They should be under investigation

 

Afghan withdrawal fiasco - drone strike coverup

Independent investigations by The New York Times and The Washington Post are calling into question the U.S. military claims that its Aug. 29 drone strike in Kabul destroyed a car operated by an ISIS-K sympathizer, which allegedly contained explosives destined for the Kabul airport.

The U.S. Central Command initial statement described the strike as a "self-defense" operation that eliminated an "imminent ISIS-K threat" to the airport. "Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material."

[...]

But the Times and Post investigations were unable to find evidence of any explosives in the car, which they say was driven by 43-year-old Zemari Ahmadi, an engineer working for the U.S. aid group Nutrition and Education International, which aims to eliminate malnutrition in Afghanistan. Family members told the Times that Ahmadi had applied for refugee resettlement in the United States.

[...]

Military officials had said the driver seemed to have loaded explosives into the car that day, but security camera footage obtained by the Times shows the alleged explosives were likely containers used to carry water home to his family. "I filled the containers myself, and helped him load them into the trunk," a guard told the Times.

[...]

Ahmadi's relatives told the Times that 10 members of their family were killed, including seven children.

[...]

U.S. Central Command spokesperson Capt. Bill Urban declined to comment on the allegations, citing an ongoing investigation.

The Centcom group that gathered the intelligence is reviewing all the information it had, although it's uncertain when or if any results will be made public. [...]

The Times and Post analyses also called into question military assertions of "secondary explosions" in the courtyard. Times reporters could find no evidence of a second explosion at the scene. Experts pointed to the lack of collapsed walls or destroyed vegetation. "It seriously questions the credibility of the intelligence or technology utilized to determine this was a legitimate target," security consultant Chris Cobb-Smith told the Times.

"My theory is: The [Hellfire] explosives themselves ruptured the gas tank, released the vapor, and because of the fire that happened a short time afterward, it detonated and caused something that may have been explosion-like," said Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

Steven Kwon, president of California-based Nutrition and Education International, told the Post that the white sedan belonged to the organization. After Ahmadi met at the NEI compound to discuss an emergency food aid program for displaced people, he spent the rest of the day running errands, Kwon said.

Kwon denied that NEI has any association with ISIS-K. "We're trying to help people," he told the Post. "Why would we have explosives to kill people?"

  NPR

My guess is that it won't.

Jesus Christ get these people out of Washington

Send over the US marshalls ffs.

Bingo!

UPDATE:

Hiding Trump's calls

Experts are homing in on allegations that the White House used a computer system meant for highly classified information to store details of President Donald Trump’s calls with foreign leaders, in what they described as a stark departure from how the server is normally used and how memos of the president’s exchanges are typically handled.

[...]

And it has surprised former White House and National Security Council officials who say the NSC’s codeword-level system is specifically designed to protect highly sensitive compartmented intelligence matters.

  Politico

Right there seems to be a contradiction to Joe Maguire's testimony that he went to the White House and DOJ with the complaint because it didn't fit the requirement of pertaining to intelligence matters, which would be the trigger for him going direct to the Intel Committee with the complaint. I wonder why they didn't press him with that in the hearing.

Those include covert action programs, diplomatically sensitive information and other national security secrets, said Larry Pfeiffer, the former Situation Room senior director under President Barack Obama and CIA chief of staff in the George W. Bush administration. An example, he said, would be “information surrounding the very sensitive negotiations and conversations involving Oman” in the early stages of negotiating the Iran nuclear deal.

“It would never be used to protect or ‘lock down’ politically sensitive material or to protect the president or senior officials from embarrassment,” Pfeiffer said.

That was then. Things have changed.

[T]he whistleblower alleged that senior White House officials had intervened to “‘lock down’ all records” of [Trump's July 25 call to Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky] by removing it from the system where these transcripts are normally stored and uploading it into a separate system “managed directly by the NSC’s Directorate for Intelligence Programs.” They did so because “of the likelihood, in the officials’ retelling, that they had witnessed the president abuse his office for personal gain,” according to the whistleblower.

[...]

After 2017, when verbatim transcripts of his conversations with the leaders of Australian and Mexico were leaked to the press, the White House began to restrict the number of officials who had access to the transcripts. One former Trump administration official confirmed that the White House started placing transcripts into the codeword system after those leaks. “I don’t think the person who leaked those was ever really discovered,” said the former Trump administration official. “So there was a decision to tighten the restrictions for those who had access to those transcripts.”

Can't wait till the impeachment committee subpoenas them all. And you have to wonder about the calls he's undoubtedly made on his own personal unsecured phone in the middle of the night that nobody else would know about.

That classification indicates that the disclosure of the call would cause "serious damage" to national security, cannot be disseminated by anyone except the originator, and is prohibited from disclosure to foreign nationals. A code word classification, meanwhile, is top secret—a level higher than secret—and then further compartmentalized by adding a code word so that only those who have been cleared for each code word can see it.

[...]

“It risks undermining a whole host of important national security activities,” [April Doss, who served as senior minority counsel for the Russia investigation on the Senate Intelligence Committee and, prior to that, as a top attorney at the National Security Agency] said, noting that “most if not all” officials who would need to have access to call readouts as part of carrying out their regular duties in advising on foreign affairs and implementing the administration’s policies “would not have access” to the codeword system.

The president has ultimate classification authority and it’s an open legal question whether he’s bound by executive orders, including one signed by Obama in 2009 that says information can’t be classified in order to “conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error” or “prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency.”

I'm sure his lawyers, and by "his" lawyers, I include the DOJ, will argue he's not.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

The lesson of Iran-Contra: Cover-ups can work

We'll work our way to Bill Barr.

