On Monday April 4, 2005 Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith became the 3,460th recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Mr. Smith “distinguished himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty,” one year ago to the day for action in Operation Iraqi Freedom, which “saved the lives of at least 100 Soldiers, caused the failure of a deliberate enemy attack hours after 1st Brigade seized the Baghdad Airport, and resulted in an estimated 20-50 enemy soldiers killed.”

The history of the Medal of Honor goes back to December 9, 1861 when an Iowa senator introduced a bill that would distribute the “medals of honor” to “promote the efficiency of the Navy.” By the end of the month the bill was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. Over half a year later, in 1862, he signed a new law that would create an equivalent award for the Army.

The medal—among scores of military service medals given since 1862—is the highest given to military service personnel in the United States, and covers conflicts which include the Civil War (1,522 awardees), the “Indian Campaigns” (426), World War II (464), and Vietnam (245). Over 600 medals have been awarded posthumously, the bulk of the awardees have been from the Army, nine have been given to unknown recipients, and as of February 7th of this year, there were 127 living recipients.

And while the Civil War figure above is the highest of all the conflicts to date, it only represents medals given to Union soldiers of the northern states and does not include those from the Confederate Army who made similar sacrifices, even if for different reasons.

It has also been awarded to only one woman in its over 140-year history. Mary Walker was a Civil War “assistant surgeon” who was awarded the medal for actions during the Battle of Bull Run in July of 1861. However, in a purge about 40 years later, her medal was revoked due to her civilian status—a distinction, until her medal was restored in 1977, she would share with five others, including Buffalo Bill Cody. Cody’s was restored in 1989.

According to the Encyclopedia Americana, The Purple Heart, probably the most widely known medal in US history, was established in 1782 by George Washington and designed by Paris-born Pierre Charles L’Enfant, also the designer of Washington, D.C. It was created for Revolutionary War service and was originally called the Badge of Military Merit. It wasn’t until nearly 250 years later that it was resurrected and has been in use ever since.

Also . . .

Medal Of Honor FAQs (Congressional Medal of Honor Society)

Medal of Honor citations (US Army)

Recommendation Process (US Army)

What are the guidelines for which the medal could be awarded? (CMHS)

Civil War Medal of Honor awards (Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System, National Park Service)

Iran, in a bold move earlier this week, declared that it would not conform to guidelines laid down by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Instead, reported the Monitor’s Scott Peterson Friday, it said it plans to resume uranium enrichment activities which are part of a larger nuclear program that was started in 1974.

It’s also the latest episode in an ongoing saga of nuclear rivalry and politics in the Middle East and South Asia. In 1979, then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, made the following statement:

We know that Israel and South Africa have full nuclear capability. The Christian, Jewish and Hindu civilizations have this capability. The communist powers also possess it. Only the Islamic civilization was without it, but that position was about to change.

Following the Iranian statements, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said that while there’s “a clear understanding now that Iran must satisfy the concerns that have been expressed by the international community,” and that the U.S. was “talking about diplomacy and political efforts to stop this movement on the part of the Iranians toward nuclear weapons,” adding, “we’re not talking about strikes.”

The punch line came next. “But every option…of course, remains on the table.”

However, the idea of striking a country in possession of nuclear capabilities is not new. The Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies notes that Iraq attacked Iran’s Bushehr plant six times throughout the Iran-Iraq War (or Iraq-Iran war, depending).

The Israeli attack on the Osirak, or Tammuz I, nuclear facilities in Iraq in June of 1981 is undoubtedly the most famous, and it has been lately invoked by the press in the wake of statements coming out of Iran and Israel.

Some commentators have turned the tables and drawn renewed attention towards Israel’s nuclear program. And while, downplaying a nuclear preemptive move, Israel has recently announced acquisition from the United States of 5000 "smart bombs" worth $319 million, including 500 so-called "bunker busters," or BLU-109s, capable of penetrating 7ft of concrete.

Herbert Krosney and Steven Weissman, in their book, The Islamic Bomb, set up an earlier strike against Tammuz that occurred the year before and set off a wave of confusion and misinformation.

