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Quinault Valley Guns & Blades / Urban Escape & Evasion Course International Relations * Military * Terrorism * Business * Security www.kcandassociates.org orders@kcandassociates.org Kathleen Louise dePass Press Agent/Publicist .360.288.2652 Triste cosa es no tener amigos, pero ms triste ha de ser no tener enemigos porque quin no tenga enemigos seal es de que no tiene talento que haga sombra, ni carcter que impresione, ni valor temido, ni honra de la que se murmure, ni bienes que se le codicien, ni cosa alguna que se le envidie. A sad thing it is to not have friends, but even sadder must it be not having any enemies; that a man should have no enemies is a sign that he has no talent to outshine others, nor character that inspires, nor valor that is feared, nor honor to be rumored, nor goods to be coveted, nor anything to be envied. -Jose Marti

From the desk of Craig B Hulet?

Liberals should proudly cheer on Rand Paul If he's right on principle, progressives should back him up -- even if he's wrong on everything else. Here's why
BY DAVID SIROTA THURSDAY, MAR 7, 2013

(Credit: Jeff Malet, maletphoto.com) Addie Stans latest piece at Alternet is a must-read summary of one of the most insidious trends in American progressive politics: the trend toward seeing anything and everything as a purely partisan endeavor, regardless of possible outcomes. Reporting on Rand Pauls heroic filibuster against President Obamas drone war, Stan makes the case that progressives shouldnt support such a filibuster because Paul is a Big Bad Republican. She says it is horrifying to see principled progressives cheer on Pauls attempt to force the Obama administration to answer basic questions about civil liberties horrifying not because Paul is wrong on that issue, but because hes wrong on other, totally unrelated issues and represents an evil paranoid base that dares to fear a government that might soon be launching drones against them.

Setting aside the snide disregard (paranoid) for those who dont like the idea of a violent police state, Stans larger argument is a guilt-by-association non sequitur but it is a powerful and pervasive one. As Stan says, the idea is that to stand with Rand means to lend support to everything he supports in totality. As any quick perusal of Twitter yesterday showed, this kind of thinking is ubiquitous among Democratic Party operatives and activists who never want to think of themselves as anything but 100 percent pure haters of every single thing a Big Bad Republican stands for. There are two pernicious problems with this kind of psychology. First and foremost, it is embarrassingly hypocritical. Many of the same Democratic partisans have argued (or at least remained silent in the face of such arguments) that President Obama has an obligation to try to work with Big Bad Republicans on ending the sequester and enacting Simpson-Bowles-style cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Somehow for Democratic partisans, this is perfectly acceptable even laudable! for a sitting Democratic president to wine and dine these Big Bad Republicans as hes putting forward a budget proposal that tilts hard to the right. And when that happens, nobody in their right mind insists that Obama working with those like John Boehner or Mitch McConnell means (he is) lend(ing) support to their entire agenda. Yet, when liberals support or propose to work constructively with Big Bad Republicans on actual liberal priorities that challenge a Democratic president like, say, ending the drone war and protecting civil liberties that is somehow portrayed as unacceptable or horrifying. Worse, it is portrayed as endorsing the entire agenda of the Big Bad Republicans whom liberals find a momentary point of common ground with. The double standard is appalling and inane. By its twisted logic, liberal Sen. Paul Wellstone was lend(ing) support to the overall awful record of Sen. Pete Domenici when he worked with the New Mexico Republican to pass mental health parity legislation. By this same logic, progressive champion Sen. Bernie Sanders was lend(ing) support to the entire awful record of Sen. Tom Coburn when they worked together as House members on drug reimportation legislation. And by the same logic, liberal civil libertarians are lend(ing) support to the entire awful record of Sen. Rand Paul. Such criticism might be valid, of course, if these liberals were fully endorsing every aspect of their Republican colleagues record, but thats not what was happening, which makes the logic utterly absurd. Yet, as absurd as it is, why do so many Democratic partisans nonetheless instinctively embrace it? That gets to the second problem that pervades so much of the left: prioritizing partisanship over everything else. In a political system that depicts every issue in red-versus-blue terms, much of the left has come to accept and internalize those terms as the only ones that are valid. Thus, Obama working with the GOP to pass a conservative budget proposal is seen by many in the Democrat-worshiping left-of-center coalition as a good thing irrespective of its real-world policy ramifications. Why? Because it promises to the Democratic Partys president a partisan political victory over the Big

Bad Republicans. By contrast, liberals working with the GOP to stop a war is seen as a bad thing irrespective of its real-world impact. Thats because it might embarrass the Democratic Partys president and deliver him a partisan political defeat. This is the difference between partisan hackery and movement activism. The former is all about defending a party, regardless of what that party happens to be doing, and attacking that partys opponents even if they happen to be doing something good. In that psychology, principles are viewed as situational, and they are secondary to partisan political goals. By contrast, movement activism (or, really, just honest citizenship) is about defending a set of principles, regardless of how doing so may inconvenience either party. In that case, party politics are situational and secondary to principles and legislative outcomes. The crisis for progressives, then, is that the psychology of partisan hackery too often wins the day on the left. Whether activists or lawmakers, the principled liberals who try to fight the good fight on everything from war to healthcare to bank bailouts are pressured by the left to subvert their principles in the name of a Democratic Party victory, regardless of whether that victory tramples progressive priorities. Similarly, as in the case of Paul, progressives looking to form transpartisan left-right coalitions on liberal causes like protecting civil liberties or drug policy reform are lambasted as traitors when such coalitions dare to go up against a Democratic Partys president. Ultimately, the whole dynamic too often ends up delivering just what youd expect. You get Democrats getting a political win by passing a healthcare bill that the party itself acknowledges is a concoction of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation. You get Rand Pauls filibuster thwarted and a Democratic White House triumph, while the drone war expands. In short, you get an oxymoron: Democratic Party wins that are actually conservative policy victories. David Sirota is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, magazine journalist and the bestselling author of the books "Hostile Takeover," "The Uprising" and "Back to Our Future." E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website Bro-gressive Values Revealed: Attacking the Messenger By Any Means Necessary Finding himself duped by Rand Pauls publicity stunt, Salon's David Sirota misrepresents the work of an AlterNet writer March 10, 2013 AlterNet / By Adele M. Stan Theres a certain breed of progressive dude who, when told that the object of his latest mancrush is, say, a bit racist (or misogynist, or is stoking the fears of right-wing preppers), gets really mad. Unable to refute the fact of his worship of the racist, misogynist, prepper-stoker, he resorts to falsifying the intention of the person who pointed out the inconvenient facts. In a column published on Salon on March 7, David Sirota proves himself to be just such a dude.

At issue was my AlterNet blog post, published earlier the same day, in which I stated how horrifying it was to see progressives lauding as courageous and heroic Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., as he took to the Senate floor in a 13-hour talking filibuster designed to win him a media tour of top right-wing talk shows as he signaled his intention to run for the presidency in 2016, an intention he confirmed to Politico just hours after leaving the Senate floor. Heroism, by its definition, implies the taking of a risk. But Paul had almost nothing to lose and much to gain from his filibuster, which was born less of passion than careful calculation, according to a National Journal account. As political publicity stunts go, it was an act of genius. Because part of what Paul had to say about the Obama administrations policy on drones and the presidents dreadful nomination of John Brennan to lead the CIA comports with progressive opposition to those things, a small but vocal cadre of progressives were slobbering over CSPAN, tweeting the hashtag, #StandWithRand. Never mind that to stand with Rand is to stand for a man who sponsored fetal personhood amendment that would end abortion on demand once and for all, in Pauls words, even for rape victims. Try not to notice that to stand with Rand is to exalt a guy who opposes the section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that desegregated restaurants, lunch counters and housing. Hes also opposed to the Americans With Disabilities Act, preferring the specter of people in wheelchairs barred from full participation in public life to an inconvenient demand on proprietors of establishments otherwise open to the public. To Sirota, these are issues unrelated to the administrations drone policy, which is after all, about the civil liberties of all American citizens, especially white survivalist guys (but apparently not so much, in Rand Paul's reading, those of non-citizens). The civil rights of women, black people and the disabled? Well, by Sirotas lights, theyre totally unrelated to civil liberties overall. After all, no skin off his back should those rights go away. Its a telling flaw in Sirotas logic. But the even greater flaw is in the moral character of a writer who all but lies in order to paint another as saying something she did not, and being something she is not. Paranoia Will Destroy Ya

Apparently in need of a straw-woman to knock down, Sirota draws out of context a few words from my blog post to convince his posse of fan-boys that I was painting them as paranoids for their support of the junior senator from Kentucky. From Sirotas Salon piece: [Stan] says it is horrifying to see principled progressives cheer on Pauls attempt to force the Obama administration to answer basic questions about civil liberties horrifying not because Paul is wrong on that issue, but because hes wrong on other, totally unrelated issues and represents an evil paranoid base that dares to fear a government that might soon be launching drones against them. (emphasis added) Heres how my sentence, from which those phrases are drawn, actually reads: In his anti-drone filibuster, which admittedly offered C-SPAN viewers an often-enlightening education on the Obama administrations flouting of the U.S. Constitution in its pursuit of al Qaeda and the Taliban, Paul also played to his paranoid base, suggesting that the U.S. Government was targeting survivalist right-wingers as potential terrorists and might soon be launching drones against them. And nowhere in my post do I suggest that anyone is evil. Quashing any doubt that his misrepresentation was unintentional, Sirota follows that up with this: Setting aside the snide disregard (paranoid) for those who dont like the idea of a violent police state... Thats Sirota cherry-picking a single adjective from my piece and applying it to a much larger group of people (to which I belong) than those to whom I applied it -- specifically, Rand Pauls survivalist-minded base. If it is unfair to describe doomsday-preppers as paranoid, I apologize for any hurt feelings. And it didnt help that in what Salon editors describe as sequence of errors, the original version of Sirotas screed appeared to misquote me entirely. Lying By Omission

But the more insidious lie is the way in which Sirota, throughout his piece, asserts that any progressive who dares to part company with him in his laughable extolling of Rand Paul as an honorable gent is a hypocritical partisan hack[ ], and/or Democratic Party operative[ ]. Youd never know from reading Sirotas attack on me that in the very first paragraph of my post, I say that Brennan, the CIA nominee, "should be ditched." Or that I wrote this in the same post: Instead of lauding the anti-woman, anti-civil rights neo-libertarian senator, progressives would do better to ask: Why have nearly all the Senate Democrats signed onto the Brennan nomination? Or that I applauded Pauls highlighting the stellar journalism of two writers who ask hard questions about the Obama administrations claim that it has the right to assassinate U.S. citizens -- even on U.S. soil -- in particular circumstances. Big, Bad Bro-gressives Having no principled defense of his embrace of Rand Paul, Sirota resorts to a false equivalency, a tactic that is typical of his attacks on other progressives. Its all part of the bro-gressive* culture exemplified by a small group of big-mouthed guys who describe themselves as progressives, but seek to advance their careers through the taunting strategies they learned on the grade-school playground. (So much easier than organizing!) In an unwitting act of self-parody, Sirota asserts that in not signing on, as he did, to the opening act of Rand Pauls presidential bid, I commit the equivalent of opposing the kind of deal-making done by Democrats with Republicans in order to pass legislation. I have never opposed compromises between the parties that result in decent legislation. So where, exactly, is the deal with Democrats that Rand Paul sought to forge in his filibuster? Oh, right -- none was ever intended. So what, then, were Sirota and the bros cheering when they threw in behind Rand Paul? Sirota contends that people who oppose progressive fawning over the woman-hating Paul never want to think of themselves as anything but 100 percent pure haters of every single thing a Big Bad Republican stands for -- as if Rand Paul were typical of the average Republican, and my

opposition to his support of Pauls publicity stunt stems merely from the fact of Pauls membership in Grand Old Party. Far more troubling to me than Rand Pauls place in the GOP is his friendship with the Constitution Party -- the right-wing, political arm of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, whose ultimate aim is to replace the law of the land with the law of the Hebrew Bible (you know, the stoning of adulterers, the execution of gay men, the death sentence for insubordinate children). In 2009, Rand Paul delivered an address to the Minnesota Constitution Party (as Bruce Wilson first reported here). The following year, Rand suggested to the Christian Broadcasting Networks David Brody that, if only everyone were as Christian as he, the nation wouldnt need secular laws, as statement that echoes, as noted by Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches, the Christian Reconstructionist philosophy. By Sirotas lights, this is not anything I should be worrying my pretty little head about, even if a progressive love-fest for Paul advances the Kentuckians political fortunes. (After all, Paul once proved his ecumenism during a college prank, when he kidnapped a woman, tied her up and demanded that she worship an idol he called Aqua Buddha. But I digress.) Frolicking in the Waters In Sirotas reading of events, unless you #StandWithRand, youre for the administrations drone policy and against the very notion of a filibuster. Thats not very imaginative for a fellow who, when relaying the quotes of others, is capable of being rather inventive. What if, instead of #StandingWithRand, progressives were tweeting: Hey, Elizabeth Warren, whats your drone policy? or Yo, Bernie Sanders, if you oppose Brennan, why arent you on the Senate floor? or Tammy Baldwin, vote no on Brennan!? Granted, not as cool as a rhyming hashtag and everything. And there is surely less fun in pushing senators to accountability than in the hero-worship of a guy who once kidnapped a woman as a prank, a doctor who would rather see a woman dead of a botched abortion than one discarded fetus, a white man who thinks private propertytrumps equal access to public accommodations for people of all races.

When it comes to Rand Paul, the bro-gressives will brook no obstacle to their frolic in the waters of the Aqua Buddha. But the veneration of Rand Paul reveals the values of those who so adore him. ---------*h/t Megan Carpentier Adele M. Stan is AlterNet's Washington correspondent. She co-edited, with Don Hazen, the AlterNet book, Dangerous Brew: Exposing the Tea Party's Agenda to Take Over America. Follow her on Twitter: www.twitter.com/addiestan . Send tips to: adele@alternet.org Rand Paul's Wrong on Drones -- Just Like Everything Else Paul's critique comes straight from the fetid fever swamps of the conspiratorial right.

