Putin Offers to Expand Plan for Missile Defense

Matthew Cavanaugh/European Pressphoto Agency

President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia headed to
lunch after a news conference in Kennebunkport, Me., on Monday.

KENNEBUNKPORT, Me., July 2 — Announcing he was “here to play,” President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said today that he was ready to expand his proposal for a shared missile defense system with the United States during meetings with President Bush here, a step that he said would take American-Russian relations to a new level of cooperation.

But the system would be based almost entirely in the former Soviet Union, and Mr. Putin’s proposal represented a continued rejection of an American plan to base it in the Czech Republic and Poland.

And the proposal seemed likely to lead to still more haggling over a joint missile defense plan after a set of meetings at the Bush family compound here that had been portrayed as an attempt to smooth over differences that both sides consider to be the most daunting since the cold war ended.

“We support the idea of consultations on missile defense and believe that the number of participants should be expanded to include the European states,” Mr. Putin said during a brief news conference here today. “This should be done within Russia-NATO council.”

Mr. Putin, who had proposed only weeks ago that the United States place its antimissile system in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, said he did not believe it was necessary to install it in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Mr. Bush, who smiled through much of the news conference, described in his own words the talk of “a regional approach to missile defense,” then added, “I’m in strong agreement with that concept.”

But Mr. Putin’s proposal seemed to catch the Americans by surprise to some degree, although Mr. Bush made it clear that he still intended to pursue plans for missile radar instillations in the Czech Republic and Poland. “I think the Czech Republic and Poland need to be an integral part of the system,” he said.

The two met in this serene, seaside setting with the intention of smoothing over the deep wrinkles that have developed in their relationship during the past six years. But they approached reporters with an air of grimness that only broke when they discussed their morning fishing trip, during which Mr. Putin caught a fish. (Mr. Bush and his father caught none during three outings this weekend.)

Mr. Putin’s new suggestions for the missile defense system came in spite of Russian officials’ statements — offered as late as 10 p.m. Sunday — that he would offer no new proposals this weekend.

It was unclear where exactly the two leaders’ discussions left the issue. The United States has been negotiating with Poland and the Czech Republic over its plans to place missile defense bases in those countries, but American officials were taken aback by the ferocity of Russian opposition to those plans. That opposition was one the many factors that led to the Kennebunkport meeting.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin today also emphasized their common concerns about the Iranian nuclear program.

“We discussed a variety of ways to continue sending a joint message,” Mr. Bush said.

“When Russia and the United States speak along the same lines, it tends to have an effect, and therefore I appreciate the Russians’ attitude in the United Nations,” he said. “We’re close on recognizing that we got to work together to send a common message.”

Mr. Putin predicted that “we will continue to be successful” as the United Nations Security Council seeks ways to pressure the government in Tehran to halt a uranium enrichment program that Iranian leaders insist is peaceful but which other nations fear could lead to Iran’s developing nuclear weapons.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin left unclear whether they had agreed on any new approach toward Iran — with which Russia has major economic relations — or simply had found a way to imply a more comfortable unity.

Security Council members are weighing an American proposal for sanctions against Iran if it continues to enrich uranium. The United States and Russia, along with the other permanent members of the Security Council, have said they will delay those sanctions if Iran stops its work as they attempt to revive negotiations over the nuclear program.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin made their comments came toward the end of a two-day visit in Kennebunkport. It was the first time the current president had invited a head of state to the family estate here. The meeting was crafted to give Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin the most comfortable and relaxed possible setting to deal with a series of issues dividing the two powers, from Iran to the Middle East and Kosovo.

Earlier today, with former President George H.W. Bush at the wheel, the two leaders took a 90-minute spin in a powerful speedboat near the shoreline around the oceanfront estate.

As they spoke, the current President Bush in particular looked at ease, frequently smiling. He wore a striped long-sleeve blue shirt open at the collar, while Mr. Putin sported a white short-sleeve shirt, also open at the collar.

“We had a good, casual discussion,” Mr. Bush said. “There’ve been times we agreed on issues and times we haven’t agreed.” But he asserted that Mr. Putin had been “consistent, transparent, honest” and open to discussing both opportunities and problems.

