don’t think Condi has done anything as blatantly illegal as Cheney and Rove and Libby and Addington and Tenet. But she might be included, sure.

When she is judged in history, I see a special place for her support for Israel in the Lebanon War and the carpet bombing that was going on. Hell, we even replaced the carpet bombs even though we know/knew that it was a war crime.

Marci, I’ve also read Shenon’s book which I thought was excellent. The insight he gave on the staffers and their interests was fascinating. In addition to the list of those culprits of incompetence, I would add John Ashcroft who I thought placed second on the “hold responsible list”. With a temporary replacement Thomas J Pickard in lieu of Louis Freeh, John Ashcroft should have been more interested in out nation. For the attorney general to refuse to fly on commercial planes after late July, 2001 because of the threat, you would at least think he could talk about something other than church, abortions, and NRA.

Incompetence and indifference paved the way to 9/11.

Incompetence and indifference were the excuses used to allow inaction to the known hijackings. They are excuses used to firewall criminal negligence, at a minimum; more likely abetting a crime. Just based on the head of NSA’s weird statement “… but we did not know they would fly those planes into buildings”, as well as other “interesting comments” should raise all sorts of red flags.

The Cheney Administration should be decapitated, figuratively, of course.

Clark’s book came out in the 2004 election season, which may have made it easier for the Bushies to dismiss his testimony as partisan.

In hindsight, of course, it’s clear that everything he said was true: there was massive evidence of a looming attack, and the Bush administration did nothing. There was no effort on the part of the Bush admin to raise the level of vigilance, similar to the watchfullness around the Millenium (I remember the 4-5 stationary helicopters hovering around Manhattan on 12/31/99).

This was a blunder that made 9/11 possible – we all know the tragic missed opportunities – from Tenet refusing to tell the FBI that the AQ agents they were asking about in reference to the Cole bombiing were INSIDE the US; to the blind eye turned to reports of Mohammed Atta’s homicidal boasting to an FAA agent, the flight school warnings, the rest of it.

Incompetence and indifference paved the way to 9/11.

And still, somehow, the Repubs hold the title of the “national security” party – this seems to me the real reason for the push for torture and domestic spying – it allows the Repubs to seize the Jack Bauer mantle, when the truth is in fact so utterly different.

One small problem; they never got the design to pass the TEMPEST test and were shipping unmodified units for the TEMPEST price. They claimed that they would modify them in the field after they got the design finished. (As someone who started my career in TEMPEST I can say “bullshit”. They need to be completely reboxed and the circuits modified.) When they finally gave up on the design (of course the PCs were obsolete as well), the FBI said, “oh well, no harm” and ORDERED MORE FROM THE SAME PLACE!

This location was also set up to obscure theft. They had no real inventory matching system and used mostly temps (like me) and changed them all out every 6 months. Now, when the inventory was done once a year, any shortages (huge!) could be blamed on 2 sets of temporary employees. I discovered that the warehouse next door that was full of PS2s was mostly empty boxes counted as…you can guess. I knew 2 guys there that were building PCs to order for their own businesses right out of the companies stock!

As an epilogue, the manager of that place got busted when his soon to be ex-wife turned him in; his garage was filled to the ceiling with stolen PC stuff.

You know I have to say it again…..my mother was terrified of what Hoover had on her in her “jacket” for 5 years after he died. He was the archetype for todays Big Dick. That was what he considered the FBI main purpose; to collect information on everyone.

Saudi Arabia’s rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.
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Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced “another 7/7″ and the loss of “British lives on British streets” if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.
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Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.
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He was accused in yesterday’s high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family.
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The threats halted the fraud inquiry, but triggered an international outcry, with allegations that Britain had broken international anti-bribery treaties.

“The first is the FBI’s computer systems. Shenon describes the sheepishness with which the FBI agents interviewed by the Commission directed staffers to send them stuff via snail mail–they simply had no workable email. That lack of automation has long prevented the agency from automating investigative files.”

How on earth does the Total Information Awareness ever work, if the FBI doesn’t even have reliable email? Interestingly consistent with the White House stories of missing emails and logs, but doesn’t explain the Quantico backdoor tap/trap ‘the client doesn’t want logs.’

“C1 said that this circuit should not have any access control. He actually said it should not be firewallled.

I suggested to migrate it and implement an “Any-Any” rule. (”Any-Any” is a nickname for a completely open policy that does not enforce any restrictions.) That meant we could log any activity making a record of the source, destination and type of communication. It would have also allowed easy implementation of access controls at a future date. “Everything at least SHOULD be logged,” I emphasized.

C1 said, “I don’t think that is what they want.”"

So who decides which branch of what offices don’t have working email (I am assuming that it is willful at this late date)?

Admittedly, even with the warrantless wiretap dragnet, we ostensibly still have greater privacy protections than the UK.

True, but for how much longer? A good example of where the Mother of Parliaments has gone, and where we may soon not fear to tread:

A young adult man in London, with a complexion and hair slightly darker than his neighbors, was recently queuing at a bus stop “on a dark and stormy” afternoon. He made the mistake of using his cell phone. Someone in line saw its blurred shape and confused it with a concealed firearm. The “neighbor” alerted the police, who quickly arrested the “suspect”.

The mistake was soon made clear, but here’s the catch: his arrest on suspicion of a firearm’s violation is now on his permanent record. So are his fingerprints, blood type and DNA. [The UK leads the EU in developing a national DNA database - purportedly for law enforcement purposes - to which the USA has demanded (and received?) real time access.] There is as yet no provision for deleting these records, which in the case of legitimate mistakes, itself seems a gross miscarriage of justice. As a result, his travel, job applications, traffic stops or applications to open a bank account may never be routine again.

It’s easy to imagine Bush’s FBI/DOJ responding similarly, but without ever admitting its mistake, perhaps never admitting the arrest and allowing “the suspect” to remain incarcerated in a secret prison.

Our individual privacy rights – commercial and governmental – are inescapable parts of wider debate we desperately need about the limits of law enforcement. A debate this administration has resisted as resolutely as the telling the truth about Iraq’s WMD, its lies about Libby and Plame, and the purported truthtelling Karl Rove learned in the lap of the family Bush.