He was found guilty of racketeering, extortion, soliciting a bribe and conspiracy. Some of those charges included shakedowns of a children's hospital and a horse racing executive. He was acquitted on one count of shaking down a construction executive and a verdict was not reached on two other counts, the Chicago Tribune reported. The newspaper reported he faces a significant prison sentence.
Leaving the Chicago courtroom, Blagojevich said he was 'very disappointed' by the verdicts. 'I, frankly, am stunned,' said Blagojevich, who has professed his innocence.
Blagojevich, 54, had been accused of trying to sell Obama's seat after he was caught on wiretap by federal investigators during a previous investigation. As governor, he had the power to appoint Obama's successor in the Senate until an election could be held be held.
Blagojevich, a Democrat, was arrested in December 2008 - weeks after Obama won the presidential election - after being recorded in a profanity-laced conversation describing the Senate vacancy as a 'golden' asset for which he was seeking political or financial returns. The Illinois General Assembly impeached Blagojevich the following January and removed him from office.
from corbett report: This week we explore the myriad ways that governments and corporations are tracking, databasing, monitoring, logging, recording and generally spying on your every movement. Is there any hope for personal freedom in the technological surveillance society?
• The “roving wiretap” provision allows the FBI to obtain wiretaps from a secret intelligence court, known as the FISA court (for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), without identifying the target or what method of communication is to be tapped.
• The “lone wolf” measure allows FISA court warrants for the electronic monitoring of a person for whatever reason — even without showing that the suspect is an agent of a foreign power or a terrorist. The government has said it has never invoked that provision, but the Obama administration said it wanted to retain the authority to do so.
• The “business records” provision allows FISA court warrants for any type of record, from banking to library to medical, without the government having to declare that the information sought is connected to a terrorism or espionage investigation.
from corbett report: Whatever one thinks of Andrew Jackson and his legacy, he was surely never one to back down from a fight. So when he took on the Second Bank of the United States it was an unstoppable force against an immovable object. In short, the bank never knew what hit it. Find out how Andrew Jackson killed the bank on this week's episode of The Corbett Report.
this special interview episode from media monarchy covers the explosive case of a freelance journalist, who at the time of his death in 1991, was researching an insidious & wide-ranging conspiracy that he called 'the octopus' ... to help us examine the tentacles of this spy state, we're joined by film critic & researcher albert lanier (see: 'crisis in journalism' & 'secret societies & the media') ... the death of danny casolaro is just the beginning of our conversation. put simply & from an historical perspective: this isn't just about a dead reporter. this is more than just a software company in a contract dispute. the story of 'the octopus' connects the dots to nearly every nefarious event over the last century - and the sinister aftershocks are happening still ...
The most well-known of the suspects is James O'Keefe, a 25-year-old whose hidden-camera expose posing as a pimp with his prostitute infuriated the liberal group ACORN and made him a darling of conservatives.
O'Keefe and suspect Joseph Basel, 24, formed their own conservative publications on their college campuses. A third suspect, Stan Dai, 24, served as editor of his university's conservative paper and once directed a program aimed at getting college students interested in the intelligence field after 9/11.
And the fourth suspect, Robert Flanagan, 24, wrote for the conservative Pelican Institute and had recently criticized Landrieu for her vote on health care legislation. O'Keefe was a featured speaker at a Pelican Institute luncheon days before his arrest. Flanagan is the son of the acting U.S. Attorney for northern Louisiana.
from washington post: The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.
E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats.
A Justice Department inspector general's report due out this month is expected to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests, bureau officials confirmed.
The records seen by The Post do not reveal the identities of the people whose phone call records were gathered, but FBI officials said they thought that nearly all of the requests involved terrorism investigations.
from paul joseph watson: President Barack Obama has once again betrayed his promise to restore liberties eviscerated by the Bush regime by pushing Congress to renew Patriot Act provisions that allow for warrantless spying on American citizens, even in cases where there is no link to terrorism whatsoever.
Obama’s support for the provisions should come as little surprise because he first voted for warrantless wiretapping of Americans in 2008 when he was an Illinois Senator, while also lending support for immunizing the nation’s telecommunications companies from lawsuits charging them with being complicit in the Bush administration’s wiretapping program.
One of the provisions Obama is pushing to renew is the so-called “lone wolf” provision, enacted in 2004, which allows for the electronic monitoring of an individual without the government having to prove that the case has any relation whatsoever to terrorism or a foreign power. This is in effect a carte blanche for the government to use every method at their disposal to spy on any American citizen they choose...
