November 2009

by Steven Aftergood
November 23rd, 2009
Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy’s Secrecy
News
Development of a new executive order on classification of national security information is now proceeding at an accelerated pace in order to preempt a deadline that would require the declassification of millions of pages of historical records next month.
A revised draft executive order was circulated to executive branch agencies by the Office of Management and Budget on November 16, with agency comments due back today, November 23. A final order is likely to be issued by the end of this year.
There is an incentive to complete the development of the executive order before December 31, 2009 because of a deadline for declassification of historical records that falls on that date. Under the current Bush executive order, classified records that are at least 25 years old and that have been referred from one agency to another because they involve multiple agency interests are supposed to be automatically declassified at the end of this year. (See E.O. 13292, section 3.3(e)(3)).

By Ray McGovern
November 17, 2009
Consortium News
As Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other alleged 9/11 conspirators go to
trial, the corporate media’s embargo on the truth about the Bush years will
be under great strain.
Media commentary on the upcoming 9/11 trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has raised concern that state secrets may be divulged, including details about how the Bush administration used torture to extract evidence about al-Qaeda.
“I think that we’re going to shine a light on something that a lot of people don’t want to look at” is how American Civil Liberties Union attorney Denney LeBoeuf put it, according to The New York Times on Saturday.

No problem, says Attorney General Eric Holder, who claims to have “great confidence” that other evidence — apart from what may have been gleaned from the 183 times Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded, for example — will suffice to convict him.
Maybe so, But what the Fawning Corporate Media (or FCM) have so far neglected is the likelihood that the testimony will be so public that they will have to break their studied silence about why Sheikh Mohammed and his associates say they orchestrated the attacks of 9/11.
For reasons that are painfully obvious, the FCM have done their best to ignore or bury the role that Israel’s repression of the Palestinians has played in motivating the 9/11 attacks and other anti-Western terrorism.

It is not like there is no evidence on this key issue. Rather, it appears that the Israel-Palestine connection is pretty much kept off limits for discussion.

November 10th, 2009
By David DeGraw
AmpedStatus
As most of you have noticed, we are primarily focused on covering the economic coup. We strongly feel that the theft of Trillions of taxpayer dollars by a small group of men on Wall Street is the biggest story of our time. We understand that these are very difficult times for most people and there are many pressing and vitally important issues confronting us. However, the theft of Trillions of dollars has to be the lead story every day until there are investigations and prosecutions to resolve it.
Many of the news sites that we link to on a daily basis have been covering this issue. However, these sites are not covering the issue sufficiently. There should be blazing headlines on a daily basis: ECONOMIC COUP IN THE US! TRILLIONS OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS STOLEN!
Think about all the vital issues you care about and then think about the Trillions of dollars that were stolen. How could a small fraction of that money directly affect the issues you care about most? We need to make this connection, and we need to make the theft of Trillions of dollars THE LEAD ISSUE RIGHT NOW!

On October 21st at the University of San Diego, Mr. Dwain Deets, former Director
of NASA Aerospace Projects, gave a multimedia presentation on behalf of nearly
one thousand architects and engineers who cite evidence of explosive demolition
in all three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11 and are calling for a new,
independent investigation into their destruction. These architects and engineers
are listed on their website at ae911Truth.org.
Mr. Deets was an engineering executive with NASA Dryden Flight Research Center
for more than 37 years and formerly served as Director, Research Engineering
Division at Dryden. He received the Presidential Meritorious Rank Award in the
federal government’s Senior Executive Service (1988). In 1986, Deets was awarded
the Wright Brothers Lectureship in Aeronautics, a distinguished speaking engagement
sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
Resolutely empirical, non-political, and non-finger-pointing, ae911Truth only
asks for a new investigation of the towers’ collapse that does justice
to the forensic evidence it presents. The concerns presented by Mr. Deets and
the conclusions of Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth are shared by hundreds
of scientists; senior-level military, intelligence, and government officials;
firefighters; pilots and aviation professionals; scholars and university professors;
9/11 survivors and family members; and media professionals around the world.

by Kristen Breitweiser,
9/11 widow and activist
November 16, 2009
HuffingtonPost.com

Even after witnessing the horrors of 9/11 that included me helplessly watching
the murder of my husband on live television, I still believe that we are a civilized
nation of laws. And like the Nuremberg trials that brought the murderers of
millions to justice, now more than ever, Americans need to trust our own judicial
system to fully and openly prosecute the mass murderers of 9/11 while the rest
of the world bears witness.
Because while the terrorists were successful in bringing down the Twin Towers
and hijacking airplanes on 9/11, our Constitution should never be hijacked or
brought down as a result of anything–let alone the potential adversity faced
in prosecuting modern day monsters like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Indeed, in the fight against Islamist extremism, we should never bow to the
terrorists by compromising, manipulating, re-writing or flat-out ignoring the
core, bedrock principles of our Constitution that speak to the very heart of
who we are as a nation–a democracy.
Yet, quite alarmingly, Republicans seem to be exhibiting just this sort of
crisis of confidence in our Constitution’s ability to prosecute these horrible
men. Republicans argue that men like KSM are war criminals who can only be convicted
in military commissions where they won’t receive the protections of our laws.
Republicans seem to lack a certain faith in our Constitution’s ability and adaptability
in meting out the demands of modern day justice.