosives by German ISAF bomb teams. The physical evidence against the terrorists was irrefutable, conclusive, and backed-up by incriminating videotaped statements, undercover surveillance, informants, and extraordinary physical evidence.

Comment: What Cao doesn't seem to be able to grok is that this is the clue to the real reason Jack Idema was cut loose to dangle in the wind, and then "Swiftboated" when he complained about it. It is obvious that the "Al-Quaeda Terrorists" that Jack Idema was capturing were CIA ASSETS! The U.S. did not want their assets captured! They wanted them to continue to attack the U.S. forces, they wanted them to continue to act as "bogeymen" to scare the American people. And most of all, they did not want it discovered that Osama was dead and there was NO connection between him and Iraq.

Without this key understanding, poor Cao simply has no explanation for his rant. Yes, he see's what happened, but he doesn't understand what is really going on.

It appears that Idema still hadn’t sold the taxicab story by July 5, when his situation took a turn for the worse. The Afghan police raided his headquarters and discovered eight prisoners, some of them tethered to chairs in a back room, which was littered with bloody cloth. The men told reporters that they had been starved, beaten, doused with scalding water, and forced to languish for days in their own feces.

Give me a break. The red cross reports showed absolutely no evidence of torture except for one guy–some abrasions on his ankle because the flexicuffs were on too tight, and he was struggling to get out of them. No pictures emerged of the “bloody cloth”, either. And do you think if there were pictures of actual torture that the media wouldn’t have had a field day broadcasting them?
As far as I recall, the actual complaint was that he wasn’t allowed to take a PISS for 12 hours, and that violated Islamic law. That’s a little bit different than languishing “for days in their own feces”. All of the other things were later done to Jack and his men at Saderat after they were taken into custody on July 6.
Of course, there was one picture that was put up at ABC Australia that showed Jack stitching up the terrorist Sherajan. Someone wrote that what he was doing in that picture was some weird kind of Nazi torture technique of removing brain tissue or some garbage. Actually, people at Bagram said he had fixed up that wound rather well and it was healing nicely. So those reports of Jack “torturing innocent Afghans” is so far off the mark it’s breathtaking. Sharajan was also captured in May, long before the events that led up to their arrest on July 6.
CBS’ Michael Brandenburg was at the compound on numerous occasions, and witnessed the interrogation of Al Qaeda terrorists at the compound. Idema allowed CBS’ representative to watch the interrogation of Corporal Murphy’s killers, and view each of the terrorists in custody. Brandenburg was also allowed to speak directly with the brother-in-law of Bin Laden’s Chief of Security, who was cooperating fully and willingly. CBS employees saw the methods of interrogation, the physical condition of the terrorist, and the conditions of the terrorists’ detention, and knew that no torture was occuring.
They didn’t, of course, admit this after Idema’s arrest because that would have indicated they were present and knew how Idema was conducting the questioning of the terrorists. So instead of telling the truth, they withheld information and proof that these men were innocent of the charges, and instead, put out the same lies the others were reporting.

Afghan authorities determined that none of the detainees had links to terrorism and set them free. Idema, on the other hand, was arrested, along with two other Americans (the cameraman and a former soldier) and four Afghans, and charged with running an unauthorized prison and torturing inmates. After a cursory trial, he was sentence to serve ten years. (This case is on appeal.)

Yes, the taliban kangaroo court allowed the terrorists to go free, and in August, there was a bombing at Bagram. Yeah. No links to terrorism. Ghulumsaki was one of the perpetrators in that bombing.
Immediately after the “guilty” verdict, they filed and appeal and in the second trial they were declared completely innocent.
The taliban judge (in the first trial), the former soviet communist interpreter and all the rest–didn’t follow any of the rules of law…and later, the two main guys who were touting the story of abuse (Jalili and Mashal) resigned their posts (to save face) and ran off because they were exposed as the Taliban. Judge Sidiq was exposed as the taliban, linked to Hekmatyar (a buddy of Bin Laden’s).
There was a vast difference in the terrorist interrogations done by Idema and the experienced intelligence agents working with him as compared to the young interrogators at Abu Ghraib and other locations. CBS’ Bureau Chief said Heyward wanted to compare Idema’s effective interrogation techniques with the poor techniques used at Abu Ghraib. CBS said they wanted to show how co-opting a terrorist accomplished more than humiliation by untrained interrogators. Idema allowed CBS to transmit interrogation video back to the US from the CBS Kabul office.
Just a few hours after Michael Brandenburg left for the last time, Idema was arrested by anti-UFMF forces, at the request of Interior Minister Ahmad Ali Jalali (exposed later as Taliban or officially “former” Taliban) of “running a torture chamber”, “torturing innocent Afghans”, and other illegal conduct. Three other false claims by Jalali were that Idema had “innocent Afghans hung from the ceiling in his basement”, that the terrorists were being “abused, tortured and starved” and that Idema and his men were “rounding up innocent Muslims with long beards” (only 3 of 11 had long beards).
CBS and other news networks piled on and reported Jalali’s false claims and similar false allegations by Jalali’s spokesman Lutfullah Mashal. Ahmad Ali Jalali was a former Voice of America radio news translator in Washington, DC. Jalali, a vehemently anti-UFMF (Northern Alliance) Pashtun from the south, is alleged to have had a prior relationship with CBS News and Fox News. CBS News had also worked with Lutfullah Mashal in the past. Mashal was a former translator for journalists during the 2001/2002 war and had close connections with the Taliban. Idema had warned both CBS and FOX about Mashal’s Taliban connections in 2001 and 2002, yet they still employed Mashal and worked with him during that time.
Interestingly enough, since these events have taken place, Mashal and Jalali “resigned”.
Don’t these so-called journalists realize how transparent their attempts are at this fakery and fraudulent news reporting?
Note how several of these pieces have come out where they use the same terms, and the same so-called “sources” and “experts” who have turned out to be complete lying frauds. It’s like a handful of journalists are using a handful of lying sources, and writing the same lies to cover for each other while destroying the reputation of someone who’s a legend in SF Ops and deserves much better than this. After what he did–I think he deserves at least a medal! And instead, he got imprisonment and torture with FBI agents laughing in the hallway. Something is terribly wrong with this picture.

For all its outlandish twists, the saga of the taxicab plot was not extraordinary for Idema, who over the years had fed the press a variety of sensational material that seemed to shed light on the shadowy world of secret soldiers, spies and assassins. This time the story never ran, but Idema had been a key source for numerous questionable stories that did. A self-proclaimed terror-fighter who has served time for fraud, Idema took a willing media by storm, glorifying his own exploits, padding his bank account, and providing dubious information to the American public.

Oh that one is rich. Painting Idema with the same brush as assassins and spies really indicates to me that you don’t understand the job of a Green Beret, or the work of special forces. Or who we’re fighting, or war in general. It didn’t seem to me that the AP had any problem with his record before this, when he single-handedly rescued 300 women and children after the earthquake in Nahrin. Take a look at the archived articles here. What this seems to boil down to, Ms. Blake, is media whores talk the line that sells papers. Even if it’s a lie.
What happened to journalists doing RESEARCH for a piece –and providing factual information? Idema may have made some money over the years, but he has also spent much of his own money–to the point where he’s virtually homeless–to fight terrorism and help the people in Afghanistan. But of course telling the truth about the man isn’t as juicy as telling lies that portray him as a ‘rogue bounty hunter’. I’m not sure about that, really…I’d rather see the real story told…and unfortunately I’m only seeing it because of my own research. What a sad commentary about the media!

In January 2002, Idema sold CBS sensational footage, which he called the “VideoX” tapes, that purported to show an Al Qaeda training camp in action. The tapes became the centerpiece of the bombshell 60 Minutes II piece, “Heart of Darkness”, reported by Dan Rather and touted as “the most intimate look yet at how the world’s deadliest terrorist organizaton trains its recruits.” Idema also sold video stills to a number of press outlets, including the Boston Globe. MSNBC, ABC, NBC, the BBC, and others later replayed the tapes. Questions are now emerging about their authenticity, some of which were detailed in a piece by Stacy Sullivan in New York magazine in October.

Boy you apologists are really quick to stroke each other off, aren’t you? Gotta love that one. There are no “questions about their authenticity” except those in the media, like you, who are trying to perpetrate this fraud on the public. And it would also seem that Stacy Sullivan, up until this point, was hanging out there all alone with that ridiculous piece “Operation Desert Fraud” –so someone at the Columbia Journalism Review had to come in and “rescue” her by printing the identical false accusations, using the same questionable lying fraudulent sources!
Here’s Peter Bergen’s response to those lies.
Last October, New York magazine raised the possibility that the Al Qaeda videotapes Idema supplied to 60 Minutes II were faked, a seemingly plausible scenario given Idema’s previous fraud conviction. But when I visited the town of Mir Bacha Kot, about a half-hour north of Kabul, Deputy Police Chief Mohammed Araf told me that Arabs had indeed used the town as a military base under the Taliban, and the buildings in Mir Bacha Kot match those on the Idema-supplied tapes. A journalist from a leading U.S. media organization who evaluated the tapes told me he had no doubt they were authentic but passed on them only because Idema was demanding tens of thousands of dollars for them.
Now consider that what Bergen is saying about Idema asking tens of thousands of dollars for those tapes is true (I don’t believe it for a second.). What do you suppose is the dollar value of the lengths to which he had to go to get that footage? Or the personal sacrifice that he and his family have made in order for him to do this difficult work? Is money any compensation? Probably not.
Do you realize that Idema doesn’t have very much at all at present, and do you know the reasons why?
Idema hasn’t asked for a dime from any journalist for those tapes. But even if he had–he’s virtually homeless because he’s been using his own money to fight this war on terror, and to help the Afghan people. To me, the claim that he’s in this for a buck is disingenuous at best. As a matter of fact, it also seems to me as though it’s the people on the other side who are trying to make a buck off him while he’s in prison and can’t defend himself.

Idema also served as an expert military commentator on Fox News and was a lead character in Robin Moore’s best-selling book “The Hunt for Bin Laden”, which was supposed to chronicle the exploits of U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan. And he fielded hundreds of interviews with major newspapers, television networks, and radio stations, which seem to take his swaggering claims–that he was an active-duty Green Beret in Afghanistan, an undercover spy, an explosives expert, and a key player in the hunt for Osama bin Laden–at face value.

He IS all of those things. And for your all of your elitist bluster, you’ve missed one key point about being a Green Beret. Being a Green Beret is something you earn through your training and courses you’ve taken. It’s an honorary award that President Kennedy began to bestow on SF operatives. IT NEVER GOES AWAY.
From Wikipedia:
Their official motto is De opresso liber (”To liberate the oppressed”).



The Green Beret was originally unauthorized for wear by the U.S. Army. It was legitimized by President John F. Kennedy who encouraged the wearing of the beret by the Special Forces. Preparing for an October 12, 1961 visit to the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the President sent word to the center’s commander, Brigadier General William P. Yarborough, for all Special Forces soldiers to wear the beret as part of the event. The President felt that since they had a special mission, Special Forces should have something to set them apart from the rest. In 1962, he called the Green Beret “a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom.”
The Green Beret is an AWARD. All other headgear and uniforms are issued when you are assigned to a unit. Dr.’s are not called former doctors, Rangers are not called former Rangers, nor are SEALs called former SEALs, because these are awards which have specific requirements, such as graduating specific schools. I’ve never seen any article declaring that Idema is active military–to the contrary; he’s a Green Beret, and a specialist in several areas as was described in this post.
C’mon, Miss Blake, do your homework. Well actually if you’d done your homework, this piece would have turned out very differently, that is obvious.

Idema used the platform the media provided to spread dubious information, much of it with curcial implications for national security and foreign policy. For example, he claimed to have uncovered a plot to assassinate Bill Clinton; that Bin Laden was dead, and that the Taliban was poisoning the food that the United States was air dropping to feed hungry Afghans. (In fact, people were getting sick from eating the dessicant packed with the food.)

Oh that’s interesting, Miss Blake. The Guardian reported on this in 1998 and is it a coincidence that Jack Idema isn’t mentioned in the article??? I don’t ever quote the Guardian because it’s a socialist rag, but listen to this:

Counter-terrorism and intelligence sources say Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York, was due to carry out the killing in Manila.
He allegedly told FBI agents escorting him to New York for his bombing trial that he planned to kill Mr Clinton by blowing up his motorcade with a missile or explosives, but gave up because the security was so tight.
Yousef, it is reported, did not say Mr Bin Laden was behind the plot. But one of his co-defendants, Walk Khan Amin Shah, once a senior aide to Mr Bin Laden, allegedly said the order had come from the Saudi millionaire, who now lives in Afghanistan.

Would those counter terrorism sources be Jack Idema? They don’t name their source of that information in the article by name.
BTW, the only place I can find the information about Jack claiming the Taliban was poisoning the people is on the websites which are stupid enough to have spread around your bullshit article.
Ted Kavanau tells me that the dessicant story is actually quite different than you describe. Actually, if you’d bothered to check, it was document in several places. In Jon Lee Anderson’s “The Lion’s Grave”:

His first mission was to provide ground assistance to the air drops of U.S. humanitarian aid rations. He had also conducted an investigation into the rumors circulating among Afghans that the rations were poisoned.
“I found out who did it,” Jack said, “and it was not Al Qaeda or the Taliban. And there wasn’t any poison. The people were eating the desiccant” –the preservative drying agent—“that comes in little packets in each ration pack. It says “Do Not Eat” in English, French, Spanish and Chinese. But not in Farsi or Pashto. They thought it was spices! So there were some severe injuries and several presumed deaths. One guy who died ate the Handi Wipes, the desiccant—everything. These people, I mean they don’t even have napkins, how do they know what a Handi Wipe is? I gather he thought it smelled good, so he ate it.” Other people had become ill, Jack found, because many of the ration packs had exploded on impact, and the food inside had been exposed and become contaminated. Jack said that he wrote a report that was sent to DOD, and about a week later the problems were sorted out.

