http://lnk.nu/news.independent.co.uk/6p6.ece

5 December 2005 03:19

What planet are you on, Mr Bush? (and do you care, Mr Blair?)

Tens of thousands of people marched in 33 countries yesterday to express concern for the environment. But will their leaders respond? Geoffrey Lean and David Randall report

Published: 04 December 2005



Greenland glaciers have started to melt and race towards the sea

More than 100,000 people took to the streets in more than 30 countries yesterday, in the first world-wide demonstration to press for action to combat global warming.

The marches - timed to put pressure on the most important international climate-change negotiations since the agreement of the Kyoto Protocol eight years ago - took place against a background of a blizzard of new research showing that the heating of the planet is seriously affecting the world sooner than the scientists predicted (see panel below).

The protests were directed primarily at President George Bush, who has been assiduously trying to sabotage the protocol and has ruled out even talking about setting targets for reducing the pollution that causes global warming, once the current targetsexpire.

Harlan Watson - the head of the US delegation to the negotiations, being held in Montreal - announced at the opening of the meeting: "The United States is opposed to any such discussions."

Yesterday's march in London was also directed at Tony Blair.

Ten thousand demonstrators - who created a party atmosphere while carrying banners linking the President and the Prime Minister as "climate criminals" - took a special detour to hand in a letter at No 10 Downing Street.

They are concerned that Mr Blair - who put climate change at the head of the international agenda by making it one of his priorities for this summer's Gleneagles Summit - may have recently trimmed his position to please Mr Bush. The letter demanded that he reaffirm the Government's commitment to a new international treaty with legally binding targets on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants that cause the climate change.

The Prime Minister has caused widespread confusion by appearing to back such a treaty, then to cast doubt on it.

The protesters also demanded that Britain should do much more to cut its own pollution; emissions of carbon dioxide have actually risen since Labour took power in 1997, despite repeated election pledges to cut them by 20 per cent by 2010.

Nick Rau, Friends of the Earth's energy campaigner, said: "If the UK is serious about leadership on climate change then our Government needs to take action at home. It is not too late."

The first demonstration of the day took place in Australia when thousands of protesters marched in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Australia is, with the US, the only Western industrialised nation not to have ratified Kyoto.

The Australian government reacted by reaffirming its refusal to join the protocol, insisting, according to its Environment minister, Ian Campbell: "We need to do something that suits the developed world, something that suits the rapidly developing world - partnerships, technologies, economic mechanisms that drive us towards that."

One of the biggest demonstrations took place in Montreal where Inuit from the Arctic were keen to draw attention to the melting of ice in their territory, which is threatening their fishing and livelihoods. They were among a crowd of some 7,000 people, around half the number organisers had anticipated.

Five environmental groups, including Greenpeace and the Climate Crisis Coalition, delivered a petition signed by 600,000 Americans to the US Consulate in Montreal urging the Bush administration to help slow global warming.

In Washington, drivers of hybrid cars - which emit far less carbon dioxide - planned to drive around the White House. And in New Orleans - devastated by Hurricane Katrina - residents intended to hold a "Save New Orleans, Stop Global Warming" party in the French Quarter. Events were held in 40 other US cities. Protests were also held in Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey.

The US protests symbolised a major change in opinion in the United States since Hurricane Katrina, which doubled the number of people telling opinion polls that they believed global warming was an immediate threat. Another poll, carried out by the conservative Fox News, shows that more than three-quarters of Americans believe that global warming is happening and is at least partially caused by human activity, and that 60 per cent see it as a "crisis" or a "major problem".

But this has yet to make an impact on the Bush administration.

Camilla Toulmin, the director of the authoritative International Institute of Environment and Development, said: "In the case of the current US administration we may have to give up ever hoping for a flicker of intelligence on climate change. The pattern of interests based on oil and gas seems too closely knit into an armour-plated defence of US plc."

The Montreal conference, the first meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol since it came into force in February, has achieved one minor success. Delegates adopted most of the "rule book" needed to make the treaty operational, though tactics by Saudi Arabia have held up agreement on how countries that break the rules will be punished.

The UK Government - which is playing a key role in the talks as head of the EU delegation - was quick to hail this agreement, far from a foregone conclusion, as a triumph. But environmentalists pointed out that the situation is dire indeed if there could be doubt over whether even previously agreed rules would be formally adopted.

