Bush Admin Pulls a "Clinton"

Pete Yost reports for the Associated Press on the Detroit Free Press (Jan 16, 2008, White House may have erased e-mail evidence):

The White House has acknowledged recycling its backup computer tapes of e-mail before October 2003, raising the possibility that many electronic messages — including those pertaining to the CIA leak case — have been taped over and are gone forever.

The disclosure came minutes before midnight Tuesday under a court-ordered deadline that forced the White House to reveal information it has previously refused to provide.

The White House “does not know if any e-mails were not properly preserved in the archiving process,” said the statement by Theresa Payton, chief information officer for the White House Office of Administration. “We are continuing our efforts,” said Payton, whose staff is responsible for the White House e-mail system.

If the e-mails were not saved, the White House might have violated two laws requiring preservation of documents that fall into the categories of federal records or presidential records....

...Payton’s sworn statement was filed in response to a federal court order last week in lawsuits by two private groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive.

The lawsuits allege that millions of e-mails are missing from White House servers. The recycling of backup tapes leaves doubt whether any missing e-mails will be recoverable.

“If the backup tapes have been erased or taped over or recycled, it’s hard to imagine where we will find copies of many lost e-mails,” said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive, said in an interview Wednesday.

“It appears that the White House has now destroyed the evidence of its misconduct,” said Anne Weismann, the chief counsel for the ethics group.

“The White House declaration raises more questions than it answers, specifically the likelihood that for a very significant period of time — March 2003 to October 2003 — the White House recycled its backup tapes,” said Weismann.

“As a result there may be no way to recover the missing e-mails from a period in which the U.S. decided to go to war with Iraq, White House officials leaked the identity of Valerie Plame and the Justice Department started a criminal investigation of the White House,” the lawyer said....

The silence of the republicans who decried Clinton's email archival "problem" is deafening.

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell - NSA owns the internet

John Leyden at The Register (UK, Jan 16, 2008, US chief spook pushes electronic dragnet policy) reports:

US cyber-security policies may give US intelligence agencies access to any email, file transfer or web search.

The proposals from National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, which have entered into a draft of US Cyber-Security Policy, would legitimise data trawling on a scale that would make the current controversy about warrantless wiretapping seem like much ado about nothing....

...Intelligence agencies have long angled for this kind of surveillance ability. The infrastructure and computing power needed to tap into Americans' email and web search history may already exist....

For some background, see Reason's interview with NSA whistleblower Russell Tice (Jan 13, 2006, Inside the Puzzle Palace), a good post on the CannonFire Blog (July 31, 2007, Data mining, the NSA, DOJ corruption and impeachment), UPI's Feb 14, 2006 story Whistleblower says NSA violations bigger, and two stories on SpamDailyNews (April 08, 2006, Whistleblower outs NSA's secret spy room at AT T; and April 07, 2006, EFF: AT T forwards all Internet traffic into NSA) about AT&T forwarding all internet traffic to the NSA.

Michigan Republican Former Representative Mark Deli Siljander

Lara Jakes Jordan reports for the Associated Press (on Chicago Tribune, Jan 16, 2008, Ex-Lawmaker Charged in Terror Conspiracy) on the ex-Congressman, ex-U.S. delegate to the U.N., ex-lobbyist & his indictment:

A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations was indicted Wednesday on charges of being part of a terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to a supporter of al-Qaida and the Taliban who has threatened U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan.

Mark Deli Siljander, a Michigan Republican when he was in the House, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about lobbying senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.

The 42-count indictment, unsealed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., accuses the Islamic American Relief Agency of paying Siljander $50,000 for the lobbying -- money that turned out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Siljander, who served in the House from 1981-1987, was appointed by President Reagan to serve as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations for one year in 1987....

...In the indictment, the government alleges that IARA employed a man who had served as a fundraising aide to Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader and mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The indictment accuses IARA of sending approximately $130,000 to help Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whom the United States has designated a global terrorist. The money, sent to bank accounts in Peshawar, Pakistan, in 2003 and 2004, was masked as donations to an orphanage located in buildings that Hekmatyar owned.

Authorities described Hekmatyar as an Afghan mujahedeen leader who articipated in and supported terrorist acts by al-Qaida and the Taliban. The Justice Department said Hekmatyar "has vowed to engage in a holy war against the United States and international troops in Afghanistan."

The charges paint "a troubling picture of an American charity organization that engaged in transactions for the benefit of terrorists and conspired with a former United States congressman to convert stolen federal funds into payments for his advocacy," said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein.....

...After leaving the government, he founded the Washington-area consulting group Global Strategies Inc.

The indictment says Siljander was hired by IARA in March 2004 to lobby the Senate Finance Committee in an effort to remove the charity from the panel's list of suspected terror fundraisers.

For his work, IARA paid Siljander with money that was part of U.S. government funding awarded to the charity years earlier for relief work it promised to perform in Africa, the indictment says. Under the grant agreement, IARA was supposed to return any unused funds after the relief project ended in 1999.

Instead, Siljander and three IARA officers agreed to cover up the money's origins and use it on the lobbying effort, the indictment charges....

