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XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX TUES SEPT 30, 2003 20:52:37 ET XXXXX

‘SHE HAS BEEN UNDER COVER FOR THREE DECADES’

A former counter-terrorism official at the CIA and the State Department claimed Tuesday night that outted CIA agent “Valerie Plame” was under cover for three decades and was not a “CIA analyst” as columnist Bob Novak has suggested.

Larry Johnson made the charge on PBS’s NEWSHOUR.

“I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been under cover for three decades. She is not as Bob Novak suggested a “CIA analyst.” Given that, i was a CIA analyst for 4 years. I was under cover. I could not divulge to my family outside of my wife that I worked for the CIA unti I left the Intelligence Agency on Sept. 30, 1989. At that point I could admit it. The fact that she was under cover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous. She was put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an area where people she works with overseas could be compromised…

“For these journalists to argue that this is no big deal… and if I hear another Republican operative suggesting that, well, this was just an analyst. Fine. Let them go undercover. Let’s put them go overseas. Let’s out them and see how they like it…

“I say this as a registered Republican. I am on record giving contributions to the George Bush campaign. This is not about partisan politics. This is about a betrayal, a political smear, of an individual who had no relevance to the story. Publishing her name in that story added nothing to it because the entire intent was, correctly as Amb. Wilson noted, to intimidate, to suggest taht there was some impropriety that somehow his wife was in a decision-making position to influence his ability to go over and savage a stupid policy, an erroneous policy, and frankly what was a false policy of suggesting that there was nuclear material in Iraq that required this war. This was about a political attack. To pretend it was something else, to get into this parsing of words.

“I tell you, it sickens me to be a Republican to see this.”

… Rest of Article

Audio

Listen to Lynn Bradach: The mother of a US marine killed in Iraq while clearing mines after the war.
… Rest of Article

Now, in the scope of prosecuting Lamo, the FBI is doing the hacker one better by violating both of these precepts in one fell swoop.

The Bureau recently sent letters to a handful of reporters who have written stories about the Lamo case — whether or not they have actually interviewed Lamo. The letters warn them to expect subpoenas for all documents relating to the hacker, including, apparently, their own notes, e-mails, impressions, interviews with third parties, independent investigations, privileged conversations and communications, off the record statements, and expense and travel reports related to stories about Lamo.

In short, everything.

… Rest of Article

“We’ve shipped home three guys in bodybags and at least another 30 wounded since (U.S. President George W.) Bush declared this thing over,” said 23-year-old Lieut. Tanner, 173rd Airborne Brigade.

“Not all of those shipped home were suffering from physical wounds. Some simply cracked under the stress.”

For the majority of U.S. military personnel presently deployed in Iraq, the earliest rotation date home will not be until next April, which means they will have served, on average, a 14-month tour abroad. To make matters worse, with the coalition forces unable to provide a secure environment anywhere in Iraq, the troops have been unable to enjoy any local R&R.

“This is completely unprecedented,” said Staff Sgt. Allan Spry, a 17-year veteran with the 173rd Brigade.

“How long can they expect our guys to go without sex and alcohol?”

Although the U.S. soldiers in Iraq are under strict orders to remain “dry,” one indicator of a breakdown in unit discipline is the presence of Iraqi alcohol vendors outside most of the American camps.

Sexual fraternization is also forbidden, but the staggering number of pregnancies among U.S. female personnel has only exacerbated the Americans’ manpower shortage.

“The [women] know that getting knocked up is a ticket out of this s–thole,” claimed Cpl. Slaughter.

“We started out with 10 women (at the U.S. compound in Taji) and already three of them have gone home pregnant. Everyone knows that the lieutenant is pregnant but she just hasn’t told the commanding officer yet. So, that’s 40% of our women knocked up in less than five months.” … Rest of Article

“Our guys are not about to start taking any chances. We are planning to survive the tour, get home safe and get the hell out of the army,” Kostens concluded. ”And God help any Iraqis who get in the way of that plan.”

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan Ñ U.S. forces could be digging in for a stay of up to eight more years in Afghanistan, where frequent firefights continue on the border with Pakistan nearly two years after major combat ended.

Base operations officials at Bagram and Kandahar bases are operating on long-term plans for improvements to the bases, which include building barracks similar to those found in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, among other quality-of-life projects.

