Inside the Killing Machine

President Obama is ordering a record number of Predator strikes. An exclusive interview with a man who approved ‘lethal operations.’

It was an ordinary-looking room located in an office building in northern Virginia. The place was filled with computer monitors, keyboards, and maps. Someone sat at a desk with his hand on a joystick. John A. Rizzo, who was serving as the CIA’s acting general counsel, hovered nearby, along with other people from the agency. Together they watched images on a screen that showed a man and his family traveling down a road thousands of miles away. The vehicle slowed down, and the man climbed out.

A moment later, an explosion filled the screen, and the man was dead. “It was very businesslike,” says Rizzo. An aerial drone had killed the man, a high-level terrorism suspect, after he had gotten out of the vehicle, while members of his family were spared. “The agency was very punctilious about this,” Rizzo says. “They tried to minimize collateral damage, especially women and children.”

The broad outlines of the CIA’s operations to kill suspected terrorists have been known to the public for some time—including how the United States kills Qaeda and Taliban militants by drone aircraft in Pakistan. But the formal process of determining who should be hunted down and “blown to bits,” as Rizzo puts it, has not been previously reported. A look at the bureaucracy behind the operations reveals that it is multilayered and methodical, run by a corps of civil servants who carry out their duties in a professional manner. Still, the fact that Rizzo was involved in “murder,” as he sometimes puts it, and that operations are planned in advance in a legalistic fashion, raises questions.

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Robert Fisk: Panic on borders as chaos engulfs Libya

INDEPENDENT

The Libyans watched from an open window of the immigration post, leaning out to see the 20,000 fleeing Egyptian, Bangladeshi, Chinese and Iranian workers heaped up against the border wall. They seemed quite unconcerned, shirt-sleeves rolled up, moving to a window closer to this crowd. Already up to 75,000 have struggled into Tunisia, but yesterday the crossing system collapsed as thousands of men, almost all Arabs desperate to escape Muammar Gaddafi's state, fought with local Tunisians who – under the eyes of the army – attacked them with stakes and iron bars. 

Many of the soldiers hurled plastic water bottles and biscuits into the masses of refugees who began to jump the border wall in their desperation, heaving family members and baggage through breaks in the cement. Clichés run out when faced with such chaos and unnecessary suffering. "Insupportable" was the word that came to mind yesterday. Most of these 20,000 had gone without food, water or sleep for four days. How is it possible that people should suffer so greatly at a mere border post?

Officials turned up with anodyne words of fearful irrelevance. Josette Sheeran, who rejoices in the title of executive director of the World Food Programme, stared at this ocean of humanity and announced: "We are doing all we can – we are working through this situation. And it's never too late." But it was. Ms Sheeran arrived with 80 tonnes of food, most of it high-energy biscuits, which were thrown over the wall at the crowds once she had left.

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Why the Dollar's Reign Is Near an End

The single most astonishing fact about foreign exchange is not the high volume of transactions, as incredible as that growth has been. Nor is it the volatility of currency rates, as wild as the markets are these days.

Instead, it's the extent to which the market remains dollar-centric.

Consider this: When a South Korean wine wholesaler wants to import Chilean cabernet, the Korean importer buys U.S. dollars, not pesos, with which to pay the Chilean exporter. Indeed, the dollar is virtually the exclusive vehicle for foreign-exchange transactions between Chile and Korea, despite the fact that less than 20% of the merchandise trade of both countries is with the U.S.

Chile and Korea are hardly an anomaly: Fully 85% of foreign-exchange transactions world-wide are trades of other currencies for dollars. What's more, what is true of foreign-exchange transactions is true of other international business. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries sets the price of oil in dollars. The dollar is the currency of denomination of half of all international debt securities. More than 60% of the foreign reserves of central banks and governments are in dollars.

The greenback, in other words, is not just America's currency. It's the world's.

But as astonishing as that is, what may be even more astonishing is this: The dollar's reign is coming to an end.

I believe that over the next 10 years, we're going to see a profound shift toward a world in which several currencies compete for dominance.

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Astonishing wealth of Gaddafi and his family revealed

The astonishing wealth of Libyan tyrant Muammar Gaddafi and his family has been laid bare as countries around the world begin freezing billions of dollars worth of their assets.

The U.S. alone has seized $30billion (£18.5bn) of their investments, while Canada has frozen $2.4bn (£1.5bn), Austria, $1.7bn (£1bn) and the UK, $1bn ($600m).

These assets appear to be just the tip of the iceberg, as no one is yet certain exactly what the family owns around the world.

But they include an enormous portfolio of properties in the West End theatre and shopping district of London - worth $455m (£280m) as well as $325m (£200m) in shares in Pearson, the owner of the Financial Times and Penguin books.

The assets also include a $15million luxury mansion in an affluent suburb of North London.

Nestled among the homes of TV presenters and actors is the eight-bed home with a swimming pool, sauna, jacuzzi and suede-lined cinema room.

The house even has an electrically operated rubbish store, which raises and lowers eight bins into the ground before a steel plate folds over to hide them discreetly.

It was bought mortgage-free by Capitana Seas Ltd, a holding company registered in the British Virgin Islands and owned by Gaddafi's most high-profile son, Saif.

Residents in the neighbourhood have been campaigning to oust Saif, a former student of the London School of Economics, who acquired the property in 2009.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361919/Muammar-Gaddafi-familys-astonishing-wealth-revealed.html#ixzz1FRaldG3r

Qaddafi Counterattacks Rebel-Held East Libya to Gain Control of Oil Stocks

Libyan rebels dug in after repulsing attacks by forces loyal to Muammar Qaddafi, increasing the prospect of civil war as the entire United Nations rebuked his regime.

Rebels in Zawiyah, which is located 28 miles (45 kilometers) west of the capital of Tripoli, held their ground yesterday at the entrances to the city, Ibrahim al-Hajj, a 58- year-old resident, said by telephone. Many were armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades taken from military depots, said Belgassem al-Zawee, a 50-year-old protester.

Pro-Qaddafi forces reclaimed control of Libya’s western border with Tunisia on Feb. 28 before attacking and failing to recapture Zawiyah. They also attacked Misratah, a city 115 miles east of the capital, according to the Associated Press.

“Libya is essentially split into two, an eastern and a western part,” Mohammed Dangor, South Africa’s ambassador to Libya, who left Tripoli on Feb. 27, told reporters in Cape Town. “This is moving toward civil war, that’s the danger.”

Saudi Arabia’s benchmark stock index plunged the most since November 2008 on concern political unrest in the Middle East may spread to the kingdom. Oil rose to its highest level since September 2008, helping send Asian stocks lower for the first time in four days.

Oil for April delivery gained as much as $1.01 to $100.64 a barrel in electronic trading the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices are 26 percent higher than a year ago.

Oman, Yemen Protests

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Government overlap costs taxpayers billions, GAO reports

WASHINGTON POST

With Congress and the White House set to debate the merits of massive spending cuts, federal auditors have identified hundreds of overlapping government offices and programs that if merged or eliminated could save taxpayers billions of dollars.

The U.S. government has, for example, more than 100 programs dealing with surface transportation issues, 82 that monitor teacher quality, 80 for economic development, 56 for "financial literacy," 20 offices or programs devoted to homelessness and 17 grant programs for disaster preparedness, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday. Among other redundancies, 15 agencies or offices handle food safety, and five agencies are working to ensure that the federal government uses less gasoline.

"Reducing or eliminating duplication, overlap, or fragmentation could potentially save billions of taxpayer dollars annually and help agencies provide more efficient and effective services," the GAO said.

The study, ordered last year as part of legislation raising the federal debt limit, quickly earned the attention of lawmakers eager to identify potential spending cuts.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who sponsored the amendment requiring the report's publication, has said Congress and the executive branch are equally to blame for failing to control spending. Coburn has been an outspoken critic of government waste.

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Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.

"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."

I put down my notebook. "Just that?"

"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."

Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.

This article appears in the March 3, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available now on newsstands and will appear in the online archive February 18.

The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted.

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"Day of Rage" shakes Yemen, Saleh sacks governors

SANAA/ADEN (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of protesters flooded Yemen's streets on Tuesday in a "Day of Rage," demanding an end to the president's three-decade rule.

In the capital Sanaa, demonstrators chanted "With blood and soul we support you, Aden," referring to the southern port city where most of the 24 people killed in the past two weeks of protests have died.

Some demonstrators flashed "V" for victory signs while others wore white headbands with "Leave" written in red -- a message addressed to President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Tens of thousands more marched through the streets of Ibb and Taiz, south of Sanaa.

