source: Times Online
picked up: Raw Story

by John Harlow

LAW enforcement agencies are seeking scientists to develop an artificial nose that can detect the smell of fear as terrorists pass through security at airports.

The US Department of Homeland Security is advertising for specialists to devise airport scanners that will sniff out “deceptive individuals”.

The technology builds on recent breakthroughs in finding human scent-prints which, many researchers believe, may be as unique to individuals as fingerprints.

Body odours also change perceptibly according to mood. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have already produced a gel that acts like the smell receptors in the human nose. Now they are trying to create a version that can isolate the tangy smell of adrenaline, the stress hormone, so that nervous passengers or those with a guilty conscience can be singled out.

Homeland Security wants a device that automatically compares odours with scents collected from crime scenes and held in a “smell bank” which, like DNA or fingerprints, could be used in court.

Last week officials said they only wanted to explore the possibilities but scientists are already predicting that it is only a matter of time before police will be able to sniff out crime artificially.

Professor Kenneth Furton, who is assembling a smell bank at Florida International University in Miami, said the technology could identify bank robbers by matching scent molecules collected from crime scenes on swabs.

He said chemists could already identify human smells by race, age and environment. Scientists will be able to tell police whether a thief is white, black or Asian, whether they are a teenager or older, and maybe even their last meal.

Furton, who taught chemistry at the University of Wales, Swansea, before moving to Miami, is also seeking body odours which mark people out as depressed. Other chemists are looking for the signature smells of cancers, asthma and other diseases.

Such advances could also be an additional tool in paternity cases, as family members give off a similar scent. Twins can smell as identical as they look.

One barrier to better security through sniffing is perfume. Detectors will have to be adapted to screen out more complicated molecules in bestselling scents such as Jennifer Lopez’s Glow range and Chanel No 5 which mask natural smells and confuse detector dogs.

Natural scents can be boosted by stress, which releases hormones from armpits and hands. The odour can then spread in 20ft clouds to cling to clothes, furniture and walls.

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source: MSNBC / AP

Obama administration dropping phrase “War On Terror”

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – The phrase “global war on terror” is finished, at least as far as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is concerned.

The top U.S. diplomat told reporters Tuesday that the Obama administration has quit using that line to describe the effort to fight terrorism around the world.

“The administration has stopped using the phrase and I think that speaks for itself,” Clinton said.

Clinton spoke as she headed to Europe for a week of diplomatic meetings. The phrase “war on terror” is widely disliked in Europe and elsewhere overseas, where even close U.S. allies suggested it was overly militaristic and perhaps counterproductive.

It is also now associated with a range of Bush administration policies such as harsh interrogation practices that President Barack Obama has pledged to abandon.

Clinton was asked about the phrase as she headed to Europe for a week of diplomatic meetings.

Pundits have noted the absence of the “war on terror” language, but top administration figures have had little to say on the subject before now.

“I haven’t heard it used. I haven’t gotten any directive about using it or not using it, it’s just not being used,” Clinton said.

Then-President George W. Bush used the phrase as a rallying cry after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

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source: Agence France-Presse
picked up: Raw Story

President Barack Obama will Friday announce a new strategy to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” Al-Qaeda in safe havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan and deploy an extra 4,000 military trainers.

The new strategy, the product of a 60-day review in conjunction with US allies, marks one of the boldest foreign policy bets laid so far in Obama’s two months in power and defies those who warn he is walking into a quagmire.

The 4,000 US troops will build up the Afghan army and are in addition to 17,000 extra troops already promised by the president.

Obama will also send hundreds more civilian and development workers into Afghanistan, three administration officials said on the eve of his announcement.

“It is a clear, concise, attainable goal, and that goal is to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al-Qaeda in its safe havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” one of the officials said on condition of anonymity.

The strategy will also establish clear benchmarks to judge the performance of the United States and its allies in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, to enable mid-course corrections, another official said.

The officials accused the Bush administration of leaving US policy “adrift” in the two nations.

“Seven-and-a-half years after September 11, the Al-Qaeda core leadership, Osama bin Laden and others, have moved from Kandahar, Afghanistan, to a location unknown, somewhere in Pakistan,” one official said.

“From that location in Pakistan, we know they are plotting new attacks against the United States, against our allies, against our forces in Afghanistan, against our Pakistani friends as well.”

The officials discounted the arguments of critics who oppose escalating the US role in the conflict, warning that given a vacuum, the Taliban would return in force to Kabul, and bring Al-Qaeda along.

