Washington Post: Turkish Intelligence Official Charges CIA Backs Fethullah Gulen Islamists

Why am I not surprised by this story in the Washington Post?

A memoir by a top former Turkish intelligence official claims that a worldwide moderate Islamic movement based in Pennsylvania has been providing cover for the CIA since the mid-1990s.

The memoir, roughly rendered in English as “Witness to Revolution and Near Anarchy,” by retired Turkish intelligence official Osman Nuri Gundes, says the religious-tolerance movement, led by an influential former Turkish imam by the name of Fethullah Gulen, has 600 schools and 4 million followers around the world.

In the 1990s, Gundes alleges, the movement "sheltered 130 CIA agents" at its schools in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan alone, according to a report on his memoir Wednesday by the Paris-based Intelligence Online newsletter.

The book has caused a sensation in Turkey since it was published last month.

Someone in Congress should really look into these allegations of CIA support for Islamists. Obviously, it is not winning everyone's "hearts and minds" in Turkey.

IMHO, If it this program is still going on, it needs to be closed down immediately--if not sooner.

Document of the Week: Indictment of NY Times Reporter James Risen's CIA Source

The case is USA v. Jeffrey Alexander Sterling. (ht FAS Secrecy News) Secrecy News has published an interesting analysis of the document that points out that although not named in the indictment, it clearly alleges that Sterling was a source for New York Times reporter Risen. FAS Secrecy News also points out why Wikileaks is necessary (as were Jack Anderson, Drew Pearson, Woodward & Bernstein, Matt Drudge, Breitbart, Arianna Huffington, et al.):

“In or about early May 2003, senior management from Author A’s employer informed a senior United States government official that the newspaper article would not be published.” That is, the New York Times decided not to publish the classified information at issue after the U.S. government argued that its revelation would damage national security. But Mr. Risen reached a different conclusion and went on to write about the material in his 2006 book State of War. In a contest of this sort, the party that is willing to publish naturally determines the outcome.

Apparently Condoleeza Rice persuaded the NY Times to kill the story. Now Iran is on the verge of detonating its first A-Bomb. Who, exactly, harmed national security in this case? It would seem to me manifest that suppression of the original story helped enable Iran's A-Bomb program...

Where is the GAO's NPR Funding Audit?

Colorado Congressman Doug Lambron asked for the Government Accountability Office to audit NPR in December, 2010. So far, no results have been reported. I doubt any audit has taken place. Lamborn opposes federal funding for NPR, which may be why the GAO hasn't moved forward. However, given the recent resignation of Ellen Weiss, and disclosure of the $300,000 salary paid to NPR president Vivian Schiller (even without an unpaid bonus), clearly some sort of audit is needed, asap. NPR received $450 million dollars from the late Joan Kroc. It may not need federal money to keep going. And if it doesn't need it--why pay it?

The audit should also look into how much NPR paid its legal counsel for the recent report on the firing of Juan Williams--and whether severance may have been provided to Ellen Weiss as "hush money."

Meanwhile, here's Congressman Lamborn's press release from last year:

Lamborn Calls for Independent Audit of NPR Funds
12/08/10
Cites Concerns With 'Complicated Revenue Streams'

Congressman Doug Lamborn (CO-05) this week sent a letter to the Acting Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Mr. Gene Dodaro, asking for a thorough audit of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and National Public Radio (NPR) so lawmakers can clearly identify NPR's use of federal dollars.

“In the era of trillion dollar annual deficits, we obviously must cut our federal spending. We no longer have the luxury of funding non-essential services, if we ever did. As we move forward with tough spending cuts, it is critical that we have the most accurate picture of government spending to ensure the cuts are made responsibly.”– Doug Lamborn (CO-05)

Below are excerpts from the letter:

“…it is imperative that an accurate and complete snapshot of CPB’s use of taxpayer funding be available to lawmakers and the public. Unfortunately, the charts, figures, statistics and documents posted on these entities’ websites—and often cited in the news media—do not sufficiently account for the complicated revenue streams between and within these entities. Efforts by Congressional staff, including the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, to contact CPB and NPR for clarification in this regard have been frustrating and limited in success.