It was September 30, 1980, the ninth day of the Gulf War between Iran and Iraq. Iranian Phantom jets had just bombed a power plant on the outskirts of Baghdad, when low on the horizon, two Phantoms came streaking in over the desert sands, rushing headlong at a new target.

[ . . . ]

Early announcements said that the rockets had missed the big new Tammuz I reactor and had scored only “minor damage” to some buildings nearby. A later report in the French magazine l’Express claimed that the rockets had hit the base of the reactor dome, badly damaging the entire structure. It would set the Iraqi nuclear program back at least a year, l’Express suggested.

At the time of the attack, French technicians were still completing construction of Tammuz I, which was not scheduled to go “critical” for at least three months. But a smaller research reactor from France and possibly an older one from the Soviet Union were very much in operation when the rockets struck.

Never before had a nuclear reactor site become a military target in time of war, and perhaps it was the novelty of it al, or the apparent brilliance of the attack, that led l’Express to drop a bombshell of its own. The Phantoms hadn’t come from Iran at all, the magazine had insisted. They were Israeli, and they had taken advantage of the war with Iran to knock out the Iraqi nuclear complex.

But it was not Israel. Not this time.

The truth, it seems, was more prosaic. The later-to-be-deposed Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who was also the military commander-in-chief, admitted the Phantoms were his. And according to eyewitnesses, it is likely that the place called Tuwaitah was not even a primary objective, but simply a target of opportunity for those two Phantoms on the way home after the bombing of the power plant on the outskirts of Baghdad.

[ . . . ]

The September bombing of Tuwaitah was not the first of the violence in the trouble-plagued history of the Iraqi nuclear program, and it would not be the last. Back in April 1979, unidentified saboteurs broke into a storage hangar at a small engineering firm near Toulon on the French Riviera and dynamited the Osirak, or Tammuz, core only hours before it was due to be shipped to Iraq. In June 1980, in a hotel room in Paris, an unknown intruder bludgeoned to death an Egyptian nuclear engineer who was playing a leading role on the Osirak project. In August, a series of bombings and letter and telephone threats against French and Italian engineering firms sparked a continuing campaign of terror.

The details of the Israeli attack on Osirak are fully exploded in a new book by Roger Claire, but here’s the rough outline of the Israeli attack from Krosney and Weissmann:

But the big attack came on Sunday, June 7, 1981, the eve of the Jewish religious holiday of Shavuot, the celebration of the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses in Sinai. The thoughts of most Israelis were far from the battlefield…

… The attack itself went strictly according to plan. Late in the afternoon, about four o’clock Israeli time, eight of Israel’s new fleet of American-built F-16 jet fighters took off from Etzion air base in the Sinai. Originally designed for high-speed dogfights, the planes had been equipped with extra fuel tanks, to increase their range, and special bomb racks which carried two 2,000-pound MK-84 iron bombs.

…The first bombs to hit the lead and concrete walls had delayed-action fuses. This allowed them to penetrate the dome before exploding, opening holes with pinpoint accuracy and destroying the reactor inside.

The U.S. role in the lead up to the attack is intriguing, according to the biography by Joseph Persico of former CIA director William J. Casey. In it Persico paints a picture of a quid pro quo between Casey and parties in Israel who want something in return for a muted reaction to the shipment of AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia.

First on his agenda was helping to get the AWACS deal through the Congress. The government of Saudi Arabia wanted to spend $8.5 billion for these “airborne warning and control systems” surveillance aircraft. The Reagan administration was eager to make the sale to cement its friendship with the Saudis. Israel was understandably unnerved by the prospect of an Arab state getting supersophisticated planes. …

Casey went to the Middle East and met in Tel Aviv with the Israeli intelligence chief, Major General Yitzhak Hoffi, known as Haka. How could he be helpful? Casey wanted to know. Haka told him that any information the Israelis could acquire from the CIA on certain installations in the Arab world could be most useful. Any in particular? Casey asked. Yes, the Israeli told him. Ten miles outside of Baghdad in Iraq was the Osirak nuclear reactor. The reactor’s core contained 26.4 pounds of weapons-grade uranium 235. The Israelis estimated that their Iraqi antagonists were within five years of producing nuclear weapons.