The officials also said the Taliban had made a “very significant comeback in the last two years,” that could not be allowed to take root.
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source: New York Post

by Tom Topousis

Freedom is so passe at Ground Zero.

Once hailed as a beacon of rebirth in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the Freedom Tower’s patriotic name has been swapped out for the more marketable One World Trade Center, officials at the Port Authority conceded today.

But more than seven years after the terror attacks and amid an effort to market the iconic tower to international tenants, sentiment gave way to practicality.

“As we market the building, we will ensure that the building is presented in the best possible way,” said Port Authority Chairman Anthony Coscia.

“One World Trade center is its address. It’s the address that we’re using. Its on the one that’s easiest for people to identify with and frankly we’ve gotten a very interested and warm reception to it.”

Port Authority officials addressed the name change after signing a lease with the Chinese firm, Vantone Industrial, which is the first private tenant to take space in the 2.6 million square foot tower. Vantone will lease 190,000 square feet over six floors.

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source: Raw Story

by Stephen C. Webster

A New York town’s decades-long struggle with police corruption has its mayor considering potential measures most would consider drastic: disbanding the entire department and declaring “martial law.”

“It may be that as a stopgap measure, that you would need military forces – State Police, National Guard,” said Brian Stratton [pictured on right], mayor of Schenectady, New York.

“The governor would have to declare it and then the National Guard would come in,” reported Capital News 9. “The mayor said it’s more for a transition to a new police force if that were to happen.”

Controversy over Schenectady’s officers is nothing new.

“My father who served in this office from 1956 to 1958 was battling police corruption,” said Stratton in a separate report by Capital News 9.

“Years later, the battle continues as at least five Schenectady police officers face possible termination,” reported the station.

“Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett says under the law, he’s not allowed to consider the opinions of Mayor Stratton but he says the mayor has given him full authority to make whatever decisions have to be made in these cases,” reported Fox 23 in Albany, NY.

“The six officers who may be fired are Darren Lawrence, accused of driving drunk, crashing in Colonie, fleeing the scene and beating a friend to keep him from reporting the incident; Michael Brown [pictured at left], accused of driving drunk, hitting another car, fleeing the scene and refusing a Breathalyzer test; John Lewis, accused of DWI, threatening to kill his ex-wife and numerous other charges; Gregory Hafensteiner and Andrew Karaskiewicz, accused of beating a drunken man during an arrest; and Dwayne Johnson, accused of leaving work four hours early on numerous Tuesdays,” reported the Daily Gazette.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo plans a community forum in Schenectady on Tuesday to hear a litany of complaints from residents, not all of them centered on the police abuses.

Police Chief Mark R. Chaires, appointed in Sept. 2008, was taken by surprise by the options his mayor is considering.

“When I think of martial law, I think of rioting,” he told Capital News 9. “I think of Watts riots and things like that. I haven’t seen anything that rises to that level. I was a little surprised to hear that.”

Chaires pledged in Feb. to fire several of the officers involved. He specifically wondered why department supervisors failed to notice officers stealing time

In January, the head of the city’s civilian complaint review board resigned and complained that his role as a lead investigator had been relegated to dropping off complaints at police headquarters.

An ineffectual review board only serves to reinforce the perception that the Schenectady Police Department is a rogue organization that operates without legitimate oversight,” opined NYCLU Director Melanie Trimble.

“I’d like to go one week where we don’t have a negative newspaper article about the department,” said City Councilman Gary McCarthy, in a report by the Times-Union. “It’s just baffling that it just keeps happening. It’s human nature that people are going to make mistakes, but this just seems so institutionalized.”

“In the meantime, terminating these guys — for such serious offenses as driving drunk then leaving the scene of a personal injury accident; beating up a DWI suspect while taking him to the police station; driving drunk, then assaulting a passenger and fleeing the scene; driving drunk and violating numerous orders of protection to harass your spouse; and regularly taking hours off during a shift while also collecting huge amounts of overtime — seems justified,” editorialized the Daily Gazette.

“From the city’s perspective, a worst-case scenario is that the firings would cost a lot of money to defend and wouldn’t hold up. In the meantime, though, the bad apples would have to stew in their own juices, pay their own legal expenses, and be ineligible to collect overtime. No officer would be likely to find such a prospect attractive, and the specter just might keep other officers honest. Wouldn’t that be a novelty?”