“I ask that the GAO undertake an audit of CPB or otherwise conduct an investigation to assess its overall financial and fiduciary relationship with NPR and PBS, and present to Congress how all sources of federal funding are used within and among them. In regards to NPR specifically, I ask that GAO provide a breakdown of the following:

The originating governmental source and specific amount of federal funds given to the NPR organization
The originating governmental source and specific amount of federal funds given directly to local affiliate stations
The flow of these aforementioned federal funds from CPB to the NPR organization to local affiliate stations
The extent of the commercial relationship between the NPR organization and its local affiliate stations in the distribution and purchase of NPR programming, respectively
Whether any federal funding to NRP, either given directly or through CPB, is used for specific purposes beyond the development of content programming..."
Note:The last audit of the NPR spending by the GAO was in 1983.

Background

Lamborn's bill, H.R.6417, would prohibit federal dollars from going to NPR, through congressional appropriations and any of the various federal grants NPR now accesses. This is a more narrowly focused bill than H.R. 5538 that Lamborn introduced in June. H.R. 5538 would eliminate federal funding for NPR’s parent organization, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. H.R. 6417 would effectively eliminate NPR’s ability to access any federal tax dollars (CPB requested $136 million for FY 2013 on behalf of all NPR entities) and apply it toward reducing the national debt (currently at $13.8 trillion).


NPR receives taxpayer funding in two different ways. First, they receive direct government grants from various federal agencies, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Education, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Over the past two years this direct funding has totaled approximately $9 million. Second, NPR also receives taxpayer funds indirectly through federal grants to local public radio stations. In 2010 those stations received a total of $65 million.

NPR claims that less than 2 percent of its total annual budget comes from the federal government. But when the indirect revenues NPR receives in licensing fees from the federally-funded local stations are included, that number jumps to an estimated 20 percent.

Flow of Federal Tax Dollars to National Public Radio:


NPR receives a significant amount of funding from private individuals and organizations through donations and sponsorships. For example in 2008, NPR listed over 32 separate private donors and sponsors who provided financial support in excess of half-a-million dollars that year. NPR officials have indicated that taxpayer funding makes up only a small portion of their overall budget. Therefore eliminating taxpayer support should not materially affect NPR’s ability to operate. It will, however, save taxpayers many millions of dollars each year.

###

Felix Salmon on Gene Sperling

From Seeking Alpha:

Finally there’s Sperling, who in some ways is the worst of the three [possible Summers replacements] when it comes to grubbing money from Wall Street. The other two have well-defined and easily-understood jobs; Sperling, by contrast, signed up with the Harry Walker Agency and started giving speeches to anybody with cash, including not only Citigroup (C) but even Allen Stanford. He also wrote a monthly 900-word column for Bloomberg for $137,500 a year, which works out to about $13 per word. Then he started “advising” Goldman Sachs (GS) on its charitable giving, which advice came very expensively indeed:

Goldman Sachs paid Sperling $887,727 for advice on its charitable giving. That made the bank his highest-paying employer. Even Geithner’s chief of staff Patterson, who was a full-time lobbyist at the firm, did not make as much as Sperling did on a part-time basis. Patterson reported earning $637,492 from Goldman Sachs [in 2008].

Sophie Silfen, 97

Just came back from Sophie Silfen's funeral this morning. She was not only a friend to me after my father died, she was a remarkable person. There were over 250 mourners, in addition to the 5 rabbis on the bimah. Her flag-draped coffin was taken to Arlington for military burial after the eulogies.

Born on the Lower East Side of New York, Sophie had been a career WAC who served Generals MacArthur, Westmoreland, and President Eisenhower before she started teaching Hebrew school at my synagogue after retirement some 30 years ago. She had reached the rank of Master Sargeant, and I sometimes called her "Sarge," which made her smile. I remember that she told me that she thought President Truman made a mistake when he fired MacArthur. Her oral history of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam has been recorded by the Veteran's History Project of the Library of Congress.

She never had a television, even in her nursing home room. She never owned a car, either, preferring public transportation.

