The American Civil Liberties Union today released documents containing disturbing new revelations about the MATRIX database surveillance program, including the fact that it was under the direct managerial control of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and that Florida Governor Jeb Bush gave a personal briefing on the program to Vice President Dick Cheney. [...] "We were surprised to learn that DHS is playing a central role not only in funding this program, but also in managing it," said Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program. "The federal government’s involvement is eerily reminiscent of the Pentagon’s ‘Total Information Awareness’ data-mining program, which was based on the same concept of sorting through everyone’s data in an attempt to identify terrorists. Congress shut down TIA, and it should shut down the Matrix as well." [...]"We have long been appalled at Florida’s seemingly central role in developing and pushing this intrusive system in which a government file is created on everyone, whether they are a terrorist suspect or completely innocent of any suspicion," said Howard Simon, Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida. "But perhaps even more disturbing, this revelation suggests that Florida has been no more than a tool of the federal authorities."
MATRIX (the Multistate Anti-TeRrorism Information eXchange) is the latest data-mining program to emerge from the government. This surveillance system combines information about individuals from government databases and private-sector data companies, and makes that data available for search by government officials to comb through the millions of file.
American businessman Nicholas Berg's body was found on May 8 near a Baghdad overpass; a video of his supposed decapitation death by knife appeared on an alleged al-Qaeda-linked website (www.al-ansar.biz) on May 11. But according to what both a leading surgical authority and a noted forensic death expert separately told Asia Times Online, the video depicting the decapitation appears to have been staged.
"I certainly would need to be convinced it [the decapitation video] was authentic," Dr John Simpson, executive director for surgical affairs at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, said from New Zealand. Echoing Dr Simpson's criticism, when this journalist asked forensic death expert Jon Nordby, PhD and fellow of the American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators, whether he believed the Berg decapitation video had been "staged", Nordby replied: "Yes, I think that's the best explanation of it."
Questions of when the video's footage was taken, and the time elapsed between the shooting of the video's segments, were raised by both experts, reflecting a portion of the broader and ongoing video controversy...
both Simpson and Nordby perceived it as highly probable that Berg had died some time prior to his decapitation. A factor in this was an apparent lack of the "massive" arterial bleeding such an act initiates.
"I would have thought that all the people in the vicinity would have been covered in blood, in a matter of seconds ... if it was genuine," said Simpson. [...] Speaking off the record, intelligence community sources have previously said they believe it "very likely" that al-Zarqawi is indeed long dead. Such a fact makes al-Zarqawi's alleged killing of Berg difficult to reconcile...
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today issued Security Directives (SD) [which] instruct commuter, transit and inter-city passenger rail systems to comply with requirements that range from removing or replacing station trash cans to utilizing canine explosives detection teams...
The directives apply to all passenger rail owners/operators. These include light rail systems, inter-city passenger rail systems such as Amtrak, commuter rail operations such as the Maryland Rail Commuter and Long Island Railroad, as well as subway systems nationwide. [...] 1. Rail owners/operators must designate coordinators to enhance security-related communications with the TSA. 2. Passengers and employees will be asked to report unattended property or suspicious behavior. 3. At certain locations, operators will be required to remove trash receptacles, except clear plastic or bomb-resistant trash containers. 4. When needed, canine explosive teams may be utilized to screen passenger baggage, terminals and trains. 5. Facility inspections will be conducted by rail operators for suspicious or unattended items. 6. Rail operators will ensure that security is at appropriate levels consistent with the DHS established threat level.
Despite having played key diplomatic roles during the Vietnam War, the Iran-Contra scandal, the creation of NAFTA and the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, very little is known about John Negroponte, the man who will be the “de facto governor-general of Iraq.”
Check out this blockbuster interview from the May 12 edition of The Power Hour radio show. Bob Papovich, a family friend of the Terry and James Nichols, visited Timothy McVeigh several times in prison. Papovich details the evidence that McVeigh was under government mind control and had tried to frame Nichols. He also gets into government and court corruption surrounding the current jury trial of Terry Nichols.
Terrorist mastermind Zarqawi has announced his name but hidden his face. The CIA has said it is indeed Zarqawi, but he appears to be reading his own speech from a paper.