Mr. Bush said the men had discussed a wide range of issues in what had been a “very long, strategic dialogue.”

Mr. Putin said he was “pleased to note that we are seeking the points of coincidence in our positions and very frequently we did find them.”

He thanked Mr. Bush for “a very nice fishing party this morning.”

But the smiles and warm words stood in uneasy juxtaposition with months of uncommonly chilly rhetoric from the Russian president and some of his aides — climaxing with Russian warnings that if the United States proceeded to build the missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia might “target” those American allies.

Starting early this year, Mr. Putin has assailed American “unilateralism,” said an “ideology of confrontation and extremism” was emerging global threats, and even — though the Kremlin later denied it — seemed to compare the United States to the Third Reich and to some of the darker days of Stalinism.

Diplomatic analysts believe such language is not unconnected to the approach of parliamentary elections in Russia in December and the nation’s presidential elections three months later.

Source: The New York Times.

Comment: I hope for Mr. Bush can complete one of his last negotiations with an agreement between the former enemies (regarding the Cold War, with the MiG-31, MiG-25, F-106, F-101,…), being the U.S.A. and the Russian Federation…

Bush, good luck…

Never give up.

technorati tags:Putin, Bush, POTUS, USA, Russia, U.S.A, U.S., US, United, States, of, America, Cold, War, negotiations, negotiation

4 Held in Scottish Attack as British See Broader Plot

A vehicle burned on Saturday after it hit a section of Glasgow Airport.

LONDON, Sunday, July 1 — British officials raised the country’s terrorism threat alert to its highest level on Saturday after two men slammed an S.U.V. into entrance doors at Glasgow Airport and turned the vehicle into a potentially lethal fireball.

Less than 38 hours earlier the police uncovered two cars in London rigged to explode with gasoline, gas canisters and nails.

Early Sunday, after a day of fast-moving developments, the London police announced that two people had been arrested in Cheshire, in northwest England, “in connection with the events in London and Scotland.”

The arrests were in addition to those of the two occupants of the blazing car at Glasgow Airport. A witness to the attack said on BBC television that one of the car’s occupants had been ablaze from head to foot, and as he struggled with the police, “was throwing punches and shouting ‘Allah, Allah.’ ”Britain’s threat level is now at “critical,” meaning another attack is
considered imminent. The threat has not been as high since last year,
after authorities discovered what they called a plot to attack
trans-Atlantic airliners with liquid explosives.

A British security official, who like many other officials who disclosed information insisted on anonymity, said Saturday that the heightened level reflected an assessment that the London and Glasgow cases were “linked in some ways and, therefore, there are clearly individuals who have the capability and intent to carry out further attacks.”

The links relate to the way the London car bombs and Glasgow airport attack were planned, using vehicles and gasoline, the official said.

In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement from Secretary Michael Chertoff saying there were no plans to raise the national threat level because there was “no specific, credible information” suggesting any threat to the United States.

But the federal government took a number of steps, given the events in Britain and the approaching July 4 holiday, to elevate security.

Homeland Security officials said they included additional bomb detection canine teams at airports and behavior-detection squads.

The New York City police said they were monitoring events in London and Scotland and were maintaining the heightened security that began after the discovery of the car bombs in London.

The measures include sending officers into parking garages with sensors that detect the presence of chemical, biological and radiological agents, and closely monitoring tourist areas, including nightclubs, said the department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne.

Although there were questions throughout the day about whether the Glasgow vehicle crashed intentionally, by Saturday night, Sir William Rae, the chief constable of the Strathclyde area around Glasgow, said it was an act of terrorism.

Mr. Rae said one of the two men was found to be wearing a “suspicious device” at the hospital where he was being treated, and the hospital was evacuated. Mr. Rae declined to comment on reporters’ suggestions that the assailant — said to be in critical condition — had been wearing an explosive belt. A person with knowledge of the investigation, however, said that the device was a suicide belt, and also that the car contained propane canisters.

