By Larry Johnson
closeAuthor: Larry Johnson
Name: Larry Johnson
Email: larry_johnson@earthlink.net
Site: http://NoQuarterUSA.net
About: Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm with expertise combating terrorism and investigating money laundering. Mr. Johnson works with US military commands in scripting terrorism exercises, briefs on terrorist trends, and conducts undercover investigations on counterfeiting, smuggling and money laundering.
Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism, is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management.
Mr. Johnson has analyzed terrorist incidents for a variety of media including the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, ABC's Nightline, NBC's Today Show, the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. Mr. Johnson has authored several articles for publications, including Security Management Magazine, the New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. He has lectured on terrorism and aviation security around the world, including the Center for Research and Strategic Studies at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France. He represented the U.S. Government at the July 1996 OSCE Terrorism Conference in Vienna, Austria.
From 1989 until October 1993, Larry Johnson served as a Deputy Director in the U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism. He managed crisis response operations for terrorist incidents throughout the world and he helped organize and direct the US Government’s debriefing of US citizens held in Kuwait and Iraq, which provided vital intelligence on Iraqi operations following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Mr. Johnson also participated in the investigation of the terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103. Under Mr. Johnson’s leadership the U.S. airlines and pilots agreed to match the US Government’s two million-dollar reward.
From 1985 through September 1989 Mr. Johnson worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. During his distinguished career, he received training in paramilitary operations, worked in the Directorate of Operations, served in the CIA’s Operation’s Center, and established himself as a prolific analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence. In his final year with the CIA he received two Exceptional Performance Awards.
Mr. Johnson is a member of the American Society for Industrial Security. He taught at The American University’s School of International Service (1979-1983) while working on a Ph.D. in political science. He has a M.S. degree in Community Development from the University of Missouri (1978), where he also received his B.S. degree in Sociology, graduating Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1976.See Authors Posts (889) on December 20, 2007 at 9:35 PM in Current Affairs
The key question surrounding torture tape gate is not who authorized the destruction of the tapes in 2005. Nope. The real priority is who in the Bush Administration knowingly lied to a Federal Judge in the spring of 2003. Either the CIA told DOJ the truth and DOJ lied or the CIA lied to DOJ or the White House directed DOJ to lie. It is that simple.
The fun started on 7 May 2003 during a CIPA (i.e., Classified Information Procedures Act) hearing presided over by Judge Leonie Brinkema. She ordered the government to determine if interrogations of suspected terrorists were recorded. Two days later, 9 May 2003, Judge Leonie Brinkema asked, “whether the interrogations are being recorded in any format”? The Department of Justice, based on info from the CIA, said “NO”. (see p. 4 of letter to Federal Judges by U.S. attorneys Novak and Raskin).
There are at least two felonies here–obstruction of justice and lying to a federal law enforcement official. Someone who worked for John Ashcroft, the Attorney General at the time, certainly was in touch with the U.S. Attorneys who fielded this question from Judge Brinkema. And the Department of Justice asked the C.I.A. I will bet you dollars to donuts that the White House also was in the loop on this. At least Harriet Miers, Gonzo, and Addington. Who would they talk to at the CIA?
George Tenet, Director? Yes. CIA General Counsel? Certainly. The guy in charge of spies in the field–the DDO Jim Pavitt? Probably. This was not some obscure legal point. This was a high priority matter. Someone (or several someones, i.e. a conspiracy) at the CIA or the Department of Justice lied. And Federal Judges like Brinkema don’t like being lied to. Gives them a case of the cherry ass.
When the CIA affirms to the court in November of 2005 that there are no tapes, that may have been a true statement at the time. If the tapes were destroyed in June or July then it was a factual statement. The real crime starts in 2003. Funny, but then Deputy Director of the CIA, John McLaughlin, has been quiet as a church mouse of late. Ditto for Tenet and Pavitt. With reason. Someone lied.
White House involvement in the CIA’s decision to destroy videotapes documenting severe interrogation techniques of suspected terrorists could constitute as many as six crimes, according to constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Turley_At_least_six_crimes_in_1219.html
I believed this was big and it has legs but with what you’ve told us Larry, it’s even bigger. Thanks for the perspective.
Cee.
Good catch.
I love Turley! I remember when he wrote the following article back in 2002!
I didn’t see him on television for a loooooong time after that.
He’s baaaaack!
Camps for US Citizens?: Ashcroft’s Hellish Vision
Attorney general shows himself as a menace to liberty
Republished from: LA Times 08/14/02: Jonathon Turley
Original Link: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-turley14aug14.story [No longer available]
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft’s announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be “enemy combatants” has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace.
