State Department officials struggled to explain Monday why they have awarded a new $120 million contract to a private security firm that was kicked out of Iraq four months ago amid charges that its personnel gunned down unarmed civilians. Xe Services, formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, was awarded an 18-month contract to provide security at [...]
Only one month before that populist moment on Capitol Hill, (Dick) Armey was employed as a lobbyist by leading international “consulting firm” DLA Piper. In that capacity, from 2005 to 2009, Armey promoted the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, otherwise known as Mujahedeen-e-Khalq MEK, which the State Department has branded a terrorist group. Armey lobbied his former [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged Akbar Nikooie, CarMax, Dick Armey, DLA Piper, FreedomWorks, Iran, Iraq, Lobbyists, MEK, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, Saddam Hussein, Saied Ghaemi, TARP, Tea Party, Tom Tancredo
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Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Controversy is not something new for WikiLeaks – a website notorious for leaking sensitive governmental, corporate, organizational, or religious documents. In the past, they have leaked Guantánamo Bay procedures, documents belonging to the Church of Scientology, contents of Sarah Palin’s e-mail account and internet censorship lists. Obviously, over the years WikiLeaks has managed to anger [...]
The Obama administration has asserted a legal position on the use of drone aircraft to kill suspected terrorists and militants, and officials plan to share the details “at an appropriate moment,” according to Harold Koh, the State Department’s legal adviser. National Journal asked Koh, the senior official responsible for international legal issues, to share his [...]
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit today demanding that the government disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas. In particular, the lawsuit asks for information on when, where and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, the number and rate [...]
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Also tagged ACLU, Afghanistan, Agency Release Panel, Appeals, Assassinations, CIA, Civilian Casualties, DOD, DOJ, FOIA, International Law, Iraq, Law, Lawsuit, Pakistan, Predator Drones, Yemen
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Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Wow, the corruption is/was worse than even my imagination is capable of thinking up… and the DoJ isn’t taking action? WTF? The former employees who filed the lawsuit, a married couple named Brad and Melan Davis, said there was little financial oversight of the money. Last year, an audit by the special inspector general for [...]
Previous CIA failures regarding the unanticipated decline and fall of the Soviet Union, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the run-up to the Iraq War demonstrate a $75 billion intelligence enterprise that can provide neither strategic nor tactical warning to policymakers and is reluctant to provide uncomfortable truth to power. The serious problems [...]
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Also tagged Accountability, Assassinations, Bureaucracy, CIA, Congress, Coup, Covert Ops, DHS, DIA, DNI, Intelligence, Intelligence Analysis, Leon Panetta, Militarization, NCS, NCTC, NIE, Oversight, Pentagon, Rendition, Secret Prisons, Torture, TSA
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Thursday, January 21, 2010
In an interview with the Pakistani TV station Express TV, Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that the private security firms Blackwater and DynCorp are operating inside Pakistan. “They’re operating as individual companies here in Pakistan,” Gates said, according to a DoD transcript of the interview. “There are rules concerning the contracting companies. If they’re contracting [...]
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
It’s a question that rarely gets asked: from where does the Obama administration locate the legal authority to launch missiles from the CIA’s unmanned drones into Pakistani (and, this week, Afghan) territory? The ACLU wants to know. The civil liberties group today filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA and the Departments [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
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Also tagged ACLU, Afghanistan, CIA, DOD, DOJ, FOIA, Iraq, Law, Pakistan, Predator Drones, Transparency, Yemen
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The U.S. has agreed to pay $3 million to a former government worker who accused officials with the CIA and State Department of spying on him with a bugged coffee table. Rather than comply with a court order to provide lawyers in the case with what the U.S. government says is classified information, the government [...]
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Also tagged Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v Obama, Burma, CIA, Courts, DOJ, Horn v Huddle, Law, Myanmar, Richard Horn, State Secrets Privilege, Wiretapping
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by Neal Mackay Sunday Herald 13 July 2003 Investigation: Neil Mackay reveals why everyone now accepts that claims Saddam Hussein got uranium from Africa are fraudulent … except, that is, Britain’s beleaguered prime minister and his Cabinet supporters In February 1999, Wissam Al Zahawie, the Iraqi ambassador to the Holy See in Rome, set off on [...]
Filed in Documents
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Also tagged CIA, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, George W Bush, Greg Thielmann, Henry Waxman, IAEA, Intelligence, Iraq War, Jack Straw, Joe Wilson, Mohammed El-Baradei, Niger Yellowcake Forgeries, PDB, Richard Kerr, Tony Blair, UK, UN, UNMOVIC, Valerie Plame, Wissam Al Zahawie
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