The conference will also address bureaucratic UN procedures which have held up schemes to provide funds to developing countries to adopt cleaner technologies and development policies.

But the real sticking point is what happens in the future.

Scientists are broadly agreed that rich countries have to reduce their emissions by a massive 80 per cent by 2050 if there is to be any hope of stopping climate change escalating out of control.

The Kyoto protocol targets, even if they are met, will reduce them by only 5.2 per cent, and everyone agrees that it barely makes a dent on the problem. Stavros Dimas, the European environment commissioner, briefly cheered the conference by predicting that the EU would meet its targets two years before the deadline. But even he admitted that little was likely to be achieved in Montreal.

"Our objective is to get an agreement to start negotiations," he said.

And Margaret Beckett, the Secretary of State for the Environment, said that anyone who believed that the meeting was going to agree to new pollution reduction targets was "living in cloud-cuckoo land". She added: "Let's see how we can move forward instead of setting some arbitrary goal that cannot possibly be achieved."

Britain says that moving forward depends on getting the US and leading developing countries such as China, India and Brazil to agree to join the battle against the climate change.

Both camps have said that they will not join any new treaty unless the other does.

But the developing countries have already taken far-reaching domestic action to cut pollution and develop renewable energy and were expressing their willingness in Montreal's corridors last week to "play their part". The big obstacle - as yesterday's demonstrators pointed out - is the White House.

GLOBAL MELTDOWN

The catalogue of disasters that are happening right now
Across the planet, rising temperatures are taking their toll

CARBON DIOXIDE

New research has found that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - the main cause of global warming - are higher than at any time in the past 625,000 years. HOTTEST EVER
This year is expected to be the warmest ever recorded; 1998 was the hottest so far, but the past three years currently occupy the next three places.

DESERTIFICATION

The giant Kalahari desert, already four times the size of Britain, threatens to become larger still, covering farmland in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa.

EXPANDING OCEANS

The level of the world's seas and oceans is rising twice as fast as in the past, as their waters expand in rising temperatures and glaciers melt.

OCEAN EXILES

The people of the Carteret Islands, a scattering of atolls off Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific, have started to leave as their homes succumb to rising seas.

HURRICANES

Hurricane Epsilon - the 14th of the year - is forming in the Atlantic, even though the worst recorded hurricane season by far formally ended on Wednesday.

GLACIER MELT

Greenland glaciers have suddenly started racing towards the sea and melting. Much the same is beginning to happen to glaciers in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

WATER SHORTAGE

Areas such as the western USA, which depend on mountain snows for their water supplies, are running short as less snow falls - and what does fall melts earlier.

DISAPPEARING SPECIES

Sealife and birdlife have declined catastrophically this year along America's north-west Pacific coast, after a similar meltdown in the North Sea.

CORAL REEFS

Corals on the Great Barrier Reef are bleaching out and dying as sea temperatures rise and scientists fear that the whole reef may perish by 2050.

Greenland glaciers have started to melt and race towards the sea

More than 100,000 people took to the streets in more than 30 countries yesterday, in the first world-wide demonstration to press for action to combat global warming.

The marches - timed to put pressure on the most important international climate-change negotiations since the agreement of the Kyoto Protocol eight years ago - took place against a background of a blizzard of new research showing that the heating of the planet is seriously affecting the world sooner than the scientists predicted (see panel below).

The protests were directed primarily at President George Bush, who has been assiduously trying to sabotage the protocol and has ruled out even talking about setting targets for reducing the pollution that causes global warming, once the current targetsexpire.

Harlan Watson - the head of the US delegation to the negotiations, being held in Montreal - announced at the opening of the meeting: "The United States is opposed to any such discussions."

Yesterday's march in London was also directed at Tony Blair.

Ten thousand demonstrators - who created a party atmosphere while carrying banners linking the President and the Prime Minister as "climate criminals" - took a special detour to hand in a letter at No 10 Downing Street.

They are concerned that Mr Blair - who put climate change at the head of the international agenda by making it one of his priorities for this summer's Gleneagles Summit - may have recently trimmed his position to please Mr Bush. The letter demanded that he reaffirm the Government's commitment to a new international treaty with legally binding targets on reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants that cause the climate change.

The Prime Minister has caused widespread confusion by appearing to back such a treaty, then to cast doubt on it.

The protesters also demanded that Britain should do much more to cut its own pollution; emissions of carbon dioxide have actually risen since Labour took power in 1997, despite repeated election pledges to cut them by 20 per cent by 2010.