“The bottom line in Iran-Contra is: Cover-ups can work,” James Brosnahan, a prosecutor in the independent counsel’s Iran-Contra investigation, told me in a phone interview. “And that’s what we should be worried about here.”

[...]

Iran-Contra involved a feast of malfeasance. The initial crime was the Reagan administration’s illegal provision of military aid to anti-communist Nicaraguan guerillas known as the Contras. Separately, top administration officials ordered the illegal sale of anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles to Iran, in a series of (failed) exchanges aimed at the release of American hostages held by Iran-linked terrorist groups in Lebanon. Administration figures, led by National Security Council staffer Oliver North, then illegally used the proceeds from these Iran transactions to purchase more weapons for the Nicaraguan Contras. Finally, officials illegally falsified a presidential directive ordering the Iranian arms sales, and—in a cover-up of the preceding crimes—Cabinet and other top administration officials illegally obstructed investigators, lying to Congress and prosecutors in the process.

[...]

In Iran-Contra, Reagan administration officials illegally conspired with multiple foreign regimes to alter U.S. foreign policy. In Iran-Contra, part of the scandal revolved around inappropriate—and often illegal—dealings with a hostile, expansionist foreign power, a destabilizing force in its near-abroad and a sponsor of terror. In Iran-Contra, powerful administration figures lied to federal investigators about their relations with foreign officials from this hostile country. Perhaps this rings a bell.

The parallels to Trump-Russia don’t end there. In Iran-Contra, the independent counsel investigating the scandal, Lawrence Walsh, was a deadly serious Brahmin lawyer with a sterling Republican pedigree; he nevertheless faced withering criticism from members of his own party, just as special counsel Robert Mueller has. [...] Republicans attacked Walsh’s team for its purported partisan bias, clamoring for the resignation of key investigators, and railed against the probe’s purported waste and corruption. They even demanded that an investigation be opened into Walsh’s (spurious) improprieties.

Walsh’s team was “a hotbed of Democratic activist lawyers,” thundered Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, repeatedly, during the yearslong probe. In Walsh’s own account, Dole was a key figure in undermining public trust in the special counsel’s office and in thwarting its activities.

[...]

It was “the biggest witch hunt since Salem,” read placards at the 1992 Republican National Convention—echoing Trump’s own favorite term for the Mueller investigation.

[...]

Walsh, the Mueller of yesteryear, spent seven years fleshing out what was in essence a conspiracy to defraud the United States, only to see powerful political interests, whose fate sometimes depended on killing the investigation, bulldoze their way through a potential constitutional crisis.

Eleven people were convicted of Iran-Contra-related crimes, but all the principals walked away unscathed. The conviction of John Poindexter, a Reagan-era national security advisor, was overturned on appeal in 1991, as was that of Oliver North. [...] A former CIA officer involved with the scandal had his case dismissed when Bush’s attorney general refused, in a highly unusual maneuver, to declassify material deemed necessary for the defense by the trial judge.

  Foreign Policy

And here, we have found our way to William Barr, for he was Bush's AG.

There have been pitifully few consequences for individuals implicated in Iran-Contra. George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, and Reagan-era Attorney General Ed Meese are all venerated Republican elder statesmen.

[...]

Elliott Abrams, who pleaded guilty to lying to Congress as part of the Iran-Contra probe, worked in the George W. Bush administration and was very nearly Trump’s deputy secretary of state.

And instead is now his henchman in the attempted coup against Venezuela's elected president.

Poindexter got a job under George W. Bush with the Defense Department. In early 2017, McFarlane reportedly worked with Michael Flynn, then the national security advisor, on a shady proposal to finance nuclear power plants in the Middle East. Oliver North—who nearly rode his newfound Iran-Contra “celebrity” with the far-right into a Virginia Senate seat in 1994—is now the president of the National Rifle Association.

If the system fails during the Trump-Russia investigation, it certainly won’t be on Mueller’s shoulders alone, and Iran-Contra shows us why. The rot goes far deeper than Trump himself.

More details of Barr's involvement in the Iran-Contra coverup is provided in this Alternet article:

History shows that when a Republican president is in serious legal trouble, Bill Barr is the go-to guy.

[...]

Back in 1992, the last time Bill Barr was U.S. attorney general, iconic New York Times writer William Safire referred to him as “Coverup-General Barr” because of his role in burying evidence of then-President George H.W. Bush’s involvement in [the Iran-Contra affair].

[...]

Barr has struck again.

[...]

Barr—without showing us even a single complete sentence from the Mueller report—decided there are no crimes here. Just keep moving along.

Barr’s history of doing just this sort of thing to help Republican presidents in legal crises explains why Trump brought him back in to head the Justice Department.

[...]

Earlier in [George HW] Bush’s administration, Barr had succeeded in blocking the appointment of an investigator or independent counsel to look into Iraqgate, as Safire repeatedly documented in the Times. In December, Barr helped Bush block indictments from another independent counsel, Lawrence Walsh, and eliminated any risk that Reagan or George H.W. Bush would be held to account for Iran-Contra.

[...]

Christmas day of 1992, the New York Times featured a screaming all-caps headline across the top of its front page: Attorney General Bill Barr had covered up evidence of crimes by Reagan and Bush in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Earlier that week of Christmas, 1992, George H.W. Bush was on his way out of office. Bill Clinton had won the White House the month before, and in a few weeks would be sworn in as president.

But Bush’s biggest concern wasn’t that he’d have to leave the White House to retire back to Connecticut, Maine, or Texas (where he had homes) but, rather, that he may end up embroiled even deeper in Iran-Contra and that his colleagues may face time in a federal prison after he left office.

Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh was closing in fast on him, and Bush’s private records, subpoenaed by the independent counsel’s office, were the key to it all.

[...]

