Chinese officials say Houston police beat diplomat

BEIJING — China said Friday that a Chinese diplomat in the U.S. was beaten and injured by Houston Police Department officers and urged an investigation to ensure diplomatic practices are not violated.

The U.S. Department of State was taking the matter very seriously and findings of the investigation would be shared with China “as soon as appropriate,” said Susan Stevenson, spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

She referred further questions to Houston police, which did not immediately return calls seeking comment Friday morning.

The statement from China’s Foreign Ministry said police harassed and beat a deputy consul-general while he was driving to the Chinese Consulate in Houston. The statement said a family member also was involved, but did not say if that person was injured.

According to a CBS News report, Houston police last Saturday tried to stop a car which was missing a license plate. When the car didn’t stop, they pursued it into a garage without realizing the garage belonged to the Chinese Consulate. Police handcuffed and arrested the driver, injuring him, the CBS report said.

Under international practice, the premises of foreign embassies and consulates are outside the jurisdiction of local law enforcement, and diplomats have legal immunity.

The CBS News report identified the official as Ben Ren Yu. The Houston consulate website lists a deputy consul-general, Yu Boren.

US lifts travel warning for Syria

The US Department of State has lifted its advisories warning American travelers of security concerns in Syria.

“After carefully assessing the current situation in Syria, we determined that circumstances didn’t merit extending the travel warning,” said Tracy Roberts Pounds, a spokeswoman at the US Embassy in Damascus.

Though Washington tries to boost ties with a country viewed as a key to peace in the region, Syria remains on the US-made list of the “countries sponsoring terrorism,” a designation made in 1979.

US observers have long insisted that the so-called US list of the states sponsoring terrorism, which included Iran, Syria, Cuba, and North Korea, is a political tool to punish states that do not submit to US regional interests.

The country also remains under US sanctions, first imposed by former US President George W. Bush and renewed by President Barack Obama in May.

Government posting wealth of data to Internet

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday is posting to the Internet a wealth of government data from all Cabinet-level departments, on topics ranging from child car seats to Medicare services.

The mountain of newly available information comes a year and a day after President Barack Obama promised on his first full day on the job an open, transparent government.

Under a Dec. 8 White House directive, each department must post online at least three collections of “high-value” government data that never have been previously disclosed.

US lifts visa ban on Muslim scholar

The US Department of State said Wednesday it lifted a ban on Swiss Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan entering the country, six years after using the Patriot Act to revoke his visa.

The decision was signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“I am very happy and hopeful that I will be able to visit the United States very soon and to once again engaged in an open, critical and constructive dialogue with American scholars and intellectuals,” Professor Ramadan said in a statement.

The travel ban on him was imposed in the wake of an accusation that he had contributed to the terrorism from 1998 to 2002 by donating about $1,300 to a Swiss-based charity that provided money to Hamas and other Palestinian groups.

The Bush administration in 2006, under the Patriot Act, revoked Ramadan’s visa, as he sought to travel to the US to take up a position as a tenured professor at the University of Notre Dame.

The Oxford University professor argued that he had believed the charity had no connections to terrorist activities and that he had always condemned terrorism.

In August 2009, Ramadan was dismissed from his positions at a university in the Netherlands for hosting a Press TV program, which the Dutch authorities said was “irreconcilable” with his position as a guest professor.

The Swiss-born scholar said his dismissal was the result of Western “hypocrisy.”

Iraqis outraged as Blackwater case thrown out

In this Oct. 2007 image, Mohammed Hafiz holds a picture of his 10-year-old son, Ali Mohammed, who was killed when guards employed by Blackwater allegedly opened fire at Nisoor Square in Baghdad. Iraqis responded with bitterness and outrage Jan. 1 at aU.S. judge’s decision to throw out a case against Blackwater guards accused in the killings.

BAGHDAD — Iraqis seeking justice for 17 people shot dead at a Baghdad intersection responded with bitterness and outrage Friday at a U.S. judge’s decision to throw out a case against a Blackwater security team accused in the killings.

The Iraqi government vowed to pursue the case, which became a source of contention between the U.S. and the Iraqi government. Many Iraqis also held up the judge’s decision as proof of what they’d long believed: U.S. security contractors were above the law.

“There is no justice,” said Bura Sadoun Ismael, who was wounded by two bullets and shrapnel during the shooting. “I expected the American court would side with the Blackwater security guards who committed a massacre in Nisoor Square.”