Nick Rau, Friends of the Earth's energy campaigner, said: "If the UK is serious about leadership on climate change then our Government needs to take action at home. It is not too late."

The first demonstration of the day took place in Australia when thousands of protesters marched in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Australia is, with the US, the only Western industrialised nation not to have ratified Kyoto.

The Australian government reacted by reaffirming its refusal to join the protocol, insisting, according to its Environment minister, Ian Campbell: "We need to do something that suits the developed world, something that suits the rapidly developing world - partnerships, technologies, economic mechanisms that drive us towards that."

One of the biggest demonstrations took place in Montreal where Inuit from the Arctic were keen to draw attention to the melting of ice in their territory, which is threatening their fishing and livelihoods. They were among a crowd of some 7,000 people, around half the number organisers had anticipated.

Five environmental groups, including Greenpeace and the Climate Crisis Coalition, delivered a petition signed by 600,000 Americans to the US Consulate in Montreal urging the Bush administration to help slow global warming.

In Washington, drivers of hybrid cars - which emit far less carbon dioxide - planned to drive around the White House. And in New Orleans - devastated by Hurricane Katrina - residents intended to hold a "Save New Orleans, Stop Global Warming" party in the French Quarter. Events were held in 40 other US cities. Protests were also held in Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey.

The US protests symbolised a major change in opinion in the United States since Hurricane Katrina, which doubled the number of people telling opinion polls that they believed global warming was an immediate threat. Another poll, carried out by the conservative Fox News, shows that more than three-quarters of Americans believe that global warming is happening and is at least partially caused by human activity, and that 60 per cent see it as a "crisis" or a "major problem".

But this has yet to make an impact on the Bush administration. Camilla Toulmin, the director of the authoritative International Institute of Environment and Development, said: "In the case of the current US administration we may have to give up ever hoping for a flicker of intelligence on climate change. The pattern of interests based on oil and gas seems too closely knit into an armour-plated defence of US plc."

The Montreal conference, the first meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol since it came into force in February, has achieved one minor success. Delegates adopted most of the "rule book" needed to make the treaty operational, though tactics by Saudi Arabia have held up agreement on how countries that break the rules will be punished.

The UK Government - which is playing a key role in the talks as head of the EU delegation - was quick to hail this agreement, far from a foregone conclusion, as a triumph. But environmentalists pointed out that the situation is dire indeed if there could be doubt over whether even previously agreed rules would be formally adopted.

The conference will also address bureaucratic UN procedures which have held up schemes to provide funds to developing countries to adopt cleaner technologies and development policies.

But the real sticking point is what happens in the future.

Scientists are broadly agreed that rich countries have to reduce their emissions by a massive 80 per cent by 2050 if there is to be any hope of stopping climate change escalating out of control.

The Kyoto protocol targets, even if they are met, will reduce them by only 5.2 per cent, and everyone agrees that it barely makes a dent on the problem. Stavros Dimas, the European environment commissioner, briefly cheered the conference by predicting that the EU would meet its targets two years before the deadline. But even he admitted that little was likely to be achieved in Montreal. "Our objective is to get an agreement to start negotiations," he said.

And Margaret Beckett, the Secretary of State for the Environment, said that anyone who believed that the meeting was going to agree to new pollution reduction targets was "living in cloud-cuckoo land". She added: "Let's see how we can move forward instead of setting some arbitrary goal that cannot possibly be achieved."

Britain says that moving forward depends on getting the US and leading developing countries such as China, India and Brazil to agree to join the battle against the climate change.

Both camps have said that they will not join any new treaty unless the other does.

But the developing countries have already taken far-reaching domestic action to cut pollution and develop renewable energy and were expressing their willingness in Montreal's corridors last week to "play their part". The big obstacle - as yesterday's demonstrators pointed out - is the White House.

GLOBAL MELTDOWN

The catalogue of disasters that are happening right now
Across the planet, rising temperatures are taking their toll

CARBON DIOXIDE

New research has found that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - the main cause of global warming - are higher than at any time in the past 625,000 years. HOTTEST EVER
This year is expected to be the warmest ever recorded; 1998 was the hottest so far, but the past three years currently occupy the next three places.

DESERTIFICATION

The giant Kalahari desert, already four times the size of Britain, threatens to become larger still, covering farmland in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa.