Already rocked by separatism and an al Qaeda insurgency, Yemen is one of the Arab nations most shaken by popular protests sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East.

Saleh, a U.S. ally against al Qaeda, has failed to quell two months of protests in a country of 23 million where 40 percent live on less than $2 a day and a third are undernourished.

On Monday he offered to form a unity government but the opposition rejected it. On Tuesday, Saleh replaced the governors of five mostly southern provinces at the center of the protests.

"Victory is coming and it is near," Hassan Zaid, an opposition leader, shouted to the protesters gathered in Sanaa, where they have been camping out for two weeks. "We have one goal and one demand, and that is the quick end of the regime."

Protesters are angry at widespread corruption, as university graduates struggle to get jobs without connections, and youth unemployment is high. Northern rebels and southern separatists say they are denied resources and a say in politics.

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FBI: Bungling spy comes in for a cold shoulder

THE strange case of an undercover FBI agent, a senior Australian defence officer, a former White House adviser and a US investigation into money laundering in the Sudan came together with the soft chime of a Canberra door bell at 6.30pm last Thursday.

The bell rang at the home of a US citizen and Australian resident, Gwenyth Todd - a former Middle East adviser to the White House, the Pentagon and the US Navy - and her husband, a senior Australian Defence Force officer.

Ms Todd's husband answered the door and was greeted by a middle-aged man who said he was the US embassy consular officer Bill Phelps. He said that a recent incident involving Chinese hackers had compromised some US passports and he was warning local Americans.

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Once inside the house he told Ms Todd - whose married surname begins with an H - he was speaking to US citizens with surnames starting with that letter.

''I said, 'Your story has a problem because my last name on my US passport does not begin with an H, my last name is Todd','' she told the Herald.

''He got all flustered, and he said, 'Oh wait, let me think, R, S, T … oh yeah, Ts were compromised, too.' It was so bad it was almost comical.''

Mr Phelps left soon after. ''I said to my husband, 'I think that guy is intel. I could smell a rat'.''

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Obama says Gadhafi's time is up as Libya's leader

President Barack Obama dropped the careful condemnation, threats of consequences and the reminders to Moammar Gadhafi's regime about its responsibility to avoid violence. In their place he delivered a more forceful message to the Libyan leader: Leave.

The president called on Gadhafi to step down for the first time Saturday, saying that the Libyan government must be held accountable for its brutal crackdown on dissenters. The administration also announced new sanctions against Libya, but that was overshadowed by the sharp demand for Gadhafi's immediate ouster.

"The president stated that when a leader's only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now," the White House said.

The statement summarizing Obama's telephone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel came as Libya's embattled regime passed out guns to civilian supporters and sent armed patrols around its capital to quash dissent and stave off the rebellion that now controls large parts of the North African nation. Violence continued, a day after pro-Gadhafi militiamen and snipers fired on protesters trying to march in Tripoli and their leader told supporters to defend the nation.

Until Saturday, U.S. officials held back from fully and openly throwing all their support behind the protest movement, insisting that it was for the Libyan people to determine how they want to be led. The refrain echoed the public position maintained by the administration during the Egypt crisis, when the U.S. gradually dropped its support for longtime ally Hosni Mubarak but never explicitly demanded his resignation after nearly three decades in power.

Decapitated bodies displayed in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico

Four bodies with their heads severed have been dumped in the Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo, close to the border with the US, police say.

Gunmen laid the decapitated bodies out on a sheet in a central square in full view of horrified pedestrians.

On the sheet was a written message from the Gulf drugs cartel to a rival gang.

Beheadings have become a feature of the violent struggle between Mexican drugs gangs fighting for control of smuggling routes into the US.

More than 34,600 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon began deploying the army to fight the cartels.

Much of the violence has been concentrated in northern states along the US border.

Nuevo Laredo is in Tamaulipas state, which has been the focus of a bloody turf war between the Gulf cartel and the Zetas gang.

Attacks on the security forces have also become frequent in the state.

Earlier this month Nuevo Laredo's police chief Manuel Farfan - a former army officer - was shot dead along with two of his bodyguards.

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More Libyan bloodshed could prompt U.S. intervention

(CNN) -- If the U.S. military were to intervene in an increasingly chaotic Libya, it would most likely be part of a NATO action in which Libyan bloodshed has reached a humanitarian crisis, analysts said Thursday.

