For some reason, it feels important to me to make sure this is on the site. It is also kind of a gratuitously large list anyway. But it's a lot of people. A good networking opportunity. etc.

Webmaster techie note: Actually, since this item is all one big name drop, it will get a ton of hits from Google, I'd wager. A good example of a 'long tail' post, in SEO-speak.

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Clinton Campaign Announces Minnesota Steering Committee

Clinton Campaign Announces Minnesota Steering Committee

The Clinton campaign today announced its Minnesota Steering Committee, made up of community leaders from across the state who will mobilize grassroots support for Hillary leading up to Minnesota’s February 5th primary.

"Hillary Clinton has the ability to deliver the change America needs, from providing universal health care to ending the war in Iraq to moving us toward energy independence," said former Vice President Walter Mondale.

"Minnesotans know Hillary Clinton has the strength and experience to lead this nation from her first day in the White House," said Saint Paul Mayor Chris Coleman.

"For 35 years Hillary’s been fighting for children and families and working to expand opportunity for all Americans," said House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher. "She is uniquely qualified to be President in these challenging times."

"I have seen Hillary's ability and intellect up close, and she is the best prepared to be President," said former Minnesota Senator Mark Dayton.

HILLARY’S MINNESOTA STEERING COMMITTEE:

Melanie Benjamin, Chief Executive, Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe
Brian Bergson, Veteran; Saint Paul
State Rep. Karla Bigham, Cottage Grove
Jay Benanov, St. Paul City Councilman
Donald Bungum, Veteran; Lindstrom
Susan Burns, Attorney; St. Paul
Margie Cady, Veteran; Winona
Paul Cassidy, Director of Government Relations, Leonard, Street and Deinard
Tarryl Clark, Assistant Senate Majority Leader; St. Cloud
Claudia Cody, Latino Community Activist; Becker
Chris Coleman, Mayor; St. Paul
Mark Dayton, Former U.S. Senator; Minneapolis
Tom Dooher, President; Education Minnesota
Captain Lou Ellingson; Veteran; Eden Prairie
Matt Entenza, Former House Minority Leader; St. Paul
Tom Foley, Former St. Paul County Attorney
Betty Folliard, Former State Representative, Golden Valley
Susan Gaertner, Ramsey County Attorney
Keesha Gaskins, Executive Director, Minnesota Women’s Political Caucus, Minneapolis
Alan Weinblatt, Weinblatt & Gaylord; St. Paul
Curtis Ghylin, Veteran; Sauk Rapids
Chris Gillette, Military Retiree, U.S. Army Chemical Corps; Roseville
Lisa Goodman, Minneapolis City Council Member; Minneapolis
Joan Anderson Growe, Former Minnesota Secretary of State; National Vice President, Strategic Business, Minneapolis
State Sen. Linda Higgins, Minneapolis
Richard Hoium, Veteran; Minneapolis
Jaimie Holmes, Veteran; Inver Grove Heights
Alan Hooker, Minneapolis Public Library Board Trustee; DFL Stonewall Dems, Minneapolis
Koryne Horbal, Former United Nations Ambassador, Columbia Heights
Hubert "Buck" Humphrey, IV, DNC Member, Plymouth
Mohamed Jibrell, Somali Community Leader, St. Paul
Larry Johnson, Veteran; Golden Valley
Ember Reichgott Junge, Former State Senate Assistant Majority Leader; Minneapolis
Margaret Anderson Kelliher, House Speaker; Minneapolis
Colleen Landkamer, President of NACo, Blue Earth County Commissioner, Mankato
Elsa Leven, Community Activist, Saint Paul
Mark F. Lindsay, Executive, UnitedHealth Group; Wayzata
Andrew Luger, Attorney, and Ellen Goldberg Luger, Edina
Paul Maccabee, President, The Maccabee Group, St. Paul
Paula Maccabee, Attorney, Former St. Paul City Council Member
Mary Jo McGuire, Former State Representative; Falcon Heights
Peter McLaughlin, Hennepin County Commissioner
Richard McNary, Veteran; Eagan
Walter Mondale, Former Vice President, Minneapolis
Tom Mullon, Veterans; Saint Paul
Kathleen Murphy, Women's Rights Activist, St. Paul
John C. Neese, Veteran; Fergus Falls
Vance Opperman, Business Leader; Minneapolis
State Senator Sandy Pappas, St. Paul
State Rep. Sandra Peterson, New Hope
Mari Pokornowski, Co-Chair DFL Platform Committee, Cokato
Cheryl Poling, Democratic Activist, Eden Prairie
Phillip Qualy, Legislative Director, United Transportation Union
Lois Quam, Business Leader; St. Paul
Amy K. Rotenberg, Communications Consultant; Minneapolis
Mark Rotenberg, University of Minnesota General Counsel; Minneapolis
Gary Schiff, Minneapolis City Council Member; Minneapolis
Elliot Seide, Executive Director, AFSCME Council 5
State Rep. Nora Slawik, Maplewood
Jill Sletten, Democratic Activist; St. Paul
Michelle Sommers, Political Director, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005
Rick Stafford, DNC Member, Chair of the DNC's LGBT Caucus, Minneapolis
Lisa Stager, Minnesota IAMAW; Minneapolis
David Stanton, Veteran; New Brighton
Jackie Stevenson, DNC Member; Minnetonka
Tammy Tesky, Community Activist; St. Paul
State Rep. Paul Thissen, Minneapolis
Megan Thomas, former Stonewall DFL, St. Paul
Dave Thune, St. Paul City Council Member; St. Paul
Susan Thune, Registered Nurse; St. Paul
Ruth Usem, Community Activist, Minneapolis
Russell Warren, Veteran; Mounds View
Lynn Wilson, Party Activist; Nurse; Rochester
Colonel Nat Wisser, Military Retiree; Saint Paul
John Wodele, MN Campaign Director for the 1992 Clinton Campaign; Vadnais Heights

