Intelligence for the President--and Everyone Else

(Compiler's note: Well now -- this thought piece must certainly be in the must read column.)

By ROBERT DAVID STEELE VIVAS

Today’s secret intelligence community costs the U.S. taxpayer over $65 billion a year, and yet, according to General Tony Zinni, USMC (Ret), provides less than 4% of the decision support needed by a major government executive. This is the same community that has violated the Constitution at least three times, with warrantless wiretapping, rendition for torture, and more recently, a homeland surveillance grid that is a hair away from effecting a police state. This is the same community that is completely useless as a source of objective information able to help the President and those purporting to represent the public in connecting means (revenue) with ways (spending) and ends (outcomes).

The U.S. taxpayer is being screwed by the Obama Administration with “Empire as Usual.” As I wrote in my latest book ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig, and as others have documented, this election was a fraud. Seventeen percent of the eligible voters elected Obama, triumphing over the fifteen percent that voted for McCain. Upon entering office, instead of reaching out to Cynthia McKinny, Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, and others representing the two thirds of America that did not vote, the Voices Not Heard, Obama immediately abandoned his transpartisan campaign rhetoric and adopted the prevailing Washington paradigm of bi-partisanship. As Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform likes to point out, bipartisanship is what you get when the two parties that exclude all others from power get together to screw the American taxpayer. ENOUGH!

Obama’s appointments to the top three positions of the totally fragmented and out-of-control U.S. Intelligence Community are mixed.

The new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Admiral Dennis Blair, USN (Ret), is a good man badly suited to the job, and he committed intellectual suicide on day one by declaring the economic crisis to be “the” threat to national security—evidently he has not read the report from LtGen Brent Scowcroft, USAF(Ret) and other members of the Panel on High-Level Threats and Challenges. Leon Panetta, the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) could be a wild card, with his extraordinary knowledge, as a former Chief of Staff to the President, and as a former Director of the Office of Management and Budget, of what Presidents actually need to know. However, as of this writing, he has allowed himself to be sucked into the secret world, where he is surrounded by sycophants, liars, and bureaucrats out of touch with reality. Finally, we have Chas Freeman, selected to chair the National Intelligence Council—this is a man with so little integrity and so little intelligence that he is world-famous for prostituting himself to the Saudis and serving as their shill for the global distribution of a Saudi history “textbook” replete with fabrications, incitements to violence, and libel against Israel in particular, the West in general. Among those remaining in power are LtGen Keith Alexander, USA, who covered up and destroyed the ABLE DANGER discovery of two of the 9-11 terrorists prior to 9-11, rather than share them with the FBI. This is the same person who wants $12 billion dollars to achieve cyber-security, but who will actually use that money to assure digital nakedness for every single person, thing, and datum. I do not trust him.

ENOUGH. It is time for We the People to demand public intelligence in the public interest, to free Obama from the clutches of the closed circle of power that is totally out of touch with both reality and the public interest, and to restore the Constitution, a balanced budget, and a foreign policy committed to creating a prosperous world at peace. Obama can listen and lead, or not listen and lose it all.

Right now $65 billion a year, 70% of which is spent on contractors rather than government employees, buys a vast range of largely failed technical systems for collecting everything it is possible to steal, while ignoring the 80% that is openly available in 183 languages we do not comprehend. The secret world has no knowledge of history, of culture, of family and tribal networks, of values. The secret world is not capable of bringing all that it knows together in any one place because it has never invested in processing what it collects. The secret world is not capable of making sense of what it collects, despite a massive hiring binge, because its security and payroll habits demand the hiring of children rather than mid-career accomplished authorities, and its cult of secrecy precludes its consulting world-class experts who lack US citizenship and the kind of boring sedentary life that is easy for thick-necked security officers to “validate” as being free from foreign influence.

Perhaps even more importantly, because secrets not known to the public can be ignored by both the Executive and Congress, our Cabinet departments continue to focus on maximizing budget share (plundering the individual taxpayer) and protecting special interests (the recipients of the tax dollar). There is nothing “intelligent” about how we are governed, for ideology and pork displace substance.

To illustrate the insanity of what now passes for “intelligence” at our expense, let me simply describe how each of the secret disciplines would approach the simple question of reporting on the outcome of a baseball game.

+ Clandestine Human Intelligence (HUMINT) would strive to recruit at least one player on each team, and they would be given complex covert communications arrangements for reporting, arrangements not likely to work while they are still playing. At the same time, using pre-arranged signals from the stands, the bribed players would be “tasked” to drop or catch any given ball depending on orders from Washington.

+ Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) would combine a dedicated satellite in outer-space seeking to listen to every conversations taking place on every cell phone being using during the game, with the installation of listening devices (“bugs”) in each dug-out, hoping to hear the coaches and players, and from all of that, figure out how the game is going.

+ Imagery intelligence (IMINT), would in the past have taken a picture of the ball field every three days. Today we can have a Predator circling the ball field 24/7, and if we don’t like one of the umpire’s calls, the secret world simply takes him out with a missile, never mind the collateral damage.

+ Measurements and Signatures Intelligence (MASINT), the most expensive and least productive of the secret disciplines, would install extremely complex equipment around the ball field and seek to “sniff” the ball each time it leaves the bat, and when that does not work, ask for billions more.

Remarkably absent from the secret world’s repertoire is Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), something I and 7,500 others have sought to advance these past 20 years. At almost no cost, this discipline listens and watches using publicly-available and generally free open sources, and if we wish to alter the outcome of the game, we change the rules of the game: any catch by anyone in the audience is an out. That’s called Collective Intelligence, something the secret world cannot fathom because Collective Intelligence not only knows everyone has something to contribute, but it shines so much sunlight on all information in all languages all the time that the lies protected by secrecy are quickly exposed.

Congress and the Executive are no longer representative of We the People, and can no longer be trusted as stewards of our Commonwealth. Our tax dollars are being spent in ways that reduce our prosperity and decrease our security, because Congress and the Executive are making decisions based on a mix of corruption, ideology, partisanship, and ignorance. As I wrote in the late 1990’s, the gap between people with power and people with knowledge has grown cataclysmic. Obama, for all of his talk of change and hope, has not demonstrated in a single appointment, a single speech, a single decision, any break what-so-ever from “Empire as Usual.”

In the balance of this commentary I will outline the one thing that President Obama can do now, at virtually no cost, to honor his campaign promises, restore the Constitution, and create a prosperous world at peace. This is not rocket science. It requires only one little word, a word that Buckminster Fuller selected to represent all that is essential about feedback loops within and among complex systems. The word: INTEGRITY.

