Declassified Echelon Information

The National Security Agency Declassified
Internet wiretapping mixes "protected" and targeted messages,Info Age requires rethinking 4th Amendment limits and policies,National Security Agency told Bush administration
"Transition 2001" report released through FOIA,Highlights collection of declassified NSA documentsPosted on Web by National Security Archive, GWU
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 24
Edited by Jeffrey Richelson
Originally Posted - January 13, 2000
Updated - March 11, 2005

Washington, D.C., March 11, 2005 - The largest U.S. spy agency warned the incoming Bush administration in its "Transition 2001" report that the Information Age required rethinking the policies and authorities that kept the National Security Agency in compliance with the Constitution's 4th Amendment prohibition on "unreasonable searches and seizures" without warrant and "probable cause," according to an updated briefing book of declassified NSA documents posted today on the World Wide Web.
Wiretapping the Internet inevitably picks up mail and messages by Americans that would be "protected" under legal interpretations of the NSA's mandate in effect since the 1970s, according to the documents that were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Dr. Jeffrey Richelson, senior fellow of the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
The NSA told the Bush transition team that the "analog world of point-to-point communications carried along discrete, dedicated voice channels" is being replaced by communications that are "mostly digital, carry billions of bits of data, and contain voice, data and multimedia," and therefore, "senior leadership must understand that today's and tomorrow's mission will demand a powerful, permanent presence on a global telecommunications network that will host the 'protected' communications of Americans as well as targeted communications of adversaries."
The documents posted today also include a striking contrast between the largely intact 1998 NSA organizational chart for the Directorate of Operations and the heavily redacted 2001 chart for the Signals Intelligence Directorate (as the operations directorate was renamed), which contains no information beyond the name of its director. "The 2001 organization charts are more informative for what they reveal about the change in NSA's classification policy than for what they reveal about the actual structure of NSA's two key directorates," commented Dr. Richelson. The operations directorate organization chart was provided within three weeks of its being requested in late 1998. In contrast, the request for the Signals Intelligence Directorate organization chart was made on April 21, 2001, and NSA did not provide its substantive response until April 21, 2004 - three years instead of three weeks.
Introduction
The National Security Agency (NSA) is one of the most secret (and secretive) members of the U.S. intelligence community. The predecessor of NSA, the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA), was established within the Department of Defense, under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on May 20, 1949. In theory, the AFSA was to direct the communications intelligence and electronic intelligence activities of the military service signals intelligence units (at the time consisting of the Army Security Agency, Naval Security Group, and Air Force Security Service). In practice, the AFSA had little power, its functions being defined in terms of activities not performed by the service units. (Note 1)
The creation of NSA resulted from a December 10, 1951, memo sent by Walter Bedell Smith to James B. Lay, Executive Secretary of the National Security Council. The memo observed that "control over, and coordination of, the collection and processing of Communications Intelligence had proved ineffective" and recommended a survey of communications intelligence activities. The proposal was approved on December 13, 1951, and the study authorized on December 28, 1951. The report was completed by June 13, 1952. Generally known as the "Brownell Committee Report," after committee chairman Herbert Brownell, it surveyed the history of U.S. communications intelligence activities and suggested the need for a much greater degree of coordination and direction at the national level. As the change in the security agency's name indicated, the role of the NSA was to extend beyond the armed forces. (Note 2)
In the last several decades some of the secrecy surrounding NSA has been stripped away by Congressional hearings and investigative research. In the late 1990s NSA had been the subject of criticism for failing to adjust to the post-Cold War technological environment as well as for operating a "global surveillance network" alleged to intrude on the privacy of individuals across the world. The following documents provide insight into the creation, evolution, management and operations of NSA, including the controversial ECHELON program. Also included are newly released documents (11a - 11g) that focus on the restrictions NSA places on reporting the identities of U.S. persons – including former president Jimmy Carter and first lady Hillary Clinton, and NSA Director Michael Hayden's unusual public statement (Document 24) before the House Intelligence Committee.
Some of the documents that appear for the first time in this update shed additional light on the history of NSA. They concern the NSA's participation in the space reconnaissance program (Document 3), NSA's success in deciphering Soviet communications in the 1960s (Document 4), the efficacy of NSA activities in the late mid-to-late 1960s (Document 5), and Israel's attack on the USS Liberty during the 1967 war (Document 10). Others provide new insight on NSA's assessment of key issues in the new century (Document 21, Document 23), on NSA's attempts to adapt to the changing world and communications environment, (Document 22), on the agency's regression to old policies with regard to organizational secrecy (Document 26a, Document 26b), and on NSA activities before and after the events of 9/11 (Document 25).
Several of these documents also appear in either of two National Security Archive collections on U.S. intelligence. The U.S. Intelligence Community: Organization, Operations and Management: 1947-1989 (1990) and U.S. Espionage and Intelligence: Organization, Operations, and Management, 1947-1996 (1997) publish together for the first time recently declassified documents pertaining to the organizational structure, operations and management of the U.S. Intelligence Community over the last fifty years, cross-indexed for maximum accessibility. Together, these two sets reproduce on microfiche over 2,000 organizational histories, memoranda, manuals, regulations, directives, reports, and studies, totalling more than 50,000 pages of documents from the Office of the Director of Central Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, military service intelligence organizations, National Security Council, and other official government agencies and organizations.
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Document 1: NSCID 9, "Communications Intelligence," March 10, 1950
National Security Council Intelligence Directives have provided the highest-level policy guidance for intelligence activities since they were first issued in 1947.
This document establishes and defines the responsibilities of the United States Communications Intelligence Board. The Board, according to the directive, is to provide "authoritative coordination of [the] Communications Intelligence activities of the Government and to advise the Director of Central Intelligence in those matters in the field of Communications Intelligence for which he is responsible."
The particularly sensitive nature of communications intelligence (COMINT) activities was highlighted by paragraph 6, which noted that such activities should be treated "in all respects as being outside the framework of other or general intelligence activities." Thus, regulations or directives pertaining to other intelligence activities were not applicable to COMINT activities.
Document 2a: Memorandum from President Harry S. Truman to the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, Subject: Communications Intelligence Activities, October 24, 1952
Document 2b: National Security Council Intelligence Directive No. 9, Communications Intelligence, December 29, 1952
President Truman's memorandum revokes the provisions of NSCID 9 with regard to the composition, responsibilities, and procedures of the U.S. Communications Intelligence Board. It establishes the USCIB as an entity "acting for and under" a newly created Special Committee of the National Security Council for COMINT, consisting of the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense.
More significantly, Truman's memo, along with a Department of Defense directive, established NSA, and transformed communications intelligence from a military activity divided among the three services to a unified national activity. (Note 3) Thus, the first sentence states that "The communications intelligence (COMINT) activities of the United States are a national responsibility."
The memorandum instructs the Special Committee to issue a directive to the Secretary of Defense which defines the COMINT mission of NSA as being to "provide an effective, unified organization and control of the communications intelligence activities of the United States conducted against foreign governments." Thus, "all COMINT collection and production resources of the United States are placed under his operational and technical control."
The directive provided the NSA director with no authority regarding the collection of electronic intelligence (ELINT)—such as intelligence obtained from the interception of the emanations of radarsor of missile telemetry. Responsibility for ELINT remained with the military services.
NSCID 9 of December 1952 replaces its 1950 predecessor as mandated by Truman's directive. Often using identical language to that in the Truman directive, it revises the responsibilities of the United States Communications Intelligence Board as well as defining the role of the newly created National Security Agency and enumerating the responsibilities of its director.
New Document 3: Memorandum of Agreement Concerning NSA Participation in the (S) National Reconnaissance Office, August 1, 1962. Top Secret
The National Reconnaissance Office was established in September 1961 to provide a central coordinating authority for the nation's overhead reconnaissance activities, which included efforts by the Central Intelligence Agency, Air Force, and Navy. An early issue was the division of responsibilities for the development and operation of satellite systems. At a conference in May 1962, it was agreed by CIA and NRO officials that the National Security Agency, despite its responsibility for signals intelligence activities, would not be allowed to develop SIGINT satellites as part of the national reconnaissance program. Herbert Scoville, the CIA's deputy director for research, argued that the Secretary of Defense was the government's executive agent for SIGINT activities and since he had chosen to assign the mission to the NRO, the NSA was excluded from undertaking such development activities. (Note 4)
The Secretary's decision did not mean, however, that NSA, was to play no role in the development and operation of signals intelligence satellites. This represents the first agreement specifying how NSA would be permitted to participate in the National Reconnaissance Program.
New Document 4: Richard Bissell, Review of Selected NSA Cryptanalytic Efforts, February 18, 1965 Top Secret Codeword
Richard Bissell joined the CIA in 1954, serving first as the special assistant to CIA Director Allen Dulles, and then as the agency's Deputy Director (Plans). He left the agency in February 1962, as a result of the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961. Before and during his tenure as the CIA's operations chief Bissell directed the development and operation of several key technical collection systems - including the U-2 and OXCART aircraft, and the CORONA reconnaissance satellite.
In his memoirs he reported that, in October 1964, "I accepted a brief assignment from John McCone at the CIA, which involved looking into very highly classified business of another agency of the government. My job was to write a report on what I had learned from visits and interviews with authorities on the problem." (Note 5) Bissell provided no further information.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the CIA provided a copy of this document - which is Bissell's report of his investigation of the National Security Agency's efforts to crack certain high-grade cipher systems. Although the identity of the nation whose ciphers were being attacked is deleted throughout the report, the target country is clearly the Soviet Union. The report discusses the prospects of breaking into high-level Soviet codes and concludes with three principal recommendations - which concern the extent of the overall cryptologic effort, the desirability of reallocating some cryptologic resources, and the possibility of a systematic comparison of the intelligence produced via the successful exploitation of two different components of the cryptanalytic effort.
New Document 5: Letter, Frederick M. Eaton to Richard M. Helms, Director of Central Intelligence, August 16, 1968, Top Secret Codeword w/TS Codeword attachment
This letter, along with the attachment, represents the report of the four-member group, which included Eaton, a New York lawyer and banker, General Lauris Norstad, the Defense Department's Eugene Fubini, and ambassador Livingston T. Merchant, that was commissioned by DCI Richard Helms in September 1967 to examine the national signals intelligence effort.
The topics examined by the group included program guidance, the DCI and the National Intelligence Resources Board, central review and coordination, management of the cryptologic community, NSA staff organization, COMINT, Telemetry, and ELINT resources, and the communications and dissemination of the information. The letter from Eaton to Helms conveys the group's nineteen recommendations and the conclusion that "there must be no slackening in the US cryptologic effort if essential military and other national needs are to be met."
According to James Bamford's The Puzzle Palace, Eaton was forced to write the conclusions himself when "many of the staff turned in their pens" because Eaton "recommended no reductions and concluded that all of NSA's programs were worthwhile," despite "accumulated substantial evidence that much of the NSA's intelligence collection was of little or marginal uses to the various intelligence consumers in the community." (Note 6)
Document 6: Memo to President Johnson, September 6, 1968
This memo, from national security adviser Walt Rostow to President Johnson, provides information concerning North Vietnamese/Viet Cong military and political strategy during the last months of Johnson's presidency. The last item in the memo notes that its conclusions were partly a function of the author's access to relevant intercepted communications.
The memo specifically notes unusual, high-priority message traffic between Hanoi and subordinate units directing forces in South Vietnam as well as urgent messages from the Military Affairs Committee of COSVN (Central Office for South Vietnam) to subordinates. It does not reveal how extensively the U.S. was able to decrypt the messages.
Document 7: Department of Defense Directive S-5100.20, "The National Security Agency and the Central Security Service," December 23, 1971
Originally classified Secret, this directive remains in effect today, with minor changes. Key portions of the directive specify the NSA's role in managing the signals intelligence effort for the entire U.S. government, the role of the Secretary of Defense in appointing and supervising the work of the NSA's director, the authorities assigned to the director of NSA, and the relationships that NSA is expected to maintain with other components of the government.
Among the specific responsibilities assigned to the director are preparation of a consolidated SIGINT program and budget for Defense Department SIGINT activities, the "exercise of SIGINT operational control over SIGINT activities of the United States," and the production and dissemination of SIGINT "in accordance with the objectives, requirements, and priorities established by the Director of Central Intelligence."