The person holding the knife -- allegedly Zarqawi -- has a Black hood at the video's beginning, but there is an edit (the camera time signatures change) and the knifeholder is then wearing a WHITE hood (and no bulletproof vest).
You'll also find the following oddities in the heavily edited video, which was heavily edited, presumably in a lab or on a pc:
So, if we are to assume the timestamps of the two (?) cameras are accurate, this means Berg was beheaded at 13:47:49 (1:47) but at 2:44, nearly an hour later, he is sitting with his head intact.
Zarqawi has also been reported to have an artificial leg; this is definitely not apparent in the video. Nor is his Jordanian accent, according to experts. Also note the gold ring on the "sinister" (toilet-using) hand -- a definite no-no for muslims.
Then there's US consulate Beth A. Payne's emails to Berg's family saying their son was in "US military custody" [...] And of course there are the American orange prisoner jumpsuit and white plastic chair and yellow walls which appear in the video -- exactly as they do at Abu Ghraib, the now-notorious site of the American torture of Iraqi POWs: http://marc.perkel.com/images/berg-chair.jpg http://marc.perkel.com/images/babe-chair.jpg http://marc.perkel.com/images/prison01.jpg http://marc.perkel.com/images/orangegarb.jpg
Next, the hosting website was reported to be in Malaysia, but was discovered to actually located in London:
Says Jackblood.com, which ran a trace: "...www.al-asnar.net and www.al-asnar.biz have apparently been disabled by 'authorities.' ...the publishers for these sites are located in London, England and Nurnberg, Denmark.
"The addresses began to disappear from the internet listings as we reported this development on The Power Hour Radio Show. Apparently, "Big Brother"; had been listening to the show and didn't like the news at all. The location of the publishers for al-ansar.net appears to be at an Arab Press Building, which appears to be shared by different Arab newspublications. The name of the organization is the Arab Press House. Thebuilding is apparently the headquarters for news magazines such as, AlJamilla, Sayidaty, and Al Majallah among others.
The London address is the following: http://www.al-ansar.net Arab Press House Abdel Rahman al-Rashed 184 High Holborn, WCIV78P, London tel. 020 78318181 [...] these same websites (www.al-asnar.net and www.al-asnar.biz) were the ones that posted the latest Bin Laden audio recording, weeks ago. Despite knowing the website addresses, and potentially the addresses of their respective publishers, the CIA, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security did not make any apparent efforts to monitor the websites for uploaded files or internet traffic. Therefore, no arrests were made."
Next, the AK-47 carried by one of the men is a "Gilal" -- an Israeli weapon that improves on the AK- 47. Feyadeen and other insurgents almost universally use AK-47s. The man in the left of the video is standing in the American military stance known as "parade rest", and several of the apparent terrorists are wearing white tennis shoes ad bulletproof vests.
At frame 13:46:27, there is an edit and a person with a white ear and a green cap is seen entering from the right. Then the video is re-edited.
Matt Drudge reports that "The statement in the video was signed off with Zarqawi's name and dated 11 May" , but Berg's body was reported found on May 10th -- the day before the video was apparently made! ...
Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the "state secrets privilege" again last week to prevent former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds from providing a deposition in a pending lawsuit related to the September 11 attacks.
See this May 14 filing by the Attorney General formally invoking the privilege: PDF
Ms. Edmonds has previously said that she saw intelligence reports prior to September 11 indicating that al Qaida planned to fly hijacked aircraft into U.S. skyscrapers. The Justice Department has repeatedly intervened to prevent her from elaborating on her statements in court.
"Edmonds's story has been almost uniformly ignored in the U.S. daily press," wrote Jefferson Morley in the Washington Post, at the same time that it has been widely reported in foreign news media.
The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.
According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq.
A series of qualitative chemical tests and deductions now confirm without doubt the presence of significant amounts of barium within atmospheric samples. Citizens may now begin the process of collecting the sample materials for formal submission to public environmental agencies and private labs for identification. The testing process can be done at modest expense and the results from laboratory analysis can now be qualitatively and independently verified without great difficulty. Any testing service employed will need to be able to demonstrate no vested interest in the outcome of the results, accuracy of method, and the willingness to have the testing process independently monitored.
