The Patriot Act was passed after Sept. 11, 2001, and gave U.S. investigators increased powers to search data such as library and business records. Provisions were to sunset Dec. 31 and the White House sought, citing the importance of sections that allow U.S. investigating forces to share information, to make the entire law permanent.

While the House of Representatives voted to do that, some senators, both Republicans and Democrats, expressed concerns. A compromise late last year extended the law until Feb. 3 and Congress has now kept the measure going until March.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in a statement said, "Democrats ... continue to support the reauthorization of the Patriot Act now with modest improvements. We must give government the tools it needs to fight the terrorists, but the checks we need to stop it from abusing its powers."

Meanwhile, John Negroponte, who in May became the country's first director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that despite "some notable successes against the global jihadist threat" — many of them by the United States' allies — there had been an "exponential increase" in the numbers of targets being tracked by U.S. intelligence agencies, from terrorist groups to alienated groups and drug traffickers.

Negroponte also expressed concern about Iran. He said that hard-liners now controlled "all major branches and institutions of government," that government repression had become more effective, and that leadership had become "more confident and assertive" than at any time since the early days of the Islamic republic.

He added that Tehran's power and resources had been bolstered by high oil prices and that Iran had prepared itself to withstand outside pressures by forming trade arrangements with countries such as China and India.

Still, Negroponte said, the intelligence agencies believed that "regime-threatening instability is unlikely."

That assessment came after President Bush had infuriated Tehran by saying in his State of the Union address that Iran was "held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people" and suggesting that the people might act to win their freedom.

Negroponte told senators that while "we have eliminated much of the leadership that presided over al-Qaida in 2001," there were other factors of concern. One was that al-Qaida's leadership along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area had gained much wider sweep through its alliance with the terrorist network, based in Iraq, of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Fragmentation of terror groups, both through pressure on more established groups such as al-Qaida and a new generation of copycats, had led to "the emergence of a decentralized and diffused movement with minimal ... guidance or control," like those that had attacked in Casablanca, Madrid and London, Negroponte said. "They are harder to spot."

Al-Qaida and dozens of what he dubbed its "self-generating progeny" remained interested in acquiring chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons, he said, even if attacks using conventional explosives remained more likely. It was now more likely, the intelligence chief said, that a terror group would use weapons of mass destruction than a state would.

More broadly, Negroponte told senators, the slow pace of political, social and economic change in most Muslim-dominated countries "continues to fuel a global jihadist movement."

Copyright Houston Chronicle

The kid-friendly program features an adventurous mountain lion mascot named Rex, a website (www.ready.gov) and classroom teaching materials being sent to 135,000 middle school teachers in the nation's 25 largest metropolitan areas.

An idea launched as part of the Homeland Security department's $9.6 million Ready campaign, the effort is the latest by the nation's security leaders to get parents and children thinking about emergency planning. In late 2004, the department unveiled public service TV ads aimed at encouraging parents to make emergency plans with their families. The ads showed anxious children asking their parents what to do in an emergency. Some child psychologists warned that the ads would frighten children.

The latest campaign takes a lighter approach, offering games and puzzles on the Ready website. The site also offers instructions on how families should prepare for emergencies and lists item they should keep in stock, including a three-day supply of non-perishable food, a battery-operated radio and duct tape.

"You and your family can collect items for your emergency-supply kit during a family scavenger hunt!" the site says.

The site also teaches kids about the causes of various natural disasters, including earthquakes, tsunamis and tornadoes.

It defines terrorism as "the use of threat or violence to scare governments into changing their policies" and cites the 9/11 attacks as examples. Children are instructed to "talk to your parents or teachers if you have questions about this type of emergency."

"It's a fine line when you're working to reduce anxiety, not create anxiety," said Ron Palomares, a child psychologist with the American Psychological Association who helped create the campaign.

He said the program was geared to fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders because that's when children begin to hear and understand the news and worry about how it will affect them. "They hear bin Laden, and they hear Katrina ... and it's now beginning to become real to them," he said.

Since 2002, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has spent a half-million dollars a year creating a database it claims is “arguably the largest repository of 16-25 year-old youth data in the country, containing roughly 30 million records.” In Pentagonese the database is part of the Joint Advertising, Marketing Research and Studies (JAMRS) project. Its purpose, along with additional millions spent on polling and marketing research, is to give the Pentagon’s $4 billion annual recruiting budget maximum impact. And it has lit a fire under civil libertarians, privacy advocates and counter-recruiting activists across the nation.

Over 100 organizations recently sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and to the DoD oversight committees of Congress, demanding the Pentagon dump the JAMRS database.

Gary Daniels, litigation coordinator for the Ohio ACLU, declared, “The ACLU’s work revolves around personal privacy, but in 2005, it’s almost like the ship has sailed. It’s clear the Pentagon’s database does not bode well for privacy rights.”

“JAMRS is a much larger issue than recruiters’ presence in the schools,” Daniels added. “Students who ‘opt out’ of having their information turned over to recruiters by their school are just shifted into another column in the JAMRS database, called the ‘suppression list.’” With students’ personal information now in the hands of the Pentagon, Daniels estimated that keeping recruiters from contacting youths directly is just about impossible.

Air Force Lt. Colonel, Ellen Krenke, a DoD spokesperson, downplayed the significance of the JAMRS database. It was initiated in 2002 and even then, she said, it was not a new project, simply a way to centralize information. “The individual services (Army, Navy, etc.) have been collecting this data since being authorized by Congress to do so in 1982.”

As for concerns about the sources of the information on these 30 million young people and how it will be used, Krenke said, “Most of the information in the database is collected through commercial vendors and is given by students voluntarily. If requested by law enforcement, tax authorities or Congress, JAMRS is required by law to provide the information. However JAMRS has never distributed these records outside DoD. Nor is it DoD’s intent to share the data to outside agencies.”

Lillie Coney, Associate Director of EPIC (Electronic Privacy and Information Center), said that Krenke’s reassurances are less than meet the eye.

Coney contends that by waiting until May of this year to give public notice it was assembling the JAMRS database, DoD was in violation of the federal Privacy Act for over two years and has kept the public in the dark as to exactly how the information will be used.

She characterized the 14 “Blanket Routine Uses” the Pentagon claims as exemptions to the Privacy Act as “a catch-all loophole that allows an agency to disclose personal information to others without the individual's consent,” and objects that, to date, the Pentagon refuses to put in writing why they are not requesting information directly from the data subjects, how to correct false information in a record, or how the military intends to notify someone that local, state, or federal agencies have requested their information.

Two of the 14 exemptions claimed by the Pentagon will allow it to give any federal law enforcement agency the records of anyone it believes has broken any federal statute, as well as disclose a person’s records for the purpose of “…counterintelligence, or for the purpose of enforcing laws which protect the national security of the United States.” Coney warned that this will allow the military to begin creating criminal records on individuals for nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights.

“Compare this to credit reports,” Coney explained. “If you didn't know they existed and that they could affect your ability to get a job or a loan, how in the world would you know you need to check them for incorrect information? Imagine what you could do with access to a student's name, phone, social security number, e-mail address, race, employer, grade point average, gender, extracurricular activities, driving record, degree interest, and attained skills if it is shared with any federal government agency, foreign government, as well as state and local governments. If any information in this database is wrong, who will authorities tend to believe? You or the Department of Defense?”