The directive reflects the 1958 addition of electronic intelligence to NSA's responsibilities, making it the national authority for both components of signals intelligence.
Document 8a: NSCID 6, "Signals Intelligence," February 17, 1972
Document 8b: Department of Justice, "Report of the Inquiry into CIA-Related Electronic Surveillance Activities," 1976, pp. 77-9
NSCID 6 is the most recently available NSCID concerning SIGINT. It was still in effect at least as late as 1987. An earlier version of the directive was issued in 1958, when NSA was first assigned responsibility for electronics intelligence.
The version released by the NSC in 1976 contains little more than the definitions for COMINT and ELINT. However, a Justice Department report obtained by author James Bamford while researching his book, The Puzzle Palace, quoted additional portions of the directive.
The directive specifies that the Director of NSA is to produce SIGINT in response to the objectives, requirements and priorities of the Director of Central Intelligence. It also empowers the director to issue direct instructions to any organizations engaged in SIGINT operations, with the exception of certain CIA and FBI activities, and states that the instructions are mandatory.
Document 9a: NSA COMINT Report, "Capital Projects Planned in India," August 31, 1972
Document 9b: NSA, "India’s Heavy Water Shortages," October 1982
These two documents provide examples of NSA reporting, as well as demonstrating that NSA’s collection targets have included Indian atomic energy programs. Portions of each document that discuss or reveal the contents of the intercepts have been redacted. However, the classification of the documents indicates that high-level communications intelligence was used in preparing the report. UMBRA is the highest-level compartment of the three compartments of Special Intelligence—the euphemism for COMINT. The lower level compartments are MORAY and SPOKE.
The classification (either TSU [TOP SECRET UMBRA] or MORAY) of the 25 reports which Document 6b was derived from indicate that the report relied extensively on COMINT. The report also demonstrates how NSA, often to the annoyance of the CIA, has gone far beyond its formal collection and processing responsibilities and into the analysis of the data it has collected. (Note 7)
New Document 10: William D. Gerhard and Henry W. Millington, National Security Agency, Attack on a SIGINT Collector, the USS Liberty, 1981. Top Secret Umbra
One of the most controversial events in the history of U.S.-Israeli relations was the attack by Israeli aircraft, during the midst of the Six-Day War of June 1967, on the USS Liberty, a ship assigned to gather signals intelligence on behalf of the National Security Agency. The attack left thirty-four Americans dead and 171 wounded.
In additional to internal studies conducted by both countries there have been numerous books, portions of books, and articles that have sought to review the events and assess blame. The most controversial issue has been whether Israel knowingly attacked a ship it knew to belong to the U.S., which was cruising in international waters off the Sinai Peninsula, to prevent it from monitoring Israeli actions in the midst of the war. Authors have reached diametrically opposite conclusions on this issue. (Note 8)
This extensive report, written by a former head of the NSA element that produced studies of SIGINT crisis situations and the former head of the NSA library, examines the political-military background, consideration's leading to the ship's deployment, deployment to the Mediterranean, the attack, Israel's explanation, recovery and initial assessment, reviews of the incident, and "a final look." In their conclusion, the authors deal with the issues of possible Israeli foreknowledge of the ship's nationality and possible Israeli motivations for an attack. They report that a CIA assessment prepared within week of the attack, drawing heavily on communications intercepts, concluded (p. 64) that Israeli forces had not deliberately attacked a ship they knew to be American.
Document 11a: United States Signals Intelligence Directive [USSID] 18, "Legal Compliance and Minimization Procedures," July 27, 1993
While NSCIDs and DoD Directives offer general guidance on the activities of NSA and the United States SIGINT System (USSS), far more detailed guidance is provided by the director of NSA in the form of United States Signals Intelligence Directives (USSIDs). The directives fall into at least nine different categories: policy, collection, processing, analysis and reporting, standards, administration, training, data processing, and tasking.
In the aftermath of revelations in the 1970s about NSA interception of the communications of anti-war and other political activists new procedures were established governing the interception of communications involving Americans. (Note 9) The version of USSID 18 currently in force was issued in July 1993 and "prescribes policies and procedures and assigns responsibilities to ensure that the missions and functions of the United States SIGINT System (USSS) are conducted in a manner that safeguards the constitutional rights of U.S. persons." Section 4 ("Collection," pp.2-6) specifies the circumstances under which U.S. SIGINT activities may intercept communications of or about U.S. persons, as well as the authorities of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Attorney General, and the Director of NSA to approve the collection of such information.
Section 5 ("Processing," pp.6-7) focuses on the restrictions on processing intercepted communications involving U.S. persons--including domestic communications collected during foreign communications collection operations. Section 6 ("Retention," p.8) deals with the retention of intercepted communications about U.S. persons. Section 7 ("Dissemination," pp.8-10) concerns restrictions on dissemination. It requires that all SIGINT reports be written "so as to focus solely on the activities of foreign entities and persons and their agents." It also specifies some of the conditions under which U.S. persons can be identified in SIGINT reports--for example, when the communications indicate the person is an agent of a foreign power.
Document 11b: NSA, "USSID 18: Dissemination of U.S. Government Organizations and Officials (U)--INFORMATION MEMORANDUM," February 5, 1993
This NSA memo indicates that the conditions for identification of U.S. officials by title in NSA reporting varies depending on whether or not the individual is a member of the executive branch. Senior officials of the executive branch may be identified by title, without prior approval from higher authority, when the official's title is necessary to understand or assess foreign intelligence. In contrast, officials from the legislative and judicial branches cannot be identified by title, even if that information is necessary to understand foreign intelligence, unless approval is obtained from higher authority. The memo implies that, under the assumed conditions, the use of names is not permitted.
Document 11c: NSA, "USSID 18: Reporting Guidance on References to the First Lady," July 8, 1993
This memo followed a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that Hillary Clinton was a full-time government official. It notes that she could be identified in reports by title (Chairperson of the President's Task Force on National Health Care Reform) without prior approval when that title was necessary to understand or assess foreign intelligence and when the information related to her official duties. The memo also contains guidance on reports containing information about information concerning Mrs. Clinton that is not clearly foreign intelligence.
Document 11d: National Security Agency/Central Security Service, "U.S. Identities in SIGINT," March 1994
This 48-page document is intended to provide detailed guidance concerning on the use of U.S. identities in SIGINT reports as well as the dissemination of U.S. identities to consumers outside the United States SIGINT System. It consists of 12 sections (including ones on requests for U.S. identities, accountability, dissemination, and collection and processing), and five appendices (including those on approved generic references and USSID 18 criteria for dissemination).
Document No. 11e: NSA, USSID 18: Reporting Guidance on Former President Carter's Involvement in the Bosnian Peace Process (U)-- Information Guidance, December 15, 1994
The issue of when the identity or even title of a U.S. citizen can be included in reporting based on communications intercepts is a major focus of USSID 18. This NSA memo was prepared in response to the invitation to former President Carter to travel to Bosnia and Herzegovina to participate in efforts to end the war. It specifies that as long as Carter is acting as a private citizen he may be referred to only as a "U.S. person" in any reports.
Document 11f: NSA, "Understanding USSID 18 and Contextual Identifications," September 30, 1997
The issue of identification by context is the subject of this memo. It notes that, in describing U.S. entities, analysts are required, in general, to substitute sufficiently generic terms for the entities--terms that do not "directly lead to the identification of a U.S. entity even though the identity has been obscured in the report." Violation of the "contextual identification rule" requires that the report "must be cancelled, reworded and reissued to eliminate the identifying information." The guidance clearly does not apply to those cases where inclusion of more specific information is necessary to evaluate foreign intelligence.
Document 11g: NSA, "USSID 18 Guide," February 1998
The introduction to this document notes that it is an informal guide to the provisions of USSID 18 with respect to the issue of the COMINT collection and and dissemination of U.S. identities. One section focues on USSID 18 issues with respect to threat situations, including when an individual is held captive by a foreign power or group or when an intercept reveals a threat to a U.S. person. The section on non-threat situations contains guidance on the disposition of the inadvertent intercept of communciations between U.S. persons, on processing and reporting of incidentally intercepted communications of a U.S. person during foreign intelligence collection, and the handling of U.S. identities in reports.
Document 12: Director of Central Intelligence Directive (DCID) 6/1, "SIGINT Committee," May 12, 1982
The SIGINT Committee, now known as the National SIGINT Committee, was first established in 1958 to oversee key aspects of U.S. SIGINT activities—the identification of collection requirements, evaluation of how well U.S. and allied SIGINT activities satisfy requirements, and the production of recommendations concerning SIGINT arrangements with foreign governments. This directive is the most recent available version of DCID 6/1. While the directive remains formally classified, the full text of the document has been published previously in scholarly works and on the world wide web. (Note 10)
The SIGINT Committee operated for many years with two permanent subcommittees—the SIGINT Requirements Validation and Evaluation Subcommittee (SIRVES) and the SIGINT Overhead Reconnaissance Subcommittee (SORS). In the mid-1990s two new groups were established: The Weapons and Space Systems Advisory Group, to "coordinate SIGINT on foreign weapons and space systems," and the National Emitter Intelligence Subcommittee, which focuses on SIGINT production concerning foreign radars and other non-communications signals. (Note 11)
Document 13: NAVSECGRU Instruction C5450.48A, Subj: Mission, Functions and Tasks of Naval Security Group Activity (NAVSECGRUACT) Sugar Grove, West Virginia, September 3, 1991
While NSA directs and manages U.S. SIGINT activities, almost all collection activity is actually carried out by the military service SIGINT units—including the Naval Security Group Command. The role of the unit at Sugar Grove in intercepting the international leased carrier (ILC) communications passing through INTELSAT satellites was first revealed in James Bamford's The Puzzle Palace. (Note 12)
The regulation reveals that Sugar Grove is associated with what has become a highly controversial program in Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. The program, codenamed ECHELON, has been described as a global surveillance network that intercepts and processes the world's communications and distributes it among the primary partners in the decades-old UKUSA alliance—the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. (Note 13)
In reality, ECHELON is a more limited program, allowing the UKUSA allies to specify intelligence requirements and automatically receive relevant intercepts obtained by the UKUSA facilities which intercept satellite communications (but not the U.S. facilities that receive data from SIGINT satellites). It is also limited by both technological barriers (the inability to develop word-spotting software so as to allow for the automatic processing of intercepted conversations) and the limitations imposed on collection activities by the UKUSA allies—at least as regards the citizens of those countries. (Note 14) Thus, the NAVSECGRU instruction also specifies that one of the responsibilities of the commander of the Sugar Grove site is to "ensure the privacy of U.S. citizens are properly safeguarded pursuant to the provisions of USSID 18."
Document 14: Farewell from Vice Admiral William O. Studeman to NSA Employees, April 8, 1992
This address by the departing director of NSA, William Studeman, examines NSA's post-Cold War mission, likely budgetary limitations, and other challenges facing the agency. Reflecting the increasing emphasis on "support to military operations," Studeman notes that "the military account is basic to NSA as a defense agency, and the lack of utter faithfulness to this fact will court decline." He also observes that "the demands for increased global access are growing" and that "these business areas (SMO and global access) will be the two, hopefully strong legs on which NSA must stand." He also argues that "technical and operational innovation to deal with a changing and changed world must continue to dominate."
Document 15: Letter, Stewart A. Baker, General Counsel, NSA to Gerald E. McDowell, Esq., September 9, 1992
In the wake of disclosures about the role of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL), particularly its Atlanta branch, in the provision of financial assistance to the regime of Saddam Hussein, questions were raised about whether the intelligence community was providing sufficient support to law enforcement.
This letter, from NSA's general counsel, answers a series of questions from the Justice Department pertaining to NSA's knowledge of, or involvement in, BNL activities. The responses appear to indicate that NSA had not derived any intelligence concerning BNL activities from its intercept operations. The letter also stresses NSA's sensitivity to the issue of the privacy of American citizens (noting that "NSA improperly targeted the communications of a number of Americans opposed to the Vietnam War") and the restrictions on reporting information concerning U.S. citizens or corporations.
Document 16: "Activation of Echelon Units," from History of the Air Intelligence Agency, 1 January - 31 December 1994, Volume I (San Antonio, TX: AIA, 1995)
The first extract from the Air Intelligence Agency's 1994 annual history provides additional information on the ECHELON network. ECHELON units include components of the AIA's 544th Intelligence Group. Detachment 2 and 3 are located at Sabana Seca, Puerto Rico and Sugar Grove, West Virginia respectively. The second reference to Detachment 3 is apparently a typo that should read Detachment 4 (located at Yakima, Washington). The deleted words appear to be "civilian communications," "NAVSECGRU" and "NSA."
The second extract notes that AIA’s participation in a classified activity "had been limited to LADYLOVE operations at Misawa AB [Air Base], Japan." The Misawa LADYLOVE activity was initiated during the Cold War to intercept Soviet military communications transmitted via satellite—along with similar operations at Menwith Hill, UK; Bad Aibling, Germany; and Rosman, North Carolina. This extract suggests that both Guam and Misawa have, at the least, been considered as possible sites for ECHELON operations.