The material under analysis has been collected by a plate ionizing filter; it may also be collected with conventional fiber filtration over a longer period of time. Extended time periods may be required to collect a sufficient volume of material for electrolytic processing and external testing preferences. Readers are referred to previous articles1,2 for the methods of collection in both cases. The use of electrolysis is significant in producing a final compound for testing purposes. The solid materials (powder/ crystals) collected by the plate ionizing filter, assuming they satisify the test procedures described on this page, will be sufficient for laboratory analysis. Qualitative chemical tests and flame tests positively establish the significant presence of barium compounds within the atmospheric sample.
Citizens with sufficient environmental concern are encouraged to begin this process of sample collection and identification, along with the documentation of the responses of both public and private environmental services.
Check out the chronology of events on 9-11 (for instance, at 11 Sept 2001 the Center for Cooperative Research's detailed and heavily sourced timeline of accounts, news stories, and documents), and think about it:
American Flight 11 took off from Boston at 7:59 a.m. By probably 8:13 and certainly 8:15, the FAA knew it had been hijacked. Now, according to government officials quoted in a January 2002 Slate article, NORAD is notified by the FAA "about one minute" after it notices anything amiss, and NORAD says the military can scramble fighters "within a matter of minutes to anywhere in the United States." That didn't happen on 9-11. At 8:46, half an hour after the FAA knew that Flight 11 was hijacked, it crashed into the World Trade Center, unimpeded by any air-defense system. At almost exactly the same moment, Flight 77 from D.C. goes radically off course. Meanwhile, Flight 175 hits the WTC at 9:03. Just afterwards, Secret Service agents burst into Dick Cheney's office, grab him under his arms and propel downstairs to the White House basement and then into a bunker. Bush, at a Florida grade school, is told about the second crash into the WTC but spends the next ten minutes with second-graders, listening to them read a story called "Pet Goat."
At 9:59, the South Tower of the WTC collapses. At 10:28, the North Tower collapses.
During this entire time, New York City authorities were on their own. Beyond that, it seems scarcely conceivable, that with a nation under attack, the mayor of New York had to call Bush—not the other way around. Why was Giuliani not immediately alerted by the Pentagon or the White House or even the FAA?
Today from the Norman city court clerk I obtained a document confirming that Nicholas E. Berg, who reportedly was decapitated by militants in Iraq, was arrested twice for trespassing on the University of Oklahoma campus during the spring of 2000. Earlier, OU police had reported that he had been sleeping on couches around the campus. He appeared to be living as a vagrant during that period. The OUPD actually contacted him six times. [...] Friday, I ascertained that Berg had been an OU employee during academic year 2000-2001. The OU personnel directory for that year listed him as a facilities attendant at the Lloyd Noble arena.
The thought crosses one's mind that Berg might have been the one who bought the 9/11 hijacker's airline ticket from the OU library computer terminal. I have not been able to ascertain whether he was ever an OU library employee. Most likely, he would have been a temp.
Still, there are things about Berg's story which don't add up. Are we to believe that someone would really voluntarily surrender his email password to a stranger he met on the bus? This is apparently the story which Berg told the FBI to account for the fact that the password and Berg's email address were on Moussaoui's computer when they searched it, after 9/11.
If Berg was the one who bought the ticket, then appearing to be a vagrant would have been a way to gain the trust of Al Qaeda, for infiltration purposes. ... it has been reported that Berg had been in possession of anti-Semitic literature. That would be another tactic...
If he bought the plane ticket, then the CIA had a good reason to set him up to be snuffed: dead men tell no tales.
An Oklahoma City bombing survivor testified Thursday that she saw Timothy McVeigh and another man standing near McVeigh's dilapidated car shortly after an explosion rocked the Murrah Federal Building.
Two more witnesses, a man who drove a catering truck and a tire shop employee, also said they saw McVeigh with another man shortly before the bomb at the federal building exploded. [...] "Two men were standing by a car," [HUD employee Germaine] Johnston said. "One of them was Timothy McVeigh. The other man was shorter and darker than McVeigh.
"Tim McVeigh, the tallest one, came up to me and said 'What happened?'" Johnston said.
"I said there had been an explosion in the federal building."