...The indictment also alleges that on 11 separate occasions the defendants transferred funds from the United States to Iraq through Amman, Jordan, to promote unlawful activity that violated Iraq sanctions....

It has been noted that the USAID is just a front for the CIA (see here, and here, and here, and here, and loads more - google them), and the CIA funded islamists throughout the 1980s & 1990s (Afghanistan & Balkans adventures). Is Siljander/IARA's current predicament just more clean-up from 9/11?

Oil Rebuff

The Saudis rebuffed Bush's plea for increased oil production to ease prices (see Mark Silva's Saudis reject Bush oil plea, Jan 16, 2008, Chicago Tribune).

However, lack of production/inventory does not seem to be sourcing the rise in prices, as Alan Greenspan stated repeatedly, its oil speculation. For a historical look over the past decade, see the article What Is Driving Oil Prices? by Richard G. Anderson and Jason J. Buol on the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis' website, from January 2005 ... there's a nice graphic (from 2004) showing historical spot and future prices for oil. BusinessWeek from November 26, 2007 (A Hot Hand in Oil Speculation) references a Goldman Sachs analyst - Jeffrey Currie - who should be listened to, given his remarkable run at predictions in the oil market. Keith Fitz-Gerald reports on MondayMorning (Jan 10, 2008, Investors Will Benefit From New Plan to Have the United States and China Cooperate in Curbing Oil Speculation) about the future cooperation of the US and China on oil speculation.

Oil speculation is delved into by David Usher on TheReaganWing (June 10, 2007, Oil Price Gouging: From Enron With Love):

...Savvy investment firms and avaricious lawyers analyzed the Enron case – realizing they could turn a huge buck on oil futures – so long as they tacitly let oil companies constrain the oil supply without manipulating the supply directly themselves.

Giant speculative investment funds and oil companies now make tremendous profits raiding the oil spot-market, playing seemingly separate but implicitly cooperative roles serving up the same end-effect as Enron wreaked on California. But this time, the victim is the American consumer, not energy producers and distributors.

Federal and state politicians in both parties have failed to address this “Enroning of America” because government is on the take too. Taxes rise with gasoline prices, fattening political contributions while feeding slush budgets and pork barrels at both the state and federal levels....

...: “Investment banks from Morgan Stanley to Goldman Sachs are making so much money from oil futures that they’ve become a hot investment for all sorts of big-money players.” Ben Dell, an oil analyst and Sanford Bernstein calls it correctly, if not conservatively: “pension funds and other investors are buying oil to remove it from the market — which can help drive up demand — before selling it for a profit some months later”....

...Here is what we can take away from the above information:
(1) U.S. oil companies cut back U.S. distillation capacity substantially between 1980 and 2004. This seeded fears. Spot market prices rose tremendously, thus increasing profits to oil companies.

(2) U.S. oil companies decreased stateside production 40.3% between 1980 and 2004, driving fears about dependence on foreign oil, and creating an illusion that shortages were imminent.

(3) These two items, in conjunction with speculative manipulation of the spot market by banks and pension funds, caused oil company profits to soar. The world’s three largest oil companies netted profits of $172,000 per minute during the second quarter of 2006. Profits going forward look similarly bullish.(22) ....

...This problem is not limited to oil markets. In the name of “deregulation”, investors are now raiding electricity markets nationwide. This is driving up home energy costs for everyone, causing utility companies to defer lifecycle replacement of end-of-life equipment, resulting in massive power outages caused by wet or cold weather failures of antiquated step-down equipment never before experienced by customers....

US Gov't Finally Stops Fighting Family of 9/11 Volunteer EMT

The Associated Press on the Long Island Newsday (Jan 15, 2008, Feds recognize slain 9/11 volunteer EMT):

After a five year battle, the U.S. government has dropped its effort to prevent a volunteer firefighter killed at the World Trade Center from receiving a federal death benefit for public safety officers who die on the job.

The decision is a belated victory for the family of Glenn Winuk, a longtime member of the Jericho Volunteer Fire Department who rushed to the burning towers on Sept. 11, 2001, to tend to victims of the terrorist attack.

Winuk, 40, died when the skyscrapers collapsed, but for years, the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Assistance fought his family's effort to collect a $250,000 payment due to police officers, firefighters and other government emergency workers killed in the line of duty.

The agency took the position that the benefit was only intended to go to active-duty public safety officers, and Winuk didn't qualify because he hadn't been on regular duty with his volunteer department on Long Island since 1998.

The long court battle finally ended on Jan. 10, after the Office of the Solicitor General decided to drop its last appeal in the case.

"It's really terrific. This fight has gone on too long," said Glenn's brother, Jay Winuk.

The move clears the way for Winuk's parents to receive the $250,000 payment, but the family maintains that their primary interest was not getting money, but achieving proper government recognition for Glenn's public service.

"It's very meaningful to my parents," Jay Winuk said.

He added that he hoped President Bush would now see fit to award his late brother the 9/11 Heroes Medal of Valor, which was given to the relatives of 442 other public safety officers killed in the terror attacks.

