Terrorism

Exposing How the Government Lied about National Security Letters and the Patriot Act

Last week, I was honored to be invited to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Patriot Act, a new endeavor for the Center for Media and Democracy, even though CMD has covered national security-related issues in its books and on SourceWatch.

One of the reasons I was so pleased to be able to join CMD is because in Washington, DC, I saw first-hand how propaganda and selective disclosures were used to influence and distort public opinion. In my testimony, I highlighted examples from the Patriot Act debate in 2005 where key information was hidden while the bill for reauthorization was being publicly debated, and did not come out until after the bill had passed. With parts of the Patriot Act up for renewal and reform this fall, I wanted to make sure the public record included the story of how the previous Bush administration misled the American people. I also wanted to share my views about why these extraordinary powers need to be fixed to better protect civil liberties and human rights.

The New Marlboro "Adventure Teams": Paramilitary Forces, Terrorist and Insurgent Groups

Post-9-11 crackdowns on funding streams for Islamic and other terrorist groups worldwide have led these networks to turn to criminal rackets, with cigarette smuggling offering low risks and high returns. Cigarettes are easy to buy, easy to bootleg and offer lucrative returns.

Courage, Bayer CropScience Style

Bayer CropScience has invoked the specter of terrorism in a bid to limit what information the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board can release at a public hearing into a chemical plant explosion in West Virginia that killed two employees. Bayer is claiming that "because it has a dock for barge shipments on the adjacent Kanawha River, its entire 400-acre site qualifies under the 2002 federal Maritime Transportation Security Act," reports Sean D.

ProPublica Posts the Legal Memos Behind Bush's War on Terror

ProPublica notes that "the Bush administration's 'war on terror' -- including its controversial policies on detentions, interrogations and warrantless wiretapping -- were all underpinned by legal memoranda. While some of those memos have been released ...

Maryland Police See 'Terrorists' Everywhere

In November 2005, activists from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network peacefully protested against the failure by then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr to significantly curb pollution from coal-fired power stations in Maryland. After their protest, Maryland police categorized them as terrorists and added them to a federal database of people to be monitored.

Branding al-Qaida as Losers Through the British Media

In an attempt to "taint the al-Qaida brand," a British counter-terrorism unit has targeted the BBC and other domestic media outlets.

New Book Claims White House Ordered CIA to Forge Letter Linking Iraq to 9/11

In a new book, Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Ron Suskind charges that in the autumn of 2003, the White House ordered the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to forge and back-date a handwritten letter from the

The Anthrax Cover-up

Bruce Edwards Ivins, a top anthrax researcher at the U.S. Government's biological weapons research laboratories, died of an apparent suicide last Tuesday, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility for the September 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people in the United States. Glenn Greenwald has written an important piece for Salon.com in which he demonstrates, with copious evidence, that a major government scandal lurks behind the anthrax story.

Time for a Federal Shield Law for Journalists

The New York Times editorial board supports a proposed federal shield law for journalists that is currently in the Senate. The bill, which would provide journalists with protections against having to reveal sources in federal court, also makes allowances for genuine needs on the part of law enforcement and security concerns. Despite those exceptions, the bill faces "near hysterical opposition from the Bush administration. ...

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