McVeigh asked her if there had been a lot of people killed, Johnston said. [...] Another witness, Mike Moroz... saw a second man in the Ryder truck while McVeigh got out and talked with him.
"He was dark-skinned," Moroz said of the second man. He described the man as "heftier" around the shoulders....
Kris Millegan, the son of an intelligence operative, who saw in his own family the toll that working for the CIA and what the ends justifies the means zeitgist does to people, has been helping folks tell their stories since 2000, when he organized the first CIA-Drugs Symposium and helped Daniel Hopsicker get his MadCow Press up and running. Kris is being sued for helping Hopsicker's very revealing Barry and 'the boys' get into print. And Millegan's own publishing venture TrineDay is being sued for publishing Lt. Col. Daniel Marvin's exposé Expendble Elite of covert activity in Vietnam by Special Forces Association lawyers -- over a story that had been vetted years ago!
Help us keep our liberties alive. These suits are just harrassment and intimidation. If they silence us -- who is next? Please donate today:
Millegan/Hopsicker Free Press Defense Fund 111 West 7th, Eugene, OR 97401
On Tuesday, May 11, 2004, an international press conference was held to announce the findings of a joint official and private effort to investigate a UFO sighting. What is remarkable in the press conference is that Mexico Department of Defense collaborated with a top Mexican UFO researcher, Jaime Maussan, in the release of information concerning the appearance of up to 11 UFO's in the vicinity of a Mexican Air force flight that was on a drug surveillance mission on March 5, 2004. Using infrared cameras and radar tracking, the eight-man crew of the Merlin C26/A flight was able to monitor the UFOs, which at one point formed a circle around the flight. In investigating the incident, the Mexico Air Force contacted Jaime Maussan and asked him to participate in the inquiry. [...] The participation of the Mexican Department of Defense in collaborating with Maussan in releasing information on a contemporary UFO sighting is unprecedented. This is a significant development ... challenging the non-disclosure position supported by the US government that apparently plays a major role in the international management system in place for UFO sightings/crashes. ...
If indeed there is a major rift in the global management system over the rate and extent to which disclosure of UFOs sightings and/or UFO evidence is made to the general public of major states, then it may be predicted that further disclosures by other governments are likely. It may be concluded that the Mexican Department of Defense collaboration with private UFO researchers heralds a major new phase in the UFO phenomenon. With a more integrated global media and Internet, it will be very difficult if impossible for the mass media in the US to ignore UFO developments in other countries. If major world governments begin disclosing information concerning contemporary UFO sightings, then it may be predicted that the non-disclosure policy in place for over 50 years may soon come to an end. This would usher in the age of exopolitics where the political implications of an extraterrestrial presence would predictably dominate global politics.
A federal complaint filed April 5 in Ft. Myers, FL. accusing flight school owners Wally Hilliard and Rudi Dekkers of flying numerous "unauthorized and unsupervised flights" during April and May of 1999 makes no mention of the clients on the illegal flights, who the MadCowMorningNews has learned were Saudi nationals. “They were flying for the Saudis,” said an aviation executive familiar with the operation. "They were ferrying Saudi princes all over the U.S."
Nor does the complaint mention that a Hilliard-owned Lear jet is currently flying regularly to a remote island in the Bahamas, apparently without an FAA air carrier operating certificate.
The unauthorized flights in the federal complaint took place on three separate Lear jets owned by Wally Hilliard of Naples, FL., the self-same ‘retired’ 71-year old Midwestern insurance executive who bankrolled the flight school attended by both Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi.
Also named in the complaint is "Magic Dutch Boy" Rudi Dekkers, whose criminal activities, according to court documents filed in his native Holland, once put him at the center of "a web of intrigue," from which he has apparently never emerged.
The federal complaint reveals that the flights took place during April and May of 1999, raising questions about still-undisclosed ties to Saudis the men may have had before terrorists began arriving at their two hastily-purchased Florida flight schools.
Read the rest of the article for amazong details on drugrunning, sabotage, and F. Lee Bailey on this favorite island of the 9/11 flight schools.
ACLU May 20, 2004:
Part 1 | 
Millegan/Hopsicker Free Press Fund 
Dr. Michael Salla comments on his Exo-politics site May 12, 2004: 
MadCowMorningNews May 4: 
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