Sophie will be missed by an awful lot of people. I was lucky to have known her. Here is her Washington Post obituary:

SOPHIE SILFEN

On Sunday, December 26, 2010, Sophie Silfen of Washington, DC. Beloved sister of Celia Silfen; also survived by her nieces, nephews, great nieces and great nephews. Funeral service will be held at Adas Israel Congregation, 2850 Quebec Street, NW, Washington, DC on Wednesday, January 5, 2011 at 10 am. Interment private in Arlington National Cemetery. Contributions may be made to Sophie Silfen Shalom Tinok Fund c/o Adas Israel Congregation. Arrangements by Hines-Rinaldi Funeral Home, Inc. under Jewish Funeral Practices Committee of Greater Washington Contract.

John Boehner's Facebook Page

Looks up to date...

John Boehner's Blog

The blog is called:GOP Leader.

Memo to John Boehner: Change it to "Speaker of the House" asap. Not only is it true, and traditional, it would boost your authority and credibility, as well...

Polly King Evans, 1957-2010

From the Washington Post, an obituary of our dear friend:

POLLY KING EVANS

Polly King Evans, 53, died December 28, 2010 after a short illness. She was the devoted mother of Isabella Wagley and the late Louisa Caroline Wagley and wife of the late Huw Evans. Her enthusiasms, wit, creativity and zest for life will be missed but also cherished by her family and all her friends, not least her former colleagues at the Lisner-Louise-Dickson-Hurt Home and at Dumbarton Oaks. Polly's involvement in the Resident Art Program at the Lisner Home resulted in the Program taking on a new dimension with the creation of contemporary canvases, of which a documentary is in the works. At Dumbarton Oaks, she became a vital member of the Byzantine Department. Her many talents were most recently displayed at an exhibition of her artworks at the Arts Club on I Street. A gathering to celebrate her life is pending. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Lisner-Louise-Dickson-Hurt Home, 5425 Western Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20015, attn: Ward Orem; www.lldhhome.org, in memory of Polly King Evans. Arrangements by DeVOL.

20001-2010: America's Decade of Defeat

I'm glad 2011 marks the start of a new decade.

The last ten years have been the worst in my adult memory. Military defeats after 9/11, on George W. Bush's own terms of Osama Bin Laden "Dead or Alive." Political defeat after democracy discredited at home and around the world. Economic defeat after Wall Street's collapse. Moral defeat after criminals got away with massive swindles. Cultural defeat when intellectual class spilled more ink on food than philosophy. (Talk about "let them eat cake...")

Americans voted for change in 2008 but didn't get it. Americans voted again for change in 2010.

I hope we actually get it, this time.

Happy New Year!

To all our readers...

Santa's On Break...

And so are we. Merry Christmas to all our readers!

Richard Branson on British Education v Entrepreneurship

From the Guardian (UK) Wikileaks website:

10. (C) Brown's party included 30 high-ranking business people, as well as 250-300 other representatives from British businesses, who met with Chinese counterparts. Approximately 30 Chinese and British entrepreneurs, including British billionaire Richard Branson met at a lunch devoted to "What Makes a Good Entrepreneur?" The Chinese participants criticized British entrepreneurs as being "overeducated, too conservative, lacking passion for entrepreneurship and too afraid of failure." Branson agreed that British entrepreneurs are overeducated and that schooling does not prepare one for entering the business world. The Chinese also criticized their own system as inadequate to prepare people for entrepreneurship.

With apologies to Nina Totenberg...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

The King's Speech: G'day Bertie!

The theatre showing The King's Speech was packed for the 3:00 Saturday matinee in Bethesda, MD yesterday. Sold out. The crowd resembled the one at the Bob Dylan concert I attended a month ago. The film starred the Masterpiece Theatre stock company:  Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi, and Helena Bonham-Carter. The plot was a cross between The Queen, My Fair Lady, and Young Victoria. I had been told to see the film for the first time in an email from my UCLA Film/TV film structure professor, Dr. Howard Suber. Then, I read the rave reviews in the local press here in DC. So, it was a "must-see."

