The selection of Sen. John Edwards as John Kerry’s running mate has raised concerns inside the FBI and among civil-liberties groups that the North Carolina senator will use the campaign to promote his controversial proposal to create a new domestic spy agency.
For the past 18 months, Edwards has been perhaps the Senate's foremost champion of a much-debated proposal to strip the bureau of its intelligence-gathering functions and turn them over to a new domestic spy agency patterned after Britain's M.I.5. [...] Edwards has refused to back down—and there are signs that Kerry himself may be warm to the idea. "He thinks it’s still the way to go," said Mike Briggs, Edwards's Senate press secretary on Wednesday when asked about the M.I.5 proposal. [...] Although Kerry himself has talked more vaguely about reforming intelligence in his major campaign speeches, a little noticed "Defending the American Homeland" plan on his campaign Web site seems to reach a similar conclusion as Edwards on the subject. [...] Edwards went ahead and introduced his bill anyway in February 2003 [...] Civil-liberties groups have other concerns about the Edwards plan. For decades, FBI agents who seek to develop evidence about potential domestic threats have operated under tight Justice Department guidelines; those guidelines require there be grounds to believe targets are engaged in criminal acts. A new domestic spy agency would not be so encumbered... Civil-liberties advocates say... a domestic-intelligence agency such as Edwards has advocated would inevitably be tempted to spy on legitimate dissenters.
"Senator Edwards’s proposal ignored the serious civil-liberties problems it would have caused," said Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies. [...]
Although the FBI has denied it even existed, the terrorist support network that provided assistance to Mohamed Atta and his fellow hijackers remains in place in Florida...
Private investigators say the network is not only operational but that its members show little or no fear of federal authorities.
[Take] 38-year-old Sarasota 'businessman' Wissam Taysir Hammoud, a native of Lebanon. Just three days before Christmas last year, while last-minute preparations for the approaching holiday occupied most thoughts, Hammoud went shopping, too… for a hit man. Hammoud was willing to pay to have two men killed in particularly grisly ways: a federal informant and an agent with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. [...] Mohamed Atta used a Verizon cell phone with a Sarasota cell phone number (941-685-0468) the MadCowMorningNews has learned, both purchased and later serviced in Sarasota...
And Wissam Hammoud is the authorized Verizon cell phone dealer in Sarasota. [...] Federal authorities had been "looking the other way" when he did something really nasty for the (presumed) first time, back in June of 2001.
Three months before the 9/11 attack Hammoud had already shown his true colors, it developed, boasting to an undercover agent that he shipped machine guns to Hezbollah and negotiated arms deals in Lebanon [...] New court documents revealed that Hammoud had been involved in an even-earlier incident with terror overtones. In 1999 he had been one of three men stopped attempting to board a Spirit Airline's flight at Tampa International Airport with more than 11 pounds of ammunition, an assault weapon, a rifle, ammunition, and what the papers called "other gun-related equipment."
[...]
As you recall, a previously-unknown company with no assets housed inside of Huffman Aviation inexplicably won a big bid from the city of Lynchburg to run a facility at the Lynchburg Regional Airport over a much-larger local Lynchburg aviation company which had then cried foul.
Britannia Aviation had no expertise running an aircraft maintenance hanger facility, but they won a 5-year lease from the city of Lynchburg anyway. Some wondered whether this strange circumstance owed anything to the million dollar loan Lynchburg’s most famous resident, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, had received and then neglected to repay from Huffman Aviation owner Wally Hilliard, where Britannia Aviation had been hiding unnoticed.
In the brouhaha which followed it was learned that Britannia Aviation was a dummy front company which nonetheless had friends in high places not just in Lynchburg but in Venice as well. Britannia had a “green light” from the DEA in Venice, authorities there were told, and local police had been warned to leave them alone.
Earlier this year Britannia folded, and its five-year lease was assigned to another company in Lynchburg, with one slight modification which permits the offering of "flight school services."
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today announced his support for Proposition 69, the DNA Fingerprint, Unsolved Crime and Innocence Protection Act, that establishes an all-felon DNA database for California. [...] Proposition 69 requires convicted felons and those arrested for rape and murder to give DNA, collected by mouth swab, not blood, for a statewide database.
