Sunday, June 03, 2007

Plame vows to battle CIA over speech - Politics - MSNBC.com

Plame vows to battle CIA over speech - Politics - MSNBC.com

Plame vows to battle CIA over speech
Outed former covert agent plans to press lawsuits against Cheney, agency
By Claudia Parsons
Reuters
Updated: 3:30 p.m. ET June 2, 2007

NEW YORK - An ex-spy whose unmasking led to the conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney’s top aide vowed on Saturday to press on with lawsuits against Cheney and the CIA for the sake of freedom of speech.

“Just as we have to be vigilant to protect our national security—something I believe in passionately—we have to be vigilant to protect our freedom of speech and First Amendment rights,” Valerie Plame Wilson said in a speech at a book convention.

Plame and her publisher, Simon & Schuster, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New York on Thursday against top CIA officials for blocking publication of her memoir on national security grounds.

Plame’s cover as a CIA agent was blown when her identity was leaked to reporters and appeared in a newspaper column in July 2003, shortly after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, emerged as an Iraq war critic.

Plame said she had no intention of endangering national security with the book but was entitled to tell her story.

“This has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with political influence and manipulation,” Plame said of the CIA’s demand that she not discuss her service before 2002.

The CIA has argued her book could hurt operations and affect its ability to conduct intelligence activities in the future.

“I’m not seeking carte blanche to reveal all the details of my government service,” Plame said.

The book, “Fair Game,” is set to be published on Oct. 21.

The leaking of Plame’s identity prompted an investigation to determine if government officials had broken any laws.

Nobody was charged with blowing her cover, but Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s former chief of staff, was found guilty in March of lying and obstructing the investigation. He is due to be sentenced on Tuesday and faces up to three years in prison.

‘Troubled times’
Evidence at Libby’s trial showed he and several other White House and State Department officials leaked her identity to discredit her husband, who had accused the administration of twisting intelligence to build a case for invading Iraq.

Plame has since filed a lawsuit against Cheney and other top administration officials, seeking money damages for violating the couple’s constitutional free speech, due process and privacy rights.

She said initially she was reluctant to sue, but did so for three reasons.

“The first one is to get the truth,” she told the audience of publishers and booksellers in New York who gave her a standing ovation even before she spoke.

“Secondly, to hold our government officials to account for their words and their deeds ... Finally it’s to prevent future abuses.”

“We are living in very troubled times and it’s imperative that we all understand what our rights are and understand when we are being trampled on,” she said later, answering a question from the audience.

Plame said she expected a judge to rule by the end of the summer on a motion by Cheney to dismiss the suit.

All publications by current and former CIA agents must be approved by a review board, which says its only objective is to prevent classified material from being released to the public.

Simon & Schuster is a unit of CBS Corp.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.

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Putin reacts to U.S. defense plan with warning - Focus on Russia - MSNBC.com

Putin reacts to U.S. defense plan with warning - Focus on Russia - MSNBC.com

Putin reacts to U.S. defense plan with warning
He says U.S. defense plans will force Russia to target weapons on neighbors
The Associated Press
Updated: 12:59 p.m. ET June 3, 2007

ROME - Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that U.S. plans to build a missile defense system in Eastern Europe would force Moscow to target its weapons against Europe.

The threat, in an interview published Sunday in Italy’s Corriere della Sera and other foreign media, marked one of Putin’s most strident statements to date against the U.S. plans and came just days before he is to join President Bush and other leaders at a Group of Eight summit in Germany.

In the interview, Putin was asked whether the proposed missile defense shield would compel Moscow to direct its own missiles at locations and U.S. military sites in Europe, as during the Cold War.

“If the American nuclear potential grows in European territory, we have to give ourselves new targets in Europe,” Putin said, according to Corriere. “It is up to our military to define these targets, in addition to defining the choice between ballistic and cruise missiles.”

Russia has not overtly targeted Europe since agreeing after the fall of the Soviet Union not to direct missiles against specific countries, according to Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst based in Moscow. He added however, that that was simple technical matter, since a missile can be given a target within minutes.

Previously, some Russian military officials have said Moscow could aim Russian weapons at Europe-based missile systems.

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek accused Russia on Sunday of misleading the public about the planned missile defense bases in the Czech Republic and Poland to hide Russia’s internal problems.

“Russia needs an outside enemy to hide problems at home,” Topolanek said.

