last of US’s most powerful nuclear bombs dismantled in texas

b53 bomb dismantlement - victory or sideshow?*
from reuters: The last of a powerful class of nuclear weapons introduced into the U.S. arsenal at the height of the Cold War in 1962 was being dismantled on Tuesday at a nuclear weapons storage facility outside Amarillo, Texas. "This was one of the largest bombs in the American arsenal," said Joshua McConaha, Public Affairs Director for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. He said the exact strength of the bomb -- known as the B53 and being dismantled at the DOE's B&W Pantex facility -- remains classified, but it is believed to have been many hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.

related updates:
obama says iraq war over by year's end; troops coming home*
video: mission accomplished as obama announces full withdrawal*
inspector says $6.6b in lost iraq cash now accounted for*

fbi lab reports on anthrax attacks suggest another miscue

from mcclatchy: Buried in FBI laboratory reports about the anthrax mail attacks that killed five people in 2001 is data suggesting that a chemical may have been added to try to heighten the powder's potency, a move that some experts say exceeded the expertise of the presumed killer... The apparent failure of the FBI to pursue this avenue of investigation raises the ominous possibility that the killer is still on the loose. A McClatchy analysis of the records also shows that other key scientific questions were left unresolved and conflicting data wasn't sorted out when the FBI declared Ivins the killer shortly after his July 29, 2008, suicide... "America, the most advanced country in the world, and the FBI have every resource available to them," [Jacobsen] said. "And yet they have no compelling explanation for not properly analyzing the biggest forensic clue in the most important investigation the FBI labs had ever gotten in their history." As a result of Ivins' death and the unanswered scientific issues, Congress' investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office, is investigating the FBI's handling of the anthrax inquiry.

related history/mystery updates:
US secretly helped france develop nukes, documents reveal*
study finds data lacking on sailors' exposure to agent orange*
video: serbian war crimes suspect ratko mladic arrested*
dr kelly police probe thrown into doubt over riddle of prints on 'missing' dental records*
'all this, and heaven too': the woman who overthrew king louis-philippe*
never before heard tapes of jackie kennedy to be released*
the titanic: mass murder that created the federal reserve bank & the new world order's 20th century?*

govt paid off $62m in student loans for federal employees

or more specifically: doj, dod, sec & state dept employees
from allgov: Wouldn’t it be nice if your employer paid your student loans for you? That’s what the federal government has been doing the past eight years for a select group of government employees. A report from the Office of Personnel Management shows 36 agencies helped out more than 8,400 workers last year, paying $61.8 million in student loan bills. Most of those receiving this assistance were lawyers, criminal investigators, administrative personnel, intelligence analysts and contract specialists. The Department of Justice allocated the most money ($19.3 million), followed by the Department of Defense ($14.1 million), State Department ($7.2 million), the Securities and Exchange Commission ($3.2 million) and the Government Accountability Office ($2.8 million). Begun in 2002, the federal government’s loan repayment program was established to help agencies compete with the private sector for new workers. The maximum an agency can repay annually is $10,000, with a cap of $60,000 per employee. Workers enrolling in the program must sign an agreement to remain at their job for at least three years.

related econocrash updates:
imf report proposes global currency called 'bancor'*
'enron accounting' has bankrupt US: deficit really $202t*
home sales drop 27% in july & only getting worse*
new home sales hit 40yr low*
even tony robbins warns economic collapse is coming*
krugman: banksters 'acting like the priests of some ancient cult'*
video: economy caught in depression, not recession*
'plunder, the crime of our time' doc on dvd/stream*
US movie tickets get biggest price hike in history*
nearly 50% leave obama mortgage-aid program*
video: china buys euros as fear of world depression grows*

investigators easily smuggled bomb materials into govt buildings

but no one could have planted bombs in the wtc without being detected, could they?
from washington's blog:

As Raw Story notes:

A Government Accountability Office investigator smuggled live bomb components into a federal building in just 27 seconds, then assembled a bomb in a restroom and ventured throughout the building without being detected, a leaked tape revealed Wednesday.

In addition, congressional investigators were able to penetrate every single federal building they probed without any difficulty — 10 in all.

And see this.

Indeed, as I wrote in 2005, there is substantial additional evidence that bombs could have been planted in the World Trade Center without anyone knowing:

• Bomb-sniffing dogs were inexplicably removed from the Twin Towers five days before 9/11
  

• The Twin Towers had been evacuated a number of times in the weeks preceding 9/11

• Workers in the Twin Towers observed heavy work taking place on supposedly empty floors in the weeks before 9-11; supposedly, the work took place on floors the elevators would not stop on without a special access key (toward the end of the video).

• There was a power down in the Twin Towers on the weekend before 9/11, security cameras were shut down, and many workers ran around busily doing things unobserved.

• Bombs could have been placed during renovation of the elevators in the Twin Towers.

• And - as an interesting coincidence - a Bush-linked company ran security at the trade centers, thus giving it free reign to the buildings

These are just a few of the known, public examples of opportunities to plant bombs. There were undoubtedly many additional opportunities available to skilled operatives. See also this video.

As with all of the other arguments trying to debunk those who question the government's version of 9/11, the argument that bombs couldn't have been planted without people observing it is incorrect.

The people still defending the government's version of 9/11 have simply not spent the time to look at the facts.

los alamos: nuke violations & classified info breaches

from danger room: There have been so many security and safety meltdowns at Los Alamos over the last five years, it's hard to keep 'em all straight (well, at least the ones that don't involved meth labs). But now, the investigators at the Government Accountability Office have put a half-decade of scandals into a single document. John Fleck runs down the tally:

• Fifty-seven security incidents "involving the compromise or potential compromise of classified information"
• Nineteen violations of rules meant to protect against nuclear accidents;
• Shoddy accounting for nuclear materials; and
• Management problems that delayed and drove up the cost of two major nuclear research machines.
  

"Some of the problems have been reported before," Fleck adds. "But many of the revelations, including the nuclear safety violations, are new."

auditors: billions squandered in iraq

from ap/yahoo: About $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on Iraq reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses, and federal investigators warned Thursday that significantly more taxpayer money is at risk.

The three top auditors overseeing work in Iraq told a House committee their review of $57 billion in Iraq contracts found that Defense and State department officials condoned or allowed repeated work delays, bloated expenses and payments for shoddy work or work never done.

More than one in six dollars charged by U.S. contractors were questionable or unsupported, nearly triple the amount of waste the Government Accountability Office estimated last fall.

"There is no accountability," said David M. Walker, who heads the auditing arm of Congress. "Organizations charged with overseeing contracts are not held accountable. Contractors are not held accountable. The individuals responsible are not held accountable."