Actor freed from Pakistani jail



LOS ANGELES - A Hollywood actor with a small part in the comedy "Dude, Where's My Car?" who claims he was wrongfully jailed in Pakistan for drug possession was released in time to celebrate Christmas with his family.

Erik Anthony Aude, 24, was freed from a Rawalpindi prison on Thursday, Christmas Eve, more than two years after he was arrested for opium hidden in his luggage, report news sources.

Aude was hired by a man who he met several years ago at a Los Angeles gym to travel to the Middle East, inspect and then pickup leather samples to transport back to America. The actor began making trips back and forth between the two continents in 2000, until his latest visit to Pakistan.

On Feb. 15, 2002 Aude, who hails from southern California, was returning from a business trip when he was detained at Islamabad airport. A search of his luggage uncovered 3.6 kg of opium, of which he maintained that he had no knowledge. Aude was sentenced to seven years in jail.

During his imprisonment, Aude's mother contacted several politicians to help release her son. Finally, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson responded and appealed to Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz for the "miscarriage of justice."

"Erik Aude's mother called me to say her son had been released earlier today (Thursday) and to thank Governor Richardson," says the governor's spokesman, Billy Sparks.

Aude's film credits also include small parts in "Bounce," "10 Attitudes" and "National Lampoon's Van Wilder."

Jet Is an Open Secret in Terror War

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer


The airplane is a Gulfstream V turbojet, the sort favored by CEOs and celebrities. But since 2001 it has been seen at military airports from Pakistan to Indonesia to Jordan, sometimes being boarded by hooded and handcuffed passengers.


The report noted that an aircraft bearing tail number N379P, and parked in a remote area of a little-used terminal at the Karachi airport, had whisked Mohammed away about 2:40 a.m. Oct. 23. The tail number was also obtained by The Post's correspondent in Pakistan but not published.

The News article ricocheted among spy-hunters and Web bloggers as a curiosity for those interested in divining the mechanics of the new U.S.-declared war on terrorism.

At 7:54:04 p.m. Oct. 26, the News article was posted on FreeRepublic.com, which bills itself as "a conservative news forum."

Thirteen minutes later, a chat-room participant posted the plane's registered owners: Premier Executive Transport Services Inc., of 339 Washington St., Dedham, Mass.

"Sounds like a nice generic name," one blogger wrote in response. "Kind of like Air America" -- a reference to the CIA's secret civilian airlines that flew supplies, food and personnel into Southeast Asia, including Laos, during the Vietnam War.

Eight weeks later, on Dec. 18, 2001, American-accented men wearing hoods and working with special Swedish security police brought two Egyptian nationals onto a Gulfstream V that was parked at night at Stockholm's Bromma Airport, according to Swedish officials and airport personnel interviewed by Swedish television's "Cold Facts" program. The account was confirmed independently by The Post. The plane's tail number: N379P.

Wearing red overalls and bound with handcuffs and leg irons, the men, who had applied for political asylum in Sweden, were flown to Cairo, according to Swedish officials and documents. Ahmed Agiza was convicted by Egypt's Supreme Military Court of terrorism-related charges; Muhammad Zery was set free. Both say they were tortured while in Egyptian custody. Sweden has opened an investigation into the decision to allow them to be rendered.

A month later, in January 2002, a U.S.-registered Gulfstream V landed at Jakarta's military airport. According to Indonesian officials, the plane carried away Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, an Egyptian traveling on a Pakistani passport and suspected of being an al Qaeda operative who had worked with shoe bomber suspect Richard C. Reid. Without a hearing, he was flown to Egypt. His status and whereabouts are unknown. The plane's tail number was not noted, but the CIA is believed to have only one of the expensive jets.

Over the past year, the Gulfstream V's flights have been tracked by plane spotters standing at the end of runways with high-powered binoculars and cameras to record the flights of military and private aircraft.

These hobbyists list their findings on specialized Web pages. According to them, since October 2001 the plane has landed in Islamabad; Karachi; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Dubai; Tashkent, Uzbekistan; Baghdad; Kuwait City; Baku, Azerbaijan; and Rabat, Morocco. It has stopped frequently at Dulles International Airport, at Jordan's military airport in Amman and at airports in Frankfurt, Germany; Glasglow, Scotland, and Larnaca, Cyprus.

