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To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (367492)	6/5/2010 4:55:50 AM
From: FJB	Respond to of 793916

Obama Said to Pick Pentagon’s Clapper as Intelligence Director By Nicholas Johnston June 4 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama intends to nominate James Clapper, the under secretary of defense for intelligence, as national intelligence director, according to an administration official. Clapper would replace Dennis Blair, a retired admiral who resigned last month, said the official, who asked not to be named because Obama’s choice hasn’t been announced. Clapper would be the top manager of U.S. spy operations, overseeing 16 U.S. intelligence agencies with a combined budget of $47.5 billion, A retired Air Force lieutenant general, Clapper has been in the Pentagon’s top intelligence job since 2007. He also has been director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. U.S. intelligence agencies have been faulted by critics for failing to head off attempted bombings aboard a Christmas Day passenger flight and in Times Square on May 1. Both plots failed because the bombs didn’t explode. Congress created the position of national intelligence director in a 2004 law, after the U.S. spy network failed to thwart the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The first director, former ambassador John Negroponte, took office in May 2005.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (367492)	6/5/2010 8:55:40 AM
From: Sdgla	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793916

From Times Online June 5, 2010 Israeli troops board aid ship bound for Gaza timesonline.co.uk The Israeli Navy has boarded and seized an Irish-owned aid ship bound for Gaza, just five days after killing nine passengers in a bloody raid on a previous convoy. Israeli vessels surrounded the 1,200-ton MV Rachel Corrie shortly after dawn today as it carried aid towards the Hamas-ruled territory. The ship, which had originally been scheduled to travel with the Gaza Freedom Flotilla earlier this week, ignored four warnings to divert to the southern Israeli port of Ashdod for inspection of its contents. A spokesperson for the Israeli army said, “Our forces boarded the boat and took control without meeting any resistance from the crew or the passengers. Everything took place without violence.” RELATED LINKS Medal for Israeli soldier who shot six dead Returned British activists describe Israeli ‘massacre' Call for inquiry as Israel frees activists After several hours of tailing the ship, Israeli forces boarded it about 35 miles (55 km) off the Gaza coast, arriving from the sea rather than using helicopters as in the previous, violent encounter. Passengers on board the Irish boat said four naval boats were shadowing them. The activists, including a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, had earlier said they would not resist if Israeli soldiers tried to take over their vessel. They also said in a statement that they would let an international force, preferably United Nations inspectors, search the ship and certify the nature of its cargo before it proceeds to Gaza. A spokesman for a Gaza-based organisation liaising with the ship said Israeli warships had surrounded the vessel. “The Rachel Corrie has been intercepted 35 miles off Gaza,” Amjad al-Shawa said. “Several Israeli boats surrounded them between 30 and 35 miles off Gaza and prevented them from reaching Gaza. They try to take the boat maybe to Ashdod or maybe to another place.” The 20 passengers on board the ship, named after an American student crushed to death by a bulldozer in 2003 while protesting Israeli house demolitions in Gaza, had been expected in Gaza late this morning. Israel’s treatment of the activists will be closely watched around the world after the disastrous Israeli navy raid on a Gaza bound convoy on Monday which led to the deaths of nine people, mainly Turkish activists. The commando who killed six of those on board the Mavi Marmara is expected to be given a medal of valour, a move certain to inflame the row with Turkey over the attack on the flotilla. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister, told his Cabinet on Thursday the Irish boat would not be allowed to reach Gaza, but he reportedly instructed the military to avoid harming the passengers. The Irish Nobel Peace Prize laureate aboard the Rachel Corrie, Mairead Maguire, had said the group would offer no resistance if Israeli forces boarded their ship. “We will sit down,” she said. “They will probably arrest us ... But there will be no resistance.” However she said the activists would “not be diverted anywhere else.” “We head to Gaza in order to deliver the humanitarian aid and to break the siege of Gaza,” she said. Yossi Gal, the director of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said that if the ship diverted to Ashdod, all cargo with the exception of weapons or weapons components would be transferred to Gaza. The former UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, Denis Halliday, said that trade unions and government officials had already inspected the ship’s cargo. “We are 100 per cent confident that there is nothing that is offensive or dangerous,” he told Israel’s Channel 2 TV. International condemnation of Monday’s raid continued on Friday, with protests in Syria, Greece, Mauritania, Bahrain and Malaysia, where some demonstrators burned Israeli flags and carried mock coffins. In Norway, the military cancelled a seminar scheduled for later this month because an Israeli army officer was to have lectured. Israel claims activists ambushed the Israeli commandos as they rappelled on board the Mavi Marmara from helicopters, and the military and Turkish TV have released videotape showing soldiers under attack. Returning activists admitted fighting with the Israeli commandos but insisted they acted in self defence because the ships were being boarded in international waters by a military force. On Friday, the Israeli military released what it said was an edited radio exchange with the flotilla, captured from its own communications equipment, in which unidentified male voices were heard making anti-Semitic and anti-American comments. It was impossible to independently authenticate the tape, which the military said pieced together segments of exchanges. Meanwhile, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the Islamic militants have refused to accept any aid from the Israeli-intercepted flotilla. “We are not seeking to fill our [bellies], we are looking to break the Israeli siege on Gaza,” he said.