Casey understood Israel’s concern. Of course he could help—but did Israel really need to be so worried about the AWACS sale to the Saudis? Couldn’t the Jewish lobby in the States be called off? The heads of the intelligence service of the United States and of Israel managed, before Casey left, to arrive at a mutually helpful arrangement.

On Sunday, June 8 Israeli aircraft bombed the Osirak reactor. Casey was notified at home at four-fifty that afternoon. Within two hours, and American KH-11 Big Bird photo reconnaissance satellite was diverted from its customary orbit over the Soviet Union and China; and within six hours, Israeli intelligence was getting KH-11 photos direct by satellite revealing the destruction wrought on the Iraqi plant.

…During the administration’s push to win approval of the AWACS deal, Casey had watched with admiration the energy of two military officers on the project.”

Oliver North and Richard Secord.

For further reference

Iran (Nuclearfiles.org)

Iraq Nuclear Weapons Program—Import Table

Osirak and Beyond

Nuclear Rights and Wrongs

Ikonos Imagery of Dimona, Negev Nuclear Research Center

Iran boasts Dimona now 'within range'

Israel and the Bomb

2000 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

Quoting FCC chairman Michael Powell, a Monitor article from Thursday states, “It’s probably the most significant paradigm shift in the entire history of modern communications, since the invention of the telephone.”

What is it?

VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol. To Jane and John Doe, it’s doing on a computer what one would normally do on a phone, and for a number of privacy advocates, it could be the latest hot button issue surrounding the FCC since that body approved new rules governing media ownership. It’s also the latest wrinkle in the blanket of measures to come out of the USA Patriot Act, the monolithic anti-terror law promptly passed by Congress in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Mr. Powell’s statement coming out of last week's FCC vote to extend wiretapping to the Internet adds, “Our support for law enforcement is unwavering; it is our goal in this proceeding to ensure that law enforcement agencies have all of the electronic surveillance capabilities that CALEA authorizes to combat crime and terrorism and support Homeland Security.”

CALEA is a 1994 law designed “to make clear a telecommunications carrier's duty to cooperate in the interception of communications for Law Enforcement purposes, and for other purposes,” and Internet, broadband, and “push-to-talk” technology now fall under its jurisdiction.

As CNET News has reported, “The vote comes five months after the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Justice Department formally asked for guaranteed wiretapping access to broadband networks. If the FCC had done nothing, wiretaps would be possible but could be more difficult and time-consuming for police to carry out.”

The battlefield where opponents inevitably will be crossing swords with the federal ruling is the US Constitution, specifically the Fourth Amendment.

The text of this amendment reads as follows:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The CALEA legislation is incorporated into Title 47 of the US Code (the formal and up-to-date version of all US federal laws) with the chapter called “INTERCEPTION OF DIGITAL AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS”. According to this item from TechLaw Journal,

Nothing in this NPRM & DR, or the CALEA, expands the authority of law enforcement agencies to conduct surveillance. Wiretap authority, and pen register and trap and trace authority (including Internet addressing and routing information), are addressed in Title 18 (criminal code) and Title 50 (foreign intelligence surveillance). The CALEA, which is codified in Title 47 (communications), imposes requirements upon telecommunications carriers to design and modify their networks to facilitate lawfully obtained surveillance orders.

For further reference:

Small players want their share of air waves (The Christian Science Monitor)

Wiretapping legislation (EPIC)

Voice On the Net (VON) Coalition

The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System

Attorney General John Ashcroft has put a plug in the whistle of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. Ms. Edmonds, a naturalized US citizen born in Turkey, is at the center of one of the most interesting government secrecy debates in US history.

After the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the FBI was under pressure to hire more linguists. Edmonds joined the ranks only to find herself fired less than half a year after blowing the whistle on what she felt were incompetent and corrupt procedures within her department. She claims that she brought to the attention of her superiors some serious conflicts in the translation staff — including those related to a colleague and a group being monitored.

According to a 2002 article in the Washington Post,

Edmonds said that on several occasions, the translator tried to recruit her to join the targeted foreign group. "This person told us she worked for our target organization," Edmonds said in an interview. "These are the people we are targeting, monitoring."