March 8, 2013 AlterNet / By Joshua Holland Rand Paul's dramatic, 13-hour drone strike of a filibuster on the floor of the United States Senate certainly stirred up the "Obama Wars" among progressives. The conventional take is that Paul was right on this one issue -- the proverbial "stopped clock" -- and those who refused to "stand with Paul" were unwilling to concede that he was right, due to their allegiance to the president. But Paul couldn't be more wrong about drones, and largely lost in the discussion is the fact that his position is identical to that of the White House. In a letter to Paul, Attorney General Eric Holder wrote that the United States government has no legal authority to use armed drones in domestic situations, but conceded that he could imagine a possible scenario in which it would be lawful to avert a truly imminent and "catastrophic" threat. During his filibuster, Paul said: "Nobody questions, if planes are flying towards the Twin

Towers, whether they can be repulsed by the military; nobody questions whether, [if] a terrorist with a rocket launcher or a grenade launcher is attacking us, whether they can be repelled." And, like the White House, Paul supports the use of (presumably unarmed) drones to patrol the border. More importantly, Rand Paul has no objection to our actual drone policy. In his follow-up letter to Holder, Paul made no mention whatsoever of the administration's dramatic expansion in the use of drone strikes against non-Americans overseas. His singular focus was on the entirely implausible idea that the military might take out dissident voices in the United States with drone strikes; he even offered up a fantasy of Jane Fonda being blown up while sitting in a cafe. (Seriously, if the government were to assassinate U.S. citizens for their political views, don't you think they might choose a somewhat quiter method?) A recent report by legal scholars at New York University and Stanford University found that our drone program in Pakistan is "damaging and counterproductive." The authors noted that "while civilian casualties are rarely acknowledged by the U.S. government, there is significant evidence that U.S. drone strikes have injured and killed civilians." (Another study, by the New America Foundation, estimated that only 2 percent of those killed in American drone attacks fit the definition of "senior-level targets.") A majority of Americans are OK with the use of drones to kill "suspected terrorists" overseas (making Paul's grandstanding something less than "brave"), but when the prospect of collateral damage is raised, only 27 percent continue to support the program, with 43 percent opposed. If Rand Paul has similar problems with blowing up innocent brown people abroad, he certainly didn't emphasize it during his filibuster. Paul is wrong because, rather than take issue with Obama's actual drone program, his criticism is animated by the paranoid delusions of the far right -- the same apocalyptic visions that animate gun-hoarding survivalists and the militia movement. As Charles Johnson noted, "Sen. Paul is a frequent guest on the conspiracy-peddling Alex Jones Show, where he co-signs every deranged fantasy." David Frum also observed that Paul "emerges from a milieu in which far-fetched scenarios don't seem far-fetched at all."

Paul specifically mentioned the possibility of a democratically elected Adolph Hitler-like figure coming to power in the United States. Looming federal tyranny -- against which the only protection is an armed citizenry -- is a staple item in the Rand Paul inventory of urgent concerns. Paul does deserve credit for illustrating the value of a "talking filibuster" in a dramatic way. But he doesn't deserve any praise from progressives for attacking a straw-drone from the far reaches of the right. And it's a shame that the discourse has been ceded to him, because we should be having a rigorous debate about Obama's drone program -- about its legality, morality and whether it's creating more terrorists than it kills. It's not the technology itself -- people have been killing people remotely using unmanned aerial vehicles since the Nazis started shooting rockets at London during World War II -- but the policy. There is virtually no transparency or accountability attached to the secretive program. Congress has been pushing for more oversight, to no avail. And even defenders of these strikes, like Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., nonetheless believe the drone program should be taken out of the CIA and put into the Department of Defense, which is subject to greater congressional oversight, according to the Wall Street Journal ($$). So you can stand with Paul, but doing so is never going to lead to the national discussion we should be having about the widespread use of these flying killer robots. Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He's the author of The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy. Drop him an email or follow him on Twitter.

America is shamed that only Rand Paul is talking about drone executions Where are the civil libertarians in the president's party that we must rely on a Tea Party Republican to champion this issue? Amy Goodman guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 March 2013

Senator Rand Paul during his 13-hour talking filibuster insisting that Obama administration provide stronger assurances that US citizens will never be killed by drone attack on US soil. Photograph: AP

You could say that a filibuster occurs when a senator drones on and on. The problem with the US Senate was that there were too few senators speaking about drones this week. President Barack Obama's controversial nomination of John Brennan as director of the Central Intelligence Agency was held up Wednesday afternoon by a Senate filibuster. The reason: Brennan's role in targeted killings by drones, and President Obama's presumed authority to kill US citizens, without any due process, if they pose an "imminent threat". The effort was led by Tea Party Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky, joined by several of his Republican colleagues. Among the Democrats, at the time of this writing, only Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon had joined in the genuine, old-fashioned "talking filibuster", wherein the activities of the Senate floor are held up by a senator's speech. Members of Congress, tasked with oversight of intelligence and military matters, have repeatedly demanded the memoranda from the White House detailing the legal basis for the drone program, only to be repeatedly denied. The nomination of Brennan has opened up the debate, forcing the Obama administration to make nominal gestures of compliance. The answers so far have not satisfied Senator Paul. Nearing hour six of his filibuster, Senator Paul admitted: "I can't ultimately stop the nomination, but what I can do is try to draw attention to this and try to get an answer that would be something if we could get an answer from the president if he

would say explicitly that noncombatants in America won't be killed by drones. The reason it has to be answered is because our foreign drone strike program does kill noncombatants. They may argue that they are conspiring or they may someday be combatants, but if that is the same standard that we are going to use in the United States, it is a far different country than I know about." The issue of extrajudicial execution of US citizens, whether on US soil or elsewhere, is clearly vital. But also important is the US government's now-seemingly routine killing of civilians around the world, whether by drone strikes, night raids conducted by special operations forces or other lethal means. Rand Paul's filibuster followed a curious route, including references to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, and quotes from noted progressive, constitutional attorney and Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald and blogger Kevin Gosztala of Firedoglake. US Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Senator Paul, 4 March, writing: "It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the president to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States." Holder noted that Paul's question was "entirely hypothetical". So, on the Senate floor, Paul brought up the case of two actual US citizens killed by drone strikes, Anwar al-Awlaki and his son, Abdulrahman. Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a US drone strike in Yemen on 30 September 2011. Two weeks later, also in Yemen, his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman, a Denver native, was also killed by a drone strike. Paul asked during his filibuster: "If you happen to be the son of a bad person, is that enough to kill you?" As Senator Paul filibustered, Will Fitzgibbon wrote from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London: "Last month, we launched a new drones project: Naming the Dead. The aim of this project is to identify as many of the more than 2,500 victims of US drone strikes in Pakistan as possible. Given we currently do not know the identities of 80% of those killed, we believe this is a crucial and missing step to having a more transparent drones debate "With all the attention being recently paid to American citizens killed by drones and with the drone debate growing, we thought it would be a good time to remind ourselves of the individual human stories of drone victims. Those we know about and those we don't." Barack Obama and John Brennan direct the drone strikes that are killing thousands of civilians. It doesn't make us safer. It makes whole populations, from Yemen to Pakistan, hate us. Senator Paul's outrage with the president's claimed right to kill US citizens is entirely appropriate. That there is not more outrage at the thousands killed around the globe is shameful and dangerous.

Seattle police plan to deploy spy drones Published time: October 26, 2012 19:17

The rainy skies of Seattle are likely to soon be a whole lot drearier. The FAA has approved the local police department to start using surveillance drones for law enforcement, but protesters are making it clear that they're willing to put up a fight. The Seattle Police Department displayed a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on Thursday that they intend on using soon to monitor criminal activity across the city, but opponents of drone use came out in droves to protest the proposed plans. The SPD is one of only law enforcement agencies given the go-ahead by the Federal Administration Agency to show officers the ins-and-outs of UAVs, and the department hopes that soon they will be able to save lives and make the city more secure by actually deploying drones across town. So far the department has already outlined an operations manual that they hope theyll have a chance to adhere to soon, describing in detail how they hope to install an unmanned aerial system across the city to help photograph crime scenes, conduct search and rescue missions, monitor traffic accidents and even aid with natural disaster responses. Putting an extra set of police eyes remote-controlled ones, at that has put a fair share of Seattle residents ill at ease, though. "We are not going to tolerate this in our city. This is unacceptable," anti-drone advocate Emma Kaplan told Assistant Chief Paul McDonagh at Thursdays unveiling. The Seattle Times says another protester in attendance, identified as General Malaise, said, "We don't trust you with the weapons you do have, let alone new ones that are still being developed. According to the paper, Thursdays community meeting held to identify the public opinion of the program was taken over by protesters, leaving McDonagh with only a small chunk of time to talk about his plans.

The city says they have no intent on using UAVs for any unlawful surveillance purposes, but the bad wrap drones have received as of late made only worse with military versions of the drones overseas executing as many as hundreds of civilians in recent years has left Seattle residents saying they have good reason to oppose domestic use. Even if unarmed, drones are a cause of big concern for some. The Seattle Police Department says they have every intent to make reasonable effort to not invade a persons reasonable expectation of privacy, and that never will any police drones supersede the issuance of a warrant when needed. UAS operators and observers will ensure and will be held accountable for ensuring that operations of the UAS intrude to a minimal extent upon the citizens of Seattle, the drafted operations manual reads. As the technology is still being tested, though, opponents say its not clear what the department could be able to get away with. "The ways that they say they can use the drones is too broad," ACLU of Washington Deputy Director Jennifer Shaw tells the Seattle Times. "They have a list of different emergencies and then a catchall phrase saying the drones can also be used in other situations if they get permission." Even what isnt outline, she says, could eventually be added. "So long as it is a policy, it can be changed. An ordinance cannot be changed at will and is the only way we can be sure there is meaningful input," she said. Earlier this month, the Sherriff of Alameda County, California asked the US Department of Homeland Security for as much as $100,000 in funding so he could add a drone to his own departments arsenal. Sherriff Greg Ahern told NBC News that UAVs are Very valuable to any tactical officer, because they could aid in identifying everything from how a suspect is dressed to what avenues of escape are possible.

Domestic drone justice: US court green-lights police UAV use Published time: August 03, 2012

Law, Planes, Police, USA A North Dakota court has approved the use of drones to help arrest citizens on US soil. UAVs have primarily been used to conduct strikes against purported militants in countries like Pakistan, but their use at home has been on the rise as of late. District Judge Joel Medd denied a request to dismiss charges against Rodney Brossart, who was arrested after law enforcement resorted to using a Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to inspect his property, according to court documents obtained by US News. Judge Medd wrote that there was no improper use of an unmanned aerial vehicle and that the UAV appears to have had no bearing on these charges being contested. Last June, Brossart was arrested after a long standoff with police, prompted by his refusal to return a herd of cows that had meandered onto his farm in the town of Lakota. During the standoff, Brossart was tased by police after allegedly threatening to kill an officer entering his property. At one point, the Department of Homeland Security offered the local SWAT team one of its Predator drones.

Court documents show that the drone was used for surveillance while local SWAT team chief Bill Macki said the UAV inspected Brossarts property to make sure that neither he, nor his family members, were armed or left the farm during the arrest. Brossart was eventually arrested and charged with terrorizing and stealing property, as well as criminal mischief. His family members were also charged. Bruce Quick, Brossarts lawyer, said guerilla-like police tactics were used against his client. He stressed that authorities had no legal right to use the drone to help capture Brossart, as the plane had been dispatched without judicial approval or a warrant. But he also noted that the entire case reeked of constitutional violations. The whole thing is full of constitutional violations, Quick told US News. The drone use is a secondary concern. He also said the use of a taser against his client was torturous and likened it to waterboarding. The prosecution, however, argued that the drone was used only after arrest warrants had been issued, and that they were not used to gather evidence, but only to ensure the safety of the SWAT team that was about to raid the farm. Unmanned surveillance aircraft were not in use prior to or at the time Rodney Brossart is alleged to have committed the crimes with which he is charged, State prosecutor Douglas Manbeck wrote. Congress mulls legislation for a droned-up 'brave new world' In the meantime, the domestic use of drones has been subject to discussion on Capitol Hill. On Wednesday, Representative Edward Markey (D-MA) introduced a draft bill seeking to tighten the regulations on drone use for both the government and private companies. The proposed Drone Aircraft Privacy and Transparency Act of 2012 requires that police obtain warrants to use drones for certain types of surveillance. When it comes to privacy protections for the American people, drones are flying blind, Markey stated, as quoted by the Huffington Post. Drones are already flying in US airspace with thousands more to come but with no privacy protections or transparency measures in place. The Congressman said America was entering a brave new world and stressed that a company should not be allowed to make a profit out of selling consumer information obtained through drone surveillance. Currently, there are no privacy protections or guidelines and no way for the public to know who is flying drones, where, and why, Markey added. The time to implement privacy protections is now.

Other lawmakers have already voiced concerns on the domestic use of drones. In June, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced the Preserving Freedom from Unwanted Surveillance Act, which also requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant prior to the deployment of drones for surveillance purposes. Congress has asked the Federal Aviation Authority to draw up rules to integrate drone use into the domestic airspace by 2015. The agency is set to start issuing licenses for police and emergency services drones this month. It has already authorized the use of pilotless Predator drones in the airspace above nearly 10,000 acres in North Dakota. The US Army is also hoping to station drones on military bases throughout the nation after obtaining certification from the FAA. Police throughout the country have other potential applications for drones, in addition to surveillance. In Texas, the Montgomery County Sheriffs Office obtained a pilotless Shadowhawk helicopter in hopes of eventually equipping it with weapons such as flares, smoke grenades, tasers and rubber bullets that could be used to subdue a crowd. However, that UAV crashed into a SWAT van during a photo op, raising the important issue of safety in a crowded urban environment. Spy drone could have almost brought down a plane in Colorado
Published time: May 17, 2012

Photo from www.valeriideas.com

Planes, Security, USA An airline pilot came close to crashing his plane near Denver, Colorado this week after encountering a mysterious object in the sky thought to be an unmanned drone aircraft. A tape recording made available this week confirms that the pilot of a Cessna Citation 525 CJ1 radioed air traffic controllers outside of Denver on Monday after nearly colliding with an unidentified flying object. Several factors have suggested that the aircraft was most likely a robotic drone aircraft. According to the record, the pilot came close to hitting what he described as a large remotecontrolled aircraft. The Cessnas pilot says that the craft was encountered at around 8,000 feet above sea level, or 2,800 feet above the ground in near the highly elevated city of Denver. Speaking to reporters at 9News, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that the agency is attempting to make sense of the unusual encounter. The threat is there from a collision standpoint. We'll do as much as we can here to try to track back what time it was, the FAAs Mike Fergus says of the groups investigation. Greg Feith, a former investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, adds to 9News that, whatever the pilot encountered, is a threat no matter how you look at it. "That's an issue because now we have something in controlled airspace that poses a danger," says Feith. Was this an unmanned vehicle that was part of some sort of law enforcement operation? Was this somebody that had flown a large model aircraft inadvertently into the airspace? Or was it just [a bird that] caught the pilot's eye so he believed it was an aircraft but could have been a very large wing span bird, he adds. The FAAs Fergus voiced a theory that it the craft in question may had just been a small, civilian remote-controlled plane, but the president of a local model airplane club says that members of the Denver RC Eagles are not permitted to go more than 5,700 feet above sea level, leaving a window of more than 2,000 feet between where those crafts can soar and where the pilot spotted the object. The FAA is currently in the midst of drafting guidelines to permit surveillance drones similar to what the pilot described for law enforcement use across the country. The federal government currently has a fleet of crafts use to see from the sky, and several smaller agencies have confirmed that they have purchased drones as well. Once they have rules established, the FAA expects that as many as 30,000 drones will be in American airspace in the coming years.