Document 17: NSA Point Paper, "SIGINT Reporting on Murders of Michael DeVine in 1990 and the Disappearance of Efraín Bamaca in 1992 in Guatemala," March 24, 1995
On March 23, 1995, Rep. Robert Torricelli, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, charged that the CIA had been withholding from Congress information it had obtained regarding the deaths of Michael DeVine, an American innkeeper living in Guatemala, and Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, a Guatemalan guerrilla leader and husband of an American lawyer. Both murders, according to Torricelli, were linked to a Guatemalan army colonel, Julio Roberto Alpírez, a paid intelligence asset of the CIA. (Note 15)
The revelations set off a firestorm of criticism and caused the Clinton administration to order a government-wide investigation over these and other cases of torture and murder attributed to Guatemalan security forces. While the CIA was the main target of such criticism, Torricelli had also reportedly received an anonymous fax from someone inside the NSA alleging that documents pertaining to the Bámaca and DeVine cases were being destroyed. (Note 16)
This Top Secret NSA position paper responds to these allegations. NSA claims that SIGINT reporting related to these cases is limited to "Guatemalan government reaction to U.S. and international human rights concerns," and does not include specific information regarding the circumstances of death or the involvement of Colonel Alpírez. The document is one of only a handful of declassified records in which the NSA even acknowledges specific SIGINT activities or reports.
Document 18: Memorandum, Daniel C. Kurtzer, Acting Assitant Secretary, Bureau of Intelligence and Research to Vice Admiral J.M. McConnell, Director, National Security Agency, Subject: Proposed Declassification of the "Fact of" Overhead SIGINT Collection, September 6, 1995
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter acknowledged that the U.S. employed reconnaissance satellites to collect imagery of foreign targets. Early in 1995, President Clinton declassified details concerning early satellite imagery programs such as CORONA. However, even the existence of SIGINT satellites remained classified until late 1995 when Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch authorized the official acknowledgement of space-based SIGINT operations. (Note 17)
The process involved soliciting the opinions of U.S. government departments whose interests might be affected by disclosure. The State Department's memo expressed concern about the impact in certain countries. Despite the deletions, it is clear that the department was anxious about the impact in the foreign countries where the U.S. operates ground stations for SIGINT satellites—the United Kingdom (at Menwith Hill), Germany (at Bad Aibling), and Australia (at Pine Gap). The memo also indicates that the proposal for declassification emanated from the National Reconnaissance Office.
Document 19: NSA, Recent Classification Decisions, June 2, 1998. Confidential
The increased openness at NSA in the late 1990s extended to historical as well as contemporary matters. In addition to memos announcing individual declassification decisions, summary memos were also issued on occasion. This one covers declassification decisions with regard to a number of categories, including signals intelligence targeting, NSA's presence abroad, the use of airborne platforms for SIGINT collection, and the codenames used to indicate intelligence obtained from communications or electronic intelligence collection.
Document 20: Organization Chart, NSA Operations Directorate, November 6, 1998
The organization chart of NSA's Directorate of Operations is notable for several reasons. Traditionally, such information was not released by NSA, which under the provisions of Public Law 86-36 is not required to release even unclassified organizational information. In recent years, however, NSA has released more information about organization and administrative matters, and acknowledged the use of a variety of aircraft for SIGINT collection.
The organization chart also shows how the operations directorate has been reorganized since the end of the Cold War. Throughout much of the Cold War, the directorate consisted of three key regional groups—A (Soviet Bloc), B (Asian Communist), and G (All Other). After the Soviet collapse the regional groups were reduced to one for European nations and one for all other. The new organizational structure reflects the increasing empahsis on transnational activities, which cut across nations and regions.
New Document 21: James R. Taylor, Deputy Director of Operations, Subject: Thoughts on Strategic Issues for the Institution, April 9, 1999. Secret
This memorandum was written early in the tenure of NSA Director Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, when much attention was being directed to the requirement for NSA to adapt to a new environment - which included new targets, communications technologies, and the availability of advanced encryption techniques.
Taylor notes that money and technology, while among the top five issues facing NSA, are not among the first three. The first and most important issue, according to Taylor, was NSA's need to reform the management and leadership system. His discussion foreshadowed Hayden's reorganization of NSA to clearly establish the primacy of the two components - the directorates for signals intelligence and information assurance - responsible for carrying out NSA's fundamental missions.
A second key issue identified in the memo is the "strengthening and leveraging of [NSA's] strategic alliances." This includes NSA's relationships with foreign SIGINT services, the CIA, and the service cryptologic elements (SCE's) that carry out much of the collection work for NSA. The discussion of NSA's relationship with the CIA indicates the increasing importance of human intelligence support to NSA - which can come in the form of acquisition of cipher materials or the clandestine placement of eavesdropping equipment.
The third issue identified is the need to properly staff "our two missions and to spot and nurture talent and leadership for the future."
New Document 22: Lt. Gen. Jim Clapper, NSA Scientific Advisory Board, Panel on Digital Network Intelligence (DNI), Report to the Director, June 28, 1999, Secret Comint
This study, a complement to another study on conventional collection, is another example of NSA's attempt to address the changing communication environment. Digital network intelligence is defined as "the intelligence from intercepted digital data communications transmitted between, or resident on, networked computers."
The study, which has been heavily redacted prior to release, notes an imperative to "re-tool: organizationally, programmatically, and technologically" and examines issues concerning the access and collection of digital network intelligence, processing and extraction of intelligence from the data collected, analysis and reporting, and dissemination.
New Document 23: SSO [Special Security Office], DIA Subject: Implementation Guidance for Elimination of Codewords, October 22, 1999. Unclassified
During the Cold War, as an extension of the system developed in World War II to protect the security of communications intelligence operations, the U.S. established the category of Special Intelligence (SI). Within SI were a number of compartments, which corresponded to the different degrees of sensitivity attached to communications intelligence activities and products. In 1960, with the launch of the first reconnaissance satellites, the U.S. also established the TALENT-KEYHOLE (TK) system, with compartments for satellite imagery (RUFF), satellite ELINT (ZARF), and aerial imagery from the U-2, and later, SR-71.
This message reflects the attempt to simplify the system by eliminating three key codenames from the SI category and one from the TK system.
Document 24: Statement for the Record of NSA Director Lt Gen Michael V. Hayden, USAF before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, April 12, 2000
In a rare public appearance by the NSA director, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden outlines the regulatory safeguards and oversight mechanisms that are in place to ensure that the agency's electronic surveillance mission does not infringe upon the privacy of U.S. persons, and to respond to recent allegations that NSA provides intelligence information to U.S. companies.
The agency may only target the communications of U.S. persons within the United States after obtaining a federal court order suggesting that the individual might be "an agent of a foreign power." The number of such cases have been "very few" since the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978. In cases where the NSA wishes to conduct electronic surveillance on U.S. persons overseas, the agency must first obtain the approval of the Attorney General, who must have probable cause to believe that the individual "is an agent of a foreign power, or a spy, terrorist, saboteur, or someone who aides or abets them." With regard to the unintentional collection of communications to, from, or about U.S. citizens, Hayden stresses that such information is not retained "unless the information is necessary to understand a particular piece of foreign intelligence or assess its importance."
In response to other allegations, Hayden asserts that NSA cannot request that another country "illegally" collect intelligence on U.S. persons on their behalf, and also that the agency "is not authorized to provide signals intelligence information to private U.S. companies."
New Document 25: National Security Agency, Transition 2001, December 2000. Secret
This document, prepared for the incoming administration of George W. Bush, was intended to provide a background on NSA's organization and mission, as well as of the issues facing NSA in the years ahead. Its main sections include those devoted to management, external process, budget, and personnel, policy/issues.
In the discussion of major policy issues, the document notes the changing environment in which the "analog world of point-to-point communications carried along discrete, dedicated voice channels" is being replaced by communications that are "mostly digital, carry billions of bits of data, and contain voice, data and multimedia." In addition, it states that "global networks leave US critical information infrastructure more vulnerable to foreign intelligence operations and to compromise by a host of non-state entities." The creation of global networks also requires, according to the transition book, that "senior leadership understand that today's and tomorrow's mission will demand a powerful, permanent presence on a global telecommunications network that will host the 'protected' communications of Americans as well as targeted communications of adversaries."
New Document 26a: Organization Chart, Signals Intelligence Directorate
New Document 26b: Organization Chart, Information Assurance Directorate
These two heavily redacted organization charts are more informative for what they reveal about the change in NSA's classification policy than for what they reveal about the 2001 organizational structure of NSA's two key directorates.
In contrast to Document 19, the largely intact 1998 organization chart for the Directorate of Operations, Document 26a, the chart for the Signals Intelligence Directorate (as the operations directorate was renamed) contains no information beyond the name of its director. The late 1990s was a period when NSA significantly loosened restrictions on information - not only historical information, but then current organizational information. As a result the operations directorate organization chart was provided within three weeks of its being requested in late 1998. In contrast, the request for the Signals Intelligence Directorate organization chart was made on April 21, 2001 and NSA provided its substantive response on April 21, 2004.
Similarly, in the late 1990s, NSA released detailed organizational information on its Information Security directorate, in contrast to the small amount of it detail it has released on the successor Information Assurance Directorate.
Document 27: Statement for the Record by Lieutenant General Michael V. Hayden, Director, National Security Agency/Central Security Service Before the Joint Inquiry of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, October 17, 2002, Unclassified
Hayden, in his testimony to the joint committee intelligence performance prior to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington of September 11, 2001, addresses three major questions: what did NSA know prior to September 11, what did NSA learn in retrospect, and what had NSA done in response? In his conclusions, Hayden addresses a number of issues - including the relationship between SIGINT and law enforcement, and the line between the government's need for counterterrorism information and the privacy interests of individuals residing in the United States.
Notes
1. Report to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense by a Special Committee Appointed Pursuant to Letter of 28 December 1951 to Survey Communications Intelligence Activities of the Government, June 13, 1952, pp. 47-48, 119; RG 457, SR-123, Military Reference Branch, NARA; The National Cryptologic School, On Watch: Profiles from the National Security Agency's Past 40 Years (Ft. Meade, Md.: NCS, 1986), p. 17.
2. Walter Bedell Smith, "Proposed Survey of Communications Intelligence Activities," December 10, 1951; Report to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense by a Special Committee, p. 118; U.S. Congress, Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Final Report, Book III: Foreign and Military Intelligence (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), p. 736; National Security Agency/Central Security Service, NSA/CSS Manual 22-1 (Ft. Meade, MD: NSA, 1986), p. 1.
3. National Security Agency, NSA/CSS Manual 22-1 (Ft. Meade, Md.: NSA, 1986), p. 7.
4. Jeffrey T. Richelson, The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology (Boulder, Co.: Westview, 2001), p. 60.
5. Richard M. Bissell Jr. with Jonathan E. Lewis and Frances T. Pudlo, Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs (New Haven, Ct.: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 239.
6. James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace: A Report on NSA, America's Most Secret Agency (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1982), p. 334.
7. Stansfield Turner, Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1985), pp. 235-236.
8. James Bamford, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (New York: Doubleday, 2001), pp. 185-239; A. Jay Cristol, The Liberty Incident: The 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship (Washington, D.C.: Brassey's 2002); James M. Ennes Jr., Assault on the Liberty: The True Story of the Israeli Attack on an American Intelligence Ship (New York: Ivy, 1979).
9. Bob Woodward, "Messages of Activists Intercepted," Washington Post, October 13, 1975, pp. A1, A14.
10. See Jeffrey T. Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community (Cambridge: Ballinger, 2nd ed., 1989/Boulder: Westview Press, 3rd ed., 1995; 4th ed., 1999); See also the World Wide Web site of the Federation of American Scientists, http://fas.org/irp/offdocs/dcid16.htm
11. Lois G. Brown, "National SIGINT Committee," NSA Newsletter, February 1997, p. 2.
12. James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace: A Report on NSA, America's Most Secret Agency (Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin, 1982), p. 170.
13. Patrick S. Poole, ECHELON: America's Secret Global Surveillance Network (Washington, D.C.: Free Congress Foundation, October 1998).
14. Duncan Campbell, Interception Capabilities 2000 (Luxembourg: European Parliament, 1999); Jeffrey T. Richelson, "Desperately Seeking Signals," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 56, No. 2, pp. 47-51.
15. Dana Priest, “Torricelli Admits Violating House Secrecy Oath,” Washington Post, April 8, 1995, p. A7.
16. Kim Masters, “Truth or Consequences; Rep. Bob Torricelli Leaked the Goods on the CIA. Was It Loyalty or Betrayal?” Washington Post, April 17, 1995, p. C1.
17. DIRNSA, "Fact of Overhead SIGINT Collection," January 4, 1996.
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Widow Speaks In Favor of Tookie Williams