Mr. Rae said the attack at the airport, Scotland’s largest, was linked to the car bombs in London, but he did not elaborate.

The airport in Liverpool was also closed on Saturday, apparently reflecting a fresh area of concern in an increasingly jittery nation.

In July 2005, four suicide bombers killed 52 people on London’s transit system, and another set of attacks failed two weeks later, bringing home to Britain fears of homegrown terrorist attacks among its disenfranchised South Asian population. Witnesses said the two men in the Glasgow attack were South Asian.

In office only since Wednesday, a somber Prime Minister Gordon Brown appeared briefly on national television from 10 Downing Street late Saturday. “I want all British people to be vigilant and I want them to support the police and all the authorities in the difficult decisions that they have to make,” he said. “I know that the British people will stand together, united, resolute and strong.”

Saturday was the first full day of the school summer vacations; thousands of people were awaiting flights in Glasgow. The sight of the dark green Jeep Cherokee smashing into the building and bursting into flames spread panic and terror in the terminal. A Glasgow police spokeswomen, Elisa Dunn, said that five bystanders were injured, and that one was hospitalized for a leg injury, according to The Associated Press.

Hours after the attack, hundreds of passengers remained on stranded airplanes on the tarmac. The authorities said they could not be allowed into the terminal because of potential further dangers.

The events in London and Scotland deepened foreboding among security experts that Britain was confronting a new threat: the use of relatively unsophisticated, homemade explosive devices to spread mayhem.

The alert began early Friday, when the two cars, Mercedes sedans, were found in the central West End theater and nightclub district.

After the midafternoon crash through doors at Glasgow Airport on Saturday, accounts by witnesses gathered by news agencies were confused, but some spoke of the two occupants of the car smashing bottles of gasoline and struggling with police officers and others who tried to restrain them. The man on fire may have immolated himself.

The attack came as London — already worried by the rigged cars — braced for a weekend of high-profile events, including a concert to honor the memory of Diana, Princess of Wales; a Gay Pride March; and the Wimbledon tennis tournament.

The police in the capital stepped up foot patrols as counterterrorism officers hunted suspects linked to the cars found in London.

But Mr. Rae, the Scottish constable, said there had been no intelligence warning of an attack in Glasgow.

Prime Minister Brown, who is himself a Scot, summoned two emergency meetings of the high-level security committee called Cobra to try to come to grips with the attacks. Likewise, in the United States, Mr. Chertoff held so-called principals meetings, involving other cabinet-level officials. And officials with the Transportation Security Administration held a conference call with airport and airline officials from around the United States.

In London, counterterrorism experts suggested that whoever abandoned the two explosives-laden Mercedes might have been what a senior Western official called “less directed from Al Qaeda and more a matter of a homegrown group,” although their plan seemed to be modeled on terrorist attacks in Iraq.

Several experts and officials said the technology behind the London car bombs seemed amateurish. While the attackers apparently tried to detonate the bombs using cellphones, “they didn’t go off because there were not top-grade people putting them together,” one Western official said.

If the plot turns out to be the work of a small, unknown cell, that could raise alarms that Britain’s terrorism threat is broader than the 2,000 suspected radicals known to the authorities. The Western official said British investigators were pursuing several “good leads.”

The attack in Scotland also seemed marked by improvisation.

BAA, the company that runs the airport, said a vehicle “drove into a front door at the check-in area” and “caught fire on impact.”

One witness, Scott Leeson, said the Jeep had sped up to the building at around 30 miles per hour.

“Then the driver swerved the car around so he could ram straight into the door,” the Press Association news agency quoted Mr. Leeson as saying. “He must have been trying to smash straight through.”

Another witness, Lynsey McBean, 26, told the Press Association: “We saw a green Cherokee drive straight into the front door of the airport but it got jammed. They were obviously trying to get it farther inside the airport as the wheels were spinning and smoke was coming from them. One of the men, I think it was the driver, brought out a plastic petrol canister and poured it under the car. He then set light to it.

“At that point a policeman came over, the passenger got out of the car and punched him. At that point I began to run away. But when I looked back several people had run over to try and stop the men.”

