http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/post/agencies-poorly-tra...

Agencies poorly track FOIA requests, report says
By Ed O'Keefe

Obama made government transparency concerns a top priority of his early days as president. (J. Scott Applewhite - AP) Eleven of 17 Cabinet-level agencies fail to fully comply with federal law requiring complete inventories of public records requests, and most large agencies earn a subpar grade for records management, according to a new congressional report.

The report, set for release Thursday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is meant to draw attention to government transparency issues during this year’s Sunshine Week, an annual event designed to raise awareness about access to public records.

The report does not probe how often agencies grant or deny Freedom of Information Act requests, but instead focuses on a key facet of FOIA law requiring agencies to track every request made by people or organizations for public information. The committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), asked 100 large and small federal agencies to provide information on their FOIA tracking systems. Each agency received a letter grade based on a seven-point criteria, including whether agencies produced digitized records that included the date of a request, the name of the requester and a description of the information requested.

“A number of agencies demonstrated that they are able to track basic information about requests, while others either would not or could not provide such information as requested,” the report said. The fact that several agencies “struggle to demonstrate transparency about very basic information is troubling and necessitates greater scrutiny.”

Under question from Sen. Sessions at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey indicated that "international permission," rather than Congressional approval, provided a 'legal basis' for military action by the United States.

http://youtu.be/5zNwOeyuG84

FBI Director: I Have to Check to See If Obama Has the Right to Assassinate Americans On U.S. Soil

Who is Ken, or Kenneth, Wainstein?

Monday, 5. March 2012

9/11 Questions Bubble Up in the Media

On Friday February 24, Boiling Frogs posted an article titled “Media Sleepwalks, While History is in the Making.” Three articles had come out the week before, one in the London Daily Telegraph and two in the Florida-based Broward Bulldog, raising important new questions about the crimes of September 11, 2001 and the quality of the government’s investigation. In particular, these articles discussed new information and questions coming from former Senator Robert Graham, questions relating to secret documents that Graham described as running at odds with past government assertions in the 9/11 investigation. These three articles also raised new questions about the role of the government of Saudi Arabia.

The Feb 24 Boiling Frogs post discussed those three articles, and noted that there hadn’t been a single article in the mainstream media on the issues they raised, even though a week had gone by. The post then asked if a valid prediction market could be established for the date when the media would wake up.

Political prediction markets have a very interesting history. One of the difficulties in having a successful market, a market that people trust, is related to a similar issue in futures markets. Futures contracts need to be specified carefully and clearly, and remain free of ambiguous legal interpretation.

Suddenly, the “Saudi-9/11 connection” is on the table for the media. But it certainly wasn’t, for the longest time.

Our story about apparent Saudi royal ties to the 9/11 hijackers caused a minor sensation via social media sharing when it came out in September, 2011, but was resolutely ignored by virtually all news organizations, including the vaunted online “alternative media.” Not surprisingly, the traditional corporate-owned mainstream media (MSM) managed to ignore the massive revelations—even though they were documented in exactly the same manner that the traditional media uses, and they were on a topic of tremendous importance and public interest.

We know they ignored it because we know them, and we sent it to them. And we heard that it would be and was being ignored. They were only willing to do maudlin, “human interest” stories for the 10^th anniversary of this monumental and still-mysterious event.

Now, however, the MSM has suddenly found a “safe” way into the dark underbelly: Let officials’ statements pave the route. Here’s the New York Times:

Read the Full Story: http://whowhatwhy.com/2012/03/05/medias-belated-acknowledgment-of-saudi-...

Article by John Bursill

Unfortunately it now appears that a war between the US and it's allies with Iran is imminent. By any military analysts assessment this has a real chance of changing the current multi-theatre war against terrorism and so called rogue/terrorist states into a real World War III scenario!

Following the Main Stream Media (MSM) in the west over the last few months, you would be sensing that many things have happened to support the war with Iran rationale, hearing that Iran wants a Nuclear bomb and would be prepared to use it against Israel and the US. Other alarming stories include Iran trading in weapons with "rogue states", Iran killing innocent people abroad, Iran's President is insane and wants to "wipe Israel off the map", Iran has been involved in terrorist plots/bombings and may attack inside the US and Iran is trading drugs. The list of baseless accusation goes on and on.

People from around the world came together at Ryerson University in Toronto, on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, to present evidence challenging the official accounts of that day. A DVD of the proceeding of the "Toronto Hearings" is nearly complete. Here is a preview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbVQvteP0rQ

http://911truthnews.com/stratfor-imam-of-ground-zero-mosque-is-an-fbi-op...