My verdict. It's OK. Not a great story, not a great script, nice production values, good acting--in sum: thoroughly enjoyable Anglophile porn. Now that Masterpiece Theatre has become hit-or-miss, and the rest of the movie industry makes super-big-screen video games, this is the best we can hope for. Solid Christmas entertainment, with emotional uplift, and ex-colonial solidarity.

Rupert Murdoch must have enjoyed watching this picture, since the moral seems to be that a despised Aussie speech therapist played by Geoffrey Rush saved the British throne from Hitler...

WSJ: America's Economy, Dickens Would Love It...

Today's Op-Ed by Alan Blinder hits the mark, IMHO:

So here we are today, with a large structural deficit slated to increase further. Until the recent agreement on $858 billion of new tax cuts, the whiff of fiscal responsibility was in the air. The Bowles-Simpson deficit- reduction proposal garnered the most attention. It asked Americans to eat a lot of spinach, which was probably inevitable. But a number of critics have pointed out that the plan as a whole looks a bit regressive. Since so much of the deficit (though not all of it) stems from the Reagan and Bush tax cuts, does that strike you as fair?

Well, fairness is in the eye of the beholder. But here's a stunning coincidence. The entire Bowles-Simpson plan would reduce federal borrowing by $3.9 trillion over 10 years, including interest savings. That's a lot of money. In fact, it's almost enough to cover the cost of extending all the Bush tax cuts for 10 years.

So here's a choice: We can achieve nearly $4 trillion in budgetary savings by accepting everything on the Bowles-Simpson list—spinach, broccoli and all. Or we can get a bit more than $4 trillion simply by letting all the Bush tax cuts expire in 2012. Of course, ending those tax cuts would mean returning to the tax rates of the Clinton years—when, as I'm sure you recall, high tax rates killed incentives and left our economy dead in the water.

Pick your poison. And, by the way, Merry Christmas.

Oooops...CIA Pakistan Station Chief Held Business, Not Diplomatic, Visa

As a result, according to this story in the Guardian (UK), he fled the country after a lawsuit had been filed against him for wrongful deaths in drone attacks:

The CIA has pulled its station chief from Islamabad, one of America's most important spy posts, after his cover was blown in a legal action brought by victims of US drone strikes in the tribal belt.

The officer, named in Pakistan as Jonathan Banks, left the country yesterday, after a tribesman publicly accused him of being responsible for the death of his brother and son in a CIA drone strike in December 2009. Karim Khan, a journalist from North Waziristan, called for Banks to be charged with murder and executed.

In a rare move, the CIA called Banks home yesterday, citing "security concerns" and saying he had received death threats, Washington officials told Associated Press. Khan's lawyer said he was fleeing the possibility of prosecution.

"This is just diplomatic language they are using. Banks is a liability to the CIA because he's likely to be called to court. They want to save him, and themselves, the embarrassment," said lawyer Shahzad Akbar. Pakistani media reports have claimed that Banks entered the country on a business visa, and therefore does not enjoy diplomatic immunity from prosecution.

The recall comes at a sensitive moment for Washington. This week's Afghanistan policy review brought fresh focus on Taliban safe havens in Pakistan's tribal belt. Meanwhile CIA drone attacks – which are co-ordinated from the Islamabad embassy – have reached a new peak. Three drones struck targets in Khyber, a previously untouched tribal agency, on Friday, reportedly killing 24 people and signalling a widening of the CIA covert campaign.

IMHO, Heck of a way to "win hearts and minds."

Julian Assange Talks to British TV Newsnight

Tax Deal=Business As Usual

I'm not an economist, but I'm not too ecstatic about the recent tax deal. To me, it signals a mistaken worldview. I fear that it is going to increase the deficit without stimulating the economy. I don't know why Obama would violate his own campaign promise to tax the rich, it does seem like a Bush 41 "Read my lips" betrayal, and if I were a liberal Democrat, I'd begin mounting my challenge to Obama. Yes, it would help the Republicans, but so do tax giveways to your political opponents. Now, Obama will start off the new session on the wrong foot, having alienated his political base. I don't get it, myself.