Cee,
Common Dreams has copy of article from LA Times:
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0814-05.htm
Thanks Nellie. I printed this out long ago.
Chertoff Concealed Role in Tape Destruction
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Wednesday 19 December 2007
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff advised the CIA between 2002 and 2003 that its agents had the legal authority to use techniques that included waterboarding on one of the agency’s so-called “high level detainees,” according to a little-known report published in January 2005.
That interrogation was videotaped and the tape later was destroyed
Chertoff was head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division when CIA officials inquired whether its agents could be charged with violating the federal anti-torture statute for employing interrogation methods such as waterboarding. The tactic causes detainees to slowly drown, and is generally terminated before the detainees die.
“The CIA was seeking to determine the legal limits of interrogation practices for use in cases like that of Abu Zubaydah, the Qaeda lieutenant who was captured in March 2002,” says a January 29, 2005, New York Times story. That story quoted unnamed sources who told the newspaper that “Chertoff was directly involved in these discussions, in effect evaluating the legality of techniques proposed by the CIA by advising the agency whether its employees could go ahead with proposed interrogation methods without fear of prosecution.”
During his Senate confirmation hearing in February 2005, Chertoff maintained that he provided the CIA broad guidance in response to its questions about interrogation methods and never specifically addressed the legality regarding waterboarding or other techniques.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/politics/29home.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Chertoff is busy again. Criticize the criminals while you can.
DHS finalizing plans to turn spy satellites on Americans
Quote
DHS finalizing plans to turn spy satellites on Americans
Published on Thursday, December 20, 2007. Congress has not been updated since civil liberties concerns delayed satellite spying
A plan to dramatically widen US law enforcement agencies’ access to data from powerful spy satellites is moving toward implementation, as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff expects to finalize a charter for the program this week, according to a new report.
Chertoff insists the scheme to turn spy satellites — that were originally designed for foreign surveillance — on Americans is legal, although a House committee that would approve the program has not been updated on the program for three months.
“We still haven’t seen the legal framework we requested or the standard operation procedures on how the NAO will actually be run,” House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie G. Thompson tells the Wall Street Journal.
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message477710/pg1
Baby Skynet. If you can Google Earth, it means that its been going on for sometime, probably since 9/11. Imagine the “destroyed tapes” from this program.
This from the guy who reviewed torture policy for DOJ-CIA.
SO I can really rest assured…
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119812248622741723.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news
I’m starting to feel like Will Smith in Enemy of the State!
I heard DHS is tracking Santa’s sleigh this year instead of NORAD.
Larry, I believe Chertoff has dual citizenship with another, um, *cough*, country. Along with many, many other neocons.
Might consider doing a piece on that.
As if Chertoff “really” belongs in the Mediterranean! By the way, does he look like Tweety Bird or is it just me?
Tweety is cute.
It seems a great time to paint, “F**K BUSH!” or other pithy sentiments atop white-colored vehicles (delivery trucks, RV’s) in the middle of the night, just to keep the little Rodneys in the Peep and Snoop Departments hunched over their consoles.
Too bad that Taggers are, as a group, so illiterate. Imagine what a contribution of a few cases of black spray paint would do in this effort. Sort of like the Freeway Blogger gone Vertical.
Larry,
You want to bet dollars to donuts that these same White House lawyers are part of the team that changed EXECUTIVE ORDER 12958 and EXECUTIVE ORDER 13292?
All so they could silence the CIA by outing Plame ans all her follow spys?
*spies
Excellent pick up, Larry. It looks like the pieces are slowing coming together. It is so sad that so much damage has been done throughout the world by this handful of traitorous buzzards… They will give their mother over to the devil to save their own sweet ass when the time comes. They have no honor, and no mercy should be shown to any of them…
Well, mercy maybe. But no quarter, definitely!
I agree with you! Moving much too slowly!
If there are any copies around perhaps, giving one to Robert Greenwald who made ‘Iraq for Sale’, Michael Moore, the ‘right’ people at the UN, CNN International (according to Eurpoeans they have much more meat than American CNN) and CBC, BBC, And Australian Broadcasting - and somehow having all them agree to show them in a 2-3 day window of time, the Interantional pressure may help Congress get off their collect fat tushes and we can be rid of our problems.
If this wonderfully happens I am sure we will be hearing about the building expansion at the Hague!
I have a question of time lines regarding that pesky U.S. attorneys Novak and Raskin filing with the court.
