Report: US Fails at Enforcing Prosecution of Contractors
By Elana Schor
The Guardian Unlimited UK
Wednesday 16 January 2008
The US government has the legal authority to prosecute private contractors for crimes they commit in Iraq but often declines to use it, according to a report released today by a leading human rights group. The findings by Human Rights First come amid renewed uncertainty about whether employees of the US security company Blackwater can be prosecuted for a September shooting in Baghdad that left 17 Iraqis dead.
The Bush administration has warned that inconsistency in federal law may allow the contractors to evade charges, the New York Times reported today.
"The main obstacle to ending the culture of impunity among private security contractors is not shortcomings in the law but rather the lack of will to enforce the law," today's report states.
A seven-year-old law called the Military extraterrestrial jurisdiction act, or MEJA, provides the main mechanism to prosecute contractors for crimes committed outside the US.
But many in the capital have questioned whether MEJA's specific application to Pentagon employees would exempt Blackwater, which was operating under a US state department contract when the September shooting occurred.
The human rights report rejects that argument, citing a congressional expansion of MEJA passed after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in 2004. That measure allows for prosecution of non-Pentagon employees who were "supporting the mission of the department of defence".
The behaviour of contractors for Blackwater and other security firms has sparked resentment among Iraqi officials as well as civilians, many of whom consider the private guards unnecessarily violent.
"These violent attacks have created a culture of impunity that angers the local population, undermines the military mission, and promotes more abuse by contractors over time," the report states.
The report found that since the war in Iraq began, only one US contractor has been charged with a violent crime under MEJA: an employee of KBR, formerly owned by Halliburton, who was accused of stabbing an Indian female colleague.
The House of Representatives already has approved a measure that would directly apply MEJA to Blackwater and its fellow contractors. Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has introduced an expansion of MEJA in the Senate, but the bill has yet to see action.
Fallout from Blackwater's legal and public relations troubles has hit British security companies in recent months.
The chief executive of ArmorGroup, the largest UK security firm operating in Iraq, left his post after reports of the September violence chilled the company's profits and new contracts.
The human rights report singles out ArmorGroup and Aegis Defence Services, another UK-based contractor, for tracking incidents involving firearms use by their employees, in contrast with US companies that do not routinely keep such records.
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O.K., so where is that Whistleblower Protection Law? -GFS
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Could Congress Be Waking Up?
By Thomas E. Mann, Molly Reynolds and Nigel Holmes
The New York Times
Saturday 19 January 2008

(Graphic: Nigel Holmes / The New York Times)

Amid the clamor of the presidential campaign, it's sometimes easy to forget that all 435 House seats and 35 of the Senate's seats are up for election this year, too. So how should Congress under its new Democratic leadership be judged?
The public has reached a decidedly negative conclusion, based on Congress's inability to force a change in policy on the Iraq war and the pitched partisan battles that characterized much of the year in Washington.
But expectations for seismic change in policymaking after the 2006 midterm elections were almost certainly too high, given the deep ideological differences between the parties, the Democrats' narrow majorities, the now-routine Senate filibusters and a Republican president determined to go his own way on Iraq, the budget and domestic policy.
Based on our research, the 110th Congress does deserve some praise. In 2007, the level of energy and activity on Capitol Hill picked up markedly. This is not surprising - when the Newt Gingrich Congress, its closest analogue, took over in 1995, the pace of legislative life sped up, too.
In terms of both the number and significance of new public laws, however, last year's Democratic majority significantly outperformed that Republican Congress. Only one item described in the Republican Contract With America was signed into law at the end of 1995, while most of the proposals the Democrats announced as their agenda were enacted.
Democrats, to be sure, aimed lower in their specific legislative promises, but they managed to overcome the many obstacles in their way. Republicans in 1995 shot for the moon and ended up frustrated by Senate inaction, presidential vetoes and a government shutdown that proved politically damaging.
The new Democratic Congress delivered on the promise of ethics and lobbying reform, and made considerable progress in reining in earmarks, which had exploded under the previous 12 years of mostly Republican rule. In fact, between the 2006 and 2008 fiscal years, the cost of appropriations earmarks appears to have dropped from $29 billion to $14.1 billion. Perhaps most important, Congress reasserted itself as a rightful check on the executive branch, significantly stepping up its oversight on a wide range of important subjects.
But a less partisan, more deliberative and productive legislative process will have to await a clearer signal from voters in the 2008 elections.
The chart above shows how the 110th Congress spent its time, and what it accomplished, in its first year under Democratic control, compared with its immediate predecessor and with the Republican Congress that took office in 1995.

Thomas E. Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of "The Broken Branch." Molly Reynolds is a senior research assistant at Brookings. Nigel Holmes is a graphic designer.
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Daniel Ellsberg writes of “The American Media’s Complicit Failure to Investigate and Report on the Sibel Edmonds Case.” He points out how ridiculous it is that the London Times writes cautiously, but at least reports on things of critical importance to the citizens of the United States, when the U.S. Press and media organizations refuse to cover the stories. Please find several previous articles on this blog regarding the Sibel Edmonds story, and another reporter's thoughts, Alexandrovna. To read Ellsberg’s article in total, please go to the Brad Blog at this address:

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5583

FBI 'Covers Up' Files & Documents
Exposing Nuclear Secrets Theft

The Sunday Times

January 20, 2007

THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.

The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.

Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.

Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an “outright lie”.

“I can tell you that that file and the operations it refers to did exist from 1996 to February 2002. The file refers to the counterintelligence programme that the Department of Justice has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations,” she said.

The freedom of information request had not been initiated by Edmonds. It was made quite separately by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent.

The letter says: “You may wish to request pertinent audio tapes and documents under FOIA from the Department of Justice, FBI-HQ and the FBI Washington field office.”

It then makes a series of allegations about the contents of the file – many of which corroborate the information that Edmonds later made public.

Edmonds had told this newspaper that members of the Turkish political and diplomatic community in the US had been actively acquiring nuclear secrets. They often acted as a conduit, she said, for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they attracted less suspicion.

She claimed corrupt government officials helped the network, and venues such as the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in Washington were used as drop-off points.

The anonymous letter names a high-level government official who was allegedly secretly recorded speaking to an official at the Turkish embassy between August and December 2001.

It claims the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official’s warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause célèbre in the US.

The letter also makes reference to wiretaps of Turkish “targets” talking to ISI intelligence agents at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and recordings of “operatives” at the ATC.

Edmonds is the subject of a number of state secret gags preventing her from talking further about the investigation she witnessed.

“I cannot discuss the details considering the gag orders,” she said, “but I reported all these activities to the US Congress, the inspector general of the justice department and the 9/11 commission. I told them all about what was contained in this case file number, which the FBI is now denying exists.

“This gag was invoked not to protect sensitive diplomatic relations but criminal activities involving US officials who were endangering US national security.”

Insight: Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert and Joe Lauria

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3216737.ece

Hi. I just started an interactive story (fiction - action adventure) on Writing.Com. It is a chance for some amusement and maybe a pressure release for some folks. It is called "A. R. Bolen Aerospace Company" and is ID#1377451. bitem: 1377451

Go to this addres to link to my portfolio.
http://Writing.Com/authors/2Whimsical

Each person who contributes adds a chapter to the life of young Jonathan Parker, new employee of the A. R. Bolen Aerospace Company. Yes, there will be an opportunity to get a little reality into the fantasy in here, and maybe Jon will even get to be a whistleblower...

It is in my portfolio. You are invited to visit and add to the story. Have fun!

Update: I added a second interractive to be about fictional federal employees as well. Have even more fun!

G. F. Scott