Everything about how we elect our government at local, state, and federal levels lacks integrity. Everything about how they inform themselves and make decisions lacks integrity. Everything about how the public dollar is spent lacks integrity. Worst of all, everything being done “in our name” both at home and abroad lacks integrity. The time has come to either abolish the government, or restore its integrity.

We do that by demanding of President Obama the transparency of which he is the purported champion. Instead of focusing $65 billion a year on “secrets for the President,” as is now the case, the President should accept the recommendation of the 9-11 Commission (on page 413 of their report), and create the Open Source Agency (OSA) as an independent agency co-equal to the CIA but under diplomatic auspices.

The OSA, which I and others have defined in collaboration with senior civil servants in OMB as well as within the Department of Defense (DoD) would initially cost only $125 million a year, ramping up over six years to a final annual cost of $3 billion a year. Once fully operational, it would allow the reduction of the secret intelligence budget by at least 50%; it would illuminate the benefits of redirecting at least a third of what we spend on war toward waging peace; and it would expose all corruption in all government spending at all levels—we can cut so much fraud, waste, and abuse as to eliminate individual income taxes along with all the corporate loopholes while generating ample revenue from a tiny tax on all financial transactions among banks and corporations. With an OSA I can wipe out the deficit in three years and cut future unfunded Medicare costs by 90%. INTEGRITY is priceless, and it favors the public over special interests.

The OSA would consist of the following “pieces,” each of which would rapidly restore INTEGRITY to the public policy and spending process, not only in the USA, but around the world in every government, every corporation, and every non-profit or civil society organization.

• A diplomatic Office of Information Sharing Treaties and Agreements, led by a senior Ambassador, would rapidly accelerate the aggregate sharing of information within the digital cloud, with full provision for all necessary aspects of privacy, accountability, and the protection of intellectual property. The Information Commons does not exist, and it must exist if we are to save the Global Commons.

• A diplomatic Office of the Assistant Secretary General for Decision Support within the Department of Safety and Security at the United Nations. This office would be responsible for identifying the intelligence (decision support) needs of all elements of the UN System, while also striving to meet the decision support needs of all those engaged in stabilization and reconstruction, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief operations. It would also be the sponsor for a Global Range of Needs Table, an online matrix of needs down to the household level, able to connect the one billion rich individuals with the five billion poor, at an item by item level of giving. This is how we harmonize close to $1 trillion a year in planned giving along with social and corporate investments, while enticing the 80% of the rich who do not give to the poor, to do so on a peer-to-peer basis.

• A Multinational Decision Support Center (MDSC) and Network, a global grid implementing the Swedish concept of Multinational, Mutliagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2). Built around the militaries of the world, this would be a hub within each country for both harvesting knowledge from and providing knowledge to each of the other seven tribes of intelligence (government, law enforcement, academia, business, media, non-profit, and civil society including labor unions and religions). It would deal exclusively with open source information, eschewing all secrets, while enabling global real-time translations in 183 languages.

• Community Decision Support Networks (CDSN) would be funded within each of the 50 states and commonwealths, with a special network for the Tribal Nations. As with the MDSC, these would deal exclusively with open source information, and serve—with National Guard personnel manning each state’s “center”—as a means for receiving and making sense of bottom up early warning of threats to the community; and as a means of providing every community with direct free access to useful information from all global sources in all languages (with all necessary translation as needed).

This is what we have now in the way of very TIRED 20th Century Intelligence: secrets for the President; obsession with seven “Hard Target” countries; administered on basis of inputs or budget share; reliance on centralized secret analysis by children; priority of support to military aggression; Ignore OMB and the General Accountability Office (GAO); ineffective in support to Cabinet Secretaries and individual action officers; Ineffective in support to state & local governments; and excessive expenditures on secret technical collection.

This is what we could have in the way of very WIRED 21st Century Intelligence, with immediate benefits: decision-support for ALL officials and citizens; “Global Coverage” of all threats and issues in all languages; management on basis of public interest outcomes; reliance on distributed public knowledge and wisdom; respect and meet needs of OMB and GAO; provide constant comprehensive decision support and raw global information feeds to every schoolhouse and chamber of commerce; balanced expenditures on processing and sense-making that can be shared, instead of just “secrets for the President.

President Obama can bring to life the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison:

A Nation’s best defense is an educated citizenry.-- Thomas Jefferson

A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives. -- James Madison

National Intelligence in this era cannot be about “secrets for the President.” It must be about empowering the President—and everyone else—with the extraordinary personal and organizational power that comes from information that has been discovered, discriminated, distilled, and converted into actionable intelligence—decision-support.

Operating under this new paradigm, the DNI would be the President’s chief aide in harnessing the distributed intelligence of the Whole Earth, and in creating a “Smart Nation” that will be secure as well as competitive in what is clearly the age of applied intelligence—applied Collective Intelligence.

A truly inspired DNI would ask that the OSA, while funded by the DNI and totally responsive to the DNI’s severely deficient access to global multilingual open sources of information, be a completely independent agency, a virtual “fourth estate” willing and able to ensure that every citizen has access to real-world, real-time intelligence, arming America with the power unique to an informed citizenry.

As the Rasmussen poll just documented, 73% of the public trusts public judgment over that of politicians. There is absolutely nothing wrong with America, or the world, that cannot be rapidly and constructively addressed by re-engaging the Collective Intelligence of the Whole Earth. This is how we do it.

Robert David Steele Vivas, a recovering spy and senior civilian founder of the Marine Corps Intelligence Center, is a 30-year veteran of government service across intelligence, information technology, military, and policy support functionalities. He is the founding CEO of OSS.Net, and of the Earth Intelligence Network, a 501c3 Public Charity devoted to creating public intelligence in the public interest. As a hobby, he is the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction. All of his books are free online at www.oss.net, as well as available in hard-copy from Amazon.

