Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Constitutional Law Professor, was Olbermann's guest. Olbermann asked him, "Does this mean that under this law, ultimately the only thing keeping you, I, or the viewer out of Gitmo is the sanity and honesty of the president of the United States?"

Turley responded, "It does. And it's a huge sea change for our democracy. The framers created a system where we did not have to rely on the good graces or good mood of the president . . . People have no idea how significant this is. What really a time of shame this is for the American system. What the Congress did and what the president signed today essentially revokes over 200 years of American principles and values."

Although we have a free press, rather than follow Olbermann's good example, most television news reporters have responded to this nullification of America's fundamental principles by avoiding the subject. News networks, which voluntarily relinquish their right and duty to challenge government officials function more as the Soviet Union's Pravda or Hitler's Nazi press program than as a genuinely free press.

Just as the mainstream media failed to adequately question the Bush administration's many shifting rationales for invading Iraq in the lead-up to the war, they're now failing to challenge Bush's logic and motives as he justifies eviscerating the Constitution in the name of his ever-expanding "war on terror." How realistic is this so-called war, and is the Bush administration conducting it effectively?

Robert Dreyfuss covers national security for Rolling Stone. He interviewed nearly a dozen former high-ranking counterterrorism officials about Bush's approach to the war on terrorism. In his article, "The Phony War," (Rolling Stone, 9/21/06) Dreyfuss says these officials conclude:

• The war on terror is bogus. Terrorism shouldn't be treated as if it were a nation to be battled with the military, but should instead be fought with police work and intelligence agencies.
  
  
• Terrorism is not an enemy, but a method. Even if the United States were to wipe out every terrorist cell in the world today, terrorism would be back tomorrow.
  
  
• Bush lacks a clear understanding of the nature of the "enemy" and has no real strategy for dealing with it.
  
  
• The Bush administration confuses the issue by grouping "Al Qaeda" with everything from Iraq's resistance movement to states such as Syria and Iran.
  
  
• Today, there's virtually no real "Al Qaeda threat" to Americans.
  
  
• Bush's policies have spawned a new generation of "amateur terrorists," but there are few of them, and they're not likely to pose a major threat to the U.S.
  
  
• Though Bush has said he will fight his "war" until every last terrorist is eliminated, terrorism can never be defeated, merely "contained and reduced."

Dreyfuss says, "In the short term, the cops and spies can continue to do their best to watch for terrorist threats as they emerge, and occasionally, as in London, they will succeed. But they are the first to admit that stopping a plot before it can unfold involved, more than anything, plain dumb luck."

Not only has the Bush administration falsely characterized and exaggerated the threat of terrorism; they have gone out of their way to mislead the public by claiming credit for preventing attacks. Dreyfuss points out that although Bush has claimed we've fended off 10 terrorist plots since 9/11, "on closer examination all 10 are either bogus or were to take place overseas."

Dreyfuss also notes that although, in 2002, the Bush administration leaked to the press that Al Qaeda had 5,000 "sleepers" in the U.S., there were, in fact, none. (Or, as Dreyfuss says, not a single one has been found.) If the administration believes the facts bolster their case for a war on terrorism, why do they find it necessary to leak false information?

The administration has done little to secure U.S. borders, ports, airports and nuclear facilities. What could logically explain their inattention to these vulnerabilities if they believe a terrorist threat here is likely? Bush has said he'll do anything it takes in order to protect the American people. Why hasn't he secured our nuclear facilities?

Exaggerating the terrorist threat does give the Bush team an excuse to seize more power for the Executive and shred the Constitution. In an article for Foreign Affairs (September/October 2006), political science professor John Mueller supports Dreyfuss's view that the war on terrorism is bogus.

Mueller points out that not only have there been no terrorist incidents here in the past five years, but there were none in the five years before 9/11. Mueller asks: "If it is so easy to pull off an attack and if terrorists are so demonically competent, why have they not done it? Why have they not been sniping at people in shopping centers, collapsing tunnels, poisoning the food supply, cutting electrical lines, derailing trains, blowing up oil pipelines, causing massive traffic jams, or exploiting the countless other vulnerabilities that, according to security experts, could be so easily exploited?"