As reports emerged Thursday about deadly clashes between leader Moammar Gadhafi's forces and anti-government protesters in the town of Zawiya near Tunisia, analysts highlighted how Gadhafi has already pledged to fight a rebellion to martyrdom.

Military intervention "is something which I hope doesn't happen, but it looks as though at some point that it should happen," said Simon Henderson, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

"What's an acceptable number of civilian deaths? I don't know. Choose your figure," Henderson said. "At the very least, instead of having a casualty list certainly in the hundreds, possibly in the thousands, we don't want a casualty list numbering in the tens of thousands, or 100,000 or so."

After 10 days of protest, Gadhafi has lost control of the eastern portion of a country he has ruled for 42 years, and analysts portrayed him as a dictator desperately clinging to power. Members of his government have defected, and in a sign of growing international pressure, Switzerland ordered Thursday that Gadhafi's assets be frozen.

"You've got to assume the worst about Moammar Gadhafi," Nicholas Burns, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School and former under secretary of state between 2005 and 2008, told CNN. "With his back to the wall, he's going to go out in a blaze of vicious attacks."

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Libya: Tripoli residents say civilians being armed

The embattled regime of Moammar Gadhafi is arming civilian supporters to set up checkpoints and roving patrols around the Libyan capital to control movement and quash dissent, residents said Saturday.

The reports came a day after protesters demanding Gadhafi's ouster came under heavy gunfire by pro-regime militiamen trying to stop the first significant anti-government marches in days in Tripoli.

Gadhafi, speaking from the ramparts of a historic Tripoli fort on Friday, told supporters to prepare to defend the nation as he faced the biggest challenge to his 42-year rule. "At the suitable time, we will open the arms depot so all Libyans and tribes become armed, so that Libya becomes red with fire," he said.

Rebels hold a long sweep of about half of Libya's 1,000-mile (1,600- kilometer) Mediterranean coastline where most of the population lives, and even captured a brigadier general and a soldier Saturday as the Libyan army tried to retake an air base east of Tripoli.

The international community stepped up its response to the bloodshed, while Americans and other foreigners were evacuated from the chaos roiling the North African nation.

The U.N. Security Council planned to meet later Saturday for a second day to consider an arms embargo against the Libyan government and a travel ban and asset freeze against Gadhafi, his relatives and key members of his government.

President Barack Obama signed an executive order Friday freezing assets held by Gadhafi and four of his children in the United States. The Treasury Department said the sanctions against Gadhafi, three of his sons and a daughter also apply to the Libyan government.

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Feds spy on reporter in leak probe

Federal investigators trying to find out who leaked information about a CIA attempt to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program obtained a New York Times reporter’s three private credit reports, examined his personal bank records and obtained information about his phone calls and travel, according to a new court filing.

The scope and intrusiveness of the government’s efforts to uncover reporter James Risen’s sources surfaced Thursday in the criminal case of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer facing federal criminal charges for allegedly disclosing classified information. Sterling is accused of giving Risen details about what Risen describes as the CIA’s plan to give Iran faulty nuclear blueprints, hoping to temporarily thwart the regime’s ambitions to build an atomic bomb.

In a motion filed in federal court in Alexandria, Sterling’s defense lawyers, Ed MacMahon Jr. and Barry Pollack, reveal that the prosecution has turned over “various telephone records showing calls made by the author James Risen. It has provided three credit reports—Equifax, TransUnion and Experian—for Mr. Risen. It has produced Mr. Risen’s credit card and bank records and certain records of his airline travel.”

The revelation alarmed First Amendment advocates, particularly in light of Justice Department rules requiring the attorney general to sign off on subpoenas directed to members of the media and on requests for their phone records. And Risen told POLITICO that the disclosures, while not shocking, made him feel “like a target of spying.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/50168.html#ixzz1F006tzPb

Pakistan arrests US security contractor as rift with CIA deepens

Pakistani authorities have arrested a US government security contractor amid a worsening spy agency row between the countries, with Pakistani intelligence calling on the Americans to "come clean" about its network of covert operatives in the country.

The arrest came at the start of the murder trial of another American held in Pakistan, the CIA agent Raymond Davis.

Peshawar police arrested Aaron DeHaven, a contractor who recently worked for the US embassy in Islamabad, saying that his visa had expired.