Barack Obama swept into office on a mandate of “change” and a commitment to restore liberties that were eviscerated under the Bush regime. Despite promising to do so, he has failed completely to overturn Bush signing statements and executive orders that, according to Obama, “trampled on liberties.” Indeed, despite promising to end the use of signing statements, he has continued to use them.
Obama has gone even further than the Bush administration in introducing “preventative detention” of detainees, ensuring people will never get a trial.
In restating his support for warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, Obama has once again proven that his promise of “change” was nothing more than a hollow and deceptive political platitude to ensure his election. Since he took office, Obama has betrayed almost every promise he made and effectively become nothing more than the third term of the Bush administration.
from ap: A federal grand jury on Friday indicted a Hollywood director who had withdrawn a guilty plea to a charge accusing him of lying to federal agents investigating a celebrity wiretapping case.
John McTiernan, who directed "Die Hard" and "Predator," was indicted on two counts of making false statements to the FBI about private investigator Anthony Pellicano and one count of perjury for allegedly lying to a federal judge while trying to withdraw his guilty plea.
His attorney, S. Todd Neal, said the indictment is "really nothing new" and promised to rigorously defend his client.
"The prosecutor has taken one count and tried to expand it into more charges in a new indictment," he said. "There seems to be retribution because John refused to play ball the way the prosecutors wanted and because we were successful on appeal."
McTiernan pleaded guilty in 2006 to making "knowingly false" statements to an FBI agent about Pellicano, whom he admitted hiring to wiretap a business associate.
But before he was sentenced, McTiernan asked the judge to withdraw his plea, arguing he didn't have adequate legal representation, was jet-lagged and under the influence of alcohol when he pleaded guilty.
The judge refused so McTiernan, 58, appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which vacated his four-month sentence and ruled that he was entitled to a hearing on whether he could withdraw his plea.
In February, he was allowed to reverse his plea.
Pellicano was convicted last year of wiretapping film producer Charles Roven for McTiernan and bugging phones of celebrities and others to get information for his clients. He was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.
download greenwald & stein interview [10.5mb mp3] wiretap recorded rep harman promising to intervene for aipac from cqpolitics: Rep. Jane Harman, the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington. Harman was recorded saying she would "waddle into" the AIPAC case "if you think it'll make a difference," according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript... The identity of the "suspected Israeli agent" could not be determined with certainty, and officials were extremely skittish about going beyond Harman's involvement to discuss other aspects of the NSA eavesdropping operation against Israeli targets, which remain highly classified. But according to the former officials familiar with the transcripts, the alleged Israeli agent asked Harman if she could use any influence she had with Gonzales, who became attorney general in 2005, to get the charges against the AIPAC officials reduced to lesser felonies. Rosen had been charged with two counts of conspiring to communicate, and communicating national defense information to people not entitled to receive it. Weissman was charged with conspiracy... "It's a story about the corruption of government - not legal corruption necessarily, but ethical corruption." Ironically, however, nothing much was gained by it. The Justice Department did not back away from charging AIPAC officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman for trafficking in classified information. Gonzales was engulfed by the NSA warrantless wiretapping scandal. And Jane Harman was relegated to chairing a House Homeland Security subcommittee.
harman caught on tape agreeing to lobby for alleged aipac spies from jeremy scahill: This is a huge story... The case, known as the AIPAC espionage scandal centers around allegations that at least two AIPAC staff members passed sensitive US intelligence on Iran, provided by Pentagon official Lawrence Franklin, to Israel. In early 2006, Franklin pled guilty to espionage-related charges and was sentenced to 13 years in prison. The case against two indicted AIPAC staffers, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, is ongoing. Allegations that Harman intervened in this case in an effort to win the spot as chair of the Intelligence Committee have been widespread since 2006, but an FBI investigation into Harman was dropped for “lack of evidence.”