Culture of corruption?

by Sean Davis

After sweeping back into power in 2006 by accusing Republicans of fostering a "culture of corruption" in the nation's capital, congressional Democrats now find themselves in an ethical quagmire of their own. A.B.C. News recently reported that PMA Group, a defense lobbying firm with significant ties to several top Democrats, was raided last November by the F.B.I. in connection with an investigation into whether the firm traded campaign cash for federal favors. The federal raid has already prompted demands from at least one lawmaker to convene a full-scale congressional ethics inquiry into the connection between campaign donations and the special-interest pork projects known as earmarks. CTC

Founded two decades ago by Paul Magliocchetti, a former top aide to Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Penn.), PMA quickly grew from a regional boutique to a lobbying powerhouse (the firm's initials stand for Paul Magliocchetti Associates). Between 1998 and 2008, the firm ranked in the top ten of all U.S. lobbying firms, with $113.7 million in total revenue according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

PMA specialized in getting earmarks, projects funded at the recommendation of a single lawmaker, often without debate or oversight, for small defense contractors. As the firm grew, it became famous for establishing small, unproven companies in the districts of powerful lawmakers in the hopes of winning federal cash to promote "economic development."

An analysis of last year's spending bills shows that PMA was remarkably successful; it secured 154 separate projects for 68 different clients, totaling nearly $300 million in taxpayer funding. Even more striking, however, is the fact that more than one-third of the funding was provided by only five lawmakers, four of whom are senior Democrats with significant power on the House appropriations committee.

Mr. Murtha, the powerful chairman of the defense spending subcommittee, handed out $38.1 million to PMA clients via the 2008 spending bills. Rep. Peter J. Visclosky (D-Ind.) sponsored 16 projects worth $23.8 million, while Rep. Norman D. Dicks (D-Wash.) sponsored five earmarks worth $12.1 million. Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.), who promised in 2006 to "earmark the sh*t" out of the appropriations committee if given the opportunity, kept his word and funneled nearly $11 million to PMA clients through eight separate line-items.

Rep. C.W. "Bill" Young (R-Fla.), the only Republican found in the top five sponsors of PMA pork, recommended nine separate earmarks totaling $20.4 million.

The firm's lobbyists were every bit as generous to their pork patrons. PMA lobbyists provided nearly $600,000 in campaign contributions to the five lawmakers since 2001 according to a joint analysis by Congressional Quarterly, a D.C.-based newspaper, and Taxpayers for Common Sense, a non-partisan government watchdog. In the 2008 election cycle, five of Mr. Murtha's top six donors were PMA clients. The seventh largest campaign donor was the lobbying firm itself. All told, PMA and its clients donated a whopping $775,000 to Mr. Murtha's 2008 election campaign.

The embattled firm was apparently so thankful for the federal largesse sent its way that it may have even created fake donors to help funnel more money to its friends in Congress, a clear violation of federal campaign finance laws. An investigation by the Washington Post found several campaign donors who had never worked for the company listed as PMA employees on federal election filings. Federal authorities are focused on whether Mr. Magliocchetti, the former Murtha staffer who founded PMA, may have illegally reimbursed his employees for campaign contributions made in their names.

Combined with the Countrywide mortgage scandal surrounding Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), news reports that Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) may have lied about his fundraising activities for Rod Blagojevich, and an ongoing House ethics investigation into whether Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) evaded taxes and filed false financial disclosure forms, the emerging PMA scandal has the potential to wreak havoc on the Democratic party's electoral prospects in 2010. The G.O.P was routed in 2006 due in part to various scandals surrounding the party. If Beltway Democrats wish to maintain their hold on power two years from now, they need to give taxpayers a little more change we can believe in and a lot less corruption we can count on.

Pelosi's List: Who's On Her Bad Side?

(Compiler's note: Here is a small insight into politics at its best.)

By Glenn Thrush

Politico: House Speaker Keeps Politics Personal By Keeping Mental "Disfavor File"

Nancy Pelosi likes to keep lists.

As a young political protégé of her father, Baltimore Mayor Tommy D’Alesandro, the preteen speaker-to-be would spend hours leafing through the list of voters her father had helped in some way - fixing a pothole, finding them a job, even getting them a hot meal.

It was known as the "favor file."

Those around Pelosi say she has always kept her own favor file. But, like her father, she has also maintained a "disfavor file" in her head - a roster of those whom she believes have screwed up, betrayed her, challenged her or merely annoyed her.

In some cases, Pelosi has mended fences with people on the list, most notably House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), a former party rival who has become an indispensable lieutenant.

But she has also moved to strip power from longtime adversaries - and she has a propensity for remembering slights and grievances for years.

Hawkish Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who clashed with Pelosi on Iraq and intelligence policy, assumed she was in line to become chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee when the Democrats seized control of the House in 2006. But Pelosi refused to appoint Harman to even a seat on the committee, and she handed the chairmanship to Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas).

As speaker, she did nothing to stop her ally Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) from ousting Rep. John Dingell as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee after clashing with the octogenarian Michigan Democrat on energy policy and global warming.

The list, Pelosi allies say, is real - even as they warn that overstating her vindictiveness feeds into the right-wing caricatures of Pelosi and perpetuates ethnic and gender stereotypes.

Moreover, they argue that portraying her as payback-obsessed misses a fundamental political point: Despite her commanding majority, Pelosi is painfully aware that powerful speakers, including Republican Joe Cannon, have been toppled for using their power heavy-handedly.

"She’s not a vengeful person, per se, and she thinks that people who do bad things eventually get their due without her intervention," a longtime associate said on condition of anonymity.

"But that doesn’t mean she forgets."

So who’s on Pelosi’s list now?

1. Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.). No Democrat has done quite so much in so short a time to arouse Pelosi’s disdain as the failed-Redskins-quarterback-turned-ambitious-North-Carolina-congressman.

The conservative, anti-abortion Shuler would have made the list for voting against both bank bailout bills and the stimulus package, but the way he went about it didn’t help; Shuler told an audience back home that “House leadership and Senate leadership have really failed” on the $787 billion package.

The thing that riles Pelosi most, according to several House aides, is that she believes Shuler’s motives are as much political as they are ideological - and that he’s picking a fight with her to position himself for a run against Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) next year.

Unless Shuler is planning a long House career, picking a fight with Pelosi may indeed have its advantages: His 2006 opponent, incumbent GOP Rep. Charles Taylor, scored points by portraying Shuler as a Pelosi acolyte.

"I don’t know if Shuler is talking without thinking or if he’s just making the calculation that distancing himself from Pelosi is never a bad thing to do," said a senior House leadership aide.

2. Rush Limbaugh. He’s Pelosi’s sworn enemy - and she views him as beneath contempt and unworthy of her comment.

Asked about the right-wing talk-radio king the other day, Pelosi said: "I don’t speak to that. I’m the speaker of the House. I don’t get into the popular culture."

3. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski (D-Pa.. Pelosi and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee made an all-out effort to help the veteran Scranton congressman win a tight race against longtime nemesis Lou Barletta last fall.

So aides say the speaker was taken aback when the western Pennsylvania representative bucked leadership by voting “no” on the original version of the stimulus bill.

He voted for the conference report later, but hard feelings persist.

4. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.). It’s no surprise that Pelosi isn’t crazy about the young, aggressive minority whip, who has marshaled an anti-Pelosi GOP insurgency in the House.

Pelosi has good personal relationship with House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). But members of her leadership cadre are starting to really dislike Cantor, despite their public pose of studied indifference. Part of the reason: Cantor is employing many of the same techniques Pelosi used so successfully to torture former House Speaker Dennis Hastert when she was the Democratic whip in 2002 and 2003.

It remains to be seen if Cantor’s power-of-"no" philosophy will work - congressional approval ratings have actually spiked on the stimulus - but he’s gotten traction by nitpicking Pelosi’s proposals and magnifying the majority’s blunders.

5. Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.). The fiscally conservative gadfly would have topped the list had he not reversed his first stimulus “no” by voting in favor of the final package.

Even so, the most outspoken of the Blue Dog Democrats is still on thin ice with leadership, thanks to his comment that he “actually got some quiet encouragement from the Obama folks” for initially bucking Pelosi on the stimulus. That required a hasty Obama-Pelosi cleanup effort that resulted in a Cooper clarification - although he continues to express dissatisfaction with what he sees as Pelosi’s top-down leadership style.

Counterintuitively, Cooper enjoys a good relationship with many in Pelosi’s inner circle, including Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Waxman - with whom Cooper shared a long lunch at the Democrats’ recent retreat in Williamsburg, Va.

6. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.). The squeakiest liberal wheel in the House has always been more than willing to articulate his differences with leadership.

But his role as the lone Democrat to switch from "yes" on the original stimulus bill to a "no" on the House-Senate compromise was viewed as grandstanding in the speaker’s suite.

DeFazio, who chairs a subcommittee on highways and transit, makes a compelling counterargument, saying he was betrayed by Pelosi’s acceptance of lower-than-promised allocations for infrastructure representing 8 percent of the total package.

7. The House Appropriations Committee staff. Pelosi’s relationship with Appropriations Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.) remains strong. But she was reportedly infuriated that Obey’s staff failed to scrub the first draft of the stimulus bill of politically damaging proposals such as billions for resodding the National Mall, funding anti-STD programs and providing free contraceptives.

8. CIA Director Leon Panetta. Pelosi supported Panetta’s appointment at the CIA and has said nary a negative public word about her fellow Californian and former colleague.

Nonetheless, people with ties to both say the speaker was more than a little annoyed that Panetta backed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to create an independent panel to redraw the state’s legislative districts, a proposal that might have endangered Pelosi’s Democratic allies in the state Legislature.

"If you asked her, she’d say she loves Leon, but there is a strain" in their relationship, said a person with knowledge of the situation.

Dishonorable mentions: Pelosi allies Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) and John P. Murtha (D-a.) aren’t in the speaker’s doghouse, but many people around her think they should be.

Murtha, whom Pelosi disastrously backed over Hoyer in the 2006 majority leader’s contest, is embroiled in a billowing scandal involving the lobbying firm PMA. And Rangel, the powerful House Ways & Means chairman, has been bogged down for months in an ethics investigation.

"Nancy is standing by them, to her detriment," said a senior Democratic aide in the House.

Backdoor Dealing Threaten Free Speech

(Compiler's note: A must read letter.)

MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER
MARCH 2, 2009

According to the MRC’s own CNSNews.com, the Senate last week passed a Broadcaster Freedom Amendment by a vote of 87-11. And while the liberal media rushed to declare the Fairness Doctrine dead, they all but ignored the “Durbin Amendment” that essentially primes the pump for silencing conservative speech through backdoor FCC regulations!

Robert, the liberal media would have you believe that the gag order against conservative talk has been once and for all lifted.

Nothing could be further from the truth!


++ A Stealth Attack on Your Free Speech Rights!

Robert, the Durbin amendment requires the FCC to “take actions to encourage and promote diversity in communication media ownership.”

Upon closer look, this “stealth” attack on Free Speech Rights is far more insidious because it empowers the government to censor and control the airwaves through backdoor policies that would almost certainly be expanded to include television, newspapers and the Internet!

In other words, the Durbin amendment actually expands the threat beyond Talk Radio to include other stages of free speech!


++ Your Efforts More Important Than Ever

There is little doubt in my mind that we are headed for a showdown over our Free Speech Rights.

Robert, over the next 36 hours, I am urging EVERY member of our MRC Action Team to take fast action—first by signing our Free Speech Alliance Petition, and then by alerting friends and family to the real truth about our Free Speech Rights coming under assault.

As we boldly move forward to protect and preserve our First Amendment Rights, it’s imperative that EVERY member of the MRC Action team stand in support with us during this critical time. If you aren’t sure whether or not you’ve signed our petition, do so again. Our exclusive system will only count you once regardless of how many times you sign.

After adding your name, alert your friends and urge them to join with you in defending your First Amendment Rights by going to the petition here

Time is short. Through this Durbin Amendment, liberal members of Congress now have a way to muzzle conservative voices in the media, and we believe will waste little time moving forward.

Robert, we cannot allow this backdoor assault to go unchallenged!

That’s why I am counting on you to help me rally an additional 20,000 citizen signers of our Free Speech Alliance petition this week alone!

As always, thank you for standing with the MRC.

David Martin

P.S: After signing our petition, forward this message to 30-35 friends today. Urge them to join with you by going to the petition here.

Illegals targeted sheriff as gang initiation

by Jerry Seper

The attempted assassination of a South Carolina deputy sheriff was a gang initiation carried out by three illegal immigrants including a 15-year-old boy who was supposed to "kill a cop" in order to be admitted as a member, according to a confidential Department of Homeland Security advisory.

Lexington County, S.C., Deputy Sheriff Ted Xanthakis and his K-9 police dog, Arcos, were attacked by the three illegals armed with a 12-gauge shotgun during a Feb. 8 incident in West Columbia, S.C., shortly after 3 a.m. The deputy and his dog survived.

Two of the men were identified in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) report as members of the Surenos gang, or SUR-13, a collection of Mexican-American street gangs with origins in the oldest barrios of Southern California.

