CCR Files Opening Brief in First Supreme Court Case to Challenge Patriot Act

Obama Administration Defending Law that Makes Speech Advocating Human Rights a Terrorist Crime
November 17, 2009, New York – Yesterday, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed the first brief in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the first case to challenge a portion of the Patriot Act before the [...]

ACLU Sues FBI for Imprisonment of New Jersey Man in Africa

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit [1] against the Federal Bureau of Investigation, saying it illegally detained and mistreated an American, Amir Meshal, who was held in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia for four months in 2007 before being released.
According to the ACLU’s complaint, which was filed [...]

US citizenship and naturalization of offspring: Department of State Passport Bulletin 96-18

Summary
United States Department of State Passport Bulletin 96-18. This bulletin confirms that the Department of State holds a different interpretation than the Immigration and Naturalization Service regarding Derivative Citizenship. Derivative Citizenship refers to U.S. citizenship that a child may derive after birth through the naturalization of a [...]

How Washington Learned to Love Nonviolence

Nonviolence can be a major force for democratic social change, but not when it becomes a tool for covert intervention.
A close-cropped, no-nonsense infantry officer, Col. Robert Helvey was studying at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs on an Army fellowship. One day in 1987, he happened upon a seminar led by Gene [...]

State Department Faces Criticism on New Merida Initiative Report

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars recently made available an unclassified U.S. State Department report on Mexico’s human rights as related to the Merida Initiative. The report comes as a response to section 1406 of the Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2008 (P.L. 110-252), and section 7045 of the [...]

Political Violence Against Americans 2008 Report

Political Violence Against Americans 2008
The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security has issued the 2008 edition of its annual report on political violence against Americans abroad. “Political Violence Against Americans is a report to the American people that focuses on major incidents of anti-U.S. violence and terrorism, [...]

Something “Very Wrong” in State Dept History Office

An Inspector General review (pdf) of the Department of State Office of the Historian (HO) last month confirmed that there were serious management defects in the Office and recommended reassignment of its Director as well as other changes.
The Office of the Historian is responsible for production of the [...]

Newly declassified documents reveal More than $97 million from USAID to separatist projects in Bolivia

The declassified documents in original format and with Spanish translation are available here
Recently declassified documents obtained by investigators Jeremy Bigwood and Eva Golinger reveal that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has invested more than $97 million in “decentralization” and “regional autonomy” projects and opposition political parties [...]

ROBERT F. KENNEDY URGED LIFTING TRAVEL BAN TO CUBA IN 1963

Washington D.C. April 23, 2009 – Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sought to lift the ban on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba in December 1963, according to declassified records re-posted today by the National Security Archive. In a December 12, 1963, memorandum to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, [...]

Sick To My Stomach, I Have A Duty To Report On the Torture of Children

As I wrote almost a year ago, the United States has apparently been torturing children.
Thinking about this, let alone writing about it, makes me sick to my stomach. But it is my moral duty to help expose this monstrous truth so that it is less likely to happen again.
Since I [...]

Glenn Beck and Penn Jillette on MIAC report

See also: The Radical Polarization of Law Enforcement

Accused CIA Rapist’s Alleged Victims Did Not File Local Charges

Interesting tidbits continue to shake out from the strange case of Andrew Warren, the erstwhile CIA station chief in Algeria accused of date rape.First is the overlooked statement of Algeria’s interior minister that the two “local” Muslim women who complained to U.S. embassy officials that Warren spiked their cocktails for [...]

The Radical Polarization of Law Enforcement

The Radical Polarization
of Law Enforcement

Patriots, Christians and concerned citizens are increasingly in the cross hairs of the U.S. intelligence community, and battle lines are being quietly drawn that could soon pit our own law enforcement and military forces against us.
A February 20 report entitled “The Modern Militia Movement” was issued [...]

CIA Man Accused of Rape Claimed to Be FBI Agent in Parking Row

Andrew Warren,  the former CIA officer accused of date rape in Algiers late last year, caused such a ruckus over parking dispute at a Washington, D.C. hotel three years earlier that the matter was referred to the FBI.
Multiple sources said Warren flashed official credentials and claimed to be [...]

Blackwater founder, CEO resigns

(CNN) – Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater Worldwide security firm, announced Monday he has resigned as head of the company, recently renamed Xe.
Prince, in an e-mail to employees and independent contractors, said Danielle Esposito will become chief operating officer and executive vice president. Esposito has worked for the [...]

US absentee at UN anti-racism confab

The US reportedly decides against participating in a UN-led anti-racism conference in Geneva following hectic Israeli attempts to denounce the event.
On Friday, an unnamed US State Department official announced the decision for withdrawal from the conference which the two sides walked out on in 2001, Reuters reported.
The 2001 conference [...]

New U.S. Interagency Counterinsurgency Guide

U.S. Government Counterinsurgency Guide
The State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, in coordination with a number of other Federal Departments and Agencies, has released the U.S. Government Counterinsurgency (COIN) Guide. It is complementary to the Army/Marine Corps COIN Field Manual and provides a basic COIN overview for civilian policy [...]

Ecuador says expelled diplomat was ‘CIA chief’

The US diplomat Ecuador expelled from the country earlier this week was a CIA station chief, President Rafael Correa said on Saturday.
“Last week we expelled the US embassy’s (Mark) Sullivan from the country. He was, let’s be clear, the director of the CIA in Ecuador,” Correa told his weekly radio [...]

CIA helped shoot down 15 planes

With the help of CIA spotters, the Peruvian air force shot down 15 small civilian aircraft between 1995 and 2001, ostensibly as part of the US-abetted war on drugs, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee revealed Thursday. Many of the shoot-downs were made without warning within two to [...]