Breaking News:

December 8, 2005,


Linda Owens, wants to build upon Mr. Williams' peace initiative. I invite Mr. Williams to join me in sending a message to all communities that we should all unite in peace. This position of peace would honor my husband's memory and Mr. Williams' work.


- Linda Owens, widow of Albert Owens

Washington/Texas shocker

In a shocking statement this week Barbara Bush revealed that she impregnated Ann Richards at the tender age of thirteen. Ann was inexpierenced and was overcome by the masculinity of the older Barbara. This announcement has sent the Washington press core into battle mode. It is said the President has become withdrawn and is focusing on the upcoming nuptials of his niece Noelle.

Announcement

Noelle Bush and Rev. Sun Wyung Moon proudly announce their engagement
Above: Rev. Moon demonstrates the move he used on Noelle to guarantee her allegiance

Moon Over The Bush Family (for Jack Random)

A Secret Service agent raises up his sleeve and speaks into his fist, “Paisley Pete is on the move.” A door opens and suddenly sunlight fills the room and in walks the Reverend Sun Myung Moon flanked by two bodyguards that resemble the morons that used to aid Howard Hughes in Las Vegas. Actually they are campaign donors from Dallas, Texas that openly support pedophilia and the right of a woman to not choose.
The reverend walks grandly across the room and embraces Neil Bush, brother of President George Bush. The two men mutter something to one another and turn to face the crowd of fervent Moonies. The Reverenced takes the microphone and speaks.

“I was just telling Neil, honorable brother of panty fascist boy president, that you could not make a pedophilia without an O and a P.” The room erupts in laughter. The fervent members slap their hands on the head of those in front of them and gurgle and growl.
“I am here, your savior, your messiah to tell you I have had a vision to build a tunnel, a tunnel that will connect Alaska to Russia. No longer will it be difficult to move currency offshore. No longer will baby adoptions be difficult, you can traffic in both if you wish.” At this remark half of the judicial wing of the Republican burst to their feet and applaud.

Neil Bush stands off to the side of the stage looking at photographs an assistant of reverend Moon handed him of Asian hookers they have flown into Martha’s Vineyard for his pleasure. His cell phone begins buzzing in his pocket and Neil Bush begins ramming the front of the huge curtain behind him. After he passes out it is discovered that he had a phone call from the Walton family that owns Wal-Mart, it was an invitation to come to Martha’s Vineyard to take part in a party for the adoption of young Taiwanese boys to South Africa.


- Chris Mansel

Neil Bush and Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Neil Bush Meets the Messiah
By John Gorenfeld, AlterNet. Posted December 5, 2005.

"Those who stray from the heavenly way," the owner of the flagship Republican newspaper the Washington Times admonished an audience in Taipei on Friday, "will be punished."
This "heavenly way," the Rev. Sun Myung Moon explained, demands a 51-mile underwater highway spanning Alaska and Russia. Sitting in the front row: Neil Bush, the brother of the president of the United States.
Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the South Korean giant of the religious right who owns the Washington Times, is on a 100-city speaking tour to promote his $200 billion "Peace King Tunnel" dream. As he describes it, the tunnel would be both a monument to his magnificence, and a totem to his prophecy of a unified Planet Earth. In this vision, the United Nations would be reinvented as an instrument of God's plan, and democracy and sexual freedom would crumble in the face of this faith-based glory.
The name Peace King Tunnel would allude to the title of authority to which Moon, 86, lays claim, and to which U.S. congressmen paid respect on Capitol Hill in last year's controversial "Crown of Peace" coronation ritual.
Moon's lobbying campaign is "ambitious and diffuse," as the D.C. newspaper The Hill reported last year, and the sheer range of guests revealed just how many Pacific Rim political leaders the Times owner has won over, including Filipino and Taiwanese politicians. And the head of the Arizona GOP attended a recent stop in San Francisco. But perhaps the most surprising VIP to tag along is Neil Bush, George H.W. Bush's youngest and most wayward son, who made both the Philippines and Taiwan legs of the journey, according to reports in newspapers from those countries and statements from Moon's Family Federation.
While Neil Bush and Moon's church couldn't be reached for comment on the tunnel or his speaking fees, a brochure from Moon's Family Federation underscores that the project is "God's fervent desire," dwarfing such past wonders as the Chunnel and heralding a "new era of automobile travel."
Moon, reviled in the 1980s as the leader of a group that separated young recruits from their families, says he is the Messiah. His far-flung business empire includes the UPI wire service, Washington, D.C. television studios, a gun factory, and enormous swaths of real estate, and he donates millions to conservative politics. In 1989, U.S. News & World Report linked his group to the Heritage Foundation and other conservative organizations. "Because almost all conservative organizations in Washington have some ties to [Moon's] church," wrote reporter John Judis, "conservatives ... fear repercussions if they expose the church's role."
The billionaire Moon has never been one to pander to the Sierra Club, having subsidized the anti-environmental "wise use" movement. Likewise, his group anticipates an anti-tunnel backlash by those who "demand the preservation of the polar region's ecosystem and the protection of polar bears and seals," and proposes an aggressive media strategy: "[P]ublic opinion polls must be carried out all over the world and it is absolutely essential that a public relations campaign to educate environmental groups, concerned organizations and residents near the proposed construction sites be carried out as well." (Moon has said in the past that Caucasians are descended from polar bears.)
In addition to the Taipei report, the Bush brother also surfaced in an article last week from the Manila Times, which placed him at a similar dinner in Manila attended by Washington Times president Dong Moon Joo and respected Filipino House Speaker Jose de Venecia. (It's unclear if Bush attended an intermediate stop in the Solomon Islands.) According to the Manila Times piece, Venecia proposed Moon's idea for a trans-religious council to President Bush in a 2003 meeting; President Bush was said to have called it "a brilliant idea."
The Taiwan paper similarly revealed high-powered support for Moon, describing Republic of China Vice President Annette Lu as listening "rapt" to his speech.
In the United States, Moon's end-of-democracy vision has been honored on the floor of Congress. According to the Congressional Record, on June 19, 2003, Democrat Danny K. Davis joined Republican Curt Weldon in recognizing Moon's "effort to create an international council of religious leaders ... this body will provide a direct link between international leaders and the various religious peoples in their constituencies," Davis said. "We are grateful to ... the Reverend and Mrs. Sun Myung [Moon] for promoting the vision of world peace, and we commend their work."
Davis later took part in Moon's March 23, 2004 Capitol Hill ceremony in which he was brought a gold crown and royal robe to coronate him Peace King. The sponsor of the event was the Virginia Republican Senator John Warner, who later told the Washington Post he'd been "deceived" into hosting the event, a charge that organizers rejected, saying the ritual was taken out of context.
While Moon's proposal has been deliberated by politicians around the world as a mere religious council, church promotional materials make clear that it's intended to forge "God's fatherland," and not just idle talk. A video from his group stresses that the U.N. will give way to a "Peace United Nations," as Moon terms it, with fantastical reverberations.
"Like a candle that burns down, sacrificing itself to give light to the world, the light of wisdom and hope will shine from the headquarters of world governance -- the "Peace United Nations" -- into all realms of life," a narrator says in a Family Federation video (available here via BitTorrent). "This light will radiate beyond the high barrier separating nations and will illuminate the road to peace, the path to the fulfillment of humanity's hopes -- and dreams ..."
Moon has frequently gone on the record against Western-style democracy and individualism, calling them results of the fall of Adam. "There are three guiding principles for the world to choose from: democracy, Communism and Godism," he said in a 1987 sermon. "It is clear that democracy as the United States knows and practices it cannot be the model for the world."
"Individualism," he also said at the speech -- entitled "I Will Follow With Gratitude And Obedience" -- "is what God hates most and what Satan likes best."
Neil isn't the only Bush to attend Moon events. In 1996, his father, President George H.W. Bush, traveled to Buenos Aires with the Reverend in one of several such fundraising expeditions. "The 41st president, who told Argentine president Carlos Menem that he had joined Moon in Buenos Aires for the money, had actually known the Korean reasonably well for decades," writes former top GOP strategist Kevin Phillips in his book "American Dynasty." "Their relationship went back to the overlap between Bush's one-year tenure as CIA director (1976) and the arrival in Washington of Moon, whose Unification Church was widely reported to be a front group for the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency." Moon and his aides have called such claims bogus, saying his accusers were controlled by "Satan" to distract from his campaign to destroy communism.
Reverend Moon is the latest in a line of unusual partners for Neil Bush in recent years, including the son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, and fugitive Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who has been promoting the younger Bush's educational software company, Ignite!, according to the Washington Post.
A messy divorce case in 2003 exposed his dalliances with prostitutes in Asia. Moon's group didn't return e-mails asking how this bore upon Neil Bush's contributions to last week's events, whose central theme was "Ideal Families."
John Gorenfeld is a freelance writer in San Francisco. He has a blog focused on Rev. Moon and his church: I Approve This Messiah.