There were no public claims of responsibility for the car bombs on Friday, which were uncovered almost by accident when an ambulance crew and traffic wardens separately discovered the sedans.

But a posting on an online forum monitored by the SITE Institute, which tracks jihadist Web sites, asked whether London had been “craving explosions from Al Qaeda” after authorities in June bestowed a knighthood on the author Salman Rushdie, reviled by some radical Muslims for his book “The Satanic Verses.”

No “established link” exists between the knighthood and the car bombs, a British security official said.

The Times of London reported Saturday that the police had warned nightclub operators a few days ago of the threat attack.

The two cars were parked around a corner from each other. The first to be discovered and disarmed was outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in the Haymarket near Piccadilly Circus. The second had been nearby on Cockspur Street leading to Trafalgar Square but towed for a parking infraction about 90 minutes later, the police said.

Sajjan M. Gohel, a security expert, said the police were pursuing a theory that the two car bombs had been designed to explode one after the other — the first to bring people into the street and the second to cause great loss of life. The fact that Thursday night at Tiger Tiger was ladies’ night, he said, recalled a conspiracy in 2004 in which British-born bombers said they wanted to attack women at a nightclub, whom they viewed as promiscuous, in conversations monitored by British intelligence.

Source: The New York Times (by e-mail)

Comment: now the British threat level has been raised to the highest level, it is proven that the British government is expecting further attacks [from Al Qaeda?]. The question now is of course or the recent events in London and in Glasgow (in good old Scotland!) will be followed by other attacks in other Western cities. It looks like the U.S. isn’t expecting attacks in the homeland, though measures have been taken to protect people and buildings from eventual attacks carried out by terrorists.

“In the United States, the Department of Homeland Security issued a
statement from Secretary Michael Chertoff saying there were no plans to
raise the national threat level because there was “no specific,
credible information” suggesting any threat to the United States.
But the federal government took a number of steps, given the events in
Britain and the approaching July 4 holiday, to elevate security.
Homeland Security officials said they included additional bomb
detection canine teams at airports and behavior-detection squads.
The New York City police said they were monitoring events in London and
Scotland and were maintaining the heightened security that began after
the discovery of the car bombs in London.
The measures include sending officers into parking garages with sensors
that detect the presence of chemical, biological and radiological
agents, and closely monitoring tourist areas, including nightclubs,
said the department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne”

2 U.S. Soldiers Charged in Murders of 3 Iraqis

 

 

Image: if the occupation in Iraq lasts some (maybe seven or more, so it would be a real, second Vietnam) years, it is possible the stealthy, new F-35C Lightning II fighter will be deployed onboard US Navy carriers in Iraqi waters. Image courtesy of Lockheed-Martin.

BAGHDAD (AP) — American soldiers rolled into Baghdad’s Shiite Sadr City slum on Saturday in search of Iranian-linked militants and as many as 26 Iraqis were killed in what a U.S. officer described as ”an intense firefight.”

 

But residents, police andhospital officials said eight civilians were killed in their homes and angrily accused U.S. forces of firing blindly on the innocent. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki condemned the raids and demanded an explanation for the assault into a district where he has barred U.S. operations in the past.

 

Separately, two American soldiers were charged with the premeditated murder of three Iraqis, the U.S. military said Saturday. And in Muqdadiyah, 60 miles north of the capital,
police said a suicide bomber blew himself up near a crowd of police recruits,
killing at least 23 people and wounding 17.

 

A U.S. soldier was killed Friday and three wounded when a sophisticated, armor-piercing bomb hit their combat patrol in southern Baghdad, the military announced a day later.

 

The U.S. military said it conducted two pre-dawn raids in Sadr City, killing 26 ”terrorists” who attacked U.S. troops with small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and
roadside bombs. But Iraqi officials said all the dead were civilians.

 

An American military spokesman insisted all of those killed were combatants. ”Everyone who got shot was shooting at U.S. troops at the time,” said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver. ”It
was an intense firefight.”

 

U.S. troops detained 17 men suspected of helping Iranian terror networks fund operations in Iraq, a military statement said. There were no U.S. casualties.