EXPANDING OCEANS

The level of the world's seas and oceans is rising twice as fast as in the past, as their waters expand in rising temperatures and glaciers melt.

OCEAN EXILES

The people of the Carteret Islands, a scattering of atolls off Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific, have started to leave as their homes succumb to rising seas.

HURRICANES

Hurricane Epsilon - the 14th of the year - is forming in the Atlantic, even though the worst recorded hurricane season by far formally ended on Wednesday.

GLACIER MELT

Greenland glaciers have suddenly started racing towards the sea and melting. Much the same is beginning to happen to glaciers in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

WATER SHORTAGE

Areas such as the western USA, which depend on mountain snows for their water supplies, are running short as less snow falls - and what does fall melts earlier.

DISAPPEARING SPECIES

Sealife and birdlife have declined catastrophically this year along America's north-west Pacific coast, after a similar meltdown in the North Sea.

CORAL REEFS

Corals on the Great Barrier Reef are bleaching out and dying as sea temperatures rise and scientists fear that the whole reef may perish by 2050.

---

"It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment." - Ansel Adams

If one's had any doubts San Antonio-based Clear Channel Communications (CCU) and its program distributor, Premiere Radio, which syndicates not only 'Coast-to-Coast AM' but the likes of Rush Limbaugh, is a vessel for the rabid right-wing, you need to look no further for an example than George Noory hosting Jerry Corsi.

Corsi appeared during the first hour of the program Monday morning and not only spouted warnings over a nuclear Iran but, he went further, expressing concern about World War looming in our immediate future as the result of a surprise attack on the U.S. by Russia and China.

One should examine who Mr. Corsi is closer by first visiting Wilkpedia on-line.

You'll find Jerome (Jerry) R. Corsi is described as an American author and conservative activist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Corsi

Reading further on our subject, one will learn Corsi co-authored the 'Swift Boat Vets' attack book on John Kerry during the Presidential race.

Corsi's links in the GOP, go back to his days as a protégé of Nixon-era dirty trickster, Charles Colson. http://mediamatters.org/items/200408060010

His alleged ‘charitable’ web site seems more concerned with beating the war drums over an 'ATOMIC IRAN' than charity. http://www.cumberlandhouse.com/atomiciransite.htm

This is clearly nothing less than rabid right-wing propaganda on the level of garbage one would find posted by the so-called on-line news source, World Net Daily, that happens, in fact, to feature Mr. Corsi within its electronic fish wrap.

The concern here is, aside from the spin on the threat posed by Iran and defense of Israel's far-right stance, the Neocons are preparing us, by slowly spreading this information to the grassroots through such means as the late-night Coast-to-Coast AM, for a coming Armageddon the ‘N-Cs’ actually intend to bring about.

Corsi's warnings, thereby, provided the very excuses they want us to believe should such disastrous events as he predicted do occur.

Odd how Noory’s featured guest following Corsi, Doctor Marc Siegel, discussed his book, False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear. http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2005/12/04.html

One would think the entire C2C program should have been designated as such.

My position, frankly, is that if either the U.S. or Israel with Neocon blessings bring about such a scenario, then this country being attacked by Russia and/or China should not be a surprise but anticipated, as well as, unfortunately, deserved.

Perhaps if our population suddenly finds itself living under conditions such as those our nation has inflicted elsewhere, the sheep among us will finally be roused to take action against the thugs presently holding our government hostage, rather than continue to rally behind them waving their little plastic flags.

EOTS 12/5/05

BBC REVIEW OF GERMAN REPORT:

CIA flights 'landed in Germany'



The report said CIA planes had
used the US airbase in Ramstein

The German government has a list of at least 437 flights suspected of being operated by the CIA in German airspace, according to a German magazine.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4496322.stm

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THE COMPLETE ARTICLE FROM DER SPIEGEL

http://lnk.nu/service.spiegel.de/6od.html

-

November 28, 2005

CIA FLIGHTS IN EUROPE

The Hunt for Hercules N8183J

By Georg Mascolo, Hans-Jürgen Schlamp and Holger Stark

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A bitter debate over torture has erupted in Europe. Washington is believed to have used EU countries as transit points for moving terrorism suspects to clandestine locations where they may have been tortured. The Council of Europe and other organizations are now demanding answers -- from the US and European countries who looked the other way.