What happened on Nisoor Square on Sept. 16, 2007, raised Iraqi concerns about their sovereignty because Iraqi officials were powerless to do anything to the Blackwater employees who had immunity from local prosecution. The shootings also highlighted the degree to which the U.S. relied on private contractors during the Iraq conflict.

Blackwater had been hired by the Department of State to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq. The guards said they were ambushed at a busy intersection in western Baghdad, but U.S. prosecutors and many Iraqis said the Blackwater guards let loose an unprovoked attack on civilians using machine guns and grenades.

“Investigations conducted by specialized Iraqi authorities confirmed unequivocally that the guards of Blackwater committed the crime of murder and broke the rules by using arms without the existence of any threat obliging them to use force,” Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement Friday.

He did not elaborate on what steps the government planned to take to pursue the case.

FARC in Colombia : A History of Armed Resistance

CARTAGENA DE INDIES, Colombia — In May 2003 a leak from the Bush Treasury Department indicated that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) was about to add to its extensive narcotics traffickers list. This time it would add someone in Colombia.

OFAC would be using one of the enlightened Republican Congress’s new drug war laws, the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. I was pretty sure who the new addition would be. The word “kingpin” was a dead giveaway.

It had to be the guy who had attained high office; whose brother had organized 20 or more death squads and maintained a couple of them out at the family hacienda; whose cousin in the Colombian Congress was the mouthpiece for those death squads as well as a close friend and promoter of various well known narcotraficantes, including the legendary Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria; someone whose own father was wanted by the Colombian police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for cocaine trafficking when he was killed in an abortive kidnap plot; and who himself was removed from his position as mayor of Medellín for having well-known ties to drug runners.

Who else could it be, but master criminal and El Presidente himself, Álvaro Uribe Vélez?

Imagine my surprise when it was announced the next day, that it was not Uribe after all, but the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo) and 15 of their known or suspected leaders, even though I already knew they had to be a bad bunch of hombres. Five years before, in 1997, they were named a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. Department of State.

It couldn’t have been easy to make it to the top of two government lists at the same time (the terrorist list and the narcotraficantes list) and be the defining designees of a whole new hyphenated word, “Narco-terrorist”! That should keep them from gaining credibility with anyone with media access in the U.S.! I started wondering who these FARC guys were. Somebody needed to check them out, find out where they came from, and why.

See also:

New Year Greetings from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC)

Failure Admitted in Afghan Drug War

The US administration has admitted that Washington has failed to curb narcotics production and trafficking in Afghanistan.

The US Department of State on Wednesday criticized Washington’s 2-billion-dollar plan to combat the drug trade in Afghanistan for poor oversight and lack of strategy.

According to a report by the State Department’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, the US counternarcotics efforts do not have clear objectives.

The report also criticized a shift of focus from eradicating poppy fields to interdiction of drug organizations and alternative crop projects, despite a consensus among US agencies.

The report also added that US embassies in Afghanistan and Pakistan do not coordinate well on the issue.

It also criticizes poorly-written contracts for counternarcotics works.

US silent on Taliban’s al-Qaeda offer

WASHINGTON – The Barack Obama administration is refusing to acknowledge an offer by the leadership of the Taliban in early December to give “legal guarantees” that they will not allow Afghanistan to be used for attacks on other countries.

The administration’s silence on the offer, despite a public statement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing skepticism about any Taliban offer to separate itself from al-Qaeda, effectively leaves the door open to negotiating a deal with the Taliban based on such a proposal.

The Taliban, however, have chosen to interpret the Obama administration’s position as one of rejection of their offer.

The Taliban offer, included in a statement dated December 4 and e-mailed to news organizations the following day, said the organization had “no agenda of meddling in the internal affairs of other countries and is ready to give legal guarantees if foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan”.

The statement did not mention al-Qaeda by name or elaborate on what was meant by “legal guarantees” against such “meddling”, but it was an obvious response to past US insistence that the US war in Afghanistan is necessary to prevent al-Qaeda from having a safe haven in Afghanistan once again.

63rd District: You need to know Paul Chabot

Paul Chabot,  who is running for California’s 63rd State Assembly District, recently participated in a debate over drug legalization, which included former judge James “Jim” P. Gray of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance.