harman & aipac: more evidence of massive government corruption from kurt nimmo: It really comes as no surprise Rep. Jane Harman was caught on a federal wiretap offering to lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against AIPAC officials. Much of Congress is beholden to the Israeli pressure group. Instead of taking note of this common practice — politicians coming to the rescue of their favored constituents at the expensive of those they were elected to represent — we should take note of the willingness of the NSA and FBI to make this information public. Somebody wanted Jane Harman out of the picture. The case is yet another example of how politics works in the District of Criminals. In exchange for help in getting espionage-related charges reduced against two AIPAC officials, a suspected Israeli agent pledged to lobby Nancy Pelosi, then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, according to CQ Politics. More specifically, the Los Angeles Times reveals, the caller told Harman Haim Saban would threaten to withhold campaign contributions from Pelosi unless Harman became committee chairwoman... “I’m a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel,” Saban told Forbes in 2003. Harman’s office told the Associated Press she “never contacted the Justice Department about its prosecution of present or former AIPAC employees, and the Justice Department never informed her that she was or is the subject of or involved in an investigation.” In a statement, Harman attempted to change the subject. “If there is anything about this story that should arouse concern it is that the Bush administration may have been engaged in electronic surveillance of members of the congressional intelligence committees.” Harman didn’t bother to mention the fact she had leaned on the New York Times in order to get the newspaper to hold off on publishing an article on the unconstitutional NSA wiretap program. “Harman is a poster child for what has been wrong with Congress for the last 8 years,” writes George Washington’s Blog. She needs to be brought up on ethics and bribery charges immediately and drummed out of Congress. If the AIPAC operatives are convicted, treason charges against Harman should not be ruled out.
video update: harman wiretap story is real life spy thriller from raw replay: CQPolitics.com reported that Rep. Jane Harman was caught on NSA wiretaps offering to intervene in the case of an accused spy. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow explains how the case compares to classic movie plotlines. This video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Apr. 21, 2009.
obama's approach to protecting 'state secrets' at issue from washington post: Civil liberties advocates are accusing the Obama administration of forsaking campaign rhetoric and adopting the same expansive arguments that his predecessor used to cloak some of the most sensitive intelligence-gathering programs of the Bush White House. The first signs have come just weeks into the new administration, in a case filed by an Oregon charity suspected of funding terrorism. President Obama's Justice Department not only sought to dismiss the lawsuit by arguing that it implicated "state secrets," but also escalated the standoff - proposing that government lawyers might take classified documents from the court's custody to keep the charity's representatives from reviewing them. The suit by the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation has proceeded further than any other in challenging the use of warrantless wiretaps, threatening to expose the inner workings of that program. It is the second time the new Justice Department has followed its predecessors in claiming the state-secrets privilege, which would allow the government to exclude evidence in a civil case on grounds that it jeopardizes national security.
obama doesn’t talk like bush, he just acts like him from ted rall: You can’t blame Dick Cheney for being annoyed at Barack Obama. Obama is closing Guantánamo. He’s ordering the CIA to interrogate prisoners according to the rules written in the Army Field Manual, which doesn’t allow torture. He’s even phasing out such classic Bushian phrases as “enemy combatant” and “war on terror.” But the dark prince of neoconservatism should relax. Obama’s inaugural address may have promised to “reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” but — in all the ways that matter — he’s keeping all of Bush’s outrageous policies in place. Sure, he talks a good game about “moving forward.” But nothing has really changed. From reading your e-mails to asserting the right to assassinate American citizens to bailing out companies whose executives pay themselves big bonuses, Obama’s changes are nothing but toothless rhetoric.
obama nominates former freddie exec as 'housing commissioner' from cnsnews: President Barack Obama has named a former Freddie Mac executive to head the federal housing commission. The White House on Monday named David Stevens as assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The position requires Senate confirmation and would put Stevens in charge of the government's housing mortgage-insurance program. Stevens now is the head of Long and Foster Companies, a real estate and mortgage firm. He previously worked at World Savings bank and Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. At Freddie Mac, Stevens was a senior vice president in charge of affordable lending, sales and marketing.
obama opens secret laboratories to germany (like truman & the paperclip nazis?) from spiegel: The Americans have always kept their research into anti-terrorism technologies top secret - until now. A new treaty between Germany and the US will give German scientists access to highly restricted laboratories. It was a productive start to the week for US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and German Research Minister Annette Schavan. The two women met at 7:15 a.m. on Monday for breakfast at a five-star hotel in Berlin to discuss one of the most explosive issues in the era of international terrorism: How can the population and infrastructure be protected against catastrophic attacks without Western democracies being turned into Orwellian regimes? ... The research offensive began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and has been fueled with huge sums of money ever since. Universities, companies and secret laboratories are carrying out research into highly sensitive surveillance cameras, bomb detectors, biometric analysis software and vaccines against biological weapons, among other things. Until now, neither the general public nor the governments of the US's Western allies have learned much about the contents of that research.