Re-Visiting The Interview with Activist Judy Bonds

Introduction

There is good in the world and there is reason to stand up and be proud. Through all of the torment we the people of the United States have had to endure, there are places in this country that have had to endure more, attacks in the own neighborhood, within reach of their children. In Libby, Montana if you remember almost an entire town was killed, murdered for so called progress. The list goes on and on, there are more towns like this than you would like to admit, that is if you actually heard of them.
Since I began listening to the radio show (Link at http://www.whiterosesociety.org/) of my very good friend Bob Kincaid I have adopted the state of West Virginia and in West Virginia are more cities than the citizens there would care to name that are in danger of the Coal companies and their reckless disregard and blind use of the land. On Friday, April 8, 2005 I published an interview with activist Judy Bonds. In this interview Judy details the horrors of big coal. So today I thought we would re-visit my interview with Judy for the simple reason that the problem in West Virginia have not gone away! To Judy let me say that I understand it must be incredibly hard not to ball up your fist when your heart is breaking.

To all those who seek a peaceful outcome when faced with violence, this interview is for you.

Friday, April 08, 2005

Interview with Activist Judy Bonds

Mansel Report: What is the biggest preconception about Coal River Mountain Watch?


Judy Bonds: The biggest preconception about Coal River Mountain Watch is also the biggest misconception: that we are Against ALL forms of coal mining and we want to take away mining jobs. This lie is something that the coal barons love to spread to the public to discredit our organization before we get a chance to open our mouths. MOST PEOPLE CHANGE THEIR MINDS ABOUT THE PRE AMD MIS CONCERPTIONS AFTER WE TALK TO THEM.

Mansel Report: In an interview with Grist Magazine you said, "If it blasts, oozes, or gushes, it's done near poor, oppressed, rural communities or minority communities. This is a dirty little secret that people are now speaking out about. Why do you think this is? Is it still the corporate philosophy that the poor can't fight back?

Judy Bonds: Yes, Exactly, It is hard for poor and minority communities to fight corporations. If the polluting corporations had to live within 1 mile, downstream/downwind of THEIR company's discharges, there wouldn't be 3/4 of the pollution in the air, land or water that we now have in our environment. It is hard for poor, rural people to get a lawyer and find the time and resources to fight corporate America. IT IS EVEN HARDER NOW THAT THE CORPORATIONS SEEM TO "BUY" THROUGH CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS, EVEN OUR JUDGES. I find this especially true if people are labeled as "second class citizens" as we Appalachian Mountaineers have been labeled as "ignorant hillbillies". In his address to the Virginia Assembly in the early part of Civil War, (1860-or so in Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers) Gen. John Imboden told of vast amounts of coal and timber reserves in western Virginia and the owners did not know the value of their own land and minerals so Imboden suggested that we obtain that land and beside that land is cheap labor to mine the coal. SO THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THEY DID, THEY CONNED AND CHEATED AND MURDERED TO STEAL OUR LAND AND MINERAL RIGHTS AND THEN THEY STOLE OUR HUMANITY BY LABELING US AS "IGNORANT HILLBILLIES". THEY, THEN, HAD THEIR "CHEAP LABORERS" TO WORK FOR SCRIPT MONEY, NOT EVEN REAL AMERICAN MONEY. Lets face it, we--hillbillies are the only ethnic group left that can still be made fun of with NO repercussions.

Mansel Report: What activists of the past have inspired you?

Judy Bonds: Well, when people call me a radical I thank them and tell them that my hero was the most famous radical of all---Jesus Christ, now this was an activist. Followed by Martin Luther King, Mother Jones in the labor fight in the early 20's and the Widow Combs from Kentucky in the first fight against strip mining in the late 60's and early 70's. I really admire lots of activists but I put them in order for you.

Mansel Report: Is it difficult to get media outlets to listen to you or to attend a rally?

Judy Bonds: It used to be a lot easier to get local media out. Especially the TV stations. It seems that the coal industry has complained that we get free publicity and it has paid off for them (coal boys) in less coverage for us. ALSO WE HAVE HEARD AND BELIEVEVE IT IS TRUE THAT MILLIONAIRE WEST VIRGINIA COAL BARON JAMES "BUCK" HARLESS HAS STOCK IN A MEDIA OUTLET, WE ALSO READ WHERE MASSEY SAYS IT IS BRANCHING OUT INTO "COMMUNICATIONS". WE THINK THE COAL MONGULS OWNS PART OF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA. We can sometimes get the Gazette to do an article but it seems that they have backed off except for Ken Ward. Since Dan Radmacher has left the Gazette, it seems that the other editors have NO courage. It seems to be ALMOST as easy to get national reporters to do a story about the devastation here in the coal fields. For instance I just got a call 5 minutes ago, from a documentary group in Los Angeles, they want to interview people about strip mining and fossil fuels. I guess it comes and goes, but one thing here in West Virginia, the coal industry's complaining AND WHINING has paid off. I would think that the TV and newspapers would understand that the more stories they do with us OR JUST REPORTING THE TRUTH....makes it mandatory that the coal industry has to/NEEDS TO buy time/ads with the media.

Mansel Report: Has there been any politician that has pledged help and actually came through on their word in the struggle with the coal companies?

Judy Bonds: There probably are more politicians than I will name here that has helped, so I apologize in advance. The majority of politicians lack the courage to stand up for what is right in mining, particularly, coal mining. But Ken Hechler has stood up for God's creation, the people and the Earth EVERY time. In the first battle against steep slope strip mining, Ken Hechler was Congressman for the state of West Virginia. A recently published book by Chad Montrie called, "To Save The Land and The People" tells the whole sordid story of the first battle. Ken Hechler is the person and politician that stands out most in my mind in that book and also in today's battle. I can't go back and look up the names of the few other politicians that stood up-(there was few) because I loaned the book to others to read. There is a VERY high interest in the renewed battle again. I remember Jennings Randolph was also mentioned as one of the good guy politicians. Today, Representatives Christopher Shay (Conn) and Frank Pallone (N.J.) has introduced a bill HR 738 into Congress that will greatly limit Mountaintop Removal. The bill has 65 co-sponsors. As for West Virginia politicians, here in this state, I cannot name one as far as I know that will stand up. I could be wrong, but I have yet to hear or read statements of support against mountaintop removal or the rape of the state and the people from them. Other than those that ran under the newly formed Mountain Party and of course, they do not have the clout or money to fight the big money coal whores to get elected. This of course goes all the way back to the birth of the state of West Virginia. This state was set up by extractive industry barons for extractive industry barons, they put themselves in power and made the laws for their other greedy baron friends and we, the people of this state, has suffered for it ever since. FOR THE INDUSTRY, BY THE INDUSTRY.

Our state motto is "Mountaineers Are Always Free" and that may have been true at one time. Now it is more like..." We're Flatlanders Now, But Once We Were Free". You see these mountains and forests did make us free. God gave us everything we needed in order in survive in these mountains and hollows, we didn't need anything from the outside world. As these mountains and the mountain culture goes, then so goes our freedom.


Mansel Report: How important is it to stress how the devastation and widespread poisoning of the eco system has a lasting effect outside of West Virginia?

Judy Bonds: I can answer that in many different ways.

It is very important to stress the damage and pollution levels outside the state. Mountains are the birthplace of rivers, of the life giving waters. Only an idiot pollutes or covers up water.

Clean water and clean air are the ONLY 2 things needed in order to live. Pollution/crap rolls downstream. My little stream gets polluted and the pollution goes all the way to the ocean and then comes back down to the earth, in the form of rain again.

The coal that is burned turns to mercury, poisons the water system and damages unborn babies: and pollutes the air causing billions of dollars in health problems, makes our babies suffer with asthma, and causes global warming. I don't understand why more people aren't concerned with the poisoning of our unborn and born babies. That is a few of the reasons.

The damage is spreading like a cancer to other states. Any place that has coal is at risk to the same destruction. The destruction is spreading into Tennessee and is becoming more aggressive in Virginia. I would say that West Virginia has the most destruction, but Kentucky isn't far behind and then Virginia.

The damage today, from mountaintop removal and steep slope strip mining, is unprecedented. It is irreversible. The ecosystems in the coalfields of central Appalachia are the worlds' most diverse temperate hardwood forest. There is NO PLACE on earth like this. Scientists marveled at the under story, plants and herbs here in the area slated for destruction. The worlds best wild ginseng comes from here, black cohosh, yellow root, blood root, ramps, morel mushrooms (we call them "molly moochers") are just a few of the valuable plants found here.

As the God's mountains are blown to pieces and His hollows are filled, the mountain culture is disappearing.

People need to understand that there is NO such thing as cheap energy and no such thing as "clean coal".

People need to understand that our homes are being blasted and that we are under attack. We are being terrorized by the flooding and the blasting and by the oversize trucks on our narrow mountain roads.

Some people call us "ignorant hillbillies" but I am smart enough to understand that our children cannot drink or breath money. I know that it is stupid to trade reliance upon one dirty fossil fuel for reliance upon another dirtier polluting fossil fuel. OUR CHILDREN WILL PAY THE ULTIMATE PRICE.

Mansel Report: What recommendations do you have for parents in aiding their children's interest in activism?

Judy Bonds: First I would highly recommend that parents teach their children that activism is a DUTY and a responsibility.

They must teach their children that only through activism can America and the World become free and livable.

Talk and read to your children at an early age about the great activists and movements of the past. Make your children aware of the wrongs that have been righted by a few dedicated people that made positive changes. Talk about the atrocities of the past and present. Show them video's and documentaries as a visual aide. Expose them to "Music That Matters", protest and activists music, there was plenty in the 60's and now there is a new move toward music that means something.