It took longer than expected, but the final version of the first short video from our Iowa Caucus trip is done and is getting spit outta the computer right now in Quicktime format.

It should appear right here once it is done:

The high quality quicktime video can be downloaded at this link by about 7:15 PM or so: (it may not be finished uploading until then, so wait!) http://www.hongpong.com/files/CaucusTime-Teaser.mov

Coming Soon: CaucusTime: DEEZ MOINEZ! The Video spectacular!

First we will release a teaser, then several fuller videos. Including The General Narrative, a Ron Paul special, and a Hillary special. Yea!

We have just gotten back to Mpls in the wee hours. The Iowa trip was an interesting one.... the situation strange. The people, cold. The media, not coming back soon.

Massive rallies, cold scenes, media people. Pols. Really eager staffers. Security theater from Clinton's henchmen.

The plan to send out videos from the road fell apart. We got one out from the cafe, but we've had problems with the video formats and want to clean them up first.

We have seen all of the Dem candidates except Gravel and Kucinich and i think we have some level of video of each.

We used the latest in underpowered pocket video systems to record everything insane we could. This really freed up creative opportunities to place visual artifacts over everything and everyone.

After we sleep off the driving, there will be much furious video productions for the Interwebs! Our Ron Paul War on Drugs video has already passed 1200 viewers in 12 hours!!

We went demanding nothing (some of us). We achieved everything!

A kind of Zen.

The Democratic presidential candidates debate at 8 PM on MSNBC tonight. If only we could set up windmills to collect the hot air...

All right, I have to admit that I sort of like watching the presidential debates, as long as I can drink or do something else alongside the spectacle. Every time Ron Paul lays into the "war propaganda" of the military-industrial complex, or Kucinich floats his dreamy utopia stuff, at least that's interesting.

The 2008 presidential campaign itself is a doom-laden spectacle of horror, and has pretty much sucked all around so far. McCain and Giuliani compete to sound the most maniacal, and even aw-shucks Huckabee plots foreign wars of obliteration. Tancredo still refuses to go back to Italy where "his type" infest us from.

The best recent news was when McCain visited the Smith & Wesson manufacturers and promised to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell, and kill him with their product. Stephen Colbert called that a 720° Triple Bank Shot, and I have to agree.

McCain personally requested the stop at the Smith and Wesson-owned Thompson-Center Arms factory, where he scrutinized hunting rifles, watched workers cast parts from molten steel and enjoyed a closed-door session with executives seated around a table with an AR-15 military-style rifle on top.