He also bolsters Dreyfuss's conclusion that the Bush administration can't take credit for the fact that we haven't been attacked again. He says that "the government's protective measures would have to be nearly perfect to thwart all such plans. Given the monumental imperfection of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, and the debacle of FBI and National Security Agency programs to upgrade their computers to better coordinate intelligence information, that explanation seems far-fetched."

Mueller addresses Bush's irrational argument that we're "fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here." He points out that terrorists with Al Qaeda sympathies have managed to carry out attacks in a variety of countries (Egypt, Jordan Turkey, the United Kingdom), not merely in Iraq.

He adds that a reasonable explanation for the fact that no terrorists have attacked since 9/11 is that the terrorist threat "has been massively exaggerated." He notes that "it is worth remembering that the total number of people killed since 9/11 by Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda-like operatives outside of Afghanistan and Iraq is not much higher than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States in a single year, and that the lifetime chance of an American being killed by international terrorism is about one in 80,000 -- about the same chance of being killed by a comet or a meteorite."

Although Bush's justification for the war on terror has been illogical and deceptive, the administration has used it as an excuse to abuse the U.S. military in Iraq, tear down our system of government at home and seize power on his own behalf. As Jonathan Turley told Keith Olbermann on his October 17 program, with the signing of the Military Commissions Act, "Congress just gave the president despotic powers . . . I think people are fooling themselves if they believe that the courts will once again stop this president from taking -- overtaking -- almost absolute power."

Bush's many power grabs and refusal to submit to usual constitutional checks and balances indicates he prefers monarchy or dictatorship to the government set up by America's founders. The framers of our Constitution provided checks on tyranny by writing into law separation of powers, granting the legislative and judicial branches of government the ability to curb abuses by the executive. Today, the Congress has abdicated its constitutional obligation and serves only as a rubber stamp for the despotic president, and to date, the courts have done much the same.

Can George W. Bush be trusted with absolute power? Here are some things he has done with his unchecked power:

• Stolen two presidential elections.
  
  
• Exaggerated and falsely characterized the terrorist threat.
  
  
• Misled the country into war with Iraq.
  
  
• Urged the U.S. intelligence agencies to fix the intelligence around the Iraq war policy (as confirmed by the Downing Street Memo and other sources) in order to mislead the Congress and public into supporting war with Iraq.
  
  
• Abused human rights by promoting the use of torture and setting up virtual gulags.
  
  
• Suspended habeas corpus for some.
  
  
• Tried to silence political opposition by pronouncing them "weak on terrorism" or somehow "with the terrorists," and
  
  
• Placed himself above the law by issuing more legislation-challenging signing statements (around 800) than all of his predecessors put together.

Bush's unnecessary invasion of Iraq alone has cost nearly 3,000 American lives. An October 11 article by Greg Mitchell in Editor & Publisher says that a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, "suggests that more than 600,000 Iraqis have met a violent or otherwise war-related end since the U.S. arrived in March 2003."

The Bush administration's policies have not only resulted in high death counts, but also in widespread, out of control torture. A September 22 Christian Science Monitor report says:

"The United Nation's special investigator on torture said Thursday that torture may now be worse in Iraq than it was during the regime of deposed leader Saddam Hussein. The Associated Press reports that Manfred Nowak, who was making a brief to the United Nations Human Rights Council about the treatment of detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay Cuba, said the torture situation in Iraq was 'totally out of hand.'"

The CS Monitor mentions the fact that the recent compromise between the Bush White House and dissident Republicans (including Senator John McCain) allows torture to continue. The article quotes a Washington Post piece:

"The bad news is Mr. Bush, as he made clear yesterday, intends to continue using the CIA to secretly detain and abuse certain terrorist suspects . . . It's hard to credit the statement by [McCain] yesterday that 'there's no doubt that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved.' In effect, the agreement means that U.S. violations of international human rights law can continue as long as Mr. Bush is president, with Congress's tacit assent."

Congress has given Bush a blank check as he's bulldozed toward an imperial presidency. We have the outward forms of democratic institutions such as Congress and a so-called free press. However, the people currently managing those institutions behave as if they're being forced to serve a totalitarian dictator.

A perfect example of this surrender to Bush's virtual despotism is Congress's and the mainstream media's compliance regarding Bush's Military Commissions Act. While Keith Olbermann and Jonathan Turley see the extreme danger posed by Bush's authoritarian moves, Congress has done little to challenge Bush, and, overall, the press is eerily silent.

In The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, William L. Shirer said the Reich Press Law of October 4, 1933, ordered editors not to publish (among other things) anything which "tends to weaken the strength of the German Reich or offends the honor and dignity of Germany." According to Shirer, Max Amman, Hitler's top sergeant during the war and head of the Nazi Party's publishing firm and financial head of its press, said that after the Nazis seized power in 1933, it was "a true statement to say that the basic purpose of the Nazi press program was to eliminate all the press which was in opposition to the party."

The U.S. mainstream press doesn't have to be coerced by a government Press Law to avoid publicly opposing Bush's most egregious policies. Television news networks, in particular, have voluntarily held back serious scrutiny. They have not only failed to discuss the recent Military Commissions Act at length, but in the run-up to the Iraq war, liberal talk show host Phil Donahue and comedian Bill Maher were fired for challenging the White House spin about Iraq and the 9/11 attacks.

Shirer also describes the ease with which the German Reichstag gave Hitler the power to change the nature of Germany's parliamentary democracy. He writes:

"One by one, Germany's most powerful institutions now began to surrender to Hitler and to pass quietly, unprotestingly, out of existence . . . It cannot be said they went down fighting. On May 19, 1933, the Social Democrats -- those who were not in jail or in exile -- voted in the Reichstag without a dissenting voice to approve Hitler's foreign policy."

Shirer concludes: "The one-party totalitarian state had been achieved with scarcely a ripple of opposition or defiance, and within four months after the Reichstag had abdicated its democratic responsibilities."

The U.S. Congress, like the German Reichstag, has abdicated its democratic responsibilities by granting Bush an inordinate amount of power -- "with scarcely a ripple of opposition or defiance." The U.S. press has abandoned its role as democracy's watchdog by failing to question this development. Both of these institutions have failed the American people.

Considering Bush is using the war on terror to justify seizing undue power, both Congress and the media should question his reasoning and offer opposition. Just as they didn't effectively challenge the administration's shifting excuses for attacking Iraq, these institutions haven't scrutinized Bush's claims about the need for the Military Commissions Act and the apparently endless war on terrorism.

Among things Congress and the media should challenge is George W. Bush's false claim that the United States does not torture. In an article published at the CommonDreams.org site, journalist Molly Ivins reports that in one case of death from torture by Americans, the military at first said the prisoner's death was caused by a heart attack. Ivins adds that the coroner later said the heart attack occurred after the prisoner "had been beaten so often on his legs that they had 'basically been pulpified.'"

She adds that the Bush administration's officially sanctioning torture "throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems necessary -- these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law." Ivins isn't inclined to hyperbole, yet she says of Americans' passive acceptance of this new law: "Do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis."

As Jonathan Turley said on Olbermann's program, "I think you can feel the judgment of history. It won't be kind to President Bush. But frankly, I don't think that it will be kind to the rest of us. I think that history will ask, 'Where were you? What did you do when this thing was signed into law?' There were people that protested the Japanese concentration camps; there were people that protested these other acts. But we are strangely silent in this national yawn as our rights evaporate."

Future generations will wonder why the U.S. Congress and mainstream press helped Bush build up an imperial presidency and eliminate constitutional protections. If they're able to sort through the administration's fallacies and lies and clearly see what went wrong with America during this time, they'll wonder why there were so few Molly Ivinses, Keith Olbermanns and Jonathan Turleys.

Coming generations will also ask why by comparison there were so many who failed to notice the obvious holes in Bush's logic and why so many turned a blind eye to his numerous false assertions and cruel policies. They'll wonder why so many supported, whether by direct action or by silence, the Bush administration's changing the fundamental nature of the democratic Republic we were given by America's founders, based on the flimsy excuse of fighting a war on terrorism -- a "war" Bush defines falsely and fights ineffectively.

Generations to come might ask why this president who lied so often, about Iraq and other critical matters, was ever entrusted with enough power to damage this country's founding principles and wage endless, unprovoked war on other nations. If Congress and the media would ask these questions now, they might prevent Bush from doing further harm. This might save many lives, prevent much unnecessary suffering and possibly steer this country out of its present darkness.

Yes, I know this means I can be tortured under whatever distorted definition of "information gathering" these war criminals utilize to make me admit that I am a terrorist. Maybe by admitting it now, I can save them the trouble of doing that too, but they may do it anyway just for practice. You know, keep the torture machine nicely greased and all that. Don't want it to get messy, mind you.

And yes, I know this means I'll end up in Gitmo or in one of those nifty new Kellogg Brown and Root Detention Centers . But I would suffer the fate of demons should I make a whore of my soul, to paraphrase another Unlawful Enemy Combatant. Why do I consider myself even remotely capable of being labeled this way?

Posted on www.whitehouse.gov, the National Security Council's "Strategy for Winning the War on Terror" states the following:

"Subcultures of conspiracy and misinformation. Terrorists recruit more effectively from populations whose information about the world is contaminated by falsehoods and corrupted by conspiracy theories. The distortions keep alive grievances and filter out facts that would challenge popular prejudices and self-serving propaganda."

On Monday, October 16, 2006 , Fatherland Security Chief Chertoff stated that an "area of concern" is the threat of "plots involving local communities, American citizens, who may become radicalized over the Internet . . . ."

It is clear: the next front of control is the blogosphere and the alternative news media. By contributing towards the "subculture" exposing the fascist nightmare oozing out of D.C., I must be necessarily "keeping alive grievances" that make our population a ripe recruiting ground for bad people.

Any parent can quickly imagine how horrible it would feel being forcibly separated from one's children. Any parent would sacrifice lofty ideals to see their children and loved ones protected from the ugliness of the world, and from suffering. We are willing to tolerate so much just to have the chance to watch our children grow up happy. Never did I think that I would find myself dragged to the horrible grey area between keeping my mouth shut in the hopes that nothing bad would happen, or risk persecution (no exaggeration) for speaking out against these travesties of freedom in the fear that the future for my children fades to bleakness. Economic margin theory now comes into play. We must now make the determination within our own value systems as individuals: Is the future in which our children must live too horrible to contemplate for those who value liberty? Are the ever-increasing chances of this nightmare becoming real high enough now that we can no longer sit on the sidelines hoping it will fix itself?

Keep our mouths shut and hope for the best, or speak out in defiance against this nightmarish Orwellian veil descending on our lives -- though that exposes us to renegade kangaroo proceedings with the real chance of being held indefinitely with no charges filed, and no ability to even see the evidence against us. I'm afraid for many of us who see the writing on the wall, this quandary looms quite closely overhead.

Come and get me, you sons of bitches! I will not suffer this farcical disgrace. I will not silence myself in the hope that maybe this evil machine of injustice, oppression, and horror overlooks me, though I, of all that is good and decent, expose my family to God knows what. By writing this article, I may very well have doomed myself to a first class ticket to the KBR Camp o' Horrors.

Has it come to this? Am I hallucinating? Is this really what is going on in this country? I sit typing this, pausing, looking around, thinking "I'm sure I'm not just reflecting on a really bad nightmare I might have had last night..."

Have you not seen the legislation, now law? Are you so foolish as to think that "it will only be used against bad people . . . terrorists . . . . It's just to keep us safe"?

To those who believe this childishness, to those frightened sheep who do not wish to rock the boat, or who either misguidedly or in brown-shirt fashion support this travesty against humanity, I say, "Beware the father who fears for his children's future." I offer you, in closing, the following quote from Samuel Adams:

"Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, 'What should be the reward of such sacrifices?' Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!"

Azmi, who made previous visits to the country as recently as April without problems, was questioned for hours before being denied entry and sent on a plane out of the country Saturday, the group said.

Michael Fleming, a Customs and Border Protection spokesman, confirmed Saturday that Azmi was forced to leave the country after a brief detainment. He refused to give any details of the case.

"His application for entry into the U.S. was determined to be inadmissible," he said.

The Islamic Society of East Bay had invited Azmi to lead prayers at mosques around the Bay Area and speak at a celebration in Fremont on Saturday night marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

"There's nothing suspicious about him," said Nawaz Khan, a member of the East Bay group. "He is not involved in any political groups. All he does is teach at the mosque and pray."

About 1,000 people are denied entry into the United States daily for reasons that include inadequate travel documents or because their names appear on a U.S. government watch list.

In trumpeting the measure, Bush declared that the "CIA program" would now be allowed to continue. He presumably means the CIA will once again be free to use reported techniques such as water-boarding, where a prisoner is made to feel like he's drowning; forcing shackled prisoners to stand in one place for 40 hours or more; or exposing naked prisoners to 50-degree temperatures and drenching them with cold water.

Bush was strident in asserting that the CIA chamber of horrors or "program" could be open for business again. At the same time, the president gravely assured us: "The United States does not torture."

Interestingly, we weren't nearly as blithe to water-boarding when it happened to our guys during World War II. Then, we considered it a war crime and a form of torture.

In "Drop by Drop: Forgetting the History of Water Torture in U.S. Courts," Judge Evan Wallach of the U.S. Court of International Trade has documented the trials in which the U.S. used evidence of water-boarding as a basis for prosecutions. The article will be published soon by the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.

Among the numerous examples, Wallach cites one involving four Japanese defendants who were tried before a U.S. military commission at Yokohama, Japan, in 1947 for their treatment of American and Allied prisoners. Wallach writes, in the case of United States of America vs. Hideji Nakamura, Yukio Asano, Seitara Hata and Takeo Kita, "water torture was among the acts alleged in the specifications . . . and it loomed large in the evidence presented against them."

Hata, the camp doctor, was charged with war crimes stemming from the brutal mistreatment and torture of Morris Killough, "by beating and kicking him (and) by fastening him on a stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils." Other American prisoners, including Thomas Armitage, received similar treatment, according to the allegations.

Armitage described his ordeal: "They would lash me to a stretcher, then prop me up against a table with my head down. They would then pour about two gallons of water from a pitcher into my nose and mouth until I lost consciousness."

Hata was sentenced to 25 years at hard labor, and the other defendants were convicted and given long stints at hard labor as well.

Wallach also found a 1983 case out of San Jacinto County, Texas, in which James Parker, the county sheriff, and three deputies were criminally charged for handcuffing suspects to chairs, draping towels over their faces and pouring water over the towel until a confession was elicited. One victim described the experience this way: "I thought I was going to be strangled to death."

The sheriff pleaded guilty, and his deputies went to trial where they were convicted of civil rights violations. All received long prison sentences. U.S. District Judge James DeAnda told the former sheriff at sentencing, "The operation down there would embarrass the dictator of a country."

But our president is just about as proud as can be of the "program," boasting about the fine intelligence we've extracted from the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, conveniently ignoring all the bad information that spilled out of him that sent our law enforcement on wild goose chases.

A former CIA insider suggests that the president has got it all wrong if he thinks CIA interrogators are looking for license to mistreat prisoners. According to Fred Hitz, former CIA inspector general and veteran CIA operations officer, "There's nobody out there in the CIA that I can imagine who wants to be governed by a set of standards that is different from those in the Army Field Manual." Under that manual, abusive techniques are strictly barred.

So it's really the president and vice president and their minions who are pushing for interrogation techniques that Allen Keller, who directs a program for torture survivors in New York, calls "torture" and the infliction of "serious physical or mental pain and suffering." Our leaders think the Military Commissions Act gives them the thumbs up. But morality, common decency and history surely won't.

Robyn Blumner is a columnist for the St. Petersburg Times. Her e-mail address is blumner@sptimes.com

In effect, President Bush got all he wanted from a submissive GOP-dominated Congress and a few spineless Democratic lawmakers. The president on Tuesday did not issue his customary signing statement interpreting implementation of the law. He didn't have to because lawmakers on Capitol Hill had handed him total victory.

The far-reaching legislation gives Bush the right to decide what constitutes torture. The president has often said "we do not torture," despite evidence to the contrary - and photographs from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison as well.

The president also can set guidelines for interrogation of prisoners. White House spokesman Tony Snow declined to say whether "waterboarding" - in which detainees are made to feel they are drowning - would be permissible. Other question marks under the new law include deprivation of sleep and shackling a prisoner in one position for hours.

The law specifically bars blatant abuses including murder and rape and "cruel and inhuman" treatment. But it also permits the withholding of evidence from defendants in certain cases.

And it denies detainees the right to file habeas corpus petitions to challenge their detentions in federal courts. The tradition of habeas corpus dates back almost 800 years to the Magna Carta.

Under the new law, the president also has extraordinary powers to designate who is an illegal enemy combatant, which potentially subjects U.S. citizens and foreigners to indefinite detention with no power to appeal.

Bush is also allowed to interpret the Geneva Conventions on Humane Treatment of Prisoners of War.

Furthermore, the CIA apparently will be able to continue sending prisoners to secret prisons abroad and agents will have immunity from prosecution for their interrogation practices. Many Europeans who have lived under tyrannical regimes cannot believe the U.S. would submit to such questionable treatment of detainees.

Bush was beaming when he signed the bill on a table with a sign in front that read: "Protecting America."

Standing by his side was Vice President Dick Cheney, a prime mover in the administration's drive to enhance presidential power. Cheney's fine hand was evident in the writing of the legislation, which is bound to be challenged in the courts.

But right now those who voted for this law believe it will be help them in the November election. And Democrats who voted against it should watch out for a total GOP assault on their commitment to protecting America from terrorist attack.

Bush called the law a "vital tool" in the war on terror.

"It is a rare occasion when a president can sign a bill that he knows will save American lives," Bush said.

"We will answer brutal murder with patient justice," he added. "Those who kill the innocent will be held to account."

Critics see the new law as authorizing creation of a veritable Gulag.

The American Civil Liberties Union called the new law "one of the worst civil liberties measures in American history."

As ACLU Executive director Anthony D. Romero put it:

"The president can now, with the approval of Congress indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam the courthouse door for habeas petitions,"

Romero added: "It is unconstitutional and un-American."

Bush contended that his policies on terror suspects did not require congressional approval, manifesting his apparent belief that the president is above the law. The Supreme Court proved him wrong.

Bush's order for warrantless wiretapping of Americans is yet another example of a presidential power grab.

Tom Malinowski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, said Bush has been accused of "criminal torture in a way that could hurt America and come back to haunt our troops."

One of the reasons Bush sought a green light from the lawmakers is "to have Congress stand with him in the dock," Malinowski added.

The military commissions act is law. And all Americans will be tainted by it.
--
Helen Thomas can be reached at the e-mail address hthomas@hearstdc.com.

Cheryl C. Kagan, a former Democratic delegate who has long questioned the security of electronic voting systems, said the disks were delivered anonymously to her office in Olney on Tuesday and that the FBI contacted her yesterday. The package contained an unsigned letter critical of Maryland State Board of Elections Administrator Linda H. Lamone that said the disks were "right from SBE" and had been "accidentally picked up."

Lamone's deputy, Ross Goldstein, said "they were not our disks," but he acknowledged that the software was used in Maryland in the 2004 elections. Diebold said in a statement last night that it had never created or received the disks.

The disks bear the logos of two testing companies that send such disks to the Maryland board after using the software to conduct tests on Diebold equipment. A Ciber Inc. spokeswoman said the disks had not come from Ciber, and Wyle Laboratories Inc. said it was not missing any disks.

Diebold spokesman Mark Radke and Goldstein said that the labels on the disks referred to versions of the software that are no longer in use in Maryland, although the Diebold statement said the version of one program apparently stored on the disks is still in use in "a limited number of jurisdictions" and is protected by encryption. The statement also said the FBI is investigating the disks' chain of custody.

Michelle Crnkovich, an FBI spokeswoman in Baltimore, said she had no knowledge of an investigation.

In an unrelated development, Maryland state auditors said in a report yesterday that the State Board of Elections is not properly controlling access to a new statewide database of registered voters or verifying what changes are made to it. The report comes at a time of heightened concern over the security and effectiveness of electronic voting systems.

Legislative auditor Bruce Myers said it was unusual to allow "across-the-board access" by local election officials to a sensitive database, but Lamone defended the board's practices. In a letter released with the Office of Legislative Audits report, she wrote that the board "is unaware of any allegations of the falsification of additions or deletions to the system."

The FBI investigation into the disks could focus further scrutiny on the security of Maryland's electronic voting system.

The disks delivered to Kagan's office bear labels indicating that they hold "source code" - the instructions that constitute the core of a software program - for Diebold's Ballot Station and Global Election Management System (GEMS) programs. The former guides the operation of the company's touch-screen voting machines; the latter is in part a tabulation program used to tally votes after an election.

Three years ago, Diebold was embarrassed when an activist obtained some of its confidential software by searching the Internet. The company vowed to improve its security procedures to prevent another lapse.

The release of such software poses a risk, computer scientists say, because it could allow someone to discover security vulnerabilities or to write a virus that could be used to manipulate election results.

In September, computer scientists at Princeton University who had obtained a Diebold voting machine demonstrated how a program they had created could secretly alter the votes cast on the machine. Diebold President Dave Byrd called the demonstration "unrealistic and inaccurate" and said it ignored the "physical security" measures used to safeguard voting machines.

The Washington Post obtained copies of the disks Wednesday and allowed Avi Rubin, a computer scientist at Johns Hopkins University, along with a colleague and a graduate student, to review the software on the condition that they make no copies of it.

"I would be stunned if it's not real," Rubin said.

Rubin, who has said that electronic voting systems that do not produce a paper record of each vote cannot be secured, led a team that produced an analysis that pointed out security vulnerabilities in the Diebold software found on the Internet in 2003.

Sam Small, the graduate student, said the version of Ballot Station "was consistent with what we've seen previously." Small could not gain access to the GEMS software because the material on two of the disks was protected by a password.

Radke, the Diebold spokesman, said the versions of Ballot Station released since the version identified on the disks have many new security features. The Diebold statement said "it would take years for a knowledgeable scientist" to break the encryption used on the software apparently contained on the disks delivered to Kagan. But Rubin said "the data and files were not encrypted" on the Ballot Station disk he reviewed.

The Office of Legislative Audits report also said the Maryland elections board has paid bills submitted by contractors without proper documentation and has not taken appropriate steps to safeguard its computer network and Web site.

Lamone said, "It seems inappropriate to base findings on a partially implemented system," referring to the new MDVOTERS database, which Maryland has established to comply with federal law.

She said it is appropriate for local election workers to have access to the database and said procedures are in place to verify changes. Lamone concurred with the auditors' criticism of her staff's accounting practices and said they had "obtained nearly all necessary documentation" for contractors' bills.

Providing the sort of local oversight envisioned by the auditors, she said, "simply cannot be conducted with existing resources."

Although Guatemala did not secure the two-thirds support needed for the seat either, diplomats say it is unlikely Venezuela can win when voting to break the impasse is due to resume next week.

The drawn-out defeat in Chavez's top 2006 foreign policy goal came despite months of canvassing for votes with foreign trips, subsidized oil sales from Venezuela's large reserves and pledges to spearhead a global anti-U.S. alliance.

The voting showed there was little appetite around the world for following Chavez, even if Washington has irked many nations with the sort of aggressive diplomacy it used seeking support for its unpopular invasion of Iraq.

The losses also followed a disappointing second-place showing by Chavez's leftist ally in Ecuador's presidential election on Sunday that exposed the limits on his ambition to export his anti-Americanism in the region.

Ecuadorean candidate Rafael Correa, who faces a run-off ballot next month, has since distanced himself from Chavez, reassuring voters he would block the Venezuelan leader from interfering in his presidency.

Chavez, who likens his opposition to U.S. trade, energy and foreign policies to Cuban President Fidel Castro's defiance of Washington, put a brave face on the U.N. results, claiming a "moral" victory for standing up to the world's only superpower.

But with oil prices falling, a tougher-than-expected re-election bid looming in December and a faltering foreign policy, the man who is used to crowds treating him like a Messiah did not show his typical confidence this week.

He generally hunkered down during the days of voting and canceled most planned political rallies.

A SPEECH TOO FAR

In his U.N. General Assembly speech last month, Chavez told the audience of heads of state, ambassadors and world dignitaries that the chamber still reeked of sulfur after Bush spoke there a day earlier.

While he drew applause and laughter, he displayed a rhetoric that contrasts with diplomatic Latin American heavyweights such as Brazil and Mexico that generally take independent stances but avoid conflicts.

"As much as there might be anti-Americanism around, other governments do not see him as a leader," said Michael Shifter of the Washington-based think tank the Inter-American Dialogue.

"This shows that style and language do matter -- and he went too far."

Chavez will undoubtedly keep up his anti-American harangues and has shown in the past he can rebound from losses, such as returning to power only days after a coup in 2002.

But losing to Guatemala limits his international profile and could hurt his prestige at home.

The opposition, which has accused him of focusing on burnishing his image abroad instead of tackling issues such as crime at home, said the U.N. vote showed he was out of touch.

"It is an embarrassing condemnation of the Cuban-Castro model that he has been promoting," election rival Manuel Rosales said.