Starting in 2009, all felony arrestees will also be tested, but those not convicted can have their sample removed from the database. [...]
A federal judge threw out a lawsuit Tuesday by a whistle-blower who alleged security lapses in the FBI's translator program, ruling that her claims might expose government secrets that could damage national security.
U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said he was satisfied with claims by Attorney General John Ashcroft and a senior FBI official that the civil lawsuit by Sibel Edmonds could expose intelligence-gathering methods and disrupt diplomatic relations with foreign governments.
The judge said he couldn't explain further because his explanation itself would expose sensitive secrets.
Edmonds, a former contract linguist for the FBI, said she will appeal the ruling. [...] The judge was appointed by President Bush... Walton acknowledged that dismissing a lawsuit before the facts of the case can be heard is 'Draconian."
They are fighting it relentlessly all right! Now, this can be used to continue the gag on Congress, the quashing of any subpoenas for my deposition, and to prevent my information from appearing on the 9/11 Commission and DOJ-IG's reports. [...]
This correspondent has been too busy/negligent/ill to have as of yet put any of the footage gathered at the 9/11 Citizens Inquiry in San Francisco back in late March on to the Web.
Simon Aronowitz of ThoughtCrimeNews.com has been more diligent as of late, however.
One of the featured videos on that site is based on a conversation between Aronowitz and military historian Barbara Honegger (she who exposed the October Surprise scandal), which was caught on video by yours truly when handed the ThoughtCrimeCam by Aronowitz.
Aronowitz has edited the conversation and other key footage together into a nice 7-minute presentation that covers the eerie similarities between 9/11 and the "Lone Gunmen" pilot episode (and its reference to Seven Days in May), and the possibility that an Osprey hit the Pentagon.
Most folks by now should know that Democrat nominee John Kerry, like both Georges Bush, is a memeber of the elite Illuminati death cult based at Yale University called Skull & Bones. Recall the Meet the Press interview:
RUSSERT: You both were members of Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale. What does that tell us?
SEN. KERRY: Not much, because it's a secret...
There are all kinds of secrets...
But it may have escaped the attention of many that, like Bill Clinton in 1992, Sen. John Edwards last month was vetted last month by the Bilderberg group, the annual secret gathering of world banking and political elites founded by the Dutch royals in 1954.
Milan, Italy -- Among the 100 or so invitees to the annual Bilderberg conference under way Sunday in a northern Italy resort is potential U.S. vice president John Edwards.
Reporters generally are not invited and those who are observe the conference group's general pledge of secrecy, reinforcing the view of conspiracy theorists that the elite gathering is up to no good, London's The Guardian newspaper reported.
Sen. Edwards is regarded in Democratic circles as a good performer in his battle with Sen. John Kerry for the nomination to be presidential candidate and so is expected to be a finalist when Kerry chooses a running mate.
Other invitees are Mrs. Bill Gates and likely are regulars Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and U.S. Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld.
In a message dated 7/1/2004 6:48:36 PM Eastern Daylight Time, NYSMASON writes: The Grand Master of Masons in the State of New York, M..W.. Edward R. Trosin (Tonawanda, NY), and Deputy Grand Master, R..W.. Neil I Bidnick (New City, NY) will be among the selected few in the official party at the July 4th dedication ceremonies of the cornerstone of the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site.
Further details will follow:
Contact: Ron Steiner NY Grand Lodge Public Relations (845) 354 - 4192 nysmason@aol.com
[...] Page Hopkins: So what are the common denominators of the members?
Kris Millegan: The common denominator...
P: Wealthy, what is it?.
K: Well, when you look at a sociological standpoint a secret society is a lot like an onion or a pyramid. You have a lot of members on the outside -um- or at the bottom [of the pyramid.] In Masonic circles they call them porch brethren. And then you have an administrative cadre and then you have a core group. The core group seems to be all related. -uh- The basic family group at Skull & Bones is the Whitney and the Cabot family.
P: Aha! Well, let's take a look at some of the illustrious members if my producer can put this list Henry Luce, for instance was one of the members. He was known to hire a lot of members. William Buckley, Jr., Averill Harriman James Whitmore, certainly not guys whom you'd think of as sinister guys. I mean I guess the questions is, those of us on the outside what do they do. Do they get together and have dinner together what is the point of this club?