Hundreds of SUR-13 gangs operate in California and have spread to many other parts of the country. The paramilitary organization has been described by federal law enforcement agencies as actively involved in illegal-immigrant and drug smuggling.

According to the ICE report, the attack occurred as the deputy responded to a call about a suspicious vehicle.

The 15-year-old and two others, Carlos Alfredo Diaz De Leon, 17, and Lucino Guzman Guttierrez, 20, were later arrested by sheriff's deputies and members of the U.S. Marshals Service. Diaz De Leon and Guzman Guttierrez were charged with assault and battery with intent to kill.

Deputy Xanthakis and his dog were in a marked patrol car at the time of the shooting.

The 15-year-old was taken to a pre-trial detention facility, where he was awaiting a hearing in family court. Prosecutors said they would recommend that the boy be prosecuted in family court on a charge of assault and battery with intent to kill.

Under state law, law enforcement officials cannot identify the boy because he is a juvenile.

Lexington County Sheriff James R. Metts told reporters that Diaz De Leon, Guzman Guttierrez and the 15-year-old illegally entered the United States from Mexico. He said Diaz De Leon and Guzman Guttierrez were living in West Columbia and a search of their house netted items thought to have been stolen in vehicle break-ins in Lexington County, including a Global Positioning System devices and car stereo systems.

The sheriff also said that deputies recovered the shotgun that was used to shoot at Deputy Sheriff Xanthakis.

ICE detainers have been lodged against the adults.

The ICE report, made public Wednesday by the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), said interviews determined that the 15-year-old was the shooter and the incident was a gang initiation. It said gangs "have long posed a threat to public safety and law enforcement but the threat is now increasing in scope. ... Never before have the street gangs in South Carolina actively targeted law enforcement officers for gang initiation."

ICE agents, as part of a nationwide crackdown on gangs, have arrested members of SUR-13 in Tennessee and Georgia on charges ranging from felony theft and illegal re-entry after deportation to murder, attempted murder, carjacking, armed robbery and drug dealing.

William Gheen, president of ALIPAC, described the attack as the "beginning of America's nightmarish future as we descend into the type of anarchy found in Mexico.

"In Mexico, things have deteriorated so much that police are demoralized and are being killed by these gangs of a weekly basis," he said. "That's what happens when your nation loses respect for the rule of law as we see with the effect of millions of illegal aliens in America."

He said the U.S. needs to secure its border and enforce its immigration laws "or we will begin to lose more officers and as we loose officers, gang rule will replace the rule of law."

Q+A: Is Iran nearing nuclear "breakout" ability?

(Compiler's note: Would someone please rephrase the question? Read the answers closely and draw your own conclusion.)

Admiral Mike Mullen, head of the U.S. military Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he believed Iran has enough material to make a nuclear bomb, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tehran was not close to having such a weapon.

.... IS IRAN ON THE VERGE OF BOMB STATUS?

No, unless it has secret enrichment facilities and there are no known indications of that. Otherwise Iran would have to overcome a succession of technical challenges, though none as hard as producing quality nuclear fuel in industrial quantities.

These include:

* reconfiguring its existing centrifuge enrichment plant at Natanz to reprocess LEU into weapons-grade HEU, or building clandestine facilities without the knowledge of U.N. inspectors

* converting HEU into metal and compressing it small enough to fit into the cone of a missile or other delivery vehicle

* designing a nuclear trigger mechanism

* mastering how to create a sustained nuclear chain reaction with an extra source of neutrons

* assembling the actual warhead, and a reliable means of delivery -- probably a missile

All this could take 2-5 years, depending on Iran's technical prowess, but probably much less time than the 20 years it took Iran to acquire enrichment equipment and knowledge from the nuclear black market and make it work.

ARE THERE OTHER RESTRAINING FACTORS?

Yes. It would be virtually impossible for Iran to "weaponize" the enrichment process at Natanz without the IAEA noticing and sounding the alarm, since the plant is under regular surveillance by inspectors.

Iran has pledged to stick to enrichment for civilian energy only, under routine IAEA monitoring. It has said nuclear weapons are against its Islamic values although its record of nuclear secrecy and limiting IAEA access has raised suspicions.

Assuming Iran had a bomb agenda, which it denies, military diversions would more likely be carried out at a covert plant. That would be almost inconceivable for the IAEA to ferret out since Iran does not observe the agency's Additional Protocol allowing snap inspections beyond declared nuclear sites.

If Iran chose to weaponize enrichment at Natanz, it would probably kick out the IAEA and quit the Non-Proliferation Treaty, drastic steps that would almost certainly provoke Israeli or U.S. attacks to destroy its nuclear facilities.

ARE ENRICHMENT AND A BOMB AGENDA THE SAME THING?

No, but it's not so simple. Iran says it will not refine uranium for anything else but electricity. Being able to enrich at industrial scale is not tantamount to seeking a nuclear weapon and is the sovereign right of NPT members as long as the work remains strictly for peaceful applications.

But the dilemma is that mastering enrichment technology provides a latent ability to build bombs in the near future. That may be all that Iran is seeking, as the ultimate deterrent against attack and a means to assert its regional power, and there is nothing illegal about having such capability.

Dozens of countries have such "breakout" capability, but do not exercise it as NPT members. The distinction between latent capacity and deionization can be virtually invisible in a vast country that limits the scope for U.N. non-proliferation inspections.

Al-Marri Indictment Today [UPDATED]

by Jane Mayer

[Update: According to sources familiar with the case, the Obama Justice Department indicted Marri this afternoon. The sealed indictment was handed up by a federal grand jury in Peoria, Illinois.]

The Obama Administration appears close to resolving the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, the alleged Al Qaeda “sleeper agent” who is the only so-called “illegal enemy combatant” imprisoned inside the United States.

As I wrote in last week’s issue, Marri has been held for the past five years in indefinite executive detention in the U.S. Naval Consolidated brig in Charleston, South Carolina—despite having never stood trial or been convicted of any crime. But according to sources close to the case, a federal grand jury is meeting today in Peoria, Illinois, and may indict Marri on multiple terrorism charges, including providing material support for terrorism. Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department on national-security issues, declined to comment, as did Marri’s lawyers.

An indictment would signal a major shift in legal policy from the Bush years. It would also fulfill President Obama’s campaign pledge to restore traditional American legal practices by treating terror suspects as common criminals, rather than stripping them of standard legal rights and classifying them neither as criminal defendants nor prisoners of war.