If the following artical is correct, as reported, would it not stand to reason that they were briefed after the Judge asked about the tapes and not in 2004? These squatters at 1600 would have heard the Blackberrys going off well prior to Novak and Raskin filing with the court. So did Hayden give false testimony to the Senate?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/19/AR2007121900699.html
Hmmm Larry, as you’ve been saying, “torture is here - and that’s official”. Well actually it isn’t. This would be classed as a conspiracy and that would make us conspiracy theorists and plain potty.
The official truth invariably pays lip service to some important person in whose interest the truth be known. This means the truth can be utter fabrication and as journo’s are [generally] corporate chattle, I guess us conspiracy theorists are the only ones with balls enough to point out utter fabrication.
Thank goodness for the bloggers. Ok you meet the odd right or left wing nutter, but if you want a double serve of truth…..pure unadulterated with a cherry on top, thats the place to go.
Good article Larry, but we know when the going gets tough, the good and the true always grab a big cup of ’shut the fuck up’.
Cee, look they spent a fortune on those snoop satellites & apparantly they didn’t work too well in Iraq locating the point of origin for suicide car bombers, etc. So why let ‘em go to waste? Might as well aim ‘em at their fellow Americans. & don’t worry about any viable resistance from the dems, once Mikey explains how proficient they are in gun grabbin’ they’ll rubber stamp it. Plus it’s already going on.
look they spent a fortune on those snoop satellites & apparantly they didn’t work too well in Iraq locating the point of origin for suicide car bombers, etc.
If they used them for that, they couldn’t divide Iraq according to plan.
So why let ‘em go to waste? Might as well aim ‘em at their fellow Americans. & don’t worry about any viable resistance from the dems, once Mikey explains how proficient they are in gun grabbin’ they’ll rubber stamp it. Plus it’s already going on.
I totally agree. The dem voters won’t say a word because their party is doing it so it must be okay.
Btw…Kosovo is heating up again.
Cee, the 4th Amendment has been just about totally eviscerated, that’s why the dems always talk about “privacy” i.e. intimating the rights of the people in the 9th Amendment, rather than “security of the people….” in the 4th Amendment. Out of curiosity did you object to the millions of roving wire tapes used in the Clinton Administration? Note:the only pres canidate objecting to this crap is Ron Paul.
Damn right I did. I think I even commented on this list about how far back this invasion of our privacy has gone.
If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there’s a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country’s largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it’s run by the National Security Agency and four English-speaking allies: Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
The mission is to eavesdrop on enemies of the state: foreign countries, terrorist groups and drug cartels. But in the process, Echelon’s computers capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world.
http://cryptome.org/echelon-60min.htm
From the Newsdesk
The new technology at the root of the NSA wiretap scandal
By Jon Stokes | Published: December 20, 2005 - 12:38PM CT
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051220-5808.html
Cee, I don’t have any problem sending email within Europe. But something happens to email I send to the States. Fortunately, my Italian ISP lets me know when an email to the USA can’t be delivered. I assume it’s being intercepted or like you said, “captured” in some way. So what actually is happening? Does captured and screened mean it’s delivered after the screening or does it not get delivered at all?
Sometimes it is delivered. Other times not.
I don’t know why. Maybe you typed one of those bad words.
Did you ever see the list of words that would make you a target?
A list of 1,700 suspicious words have been listed on the Cipherwar site, for inclusion in e-mail, telephone or fax communications on Jam Echelon Day. The trigger words include hackers, encryption, espionage, secret service and Bletchley Park.
But Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, believes that sprinkling keywords within communications will not have an impact on the high-tech spy network.
“The Echelon system works on a very sophisticated system of word relationships, rather than strictly on keywords,” said Davies. “Powerful artificial-intelligence software is used to judge the relationship between words, and analyze strings of words.”
http://www.news.com/Activists-target-U.S.-surveillance-system/2100-1001_3-270655.html
read the book “nowhere to hide” and you’ll see just how far they have already gone.quite frightening.
we are commodity to these bastards , thats all, consumers and we are being fattened up for the feast.
Author please? There are several titles by that name. Thanks.
sorry I spaced…No place to hide by Robert O’Harrow
http://books.google.com/books?id=5gKOfsDAYsgC&dq=no+place+to+hide&pg=PP1&ots=fJL-vzqU9X&sig=KQmY5GwAQB-BIjehdltoS_T9yrM&hl=en&prev=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=no+place+to+hide&spell=1&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail
Thanks. Add that to the stack.