Edmonds would not identify the other translator, but The Post has learned from other sources that she is a 33-year-old US citizen whose native country is home to the target group. Both Edmonds and the other translator are US citizens who trace their ethnicity to the same Middle Eastern country [Turkey]. Reached by telephone last week, the woman, who works under contract for the FBI's Washington field office, declined to comment.

Edmonds allegedly went to her superiors.

"Investigations are being compromised," Edmonds wrote to the inspector general's office in March. "Incorrect or misleading translations are being sent to agents in the field. Translations are being blocked and circumvented."

The axe fell, as they say, when she was accused of having “breached security,” partly due, she says, “to specific instruction by a supervisor to prepare a report on the other translator on her home computer.”

Afterwards she found herself censured by Mr. Ashcroft, “at the request of FBI Director Robert Mueller,” from testifying in court under the rare, but absolute, "state secrets privilege." (Edmonds has actually brought suit against the Department of Justice). She did, however, testify in camera before the 9/11 Commission, but the specifics of that testimony are unknown to the public.

And in a move that has confused Senators from both parties, Ashcroft retroactively classified material in the Edmonds case. This material included letters from Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who expressed concern over the classification measures.

Earlier this month, the FBI and Justice Department indicated they might release an “unclassified version” of the reports investigating the claims by Edmonds. And The New York Times, quoting FBI director Robert Mueller, reported Thursday that the OIG at the Justice Department concluded that Edmonds' whistle-blowing actions were "a contributing factor" to her dismissal.

The inspector general "also criticized the FBI's failure to adequately pursue Ms. Edmonds's allegations of espionage as they related to one of her colleagues," Mr. Mueller said in his letter. The Times noted that the FBI is "considering disciplinary action against some employees as a result" of this finding.

For further reference:

Statement of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds and her attorneys
August 13, 2002 (Washington Post)

STATE SECRETS PRIVILEGE GETS A WORKOUT (Federaton of American Scientists)

Federal Rules of Evidence (2004) (Legal Information Institute, Cornell)

Ex-CIA analyst and Edmonds dissect final 9/11 commission report (Democracy Now)

What's covered in the 9-11 report? What's covered up?(Village Voice)

National Whistleblowers Center

An editorialin Wednesday's Monitor focuses on women gaining political prominence in Mexico. As many men migrate to other countries, Mexican women have more confidence and opportunity to run for public office. In fact, women now comprise 22% of seats in the Lower House and 15% in the Upper House of the Mexican Parliament, which is above the world average.

That is encouraging, as not only are women politicians likely to put more attention on issues of concern to families and women, but they can bring a different approach to policy making. There is even evidence that corruption in public life is less likely where women hold a larger share of parliamentary seats, according to a study by researchers affiliated with the Center for Institutional Reform, University of Maryland.

Clearly it is essential to increase the percentages of those who represent large number of constituents or so-called minorities. In terms of women, this would be a little over half the world's population. But more important is to affirm why women's presence in public policymaking is needed.

A Monitor article this week looks at the proposed construction project of two bridges in Alaska, in addition to other transportation improvement measures, totaling $2 billion. The project is testing lawmakers and voters' sensibilities.

Sen. Stevens and Rep. Young, (both R-AL), claim building the bridges will boost much-needed economic development. Criticism is heated, with Sen. McCain (R-AZ) calling them 'bridges to nowhere.'

Other states have bridges of their own that they want refurbished. The argument against these sort of projects is that they will 'only benefit a few people' or that they are 'special interest projects.' A taxpayers' watchdog group, Citizens Against Government Waste, uses the former to declare Alaska the most egregious pork project state, because of its spending per capita.

How to find out about these so-called pork barrel projects? The aforementioned group puts out an annual 'Pig Book' on state by state spending.

Back to Sen. McCain – his Senate home page has a link upon entry to Pork Barrel Spending updates. A closer look at some of the differences he had with the Omnibus Spending Bill, where many of these measures are inserted at the last minute, does reveal some interesting proposals, like $325,000 to the city of Salinas, California for swimming pool construction?

Aw. Pools provide a lot of affordable summertime pleasure for a lot of folks. Then there is $7.3 million for sea turtles and $6 million for sea lions. More information needed on this, but they ARE beleagured. And adorable.