And in Hunt for Bin Laden.

Even though they had six DZs (drop zones) mapped and ready to receive food drops, the Air Force continued to drop the food packs blind, suing what was referred to as “flutter method,” an untested procedure where the HDRs were simply dumped out of the back of cargo planes. Idema was not happy with the way food drops were being conducted and started firing off messages to his friends at Fort Benning, Fort Bragg, and the Pentagon. While he waited for a response he started collecting airdropped food packs. Recovering some from the mountains and the desert floor, he paid the Afghans $5 each out of his own pocket so they could purchase rice instead. The Afghans had claims the HDRs were making them ill. Once Idema had a selection of HDR samples from across northeastern Afghanistan, the investigation quickly took an unexpected turn.
The packs had desiccant in them, a drying agent and moisture retardant that was packaged in small paper pouches and looked just like Afghan medicine or the spice packets in Russian noodles. Afghans started eating the desiccant. Sick Afghans started eating even more, thinking the U.S. was kindly dropping medicine. Idema’s civilian team fired off a report that Afghans were getting sick from desiccant. One village even claimed a man had died. (HDRs were printed in English, French, German and Spanish, nonexistent languages in remote Afghan villages. Eventually the Air Force started dropping cartoon leaflets that explained how to eat the food.)
Colin Powell received a copy of the team’s email and wanted answers. Natick Labs in Massachusetts initiatially denied the report and told the Pentagon and Powell that there was no desiccant in the HDRs. Washington believed them. The message returned to Idema’s team from “higher up” said the team was wrong, their intel was bad, and they were basically out in left field and unreliable.
Pissed off, Idema went back to the drawing board. Twenty-four hours later he was emailing digital pictures of desiccant packs via INMARSAT. In the process he discovered something far worse.
The HDRs had been packed in Texas, Indiana, and South Carolina at low altitudes. They had been dropped at altitudes far exceeding ten thousand feet. The sealed packs expanded in the air, and then hit the ground at terminal velocity, exploding the sealed food inside and causing slight tears in the other protective plastic wrapper. Exposed to the rugge Aghan terrain and harsh elements, the food inside rapidly spoiled and became contaminated. Digital pictures were transmitted through INMARSAT to Fort Benning’s Battle Lab.
Idema got word that Donald Rumsfeld had demanded answers from Natick. The following day the team was excstatic, a Natick official admitted the presence of desiccant and the more important contamination problem, stating that government contrators had violated DoD (Department of Defense) product specifications.

Yeah, here’s a “rogue” warrior criminal guy who a) doesn’t care about the Afghan people and b) has no contacts in Washington. Give me a break.
Idema never told anyone that the Taliban was poisoning the food that the Americans were dropping into Afghanistan as humanitarian aid to starving people. You could easily speculate that the American government itself started to talk that way–in the beginning when they were denying that desiccants were in the food.
Here’s an SF Operator comment [thanks, Dan]:

I would like to add that ANYONE that doubts your facts can contact ANY member of TIGER 03 (JSOTF Codename for ODA 595- 5th Special Forces Group (ABN), Fort Campbell, KY).
If you check the early October 2001 Reports from the DOD, I think you will find that it was the DOD PAO and an ASD who stated at a PRESS CONFERENCE that THEY believed the Taliban was poisoning the airdrops in Northern Afghanistan (I was already in the ISOFAC preparing to deploy when we were briefed on it).
During the press conference the DOD was defending dropping food and not bombs on Northern Afghanistan, which was of course the RIGHT thing to do because these people were, and are still, our allies, even if the American State Department has now deserted them and has us working with the new ANA (a joke of a Keystone Cop army).
Jack Idema went into Northern Afghanistan with a primary mission to find out who WAS poisoning the food drops and to get more food drops to the Northern Alliance and get the right kind of food landing on actual drop zones instead of USAF “blind drops.” This was secretly coordinated by the DAT at both the American and Afghan Embassies in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
Jack Idema found out the real cause of the poisoning and HDR problems. Idema FIXED the problem single handily, through initiative, ingenuity, and pure guts.
Make no mistake about it, four of the men on my team currently here in Afghanistan know for absolute fact that Jack Idema’s version of the HDR story is true.

Kavanau called the Pentagon and they denied these packets were packed in that food. PLUS, there were several reporters who claimed they broke the dessicant story FIRST and were pissed that Idema picked it up as though it were his. That’s the only problem here–Idema never said the Taliban was poisoning the food. That’s utter BS, but it goes along with the rest of the BS flavor of this piece.
I can pick holes in every single paragraph of this thing… I’m going to stop at the piece de resistance…just a few more to go…This next one is priceless…

Idema’s career as a media personality reached its peak during the final breathless weeks of the run-up to the war in Iraq. Much of the information he provided during that period echoed the Bush administration’s hotly contested rationale for the war. He told MSNBC that the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda was “common knowledge” on the ground in Afghanistan, and claimed in an interview with WNYC radio’s Leonard Lopate that “Iraq has been involved in supporting Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations with money, with equipment, with technology, with weapons of mass destruction.” He told other wide-eyed journalists that there was ample evidence linking “Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia to Al Qaeda and to the attacks on September 11,” and professed to have firsthand knowledge of nuclear weapons being smuggled from Russia to all three members of the “axis of evil”–Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Few in the media questioned Idema’s claims, much to the alarm of some who knew him.

This is too much, . The “rationale for the war” is not, nor has it ever been “hotly contested”. An neither is the Saddam/Iraq/Al Qaeda/Bin Laden Connection. Only where the myth plays dramatically–in the no-account clueless world of the media.

Comment: And here, Cao loses the thread that would lead him to the truth again: the Complicity of the U.S. government in the 9-11 attacks and the subsequent use of those events to initiate an illegal war against Iraq. There is no Saddam/Iraq/Al Qaeda/Bin Laden connection.
What familiar about all of this is how FDR was demonized in the press for the war with the nazis. At the time, Joe Kennedy tried to talk him out of it; saying that Hitler had it “in the bag”. Clare Boothe Luce was the wife of Time Magazine Founder Harry Luce, and she was also a playright. Clare Boothe Luce said that FDR “lied us into war” with the nazis. So this is all eerily familiar. And as usual, the leftists are on the wrong side of history. Because as it’s been pointed out before, they’ve been wrong about every single conflict we’ve ever been engaged in.
Comment: Poor Cao! He cannot see the forest for the trees! He sees what was done to his hero, Jack Idema, but he can't let go of his "I'm an Amurrikan and Amurrika is always good and right" brainwashing. It is, indeed true, that FDR lied America into WW II. Fact is, it was the so-called "Leftists" that the Nazi's were really after. It's no different today with Bush and the Neocons - Fascists vs. the Left, and poor Cao has bought the propaganda.


It is also interesting that Cao then goes on to quote from Richard Miniter's book, written to support the Neocon lies, in his arguments agains Mariah Blake, who has also written her flame piece about Jack Idema to support the Neocon lies. Note in Democracynow's inteview how Boykin, a Neocon general, cuts Idema loose when the whole Neocon gang closes ranks against Idema. But Cao apparently can't see that these are all parts of the same elephant.
Cao next struggles with this very issue, but is still unable to see the answer.
Oh yeah. I forgot. Journalism isn’t about reporting facts, it’s about spinning the news according to the party line. IN this case, it’s about furthering “no wmd”, “Bush lied, men died”, etc.. So the party line on Idema was to paint him as a “rogue warrior”, a backyard “paintball” enthusiast who had fantasies of 007, but who was really a criminal. I think that about sums it up.
Comment: Cao conveniently forgets that it was journalists that were "spinning the news according to the party line that there WERE WMDs in Iraq. Now, because there are journalists questioning this, he accuses them of "spinning the news according to the party line" of NO WMDs. It never occurs to him that the truth is not always found by deciding that everything is Black or White. What's more, you can't have it both ways at once.


Blake’s piece demonizes one of the greatest patriots of our time; Jack Idema. I’m pretty sick of this, and I’d like to see just one large pundit–just one big blogger to pick up this story–because right now, all “news outlets” are pretty sad in my estimation–as perveyors of truth, as far as reporting anything at home or abroad accurately, fairly, or taking the best interests of our national security at heart.

“The media saw this outfitted, gregarious, apparently knowing guy, and they didn’t check him out,” says Ed Artis, chairman and founder of the humanitarian organization Knightsbridge International, who met Idema in Afghanistan in late 2001 and later tried to warn the government and media organizations that Idema was misrepresenting himself. “They ran story after story that furthered the cachet of a self-serving, self-aggrandizing criminal.”

Whew. Put your boots on, and pull up your pantlegs. Let’s take a look at this last paragraph. Who exactly is Ed Artis?
Since I’ve taken up this story, people are coming out of the woodwork who are surprised he hasn’t gotten people killed, surprised he hasn’t gotten himself killed, and more importantly, are anxious to see the truth be told.
Knightsbridge International is a supposed “humanitarian” organization that is supposedly doing good deeds. You can read about Artis’ and Laws’ exploits at several websites online. They talk about how Knightsbridge is a cross between Mother Teresa and Indiana Jones. If that doesn’t make you roll your eyes back into their sockets, Artis’ talks about being a Knight of Malta, that sounds impressive, doesn’t it? But the fact is- Americans don’t have Knights of anything. There are no American knights –except for the Knights of Malta, which you can join if you pay them $5,000. There are some definite similarities that I can see between Knightsbridge and George Galloway’s Miriam Appeal.
Artis has reportedly taken money people thought they were paying for humanitarian work to hire photojournalists to record his exploits on film. Artis, according to my sources, has a $400,000 or so home in California, which he had quick-claimed deeded to his wife in order to avoid problems with litigation. Miriam Appeal, which was originally put together to supposedly cure a little Iraqi child of leukemia, is still collecting funds, long after the little girl was cured, paying for, in part, Galloway’s lavish lifestyle. The Global Coalition to End Human Trafficking NOW has some interesting things going on, not the least of which is an investigation for charity fraud. Curiously, Christine Dolan started up another organization in order to continue defrauding people out of their money, called The International Humanitarian Campaign Against the Exploitation of Children.
Dolan’s group claims connection with Knightsbridge.
In addition to that, Ed Artis has claimed -under oath–that the medals he has worn to formal events (like at an event at West Point, for example)–are fake.
During 1994, Artis scammed his way into a war zone and hitched a ride on a C-130, claimed he was “Airborne” so he could get to the capital, broke in and stole documents. He certainly isn’t all that he claims to be, and you’d wonder why he’d want to steal documents and what he’d possibly be using them for? Another member of the smear Jack cabal said Artis “has helped more people than you can imagine’. Yeah, I wonder what the definition of “helped” is. Refusing to give the food you’ve stashed for your flabby self to starving people because all you’re really looking for is pictures and movies taken of yourself “rescuing them”? Endangering a man by telling the media about his dangerous (and secret) mission, the times of the flights, etc., in order to brag that “mercs” would meet him at the airport? Supposed “Knights of Malta” who had “vowed” to “help” and would join him at New Orelans, New York, Brusssels, Kanshasa, Goma–who never showed up? But were hungry to get their hands on bloody machetes off the battlefield and sell them at a high price?
Reminds me of the stories of him in Afghanistan–buying black turbans and smearing them with chicken blood and dirt, in order to claim he’d taken them off dead Taliban or Al Qaeda and turn around and sell them. What kind of sick minds come up with this stuff?
Sure, it’s sounds heroic to go to third world countries and provide any manner of relief–set yourself up as a “knight” which appeals to the elitists and opens their pocketbooks. Buy yourself a PHD from a papermill and claim you’re a “doctor”–But it’s also disgusting when the entire reputation–all the medals, the fake vatican passport, etc., are entirely fraudulent. When he went to Africa, he was taken into a combat zone and promising everyone he ran across, apparently not aware how dangerous things were, that he could get them a vatican passport. And from what I gather they didn’t look real–they looked childish. He has (over the years) somehow managed to avoid getting people killed–which is something the people he’s dealt with in places like Afghanistan still wonder at. Someone that clueless-that determined to pay for photojournalists to film him handing out blankets–and willing to re-shoot it–much like John Kerry–so he could get the best footage–is who the real man is. A man who gets almost a sexual pleasure out of self-promotion, and has a laundry list of fake exploits he’s willing to wave in your face.
He is Walter Mitty in the flesh.
In just the first little more than a page–there are lies in every single paragraph of this piece! There is something wrong with this picture.

Idema’s U.S. office is tucked inside a hulking brick warehouse in Fayetteville, North Carolina–home to Fort Bragg, America’s largest military base and command center for the U.S. Army Special Operations. There’s little to distinguish the building from its industrial surroundings except the dark-tinted windows, and the red “Restricted Access” plaque that clings to the front door. Inside, the cavernous space is cluttered with evidence of Idema’s Afghan mission: crumpled boxes of medical supplies, a lime-green presentation board bearing an organizational chart for Al Qaeda, a massive topographical map of Afghanistan. Movie posters of scowling, leather-clad action heroes plaster the surrounding walls, including a particular large one from Men in Black over Idema’s desk. It shows two movie stars clutching super-sized guns and reads, “Protecting the Earth from the Scum of the Universe”.
The decore reflects Idema’s decades-long quest to fashion himself an action hero. He joined the army in 1975 and qualified for the Special Forces, but his performance was often lacking. In an evaluation report dated July 7, 1977, Captain John D. Carlson described him as “without a doubt the most unmotivated, unprofessional, immature enlisted man that I have ever known.”