AP: A solitary confinement cage at
Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Dick Marty, a liberal-minded Swiss citizen with a gray beard, glasses and a high forehead, knows what it's like to face a powerful opponent. As a prosecutor, he once successfully prosecuted the Mafia. His current adversary is just as intimidating and perhaps even more secretive than the Mafia. It's the United States Central Intelligence Agency, which, in an effort to back the White House, has responded to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by kidnapping terrorism suspects and presumably abusing them in secret prisons. Now the Council of Europe has hired Marty to find out which European countries may have helped the US agents achieve their objectives.

Last Friday, the Swiss prosecutor made it clear that he has no compunctions about picking a fight with the world's sole remaining superpower. A self-confident Marty filed a request with the European Union's satellite center in Torrejón, Spain for satellite photographs from the past three years. He hopes to use the images to determine whether the alleged secret prisons did in fact exist, in countries like Poland and Romania. He also contacted the European aviation authority, Eurocontrol, asking for data on the flight movements of 31 aircraft suspected of having served as CIA shuttles for the transport of prisoners or abducted terrorism suspects.

Marty's mission touches on a hot-button issue -- and it's the first serious attempt to investigate and expose an arbitrary system Washington has allegedly used as one of its most effective weapons in combating terrorism. The US agents have used torture-like methods that many experts believe violate international law to extract statements from suspected members of al-Qaida. Until now, Washington's European allies have consistently looked the other way when it came to this notorious aspect of the worldwide counterterrorism effort.

A regular CIA gulag appears to have been created in recent years, with many prisoners kept in Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and various central Asian nations, places where the CIA was given access to the prisoners at all times. Alvaro Gil-Robles, Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe, also claims to have seen a suspicious-looking prison camp at Camp Bondsteel, an American base in Kosovo.

But the highest-ranking al-Qaida members are apparently kept moving with a small group of CIA interrogation experts, like an invisible caravan, from one of the so-called black sites to another. Outrage over claims that some of these secret prisons may be located at former military bases in Eastern Europe triggered the Council of Europe's investigation.

Turning a blind eye to human rights violations?

In the past, the Europeans turned a blind eye to the Americans' human rights violations. After all, Islamist terror was considered more dangerous and, more importantly, was being committed by a common enemy. But now European politicians have had enough.

Marty secretly hopes for trans-Atlantic cooperation, and he may well get it. A heated debate has broken out in the United States over whether the West's leading power can resort to torture when it believes its national security is under threat. The Bush administration's draconian methods have met with sharp resistance in the US Senate. US President George W. Bush, for his part, has threatened to veto an amendment that would require the CIA -- like any other US government agency -- to use only methods allowed under international law to extract information from its prisoners. Vice President Dick Cheney's vehement efforts to obstruct the amendment even prompted former CIA Director Stansfield Turner to angrily label Cheney a "vice president for torture."

Another amendment the US Congress recently approved would give the US government 60 days to present a detailed report on the secret CIA prisons, or black sites. Specifically, Congress wants information on both the locations of these sites and all the interrogation methods allegedly used there. In other words, it appears that the US Congress and Swiss prosecutor Marty are both urgently seeking the same information.

The Council of Europe's investigator already submitted a discreet request to the office of Democratic Senator John Kerry, who proposed the amendment, asking for information on the outcome of the report. Meanwhile, however, Marty can at least look forward to receiving informal help. In light of the heated debate over torture in Washington, the prospects of keeping the highly confidential report under wraps are slim.

The White House is increasingly coming under fire, especially in light of the difficulties Bush is having in convincing his fellow Americans that he is, in fact, winning the global war against terrorism. Indeed, every attempt on the part of the administration to suppress the revolt in the Senate against White House-sanctioned interrogation practices has so far failed.

The US does not engage in torture, but rather "unique and innovative" methods of prisoner interrogation, explains CIA Director Porter Goss. But what these methods entail has since become public knowledge. Under the policy, blows to the face and the abdomen are allowed, as is the apparently routine practice of forcing prisoners to stand for 40-hour periods in ice-cold cells while periodically spraying them with cold water. In an especially repugnant practice known as waterboarding, the prisoner is made to believe that he is drowning. "We must never simply fight evil with evil," says Republican Senator John McCain, himself a torture victim during the Vietnam War. "It will kill us."

