Confirmed: the Government Hid--and Is Still Hiding--Manssor Arbabsiar's First Docket
I first raised questions of why the government had charged Manssor Arbabsiar--the Scary Iran Plotter--with an amended complaint almost two weeks ago. As I noted then, the obvious existence of an earlier sealed complaint might suggest the possibility…
The Informant Racket and the Scary Iran Plot
Jeralyn Merritt has been focusing closely on the DEA's use of informants of late. And as part of a discussion of how much the DEA informant in the Viktor Bout case, Carlos Sagastume, has made off his lucrative informant career ($8 million and…
Feigned Ignorance Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry
After the US killed AQAP propagandist Samir Khan in a drone strike, the State Department made two calls to his family to express condolences. Doing so was probably the only way they could maintain the fiction his death was an accident, while…
Why Isn't the Federal Government Treating the Maine OWS Attack as WMD Terrorism?
Mohamed Osman Mohamud's alleged terrorist act was to take an inert bomb constructed by the FBI and attempt to detonate it in Portland, OR's Courthouse Square; had he succeeded, a bomb would have gone off in a public space full of people and,…
America's Privatized Repression
Corey Robin has an important post on America's privatized repression. He starts by describing how, after watching a panel on Occupy Wall Street in which she appeared, the freelancer who got arrested while she was covering the Brooklyn Bridge…
Pakistan Update: 18,000 Flee Khyber Area, Haqqani Insist Taliban Must Lead Talks
Last week's visit by a delegation of high-ranking US officials to Pakistan featured the ironic use of the US Secretary of State to deliver a newly militarized message to the Pakistanis regarding the way forward, with the introduction of…
How the Fed Helped Qaddafi Keep His $200B in Loot
I suggested yesterday that the West will be playing dumb about the extent to which Qaddafi looted the Libyan people becomes known.
But what about how Qaddafi looted us--or, at least, the Fed?
As this article laid out, one of the means…
Why Does Duqu Matter?
The short answer is that if your PC got infected by Stuxnet last year, you were just collateral damage, unless you were operating a very specific set of uranium enrichment centrifuges. If you get Duqu this year, your network is under attack…
The West Is Shocked--Shocked!--to Find Qaddafi's Loot in their Casinos!
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Now that they're dancing on Moammar Qaddafi's grave (or would be, if the rebels would end the trophy show of his body so he can be buried), they're no doubt faced with a dilemma.
How to get all the money…
Now That Training in Iraq is a Failure, Petraeus No Longer Mentioned
A remarkable story in this morning's Washington Post addresses a report released today from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The report details that the training of police forces in Iraq has been a failure:
Over…
MoDo's Camels and Ponies
Having MoDo vouch for the "sangfroid" of Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir (who, she notes, once saved her from being punished by Saudi religious police for dressing inappropriately) is about as amusing as having David Ignatius announce the Scary…
Tebow Christ Superstar!: Wash Yer Hands & Seal The Fishes Fate
Welcome to TebowWheel. We are done with that national security and legal shit; we're going ALL TEBOW, ALL THE TIME baybee! Now, I hear Rosalind is fixing to riot this place or something because she can't find a Trash post to trash up. Fine,…
The OTHER Saudi Assassination Plotter Got a Reduced Sentence in July
This post from Cannonfire reminded me how convenient for our country it is that Moammar Qaddafi was executed rather than captured alive and tried: he will not be able to tell anyone, now that he's dead, how Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, who under torture…
FBI in Detroit Profiles Muslims and Arabs in Spite of 12 Whites Engaged in Terrorism
As part of a new ACLU project to FOIA and map all the racial profiling the FBI has been doing, it liberated a Detroit FBI document describing its efforts to set up a "Domain Management" assessment (which seems to be a nice euphemism for racial…
DOJ Offers No More Detail on Scary Iran Plot in Indictment
I had this naive hope that DOJ would use the opportunity of an indictment to fill in some of the holes in their case.
Like I said, naive hope.
The indictment appears to be the amended complaint, without the affidavit, with an arrest warrant…
From US-Pakistan Meetings: No Pakistan Action in North Waziristan; Petraeus to Deliver Evidence Against ISI
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The high level meetings in Islamabad between US and Pakistani officials head into their second day today, after a marathon four hour session late yesterday. The line-ups of officials…
John Brennan Boasts that an Obama Decision Killed Anwar al-Awlaki
Okay, I don't know for a fact that the Senior Administration Official Jake Tapper rather irresponsibly gave anonymity to is John Brennan. After all, Ben Rhodes loves to boast anonymously too.
But given the Administration's past caution about…
Scary Iran Plot: FBI Had No Need to Investigate Arbabsiar's Corpus Christi Past
So imagine this scenario.
A DEA informant calls up his handler out of the blue and says,
Omigod! Some crazy Iranian just approached me to arrange some kind of hit on behalf of this Iranian terror organization. He asked about explosives (I…
Did Duqu fix the bug that revealed Stuxnet?
Duqu isn't Christopher Lee in Attack of the Clones, but it is the newest computer malware to hit mainstream consciousness. It's attracting attention mainly because it is based on the same software source code base as the Windows portion…
Three Teenagers and a Journalist Attempt to Prosecute Bush for Torture
Bush is in British Columbia today, giving a $100,000 speech.
Three men first captured when they were teenagers--Hassan bin Attash (Walid's brother, who was captured when was 16 and remains in Gitmo), Muhammed Khan Tumani (who was captured…