K: Well, some say that point of the club is bonding. I look at it through the eyes of a social historian and when you look at the grouping of people and the jobs that they have. you find a rather large amount of the membership has been involved in intelligence. And then one of the most disturbing things is that the family groups have been involved in drug running since the early 1800s. And it seems --
P: Drug running?
K: Yes, the founder of Skull & Bones was William Huntington Russell and his family business was Russell & Company. Which was the -er- America's largest opium smuggler, the third largest in the world.
P: Wow, Kris Millegan, unfortunately we are out of time...
A group of frequent fliers stood in long lines at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Monday, hoping the wait would mean less time queued up in the future.
Those chosen for a three-month pilot program for the Transportation Security Administration will be able to bypass extra security inspections if they agree to submit to background checks in advance. [...] The test program will be expanded to airports in Boston, Los Angeles, Houston and Washington between now and November, officials said. It could be expanded nationally based on the tests results and funding, TSA officials said. [...] Participants in the pilot program will be required to give the government their name, address, phone number, birth date and "biometric identifiers," including fingerprint and iris scan. That information will be matched against law enforcement and intelligence databases ...
U.S. Treasury officials have billions of dollars of Iraqi oil revenues stashed away in secondary “slush funds” and U.S. Treasury bills.
President George W. Bush has repeatedly said that Iraqi oil revenues are to be used solely for the benefit of the Iraqi people. ...
In May, as oil prices soared and Iraqi oil production reached 2.4 million barrels per day, nearly $70 million per day flowed into the coffers of the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI). The DFI funds, administered until June 30 by L. Paul Bremer III and the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), are managed in accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
With the approach of the June 30 handover, however, reports suggest that Iraq’s oil revenues have been mismanaged and that untold millions have been siphoned off into unregulated "slush funds."
According to CPA accounting, a total cash inflow of more than $20.24 billion filled the DFI since it was created on May 28, 2003. Although nearly all of the "development" funds came from Iraqi oil exports, the Central Bank of Iraq had only $216 million in its DFI account on June 20.
A simple spread sheet of 35 rows lists how more than $11.3 billion of the fund had been disbursed by the CPA. The sheet reveals that the “Commanders Emergency Response Program” received $391 million of Iraqi money, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers got another $367 million, and the CPA Front Office got $2.8 million etc. Details, dates and specifics are not provided. [...] A member of the former Iraqi Governing Council told The Financial Times, "If the auditors don’t finish by June 30, they never will, because the CPA staff are going home."...
The U.S. general who was in charge of Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison said on Saturday she had met an Israeli interrogator in Iraq, a claim Israel denied but which was likely to irritate many in the Arab world.
Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, who was responsible for military police guarding all Iraqi jails at the time prisoners were abused by U.S. troops there, told the BBC she met the Israeli at a Baghdad interrogation center.
"He was clearly from the Middle East and he said: 'Well, I do some of the interrogation here and of course I speak Arabic, but I'm not an Arab. I'm from Israel'," she said. [...]
Newsweek July 7:
Daniel Hopsicker's latest at Mad Cow Morning News July 8, 2004: 
[...]
Californians for the DNA Fingerprint press release July 7, 2004:
PDF of the decision
This correspondent has been too busy/negligent/ill to have as of yet put any of the footage gathered at the 9/11 Citizens Inquiry in San Francisco back in late March on to the Web.
that covers the eerie similarities between 9/11 and the "Lone Gunmen" pilot episode (and its reference to Seven Days in May), and the possibility that an Osprey hit the Pentagon.
Most folks by now should know that Democrat nominee John Kerry, like both Georges Bush, is a memeber of the elite Illuminati death cult based at Yale University called Skull & Bones. Recall the Meet the Press interview:
But it may have escaped the attention of many that, like Bill Clinton in 1992, Sen. John Edwards last month was vetted last month by the Bilderberg group, the annual secret gathering of world banking and political elites founded by the Dutch royals in 1954.
Found on the Grand Lodge of New York forum for New York Masons Jul 03, 2004: 
Kris Millegan, editor of Fleshing Out Skull & Bones appeared on Fox News Channel on June 19th. Click 
AP Jun 28:
Reuters Jul 3:
CLOSER LOOK
SELECTED VIDEO ]