Walsh had zeroed in on documents that were in the possession of Reagan’s former defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, who all the evidence showed was definitely in on the deal, and President Bush’s diary that could corroborate it. Elliott Abrams had already been convicted of withholding evidence from Congress, and he may have even more information, too, if it could be pried out of him before he went to prison. But Abrams was keeping mum, apparently anticipating a pardon.

Weinberger, trying to avoid jail himself, was preparing to testify that Bush knew about it and even participated, and Walsh had already, based on information he’d obtained from the investigation into Weinberger, demanded that Bush turn over his diary from the campaign. He was also again hot on the trail of Abrams.

So Bush called in his attorney general, Bill Barr, and asked his advice.

Barr, along with Bush, was already up to his eyeballs in cover-ups of shady behavior by the Reagan administration.

[...]

[I]n another scandal—having to do with Bush selling weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein—Barr was already covering up for Bush, Weinberger, and others from the Reagan administration.

[...]

“I went over and told the President I thought he should not only pardon Caspar Weinberger, but while he was at it, he should pardon about five others,” [Barr told an interviewer in 2001.]

Which is exactly what Bush did, on Christmas Eve when most Americans were with family instead of watching the news. The holiday notwithstanding, the result was explosive.

America knew that both Reagan and Bush were up to their necks in Iran-Contra, and Democrats had been talking about impeachment or worse. The independent counsel had already obtained one conviction, three guilty pleas, and two other individuals were lined up for prosecution. And Walsh was closing in fast on Bush himself.

[...]

Bush shut the investigation down by pardoning not only Weinberger, but also Abrams and the others involved in the crimes, destroying Walsh’s ability to prosecute anybody.

[...]

[Journalist William] Safire accused Barr of not only rigging the cover-up, but of being one of the criminals who could be prosecuted.

“Mr. Barr,” wrote Safire in August of 1992, “…could face prosecution if it turns out that high Bush officials knew about Saddam Hussein’s perversion of our Agriculture export guarantees to finance his war machine.”

He added, “They [Barr and colleagues] have a keen personal and political interest in seeing to it that the Department of Justice stays in safe, controllable Republican hands.”

[...]

Independent Counsel Walsh added that the diary and notes he wanted to enter into a public trial of Weinberger represented, “evidence of a conspiracy among the highest ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public.”

The phrase “highest ranking” officials included Reagan and Bush.

[...]

Both Trump and senior Republican leadership are already calling for a repeat of ’93; what remains to be seen is if the press and Democratic leadership will go along like they did back then.

  Alternet

On the evening of George H.W. Bush’s 1992 Christmas Eve pardons, Walsh held a hastily convened press conference in his hometown of Oklahoma City. Bush’s action, Walsh said at time, “demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office—deliberately abusing the public trust—without consequences.”

As Walsh recalled, “near the end [of the press conference] one reporter asked, ‘Is the message here if you work for the government, you’re above the law?’”

“That,” he replied, “depends on the president you work for.”

  Foreign Policy

And, unfortunately, Bob Mueller doesn't appear to be a Lawrence Walsh.

Barr did what he was hired to do.  Twice.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



Not in this country.  And that's why they keep committing them.

Keeping Americans in the dark on Afghanistan

The American military command in Afghanistan has decided to keep secret key figures related to the growth and progress of local security forces, redacting the numbers at the behest of Afghan officials from the latest report by the government’s watchdog for spending.

The move clouds measures of progress for the Afghan security forces, the primary benefactor of the $120 billion that the United States has spent on reconstruction since the start of the war and the linchpin of President Trump’s new strategy in Afghanistan.

  NYT

Measures of progress?? Measures of regress, maybe.

Among the details being kept private in the report are the number of people in the Afghan army and police force, how many of them have been wounded or killed and the state of their equipment.

“The Afghans know what’s going on; the Taliban knows what’s going on; the U.S. military knows what’s going on,” John F. Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan, whose office compiled the quarterly report, said in an interview. “The only people who don’t know what’s going on are the people paying for it.”

[...]

The information has been classified only once before, in 2015, as the Obama administration was trying to portray the war in Afghanistan as all but over.

[...]

[M]ost of the data categories redacted in the latest release have been available to the public since the inspector general started putting out the reports in 2008. This time, the numbers were kept secret as Mr. Trump ramps up the conflict, authorizing the deployment of thousands more troops and an expanded C.I.A. paramilitary campaign as well as overseeing a volume of airstrikes not seen since 2012.

It's not immediately clear whether Army Maj. Gen. James B. Jarrard misspoke or, in fact, divulged information that reflects the true scope of U.S. military activity in Syria. The Pentagon says there are 500 U.S. troops in the war-torn country.

  WaPo

So how many did Jarrad say are there?

[The] commander said Tuesday that 4,000 American troops are on the ground in Syria [...] while briefing Pentagon-based reporters via satellite from Baghdad.

[...]

When asked to confirm the 4,000 figure, Jarrard appeared to be caught off guard. He then apologized and said the number is about 500.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Not at all presidential

Is my math off?  The order to release them in 25 years was made in 1992.  

And there are still thousands of documents sealed because the CIA told him they would harm national security.

As we all wait for the total bomb that is the Trump show to be forced to close.

Moore's show wasn't forced to close.  It ran its intended course. It might have been a bomb.

In a crossfire of positive and negative reviews from a range of outlets over the course of the show's term in front of Broadway audiences, The New York Times, The New Yorker and the Los Angeles Times formed a consensus that Moore's act was difficult to stomach and ill-fitting for the medium given his inexperience as a true performer.

  Forbes

Who wants to sit and watch Michael Moore do a one-man show?  Who but Michael Moore?

Despite the yield of disappointing ticket sales and a lukewarm reception by critics, Moore tells The Wall Street Journal that his first taste of Broadway was "the most artistically gratifying experience of my life" and that "talks [are] happening about taking [the] show on the road."