European governments in the hot seat

The investigations in Europe are also acquiring a new sense of urgency, prompted by an official investigation request filed by the Council of Europe, which arrived in European capitals last Tuesday and has made officials nervous in several member states, including Germany. In a questionnaire accompanying the request, Terry Davis, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, asks for information on the "activities of foreign services" on German soil and demands an investigation into the possible abduction of suspected al-Qaida activists. The request also includes questions about prisoner "transport by air."


DER SPIEGEL Graphic:
Suspected CIA terror flights in Europe
(To enlarge go to direct image link)

The German government will have some explaining to do, especially when it comes to charges that the German authorities turned a blind eye to the Americans having used their military base in Frankfurt am Main, which was just closed in October, Berlin's Schönefeld Airport and the US military base in Ramstein essentially as European transfer stations for their secret prisoner transports.

British journalist Stephen Grey, who claims to have a list of the flight movements of CIA aircraft, says he has discovered 210 suspicious flights in England alone. In January 2003, the Austrian air force even sent up two fighter jets to check on a suspicious Hercules flying under registration number N8183J.

An investigation later revealed that the plane had taken off from the Rhine-Main Airbase in Frankfurt and was operated by Tepper Aviation, which is considered a CIA front company.

The German government has long been unofficially aware of such episodes. But it too has no knowledge of what or who was actually being transported on the aircraft. Nevertheless, Berlin has yet to follow the lead of the Danish government, which insisted that the Pentagon discontinue flights in Danish airspace that are "incompatible with international conventions."

The Council of Europe also wants to know how the German government intends to ensure that such activities on the part of "foreign agencies" are monitored in the future -- and "to what extent domestic law provides for a suitable response to such violations of the law," especially when they relate to the "curtailment of liberty by foreign agencies."

In short, the Council of Europe wants to know what European governments intend to do about CIA agents being allowed to fly their prisoners across Europe with impunity. The Germans won't be the only ones with some explaining to do by Feb. 21, the deadline for all member states to return the questionnaire. The truth is that hardly any US ally in Europe has sufficiently met its obligation to comply with the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits any form of torture.

In Germany, there is at least one documented case of the CIA abducting Khaled el-Masri, from the southern city of Neu-Ulm.

The story of Masri, who was abducted in Macedonia in late 2003 and flown to Afghanistan in January 2004, is one of the first cases to expose the secret CIA program.

Masri, who has had a German passport for the past decade, was interrogated for months in a prison in Afghanistan, where he was likely tortured and, after no evidence was found to incriminate him, was secretly flown back to Europe in late May 2004. The case has drawn the attention of both the German and the Spanish authorities, because the aircraft used to transport Masri, a Boeing 737 with registration number N313P, was owned by a company with ties to the CIA and made a stop on the Spanish island of Mallorca.

The German government must have known about the allegations by no later than June 2004, when Masri's attorney, Manfred Gnjidic wrote to then Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and the Federal Chancellery. The authorities reacted as they often do in embarrassing situations, using behind-the-scenes diplomacy in an attempt to make the problem go away.

At first, agents with Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND), sent a discreet inquiry to their US counterparts with whom they normally enjoy a close working relationship. The reply was succinct: it was a mistake, the kind that happens now and then.

Then, in Feb. 2005, then Interior Minister Otto Schily flew to Washington and met with CIA Director Goss. Schily demanded an explanation and an assurance that the abductions would cease. But this time Schily, otherwise known for his good relationship with the Bush administration, came away more or less empty-handed.

In a similar case, the Italian Justice Ministry has attempted to exert pressure on its own judiciary. Justice Minister Roberto Castelli publicly chastised a Milan public prosecutor who caused trouble for Castelli by filing an extradition request for 22 CIA agents. Prosecutor Armando Spataro said that in February 2003 the US agents kidnapped Imam Abu Omar in broad daylight in Milan, placed him on a Lear jet operated by CIA airline Tepper Aviation, and sent him to Egypt via the US airbase in Ramstein, Germany. If Castelli sends the extradition request to Washington, the move will anger the Bush administration. But if he refuses, he'll irritate many Italians. To avert either outcome, Castelli first plans to meticulously examine the prosecutor's petition for signs of "leftist anti-Americanism."

Two Eastern European countries are coming under even more pressure than Germany or Italy: Poland and Romania, both countries that apparently served as temporary destinations for the CIA's secret al-Qaida transports. Insiders in Washington claim that the two countries also contained secret black sites.

