Karl Rove Worried About Ron Paul "Momentum"

Bush's brain fears "bandwagon effect" could trump national recognition in early Republican primaries

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, December 20, 2007

Without mentioning his name, Karl Rove made it clear during a recent appearance on Hannity and Colmes that he is worried about people jumping on a bandwagon and supporting a candidate who picks up momentum as a result of the early Republican primaries being bunched together tightly.

Since Rove had already discussed the other Republican candidates in the Fox News piece, he could only have been referring to Congressman Ron Paul.

The man who was dubbed "the architect" and "Bush's brain" told Hannity he was concerned that the thick and fast style of the early primaries would hinder Americans from making a "more considered judgment," increasing the likelihood of a "bandwagon effect" overcoming "national reputation."

Here's the quote in full.

HANNITY: Do you lean towards one strategy over the other? Or you don't want to say?

ROVE: I don't want to say. I —

HANNITY: You do, though.

ROVE: But it is interesting to see that everybody has made their strategic bets. I'm not certain, incidentally, that this is helpful for the country, for this to be settled so quickly. I mean, people do need the time — this process ought to be spread out over time, in my opinion, because it allows more people to participate, more people in the country to develop a deeper understanding of who the candidates are, and for the people of America to make a more considered judgment.

This thing is happening so quick on so many different battle fronts that I'm not certain, regardless of who makes the — who bet on the right strategy, there is going to be a bandwagon effect, no, national reputation is going to count — no matter which way that works out, I'm not certain it is necessarily in the best interest of the country.

With the media desperate to exalt Mike Huckabee's campaign as some kind of alternative to the standard Neo-Con fare, it's clearer than ever that the establishment are trying to run a dead horse against Hillary Clinton to ensure her victory.

As polls have shown, only Congressman Ron Paul could beat Hillary should they go head to head for the presidency, and that's why people like Rove are scared stiff of the Texan building momentum during the key early primaries.

'People's poll' picks Ron Paul

azcentral
Thursday December 20, 2007

Republican hopefuls are chasing the Democrats' Hillary Clinton. Marvelous.

Now, where is Ron Paul in all of this heady discussion about these Republican "leaders," as it were?

The "polls" say he is at about 4 percent. Whose polls? AP? Gallup? Fox News? Certainly not us.

These so-called polls are as biased and abusive as their sponsors.

The ugly and awful truth of the matter is that Ron Paul has actually won each and every televised GOP debate to date, and the GOP establishment is too embarrassed to admit it or even back him against the Democrat hopefuls.

As an analogy, this is clearly a case of the Oscars vs. the People's Choice. However, the People's Choice Award does not have to hire a Big Seven accounting firm to conceal the ballots. The "people's poll" is winning this one hands down, and Ron Paul is leading the way.

Pity the losers of the Iowa caucuses and upcoming primaries. I give my support to Ron Paul for president of these United States. - William Gaillard, Prescott

Taj Mahal Won't Accept Bush Dollars as India Laments Lost Value

James G. Neuger and Simon Kennedy
Bloomberg
Thursday December 20, 2007

The Taj Mahal, one of the world's architectural masterpieces, welcomes about 2.5 million visitors each year -- provided they don't try to buy tickets with dollars. India's most popular shrine announced in November that it would stop accepting the U.S. currency and take only rupees, hurling yet another insult at the once mighty greenback.

The dollar, which has been snubbed by everybody from government officials in Kuwait and South Korea to top-earning Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen, may not recover its luster. Economists say the currency, which has declined in five of the past six years against the euro, is caught in a downdraft as investors pour into Asia, prompting a tectonic shift in economic power from the U.S.

``Can it be turned around? Probably not totally,'' says Riordan Roett, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. ``The century of Asia has arrived, and the U.S. and its European allies will need to adjust to that.''

