north korea attack may be response to drills from danger room: It’s not the diplomacy-minded former president who is ready to spy, it’s the secretive nuclear submarine named for him. The surveillance and attack capabilities it’s supposed to have could keep the tense situation on the Korean peninsula from spiraling out of control. In the wake of yesterday’s North Korean artillery barrage against a South Korean island, the U.S.S. George Washington is sailing to South Korea to participate in joint exercises.
A statement from the Navy’s Seventh Fleet, which patrols the western Pacific, says the drill was planned before the “unprovoked” North Korean attack, but will demonstrate “the strength of the [South Korea]-U.S. Alliance and our commitment to regional stability through deterrence.” In other words: to stave off another attack, not to initiate a retaliation.
The George Washington aircraft carrier is equipped with 75 planes and around 6,000 sailors. But it’s not coming alone. It’s got the destroyers Lassen, Stethem and Fitzgerald with it, and the missile cruiser Cowpens in tow. Rumor also has it that the carrier strike group will link up with another asset in area: The undersea spy known as the Jimmy Carter, which can monitor and potentially thwart North Korean subs that might shadow the American-South Korea exercises.
According to plugged-in naval blogger Raymond Pritchett, word’s going around Navy circles that the first surveillance assets that the United States had in the air over yesterday’s Korean island battle were drones launched from the Jimmy Carter.
The Israeli military killed 34 and wounded 171 crew members aboard the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, during the Arab-Israeli war and suffered no consequence. Israel said it had confused the intelligence ship for an Egyptian vessel. Many intelligence and military officials dispute Israel’s explanation, but that does not matter. Israel has a carte blanche to murder at will. It is almost completely irrelevant when nations and aggrieved parties complain.
in kingdom, saudi prince's coup 'fails' from presstv: Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the kingdom's former ambassador to the United States, is reportedly under house arrest over a conspiracy against the monarch. Saad al-Faqih, head of the opposition group Islamic Reform Movement, told Arab-language TV al-Alam that Prince Bandar has been disappeared and the media has published no word from the ex-diplomat's whereabouts since nearly three months ago. According to al-Faqih, the prince first disappeared in Britain but he returned to the kingdom shortly afterwards. He added that after Saudi officials discovered that he had provoked 200 agents working for the Saudi security service to stage a coup against King Abdullah, he was put under house arrest. Al-Faqih said people close to the king had disclosed Bandar's plots and foiled them. He said Saudi sources believe that intelligence provided by some Arab countries help the Saudi monarch foil Prince Bandar's conspiracy. Power struggle between members of the Saudi royal family has been common as power is shared among some 200 princes out of the estimated 7000 family members. Known as Bandar Bush because of his close relations with former US President George W Bush, the prince is son of Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz.
when bill met il: clinton gets journos released from nkorea from ap: North Korean leader Kim Jong Il issued a "special pardon" freeing two jailed American journalists after talks with former U.S. President Bill Clinton, North Korea's official news agency announced Wednesday. Clinton, who arrived in North Korea Tuesday on an unannounced visit, met with the reclusive and ailing Kim for talks described by Pyongyang as "exhaustive." It was Kim's first meeting with a prominent Western figure since his reported stroke nearly a year ago. The release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who were arrested March 17 near the China-North Korea border, was a sign of North Korea's "humanitarian and peace-loving policy," the Korean Central News Agency reported.
from politico: Two people asked a Pentagon official cooperating with prosecutors in an investigation into the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to fake his own death to avoid testifying against two pro-Israel lobbyists charged in the case, according to the Justice Department.
Pentagon analyst Lawrence Franklin pled guilty in October 2005 to participating in a conspiracy with AIPAC officials Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman to obtain and distribute classified information. The Justice Department dropped the case against Rosen and Weissman last month as a trial approached.
"Just prior to the entry of his guilty plea, Franklin was approached by two individuals who made a pitch to Franklin about faking his death by suicide and disappearing, thus thwarting any cooperation in the case against Rosen and Weissman," prosecutors wrote in a brief filed in connection with a motion to reduce the 12-year prison term Franklin was originally sentenced to.
"In January 2006, Franklin conducted five consensually recorded telephone conversations with one of these individuals, in support of an obstruction of justice/witness tampering investigation; however, the FBI was unable to obtain the requisite incriminating evidence to support a criminal investigation," the Justice Department brief said.
Lawyers for Franklin also cited his report of the apparent tampering effort as part of their arguments for reducing Franklin's sentence. The government recommended lowering Franklin's sentence to about nine years imprisonment. Franklin's team asked for probation. Judge T.S. Ellis, who imposed the first 12-year prison term several years ago, re-sentenced Franklin to probation and 10 months home confinement. (The Pentagon official never started his original sentence; he had been free pending Rosen and Weissman's trial.)
The alleged witness tampering was first reported by POLITICO following Franklin's re-sentencing earlier this month.
A lawyer for Weissman, Baruch Weiss, said today he knew nothing about the alleged incident. "If there was any witness tampering it wasn't by us. We had zero contact with Larry Franklin through all of this. That's true for us, our lawyers and anybody acting on our behalf. It’s totally surprising to me," Rosen said. An AIPAC spokesman also denied knowledge of or involvement in the alleged approach to Franklin.
The decision to drop the case comes just days before AIPAC is scheduled to begin its annual policy conference in Washington, which has often served as an advertisement of its influence...
update1: lawyers credit obama team for dismissing aipac case from jewish telegraphic agency: Lawyers for the two former AIPAC staffers charged four years ago with dealing in government secrets credited the Obama administration for dropping the case. “We are extremely grateful that this new Administration, in coordination with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Virginia, has taken seriously their obligation to evaluate cases on the merits and not to allow an unjust prosecution to continue solely due to momentum,” said the joint statement by lawyers for Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman issued Friday, hours after the government filed for a dismissal of the charges against the two former senior staffers for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “This Administration truly shows that theirs is a Department of Justice, where the justice of any case can be re-evaluated and the government can admit that a case should not be pursued.”
video update: springtime for aipac: annual confab draws protest from liamh2: Its Springtime for AIPAC! The mega-Israel Lobby convenes annually in Washington, D.C. at the convention center. AIPAC sucks out over $3 billion a year from our fast fading treasury for Israel with little or no dissent from the fakers in the U.S. Congress. If only the cities of Detroit, LA, Atlanta and Baltimore had such a puffed-up advocate in their corner. If you're lucky, you can spot some of your Congressional low lifes crawling on all fours into the convention center to pay homage to the Israel-First types. Isn't there a law against that kind of bootlicking? As always, lovers of the Republic were outside on the streets on Monday, May 4, 2009, protesting AIPAC. For some background on the all-powerful Israel Lobby, see: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/04/30/the-lobby-wants-war/ and http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/05/03/the-spies-who-got-away/ and http://wrmea.com/ and http://www.irmep.org/ila/ and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by Mearsheimer and Walt, at: http://us.macmillan.com/theisraellobbyandusforeignpolicy
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