During a talk with more than 100 of the company's employees, the Republican presidential candidate promised to "bring Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell and shoot him with one of your products." The line got a big round of applause.

Obama's campaign has been an extreme disappointment. Somehow the last 8 to 10 weeks have slid by without Obama daring to point out that Hillary Clinton Sucks All Around, and so he's viewed as weak, in the all-important frame of the Bitchslap Theory of Electoral Politics. As Josh Marshall explained, as we saw with SwiftBoats in the summer of 2004, you keep slapping them with stupid shit, and when they don't fight back, you look too weak for the American public:

One way -- perhaps the best way -- to demonstrate someone's lack of toughness or strength is to attack them and show they are either unwilling or unable to defend themselves -- thus the rough slang I used above. And that I think is a big part of what is happening here. Someone who can't or won't defend themselves certainly isn't someone you can depend upon to defend you.

Demonstrating Kerry's unwillingness to defend himself (if Bush can do that) is a far more tangible sign of what he's made of than wartime experiences of thirty years ago.

Hitting someone and not having them hit back hurts the morale of that person's supporters, buoys the confidence of your own backers (particularly if many tend toward an authoritarian mindset) and tends to make the person who's receiving the hits into an object of contempt (even if also possibly also one of sympathy) in the eyes of the uncommitted.

This is certainly what Bush's father did to Michael Dukakis and, sadly, it is what Bush himself did, to a great degree, to Al Gore.

It worked against Kerry, and so far against Obama. Hillary's campaign has resisted sniping a lot at Obama directly, but they've gone the next level up to set the Frame of Polls and other assorted Voodoo Chicken Guts to create a Conventional Wisdom that she can't be touched.

Then there is the ready victim gender language thing, wherein such ideas as "a Conventional Wisdom that she can't be touched" flips around to represent domestic violence and sexism and other stuff. Any Hillary assault is sort of like hitting your wife. This seems to be working, and it's kind of surprising no one has ever tried it before at the national level. I guess it wouldn't have helped much with Geraldine Ferraro in '84.

New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, who I have always thought of as a Basically Good Guy and also Very Experienced with the Wily World Out There - a diplomatic Grandmaster - has basically run an invisible campaign. He was hobbled for early 2007 by having to spend all his time finishing the session of the New Mexico legislature. This kept him off the radar while the HillaryBots locked up the entire Democratic Party hierarchy.

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The conventional wisdom of the race depresses me. The media sucks and they follow Baby Boomer rules of sugarcoating all awkward realities of 2007. The media is just horrible and only care about these dumb polls. The left of the alternative media is letting everything slide, pretty much, with few results. This Iran shit getting ginned up is seriously their responsibility to deal with.

One other thing on the media, though: MSNBC does a unique job covering the stuff, and I have to give them some credit for the effort. Right now David Schuster, the Hardball correspondent, is grilling some pols and doing a decent enough job by today's standards. Schuster really has done better than anyone else on television covering the Valerie Plame / CIA leak / Scooter Libby scandal. When Plame was on Hardball, Plame complemented Schuster's rapidfire summary of the extremely convoluted case.

******

The Rundown:

• Bill Richardson: Shooting for VP. Wish he was doing better. Usually focuses on speaking against paranoid warmongering and conveys a positive attitude.
• Hillary Clinton: Playing an impressive game at every level, as long as the other candidates always pull their punches. If the Teflon ain't fried tonight, we are fucked.
• Chris Dodd: Polling behind Colbert in South Carolina. Has been principled in his foreign policy and responsive to the blogger netroots, but has had no influence.
• Joe Biden: Breaking up Iraq is a shitty idea, smart guy. Watch no one really care, but then again, I hope he'll probably pounce on Hillary for the Iran thing (she voted for recent Kyl-Lieberman war hawk insanity bill)
• Dennis Kucinich: Still not making himself relevant, but I wish he would.
• Mike Gravel: They don't give him any time of course. I gave him $15 early on when he said the Military-Industrial Complex dominates our culture. I wish he'd keep injecting that hard-core antiwar idea. He probably will, but it won't get any bounce unless he really goes after Hillary specifically.
• John Edwards: He seems to be floating away or something. I'm glad he called out Hillary's cash vacuum cleaner with Beltway lobbyists and the military-industrial complex.
• Barack Obama: Dude you gotta git 'em. Seriously. Americans don't want a freaggin' Harvard lecturer, they need something of a pit bull. Obama needs a little more Nixon, if you will.