In Asia, an investment boom has boosted local currencies. China's roaring economy has grown an average of 10.4 percent in the past four years, fueled by record exports and a flood of foreign funds. That's pushed up the yuan since the government ended the currency's peg to the dollar in July 2005. As of Dec. 19, the yuan -- managed against a basket of currencies -- climbed 12 percent against the dollar.

In India, the economy has grown at its fastest pace in the past four years since independence in 1947. That's helped lift the rupee 12 percent against the U.S. currency in 2007 through Dec. 19.

Dollar Bulls

Dollar bulls say the currency, which rose to its highest in seven weeks against the euro on Dec. 17, could rally further in 2008. They cite the fiscal 2007 U.S. budget deficit, which fell to $162.8 billion compared with $412.8 billion three years earlier. And the current account deficit narrowed to $178.5 billion in the third quarter after reaching a record $217.3 billion in the 2006 period.

Deutsche Bank AG, the world's largest currency trader, predicts the dollar next year will rise about 2 percent more versus the euro, a currency shared by 15 nations as of January.

Full article here.

FBI Now Admits Evidence Used to Connect Oswald to Kennedy Assasination Was Bogus

Jonathan Elinoff
TruthAlliance.net
Thursday December 20, 2007

The front page of the Sunday Washington Post features, "FBI Forensic Test Full of Holes." It claims that hundreds of defendants sitting in prisons nationwide have been convicted with the help of an FBI forensic tool that has been found to be completely full of inconsistent results and has actually been discarded by the FBI for such reasons more than two years ago. But the FBI lab has failed to take or attempt to alert any of the affected defendants or courts, even though the window for appealing convictions is closing.

As early as 1991, the FBI conducted studies on the reliability of the "bullet-lead" analysis used to connect bullets found at the scene of a crime to bullets in thepossession of a suspect. The studies found that lead composition of bullets in the same box didn't always match, which should have been a sign that the test was completely unreliable. Further analysis discovered that bullets packaged15 months apart in different areas of the country in different boxes, unexpectedly matched - a gap the forensic testing originally claimed had different bullet lead make-up.

The Innocence Project is a group of individuals who have committed their time and finances to investigate claims of innocence in convicted cases where DNA testing was never available. To date, over 200 individuals have been set free due to the DNA analysis of many rape cases confirming that the child born from a rape victim's DNA didn't match the accused and convicted individual. Hopefully, they will pick this flawed forensic test up and begin to look at the tens of thousands of people estimated to have been placed in prison solely on this bogus "bullet-lead analysis."

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The test, now confirmed by the FBI's own admittance, has actually been used to connect people to crimes they never committed. The test was first initiated and used on July 8, 1964 by order of J Edgar Hoover for the Warren Commission to connect Lee Harvey Oswald to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy. Throughout the following decades, this same test has been used to convict civil rights activists and gang members, many of which have maintained their "innocence."

The forensic test was the only major connection Oswald had to the actual scene of the crime. For Kennedy assasination researchers, this is a big leap. For years, the only evidence outside this forensic connection has been completely circumstantial. Oswald never confessed to the murder and actually stated to the public that he believed he was being made a patsy. Oswald was only picked up because an APB had been ordered in Dallas in his description, even though no one saw the shooter.

Oswald maintained that he had gone down to the parade to see the President's motorcade pass, as did everyone, when he was working that day. A famous picture surfaced that many researchers believe identifies Oswald in the doorway of the School Book Depository as the motorcade passed and was not in the sixth-floor window as he was accused to have been.

The interrogation which took place for several hours was not recorded, a violation of standard operating procedure. Oswald was murdered the next morning on live television while being transported in the parking garage at the local jail. Jack Ruby, the man who shot Oswald, was a major mafia/CIA connected nightclub owner and hated Kennedy with a passion. Kennedy's younger brother, Bobby Kennedy, was mounting a large scale war against organized crime, even though the Kennedy's had used the mafia in voter fraud crimes to get elected. The Kennedy empire was built from bootleging alcohol in an organized crime syndicate that Joe Kennedy, John and Bobby's father, ran with connections to Al Capone. Of the many odd factors in the assasination of the former president, it turns out Jack Ruby ran bootleging in Chicago for crime boss Al Capone in his early years as well.