Cop cars to be replaced with drones by 2025 Published time: November 23, 2012 19:34

Planes, Police, Security, USA Law enforcement agencies across the US are lining up to be among the first to use drones to serve and protect, but unmanned vehicles are likely to replace the traditional cop cruiser in just a few short years. In places like California, Texas and Washington State, police officers in recent weeks have intensified their demands for surveillance drones, a necessary addition they say to their arsenal of tools to help thwart crime. The Federal Aviation Administration has yet to finalize plans to put drones in US airspace, but by the end of the decade as many as 30,000 UAVs are expected to be soaring through the sky. By 2025, those drones are predicted to take the place of the police patrol car as unmanned vehicles operated by cops are being considered a likely inclusion on our roads of tomorrow. Leading up to this years Los Angeles Auto Show, carmakers were asked to put together prototypes showing what they envision highway patrol vehicles to look like in the year 2025. The entries, from big manufacturers like BWM and Honda, are largely based on the still primitive drone technology that is used in military and surveillance missions overseas.

The car shows organizers asked designers to develop a vehicle that should empower highway patrol officers to meet new demands and effectively both protect and serve the public while considering not just enforcement needs but emission concerns, population growth and transportation infrastructure. According to the New York Times, drone devices are far and away the popular choice. By coincidence or destiny, designers at several companies came up with concepts for robotic, autonomously driven vehicles on ground, water and air. These future police cruisers usually presented as story boards rather than actual vehicles recall todays Predator and Global Hawk drones, stars of the anti-insurgency efforts. They may give new meaning to those signs that read Speed limit enforced by aircraft, writes the Times Phil Patton. In the prototype unveiled by BMW, a larger ePatrol vehicle is equipped with up to three individual drones that can be deployed to follow suspected criminals in high-speed chases across busy highways. Once one of the smaller can catch up with a targeted car, those individual drones would then be able to send an impulse to startle the driver. One of those smaller drones would be able to fly on its own, and the other two unmanned vehicles could roll on two wheels through busy roads. At Honda, designers there envision a similar concept: a large all-electric patrol car that could dispatch at the drop of a hat unmanned motorcycles to catch up with criminals and maintain coverage at high speeds for long distances. In addition to the BMW E-Patrol (Human-Drone Pursuit Vehicle) and Hondas CHP Drone Squad, Subaru also sent into the car show designs for the SHARC, or Subaru Highway Automated Response Concept. PSFK online describes it as an autonomous, zero-emission patrol vehicle meant to augment reduced highway patrol budgets by providing remote 3D video to officers who can control the vehicle via goggles and voice command. The winner of this years design challenge will be announced November 29 in Los Angeles. California gets face scanners to spy on everyone at once Published time: November 19, 2012 03:44 In a single second, law enforcement agents can match a suspect against millions upon millions of profiles in vast detailed databases stored on the cloud. Its all done using facial recognition, and in Southern California its already occurring. Imagine the police taking a picture: any picture of a person, anywhere, and matching it on the spot in less than a second to a personalized profile, scanning millions upon millions of entries from within vast, intricate databases stored on the cloud. Its done with state of the art facial recognition technology, and in Southern California its already happening.

At least one law enforcement agency in San Diego is currently using software developed by FaceFirst, a division of nearby Camarillo, Californias Airborne Biometrics Group. It can positively identify anyone, as long as physical data about a persons facial features is stored somewhere the police can access. Though that pool of potential matches could include millions, the company says that by using the best available facial recognition algorithms they can scour that data set in a fraction of a second in order to send authorities all known intelligence about anyone who enters a cameras field of vision.

Live high definition video enables FaceFirst to track and isolate the face of every person on every camera simultaneously, the company claims on their website. Up to 4 million comparisons per second, per clustered server thats how many matches a single computer wired to the FaceFirst system can consider in a single breath as images captured by cameras, cell phones and surveillance devices from as far as 100 feet away are fed into algorithms designed to pick out terrorists and persons of interest. In a single setting, an unlimited amount of cameras can record the movements of a crowd at 30-frames-per-second, pick out each and every face and then feed it into an equation that, ideally, finds the bad guys. "I realized that with the right technology, we could have saved lives, Joseph Rosenkrantz, president and CEO of FaceFirst, tells the Los Angeles Times. He says he dreamed up the project after the attacks of September 11, 2001 and has since invested years into perfecting it. Not yet mastered, however, is how to make sure innocent bystanders and anyone who wishes to stay anonymous is left alone as he expands an Orwellian infrastructure that allows anyone with the right credentials to comb through a crowd and learn facts and figures of any individual within the scope of a surveillance cam.

Speaking to reporters with Find Biometrics in August, Rosenkrantz said that the system is already in place in Panama, where computers there process nearly 20 million comparisons per second using a FaceFirst matching cluster with a large number of live surveillance cameras on a scale beyond any other system ever implemented. Within just a couple of seconds whoever needs to know receives an email containing all the evidence and stats about the person identified along with the video clip of them passing the camera so they may be approached then and there, he says. Earlier this year, RT broke the story of TrapWire, a surveillance system marketed by global intelligence firm Stratfor to law enforcement agencies across the world. Through investigation of TrapWire and its parent companies, it became apparent that surveillance devices linked to the system could be monitored from remote fusion centers with access to an endless array of cameras and databases. According to FaceFirsts developers, their technology doesnt need a second person to scour video feeds to find suspected terrorists. Complex algorithms instead make finding a match the job of a computer and positive IDs can be returned in under a second. "It doesn't do me any good if I'm able to look at a face with a camera and five minutes later, there's a match," says Paul Benne, a security consultant who tells the Los Angeles Times that he recommended his clients use FaceFirst in high-security areas. "By then, the person's gone." Rosenkrantz admits in his interview to the use of the technology at Panamas Tocumen airport, as well as other border crossings along the perimeter of the country. The deployment of FaceFirst in the United States still begs questions concerning the relationship between security and privacy, though, and is likely to remain an issue of contention until agencies in San Diego and elsewhere explain what exactly theyre up to. According to a report in Southern Californias News 10 published this week, an unnamed law enforcement agency in San Diego County has been testing a handheld version of FacecFirst for about five months now. On the record, though, no agency in the US has been forthcoming with why its using those specific facial scanners or even confirming its in their arsenal of ever expanding surveillance tools. "If they spot someone who doesn't have identification, they can take their picture with their phone and immediately get a result," Joseph Saad, business development director for FaceFirst, tells News 10. Saad says his company predicts that "facial recognition will be in every day society soon, perhaps before many Americans want to admit. According to filings available online, Airborne Biometrics was already cleared by the Government Services Administration (GSA) last year to have FaceFirst sold to any federal agency in the country. The ability to apply our technology for the advancement of our country has always been my number one goal, Rosenkrantz said in April 2011 when Airborne was awarded an IT 70 Schedule contract for FaceFirst by the GSA. Because that contact has since been signed with Uncle Sam, Rosenfratz and company can see that goal through, at least until its up for renewal in

2017, through a deal that lets them sell FaceFirst to all federal agencies and other specified activities and agencies. In a demonstration video on the FaceFirst website, the company touts their product as being a great addition to any acquisition device, specifically suggesting that clients consider integrating the software with tactical robots, mobile phones and surveillance drones. Coincidently, just last month the sheriff of Alameda County, California asked the US Homeland Security department for as much as $100,000 in order to have an unmanned aerial vehicles a drone in his agencys arsenal for the sake of protecting the security of his citizens. Weeks earlier, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told congressional lawmakers that she endorses the idea of sending drones to California to aid with law enforcement efforts. Pleads like the one out of Alameda have been occurring across the country in a rate considered alarming by privacy advocates, but rarely has that opposition brought into the spotlight the scary surveillance capabilities that any police agency may soon have in their hands. While the issues of Fourth Amendment erosions and privacy violations have indeed emerged, the actual abilities of surveillance devices snagging faces from large crowds in milliseconds and sending info to the authorities have not. Facial characteristics become biometric templates compared against multiple watch lists created from customer photos or massive criminal databases, the promo explains. Those lists can be custom created by law enforcement agencies to track a most-wanted roster of suspected criminals but can pull from databases where any biometric information is already available or can be inputted on the fly. Discovery of San Diegos use of FaceFirst comes just two months after the FBI announced it had already rolled out a program to upgrade its current Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) that keeps track of citizens with criminal records across the country with one that relies on face recognition. The FBI expects the Next Generation Identification (NGI) program will include as many as 14 million photographs by the time the project is in full swing in just two years, relying on digital images already stored on federal databases, such as the ones managed by state motor vehicle departments. In the state of New Jersey, the DMV has recently told drivers that they are not allowed to smile for drivers license photos because it could cause complications in terms of logging biometric data in their own facial recognition system. The FBI said that, by rolling out NGI, they will be able to provide services to enhance interoperability between stakeholders at all levels of government, including local, state, federal and international partners. The unnamed San Diego law enforcement agency already with the ability to match millions of faces in a single moment may be relying right now on that connectedness to keep track of anyone they wish. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times last week, 70 percent of biometrics spending comes from law enforcement, the military and the government. The private sector is scooping up that scanning power too, though, with FaceFirst having already cut deals with Samsung to provide them with technology for use in closed-circuit surveillance cameras marketed to

businesses. But while the Federal Trade Commission has informed companies and corporations that they need to be more transparent about how personally identifiable information is stored on their servers, the Times notes that no guidelines like that exist for law enforcement agencies, who may very well sit on mounds of intelligence without good reason. "You don't need a warrant to use this technology on someone," Sen. Al Franken (D-Minnesota) said last year during a congressional hearing about the use of expanding surveillance technology. "You might not even need to have a reasonable suspicion that they're involved in a crime." Aside from FaceFirst, law enforcement is using that excuse to pull data on persons of interest and otherwise even when their faces are protected. As RT reported recently, an ever-growing number of police departments are investing in license plate scanners that let officers identify as many as 10,000 vehicles and their registered owners in a single shift. Much like how FaceFirst can pick out dozens of suspects from a single photograph and send data to custom servers, those license plate readers can pick up the precise location of persons never suspected of a crime, making rampant invasion of privacy just collateral damage as the surveillance monster state grows larger The cameras will catch things you didnt see, cars you wouldnt have run, and the beauty of it is that it runs everything, Lieutenant Christopher Morgon of the Long Beach, California Police Department says in promotional material for an automated license plate recognition device manufactured by PIPS Technology. The Federal Trade Commission has offered the security industry best practice suggestions about how long to hold onto data picked up by surveillance cameras, but safeguards for law enforcement agencies are largely absent. In the case of the scanners used to find license plates on the streets of Southern California, Jon Campbell of LA Weekly writes, The location and photo information is uploaded to a central database, then retained for years in case it's needed for a subsequent investigation. Rosenkrantz says FaceFirst is experiencing triple digit growth in 2012 and expects sustainable expansion to continue throughout the next five years. By 2020, the Federal Aviation Administration expects that as many as 30,000 drones will be operating in US airspace.

1.6 Billion Rounds Of Ammo For Homeland Security? It's Time For A National Conversation

Armored Personnel Carriers in Baghdad. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The Denver Post, on February 15th, ran an Associated Press article entitled Homeland Security aims to buy 1.6b rounds of ammo, so far to little notice. It confirmed that the Department of Homeland Security has issued an open purchase order for 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition. As reported elsewhere, some of this purchase order is for hollow-point rounds, forbidden by international law for use in war, along with a frightening amount specialized for snipers. Also reported elsewhere, at the height of the Iraq War the Army was expending less than 6 million rounds a month. Therefore 1.6 billion rounds would be enough to sustain a hot war for 20+ years. In America. Add to this perplexing outr purchase of ammo, DHS now is showing off its acquisition of heavily armored personnel carriers, repatriated from the Iraqi and Afghani theaters of operation. As observed by paramilblogger Ken Jorgustin last September:

NRA Winning the Influence Battle Over Gun Control Forbes Staff [T]he Department of Homeland Security is apparently taking delivery (apparently through the Marine Corps Systems Command, Quantico VA, via the manufacturer Navistar Defense LLC) of an undetermined number of the recently retrofitted 2,717 Mine Resistant Protected MaxxPro MRAP vehicles for service on the streets of the United States. These MRAPs ARE BEING SEEN ON U.S. STREETS all across America by verified observers with photos, videos, and descriptions. Regardless of the exact number of MRAPs being delivered to DHS (and evidently some to POLICE via DHS, as has been observed), why would they need such over-the-top vehicles on U.S. streets to withstand IEDs, mine blasts, and 50 caliber hits to bullet-proof glass? In a war zone yes, definitely. Lets protect our men and women. On the streets of America ? They all have gun ports Gun Ports? In the theater of war, yes. On the streets of America? Seriously, why would DHS need such a vehicle on our streets?