Little was known about DeHaven except that his firm, which also has offices in Afghanistan and Dubai, is staffed by retired US military and defence personnel who boast of direct experience in the "global war on terror".

It was unclear whether his arrest was linked to escalating tensions between the Inter-Services Intelligence and the CIA, triggered by the trial of Davis, who appeared in handcuffs at a brief court hearing in a Lahore jail.

The 36-year-old former special forces soldier, whose status as a spy was revealed by the Guardian, refused to sign a chargesheet presented to him by the prosecution, which says he murdered two men at a traffic junction on January 27.

Davis instead repeated his claim of diplomatic immunity – a claim supported by President Barack Obama, who called him "our diplomat".

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Yemen Protests: Tens Of Thousands Hold Pro- And Anti-Government Rallies

Tens of thousands of supporters and opponents of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh held rival demonstrations in the capital on Friday, in a test of support for the veteran leader's 32-year rule.

Protesters outside Sanaa University, repeating slogans which have echoed round the Arab world since the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, chanted: "The people demand the downfall of the regime."

About 4 km (2 miles) across town, loyalists shouted support for a leader they said was holding the fractured and impoverished tribal nation together. "The creator of unity is in our hearts. We will not abandon him," they chanted.

Seventeen people have been killed in the past nine days in a sustained wave of countrywide anti-Saleh protests galvanized by the fall of the Tunisian and Egyptian presidents. Saleh has said he will not give in to "anarchy and killing."

A U.S. ally against the Yemen-based al Qaeda wing that has launched attacks at home and abroad, the Yemeni leader is struggling to end protests flaring across the Arabian Peninsula's poorest state.

He is also trying to maintain a shaky truce with northern Shi'ite Muslim rebels and contain a secessionist insurgency in the south against northern rule.

In the south of the country, more than 10,000 people took to the streets in various districts of the port city of Aden, demanding an end to Saleh's rule.

Tens of thousands of supporters and opponents of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh held rival demonstrations in the capital on Friday, in a test of support for the veteran leader's 32-year rule.

Protesters outside Sanaa University, repeating slogans which have echoed round the Arab world since the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, chanted: "The people demand the downfall of the regime."

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Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.

"My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line."

The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts.

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North African Turmoil Could Rocket Crude to $220

If the turmoil paralyzing parts of the Middle East and North Africa brings oil production in Libya and Algeria to a standstill, it could cause crude oil to explode to $220 a barrel, derailing the global economic recovery.

According to a new report from Tokyo-based Nomura, a simultaneous production halt from embattled Libya and neighboring Algeria would reduce OPEC spare capacity to 2.1 million barrels a day and may cause crude to spike from about $97 a barrel today to $220 a barrel. 

“The closest comparison is the 1990-1991 Gulf War,” the Nomura analysts, led by Michael Lo, wrote, saying crude prices leaped 70% in seven months when OPEC’s spare capacity was cut to just 1.8 million barrels a day during that conflict with oil-rich Iraq.

While the $220 figure may sound high, Nomura said it could be an underestimate as speculative oil traders who were not around during the Gulf War may exaggerate the surge during an oil production halt.

The turmoil in Algeria hasn't gotten nearly as much attention, but that government is also believed to be very vulnerable and recent protests have led the government there to lift its state of emergency.

The report comes as Wall Street has grown increasingly fearful the violence slamming Libya, Africa’s third-largest oil producer, will eat into the global economic recovery.

Even though the global economy has strengthened considerably in recent months, it's clear $220 oil prices would seriously hurt growth, putting a huge burden on cash-strapped consumers and businesses, especially transportation companies like shipping giant FedEx (FDX: 89.25, -4.01, -4.30%), airliner JetBlue (JBLU: 5.70, -0.08, -1.38%) and cruise operator Carnival (CCL: 42.06, -0.03, -0.07%).

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The American War Machine

A very cool combination of some of Joe's rants connected with some great video editing by a youtube user named "TheParadigmShift".

Dr. Steven Jones, PhD :: 9/11: Science and Society

This powerful two hour high quality video presentation given by Professor Emeritus Physicist Dr Steven E. Jones issues a challenge to the world scientific community; a challenge to examine the evidence he and his peers have presented at The Journal of 9/11 Studies questioning the official explanation of the 9/11 events.

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