Chabot was damaged in childhood by incompetent parenting and by the war on drugs. While compassion and support for the handicapped is honorable, outright patronization and exaggerated, unreal flattery is an insult.

The military, the criminal justice system and many religious cults go a step further and recruit from sources such as Alcoholics Anonymous, where a couple of percent of forced participants who actually are handicaps (euphemistically called “addicts“), buy into the concept of helplessness and are anxious to turn the control of their minds and bodies over to a “higher power.”  Chabot has been a subject of their nurturing since age 12.

These are the people sought by the recruiters.  They will do what rational people will not.  Note that 1 in 8 combat troops needs alcohol counseling.  Note the escalated activity by law enforcement to round them up during “wartime.”

Chabot has already proven his helplessness and mindless obedience to both the prison- and military-industrial complexes.  The next step for such victims is abandonment – or “promotion” to public office for one final round of exploitation.

If he is abandoned now, further damage to himself and his family might be avoided.  Even if this was not the case, society cannot accept the threat he will represent to all of us if he is patronized into a political career as a windfall cut-out for his handlers.

Do you want another “leader” who cannot handle his alcohol and/or drugs?  A leader whose goal is to punish all normal, healthy people for his disease and weakness?  It is time to take control of government away from the vulgar, self-serving military– and prison-industrial complexes and put them back under our control where they belong.  Have they not disgraced us all enough?  Listen to the debate…

Listen to the debate here.

His “testimonial-fired” personal website is here.

His political website is here.

His “bio” is here.

White house announces 20 agency open government initiatives

Each of the 20 cabinet departments has unveiled a new open government initiative in response to the directive issued Tuesday by the Obama administration, the White House reports.

“This work represents only the beginning of an ongoing commitment across the Administration to create a culture of openness in government,” the White House stated in its release.

The White House categorized the new open government initiatives according to how they will increase transparency efforts. The Department of Justice, for instance, will begin providing its annual Freedom of Information Act report in a machine-readable format that will allow the public to track and monitor detailed statistics on Freedom Of Information Act requests.

Other agencies, such as the Department of Defense, the Department of Transportation, the General Services Administration and the United States Patent and Trademark Office, will make data available to the public for free download for the first time.

Still other agencies will disclose previously unreleased records, though not necessarily online. The Department of State plans to release new data about the conflict in Darfur from 2003 to 2009, while the Department of Agriculture will disclose the nutrition information of more than 1,000 frequently consumed foods.

Not all of the open government initiatives touted by the White House are entirely new however, according to the Huffington Post. The online media outlet reported yesterday that the open government effort announced by the Treasury department includes what it claimed is a “new report” on bank trading and derivatives that has actually been available since 1995.

US rejects global landmine ban treaty supported by more than 150 countries

The US administration has rejected a global treaty, supported by more than 150 countries, banning the use of land mines.

The Department of State explained the decision on Tuesday, saying a policy review had found the US could not meet its “national defense needs” without land mines.

“This administration undertook a policy review and we decided that our land mine policy remains in effect,” Ian Kelly, the state department spokesman, said.

“We determined that we would not be able to meet our national defense needs nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we signed this convention,” he said.

The US decision comes just days before a review conference on the 10-year-old Mine Ban Treaty (Ottawa Treaty), credited with reducing land mine casualties around the world, is due to get under way in Cartagena, Colombia.

The treaty plans to end the production, use, stockpiling and trade in land mines.

Besides the US, countries holding out on the agreement include China, India, Pakistan, Myanmar and Russia.

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 Supreme Court. The case, originally brought in 1998 on behalf of a human rights group, a retired federal administrative judge, a doctor, and several nonprofit groups, challenges the constitutionality of the law that makes it a crime to provide “material support” to groups the administration has designated as “terrorist.”  In particular, the plaintiffs charge that the law goes too far in making speech advocating lawful, nonviolent activity a crime.  The lower courts have unanimously declared several provisions of the law – including one added by the Patriot Act – unconstitutionally vague because they encompass speech and force citizens to guess as to their meaning.