Obama has been forced to grapple with the Marri case because the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a challenge contesting the legality of his prolonged and indefinite detention. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case this spring, requiring the Obama Administration to file papers stating its position by March 23rd. The federal grand jury in Peoria meets only once a month, so today is likely the last chance to indict Marri before the Supreme Court’s deadline. An indictment would transfer Marri from military detention into the criminal-justice system, perhaps rendering the Supreme Court case moot.

Human-rights groups and civil-liberties lawyers are watching the situation closely, as an indicator of whether the Obama Adminstration will support the Bush Administration’s aggressive claims to executive detention powers in the war on terror.

The Real Intelligence Failure? Spineless Spies.

(Compiler's note: This is a must read article.)

By Mark M. Lowenthal

The U.S. intelligence community has failed. We have failed as a public institution and as a profession. We have failed not because of 9/11, or Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, or Iran's supposed WMD, or the horror stories about renditions and detentions. We have failed because we have not explained ourselves adequately and comprehensibly to the public -- describing our role, the limits within which we work and our view of what can be reasonably expected from us. We have failed because we have allowed ourselves to be caricatured, vilified and misrepresented by people who do not know us, do not like us and do not understand us -- or simply see us as convenient fall guys.

We have been, in a word, supine. And the net result has been a misguided restructuring of the entire intelligence community based on faulty premises. Inside the community, our passivity has meant crippled morale; outside the community, it has meant a severely diminished view of the value of the crucial, difficult tasks we perform. And we have allowed others to burden us with entirely false and unrealistic expectations.

This isn't meant as a critique of the current director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell; his predecessor, John D. Negroponte; or their staffs. They've done the best they could within a dysfunctional structure. But the fact remains that intelligence is now largely fated to be seen as a failed institution. It has also become a highly politicized one, which further dooms its future effectiveness. And that is a problem for all Americans, not just former intelligence analysts like myself.

The intelligence community's predicament was largely forged by two very different events: the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the failure to find WMD in Iraq. But the lessons that outsiders have learned from these two watersheds have often been glib, fatuous and contradictory.

In 9/11, intelligence was excoriated for "failing to connect the dots" -- a demeaning, inapt concept that, unfortunately, has entered the popular lexicon. But in Iraq, intelligence was blamed for connecting too many dots.

In 9/11, intelligence did not warn intensely enough. But in Iraq, intelligence warned too intensely.

In 9/11, intelligence was faulted for a "failure of imagination." But in Iraq, intelligence had too vivid an imagination.

In 9/11, the failure to share intelligence was seen as a major problem. But in Iraq, too much information -- such as the fabricated reports about mobile bioweapons labs from the Iraqi defector infamously code-named "Curveball" -- was shared.

The subtext here, as we say in intelligence analysis, is that intelligence needs to be right all the time. But it can't be, no matter how blithely the critics expect otherwise. And it's past time we all got used to that.

I understand why people are disappointed in the way the intelligence community handled 9/11 and Iraq. But that dismay should have been tempered by an understanding of what intelligence can and cannot do -- an explanation that the intelligence community has failed to provide.

First consider 9/11. No one has yet revealed the one or two or 10 things that, had they been done differently, might have prevented the attacks. In my view, and in the view of many of my colleagues, even the missed "operational opportunities" identified by the 9/11 Commission would have done little more than force al-Qaeda to send different terrorists into the United States, especially considering the legal rules in play at the time. Even if every "dot" had been connected, they would not have led to the tactical intelligence needed to stop those four planes on that Tuesday morning.

This is a profoundly disturbing message to send. Political leaders and the public would rather believe that al-Qaeda's attacks exploited flaws that have been found and fixed, letting us all return to our pre-9/11 feeling of safety. It is too disturbing to hear the truth: Despite what we have learned, despite the changes that we have made, it could indeed happen again. And it is both comical and distressing to see members of Congress declare that, with the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2004, the United States was once again made safe.

Iraq, to my mind, was the more serious intelligence failure. Our analysis was wrong. That said, we did not go to war in 2003 because of a faulty National Intelligence Estimate. (NIEs are the consensus judgments of the 16-member intelligence community, as produced by the National Intelligence Council, which I helped lead during the Bush administration's first term.) Indeed, the notorious October 2002 NIE warning that Iraq possessed WMD had virtually no effect on anyone's decision about whether to go to war. It probably did not influence President Bush or other senior policymakers, who had pretty much made up their minds to invade Iraq months earlier. It had no effect on the Senate: As The Washington Post reported in 2004, no more than six senators read beyond the five-page executive summary of the NIE, although 77 senators voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. Nor did the NIE have much effect on the United Nations: The Security Council declined to support the hawkish U.S. and British position despite the NIE's alarming (and alarmist) assessment of Iraq's arsenal.

The real problem with U.S. intelligence on Iraq is simply that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to envision an NIE based on good intelligence that would have come up with the correct answer. The best my fellow analysts could have done, I think, would have been to offer three analytical options: Saddam Hussein has WMD; he does not have WMD; or we simply do not know. And of course, given his track record of gassing Kurds, attacking neighbors and resisting U.N. weapons inspections, the most likely of the three still would have been that he had WMD. But analytical responses that cover the waterfront of possibilities are not seen as very useful to policymakers, for obvious reasons. Moreover, even if we had concluded that we just didn't know what Iraq had, Bush would have probably favored going to war anyway, and Congress would have gone along, largely out of political expediency.

The shock of 9/11 and the debacle over Iraqi WMD created an instant consensus that U.S. intelligence was seriously flawed and needed to be overhauled. The 9/11 Commission, which pushed hard for a new director of national intelligence to quarterback the sprawling intelligence community, offered recommendations for intelligence reform that had no logical connection to the story told in its bestselling but overrated final report. Meanwhile, the problems inherent in the new structure that the commission proposed were glossed over. The resultant intelligence-reform legislation was crafted by staffers on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee who had scant working knowledge of the way intelligence functions. Senior members of the intelligence community spent hours with the Senate staffers, trying to bring them up to speed on what intelligence is and how it works. (I speak from personal experience.)

To avoid repeating old blunders, much attention has been lavished on intelligence analysis. Standards of tradecraft and integrity have been introduced, and the NIEs have undergone various technical fixes. But the intelligence community's batting average has not gone up. And it won't, even though this was the unstated intention of all the changes.