...and now, a few twisted tales of the coming cyberwar...
nsa chief continues bid to take over cybersecurity from threat level: In the wake of the resignation on Friday of National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) Director Rod Beckstrom over concerns that the National Security Agency plans to take over government cybersecurity efforts, comes an announcement that NSA Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander will be giving the keynote address at this year's RSA security conference. The talk is being billed as an explanation about why cybersecurity is a national security issue. The release says Alexander will be talking about "how the Internet enables cyber criminals and others in conducting targeted attacks and what can be done to combat this threat." The Bush Administration frequently tried to equate crime on the internet with national security to gather support for its interest in monitoring internet activities. Alexander's RSA talk will likely continue this trend and serve to bolster the NSA's efforts to wrest control of the government's cybersecurity efforts from the Department of Homeland Security, a prospect that concerns civil liberties advocates, given the NSA's acknowledged warrantless domestic wiretapping program and allegations that the agency also secretly tapped domestic internet communications without a warrant. Last month, Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair told Congress that the NSA, rather than the DHS which currently oversees cybersecurity, should take over the government's cybersecurity efforts. A week later, Beckstrom, DHS's current cybersecurity chief, tendered his resignation. [980kb PDF]
outgoing dhs cyber chief expands on why he resigned from threat level: In an interview with Forbes on Monday, Beckstrom said, "In intelligence environments like the NSA, you seek out and gather information, and then you classify it. It's the opposite of collaboration." He added that "there are companies that are comfortable working in classified environments, and there are those that aren't. That would be one reason to support a credible, civilian, independent component like the NCSC. Otherwise, we'd lose those relationships we gained by bringing [these companies] into the fold." In his resignation letter, Beckstrom said the NSA is trying to move the NCSC to its base at Ft. Meade in Maryland, a move he opposes on grounds that it would concentrate too much authority in one place. "The issue is that we have a federated government, decentralized for a reason," Beckstrom told Forbes. "Our founding fathers never believed that power should be concentrated in one place. And what today is more powerful than information?"
nsa dominance of cybersecurity would lead to 'grave peril' from threat level: The government's national cybersecurity efforts would be in "grave peril" if they were dominated by the intelligence community, said Amit Yoran, former head of the Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division. Yoran told a House subcommittee on Tuesday that although the Department of Homeland Security, which currently oversees the government's cybersecurity efforts, has demonstrated "inefficiency and leadership failure" in those efforts, moving the cyber mission to the National Security Agency "would be ill-advised" due to the agency's lack of transparency. Two weeks ago, Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair told the House intelligence committee that the NSA should take over government cybersecurity duties, because the agency has the smarts and the skills for the job. But Yoran, who served at one time as CEO of In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, said a cyber program overseen by the NSA would be over-classified and lack adequate oversight and review, which is needed to gain the trust of the public and private-sector partners who will be needed to secure the nation's infrastructure. "One of the hard lessons learned from the Terrorist Surveillance Program is that such a limited review can lead to ineffective legal vetting of a program," Yoran said. "The cyber mission cannot be plagued by the same flaws as the TSP." Yoran's comments echoed those made by Rod Beckstrom, the DHS' current cyber chief who tendered his resignation last week in part over concerns about the NSA assuming a leading role in the government's cybersecurity plan.
chas freeman pulls his appointment from thinkprogress: A new statement from Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair’s office: "Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair announced today that Ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. has requested that his selection to be Chairman of the National Intelligence Council not proceed. Director Blair accepted Ambassador Freeman’s decision with regret." Freeman’s appointment was met by strong right-wing outrage, provoking a “fierce behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign to torpedo the appointment.” The Wonk Room’s Matt Duss noted that Freeman voiced “some inconvenient truths about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and represent[ed] a challenge to the treasured neoconservative myth that US and Israeli interests are identical.” Today, Blair defended Freeman’s appointment under questioning from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT).
freeman slams 'israel lobby' from huffington post: [Here] is Chas Freeman's full statement following his decision not to serve as National Intelligence Council chairman.
exiting, chas freeman attacks 'israel lobby' from abcnews: In an angry cable to Foreign Policy, Chas Freeman - the now-former nominee to chair the National Intelligence Council - attacks the "Israel Lobby" he says is behind a "barrage of libelous distortions" and says his sandbagged career in the Obama administration "will be seen by many to raise serious questions about whether the Obama administration will be able to make its own decisions about the Middle East and related issues."
fair use notice: this site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. we are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, & social justice issues, etc. we believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US copyright law. In accordance with title 17 usc section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
from dpa: Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich was on Monday found guilty on 17 of 20 corruption charges in connection with trying to sell the Senate seat held by US President Barack Obama before he took office. Blagojevich was found guilty last year of making false statements to federal investigators, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the other counts, setting the stage for a second trial.
.jpg "out w/the old & in w/ the old, the left/right charade goes on - on obama's election anniversary, repugs claim victory")