One of the first juicy bits to trickle out of the Wikileaks release of 5 million Stratfor emails is the comment from Fred Burton, Stratfor's Vice President of Intelligence, that the Imam of the controversial so-called Ground Zero mosque is an "FBI operational asset." Burton, who was formerly a special agent with the US State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and the Deputy Chief of their counterterrorism division, made the comment on an email chain regarding a New York Observer article, Untangling the Bizarre CIA Links to the Ground Zero Mosque. The controversy surrounding the "Ground Zero mosque" overwhelmingly dominated the news and discussion surrounding the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

RELATED:
Hate Rally at Ground Zero

Posted on February 24, 2012
By Kevin Ryan

The Kuwaiti-American Corporation (KuwAm), parent company of World Trade Center (WTC) security company Stratesec, had some interesting links to royalty in both Iran and Kuwait.  Some of the company’s directors also had connections to U.S. intelligence agencies and at least one was associated with the CIA-funded terrorist financing network that included BCCI.  Through these links we can see that the origins of the War on Terror are related to the origins of the first Gulf War, and to a private network of covert operatives that stretches back for generations.

After the 1993 bombing, a company called Stratesec was responsible for the overall integration of the new WTC security system.  In the few years leading up to 9/11, Stratesec also had contracts to provide security services for United Airlines, which owned two of the planes that were destroyed on 9/11, and Dulles Airport where American Airlines Flight 77 took off.

Stratesec’s board of directors included Marvin Bush, the brother of George W. Bush, and Wirt Dexter Walker III, a distant relative of the Bush brothers.[1]  Marvin Bush joined the board of Stratesec after meeting members of the Al Sabah family on a trip to Kuwait with his father in April 1993.  During this trip, the Kuwaiti royals displayed enormous gratitude to the elder Bush for having saved their country from Saddam Hussein only two years earlier.

But the Bush-Kuwaiti connection went back much farther, to 1959, when the Kuwaitis helped to fund Bush’s start-up company, Zapata Off-Shore.  As a CIA business asset during this time, Bush and his company worked directly with the anti-Castro Cuban groups in Miami before and after the Bay of Pigs invasion.[2]

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/evidence-mounting-9-11-first-responde...
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Tuesday, February 21, 2012, 4:00 AM
WARGA, CRAIG/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Joseph Zadroga fought for the bill that bears his son’s name. But will it cover first responders who fell ill with cancer?

The director of Mount Sinai Medical Center’s World Trade Center health program is preparing to publish a study that will show elevated risks of cancer among 9/11 rescue and recovery workers.

A leading authority on the illnesses suffered by Ground Zero responders, Dr. Philip Landrigan says that an analysis of 20,000 medical case histories revealed an incidence of cancer that is 14% higher than expected for a population of the same profile. The most common elevations were in prostate, thyroid and blood cancers.

Landrigan’s findings add to the evidence that the toll from service on or around The Pile, bad as that toll has been, will significantly worsen with time. Research by fire department doctors previously had found a 19% higher cancer rate among FDNY members who’d been at Ground Zero than among those who hadn’t.

It has been well-established that exposure to airborne toxins in the smoke and dust that shrouded Ground Zero produced respiratory, heart and gastrointestinal damage. And medical experts have feared from the start that cancers, which develop slowly, would emerge.

February 20, 2012 Russia Today News

http://youtu.be/j1sYlW5al_4

http://rt.com/about/on-air-talent/alyona-minkovski/
http://rt.com/programs/alyona-show/

*h/t to Rage_Against_Machine

MEDIA ROOTS – This is the re-release of a special 2 hour 20 minute episode of Media Roots Radio about 9/11, now fully sourced and transcribed below. In this edition, Abby and Robbie Martin introduce how their political awakenings were prompted by 9/11, and break apart the official government and corporate media narrative of the 9/11 attacks by discussing the foreknowledge, government complicity, and gross inconsistencies regarding every aspect of the events. The show then delves into the aftermath: the psychological manipulation of the American psyche and the significance that this event continues to have in our nation and world.

***

By Anthony Summers, Neil Tweedie and Dan Christensen in Miami
The Daily Telegraph - February 18th, 2012

A Saudi Arabian accused of associating with several of the September 11 hijackers and who disappeared from his home in the United States a few weeks before the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, is in London working for his country’s state oil company.

Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife Anoud left three cars at their luxurious home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida — one of them new — and flew to Saudi Arabia in August 2001. The refrigerator was full of food; furniture and clothing were left behind; and the swimming pool water was still circulating.

Security records of cars passing through a checkpoint at the Prestancia gated community indicated that Mr al-Hijji’s home, 4224 Escondito Circle, had been visited a number of times by Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 19-strong hijack team, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in 2001.

The logs also indicated that Marwan Al-Shehhi, who crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower, and Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, had visited the house.

All three men had trained to fly at Venice Airport, which is 19 miles from Sarasota.

A US counter-terrorist agent told The Daily Telegraph: “The registration numbers of vehicles that had passed through the Prestancia community’s north gate in the months before 9/11, coupled with the identification documents shown by incoming drivers on request, showed that Mohamed Atta and several of his fellow hijackers, and another Saudi suspect still at large, had visited 4224 Escondito Circle.”