Premier Executive Transport Services was incorporated in Delaware by the Prentice-Hall Corporation System Inc. on Jan. 10, 1994. On Jan. 23, 1996, Dean Plakias, a lawyer with Hill & Plakias in Dedham, filed incorporation papers with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts listing the company's president as Bryan P. Dyess.

According to public documents, Premier Executive ordered a new Gulfstream V in 1998. It was delivered in November 1999 with tail number N581GA, and reregistered for unknown reasons on March 2000 with a new tail number, N379P. It began flights in June 2000, and changed the tail number again in December 2003.

Plakias did not return several telephone messages seeking comment. He told the Boston Globe recently that he simply filed the required paperwork. "I'm not at liberty to discuss the affairs of the client business, mainly for reasons I don't know," he told the Globe. Asked whether the company exists, Plakias responded: "Millions of companies are set up in Massachusetts that are just paper companies."

A lawyer in Washington, whose name is listed on a 1996 IRS form on record at the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office in Massachusetts -- and whose name is whited out on some copies of the forms -- hung up the phone last week when asked about the company.

Three weeks ago, on Dec. 1, the plane, complete with a new tail number, was transferred to a new owner, Bayard Foreign Marketing of Portland, Ore., according to FAA records. Its registered agent in Portland, Scott Caplan, did not return phone calls.

Like the officers at Premier Executive, Bayard's sole listed corporate officer, Leonard T. Bayard, has no residential or telephone history. Unlike Premier's officers, Bayard's name does not appear in any other public records.

Rumsfeld says Iraq election won't quell violence

The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, says it would be a mistake to think the deadly chaos in Iraq will subside after next month's democratic election.

He faced critical questioning at a Washington media conference, after the announcement that it was a suicide bomber who caused the blast inside a US military base in Mosul yesterday, killing 22 people.

That number included 14 soldiers.

Mr Rumsfeld defended security strategies within US bases, saying he had predicted that the violence in Iraq would increase before the election and it will not decrease soon.

"Looking for a peaceful Iraq after the elections would be a mistake," he said.

"I think our expectations level ought to be realistic about that. These folks have a lot to lose, they're going to do everything they can to see that the opportunity they have succeeds, and we've got to do everything to see that they fail."

White House May Have Issued Torture Order
By Joel Wendland

Is it a smoking gun? An Executive Order issued by President Bush authorizing interrogation methods that since the Abu Ghraib scandal have shocked and disgusted the world may exist. This, according to a May 2004 e-mail labeled "On Scene Commander--Baghdad" and sent to a handful of senior FBI officials and recently released to the ACLU.

The civil liberties organization obtained these FBI records from the US government after winning a lawsuit filed when the government refused to release some documents listed as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents related to interrogation methods, detainees' identifications and locations, and other issues related to Bush’s "war on terror."

ACLU director Anthony Romero stated, "These documents raise grave questions about where the blame for widespread detainee abuse ultimately rests." Romero insisted that, "Top government officials can no longer hide from public scrutiny by pointing the finger at a few low-ranking soldiers."

The two-page e-mail states that President Bush directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc."

Less than two weeks ago the ACLU posted a slew of documents uncovered in its FOIA lawsuit to its website ACLU.org. These documents revealed a systematic policy of torture, mistreatment, and abuse from the infamous Iraq prison to several US bases in Afghanistan to the facilities at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which alone now hold over 500 detainees captured in various countries in operations said to be related to Bush's "war on terror." No estimate could be found of the total number of prisoners held in all US-controlled prison facilities around the world.

This memo’s existence among other FBI records indicate that the White House will have to answer charges that it has misled the public when it insisted that, despite the Abu Ghraib scandal and other hints of widespread abuse, its real policy is to abide by conventions, treaties, and agreements that govern the treatment of prisoners and detainees.

Of special interest also was a second seemingly incriminating e-mail sent in December 2003. According to the ACLU, this e-mail describes an incident in which Defense Department interrogators at Guantánamo Bay impersonated FBI agents while using "torture techniques" apparently designed by the Pentagon on a prisoner.

New F.B.I. Files Describe Abuse of Iraq Inmates

By NEIL A. LEWIS and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - F.B.I. memorandums portray abuse of prisoners by American military personnel in Iraq that included detainees' being beaten and choked and having lit cigarettes placed in their ears, according to newly released government documents.