Others object to JAMRS because of the extensive involvement of private marketing companies, including maintenance of the database itself.

Toledoan Peggy Daly-Masternak has two teenage sons. She started the Student and Family Rights and Privacy Committee, aimed at reducing the military’s presence in the city’s public schools. She says “there are few things these days on which people across the spectrum of viewpoints can unify. Privacy is one. If people knew the extent of the Pentagon’s data collection they would give it a resounding ‘No’ and they would shout ‘DEFINITELY NOT’ to compiling these databanks together under contract to private companies. Yet, this is exactly what JAMRS does.”

The Pentagon has contracted JAMRS work to:

* Mullen Advertising Corp., one of over 100 subsidiaries of the Interpublic Group, a global advertising conglomerate with $6.4 billion in annual revenues and operations in 130 countries.

* Benow Corp., Mullen’s subcontractor to manage the database. Benow was recently purchased by Equifax, Inc. which describes itself as “a global leader in turning information into intelligence.” Equifax generates $1.2 billion annually by selling marketing services to businesses and credit reports to individuals.

* American Student List Corp. (ASL), and Student Marketing Group Corp. (SMG), two companies that specialize in gathering information from students, sell JAMRS some of the data it uses. According to EPIC, both these companies have faced legal action for using deceptive practices in collecting information from students.

· Teenage Research Unlimited: (TRU) is one of the companies from which JAMRS purchases “information on attitudes of youth…on a wide variety of topics”

TRU’s web site claims it is “the first marketing-research firm to specialize exclusively in teenagers,” with a vision “to develop an unparalleled expertise in the teenage market, and to offer our clients virtually unlimited methods for researching teens.”

At the bottom of the company’s “about us” page, TRU states it “regularly applies its expertise to the ‘unmarketing’ of high-risk youth behaviors. As an advocate for teens, TRU has worked on a number of important social-marketing issues, including: anti-tobacco and drug use, sexual assault, life safety, education, crisis management, and skin cancer.” What it calls its social-marketing clients include the American Cancer Society, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, various state health departments, and Kidspeace, a group with a mission to “give hope, help and healing to children facing crisis,” including a web page advising how to help children cope with war.

The much longer list of TRU corporate clients include Abercrombie and Fitch, Calvin Klein, Target, Hill and Knowlton, Channel 1, CosmoGirl, Cartoon Network, MTV, Time-Warner, WB Network, AT&T, Microsoft, Verizon Wireless; VISA, Avon, Proctor and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, Heinz, Kraft, General Mills, Taco Bell; and lastly, an “Other” category ranging from the Master Lock Co., to the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. Literally at the bottom of the list is the Department of Defense.

As the ACLU’s Daniels said, “In a way, the Pentagon is not doing anything private industry hasn’t done for years. The military is trying to turn kids into soldiers and private industry is trying to make them bigger consumers.”

Daly-Masternak voiced an additional concern. “The sources of data in the JAMRS database include the High School Master File and the College Students File. Both are collected and manipulated by the American Student List and Student Marketing Group…and where do the ASL and SMG get the data they trade for cash? If it’s what the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) recommends schools collect from students, every student from kindergarten through college is in big trouble regarding their privacy. Linking JAMRS to NCES and other such data has the potential for the DoD to create lifetime profiles of everyone,” she warned.

The U.S. Dept. of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics publishes the NCES handbook listing over 700 coded bits of information on students, such as:

Category 0674: Honors Information – 18 coded options including whether the student made the Honor Roll, Honor Society, or Honorable Mention.

0679: Extra curricular activities – 97 coded options

0689: Non-school activity – 13 coded options from full time employment to patents and inventions.

0710: Education planned – 14 coded options from GED to Ph.D.

0714: Voting status

0715: Other post-school accomplishments “other than employment, education and military service such as elective offices held and books published.”

0737: Whether or not the student has gingivitis. Options 2091 to 2094 describe normal gums to “severe gum deviation.”

0741: Mother’s first pre-natal visit

0743: Mother’s total weight gained during pregnancy

1070: Meal service transaction date: “The month, day and year on which the student received a particular meal or food service.”

1106: Meal service components. Coded options include bread, fruit, meat, milk and vegetable.

9 categories on Early Childhood Program Participation, defined as “Information about a child's care, education, and/or services from birth to enrollment in kindergarten.”

16 categories on student employment: In-School/Post-School Employment Status to Number of Hours Worked per Weekend and Employment Recognition.

Coney said people should also note that so much information is “floating around in cyberspace” from sites like www.myspace.com where young people can chat on thousands of topics in exchange for registering their name, email address, date of birth, gender, zip code, and country. “The free time kids have to themselves these days to role play, act out, and just be kids is often spent in the new online ‘backyard,’ but we know that anything placed on the internet can be accessed if there’s a data leak.”

The Pentagon’s JAMRS web site lists the following as sources for the information in its database:

· High School Master File: (HSMF) contains contact information on nearly four million students for every class year, covering about 90% of the high school population.

· Selective Service System: contains a listing of all registrants with the Selective Service System, about 2.5 million names per year.

· College File: contains basic information on over 3.4 million college students enrolled in a range of two- and four-year academic institutions across the country.

· Joint Lead Management System: over 70,000 yearly “influencer (parents, coaches etc.) and prospect leads” are processed on a daily basis from the individual branches of the military.

· Permanent Suppression File: this file is update and available the first of every month.

Some of the research projects JAMRS commissions include:

* Ad Tracking Study: conducted quarterly to monitor “advertising awareness and imagery” for all military branches.
* Adult/Youth Influencer Polls: track “attitudes, impressions, and behavioral intentions as they relate to and affect military enlistment.”

The Youth Poll “measures youth's favorability of the military, perceived knowledge of the military, perceptions of current economic conditions, and reactions to current events.”

The Parent Poll is targeted at parents of children who’ve completed the Youth Poll, to see what has an effect on “…a parent's likelihood to recommend as well as indirectly influence youth propensity (to enlist).”

* College Drop Outs Study: conducted to understand “…how the Services can capitalize on this group of individuals (ages 18-24).” It was performed by University of Texas MBA students who volunteered their time as part of a market research course.

* Educator Study: 90 high school teachers and guidance counselors were polled to “uncover their attitudes toward military service” and to “develop better understandings of the relationship between educators – a key youth influencer group – and military representatives engaged in recruiting efforts on high school campuses…”

* Knowledge Study: “Knowledge about the military and attitudes toward it have a strong impact on youth's propensity to join and adults' likelihood to recommend the military…(T)he JAMRS program began a study in August of 2004 on the types of knowledge that may affect these attitudes: subjective knowledge (how much one believes he/she knows about the military), declarative knowledge (knowledge of military facts) and structural knowledge (how one associates military concepts) are three types of knowledge thought to affect attitudes toward the military. This study will be especially beneficial to military recruiters and advertisers in determining what youth and influencers need to know about the military, what they need to believe they know about the military, and how they relate military concepts, in order to be propensed for military service or recommend it.”