Glenn Winuk was working at his Manhattan law office the morning of the attacks, but he grabbed a medical bag and raced to pitch in with the rescue effort. When his body was found in the rubble, months later, he was wearing surgical gloves and a stethoscope.

A number of New York officials supported the family's campaign for a payment from the Public Safety Officers Benefits Program, including state lawmakers who passed a statute declaring that Winuk died in the line of duty.

The turning point in the case came when a judge on the Federal Court of Claims sided with the family last June, ruling that the government's denial of the benefit had been arbitrary.

Saudi Weapons Deal, bin Laden's message, Iraq

Michael Scheuer has a piece on Asia Times Online (Jan 12, 2008, Bin Laden turns heat on Saudi Arabia) analyzing bin Laden's latest (12-29-07) message:

....Bin Laden urges the Iraqi fighters to heed the lesson of the Afghans' historic post-Soviet debacle because "the same thing applies to Iraq today"; leaders are more interested in their own power and status than in making Islam and the ummah (Islamic community) victorious. And while bin Laden warns that Washington is using promises of money, military training and arms to entice the "Islamic Party and some fighting groups [to] support America against Muslims", he leaves no doubt that the Islamists' main enemy in Iraq is now Saudi Arabia, not the supposedly militarily defeated United States....

...Bin Laden goes on to claim that the Saudis are trying to co-opt some of the Sunni mujahideen in Iraq by allowing "some groups to confidently move in the Gulf to receive [financial] support". Riyadh is careful to avoid officially funding its Iraqi insurgent favorites, so its support "is channeled under the banner of raising donations by some unofficial scholars and preachers". Bin Laden warns that "many of them ... are loyal to the state and seek to implement [Riyadh's] policy by pulling the rug from under the honest mujahideen's feet" and forcing them to support a national-unity government that is designed to be the agent of the United States and Saudi Arabia.

He asks the Iraqi mujahideen how they can trust Saudi King Abdullah, who is the "malignant foe" of Islam, the "main US agent in the region" and a man who took it on himself "to tempt and tame every free, virtuous, and honest person with the aim of dragging him to the path of temptation and misguidance ... [and] the path of betraying the religion and nation and submitting to the will of the Crusader-Zionist alliance"....

...While it is clear in the December 29 tape that bin Laden rates the Saudis as the main obstacle to God's victory in Iraq, there is little indication of what he intends to do to destroy Riyadh's ability to stymie the mujahideen there as it did in Afghanistan....

...If bin Laden's assertions are true, and Saudi Arabia's Afghanistan-like intervention in Iraq continues to prevent the mujahideen unity bin Laden advocates, the al-Qaeda chief and his shura (consultative) council may soon confront the very unpalatable necessity of having to break with their traditional grand strategy and move to try to destroy the Saudi regime....

Anne Gearan and Terence Hunt report for the Associated Press on the Detroit Free Press (Jan 14, 2008, Bush Delivers Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia and Bush Seeks Stronger Ties With Arms Deal):

Anne Gearan's article:

...The administration was notifying Congress of its intent to sell $20 billion in weapons, including precision-guided bombs, to the Saudis. It is "a pretty big package, lots of pieces," national security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters on Air Force One....

Terence Hunt's article:

...Coinciding with Bush's arrival, the administration officially notified Congress it will offer Saudi Arabia sophisticated Joint Direct Attack Munitions - or "smart bomb" - technology and related equipment. The deal envisions the transfer of 900 of the precision-guided bomb kits, worth $123 million, that would give Saudi forces highly accurate targeting abilities.

Some lawmakers fear the systems could be used against Israel but Congress appears unlikely to block the deal because of Saudi Arabia's cooperation in the war on terror and in deterring aggression from Iran.

The United States already has notified Congress of five other packages to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, including Patriot missiles. The total amount of eventual sales as part of the Gulf Security Dialogue is estimated at $20 billion, a figure subject to actual purchases....

HIV Replication Stop Mechanism

UPI story (Jan 14, 2008, Study finds cell protein that stops HIV):

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 14 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists have found a key protein in dendritic cells can stop the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS from replicating.

UCLA researchers found the protein prevents HIV "budding" -- part of the virus' life cycle that is crucial to its ability to replicate and infect other cells.

"If we can block virus generation, then we can control the disease," said UCLA Associate Professor Shen Pang, lead author of the study.

Dendritic cells are specialized white blood cells in the skin, mucosa and lymph nodes that activate lymphocytes, including the T cells that HIV targets. Although dendritic cells can be infected with HIV, studies have shown viral generation from such cells is nearly 100 times lower than from infected T cells, indicating the cells may possess some inhibiting property.

Pang hypothesized that DC-SIGN, a protein expressed in dendritic cells, might be responsible for such inhibition. He and his colleagues found DC-SIGN and a related protein, DC-SIGNR, both demonstrated 95 percent to 99.5 percent inhibition of viral production from host cells.

The study that included postgraduate researcher Qiuwei Wang is scheduled for publication in the April issue of the FASEB Journal and is now available online at www.fasebj.org/cgi/rapidpdf/fj.07-9443comv3.pdf