So my order of preference for Dem nomination, the proper combo of principles and electibility: 1) Richardson. 2) Obama. 3) Edwards. 4) everyone else. 8) HillaryCorp International.

There is no doubt that this is somehow related to an unprecedented number of categories!! Haha!

No doubt about that! You can purchase a linked slice of one freakin awesome image map. Most assuredly, if you follow all the links on this page, you will surely find the Ultimate Truth until the Black Helicopters come and take you away!!

Visit conpix.thegatekeepers.biz today, and find out the secrets which only the awesome wall of links may tell you!! They gots a blog too!

Having a low-key afternoon after the Wednesday street market closed in Treguier. Outside my aunt & uncle's spot the vendors have been peddling their wares all morning.

We just watched the traditional afternoon game of Bocci-like bowling in a gravel parking lot in front of the river. Small kids, older folks, the young tough-looking dudes, everyone plays nicely together. They basically throw a tiny rubber ball out about 25 feet, then try to throw three metal balls apiece at it. Whoever lands the closest wins. I was surprised no one got pegged in the head. I took a few video clips; when I get back I'll share more digital bits than you can handle...

England started flooding severely the day we left; fortunately enough for us, the Stansted Airport actually had few problems. I bumped into a number of interesting news stories today.

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First of all, from the quite interesting site TheSpyWhoBilledMe.com, which focuses on the creepy and probably damaging outsourcing of intelligence, we learn that many really important products of intelligence analysis in Washington DC are generated by private contractors, who have become thoroughly integrated with the CIA, DIA and other intelligence agencies. The whole thing sucks in 'Corporate Content and the President's Daily Brief:'

Employees of corporations are handling sensitive government responsibilities in the Intelligence Community, including analytical products that are incorporated into our nation’s most important and sensitive document, the President’s Daily Brief. Thanks to outsourcing, for-profit companies have the American president’s ear on a daily basis and their words carry the weight of the combined intelligence agencies of the United States. The possibilities for manipulating politics on a global scale are unprecedented and chilling.

The President’s Daily Brief is a summary and analysis of national security issues that requires the President’s immediate attention and that the National Intelligence Director presents to the President each morning.

Across the board, US government intelligence agencies are now highly dependent upon the staff of companies for critical national security functions. Corporate intelligence professionals from companies such as Lockheed, Raytheon, Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC and others are thoroughly integrated into analytical divisions throughout the Intelligence Community, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence which produces the final document of the President’s Daily Briefing, based upon analytical products created by the Intelligence Community. It would be hard to find an analytical product that does not have contractor involvement in some way, shape, or form. And it’s not just the products. Raw intelligence gathered by contractors also goes into the pipeline.

These analytical products from multiple agencies are sifted through, probably in part by contractors, and presented to the President every day as the US Government’s most accurate and most current assessment of priority national security issues. It’s true that the government pays for and signs off on the assessment, but much of the analysis and even some of the underlying intelligence gathering is corporate. Corporations have so penetrated the Intelligence Community that it’s impossible to distinguish their work from the government’s. Although the President’s Daily Brief has the seal of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, it is misleading. For full disclosure, the PDB really should look more like NASCAR with corporate logos plastered all over it.

Theoretically, if a corporation wanted to manipulate the national security agenda, it could introduce something into the system and no one would realize what’s happening, particularly since these companies have analysts and often intelligence collectors spread throughout the system. For argument’s sake, let’s say a company is frustrated with a government that’s hampering its business or business of one of its clients. Introducing and spinning intelligence on that government’s suspected collaboration with terrorists would quickly get the White House’s attention and could be used to shape national policy. To get us into the Iraq war, manipulation of intelligence regarding alleged weapons of mass destruction had to be very artfully done to short-circuit a formidable bureaucracy designed to prevent just such warping of intelligence. Due to the shift toward wide-scale industrial outsourcing in the Intelligence Community, that safeguard has been eroded.

Iran-Contra Revisited: Laura Rozen points out that a Sy Hersh angle is coming all too true. Back in March, Sy reported that

Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal "lessons learned" discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: "One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office"--a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said.