 

Witnesses said U.S. forces rolled into their neighborhood before dawn and opened fire without warning.

 

”At about 4 a.m., a big American convoy with tanks came and began to open fire on houses — bombing them,” said Basheer Ahmed, who lives in Sadr City’s Habibiya district. ”What did we do? We didn’t even retaliate — there was no resistance.”

 

According to Iraqi officials, the dead included three members of one family — a father, mother and son. Several women and children, along with two policemen, were among the
wounded, they said.

 

The assault brought quick criticism from al-Maliki. ”The Iraqi government totally rejects U.S. military operations … conducted without a pre-approval from the Iraqi military
command,” al-Maliki said in a statement released by his office. ”Anyone who
breaches the military command orders will face investigation.”

 

Sadr City is the Iraqi capital’s largest Shiite neighborhood — home to some 2.5 million people. It is also the base of operations for the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to
anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The fighters are blamed for much of the
sectarian killing in Baghdad.

 

Last year, al-Maliki banned military operations in Sadr City without his approval after complaints from his Shiite political allies. But he later agreed that no area of the capital was off-limits, after President Bush ordered reinforcements to Iraq as part of the
Baghdad security operation.

 

Houses, a bakery and some other shops were damaged by U.S. tank fire during the assault, Iraqi officials said. In the Shiite holy city of Najaf, Sheik Salah al-Obaidi, a spokesman for al-Sadr condemned Saturday’s raids: ”The bombing hurt only innocent
civilians.”

 

A policeman wounded in the raid, Montadhar Kareem, said he was on night duty when U.S. troops moved in and ”began bombing houses in the area.”

 

”The bombing became more intense, and I was injured by shrapnel in both my legs and in my left shoulder,” Kareem said from a gurney at Al Sadr General Hospital.

 

Hours afterward, a funeral procession snaked through Sadr City. Three coffins were hoisted atop cars.

 

One resident who goes by the nickname of Um Ahmed, or ”mother of Ahmed,” stood outside her home as mourners passed by.

 

”We are being hit while we are peacefully sleeping in our houses. Is that fair?” she cried. The woman gave only her nickname, fearing reprisal.

 

The U.S. military statement said American troops opened fire on four civilian cars during the assault — one that failed to stop at a checkpoint, and three that insurgents were using
for cover as they shot at U.S. soldiers.

 

”Every structure and vehicle that the troops on the ground engaged were being used for hostile intent,” Garver said. Some of the 26 dead were in civilian cars, some had been
hiding behind cars and others had fired on U.S. troops from nearby buildings,
he said.

 

 

In the murder case, the two American soldiers are accused of killing three Iraqis in separate incidents, then planting weapons on the victims’ remains, the military said in a
statement. Fellow soldiers reported the alleged crimes, which took place between April and this month near Iskandariyah, 30 miles south of Baghdad, it said.

The U.S. military on Saturday identified the soldiers as Staff Sgt. Michael A. Hensley from Candler, N.C., and Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval from Laredo, Texas.

 

Hensley is charged with three counts each of premeditated murder, obstructing justice and ”wrongfully placing weapons with the remains of deceased Iraqis,” the military said. He was placed in military confinement in Kuwait on Thursday.

 

Sandoval faces one count each of premeditated murder and placing a weapon with the remains of a dead Iraqi, a statement said. He was taken into custody Tuesday while at home in Texas, and was transferred to military confinement in Kuwait three days later,
it said.

 

Saturday’s blast in Muqdadiyah ripped through a crowded market area where Iraqi police recruits were having coffee, police said.

 

One witness, 30-year-old Abu Omar, said he rushed to the area where his brother has a shop, and saw police loading mutilated bodies into the back of a pickup truck. Fire engines sprayed water onto burning storefronts, and ambulances evacuated the wounded, he said.

 

At least seven shops were destroyed by the explosion, and the market street soaked with blood, Omar said.