Why indeed? It is utterly inconceivable that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is planning a coup detat against President Obama, and the Congress, to install herself as Supreme Ruler of the United States of America. There, however, are real signs that the Department bureaucrats are running amok. About 20 years ago this columnist worked, for two years, in the U.S. Department of Energys general counsels office in its procurement and finance division. And is wise to the ways. The answer to why would DHS need such a vehicle? almost certainly is this: its a cool toy and these (reportedly) million dollar toys are being recycled, without much of a impact on the DHS budget. So why not? Why, indeed, should the federal government not be deploying armored personnel carriers and stockpiling enough ammo for a 20-year war in the homeland? Because its wrong in every way. President Obama has an opportunity, now, to live up to some of his rhetoric by helping the federal government set a noble example in a matter very close to his heart (and that of his Progressive base), one not inimical to the Bill of Rights: gun control. The federal government can (for a nice change) begin practicing what it preaches by controlling itself. Remember the Sequester? The president is claiming its budget cuts will inconvenience travelers by squeezing essential services provided by the (opulently armed and stylishly uniformed) DHS. Quality ammunition is not cheap. (Of course, news reports that DHS is about to spend $50 million on new uniforms suggests a certain cavalier attitude toward government frugality.) Spending money this way is beyond absurd well into perverse. According to the AP story a DHS spokesperson justifies this acquisition to help the government get a low price for a big purchase. Peggy Dixon, spokeswoman for the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center: The training center and others like it run by the Homeland Security Department use as many as 15 million rounds every year, mostly on shooting ranges and in training exercises. At 15 million rounds (which, in itself, is pretty extraordinary and sounds more like fun targetshooting-at-taxpayer-expense than a sensible training exercise) thats a stockpile that would last DHS over a century. To claim that its to get a low price for a ridiculously wasteful amount is an argument that could only fool a career civil servant. Meanwhile, Senator Diane Feinstein, with the support of President Obama, is attempting to ban 100 capacity magazine clips. Doing a little apples-to-oranges comparison, here, 1.6 billion rounds is 16 million times more objectionable. Mr. Obama has a long history of disdain toward gun ownership. According to Prof. John Lott, in Debacle, a book he co-authored with iconic conservative strategist Grover Norquist, When I was first introduced to Obama (when both worked at the University of Chicago Law School, where Lott was famous for his analysis of firearms possession), he said, Oh, youre the gun guy. I responded: Yes, I guess so. I dont believe that people should own guns, Obama replied.

I then replied that it might be fun to have lunch and talk about that statement some time. He simply grimaced and turned away. Unlike other liberal academics who usually enjoyed discussing opposing ideas, Obama showed disdain. Mr. Obama? Wheres the disdain now? Cancelling, or at minimum, drastically scaling back by 90% or even 99%, the DHS order for ammo, and its receipt and deployment of armored personnel carriers, would be a fourfer.

The federal government would set an example of restraint in the matter of weaponry. It would reduce the deficit without squeezing essential services. It would do both in a way that was palatable to liberals and conservatives, slightly depolarizing America. It would somewhat defuse, by the government making itself less armed-to-the-teeth, the anxiety of those who mistrust the benevolence of the federales.

If Obama doesnt show any leadership on this matter its an opportunity for Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, to summon Secretary Napolitano over for a little national conversation. Madame Secretary? Buying 1.6 billion rounds of ammo and deploying armored personnel carriers runs contrary, in every way, to what homeland security really means. Discuss. Sheriff Maketa: Democrats use gun control to threaten sheriffs' pay Big questions remain about where allegations came from Lindsay Watts, Target 13 Reporter, l.watts@krdo.com Mar 10, 2013 COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa dropped a bombshell over the weekend claiming Colorado Senate Democrats are threatening sheriffs' salaries because sheriffs oppose gun control legislation. But big questions remain about who the threats came from. Maketa made the allegations Saturday morning on the Jeff Crank Radio Show on KVOR. He said he got an email from a member of the County Sheriffs of Colorado describing a verbal conversation that person had with someone connected to Senate democrats. "Basically in that email, it said the Senate majority leadership, the Dems, are very upset with your opposition and testimony on the gun bills and they are stating we should reconsider our positions to gain a more favorable light for salary support from the Dems," Maketa said.

In a nutshell: that Senate democrats are delaying a measure to raise sheriffs' salaries because sheriffs are speaking out against gun control. "I made it clear that I felt it was almost bordering extortion," Maketa said. "Attempted influence of a public official." Maketa never names the person who sent him the email or the person or legislator who connected sheriffs' pay with gun control legislation. Maketa has refused all media interviews, and a sheriff's office spokesperson told TARGET 13 that Maketa planned to write a letter to a local newspaper to be published Tuesday and would not comment before then. In his KVOR interview Maketa goes on to say, "I think that's the type of antics that we're seeing out of the leadership up there and it starts right at the top with the president of the Senate." Senate President John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, said he's furious with Maketa's allegations, calling them hearsay. "The allegations are completely, totally, utterly false and fabricated," Morse said. "And for one of the top law enforcement officials in our community to make such baseless allegations disturbs me deeply." Morse said he has contacted other top leaders in the Senate about the allegations. "(Maketa) knows there's no factual basis to it because he hasn't checked the facts himself," Morse said. "He's in law enforcement so he knows, you always check first and then make your allegations. This is just so out of character." Morse went on to point out that no senator, Democrat or Republican, has introduced a bill that would raise the pay of county officials. "I'm not in favor of that bill, but I'm happy to help (Republicans) get it introduced and see if they can get it accomplished," Morse said. "I think with everything families are suffering right now, people like Sheriff Maketa making $111,000 are doing just fine." Maketa pointed out on his Facebook page that a salary bill would not impact him personally because he is term limited. He also wrote: "I want to make something very clear; I have not been directly threatened or coerced in any way nor would I tolerate any threat."

TARGET 13 contacted the head of the County Sheriffs of Colorado, Chris Olson. He said the email Maketa referenced did not come from him and that he had no knowledge of the allegations Maketa had made. "Nothing came through our organization," Olson said. "It must be Sheriff Maketa on his own." Teller County Sheriff Mike Ensminger said he hadn't received the email. Las Animas County Sheriff James Casius said he'd heard about the allegations but wasn't sure if he'd gotten the email. Pueblo County Sheriff Kirk Taylor also wasn't sure and said he didn't want to comment. TARGET 13 also contacted radio host Jeff Crank to see if Maketa has elaborated on where the threats came from. Crank said Maketa did not. To watch the KVOR interview in full click here. Bill curbing surveillance drones passes committee By Jennifer Curington, Tallahassee Bureau 7:12 p.m. EDT, March 12, 2013 TALLAHASSEE A bill that would restrict the use of surveillance drones was unanimously approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, amid signs that law-enforcement objections to it may be easing. The bill (SB 92) would allow law enforcement to use the small, quiet unmanned drones only if they obtain a warrant from a judge, if a person's life or property is believed to be in danger, or if the Department of Homeland Security declares a terrorist threat. Citizens who feel they have been wrongfully spied upon can file a civil action lawsuit against law enforcement. "It's fine to kill terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan with drones, but I don't think we should use them to monitor the activities of law-abiding Floridians," said Senate sponsor Joe Negron, RStuart, a libertarian-minded conservative who's teamed with groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union to push the "Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act."

Florida seeking to cash in on drones

Pictures: Orange sheriff demonstrates new drone Once the Federal Aviation Administration allows their widespread use, drones will be able to do everything from crop dusting to mapping. Law-enforcement agencies have expressed interest in using them in place of noisy, expensive helicopters to search for missing persons, find fleeing suspects or keep an eye on crowds or traffic. And law enforcement groups led by the Orange County Sheriff's office, which owns two small drones have objected to restrictions. But Tuesday, the commander of the aviation unit of the Miami-Dade police department said his agency wouldn't object. "The bill fits our purpose of the program well," Lt. Aviel Sanchez said. He added that his department anticipated using its two Honeywell RQ-16 T-Hawk drones only in "tactical or emergency circumstances." The bill still must pass two more committees before making it to the Senate floor. A House companion (HB 119) sponsored by Rep. Ritch Workman, R-Melbourne, passed its second committee last week and has one more to face House Dems Attack President Obama's Extrajudicial Assassination Powers Finally, a coalition of Democrats are asking about the authorities under which the president has granted himself the power to secretly target Americans for assassination.

March 12, 2013 | Photo illustration of a US Predator in Afghanistan. The US media has turned a spotlight on itself after three news organizations admitted keeping the location of a drone base in Saudi Arabia secret at the request of the US administration.

Since the participation of Rand Paul in the civil liberties debate seems to make it doubly controversial and more difficult than it already is, perhaps the liberal base, at least, will be persuaded by the stalwart progressive House Democrats who sent this letter to President Obama today. Here's the crux of their issue:

Unlike everyone else they seem to have managed to see the forest for the trees on this and aren't obsessing of the use of drones, as if that's the real problem* with all this. They are asking about

the authorities under which the president has granted himself the power to secretly target Americans for assassination. It's signed by Lee, Ellison, Conyers, Grijalva, Edwards and Honda. Not a libertarian or right winger anywhere to be found. And as Emptywheel points out there are others as well, like Dianne Feinstein and Susan Collins, Jerry Nadler and Pat Leahy among others. This is beyond ideology or partisanship. Or at least it should be. *Yes, drones present problems for modern warfare for a number of reasons, which we've discussed before. But this is about something more than the technological capability. It's about whether the president has the constitutional or statutory authority to carry out a covert assassination program against American citizens on the new "global battlefield." (And again, that's not to say that carrying out such a program against non-citizens is moral or legal either, but it's a different set of rules and norms.) Americas Troubled Drone Policy: Let the Debate Finally Begin by John Kael Weston Feb 10, 2013 For John Kael Weston and other men on the frontlines of Iraq and Afghanistan drone strikes raise many uncomfortable questions. He writes about why we need clearer policy and guidelines for these silent killersand that we must realize their huge cost in civilian lives. Remember the bad guys we killed with the Predator after the Taghaz bombing? A U.S. Marine Cpl. waits for radio transmissions at his platoons defensive position during Operation Shahem Tofan in Helmand province. (Cpl. Reece Lodder) My Marine friends call came late one night in mid-2011 from Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania (home to the U.S. Armys War College) while I was in Leadville, Colorado. He wanted to vent about drones and our nations kill strategy from the sky. An incident two years earlier in a remote stretch of yellow desert in southern Afghanistans Helmand Province stuck with him, gnawing at his conscience. This war-hardened Marine infantry officer could not shake the image of watching a guilty man die, as cameras thousands of feet above beamed live streaming video footage to Camp Leathernecks command center. The feed showed how the missile severed both legs of one of the men, who then tried to drag and conceal what was left of himself into the new crater that became his grave. Marines watched from half-a-province away as the man bled to death, nowhere to hide. Those in the White House and Pentagon would be pleased: another kill added to the long list. This time a bullseye from a distance made clean, easy, and effective. Lets talk about it, I replied. If anyone wanted revenge, we did.

The bad guys, after all, were linked (but not indisputably) to a suicide bomber who blew up two Marines and a Navy Corpsman in a market the day after a Marine commanding general and I had visited them. We shook their hands as they began a new mission at the edge of Americas military empire, overstretched and unforgiving to frontline troops on third tours. We spent the next couple of hours on the phone, the first of many conversations about drone warfareits legal complexities, moral dimensions, and our firsthand experiences.

In Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010, where I served as a State Department political adviser to a 20,000-strong Marine Expeditionary Brigade, I got used to being briefed frequently on the deadly variety of drone missions. Some succeeded as planned; others did not. SEAL and DELTA Teams usually received top priority in their hunts for jackpot targets and dedicated air surveillance assets. Rarely were missions that resulted in unplanned outcomes called dryholes in frontline lingobriefed in any detail to us. They should have been. We dont always get the bad guys in the zero-dark hours after midnight, when civilians die at our hands. This side of the National Security Staff inbox warrants just as much scrutiny as the HVT (high-value target) categories. An Afghan I first met in Khost Province told me recently, Only few drones get success among the dozens because of either the false time or wrong report. He believes they should continue to operate but be conducted more carefully, with better intelligence and Afghan leaders helping to frame the issue. My Marine friend later wrote to me, noting that innocents are killed on battlefields always have been and unfortunately always will be what I am saying about what bothers me goes back to the effect killing has on your psychology, the psychological damage that occurs, damage that can be made worse when killing innocents.

Despite the effects of PTSD on drone operators stationed in the Nevada desert, the toll remains far greater among Pashtun parents and children. As a former U.S. Government official, I paid blood money (termed condolence payments in Pentagon and State Department prose) to families who lost brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters in operations of ours that went wrong. We usually handed over a maximum of $5,000 American dollars per death in Iraq or Afghanistan. It was never easy. And I never knew exactly how Washington priced out their lives. Our drone hammer makes everyone look like that nail that needs to be flattened. Now with our nations longest war ending, kill lists and bureaucratic memos make an already distant war even more remoteand antiseptic. It is a deceptive picture that obscures the truth. Under both the Bush and Obama Administrations, a slippery slope of self-justifications has become too commonplace. Republican and Democratic in-house lawyers have issued Executive Branch orders in convenient but questionable and euphemistic legalese. Enhanced interrogation techniques. Extraordinary rendition. Enemy combatants. Black sites. Imminent. And so on. Words to confuse the conscience. It is this gray area that troubles my Marine friend and me. His late-night call extended into an ongoing wider discussion about the courses he is taking at the Army War College. It is there he and classmates study the history and practice of warfarehow Americans fought in the past, present, and how were planning to fight into the future. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans like him have seen how detached policy has become from the human costs on the ground. As have I. Memos in Washington do not translate well in places like Helmand. (They didnt in Iraq, either.) While we both did not believe the man cut in two by our drone deserved a tactical reprieve or due process review on the battlefield, watching men die warps the soul. Intelligence that drives our decisions is never complete, and in his words, our drone hammer makes everyone look like that nail that needs to be flattened. The Marine officer went on to emphasize in a follow-on email, There is a gap in the system that ensures we are really killing bad guys and not innocents, which of course leads to the fact that hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in World War II on purpose by our government, which then leads to what is the value of human life one versus ten, us versus them? From Washington, drones appear to be an attractive, or possibly cheaper, alternative compared to another war or extending our nations longest, in Afghanistan, beyond 2014, the date President Obama has promised to end it. White House spokesman Jay Carney declared this way of warfare as preferable to massed invasions of villages, thereby lessening needless deaths in faraway battlefields.