Plus, it seems to my non-economist mind that extension of unemployement benefits is not the best foundation for growth. Talk about the return of the "welfare state."

I don't like the way this deal was done, and don't like the result.

Of course, I hope I'm wrong, and that a year from now unemployment is below 10 percent--but I don't see any way this could lead to that.

The US is suffering because we are losing two wars--one in Iraq, the other in Afghanistan. The evidence is that both countries sided with China in the recent Nobel Peace Prize controversy, boycotting the presentation to Liu Xiaobo. If we had won those wars, they'd be on our side rather than China's, IMHO.

Economic decline is a symptom of political and military decline. Only military victory could reverse that--but it would require a reorientation of American policy away from "Great Game" to "Clash of Civilizations" mode, full partnership with Russia and China, confrontation with Muslim extremism, and crash re-industrialization of the American economy.

Easier for Congress and the White House to take the drugs of tax-cuts and unemployment insurance instead, apparently hoping it might work...for the short-term.

Jack Goldsmith: Seven Thoughts on Wikileaks

Ralph Nader quoted from this webpage in his congressional testimony a few minutes ago, so thanks to the internet and google (until they shut that down), here's the source material from his LAWFARE blog:

Seven Thoughts on Wikileaks
by Jack Goldsmith

1. I find myself agreeing with those who think Assange is being unduly vilified. I certainly do not support or like his disclosure of secrets that harm U.S. national security or foreign policy interests. But as all the hand-wringing over the 1917 Espionage Act shows, it is not obvious what law he has violated. It is also important to remember, to paraphrase Justice Stewart in the Pentagon Papers, that the responsibility for these disclosures lies firmly with the institution empowered to keep them secret: the Executive branch. The Executive was unconscionably lax in allowing Bradley Manning to have access to all these secrets and to exfiltrate them so easily.

2. I do not understand why so much ire is directed at Assange and so little at the New York Times. What if there were no wikileaks and Manning had simply given the Lady Gaga CD to the Times? Presumably the Times would eventually have published most of the same information, with a few redactions, for all the world to see. Would our reaction to that have been more subdued than our reaction now to Assange? If so, why? If not, why is our reaction so subdued when the Times receives and publishes the information from Bradley through Assange the intermediary? Finally, in 2005-2006, the Times disclosed information about important but fragile government surveillance programs. There is no way to know, but I would bet that these disclosures were more harmful to national security than the wikileaks disclosures. There was outcry over the Times’ surveillance disclosures, but nothing compared to the outcry over wikileaks. Why the difference? Because of quantity? Because Assange is not a U.S. citizen? Because he has a philosophy more menacing than “freedom of the press”? Because he is not a journalist? Because he has a bad motive?

3. In Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward, with the obvious assistance of many top Obama administration officials, disclosed many details about top secret programs, code names, documents, meetings, and the like. I have a hard time squaring the anger the government is directing toward wikileaks with its top officials openly violating classification rules and opportunistically revealing without authorization top secret information.

4. Whatever one thinks of what Assange is doing, the flailing U.S. government reaction has been self-defeating. It cannot stop the publication of the documents that have already leaked out, and it should stop trying, for doing so makes the United States look very weak and gives the documents a greater significance than they deserve. It is also weak and pointless to prevent U.S. officials from viewing the wikileaks documents that the rest of the world can easily see. Also, I think trying to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act would be a mistake. The prosecution could fail for any number of reasons (no legal violation, extradition impossible, First Amendment). Trying but failing to put Assange in jail is worse than not trying at all. And succeeding will harm First Amendment press protections, make a martyr of Assange, and invite further chaotic Internet attacks. The best thing to do – I realize that this is politically impossible – would be to ignore Assange and fix the secrecy system so this does not happen again.

5. As others have pointed out, the U.S. government reaction to wikileaks is more than a little awkward for the State Department’s Internet Freedom initiative. The contradictions of the initiative were apparent in the speech that announced it, where Secretary Clinton complained about cyberattacks seven paragraphs before she boasted of her support for hacktivism. I doubt the State Department is very keen about freedom of Internet speech or Internet hacktivism right now.