IF you don't do this, your children will never hear or see the truth. For instance, very few people know that there are only 2 instances in which the United States has bombed their own citizens. Most people think there was just the Civil War. In 1921, America dropped bombs on coal miners in Logan County, West Virginia at the Battle of Blair Mountain.

LISTEN to your child, relate that to problem solving in a way that an activist thinks.

EDUCATE AND MOTIVATE. But we must be careful not to pressure. Teenagers especially tend to rebel if pushed but it seems that sometimes children will stray off the straight and narrow path but most of the time they find their way back.

Teach to your best ability. Give you children YOUR BEST and that does not mean material things----It MEANS JUST THE OPPOSITE.

We think that by giving our children "comfortable" things, that we did without and wished for when we were children, is what we should do. But we are truly doing our children a disservice. The best thing we can give our children is a LIVABLE earth and the tools to fight to keep the earth livable. For the sake of the kids...STOP poisoning them!!!

Teach our children to "REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE and UPON WHOSE EARTH YOU WALK".

LIBERTY IN A WASTELAND IS MEANINGLESS!!!! AND "THE EARTH----PASS IT ON.

Mansel Report: Do you ever worry that with all the traveling you have to do if the cause will fall apart if something happens to you?

Judy Bonds: That is why I feel that my job is to empower others so that the movement goes forward without anyone or me that people feel that they can't do without.

A Lakota Chief once said, "You Are the One that You Have Been Waiting For"

Have you ever noticed how geese fly in a V formation? There is a leader, but it is NOT always the same leader. When the goose in the front (leader) gets tired, it falls to the back and another goose takes the lead for a while and this continues until they reach their destination.

Since winning the Goldman prize have you become more of a target of the coal companies?

Actually, no. The public, the consumer has become a BIGGER target, more now than ever.

I think the coal companies understand that a high profile person is the LAST person they want to have come up missing. The coal companies would rather discredit leaders. Character assassination, as in the case of Judi Barri.

Also the money that King Coal spends on TV propaganda/ads seems to be getting the job done for them, no need to "target" anyone but the gullible public.

The real problem is that the little workingman doesn't seem to understand. The coal industry feeds such lies and propaganda to the little man, the workingman and I am more wary of him. It is easy for King Coal to put fear into these men. The coal companies seem to keep pointing out lies, mainly that we want to take their jobs. Why would anyone deliberately want to take peoples jobs???

The coal companies have also found out that we are not afraid of them. When we feel threatened, we talk to the press, we scream loud and clear!!!.

During the coal truck campaign my friend, Patty Sebok, had a "hit" out on her. The plan was to trap her between two coal trucks and squeeze her.

During that time Patty and I were surrounded at our State Capitol in Charleston, by a group of coal truck drivers.They harassed us and damaged our signs and tried intimidation. We wouldn't leave.

As we entered the "Well" and noticed the "coal hoes" there. Our group was late, but my goodness, we were at our own state Capitol and there was a state trooper there. Well, he looked me dead in the eyes and left. We stayed.

I felt a little comfort in the fact that a there was a local talk radio show host 5 feet from the incident. He saw what happened and when I screamed for security, Hoppy Kershevel (of the Charleston station, I think it is 580, Metro News) packed up his equipment, tucked in his tail and left.

Patty said that when I screamed "HELP Security" you could have heard a pin drop . One of us had to get security. That is when the security at the Capitol told us that the "well" area was the only place that didn't have security cameras and that the state trooper was NOT supposed to leave without informing security. Patty stayed and their boss came out and Patty told him about the incident, and he was NOT happy with his workers. A newspaper ran the story the next day.

Things like this happened ALL the time. We can't be intimidated by this, we just need to be aware and watch each others backs. Really, this is a battle between good and evil and we need more people on our side ...the good side.

Mansel Report: For those unfamiliar with the struggle of coal miners through the years what would be a recommended reading list to learn more?

Judy Bonds: First see the movie "Matewan" by John Sayles, this movie was based on the book by Lon Savage--Thunder In the Mountains.A PBS documentary called "Even The Heavens Weep"Also the new PBS documentary "The Appalachians" will start to be aired in Kentucky this weekend. This documentary tells the whole sorry story of the abuse the coal industry has put us through and there is a companion book published by Random House.

Now for the other Books

Thunder In The Valley, West Virginia Mine War by Lon Savage...... U. Of Pittsburgh Press

Bloodletting In Appalachia, by Howard Lee

The Battle of Blair Mountain by Richard Shogan this book is really new, Westview Press, I have an autographed copy

Some Books about the fight against coal companies, miners and strip mining. Night Comes To the Cumberlands by Harry Caudill..this book is old and is more about the fight against strip mining in the 60's.

To Save The Land and The People by Chad Montrie--new take on the old fight.

Absentee Landowning and Exploitation in West Virginia by Barbara Rasmussen

Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers, so long ago that I can't remember the author.

Mansel Report: What do you believe are the psychological effects of the Coal Mining Companies on the next generation coming out of West Virginia?

Judy Bonds: My Answer with the help of Patty Sebok, wife of an underground coal miner and a picket line lady.

The coal company has already effected Appalachia's children and it keeps getting worse every generation and with the destruction of our mountains, which is our idenity. Kill the mountain and you kill the mountaineers and the culture. Mountaintop Removal is Mountaineer Removal.

This seems to effect West Virginia more than other Appalachian states. West Virginia is the ONLY state that lies entirely within the Appalachian Mountain range. Other states have bits and pieces of the Appalachian Mountain range but West Virginia is enfolded entirely in the Appalachian Mountains.

The coal industry and other extractive industry helped create the myth of the hillbilly and this has severly effected our children for over 130 years and it has stuck with us until this day. This was done intentionaly, as the extractive industry learned form the slave masters of the south that all they had to do was to dehumanize these "mysterious" people that America knew little about. America still knows very little about Appalachia and our culture.

Some of our children and indeed adults are ashamed to admit they are from West Virginia, that is how severve the effects of the coal industry mind set has been.The coal industry considered coal company mules as worth more that the men and children that they had slaving in the unsafe mines. Thus the statement, "Don't Kill the Company Mule". .That attitude stuck with the people. They still think they are second class citizens.

Now add the fact that the coal industry is destroying our mountains, our very indentity as mountaineers, that will probably be a near death blow to our children. With the mountains and valley's of their family homeplaces gone, they won't have a past and they definitely won't have a future here in the coal fields of Appalachia. They will never know the meaning of living in a holler or the mountain culture.

The coal companies and their minions are committing cultural and ethnic genocide. We are unique to the rest of the world and no one, with the exception of a few, understands how unique we are. Once our unique place (the mountains and hollors) are gone so will be our culture and heritage. How can we pass this heritage along to our children and grandchildren when the places that we do these unique things such as: rooting, green picking, and picking molly moochers, hunting and fishing will all be gone? These kinds of activities have been part of our lives as long as we have been West Virginians.

We are also not readily accepted into other places, so what do we do? We will be a people without a connection to the land.

One other thing is we are part of a global climate. Our trees and forests are the lungs of the east. Does man think we can cut down this many trees and forests and not make an impact on the global level? Just think you might be able to live and breathe with one lung but how much of the second lung could you live without? Just something to think about. Appalachians, especially Southern West Virginians, are a people shaped by the land. A people that once relied ONLY upon themselves. God gave us everything we needed here in order to survive, we didn't need anything from the outside world until the coal, timber and railroad barons came with their slick words and told our ancestors that we did need those "things".

Our state motto is "Mountaineeers Are Always Free". Now that the indusrty is destroying the very mountains I gues our new motto is "We're Flatlanders Now But Once We Were Free".

I am afraid that our children will find their "Almost Heaven" only in Heaven.

Peace Activists Held In Iraq

Published on Friday, December 2, 2005 by CommonDreams.org

Join Arundhati Roy, Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, Cindy Sheehan, Denis Halliday, Rashid Khalidi, and Many Others in Calling for the Urgent Release of Peace Activists Held in Iraq


An Urgent AppealAdd your name at:http://www.freethecpt.org

Four members of Christian Peacemaker Teams were taken this past Saturday, November 26, in Baghdad, Iraq. They are not spies, nor do they work in the service of any government. They are people who have dedicated their lives to fighting against war and have clearly and publicly opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq. They are people of faith, but they are not missionaries. They have deep respect for the Islamic faith and for the right of Iraqis to self-determination.
C.P.T. first came to Iraq in October 2002 to oppose the US invasion, and it has remained in the country throughout the occupation in solidarity with the Iraqi people. The group has been invaluable in alerting the world to many of the horrors facing Iraqis detained in US-run prisons and detention centers. C.P.T. was among the first to document the torture occurring at the Abu Ghraib prison, long before the story broke in the mainstream press. Its members have spent countless hours interviewing Iraqis about abuse and torture suffered at the hands of US forces and have disseminated this information internationally.
Each of the four C.P.T. members being held in Iraq has dedicated his life to resisting the darkness and misery of war and occupation. Convinced that it is not enough to oppose the war from the safety of their homes, they made the difficult decision to go to Iraq, knowing that the climate of mistrust created by foreign occupation meant that they could be mistaken for spies or missionaries. They went there with a simple purpose: to bear witness to injustice and to embody a different kind of relationship between cultures and faiths. Members of C.P.T. willingly undertook the risks of living among Iraqis, in a common neighborhood outside of the infamous Green Zone. They sought no protection from weapons or armed guards, trusting in, and benefiting from, the goodwill of the Iraqi people. Acts of kindness and hospitality from Iraqis were innumerable and ensured the C.P.T. members' safety and wellbeing. We believe that spirit will prevail in the current situation.
We appeal to those holding these activists to release them unharmed so that they may continue their vital work as witnesses and peacemakers.

Washington's Blue Underground

“Burn down the retinas and shave the ghost!”

Those words came from the oval office as reporters stormed the steps of the White House on Friday. Karl Rove was screaming and swinging a fourteen-pound dumbbell on the desk of the president.

Rove screamed, “I can’t fucking take it anymore. Three hundred and seventy five Iraqi’s ready for combat? What do we have to do go over there and torture the cocksuckers myself? Shit!”

Dick Cheney sat in silence mulling over the freckled face of a senate page on loan from Rick Santorum. The page stood nervously, his feet becoming clammy in anticipation and in fear of the result.

The President snorting lines of cocaine quickly answers the phone and is informed of the reporters storming past the Roosevelt room. The formerly retired Sam Donaldson loses his hairpiece in the struggle. Helen Thomas aboard a motorized scooter whizzes past Bob Woodard who was tripped up by a foaming Bill O’Reilly who keeps exposing himself.

Meanwhile in the residence first lady Laura Bush is crouched above a first century pamphlet on sobriety and tries to pick it up by using neither of her hands.


- Chris Mansel

Be Pro-Life, No Capital Punishment

World AIDS Day

On World AIDS day look into the mirror and ask yourself one question. Do you want to be one of those to die from a disease that has already killed millions?