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 in district court in Washington this afternoon, Meshal, who is now 26, traveled to Mogadishu, the Somalian capital, in 2006, to study Islam. In January 2007, he fled Somalia after fighting flared up in the country’s long-run­­ning civil war. He was arrested in Kenya by a joint U.S.-Kenyan-Ethiopian operation, the complaint alleges, then was transferred first to Somalia and later to Ethiopia. The lawsuit said he was interrogated more than 30 times by U.S. officials, including two FBI agents, who threatened him with torture and execution and denied him access to an attorney. Meshal, of Tinton Falls, N.J., was released that May and returned to the United States.

The complaint alleges that Meshal’s detention and treatment “was at the direction or behest of U.S. officials, or carried out with their active and substantial participation.” The ACLU identifies two FBI agents by name, as well as two unknown employees of the U.S. government.

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 parent or parents. The reason it is important is because thousand of people are being deported from the US by the INS based on a claim that they are not US Citizens when in fact they had unknowingly derived US citizenship through the naturalization of a parent or parents. The likely audience is the thousands of people in the US in deportation proceedings or trying to prove their citizenship. Verification: the document will have the Passport Services officers who wrote and received the Passport Bulletin at the time of its writing. Many of these people are now immigration attorneys that can be found via a quick Google of their name. The event that determines this document needs to be published urgently is the passing of Child Citizenship Act – this act loosens the requirements for derivative citizenship for people born after 2001, but also makes the standards used by people born before 2001 prove US citizenship much harder. Ultimately, the USCIS (United States Citizen and Immigration Service) uses different standards then the US Department of State to allow people to prove US citizenship. A person can prove US Citizenship in 2 ways: apply for a US Passport from the Department may apply for a US Passport from the US Department of State (which uses the lighter standard of proof) or file for a Certificate of Naturalization from the USCIS that uses a much heavier standard of proof. This Passport Bulletin gives regular people the “inside scoop”.

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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 Sharp, a draft resister imprisoned for refusing to serve in Korea and a systematic scholar of the kind of strategic non-violence that activists of my generation had helped to develop in the free speech, civil rights, and anti-war movements of the 1960s.

“I had an image of nonviolence as being a bunch of long-haired hippies,” Col. Helvey recalled. But Dr. Sharp had come a long way from his Gandhism roots, and Helvey quickly realized that the older man’s approach had “nothing to do with pacifism.” Sharp was talking “about seizing political power or denying it to others,” and doing it without having to break things or kill people.

The idea fascinated Col. Helvey. He invited Sharp to lunch, spent time at the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI), which Sharp had created in Cambridge in 1983, and came to see his new mentor as “the Clausewitz of the nonviolence movement.” An energetic disciple, Col. Helvey would in time become president of AEI and a forceful champion of nonviolent conflict as a weapon of American intervention in other countries.

Were these interventions good or bad? In my opinion, they had elements of both, at least at the start. But they have become a major danger to democracy, not least our own, and an increasing threat to the lives of those that the United States and its allies encourage to make nonviolent revolutions.

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 Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2009 (Div. H, P.L. 111-8), two Congressional Appropriations bills that form the funding of the Merida Initiative. Before releasing funds to Mexico’s military and federal police for training, equipment, and armament to support the war on drugs, the State Department is required to certify that Mexico improve transparency and accountability, and address numerous allegations of human rights abuses. In this August report, the State Department has sought to justify the release of these funds, which has led to some criticism from human rights organizations.

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, with apparent political motivations, that occurred worldwide during 2008. The U.S. Department of State closely monitors and maintains information on threats to Americans overseas-from terrorism and organized violence, to street crimes and health hazards-and makes this information freely available. It is the policy of the U.S. Government that no double standard shall exist regarding the dissemination of threat information that affects U.S. citizens. Government employees may not benefit unfairly by access to, or possession of privileged information that applies equally to all Americans.”

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 Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, which is the official documentary history of U.S. foreign policy and one of the most important vehicles for declassification of historical records.

Allegations of mismanagement and declining performance had surrounded the Office for years until the Chairman of the State Department Historical Advisory Committee, Prof. William Roger Louis, resigned last December to dramatize his concerns that the FRUS series was “at risk.” (See “State Dept: Crisis in the ‘Foreign Relations’ Series,” Secrecy News, December 11, 2008).

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 in Bolivia since 2002. The documents, requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), evidence that USAID in Bolivia was the “first donor to support departmental governments” and “decentralization programs” in the country, proving that the US agency has been one of the principal funders and fomenters of the separatist projects promoted by regional governments in Eastern Bolivia.