* Media Allocation Project: using services such as Nielson and Arbitron, “…JAMRS can project how many young people (15-24 & 18-24) saw a branded message and forecast costs by state and by month. These data have been, and will be, used by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decision making through research and analysis, to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing communications and to assess advertising mix tests (given a certain budget, what is the most efficient mix of TV, radio, print, etc.). Clemson University has also used these data to link advertising effectiveness with military applications and enlistments.”

* Mothers’ Attitude Survey: gauges attitudes towards the military of 270 mothers of 10th- and 11th-graders. The purpose is to validate JAMRS’ “influencer communications” strategies that allow recruiters to a) refine approaches towards friends of mothers who may be strong supporters of the military, b) help motivate friends of mothers who are undecided about advocating the military, and c) help avoid alienating mothers who are strongly opposed to the military.

* National Quorum™ Poll: conducted by Wirthlin Worldwide/Harris Interactive Co., is a twice-monthly omnibus survey that serves as a trend analysis tool. “The National Quorum…provides JAMRS the means to get a 'pulse' on public opinion immediately after a significant event” and to capture the attitudes and opinions of American adults on various aspects of the military, including the impact of the war in Iraq.

* Studies conducted by the National Academy of Sciences: The JAMRS site describes an extensive involvement between the Department of Defense and the NAS, dating from 1999, through the Academy’s National Research Council. The Council’s Committee on Youth Population and Military Recruitment has completed two phases of work.

1) “In the first phase, the committee examined long-term trends in the youth population and evaluated policy options that could improve youth propensity for and enlistment in the military.” Their research was published in a 2003 report, Attitudes, Aptitudes, and Aspirations of American Youth

2) “In the second phase, the committee reviewed military research on advertising and recruiting and found it often lacked long-term objectives and coordination across relevant research topics and methodologies. The committee developed an evaluation framework to assist the DoD in making informed decisions on the effectiveness of various recruiting policies and mixes of recruiting resources.” This research was published in a 2004 report, Evaluating Military Advertising and Recruiting, Theory and Methodology.
The book is helping DoD to improve its research on advertising and recruiting policies and has been sent to each of the Services’ Market Research Directors and Recruiting Commanders.

Donald Rumsfeld’s top adviser on recruitment, pay and benefits for some 3.4 million people on active duty, in the Guard and Reserve, and DoD civilian employees is David Chu. He recently told reporters, “If you don’t want conscription, you have to give the Department of Defense an avenue to contact people.”

The Pentagon’s JAMRS database is designed to do that in a bigger and better way than ever before.

Ferner is a freelance writer from Ohio.

"Nevertheless," Judge Tatel wrote, "Libby maintains that he was learning about Wilson's wife's identity for the first time when he spoke with NBC Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert on July 10 or 11." Mr. Russert denied Mr. Libby's account. Ms. Wilson is married to Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who has criticized the Bush administration's Iraq policy.

Over all, the new material amplified and provided new details on charges outlined in the October 2005 indictment against Mr. Libby. The indictment accused Mr. Libby of falsely telling investigators that he had first learned about Ms. Wilson from reporters, when he had, according to the charging document, learned of it from other government officials like Mr. Cheney.

Mr. Libby appeared in federal court in Washington on Friday for the first time in several months. A federal trial judge, Reggie B. Walton, set a calendar that means Mr. Libby's trial will not begin for at least 11 months, with jury selection to begin on Jan. 8, 2007.

Judge Walton had hoped to start the trial in the fall of 2006 but Mr. Libby's chief lawyer, Theodore V. Wells Jr., said he would be involved in another trial at that time.

Judge Tatel's comments in the formerly secret legal opinion were largely drawn from affidavits supplied by the special counsel in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, that were written nearly two years ago, in August 2004. At that time, Mr. Fitzgerald was seeking to compel grand jury testimony from two reporters, Judith Miller, then a reporter for The New York Times, and Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine.

By that point, the newly disclosed pages showed, Mr. Fitzgerald had centered his inquiry on possible perjury charges against Mr. Libby, although that was not publicly known at the time. Mr. Fitzgerald had abandoned a prosecution based on a federal law that makes it a crime to disclose the identity of a covert officer at the C.I.A. Such charges, Judge Tatel wrote, were "currently off the table for lack of evidence."

Judge Tatel wrote his opinion as part of a unanimous decision by the three-judge panel which ruled on Feb. 15, 2005, that Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper had potentially vital evidentiary information and could not refuse to testify to the grand jury in the leak case on First Amendment grounds.

In a separate affidavit filed by Mr. Fitzgerald and disclosed Friday, the prosecutor wrote that Mr. Libby had testified that he had forgotten the conversation with Mr. Cheney when he talked to Mr. Russert. "Further according to Mr. Libby, he did not recall his conversation with the Vice President even when Russert allegedly told him about Wilson's wife's employment."

About eight pages of Judge Tatel's concurring opinion were deleted from the opinion released in 2005. After Mr. Libby's indictment, lawyers for The Wall Street Journal went to court and succeeded in obtaining the material released Friday by order of the same three-judge panel.

Not all of the previously withheld material was released. Several pages, which apparently contained information about Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation of Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, remained under seal. Mr. Rove has not been charged, but remains under investigation although his lawyer has expressed confidence that Mr. Rove will be cleared.

The release of new material represented an important First Amendment ruling for the right of public access to court records, said Theodore J. Boutros Jr., a lawyer for The Journal. "We're pleased that the court recognized that grand jury secrecy is not absolute and that there's an important public interest in the public being able to scrutinize the basis for a judicial decision."

The newly disclosed information provides new details about other events, like a previously reported lunch on July 7, 2003, in which Mr. Libby told Ari Fleischer, then the White House press secretary, about Ms. Wilson.

In his opinion, Judge Tatel said that Mr. Fleischer said that Mr. Libby had told him that Ms. Wilson sent had her husband on a trip to Africa to examine intelligence reports indicating that Iraq had sought to buy uranium ore from Niger.

Judge Tatel wrote that Mr. Fleischer had described the lunch to prosecutors as having been "kind of weird" and had noted that Mr. Libby typically "operated in a very closed-lip fashion." Judge Tatel added: "Fleischer recalled that Libby 'added something along the lines of, you know, this is hush hush, nobody knows about this. This is on the q.t.' "

CIA analysts wrote then-CIA Director George Tenet in a highly classified memo on June 17, 2003, "We no longer believe there is sufficient" credible information to "conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad." The memo was titled: "In Response to Your Questions for Our Current Assessment and Additional Details on Iraq's Alleged Pursuits of Uranium From Abroad."

Despite the CIA's findings, Libby attempted to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had been sent on a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger the previous year to investigate the claims, which he concluded were baseless.


Previous coverage of the CIA leak investigation from Murray Waas


The campaign against Wilson led to the outing of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as an undercover CIA officer -- less than a month after the CIA assessment was completed. Libby resigned as Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser on October 28, 2005, after he was indicted by a federal grand jury on five counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice for concealing his role in leaking Plame's identity to the media.

Tenet requested the previously undisclosed intelligence assessment in large part because of repeated inquiries from Cheney and Libby regarding the Niger matter and Wilson's mission, although neither Cheney nor Libby specifically asked that the new review be conducted, according to government records and to current and former government officials. Tenet also asked for the assessment because information about Wilson's mission to Niger had begun to appear in the media, and Tenet thought that the press or Capitol Hill might raise additional questions about the matter.