Don't.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

You have to understand the CIA's point of view

Trump released a memo on Thursday explaining why he had decided to block — at least temporarily — the release of some files.

[...]

He added that some executive departments and agencies had proposed that certain information should remain redacted "because of national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns."

[...]

The law, which mandated the release of all documents related to Kennedy’s assassination, was signed by then-President George H.W. Bush in response to “JFK,” the conspiracy-filled Oscar-winning movie from Oliver Stone that had been released a year earlier. The law ordered the immediate release of thousands of pages of documents and set the 25-year deadline for the release of the 3,100 yet-unseen documents as well as the full, unredacted versions of the 30,000 pages already made public.

  Politico

Obviously, the CIA is above the law.

Trump said that all the information in the redacted documents will be withheld from the public until no later than April 26 of next year, and that agencies will have to propose any further postponements by March 12.

At which time, they'll just come up with another "national security" reason not to release them.

While many of the documents released Thursday were created in the 1960s and 70s, a small number of them — mostly sourced from the CIA — are as recent as from the 1990s. Such documents could have the potential to expose relatively recent intelligence and law enforcement operations.

Let me guess: when the law was created in '92, the CIA immediately set about creating a bank of "new" information with some not-necessarily-related current intelligence that they could point to as making the trove of documents too recent to be released. Nobody was still investigating the assassination in the 90s. Well, nobody in the government. Or the CIA. The CIA already knew what really happened in the 60s.

Maybe they're busy right now creating more documents with current intelligence in them to stuff the files.

Following the White House's rollout, researchers expressed skepticism that the CIA and FBI didn’t have enough time to fully review the files for any information that might still risk revealing intelligence sources and methods.

"I guess nobody had 25 years to prepare for today,” said Rex Bradford, president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a nonprofit research organization that has digitized hundreds of thousands of documents and government reports about the Kennedy assassination.

[...]

“This is a fiasco,” said John McAdams, a political science professor at Marquette University and JFK researcher. “These issues should have been resolve weeks, if not months, ago.”

Again, if you were in charge at CIA and you wanted to keep some things from being publicized, you would not have attempted to resolve any issues.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

No! Not the CIA!

The National Archives ended up making public only a fraction of the JFK documents last night.

Still, the 2,800 papers included in the new document dump confirm some salacious details of America's decades-long quest to kill or depose Fidel Castro — including a fairly shocking plan by the CIA to sow terror in Miami.

After Castro's revolution succeeded and thousands of Cubans fled to South Florida, the agency actually considered murdering a boatload of refugees, assassinating exile leaders, and planting bombs in Miami — all so Castro could be blamed for the chaos.

[...]

The campaign was included in a report on "pretexts" the U.S. could conjure up to justify a military intervention in Cuba. The paper was sent by Gen. Edward Landsdale, a top Cold War officer who worked with the CIA to plot out Operation Mongoose; he sent the report, which included nine other "pretexts," on April 12, 1962, to Gen. Maxwell Taylor, who would soon become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

[...]

The Mongoose doc includes other frightening plots hatched by the spooks in Washington, including an idea to use biological weapons to ruin Cuba's crops, possibly leading to famine and an uprising against Castro.

  Miami New Times

Yeah, that sounds like the CIA I know.

As some astute readers have noted, much of the newly posted Mongoose details at the National Archive were already released as part of a plot called Operation Northwoods, which President Kennedy reviewed but rejected.

Oh. So they're releasing classified documents that provide informaiton already known about. That also sounds like the CIA I know.

The newly released papers include reports [describing] the CIA's willingness to collaborate with the Mob to oust the Communist leader.

So they didn't release the ones describing the CIA's willingness to collaborate with the Mob to kill Kennedy.

Don't blame me. If you don't like conspiracy theories, get the rest of the documents.

None of those details are particularly new — the wetsuit and seashell ideas were outlined in 1979 in a book about the CIA by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Powers.

[...]

Americans will have to wait at least another six months to find out whether the hundreds of documents the CIA refused to include in yesterday's dump include any clues as to JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's deeper ties to intelligence agencies or the Soviet Union.

In the meantime, let's just be grateful the CIA decided not to blow up Miami in the name of going after Castro.

No, sorry. I'm not going to "be grateful" to the CIA for anything. It's a criminal, corrupt and ruthless organization that doesn't seem to be accountable to anyone. Do you think they didn't do other things just as horrible?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

"Conspiracy theorists"

You didn't "order" anything, Mr. Nothing-happens-in-the-world-without-my-edict. It was already set up to happen. You're just the bunghole who happened to be in the Oval Office at the time.

And, as far as anything still being claimed to be a matter of national security, I think that's ample evidence right there that the "conspiracy theorists" are on the right track. What could hold over for 50 years as a matter of national security if not CIA need to keep its part in the assassination covered up?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Finally, Niger stories coming out

Whether they're true or not, who knows? But let's have a look at what ABC is saying was told to them by "a survivor of the attack and a senior U.S. intelligence official."

Their accounts, provided in separate interviews, raise questions about why a second, potentially more dangerous mission was tacked on late in the day even after a second team that was supposed to join them was unable to do so.

What was started as a reconnaissance mission to meet with local leaders turned into a kill-or-capture mission aimed at a high-value target, according to both sources.

  ABC

Did Dunford mention any of that in his press conference? Or was that just his mention that an alteration to the mission was being investigated?

According to multiple intelligence sources, this target is one of the U.S.’s “top three objectives in Niger,” one that the U.S. has been “actively pursuing.”

Hmmmm...what about that business of US troops being forbidden to take on any mission that might lead to enemy contact?

“They should have been up and back in a day. Because they were up there so f------ long on a mission that morphed, they were spotted, surveilled and ultimately hit,” the official said.

[...]

“He was the best kid you could ask for,” the survivor said of Johnson, who fought back the militants with machine gun fire from the back of a pickup truck, before grabbing a sniper rifle and continuing to shoot.

“The guy is a true war hero,” the survivor added. “I really want his wife and kids to know that.”

But, do you want them to know what really happened to him?

Their pre-mission threat assessment never considered the possibility of 50 to 60 enemy combatants attacking them, according to the official. That matches what Dunford told reporters on Monday.

[...]

On their way back, the team received a call from the base back in Niamey, asking them to turn around and kill or capture a high-value target who is a known al Qaeda and ISIS operative, according to two senior officials.

We knew somebody knew what happened. Even if the Pentagon - or the administration of The Most Notable Loser - didn't want Dunford to admit it.

There was “high confidence” that the target was in the area, the sources told ABC News. A second U.S. Special Forces team was directed to meet up with their patrol, but when they could not, the original 12-member team and their Nigerien partners were told to proceed anyway.

Somebody's going to get an earful. Well, most likely already has.

The senior intelligence official credited the French forces who responded with “saving our bacon.”

“The French saved our men. Yes, we lost four. But we would have lost everybody if it wasn't for the French,” the official told ABC News.

I don't think we've heard that sentiment before.

The team arrived at the target location in the early morning hours of Oct. 4, but found nothing. They burned the remnants of the abandoned campsite and headed back south as the sun came up, stopping back through a nearby village called Tongo Tongo around 8:30 AM.

There, the Nigerien force requested they stop to eat, while U.S. soldiers met with a village elder, who was “obviously and deliberately trying to stall them,” according to the official.

“He was definitely stalling as long as he could to keep us there,” the survivor said, saying he had an entourage, showed the unit a child with an illness, and even grabbed a goat he wanted to prepare for them.

But the unit suspected something was definitely wrong when they saw two motorcycle riders watch them and race out of the village.

[...]

It was around midmorning or midday by the time the team departed the village. According to the survivor, they had only gone a few hundred yards when they came under fire from machine guns, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades.

[...]

Exactly how and where Johnson died remains unclear

[...]

“Without a doubt, his courage and bravery in action that day were above and beyond expectation. He died fighting for his brothers on his team. You can quote that verbatim,” the survivor added. “He grabbed any and every weapon available to him. The guy is a true war hero.”

[...]

The survivor described an all-out effort to find Johnson during those 48 hours [until Johnson's body was found], saying he was missing, but presumed alive.

So what the hell happened to him? This person knows, or he is being told what to say. Or both.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ignorant Twitterer

Killed by "friendly" fire (looking more like a deliberate killing by fellow soldiers), covered up by US military and government. Parents had to fight for three years to uncover the truth about how their son died.

Our dead soldiers are fodder for exploitation by our politicians. The truth is often something else.

Tillman was the first NFL professional since the Second World War to voluntarily leave the game for military service, and his recruitment was a public relations gift for the army. Rumsfeld, after sending Tillman his personal letter of congratulations on June 28 2002, emailed the Secretary of the Army, Tom White, noting that Tillman 'sound [sic] like he is world-class. We might want to keep our eye on him.’ But Tillman refused to play the role of poster boy. He declined to explain why he had enlisted, turning down all interview requests from the media and asking family members not to comment. He was quietly offered a 'safe’ posting at home, but turned that down too.

After basic training, Pat and Kevin were assigned to the US Army Rangers, an elite combat corps, with the rank of 'specialist’ – between private and corporal – and in March 2003 they were among the first US forces deployed in the invasion of Iraq. Doubts soon began to set in. At 25, Pat was older than most of his platoon, and according to his mother he grew frustrated at the lack of intellectual stimulation. 'It disturbed him that the military didn’t use people to their full potential and that things were done that seemed to make no sense.’ He also began to question the prosecution and legality of the war in Iraq.

Returning home after his first tour of duty, Tillman told his mother that the war was 'pretty much bullshit’.

  Telegraph

I'm guessing the Twit in Chief doesn't know much about Tillman, other than hearing his name and the fact that he was in the NFL, never mind that the story and the cover up were national news for months.

Among the things [Tillman and his mother] discussed was his concern that he seemed to undergo more psychological evaluations than other soldiers in his platoon. 'I said, “Maybe it’s because they’re curious about you,” ’ Mary recalls. ' “Why would you give up so much to join the military?”’

In the years following his death, the family were eventually able to obtain two of these evaluations under the Freedom of Information Act. 'They said things like, he didn’t respect authority, all kinds of stuff…’ Mary says.

[...]

In Afghanistan, a series of highly unusual steps had been put in train in the immediate aftermath of Tillman’s death. Other members of the platoon were ordered to say nothing of the incident, and phone and internet connections at the base were shut down. His brother Kevin, who had not witnessed the incident and knew only that Pat had been killed but not how, was put in 'quarantine’, and within days would be sent home with Pat’s body, accompanied by another soldier who was under strict instructions not to tell Kevin or the family what had happened.

[...]

The army wanted to give Tillman a full military funeral with honours, but his wife, Marie, refused. Apparently mindful of how the army might continue to use him in the event of his death, Pat had given Marie written instructions that 'I do not want military involvement’ at his funeral. But Pat Tillman was too public a figure for his death to be allowed to pass quietly.

[...]

In April 2005, after Tillman Sr received his briefing from Brig Gen Jones and Jones’s report into his son’s death, he wrote Jones a scalding letter. Picking apart the assertion that the shooting had happened in '4-5 seconds’, Tillman Sr pointed to the evidence that his son had actually been fired on from at least two separate locations while the shooters were stationary. He was hit first by machine-gun fire to his body armour, knocking him down. Two further rounds fired by another weapon took off the back of his head. Then a third – in army jargon – 'kill shot’ entered the top of his head as he fell. He and O’Neal were standing only 40 yards from the shooters – close enough for whoever had shot him to clearly identify him as a 'friendly’. This was no 'fog of war’.