Why won't the analysts' success rate change? Simply because there is not vast room for improvement. A lot depends on the nature of the issue and the question being asked. The intelligence community will do reasonably well at explaining whether China will become a major rival because "Whither China?" is a large, open-ended question that relies less on hard intelligence than on good suppositions. But determining where and when the next terrorist attack will come? That requires penetrating deep into closed al-Qaeda circles and depends on some awfully lucky breaks in data collection. The best that the U.S. government can reliably produce is some incremental improvements in analysis -- none of which will guarantee that the nation will not be surprised again.

The pressure to avoid another 9/11 or Iraq is so intense that the intelligence community is expending great effort to little gain. The state of the NIEs is a perfect example. The collectors of intelligence now have to swear by their sources, all of which will be thoroughly scrubbed. The push for consensus among the intelligence community's often squabbling agencies will end. But none of this will assure that the reliability of the estimates themselves will increase. More important, none of this will increase the likelihood that policymakers, in the executive branch or Congress, will read these often ponderous, densely written tomes.

The blunt truth? The intelligence community would be far better off scrapping NIEs altogether and going to a streamlined, better written product similar to the sharper assessments produced in Britain and Australia. And if we are going to be serious about improving intelligence analysis, we have to stop publishing the end products -- even in redacted forms that can show up in the pages of this newspaper. More than anything else, this certainty that internal assessments will wind up on public display stifles the vibrant, edgy, out-of-the-box analysis that everyone says they want -- until it disagrees with their political point of view, of course.

Intelligence is not in the business of predicting or forecasting. Intelligence tends to do worse on the "big events" (Pearl Harbor, 9/11, the fall of the Berlin Wall) because these events, by their very nature, are counterfactual or surprising. Nor can intelligence eliminate the element of surprise.

Intelligence is actually good at something that can seem awfully mundane: keeping policymakers generally well-informed on a recurring basis so that they can make decisions with a reasonable sense of confidence. Given the frequency with which this occurs -- as opposed to the headline-grabbing crises -- this is no small service. Unfortunately, it is also no longer one that many people seem to value.

Mark M. Lowenthal is president and chief executive of the Intelligence & Security Academy LLC. From 2002-05, he was an assistant director of central intelligence and vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

Obama 'ready to drop shield plans for Russian help on Iran'

MOSCOW, March 2 (RIA Novosti) - Washington has told Moscow that Russian help in resolving Iran's nuclear program would make its missile shield plans for Europe unnecessary, a Russian daily said on Monday, citing White House sources.

U.S. President Barack Obama made the proposal on Iran in a letter to his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, Kommersant said, referring to unidentified U.S. officials.

Iran's controversial nuclear program was cited by the U.S. as one of the reasons behind its plans to deploy a missile base in Poland and radar in the Czech Republic. The missile shield has been strongly opposed by Russia, which views it as a threat to its national security. The dispute has strained relations between the former Cold War rivals, already tense over a host of other differences.

The leaders have exchanged letters and had a telephone conversation since Obama was sworn into office in January, Kommersant said. The first high-level Russia-U.S. meeting will take place later this week, when Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meets with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Geneva.

Moscow has not yet responded to the proposal by Obama, the paper said, adding that a decision was unlikely to be made during Lavrov and Clinton's meeting.

The issue is likely to be discussed when Obama and Medvedev meet in London on April 2 on the sidelines of the G20 summit of world leaders to address the financial crisis. Earlier reports said Medvedev had also invited the U.S. leader to visit Russia and the date of Obama's first visit to the largest country in the world could be announced in the British capital.

In an interview on Sunday with Spanish media, Medvedev said he hoped to discuss the issue of missile defense with Obama in London. He also said he hoped the new U.S. administration would display a "more creative approach" to the issue than its predecessors.

"We have received signals from our American colleagues," Medvedev said. "I expect those signals will turn into specific proposals. I hope to discuss the issue, which is extremely important for Europe, with U.S. President Barack Obama."

The United States and other Western nations suspect Tehran of secretly seeking nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is purely aimed at generating electricity. However, unlike his predecessor, George W. Bush, Obama has stated a preference for diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on the NBC television channel on Sunday that the Islamic Republic was not close to building a nuclear bomb. "They're not close to a stockpile, they're not close to a weapon at this point, and so there is some time," Gates said.

Gates also said that the while more sanctions should be imposed against Iran, the door should not be closed to diplomacy.

Should the U.S. Nationalize Banks?

By Alyssa A. Lappen

Well, it’s official.

Last Friday, the U.S. came within a hair of nationalizing a sick major bank. The government will receive up to 36% of Citigroup common shares—what financial markets would call control—for up to $25 billion in preferred stock bought in a failed October attempt to shore up the bank’s ailing capitalization.

For U.S. taxpayers, this could be a lose-lose proposition: As President Barack Obama’s newly named National Economic Council director Lawrence Summers observed last July, government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) tend to privatize profits and socialize losses. But the outcome will depend on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s next step, which he has not yet specified.

Yet pumping new capital into sick banks hasn’t worked. Hundreds of billions in taxpayer funds barely dented the problem. At least Uncle Sam won’t commit ad infinitum to back Citi’s liabilities without control, dramatic policy changes and a total dividend moratorium. Common shareholders stand to see their 100% Citigroup stake tumble to 26%, but have little choice. The alternative could be total loss. Perhaps $27.5 billion in preferred and special stock may also be converted in the potential $52.5 billion if owners like Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Singapore’s Government Investment Corp., Capital Research Global Investors and Capital World Investors and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority agree.

“This does something critical for the common good,” says Albert Romano, a former money center bank senior manager and trader, adding banks are but one industry affected by multiple converging crises. “We face widespread systemic risk. The overarching challenge goes beyond political views and philosophical differences.”

Even some die hard capitalists believe circumstances so grave that the U.S. must nationalize its banking system. Besides $1.2 trillion in subprime mortgages, New York University economics professors Matthew Richardson and Nouriel Roubini contend, $7 trillion in commercial real estate loans, consumer credit card debt, high-yield bonds and other loans could lose much of its value. The International Monetary Fund and Goldman Sachs predict bank loan write downs, now above $1 trillion, could exceed $2 trillion. Combined U.S. bank loan and portfolio losses could reach $3.6 trillion, with banks absorbing $1.8 trillion, the professors project. Banking industry capital, after U.S. government assistance, was only $1.4 trillion last fall—“about $400 billion in the hole.” Based largely on Sweden’s 1992 example, they argue, only nationalization, system-wide “receivership,” would stop “the death spiral,” resolve “toxic assets in an orderly fashion” and finally let lending resume.