I work in IT and monitor an email server. My server is collecting about 20,000 spam emails a day. It’s like driving thru Kansas on warm summer night and believing you get through it with the wipers intact. The fact that 85% of email is crap and contains “seek and infiltrate” virals, is like the Powell Doctrine applied to the internet.
The “delivery headers” on these emails have gotten really funky in the last 2 years .Very few, if any, off the shelf solutions are available to combat 100 % of this. Microsoft Vista has an anti-piracy feature which requires it to “phone home” every 6 months and validate.
Out of 5 different vendor solutions, recently, only one found the infection on a compromised machine we had. That’s like a drug company marketing a pill to “cure” the “marker” they let out. The shear volume of spam increases the odds of infection.
So lets us say today you are in New York and within a 6 month period you are next in San Diego or Germany .The net effect of having to “check in” and the gleaning of any email routing table info, on the machine checking in, gives you a roadmap from A to B and the communication end points that occurred in between. If you think that it is only the Telco’s that are being “asked” to “be patriotic” consider the market share for Operating Systems that use the internet…..Add the Voice Recognition and you can correlate independent tracking points. Add the surveillance cameras, satellite and GPS emissions and you can get a biometric identification to go with the French Fries you did not know you ordered. Virtual Border fences move with the target and international borders, to use John Yoo’s term, are made “quaint”.
The real question this election cycle, given that this Genie is out of the bottle, is who we can trust the monster Bush has created, to use in the Constitutions defense and not for the profits of these global corporate carpet baggers who are spreading “democracy”.
Roving wiretaps during the Clinton Administration.
Any links? Any facts to back that claim?
Didn’t think so!
In 1998, in Austin, Texas, while George Bush was governor, I discovered little tapes inside a closet in the bedroom of my private home and inside the medical kit in the back-seat of my car. After the divorce, I reported this and other things about what was done to me during this divorce to the ACLU. They told me that it wasn’t that I didn’t have a case but that they were too busy to help me. A few nights ago, I was watching, “The Sopranos” and low and behold, when Pussy handed over the tape to the FBI agent he was working with, it was the exact same kind of tape that I found inside my private home.
Those Clintons were after you!
No. Clinton was in the White House — Washington, DC. This took place within five miles of the Texas governor’s house.
Sounds like Dumbya has some experience with wire tapping then, no surprise considering Rove was his main man for all those years.
correction: wire taps NOT tapes, although same concept
Wasn’t Chertoff one of the guys helping Kerrick ‘investigate’ 9-11 and secure ground zero?
Who would ever have thought, nay imagined, that he’d destroy evidence?
:-X
[...] Who Obstructed Justice? (by Larry Johnson at No Quarter) [O]n 7 May 2003 during a CIPA (i.e., Classified Information Procedures Act) hearing … Judge Leonie Brinkema … ordered the government to determine if interrogations of suspected terrorists were recorded. Two days later, 9 May 2003, Judge Leonie Brinkema asked, “whether the interrogations are being recorded in any format”? The Department of Justice, based on info from the CIA, said “NO”… There are at least two felonies here–obstruction of justice and lying to a federal law enforcement official. [...]
…..But in the process, Echelon’s computers capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world…..
…..RE: PRINCESS DIANA. When NSA extends the big drift net out there, it’s possible that they’re picking up more than just her conversation concerning land mines. What they do with that intelligence, who knows?…..
Oh, I know what they do with it. They come on your I/M and tell you they “read cards” and then proceed to tell you personal things about yourself that no-one else could possibly know. That’s what they do with it.
On 12-20 at 23:31, Ron England asks;
“You want to bet dollars to donuts that these same White House lawyers are part of the team that changed EXECUTIVE ORDER 12958 and EXECUTIVE ORDER 13292?”
I place my money on David Addington, described by Jane Meyer in an 3July06 New Yorker article as the “Hidden Power”.
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/62/20925
It is of the greatest significant, at least to me, that five days after the beginning of the Iraq Invasion on March 20, 2003–President Bush signed Executive Order 13292 which amended 12958, The changes are stunning. The final line-in/line-out version of Executive Order 13292, showing the changes made to the earlier EO 12958, seems to make it clear that the war powers began to flow into the VP’s office.
It looks like to me that EO 13292, more than any other mechanism, has given rise to the imperial VP and a unconstitutional and soulless foreign policy. And the more that I think about it, the more I am convinced that the neoconservative weltanschauung that gave us EO 13292 is the same as the one that gave us the 1998 essay “Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence (By which we do not mean Nous).
“By which we do not mean Nous”. I can only interpret such to connote “soulless”.