In reality, John D. Carlson was a 26-year old captain who was an ROTC guy who spent a year or so in the army and got out…where is he now? And where did that “evaluation report” come from? And who really wrote it? There is no such “evluation report”. John D. Carlson doesn’t exist anymore and what’s a certifiable fact is–John D. Carlson was a guy who might have SAID that, but he didn’t write it in any report. If he did, I’d sure like to see it, because I’m certain that it was one of those fakeries made up by a certain “Colonel” who’s been very good at contacting the media and feeding them fake military documents to discredit Idema. Carlson wasn’t even in a position to “evaluate” Idema.

In 1978 he transferred to a reserve unit where he served until 1981, when he was relieved of his duties, in part for his irrationality and tendency toward violence. His military records indicate that he never saw combat.

Too bad you haven’t seen his DD214A. ... Here again, we have a case where just about every line is manufactured by the Smear Jack Cabal or just complete garbage, so I’m going to wrap it up right here.
Comment: Now things are getting VERY interesting. As it happens, in response to the mention of Artis above, an anonymous poster added a comment to Cao's blog:

This is the best we have ever seen on Artis and his gang including Christine Dolan. But you know the old saying, scratch a conman, find a politician underneath. Seems that Charlie Black of BKSH who has a substantial piece of the $300 million Lincoln Group psyops contract for Iraq was involved with both Artis and Dolan through the questionnable child trafficking organization. In fact Black was the chairman. Mianstream media won’t touch this will a ten foot pole though. Federal court docs are at: www.kronzer.org/dolan2.pdf

Where have we seen Charles Black before???

It just so happens that we met him while digging around about Simon Gray, owner of Abovetopsecret.com. Seems that Charles Black is a lobbyist for Christian Bailey's outfit, the psyops gang that just got the $100 K contract from the Pentagon. Here's the scoop on Bailey from Laura's Blog:

I'm still amused at the idea that "Simon Gray" of AboveTopSecret.com is obviously a Brit "specializing" in American conspiracies . It seems that this is not exactly an isolated case. In recent times the Pentagon's contract with another Brit, for the purposes of spreading disinformation, came to the attention of the mainstream media. Let's look at the strange case of "Christian Bailey.":

So, just who is Christian Bailey?

A 30-year-old Oxford graduate with no public relations experience was the recipient of a $100m (£56m) contract from Donald Rumsfeld's Department of Defence for buying space in Iraqi newspapers to place deliberately one-sided stories written by US "psy-ops" troops, at a time when the chaos of Iraq makes genuine journalism all but impossible and when journalists risk their lives on a daily basis to report the truth.



[LKJ: Deliberately ONE SIDED STORIES? Shades of AboveTopSecret!]



The office building situated at 1420 K Street NW has nothing obvious to commend it other than its prime location. Just a couple of streets from the north-west gates of the White House, it sits in the heart of lobbying land - the K Street corridor that represents one of the most crucial centres of power, influence and money in the United States.



This grey building, neighboured to one side by an off-licence and to the other by a travel agent, is home to the Lincoln Group, a previously little-known "business intelligence" company headed by a heretofore little known young Briton, Christian Bailey, an Oxford graduate and consummate net worker. He is at the centre of a mounting storm of controversy surrounding the Bush administration's covert propaganda war in Iraq.



[LKJ: It will be very useful to have read the links to the "Let'sRoll9-11 discussion board given above to see the connection between AboveTopSecret.com and the covert propaganda war in Iraq. VERY interesting connections those folks found!]



It was recently revealed that Bailey's company was the recipient of a $100m (£56m) contract from Donald Rumsfeld's Department of Defence for buying space in Iraqi newspapers to place deliberately one-sided stories written by US "psy-ops" troops, at a time when the chaos of Iraq makes genuine journalism all but impossible and when journalists risk their lives on a daily basis to report the truth.



[LKJ: Deliberately ONE SIDED STORIES? Shades of AboveTopSecret! And we notice how vigorously they tried to place those stories on our own site! Does this mean that CatHerder is "psy-ops"?]



As part of the project - in which the US military hid its involvement - Lincoln Group staff paid Iraqi journalists to write similarly misleading stories about US forces and the Iraqi government that ignored anything negative about the occupation. One headline read: "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism."



The revelations have created a furore. President Bush is said to be "very troubled" by the news, while on Capitol Hill members of both the Senate and House armed services committees demanded inquiries. The Pentagon said it would launch an immediate investigation.



Much is unclear about the Lincoln Group, its youthful executive vice-president and his string of previous companies that have left only the faintest paper trail. Indeed, Christian Bailey may not be his real name: a number of student associates said at some point during his four years that he changed his name from Yusefovich - an unlikely surname for someone called Christian.



[LKJ: Shades of Simon Gray and AboveTopSecret.com!]



The Independent has been unable to confirm this. Yet the details known about Bailey and the contract his company won provide a remarkable insight into the way influence and power operate in Washington. Just two years after arriving here, Bailey, 30, who has a penchant for socialising, has apparently developed contacts both within the Republican establishment and the world of private intelligence.



[LKJ: Shades of Simon Gray and AboveTopSecret.com!]



Senator John Warner, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said of the false news operation: "I remain gravely concerned about the situation." Since the controversy broke Bailey has kept a low-profile and has offered just the fewest public words about his organisation and what it does. (He failed to respond to requests for an interview.) It also appears a number of internet references linking him to the Republicans can no longer be found.



[LKJ: Shades of Simon Gray and AboveTopSecret.com!]



Yet it is clear the Lincoln Group and its contract with the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element, part of the Pentagon's Special Operations Command, is inextricably linked with Bailey. He apparently named the company and its various offshoots after Lincoln College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1997 with an MA in economics and management. [abovetopsecret.com was registered in 1997]



[LKJ: Shades of Simon Gray and AboveTopSecret.com! Registered in 1997... ]



Many observers have been surprised Bailey, from Surrey, has been awarded such a sizable contract, give that he appears to have no experience in public relations. Indeed, since he moved to the US in the late 1990s, he has spent much of his time in private finance, working in hedge funds in San Francisco and New York.



[LKJ: Shades of Simon Gray and AboveTopSecret.com! See webarchive history of the website.]



It appears he has been especially interested in new technology markets. A brief biography presented by the organisers of a conference held earlier this year in Dubai at which Bailey was listed as a speaker, said he had worked in Palo Alto, California, "where he advised portfolio companies and identified, evaluated and developed emerging technology investments".



[LKJ: Shades of Simon Gray and his sorta UK and sorta California address...]



The Briton has always enjoyed a reputation for business. Several Oxford associates said it was rumoured that the popular student kept two computers in his room to monitor the stock markets. Bailey has said he founded and sold two companies while an undergraduate. "He was quite enterprising, I believe," said Graham De'ath, of Winchester, who was in the same year.



[LKJ: Shades of Simon Gray and AboveTopSecret.com and his "make $100s surfing the net scams!]



Kate Smurthwaite, who is now a stand-up comic but shared a flat with Bailey in his third year, told The Independent that the young entrepreneur hired a personal assistant to work for him in his student digs as he ran an operation selling self-help advice on cassettes. [Shades of Simon Gray and AboveTopSecret.com and his "make $100s surfing the net scams!]



He also had a reputation as a hard-working networker. While in New York he became treasurer of the Oxonian Society, a club for graduates of Oxford and other universities, which invites high-profile figures to speak. He was involved in at least one charity fundraising effort with other hedge-funders. Perhaps of more significance, Bailey became the co-chairman of the New York chapter of Lead21, a networking group for young Republicans. At least a dozen of its members have gone on to work for either the Bush administration, Congress or the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger.



[LKJ: Shades of Simon Gray and AboveTopSecret.com!]



During a Lead21 trip to the Republican National Convention in New York last autumn, Bailey said of his colleagues to one reporter: "These are going to be the big supporters, the big donors, to the Republican Party in five years."



According to other members, Bailey was very popular. Auren Hoffman, chair of Lead21 and chairman of the Stonebrick Group, a San Francisco-based consulting firm, said Bailey was a good friend. "Christian is a terrific guy personally. Everyone I know that has ever met him instantly likes him. He is very likeable and charming. Very intelligent. Very interesting."



[LKJ: Shades of psychopathy!]



When he moved to Washington, his reputation as a networker continued. He often hosted parties at home and mixed with a set of young, up-and-coming journalists and congressional staffers. He enjoyed a reputation as a good cook, a welcoming host and for making cappuccinos with a machine in his kitchen. He also enjoyed flying: Federal Aviation Administration records show that he is qualified to fly aeroplanes and helicopters.



[LKJ: Sounding more and more like Simon Gray and AboveTopSecret.com]



How and when did Bailey make the switch from hedge funds to private intelligence and PR? One clue is provided by the Alternative Investment News newsletter of 1 March 2003, just weeks before the invasion of Iraq. It reported Bailey's hedge fund, Lincoln Asset Management Group, had launched a buyout fund to start buying companies in the defence and security industries. Bailey said he had obtained commitments of $100m from six institutional investors, whom he declined to name.



Apparently with an eye to the preparations for war being made in the deserts of northern Kuwait, he added: "[The] timing is extremely good to look at defence companies." Shortly afterwards, a subsidiary called Lincoln Alliance Corp was established, offering what it called "tailored intelligence services [for] government clients faced with critical intelligence challenges".



By last autumn Bailey had formed another Lincoln subsidiary, called Iraqex, which seems to have formed a partnership with another American PR firm called Rendon, famous in Washington for having promoted Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress.



[LKJ: DO take a look at the links to the "Let'sRoll9-11 discussion board given above to see the connection between AboveTopSecret.com and the covert propaganda war in Iraq. VERY interesting connections those folks found!]



At some point Bailey also went into business with Paige Craig, 31, a former US Marine who served in Iraq and elsewhere. [Bailey and Craig are flatmates in a fashionable part of Washington, close to U Street. The flat is just yards away from Café Saint- Ex, popular with young professionals.]



[LKJ: Hmmm.... wonder if Paige Craig and CatHerder are one and the same???]



In September, Iraqex won a $6m Pentagon contract to design and execute "an aggressive advertising and PR campaign that will accurately inform the Iraqi people of the Coalition's goals and gain their support". It appears one project was an attempt to persuade the Iraqi and US public that Iraqi troops played a vital role in last year's effort to clear Fallujah.



A strategy document obtained by ABC News revealed the Lincoln Group was seeking to promote the "strength, integrity and reliability of Iraqi forces during the fight for Falujah". In reality, most assessments suggest the small number of Iraqi troops present were minimally involved.v But the real breakthrough came this summer when Bailey's company, having again changed its name to the Lincoln Group, secured a $100m contract for information and psychological operations. Part of the contract was for placing "faux" news stories in some of the 200 Iraqi-owned newspapers that now exist.



[LKJ: Sounding more and more like AboveTopSecret.com all the time!]



Pentagon officials have said that, while not factually incorrect, these stories only presented one side of the story and would not include anything negative about the occupation. It was reported this week that the $10Om was part of a larger $300m "stealth PR effort" in a number of countries around the world.



[LKJ:

First of all, we pay a visit to the Kronzer Foundation Website where we read the Founder's Welcome. This isn't an ordinary welcome, we notice right away. While Mr. Kronzer thinks that he was taken by a "religious hoax," it seems that the issues are a lot deeper than that.

Thank you for taking the time to visit our site.

My name is Phillip Kronzer and it gives me great pride to announce the formation of the Phillip Kronzer Foundation for Religious Research.

Each year, thousands of people endure mental and physical suffering due to the deceptive, deceitful and mind numbing effects of religious fraud. Unfortunately, myself and my family recently fell victim to a group who took advanatge of us. When I finally realized we had been manipulated, my business was destroyed as well as my 39 year marriage
to my lovely wife Ardie.

As I began talking to friends, family, colleagues and church members, I realized that my experience was not unique. Through my own personal research, I soon discovered that I was one of hundreds of thousands of people who have been hurt by deceiving religious hoaxes.

Most people don't realize that they are being manipulated by illegitimate religious groups until it is too late. The Kronzer Foundation will help expose these groups and the scams and hoaxes that hurt good, honest people - all to gain power and money while placing material assets above spiritual ones.

I have now dedicated my life to using the resources God gave me to help others who have experienced the hurtful effects of religious frauds. If we work together, we can help each other regain all that we have lost.

Sincerly,

Phillip J. Kronzer

Mariah Blake is a "journalist." Her "Swiftboat" job on Jack Idema was published in Columbia Journalism Review which claims to be "America's Premier Media Monitor." As we learned in the Shredding Propaganda piece, CJR is very likely just an arm of the Neocon Press Corps.

Where things get interesting is when Blake quotes Ed Artis, chairman and founder of the humanitarian organization Knightsbridge International:

“The media saw this outfitted, gregarious, apparently knowing guy, and they didn’t check him out,” says Ed Artis, chairman and founder of the humanitarian organization Knightsbridge International, who met Idema in Afghanistan in late 2001 and later tried to warn the government and media organizations that Idema was misrepresenting himself. “They ran story after story that furthered the cachet of a self-serving, self-aggrandizing criminal.”

The problem with this is that Idema was most definitely on the "side" of the Neocons, so WHY DID THEY CUT HIM LOOSE?

But that is not the issue here. The issue here is Ed Artis and his connections.

Knightsbridge International is a supposed “humanitarian” organization that is supposedly doing good deeds. You can read about Artis’ and Laws’ exploits at several websites online. ...

Artis has reportedly taken money people thought they were paying for humanitarian work to hire photojournalists to record his exploits on film. Artis, according to my sources, has a $400,000 or so home in California, which he had quick-claimed deeded to his wife in order to avoid problems with litigation. ...