U.S. wants radar base in Czech Republic
The United States made a formal request in January to place a radar base in a military area southwest of Prague, Czech Republic, and 10 interceptor missiles in neighboring Poland as part of plans for a missile defense shield that Washington says would protect against a potential threat from Iran.

The U.S. plans have brought a strong reaction from Russia, which accuses the United States of threatening Russian territory and of trying to start a new arms race.

Putin was interviewed Friday at his dacha by journalists from each of the G-8 countries, Corriere said.

The three-day summit, Wednesday to Friday at the Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm, will bring together leaders of the United States, Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, and Japan.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Suicide bomber kills 7 near Somali PM's home | Top News | Reuters

Suicide bomber kills 7 near Somali PM's home | Top News | Reuters

Suicide bomber kills 7 near Somali PM's home
Sun Jun 3, 2007 6:00PM BST

By Guled Mohamed

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed seven people outside the Somali prime minister's home in Mogadishu on Sunday, just hours after an official said Western jihadists were among the dead from U.S. strikes in the north.

Security sources said Ali Mohamed Gedi was unhurt, but five soldiers and two civilians died when the bomber detonated a car rigged with explosives at the gates of his residence in a heavily guarded neighbourhood of the capital.

"I saw limbs nearly a kilometre from where the suicide bomber detonated," a police officer at the scene who asked not to be named told Reuters by telephone.

"We don't know how the suicide bomber managed to pass through undetected ... The wounded cannot be counted."

African Union peacekeepers raced to the area. "We took the prime minister to a safe place after the blast. He is well," said their spokesman, Captain Paddy Ankunda.

Gedi's interim administration is struggling to impose its authority on the anarchic Horn of Africa nation. Near daily attacks on government troops and their Ethiopian military allies are blamed on members of a defeated Islamist movement who have vowed to wage an "Iraq-style" insurgency.

On Friday, a U.S. warship fired missiles at one group of foreign fighters in the remote mountains of northern Somalia's semi-autonomous Puntland. CNN said the attacks were aimed at an al Qaeda suspect.

On Sunday, the region's finance minister said six Islamists -- from America, Britain, Sweden, Morocco, Pakistan and Yemen -- had been killed in the air strikes and in gun battles with local forces. He gave no other details.

AL QAEDA TARGETED

Speaking in Singapore, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates declined to comment on the strikes in rugged northern Somalia, saying it was possibly an operation still in progress.

A Somali jihadist group calling itself the Young Mujahideen Movement said it suffered no casualties in what it called "random" U.S. air strikes and said it killed 11 soldiers. The Web posting could not immediately be verified but was on a site used by al Qaeda and other Islamists.

Sources told CNN the air strikes were the second in six months aimed at a suspect in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 240 people.

The United States also launched air strikes in southern Somalia in January aimed at three top al Qaeda suspects but killed their allies instead, U.S. officials have said.

They were believed to be in a group of Islamists who fled Mogadishu in January after being routed by Somali interim government forces and the Ethiopian military.

Washington says six al Qaeda operatives or associates are in Somalia, including alleged embassy bomber Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, and Abu Talha al-Sudani, accused of orchestrating the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya that killed 15.

Others include Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, hardline leader of the ousted Somali Islamic Courts Council (SICC), and Adan Hashi Ayro, head of the SICC's feared military wing, the Shabaab.

(Additional reporting by Abdiqani Hassan in Bossasso)

BBC NEWS | Africa | Ethiopia seeks prince's remains

BBC NEWS | Africa | Ethiopia seeks prince's remains

Ethiopia seeks prince's remains
By Elizabeth Blunt
BBC News, Addis Ababa

Ethiopia's president has sent Queen Elizabeth II a formal request for the remains of a prince who died in Britain more than a century ago.

The royal household at Windsor Castle, where Prince Alemayehu was buried, is said to be considering the request.

President Woldegiorgis Girma hopes the prince's bones can be reburied for millennium celebrations in September.

Ethiopia has been waging a lively campaign to get back historic treasures looted during the last two centuries.

Father's suicide

Its most striking success has been in recovering a massive stone obelisk from Axum, carried off to Rome by Mussolini's army.

But the campaign now has a new impetus.

Ethiopia's calendar is more than seven years behind that of the rest of the world - here, it is still 1999 and Ethiopians are planning to mark what they believe is the 2000 anniversary of the birth of Christ with big celebrations in September.

[Prince Alemayehu] was buried at Windsor Castle, with Queen Victoria describing as "too sad" his short life and early death

Now the Ethiopian president has put in a formal request for the return of the remains of Prince Alemayehu.