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source: Wall Street Journal
picked up: Raw Story

by Alex Frangos

NEW YORK — The rebuilding of the World Trade Center site, already hobbled by years of delays and infighting, is facing fresh problems as private developer Larry Silverstein asks the government for crucial financial assistance, according to people familiar with the matter.

The result would be that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the government entity that owns the site, would take on more of the risk of the project at a time when the agency already faces budget restraints to pursue its core transportation and infrastructure missions.

The Port Authority, eager to prevent the project from stalling, is considering helping to finance at least one of Mr. Silverstein’s planned three office towers, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Silverstein is requesting financing help on at least two of the three towers. The Port Authority would require concessions from Mr. Silverstein, including possibly giving up some of upside profits should the towers succeed in the long term.

The project, meant to be a symbol of the recovery after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has been through years of costly delays and acrimony. The plan for the 16-acre site includes five skyscrapers, a memorial, a transit hub, a shopping mall and a performing-arts center. Much of that was recently expected to open between 2011 and 2013.

Those dates are in jeopardy and at least some elements are unlikely to be finished until the later part of the next decade. The memorial is set to open by the 10th anniversary of the attacks, but even it faces budget shortfalls and is pursuing federal stimulus money.

Despite the long-term financial problems, the site has been a beehive of activity after years of delay. The Freedom Tower, owned by the Port Authority, is poking above street level. The memorial is taking shape. And Mr. Silverstein recently installed a crane to begin foundation work on the smallest of his three towers.

But if construction of the office towers doesn’t proceed, the entire site could be plunged into further delays and uncertainty. The planned $3.2 billion transit hub relies on Mr. Silverstein’s office towers for ventilation and fire exits. The Port Authority’s $3 billion Freedom Tower would be unable to open as planned because its delivery ramps tie underground into the part of the site that Mr. Silverstein jointly controls with the Port Authority.

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source: Reuters

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – How long might it really take to find al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden? U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggests the FBI’s 17-year hunt for convicted Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski as a reasonable guide.

Or worse still, Gates said on Wednesday, consider the fate of Americans taken hostage decades ago in Lebanon who died before the United States could find and rescue them.

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, Gates dismissed the notion that something might be amiss because bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahri, remain free more than seven years after the September 11 attacks.

“To a certain extent, I think too many people go to too many movies. Finding these guys is really hard, and especially if they have some kind of a support network,” he said.

Bin Laden and Zawahri, widely blamed in the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington that prompted the U.S. war on terrorism, are believed hiding in the rugged terrain along Afghanistan’s mountainous border with Pakistan.

Failure to track down the two men haunted the presidency of George W. Bush, despite his 2001 vow to “smoke them out” of hiding.

But Gates drew a historical parallel between bin Laden’s hide-out and the mountain cabin in Montana where federal agents found Kaczynski in 1995, after he had killed three people and injured 23 others in a bombing campaign that began in 1978.

“Look at how long it took … years and years — in the United States,” the U.S. defense chief said.

“We never did find our hostages in Beirut despite all of the efforts of the American government,” he added. “So this is a lot harder than it looks.”

The United States in recent months has stepped up efforts to attack al Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan’s tribal areas with missile strikes from unmanned drones operated by the CIA.

“We’ve done some serious damage to al Qaeda over the last number of months,” Gates, a former CIA director, said without confirming any missile attacks against al Qaeda targets.

“Everybody continues to look for No. 1 and No. 2. And we will continue that effort and I think everyone’s hope is that one of these days, we’ll be successful,” he said.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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source: Raw Story

Graphic report describes inhumane tactics

by John Byrne

US interrogators attached detainees to collars like dogs and used their leashes to slam them against walls, forced them to stand for days wearing only diapers, and tied detainees necks with towels and threw them against plywood walls, according to accounts in a secret 2007 report issued by the Red Cross to be printed in a New York magazine and leaked on Monday.

The report — issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross and kept secret for the last two years — is the first first-hand document to legally say the Bush Administration’s harsh interrogation techniques “constituted torture.” They strongly imply that CIA interrogators violated international law.

The Red Cross was the only organization to get access to high-value detainees that were transferred to Guantanamo Bay from secret prisons US in 2006. It contains accounts from the prisoners, who were held in different locations but offered remarkably uniform tales of abuse at the hands of US agents.

Techniques amounted to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” the report states. Such treatment is explicitly barred by the Geneva Conventions.

The Red Cross report is perhaps the most harrowing to date in describing what appear to be routine US practices authorized by the Bush Administration. They include beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures, collaring and simulated drowning.