ÒThere is a long-term plan; weÕre going to be here a long time,Ó said Lt. Col. Steve Mahoney, base operations commander in Kandahar. Ò[The plan] is in a state of being updated. WeÕre constantly looking at it because the environment here is always changing.Ó

At Bagram air base, base operations has devised a five- to eight-year community master plan, in which all U.S. troops will eventually move from the west side of the airfield to the east side, said Lt. Col. Paul Kimbrough, at Bagram base operations.

The U.S.-controlled bases could end up looking similar to those in Kosovo and Bosnia, where soldiers have cappuccino bars and movie theaters, among other extras.

However, Mahoney says, the unstable situation in Afghanistan directly affects how much the command can do to improve living conditions.

ÒThe atmosphere here is much different,Ó said Command Sgt. Maj. Mike Wevodau, base operations at Bagram. Ò[Kosovo and Bosnia] are certainly dangerous, but itÕs a different situation here. While those places are able to concentrate on quality of life, we still have to consider force protection.

ÒHere, we have two priorities: support warfighting, and then improve quality of life.Ó… Rest of Article

Calvi was found hanging from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge in central London in June 1982 with bricks in his pockets and $15,000 on him. … Rest of Article

KUWAIT (Reuters) – Kuwaiti parliamentarians have reacted angrily to a U.S. suggestion the oil-rich emirate drop demands for billions of
dollars in war reparations owed by former foe Iraq, newpapers say.

U.S. civil administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer said on Friday that out of Iraq’s total debt of $200 billion, Baghdad owed $98 billion in
reparations to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for losses during the 1990-91 Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and the Gulf War.

“This is some kind of (U.S.) pressure on Kuwait .. the issue of the reparations is something that concerns the impacted countries and the
United Nations,” said MP Yousef al-Zalzalah in remarks carried by al-Watan daily on Sunday.

“Demanding that Kuwait of its own accord give up its rights is something unacceptable because the reparations are part of the big losses of
the tyrannical (Iraqi) invasion.”

Bremer said “it is curious to me to have a country whose (annual) per capita income GDP is about $800 … pay reparations to countries
whose per-capita GDP is a factor of 10 times that,” for a war which all Iraqis now in power opposed.

Saddam’s forces invaded Kuwait in 1990 and were driven out by U.S.-led multinational coalition in 1991. Iraq also launched missiles into
Saudi territory. Baghdad subsequently agreed to pay compensation for damage it caused, and some revenue from Iraq’s U.N. oil-for-food
deal went for payment of reparations.

“If Bremer is so concerned about per capita income he has to demand dropping all of the United States of America debts on poor nations
where per capita incomes don’t exceed $30 a year,” MP Daifallah Buramiya told English language daily Arab Times.
… Rest of Article

But nothing could have prepared the young Mancunian for the horrific events he witnessed on a May morning in 1953. Answering an emergency call, he witnessed scenes which would haunt him for half a century and thrust him to the centre of an inquiry into one of the darkest hours of British military history.

Until today Thornhill – now a 70-year-old pensioner – has never spoken publicly about what he saw. He feared the Ministry of Defence would send him to prison.

He has now broken his silence to tell of the day he arrived at Porton Down’s gas chamber and saw the convulsing body of 20-year-old Ronald Maddison thrashing around on the floor, spewing substances from his mouth.

Thornhill’s eyewitness testimony will form a key plank of the reopened inquest into Maddison’s death, which is due to be heard in the next few weeks.

Maddison, an RAF engineer from County Durham, had been used as a human guinea pig by MoD scientists experimenting on the lethal nerve gas sarin…. Rest of Article

Over the past three months, TIME has interviewed Iraqi weapons scientists, middlemen and former government officials. Saddam’s henchmen all make essentially the same claim: that Iraq’s once massive unconventional-weapons program was destroyed or dismantled in the 1990s and never rebuilt; that officials destroyed or never kept the documents that would prove it; that the shell games Saddam played with U.N. inspectors were designed to conceal his progress on conventional weapons systemsÑmissiles, air defenses, radarÑnot biological or chemical programs; and that even Saddam, a sucker for a new gadget or invention or toxin, may not have known what he actually had or, more to the point, didn’t have. It would be an irony almost too much to bear to consider that he doomed his country to war because he was intent on protecting weapons systems that didn’t exist in the first place. … Rest of Article

Gotta love it.

Last December, at his three-day God and World Peace event, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon drew a notable slate of political figures, from Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., to Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., and, perhaps most notably, James Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, who offered some respectful opening remarks to Moon’s Unification Church faithful. Moon followed, and called for all religions to come together in support of the Bush plan for faith-based initiatives… Rest of Article