MARTHA RADDATZ and JONATHAN KARL ABC News Thursday, January 10, 2008
Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the tape could have come from the shore or from another ship.
The near-clash occurred over the weekend in the Strait of Hormuz. On the U.S.-released recording, a voice can be heard saying to the Americans, "I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes."
The Navy never said specifically where the voices came from, but many were left with the impression they had come from the speedboats because of the way the Navy footage was edited.
Today, the spokesperson for the U.S. admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet clarified to ABC News that the threat may have come from the Iranian boats, or it may have come from somewhere else.
We're saying that we cannot make a direct connection to the boats there," said the spokesperson. "It could have come from the shore, from another ship passing by. However, it happened in the middle of all the very unusual activity, so as we assess the information and situation, we still put it in the total aggregate of what happened Sunday morning. I guess we're not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we're not saying it absolutely didn't."
David Edwards and Muriel Kane Raw Story Thursday, January 10, 2008
The United Nations has warned that economic problems in the United States could trigger a global recession.
According to an analysis released by the UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs, "There is a clear and present danger of the world economy coming to a near standstill. ... The domino effect of a U.S. recession would be to knock down export growth from China, Europe and Japan, in turn reducing their demand for exports from developing countries."
Chief UN economist Rob Vos told Bloomberg News that in those circumstances the world economy might not expand at all in 2009.
Australian television reports that although their own economy remains strong, banks and home buyers there are feeling the impact of the global credit crunch. The major Australian banks have been downplaying their exposure to the US subprime mortgage crisis but they are said to have a $1 billion investment in Countrywide Financial, which is rumored to be close to collapse. This has already caused them to raise mortgage interest rates.
It has been revealed that a high ranking executive at the company that was contracted to program all of New Hampshire's Diebold voting machines has a criminal record and has previously defended the illegal act of "swapping out" memory cards for the machines during live elections.
The revelations, which were uncovered by investigative journalist and vote fraud expert Bev Harris of Blackboxvoting.org and announced yesterday on the Alex Jones show, once again plunge Diebold and the controversial electronic voting systems into the spotlight.
Harris reports that Ken Hajjar, the Marketing and Sales Director at LHS Associates was arrested, indicted, and pleaded guilty to "sale / CND" (sale of controlled narcotic drugs) and sentenced to 12 months in the Rockingham County Correctional facility, and fined $2000. As things go for the politically connected, he was then given a deferred sentence and $1000 of his fine was suspended.
LHS Associates is a private company that counted over four fifths of the New Hampshire vote with no oversight whatsoever and also holds Diebold contracts for Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont.
Harris exclusively revealed some of the details on the Alex Jones show yesterday as she was still awaiting triple confirmation on the information and a full copy of the criminal record from a source who was investigating Hajjar regarding a separate matter.
"They program every single voting machine in New Hampshire, Connecticut, almost all of Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine." Harris comments. "But did state officials in five New England states ever do a criminal background check on this company's executives? Do the laws of these five states even ALLOW them to hire convicted criminals for services paid for by the state? What about over 500 local towns and municipalities?"
The story becomes even more compelling given comments made by Ken Hajjar himself in a recent interview as he revealed that he totes memory cards around in the trunk of his car and defends the concept of swapping out memory cards during live elections!
Other LHS staff members we spoke with, including Mike Carlson and Tom Burge, provided similar comments. They said they would open machines up during an election and swap memory cards as needed. This is illegal under Connecticut law and Deputy Secretary Mara told us she has since informed LHS that such actions were in violation of Connecticut election laws.
"In 2006, as Hajjar argued in favor of their policy to change cards during elections, I asked him about about the laws which govern chain of custody issues. His response: "I mean, I don't pay attention to every little law. It's just, it's up to the Registrars. All we are is a support organization on Election Day".
He said he had three memory cards in the trunk of his car and, in the event they had to be used, the chain of custody issues wouldn't matter since, "once you run the [pre-election] test deck through, you're golden"."
Bev Harris has also asked for complaints filed on a threat allegedly made in recent years to a New Hampshire woman, and any other reports for Hajjar or LHS owner John Silvestro. The pair grew up together in Lawrence, Massachusetts before moving to Londonderry, New Hampshire.
As we detailed in our report on Tuesday, John Silvestro has been at the center of a long-running public dispute in trying to deflect accusations made by hacker Harri Hursti that the voting machines are wide open to tampering and can easily be rigged.
Video of John Silvestro as he tangles with Harri Hursti recently surfaced on the web:
The new revelations concerning LHS may prove even more explosive in the wake of Tuesday's New Hampshire results vastly differing from the pre-election polls and the emergence of clear widespread evidence of vote fraud involving the machines.
If the allegations are accurate, it won't be the first instance of Diebold employing a convicted felons to run its ballot printing operations.
Harris previously revealed that an embezzler named Jeffrey W. Dean, who specialized in sophisticated alteration of records of computerized systems, was a programmer of voting systems.
Dean was the senior vice president of Global Election Systems and a director of the company previous to Diebold's takeover in 2002. Despite Diebold's claim that Dean left the company when they took over it was later revealed that they retained Dean as a consultant.
Dean and his prison buddy John Elder, who did five years for cocaine trafficking, ran a ballot plant on the West coast and were also responsible for writing vote tallying software. Harris' research has further shown that Global Election Systems/Diebold vote machines were specifically built to allow tampering.
"It's weird, these guys are not even allowed to vote because they are convicted felons!" Harris commented yesterday.
Reporters from WeAreChange.org confronted Ron Paul in a New Hampshire spin room about supporting victim's family members in pursuing a new 9/11 investigation. "Yes, I support more investigation," Paul responded.
The Presidential candidate indicated that the full truth was still not known "because ineptness was hidden" in the 9/11 Commission investigation.
"This is generally what government investigations do," Ron Paul said. "They hide inefficiencies and ineptness."
He further criticized those in charge who "can't and won't admit" that the country is "fighting a war for no good reason." "They've dug their heels in and they'll lose everything they've said," he said about war hawks.
Paul commented that Giuliani's intention to expand the military by 200,000 troops would lead to a draft and the printing of more money. "Get ready. They're going to draft you-- all you young people," Paul warned.
"They'll print it and the dollar will go bust-- and everyone going to get poor-- and then we'll bring our troops home. I don't want to wait to that point I want them bring home in a more logical fashion," Paul said.
Other reporters asked about Giuliani's odd dismissal of history as a factor in current middle-east foreign policy. "He's been saying that for a long time," Paul told cameras, "but I've given my explanation and I bet a majority of Americans agree with me."
Giuliani and his advisors have consistently refused to even discuss foreign policy or address the consequences it could have.
WeAreChange.org asked Norman Podhoretz-- a Giuliani advisor-- about the U.S.-led overthrow of Iran in 1953. Podhoretz dismissed the incident as "ancient history," when reporters brought up its impact in current tensions. Yet, Podhoretz advocates a pre-emptive strike on Iran.
Ron Paul also addressed his concerns about the emerging North American Union, stating that "there are people who would like to have it, like a European Union." But, he said, "the American people are waking up to this and are resisting it." Paul urged people to "join the Ron Paul Revolution."
Ron Paul has been the only presidential candidate unafraid to stand up to WeAreChange.org questions and give an explanation without avoiding the issues. Others on the campaign trail have deflected or even run away.
Randall Mikkelsen Reuters Thursday, January 10, 2008
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A telephone company cut off an FBI international wiretap after the agency failed to pay its bill on time, according to a U.S. government audit released on Thursday.
The Justice Department's inspector general faulted the FBI for poor handling of money used in undercover investigations, which it said made the agency vulnerable to theft and mishandled invoices.
It cited the case in which a wiretap under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs electronic spying in terrorism and intelligence cases, was disrupted due to an overdue bill.
"Late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence, including an instance where delivery of intercept information required by a ... FISA order was halted due to untimely payment," the audit said.
Inspector general spokeswoman Cynthia Schnedar said she could provide no additional details on the disrupted wiretap. Much of the report contained sensitive law-enforcement information and was not released, she said.
The FISA program, denounced by critics as overly intrusive and unconstitutional, is up for renewal in Congress. But lawmakers are bogged down over the scope of the program and liability protections for telephone companies that took part in a domestic eavesdropping program launched by President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks.
The audit followed a 2006 case in which an FBI employee pleaded guilty to stealing more than $25,000 in confidential case funds intended for undercover telecoms services.
The FBI acknowledged "widespread agreement" that its 1980s era accounting system was inadequate and said it was working to improve it.
Governments around the world need to do more to prepare for the dramatic economic impact of the next flu pandemic, the United Nations influenza coordinator said on Thursday.
David Nabarro said his team had recently collected information from nearly 150 countries to see how prepared they were for a pandemic and the picture was mixed.
"Most countries have now focused on pandemic as a potential cause of catastrophe and have done some planning. But the quality of the plans is patchy and too few of them pay attention to economic and social consequences," he told BBC radio.
"The economic consequences could be up to $2 trillion -- up to 5 percent of global GDP removed," he said, reiterating previous World Bank and UN estimates.
Nabarro will deliver a lecture at the London School of Economics later on Thursday on the global state of preparedness for any pandemic, which could be triggered by bird flu.
The current H5N1 form of bird flu is mainly an animal disease, but experts fear it might mutate into a strain that could spread easily between people, causing a pandemic which could kill millions.
"They program every single voting machine in New Hampshire, Connecticut, almost all of Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine." Harris comments. "But did state officials in five New England states ever do a criminal background check on this company's executives? Do the laws of these five states even ALLOW them to hire convicted criminals for services paid for by the state? What about over 500 local towns and municipalities?"