The issue is especially worrisome to the Romanians. If investigator Marty, currently making inquiries in Bucharest, finds evidence of the existence of a secret US prison, the country's planned accession to the EU in 2007 could be in jeopardy. But all other Europeans who, despite not having actively supported the prisoner transports, looked the other way for too long will hardly be able to avoid coming clean. "If it becomes apparent that flying torture chambers are circling over Europe," threatens Martin Schulz, Social Democratic group leader in the European Parliament, "there will be no getting around an official inquiry."

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Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS

The Forgotten Prisoner: A Tale of Extraordinary Renditions and Double-Standards (11/21/2005)

Terror and Diplomacy: The US Stands Accused of Kidnapping (02/14/2005)

© DER SPIEGEL 48/2005

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ALSO SEE:

US civil rights group to sue CIA


Reports claim al-Qaeda members
are being held in clandestine jails

A US civil rights groups says it is taking the CIA to court to stop the transportation of terror suspects to countries outside US legal authority.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4494246.stm

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"They are engaging in acts which amount to torture in the medieval sense of the phrase. They are engaging in good old-fashioned torture, as people would have understood it in the Dark Ages." - Australian attorney Richard Bourke

http://lnk.nu/huffingtonpost.com/6oi.html

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WANTED: PLAN TO STABILIZE IRAQ CITIES TO DEFEAT INSURGENCY. $1 BILLION AVAILABLE. INVITATION OPEN TO ANY TYPE OF ENTITY...

USAID   |  Posted December 3, 2005 10:04 AM

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"The United States Agency for International Development is seeking applications for an Assistance Agreement from qualified sources to design and implement a social and economic stabilization program impacting ten Strategic Cities, identified by the United States Government as critical to the defeat of the Insurgency in Iraq. The number of Strategic Cities may expand or contract over time. USAID plans to provide approximately $1,020,000,000 over two years to meet the objectives of the Program. An additional option year may be considered amounting to $300 million at the discretion of USAID. Funds are not yet available for this program."

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From fedgrants.gov

IRAQ: Strategic City Stabilization Initiative (SCSI)

General Information

Document Type: Grants Notice

Funding Opportunity Number: RFA 267-06-001

Posted Date: Nov 30, 2005

Original Due Date for Applications: Jan 31, 2006

The Request for Application will be issued after December 16, 2005

Current Due Date for Applications: Jan 31, 2006

The Request for Application will be issued after December 16, 2005

Archive Date: Mar 02, 2006

Funding Instrument Type: Cooperative Agreement

Category of Funding Activity: Regional Development

Expected Number of Awards: Not Available.

Estimated Total Program Funding: $1,020,000,000.00

Award Ceiling: $1,320,000,000.00

Award Floor: $1,020,000,000.00

CFDA Number: 98.001 -- USAID Foreign Assistance for Programs Overseas

Cost Sharing or Matching Requirement: No

Eligible Applicants

Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled "Additional Information on Eligibility"

Agency Name

Agency for International Development, Overseas Missions, Iraq (CPA) USAID-Baghdad

Description

The United States Agency for International Development is seeking applications for an Assistance Agreement from qualified sources to design and implement a social and economic stabilization program impacting ten Strategic Cities, identified by the United States Government as critical to the defeat of the Insurgency in Iraq. The number of Strategic Cities may expand or contract over time. USAID plans to provide approximately $1,020,000,000 over two years to meet the objectives of the Program. An additional option year may be considered amounting to $300 million at the discretion of USAID. Funds are not yet available for this program.

Link to Full Announcement

IRAQ: Strategic City Stabilization Initiative (SCSI)

If you have difficulty accessing the full announcement electronically, please contact:

Feurtado, Yvette, Contracting Officer, Phone 962-6-590-6477, Fax 962-6-590-6333, Email yfeurtado@usaid.gov Feurtado, Yvette

http://lnk.nu/nytimes.com/6o5.html

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December 4, 2005

Report Finds Cover-Up in an F.B.I. Terror Case

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 - Officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation mishandled a Florida terror investigation, falsified documents in the case in an effort to cover repeated missteps and retaliated against an agent who first complained about the problems, Justice Department investigators have concluded.

In one instance, someone altered dates on three F.B.I. forms using correction fluid to conceal an apparent violation of federal wiretap law, according to a draft report of an investigation by the Justice Department inspector general's office obtained by The New York Times. But investigators were unable to determine who altered the documents.