But the most recent NIE does give me hope.
Just to be a picky nitter that I am, let’s call “tapes” “recordings”. That way we don’t dismiss ones on the various servers they haven’t figured out how to find yet. Patriots may have renamed the file and are hiding them for a new justice department to investigate. When you see a criminal appointed and confirmed for AG, I can understand your reticence to reveal anything right now. The blow torch that is this administration cares nothing about any laws, so you best hide the facts from them so they aren’t destroyed again.
I can’t imagine how you folks in and from CIA can tolerate what is going on? Like any group in our country, there are a mixed bag of folks, but to have a government using you and abusing you must be a bit hard to stomach after a while. After years, what next? Are you going to help if they declare martial law?
slightly off topic…..
Wexler’s cheney impeachment petition 11:00 MST 12/21/07
124,000 and adding about 800-900 per hour.
Also just listened to Wexler on Blog radio from last night great speaker we should get behind this effort big time. its rather long but covers a lot of ground
listen to it here……
http://www.BlogTalkRadio.com/fpc/2007/12/21/The-Impeachment
I believe that by the time he takes this petition to the judiciary committee the second week of january
at this rate he could have between 400-500,000 signatures.
You know I have and continue to preach that Impeachment of this administration is the last and only hope for the saving the republic.
By Impeaching Cheney first Wexler’s theory that since no one likes Cheney it would be more acceptable than going after Bush and not be attacking (God help us) the leader of the free world.
Another interesting development is he along with two other Dems on the juducuary committee wrote an op piece which they tried to get the big papers, NYT WApo latimes, and USA Today etc to print, which of course they refused (so much for equal time and free speech).
Once the petition started getting signatures, these papers started get letters and emails asking why they wouldn’t print their oped and now some are starting to re-consider.
He suggests that anyone who rep is on the committee especially Democrats, to contact them and ask if they will sign a letter that Wexler will draft to Conyers asking him to have hearings.
Also any letters to the editors asking them to print
Wexler’s op ed would be helpful.
For your info here is a list of the Dems on the judiciary committee…
Democrat
Hon. Berman
(D) California, 28th
Hon. Boucher
(D) Virginia, 9th
Hon. Nadler
(D) New York, 8th
Hon. Scott
(D) Virginia, 3rd
Hon. Watt
(D) North Carolina, 12th
Hon. Lofgren
(D) California, 16th
Hon. Jackson Lee
(D) Texas, 18th
Hon. Waters
(D) California, 35th
Hon. Delahunt
(D) Massachusetts, 10th
Hon. Wexler
(D) Florida, 19th
Hon. Sánchez
(D) California, 39th
Hon. Cohen
(D) Tennessee, 9th
Hon. Johnson
(D) Georgia, 4th
Hon. Sutton
(D) Ohio, 13th
Hon. Gutierrez
(D) Illinois, 4th
Hon. Sherman
(D) California, 27
Hon. Baldwin
(D) Wisconsin, 2nd
Hon. Weiner
(D) New York, 9th
Hon. Schiff
(D) California, 29th
Hon. Davis
(D) Alabama , 7th
Hon. Wasserman Schultz
(D) Florida, 20th
Hon. Ellison
(D) Minnesota, 5th
RE: Hon. Wasserman Schultz, she gave an interview on the Ed Schultz Radio and said she would not do it. Political expediancy and lock stock with Conyers.
Let her know how much you care! We can do both.
Cheney must have pictures on both of them….
Hmm, who obstructed justice? How many guesses do we get?
IS THIS ODD?
What did the Cheney Junta of Right Wing Crypto-Fascists learn from Watergate? BURN THE TAPES!
For the remainder of the Cheney/Bush Junta’s term, assuming that they actually intend to cede the Unitary Executive on 1/20/09, there will be a continuing preoccupation with sanitizing all the records that might be used against them once they no longer hold the reins of power in a death grip. A veritable orgy of document destruction….tapes, hard drives, servers, logs, any records that could haunt their leisure years and their “legacy.”
And Little W will then issue blanket pardons to all Wingers/Neocons who participated in the wholesale distruction of our Constitution. The Democrats, with few exceptions, have no spine for the patriotic defense of our Republic against its true enemies….
What the hell is Impeachment for, if not to protect America from the continuing criminal conspiracy that used to be the Republican Party.
Impeach them, after intensive hearings, and then prosecute the whole bunch under the Ricco Statutes. Probably a good idea to seize their passports immediately following the the swearing in of Pres. Edwards or Pres. Clinton.