His father, the Emperor Tewodros II, committed suicide after his defeat by the British at the Battle of Magdala in 1868.

The young boy was taken to Britain and sent to boarding school and officers' training school at Sandhurst, but died at the age of 18.

He was buried at Windsor Castle, with Queen Victoria describing as "too sad" his short life and early death.

The Ethiopian embassy in London says Windsor is now considering their request.

The young prince was not the only thing the British took from Magdala - they reportedly needed 15 elephants and nearly 200 mules to carry away the treasures that Tewodros had accumulated.

Many of them are still in Britain and the Queen has some of them - notably six of the very finest illuminated manuscripts, which are part of the royal collection in Windsor Castle.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/6716921.stm

Published: 2007/06/03 15:40:26 GMT

© BBC MMVII

BBC NEWS | Europe | Gorbachev criticises US 'empire'

BBC NEWS | Europe | Gorbachev criticises US 'empire'

Gorbachev criticises US 'empire'
The former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, has blamed the US for the current state of relations between Russia and the West.

In a BBC interview, Mr Gorbachev said that the Russians were ready to be constructive, but America was trying to squeeze them out of global diplomacy.

He added that the Iraq War had undermined Tony Blair's credibility.

Mr Gorbachev accused America of "empire-building", which he said the UK should have warned it away from.

'New empire'

Moscow and the West have been in dispute over Iraq, America's plans for a missile defence system and civil rights within Russia itself.

I don't understand why you, the British, did not tell them, 'Don't think about empire'
Mikhail Gorbachev

Britain's extradition request for a Russian man in connection with the murder of ex-agent Alexander Litvinenko has also caused tension.

In an interview with Radio Four's The World This Weekend, Mr Gorbachev said relations between Russia and the West were in a bad state.

"Well, it's worse than I expected," he said through a translator.

"We lost 15 years after the end of the Cold War, but the West I think and particularly the United States, our American friends, were dizzy with their success, with the success of their game that they were playing, a new empire.

"I don't understand why you, the British, did not tell them, 'Don't think about empire, we know about empires, we know that all empires break up in the end, so why start again to create a new mess.'"

He added that the war with Iraq had damaged Britain's relationship with Russia after a promising start.

"Tony Blair and Putin established a very good relationship and that made it possible to advance our relationship," he said.

"But then Iraq happened and Tony found himself in the embrace of that military monster, of that war situation, and he lost a lot of his credibility in the world and in Europe."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/6717037.stm

Published: 2007/06/03 15:48:42 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Anti-crime teams being sent to 4 cities - Crime & Punishment - MSNBC.com

Anti-crime teams being sent to 4 cities - Crime & Punishment - MSNBC.com

Anti-crime teams being sent to 4 cities
Move comes ahead of FBI stats expected to show rise in violent crime
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:21 p.m. ET June 1, 2007

WASHINGTON - A violent crime spike in four cities led the Justice Department on Friday to dispatch additional teams of federal agents to combat guns, gangs or surging murder rates in Mesa, Ariz.; Orlando, Fla.; San Bernardino, Calif., and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The four-city push comes as the FBI is expected to report a 1.3 percent rise in violent crime nationwide in 2006 — an increase for the second straight year.

At the same time, a new internal Justice report rapped crime-busting task forces for failing to coordinate efforts and potentially endangering agents’ lives.

“Each of these cities has seen an unacceptable increase in homicides or other violent crimes,” Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told employees at the Washington headquarters of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “Authorities in each have come forward and asked for our help.”

Defying critics who have demanded his resignation over the firings of U.S. attorneys, Gonzales said he would spend the final 18 months of his tenure “in a sprint” to curb violent crime.

The influx of agents brings the number of ATF Violent Crime Impact Teams, which first deployed three years ago, to 29 cities. The FBI is also adding to its more than 180 Safe Streets Task Forces by sending one to Orlando, which Gonzales said has been plagued by gang violence.

Orlando police spokeswoman Barbara Jones said the department “welcomes any additional federal support in our efforts to combat violent crime.”

No additional funds or grants are expected to be funneled to communities to bolster their own law enforcement efforts, Justice officials said. Gonzales also called anew for laws to strengthen penalties against criminals, including imposing mandatory minimum sentences on federal convicts.