The documents, released Monday in connection with a lawsuit accusing the government of being complicit in torture, also include accounts by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who said they had seen detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, being chained in uncomfortable positions for up to 24 hours and left to urinate and defecate on themselves. An agent wrote that in one case a detainee who was nearly unconscious had pulled out much of his hair during the night.

One of the memorandums released Monday was addressed to Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, and other senior bureau officials, and it provided the account of someone "who observed serious physical abuses of civilian detainees" in Iraq. The memorandum, dated June 24 this year, was an "Urgent Report," meaning that the sender regarded it as a priority. It said the witness "described that such abuses included strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees' ear openings and unauthorized interrogations."

The memorandum did not make clear whether the witness was an agent or an informant, and it said there had also been an effort to cover up the abuses. The writer of the memorandum said Mr. Mueller should be aware of what was occurring because "of potential significant public, media and Congressional interest which may generate calls to the director." The document does not provide further details of the abuse, but suggests that such treatment of prisoners in Iraq was the subject of an investigation conducted by the bureau's Sacramento office.

Beyond providing new details about the nature and extent of abuses, if not the exact times or places, the newly disclosed documents are the latest to show that such activities were known to a wide circle of government officials.

The documents, mostly memorandums written by agents to superiors in Washington over the past year, also include claims that some military interrogators had posed as F.B.I. officials while using harsh tactics on detainees, both in Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay.

In one memorandum, dated Dec. 5, 2003, an agent whose name is blanked out on the document expressed concern about military interrogators' posing as F.B.I. agents at the Guantánamo camp.

Deserters Are Heroes

VIEW FROM THE LEFT
- Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, December 13, 2004

Today let us take the sad, sordid case of one George W. Bush. Our president. Love him or hate him, it was he and he alone who decided that our mighty armies should travel to Iraq and kill tens of thousands of people, most of whom were guilty of nothing more than being there.

Like egomaniacal rulers forever, dating back to the cave, Mr. Bush demonized the people he wanted to kill. They have "weapons of mass destruction," he asserted. Yeah, like we don't. Like India doesn't. Like Israel doesn't. Like Pakistan doesn't. Like China doesn't. Like Russia doesn't. Why don't we invade them? Or ourselves?

It turned out the Iraqis didn't have those terrible weapons. But, the Iraqis are evil, Mr. Bush asserted. Well, at least their leader was, so, by extension, they all were. And, by gosh and by golly, they might have harbored terrorists at one time or another.

Quickly now, name a country that harbored the Sept. 11 terrorists! Ah, that was too easy. You got it right away. The answer: the United States of America. That's who sheltered the 19 terrorists before their attacks on Manhattan and Washington. That's where those terrorists worked and played, ate and slept, plotted and rehearsed right up to that tragic day. The U.S. of A.

Fiddling as Iraq Burns
By BOB HERBERT


Columnist Page: Bob Herbert





The White House seems to have slipped the bonds of simple denial and escaped into the disturbing realm of utter delusion. On Tuesday, there was President Bush hanging the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, on George Tenet, the former C.I.A. director who slept through the run-up to Sept. 11 and then did the president and the nation the great disservice of declaring that it was a "slam-dunk" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

It was a fatal misjudgment.

Another Medal of Freedom was given to Paul Bremer III, the chief civilian administrator of the American occupation, who made the heavily criticized decision to disband the defeated Iraqi Army and presided over an ever-worsening security situation. Thousands upon thousands have died in this unnecessary and incompetently conducted war, yet here was the president handing out medals as if some kind of triumph had been achieved. If these guys could get the highest civilian award, what honor is left for someone who actually does a good job?

A third medal was given to Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasion of Iraq, which Mr. Bush, in his peculiar way, has characterized as a "catastrophic success." It's an interesting term. Some people have applied it to the president's run for re-election.

By anyone's standards, terrible things are happening in Iraq, and no amount of self-congratulation in Washington can take the edge off the horror being endured by American troops or the unrelenting agony of the Iraqi people. The disconnect between the White House's fantasyland and the world of war in Iraq could hardly have been illustrated more starkly than by a pair of front-page articles in The New York Times on Dec. 10. The story at the top of the page carried the headline

Lott: Replace defense chief



By MELISSA M. SCALLAN

BILOXI - U.S. Sen. Trent Lott doesn't believe Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should resign immediately, but he does think Rumsfeld should be replaced sometime in the next year.