The new disclosures raise questions as to why Libby and other Bush administration officials continued their efforts to discredit Wilson -- even as they were told that claims about Iraq's having procured uranium from Niger were most likely a hoax.

The answer may lie in part with the already well-known misgivings about the CIA by Cheney, Libby, and other senior Bush administration officials. At one point during that period -- the summer of 2003 -- Libby confronted a senior intelligence analyst briefing him and the vice president and accused the CIA of willfully misleading him and the administration on Niger. Libby was said to be upset that the CIA, in his view, had routinely minimized the extent to which Iraq was pursuing weapons of mass destruction and was now prematurely attempting to distance itself from the Niger allegations.

Libby had also complained about the CIA's Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control. WINPAC, as the center is known, scrutinizes unconventional-weapons threats to the United States, including the pursuit by both foreign nations and terrorist groups of nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological weapons.

Libby, according to people with knowledge of the events, said that he and Cheney had come to believe that WINPAC was presenting Saddam Hussein's pursuit of such weapons in a far more benign light than Iraq's intents and capabilities reflected. Libby cited CIA bureaucratic inertia and caution and his view that many of WINPAC's analysts were aligned with foreign-policy elites who did not support the war with Iraq.

Libby and others in the office of the vice president apparently were even more suspicious because they mistakenly believed that Plame worked for WINPAC, according to these sources. When they also learned that Plame possibly played a role in Wilson's selection for the Niger mission, their suspicions only intensified.

One indication of Cheney's personal interest in the subject was that some of Libby's earliest and most detailed information regarding Plame's CIA employment came directly from the vice president, according to information contained in Libby's grand jury indictment.

"On or about June 12, 2003," the indictment stated, "Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Division. Libby understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA."

It would not have been improper or illegal for Cheney to discuss Plame's CIA employment with Libby or other government officials with high security clearances. No public evidence has emerged during the two-year grand jury probe by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that Libby acted at the vice president's behest in leaking details of Plame's CIA employment to the press, or that Cheney even knew that Libby was doing so.

Contemporaneous notes of Libby's that were obtained by federal investigators in the CIA leak case indicate that Cheney had originally learned about Plame from then-CIA Director Tenet. Tenet has confirmed that Fitzgerald interviewed him, but Tenet has refused to make public any details of what he told investigators. He declined to comment for this story.

Sources said that Tenet may have discussed Plame with Cheney because of requests from Cheney, Libby, and other administration officials for more information about the Niger matter and Wilson's mission. Cheney's and Libby's interest in Niger was apparently rekindled after New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof wrote on May 6, 2003, that the CIA had sent an unnamed former ambassador to the African nation in February 2002 to investigate allegations that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger. Kristof wrote that the ex-ambassador reported back to the CIA and the State Department that the allegations were "unequivocally wrong" and "based on forged documents."

The column led Cheney and Libby to inquire about the then-still-unnamed ambassador and his trip to Niger. On May 29, 2003, Libby asked then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman for information about the mission. Grossman in turn assigned the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research to prepare a report on the matter. Cheney's and Libby's interest in the issue led Tenet to seek more information as well.

On June 11 or 12, according to the grand jury indictment of Libby, Grossman reported back that "in sum and substance Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, and the State Department personnel were saying that Wilson's wife was involved in the planning of his trip."

Also on June 11, 2003, according to the indictment, "Libby spoke with a senior officer of the CIA to ask about the origin and circumstances of Wilson's trip, and was advised by the CIA officer that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and was believed to be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip." On the very next day, June 12, the indictment said, Cheney more specifically informed Libby that Plame worked at the CIA's "Counterproliferation Division."

Tenet received the highly classified memo on Niger from his analysts on June 17, 2003, five days after Cheney and Libby spoke with each other about Plame's working for the CIA. Sources familiar with the matter say that both Cheney and Libby were informed of the findings in the June 17 memo only days after Tenet himself read and reviewed it.

In the memo, the CIA analysts wrote: "Since learning that the Iraqi-Niger uranium deal was based on false documents earlier this spring, we no longer believe that there is sufficient other reporting to conclude that Iraq purchased uranium from abroad."

The memo also related that there had been other, earlier claims that Saddam's regime had attempted to purchase uranium from private interests in Somalia and Benin; these claims predated the Niger allegations. It was that past intelligence that had led CIA analysts, in part, to consider the Niger claims as plausible.

But the memo said that after a thorough review of those earlier reports, the CIA had concluded that they were no longer credible. Indeed, the previous intelligence reports citing those claims had long since been "recalled" -- meaning that the CIA had formally repudiated them.

The memo's findings were considered so significant that they were not only quickly shared with Cheney and Libby but also with Congress, albeit on a classified basis, according to government records and interviews.

On June 18, 2003, the day after the new Niger assessment was sent to Tenet, Robert D. Walpole, the national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs, briefed members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence regarding the findings. And on the following day, June 19, 2003, Walpole briefed members of the House Select Committee on Intelligence as well.

Six days after the memo was sent to Tenet, on June 23, 2003, Libby met with then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and -- as part of an effort to discredit Wilson -- passed along to her what prosecutors have said was classified information that Wilson's wife, Plame, worked for the CIA, according to allegations contained in Libby's indictment.

On July 6, 2003, Wilson himself went public with his allegations that the Bush administration had misused the Niger claims to make the case to go to war. Wilson made his arguments in an op-ed in The New York Times and an appearance that same morning on NBC's Meet the Press.

On July 8, 2003, Libby and Miller met again. During a two-hour breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, according to testimony Miller gave to the federal grand jury hearing evidence in the CIA leak case, Libby first told her that Plame worked for the CIA's Weapons, Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Office.

Around the same time, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove and at least one other senior Bush administration official leaked information to a number of journalists about Plame's CIA employment and her role in recommending her husband for the Niger mission.

Columnist Robert Novak, on July 14, 2003, published his now-famous column identifying Plame as a CIA "operative" and alleging that she had been responsible for sending her husband to Niger.

The disclosure did little to discredit Wilson. Instead, it had unintended and unforeseen consequences for Libby and the Bush administration: A special prosecutor would be named to investigate the leak; Judith Miller would spend 85 days in jail for refusing to testify regarding her conversations with Libby before ultimately relenting; and a federal grand jury would indict Libby on charges that he obstructed justice and committed perjury to conceal his own role in the leak of Plame's CIA status to the press.

As Libby awaits trial, one of the unresolved mysteries is why Libby insisted in interviews with the FBI and during his grand jury testimony that he learned about Plame's employment from journalists, when investigators already had Libby's own copious notes indicating that he had first learned many of the details of Plame's CIA employment from Cheney and other senior government officials.

One possibility examined by investigators is that Libby was attempting to cover for Cheney because of the political or legal fallout that might occur if it was determined that the vice president had been involved in the effort to discredit Wilson.

Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, said, "The prosecutor's implicit inference before the jury may well likely be that Libby lied to protect the vice president. Even in a plain vanilla case, a prosecutor always wants to be able to demonstrate a motive."