Team issues
The report, released Friday by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, warned of problems with federal crime-fighting task forces. It concluded the teams duplicate efforts and compete for help from local authorities while failing to communicate among themselves. The poor communication, in particular, resulted in three so-called “blue-on-blue” cases where federal agents mistook each other for criminals.

Those incidents, which the report found “put officers’ safety at risk,” included:
# An undercover ATF agent and informant in Chicago bought a loaded gun from an informant working for the FBI’s Safe Streets task force.
# FBI Safe Streets agents in Atlanta pulled over a member of a U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force whose car matched the description of a suspect both teams were looking for.
# ATF agents working an undercover sting at a Las Vegas gun show arrested a suspect for illegally buying firearms. The buyer turned out to be an informant working for the FBI — even though the ATF had taken steps to make sure there would be no overlap between federal agencies.

Fine’s inspectors studied task forces in eight cities: Atlanta, Birmingham, Ala., Camden, N.J., Chicago, Gary, Ind., Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. Nearly 130 task force members in the cities reported working on at least 45 duplicate investigations.

Gonzales said Justice’s investigative agencies have already taken steps to fix the problems, and were ordered in March to make sure their task forces coordinate and share information with each other to prevent overlap. Additionally, the nation’s 93 U.S. attorneys were told last month to meet with task force leaders in their districts and fix any coordination problems.

Between 2003 and 2006, Fine’s report showed, 210 Justice Department task forces were working in 256 cities nationwide.

$1.5 million teams
ATF Director Michael J. Sullivan said each of his Violent Crime Impact Teams cost an estimated $1.5 million in personnel, equipment and other expenses. After being strapped by budget cuts last year, the new teams are being deployed now so “we can come in with money and bodies — we can have new agents, investigators, intel analysts” to help local authorities, Sullivan said in an interview.

But violent crime nationally continued to climb last year, if at a slower pace than in 2005, which marked the first increase since 2001.

FBI data set for release Monday is expected to show an overall 1.3 percent rise in violent crime during 2006, according to a Justice Department official who had seen the numbers. Comparatively, violent crime increased by 2.2 percent in 2005.

A second Justice Department official said the murder rate also is up, if modestly, but robberies rose by as much as 6 percent. And a third department official said the number of property crimes — such as burglary, car theft and arson — again dropped.

All three officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the data had not yet been released.
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18984489/
© 2007 MSNBC.com

White House seeks new path to secrecy - Politics - MSNBC.com

White House seeks new path to secrecy - Politics - MSNBC.com

White House seeks new path to secrecy
Bush officials had lengthy debate before calling visitor records confidential
The Associated Press
Updated: 3:08 p.m. ET June 1, 2007

WASHINGTON - A newly disclosed effort to keep Vice President Dick Cheney's visitor records secret is the latest White House push to make sure the public doesn't learn who has been meeting with top officials in the Bush administration.

Over the past year, lawyers for President Bush and Cheney have directed the Secret Service to maintain the confidentiality of visitor entry and exit logs, declaring them to be presidential records, exempt from a law requiring their disclosure to whoever asks to see them.

The drive to keep the logs secret, the administration says, is essential to assuring that the president and vice president receive candid advice to carry out their duties.

Exploiting exemptions
Cabinet officers often don't want to give up their meeting calendars to journalists. They have no choice under the Freedom of Information Act, which provides public access to some records kept by federal agencies.

But the FOIA disclosure law, which doesn't apply to Congress, also doesn't apply to presidential records.

The Bush administration has exploited that difference, triggering a battle in the courts.

The administration is seeking dismissal of two lawsuits by a private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, demanding Secret Service visitor logs.

In trying to get the cases thrown out, the Justice Department has filed documents in court outlining a behind-the-scenes debate over whether Secret Service records are subject to public disclosure. The discussions date back at least to the administration of President Bush's father and involve the Justice Department and the National Archives as well as the White House and the Secret Service.

The government's court filings show that the Bush White House focused on the issue in the months before Election Day 2004.

Discussions moved into high gear when the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal prompted news organizations and private groups to demand that the administration turn over Secret Service records of visitors to the White House complex and the vice president's residence.

Standing on principle
There was precedent for the demands.

During the Clinton administration, Republican-controlled congressional committees obtained Secret Service visitor logs while conducting investigations of the president and first lady.

Christopher Lehane, a former special assistant counsel to President Clinton and press secretary to then-Vice President Al Gore, points out the political implications of the Bush administration campaign to close off access to the records.