DHS Finalizing Spy Satellite Program To Watch Americans Without Congressional Oversight

Plans also include "cyber-security strategy" to "protect" domestic computer networks

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Thursday, Dec 20, 2007

The Department of Homeland security is forging ahead and finalizing plans to use a network of spy satellites for domestic surveillance despite the fact that the Congressional committee supposedly overseeing the program has had no update on it for over three months.

A report in today's Wall Street Journal suggests that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is in the process of finalizing a charter for the program this week, regardless of the fact that it is supposed to be suspended.

The DHS had declared that the program was "on hold" after its existence was made public in August, prompting an outcry amongst civil libertarians and lawmakers.

Demands to justify the congressional legality of the satellites, which were originally mandated for foreign surveillance, followed the revelation that a new department branch called the National Applications Office would oversee the program and be responsible for providing images from the satellites to non military law enforcement agencies.

Critics have called for cuts to DHS funding, stressing that the program is in direct violation of the Posse Comitatus act, which prevents the use of military for domestic law enforcement. It also violates the fourth amendment as the satellites are capable of seeing through the walls of people's homes.

Domestic intelligence and security agencies are now receiving more funding for spy satellites than the military.

"We still haven't seen the legal framework we requested or the standard operation procedures on how the NAO will actually be run," House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie G. Thompson told the WSJ.

In addition to the satellites, the surveillance program also includes new forms of internet monitoring:

Mr. Chertoff also plans soon to unveil a cyber-security strategy, part of an estimated $15 billion, multiyear program designed to protect the nation's Internet infrastructure. The program has been shrouded in secrecy for months and has also prompted privacy concerns on Capitol Hill because it involves government protection of domestic computer networks.

Essentially the program would allow the DHS to regulate and control access to the internet in the name of "protecting" national security.

The news comes on the back of separate revelations that another military spy agency, the NSA has increasing control over SSL, now called Transport Layer Security, the cryptographic protocol that provides secure communications on the internet for web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, and other data transfers.

In other words the agency is capable of intercepting and reading your emails and instant messages in real time.

We also learned this week that the lawyer for an AT&T engineer has alleged that "within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans’ phone usage.” That is BEFORE 9/11, before the nation was embroiled in the freedom stripping exercise commonly known as the "war on terror" had even begun.

We shouldn't be surprised obviously, Government surveillance programs targeting Americans are legion and have been in place for decades.

'My husband is planning an accident in my car': Diana's sensational letter is revealed in full

TOM KELLY
UK Daily Mail
Thursday December 20, 2007

A handwritten letter from Princess Diana claiming that Prince Charles was plotting to kill her was shown to her inquest yesterday.

In the note, sent to her butler Paul Burrell, Diana suggested that her husband was "planning an accident in my car".

She also made the astonishing suggestion that Camilla Parker Bowles was just a "decoy" while Charles's real desire was to marry William and Harry's nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke.

A copy of the letter has previously been published, but the references to "my husband" and to Miss Legge-Bourke were blacked out. The uncensored version was revealed to the public after being read to the London hearing into the death of Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed.

It was sent in October 1993, ten months after Charles and Diana's separation was announced. Handwritten in black pen, it reads: "I am sitting at my desk today longing for someone to hug me and encourage me to keep strong and hold my head high.

"This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous. My husband is planning an accident in my car, brake failure or some serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry Tiggy. Camilla is nothing more than a decoy so we are being used by the man in every sense of the word."

Dodi's father, Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed, is convinced that the couple were killed by MI6 on the orders of Prince Philip because she was pregnant and they were about to announce their engagement.

The jury has already heard that Diana told her solicitor she feared both she and Camilla would be assassinated to allow the prince to marry the nanny.

She insisted to Lord Mishcon at a tense private meeting in October 1995 that "reliable sources" had informed her of the plan.

He kept it secret until after the Paris crash in which she died almost two years later.

The respected royal lawyer and Labour peer, who died aged 90 last year after a long illness, also said that the princess told him that Tiggy had undergone an abortion and that she would obtain a medical certificate to prove it.

Charles and Diana finally divorced in July 1996. Tiggy Legge-Bourke is now 42-year-old Mrs Alexandra Pettifer and runs a bed-and-breakfast business near Abergavenny, South Wales.

The inquest had earlier heard claims that the letter is a fake.

Lucia Flecha de Lima, a close friend of the princess, said the butler was "perfectly capable of imitating" her handwriting.

She added: "I still don't believe in it. I still don't believe she was fearing for her life, especially from Prince Charles, the future king of your country."

Full article here.

FBI E-Mail Shows Rift Over Warrantless Phone Record Grabs

By Ryan Singel 12.20.07 | 12:00 AM

By now it's well known that FBI agents can't always be troubled to get a court order before going after a surveillance target's telephone and internet records. But newly released FBI documents show that aggressive surveillance tactics have even caused friction within the bureau.

"We deal mostly with the fugitive squad here, and, like in many other offices, these guys have a reputation for cutting corners," a surveillance specialist at the FBI's Minneapolis field office complained in an internal e-mail last year. "I'm not bashing them; it's the way they do business. Getting a court order is the absolute last step, if they have to.

"Before I had a blowup with a particular agent ... we were constantly asked to call our contacts at service providers to see if we could get various information without having to get a court order," the message continues. "This gets old, believe me. ... Doing this once or twice to help out turns into SOP (standard operating procedure) ... It's expected, and you're criticized as a tech agent if you refuse to do this later on."

The revelation is the second this year showing that FBI employees bypassed court order requirements for phone records. In July, the FBI and the Justice Department Inspector General revealed the existence of a joint investigation into an FBI counter-terrorism office, after an audit found that the Communications Analysis Unit sent more than 700 fake emergency letters to phone companies seeking call records. An Inspector General spokeswoman declined to provide the status of that investigation, citing agency policy.

The June 2006 e-mail (.pdf) was buried in more than 600-pages of FBI documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The message was sent to an employee in the FBI's Operational Technology Division by a technical surveillance specialist at the FBI's Minneapolis field office -- both names were redacted from the documents. The e-mail describes widespread attempts to bypass court order requirements for cellphone data in the Minneapolis office.

Remarkably, when the technical agent began refusing to cooperate, other agents began calling telephone carriers directly, posing as the technical agent to get customer cellphone records.

Federal law prohibits phone companies from revealing customer information unless given a court order, or in the case of an emergency involving physical danger.

The documents are the second batch released by the EFF after winning a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit last May. The first set of documents shed light on the breadth and sophistication of the FBI's national wiretapping system, which is wired into telecom switches around the United States under the terms of the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act -- a law that was extended to broadband internet switches in May of this year.

The new documents detail how a little-known FBI telephone intercept unit has developed a powerful cellphone tracking technology that agents use to monitor the physical movements of surveillance targets, even on phones that are not GPS equipped.

Originally developed to capture and arrest computer hacker Kevin Mitnick in 1995, the system today relies on a mobile FBI van that has access to a wireless carrier's cell site tracking information in real time. A special surveillance unit called the Wireless Intercept and Tracking Team (WITT) operates the van, using the cell site location to get to the approximate location of the cellphone customer, then uses direction-finding gear to zero in on the target.

The technical agent complained in the e-mail that FBI agents looking for a suspect tend to skip gumshoe investigative techniques in favor of the slick tracking van. "These guys always want to take the WITT vehicle out and drive around half of town (sic) to find the guy," the agent wrote.