Lance Cpl. Chance Voth, uses a laptop to track the movement of a RQ-11B Raven unmanned aircraft system during training operations in Hawaii, July 2011. (Cpl. Reece E. Lodder) Having survived Fallujah, Khost, Sadr City, and Helmand myselfplenty of American and Iraqi and Afghan friends did notI understand Mr. Carneys logic. Many of us are indeed war-weary and war-wary, especially everyone who served over there again and again. But this quiet war of stealth in the skies above only became a public topic of discussion because of a leaked memo outlining when an American commander in chief can legally kill an American citizen and because of ++John Brennans nomination to CIA director++[ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/09/john-brennan-and-the-drone-consensus.html]. Why did it take a leak to get the debate going? What we need is a deeper examination of the pros and cons. Terrorists have been killed, as they should be when we locate them. But so have civilians, more than a few. The overriding question, however, remains: when can U.S. leaders make lethal determinations about citizens outside established due process or legal proceedings? This overdue debate should be welcomed by Americans. As Oregon Senator Ron Wyden tweeted, Every American has the right to know when their government believes that it is allowed to kill them. Achieving the proper balance between rights and security requires active, ongoing discussion, not more secret memos passed between administration lawyers. General Stanley McChrystal has expressed skepticism about drones. In a recent Reuters interview he remarked: "What scares me about drone strikes is how they are perceived around the world. The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes ... is much greater than the average American appreciates. They are hated on a visceral level, even by people who've never seen one or seen the effects of one."

Brennan, in contrast, has voiced full-throated support, while current and incoming defense secretaries, Mr. Panetta and Mr. Hagel, have offered vague statements. Secretary of State John Kerry has yet to go on the record in a substantive way. President Obamas decision to release information to relevant Congressional oversight committees outlining his teams legal reasoningwhy and when a U.S. citizen might be targetedshould help initiate broad dialogue. Former Vice President Dick Cheneys dark side logic still begs for a small-d democratic airing and key senators seem ready, at last, to ask the hard questions. That is Congresss crucial balance-of-power role in our democracy. *** My Marine friend said neither man killed by our Predator strike that night in Helmand proved to be the intended target. He added, but they both were bad . . . loaded with weapons, grenades, etc. He sounded almost convinced. Are we? China's Drone Swarms Rise to Challenge US Power By Jeremy Hsu, TechNewsDaily Senior Writer | LiveScience.com Wed, Mar 13, 2013

China's Drone Swarms Rise to Challenge China is building one of the world's largest drone fleets aimed at expanding its military reach in the Pacific and swarming U.S. Navy carriers in the unlikely event of a war, according to a new report. The Chinese military known as the People's Liberation Army (PLA) envisions its drone swarms scouting out battlefields, guiding missile strikes and overwhelming opponents through sheer numbers. China's military-industrial complex has created a wide array of homegrown drones to accomplish those goals over the past decade, according to the report released by the Project 2049 Institute on March 11. "The PLA now fields one of the world's most expansive UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] fleets," said Ian Easton and L.C. Russell Hsiao, researchers at the Project 2049 Institute and authors of the new report.

U.S. military forces still operate the largest drone fleet, with at least 679 drones in 2012, according to data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies reported by the Guardian. But the new Project 2049 Institute report estimates that China had 280 military drones as of mid2011 a number that has likely grown since then. Chinese military drones have already entered the frontlines of China's territorial disputes with neighboring countries such as Japan by flying maritime patrols over disputed areas. The Project 2049 Institute report warned that China could be tempted to use drones more aggressively without risking human lives, or even consider "plausibly deniable" drone attacks blamed upon mechanical failure or cyberhackers. Chinese strategists have also discussed using swarms of drones to overwhelm the U.S. Navy's carrier groups in the unlikely possibility of a shooting war. The drones could act as decoys, use electronic warfare to jam communications and radar, guide missile strikes on carriers, fire missiles at U.S. Navy ships or dive into ships like kamikaze robots. [Video: RoboBees: Design Poses Intriguing Engineering Challenges] "In particular, numerous authoritative studies indicate a strong emphasis on developing UAVs for locating, tracking and targeting U.S. aircraft carriers in support of long range anti-ship cruise and ballistic missile strikes," the Project 2049 Institute report says. All the main branches of the Chinese military field operational drone units. The new report identifies those military units along with major academic, industry and military organizations involved in building Chinese drones. The report goes on to examine the state of Chinese drone technology. China is developing drones such as the rumored "Dark Sword" stealth drone that have low radar profiles to escape radar detection. It also wants to build "space" drones that could loiter at heights of 31 miles (50 kilometers) above the Earth to provide constant surveillance. (Scientists typically consider 62 miles (100 km) to mark the boundary for the edge of space.) Chinese engineers have even begun working on drones that have the software brains to fly in formation, do aerial refueling and takeoff and land autonomously capabilities that the U.S. military has also developed or begun testing for its own drones. The risk of war between the U.S. and China remains low. But the report cautions that the U.S. military could prepare for the worst-case scenario by hardening its existing air bases in Asia and developing energy weapons (such as lasers) for better air and missile defense.

MENUPROJECTS

Views of Government: Key Data Points Trust in Government For the past seven years, a period covering the final two years of the Bush administration and President Obamas first term, no more than about three-in-ten Americans have said they trust the federal government to do the right thing always or most of the time.

Our Jan. 2013 survey found only 26% saying they can trust government always or most of the time, while 73% say they can trust the government only some of the time or never. Majorities across all partisan and demographic groups express little or no trust in government. However, there are disparities: more than twice as many Hispanics as whites 44% vs. 20%) trust the federal government, and more blacks (38%) than whites trust the government. People younger than 30 have more trust in government than do older people. And far more Democrats (38%) than independents (21%) or Republicans (15%) say they can trust the government at least most of the time.

A majority of Americans also say the federal government is a threat to their rights.

In the January 2013 survey, 76% of conservative Republicans regard the government as a threat to their personal rights and freedoms and 54% consider the government to be a major threat, an increase over three years ago when 62% of them described it as a threat to their freedom and 47% said it was a major threat. By comparison, there is little change in opinion among Democrats; 38% say the government poses a threat to their personal freedoms and 16% view it as major. Fewer Americans have a favorable view of the federal government, with the biggest decline last year coming among Democrats.

Since Barack Obamas first year in office, public assessments of the federal government dropped nine points, according to our April 2012 survey. Most of the change was among Democrats and independents, as the level of favorable views of government among Republicans was already low.

The more negative view of the federal government has produced a growing gap between how Americans see Washington as compared to their state and local governments.

Ten years ago, roughly two-thirds of Americans offered favorable assessments of all three levels of government: federal, state and local. But in a survey conducted in April 2012, those having a favorable view of the federal government numbered just 33% compared to 61% who regarded their local government favorably, and 52% who had a positive opinion of their state government. In the 2012 Values survey, 69% of Americans said the federal government should only run things that cannot be done at the local level.

Government Role While many Americans may oppose a range of cuts in specific government programs, the public overall favors smaller government providing fewer services than a bigger government providing more services.

Currently, Americans say by a 56 to 35% margin that they prefer a smaller government providing fewer services than a bigger one, according to our Sept. 2012 survey. These opinions have changed little over the course of Barack Obamas presidency, although the margin did narrow in 2008. There was a substantial partisan divide on this question: 87% of Republicans favored the smaller government option compared to 28% of Democrats. Conversely, Democrats preferred bigger government over a smaller one by a 60% to 11% margin over Republicans. Independents favored a smaller government over a bigger one by 65% to 27%. The trend in public opinion favoring a smaller role for government is reflected in declining support for the social safety net.

While a majority of Americans has consistently agreed it is the responsibility of government to take care of people who cant take care of themselves, this has slipped to 59% from 63% in 2009 and 69% in 2007, according to our Values Study conducted in April 2012. Since 2007, Republican support for the safety net has declined significantly even as Democrats continue to support government aid to the poor and needy as they have over the last 25 years. As a result, the current party gap is now larger than ever.

Government regulation of business has become one of the nations most politically divisive issues.

In nearly every political values survey since 1987, majorities have agreed that government regulation of business usually does more harm than good. Partisan differences on this measure were far greater in 2012 than they were in 2007, the final year of George Bushs presidency.

About three-quarters (76%) of Republicans said that government regulation of business did more harm than good, among the highest ever. Just 41% of Democrats agreed, one of their lowest percentages ever. Branches of Government Americans have a highly negative view of Congress.

Opinions about Congress remain very negative, according to our Jan. 2013 survey: just 23% offer a favorable opinion while 68% express and unfavorable view.In 2009, 50% of the public regarded Congress favorably and, between 1985 and 2005, Congress was viewed more favorably than unfavorably. Virtually identical majorities of Republicans (58%), Democrats (57%) and independents (56%) put the blame on members of Congress, not the political system.

Unfavorable views of the Supreme Court are at their highest level in years.

Unfavorable opinions of the Supreme Court rose to their highest level in 25 years in July 2012 following its ruling that upheld most of the 2010 health care law. A survey conducted Dec 2012 found that little changed: 53% had a favorable view of the court while 36% had an unfavorable one. There are wide partisan differences in views of the court that emerged in the wake of the health care ruling: 62% of Democrats have a favorable view of the court compared to 44% of Republicans. Before the health care ruling, 56% of Republicans had viewed the court favorably in a survey conducted in April 2012. California Seizes Guns as Owners Lose Right to Keep Arms By Michael B. Marois & James Nash - Mar 12, 2013 12:06 PM PT

California Department of Justice police agents walk towards a house near Ontario, California on Tuesday, March 5, 2013. The agents, working for the only state-level program to confiscate illegal firearms from

owners, targeted people whod once legally purchased firearms and lost the right after being convicted of violent crimes, committed to mental institutions or hit with restraining orders.

Wearing bulletproof vests and carrying 40-caliber Glock pistols, nine California Justice Department agents assembled outside a ranch-style house in a suburb east of Los Angeles. They were looking for a gun owner whod recently spent two days in a mental hospital.
Special Agent Supervisor John Marsh who coordinates the operations around California, said: Were not contacting anybody who can legally own a gun. The only people were contacting are people who are prohibited from owning guns.

Special Agent Supervisor John Marsh who coordinates the operations around California, said: Were not contacting anybody who can legally own a gun. The only people were contacting are people who are prohibited from owning guns.
Weapons and ammunition seized from the home of Lynette and David Philllips by agents with the California Department of Justice police in Upland, California.

Weapons and ammunition seized from the home of Lynette and David Philllips by agents with the California Department of Justice police in Upland, California. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg
Lynette Phillips, 48, and her husband, David Phillips, 51, sit in their home in Upland, California on March 5, 2013. Lynette, a nurse, had to surrender three guns after spending two days in a mental hospital in December.

Lynette Phillips, 48, and her husband, David Phillips, 51, sit in their home in Upland, California on March 5, 2013. Lynette, a nurse, had to surrender three guns after spending two days in a mental hospital in December. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg
Weapons with ammunition seized from the home of Lynette and David Phillips by agents with the California Department of Justice police in Upland, California.

Weapons with ammunition seized from the home of Lynette and David Phillips by agents with the California Department of Justice police in Upland, California. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg

California Department of Justice police agents walk towards a house near Ontario, California on March 5, 2013.

California Department of Justice police agents walk towards a house near Ontario, California on March 5, 2013. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg
Special Agent Supervisor John Marsh with the California Department of Justice drives out to seize illegal firearms near Ontario, California on March 5, 2013.

Special Agent Supervisor John Marsh with the California Department of Justice drives out to seize illegal firearms near Ontario, California on March 5, 2013. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg They knocked on the door and asked to come in. About 45 minutes later, they came away peacefully with three firearms. California is the only state that tracks and disarms people with legally registered guns who have lost the right to own them, according to Attorney General Kamala Harris. Almost 20,000 gun owners in the state are prohibited from possessing firearms, including convicted felons, those under a domestic violence restraining order or deemed mentally unstable. What do we do about the guns that are already in the hands of persons who, by law, are considered too dangerous to possess them? Harris said in a letter to Vice President Joe Biden after a Connecticut school shooting in December left 26 dead. She recommended that Biden, heading a White House review of gun policy, consider California as a national model. As many as 200,000 people nationwide may no longer be qualified to own firearms, according to Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis. Other states may lack confiscation programs because they dont track purchases as closely as California, which requires most weapons sales go through a licensed dealer and be reported. Very, very few states have an archive of firearm owners like we have, said Wintemute, who helped set up the program.

Funding Increase Harris, a 48-year-old Democrat, has asked California lawmakers to more than double the number of agents from the current 33. They seized about 2,000 weapons last year. Agents also took 117,000 rounds of ammunition and 11,000 high-capacity magazines, according to state data. Were not contacting anybody who can legally own a gun, said John Marsh, a supervising agent who coordinates the sometimes-contentious seizures. I got called the Antichrist the other day. Every conspiracy theory youve heard of, take that times 10. The no-gun list is compiled by cross-referencing files on almost 1 million handgun and assault-weapon owners with databases of new criminal records and involuntary mentalhealth commitments. About 15 to 20 names are added each day, according to the attorney generals office. Probable Cause Merely being in a database of registered gun owners and having a disqualifying event, such as a felony conviction or restraining order, isnt sufficient evidence for a search warrant, Marsh said March 5 during raids in San Bernardino County. So the agents often must talk their way into a residence to look for weapons, he said. At a house in Fontana, agents were looking for a gun owner with a criminal history of a sex offense, pimping, according to the attorney generals office. Marsh said that while the woman appeared to be home, they got no answer at the door. Without a warrant, the agents couldnt enter and had to leave empty- handed. They had better luck in nearby Upland, where they seized three guns from the home of Lynette Phillips, 48, whod been hospitalized for mental illness, and her husband, David. One gun was registered to her, two to him. The prohibited person cant have access to a firearm, regardless of who the registered owner is, said Michelle Gregory, a spokeswoman for the attorney generals office. Involuntarily Held

In an interview as agents inventoried the guns, Lynette Phillips said that while shed been held involuntarily in a mental hospital in December, the nurse who admitted her had exaggerated the magnitude of her condition. Todd Smith, chief executive officer of Aurora Charter Oak Hospital in Covina, where documents provided by Phillips show she was treated, didnt respond to telephone and email requests for comment on the circumstances of the treatment. Phillips said her husband used the guns for recreation. She didnt blame the attorney generals agents for taking the guns based on the information they had, she said. I do feel I have every right to purchase a gun, Phillips said. Im not a threat. Were lawabiding citizens. No one was arrested. Most seized weapons are destroyed, Gregory said. Its not unusual to not arrest a mental-health person because every county in the state handles those particular cases differently, Gregory said by e-mail. Unless theres an extenuating need to arrest them on the spot, we refer the case to the local district attorneys office, she said. Convicted Felons Agents more often arrest convicted felons who are prohibited from buying, receiving, owning or possessing a firearm, Gregory said. Violation of the ban is itself a felony. The state Senate agreed March 7 to expand the seizure program using $24 million in surplus funds from fees that gun dealers charge buyers for background checks. Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, a gun lobby based in Fairfax, Virginia, that says it has more than 4 million individuals as members, didnt respond to a request for comment on the program. Sam Paredes, executive director of the Folsom-based advocacy group Gun Owners of California, praised the program, though not how it is funded.