 

Source: The New York Times

 

Comment: Another scandal in the occupation of Iraq by allied forces. I hope for POTUS Bush they don’t appear anymore in the media, or he has a big problem after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal…the problems stay showing up, one after one…

 

 

 

technorati tags:Iraq, US, Army, USA, Middle-East

 

Maine retreat launches U.S.-Russian dialogue

WASHINGTON — The up-and-down relationship between the United States and Russia takes center stage this weekend as President Bush and counterpart Vladimir Putin try to iron out their differences.Putin visits the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, on Sunday and Monday, and it’s unclear what his attitude will be. Will he be the same leader who threatened to aim Russian missiles at Western Europe, as he did last month? Or more like the one who told Bush on June 7 that he was “satisfied with the spirit of openness” between the countries?

Whatever their mood, Bush and Putin have a lot to discuss. The agenda includes missile defense, new sanctions to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, possible independence for Kosovo and the fate of democracy in Russia.”This may be the last opportunity to improve U.S.-Russian relations before the two leaders leave office in 2008 and 2009,” said Ariel Cohen, a Russian specialist at the Heritage Foundation, a think tank.

The White House played down expectations Wednesday and disputed the idea that this gathering is a “summit.”"I would caution against expecting grand, new announcements,” said White House spokesman Tony Snow. “This is, in fact, an opportunity for two leaders to talk honestly and candidly with one another.”The host of the meeting is Bush’s father, who touted the laid-back atmosphere and rustic pleasures at his coastal compound on Walker’s Point. “Fishing is good for the soul,” the senior Bush told WGME-TV in Portland, Maine. “Fishing is good for one person to get to know another.”Bush and Putin meet as a new survey shows neither inspires confidence around the globe. Less than 40% of respondents in Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Canada, and Italy have confidence in either Bush or Putin to “do the right thing regarding world affairs,” according to the Pew Research Center.The exception is that Putin is popular back home, where 84% of Russians expressed confidence in their president. Bush scored a 45% confidence rating in the United States, according to the Pew poll.The meeting was prompted partly by a dispute on missile defense. Bush wants to put parts of a new system in the Czech Republic and Poland, which Putin viewed as a threat to Russia. Putin vowed to retarget Russian missiles at Europe.After weeks of escalating tensions, Putin surprised Bush in the midst of the Group of Eight summit this month when he proposed a joint U.S.-Russian missile-defense system at an existing radar facility in Azerbaijan. Experts from Russia and the United States are reviewing the plan.While both Bush and Putin say they have a good personal relationship, Putin has taken his shots at Bush’s government. Among them, Putin said in February that “we are constantly being taught about democracy, but for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves.”Bush brushed aside the disputes after the last meeting with Putin, citing instead “the desire to work together.”James Lindsay, director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas, said it will be hard for Putin to dial back on his past comments. “Tough talk sells very well in Russia,” he said. Still, Lindsay believes the setting will have a calming effect.”Generally, it’s considered poor form to go to somebody’s house and throw a tantrum,” he said.

Source: USAToday.com.

Personal comment:

I hope Putin realises he’s not the president of the former Soviet Union, and that he can’t pose a threat neither versus the United States of America, neither to Europe. He needs to learn he can’t use his KGB, GRU, or another intelligence service to threat people like the Bulgarian government threated Georgi Markov in the 1970’s. I also hope Bush also learns to act like a president (of course, he has already begun two wars during his administrations) of the U.S.A., not like the old American tradition (fortunelaty it’s a minority of US citizens that act this way ) “I’m from the U.S.A. and you’re going to listen to me. If the next POTUS (President of the United States, some people may remember this from the TV series “The West Wing” from NBC) – Barrack, Clinton or Dean – acts like good old Ronald Reagan – God have his soul – did, they may have a chance to stay in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

technorati tags:Reagan, Bush, George, W., Vladimir, Putin, Russia, U.S.A., USA, Unites, States, of, America

CIA releases hundreds of heavily censored documents

WASHINGTON (AP) — The CIA released hundreds of heavily censored documents Tuesday about its spying on Americans, foreign assassination plots and other misdeeds that triggered a scandal in the mid-1970s.Known inside the CIA as the ”family jewels,” the documents were released with vast sections blocked out by agency censors. As a result, they were far less revealing than the reports issued in the mid-1970s by the three investigations which obtained unedited versions of these internal CIA documents a generation ago.