Which all reeks of uncanny accuracy, as well as echoing the quite true fact that everything got piped thru GW Bush's VP office back in the 1980s.

So today we find that basically whenever Congress wants to hold someone in Contempt for their various lies and stonewalling on Capitol Hill, then the U.S. Attorneys will be ordered to roll over like the puppies they are and stay right there on the rug, according to WaPo:

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.
The position presents serious legal and political obstacles for congressional Democrats, who have begun laying the groundwork for contempt proceedings against current and former White House officials in order to pry loose information about the dismissals.
Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action."
But administration officials argued yesterday that Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases, such as the prosecutor firings, in which the president has declared that testimony or documents are protected from release by executive privilege. Officials pointed to a Justice Department legal opinion during the Reagan administration, which made the same argument in a case that was never resolved by the courts.

Finally Rosen concludes the only possible conclusion:

Perhaps that is the take-away that Abrams' Iran Contra lessons learned exercise derived: with a closed circle feedback loop in which Congress's authority is consistently subjugated to the executive, the White House can get away with anything, and is indeed not subject to the rule of law. Under the Bush administration's definition, there are no checks on the executive branch, the very foundation of our democracy.

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Here's a useful one from Ian @ The Agonist: The War on Terror is the War on Drugs... on Crack. Because your legal system's erosion started with asset forfeiture and all that other insane shit first. Note Don's comment at the bottom about how he quit believing politicians after he saw the CIA pilot landing lotsa coke and weed. Don, an Agonist regular, (sig: 'i did inhale') spent some time in jail because he couldn't quite get out of his bit part in Iran-contra... he flicks off traffic security cameras in Texas nowadays.

Maryam: the well-justified rants of an Iraqi aid worker: There are a lot of people on the Internet pissed off and ranting for lame reasons. Maryam ain't one of em; she works cleaning up the mess in Iraq, trying to patch up wounded children and so forth. On various comments on a FireDogLake thread, she lets loose an ugly, but quite understandable, series of angry thoughts which crystallize the reality we can't handle facing in America, instead cowering behind abstractions:

Stop telling lies to yourself American. We know that your racist brutal murdering war criminal troops came from your society and reflect its values. we know that because we see how they behave and have to bury their victims. If you are stupid enough to think we feel anything but hatred and contrempt for your soldiers and the country that sent them to make war on my people then you are a fool.

As to Saddam bad though he was your country is far worse.

.......As I am an Iraki and as my job is to treat children maimed and deformed by the weapons your country uses and then prevented me from getting the medicines used to treat those cancers you will forgive me if I tell you that you too are telling lies to yourself. What we konw is that when it comes murdering Iraki civilians that there is no difference between the cynical and corrupt party called the Democrats and the cynical and corrupt party called the Republicans. Both are infected with the belief that America has the right to behave as it wishes especially when the people being killed are not white.

.......The Red Crescent to answer your question Siun is the only body working everywhere in Irak and outside it. It is probably the best way for those who want to undo some of the evil that America does to Irakis to help with humanitarian relief.

There are few people with more justifiable rants. Good luck to Maryam out there, somewhere on the fringe of oblivion.

Well I am off for now, probably not going to post anything for a few days as we enjoy Paris and the tail-end of this excellent two-week vacation. When I return, it'll be to a country still sliding quite rapidly downhill... Where it goes, nobody knows. At least i'll be a little more relaxed, enough to deal with things better in the future than I have lately.

Well here is something improbable. I don't have the time to follow up on any of this (I'm on vacation in Brittany!!!!) but I am happy to share it with our meager audience. I suspect this was posted because of our prominent (but sadly not recently-updated) Sibel Edmonds material. Oddly it was posted to the comment thread of one of the random sidebar images three days ago. So I will promote it here in full.

I wish the best to Ms. Jones, a former White House employee who claims to have been silenced regarding "politically embarassing (and job-threatening) security breaches, even if those lapses pose a threat to the life of the president." It seems that the White House mailroom is really close to the Oval Office, and air leaks from the former to the latter. Hence if anyone sent anthrax-like poisons to the White House, it could contaminate the hubs of power far more easily than you'd assume.