That Cheney was one of the first people to tell Libby about Plame, and that Libby had written in his notes that Cheney had heard the information from the CIA director, Gillers said, might make it more difficult for Libby to mount a credible defense of a faulty memory. "From a prosecutor's point of view, and perhaps a jury's as well, the conversation [during which Libby learned about Plame] is the more dramatic and the more memorable because the conversation was with the vice president" and because the CIA director's name also came up, Gillers said.

The disclosure that Cheney and Libby were told of a CIA assessment that the agency considered the Niger allegations to be untrue, and that Tenet requested the assessment as a result of the personal interest of Cheney and Libby, would "demonstrate even further that Niger was a central issue for Libby," said Gillers, and would "make it even harder, although not impossible, to claim a faulty memory."

-- Murray Waas is a Washington-based journalist.

© National Journal Group Inc.

Rumsfeld spoke just before the UN's nuclear watchdog decided to report Iran, which Washington and the European Union fear is covertly developing atomic weapons, to the UN Security Council. Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful.

"We must continue to work together to seek a diplomatic solution to stopping the development of (Iran's) uranium enrichment program," Rumsfeld said.

Enrichment can make fuel for atomic power plants or weapons.

"While we oppose the actions of Iran's regime, we stand with the Iranian people who want a peaceful democratic future. They have no desire to see the country they love isolated from the rest of the civilized world," he said.

Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar was quoted by Iranian state television as saying Rumsfeld's comments were "outrageous remarks and a ridiculous projection by the White House leaders."

"Rumsfeld had better try to act responsibly for the disgrace of attacking Afghanistan and Iraq, because the people of the world will never forget the torturing of the prisoners of Abu-Ghraib," he said.

"Compelled by a militant ideology that celebrates murder and suicide with no territory to defend, with little to lose, they will either succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs," Rumsfeld said in a speech at the National Press Club.

The speech, which aides said was titled "The Long War," came on the eve of the Pentagon's release of its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which sets out plans for how the U.S. military will address major security challenges 20 years into the future. The plans to be released today include shifts to make the military more agile and capable of dealing with unconventional threats, something Rumsfeld has said is necessary to move from a military designed for the Cold War into one that is more flexible.

He said the nation must focus on three strategies in the ongoing war: preventing terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, defending the U.S. homeland and helping allies fight terrorism. He emphasized that these goals could take a long time to achieve.

Indeed, the QDR, mandated every four years by Congress, opens with the declaration: "The United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war."

The review has been widely anticipated in Washington defense circles because of the dramatic changes in the U.S. military's global role since the last review in 2001. Adding to the high expectations is the fact that Rumsfeld and his team have now been in place for more than four years.

The QDR strategy draws heavily on lessons learned by the military from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the worldwide campaign against terrorism, shifting the Pentagon's emphasis away from conventional warfare of the Cold War era toward three new areas.

First are "irregular" conflicts against insurgents, terrorists and other non-state enemies. Iraq and Afghanistan are the "early battles" in the campaign against Islamic extremists and terrorists, who are "profoundly more dangerous" than in the past because of technological advances that allow them to operate globally, said Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England in an address on Wednesday.

The QDR also focuses on defending the U.S. homeland against "catastrophic" attacks such as with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Finally, it sets out plans for deterring the rising military heft of major powers such as China.

The strategic vision outlined in the QDR has won high marks from defense analysts for diagnosing the problems the U.S. military will likely face. However, it is less successful in translating those concepts into concrete military capabilities, the analysts say.

The review does not dramatically change the "force construct" -- the set of world contingencies that the U.S. military is expected to be able to deal with. The most important change is the recognition that U.S. forces may have to carry out long-term stability operations, or surge suddenly to a world hot spot. There are not "huge tectonic shifts," said Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an address Wednesday.

The strategy does call for devoting resources to accelerate a long-range strike capability directed at hostile nations, and for new investments aimed at countering biological and nuclear weapons -- such as teams able to defuse a nuclear bomb. But it makes relatively minor adjustments in key weapons systems, with the biggest programs such as the Joint Strike Fighter and the Army's Future Combat Systems escaping virtually unscathed. This leaves less room for investments in innovative programs and forces to address the types of problems that the QDR identifies, analysts say.

"A lot of tough choices are kicked down the road," said Andrew F. Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

One of the toughest battles facing the United States, Rumsfeld said yesterday, is recognizing the seriousness of the terrorist threat and the immediacy of fighting the nation's enemies. He said the task facing Western nations could be arduous, as terrorists operate in numerous countries around the world, hidden, and with the willingness to wait long periods between attacks. Military leaders and officials in the Bush administration have taken to calling the global war on terrorism the "long war," which defense experts say is a recognition that there is no end in sight.

"Dealing with the issue of terrorism and extremism is going to take a long time," said Robert E. Hunter, senior adviser at Rand Corp. and a former ambassador to NATO. "But we have to define success. You're never going to get rid of all terrorism."

Rumsfeld said he does not believe the war will end with a bang but, instead, with a whimper, "fading down over a sustained period of time as more countries in the world are successful," much as how democracy outlasted communism in the Cold War. He added that the early decades of the Cold War also brought confusion and doubt.

"The only way that terrorists can win this struggle is if we lose our will and surrender the fight, or think it's not important enough, or in confusion or in disagreement among ourselves give them the time to regroup and reestablish themselves in Iraq or elsewhere," he said.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

(Rumsfeld's speech can be found at the C-Span website under 'Recent Videos').

Obviously, the Middle East would be one of the regions in a system of global governance. In something I read a while back, it said that Saddam Hussein had a plan to control the entire region. Saddam Hussein was a CIA asset who was put into power by the U.S. government. I suspect they promised him the top position of the Middle East region after the fall of the Shah of Iran but something went haywire so they had to take him out leaving a power vacuum in the Middle East. My guess would be that Saddam had not been able to change the culture fast enough to suit the globalists.

On September 8, 2000, Bill Clinton signed the Millennium Declaration for global governance. Mikhail Gorbachev was invited to this country to to establish a Foundation - State of the World Forum - at the Presideo.

"The core mission of the State of the World Forum is to establish an enabling environment and to serve as a Secretariat for the gathering of leaders and citizens from around the world and a spectrum of diciplines to search together for those new frameworks of values required for this new phase of human development; and within this context to take concerted action -- strategic initiatives -- to help give shape to the world we envision".

"Many of earlier civilizations which have largely appeared over the 6,000 years of our recorded history have largely been created by groups of so-called "creative minorities" or "sapiential circles" -- independent individuals who came together to articulate and take up challenges being ignored by declining and out-dated concepts, organizations and governments."

I believe it was Gorbachev and Maurice Strong who wrote the Earth Charter which has been adopted by the United Nations. It is a radical environmental treatise that calls for a complete restructuring of world view and how people live on the earth. Al Gore wrote a book which follows the themes of the Earth Charter - called “Earth in the Balance”. This radical environmental agenda is being implemented in this country under environmental names like ‘Smart Growth’ and sustainable development. It is being used to radically change how people live on the earth - and the U.S. Government supports it. It is being used to relieve people of their property rights and natural resources on their property. And… btw, Mohammed Atta was an urban planner and he was not a religious man. That doesn’t fit with the Osama scenario - but it does fit with the Gore-Gorbachev-Strong game plan.

The way that the ‘terrorists’ are being funded is through front groups - like the ones that Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed were and are heading up. Corporations and Foundations establish a ‘special interest’ front groups to lobby Congress and to propagandize for their agenda. Other front groups include Ducks Unlimited, Nature Conservancy, MALDEF, La Raza. All of these groups lobby for their ‘special interest’ but all are geared towards breaking down our nation-state in furtherance of the goals of the funders - globalization. Grover Norquist is a Muslim and his goal is “make our government so small it can be drowned in a bathtub”. That was Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton’s goal too - to ‘reinvent government’ by eliminating government employees and replacing them with ‘public-private partnerships’ - effectively corporate government.

Rumsfeld mentioned Lenin and Hitler in his speech. He said nobody paid attention to what they wrote and the world paid for it. Hitler was ‘legally elected’ and he consolidated power. How is that different from the PNAC agenda and Bush’s consolidation of power? It isn’t. Rumsfeld defined the way the funding works for the ‘terrorists’. They are the front groups 501-C3’s and 4’s. Has the Congress done anything about that? No. Have they tried to stop the FTAA and the dissolution of our nation? No. Have they announced that they want out of the WTO? No. In fact, everything this administration has done has been to support the UN agenda for the dissolution of our nation.

Rumsfeld said:

“The only way the terrrorists can win this struggle is if we lose our will and surrender the fight or think it is not important enough or in confusion or in disagreement among ourselves, give them the time to regroup and reestablish themselves in Iraq or elsewhere. A decade ago we celebrated the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the end of the cold war. But that war, what President Kennedy called “a long twilight struggle” lasted some 45 years before we saw a hope of victory. In the early decades the way was uncertain. Allies bickered over tactics. They bickered over strategies. They even bickered over the seriousness of the threats. There were motions in Congress to pull our forces out of Europe and concede. Euro-communism became fashionable (Third Way). It’s not really communism, it’s Euro-communism so it’s ok. Then as now we found ourselves building new organizations to help in our new circumstances. And today in many ways, we find ourselves echoing the words once spoken by Dwight Eisenhower in the early decades of the cold war. He said, “We face a hostile ideology - global in scope, ruthless in purpose and insidious in method. To meet it successfully we must carry forward steadily, surely and without complaint, the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle with liberty the stake.”

It is true that we face a hostile ideology, global in scope, ruthless in purpose and insidious in method. And Donald Rumsfeld’s Orwellian description of the conflict and the enemy are case in point.

Both law-enforcement and intelligence agencies fundamentally depend on informants. Informants in foreign intelligence are at best traitors to their respective countries. Informants in domestic crime issues are often paid, either in cash or in deals cut on crimes they have committed. Altogether, they are a sleazy lot.

One point many people often don't understand is that CIA officers are not spies. They are "case officers." Their job is to recruit spies (informants) and funnel the information back to the analysts.

Naturally, every country tries to depict its spies as noble people opposed to tyranny rather than people trapped and blackmailed, soreheads and neurotics or simply greedy opportunists. Often, informants working for money in domestic criminal cases will actually entrap some innocent person. That's how the sorry episode of Randy Weaver began, which ended with the deaths of his wife, his son and a deputy U.S. marshal in 1992.

A paid informant badgered Weaver, who was hard up for money to feed his family, into illegally sawing off a shotgun, something any 8-year-old with a hacksaw and a vise can do. The idea was to arrest him, threaten him with a long prison sentence and then coerce him into becoming a federal informant. It was a federal cluster you-know-what from start to finish.

This is a short preface to the current problem of domestic spying. The Bush administration says it only intercepts calls from terrorists. OK, how does the Bush administration know that somebody in Europe or the Middle East is a terrorist? Terrorists don't walk around the street with little name tags identifying them and their organization. They don't call people and say: "Hi, al-Qaeda calling. Can I interest you in a bomb-making kit?"

The answer is an informant or some other country's intelligence agency. The first thing you know is that this person is a terrorist suspect. If anyone had proof that he was a real terrorist, he would be arrested. You can get some idea of how unreliable these suspect lists are by the instances of pop stars, U.S. senators, babies and other innocent people winding up on the U.S. terrorist watch list because of bureaucratic goof-ups.

Furthermore, it stands to reason that the National Security Agency has no way of knowing who this suspect is calling until the call is actually made. NSA doesn't put wiretaps on telephones. It sweeps the calls out of the air, and then the NSA supercomputers comb the messages for certain key words. My guess is that the NSA is intercepting all the overseas calls from Americans of Arab descent, people of the Muslim faith, as well as those who have spoken out on Middle East issues or have business dealings in the region. In other words, it's a massive invasion of privacy, not a selective invasion of privacy – or at least that's my guess.

Ronald Reagan said of his arms deals with the Soviets: "Trust, but verify." The problem is, there are no ways the American people or their elected representatives can verify anything President Bush says on the subject of national security. It's all classified. The very practice of one equal branch of the government keeping secrets from another equal branch of the government is an unconstitutional act that ought to be ended immediately. We will have to wait for a Congress with guts for that to happen.

I fear the expansion of American government power more than I do the terrorists. They are, after all, criminals who might shoot us or bomb us and get killed in the process. They are, by nature, a passing threat. A secretive government that scoffs at the rule of law and the restraints of the Constitution, however, is a very permanent threat to the freedom of the American people.

Government power that isn't checked will just keep on growing until one day the American people will wake up neither free nor secure.

Presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush have intercepted communications to ascertain enemy threats to national security, Roberts, R-Kan., said in a letter to the chairman and ranking Democrat of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"Despite legal analysis by some critics, I am confident that the president retains the constitutional authority to conduct" such spying when the primary purpose is the collection of foreign intelligence information regarding foreign powers, Roberts wrote in his 19-page letter to Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

Leahy is among Democrats who have questioned President Bush's authority to conduct the domestic spying program.

Roberts' letter came the day after National Intelligence Director John Negroponte's appearance at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, where Democrats focused on questions about the legality of the National Security Agency's secret surveillance program and complained that the president had kept them in the dark about it.

Negroponte defended allowing the NSA to eavesdrop _ without first obtaining warrants _ on international communications of people on U.S. soil who may be linked to al-Qaida.

The roughly 200 pages of historic records obtained by The Associated Press reflect a remarkably similar dispute between the White House and Congress fully three decades before President Bush's acknowledgment he authorized wiretaps without warrants of some Americans in terrorism investigations.

"Yogi Bera was right: It's deja vu all over again," said Tom Blanton, executive director for the National Security Archives, a private research group that compiles collections of sensitive government documents. "It's the same debate."

Senate Judiciary Committee hearings begin Monday over Bush's authority to approve such wiretaps by the ultra-secretive National Security Agency without a judge's approval. A focus of the hearings is to determine whether the Bush administration's eavesdropping program violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law with origins during Ford's presidency.

"We strongly believe it is unwise for the president to concede any lack of constitutional power to authorize electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes," wrote Robert Ingersoll, then-deputy secretary of state, in a 1976 memorandum to President Ford about the proposed bill on electronic surveillance.