We think that crime control instead of gun control is absolutely the way to go, he said. The issue we have is funding this program only from resources from law-abiding gun purchasers. This program has a benefit to the entire public and therefore the entire public should be paying through general- fund expenditures, and not just legal gun owners.

The NYT and Obama officials collaborate to prosecute Awlaki after he's executed Glenn Greenwald The New York Times published a long article on Sunday purporting to explain the government's justifications for killing US citizen Anwar Awlaki. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA A joint media-government attempt to justify the assassination of a US citizen ends up doing the opposite March 11, 2013 (updated below) The New York Times and the Obama administration have created a disturbing collaborative pattern that asserted itself again on Sunday with the paper's long article purporting to describe the events leading up to the execution by the CIA of US citizen Anwar Awlaki. Time and again, the Obama administration shrouds what it does with complete secrecy, and then uses that secrecy to avoid judicial review of its actions and/or compelled statutory disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. "Oh, we're so sorry", says the Obama DOJ, "but we cannot have courts deciding if what we did is legal, nor ordering us to disclose information under FOIA, because these programs are so very secret that any disclosure would seriously jeopardize national security". But then, senior Obama officials run to the New York Times by the dozens, demand (and receive) anonymity, and then spout all sorts of claims about these very same programs that are designed to justify what the US government has done and to glorify President Obama. The New York Times helpfully shields these officials - who are not blowing any whistles, but acting as government spokespeople - from being identified, and then mindlessly regurgitates their assertions as fact. It's standard government stenography, administration press releases masquerading as in-depth news articles. Sunday's lengthy NYT article on the Awlaki killing by Mark Mazzetti, Charlie Savage and Scott Shane is a classic case of this arrangement. It purports to provide "an account of what led to the Awlaki strike" that is "based on interviews with three dozen current and former legal and counterterrorism officials and outside experts". But what it really does is simply summarize the unverified justifications of the very officials involved in the killing, most of whom are permitted to justify themselves while hiding behind anonymity. It devotes itself with particular fervor to defending the actions of former Obama OLC lawyers David Barron and Marty Lederman, who concocted the theories to authorize due-process-free assassinations of American citizens (those same Democratic lawyers were, needless to say, among the most

vocal critics of the Bush administration's War on Terror policies that denied due process and relied on rampant secrecy). There are many points to make about all of this. To begin with, will the Obama administration - which has persecuted whistleblowers with an unprecedented fervor and frequency - launch a criminal investigation to determine the identity of the "three dozen current and former legal and counterterrorism officials" who spoke to the NYT about the classified Awlaki hit, or, as usual, are such punishments reserved for those who embarrass rather than glorify the president? Moreover, why can Obama officials run to the NYT after the fact and make all sorts of claims about the mountains of evidence supposedly proving Awlaki's guilt, but not have done the same thing in a court of law prior to killing him? As the NYT notes, when the ACLU sued on behalf of Awlaki's father seeking to enjoin Obama from killing his son, the Obama DOJ invoked the "state secrets" privilege, insisting that the evidence against Awlaki was so secret that national security would be jeopardized if disclosed to the court: the very same alleged evidence that Obama officials are now spilling to the NYT. They also deliberately refused to indict him, which would have at least required showing some evidence to a court to justify the accusations against him and would have enabled him to turn himself in and defend himself if inclined to do so. All of this highlights why it's so odious to prosecute and convict people in a newspaper after you execute them, rather than in a court of law before you end their life. As but one example, the statements about Awlaki from attempted underwear bomber Umar Abdulmutallab on which the NYT heavily relies to assert Awlaki's guilt would have been subjected to intense crossexamination to see if they were simply the results of Abdulmutallab giving the government what they wanted - namely, statements that incriminated someone they wanted to kill - in exchange for favors as part of his plea agreement. It's so basic, though the NYT seems not to have heard, that statements made by accused criminals in exchange for favors as part of a plea bargain are among the most unreliable. But that kind of critical scrutiny only happens in courtrooms, with due process. By contrast, asserted government evidence is simply mindlessly assumed to be true when it's fed to journalists after the fact without anyone to contradict it or any process available to disprove it. As the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights jointly said yesterday about this NYT story: "This is the latest in a series of one-sided, selective disclosures that prevent meaningful public debate and legal or even political accountability for the government's killing program, including its use against citizens. "Government officials have made serious allegations against Anwar al-Aulaqi, but allegations are not evidence, and the whole point of the Constitution's due process clause is that a court must distinguish between the two. If the government has evidence that Al-Aulaqi posed an imminent threat at the time it killed him, it should present that evidence to a court."

Indeed, while the NYT asserts as though it's incontrovertible that he was "a senior operative in Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen", Yemen experts such as Gregory Johnsen have long said the opposite: "We suspect a great deal about Anwar al-Awlaki, but we know very little, precious little when it comes to his operational role" and "Mendelsohn [said]: '(Awlaki) played an important role in a string of attacks in the West'. We just don't know this, we suspect it but don't know it." Beyond that, the DOJ officials whose conduct is defended by this story have long been important sources to the very NYT reporters writing this article (not just during the Obama years but also the Bush years), so it's a typical case of journalists using anonymity to serve the agendas of their government sources. And it's yet another case where journalistic anonymity is granted not to protect whistleblowers from recriminations by the powerful, but to protect government officials from accountability so they can justify government conduct. And, finally, Marcy Wheeler details several extremely dubious claims that were passed off as fact by this NYT article: here and here. But I want to focus on one key point. What prompted my opposition from the start to the attempted killing of Awlaki was that it was very clear he was being targeted because of his anti-American sermons that were resonating among English-speaking Muslim youth (sermons which, whatever you think of them, are protected by the First Amendment), and not because he was a Terrorist operative. In other words, the US government was trying to murder one of its own citizens as punishment for his political and religious views that were critical of the government's policies, and not because of any actual crimes or warfare. The NYT addresses this concern directly with a long, convoluted explanation that the Obama administration refrained from targeting Awlaki when they thought he was only a "dangerous propagandist", and decided to kill him only once they obtained proof that he was an actual Terrorist operative. The NYT says that this proof was obtained in "late January 2010" when Abdulmutallab cooperated with authorities and claimed Awlaki participated in his plot. In order to validate this explanation, the NYT claims that a December, 2009 drone strike in Yemen that was widely reported at the time to have targeted Awlaki - and which media outlets falsely reported killed him - was actually targeting others, and that Awlaki would merely have been oh-so-coincidental (and perfectly legal) "collateral damage". Here is the NYT's effort to insist that the Obama administration targeted Awlaki for death only once it obtained evidence in late January, 2010 that he was more than a mere propagandist:

"[Awlaki's] eloquent, English-language exhortations to jihad turned up repeatedly on the computers of young plotters of violence arrested in Britain, Canada and the United States. "By 2008, said Philip Mudd, then a top F.B.I. counterterrorism official, Mr. Awlaki 'was cropping up as a radicalizer - not in just a few investigations, but in what seemed to be every investigation.' "In November 2009, when Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, was charged with opening fire at Fort Hood in Texas and killing 13 people, Mr. Awlaki finally found the global

fame he had long appeared to court. Investigators quickly discovered that the major had exchanged e-mails with Mr. Awlaki, though the cleric's replies had been cautious and noncommittal. But four days after the shootings, the cleric removed any doubt about where he stood. "'Nidal Hassan is a hero', he wrote on his widely read blog. 'He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people.' "As chilling as the message was, it was still speech protected by the First Amendment. American intelligence agencies intensified their focus on Mr. Awlaki, intercepting communications that showed the cleric's growing clout in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemen-based affiliate of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. "On Dec. 24, 2009, in the second American strike in Yemen in eight days, missiles hit a meeting of leaders of the affiliate group. News accounts said one target was Mr. Awlaki, who was falsely reported to have been killed. "In fact, other top officials of the group were the strike's specific targets, and Mr. Awlaki's death would have been collateral damage - legally defensible as a death incidental to the military aim. As dangerous as Mr. Awlaki seemed, he was proved to be only an inciter; counterterrorism analysts did not yet have incontrovertible evidence that he was, in their language, "operational." "That would soon change. The next day, a 23-year-old Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried and failed to blow up an airliner as it approached Detroit. The would-be underwear bomber told FBI agents that after he went to Yemen and tracked down Mr. Awlaki, his online hero, the cleric had discussed 'martyrdom and jihad' with him, approved him for a suicide mission, helped him prepare a martyrdom video and directed him to detonate his bomb over United States territory, according to court documents. "In his initial 50-minute interrogation on Dec. 25, 2009, before he stopped speaking for a month, Mr. Abdulmutallab said he had been sent by a terrorist named Abu Tarek, although intelligence agencies quickly found indications that Mr. Awlaki was probably involved. When Mr. Abdulmutallab resumed cooperating with interrogators in late January, an official said, he admitted that 'Abu Tarek' was Mr. Awlaki. With the Nigerian's statements, American officials had witness confirmation that Mr. Awlaki was clearly a direct plotter, no longer just a dangerous propagandist. "'He had been on the radar all along, but it was Abdulmutallab's testimony that really sealed it in my mind that this guy was dangerous and that we needed to go after him,' said Dennis C. Blair, then director of national intelligence." So that tortured justification for what the Obama administration did, laundered through the NYT, is clear in its claims: (1) we were legally and constitutionally barred from trying to kill Awlaki when we thought he was just a propagandist; (2) the December, 2009 strike wasn't

really targeting him, despite what media outlets reported at the time, because we did not yet have evidence that he was a Terrorist plotter; and (3) we acquired that evidence only in late January, 2010, and only then did we start to target Awlaki for execution. Obviously, those claims are necessary to defend themselves from what would clearly be criminal behavior: trying to kill a US citizen because of the government's dislike for his political and religious speech. But the first journalist to report on the existence of Obama's kill list and the inclusion of US citizens was the Washington Post's Dana Priest. On January 26, 2010, this is what she wrote:

"As part of the operations [in Yemen], Obama approved a Dec. 24 strike against a compound where a US citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was thought to be meeting with other regional al-Qaeda leaders. Although he was not the focus of the strike and was not killed, he has since been added to a shortlist of US citizens specifically targeted for killing or capture by the JSOC, military officials said . . . "The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a US citizen joins al-Qaeda, 'it doesn't really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them', a senior administration official said. 'They are then part of the enemy.' "Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called 'High Value Targets' and 'High Value Individuals', whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC list includes three Americans, including Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three US citizens, and an intelligence official said that Aulaqi's name has now been added." According to Priest's reporting back then, the Obama administration was trying to execute Awlaki as early as late 2009 - exactly when the Obama officials who spoke to the NYT admit that they had no evidence that he was anything other than a "propagandist" and this his targeted killing would therefore be unconstitutional and illegal. (That's also a reminder that not only Awlaki, but at least two other still-unknown Americans, have been placed on Obama's kill list). Priest then added that the cause of Awlaki's being placed on the kill list were his "academic" discussions with Nidal Hasan: exactly what the NYT's Obama-official-sources now say are protected free speech that could not be used to legally justify his killing: "Intelligence officials say the New Mexico-born imam also has been linked to the Army psychiatrist who is accused of killing 12 soldiers and a civilian at Fort Hood, Tex., although his communications with Maj. Nidal M. Hasan were largely academic in nature. Authorities say that Aulaqi is the most important native, English-speaking al-Qaeda figure and that he was in contact with the Nigerian accused of attempting to bomb a US airlner on Christmas Day." Whatever else is true, there is a serious potential contradiction between the self-justifying claims of the NYT's sources (we waited until late January, 2010 when we acquired evidence of Awlaki's involvement in plots before trying to kill him) and Priest's reporting (the Obama administration began trying to kill Awlaki in 2009, before it had evidence that he had done

anything beyond "inspiring" plots with his sermons). The reason this matters so much regardless of your views of Awlaki is obvious, and is certainly on the mind of the NYT's government sources: it would be purely tyrannical, not to mention unconstitutional and criminal (murder), for the US government to try to kill one of its own citizens in order to stop his critical speech. It's possible that there is a distinction in this reporting between being targeted for killing by JSOC versus the CIA, although the NYT's government sources are clear that any government targeted killing of Awlaki without proof of involvement in terrorist plots - based solely on his sermons - would be legally dubious, at best (indeed, on Democracy Now this morning, the NYT's Scott Shane said: "they had in fact decided they could not target [US citizen] Samir Khan, because he was a propagandist, and not an actual plotter, but he was killed anyway"); when I asked Savage about this, he told me this morning via email that "the exact date that Awlaki went on 'the list' is one of several issues that we dug into at length, and while we were able to mosaic together some answers to some previously outstanding questions this one remains murky"). It's also possible that Priest's reporting was wrong and efforts to kill Awlaki only began in 2010 once the government acquired what it claims is evidence of his involvement in Terrorist plots. It's also possible that the NYT's sources are simply wrong, or worse, when claiming that abundant evidence exists to prove Awlaki's involvement in such plots. But all of this only underscores why governments of civilized nations don't first execute people without charges or due process and seek after the fact to prosecute and convict them in a onesided, non-adversarial process of newspaper leaks; these are exactly the kinds of questions that are resolved by adversarial judicial procedures, precisely the procedures the Obama administration made sure could never take place. It also underscores why responsible media outlets should do more than print these unverified government accusations as truth, especially about a matter as consequential as the government's assassination of its own citizens. That the Obama administration and the New York Times did neither of those things in this case is quite revealing about the function they perform. UPDATE I linked above the email response given to me by Savage, which is here. At his request, I've added a second email he sent which elaborates on one of the points he made. I'm content to have the reader compare the above facts which Priest reported and make up your own mind about what you think happened here.