It appears to parallel the Sibel Edmonds case in at least one dimension: while the outer layer of the Edmonds onion begins with a Turkish spy ring covering up drug trafficking by penetrating the FBI translation office unit, a major and embarassing breach, which Edmonds promptly brought to her superiors and got stuffed (and gagged) for, the whole thing was so embarassing they had to bury it for political reasons. Even though if you're even the slightest patriot it should piss you off that Turkish spies have penetrated the inner rings. etc... Embarassing security breaches have to be covered up. Surprise!!!

So without further ado I will share this message, which apparently was posted here by the whistleblower herself. I believe most of this was from NarcoNews.com:

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NARCO NEWS, WHITE HOUSE EMPLOYEE FIRED, WBAI RADIO, NYC

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 2007-07-20 12:44.
PLEASE READ......THANKS.......LAURA C. JONES

White House employee fired for trying to protect president's life
By Bill Conroy,
Posted on Sun May 6th, 2007 at 04:48:59 PM EST
Sometimes, the truth is right in front of us, even if it comes in the form of a seemingly misspoken sentence.
During the political storm that erupted in early 2006 over the Bush administration’s plans to turn over port security to a United Arab Emirates-based company, the president was quoted on Fox News saying the following on March 12 of that year:

"People don't need to worry about security. This deal wouldn't go forward if we were concerned about the security for the United States of America."

Apparently, if we are willing to heed the story of a former West Wing lead mailroom assistant, Laura C. Jones, the president’s gaff underscores another truth: that his staff isn’t concerned about White House security either.

Rather, the Bush inner circle seems more concerned with silencing individuals who threaten to expose politically embarrassing (and job-threatening) security breaches, even if those lapses pose a threat to the life of the president.

With friends like those, you have to wonder why Bush remains so focused on frightening the American people about foreign boogiemen. Based on Jones’ documented experiences inside the White House, it seems the president should be more focused on protecting himself from security threats brought about by the dysfunction of his own staff.
Jones began working at the White House mailroom in 1995 as part the Office of Administration, which is under the Executive Office of the President. In 2003, after receiving a number of awards for her dedicated service over the years, she was promoted to lead mail assistant to the West Wing, and was among a very few people within the Office of Administration who had top security clearance that allowed her access to the president and his staff.

Jones told Narco News that the West Wing mailroom is very close to the Oval Office. In fact, Jones recalled that one day someone from the president’s staff complained that the odor of burned micro-waved popcorn in the mailroom was disrupting a meeting in the Oval Office.

The mailroom’s proximity to the office where the president conducts business is a key fact to keep in mind given what happened in the West Wing mailroom on March 24, 2004.

Less than two months prior to that date, three U.S. Senate office buildings were closed temporarily after highly poisonous ricin powder was discovered in the mailroom of the office of then U.S. Sen. Bill Frist. As a result of the ricin incident, on March 24, 2004, Jones and her co-workers in the West Wing were still taking the antibiotic Ciprofloxacin as a precaution.

It was in that context, then, that Shane Chambers, special assistant to then White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, brought a package to the West Wing mailroom. Chambers had been handling appointments at the White House that day and Jones says it is likely the package was given to Chambers by someone who had come to visit the president.

However, Jones stresses, to this day she isn’t certain where the package came from originally, only that it was clear at the time that the package had not gone through the rigorous off-site security clearance required for all mail delivered to the White House.

“I told him (Chambers) that the package had to be sent to another location to be X-rayed, opened and checked for powder before it comes to us,” Jones says. “… I told him that I could give the package to a driver who could take it to the location where it would be checked.”

But that’s not what happened. Instead, Jones says, her supervisor in the mailroom that day overruled her and allowed the package through, “and [despite the ricin threat] they opened it up right there in the mailroom of the West Wing,” Jones says.

Inside the package, Jones says, were a series of smaller packages, each with a label bearing a name. The names on those labels included President George W. Bush, First Lady Laura Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Chief of Staff Andy Card, according to Jones.

“I do not know what was inside the little packages,” Jones says. But she adds that the packages were sent forward to the president and his staff, despite the reckless disregard for their security in this case.

In the wake of the incident, Jones contacted a higher-level manager in her department to express her concern about how the package had been handled due to the threat it posed to the president and his staff.