6. Tim Wu and I wrote a book called Who Controls The Internet? One thesis of the book was that states could exercise pretty good control over unwanted Internet communications and transactions from abroad by regulating the intermediaries that make the communications and transactions possible – e.g. backbone operators, ISPs, search engines, financial intermediaries (e.g. mastercard), and the like. The book identified one area where such intermediary regulation did not work terribly well: Cross-border cybercrime. An exception we did not discuss is the exposure of secrets. Once information is on the web, it is practically impossible to stop it from being copied and distributed. The current strategy of pressuring intermediaries (paypal, mastercard, amazon, various domain name services, etc.) to stop doing business with wikileaks will have a marginal effect on its ability to raise money and store information. But the information already in its possession has been encrypted and widely distributed, and once it is revealed it is practically impossible to stop it from being circulated globally. The United States could in theory take harsh steps to stop its circulation domestically – it could, for example, punish the New York Times and order ISPs and search engines to filter out a continuously updated list of identified wikileaks sites. But what would be the point of that? (Tim and I also did not anticipate that state attempts to pressure intermediaries would be met by distributed denial-of-service attacks on those intermediaries.)

7. The wikileaks saga gives the lie to the claim of United States omnipotence over the naming and numbering system via ICANN. Even assuming the United States could order ICANN (through its contractual arrangements and de facto control) to shut down all wikileaks sites (something that is far from obvious), ICANN could not follow through because its main leverage over unwanted wikileaks websites is its threat to de-list top-level domain names where the wikileaks sites appear. It is doubtful that ICANN could make that threat credibly for many reasons, including (a) the sites are shifting across top-level domains too quickly, (b) ICANN is not going to shut down a top-level domain to get at a handful of sites, and (c) alternative and perhaps root-splitting DNS alternatives might arise if it did.

Charles Glass: Prosecute Those Who Call for Attacks on Assange

Writing in TAKI Magazine, Charles Glass calls for the indictment of Sarah Palin and Bob Beckel, among others, for incitement to commit murder (ht Frontline Club):

What those who demand a man’s murder are doing, however, is not merely stating facts or lies, opinions or observations. In voicing what the philosopher J. L. Austin called “performative utterances,” they are acting. These are not statements that can be true or false; they are “speech acts.” When a military officer orders his men to go into action, he is not exercising free speech so much as he’s issuing a command. Moreover, he is held responsible under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions for his orders. When Ayatollah Khomeini issued the death sentence on Salman Rushdie, he was not giving an idle opinion but instructing those who accepted his proclamations to take action. When Al Capone told one of his heavies to rub somebody out, that heavy had to do some quick rubbing or be rubbed out himself. If someone comes to your house with a firing squad and declares, “Ready, aim, fire,” the First Amendment would be no defense in court against a murder charge.

The idea that incitement to murder is permissible free speech was expressly condemned by, of all agencies, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in July 2003. It shut down the Al Mustaqila newspaper for urging death to “spies and those who cooperate with the U.S.” One of the State Department members of the C.P.A. at the time was Bill Stewart, who is now the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm. (We may read via some future leak what he said to the Swedes regarding their prosecution of Julian Assange for ostensible crimes against two women who chose to go to bed with him.)

Some people may believe Sarah Palin and Fox News’ “experts” as much as some Muslims believed Khomeini. If anyone had murdered Rushdie (and a few tried), Khomeini could not deny responsibility. The United States Supreme Court has recognized the fact that speech is sometimes an action in itself. In Virginia v. Black et al., Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote the majority opinion:

We have consequently held that fighting words – “those personally abusive epithets which, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke violent reaction” – are generally proscribable under the First Amendment….And the First Amendment also permits a State to ban a “true threat.”

Therefore, I call upon prosecutors in the states where public figures have demanded Julian Assange’s assassination to investigate whether these incitements to murder may be prosecuted. This is my performative utterance, and I hope the Attorneys General will act on it before some idiot with a deer rifle takes it into his head to follow the recommendations of Palin, Flanagan, Beckel, et al.