The Global Coalition to End Human Trafficking NOW has some interesting things going on, not the least of which is an investigation for charity fraud. Curiously, Christine Dolan started up another organization in order to continue defrauding people out of their money, called The International Humanitarian Campaign Against the Exploitation of Children.

As it happens, in response to the mention of Artis above, an anonymous poster added a comment to Cao's blog:

This is the best we have ever seen on Artis and his gang including Christine Dolan. But you know the old saying, scratch a conman, find a politician underneath.

Seems that Charlie Black of BKSH who has a substantial piece of the $300 million Lincoln Group psyops contract for Iraq was involved with both Artis and Dolan through the questionable child trafficking organization. In fact Black was the chairman.
Mianstream media won’t touch this will a ten foot pole though. Federal court docs are at: www.kronzer.org/dolan2.pdf

Naturally, SOtT decided to have a look at said court documents. We think they are worth perusing considering all that we have been learning about COINTELPRO and the famous "Third Party Attack" Protocol.

There is currently a boom in books on conspiracy theory, most of them derogatory, as is evident in some recent titles: Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics; Conspiracy Culture: From the Kennedy Assassination to the X-Files; Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From.

Within popular US culture, there is also now a boom in movies, novels, and web sites that feature conspiracy theories. The apparent popularity of conspiracy theories is often cited as a cause of concern, that our society is breaking down. For example, Canadian journalist Robert Sibley has said that conspiracy theory is "a nihilistic vortex of delusion and superstition that negates reality itself."

I think that just the reverse is true. There is nothing insane or sinister about conspiracy theory research. It is rather matter of fact. A wide range of ordinary people from many walks of life take an interest in the political and economic events of our era. They think things through on their own, use the library, seek for evidence, articulate a theory, communicate with other people with similar interests. It is heartening that some citizens invest time and effort to unearth and expose some of the conspiracies that damage our society, our economy and our government.

But it certainly does seem that some historians and journalists are quite frightened of conspiracy theory and its wide popularity. Those are the two professions whose job it is to interpret our world for us. When ordinary people take on the task of doing this themselves, it must mean that they don't believe what the authorities say we should. Maybe the professionals feel threatened when amateurs think about political events for themselves.

Perhaps we are in the middle of a new Reformation. The high priests are again losing their monopoly, and they see us sliding into cults and chaos. Something similar happened in 1517, when Martin Luther challenged the Church and translated the Bible into German so that ordinary people could think about theology for themselves. When put on trial, Luther said, "I cannot submit my faith either to the Pope or to the Councils, because it is clear as day they have frequently erred and contradicted each other." That is exactly what a JFK conspiracy theorist would say about the Warren Commission.

People take on the task of explaining things for themselves when the orthodox experts insist on saying nonsense—for example, that Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone killed JFK. A Reformation is a rebellion against arrogance. If historians and journalists want to understand why they are being displaced by conspiracy theory, it would be most reasonable to examine their own failings first.

The correct big-word label for conspiracy theory would be "naive deconstructive history." It is "history" because it explains events, but only after they have happened. Past-tense. Conspiracy theory, as a political act, is an after-the-fact complaint. To see conspiracies while they are happening would require the resources and powers of police forces and espionage agencies.

Conspiracy theory is "deconstructive history" because it is in rebellion against official explanations and against orthodox journalism and orthodox history. Conspiracy theory is radically empirical: tangible facts are the focus, especially facts that the standard stories try to overlook. There is a ruthless reduction down to what is without doubt real, namely, persons. Conspiracy theory presumes that human events are caused by people acting as people do, including cooperating, planning, cheating, deceiving, and pursuing power. Thus, conspiracy theories do not focus on impersonal forces like geo-politics, market economics, globalization, social evolution and other such abstract explanations of human events.

To call conspiracy theory "naive" does not mean that it is uncritical or stupidly innocent. In fact, that is what conspiracy theorists might say about orthodox explanations of events promoted by government sources, by mainstream journalism, or by schoolbook history. For example, it is naive to believe that the September 11, 1973, coup d'etat against Allende was not orchestrated by the United States. Rather, to here call deconstructive history "naive" means that conspiracy theorists are unaware that they are doing deconstructive history, and they are amateurs, untrained in deconstructive history.

Conspiracy theories arise when dramatic events happen, and the orthodox explanations try to diminish the events and gloss them over. In other words, conspiracy theories begin when someone notices that the explanations do not fit the facts.

Take the case of explaining the past two decades of US "free-trade" schemes among countries in the Americas: FTA, NAFTA, and soon FTAA. These schemes began with two nations, then three, and soon four and more. The first was the 1989 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) which set the subservient conditions of member nations to US economic dominance. The essence of the FTA is that US corporations get unrestricted commercial rights and resource ownership in Canada, and in exchange, Canada gets to obey US trade laws.

Why would Canadians have agreed to this? Well, we didn't, but historians would explain it by saying something like, "Globalization made Canadians choose free-trade." Conspiracy theorists would say, "Don't be naive. Look at the facts." In a decade of political opinion polls, and in three consecutive national elections (1984, 1988, 1993), a majority of Canadians had consistently said that they do not want American "free-trade" schemes. How has it happened that such a clear, strong democratic decision by so many millions of Canadians could be overthrown?

In the 1984 and 1993 federal elections in Canada, the successful parties had explicitly campaigned against free-trade, but when elected they reversed themselves. The 1988 vote was also not straight: of the two anti-free-trade parties, the minor one in mid-campaign began to attack the leader of the major one. It is reasonable to see such facts and to surmise that orthodox explanations are not the real explanations.

Let's look in the library to see what can be found. From 1976 to 1979, more than a decade before the FTA, US Ambassador Thomas Enders was crisscrossing Canada promoting free-trade. Who was Thomas Enders? He was hired by the US government in 1958 as an "intelligence research specialist." In 1969 he was in Yugoslavia, in 1971 Cambodia. His jobs there were to rig Lon Nol's election and to use a local intelligence network to pick villages to be bombed by B52s in President Nixon's secret war. From 1976 to 1979, he was in Canada weaving a web of political and business connections to promote the American version of "free-trade." In 1981 Enders became President Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, working on the invasion of Grenada and the illegal proxy wars against Nicaragua and El Salvador. One of his jobs was to coordinate operations with Oliver North and Duane Claridge, head of the CIA's covert operations in Latin America.

Considering these facts, which is more likely—that Enders was in Canada promoting free-trade as some kind of personal hobby, or that he was under orders, promoting free-trade as one more operation in a career of covert operations? At the time, Quebec's populist premier, Réne Lévesque, said of Enders, "He's the bum who launched the bombs in Vietnam. He's a damned spy. He must be working for the CIA" (quoted in Lisée, 1990, p. 207).

The idea of NAFTA first appeared in public in 1979, to everyone's surprise, as Ronald Reagan's core policy when he announced his candidacy for President. But, curiously, it was then never again mentioned in his campaign. In 1979, Reagan's campaign was run by Michael Deaver and Paul Hannaford, who reportedly also ran a public relations firm that represented the right-wing Guatemalan group Amigos del Pais and its leader Roberto Alejos, who had provided the ranch used for CIA training of Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion forces in 1961. In early 1980 William Casey became Reagan's campaign director. Casey began his career directing OSS espionage operations in Germany and China in the 1940s, and he ended his career as director of the CIA. It is not common for US presidential candidates to be so managed by those so linked to covert operations.

The information in the proceeding two paragraphs comes from library sources. "Free-trade" comes from the dark lower bowels of Washington sometime in the early 1970s. It seems to have been conceived and promoted, in part, by conspiracy rather than by forthright democratic processes.

This exemplifies how conspiracy theory arises: 1) significant political or economic events change power relationships in our society; 2) contradictions are noticed by ordinary citizens in the explanations of these events; 3) concern and curiosity are aroused; 4) further information is sought under the presumption that power is being abused and deception is being deployed. Most of the evidence discovered is circumstantial, as it must be when investigating conspiracies.

"Free-trade" was definitely not the democratic choice of Canadians, and maybe not of Americans or Mexicans either. There is a history waiting to be written about these "free-trade" schemes. Orthodox, school-book historians will probably not write that history, and mainstream journalists will not dig it out. Conspiracy theorists might. (Did anyone notice that the NAFTA treaty was not legally passed by Congress as a treaty?)

Conspiracy theory has a special focus on contradictions, discrepancies, and missing facts. The natural sciences similarly seek to find faulty explanations by focusing on facts that don't fit the orthodox explanations. If we want more truthful explanations of events, whether of scientific events or of political and historical events, then we must compare competing explanations.

One explanation usually fits the available observations better than the other. By the principle of fit, the explanation that encompasses more of the observations should be preferred. This principle can favor conspiracy theories. For example, one gunman cannot shoot a bolt-action rifle as fast as the shots were fired at JFK. The vast majority of eye-witnesses heard shots coming from different directions.

We can discover mis-explanations and find better ones by focusing on the facts that don't fit. For example, Galileo concluded that moons around Jupiter are discrepancies to the then-orthodox geocentric theory. Galileo was called a heretic for writing that. Mark Lane's book, Rush to Judgment, includes hundreds of facts that did not fit the Warren Commission's conclusion that a lone gunman killed Kennedy. Lane was called a conspiracy theorist for writing that.

The pejorative force of the "conspiracy theory" label comes from its ad hominem attack on the author's personality. It is true that conspiracy theory authors doubt the orthodox explanations and suspect that there are other explanations for events. Such doubt and suspicion, which is the same kind of doubt and suspicion as motivates many scientific discoveries, gets labeled paranoia.

Think for a moment. Most of the US population believes that a conspiracy, not a lone gunman, killed JFK. A society could not function if that many people were "paranoid." That word is pure pejorative. Real paranoia includes: 1) fear, 2) of a prominent person, 3) whom you think threatens you personally, 4) using invisible means, like the evil-eye, x-rays, or laser beams. Conspiracy theory entails doubt and suspicion, but that is far from clinical paranoia. For example, I believe the Iran-Contra conspiracy theory, but I have no emotion of fear, certainly no fear that Oliver North is out to get me, using invisible rays of some kind.

However, we should remember that conspiracy theorists are ordinary people and will show ordinary failings of rationality, for example, what is referred to as "confirmation bias." This means that we are all biased to look for evidence that our ideas are right rather than for evidence that our ideas are wrong. This bias has been demonstrated and replicated in many different contexts and countries. Confirmation bias is a common mistake made by conspiracy theorists, as well as by historians, journalists, and everyone else. David Fischer has catalogued and exemplified over 100 different kinds of faulty reasoning in the research of competent, published historians. These would all apply to conspiracy theorists as well.

Conspiracy theory is more thoughtful than fearful. The motivations behind conspiracy theory research are cognitive and social. It is very much like doing family genealogy. You begin with a few facts. Then you puzzle out the story, make inferences and hypotheses, and seek further facts. With help from other people, with good luck, you discover information that is sometimes difficult to find. A story emerges, suggesting new facts that should be sought. The satisfaction comes from finding the facts, constructing the story, and sharing the process and discoveries with other people.

Conspiracy theorists think they are serving the public good. Often their motivations are patriotic, and with good reason. Democracy is built on distrust of the king and all the king's men. Democratic safeguards like habeas corpus, jury trial, independent courts, and secret ballots all presume that we should not trust people in positions of power. Because of distrust, opposition parties and an independent press are expected to question and criticize the government, and the government is expected to answer. The free press is called the Fourth Estate, in opposition to the First Estate (the Church), the Second Estate (the aristocracy), and the Third Estate (those who live off capital). Since orthodox journalism has become an instrument of power, investigative journalism is now sometimes called the Fifth Estate. Conspiracy theory is part of the Fifth Estate in this balance of powers. The independent, oppositional thinking that underlies conspiracy theory is not paranoia; it is the very foundation of freedom and democracy.

There probably appear to be more "conspiracy theories" about for three reasons: 1) More people have the skills and resources to look for conspiracies and to make their thinking public; 2) Probably there are more conspiracies to find as political and economic power become ever more concentrated and our democracy declines; 3) Mainstream journalism and schoolbook history now serve the state and corporate interests more than in the past, so now we hear more nonsense.

Conspiracy theory will certainly be a growth industry for the foreseeable future. Conspiracy theory will decrease when conspiracies decrease and when journalists and historians increase their efforts to explain events rather than explain them away.

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In sentencing Franklin, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III said the facts of the case led him to believe that Franklin was motivated primarily by a desire to help the United States, not harm it.

Franklin, 59, had worked with top Pentagon officials, including former undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith, and is an expert on Iraq and Iran.

Franklin pleaded guilty in October in a plea bargain, and will testify in the trial of former AIPAC lobbyists Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman slated to start in April 2005. Franklin's sentence could be then further reduced because of his cooperation with the government.

Rosen and Weissman, who are facing charges of disclosing confidential information to Israel, were fired from AIPAC in 2004.

The judge said that Franklin believed the National Security Council was insufficiently concerned with the threat posed by an unspecified Middle Eastern nation. Franklin thought leaking information might eventually persuade the Security Council to take more serious action, he said.

While the Middle Eastern country was not named in the court record, sources and the facts of the case point to Iran.

Ellis said he viewed Franklin's case differently than a case involving information leaked to the Soviets at height of the Cold War.

"But not different to the extent of excuse. Not at all," Ellis said.

Franklin at one time worked for Feith, then the Pentagon's No. 3 official, on issues involving the Middle East. During a court appearance last year, Franklin said he would occasionally be questioned directly by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former top Pentagon official Paul Wolfowitz on policy issues.

As a result, Franklin said, he sometimes took classified information home to stay up to speed. One of the charges to which he pleaded guilty was unlawful retention of classified national defense information.

Franklin admitted that he met periodically with Rosen and Weissman between 2002 and 2004 and discussed classified information, including information about potential attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq.