It is when you get down to a few hundred thousand for refurbishing local history sites, like the first Coca-Cola factory in Macon, Georgia, or restoring the opera house in Traverse City, Michigan, those seems to pale in comparison to the larger line items. These little things do add up, but these are important parts of our common history, that give people a sense of pride in place. That's priceless.

But the improvements should be on budget, as should more of these massive transportation measures.

“The most defective part of the Federal Constitution, beyond all question, is that which relates to the executive department.” (Abel P. Upshur, President John Tyler’s Secretary of State, quoted in “Secrecy and Foreign Policy,” ed. Thomas M. Franck & Edward Weisband, 1974)

This Thursday, Condoleezza Rice will testify before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. On March 30th, the White House finally agreed to let Rice testify publicly and under oath . President Bush’s public statement came after White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, sent a letter to the commission outlining the conditions upon which Rice, President Bush and Vice President Cheney would testify before the panel.

More recently, the White House has agreed to hand over about a quarter of the 11,000 relevant pages of material the Clinton administration had supplied at the time of transition.

Rice had said that her appearance before the commission would be both unprecedented and would compromise Bush's and future presidents’ ability to exercise their right to “executive privilege.” This argument was challenged by a provocative fax sent by commission executive director (and reported co-author of the 2002 National Security Strategy) Philip Zelikow to Gonzales Monday, March 30th, which may have led to the decision to let Rice appear before the panel. Apparently, Admiral William D. Leahy (ret.), President Franklin Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff, did testify during the investigations of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Executive privilege is a term first used during the Eisenhower administration, but the conflict goes back to the presidency of George Washington, who refused to reveal to the House of Representatives (and succeeded) the details of the Jay Treaty with Great Britain. But as professor Michael Dorf writes in his fine 2002 article on the battle between the GAO and Vice President Cheney, “The Constitution nowhere expressly mentions executive privilege.”

Rather, it is a kind of rubbery side effect of the system of checks and balances among the three branches of government set up in the Constitution, sometimes referred to as the "Separation of Powers." And besides Washington, it has embroiled presidents Jefferson, Nixon, and Clinton.

For additional information, see:

EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE REVIVED: SECRECY AND CONFLICT DURING THE BUSH PRESIDENCY

Picture shows FDR aide before Pearl Harbor panel (By Alan Messmer)

Ever wonder who's trying to sell the leaders in Washington on the best arms deals for leaders in Africa or South America? Or which US legal and public relations firms have been knocking on doors in Capitol Hill and the White House on behalf of Afghanistan, Indonesia, or Venezuela over the last five years? Unless you're a diplomat or foreign official, you must register your foreign representative status with the US Justice Department. The Foreign Agents Registration Act, administered by the Justice Department, was created in 1938 by Congress as a "response to the large number of German propaganda agents in the pre-WWII U.S." The online-accessible FARA database starts in mid-year 1997 and goes through the first half of 2002. Here's a brief Q&A on FARA. FARA is not the only legislation governing lobbying activities in the United States. In 1995, Congress passed the Lobbying Disclosure Act, which also governs registration for those engaged in lobbying activities. An 1998 amendment to the laws exempted those registered with LDA from registering with FARA.

National Security Archive's Dubious Files illustrates the inconsistent, obfuscating, and sometimes whimsical results of FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests and declassification logic. Case in point, it's 1997 and you're a seeking a document, a sample of the CIA's "Weekly Situation Reports on International Terrorism." You come across the entire document at The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. On the last page is an imagined brief on a proposed terrorist act on Santa and his train from the "GONP" (Government of the North Pole), but all you see is a blacked out box where the fiction appeared. Two years later you're at the CIA's CREST (CIA Records Search Tool) library in College Park, MD. You come across the same item and decide to take a look. Oddly the Santa sabotage sketch has now passed muster and become part of the declassified public record. This is a rather benign example. The National Security Archive claims it has an appeal pending at the State Department to release more information on the roles of the US government and outsourced contractors in Plan Colombia (a.k.a. Andean Initiative), the controversial effort at crop eradication in the decades-long "War on Drugs."

"In contrast to other briefing books that highlight the declassification and release of records, this one focuses on denials of information, including some highly questionable, sometimes silly, classification decisions by the national security bureaucracy."