March 9, 2013 How a U.S. Citizen Came to Be in Americas Cross Hairs By MARK MAZZETTI, CHARLIE SAVAGE and SCOTT SHANE WASHINGTON One morning in late September 2011, a group of American drones took off from an airstrip the C.I.A. had built in the remote southern expanse of Saudi Arabia. The drones crossed the border into Yemen, and were soon hovering over a group of trucks clustered in a desert patch of Jawf Province, a region of the impoverished country once renowned for breeding Arabian horses. A group of men who had just finished breakfast scrambled to get to their trucks. One was Anwar al-Awlaki, the firebrand preacher, born in New Mexico, who had evolved from a peddler of Internet hatred to a senior operative in Al Qaedas branch in Yemen. Another was Samir Khan, another American citizen who had moved to Yemen from North Carolina and was the creative force behind Inspire, the militant groups English-language Internet magazine. Two of the Predator drones pointed lasers on the trucks to pinpoint the targets, while the larger Reapers took aim. The Reaper pilots, operating their planes from thousands of miles away, readied for the missile shots, and fired. It was the culmination of years of painstaking intelligence work, intense deliberation by lawyers working for President Obama and turf fights between the Pentagon and the C.I.A., whose parallel drone wars converged on the killing grounds of Yemen. For what was apparently the first time since the Civil War, the United States government had carried out the deliberate killing of an American citizen as a wartime enemy and without a trial. Eighteen months later, despite the Obama administrations effort to keep it cloaked in secrecy, the decision to hunt and kill Mr. Awlaki has become the subject of new public scrutiny and debate, touched off by the nomination of John O. Brennan, Mr. Obamas counterterrorism adviser, to be head of the C.I.A. The leak last month of an unclassified Justice Department white paper summarizing the administrations abstract legal arguments prepared months after the Awlaki and Khan killings amid an internal debate over how much to disclose has ignited demands for even greater transparency, culminating last week in a 13-hour Senate filibuster that temporarily delayed Mr. Brennans confirmation. Some wondered aloud: If the president can order the

assassination of Americans overseas, based on secret intelligence, what are the limits to his power? This account of what led to the Awlaki strike, based on interviews with three dozen current and former legal and counterterrorism officials and outside experts, fills in new details of the legal, intelligence and military challenges faced by the Obama administration in what proved to be a landmark episode in American history and law. It highlights the perils of a war conducted behind a classified veil, relying on missile strikes rarely acknowledged by the American government and complex legal justifications drafted for only a small group of officials to read. The missile strike on Sept. 30, 2011, that killed Mr. Awlaki a terrorist leader whose death lawyers in the Obama administration believed to be justifiable also killed Mr. Khan, though officials had judged he was not a significant enough threat to warrant being specifically targeted. The next month, another drone strike mistakenly killed Mr. Awlakis 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, who had set off into the Yemeni desert in search of his father. Within just two weeks, the American government had killed three of its own citizens in Yemen. Only one had been killed on purpose. An Evolving Threat By the time the missile found him, Mr. Awlaki, 40, had been under the scrutiny of American officials for more than a decade. He first came under F.B.I. investigation in 1999 because of associations with militants and was questioned after the 2001 terrorist attacks about his contacts with three of the hijackers at his mosques in San Diego and Virginia. But at other times, presenting himself as a moderate bridge-builder, he gave interviews to the national news media, preached at the Capitol in Washington and attended a breakfast with Pentagon officials. In 2002, after leaving the United States for good, he endorsed the notion that the land of his birth was at war with Islam. In London, and then in Yemen, where he was imprisoned for 18 months with American encouragement, Mr. Awlaki inched steadily closer to a full embrace of terrorist violence. His eloquent, English-language exhortations to jihad turned up repeatedly on the computers of young plotters of violence arrested in Britain, Canada and the United States. By 2008, said Philip Mudd, then a top F.B.I. counterterrorism official, Mr. Awlaki was cropping up as a radicalizer not in just a few investigations, but in what seemed to be every investigation.

In November 2009, when Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, was charged with opening fire at Fort Hood in Texas and killing 13 people, Mr. Awlaki finally found the global fame he had long appeared to court. Investigators quickly discovered that the major had exchanged e-mails with Mr. Awlaki, though the clerics replies had been cautious and noncommittal. But four days after the shootings, the cleric removed any doubt about where he stood. Nidal Hassan is a hero, he wrote on his widely read blog. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people. As chilling as the message was, it was still speech protected by the First Amendment. American intelligence agencies intensified their focus on Mr. Awlaki, intercepting communications that showed the clerics growing clout in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemen-based affiliate of Osama bin Ladens terrorist network. On Dec. 24, 2009, in the second American strike in Yemen in eight days, missiles hit a meeting of leaders of the affiliate group. News accounts said one target was Mr. Awlaki, who was falsely reported to have been killed. In fact, other top officials of the group were the strikes specific targets, and Mr. Awlakis death would have been collateral damage legally defensible as a death incidental to the military aim. As dangerous as Mr. Awlaki seemed, he was proved to be only an inciter; counterterrorism analysts did not yet have incontrovertible evidence that he was, in their language, operational. That would soon change. The next day, a 23-year-old Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried and failed to blow up an airliner as it approached Detroit. The would-be underwear bomber told F.B.I. agents that after he went to Yemen and tracked down Mr. Awlaki, his online hero, the cleric had discussed martyrdom and jihad with him, approved him for a suicide mission, helped him prepare a martyrdom video and directed him to detonate his bomb over United States territory, according to court documents. In his initial 50-minute interrogation on Dec. 25, 2009, before he stopped speaking for a month, Mr. Abdulmutallab said he had been sent by a terrorist named Abu Tarek, although intelligence agencies quickly found indications that Mr. Awlaki was probably involved. When Mr. Abdulmutallab resumed cooperating with interrogators in late January, an official said, he

admitted that Abu Tarek was Mr. Awlaki. With the Nigerians statements, American officials had witness confirmation that Mr. Awlaki was clearly a direct plotter, no longer just a dangerous propagandist. He had been on the radar all along, but it was Abdulmutallabs testimony that really sealed it in my mind that this guy was dangerous and that we needed to go after him, said Dennis C. Blair, then director of national intelligence. A Legal Quandary David Barron and Martin Lederman had a problem. As lawyers in the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel, it had fallen to them to declare whether deliberately killing Mr. Awlaki, despite his citizenship, would be lawful, assuming it was not feasible to capture him. The question raised a complex tangle of potential obstacles under both international and domestic law, and Mr. Awlaki might be located at any moment. According to officials familiar with the deliberations, the lawyers threw themselves into the project and swiftly completed a short memorandum. It preliminarily concluded, based on the evidence available at the time, that Mr. Awlaki was a lawful target because he was participating in the war with Al Qaeda and also because he was a specific threat to the country. The overlapping reasoning justified a strike either by the Pentagon, which generally operated within the Congressional authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda, or by the C.I.A., a civilian agency which generally operated within a national self-defense framework deriving from a presidents security powers. They also analyzed other bodies of law to see whether they would render a strike impermissible, concluding that they did not. For example, the Yemeni government had granted permission for airstrikes on its soil as long as the United States did not acknowledge its role, so such strikes would not violate Yemeni sovereignty. And while the Constitution generally requires judicial process before the government may kill an American, the Supreme Court has held that in some contexts like when the police, in order to protect innocent bystanders, ram a car to stop a high-speed chase no prior permission from a judge is necessary; the lawyers concluded that the wartime threat posed by Mr. Awlaki qualified as such a context, and so his constitutional rights did not bar the government from killing him without a trial.

But as months passed, Mr. Barron and Mr. Lederman grew uneasy. They told colleagues there were issues they had not adequately addressed, particularly after reading a legal blog that focused on a statute that bars Americans from killing other Americans overseas. In light of the gravity of the question and with more time, they began drafting a second, more comprehensive memo, expanding and refining their legal analysis and, in an unusual step, researching and citing dense thickets of intelligence reports supporting the premise that Mr. Awlaki was plotting attacks. Their labors played out against the backdrop of how some of their predecessors under President George W. Bush had become defined by their once-secret memos asserting a nearly unlimited view of executive authority, like that a presidents wartime powers allowed him to defy Congressional statutes limiting torture and surveillance. Indeed, Mr. Barron and Mr. Lederman had produced a definitive denunciation of such reasoning, co-writing a book-length, two-part Harvard Law Review essay in 2008 concluding that the Bush teams theory of presidential powers that could not be checked by Congress was an even more radical attempt to remake the constitutional law of war powers than is often recognized. Then a senator, Mr. Obama had called the Bush theory that a president could bypass a statute requiring warrants for surveillance illegal and unconstitutional. Now, Mr. Barron and Mr. Lederman were being asked whether President Obamas counterterrorism team could take its own extraordinary step, notwithstanding potential obstacles like the overseas-murder statute. Enacted as part of a 1994 crime bill, it makes no exception on its face for national security threats. By contrast, the main statute banning murder in ordinary, domestic contexts is far more nuanced and covers only unlawful killings. As they researched the rarely invoked overseas-murder statute, Mr. Barron and Mr. Lederman discovered a 1997 district court decision involving a woman who was charged with killing her child in Japan. A judge ruled that the terse overseas-killing law must be interpreted as incorporating the exceptions of its domestic-murder counterpart, writing, Congress did not intend to criminalize justifiable or excusable killings. And by arguing that it is not unlawful murder when the government kills an enemy leader in war or national self-defense, Mr. Barron and Mr. Lederman concluded that the foreign-killing statute would not impede a strike. They had not resorted to the Bush-style theories they had

once denounced of sweeping presidential war powers to disregard Congressionally imposed limitations. Due to return to academia in the fall of 2010, the two lawyers finished their second Awlaki memorandum, whose reasoning was widely approved by other administration lawyers, that summer. It had ballooned to about 63 pages but remained narrowly tailored to Mr. Awlakis circumstances, blessing lethal force against him without addressing whether it would also be permissible to kill citizens, like low-ranking members of Al Qaeda, in other situations. Nearly three years later, a version of the legal analysis portions would become public in the white paper, which stripped out all references to Mr. Awlaki while retaining echoes, like its discussion of a generic senior operational leader. Divorced from its original context and misunderstood as a general statement about the scope and limits of the governments authority to kill citizens, the free-floating reasoning would lead to widespread confusion. Heightening Intelligence Now the lawyers had twice signed off on killing Mr. Awlaki if he could not be captured but the government still had no idea where in Yemen he was hiding. During the first half of 2010 the C.I.A. was just ramping up intelligence gathering in the country, and Saudi spies had yet to penetrate militant networks in Yemen deeply enough to learn the whereabouts of leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Mr. Awlaki appears to have hidden most of the time in Shabwa Province, several hours drive southeast of the capital, turf for Al Qaeda and also the traditional territory of his familys powerful tribe, the Awaliq. Yemens cagey longtime president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, negotiated with tribal leaders, who offered to hold Mr. Awlaki under house arrest, according to a Yemeni official. The talks were inconclusive. And there were other problems. A disastrous American missile strike in May 2010 accidentally killed a deputy provincial governor in Yemen and infuriated President Saleh, effectively suspending the clandestine war. It would be months before the Pentagons next strike in Yemen. In August 2010, Mr. Awlakis father, with help from civil liberties groups, filed a lawsuit in Washington challenging the government plan to kill his son, which had been reported in the

news media. In court filings, the administration marshaled its public claims against Mr. Awlaki and said he could always surrender. But it also declared that courts should play no role in overseeing the executive branchs wartime targeting decisions, argued that Mr. Awlakis father had no legal standing to bring the case, and invoked the state secrets privilege. In December 2010, a judge dismissed the suit. Back in Yemen, the C.I.A. and the Pentagon used the pause in the air campaign to develop more sources inside the country. The National Security Agency stepped up monitoring of cellphones in Yemen and penetrated computer networks to intercept electronic messages. Aware that Mr. Obama, shaken by the underwear bombing attempt, was closely following the hunt, agencies competed to get new scraps about Mr. Awlaki into the presidents daily intelligence briefing, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst said. And, very quietly, the C.I.A. began to build its own drone base in Saudi Arabia. Saudi officials had given the C.I.A. permission to build the base on the condition that the kingdoms role was masked. And the base took care of a separate problem: the government of Djibouti, where the military was basing its drone operations in the region, put tight restrictions on any lethal operations carried out from its soil. The Saudi government made no similar demands. Meanwhile, attacks linked in various ways to Mr. Awlaki continued to mount, including the attempted car bombing of Times Square in May 2010 by Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen who had reached out to the preacher on the Internet, and the attempted bombing by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula of cargo planes bound for the United States that October. In late 2010 or early 2011, Yemeni security troops surrounded a village in Shabwa Province where Mr. Awlaki was reported to be hiding, said Gregory Johnsen, a Princeton scholar and author of The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and Americas War in Arabia. But a house-tohouse search did not find him. At the White House, frustration was mounting. The Hunt Narrows Even as the hunt went on, Yemens strongman began to lose his grip on power as his country was caught up in the revolts sweeping the Arab world in early 2011.