The tracking system is part of the FBI's Digital Collection System, or DCS, a suite of software packages used for criminal and intelligence phone taps, which relies on a massive interlinked fiber-optic network that connects surveillance terminals around the country.

In brief, the mobile tracking system works as follows:

1. FBI agents investigating a case prepare a court order saying a cellphone number is likely relevant to an ongoing investigation, and a judge signs off on it.
2. The court order is faxed to a mobile carrier, which then turns on surveillance in its switches, and begins delivering call data and cell site information to the FBI's DCS 3000 software.
3. That software keeps track of which cellphone towers a phone uses or pings. A central FBI database translates a mobile carrier's cell tower code to latitude and longitude coordinates.
4. The software sends the coordinates to the agents and technical personnel in the mobile unit who then drive to the general area. But since cell tower information is not precise, agents in the van use antenna array connected to tracking software to zero in on the cellphone.

The FBI's technology office trumpeted the tracking function of the DCS 3000 software in a letter to the FBI director, boasting that it was used after a December 2005 North Carolina kidnapping to help find the victim unharmed.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd says the department's policy allows the FBI to get cell tower information using under the low legal standard that applies to monitoring the digits a phone customer dials. Under that "pen register" standard, the FBI need only assert that the surveillance is relevant to an investigation -- the target need not be suspected of a crime.

When GPS-level data is wanted, law enforcement agents still need to show probable cause to a judge, said Boyd, who deferred questions about the Minneapolis agent's e-mail to the FBI.

FBI spokesman Paul Bresson cautioned against drawing conclusions from redacted government documents, and claimed that the FBI follows the law.

"FBI agents are trained to enforce the law using all available legal tools," Bresson said. "Absent an emergency circumstance involving danger or death or serious physical injury, the FBI does not request, nor do service providers give, any records without a court order."

The FBI tech agent's critical e-mail is best understood in light of the bureau's ongoing courtroom attempts to get cellphone location information without having to show probable cause, according to EFF lawyer Marcia Hofmann.

"For years the government has made dubious legal claims to justify tracking people's locations with minimal oversight," Hofmann said. "These docs show that the government hasn't satisfied its own weak standards in some cases."

Other revelations in the document include:

• National security wiretaps in a Florida investigation captured more than 1,800 phone conversations, and led to 50 international terrorism advisories. Though details are redacted from the document, that case appears to be the so-called Liberty City Seven. Prosecutors initially trumpeted that the seven men were plotting to blow up the Sears Tower, though a government official later admitted the group was "more aspirational than operational." Last week a Florida jury acquitted one man and failed to reach a verdict on the other six.
• In 2006, DCS 5000, the FBI's national security wiretapping software, captured 27,728,675 communication sessions. The document does not define what a "session" consists of. That year the FBI reported winning 2,176 FISA, or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, warrants from a secret court.
• By 2003 one cellphone carrier, Richmond, Virginia-based Triton PCS, was handling some 1,800 subpoenas and court orders a year. With 800,000 customers, that represented one records demand for every 444 customers.
• The FBI uses a Raytheon-developed tool known as the Digital Multimedia Watchdog to record and store phone calls and internet communications between informants and targets of an investigation. That tool can "collect, process and store large amounts of multimedia data, including voice, fax, data and video."
• DCS 3000 -- the FBI's tool for recording the phone numbers a target calls, or is called from -- was set loose on 5,300 phones in 2005, at a cost of $320 per targeted number. Those costs did not include payments to telecoms for the intercepts. The software is maintained by Booz Allen Hamilton and contained more than 490,000 lines of code as of 2005.
• The three software components of the FBI's phone surveillance system cost $38.7 million in 2003 and $39 million in 2004. Computers running these software packages at FBI offices and surveillance locations are connected through a Sprint-run closed fiber-optic network that allows surveillance to continue even when offices are destroyed, as happened during Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina.