Two of the 12 Americans killed in the 1998 US embassy attack in Nairobi worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, a news service has reported.

The disclosure of Mr Tom Shah's and Ms Molly Huckaby Hardy's actual status comes 13 years after the bombing and coincides with Memorial Day on Monday when the US honours its war dead.



Mr Shah and Ms Hardy "are believed to have been the first CIA casualties" in the clandestine war against al-Qaeda, the Associated Press says in its investigative story.


The news service says its account is based on interviews with half-a-dozen current and former US officials.

Until now, "their service remained a secret in both life and death, marked only by anonymous stars on the wall at CIA headquarters" outside Washington, the AP writes.

[This article originally appeared in Issue 13 of The Dot Connector Magazine]
As a species, you'd think we'd be able to tell the difference by now between image and reality. And yet, with all our acquired scientific knowledge, the gist of which is dutifully drilled into our minds during twelve to twenty years of public and 'higher' education, we still can't get it right. Well, perhaps that isn't fair. I know a few individuals who can sniff out a pair of imitation Nikes or a Britney Spears lip-synch in a heartbeat. So we're experts when it comes to the trivial, but with anything a tad meatier, where our very livelihoods may depend on it, our discernment in separating fact from fiction is deplorable. Why is that?

Growing up, I had the opportunity to sit in on more than a few 'polite' dinner conversations among adults. Not having much to say, I tended to listen. And, more often than not, as one topic led to another, as the pace of speech quickened and voices became slightly higher in pitch, that inevitable conversation stopper reared its head. "No religion or politics!" Such things are off limits, you see, and when discussed in 'polite' company, all rationality seems to fly out the window and a battle of wills ensues.

No great civilization is ever destroyed from without, or conquered by external forces, until it first destroys itself from within. America's leaders should have thought long and hard about that before voting to extend the Patriot Act last week.

Unhappily it's official. We the People are the enemy. We have dared to prod and examine government policy too closely. We have questioned government leadership when we should rightly have obeyed without challenge. Some of us have exposed wrongful government practices and deceptions, expecting to hold Congress and White House leaders accountable to voters. Foolish us!

Last week Congress set the record straight. Breaking campaign promises to defeat the Patriot Act, Congress blocked hearings and debate on amendments that would fix problems in surveillance rules, and rammed a four year extension on the American People. Only 31 Republicans and 122 Democrats voted against the Patriot Act in the House.

A new short film claims that the board of the Organic Trade Association (OTA) is undermining the ethic of of the organic movement. The film, embedded below, was released by an anonymous person or group called Organic Spies, suggests that at least four current board members of the OTA are in conflict of interest because the companies they represent overwhelmingly rely on genetically engineered ingredients, something that is anathema to the organic movement.

I love a shadowy figure as much as the next guy, but I also checked with former OTA director and board member Arran Stephens, CEO of the still independent and fiercely organic cereal company, Nature's Path, to get his take on this breaking scandal.

Early this spring, while the world was distracted by Egypt's uprising, President Barack Obama pushed the Secretary of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to deregulate genetically engineered alfalfa and sugar beets in the United States. The USDA came through as he directed, totally deregulating these Monsanto-patented genes in early February.

In so doing, Obama and the USDA have chosen to override and ignore decisions and injunctions made by the U.S. Supreme Court that banned planting of genetically engineered alfalfa and sugar beets without consideration of the Environmental Impact Assessments, which showed high risks to organic and conventional (chemical) farmers.

So how does this affect you and me? Neither of us remembers seeing alfalfa or sugar beets on our breakfast table or even on our Seder table. Or do we?

Sugar beets provide over 50 percent of the sugar Americans use in their coffee, cereals, and desserts. For the moment, let's not focus on the fact that sugar beets can cross-pollinate with red beets and make our borscht genetically modified.

Alfalfa reaches our tables within milk, cream, butter, and meat, as it is used as a major animal feed in the dairy industry. It is also used to enrich soils in organic farming.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Savage] is recognized for 60 minutes.

Mr. SAVAGE. Madam Speaker, I rise tonight to deal with the problem that occurred in my recent primary election, the one in which--let me just say that I was successful, despite this problem. However, I want to bring it to the attention of our Nation tonight. For while I mention it in reference to my own experience in the recent primary election, I am convinced that it constitutes a danger for all America and threatens to rip the fabric of our democracy.

I represent the Second Congressional District in Illinois. It is not an inner-city district. It consists mainly of bungalows, semi-professional, and blue collar workers, second and third generation families there. It is approximately 30 percent suburban, approximately 30 percent nonblack. It is an industrial district that has housed most of the heavy industry in Illinois--automobile assembly plants, stamping plants, three steel mills, at one time, four.

In this campaign a strange thing occurred. A column was written by a columnist in the Sun-Times, the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, by the name of Vernon Jarrett, that raised questions about who really was my opponent, because of what appeared to be a strange tilt in the sources of his campaign funding.

I want to share some facts with Members here this evening, that perhaps could be shared by some others who have been targeted, apparently as I was in this primary, and unfortunately, they lost their reelection bid.

In 2005 in the basement of the United States Capitol at a meeting convened by Congressman John Conyers on the subject of the "Downing Street Memo," Ray McGovern uttered the following truth: he testified that "the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel, and military bases craved by administration neocons" so that "the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world." McGovern went on to testify truthfully that "Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation. The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic."

The routine condemnations of McGovern could be heard from all of the sources inside the U.S. political structure that has at its base finance from pro-Israel sources; that included from Dr. Howard Dean who was Chair of the Democratic National Committee at the time. This finance nexus has been thoroughly identified by Dr. James Petras, for those who want to do further reading.

Condemnations, however, do not disprove McGovern's statement, but point, instead, to the political untouchability of the topic. However, if one wants to truly understand the formulation of U.S. foreign and military policies, one must carefully consider McGovern's testimony.

"People are really defiant" in the face of savage NATO bombing raids on Tripoli, the Libyan capital, says former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. "Every night the people gather" at Bab al-Azizia, Moammar Gaddifi's residential compound, for dancing and singing -- "like a block party." McKinney, who only days ago returned from a trip to Libya, is leading another delegation to the besieged country this week. "The question is: Will the American people hold their government accountable for the war crimes that are being committed against an African country," says the former Green Party presidential candidate. NATO's attack on Libya "is a humanitarian disaster."

While serving on the House International Relations Committee from 1993 to 2003, it became clear to me that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was an anachronism. Founded in 1945 at the end of World War II, NATO was founded by the United States in response to the Soviet Union's survival as a Communist state. NATO was the U.S. insurance policy that capitalist ownership and domination of European, Asian, and African economies would continue. This also would ensure the survival of the then-extant global apartheid.

NATO is a collective security pact wherein member states pledge that an attack upon one is an attack against all. Therefore, should the Soviet Union have attacked any European Member State, the United States military shield would be activated. The Soviet Response was the Warsaw Pact that maintained a "cordon sanitaire" around the Russian Heartland should NATO ever attack. Thus, the world was broken into blocs which gave rise to the "Cold War."

Avowed "Cold Warriors" of today still view the world in these terms and, unfortunately, cannot move past Communist China and an amputated Soviet Empire as enemy states of the U.S. whose moves any where on the planet are to be contested. The collapse of the Soviet Union provided an accelerated opportunity to exert U.S. hegemony in an area of previous Russian influence. Africa and the Eurasian landmass containing former Soviet satellite states and Afghanistan and Pakistan along with the many other "stans" of the region, have always factored prominently in the theories of "containment" or "rollback" guiding U.S. policy up to today.

In this edition of Face to Face, Marzieh Hashemi interviews Cynthia McKinney; Former US Congresswoman and former presidential candidate for Green Party.