After that act of internal whistleblowing, however, Jones’ life would never be the same, she claims.

Jones alleges her managers ignored her warning about the security breach and began to retaliated against her by increasing her workload, writing her up on bogus charges related to her workplace behavior, and eventually transferring her out of the White House, stripping her of her high-level security clearance and subjecting her to harassment by the Secret Service.

Jones filed an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) discrimination complaint as result of her treatment. That case is still in the appeal process. She also filed a whistleblower complaint with the government watchdog agency the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), which declined to act on her complaint.

(The OSC itself is mired in controversy because its director, Scott Bloch, in 2005 allegedly improperly dismissed hundreds of whistleblower cases and re-assigned a dozen OSC personnel without warning to other offices around the country. Bloch is now himself the subject of a retaliation complaint filed by a group that includes current and former OSC employees. For more information, read the recent expose on Bloch in Mother Jones, which also references the House of Death case that has been the subject of extensive coverage by Narco News.)

Calling Card

Jones’ story has even more twists that expose the dysfunction within the White House. After Jones was informed by her manager in mid-July 2004 that she was being transferred from the White House to another mailroom located several blocks from the White House — which included a change in work hours and a reassignment of her parking spot — she put a call into Andy Card’s office.

From Jones’ EEO pleadings:

Mr. Card specifically directed [Jones] and three other co-workers during a personal lunch outing shortly after 9/11 that he had an open door policy and expected [Jones] to come directly to him if there were ever any issues that were un-resolvable. He stated that if he could, he would help them.
When [Jones] called Mr. Card, Ms. Harriet Miers … the deputy chief staff to Mr. Card [and later Counsel to the President] answered the phone. Ms. Miers immediately recognized [Jones’] voice and inquired of [Jones] if she could assist her with any issues. [Jones] then proceeded to explain to Ms. Miers specifically her EEO concerns and that she had gone through her chain of command but retaliation was only becoming progressively worse and that no one was talking to her about her career demise and severe changes in her work environment.

Ms. Miers told [Jones] that she would advise Mr. Card and further see what she could do to find out about [Jones’] EEO situation. Both parties then ended the phone conversation.

About an hour after her conversation with Miers, Jones received a phone call from the director of Human Resources for the Office of Administration – Executive Office of the President (OA-EOP).

From Jones EEO pleadings:

[The Human Resources director) told the [Jones] that she had “stepped on toes” and that [Jones] had “put employees jobs on the line.” [The director] told [Jones] that not only was she being transferred on Monday, July 19, 2004, [to the mailroom at 1800 G St.] but they were taking away her navy blue badge (allows top security West Wing access) and giving [Jones] a green badge (lesser access and nowhere near the White House). [The director] also stated that [Jones’ manager] could sue [her] for slander for stating that a box came into the West Wing that was not radiated and properly secured.
Jones contends the retaliation continued while she was at the 1800 G St. mailroom. Her desk was put in a corner, she claims, to humiliate her. While at the G Street mailroom, Jones was suspended from work twice, once in August 2004 and again in January 2005, allegedly for “insolent” behavior toward management and for using “insolent language toward … co-workers,” according to a July 8, 2005, OA-EOP memo outlining the rational for her termination from federal employment.

That’s right, Jones was fired after some 16 years of recognized outstanding performance as a federal employee.

Jones’ EEO representative, Matthew Fogg, who is an executive director with the Federally Employed Women’s Legal and Education Fund, claims the suspensions that led to Jones' firing were based on bogus charges and were part of the pattern of retaliation against her.

Fogg puts it this way:

She tried to protect the president’s life, and yet she has been relegated to a zero. She is a hero who has been relegated to a zero.
Jones’ EEO pleadings allege that her whistleblowing and eventual firing are directly related:

From the time [Jones] reported the March 24, 2004 [package] incident to the Equal Employment Opportunity director on April 6, 2004, and through July 19, 2004, [when she was reassigned to the G Street mailroom] and beyond, [Jones] experienced a documented career first litany of extreme harassment and hostile working conditions, which included heavy workloads in work assignments, change of work location, change in parking location, loss of computer privileges, loss of high-level security clearance, change of work hours, being prevented from returning to the Old Executive Office Building to gather personal belongings, placed under surveillance by United States Secret Service (USSS) Officers who displayed her photograph in “roll call” and around to other USSS officers….
Fogg also points out that Jones’ version of events is given credibility by the fact that an administrative judge with the Office of Administrative Hearings upheld her claim for unemployment compensation in the wake of her termination from the OA-EOP.