George H.W. Bush, then director of the
CIA, wanted to ensure "no unnecessary diminution of collection of important foreign intelligence" under the proposal to require judges to approve terror wiretaps, according to a March 1976 memorandum he wrote to the Justice Department. Bush also complained that some major communications companies were unwilling to install government wiretaps without a judge's approval. Such a refusal "seriously affects the capabilities of the intelligence community," Bush wrote.

In another document, Jack Marsh, a White House adviser, outlined options for Ford over the wiretap legislation. Marsh alerted Ford to objections by Bush as CIA director and by Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft over the scope of a provision to require judicial oversight of wiretaps. At the time, Rumsfeld was defense secretary, Kissinger was secretary of state and Scowcroft was the White House national security adviser.

Some experts weren't surprised the cast of characters in this national debate remained largely unchanged over 30 years.

"People don't change their stripes," said Kenneth C. Bass a former senior Justice Department lawyer who oversaw such wiretap requests during the Carter administration.

The National Security Archives separately obtained many of the same documents as the AP and intended to publish them on its Web site Saturday.

The documents include one startling similarity to Washington's current atmosphere over disclosures of classified information by the media. Notes from a 1975 meeting between Cheney, then White House chief of staff, then-Attorney General Edward Levi and others cite the "problem" of a New York Times article by Seymour Hersh about U.S. submarines spying inside Soviet waters. Participants considered a formal
FBI investigation of Hersh and the Times and searching Hersh's apartment "to go after (his) papers," the document said.

"I was surprised," Hersh said in a telephone interview Friday. "I was surprised that they didn't know I had a house and a mortgage."

One option outlined at the 1975 meeting was to "ignore the Hersh story and hope it doesn't happen again." Participants worried about "will we get hit with violating the First Amendment to the Constitution?"

CIA Director Porter Goss told lawmakers this week that recent disclosures about sensitive programs were severely damaging, and he urged prosecutors to impanel a grand jury to determine "who is leaking this information." The National Security Agency earlier asked the Justice Department to open a formal leaks investigation over press reports of its terrorism wiretaps.

When it comes to e-mail and Internet service records, "the average citizen would be shocked to find out how adept your average law enforcement officer is at finding information," said Paul Ohm, who recently left the Justice Department's computer crime and intellectual property section.

The issue has come to the fore because of a Justice Department request to four major Internet companies for data about their users' search queries. While America Online, Yahoo and Microsoft complied with the request, Google is resisting it. That case does not involve information that can be linked to individuals, but it has cast new light on what privacy, if any, Internet users can expect for the data trail they leave online.

The answer, in many cases, is clouded by ambiguities in the law that governs electronic communication like telephone calls and e-mail. In many cases, the law requires law enforcement officials to meet a higher standard to read a person's e-mail than to get copies of his financial or medical records.

Requests for information have become so common that most big Internet companies, as well as telephone companies, have a formal process for what is often called subpoena management. Most of the information sought about users is basic, but very personal: their names, where they live, when they were last online — and, if a court issues a search warrant, what they are writing and reading in their e-mail. (Not surprisingly, the interpretation of voluminous computer records can be error-prone, and instances of mistaken identity have also come to light.)

AOL, for example, has more than a dozen people, including several former prosecutors, handling the nearly 1,000 requests it receives each month for information in criminal and civil cases. The most common requests in criminal cases relate to children — threats, abductions and pornography. Next come cases of identity theft, then computer hacking. But with more than 20 million customers, AOL has been called on to help in nearly every sort of legal action.

In recent years, "we found ourselves involved in every imaginable classification of traditional crimes, from murder to the whole scope of criminal behavior, because AOL was used to communicate or there is some trace evidence," said Christopher Bubb, assistant general counsel at AOL.

Investigators have found new ways to identify people who visit Web sites anonymously or use a false identity. Many Web sites keep a log of all user activity, and they record the Internet Protocol address of each user. I.P. addresses are assigned in blocks to Internet service providers, who use them to route information to the computers of their users. If an investigator determines the I.P. address used by a suspect, he can subpoena the Internet provider for the identity of the user associated with that address at a particular date and time.

For example, in investigating a bomb threat at a Canadian high school in 2002, Mr. Ohm approached the operator of a message board in California on which the threats were placed. He asked to review the log monitoring each user's activities, which showed the Internet Protocol address of the person who left the threatening message. Mr. Ohm used that address in turn to determine the suspect's Internet service provider, who identified a teenager who had posted the message. (As a minor, he was not prosecuted.)

While Internet evidence has been used to solve some crimes, there have also been examples of mistakes in the process. Last year, Manchester Technologies, a company in Hauppauge, N.Y., sued Ronald Kuhlman Jr. and Kim Loviglio, claiming they had posted messages on a Web site that defamed its chief executive.

Manchester had identified Mr. Kuhlman and Ms. Loviglio based on information provided by Cablevision, their Internet provider, which incorrectly associated their account with the Internet Protocol address used to make the postings. Manchester dropped its suit against Mr. Kuhlman and Ms. Loviglio, who in turn sued Cablevision. That case was settled for undisclosed terms, their lawyer, Mark Murray, said.

The 1996 law that governs privacy for telephones, Internet use and faxes — the Electronic Communications Privacy Act — provides varying degrees of protection for online information. It generally requires a court order for investigators to read e-mail, although the law is inconsistent on this, treating unopened items differently from those previously read. The standard to compel an Internet service provider to provide identifying information about an Internet user is lower — in general, an investigator needs a subpoena, which can be signed by a prosecutor, not a judge. (And the USA Patriot Act allows some of these procedures to be waived when lives are at risk.) By comparison, domestic first-class mail requires a search warrant to be opened.

In cases in which investigators want to intercept Internet communication as it occurs, they must get the same authorization needed for a telephone wiretap, which requires continuing court monitoring. In 2004, there were 49 cases of computer or fax transmissions being monitored under these procedures, according to federal statistics (which exclude national security cases).

Mr. Ohm, now an associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School, said those statistics undercounted the instances of such monitoring, especially cases in which an Internet company was tracing attacks on its own system.

"The Wiretap Act has enough loopholes built into it that you can often do a wiretap without having to get a court order," he said.

The law for civil cases, like divorces or employment disputes, is also a bit unclear. Litigants can generally subpoena the identifying information of a user behind an e-mail account or an I.P. address.

AOL says that only 30 of the 1,000 monthly requests it receives are for civil cases, and that it initially rejects about 90 percent of those, arguing that they are overly broad or that the litigants lack proper jurisdiction. About half of those rejected are resubmitted, on narrower grounds. Generally, AOL gives its members notice when their information is sought in civil cases. If the member objects, the issue is referred back to the court. (In criminal cases, there is often no notice, or notice is given after the information has been given to investigators.)

"Subpoenas come in all the time that ask for everything," said Kelly Skoloda, an AOL lawyer. "We engage in an active dialogue to determine what they want and what we can give in compliance with our privacy policies."

AOL and most other Internet providers take the view that the content of e-mail messages cannot be turned over to lawyers in civil suits. The most significant exception is that e-mail can be turned over with the consent of the account owner, and litigants often persuade judges to order their opponents to authorize the disclosure of e-mail.

A gray area that has recently gained prominence involves the pages that users read online and the terms of their searches.