That June, a barrage of rockets struck the room of the presidential palace where Mr. Saleh was hiding, severely injuring him and effectively ending his rule. The weakening of Mr. Saleh gave the Americans more latitude for the Awlaki manhunt. By then, American and Saudi spies had turned a number of militants into sources, helping to guide American strikes. In its most exotic effort to track the cleric, the C.I.A. worked with Danish intelligence to use Morten Storm, a Danish convert who had befriended Mr. Awlaki, to put a tracking device on the suitcase of a woman who had agreed to become the clerics third wife. The plan failed when Mr. Awlakis wary associates discarded the suitcase. But Mr. Storm also told the authorities that he communicated with Mr. Awlaki via a courier; it is not clear whether that courier eventually helped lead the C.I.A. to Mr. Awlakis location. Other sources of information were also emerging, and one led to a new debate. In April 2011, the United States captured Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a Somali man who worked closely with the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen. He was held aboard a naval vessel for more than two months and spoke freely to interrogators, including about his encounters with the former North Carolina man now editing the groups magazine, Samir Khan. While the United States had long tracked Mr. Khan, the new details from the Warsame interrogation raised the question of whether another American citizen should be considered for targeting. There was still scant evidence tying Mr. Khan to any specific plot, so the administration left him off the list. But events would not turn out so neatly. In May 2011, days after the American commando raid in Pakistan that killed Bin Laden, the Pentagons Joint Special Operations Command, the hub for classified Army and Navy commando units, had its best chance to kill Mr. Awlaki as he moved around Shabwa Province. Drones and Marine Harrier jets fired at his truck, but he managed to escape and took refuge in a cave. According to Mr. Johnsen, the Princeton expert, Mr. Awlaki told friends that the episode increased my certainty that no human being will die until they complete their livelihood and appointed time. Finally, by late September 2011, the C.I.A. base in Saudi Arabia was ready. Mr. Obamas counterterrorism adviser, Mr. Brennan, directed that lead responsibility for the Awlaki hunt would be shifted to the agency. David H. Petraeus, who had taken over as C.I.A. director on Sept. 6, ordered several drones to be relocated from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia. By mid-

September, the Americans were closing in with updates from a C.I.A. source inside Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, officials say. That was when a very different search for Mr. Awlaki began. As Mr. Awlaki had become one of the worlds most hunted terrorists, his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman had lived the life of a normal adolescent. He liked sports and music and kept his Facebook page regularly updated. But now he sneaked out of the family home in Sana, Yemens capital, leaving an apologetic note for his mother saying that he had gone to find his father. But by the time the teenager headed to Shabwa, his father had left for Jawf Province, hundreds of miles away. Accompanied by Mr. Khan, the elder Awlaki moved about the rugged territory, wary of staying anywhere for long. What he did not know was that the C.I.A.s source was reporting the movements. On the morning of Sept. 30, guided by the tipster, the fleet of drones arrived above Jawf. Missiles destroyed the convoy. The same day, at a military ceremony at Fort Myer in Arlington, Va., Mr. Obama took note of the victory for the immense American counterterrorism effort but in oddly indirect language. Mr. Awlaki, he said, was killed in Yemen, and this success is a tribute to our intelligence community and to the efforts of Yemen and its security forces who have worked closely with the United States. Mr. Obama had immediately declassified the Bin Laden raid. But this time he signaled that the operation in Yemen, though already reported around the globe, would remain officially unacknowledged. Members of Congress would speak only cautiously about it, and counterterrorism officials could discuss only privately what the whole world knew. Administration officials who had labored for months to evaluate the killing of Mr. Awlaki took stock. Mr. Khan, whom they had specifically decided not to add to the kill list, was dead, too. While the lawyers believed that his killing was legally defensible as collateral damage, the death cast a cloud over all those months of seemingly cautious efforts to analyze who should go on the list and who should not. Then, on Oct. 14, a missile apparently intended for an Egyptian Qaeda operative, Ibrahim alBanna, hit a modest outdoor eating place in Shabwa. The intelligence was bad: Mr. Banna was

not there, and among about a dozen men killed was the young Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who had no connection to terrorism and would never have been deliberately targeted. It was a tragic error and, for the Obama administration, a public relations disaster, further muddying the moral clarity of the previous strike on his father and fueling skepticism about American assertions of drones surgical precision. The damage was only compounded when anonymous officials at first gave the younger Mr. Awlakis age as 21, prompting his grieving family to make public his birth certificate. He had been born in Denver, said the certificate from the Colorado health department. In the United States, at the time his governments missile killed him, the teenager would have just reached driving age.

ACLU and CCR Comment on New York Times Article on Killing of Anwar Al-Aulaqi ACLU & CCR

March 10, 2013 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following statement in response to The New York Times article today detailing the U.S. governments killings of three U.S. citizens: "In anonymous assertions to The New York Times, current and former Obama administration officials seek to justify the killings of three U.S. citizens even as the administration fights hard to prevent any transparency or accountability for those killings in court. This is the latest in a series of one-sided, selective disclosures that prevent meaningful public debate and legal or even political accountability for the governments killing program, including its

use against citizens. "Government officials have made serious allegations against Anwar al-Aulaqi, but allegations are not evidence, and the whole point of the Constitutions due process clause is that a court must distinguish between the two. If the government has evidence that Al-Aulaqi posed an imminent threat at the time it killed him, it should present that evidence to a court. Officials now also anonymously assert that Samir Khans killing was unintended and that the killing of 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi was a mistake, even though in court filings the Obama administration refuses to acknowledge any role in those killings. In court filings made just last week, the government in essence argued, wrongly, that it has the authority to kill these three Americans without ever having to justify its actions under the Constitution in any courtroom." The ACLU and CCR are challenging the legality of the drone strike that killed Al-Aulaqi and Khan, as well as the separate strike that killed Al-Aulaqis 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, in Yemen in September and October 2011. The ACLU is also seeking disclosure of the legal memoranda written by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel that provided justifications for the targeted killing of AlAulaqi, as well as records describing the factual basis for the killings of all three Americans, in a separate Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. More information is at: www.aclu.org/targetedkilling and http://ccrjustice.org/targetedkillings Obamas Smart Move on Drones by Michael Tomasky Feb 10, 2013 7:38 PM EST The presidents civil-liberties record is far from ideal. But, says Michael Tomasky, at least give Obama credit for exploring ways to limit his own power. (But it was a ruse, not even a real effort! What is wrong with people! Ed.) At John Brennans CIA confirmation hearing last week, which came right after the leak of the controversial Justice Department memo about the targeting of U.S. citizens, Sen. Dianne Feinstein said that the Senate was reviewing proposals for special courts to oversee the program. At least that way, this awesome power to determine that a U.S. citizen had forfeited his right to due process by joining an enemy army wouldnt repose in one person. Then on Saturday, The New York Times noted that President Obama has been considering exactly this move. This provides a good occasion, then, to reflect on a difference between Obama and his predecessor Obama has certainly continued and maybe even expanded some dreadful Bush-era practices on wiretapping, but at least hes apparently willing to relinquish some executive power. And that serves as a reminder that while we always have to be on guard against abuse of executive power, its also the case that some presidents are less creepy than others, and that in the post-9/11 era, we dont have much choice but to live with a lot of ambiguity in these matters.

Presdent Obama arrives to speak during the House Democratic Issues Conference last week at the Lansdowne Resort in Virginia. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty) The Times article cites a number of senatorsFeinstein, Ron Wyden, Saxby Chambliss, freshman Angus Kingexpressing their concern about the fact that a president can use secret evidence to label a citizen a terrorist and order his execution without a trial or judges ruling. For several paragraphs, youre reading this piece thinking that its a building congressional hue and cry that will force the Obama administration to submit to judicial reviews of the targeting of citizens. But then you get to this sentence: An administration official who spoke of the White House deliberations on the condition of anonymity said President Obama had asked his security and legal advisers a year ago to see how you could have an independent review of planned strikes. That includes possible judicial review. Now, let me acknowledge the obvious, which is that the Obama administration hasnt implemented this review. The leak of this memo to Mike Isikoff of NBC may indeed have been made by someone frustrated that the process wasnt moving fast enough. Carrying this change through is going to require legislation, and then these courts will need to be set up. Equally obviously, a secret court of the type envisioned is not going to satisfy civil libertarians, not only because its secret, but because the target would presumably have no representation at hearings. But it would address a major concernthat the president alone shouldnt have such power. Im not saying that Obama deserves ... oh, the Nobel Peace Prize (!) for initiating such a process, if indeed it comes to pass. But its worth noting anyway. I dont know many presidents who would willingly see their own power be subject to more scrutiny. Can you imagine George W. Bush turning to Alberto Gonzales and saying, Fredo, Ive been thinking, I have too much executive

power. Howzabout we get some judges to review some of my decisions? And on the off chance there was such a moment of presidential weakness, Dick Cheney was there to cut any such nonsense short. Possibly the worst thing Obama has done as president is his flip-flop in support of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act amendments of 2008, which permit a broad range of foreign and domestic wiretapping and which he extended last December until 2017. No one who cares anything about the Bill of Rights can feel entirely comfortable with an executive branch that has the power to engage in warrantless wiretapping on such a broad scale. Its going to be a fact of life for a while in this country that presidents are going to have this kind of power. But its going to be a fact of life for a while in this country that presidents are going to have this kind of power. The public generally supports such power, according to polls Ive seen. One poll last year even showed a plurality supporting the use of domestic-surveillance drones by local police departments. (Imagine one of those in Joe Arpaios hands.) Its also going to be a presidential game of chicken: what president is going to be the first to give up broad powers of domestic surveillance, knowing that if she or he does so and there is a domestic terrorist attack, the opposition party (especially if its the Republicans) will rush to connect the dots even if there is no real connection? Given all this, the best that citizens can do is decide which candidate and party theyd rather trust with this power. Im not turning somersaults at the idea of any president having it. But you better believe Id rather have Obama possess it than George Bush or John McCain or Mitt Romney. Talk of this sort is the highest form of apostasy to your purer civil libertarians, who urge us to think only in terms of the office. But men (and hopefully soon women) hold that office, and its not just OK for citizens to assess their character and their levels of paranoia, its a duty. I hope Obama and his people follow through on this idea of setting up these courts. More broadly, its now incumbent upon Obama, after the leak of this document and the hubbub thats ensued, to outline to the American people just where he draws these lines. The State of the Union address arrives on Tuesday; that would be a timely, and appropriate, place to start. Author: Prof. Obama 'Wouldn't Shake Hands, He'd Turn His Back On Me' March 13, 2013 By Gregory Gwyn-Williams, Jr. Author and economist, John R. Lott Jr. told Conservative Commandos Radio Show (CCRS) that Professor Barack Obama wouldn't shake hands and would turn his back on him during discussions on controversial issues when they both worked at the University of Chicago. "He had the most extreme consistent reaction interacting with me as anybody that I ever ran into," Lott told CCRS host Rick Trader.

Lott was discussing his new book, At the Brink, in which he recalls some of his interactions with then-professor Barack Obama at the University of Chicago Law School. Lott told Trader, "The reason why he [Obama] stands out in my mind so much...he had the most extreme consistent reaction interacting with me as anybody that I ever ran into by far in academia." "Also he [Obama] was the only one that just told me, point blank, that he didn't believe people should own guns. "I mean there were other very liberal academics, or left-wing academics who would think that there ought to be strict gun-control or regulations. But, he stood out because I don't think I ever had anybody else just so flatly tell me that they don't believe people should be able to own guns," Lott said. Lott also elaborated on some of his other interactions with Obama: "He wouldn't shake hands, he'd turn his back on me; the book goes through some of these things. "And, you know, it was just obvious that he disliked me. He disliked me a lot. Not just, you know, as one would normally dislike somebody that they disagree with, but I think he actually viewed me as evil in some way because of our differences on the gun issue." "I think he held that position very, very strongly and you know it affected the way he interacted with other people," Lott said. Lott also said that one of the reasons that he wrote, At the Brink, is because he believes there is a "full-scale assault" by the president on the people's ability to own guns. "People are missing how this is really the first president to go and fight for state regulations, to go and make it difficult for people to own guns," Lott told CCRS. MoD admits campaign in Afghanistan is 'an unwinnable war' Richard Cookson Thursday 14 March 2013 British soldiers in Afghanistan are fighting an 'unwinnable' war British soldiers fighting in Afghanistan are part of a campaign that attempted to impose an ideology foreign to the Afghan people and was unwinnable in military terms, according to a damning report by the Ministry of Defence. The internal study says that Nato forces have been unable to establish control over the insurgents safe havens or protect the rural population, and warns the conditions do not exist to guarantee the survival of the Afghan government after combat troops withdraw next year.

The report, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, says that when troops leave, Afghanistan will be left with a severely damaged and very weak economic base, which means that the West will have to continue to fund large-scale support programmes for many years to come.

Even if the internal situation were stable, the Afghan government may not survive the destabilising activities of its neighbours. Regional players do not have a vested interest in the success of the Kabul government, states the document in a clear reference to Pakistan. The report, Lessons from the Soviet Transition in Afghanistan, is an internal research project produced in November last year by the MoDs think-tank, the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC). Based in Shrivenham, Wiltshire, the DCDCs reports help inform decisions in defence strategy, capability development and operations across all three branches of the armed forces. The study examines the extraordinary number of similar factors that surround both the Soviet and Nato campaigns in Afghanistan and highlights lessons that military commanders could learn. The highest-level parallel is that both campaigns were conceived with the aim of imposing an ideology foreign to the Afghan people: the Soviets hoped to establish a Communist state while Nato wished to build a democracy, it says. Equally striking is that both abandoned their central aim once they realised that the war was unwinnable in military terms and that support of the population was essential. It continues: Both interventions have been portrayed as foreign invasions attempting to support a corrupt and unpopular central government against a local insurgent movement which has

popular support, strong religious motivation and safe havens abroad. In addition, the country will again be left with a severely damaged and very weak economic base, heavily dependent upon external aid. In unusually frank terms, it goes on: The international setting for both campaigns has significant similarities with world opinion judging both as failed interventions. Both faced a loss of confidence in their strategic world leadership and increasing domestic and financial pressure to abandon the enterprise. Turning to lessons for the armed forces, it says: The military parallels are equally striking; the 40th Army [of the Soviet Union] was unable decisively to defeat the mujahedin while facing no existential threat itself, a situation that precisely echoes the predicament of Isaf [the Nato-led security mission]. Neither campaign established control over the countrys borders and the insurgents safe havens; both were unable to protect the rural population. The report states that the Soviet withdrawal plan was handicapped by a publicly announced timetable. Western commanders have blamed the British and American governments for publicly presenting just such a timetable. It adds that the success of the withdrawal in Afghanistan is likely to be judged on the same criteria as those used to objectively judge the Soviet transition, which includes the longevity and effectiveness of the incumbent central government. An MoD spokesman said: We are in Afghanistan to protect our national security by helping Afghans to take control of their own. We are not trying to build a perfect Afghanistan rather one that does not again provide safe haven for international terrorists. A key purpose of the DCDC is to produce research which tests and challenges established doctrine and its papers are designed to stimulate internal debate, not outline government positions.

Craig B Hulet was both speech writer and Special Assistant for Special Projects to Congressman Jack Metcalf (Retired); he has been a consultant to federal law enforcement DEA, ATF&E of Justice/Homeland Security for over 25 years; he has written four books on international relations and philosophy, his latest is The Hydra of Carnage: Bushs Imperial War-making and the Rule of Law - An Analysis of the Objectives and Delusions of Empire. He has appeared on over 12,000 hours of TV and Radio: The History Channel De-Coded; He is a regular on Coast to Coast AM w/ George Noory and Coffee Talk KBKW; CNN, C-Span ; European Television "American Dream" and The Arsenio Hall Show; he has written for Soldier of Fortune Magazine, International Combat Arms, Financial Security Digest, etc.; Hulet served in Vietnam 1969-70, 101st Airborne, C Troop 2/17th Air Cav and graduated 3rd in his class at Aberdeen Proving Grounds Ordnance School MOS 45J20 Weapons. He remains a paid analyst and consultant in various areas of geopolitical, business and security issues: terrorism and military affairs. Hulet lives in the ancient old growth Quinault Rain Forest.