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, Kennedy urged a quick decision “to withdraw the existing regulation prohibiting such trips.”

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 wrote the essay, respected political scientist Michael Haas has confirmed that children were tortured, and Raw Story has explained that the newly-release Bush torture memos may corroborate claims that at least some detainees’ children were tortured using insects.

The number two man at the State Department, Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson, said that many of those tortured at Guantanamo Bay were innocent, but that the Bush administration did not really care whether they were innocent or not.

But children are – by definition – innocent.

Torturing children is not only a war crime, it is a crime against humanity and the most barbaric action of all.

And the torture was not the act of a couple of “bad apples”, but was approved by Bush’s top advisors. It was, in other words, a policy of monstrous wrongdoing.

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 nonconsensual sex hold “dual citizenship,” presumably American and Algerian.

That could at least partly explain why the women did not file local criminal charges against Warren, the other reason being that the CIA’s top man in Algeria worked under State Department cover, theoretically giving him diplomatic immunity.

Another factor is that in Muslim countries where the legal code adheres more or less to Islamic sharia law,  women face prohibitive hurdles against filing rape charges, including a requirement to come up with as many as four male witnesses.  It’s also not uncommon for victims to be punished.

But Interior Minister M. Noureddine Y. Zerhouni said last month that “the agent [Warren] is subject [to] an investigation which is still ongoing,” according to an Algerian news site.

Zerhouini also said “that the sexual scandal of the CIA man in Algeria could be connected to the U.S. intelligence framework of recruiting the victims to work with the CIA,” according to the report.

And not just in Algeria.

“Egypt compiled a list of names of women who frequently visited the American institutions in Egypt at the time, to investigate if they were recruited for the CIA,” it said.

U.S. investigators have reportedly found more than two dozen videotapes that Warren allegedly made of his sexual escapades.

Meanwhile, Warren’s steamy novel of sex and terrorism set in – you guessed it – Algeria, has gotten its first bad reviews.

See also:

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

CIA Station Chief in Algeria Accused of Rapes

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 by the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) that paints mainstream patriotic Americans as dangerous threats to law enforcement and to the country. Operating under the Missouri State Highway Patrol, the MIAC is listed as a Fusion Center that was established in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.

Because authenticity of the report was questioned by some, this writer contacted Missouri state Representative Jim Guest (R-King City) who had personally verified that the report had indeed been issued. Rep. Guest is chairman of the Personal Privacy Committee and is a prominent leader in the national Blowback against the Real ID Act of 2005 that requires states to issue uniform driver’s licenses containing personal biometric data. (See Guest warns against Big Brother, Real ID)

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 an FBI agent during the dispute, which took place in late 2004 or early 2005 when he was escorting Egyptian intelligence officials on an official visit to the CIA.

Warren was a senior CIA operative in Egypt at the time, said the sources, which include two senior former spy agency experts on the region, who demanded anonymity in exchange for discussing the matter.

Warren’s claim to be an FBI agent prompted a hotel manager to send a security video of the incident to the FBI, said two of the sources.

FBI officials said they could not recall such an incident.

See also: CIA Station Chief in Algeria Accused of Rapes

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 firm and its partners for nearly 10 years.

Blackwater/Xe’s president, Gary Jackson, is also retiring, Prince said.

The position of CEO will remain open, the company said.

See also:

Report: State Department & Blackwater Cooperated to Neutralize Killings

Accused Blackwater Shooters Face Trial in D.C.

Sources: Blackwater guards indicted

New Blackwater Iraq Scandal: Guns, Silencers and Dog Food

Blackwater May Face Criminal Charges, Hefty Fines Over Arms Shipments

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 held in Durban, South Africa, was slammed by Washington and Tel Aviv for being anti-Semitic because it brought into focus Israel’s ill-treatment of the Palestinians and attempted to pass a resolution likening Zionism to racism.

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 makers. “This Guide, the first of its kind in almost half a century, distills the best of contemporary thought, historical knowledge, and hard-won practice. It is the best kind of doctrinal work: intellectually rigorous, yet practical.”

Commentary on the guide is also available from Small Wars Journal.

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 and television show.

Sullivan– who was listed as first secretary at the US embassy in Quito — was given 48 hours to leave the country on February 18.

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 three minutes of the planes being detected. See: Family Racked by CIA Cover-Up CIA lied about shoot-down of missionary plane, report says