"I'm not a fan of Secretary Rumsfeld," Lott, R-Mississippi, told the Biloxi Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday morning. "I don't think he listens enough to his uniformed officers."

Rumsfeld has been criticized since a soldier asked him last week why the combat vehicles used in the war in Iraq don't have the proper armor. Both Rumsfeld and President Bush have said more vehicle armor will be shipped to Iraq.

Lott said the United States needs more troops to help with the war. The country also needs a plan to leave Iraq once elections are over at the end of January.

Lott doesn't think Rumsfeld is necessarily the person to carry out that plan.

"I would like to see a change in that slot in the next year or so," Lott said. "I'm not calling for his resignation, but I think we do need a change at some point."

On another military issue, Lott said he hopes the Base Realignment and Closure Commission will consider closing bases overseas.

Lawsuit Against Rumsfeld Threatens US-German Relations

By: Deutsche Welle
Published: Dec 14, 2004


The Pentagon made thinly veiled threats on Monday, suggesting US-German relations could be at risk if a criminal complaint filed in German courts over Abu Ghraib proceeds.

The Pentagon expressed concern Monday over a criminal complaint filed in Germany against US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other officials over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, warning that "frivolous lawsuits" could affect the broader US-German relationship.

The complaint was filed in Berlin on Nov. 30 by the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Berlin's Republican Lawyers' Association on behalf of four Iraqis who were alleged to have been mistreated by US soldiers.

Besides Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Steven Cambone, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, Brigadier General Janis

Karpinski and five other military officers who served in Iraq were named in the complaint, which seeks an investigation into their role in the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib.

US-German relations at risk

"Generally speaking, as is true anywhere, if these kinds of lawsuits take place with American servicemen in the cross-hairs, you bet it's something we take seriously," said Lawrence DiRita, the Pentagon's spokesman. "If you get an adventurous prosecutor who might want to seize onto one of these frivolous lawsuits, it could affect the broader relationship. I think that's probably safe to say," he told AFP.

Germany is home to some 70,000 US troops, many of which have rotated into and out of Iraq from German bases. Sanchez, the former US commander in Iraq, is stationed in Germany as commander of the Army's 5th Corps.

Universal jurisdiction for war crimes

The groups that filed the complaint said they had chosen Germany because of its Code of Crimes Against International Law, introduced in 2002, which grants German courts universal jurisdiction in cases involving war crimes or crimes against humanity.

It also makes military or civilian commanders who fail to prevent their subordinates from committing such acts liable. DiRita said he did not know whether the United States had raised specific concerns directly with the German government. But he said, "I think every government in the world, particularly a NATO ally, understands the potential effect on relations with the United States if these kinds of frivolous lawsuits were ever to see the light of day."

Pentagon Weighs Use of Deception in a Broad Arena
By THOM SHANKER and ERIC SCHMITT

Published: December 13, 2004

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - The Pentagon is engaged in bitter, high-level debate over how far it can and should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad, senior Defense Department civilians and military officers say.

Such missions, if approved, could take the deceptive techniques endorsed for use on the battlefield to confuse an adversary and adopt them for covert propaganda campaigns aimed at neutral and even allied nations.

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Critics of the proposals say such deceptive missions could shatter the Pentagon's credibility, leaving the American public and a world audience skeptical of anything the Defense Department and military say - a repeat of the credibility gap that roiled America during the Vietnam War.

The efforts under consideration risk blurring the traditional lines between public affairs programs in the Pentagon and military branches - whose charters call for giving truthful information to the media and the public - and the world of combat information campaigns or psychological operations.

Latest Round of Violence Kills 7 Marines and 9 Iraqis
By ROBERT F. WORTH

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 13 - A suicide bomber killed nine civilians at the entrance to Baghdad's Green Zone today, after a weekend in which separate attacks left seven marines dead.

Nineteen people were wounded, four seriously, in today's attack, civilian hospital staff members said. Responsibility for the bombing was claimed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who is the head of a terrorist network allied to Al Qaeda, according to news agencies.