Turning to the cover-up, Tillman Sr went on that rather than fratricide having been 'suspected’, it was known instantly. Fourteen people had witnessed it, and a colonel had been at the scene within hours. 'Telling us the truth about how Pat died was the least you could do,’ Tillman Sr wrote to Jones. 'Every one of you have disregarded your duty, acting deliberately and shamelessly to kill my son and lie about it.’ He concluded his letter: 'In sum, ---- you… and yours.’

[...]

'I will not assume that there was some mistake made, or some fog of war and that this was simply an unfortunate accident,’ he says. 'I won’t do it. The reports all say this was done improperly, or this was an oversight. It was just one screw-up after another. But if you start from the top and work your way down, it makes perfect sense: everything was done in accordance to plan. People don’t burn evidence; you don’t destroy a soldier’s diary, it’s just not done. Some very serious people were involved in falsifying several homicide investigations and issuing my son a Silver Star. And when you look at some of the communications – [Brig Gen Yellen’s statement] “we handed you the steak…” – it’s painfully obvious this thing was choreographed.’

Pat Tillman, whom Dotard J Trump uses to support his assertion that NFL players need to "respect" the flag by standing during the national anthem, believed the war was "bullshit". And he paid for his belief with his life.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Draw your own conclusions, but this whole affair with Pat Tillman could appear like somebody took the opportunity to get rid of him in order to avoid the embarrassment of the govenrment/military having to eat crow.

Baer told The Chronicle that commanding officers were to blame for the friendly fire because they split the platoon and ordered it to leave a secure location in favor of a region known as a Taliban stronghold.

[...]

“It’s a well-known military doctrine that privates first learn going through basic training — if you are in enemy territory and you are stopped for a prolonged period of time, the best thing to do is to wait until nightfall. Why they thought that moving us out in broad daylight from our position, dragging a busted humvee slowly through a known hotspot after we had been stranded there all day was a good idea will forever elude me. Who made that decision? Bailey? Saunders? That’s what I want to know.”

[...]

The officer who led the first investigation testified that when he was given responsibility for the probe the morning after Tillman’s death, he was informed that the cause was “potential fratricide.’’

  SF Gate

US Involvement in 1953 Iranian Coup Declassified

But quietly.

The Department of State yesterday released a long-suppressed volume of historical records documenting the role of the United States in the 1953 coup against the Iranian government of Mohammad Mosadeq.

[...]

Evidently wishing to downplay its significance, however, the State Department buried an announcement of the new volume at the bottom of a June 15 press release. After listing 16 other publications, it briefly mentioned that the Iran retrospective volume had “also” been released, making no mention of the decades-long controversy leading up to its publication.

[...]

“This volume includes National Security Council and Presidential materials that document the U.S. decision to proceed with the operation against Mosadeq, and the operational files within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that document the implementation of the operation, codenamed TPAJAX.”

Some of the relevant records were destroyed long ago.

  FAS

The most damning, no doubt.

“The original CIA cables relating to the implementation of the covert action TPAJAX no longer exist. The original TPAJAX operational cables appear to have been destroyed as part of an office purge undertaken in 1961 or 1962, in anticipation of Near East (NE) Division’s move to the Central Intelligence Agency’s new headquarters.”

Oh, and one little detail...

A small portion of the 1,000-page collection remains classified.

Imagine That

Scratches head. Looks under desk.

The Department has located a pst from Mr. Pagliano’s recent work at the Department as a contractor, but the files are from after Secretary Clinton left the Department.

[...]

Pagliano was responsible for setting up the now-infamous private server in the basement of the Clinton's home in Chappaqua, New York. He has since become a key witness in the FBI inquiry into the handling of sensitive material on that server and has been granted immunity by the Justice Department in exchange for his cooperation.

[...]

When Clinton's emails were published on the State Department's public reading room, only one email of his surfaced. It was a happy birthday message from his private email account to hers. She forwarded it to another staffer instructing him to "pls respond."

  ABC

Say what??  She couldn't just respond with a thank you?  She told someone else to do it??

Never Forget 9/11

The lead author of the Senate’s [2003] report on 9/11 says it’s time to reveal what’s in the 28 pages that were redacted from it, which he says will embarrass the Saudis.

[...]

A story that might otherwise have slipped away in a morass of conspiracy theories gained new life Wednesday when former Sen. Bob Graham [retired 2005] headlined a press conference on Capitol Hill to press for the release of 28 pages redacted from a Senate report on the 9/11 attacks. And according to Graham, the lead author of the report, the pages “point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as the principal financier” of the 9/11 hijackers.

[...]

The pages are being kept under wraps out of concern their disclosure would hurt U.S. national security.

  Daily Beast

Let me correct that line: The pages are being kept under wraps out of concern their disclosure would hurt U.S. national security relations with Saudi Arabia.

Graham argues the opposite is true, and that the real “threat to national security is non-disclosure.”

Graham said the redacted pages characterize the support network that allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur [and] said that keeping the pages classified is part of “a general pattern of coverup” that for 12 years has kept the American people in the dark. It is “highly improbable” the 19 hijackers acted alone, he said, yet the U.S. government’s position is “to protect the government most responsible for that network of support.”

[...]

“[The Saudis] have continued, maybe accelerated their support for the most extreme form of Islam,” he said, arguing that both al Qaeda and ISIS are “a creation of Saudi Arabia.”

