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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (11100)	10/7/2003 4:30:14 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793905

This is going to take a while. I don't think the main media can keep the drums banging. It should go "inside" the papers soon. ________________________________ A Veteran of Ferreting Out Spies Turns His Attention to the White House By ERIC LICHTBLAU NEW YORK TIMES ASHINGTON, Oct. 6 — As a Justice Department lawyer for the last three decades, John Dion has helped investigate the most notorious Soviet spies and Chinese double-agents in recent American history, and his accomplishments have earned him some of law enforcement's most prestigious awards. But Mr. Dion, 57, now faces perhaps the most difficult and politically delicate assignment of his long career: overseeing the Justice Department's investigation into whether senior Bush administration officials illegally leaked the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer in retaliation for her husband's criticism of the Iraq war. "This is a unique case," said John L. Martin, a former longtime Justice Department counterespionage official who was Mr. Dion's boss and mentor. "But John is a very, very capable and honest lawyer, and he's not going to be bullied by any kind of outside pressure." Nor have he and his assistant been afraid to challenge government leaks in the past, associates say. In the case of Wen Ho Lee, the Los Alamos scientist prosecuted by the Justice Department in 2000 after a much-publicized espionage investigation, Mr. Dion acknowledged in a memorandum that government officials had publicly discussed information about Dr. Lee that might have been classified "to pressure Lee to confess or out of vindictiveness toward Lee for not confessing." Mr. Dion heads the Justice Department's counterespionage unit, and he has been given the task of overseeing the effort of F.B.I. agents and officials gathering evidence in the C.I.A. leak case. He has been involved in the prosecution of more than 70 espionage and internal security cases, but this time the target may not be a foreign spy but a senior administration official, and the legal and political challenges he faces are many. Government leak investigations are notoriously tricky. Most journalists refuse to disclose their confidential sources even under threat of jail time, and investigators often face a universe of hundreds of thousands of potential leakers with access to classified information. Although officials say the C.I.A. refers some 50 unauthorized-leak cases a year to the Justice Department, department officials said the last case prosecutors brought for the disclosure of classified material was in 1985, when a former Navy intelligence analyst leaked spy satellite photos to a British magazine. Compounding the difficulties for Mr. Dion are the case's unusual political dynamics, with the White House facing accusations that administration officials may have committed a felony and endangered the life of a C.I.A. officer and her foreign sources in a political vendetta. Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador, has accused White House officials of condoning the leaking of his wife's job at the C.I.A. to the syndicated columnist Robert Novak in July as a means of intimidating Mr. Wilson for criticizing the administration's Iraq intelligence. The C.I.A. sent Mr. Wilson to Africa in 2002 to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein had bought uranium ore from Niger for nuclear production, but Mr. Wilson said he found no support for the claim. He wrote in a July 6 Op-Ed article in The New York Times, eight days before Mr. Novak's column, that he thought the administration was using the incident to exaggerate the Iraqi nuclear threat. Democrats charge that whatever Mr. Dion's investigation finds, the results will be politically tainted because of the White House's close ties to Attorney General John Ashcroft and his top aides. They have called on Mr. Ashcroft to appoint a special counsel or recuse himself, pointing out that any decisions on subpoenaing of reporters would have to be approved by the attorney general. But Justice Department officials and Republicans in Congress say they are confident that Mr. Dion's counterespionage unit — made up of 11 career lawyers who are not politically appointed — can conduct a fair and independent review. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said the F.B.I.'s role as the lead investigative agency should give the review an added level of political insulation. He noted that while Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, was appointed by President Bush, he has a 10-year term through 2011. "He's not beholden to anyone," Mr. Specter said. "He's not going to favor the president." Mr. Specter and other lawmakers called Mr. Dion's section on the carpet in 2000 for its lenient handling of a Southern California nuclear scientist who admitted passing classified national defense information to the Chinese. Justice Department officials said they had been unaware that the plea agreement struck by federal prosecutors with the scientist, Dr. Peter Lee, would not result in any jail time. Mr. Specter said that despite his deep concerns about the handling of that case, "I did not have any doubt about Dion's work." Mr. Dion declined through a department spokesman to be interviewed for this article. A graduate of Notre Dame and George Washington University law school, Mr. Dion came to the Justice Department in 1973 through its honors program for recruiting top young lawyers. He had an avid interest in national security law. His interest paid off in 1980 with a position in the counterespionage section — then known as internal security — and he rose through the ranks at a time when it was prosecuting a historic string of spy cases. In a two-year period in the mid-1980's, the section brought 27 spy cases, including against the Walker family spy ring and Ronald Pelton, a former National Security Agency employee. Mr. Dion was recognized by both Republican and Democratic administrations with one of the Justice Department's highest honors, the John Marshall Award for Outstanding Achievement. He won it first in 1987 for his work in the Walker case and again in 1997 for the spy prosecutions of Earl Pitts, an F.B.I. agent, and Harold Nicholson, a C.I.A. case officer. Even his legal adversaries say they have been impressed by his calm-headed legal acumen. "He's extremely competent," said a defense lawyer who has worked against Mr. Dion. "The one word I'd use to describe him is cerebral — he's not a guy who uses a lot of words, but he's very thoughtful in how he comes across." nytimes.com