"The question it raises is 'what are these guys hiding?'" said Lehane, now a Democratic consultant. "They can live with it because they've only got a year or so left, but it doesn't do a lot for public confidence in open government."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said Thursday, "I can't comment on a case in litigation, and I can't speak to the decisions made by other administrations."

The Bush administration says it is standing on principle.

"It is important that the president be able to receive candid advice from his staff and other members of the administration," Fratto said. "To ensure that he receives candid advice, it is essential as a general matter that the advice remains confidential."

In a declaration filed in court a week ago, Cheney's deputy chief of staff, Claire O'Donnell, stated that "systematic public release of the information regarding when and with whom the vice president and vice presidential personnel conduct meetings would impinge on the ability of the OVP (office of the vice president) to gather information in confidence and perform its essential functions, including assisting the vice president in his critical roles of advising and assisting the president."

In May 2006, the Secret Service and the White House signed a memorandum of understanding designating visitor records as presidential.

They are "not the records of an 'agency' subject to the Freedom of Information Act," says the agreement that was not disclosed until months later, in late 2006. The records are "at all times under the exclusive legal custody and control of the White House."

In search of vice presidential visitors
Four months after the memorandum of agreement, Cheney's counsel wrote the Secret Service, stating that visitor records for the vice president's personal residence "are and shall remain subject to the exclusive ownership, custody and control of OVP."

The Sept. 13, 2006, date on the Cheney letter coincides with requests by The Washington Post seeking records on the vice president's visitors under the Freedom of Information Act.

The law enforcement agency "shall not retain any copy of these documents and information upon return to OVP," stated the letter to the Secret Service's chief counsel.

"If any documents remain in your possession, please return them to OVP as soon as possible," the letter added.

The Justice Department filed the Cheney letter last Friday in one of the lawsuits brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is invoking the FOIA law in seeking the identities of conservative religious leaders who visited the White House complex and the vice president's residence. The group, which represents Valerie Plame and her husband in their lawsuit against Cheney and other key administration figures in the leak of Plame's CIA identity, also is seeking White House visitor logs in the Abramoff scandal.

Document destruction stopped
According to government documents, the Secret Service routinely destroyed five of eight categories of information relating to visitors to Cheney's residence. Of the records it retained, the Secret Service regularly turned over handwritten visitor logs to Cheney's office.

The Secret Service stopped the destruction in June 2006 because of lawsuits by various groups, according to the court papers. The law enforcement agency also is retaining copies of the material, contrary to the directive in the September 2006 letter from Cheney's counsel.

The court filings by the government show that:
# On three occasions late in the administration of the first President Bush and during the first term of President Clinton, the Secret Service proposed treating copies of White House visitor documents as non-presidential records. In its court filings, the current Bush administration opposes releasing details of the Secret Service proposals, saying this "poses a substantial risk of creating public confusion" because the proposals were never adopted.
# In January 2001, as Clinton prepared to leave office, White House lawyers proposed the transfer of visitor records from the Secret Service to the White House. The proposal was entitled "Disposition of certain presidential records created by the USSS," or the Secret Service. The records are now at the Clinton library in Little Rock, Ark., the National Archives confirmed Thursday.
# In September 2004, a lawyer for the Bush White House and a special assistant to the director of the Secret Service proposed "informal views on one way to address the disposition" of visitor records, according to court documents. The unnamed associate White House counsel and the Secret Service assistant jointly authored a July 29, 2004, document bearing the same title as the Clinton administration document from 3 1/2 years earlier.
# In July 2005, the Secret Service gave a presentation on the issue to the White House counsel's office, the Justice Department and the National Archives.
# On May 11, 2006, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel provided a legal opinion on the issue, which is among the many documents the government is refusing to disclose. Six days later, the White House and the Secret Service signed the agreement designating the records as presidential.

Power grab?
Presidential records are released starting five years after a president leaves office. Under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, non-classified material is disclosed first, with classified documents and advice to the president released later after review by federal agencies, the White House and the former president.

Under an executive order President Bush signed in 2001, the archivist of the United States cannot unilaterally release the records without the permission of the current president, former presidents and their representatives.

"The scary thing about this move by the vice president's office is the power grab part of it," said Tom Blanton, head of the National Security Archive, a private group which uses the FOIA law to pierce government secrecy.

"We're looking at a huge problem if the White House can reach into any agency and say certain records have something to do with the White House and they are presidential from now on," Blanton said. "This White House has been infinitely creative in finding new ways and new forms of government secrecy."
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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