Randy "Duke" Cunningham Anarchist of the Republican Party

Look up anarchy on the web and you’ll get a varied list from television shows, cookbooks, music, and even sunglasses. Now is that what the anarchists first envisioned? Is that what the Weather Underground envisioned? I doubt it. Anarchy these days seems to be a Republican and to state anything on the record you can possibly dream up however insane it may be. Take Randy “Duke” Cunningham for instance. This guy gives the word anarchy a shiny gleam and pushes the limits of the dictionary form. Quoting from www.dukecunningham.org, here are some quotes:

· In 1998, in the halls of Congress, the Mr. Cunningham used foul and unprintable language with the Secretary of the Army. The Secretary of the Army was trying to prevent sexual assaults on women which Mr. Cunningham wished he’d ignore or condone. Nobody loyal to our armed forces would foul-mouth the Secretary of the Army. [S.D.Union-Tribune, 3/11/1998].

Before a group of elderly cancer patients in Alvarado Hospital, Mr. Cunningham made obscene remarks and gestures. After he said the defense budget was the lowest in 25 years, a member of the audience, Charles Cotton, a WW II veteran, commented that it was “not low enough.” The embarrassed audience was shocked when Mr. Cunningham replied by giving Mr. Cotton “the bird” finger gesture and said “f--k you.”

He later expanded his foul language when questioned by a reporter. Cunningham later claimed he was heckled by Mr. Cotton, but as confirmed by a reporter and others in the audience, Mr. Cotton interrupted Mr. Cunningham but once, and didn’t bash the military or flip him “the bird.”

In an editorial, the Union-Tribune asks “what kind of example does it set . . . when their elected representative uses obscene language and gestures to express himself at a public forum?” [AP 9/8/1998; S.D.Union-Tribune, 9/9/1998 B1,B8, 9/10/1998 B10 (editorial), 9/10/1998 B10].

Mr. Cunningham neglected to mention to the cancer patients, between his swearing episodes, that he tried to reduce cancer research funding [Congressional Record, 104th Congress, 1995, pp. E1584-E1585].

Anyone questioning his getting campaign donor ADCS a Pentagon contract “can go to hell” [Union-Tribune 12/15/1997; 6/25/2005].

“Your son is dead meat.” said Duke Cunningham and other Republicans, who taunted Rep. Nick Smith (R-MI) after he voted against new prescription drug benefits and refused a $100,000 bribe donation to his son Brad’s Congressional campaign (11/22/2003). His son, Brad Smith, was campaigning to replace his retiring father’s seat in Congress [AP 11/24/2003, Bob Novak Chicago Sun-Times 11/27/2003, Slate 12/1/2003, CREW 12/3/2003, commentary, 7/16/2005].


Dictionary.com gives the following definitions of anarchy.

Absence of any form of political authority.
Political disorder and confusion.
Absence of any cohesive principle, such as a common standard or purpose.


The conservative wing of the Republican Party is what it is often called to provide some of the less light bulb chewing nazi a place to run and hide when people like Randy Cunningham speak out. But what these often unremarkable people forget is that once you stand alongside someone like Randy “Duke” Cunningham the stain, the odor and the shame exists forever somewhere on camera. But the real shocker is that Americans elect people like this. These are the people we need to worry about, not the messengers but the message.

- Chris Mansel

Why The Tug At Your Heart Is Never Organic

It is never a problem finding something to write about. The news is almost always bad and there is plenty to be enraged about. There are topics I haven’t even touched. The inhuman trafficking of children for the sex trade, the effect of local politics on the poor, there are so many items.
What about the sex trade? I made mention before about the documentaries made by right-wing news sources who tape Americans traveling to places like Bangkok to have sex with minors, they get the footage and try to dissuade the transaction but just as much goes by and they arrive back in this country and head to their moral high ground to edit the footage of those dirty people and their way of life. What they never seems to explain is the far-reaching effect the local economy has on the people they filmed. You see an ad on television to donate and help this child or that child all the while knowing that you have read reports about how that charity has pocketed the funds and not helped anyone. All you can do is tell someone about it and hope they can see through the so-called generosity and see the charity for what they are, pornographers.
What about the local politics that do more harm than good? You can change a city ordinance to suit a few and end up hurting many, many more. In a town like Florence, Alabama where I live the city council has for years turned away major corporation and business that would have provided several thousands of jobs, jobs that would have paid a wage you could support a family on, and we are left with barely over minimum wage with little hope of insurance. All of those jobs just about drove about 45 minutes to an hour away and have prospered. So now the workers have to drive all these miles everyday. The wear and tear on their vehicles, the cost of gas rising, the possibility of out-sourcing eats away the benefit of that hour drive. Why? Politics.

- Chris Mansel

Blog Success on the Conservative Dime

Since I have been blogging I have made it a point to learn more about this so-called revolution. In fact, words have been revolutionary a hell of a lot longer than the brief existence of the Internet. One thing I have learned is that a successful blog has one thing in common with all other successful blogs. Money. A successful blog has ads from other successful blogs, it courts corporate ads that feature timely films or books, these items are published by corporations who publish books and release movies by the politicians and actors that those same blogs seek to repute and rail against.

Take the Huffington Post for example. The Huffington Post featured a banner ad this evening for a company owned by Siebel. Siebel has been purchased by Oracle. Who is on the board of directors at Oracle? Jack Kemp. One of the organizations listed in the brief bio of Kemp is Empower America Kemp is a co-chair. Empower America’s full name is Freedom Works Empower America. Freedom Works is co-chaired by Dick Armey. On their site, http://www.freedomworks.org/know/index.php is a link to watch Dick Armey and Robert Novak discuss the freedom agenda on CNN. So in short a good liberal blog, the kind that has those ads I mentioned, accepts advertising from conservatives, the same conservatives the Huffington Post seeks to rail against.


- Chris Mansel

The Most Vulnerable Site in AMerica for Terrorist Attack

On any shopping day of the year, especially the biggest, the day after Thanksgiving, the Mall of America is most vulnerable for terrorist attack. According to http://www.mallofamerica.com/ over 320 million people have visited since it’s opening. Without overwhelming security it would be next to impossible for it to defend itself against a terrorist attack. A suicide bomber, or several bombers not unlike those wrecking havoc in Iraq and across the world could simply walk in and kill or maim and untold number of shoppers. Only if a major figure likes a politician visiting would call for extreme security. Nearly 3,000 were killed in the bombings of the Twin Towers, the number of the Mall of America could dwarf that.
Take the Oklahoma City bombing for instance. A truck filed with explosives could tear a huge chunk out of the mall especially if driven into the complex. The scenarios are horrific. The one item on the Homeland Security agenda should be the protection of U.S. citizens. Why not protect them where they assemble, the Mall of America, what bigger symbol of America could you find?


- Chris Mansel

George Orwell

Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. - George Orwell,

So Where Are You Mrs. Robinson?

Planned appearances on talk shows, subpoenaed emails, op-ed columns taken for fact, heresay as journalism, this is how politics is carried out in the new century. The old days of twisting the arm of reporters, drinking with the editors of newspapers, bribes and payoffs well, this still goes on as well. The one thing they all have in common with each other are lies. The backroom noise they all hear and never repeat because it is not conducive to their careers. The women of John Kennedy, no one spoke of that because it was a different time is the response you hear. What kind of time is this?

- Chris Mansel

Bush Ghosts

In South America piranha are known as donkey castrators. The donkey swims across the water or wades in to cool off and the piranha swim up and gorges on the penis. If you really think about it, if the piranha went for another orifice it could be described as Bush ghosts. When the Bush ghosts swirls up your rectum they take from you what they find and leave you emaciated body floating down the river carried by the current to unemployment, lack of healthcare and jobless. A piranha/Bush ghost rim job, but look at it this way, at least you could finally have a scientific name for what the Bush administration has done to you.


- Chris Mansel

Thundered On The Flesh: New York Stories

The steakhouse smells of shit and the waiters stand in the corners, darkened by the smoke emitting from the kitchen. Donald Rumsfeld is entertaining foreign heads of state, otherwise known as senate pages, and going on and on about the breakdown in communications since the capture of many members of the terror organizations, which were helpful in the C.I.A. drug trade. Robert Novak arrives and begins throwing peppercorns around the room. He stuffs chervil down the V-neck sweaters of the waiters and kicks at the jukebox, which only plays Carol Channing.
A waiter approaches Rumsfeld and explains he has a phone call. Karl Rove is calling and screams about the press outside the restaurant. Rove down the street in a dusty van pecks at the laptop computer and watches surveillance footage of Judith Miller and Jean Schmidt make out under a streetlight on the dark side of an abandon Maryland highway.
The Machiavellian silence of the press core, the lack of investigative journalism, the reliability of the in-bedded reporters in Iraq twirl on the little finger of the major corporations as they meet in seclusion in New York city. Usually they will just sit around and try and remember who owns what. But today they are discussing whether or not the physical makeup of New Orleans and southern Mississippi will impact their businesses. Business a coy term to explain the root of the term, when you own major corporations and own shares in others your line of influence extends in many directions. You might own the items that fill up the shelves but no the store. You may own the company that supplies the workers but not be responsible for their safety or the healthcare costs. It is a high finance way of hiding income out in the open.
The heads of the major corporations who own shares in the three corporations that are shadow companies that supply income and money laundering for the government are in New York mainly to celebrate finally taking the companies public, but soon the real guests arrive. Politicians from both sides of the aisle and both sides of the pond arrive and await information on the status of the new IPO. Members of the current administration keep up to date by phone.

- Chris Mansel

Lives Lost In The Cleanup of New Orleans

After speaking with someone who has been working in the cleanup of New Orleans I have learned of the true conditions, not of the toxic stew everyone speaks of but the danger and loss of life. There have been several deaths that have not made the news.
One worker was accidentally run over by heavy equipment, another worker was run over by a truck carrying debris. Worst of all a mother and son were killed when a truck turned over and crushed them. CNN and the other news agencies speak of reporters having embedded status and collecting news alongside our troops but no one is reporting of the loss of life after Katrina. Where are the war grizzled journalists in their khaki shirts peering bravely into the camera?


- Chris Mansel

Abramoff's Whores

LINK: http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/gopscorecard.htm

In the fraud case against Jack Abramoff the Washington lobbyist who used to work for Senator Tom Delay has ties to Alabama politics. Senator Richard Shelby accepted contributions from Abramoff and Governor Bill Riley also accepted contributions from Tom Delay’s ARMPAC which has been discovered to have ties to Abramoff. You have to wonder just how far into Alabama politics this money has reached. Accepting or being tied to money from an investigation of this manner suggests some wrong doing by accident or by purpose. The well-known strong-arm tactics of Senator Tom Delay begs the question, if Shelby and Riley both accepted funds were there something that was expected in return?


- Chris Mansel

The Abandonment of Friends

You go to war with the government you have. To even suggest that we can find a peaceful solution to this pre-Armageddon intelligence failure is insane. After years of American forces in Iraq only 500 to 700 hundred Iraqi troops can protect themselves and others. After several years of American forces in Iraq how many terrorists have we created or drawn to the area? More than 500 to 700. A large majority of the world’s terrorists were either financed or trained by the United States, so why would we be so upset when they become disgruntled when we as the employer abandon the employee?