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (11100)	10/7/2003 6:18:48 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793905

I have been bumping into this during my Internet travels, and I was clueless. Now I know. ____________________________ Much Ado About Site Finder By Jonathan Zuck Published 10/06/2003 The introduction of VeriSign's Site Finder service last month resulted in a chorus of criticism from some members of the Internet community. On Tuesday, October 7th the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet's primary regulatory body, will hold a hearing to decide the future of Site Finder. While this hearing is designed to review the Site Finder service, the debate that ensues has the potential to shape the future of Internet innovation. Before Site Finder, if you mistyped an internet address, you probably received an error message saying "Error: 404. Page not found." It would be up to you to reach for your dictionary and correct your mistake. With Site Finder, your error leads not to a dead end, but to a search page that suggests sites that you may have meant. Think of it as an automatic "Did you mean?" For the vast majority of Internet users, this is a great new feature that makes web surfing a better experience. For me, it may cut back on the calls from my parents when they confuse the error 550 or 404 message with their computer breaking. Despite the undeniable benefits of this service, a few members of the Internet community have protested loudly. By the way they are reacting, you'd think the people at VeriSign were standing with the power cord to the Internet in their hand getting ready to unplug it. Generally, the complaints can be put into two categories. Some point to technical issues that emerged and suggest that VeriSign has "broken the Internet." Others, including the regulators at ICANN, have argued that VeriSign has overstepped its authority. As anyone who has used it over the past few weeks can attest, the Internet is not broken. Minor glitches emerged with spam filtering and a few other services, but patches were written and distributed within hours of the Site Finder going live. Could VeriSign have done a better job of testing before roll out? Perhaps. However, the technical issues created have been relatively minor and VeriSign has worked hard to respond quickly to feedback from customers and the Internet community. VeriSign has even formed an expert technical panel to address any existing and future concerns about the service. The question of whether VeriSign may have entered into gray areas of its contract with ICANN is more complicated, but less important than whether this service represents positive innovation. An organization under constant criticism, ICANN has often been attacked for the glacial pace at which it moves on all its decisions. Very little innovation has occurred on the infrastructure of the Internet in the past 25 years, and ICANN has slowed the pace of innovation even further in recent years. While some have argued that VeriSign should have gone to ICANN before launching Site Finder, I for one am glad they did not. Given its track record, it's likely ICANN would have sat on this technology for years. ICANN can sometimes act like the lawyer who tells you no, instead of showing you how you can actually achieve something with a little work. Perhaps it should be renamed "ICANN'T." The most important issue in the Site Finder debate is whether innovation can take place on the Internet infrastructure. While ICANN should consider the complaints of the naysayers, it must balance them against the need for innovation and growth of the Internet infrastructure. As the stewards of the modern Internet, it is imperative that ICANN use regulation not to stifle but promote innovation of this critical world asset. Jonathan Zuck is the president of the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) with more than 15 years of experience as a professional software developer and IT executive. Copyright © 2003 Tech Central Station - www.techcentralstation.com

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (11100)	10/7/2003 6:20:39 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793905

It's in the class size argument. Students perform better with smaller class size. It's also why suburban parents work so hard to find the best school district in which to live.