Rosen and Weissman would subsequently share what they learned with reporters and Israeli officials.

Rosen was a top lobbyist for Washington-based AIPAC for more than 20 years, and Weissman was the organization's top Iran expert. AIPAC fired them in April and says it has cooperated with the investigation.

Prosecution attorneys said Friday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia they would consider releasing the court from federal sentencing guidelines once Franklin completes his cooperation in the case against Rosen and Weissman.

Franklin asked that he be allowed to serve his sentence at a minimum security prison near his home.

Israel's Ambassador to the U.S. Danny Ayalon said in reaction "this is an internal American affair. Israel had no connection to the trial and, of course, to its outcome."

© Copyright 2006 Haaretz

US government investigators probing Washington's explosive Congressional bribery scandal centered on disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff recently visited Hong Kong, according to a witness interviewed by the authorities.

The investigators reportedly are chasing convoluted money trails leading to Abramoff and government officials he sought to influence.

Among the likely subjects of interest here is a previously unknown company called Rose Garden Holdings. In May 2002, Abramoff notified the US Senate that Rose Garden had hired him and Greenberg Traurig, his firm at the time, to represent Rose Garden's "interests before federal agencies and [the] US Congress."

Abramoff recorded Rose Garden's address as a luxury flat in Tai Hang, above Causeway Bay, and its business as international trade. Over the next year and a half, the records show, Rose Garden paid Greenberg Traurig US$1.4 million (HK$10.92 million) for putting its case to the Senate, House of Representatives and US Department of Labor.

Hong Kong's Companies Registry has no record of Rose Garden Holdings; nor does the telephone directory. The apartment listed by Abramoff as Rose Garden's premises has been owned since 1992 by Luen Thai Shipping and Trading, according to the Land Registry.

Luen Thai Holdings and its controlling shareholders, the Tan family, were leading beneficiaries of Abramoff's Washington lobbying.

Luen Thai officials and spokesmen referred queries about Abramoff and Rose Garden to chief execut
ive Henry Tan, but Tan declined through his secretary to be interviewed, citing his travel schedule.

Luen Thai Holdings, which held a HK$669.4 million initial public stock offering in 2004, was built on the business of sewing together clothing for top US brand-names such as Liz Claiborne, with the assistance of young women from China and other Asian countries on the US-controlled Pacific island of Saipan.

The foundations of the company's profitable niche are loopholes in US law that allow free migration to the island, set its minimum wage below mainland US levels and allow clothing sewn there to carry the "Made in USA" label and be exempt from quotas and tariffs.

Before the Tan family had friends in Washington, they made enemies. In 1991, the US Labor Department sued six Tan companies for paying 1,350 mainly Chinese workers less than Saipan's minimum wage and forcing them to work up to 90 hours a week without required overtime pay.

The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration levied more than US$240,000 in fines against the six Tan companies the following year for violations including locking and blocking factory and dormitory fire doors and other unsanitary and hazardous conditions in the factories and dorms.

After the charges were made public, clothing giant Levi Strauss & Co and retailer The Gap halted purchases from the Tans.

US Representative George Miller, a Democrat from California, launched committee hearings into labor abuses on the island and ways to close the loopholes surrounding Saipan.

The Tans settled the overtime suit without admitting any wrongdoing by agreeing to pay the workers US$9 million. They also settled the health and safety charges by pledging US$1.3 million in repairs and paying a US$76,000 penalty.

After this episode - and ones with other island manufacturers - Saipan's government hired Abramoff to fend off repeated threats to the island's status in Washington.

Abramoff took up the garment makers' cause enthusiastically, taking congressmen and their staff and families to Saipan to enjoy its tropical pleasures and hear the manufacturers' case for protection. Abramoff and his staff trumpeted the clothiers' agenda to administration officials, targeting unsympathetic ones for retribution. A syndicated US newspaper columnist last month admitted receiving payments from Abramoff for writing favorable stories about Saipan and other clients.

Between 1995 and 2002, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, centered on Saipan, paid Abramoff at least US$8 million, according to commonwealth audits and Senate records. But the high-priced help became a lightning rod for controversy on the cash-strapped islands. Twice the government dropped Abramoff's services.

Rose Garden's hiring of Abramoff came four months after the government, now under a new governor, ended his contract for the last time. During the previous suspension, four business organizations in Saipan joined to publicly form a new group that paid Abramoff US$2.4 million.

If Abramoff reported "Rose Garden Holdings" as his client, using its name as a front for Luen Thai or other Saipan business interests, he may have violated the US Lobbying Disclosure Act. Jan Witold Baran, a Washington lawyer specializing in lobbying law, said the law requires identification of the entity directing and funding lobbying activity.

Juan Babauta, who was succeeded on January 8 as Northern Marianas governor by a former Tan Holdings executive, told the Saipan Tribune just before he left office: "The Jack Abramoff investigation is obviously turning in the direction of the CNMI."

According to an investigation published by The Washington Post three weeks ago, records obtained by the newspaper reveal that Saipan garment makers, including Tan, contributed US$500,000 to an organization called the US Family Network between 1996 and 2001. Much of the organization's funding was spent supporting other groups linked to Abramoff or indicted Congressman Tom DeLay.

A series of e-mail messages between Abramoff and Willie Tan, Henry's brother who heads up the family's ventures on site in Saipan, recently obtained by Washington journalist Joshua Micah Marshall, appear to show another financial link. According to a copy posted on Marshall's Web site, Abramoff billed Tan US$223,679 in 2000 toward the annual rental of skyboxes in three Washington-area stadiums and arenas.

Abramoff made frequent use of the skyboxes to entertain congressmen. The e-mails indicate receipt of a first quarterly payment of US$55,919.75 and show Tan directing a company finance executive to make the second quarterly payment.

In a joint filing with prosecutors, lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, 55, warned U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton that a trial likely will be delayed because of their strategy to seek more subpoenas of reporters' notes and other records.

Libby was indicted last year on charges that he lied to FBI agents and a federal grand jury about how he learned CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity and when he subsequently told reporters.

Plame's identity was revealed in July 2003 by columnist Robert Novak after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium "yellowcake" in Niger. The year before, the CIA had sent Wilson to Africa to determine the accuracy of the uranium reports; he concluded they were untrue.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, in announcing the charges against Libby, portrayed Cheney's former chief of staff as the first government official to have shared Plame's name and her work at the CIA with reporters in the summer of 2003.

Libby's defense team did not disclose the names of reporters or news organizations it wants to subpoena.

The filing provides the most concrete indication yet that a large part of Libby's trial strategy will be identifying other government officials who knew Plame was a CIA operative and told reporters about it.

The kind of subpoena cited is for documents or records, not testimony. Such subpoenas usually require records to be turned over before trial so the defense team would have a chance to review them. Libby's team said it expects a delay in the trial while news organizations fight the subpoenas, if Walton agrees to issue them.

Last summer, several reporters were subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury investigating the leak of Plame's identity. New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent 85 days in jail for refusing to discuss her source.

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said the defense's strategy is no surprise but still alarming.

"Every key witness in this case is going to be a reporter," Dalglish said. "It's an absolutely ugly situation, ... putting reporters in a very, very bad position, ... and it should send a chill up the spine of American citizens across the country."

The defense attorneys also told Walton that a significant disagreement is brewing between Libby's team and Fitzgerald's prosecutors over whether reporters heard Plame's name from government sources other than Libby.

Libby's lawyers said information about other sources used by reporters is "material to the preparation of the defense."

No trial date has been set. Walton had requested the update on the prosecution's exchange of evidence with the defense before a Feb. 3 hearing in the case.

Fitzgerald said he has turned over 10,150 pages of classified and unclassified documents to Libby's defense team.

But the defense attorneys said they want more. They said they may subpoena other executive branch agencies _ besides the special prosecutor's office and the FBI _ if Fitzgerald continues to refuse to turn over information he has from those departments. They did not specify which agencies.

Shortly after Libby's indictment, The Washington Post revealed that one of its editors, Bob Woodward, who achieved fame for his reporting on the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration, may have been the first reporter to learn about Plame.

Woodward gave a sworn deposition to Fitzgerald late last year, telling the special prosecutor that a top administration official told him in mid-June 2003 that Wilson was married to Plame.

If you read the headlines these days, you are led to believe that the most serious consequences of our corrupt political system are the nefarious schemes of individuals like Duke Cunningham, Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay. And while the scandals surrounding these guys are all outrageous, the narrow focus on them masks the much more severe consequences of corruption that no one in the media/political Establishment really wants to talk about - the consequences that are at the heart of my upcoming book Hostile Takeover due out in April/May (and, for those interested, available for pre-order today at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Powell's Bookstore, among others).

Beyond the brazen vote-buying/bribery that our money-drenched political process periodically is afflicted with is the far more systematic way America's entire political debate is artificially limited to ensure an outcome favorable to Big Money interests.

No matter where you look in politics you can see this phenomenon, right up in your face. We can see it in the two parties' competing lobbying/ethics "reform" packages - both of which do not attack the real problem of elections being financed by corporate cash. That's by design - because to attack the real problem with public financing of elections would be to actually give the public - and not Corporate America - control over the political process.

We see the same thing on many major economic issues like bankruptcy, "free" trade, energy policy, health care and more. These are the bread-and-butter economic issues where the public consistently tells pollsters it wants radically different policies than comes from their government. Yet, politicians and the media dishonestly portray only a narrow set of policies in these areas as "mainstream," "centrist," or "politically possible" making sure the overall debate and realm of possible outcomes is narrowed to the point where votes don't really have to be bought, because whatever final result is already guaranteed to further enrich the powers that be.

This debate narrowing is really what lobbyists are masters of. They provide the talking points, justifications, background research and propaganda to both sides of a debate to make sure that politically taboo subjects (aka. the concerns of ordinary Americans) aren't really ever seriously considered in a debate over an issue. Lawmakers are happy to regurgitate the nonsense because they know that when they do, they will be rewarded like little puppies with a treat - namely, a campaign contribution.

But where does the lobbyists' information ammunition actually come from? Where do they actually get that propaganda to give to the lawmaker to make sure the debate is narrowed? A story in Businessweek today provides a glimpse of the answer. Many "pundits who present themselves as independent voices sometimes turn out to be quietly financed by powerful interests," the magazine reports. "Money flows from an industry or a lobbyist rather than a branch of government. The tradecraft for fixing media opinions varies and sometimes involves public relations firms, Washington front groups, or other intermediaries."

In other words, the opinion makers - the pundits/commentators who play one of the key role in creating the boundaries of the political debate - are often bought off. Many of these people, not surprisingly, come out of the bigger world of corporate-funded think tanks that dominate Washington, D.C. These are the propaganda machines who the media and politicians loyally rely on for background research and overall debate framing, rarely - if ever - thinking about or reporting on who actually is funding the institutions in the first place.

So, for instance, if you read the newspapers or listen to a congressional hearing, you might think that organizations like the Heritage Foundation or the Cato Institute are just naturally occurring organizations sprouting up from the a supposed overall extreme conservative economic slant of the American public. These institutions - which D.C. is teeming with - are cited as official-esque sources, described only in ideological terms as "conservative." They are almost never labeled according to which industries fund them, just as the politicians who spew corporate PR are almost never identified in the media as having taken huge sums of cash from the industry being shilled for. It is as if naming the funders would be to offer the public too much truth about who owns their political debate - a major Establishment taboo.

But even worse than not identifying the backers of these corporate-funded entities is how those politicians/reporters/pundits who cite them - and thus allow them to distort the political debate - don't themselves even consider/care that the organizations are corporate appendages, artificially narrowing the debate not out of some ideological motive, but from a very obvious desire to make sure that economic debates always end with Big Money interests making off like bandits.

To be sure, the right claims that progressive institutions like labor unions and environmental groups spend resources on lobbying and public policy advocacy. But the statistics make very clear that the amount or resources progressive groups are able to muster is like a grain of sand on a giant beach compared to what Big Money corporate interests spend distorting the political debate.

My book Hostile Takeover, due out in Spring, looks at the major overarching economic issues that ordinary citizens face on a daily basis and shows how this corruption narrows the overall debate; transforms sheer lies into assumed facts; and creates the rationale for public policies designed to do one thing and one thing only: rip off ordinary citizens. That is the truth of our corrupt political system right there under our noses - a truth that I have spent the last year documenting in the pages of my upcoming book, but which is hard to see because almost every message the public receives from the political/media Establishment is carefully crafted to distract us from this. The book is designed to be a citizens' guide to seeing through this haze of dishonesty because the more we become aware of the fraud being perpetrated on us, the closer we come to being able to take back our government once and for all.

Asked about the senator's remark, Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson said that Alito "is a thoughtful mainstream conservative jurist who is well respected by his peers, by Democrats and Republicans alike."

Stevenson added, "There are liberals, many of them represented by the outside groups, who will do anything to kill any nominee put forward by this administration."

Democrats have expressed concerns the conservative Alito would push the nation's highest court to the right in areas such as abortion rights, civil rights and presidential powers.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on Tuesday on the Alito nomination and the full Senate intends to debate it next week.

Three top Democrats announced this week they would vote against sending Alito to a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. They are Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Dick Durbin of Illinois.

No Democrat so far has said he or she would try to block a Senate floor vote on Alito through a procedure known as a filibuster.

The Republican National Committee was holding a winter meeting in Washington this week, and the 50 or so party activists from across the United States were invited by Frist to tour the Senate chamber.

Machiavelli, for one, laid it all out and, if you want to see its flesh, you need merely know where to look. That’s precisely what the “phobic” Chomsky avers and it’s what too many of us are missing, simultaneously the key to Alito.

One must see the entire picture to understand which vacancy in the puzzle the prospective Chief Justice is to occupy. It isn’t a seat, it’s a need. Bush’s latest candidate is, it should not be too difficult to understand, the logical next step forward from the rather dim Clarence Thomas (widely commented upon as the most depressingly shallow Justice, perhaps ever) through Catechism boy John Roberts to the Third-Level Manager spot - a ring-leader, in other words, who may be depended upon to do the bidding of the not-so-shadow-lords. What’s desired isn’t a set of brainiacs contemplating deep legalistics or their underlying philosophical questions but a gaggle of opportunists who managed to withstand the maddening rigors of law school, know lawyers to be key facilitators for the ruling class, and have just enough brains to have earned the license while being completely devoid of a micro-ounce of originality, compassion, or empathy.

This latest move is not a conservative concern, it’s a save-our-damn-necks aspiration. The coup which successfully insurged the Presidency, the BCCS (Bush-Cheney Crime Syndicate), must also, because it fully understands the blowback waiting at the end of the line, besiege the top-level judiciary and capture that as well, breaking the institution to its will, preparation against a possible future. The BCCS isn’t even vaguely worried about the Supreme Court while it holds the government’s reins so tightly. It will never allow a damaging legal question to come before them; hence, the urgency to induct Alito isn’t to pack the Court for present concerns. What it fears is the potential near-future thwarting of its fullest strategies and then being brought before the Supes. In that event, it needs to have the “nine scorpions in a bottle” de-clawed and stingerless, neutered and impotent, completely supine and sympathetic to its pre-downfall will and intent.

Why? Simple. Should a case regarding Vote Fraud ever be successfully mounted, the BCCS has worlds of pain awaiting it. The matter would ultimately be referred to the Supreme Court, its proper and only last venue on appeal of any negative decision in a lower federal trial court. Without Alito, the outcome of that appeal would be extremely dicey; with him, a positive handing down would be assured: the BCCS would go free. However, whether or not that trial will ever occur in the first place is doubtful. Greg Palast seems to have given up his earlier landmark work toward the objective. Perhaps that’s of no consequence, as Mark Crispin Miller has picked up the lance and is presently sallying forth, but...only two guys? In all this time? In all the country?

Liberal radio talk show hosts are ambivalent about this. It took a while for most to even come around to the issue, and many still carefully shy away from it, Ed Schultz in particular, but, even when they do drop it into their repertoire, the issue gets ridiculously short shrift, usually a toss-off reference or two, or a note of brief frustration. This hideously important keystone to the swift decapitation of the BCCS, the only method by which it can assuredly be slain and all its insanities completely expunged, should be something they’re ceaselessly screaming at the top of their lungs about, but...well, they worry about paychecks, too. Alas, human frailty.

Alright then, the entire NeoCon farrago just may work after all, not for want of information to destroy it but for lack of a spine in key positions to invoke what must be done. However, at the very least, never deceive yourself that the insurgents needed Alito to further their twisted agenda; they don’t - that can be done though any number of agents - what they must have is insurance, a hedge against the dim possibility that either the people or the Congress, the latter being the most dubious, will somehow press the Vote Fraud to its logical conclusion. It’s a Las Vegas style 9-Card Stud game and the dealer must have a hidden ace or all is lost. That’s why the BCCS needs Alito and that’s why the activity behind him will become exceedingly frantic as a fever to whisk him into an “up or down” vote and then immediately into position becomes paramount. Whatever might eventuate afterwards will be gravy. When push comes to shove, what’s needed is a subservient bootlicker to moot everything in a feared reprisal from us. The Supreme Court’s where that can be done, because, when the federal SC decides wrongly in favor of the criminals, where do those aggrieved with such a rigged decision then go? When it comes to appealing a Supreme Court appellate decision, I’m sorry to inform you there's no ‘there’ there.

Think about that when you hear Dianne Feinstein schoolmarmily hector both her fellows and we the lowly that a filibuster is not needed. Not needed? Yeah, and neither is democracy. While functionaries like Feinstein jockey for positions serving the new royalty, consider what it means to be a serf, ‘cause that’s where we’re headed, Bunky.

----------------

Mark S. Tucker, a critic, has written for numerous magazines and presently writes for Perfect Sound Forever on-line, as well as this forum. He can be reached at progdawg@hotmail.com. This article is originally published at opednews.com. Copyright Mark S. Tucker, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media so long as this credit is attached.

There was also no shortage of pundits applying the now routine spin that America’s large trade deficit results from its superior economic growth. Since deficits are now regarded as a sign of economic strength, surpluses must evidence the opposite. This is akin to our student instead attempting to convince his parents that the “F” on his report card actually stands for fabulous.

The obfuscation continued last Friday with the release of a sharp 0.9% increase in December producer prices. Conned by Wall Street spin doctors, the media again focused on the meaningless 0.1% rise in the so called “core” rate, and expressed relief that higher energy prices did not “bleed into the core.” Who cares if one highly manipulated subset of the PPI did not rise if overall prices rose sharply? All the while Wall Street ignored the best indicator of resurgent inflation; gold prices surging to a new twenty-five year high.

Wednesday, the spin doctors demonstrated their dexterity by spinning two balls simultaneously. First they celebrated the benign 0.1% decline in December consumer prices, while ignoring the fact that the decline resulted from falling energy prices that have recently reversed course, surging by 15% in the past two weeks. Also unnoticed was the obvious double standard in that last Thursday’s big increase in the headline PPI was downplayed as being meaningless, while yesterday’s benign increase in headline CPI was cheered as great news. That’s Wall Street’s equivalent of “heads I win, tails you lose.”

Later that morning news that foreigners purchased a record $54.6 billion in Treasury debt in November was heralded as still more good news. The spin was that this unprecedented increase in foreign lending indicates growing foreign confidence in America. This is analogous to a credit card junkie celebrating a record month of charging as as proof of continued bank confidence in his creditworthiness.



The only “good’ news is that the absence of strong foreign demand for Treasuries would be an even bigger short-term disaster. With little in the way of domestic savings to pick up the slack, waning foreign demand would cause treasury prices to collapse, sending interest rates soaring, asset prices tumbling, and the U.S. economy into a severe recession. Yesterday’s news that foreigners continued to spike America’s punch bowl merely assures that our ultimate financial hangover will be that much more debilitating.

The bottom line is that accumulating record amounts of foreign debt to finance consumption is an economic fiasco that can only lead to a substantial reduction in America’s future standard of living. Celebrating our increasing debt will ultimately prove to be nothing more than a bit of comic relief in the final chapter of this developing American economic tragedy.

Is it just plain old greed - the irresistible lure of bathrooms with heated towels, outstanding golf and tennis, and ski valets who will warm your boots on a cold day and deliver them right to your door? Is the tendency to sponge inappropriately off rich special interests an inherited trait, the product of some yet to be mapped junket gene? Or is it environmental, a sad reflection of the social and political culture?

I'm more perplexed than ever after reading all about Tom DeLay's outing in 2000 to the St. Andrews golf course in Scotland with Jack Abramoff, the former superlobbyist turned star witness in the sweeping public corruption inquiry now enveloping Mr. DeLay, the former House majority leader, and a still untold number of his Congressional colleagues. In addition to revealing the need to tighten Congressional gift and fund-raising rules, the episode has helped expose a tangle of other unethical transactions and has already robbed Mr. DeLay of his Capitol Hill clout. What was the Hammer thinking?

But it must be noted that Mr. DeLay's junket habit is something he has in common with the nation's judiciary, which he has criticized so many times for the wrong reasons. (Recall, for example, his threatening anti-judge screed in the aftermath of the Terri Schiavo case.) In 2000, the year of Mr. DeLay's lobbyist-financed St. Andrews trip, nearly 100 federal judges engaged in distressingly similar behavior. These judges attended all-expenses-paid private seminars for judges held at resorts offering excellent golf, tennis, skiing and spa services. The trips were underwritten by monied interests out to influence judges to rule in favor of corporate interests on issues like environmental protection and liability for harmful products.

Just as Mr. DeLay's Scotland trip with Mr. Abramoff was treated in official filings as privately sponsored "fact-finding," the judicial seminars are conducted under the innocuous-sounding banner of "judicial education." In reality, these slanted multiday sessions mock the ideal of an independent, impartial judiciary, and pose a threat to the appearance and reality of judicial integrity.

And it's not just judges from the lower federal courts who have deluded themselves into thinking that their trips will not undermine public trust. Just remember Justice Antonin Scalia's duck-hunting trip with Dick Cheney in 2004, shortly before the Supreme Court heard a big case of personal and political interest to the vice president. In September, Justice Scalia showed he'd learned little from the episode when he failed to attend the swearing-in of Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. because he was teaching a seminar for the Federalist Society at the exclusive Beaver Creek ski area in Colorado. Justice Scalia permitted the society, an influential conservative legal group, to promote the event to lawyers, some of whom may have matters before the Supreme Court now or in the near future, as "a rare opportunity to spend time, both socially and intellectually," with a justice. The pitch had all the dignity and subtlety of a capital fund-raiser for a senior Ways and Means Committee member.

It would be nice if the judiciary itself would act to end judges' seamy travel perks, but when the ethics committee of the Judicial Conference took up the issue just two years go, it made the rules even more permissive. Last month, the American Bar Association committee charged with revising the A.B.A.'s influential Code of Official Conduct bowed to the wishes of the judiciary's small but vigorous Resort Caucus. It issued a draft perpetuating judicial junkets.

That inspires me to offer a proposal. Embarrassed by ethics scandals, the Republicans who run Congress seem poised to enact new lobbying reforms, including a crackdown on lobbyist-financed travel. While they are in cleanup mode, why don't they also bar special interests from wining and dining the judiciary? Although the rules for judges might wisely include a few separate wrinkles - like an overdue judicial pay raise or a small pot of money to underwrite real judicial educational programs - the basic principle is the same. Members of Congress should not be accepting compromising free trips or other gifts, and neither should federal judges.

This week both the Republicans and the Democrats have announced proposals to clean up Washington lobbying after the scandal over Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty to using gifts of money, lavish meals and foreign trips to buy political influence. Although British lobbying represents less than 10 per cent of this vast network’s earnings, British spending in 2004 totalled almost $30 million.

One British company that has employed lobbyists extensively in recent years is Sportingbet, the online gambling company, which is listed as having spent $1.62 million since 1998, and $760,000 in 2004 alone. Until recently, Sportingbet used the firm Greenberg, Traurig LLP, where Mr Abramoff had been the top lobbyist for many years. There is no evidence that Mr Abramoff lobbied himself for Sportingbet, but Neil Voltz, a former aide to Bob Ney, a Republican Congressman, is shown to have been employed. Both Mr Voltz, one of 2,200 former federal employees registered as lobbyists, and Mr Ney are the subject of a congressional inquiry, which could yet implicate scores of US politicians or their staff in the scandal.

Nigel Payne, the chief executive of Sportingbet, denied having met Mr Voltz. He said that all his dealings had been with Ronald Platt, a respected lobbyist, who has since moved to a different firm. Sportingbet, he said, had been campaigning for the regulation of online gaming, the legality of which in the US remains a grey area. Mr Payne emphasised that two thirds of his company’s expenditure was not strictly lobbying, but fees for legal or other services conducted by Mr Platt.

According to Alex Knott, the political editor of the Centre for Public Integrity, British lobbying in Washington was higher than for any other country, and was more than the total spent by 35 American states.

The highest spenders were GlaxoSmithKline ($32.4 million), BP ($26.8 million), HSBC ($23.8 million), Reed Elsevier ($12.5 millon) and Reuters ($12.2 million). Defence manufacturers, such as Rolls Royce, have, Mr Knott suggested, obtained particularly good value for money. Rolls Royce has spent $2.9 million on lobbying since 1998, while obtaining $1.8 billion in US defence contracts.

Mr Knott said that 86 per cent of these were “non-bid contracts”, for which Rolls Royce would have faced no competition. “That was the result of some pretty effective lobbying,” he added.

On Wednesday, the Democrats sought to pin the blame for the lobbying scandals on Republicans. The Republicans have promised to tighten lobbying-disclosure rules, as well as to curb gifts from outside interests to politicians.

The Democrats laid out similar measures but included a provision to shut down ventures such as the K Street Project, through which Republicans exert pressure on lobbying groups to employ Republicans, and direct funds to their causes. “The Republicans have turned Congress into an auction house for sale to the highest bidder,” Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader, said.

At a time when the livestock industry is controlled by increasingly fewer companies, the USDA hasn't filed a formal complaint for anti-competitive behavior in the meat or poultry industry since 1999, the audit found. In addition, the arm of the department charged with ensuring competition in the livestock industry, the Packers and Stockyards Program, rarely has conducted complex investigations that would involve large amounts of resources or focus on a major firm, the audit said.

Meanwhile, the record keeping of the monitoring arm was so inadequate that the office of Inspector General Phyllis Fong could not track the progress of some investigations and couldn't figure out why others were started in the first place. Of the 1,842 investigations that were under way in June 2005, the records were incomplete in 973 of those cases.

The Packers and Stockyards Program's "tracking system could not be relied upon, competition and complex investigations were not being performed and timely action was not being taken," the report said.

The program, according to the report, had no formal definition for what constituted an investigation. As a result, employees counted routine correspondence to companies and the tracking of public data as full-fledged investigations.

In one instance, the deputy administrator reprimanded a regional office for logging too few investigations. To make up for the deficiency, the office began logging activities that previously had not counted.

"The region climbed from last to first among the three regions by reclassifying over 300 routine activities as investigations," the report said.

That deputy administrator, JoAnn Waterfield, urged her managers to "perform their functions in more of a `big picture' view and to evaluate the repercussions that their decisions have on the agency and the livestock and poultry industries," the report said.