Others disagree.

Sweden’s emergency bank authority resembled the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, writes former Stockholm School of Economics professor Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at Peterson Institute for International Economics. “It is sheer waste to try to recapitalize a damaged bank,” as the U.S. did with Citibank and others. Like “a worm in an apple,” toxic debts left alone “will devour the whole apple.” Sweden categorized banks as obviously bankrupt, under-capitalized but salvageable, or private but in “rude health.” It reviled private-public partnerships like the “telling and repulsive” Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. (Freddie Mac). Only Sweden’s bankrupt Gota Bank was nationalized and merged into the government’s own bankrupt Nordbanken, which was reconstituted as Nordea, revitalized and privatized. Private banks created private bad banks, through which they discounted or sold non-performing loans.

Already under government control, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac remain prone to privatize gains and socialize losses. Respectively founded in 1938 and 1970 to fill mortgage lending gaps, both benefit from U.S. government debt guarantees. In the early 1980s they “fed off the carcasses of the thrift industry,” enabling troubled savings and loans “to liquidate mortgage portfolios without recognizing losses.” Later, their easy lending policies fueled the current crisis: In 2003, they together held over half America’s outstanding mortgage debt. The Bush administration last year nationalized both bankrupt agencies. Yet they remain guarantors of the American dream—making home ownership universally available—a goal the Obama administration hasn’t relinquished.

Of most immediate concern is the banking industry’s terrible capitalization. Bank regulators require at least 6% of overall bank capitalization to be Tier 1—i.e. “intangible” preferred and special securities that ordinarily measure an institution’s health. For huge “money center” banks like Citi, U.S. economic cornerstones, regulators expect much higher Tier 1 capital ratios. But markets currently hate Tier 1 capital still more than bank common stock.

Thus the U.S. devised the new Citigroup rescue plan largely to sooth markets by creating up to $81 billion in tangible capital. Taxpayers lose out: The U.S. has collected only a quarter of $2.25 billion in annual dividends originally expected on $25 billion in preferred stock since October, although besides the control block, the U.S. would retain $27 billion in two other preferred “rescue” issues to convert into “separate trust preferred securities” paying 8% annually.

Unfortunately, markets disapprove. Citigroup shares fell 39% Friday, and further in after hours trading. Other banks were also pummeled. “The dose of intervention and its intended objectives will ultimately determine the validity of this temporary model,” says Romano. But as to whether political animus or President Obama’s social agenda will prevent an orderly resolution of the mess, the jury remains out.

Disgraced Merrill Lynch managing director Henry Blodget calls Geithner a “weird reverse Robin Hood,” shoveling money from regular guys “into banks that vaporize it.” The U.S. should force Citi to write down its assets and convert the company’s debt to common stock. Blodget understands balance sheet toxic assets have to go.

Unfortunately, “mark-to-market” accounting rules, intended to forestall managers from doctoring true asset values to disadvantage shareholders, are self-defeating in the current market. Panic has virtually eliminated normal markets, slashing bank balance sheet values for some of the most troubled assets to far less than the “near expected rate” cash flows that they currently produce.

Thus the obvious, best and simplest solution, also possibly closest to Sweden’s successful model, might be removing “bad” assets from bank balance sheets at “net realizable value,” argues American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Peter J. Wallison. Translation: paying a normal market price, if there were a normal market to realistically assess. Normal prices generally approximate current cash flows “discounted by expected credit losses over time.” Bank balance sheet losses are temporary “liquidity losses,” not indicative of whether banks are sufficiently financed to continue “until liquidity returns to the asset-backed market.” Banks aren’t insolvent, and “nationalization would be a huge mistake.” The U.S. could and should simply buy assets at independently-verified net realizable values, thus significantly improving bank industry capitalization—and U.S. economic health. Ultimately, taxpayers would lose little, since the government could sell the “toxic” assets for their true value, like Sweden’s private banks eventually did.

In any case, delaying puts the U.S. at risk of tumbling into something akin to Japan’s 1990s, decade-long banking crisis, Swedish economist Aslund warns. The Obama administration must “act fast” to identify, write off, and remove bad debts from normal banks—especially since assets at those banks equal at least $1 trillion, or 7 percent of America’s gross domestic product (GDP).

---

Alyssa A. Lappen is a former Senior Fellow of the American Center for Democracy, former Senior Editor of Institutional Investor, Working Woman and Corporate Finance, and former Associate Editor of Forbes.

Marine One Computer Security Breach

from USMC81

NOT GOOD! Somebody needs to be held accountable...
~Wally

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10184558-83.html
An Internet security company claims that Iran has taken advantage of a computer security breach to obtain engineering and communications information about Marine One, President Barack Obama's helicopter, according to a report by WPXI, NBC's affiliate in Pittsburgh.

Tiversa, headquartered in Cranberry Township, Pa., reportedly discovered a security breach that led to the transfer of military information to an Iranian IP address, according to WPXI. The information is said to include planned engineering upgrades, avionic schematics, and computer network information.

The channel quoted the company's CEO, Bob Boback, who said Tiversa found a file containing the entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One.

"What appears to be a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., had a file-sharing program on one of their systems that also contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One," Boback told WPXI.

Tiversa makes products that monitor the sharing of files online. A representative for the company was not immediately available for comment.

Boback believes that the files probably were transferred through a peer-to-peer file-sharing network such as LimeWire or BearShare, then compromised.

==
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/01/report-pennsylvania-company-discovers-marine-security-breach/

A Pennsylvania company that monitors peer-to-peer file-sharing networks discovered a potentially serious security breach involving President Obama's helicopter, Marine One, NBC affiliate WPXI in Pittsburgh reported.

Sensitive information about Marine One was reportedly found by Tiversa employees at an IP address in Tehran.

Tiversa CEO Bob Boback said a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., had a file sharing program on one of their systems that contained highly sensitive blueprints for Marine One and financial information about the cost of the helicopter.

"We found a file containing entire blueprints and avionics package for Marine One," Boback said.

Boback said the issue most likely stemmed from someone downloading the file-sharing program without realizing the problems that could result.

"When downloading one of these file-sharing programs, you are effectively allowing others around the world to access your hard drive," Boback told WPXI.

"We found where this information came from. We know exactly what computer it came from. I'm sure that person is embarrassed and may even lose their job, but we know where it came from and we know where it went," Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, an adviser to Tiversa, told WPXI.