Author: JT

CIA DISBANDS BIN LADEN UNIT (In Case You Missed It)

Stories

The administration’s least favorite newspaper reported on July 3 as follows:

The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had
the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants,
intelligence officials confirmed Monday.

The unit, known as Alec
Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned
within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, the officials said.

King George the Incompetent was asked about this at a press conference that he held in Chicago.

Q:
You said some time ago that you wanted Osama bin Laden dead or alive.
You later regretted the formulation, but maybe not the thought.

BUSH: I regretted the formulation because my wife got on me for talking that way.

Q:
We suspected as much, sir. But the question I have is: It appears that
the CIA has disbanded the unit that was hunting him down. Is it no
longer important to track him down?

BUSH: It’s just an incorrect story.

I
mean, we got a lot of assets looking for Osama bin Laden. So whatever
you want to read in the story, it’s just not true, period.

It
just so happens that Michael Scheuer was on Washington Journal this
morning. He was a senior analyst at the CIA, until he retired in 2004.
He left the agency because he felt that it had been scapegoated in the
9-11 Commission report. He described himself as a conservative
Republican who voted for George W. Bush twice. Mr. Scheuer is now a CBS
News Terrorism Analyst.

He was the head of the CIA unit that was
charged with responsibility for Osama bin Laden from when he founded it
in late December 1995, until mid-June 1999.

Brian Lamb: Is there any truth to the fact that it’s been disbanded?

Michael
Scheuer: As I understand it, the agency has confirmed that. Yes, sir.
After 10 years of what I think, at least, is the most successful United
States counter-terrorism unit that has ever been formed.

BIG MITCH/July 2006

CARTOON NETWORK TO BUY "THE CHICAGO TEN CARTOON" EPISODE 1: BOSTON

Stories

Rachel Sklar AP050420010212.jpg
Page Six today reported that Graydon Carter‘s documentary Chicago 10, about the protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention involving sixties activists/larger-than-life figures Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale, failed to get picked up at Sundance. The film, an animated (animated?) version of the story starring the voices of Hank Azaria, Liev Schreiber and Mark Rufalo, was said to have had “no emotion”

GAWKER


(Ed. note: I auditioned for this when I first got to nyc. I’m sorry it didn’t get picked up. I think.)

White House Quietly Retracts Entire State Of The Union Address

Stories

White House Quietly Retracts Entire State Of The Union Address:

January 31, 2007 | Issue 43•05 WASHINGTON, DC—

In a brief statement faxed to major media outlets at approximately 11:50 p.m. Friday, the White House retracted the entire 5,600-word State of the Union address delivered by President Bush last Tuesday. “This includes all components of the address, and is not limited to the president’s congratulations to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi or his plan to give more Americans affordable health care through tax cuts, which has since been deemed infeasible,” the statement read in part. “Furthermore, the president’s urge for bipartisanship as well as his final statement about the state of the union being ‘strong’ are hereby stricken from the public record.” Like the State of the Union address itself, the White House’s retraction has not yet become a significant national news story. © Copyright 2006, Onion, Inc. All rights reserved.

DISCONTINUATION OF STATE DEPARTMENT TERROR REPORT RAISES EYEBROWS

Stories

Apr. 22, 2005

DISCONTINUATION OF STATE DEPARTMENT TERROR REPORT RAISES EYEBROWS.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., asked for an investigation this week after
the State Department announced that after 19 years, it would no longer annually publish terrorist attack numbers,
Reuters reported Thursday. The decision “denies the public access to
information about the incidence of terrorism,” he said in
correspondence to the acting State Department inspector general in
which he asked what political concerns, if any, motivated the
discontinuation. The 2004 statistics contradicted the Bush
administration’s claims that the war on terror was making progress.
A spokesman for the State Department, Richard Boucher, answered the press corps’ questions about the decision
on Monday morning, saying that responsibility for the report has simply
been shifted to the National Counterterrorism Center because “the 9/11
Commission recommended and the Congress passed legislation called the
Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 that
established the National Counterterrorism Center as the primary
organization in the U.S. Government for analysis of global terrorism.”

Behind the Homefront

Stop The Escalation

Stories

This ad is being pushed in the six home states of the Republicans on Foreign Relations Committee that voted against the Levin/Biden/Hagel resolution.

Stop Escalation

Army investigates war contractors

Stories

KANSAS CITY DOT COM

Up to 50 criminal cases involving alleged fraud, bribery and abuse have been opened.
The Associated PressWASHINGTON | Army investigators have opened up to 50 criminal investigations involving battlefield contractors in the war in Iraq and the U.S. fight against terrorism, The Associated Press has learned.

They include high-dollar fraud, conspiracy, bribery, and bid rigging.

Senior contracting officials, government employees, residents of other countries and, in some cases, U.S. military personnel have been implicated in millions of dollars of fraud allegations.

“All of these involve operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait,” Chris Grey, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, confirmed Saturday.

Battlefield contractors have been implicated in allegations of fraud and abuse since the war in Iraq began in spring 2003. A special inspector general office that focused solely on reconstruction spending in Iraq developed cases that led to four criminal convictions.

The problems stem in part from the Pentagon’s struggle to get a handle on the unprecedented number of contractors now helping run the nation’s wars. Contractors are used in battle zones to do nearly everything but fight.

Special agents from the Army’s major procurement fraud unit recently were dispatched to Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, where they are “working closely and sharing information with other law enforcement agencies in the region,” Grey said.

One case involves an Army chief warrant officer accused of taking a $50,000 bribe to steer a contract for paper products and plastic flatware away from a government contractor and to a Kuwaiti company, according to court records.