Standing with Graham were Republican Rep. Walter Jones and Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch, co-sponsors of House Resolution 428, which says declassification of the 28 pages is necessary to provide the American public with the full truth surrounding the 9/11 attacks.

[...]

Jones and Lynch wrote a letter to Obama in April urging him to take action, and have been told by the White House that a response is in the works.

But don't expect it before November 2016. And, it could well be: "sorry, no can do."

Any member with a security clearance is able to read the redacted chapter in a closed room, albeit under supervision and with no note taking and no staff. It’s a cumbersome process, and most members haven’t bothered.

Gee, wouldn't want to put you guys out at all.

The relatively few who have read the pages come away with varying levels of shock and surprise.

If you're trying to make me think these people are that naive, you've got to work harder.

[A bill c]o-sponsored by Democratic New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn [...] would strip diplomatic immunity from nation states in cases of terrorism, and open the door to financial compensation for the 9/11 families from the Saudi government.

It's not going to happen.

In Sarasota, Florida, a federal judge is reviewing 80,000 pages of documents that relate to a prominent Saudi family and its extensive contacts with three of the hijackers when they attended flight school in Sarasota.

The family abruptly left the U.S. for Saudi Arabia a few days before the attacks, leaving dinner on the table and a brand new car in the driveway “as though they’d been tipped something was going to happen, and they’d better not be in the country,” said Graham. One member of the family is described as a high-level adviser to the Saudi royal family.

Eighty thousand pages the judge is reviewing. And a few Congress asshats can't be bothered to read one chapter, 28 pages of an 800-page report.

“Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters,” the redacted portion, begins midway through the report, on page 395.

Well, now. That was Graham and his fellow report makers' mistake, wasn't it? With a title like that, wasn't it obvious to them that it would be redacted? I think it was. I think they titled it like that to give the government a greased path to redact it.

What I can't say is whether Graham went along willingly. Maybe he didn't. And maybe he did, but later had a change of heart, or a green light to start calling for release. But, he was the lead author.

[At Thanksgiving 2011, as the retired Senator Graham and his wife] stepped off an airplane at Dulles International Airport [going to visit a daughter], two FBI agents approached and asked [the couple] to accompany them to a nearby agency office.

[...]

[Graham] had received an email from a White House aide on Sept. 15 saying the FBI would be in touch with him to answer questions he had raised in an attempt to get the White House to force release of the FBI's investigation into the situation in Sarasota on 9/11.

[...]

So [according to Graham] his immediate reaction to being stopped by federal agents was to hope they would finally respond to his questions.

[...]

[Instead, he says he was told] that the FBI had done a thorough job investigating all of the events in Sarasota and concluded there was no communication between the Saudi family that fled and the 9/11 hijackers who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center.

[...]

Graham had reason to be suspicious. He was chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee when the 9/11 attacks occurred and co-chair of a joint congressional commission that investigated the attacks. From the very beginning, the commission and Congress requested all FBI reports on their investigation.

Graham said not one single report involving the Sarasota family was given to the commission until he began to ask questions 10 years later.

[...]

[At that Thanksgiving meeting,] Graham says he told [Sean M. Joyce, the deputy director of the FBI] that he had seen two reports indicating that the ties between the family and the hijackers needed more investigation. He said Joyce told him that the reports were based on information that had been taken out of context by an agent and insisted Graham would understand if he saw the "full context."

Graham, traveling from Miami on his own nickel, returned to Washington for the meeting only to be told by Joyce that the FBI would provide no further information. "

[...]

He may be 78 years old, but Graham remains sharp as a tack and full of outrage toward the FBI and two presidents who have ignored the obvious while protecting relations with Saudi Arabia and its oil.

  TampaBay.com

Could well be.  I don't know how hard Graham tried to get anything done while still in the Senate.  He may be yet another name to put on the long list of people who have spoken out only after they retired and had collected all the money they were going to collect on the job.  Graham did, at least, offer a seeming plea to have the redacted portions of the report released in a letter to then-president George W. Bush immediately after the report was filed.

Doing so "will permit the Saudi government to deal with any questions which may be raised in the currently censored pages, and allow the American people to make their own judgment about who are our true friends and allies in the war on terrorism," Graham, D-Fla., said in a letter to Mr. Bush. Graham, who co-chaired the inquiry, is a Democratic presidential candidate.

  CBS

A Democratic presidential candidate needing to make a splash amongst a field of Democrats with better chances than he.

And, I don't know that Graham was in on the coverup, but here's the context of his letter request:

Bush said he could not comply with a request by the Saudi foreign minister for a chance to clear the Arab kingdom's name because publication of the report could hurt U.S. intelligence operations.

The Saudis were blustering about being linked in suspicion to the 9/11 terrorists.  W gives them cover for not having the information released by claiming national security.  You can imagine the private meeting.

W Bush to Bandar Bush (that is what he was commonly called, for good reason):  You demand release of the incriminating information, and I'll come on tough. 'See.  I don't care who it is.  I'm watching out for America.'  And that way, we're both covered.

Wait a minute. Let me correct that.

Cheney to W and Bandar: George, you say...

Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan issued a statement saying that "28 blanked-out pages are being used by some to malign our country and our people."

"Saudi Arabia has nothing to hide. We can deal with questions in public, but we cannot respond to blank pages," he said.

Citing those comments, Graham said Bandar "has joined in asking that the pages be declassified."

So, at the time, Graham could either have been truly wanting the redacted information released, or he could have just been part of the Saudi cover, and now that the Saudis are becoming more and more of a millstone around America's neck, he's decided he can work at it sincerely.  Or, he's been given the green light to go ahead.

I remain on the fence, leaning more toward the latter.  But then, I'm completely jaded where Congress people are concerned.

Bury It

One year ago today, the Senate Intelligence Committee published a highly redacted executive summary of its investigation into the CIA’s torture and rendition program. The 525-page summary was shocking in many of its details, revealing the torture and rape of detainees held in CIA custody and encompassing treatment far in excess of even the torture techniques formally authorized by the Bush administration.

Despite the passage of 12 months, the actual report, comprising 6,700 pages, still has not been made publicly available. In fact, reading it appears to be prohibited among officials in the executive branch. Nearly a month and a half after the report’s initial release, it had not even been taken out of the package in which it was delivered to the Department of Justice and Department of State, according to government lawyers.

[...]

[T]he Department of Justice has “refuse[d] to allow executive branch officials to review the full and final study,” Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Patrick Leahy wrote in a letter last month to the attorney general and FBI director, urging that they or their “appropriately cleared” underlings read the full report.

[...]

In January, the new Republican head of the Senate committee that produced the study, Richard Burr, demanded that all extant copies be returned, reportedly over concerns they could be obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The Obama administration declined to do so, at least barring a court ruling. But the report is certainly being sought under FOIA, including in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against the government.

  The Intercept

I would think now is a good time for the government to let the information out.  The public mood after the Paris attacks is such that Americans might be willing to condone whatever is in the report.  Unless it's even more horrible than we imagine.

Aiding and Abetting

In a U-turn at the United Nations Human Rights Council, Western governments dropped plans Wednesday for an international inquiry into human rights violations by all parties in the war in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians in the last six months.

[...]

That proposal was a follow-up to recommendations by the commissioner, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, who detailed in a report this month the heavy civilian loss of life.

[...]

The Dutch resolution also called for the warring parties to allow access to humanitarian groups seeking to deliver aid and to the commercial import of goods like fuel that are needed to keep hospitals running. Deliveries of aid and other goods have been slowed by the coalition’s naval blockade of Yemeni ports.

But in the face of stiff resistance from Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners, and to the dismay of human rights groups, Western governments have accepted a resolution based on a Saudi text that lacks any reference to an independent, international inquiry.

[...]

“The result is a lost opportunity for the council and a huge victory for Saudi Arabia, protecting it from scrutiny over laws of war violations which will probably continue to be committed in Yemen,” said Philippe Dam, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Geneva.

  

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Operation DeathEaters

Hacktivist group Anonymous will descend upon the houses of “elite” establishment figures whom they claim have been involved in an extensive cover-up of historic child sex abuse and trafficking.

In a video released on YouTube, the group claims to be aware of a document which, if uncovered, would lead to the revelation of numerous establishment figures involved in the cover-up of child abuse spanning decades and continents.

  RT

Should George H.W. Bush be concerned?

One activist told Sky News: “This isn’t a situation where we are looking to create mayhem. It’s about giving the public information so we can confront these problems that go back decades.

“The stories that are coming out are the torture and murder of children with our trusted politicians and that is unacceptable.”

Will it tarnish the halo over St. Ronnie the Reagan’s head?

“If you are thinking ‘Kill the Bad Guys’ is the solution, you have no idea. We need nothing less than a complete examination of who we are,” it adds.

They call those who have abused their positions of power to participate in sexual abuse of children “Death Eaters” and say it is not only a problem in the UK.

[...]

The protest comes weeks after Home Secretary Theresa May announced the latest chairman of the Historic Sex Abuse Inquiry, examining a suspected Westminster pedophile ring which operated during the 1980s.

The inquiry has been plagued with problems since its inception in 2014, with both its previous chairs, Fiona Woolf and Baroness Butler-Sloss, stepping down amid conflicts-of-interest scandals.

Right. It’s not going to lead anywhere if the politicians themselves are “investigating”. Be careful out there Anonymous. You’ll be as wanted and hunted as Ed Snowden for this op.

Former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection center (CEOP), Jim Gamble, told Sky News: “It's fraught with so many difficulties.”

He welcomed any attempts to come forward to police with information targeting pedophiles, but warned that working outside a framework could result in “reckless disclosure” that might “ruin lives.”

Politicians’ lives, he’s talking about. Because children’s don’t matter, of course.

NYT: 1988

Washington Times 1989:

Torture Report on Its Way Down the Memory Hole

Well protected from the American citizens. Everyone else knows what happened. (Well, maybe not the British and Canadian - and Australian - citizens.)

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request for the full, still-classified 6,900-page torture report, government lawyers wrote that most of the executive agencies that had been copied on the transmission of the full report to the White House from then-Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) hadn’t opened their sealed copy -- and in one case, never even picked it up.

[...]

"Neither [the Department of Justice] nor [the Department of State], moreover, has even opened the package with the disc containing the full Report.

[...]

The FBI’s copy remains sealed in the Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs, according to the FOIA response. The bureau has yet to collect it.

[...]

"That shows a shocking disregard for their professional responsibilities, and appears to be an organized effort to cover up the truth about torture." [Sen. Ron Wyden]

[...]

The executive branch’s apparent failure thus far to delve into the behemoth study as Feinstein wished -- in the hope that its gruesome accounts would deter the nation from ever torturing again -- underscores the study's uncertain future. The committee’s new Republican leaders have made no secret of their disdain for the document. In a clear change from Feinstein's tenure, [The new Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chair, Republican Richard] Burr is campaigning to snatch back copies of the report and has signaled his intention to return to the CIA the particular contested document.

Certain Democratic lawmakers, including Wyden, and human rights groups have called for the public release of the full study.

But if officials in some of the most relevant, appropriately cleared agencies haven’t laid eyes on it, does the public even have a chance?

  HuffPo

In a word, no. And since Mark Udall declined to read the report into the Congressional record, I guess that leaves Ron Wyden to grow some, and do it himself. Fat chance. Maybe DiFi will. And, as Mike Meyers famously quipped in Wayne’s World…