But the report goes further: Prisoners were routinely beaten, stripped, doused with freezing water and loud music, and kept awake for days with their arms shackled above them, wearing only diapers.

“On a daily basis . . . a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room,” the report quotes detainee Walid Muhammad bin Attash, as saying, according to a story today. He was wrapped in a plastic sheet, he said, as cold water was “poured onto my body with buckets.”

“I would be wrapped inside the sheet with cold water for several minutes,” he said. “Then I would be taken for interrogation.”

One captive said his neck was tied with a towel and then he was repeatedly swung into a plywood wall mounted in his cell. He was often slapped in the face and then placed in a coffin-like wooden box and forced to crouch with his air supply restricted.

“The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in my leg and stomach became very painful,” he told the Red Cross.

Afterward — as if this wasn’t enough — he was waterboarded by being strapped to what looked like a hospital bed.

“A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe,” he said.

“I struggled against the straps, trying to breathe, but it was hopeless,” he added. “I though I was going to die.”

The Washington Post said Monday that at least five copies of the report had been shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007, but barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the group’s policy of neutrality in conflicts.

The Post said that at least five copies of the report had been shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007, but barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the group’s policy of neutrality in conflicts.

The paper quotes an unnamed US official familiar with the report as saying that “it is important to bear in mind that the report lays out claims made by the terrorists themselves.”

The report was obtained by Mark Danner, a journalism professor and author who published extensive excerpts in the April 9 edition of the New York Review of Books.

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source: Raw Story

by Joe Byrne

Court documents filed Friday reveal that Obama’s lawyers are arguing that Ex-Guantanamo detainees have no constitutional rights.

The Center for Constitutional Rights(CCR), a non-profit legal advocacy group, is supporting four British citizens – Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal al Harith – in their suit alleging religious mistreatment and torture at Guantanamo Bay. Defendants in the case include Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The four men say that they were “beaten, shackled in painful stress positions, threatened by dogs and subjected to extreme medical care,” according to the Miami Herald. In addition, they reported being forced to shave their beards, being banned from prayer, being denied prayer mats, and watching a copy of the Koran get tossed in the toilet.

Last year, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal in D.C. voted unanimously against the 4 ex-detainees. The Appeals Court claimed that the men did not fit the definition of ‘person’ in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, because they were foreigners being held outside the United States. Months later, the Supreme Court instructed the Appeals Court to reconsider their decision, based on a Supreme Court ruling that Guantanamo detainees have some rights under the constitution. On Friday, the CCR re-filed their brief in the D.C. Court of Appeal.

Obama’s justice department is using an old strategy employed by the Bush administration. Their primary argument is that Ex-Guantanamo detainees don’t have any constitutional rights. Even if they did, the brief continues, Rumsfeld and other officers should be immune from prosecution because detainees’ right not to be tortured and to practice their religion without abuse was “not clearly established” at the time of their detention. The Obama administration supports the earlier decision by the Appeals Court that the ex-detainees do not have constitutional person-hood. The case should be dismissed because of special factors “involving national security and foreign policy,” the government’s brief concludes.

However, “it has long been established that there is an irreducible constitutional minimum that government officials owe to human beings under their control – whether citizen or alien – that necessarily includes the prohibition of torture,” the plaintiff’s brief contends. CCR is disappointed the new administration “squandered this opportunity to separate themselves from the policies of the past and to speak with moral force about torture and religious freedom,” said Michael Ratner, president of the organization.

Obama has decided to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility by 2010. On the same day as the ex-detainee’s brief was filed, the White House dropped the term ‘enemy combatant’ from legal documents. The assertion that ex-detainees have no constitutional rights is a problem for non-citizens being detained outside of U.S. borders, who worry that this case will set precedent and enable the military to legally disobey the constitution.

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source: Huffington Post

by Philip Elliott

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama, sounding weary of criticism over federal earmarks, defended Congress’ pet projects Wednesday as he signed an “imperfect” $410 billion measure with thousands of examples. But he said the spending does need tighter restraint and listed guidelines to do it. Obama, accused of hypocrisy by Republicans for embracing billions of dollars of earmarks in the legislation, said they can be useful and noted that he has promised to curb, not eliminate them.

On another potentially controversial matter, the president also issued a “signing statement” with the bill, saying several of its provisions raised constitutional concerns and would be taken merely as suggestions. He has criticized President George W. Bush for often using such statements to claim the right to ignore portions of new laws, and on Monday he said his administration wouldn’t follow those issued by Bush unless authorized by the new attorney general.