The agent who first alerted the F.B.I. to problems in the case, a veteran undercover operative named Mike German, was "retaliated against" by his boss, who was angered by the agent's complaints and stopped using him for prestigious assignments in training new undercover agents, the draft report concluded.

Mr. German's case first became public last year, as he emerged as the latest in a string of whistle-blowers at the bureau who said they had been punished and effectively silenced for voicing concerns about the handling of terror investigations and other matters since Sept. 11, 2001.

The inspector general's draft report, dated Nov. 15 and awaiting final review, validated most of Mr. German's central accusations in the case. But the former agent, who left the bureau last year after he said his career had been derailed by the Florida episode, said he felt more disappointment than vindication.

"More than anything else, I'm saddened by all this," Mr. German said in an interview. "I still love the F.B.I., and I know that there are good, honest, hard-working agents out there trying to do the right thing, and this hurts all of them."

Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I., has emphasized repeatedly, both publicly and in private messages to his staff, that employees are encouraged to come forward with reports of wrongdoing and that he will not tolerate retaliation against whistle-blowers.

Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who has been a frequent critic of the bureau, said of Mr. German: "Unfortunately, this is just another case in a long line of F.B.I. whistle-blowers who have had their careers derailed because the F.B.I. couldn't tolerate criticism."

Michael Kortan, an F.B.I. spokesman, said the bureau had not been briefed on the findings. But Mr. Kortan said that when the F.B.I. received the report, "if either misconduct or other wrongdoing is found, we will take appropriate action."

Ann Beeson, associate legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said that the inspector general's findings, coming just days after the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from an earlier F.B.I. whistle-blower, pointed to the need for tougher measures to protect those who report abuse. "With courts reluctant to protect whistle-blowers, it is crucial that Congress pass additional protections," Ms. Beeson said.

Mr. German's case dates to 2002, when the F.B.I. division in Tampa opened a terror investigation into a lead that laundered proceeds, possibly connected to a drug outfit, might be used to finance terrorists overseas. The F.B.I. was considering initiating an undercover operation to follow the lead, and Mr. German, who had extensive experience infiltrating militias, skinheads and other groups, was asked to take part.

But in the coming months, Mr. German would alert F.B.I. officials that the Orlando agent handling the case had "so seriously mishandled" the investigation that a prime opportunity to expose a terrorist financing plot had been wasted. He said agents had not adequately pursued leads, had failed to document important meetings with informants, and had tolerated violations of rules and federal law on the handling of wiretaps.

The report, in one of its few dissents from Mr. German's accusations, said it could not confirm that the F.B.I. had missed an important chance to expose terrorism. Rather, it cited two findings by the bureau that the prime informant had misled agents about the terrorism angle in the case and that "there was no viable terrorism case."

Nonetheless, the inspector general found that the F.B.I. had "mishandled and mismanaged" the investigation, partly through the failure to document important developments for months at a time. The report also found that supervisors were aware of problems in the case but did not take prompt action to correct them.

Moreover, after Mr. German raised concerns about the lack of documentation, an unnamed agent in Orlando "improperly added inaccurate dates to the investigative reports in order to make it appear as though the reports were prepared earlier," the inspector general found.

In addition, someone used correction fluid to backdate by two months a set of forms that the main informant had signed as part of a bugging operation, in which he agreed that he had to be present for all undercover taping.

The backdating was significant, the inspector general said, because the informant had taped a 2002 meeting with several suspects but had left the recording device unattended while he went to use the restroom - a violation of federal law.

Mr. German became increasingly vocal within the F.B.I. about what he saw as the bureau's failure to correct missteps, taking his concerns directly to Mr. Mueller in a 2003 e-mail message. His complaints, the inspector general found, led agents in Florida, Washington and Oregon to distance themselves from him.

In the most serious instance, the head of the F.B.I. undercover unit, Jorge Martinez, froze Mr. German out of teaching assignments in undercover training and told one agent that Mr. German would "never work another undercover case," the report said.

Mr. Martinez told investigators that he did not remember making the statements but that if he had, it was a "knee-jerk reaction but did not mean to indicate I was retaliating against him," the report said.

The inspector general disagreed. It said in the report that Mr. Martinez's treatment of Mr. German amounted to improper retaliation and "discrimination that could have a chilling effect on whistle-blowing."

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Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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"The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on [them]" - James W. Fulbright - US senator, 1905-1995