DU Digest - These are the stories DU is following now

Sometimes the biggest stories get lost in the mayhem. This is an attempt to keep the biggest stories front and center. Not Uday.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1004773,00.html
Don't blame September 11 on spy failures, says report
Gary Younge in New York
Thursday July 24, 2003
The Guardian

Nothing could have been done to stop the terrorist attacks on September 11 even though an FBI informant had contact with two of the suicide hijackers a year before they were carried out, according to a congressional report into intelligence lapses preceding the destruction of the twin towers, to be published today.

But despite objections from some senators a crucial 28 pages of the 900-page report, which criticises Saudi Arabia for its lack of interest in clamping down on Islamist extremists, has been removed from the final document.

Saudi Arabia was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers yet remains a close and important ally of America in the region. The omission of criticism of Saudi Arabia was condemned by the Democratic senator and presidential hopeful, Bob Graham, a former chairman of the joint house and Senate intelligence committee.

"I start from the premise that in a democracy, the people should know as much as the government knows unless there is a very compelling case that the information threatens American security interests," he said. <more>



http://www.msnbc.com/news/943558.asp?cp1=1
E-voting flaws risk ballot fraud
Scientists warn of big security holes in version of software
Johns Hopkins researchers Adam Stubblefield, Avi Rubin and Yoshi Kohno were involved in the e-voting software analysis, along with Rice University computer scientist Dan Wallach (not pictured).

By Alan Boyle
MSNBC

July 24 — Some versions of electronic voting software could allow for ballot fraud on a massive scale, computer security researchers reported Thursday. The researchers made their claim based on an analysis of computer code that was purportedly taken from one of the country’s top suppliers of voting equipment. But the supplier, Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, said it believed the software was “outdated and never was used in an actual election.”

THE SOURCE CODE was analyzed over the past couple of weeks by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Rice University, and their findings were posted Wednesday on the Web as an Adobe Acrobat file.

“Common voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal,” they contended.

The code that the researchers analyzed came from a New Zealand-based Web site, with the claim that it was downloaded via the Internet from an unprotected Diebold site. <more>



http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/24/technology/24VOTE.html?ex=1060064323&ei=1&en=c93f29ce
Computer Voting Is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

The software that runs many high-tech voting machines contains serious flaws that would allow voters to cast extra votes and permit poll workers to alter ballots without being detected, computer security researchers said yesterday.

"We found some stunning, stunning flaws," said Aviel D. Rubin, technical director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, who led a team that examined the software from Diebold Election Systems, which has about 33,000 voting machines operating in the United States.

The systems, in which voters are given computer-chip-bearing smart cards to operate the machines, could be tricked by anyone with $100 worth of computer equipment, said Adam Stubblefield, a co-author of the paper.

"With what we found, practically anyone in the country — from a teenager on up — could produce these smart cards that could allow someone to vote as many times as they like," Mr. Stubblefield said.<more>



http://www.nynewsday.com/news/ny-uscia0722,0,2289800.story?coll=nyc-topnews-short-navigation
Columnist Names CIA Iraq Operative
By Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce
Washington Bureau
July 21, 2003, 9:48 PM EDT

Washington -- The identity of an undercover CIA officer whose husband started the Iraq uranium intelligence controversy has been publicly revealed by a conservative Washington columnist citing "two senior administration officials."

Intelligence officials confirmed to Newsday Monday that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity -- at least she was undercover until last week when she was named by columnist Robert Novak.

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's employment, said the release to the press of her relationship to him and even her maiden name was an attempt to intimidate others like him from talking about Bush administration intelligence failures.

"It's a shot across the bow to these people, that if you talk we'll take your family and drag them through the mud as well," he said in an interview.<more>



http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,999737,00.html
The spies who pushed for war
Julian Borger reports on the shadow rightwing intelligence network set up in Washington to second-guess the CIA and deliver a justification for toppling Saddam Hussein by force
Thursday July 17, 2003
The Guardian

As the CIA director, George Tenet, arrived at the Senate yesterday to give secret testimony on the Niger uranium affair, it was becoming increasingly clear in Washington that the scandal was only a small, well-documented symptom of a complete breakdown in US intelligence that helped steer America into war.

It represents the Bush administration's second catastrophic intelligence failure. But the CIA and FBI's inability to prevent the September 11 attacks was largely due to internal institutional weaknesses.

This time the implications are far more damaging for the White House, which stands accused of politicising and contaminating its own source of intelligence.

According to former Bush officials, all defence and intelligence sources, senior administration figures created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency. <more>



http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,92372,00.html
Cheney Energy Task Force Documents Detail Iraqi Oil Industry
Friday, July 18, 2003

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force appeared to have some interest in early 2001 in Iraq's oil industry, including which foreign companies were pursuing business there, according to documents released Friday by a private watchdog group.

Judicial Watch (search), a conservative legal group, obtained a batch of task force-related Commerce Department papers that included a detailed map of Iraq's oil fields, terminals and pipelines as well as a list entitled "Foreign Suitors of Iraqi Oilfield Contracts."