Waterfield, who resigned last month, could not be located for comment.

In instances where employees initiated investigations about competition in the marketplace, the probes often languished in Washington waiting for approval, the report found. In August, 50 investigations were awaiting approval, some of them dating back two or three years.

Because USDA lawyers have received so few referrals for action from the Packers and Stockyards Program, they have not pursued an anti-competition complaint in the livestock industry since 1999, the report said.

The Packers and Stockyards Program has about 150 employees and an annual budget of about $20 million.

Latest in series of criticisms

The inspector general's audit is not the first time the Agriculture Department has been criticized for lackluster enforcement of competition in the livestock industry. The inspector general made similar remarks in 1997, as did the General Accounting Office in 2000. But according to the most recent report, USDA's actions to address the problems were insufficient.

James Link, who was hired as the administrator of the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration in October, said he agreed with the findings, and vowed to change the agency's culture to encourage vigorous enforcement.

"I don't think it's quite as ineffective as the report shows, but it can be a lot more effective," Link said. "Part of the problem was it was mired down in paperwork and a lack of communications between different portions of the administration, and we are trying to streamline that."

Link said he was also moving authority back to the regional offices to give them more autonomy to investigate complaints.

"We put the authority back out in the field and turned them loose to let them do the job," he said. "A lot of the people told us that they didn't feel like they had the freedom to do their job."

Harkin urges big changes

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who requested the audit, called for sweeping changes at the Agriculture Department, including creating an office of special counsel to oversee matters of competition in the marketplace.

"America's producers have faced an increasingly integrated and consolidated market, but in the past five years, USDA has made virtually no attempt to investigate or take action against unfair and anti-competitive market changes," Harkin said.

Family farm groups and rural advocates said the inspector general's report confirms their longtime contention that Agriculture is too cozy with agribusiness. Numerous top officials at USDA have been hired from agribusiness companies or trade groups representing the meat industry.

"USDA leadership defrauded farmers," said Michael Stumo, an attorney who represents the Organization for Competitive Markets in Lincoln, Neb., a not-for-profit group. "Farmers and ranchers complaining to USDA about unlawfulness of [meatpackers] had their complaints buried due to USDA cronyism."

The inspector general's report was released after years of intense consolidation in the livestock industry, both at the farm and processor level. Increasingly, farmers are raising pigs and chickens under contract with a livestock company, rather than owning them themselves, a trend that critics say has driven down prices and decreased the influence of spot markets.

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ajmartin@tribune.com

"Republicans have a post-9/11 view of the world. And Democrats have a pre-9/11 view of the world," Rove told Republican activists. "That doesn't make them unpatriotic, not at all. But it does make them wrong -- deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong."

Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean denounced Rove's remarks and renewed his call for the deputy White House chief of staff to be fired for his role in leaking a CIA official's name. "That is both unpatriotic and wrong," Dean said.

In November, Capitol Hill Blue revealed a private GOP memo, circulating among top Republican operatives, "suggests that a new attack by terrorists on U.S. soil could reverse the sagging fortunes of President George W. Bush as well as the GOP and "restore his image as a leader of the American people."

Rove, making a rare public address while under investigation in the CIA leak case, joined Republican Party chairman Ken Mehlman in warning GOP leaders against falling prey to the corrupting nature of power.

"The GOP's progress during the last four decades is a stunning political achievement. But it is also a cautionary tale of what happens to a dominant party _ in this case, the Democrat Party _ when its thinking becomes ossified; when its energy begins to drain; when an entitlement mentality takes over; and when political power becomes an end in itself rather than a mean to achieve the common goal," Rove told Republican National Committee members ending a two-day meeting.

"We need to learn from our successes," he said, "and from the failures of others."

The admonition reflects growing concerns among senior Republicans that ethics scandals in the Republican-led Congress could hurt the party in November, even among staunch GOP voters who may begin to blame corruption for Congress' runaway spending habits.

Mehlman couldn't have been more blunt: "One of the oldest lessons of history is that power corrupts," he said, telling RNC members that any Republicans guilty of illegal behavior should be punished.

The investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff threatens to ensnare at least a half dozen members of Congress of both parties and Bush administration officials. His ties to GOP congressional leaders and the White House pose a particular problem for Republicans. Abramoff, who has admitted to conspiring to defraud his Indian tribe clients, has pleaded guilty to corruption-related charges and is cooperating with prosecutors.

In an unrelated scandal, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, is expected to stand trial in the CIA leak case this summer, just ahead of the midterm elections.

The special prosecutor's inquiry is still under way, leaving the fate of other senior White House officials, notably Rove, in doubt.

Bush's political guru opened his remarks with a joking reference to the unwanted attention the case has brought him. "Anybody want to get their picture in the paper? Come on up here," he said.

In 2002, Rove caused a stir among Democrats when he told RNC members to make the war on terrorism an issue in the midterm elections. "We can go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America," he said at the time.

Rove made the same case Friday, though his words were a bit more measured. Reading from a prepared text, he began with a call for election-year civility _ "Our opponents are our fellow citizens, not our enemies" _ and quickly turned to portraying Democrats as weak on defense.

"The United States faces a ruthless enemy _ and we need a commander in chief and a Congress who understand the nature of the threat and the gravity that American finds itself in," Rove said. "President Bush and the Republican Party do. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for many Democrats."

He said some Democrats want to abandon Iraq too soon, which would cause enemies to "laugh at our failed resolve." Rove added: "To retreat before victory would be a reckless act _ and this president and our party will not allow it. This is worthy of a public debate."

Rove also criticized Democrats for opposing extension of the USA Patriot Act and warrantless eavesdropping, before turning to Alito, newly minted Chief Justice John Roberts and their Democratic opponents on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"Every effort to smear the name of these good men blew up in the face of those making the malicious charges. Some committee members came across as mean-spirited and small-minded _ and it left a searing impression," Rove said. He specifically accused Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., of creating "an ugly display" during Alito's hearing.

Before the RNC members returned to their home states, they approved an immigration resolution supported by the White House. A competing measure backed by hard-line conservatives opposed to Bush's guest worker program was withdrawn under pressure from White House allies.

© Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue

Rights groups in the US are already on alert after revelations that the White House authorised phone tapping without court orders. "This is exactly the kind of thing we have been worrying about with search engines for some time," Pam Dixon of the World Privacy Forum told the Associated Press. "Google should be commended for fighting this."

Yahoo and Microsoft confirmed they had handed over similar requested information to the US government. America Online said it had complied in part, providing a list of search terms already publicly available.

The administration first requested the search data in the summer, but Google refused - leading the US attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, to ask for a court order this week.

In a statement, Google said the demand was overreaching, and that it intended to fight the court order. The firm handles up to 1bn searches in an average week. Yahoo said it had not disclosed any personal information. "We are rigorous defenders of our users' privacy," a spokeswoman said. "In our opinion this is not a privacy issue." Microsoft said it too had protected users.

The department of justice said it wants to simulate how people search the internet. In a brief filed with the court, it said the information would "assist the government in its efforts to understand the behaviour of current web users, and to estimate how often web users encounter harmful-to-minors material in the course of their searches."

SAN FRANCISCO — Federal investigators have obtained potentially billions of Internet search requests made by users of major websites run by Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and America Online Inc., raising concerns about how the massive data trove will be used.

The information turned over to Justice Department lawyers reveals a week's worth of online queries from millions of Americans — the Internet Age equivalent of eavesdropping on their inner monologues. The subpoenaed data could, for example, include how many times people searched online for "apple pie recipes," "movie tickets 90012" or even "bomb instructions."

The Internet companies said Thursday that the information did not violate their users' privacy because the data did not include names or computer addresses. The disclosure nonetheless alarmed civil liberties advocates, who fear that the government could seek more detailed information later.

A Justice Department spokesman said the government was not interested in ferreting out names — only in search trends as part of its efforts to regulate online pornography. But the search-engine subpoenas come amid broader concerns over how much information the government collects and how the data are used.

Congress is debating an extension of the Patriot Act, which dramatically expanded the government's ability to obtain private data. And congressional hearings are expected soon on the legality of a National Security Agency program to track communications by U.S. citizens without prior court approval.

Privacy advocates said the opportunity to peruse search queries provided an unprecedented glimpse into people's private thoughts and habits. Virtually unknown a decade ago, search engines rapidly have become an integral part of daily life.

Search engines maintain "a massive database that reaches into the most intimate details of your life: what you search for, what you read, what worries you, what you enjoy," said Kurt Opsahl, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "It's critical to protect the privacy of this information so people feel free to use modern tools to find information without the fear of Big Brother looking over their shoulder."

The issue came to light this week only when Google Inc., the most-used Internet search engine, fought its subpoena. AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo also had been subpoenaed. Government lawyers filed a brief in U.S. District Court in San Jose seeking to force Google to comply.

Google's refusal was first reported by the San Jose Mercury News.

Search engines and e-mail providers are asked for information on specific people in hundreds of cases yearly, both by law enforcement and in civil lawsuits. They generally comply, and their privacy policies warn users that data can be turned over to authorities.

Under a section of the Patriot Act expanding the use of so-called national security letters, companies such as Google can be asked to turn over potentially useful data — even about people who aren't suspected of wrongdoing — while being barred from disclosing those requests.

But no previous case is known to have involved such a wide range of data.

"Their demand for information overreaches," said Nicole Wong, Google's associate general counsel. "We had lengthy discussions with them to try to resolve this but were not able to, and we intend to resist their motion vigorously."

The other search engines disclosed the information after narrowing the government's original request for two months' worth of searches to one week's worth. The week was not specified.

"We are rigorous defenders of our users' privacy," Yahoo spokeswoman Mary Osako said. "We did not provide any personal information in response to the Department of Justice's subpoena. In our opinion, this is not a privacy issue."

A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company complied with the request "in a way that ensured we also protected the privacy of our customers. We were able to share aggregated query data … that did not include any personally identifiable information."

AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein said the Time Warner Inc. subsidiary initially rebuffed the Justice Department's requests and eventually provided "an aggregated and anonymous list of search terms…. What we gave them was something that was extremely limited, didn't have any privacy implications and is fairly common data."

Beth Givens, director of the nonprofit Privacy Rights Clearinghouse in San Diego, said those companies should have fought.

"Google and the other search engines," she said, "represent a very appealing honey pot for government investigators."

In some ways, Google's action echoes Verizon Communications Inc.'s fight against the record industry two years ago. The record labels used a provision of a digital copyright law to demand the names of subscribers to Verizon's Internet service who were suspected of swapping music files illegally. Verizon resisted, and a federal appeals court eventually agreed that the labels would have to sue individuals before forcing Verizon to turn over information on them. The Supreme Court declined to intervene in the case.

Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller said the government wanted an overview of what people look for online as part of its effort to restore an anti-pornography law that was struck down by the Supreme Court.

The Child Online Protection Act was adopted in 1998 after a similar law, the Communications Decency Act, was struck down on constitutional grounds. The Child Online Protection Act establishes fines and jail terms for businesses that publish sexually oriented material on the Web that is obscene or offensive, unless they weed out minors by demanding a credit card or other proof of age.

In 2004, the Supreme Court upheld an injunction against the law but sent the case back to a lower court in Pennsylvania. A majority of the high court wrote that the government could save the measure if it showed that the rules were more effective than Internet content filters at balancing the need to keep pornography from children against the free-speech rights of website operators.

Philip Stark, a UC Berkeley statistics professor working for the government, wrote in the San Jose court filing that the queries, along with a list of available websites, would help show what users were looking for and how often they found material that the government deemed harmful to minors.

The Justice Department also asked the Internet companies for the addresses to every website in their search-engine indexes, a request that was negotiated down to 1 million randomly chosen addresses. Government lawyers said they wanted that information to gauge the prevalence of websites that were harmful to minors and to measure the effectiveness of filtering software on those sites.

"We're not seeking any individual information regarding anybody who entered the query terms," Miller said.

He did not respond to other questions, including whether the department would rule out seeking such information in the future and how the existing data would be used.

Google said, though, that the words in a single text query could lead the government to a searcher's identity.

"One can envision scenarios where queries alone could reveal identifying information," the company wrote in a letter objecting to the demand.

Users often search for information about themselves.

More broadly, the company wrote, "Google's acceding to the request would suggest that it is willing to reveal information about those who use its services. This is not a perception that Google can accept."

Google has tried to cast itself as an enlightened company, going so far as to tell investors that it planned to do business under a simple rule: "Don't be evil."

But as Google has collected increasing amounts of information about its users, some observers have expressed concern that the company could break that rule by letting the data fall into the wrong hands or simply by complying with government demands.

"Google could help protect its users … by limiting the information that is kept and how long it is stored," said the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Opsahl. "The easiest way to respond to a subpoena is by saying, "We don't have it.'

``I'm disturbed,'' said Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who has studied and taught democracy for more than 30 years. He is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit filed Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union suit against Bush, the National Security Agency and the heads of other major agencies. ``I'm not afraid. I don't feel that I'm in danger. I don't expect retribution.''

``What I'm disturbed about is the practical consequence for academic freedom and my ability to do research that enables me to be a good advocate for democracy,'' he said.

``It is not simply what the president is having the NSA do. It is the unilateral and unconstitutional means by which he is doing it.''

Diamond says he hasn't heard clicks on his phone, or felt himself shadowed by suspicious people. He believes the administration's method of eavesdropping on phone calls and e-mails is much more systematic. ``Imagine a fishing trawler dragging a huge net, then pulling it up and sifting through whatever they come up with.''

