National security

Is America Any Safer 15 Years After 9/11? - The Atlantic & CBS

Published on Aug 9, 2016 "CBS This Morning"
As we approach the 15th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, fear remains.
A CBS News poll taken in June after the shooting rampage in Orlando found two-thirds of Americans think a terror attack is very or somewhat likely in the next few months.
Author Steven Brill spent a year investigating the estimated trillion-dollar security state, built since 9/11. Brill joins "CBS This Morning" to discuss his latest cover story in The Atlantic, titled, "Are we any safer?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kotQl4H76_0

Bin Laden Photo Release: We Are Damned if They Do, Damned if They Don't

 

Brian Romanoff        Nor Cal Truth        Apr 28, 2012 

 

 

The Bin Laden saga continues. 

Almost one year ago exactly, Obama came onto live TV late at night to announce that Usama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan raid by US Marines. 

The decade's biggest scam By Glenn Greenwald

The decade's biggest scam By Glenn Greenwald

The Los Angeles Times examines the staggering sums of money expended on patently absurd domestic "homeland security" projects: $75 billion per year for things such as a Zodiac boat with side-scan sonar to respond to a potential attack on a lake in tiny Keith County, Nebraska, and hundreds of "9-ton BearCat armored vehicles, complete with turret" to guard against things like an attack on DreamWorks in Los Angeles. All of that -- which is independent of the exponentially greater sums spent on foreign wars, occupations, bombings, and the vast array of weaponry and private contractors to support it all -- is in response to this mammoth, existential, the-single-greatest-challenge-of-our-generation threat:

"The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism.

Scanners - The Prequel

Michael Collins

How did we get to the point of full body scans at airports, the massive personal intrusion that represents, and the tens of millions spent for machines that irradiate us as a consequence of merely flying from here to there?

The proximate cause is the attempted bombing of a December 25, 2009 Northwest airlines flight. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, an engineering student, attempted to mix, then detonate a bomb as Northwest Flight 253 from Amsterdam made its descent to Detroit's Metropolitan Airport. Mr. Abdulmutallab somehow got on the flight with the chemicals undetected, hidden in his underwear. (Image)

Bush Declares National Emergency June 26, Media Blackout

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/06/20080626-4.html

Executive Order: Continuing Certain Restrictions with Respect to North Korea and North Korean Nationals

White House News
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.) (NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,

Film Exposes the Seduction of Secrecy

By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor
http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=hsnews-000002721511&parm1=5&cpage=1

"Eight years later came 9/11, famously labeled a failure to “connect the dots.” Eyewash. The CIA, FBI and others had dots. They hoarded them like marbles."

So, was the "failure to prevent" an intentional act to further an agenda, as well as treason and mass murder by US policy makers- or more like manslaughter, only involving "incompetence", criminal negligence, dereliction of duty and horrendous administrative and policy decisions rooted in ignorance, territoriality, ego, partisanship, spite, suspicion- or just the inevitable, "blameless" result an institutionalized culture of secrecy that "supposedly" has been changed? Instead of pursuing these questions, he continues with secrecy issues, the subject of the film being reviewed (in CQ Politics). Article has a nice summary of the bin Laden satellite phone-1998 NSA leak publication-Bush propaganda. In reference to abuse of secrecy:

"Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? A government of men, as it were, not laws.

FBI Backs Off From Secret Order for Data After Lawsuit (Internet Archive)

Was this for your info, 911veritas?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/07/AR2008050703808.html

The FBI has withdrawn a secret administrative order seeking the name, address and online activity of a patron of the Internet Archive after the San Francisco-based digital library filed suit to block the action.

It is one of only three known instances in which the FBI has backed off from such a data demand, known as a "national security letter," or NSL, which is not subject to judicial approval and whose recipient is barred from disclosing the order's existence.

NSLs are served on phone companies, Internet service providers and other electronic communications service providers, but because of the gag order provision, the public has little way to know about them. Their use soared after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, when Congress relaxed the standard for their issuance. FBI officials now issue about 50,000 such orders a year.

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