Top Secret America: Dana Priest, William Arkin

Has the Balance Tipped?

FRONTLINE

September 7, 2011, 3:30 pm ET by Philip Bennett

On a rainy day in October 2005, Dana Priest was escorted across the immaculate marble lobby of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia along with a pair of her editors from The Washington Post (I was one of them). We crowded into a private, key-operated elevator that opened into a study that would have seemed almost cozy if not for the arresting artifact at the far end of the room: an American flag, scorched and battered, recovered from Ground Zero and now hanging behind the director’s desk.

The purpose of the meeting was to urge The Post not to publish Priest’s story about a global network of secret CIA prisons. The discussion was off the record, but senior officials in the room later made the same arguments in public. They said the story would disrupt the detention of highly prized prisoners. It could endanger American lives by interfering with efforts to stop another attack. And revealing this one secret might set off an invisible domino effect, ruining the government’s reputation for keeping others.

It was an icy and awkward encounter, but it could have been scripted by the Founders. Disputes over secrecy are as old as the republic. In this case, officials who had authority to order people’s deaths had no power to stop a newspaper article (which must have been infuriating). At The Post, we had no way of knowing if the benefits of running the story outweighed potential costs (which was humbling). Where was the boundary between our responsibility to inform the public and hold the government accountable, even in wartime, and harm to national security? Wrestling with this question, case by case, was how the contest between security and freedom worked.

 Telling it like it is

FRONTLINE goes inside The Washington Post's major two-year examination into the massive, unwieldy, top secret world the U.S. government has created in response to 9/11. Coming fall 2010 to PBS.

A major examination by Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin is the subject of an upcoming FRONTLINE documentary produced by veteran producer Michael Kirk. The Post's two-year investigation looks at the top secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001—a world that has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that few know how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or how many agencies duplicate work being done elsewhere.

See the full documentory at  Top Secret America

Chris Hedges Speaks on Osama bin Laden’s Death

truthdig Posted on May 1, 2011

Chris Hedges, speaking at a Truthdig fundraising event in Los Angeles on Sunday evening, made these remarks about Osama bin Laden’s death.

I know that because of this announcement, that reportedly Osama bin Laden was killed, Bob [Truthdig Editor Robert Scheer] wanted me to say a few words about it … about al-Qaida. I spent a year of my life covering al-Qaida for The New York Times. It was the work in which I, and other investigative reporters, won the Pulitzer Prize. And I spent seven years of my life in the Middle East. I was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. I’m an Arabic speaker. And when someone came over and told ... me the news, my stomach sank. I’m not in any way naive about what al-Qaida is. It’s an organization that terrifies me. I know it intimately.

But I’m also intimately familiar with the collective humiliation that we have imposed on the Muslim world. The expansion of military occupation that took place throughout, in particular the Arab world, following 9/11—and that this presence of American imperial bases, dotted, not just in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Doha—is one that has done more to engender hatred and acts of terror than anything ever orchestrated by Osama bin Laden.

Listen or read the transcript on truthdig.com

Fear mongering by those who fear truth, justice, and the American way

There has sure been a lot of fear mongering, of late, by the same folks that we're spinning the facts in the Bu$h administration. The Neo Republican minions of the corporate government still speak with one voice and the choreography is all too predictable.

KSM is on trial for his involvement in the destruction of the World Trade Center and the scene of the crime is, of course in NY City. Typically criminals are tried in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed. If anyone has any objection, they should file for a change of venue. That is how the law works, not by a bunch of extremists screaming bloody murder because they don't get their way. How about some consideration for the folks that lost relatives, shouldn't they be able to see justice being done?

Can it be that there is more to this than the main stream media is reporting, like maybe, that admission of evidence about other possible perpetrators of the crime cold be brought up? That looking closer at the evidence at the scene of the crime might reveal a few things that could reveal that the official government story is not feasible?

This is, after-all, the crime of the century and as such deserves a fair trial witnessed by the folks who were affected by this horrible and unbelievable, even after nine years, crime that has touched every one of us.

Senator offers Guantanamo Bay deal if 9/11 trials move to military tribunals

Washington Post Monday, March 8, 2010

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) said that if President Obama agrees to try alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four accused henchmen in military tribunals, he will press fellow Republicans to vote to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Graham, interviewed Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation," said reversing a plan by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to try the suspected terrorists in a civilian court in New York would be seen by the public as an act of leadership.

The White House is reviewing Holder's plan, and no new recommendation has been presented to the president. A decision is not expected for several weeks.

Beyond Mohammed's case, Graham also said a new legal framework is needed to deal with the most dangerous detainees at the U.S. military prison.

"We need a legal system that gives due process to the detainee but also understands they didn't rob a liquor store," he said.

Closing Guantanamo Bay was a key promise Obama made when he took office, but it remains unfulfilled as he battles pressure from both sides of the political aisle.

In a full-page ad in Sunday's New York Times, the American Civil Liberties Union said that if Obama does not back Holder, he will be extending the policies of the George W. Bush administration. The ad shows an image of Obama on the left and in subsequent panels moving to the right, the image morphs into a portrayal of Bush, who set up Guantanamo Bay for suspected terrorists.
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"As president, Barack Obama must decide whether to keep his solemn promise to restore our Constitution and due process, or ignore his vow and continue the Bush-Cheney policies," the ad states.

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