“Abraham Lincoln’s belief that the United States was “the last best hope on earth” seemed an invocation not just of the Republican dream, but of a burdened world at last set materially free.”
Derek Leebaert, The Fifty-Year Wound


And what of that last hope, are as Andre Gregory stated in the film, My Dinner With Andre, that the “sixties represented the last burst of the human being.” Over wrought with their childhood the baby boomer generation romanticizes the turmoil of that generation and cannot see the forests of Iraq and South Africa, of Rwanda or Darfur for the trees of a once promised Eden, a last best hope of a tranquil overcoming of peace on earth or peace with honor. When speaking from the heart the soul gets clouded and experiences weather it cannot explain. The generation that would end the war, the generation that could begin the environmental movement, somehow lost sight of the militancy and the engendered response. Now the same generation trains other generations to kill, to commit acts of aggression. Where’s the love in war? The only rainbows in this troubled planets future watch over the dead and then dissipate until the hard rain comes again.

- Chris Mansel

The Leviathan Who Fought On His Knees ( for Bob KIncaid )

Ok, they have me now, they have worn me down and tied me to the post and hurled their lies and betrayals, perjuries and their lawbreaking has got me down, how can anyone in some resemblance of thought watch Scott McClellan and believe anything he says. How can anyone watch our President utter anything at all and watch him quiver, slither his own brand of ka ka and not be flabbergasted? If anyone can honestly say they believe in this administration avoid them because they may have the bird flu you have heard so much about.
Mine eyes have seen the coming of the fall of the house of Bush. They’ll be throwing bodies out the window as the car careens out of control until the election of 2008. I predict sooner rather than later the Saudi Royal family will summon Bush to their creepy lair and scold him for his actions. Called on the carpet though they be on the walls Georgie boy will hold hands and stagger cocaine bunches up under his lips and call for a moratorium on cannibals in the U.N. He’ll trace the family tree of Dick Cheney back to the original declaration for independence first composed on the Mayflower in blood from a Haitian slave.
Condi Rice will appear in a sex tape with several volleyball players with sand still stuck in their toes. She’ll be seen in the fetal position humping a statue of Ronald Reagan and screaming about the troops overlooking Little Big Horn.
Scooter Libby will consult and be visited often by G. Gordon Libby and develop contacts in the prison drug trade and be tattooed by the Aryan gangs. Upon release he will start a foundation to study the possibility of promoting commercial prison retreats for the wealthily.
The body of William McNamara upon his death will burst into flames and a million North Vietnamese will run out and devour the body of Henry Kissinger asleep in the front row of the memorial service.


- Chris Mansel

A Conservationist's Danny Boy

Alive and dead the seasons are coming
Over the hills and for a while to stay
We’ll watch as the snow turns to rain
And the summer sun turns a ghostly gray
We’ll see the mountains give rivers
And stones turn into clay
And then we’ll go into that earthly heaven
And once more come together to stay

- Chris Mansel

A Blind Eye Over An Open Grave

"Tens of thousands of prisoners around the country are infected with the virus that causes AIDS, making prisons one of the most potentially dangerous incubators of the epidemic," began the editors. Such a concentration of HIV-infected prisoners "means that healthy inmates run an increased risk of catching the disease by having sex or sharing hypodermic needles with them -- behaviors that are illegal but widespread in American prisons." But most prisons "ignore these risks" and do not provide "adequate tools to slow the spread of the virus. Only a few prison and jail systems in the country offer condoms for safer sex or bleach to disinfect needles. This is shortsighted. Officials should not only work to reduce prisoners' risk of catching AIDS in prison, they should also help a captive audience learn about safer practices in a way that would stick when the inmates returned to the community," asserted the editors. Although "the amount of AIDS transmission in prison is unknown... there is anecdotal evidence that people have gotten HIV in prison, and it is very likely that the number is high," the editors wrote. One Tennessee study "found that 28 percent of inmates reported injecting drugs in prison. Since needles are rare behind prison walls, they are almost always shared, accelerating the spread of AIDS," they wrote. The editors also pointed to consensual homosexual behavior and forcible sex as modes of HIV transmission among prisoners.

http://www.thebody.com/cdc/news_updates_archive/may21_01/prisons.html


A Blind Eye Over An Open grave

Once again I am talking about the one item that belittles all others, AIDS. I have written many articles about what is going on in Africa and I have written about conditions in U.S. prisons, they both are spiraling out of control and no amount of pontificating on talk shows, no conferences or books written are going to alleviate the problem any time soon. What it takes is funding and the ability to interpret what must be done. As you read above prisons, very few of them offer any way of combating AIDS to those in incarceration. Going to jail for a minor felony should not be a death sentence.
Like those prisoners who were tricked into subjecting themselves to drug trials in lieu of cash the prisoners in American jails are involved in a total denial by the justice system as to what a hibernation of an incurable illness can generate.
The Black Death, the influenza epidemic all forms of terrorizing outbreaks eventually found cures but it is hard to imagine AIDS as anything but a serious and earth cleansing epidemic. Some of the world’s most dangerous viruses are kept and studied in labs safe from infecting anyone. You can spin it in anyway you like but our government it seems to turn a blind eye to those incarcerated.

- Chris Mansel

HIV Positive and Hurricane Katrina

Ok, let’s imagine you are a HIV patient in New Orleans and you could not afford to leave before Katrina struck. Let’s also imagine that you are African-American. Let’s further imagine that you were sitting out in front of the cameras of CNN as they drove by never stopping. Now politicians are calling you poor blacks, the former first lady Barbara Bush says that you were poor anyway, and now you are not allowed to gain entry to a shelter. You are weak because of your condition, you are hungry and you are thirsty. You sit and watch people panic and loot the buildings around you and you wonder how you will get your medicine. You try to ask a national guardsman about getting your medicine and he tells you to loot a pharmacy.
Now it is a week into the struggle and you are told you will be moved to Houston, Texas. You board the bus shaky and sick. You get to the shelter and you cannot make your way to the food they have for you because there are news cameras and crews stringing their cords all over the floor, the news people are looking for people to interview and bumping into you. You’re still sick.
While you are still in Houston the landlord who discriminated against you because of your condition has moved what possessions you had out of your apartment so he can rent it to someone else. You finally get some help from someone in the Red Cross but you still do not have a place to stay and the shelter is closing because of a sports event or convention. The workers in Houston at the shelter are griping about the cleanup and you are so tired of it all you snap back at them. All you know is that you are an American citizen and the days of Civil Rights were a long time ago, then you hear that Rosa Parks has died.


- Chris Mansel

The Garden Without Any Soil

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. - H.L. Mencken

The only thing that is not inescapable is the balance that cannot hold. Everything else can be accounted for by fear, grief and happiness. When someone promises in a considering tone you must be aware whether or not they can deliver on such a statement. The same goes for the process of government. Government the old saying goes is the compromise, where do the citizens of the United States fit between that narrow area between your side and mine getting what they both want by a process of give and take?
It doesn’t take an entire breath to know that the air is poisoned.
News broadcasts like leaflets in another era come at you from every side. Print media sandwiched between personal ads and the lost and found are no different, the only difference is the quality of the ink in the printer. It is time to recognize that the media has its clutch pulled back so that the engine can pick up speed downhill where the general public lives. If you ever feel helpless in a government office do not worry it’s a familiar situation. It doesn’t get any better when you are employed in such an office. When every thing about you is reduced to ones and zeros where can you hide but in the blackness between the numbers?


- Chris Mansel

Mass Gatherings In A Single Grain Of Sand

Where do you stand, aside Clausewitz or Sun Tzu? You can use each of the two’s writing and decipher how both would have handled the Tower Of Babel and then decide whether the twin towers were in their sights would we have followed the same tactic. Derek Leebaert wrote in his book, The Fifty-Year Wound wrote of Clausewitz, “…understanding Clausewitz’s writing on the capacity to harness-violent nonreason with this would-be stylized workings of state policy.”
Sun Tzu wrote, “Those skilled in defense conceal themselves in the lowest depths of the Earth, Those skilled in attack move in the highest reaches of the Heavens.” So from the heavens we search for a man, Bin laden, who is in the deepest part of the earth, the unknown. In this unknown many things can happen that necessarily do not have to actually exist. One can appear secluded and be out in the open. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put these words in the mouth of his master sleuth Sherlock Holmes, “The best way to hide something is to put it in plain view.” Sun Tzu writes, “Foreknowledge cannot be elicited from ghosts and spirits; it cannot be inferred from comparison of previous events, or from the calculations of the heavens, but must be obtained from people who have knowledge of the enemy's situation.” The acquiring of this information whether through electronic or in person cannot always believed. You have to understand the information before you can distribute it in memoranda. Even then you cannot guarantee it will be read and understood if read at all.
Clausewitz wrote rather ominously, “The aim of war should be the defeat of the enemy. But what constitutes defeat? The conquest of his whole territory is not always necessary, and total occupation of his territory may not be enough.” We have occupied the entire country of Afghanistan and found only minor and some major players in the terror organizations, which would lead the prying eye to wonder, not wander over the information gathered and whether or not those who read it understood it or even read it. You have to at least consider for a moment that Bin Laden may very well be inside the borders of Saudi Arabia where he acquired most of his wealth by merely being born. The hijackers of 9/11 have been traced to Saudi Arabia so it doesn’t take Clausewitz or Sun Tzu to figure out whether or not we should be our ally’s keeper.


- Chris Mansel

Tribute to The Onion

The Vatican and its role in the mass-producing of Industrial Defecates
The Vatican in order or attempt to quell the many confessions and charges by parishioners,
victims, and press about the many rapes, touching and groupings have enlisted the giant pharmaceutical company Merck to create a pill to be given to any person who speaks out against the money making, golden calf inspiring, and rhetoric spinning Catholic Church. The pill will deplete the conditions of the human stomach in startling time. The person will instantly be depleted of most of the vital fluids to operate properly and will immediately require hospitalization. The Vatican in a joint press conference with Sen. Frist calls the creation of such a pill necessary to control the information that is and can be contrary to the religious right.

Tipper Gore and her backroom deal with the late Frank Zappa
In his first major act since leaving the small cramped apartment allowed for the Vice President and his family and the hate spewing crowds of the Florida vote tallying services of Governor Jeb Bush Tipper Gore former second lady secured an audience with the late Frank Zappa who years earlier testified in front of members of the Congress that Mrs. Gore and her compatriots were misguided and just plain stupid, agreed today with Mrs. Gore that artists like Raffi and Michael Jackson should be kept from the store shelves and out of the hands of mature adults who cast paranoid glances at passersby when shopping.


- Chris Mansel

Many Witnessed The Beginning

"At this point, we do not have evidence that a pandemic is imminent. Most of the people in Southeast Asia who got sick were handling infected birds.”

President Bush, Nov. 1, 2005


President Bush went to say that if we wait for a pandemic to appear it would already be too late. Such is the state of the AIDS pandemic today. During the Reagan administration there was ample time to take measures to not stop the pandemic but to take control of it, to educate the world and to take actions to create medication to treat it.
Today the democratic minority leader Harry Reid called a closed session to the senate to explore the pre-war intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. This was a dramatic move that caught the eye of every news organization in the world. Much has been said on both sides and the answers do need to be found but I ask you where was the call for a closed session on how to handle the mounting death toll of the AIDS virus after the death toll had reached one million or two?
In this country there is so much unrest over a few thousand dead. In the events of 9/11 we lost almost 3,000 people. Thus far in our current war in Iraq we have lost 2025 soldiers currently. These are disturbing numbers to be sure and in no way do I make light of their deaths. But millions have died around the world because of the AIDS Mr. President and I fear it may be too late.

- Chris Mansel