The ensuing scandal sullied the reputation of the intelligence community and led to new rules for the CIA, FBI and other spy agencies and new permanent committees in Congress to oversee them.

The 693 pages, mostly drawn from the memories of active CIA officers in 1973, were turned over at that time to three different investigative panels — President Ford’s Rockefeller Commission, the Senate’s Church committee and the House’s Pike committee.

The panels spent years investigating and amplifying on these documents. And their public reports in the mid-1970s filled tens of thousands of pages.

In early 1975, CIA Director William Colby told the Justice Department that these documents detailed assassination plots against foreign leaders such as Fidel Castro, the testing of behavior-altering drugs on unwitting citizens, wiretapping of U.S. journalists, spying on civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protesters, opening of mail between the United States and the Soviet Union and China and break-ins at the homes of ex-CIA employees and others.

But as censored by the CIA, many of the most sensational events were mentioned in little more than one, sketchy paragraph apiece.

The new documents devoted two paragraphs to the programs that opened mail between U.S. citizens and the Soviet Union and China.

One paragraph said ”Project WESTPOINTER,” from the fall of 1969 through October 1971, was based in the San Francisco area and the ”target was mail to the United States from Mainland China.”

The other paragraph said a program, begun in 1953 but dormant by 1973, intercepted incoming and outgoing Russian mail, and occasionally other types of mail, at New York’s Kennedy Airport.

By contrast, the Senate committee headed by Frank Church, D-Idaho, which spent two years investigating these documents, produced a book-length study of 12 CIA and FBI mail opening programs from 1940 to 1973. It found that the CIA alone had opened and photographed almost 250,000 first class letters in the United States and produced a computerized CIA index of nearly 1.5 million names.

The agency’s new documents contained an unsigned three-page memo that described CIA’s program code named Operation CHAOS as a worldwide effort to collect information ”on foreign efforts to manipulate U.S. extremism.” It said some American extremists had been recruited by the CIA and sent abroad as contract agents, but asserts that CHAOS ”has not and is not conducting efforts domestically for internal domestic collection purposes.”

Another 1973 memo to Colby from the CIA inspector general expressed concern over CHAOS ”because of the high degree of resentment we found among many agency employees at their being expected to participate in it.”

But the Church committee reported in 1976 that CHAOS compiled a computerized index of 300,000 individuals, including 7,200 Americans and more than 100 domestic groups between 1967-1973 as it examined civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protesters.

One of the most detailed descriptions in the newly released documents concerned one of the plots to kill the Cuban dictator Castro.

A memo by CIA security chief Howard Osborn said in August 1960 the CIA recruited ex-FBI agent Robert Maheu, who was a top aide to Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, to approach mobster Johnny Roselli and pass himself off as the representative of international corporations who wanted Castro killed.

Roselli introduced Maheu to ”Sam Gold” and ”Joe,” who were actually 10-most wanted mobsters Sam ”Momo” Giancana, Al Capone’s successor in Chicago, and Santos Trafficante. The mobsters worked for free, turning down a $150,000 offer. The CIA gave them six poison pills, and they tried unsuccessfully for several months to have several people put them in the Cuban leader’s food.

This particular plot was dropped after the failed CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Other plots continued against Castro though they are not detailed in the newly released documents. Details of this plot first appeared in Jack Anderson’s newspaper column in 1971.

The new releases devote one bare-bones paragraph to CIA involvement in a plot that resulted in Congolese Premier Patrice Lumumba’s assassination in 1961.

The Church committee produced a 364-page report on assassination plots that described at least eight plots involving the CIA to assassinate Castro between 1960 and 1965 and detailed how the CIA encouraged Congolese dissidents to kill Lumumba.

In a message to CIA employees Tuesday, Director Michael Hayden said: ”It’s important to remember that the CIA itself launched this process of recollection and self-examination. And it was the Agency itself that shared the resulting documents in full with Congress.