The papers also included a detailed map of oil fields and pipelines in Saudi Arabia and in the United Arab Emirates and a list of oil and gas development projects in those two countries.

The papers were dated early March 2001, about two months before the Cheney energy task force completed and announced its report on the administration's energy needs and future energy agenda.<more>



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3079927.stm
Blair under pressure over Kelly death
Last Updated: Saturday, 19 July, 2003, 13:12 GMT 14:12 UK

Prime Minister Tony Blair has faced intense questioning over the death of Iraq weapons expert Dr David Kelly, but says judgment must wait until an inquiry is complete.
He was asked if he had "blood on his hands" during a press conference in Tokyo, where he was meeting his Japanese counterpart on the first leg of a tour of the Far East.

Mr Blair said an independent judicial inquiry into the affair was due to be held and "we should make our judgement after we get the facts".

He called for "respect and restraint" until the full circumstances were known.

Police confirmed on Saturday that a body found at an Oxfordshire beauty spot on Friday is that of Dr Kelly, a Ministry of Defence adviser. <more>



http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=544&e=2&u=/ap/20030722/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_iraq_criticism
Bush Adviser Apologizes Over Iraq Claim
Tue Jul 22, 7:50 PM ET
By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Stephen Hadley, President Bush (news - web sites)'s deputy national security adviser, on Tuesday became the second administration official to apologize for a role in allowing a tainted intelligence report on Iraq (news - web sites)'s nuclear ambitions to find its way into Bush's State of the Union address.

Hadley, in a rare on-the-record session with reporters, said that he had received two memos from the CIA (news - web sites) and a phone call from agency Director George Tenet last October raising objections to an allegation that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium ore from Africa to use in building nuclear weapons.

As a result, Hadley said the offending passage was excised from a speech on Iraq the president gave in Cincinnati last Oct. 7. But Hadley suggested that details from the memos and phone call had slipped from his attention as the State of the Union was being put together.

"The high standards the president set were not met," Hadley said. He said he apologized to the president on Monday. <more>

Very helpful post. It's very hard to keep track of things with all the important news going on and the server troubles.

Maybe some folks can get together and make this a regular thing? Like a weekend wrap-up or something..."This Week on DU"

:kick:

it allows me to bookmark several stories I will refer back to for easy reference.

If you post these updates in the meeting room, they won't disappear as fast. I am sure people want to refer back to them from time to time, but in GD, they get archived really fast and they are so helpful.

you can post on page 100 and it will kick forward

but not that many people would see it. I just keep seeing posts like "what happened to Wilson's wife?!?" - the KOBE and UDAY and other distracting "stories" are pushing the real news down, even here.

to the post in the Meeting Room with a brief reference as to what it is. That way the GD people will see it too.

"Sometimes the biggest stories get lost in the mayhem. This is an attempt to keep the biggest stories front and center. Not Uday."

Yep, your exactly right.

I would love to see this be some kind of regular feature.

Thanks for putting it together.

Imajika

:bounce::kick::bounce:

THANK YOU!!!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3050-2003Jul16.html

GOP Attorneys General Asked For Corporate Contributions


By R. Jeffrey Smith and Tania Branigan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 17, 2003; Page A01


Republican state attorneys general in at least six states telephoned corporations or trade groups subject to lawsuits or regulations by their state governments to solicit hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions, according to internal fundraising documents obtained by The Washington Post.

One of the documents mentions potential state actions against health maintenance organizations and suggests the attorneys general should "start targeting the HMO's" for fundraising. It also cites a news article about consolidation and regulation of insurance firms and states that "this would be a natural area for us to focus on raising money."

The attorneys general were all members of the Washington-based Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). The companies they solicited included some of the nation's largest tobacco, pharmaceutical, computer, energy, banking, liquor, insurance and media concerns, many of which have been targeted in product liability lawsuits or regulations by state governments.

The documents describe direct calls the attorneys general made, for example, to representatives of Pfizer Inc., MasterCard Inc., Eli Lilly and Co., Anheuser-Busch Cos., Citigroup Inc., Amway Corp., U.S. Steel Corp., Nextel Communications Inc., General Motors Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Shell Oil Co., among other companies. They also make clear that RAGA assigned attorneys general to make calls to companies with business and legal interests in their own states.

Thanks LynneSin

to a online law Journal service, so I can figure out the multitude of ways obtuse scoundrels like this are complicit

because I can't track everything and everything is popping out all over the place. Thanks for the digest!

Great idea

We were on a camping trip from the middle of last week until early this week and it's been hard to try to catch up and keep up! Thanks again.

http://enemyoftheearth.org/

... I changed the headline of the Novak one to "Robert Novak Commits Treason". That's what it is, isn't it? Anybody want to look it up to be sure?

looks good!

!! thanks

:kick:
we need to keep this up top

Did I miss something?

nice people in there

or there's too much to digest and it's a good way to make sure things get the proper attention they deserve.

Just another of the many super things by the excellent people at DU!

:bounce:

All humility aside, we ROCK.

That story seems to have been truly buried. Any movement on that?

.....

One more kick for the weekend.

We have the mega Unified Fraud Theory of BushCo Corruption here. Don't let any of these stories die.