The military said no Americans were killed or hurt in the attack, just outside the Iraqi government and United States diplomatic compound, which occurred a year to day after the capture of Saddam Hussein by American forces.

Most of today's victims were local people lining up to enter the Green Zone at the start of the working day.

U.S. gives rosy picture of rebuilding Iraq, while people on the streets seethe

By Tim Johnson and Omar Jassim

Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Deep within the Green Zone, the fortified home of Iraq's interim administration, U.S. officials offered an upbeat assessment Thursday of their multibillion-dollar efforts to rebuild the country. Out in the streets of Baghdad, though, it's a parallel universe.

Twenty months after Saddam Hussein's removal from power, electricity blinks on and off. Jobs are scarce. The rat-a-tat of automatic gunfire erupts nearly hourly. Criminal kidnappings for ransom have soared. Parents fear to let their children out for long periods, even to go to school.

Stop just about anyone on the street, and the complaints spill out in torrents.

"The Americans keep saying that they are making things better and better," said Ali Ayad, a 17-year-old school dropout. "If things are getting better, why did I have to leave school to support my family?"

Kerik Pulls Out as Bush Nominee for Homeland Security Job
By ERIC LIPTON and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM




WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 - Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, abruptly withdrew his name from consideration to be President Bush's secretary of homeland security late Friday night, citing questions related to the immigration status of a former household employee.

Mr. Kerik's swift fall - he was nominated only a week ago by President Bush to succeed Tom Ridge - came in a letter in which he called the offer "the honor of a lifetime" but said that "moving forward would not be in the best interest of your administration, the Department of Homeland Security or the American people."

US Army plagued by desertion and plunging morale
From Elaine Monaghan in Washington



WHILE insurgents draw on deep wells of fury to expand their ranks in Iraq, the US military is fighting desertion, recruitment shortfalls and legal challenges from its own troops.

The irritation among the rank and file became all too clear this week when a soldier stood up in a televised session with Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, to ask why the world’s richest army was having to hunt for scrap metal to protect its vehicles.
The same night, interviews with three soldiers who are seeking refugee status in Canada, where they have become minor celebrities, dominated prime time television. They are among more the than 5,000 troops that CBS’s 60 Minutes reported on Wednesday had deserted since the war began.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal prosecutors said Wednesday journalists have limited legal protection while a lawyer for two reporters who could go to jail for refusing to divulge their sources argued for a broader interpretation of the Constitution.

``There is a level of legal protection,'' lawyer Floyd Abrams told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

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Abrams represents Time magazine's Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller of The New York Times, who have been subpoenaed in the grand jury investigation into the leak of an undercover CIA officer's name.

In October, the reporters were held in contempt by a federal judge for refusing to disclose their confidential sources. Both reporters face up to 18 months in jail pending the outcome of their appeal.

Concerned US defence workers were told to keep quiet about the alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners, memos obtained by a US civil rights group have revealed.

Documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union also show that special forces officers ignored FBI fears over their interrogation methods.

FBI and Defence Intelligence Agency concerns were ignored or brushed aside by special forces, says the ACLU.

The ACLU obtained the documents under the US Freedom of Information Act.

A Pentagon spokesman said the US has a policy of "full disclosure" on allegations of abuse and the government "condemns and prohibits torture".

http://www.nytimes.com

Michael Kinsley said it best:

Reporters should be concerned with Grand Jury probes and
prosecutors should be concerned with First Amendment rights.
There is no invisible hand that will guide this Plame case.

This Plame case is really snowballing.

"Joseph Wilson was hardly a household name himself until he wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times on June 6 describing his mission to Niger. But we're expected to believe it was common knowledge who his wife was and what she did. Well, let's pretend that's true. Novak didn't know it. When a famous Washington pundit says there's a loop and he's out of it, that can only be an act of desperation."

The above passage, which is insightful, was published on the Web October 2003. This goes to show you how slowly this whole affair is moving!

Judith "Iscariot" Miller may be heading for jail
in two days. Robert Novak outs a CIA agent and
other journalists are being sent to jail.


Meanwhile Dubya has re-appointed Donald Rumsfeld.
Doesn't this guy have too much stink-juice on him
already. That was a really cowardly appointment,
Dubya.