”The collection as a whole was exhaustively reviewed in the 1970s by three outside investigative panels,” Hayden said. The documents provide ”reminders of some things the CIA should not have done” and ”a glimpse of a very different era and a very different agency,” he said.

The documents were one of the products of the Watergate scandal. Then-CIA Director James Schlesinger was angered to read in the newspapers that the CIA had provided support to ex-CIA agents E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, who were convicted in the Watergate break-in. Hunt had worked for a secret ”plumbers unit” in Richard Nixon’s White House. The unit originally was tasked to investigate and end leaks of classified information but ultimately engaged in a wide range of misconduct.

In May 1973, Schlesinger ordered ”all senior operating officials of this agency to report to me immediately on any activities now going on, or that have gone on the past, which might be construed to be outside the legislative charter of this agency.” The law establishing the CIA barred it from conducting spying inside the United States.

The result was 693 pages of memos whose contents Schlesinger’s successor, Colby, reported to the Justice Department.

”These are the top CIA officers all going into the confessional and saying, ‘Forgive me father, for I have sinned,”’ said Thomas Blanton, director of the private National Security Archive, which had requested release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act.

Some contents of these documents first spilled into public view Dec. 22, 1974, with a story by Seymour Hersh in The New York Times on the CIA’s spying against anti-war and other dissidents inside this country.

Source: The New York Times.

Comment: this is going to become interesting…

go to this page to download the documents:

http://www.foia.cia.gov

technorati tags:CIA

CIA Plot to Kill Castro Detailed

Filed at 7:50 a.m. ETHAVANA (AP) — The CIA recruited a former FBI agent to approach two of America’s most-wanted mobsters and gave them poison pills meant for Fidel Castro during his first year in power, according to newly declassified papers released Tuesday.Contained amid hundreds of pages of CIA internal reports collectively known as ”the family jewels,” the official confirmation of the 1960 plot against Castro was certain to be welcomed by communist authorities as more proof of their longstanding claims that the United States wants Castro dead.Communist officials say there have been more than 600 documented attempts to kill Castro over the decades. Now 80, Castro has not been seen in public since handing power to his younger brother Raul while recovering from intestinal surgery last July. But in a letter published on Monday, the elder Castro claimed without providing details that President Bush had ”authorized and ordered” his killing.And while Cuban government press officials didn’t return a call seeking reaction Tuesday, the release of the newly declassified CIA documents had already been noted in state media.”Upon the orders of the White House, the Central Intelligence Agency tried to assassinate President Fidel Castro and other former personalities and leaders,” the Communist Party newspaper Granma said Saturday. ”What was already presumed and denounced will be corroborated.”Other aborted U.S. attempts to kill Castro, who rose to power in January 1959 in a revolution that ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista, have been noted in other declassified documents.The papers released Tuesday were part of a report prepared at the request of CIA Director James Schlesinger in 1973, who ordered senior agency officials to tell him of any current or past actions that could potentially violate the agency’s charter.Some details of the 1960 plot first surfaced in investigative reporter Jack Anderson’s newspaper column in 1971.The documents show that in August 1960, the CIA recruited ex-FBI agent Robert Maheu, then a top aide to Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, to approach mobster Johnny Roselli and pass himself off as the representative of international corporations that wanted Castro killed because of their lost gambling operations.At the time, the bearded rebels had just outlawed gambling and destroyed the world-famous casinos American mobsters had operated in Havana.Roselli introduced Maheu to ”Sam Gold” and ”Joe.” Both were mobsters on the U.S. government’s 10-most wanted list: Momo Giancana, Al Capone’s successor in Chicago; and Santos Trafficante, one of the most powerful mobsters in Batista’s Cuba. The agency gave the reputed mobsters six poison pills, and they tried unsuccessfully for several months to have several people put them in Castro’s food.This particular assassination attempt was dropped after the failed CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961. The CIA was able to retrieve all the poison pills, records show.

Source: The New York Times.

technorati tags:CIA, Central, Intelligence, Agency, Homeland, Security, Fidel, Castro, Cuba