White House officials have accused Bush of using the statements to get around Congress in pursuing anti-terror tactics.

Obama signed the bill in private, unlike a number of recent signings that took place with fanfare, but he raised the issue of earmarks in public remarks playing down their scope and possible harm in the measure. They comprise about 1 percent of the spending package, which will keep the government running through September, he told reporters.

“Done right, earmarks have given legislators the opportunity to direct federal money to worthy projects that benefit people in their districts. And that’s why I’ve opposed their outright elimination,” he said.

Still, the president acknowledged the storm of criticism from watchdog groups, talk show hosts and many Republican lawmakers _ including some who have obtained earmarks _ who call them wasteful and politically motivated. They are special provisions earmarking money in spending bills for specific projects.

Obama, too, has criticized them as overused and subject to abuse.

Proposing new safeguards, he asked Congress to require that any earmark for a for-profit company be subject to competitive bids. He also said he would work with Congress to eliminate earmarks or other specific items in spending bills that he believes serve no legitimate purpose. But he did not specify how.

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source: Raw Story

by Muriel Kane

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell on Tuesday when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that the military was running an “executive assassination ring” throughout the Bush years which reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The remark came out seemingly inadvertently when Hersh was asked by the moderator of a public discussion of “America’s Constitutional Crisis” whether abuses of executive power, like those which occurred under Richard Nixon, continue to this day.

Hersh replied, “After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet.”

Hersh then went on to describe a second area of extra-legal operations: the Joint Special Operations Command. “It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently,” he explained. “They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. … Congress has no oversight of it.”

“It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on,” Hersh stated. “Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.”

Hersh told MinnPost.com blogger Eric Black in an email exchange after the event that the subject was “not something I wanted to dwell about in public.” He is looking into it for a book, but he believes it may be a year or two before he has enough evidence “for even the most skeptical.”

Stories have been coming out about covert Pentagon assassination squads for the last several years. In 2003, Hersh himself reported on Task Force 121, which operated chiefly out of the Joint Special Operations Command. Others stories spoke of a proposed Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group.

As Hersh noted in Minnesota, the New York Times on Monday described the Joint Special Operations Command as overseeing the secret commando units in Afghanistan whose missions were temporarily ordered halted last month because of growing concerns over excessive civilian deaths.

However, it appears that Hersh is now on the trail of some fresh revelation about these squads and their connection to Vice-President Cheney that goes well beyond anything that has previously been reported.

Eric Black’s blog posting, which includes an hour-long audio recording of the full University of Minnesota colloquy, is available here.

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source: New York Times

by William Glaberson

The five detainees at Guantánamo Bay charged with planning the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have filed a document with the military commission at the United States naval base there expressing pride at their accomplishment and accepting full responsibility for the killing of nearly 3,000 people.

The document, which may be released publicly on Tuesday, uses the Arabic term for a consultative assembly in describing the five men as the “9/11 Shura Council,” and it says their actions were an offering to God, according to excerpts of the document that were read to a reporter by a government official who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The document is titled “The Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations,” the military judge at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp said in a separate filing, obtained by The New York Times, that describes the detainees’ document.

The document was filed on behalf of the five men, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has described himself as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

President Obama halted the military proceedings at Guantánamo in the first days after his inauguration, and the five men’s case is on hiatus until the government decides how it will proceed.

Several of the men have earlier said in military commission proceedings at Guantánamo that they planned the 2001 attacks and that they sought martyrdom. The strategic goal of the five men in making the new filing, which reached the military court on March 5, was not clear.

In their filing, the men describe the planning of the Sept. 11 attacks and the killing of Americans as a model of Islamic action, and say the American government’s accusations cause them no shame, according to the excerpts read by the government official.

“To us,” the official continued reading, “they are not accusations. To us they are a badge of honor, which we carry with honor.”

It appears that the men wrote the document at meetings they are permitted to conduct periodically at the detention camp without lawyers.

In his brief court order describing the filing, the military judge who has been handling the case, Col. Stephen R. Henley of the Army, said the men sought no specific legal action. Judge Henley ordered that the filing be released immediately, but officials said objections from lawyers for two of the men had held up release Monday.

All five of the men have said they want to represent themselves, but in the case of these two men, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the military judge had not yet determined their competency when the proceedings were halted.

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“We are terrorists to the bone” says Guantanamo detainees