(Fwd) A dirty bomb or dirty trick?

[Ivo Skoric]

Recently I watched the trailer for the movie Minority Report with 
Tom Cruise, due to open on June 21. It is about a society, the U.S. 
society, to be more precise, in the near perfect, albeit somewhat 
Orwellian future, where people are arrested not for crimes that they 
have already committed, but rather for crimes that they were to 
commit in the future. It seems, though, that the movie release is a 
little bit late: the Aschcroftian reality of the U.S. society today pre-
empted its message. I am actually thinking of translating some of 
the old Yugoslav books about "homeland security" (Opstenarodna 
Obrana i Drustvena Samozastita) from the communist period: I find 
them very fitting in the new America.
ivo

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From:           	Daniel Tomasevich <danilo at MARTNET.COM>
Subject:        	A dirty bomb or dirty trick?
To:             	JUSTWATCH-L at LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

Just when the heat gets turned up on the CIA, FBI there is finger
pointing elsewhere.


   Some might claim the venue was oddly apt, though. With his fierce
   prosecutorial zeal and taste for scary hyperbole, Mr Ashcroft calls to
   mind Andrei Vyshinsky, the infamous prosecutor at Stalin's show
   trials, whose prime contribution to 20th-century legal doctrine was
   the "presumption of guilt" against those unfortunate enough to be in
   his sights.


Daniel
(article not for cross posting)
-------------------------------------------------------------

   The Independent  16 June 2002

   Home   > News  > World  > Americas

         A dirty bomb from Pakistan? Or a dirty trick from Washington?

Just as the heat was building on the CIA and FBI over failures of
intelligence-gathering, up popped a brand new suspect.
Rupert Cornwell smells a rat


   It sure sent a jolt through the United States. Yet last week's much
   ballyhooed arrest of the "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla now seems,
   like other developments in the "war against terror", to have been a
   political device of the Bush administration - designed to distract
   attention from US intelligence failures and solidify support behind
   President Bush.

   For who, exactly, is Mr Padilla, aka Abdullah al-Muhajir? Is he a
   highly trained al-Qa'ida operative who was about to explode a
   radioactive "dirty" bomb in Washington DC, as the US attorney general,
   John Ashcroft, would have us believe? Or a Chicago street punk of no
   great danger to anyone?

   With each passing day, the latter looks more likely. No plot and no
   accomplices have been discovered, despite Mr Padilla having been in
   detention for more than a month before his existence was revealed to
   the nation, which duly panicked.

   As the New York Times said on Thursday, quoting some of those unnamed
   "US officials" who abound in the nation's press, he was "an unlikely
   terrorist, a low-level gang member with no technical knowledge of
   nuclear materials who was arrested long before he represented a
   significant terrorist threat".

   And why, if it was as important as Mr Ashcroft claimed, was his arrest
   kept secret for five weeks - only for the attorney general to reveal
   it while in Moscow of all places?

   Some might claim the venue was oddly apt, though. With his fierce
   prosecutorial zeal and taste for scary hyperbole, Mr Ashcroft calls to
   mind Andrei Vyshinsky, the infamous prosecutor at Stalin's show
   trials, whose prime contribution to 20th-century legal doctrine was
   the "presumption of guilt" against those unfortunate enough to be in
   his sights.

   For "enemy of the people" read "enemy combatant", as Mr Padilla, a US
   citizen, has now been designated. He sits in a naval prison in South
   Carolina, presumed guilty but not charged with any criminal offence.
   Indeed, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, has acknowledged that
   he may never be charged. Mr Padilla's lawyers responded to that
   statement with a petition to the courts, saying their client's
   detention without time limit or the right to counsel should be "a
   constitutional concern to everyone".

   No one would dispute the US's right to defend itself against
   terrorists, nor that this shadowy struggle, "asymmetric" in the jargon
   of conflict experts, demands exceptional, equally shadowy means. But
   Mr Padilla's fate is currently shared by hundreds of non-Americans,
   mostly Arab individuals, swept up in dragnets in the days and weeks
   following 11 September, and nine months later still in detention on
   the most minor of charges. The only difference is, no one knows their
   names.

   One thinks also of Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian pilot whose one stroke of
   good luck was to be arrested in Britain, not the US. He was picked up
   at his home near Heathrow airport on 21 September 2001, and Mr
   Ashcroft's Justice Department instantly demanded his extradition on
   the grounds that he had trained some of the 11 September hijackers.

   But not a shred of evidence was ever forthcoming from Washington,
   beyond the fact that Mr Raissi was an Arab and had trained at an
   Arizona flight school at roughly the same time as Hani Hanjour, one of
   the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the
   Pentagon. In February he was released on bail, and in April his case
   was thrown out entirely. Had he been in the US, however, he would
   undoubtedly still be rotting quietly in jail.

   But the fanfare around Mr Padilla served Mr Bush's purposes perfectly.
   Forgotten were the host of clues missed by the FBI and the CIA before
   11 September. The US was on full nuclear terror alert, ready once more
   to take the President's word for anything and to support his plans for
   a new super-ministry for domestic security.

   Recent "revelations" about Khalid Almidhar, another of the AA77
   hijackers, are equally instructive, albeit for different reasons. More
   unnamed officials told Newsweek magazine that Almidhar was spotted by
   the CIA at a meeting of al-Qa'ida operatives in Malaysia in January
   2000. But the CIA, it seemed, failed to alert other agencies,
   including the immigration services who might have picked him up on
   entry into the US.

   But wait. A few days later, other intelligence sources disclosed, this
   time to the Washington Post, that the CIA had in fact told the FBI. By
   now an alert reader will have divined that the disclosures have less
   to do with the fight against terrorism than with the equally
   entrenched fight between the FBI and the CIA. And as armistice breaks
   out between them, in reaction to their having had their heads banged
   together by the Bush administration, blame is being shifted beyond US
   shores.

   Take Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the al-Qa'ida operative whom other
   anonymous counter-terrorism officials named early this month as a
   prime organiser of the 11 September attacks. Those officials claimed
   he was in Germany before the attacks, liaising with Mohamed Atta, who
   flew the jet into the north tower of the World Trade Centre.

   The only problem is, the Germans know nothing about it - and when they
   ask Washington for further information, none is forthcoming. But that
   is a secondary consideration. The finger now points to Berlin, not
   Langley, where the CIA is based, or FBI headquarters in Washington.
   Increasingly, for the two secretive agencies engaged in the US's "war
   on terror", anything goes.

  If the face fits...

   Lotfi Raissi
   Arrested: 21 September 2001.
   Problem: Global coalition in doubt. Polls show America blames FBI and
   CIA for not stopping al-Qa'ida.
   Solution: Arrests all over world, including this Algerian in England.
   Terrorism charges dropped after five months in prison.

   Khalid Almidhar
   Revealed: 4 June 2002.
   Problem: Washington hearings begin, asking who knew what.
   Solution: Press tipped off that CIA passed name and passport number of
   this future hijacker to FBI by email in January 2000.

   Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
   Reward offered: 5 June 2002.
   Problem: Global condemnation of decision to photograph and fingerprint
   visitors from high-risk countries in Middle East.
   Solution: FBI offers £18m reward for capture of this
   37-year-old Kuwaiti, mastermind of 11 September attacks.

   Abdullah al-Muhajir
   "Arrested": 10 June 2002
   Problem: Derision for new Department of Homeland Security. Unease
   about treatment of Arabs grows.
   Solution: Arrest of this "dirty bomber" announced. But in reality he
   had been in custody for a month already.

   ______________________________________________________________________

   © 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd