United States News Digest
Ashcroft Must Go! Attorney General Tears Up Constitution, But Covers Up Israeli Spy Scandal
Almost daily, new evidence emerges demonstrating anew that Attorney General John Ashcroft is unfit for his office, and is a threat to the United States Constitution and the Republic which it established.
In addition to Ashcroft's continuing efforts to deny Constitutional rights and due process to anyone caught up in the Administration's "war on terrorism," another charge must be levelled against the Attorney General: that he has refused to launch any serious investigation of the suspected Israeli spy apparatus inside the United States.
The revelations about the Israeli "art students" which surfaced after the Sept. 11 attacks have never been officially thoroughly investigatedand many intelligence and law enforcement sources point to Ashcroft as the key point of this obstruction of justice.
As Lyndon LaRouche has demanded, with reports and rumors of a new "Sept. 11" terrorist atrocity circulating widely, it is critical that this Israeli spy apparatus be investigated and dismantledto determine, among other things, what if any role these networks may have played relative to 9/11. For example, a number of reports have placed teams of these so-called "art students" in close proximity to the alleged 9/11 hijackers prior to Sept. 11. - Detention Camps Planned -
Earlier this month, it was reported that Ashcroft and the Bush Administration are preparing to expand their policy of military detentions, which has so far been applied to two U.S. citizens being held incommunicado in military jailswithout any charges being filed or access to lawyers. The Administration was reported to be considering creating a high-level committee which would determine who should be labelled as an "enemy combatant" and detained by the military authorities.
Even without the "enemy combatant" designation, hundreds of Arabs and Muslims who were rounded up in dragnets after Sept. 11 were also held incommunicado, without access to family or lawyers, and many were then deported in secret hearings.
As detailed in an article in the Aug. 23 issue of Executive Intelligence Review, the implication of the expanded detention policy is that the Administration is moving to re-establish the notorious detention camp policy used against Japanese-Americans during World War II, a policy which then held camps in readiness for the potential roundup of "national security risks" for three decades, starting in the late 1940s.
Congress has been slow to exercise its oversight powers over Ashcroft's Justice Departmentalthough a confrontation is now building between the Justice Department and the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, over Committee demands for information relating to the DOJ's implementation of its new anti-terrorism powers.
But two court rulings, disclosed over the past week, show that the courts themselves are alarmed by Ashcroft's effort to seize expanded powers for the FBI and DOJ. - Courts Slam Ashcroft's DOJ -
First, in an extraordinary and unprecedented action, the secret court which was created by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), released an opinion which sharply rebuked the DOJ. The opinion, written in May by the then-Chief Judge of the FISA court, Royce Lamberth, was made public by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Aug. 22.
In the ruling, the FISA Court rebuked efforts by Ashcroft's Justice Department to expand the ability of prosecutors in criminal cases, to use information obtained under national-security wiretaps; the court said the Ashcroft measures would give prosecutors too much control over counterintelligence investigations, supposed to be conducted separately.
The FISA Court's opinion reported that, in September 2000, the Justice Department "came forward to confess error in some 75 FISA applications related to major terrorists attacks directed against the United States." The errors related to "misstatements and omissions of material facts." The court held a special meeting in November 2000 to consider what it called "the troubling number of inaccurate FBI affidavits in so many FISA applications." Among the steps taken, was an action to ban one FBI agent who had been handling major anti-terrorism cases, from ever appearing before the FISA court.
The legal principle underlying the FISA law is that, whereas prosecutors must show "probable cause" to obtain a wiretap in a criminal case, the standard for obtaining a wiretap (or approval for a break-in) is lower in a foreign-intelligence or national security case. However, because of the lower standard, evidence obtained under national-security wiretaps is not supposed to be made available to prosecutors in criminal cases (a prohibition more honored in the breach than the observance, as EIRNS has been told since the time of the "LaRouche Case" in the 1980s).