Bush has authorized surveillance, without warrants, of telephone calls and e-mails between Americans and people overseas suspected of links to terrorist groups. The president defends the program as a vital tool in a fast-changing battle against elusive enemies -- and has argued that as president he has the right to circumvent a long-established secret court that issues warrants in intelligence cases. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has defended the program, saying Congress gave Bush the authority to order NSA eavesdropping under a resolution authorizing force in response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Bush's press secretary Scott McClellan dismissed the ACLU suit, and a similar lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, as ``frivolous lawsuits'' that ``do nothing to help enhance civil liberties or protect the American people.''

As a leading political scientist, Diamond communicates with people in Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere around the world by means of the telephone and e-mail.

These people aren't terrorists, he says -- they're opposition activists, human rights workers, journalists, civil society leaders and academics.

They tell him about human rights abuses and political developments. They offer insights and share strategies. They seek his advice. Some of this information helps them; some of this information could help America do a better job of spreading democracy, Diamond says.

``If people from these parts of the world believe, or have reasonable cause to fear, that their communications with Americans will be intercepted by the United States government, will they continue to communicate?''

``The NSA program is widening the net so that people who communicate with people who communicate with people who might be suspected of terrorism'' would be subject to monitoring, he said.

``Given the sort of people I am involved with,'' Diamond says, his lawyers have told him ``there are strong grounds to believe that some of my telephone calls, and especially e-mail, have been intercepted.''

A political moderate, Diamond served for three months as a senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, and came away disillusioned and sharply critical of the administration's handling of the war.

A Stanford official said no one was available to comment about Diamond or the lawsuit Wednesday afternoon.

Diamond's said his Stanford students have been very supportive of his decision to sue. He has not been discouraged by his bosses at Stanford or the Hoover Institution, he said.

``I believe strongly in George Bush's stated goal of promoting democracy and freedom around the world,'' he said. ``And I believe this seizure of power undermines that.''

"Ready Kids is a tool for parents and teachers to use to be able to speak to their students and children about how to be prepared for any type of disaster," said DHS spokeswoman Joanna Gonzalez.

Gonzalez said the program will include age-appropriate activities and lessons on preparedness.

FEMA, an agency within the DHS, already has a program preparing children for disasters. "FEMA for Kids" (www.fema.gov/kids) includes a pudgy and nervous-looking airplane leaking a trail of smoke, a hermit crab mascot named "Herman," and a song with a rap beat:

"Disaster . . . it can happen anywhere,

"But we've got a few tips, so you can be prepared,

"For floods, tornadoes, or even a 'quake,

"You've got to be ready -- so your heart don't break."

Gonzalez said she didn't know how www.readykids.gov would differ from FEMA's program. FEMA spokeswoman Barbara Ellis said FEMA for Kids will include information about Ready Kids "as part of a coordinated promotional launch."

Federal officials originally announced plans to launch Ready Kids in September 2004, in conjunction with National Preparedness Month. Then the department announced launch for National Preparedness Month 2005, this past September. Gonzalez said she could not explain the delays, but said the program is definitely scheduled to launch February 2 in Chicago.

Planned events include a roundtable discussion with Homeland Security officials, teachers, parents and psychologists, said PTA spokesman James Martinez, whose organization is working with the DHS on the program.

"The goal is to prepare kids and educate kids for emergencies," said Martinez. "It's something a little more elaborate but similar to preparing children for tornadoes by having them get under a desk."

Both Martinez and Gonzalez said they had no concerns that the preparedness program might frighten children.

"Personally I can remember learning to get under a desk for tornadoes and that that didn't frighten me," said Martinez.

Last year, Homeland Security officials refused to release proposals, drafts or any budget information about the Ready Kids campaign in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Associated Press. They said the program was still being developed.

The program is part of the Department of Homeland Security's $100 million campaign to prepare American citizens for terrorism disasters.

Earlier announcements about Ready Kids from the DHS have said it is "a tool to help parents and teachers educate children ages 8-12 about emergencies and how they can help get their family prepared." In August 2004, the DHS said the program would include a mascot of a dog, or a "homeland security hound," following in the pawsteps of McGruff, the Crime Dog. That year, the DHS also put the idea for a mascot-naming contest into the federal register for an open comment period.

The Ready Kids campaign is part of the larger Ready campaign, which debuted in February 2003, under contract with the Ad Council. The Ad Council described the Ready campaign as one of the most successful campaign launches in its 62-year history. That program focuses primarily on terrorism, and features a slogan: "Terrorism forces us to make a choice. Don't be afraid. Be ready."

The New York-based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation donated more than $5 million to the Ad Council in support of the Ready campaign when it faced cost overruns.

"Although the campaign has been a success, a number of developments resulted in major cost overruns," said a report on the donation prepared by the nonprofit foundation, which supports educational, anti-terror and other initiatives. "The original plan included a Web site that would exist as part of Homeland Security's Web site. However, it turned out that Homeland Security could not host the READY Web site with confidence that it would be secure and able to withstand high traffic."

The Sloan Foundation said about $1.8 million was needed to hire outside vendors to provide appropriate hosting and security for the site in 2002 before the launch. Other foundation funds were for production of advertising materials when it became apparent that donated ad space was available on billboards and in magazines.

The DHS assumed the costs of going forward with the READY program after October 1, 2003.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.

This is nothing new for Mr. Bush. He began disregarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 in 2002 when he authorized wiretapping of foreigners and Americans' telephone calls and e-mails by the National Security Agency without first obtaining a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The practice continues today.

His new use of the presidential signing statement turned up egregiously when after signing the bill sponsored by Sen. John McCain to ban the torture of prisoners in American custody, Mr. Bush issued a statement Dec. 30 that in effect said he would enforce the new law only as he saw fit.

We repeat -- there is nothing in the Constitution that says he can do that. To the degree that the American system functions, Congress passes laws that put into effect the will of the people.

Mr. Bush's subversion of the process is particularly ironic since the laws passed by Congress that he chooses not to carry out are the product of a legislature controlled by his own political party. Unfortunately, that is also a prime reason that Congress is not in open revolt over the president's disregard for its work.

Everyone loses when a president chooses to carry out only the laws that he wants to, as he wants to. Fundamental governance of the United States through the rule of law is sabotaged by this practice. We'll see what happens when Mr. Bush's ability to do so is challenged by a court -- assuming there will still be independent courts after he succeeds in stocking them with acquiescent appointees.

Mr. Bush's presidential signing statements are a practice designed to paint the Constitution, Congress and the American people into a shrinking corner. If Congress can't pass a law and expect the president to respect it, where exactly is this nation left?

The employee, who is now living in Virginia, wrote that she had been taken aback when she "suddenly got an e-mail through work which was entitled, `Italy, don't go there.'" Reached by telephone, the employee said she was not at liberty to discuss her e-mail to Lady, which was dated Dec. 24, 2004.

The "don't go there" message, described as "giving a short rundown regarding the Milano Magistrate's intentions," came after the first published report, in the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera, that prosecutors were investigating the imam's abduction as a potential kidnapping and "a possible breach of national sovereignty."

Lady is among the 22 past and present CIA operatives charged in June with the kidnapping of 42-year-old Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, better known within Milan's Islamic community as Abu Omar. None of the 22 has been arrested, although the warrants for their arrest have been disseminated throughout Europe.

In addition to representing an implicit acknowledgement by the CIA that its operatives were responsible for the kidnapping, Italian prosecutors said, warning the operatives to stay beyond the reach of the investigating authorities in Milan represented a possible obstruction of justice.

"The only obstacle was not for investigation but for sending them in prison," Armando Spataro, the chief anti-terrorism prosecutor in Milan, said in an e-mail to the Chicago Tribune. "If they were in Italy, we could arrest them."

Spataro said he planned to ask U.S. authorities to question the woman who wrote to Lady under a mutual legal assistance treaty between Italy and the U.S. "According to our criminal code, someone who helps other people to escape, when there's a warrant or the possibility of a warrant, is responsible for a crime," Spataro said.

The prosecutors have been unable to identify the author of the "don't go there" message or to determine her whereabouts, although databases accessible by the Tribune show she is living in Washington, D.C.

The author, who like the recipient is an employee of the CIA's directorate of operations, could not immediately be reached for comment. The names of the two women were not published at the request of the CIA, which said both are still working under cover.

The CIA employee who wrote to Lady was listed by the Italian government as an employee of the U.S. Consulate in Milan from June 2001 until June 2003, four months after Abu Omar was snatched off a Milan street and thrown into a parked van. The author of the "don't go there" memo was not on the U.S. diplomatic list.

A third woman, according to court papers known to Milan police as "a CIA agent operating in the Milan American Consulate," is mentioned in the CIA employee's e-mail to Lady as having warned other CIA personnel that they "could not visit Italy" because of the prosecutors' investigation. The CIA also requested that the third woman's name also not be published because she was still "active."

Under European Union treaties, the 22 CIA operatives charged so far would be arrested if they set foot in any of the 25 countries that make up the EU. Spataro has asked the Italian justice minister to forward the 22 arrest warrants to the U.S. Justice Department and to the international police agency, Interpol, of which the United States is a member.

Justice Department officials in Washington declined to say what steps they might take if the warrants are communicated to them, either directly or indirectly through Interpol, although one said he viewed it as unlikely that FBI agents would be dispatched to arrest CIA officers currently residing in the United States.

Lady is believed to be living in Florida. His Italian lawyer, Daria Pesce, maintains that her client had nothing to do with Abu Omar's kidnapping. Asked why Lady had fled Italy for Geneva shortly after news of the Italian investigation became public, Pesce said she didn't know.

On June 23, the day the warrants were issued, police searched the villa in the Italian wine region of Asti where Lady had retired with his wife at the end of 2003. From the hard drive of one of his computers police recovered the e-mail message, which someone had attempted to delete, plus other documents they say establish Lady as the organizer of the kidnapping.

Once in the CIA's hands, Abu Omar was flown by the agency to Egypt, where family members say he has been imprisoned for nearly three years. Spataro says the Egyptian government has ignored two formal diplomatic requests for confirmation that it has Abu Omar in custody.

Earlier this month, a senior official of the Egyptian Interior Ministry confirmed for the first time that Abu Omar was in Egypt and was being "detained for security reasons."

In an interview in the semi-official Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram, the official, Maj. Gen. Ahmed Omar, maintained that Abu Omar, who had been living in Italy under a grant of political asylum, had come to Egypt "on his own initiative" because "he was sick of having been on the run for years."

In prison conversations with his two wives and other family members, Abu Omar, who belonged to a militant Muslim group during his college years, said he has been tortured to the point where he can barely walk or hear and has become incontinent.

According to a new report from Human Rights Watch, such treatment is not the exception in Egypt, where "security forces and police routinely torture and mistreat detainees, particularly during interrogations."

El-Masri v. Tenet

In a history-making lawsuit, the ACLU is challenging the practice on behalf of Khaled El-Masri, an entirely innocent victim of rendition who was released without ever being charged.

The lawsuit charges that former CIA Director George Tenet violated U.S. and universal human rights laws when he authorized agents to abduct Mr. El-Masri, beat him, drug him, and transport him to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan. The corporations that owned and operated the airplanes used to transport Mr. El-Masri are also named in the case. The CIA continued to hold Mr. El-Masri incommunicado in the notorious “Salt Pit” prison in Afghanistan long after his innocence was known. Five months after his abduction, Mr. El-Masri was deposited at night, without explanation, on a hill in Albania.

The United States government has yet to acknowledge its unlawful abduction and mistreatment of Mr. El-Masri. No U.S. official has been held accountable for violating Mr. El-Masri’s well-established rights to due process and fair treatment.

Mr Tobias will be named the new head of USAID, the state aid agency with a $14bn (£8bn) budget, replacing Andrew Natsios, who resigned last week. Mr Tobias will also be appointed to the newly created position of deputy secretary for development as Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, pursues what she calls her assertive strategy of "transformational diplomacy".

The Bush administration wants its multibillion-dollar aid programmes to serve its foreign policy goals better. Critics are worried that by in effect merging USAID into the State Department, the agency will lose some of its independence, and development will become purely politicised.

Ms Rice was expected to announce the changes on Thursday, officials said, following a keynote speech to George­town University on Wednesday in which she sketched out a "sweeping and difficult" transformation of US diplomacy and its institutions.

As part of those changes, 100 US diplomats will be transferred this year from Europe and Washington to countries including China, India, Nigeria and Lebanon. Hundreds more will follow over five years. A senior official compared the shift to the Pentagon's drawdown of forces from Europe after the cold war.

"In the 21st century, emerging nations like India and China, and Brazil and Egypt, and Indonesia and South Africa are increasingly shaping the course of history," Ms Rice said.

The US global posture did not reflect these changes, she said, noting that the US had nearly the same number of diplomats in Germany, with a population of 82m, as in India, with 1bn people.

Ms Rice said the US needed bold diplomacy to achieve the mission set out by President George W. Bush in his second inaugural address a year ago of supporting democratic institutions worldwide with the "ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world".

She defined diplomacy as seeking "to change the world itself", not simply reporting on it. Drawing on the lesson of Afghanistan and how it provided a haven for al-Qaeda, Ms Rice said she had an "expansive vision" for the State Department's new office of reconstruction and stabilisation, mandated to deal with post-conflict situations.

"Should a state fail in the future, we want the men and women of this office to be able to spring into action quickly," she said.

The US, she said, would also put new emphasis on regional and transnational strategies to deal with terrorism, weapons proliferation, drugs smuggling and trafficking in people and disease. Regional partnerships were a foundation of the US counter-terrorism strategy, she said, listing Indonesia, Nigeria, Morocco and Pakistan as key partners in combating the "the ideology that uses terror as a weapon".

Diplomats had to get into the field, she said, noting that there were 200 cities with more than 1m inhabitants but no US diplomatic presence. "This is where the action is today, and this is where we must be," she said.

Copyright 2006 Financial Times