Yahoo, Google and the new free AOL.com site, for example, maintain records of user surfing behavior. Google also keeps a log file that associates every search made on its site with the I.P. address of the searcher. And Yahoo uses similar information to sell advertising; car companies, for example, place display advertising shown only to people who have entered auto-related terms in Yahoo's search engine.

It is unclear what standard is required to force Internet companies to turn over this search information to criminal investigators and perhaps civil litigants.

"The big story is the privacy law that protects your e-mail does not protect your Google search terms," said Orin S. Kerr, a professor at the George Washington University Law School and a former lawyer in the computer crime section of the Justice Department.

Other lawyers argue that the law that provides protection for e-mail content, or even the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches, could be applied to data about Web searching, but the issue has not been tested in court.

The break in the St. Louis murders came in 2002, when a reporter received an anonymous letter with a map generated by Microsoft's MSN service — marked with the location where a body could be found.

The F.B.I. subpoenaed Microsoft for records of anyone who had searched for maps of that area in the days before the letter was sent. Microsoft discovered that only one user had searched for precisely that area and provided the user's Internet Protocol address. That address, in turn was provided by a unit of WorldCom, which identified the user as Maury Troy Travis, a 36-year-old waiter. (Mr. Travis was arrested and hanged himself in jail without ever admitting guilt.)

While requests for search data have been few, computer experts expect them to increase.

"It is rare that those links will be a slam-dunk that will make a case," said John Curran, a former cybercrime investigator for the F.B.I. "But when you are putting together a larger case, you are trying to connect the dots, and it is the little things that actually help."

The warrant came up during a routine background check when Valdez went to an immigration office for an interview to renew his alien registration "green card," according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because their agencies did not handle the arrest.

Valdez, contacted by cell phone, confirmed he had been arrested but said the only problem he had in Miami was an arrest for driving under the influence. He did not elaborate about that arrest, but said authorities wanted to send him back to Florida within 24 hours.

"They want to get me out of California as soon as possible," Valdez said in Spanish. "They say I was involved in gunfire in Miami."

He did not provide other details.

Valdez taped the scene Sunday night after a car involved in a brief high-speed chase crashed into a wall by his home, 35 miles east of Los Angeles. Senior Airman Elio Carrion was a passenger in the car driven by a friend.

The tape showed Carrion on the ground talking with San Bernardino County sheriff's Deputy Ivory J. Webb, who stood pointing a gun at him. A recorded voice appeared to be commanding Carrion to "get up." As Carrion began to rise, the deputy fired three shots into him.

Carrion, 21, an Air Force security officer recently back from Iraq, was shot three times and was hospitalized in good condition.

Webb, 45, who has more than 10 years with the department, was placed on paid administrative leave.

The FBI has opened a civil rights investigation of the shooting but Carrion's family said Friday that more must be done.

"My family is outraged because this person hasn't been arrested and is on paid vacation," Carrion's wife, Mariela, said at a news conference.

She said her husband was doing "good."

Attorney Luis Carrillo, who represents Carrion's family, said federal authorities should arrest the deputy for civil rights violations if local authorities do not make an arrest.

"Their son is a hero," Carrillo said. "He went to Iraq and thank God he didn't get a bullet, but he comes home and he gets three bullets...."

Carrillo also said the arrest of Valdez appeared to be "some kind of retribution on a good Samaritan who taped something that law enforcement didn't want the public to see."

The Sheriff's Department had not contacted the Carrion family since the shooting and had no comment on the demand for an arrest, spokeswoman Jodi Miller said.

Associated Press Writers Sandy Cohen and Robert Jablon in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures

The revelations coincided with hearings Wednesday in which U.S. senators heard about the death penalty from relatives of crime victims.

Ann Scott, whose daughter was sexually assaulted and murdered in 1991, likened the killer to an animal and said he should be ''put away.''

''I, me, want this bully gone. I want him to disappear off the face of this earth. I want him to rot in hell for eternity,'' she was quoted in a news report as saying of her daughter's murderer, Alfred Mitchell. ''He is a bad seed that never should have been born. He is an animal and when you have an animal that attacks people, you take it to the pound and have it put away.''

Vicki Schieber, whose daughter Shannon was raped and murdered in 1998, disagreed and told the Senate panel she did not want her daughter's killer to be executed.

''Responding to one killing with another killing does not honor my daughter, nor does it help create the kind of society I want to live in, where human life and human rights are valued,'' she said. ''I know that an execution creates another grieving family, and causing pain to another family does not lessen my own pain.''

Her daughter's killer, Troy Graves, was sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole.

The Amnesty report and Senate hearings reflect increasing scrutiny of the death penalty in the United States.

Last October, a Gallup poll said that 64 percent of Americans favored the death penalty--still nearly two-thirds of the population but the lowest level in 27 years. Approval of the death penalty peaked at 80 percent in 1994, Gallup said.

Amnesty, in its report, urged an immediate moratorium on all executions involving the mentally ill.

The inmates in question suffered ''serious mental impairment'' either before or while they committed their crimes, Amnesty said, adding that their execution stood at odds with a 2002 Supreme Court ruling that it is unconstitutional to execute criminals who are mentally retarded.

Only one state--Connecticut--bars execution for convicts found to have been mentally ill when they committed their crime. Texas is the top executioner of mentally impaired people, killing at least 24 retarded or mentally ill people since 1977. Oklahoma killed the next largest number of mentally ill people, nine, among the cases studied by Amnesty.

''The safety net currently in place to prevent individuals with long, documented histories of severe mental illness from committing violent crimes or to protect them from being executed when they do is egregiously inadequate,'' the group said.

''Instead of receiving the care they desperately need, hundreds of severely mentally ill offenders in the United States are mired within a health care system that is too slow to help and a justice system that is too quick to push them into the death chamber,'' it added.

Amnesty said a review of psychiatric examinations, medical records, and documented cases of extreme behavior found that at least 100 of the condemned prisoners had severe mental illness. In other cases, it was impossible to determine if the inmates suffered from mental illness because a thorough psychiatric examination had never been done.

Mentally ill defendants were allowed to conduct their own defenses, waive their rights to appeal, and ''volunteer'' to be executed, the rights organization added.

More than one-fourth of the 100 mentally ill prisoners executed since 1977, when the Supreme Court lifted a 10-year moratorium on capital punishment, had thus agreed to be killed--sometimes because they simply would not accept that they were mentally impaired but also because they had given up hope of receiving treatment, said the report, The Execution of Mentally Ill Offenders.

''In some cases, families begged the state for help with their mentally ill loved ones only to be told that nothing could be done until the relative became 'dangerous','' Amnesty said. ''Unfortunately, the next time the families heard from the state authorities was when the person for whom they had sought help was being arrested and charged with murder.''

Many trials never heard any evidence of mental illness, the report said, and U.S. prosecutors exploited public ignorance or fear about mental illness by arguing that mentally ill defendants' ''flat'' behavior in court indicated they were ''unremorseful.''

The report cited the case of Scott Panetti, sentenced to death in 1995 for killing his parents-in-law. Panetti, who had been hospitalized repeatedly with hallucinations, represented himself in court, where he dressed as a cowboy and asked irrational questions. His case is under appeal.

Other defendants had been medicated so that they would be lucid enough to be aware of what was happening to them at the time of their execution.