The so-called "USA-Patriot Act," passed last fall after 9/11, eased the standards for obtaining counterintelligence warrants, and for information-sharing. The FISA ruling did not directly deal with the new law, but it was triggered by new regulations proposed by Ashcroft in March, which the court said would have allowed the Justice Department to misuse intelligence information. - Secret Hearings Blasted -
Second, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, ruled on Aug. 26 that the Bush Administration's policy of closing all immigration hearings related to Sept. 11, is unconstitutional. The Sixth Circuit's ruling upheld an earlier ruling by a Federal district judge in Detroit, who had said that the government could not block the public and the news media from such hearings. This was the first such ruling by a Federal appeals court.
"The executive branch seeks to uproot people's lives, outside the public eye, and behind a closed door. Democracies die behind closed doors," wrote Judge Damon Keith for a three-judge panel. (Notably, Judge Keith wrote a famous 1971 wiretap ruling against the Nixon Administration, which was claiming the power to conduct warrantless wiretaps in national-security cases.)
"When government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people," the ruling stated. "Selective information is misinformation"a characterization which, in fact, applies much more broadly to Ashcroft's Justice Department.
In early 2001, Lyndon LaRouche warned that John Ashcroft as Attorney General spelled police state. LaRouche led the fight to defeat Ashcroft's confirmation, but too few people listened at that time. Now, we're reaping the results.
End the Ban on DDT: Kill Mosquitoes, Not People
The chief weapons against insect-borne killer diseases are insecticides, but since the politically motivated U.S. ban on DDT in 1972, insecticides have become perceived as toxic threats, instead of life-savers.
As a result of the DDT hoax launched by Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, 60 million people have died needlessly of malaria, and hundreds of millions more have suffered from this debilitating disease. Today, in the United States, people have begun to die of West Nile virus, another mosquito-borne disease, which would not be spreading if the United States had not dismantled its aggressive mosquito control programs over the past 30 years.
In fact, the original campaign against DDT was based on lies: As the Environmental Protection Agency's hearing examiner ruled, after seven months of hearings in 1972, "DDT is not carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic to man [and] these uses of DDT do not have a deleterious effect on fish, birds, wildlife, or estuarine organisms."
Now, as a first step to reversing this crisis, in which DDT is banned and insect-borne diseases are flourishing, Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. recently called for "the President of the United States to take necessary measures to overturn the banning of DDT, taking into account the fact that the argument for banning it was always fraudulent. We cannot kill people for the sake of condoning a fraudas we should have learned from the Enron case."
Although insecticides other than DDT will be the first line of attack against West Nile, the use of all insecticides has been made more difficult by the hysteria created by the DDT scare. West Nile virus has struck the United States in 37 states and the District of Columbia (480 cases and 24 dead in 2002). - Mosquitoes Love Greens -
By 1970, mosquito control campaigns, in particular, the use of DDT, had reduced mosquito populationsthe main carriers of malaria, dengue, and yellow feverto a few small pockets worldwide. But within a short time, aided by a combination of pesticide bans, so-called wildlife protection, and public health budget cuts, mosquito populations again grew, and vector-borne diseases were on the upswing around the globe.
West Nile, a flavivirus with flu-like symptoms which can also cause encephalitis in human beings and horses, was first isolated in Uganda in 1937, in the West Nile region. Since then, there have been several outbreaks in the Old World, where West Nile is now endemicIsrael, South Africa, Russia, Romania, to name a few. There was no West Nile virus recognized in the Western Hemisphere before its 1999 introduction in New York State, by as yet undetermined means.
The technology to stop the spread of West Nile and other insect-borne diseases is well known. Aerial and on-ground surveillance, including remote sensing of mosquito breeding conditions and mosquito traps to ascertain the size of infestation; the use of insecticides to kill mosquito eggs and, if necessary, the adult mosquito populations; vigilant public health programs to monitor and eliminate standing water in urban and rural areas; and animal surveillance. - Killing Mosquito Carriers -
The most effective form of control is to kill mosquitoes in the larval stage, before they become adults. This requires surveillance, to know when and where mosquitoes are breeding, and the use of insecticides appropriate for the job. If the problem is severe, as it was in New York in 1999, aerial spraying to kill the adult mosquitoes is also required. There are several ultra-low-volume insecticides appropriate for this purpose.
States that are unprepared to fight mosquitoes, because of budget cuts and anti-pesticide campaigns, will be least able to stop the rapid spread of an insect-borne disease like West Nile. California, for example, where the already insufficiently funded mosquito abatement program was slashed this year by 50% in the Sacramento area (to take one example), will be in big trouble next year, when it is likely that the West Nile virus will reach the West Coast. As a further mosquito-friendly measure, the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco recently ruled that larvicides applied to U.S. waters are "pollutants," requiring a permit to use, plus monitoring of water quality before during and after use.
And as bad as the West Nile situation is in the wet state of Louisiana this year (which has the largest number of West Nile cases and deaths), it could have been worse. Medical entomologist Joe Conlon, of the American Mosquito Control Association, told this author: "If Louisiana had not had such a superbly organized and effective mosquito abatement program in place, the situation would have been far worse."
Bringing back DDT will have a dramatic effect worldwide in preventing millions of cases of the killer malaria. It will also help eradicate the lies and scare stories that have allowed mosquitoes to breed freely at the expense of America's victims, and potential victims, of West Nile virus.
Gentry: 'Now It's Time for the Big Battle'
LaRouche Democrat George Gentry told a group of 25 supporters in Chouteau Aug. 27 that his campaign for U.S. Senate in Oklahoma was just the beginning of the 2004 Presidential election campaign.
"We gave Democrats in Oklahoma a chance to face the crisis of war and depression. Too many of them chose to cling to their illusions this time, to 'go along to get along.' But these illusions won't last. This campaign was part of a bigger battle, to get Lyndon LaRouche elected President in 2004. I think we can win it."
Gentry received almost 23,000 votes in the Democratic primary on Aug. 27, for 7% of the total votes cast, despite a nearly complete blackout in the media. He told his backers that the task they now have is to activate those 23,000 voters, whom he characterized as "hard-core LaRouche supporters."
His campaign focussed on LaRouche's leadership, in particular on the mass leafleting initiated by LaRouche in 2004, to expose the central roles of Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman as thugs operating on behalf of the drive for war, and in defense of the now-bankrupt "New Economy." In the last week of the campaign, Gentry released LaRouche's emergency national security infrastructure plan, as well as a statement from LaRouche which endorsed Gentry as one who "is very capable of conveying to voters what I have proposed." Both were posted on Democratic Internet sites. - Gentry Challenges Democrats -
In the last three weeks, Gentry addressed more than 20 campaign events. Typical of these were speeches he gave in Stillwell on Sunday, before 600 people, and before 200 in Durant on Monday, where a majority gave him enthusiastic ovations.
Gentry described the infrastructure plan released by LaRouche in Los Angeles on Aug. 18, and concluded, "Our biggest national security threat is not Saddam Hussein, but the collapse of our basic infrastructure. We need a revolution in this country, to get us out of this mess. I need your support now, and your continued support, to put Lyndon LaRouche in the White House."
Some Democrats backed Gentry, based on their recognition that LaRouche has been right. For example, at a union hall in Oklahoma City, there hangs a large poster which says, "LAROUCHE WARNED YOU, NOW IT IS HERE." A union official, who represents workers at a "high-tech" firm which just announced 50% layoffs, told Gentry, "You are right on time" with your message. A union president in Stillwell told him, "As soon as I heard you say LaRouche, I knew I had to support you. I've been following LaRouche."
However, many impotent Democrats meekly told George that, while they agree with what he is saying, they must go along with the unions, or the party, and vote for David Walters, the former Governor, who received 49% of the vote in the primary, and is now in a runoff. But, the changing mood of at least some Democrats was reflected in the only serious press coverage of Gentry's campaign, in an article appearing on Aug. 21 in Tulsa Today. After accurately describing Gentry as an "FDR Democrat" who is a supporter of LaRouche's economic policies, the article ended with a quote which it attributed to an anonymous Democrat: "The primary will illustrate if the Democratic Party has evolved into a sincere group of intellectuals. If we do not vote for George Gentry, our party will have the disgrace of knowing we can't be given the responsibility to elect solid candidates. George is the only one that should be on the ballot in the first place."
|