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (11100)	10/7/2003 6:58:52 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793905

The Military is scared to death of getting hauled before a Senate committee and being scolded by Teddy, etc. That's the problem. __________________________________________ Guantanamo spy cases By Robert Spencer OP-ED THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published October 7, 2003 The Muslim organizations that certify chaplains for the U.S. military have come under renewed scrutiny since the arrest of Army Chaplain Yousef Yee and two Muslim translators who worked with al Qaeda prisoners in Guantanamo Bay — and that's all to the good. The Graduate School of Islamic Social Sciences (GSISS) and the American Muslim Foundation (AMF) were already being investigated, and it may well be that somehow Mr. Yee picked up his radical Islam from some contact with these groups. But so far another possibility has been overlooked, perhaps because its political incorrectness quotient is positively off the scale: The possibility that Yee was sincere when he denounced the September 11 attacks, and that his mind was changed by the Guantanamo prisoners themselves. According to military intelligence veteran and former Guantanamo translator Bill Tierney, the prisoners at Guantanamo would frequently ask Muslim American translators and other servicemen how they could accept the infidel's money. Mr. Tierney said that the prisoners "would know who the Muslims were, who spoke Arabic" among the American military personnel, "and would do everything to push their buttons." Including using the Koran to convince them of the legitimacy of violent jihad? And using the Koranic command that Muslims must not fight against other Muslims (Sura 4:93) to assail the legitimacy of Muslims serving in the American armed forces? We may never know. So far, these questions have been too hot for the military even to ask. The official position on terrorism seems to be that Islam is a religion of peace, terrorists have hijacked it and that's that. The possibility that American Muslims — even West Point grads like Mr. Yee — could fall prey to the same hijacking is off their radar screen. To the American officials in charge of Guantanamo, the words "Islamic" and "terrorism" are so far from residing in the same sentence that Mr. Tierney told me that he was forbidden during his time there from compiling a list of Koranic verses relating to jihad, despite the fact that those who were interrogating the prisoners specifically asked for such a list. And, despite the fact that such verses appear in abundance in the writings of Osama bin Laden and other radical Muslims around the world today. These are the writings which are being used as you read this to recruit terrorists on a global scale, and which were most likely used to recruit each of the Guantanamo prisoners into al Qaeda. Who forbade Tierney from making this list? The American Army captain in charge of all the translators. This captain, an Iranian Muslim who came to the United States in his teens, claimed to have converted from Islam to Mormonism. But Mr. Tierney told me that he behaved just like the other Muslims at Guantanamo, faithfully complained to officials about any anti-Muslim remark, and even prevented Mr. Tierney from using the Internet after he went online to gather open source data to aid in an investigation. He shut down Mr. Tierney's Koranic research by ordering the site manager (a Somali Muslim) to tell Tierney to desist. This problem is bigger than Guantanamo. In my book Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West, I provide evidence of widespread anti-Americanism among American Muslims. Muhammad Faheed, a 23-year-old who lived in America from the age of 3, expressed these sentiments well when he told a Muslim Student Association meeting in New York: "We are not Americans, we are Muslims. . . . The only relationship you should have with America is to topple it!" Are any Muslims with similar sentiments now serving with American forces in Iraq? There's no way to tell. No one dares to ask. Mr. Tierney also recounted to me an incident from his service in Saudi Arabia, when he drove an American Muslim civilian translator to a local mosque one Friday. Mr. Tierney stood outside listening to the sermon, which was carried to the overflow crowd by loudspeakers: "It is the duty of all Muslims," cried the preacher, "to fight against Israel and those who support Israel!" This translator, Mr. Tierney said, worked for senior Air Force personnel, translating sensitive material — but the American government could not and did not ask him where he went to mosque. We are simply to assume that that sermon made no impression on the translator whatsoever. The Guantanamo espionage cases demonstrate how important it is to root out politically correct wishful thinking about the causes of radical Islam. If there is any lesson to be drawn from the Guantanamo spy scandal, it is that the government's refusal to acknowledge the true dimensions of the threat from Islamic radicalism could come at a cost far greater than anyone has yet calculated. Robert Spencer is an adjunct fellow with the Free Congress Foundation.