“It validates her story and says there is culpability on the part of the government in her case,” Fogg adds.

More of the same

The March 24, 2004, security breach reported by Jones is not an isolated incident. While Jones was working at the G Street mailroom, she again had to deal with another security breach that she reported to her managers — which, Fogg says, also resulted in no action to correct the problem other than retaliation against Jones.

The following is from a Sept. 3, 2004, email Jones sent to her supervisors in the wake of the G Street incident:

… When I started unloading the car in the mailroom, the phone rang and Paul was telling me that the Pelican case was outside sitting on the sidewalk, and that I had better get it. I asked him what he was talking about and he said that he wasn’t kidding. I went outside and there were at least seven guys standing there and said that Paul had just taken it off the truck and set it on the sidewalk and left it there.”
Jones told Narco News that the “Pelican” was one of eight or so highly secured briefcases (with combination locks) that come to the White House each day. They contain highly sensitive documents and it is a priority that the briefcases are handled securely and delivered to the appropriate person.

“In this case, someone just set the Pelican by the mailroom door, outside, on the curb,” Jones says.

Fogg says the handling of the Pelican briefcase, as well as the March 24, 2004, package incident, go the heart of concerns raised recently by U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Waxman sent a letter to former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card on April 23 of this year outlining those concerns.

From that letter:

Since I first wrote you on March 30, 2007, I have received new information that suggests there may have been a systemic failure to safeguard classified information at the White House during and after your tenure [Card resigned in March 2006] as White House Chief of Staff. Multiple current and former White House security personnel have informed my staff that White House practices have been dangerously inadequate with respect to investigating security violations, taking corrective action following breaches, and physically securing classified information.
… On March 16, 2007, the Oversight Committee held a hearing to examine the disclosure by White House officials of the covert status of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson. At this hearing, the current Chief Security Officer at the White House, James Knodell, testified that the White House Security Office (1) did not conduct any internal investigation to identify the source of the leak (2) did not initiate corrective actions to prevent further security breaches, and (3) did not consider administrative sanctions or reprimands for the officials involved.

… Following the hearing, my staff heard from multiple current and former security officials who work or worked at the White House Security Office. These security officials described a systemic breakdown in security procedures at the White House. The statements of these officials, if true, indicate that the security lapses that characterized the White House response to the leak of Ms. Wilson’s identity were not an isolated occurrence, but part of a pattern of disregard for the basic requirements for protecting our national security secrets.

… According to the security officers who spoke with my staff, they were prohibited from investigating multiple White House security breaches that were reported to the White House Security Office by concerned officials, such as Secret Service agents. In fact, they said that the practice within the White House Security Office was not to document or investigate violations or take corrective action.

It would seem that ignoring security procedures for mail to be delivered to the president is a national security threat given that such a practice could place the president’s life in danger. Jones’ efforts to report the incident on March 24, 2004, and the alleged retaliation brought against her as a result, fits the pattern outlined in Waxman’s letter — as does the Pelican briefcase incident.

Narco News contacted Waxman’s office for a comment on Jones’ case. Karen Auchman, a press spokeswoman for Waxman, said she was not familiar with Jones’ case, but promised “to pass it along to the people in the Congressman’s office who are handling [the White House security] matter … to see if they can provide a comment.”

Waxman’s office never got back to Narco News.

Narco News also contacted the White House press office for a comment on the Jones case. An individual named “Andy” (who refused to provide his last name) promised to pass along Narco News’ question to someone who could respond. No one from the White House press office has yet called Narco News back to provide a comment.

Jones, to date, is still trying to find another job. She said this whole affair has turned her life upside down.

“I almost lost my house [due to the expense],” she says.

Jones also alleges that one of her co-workers who provided a favorable affidavit in her EEO case has since been fired — after being suspended and followed around by the Secret Service.

Jones’ EEO case might well make its way into federal court in the near future, Fogg says, if the EEO Commission declines to reverse a recent ruling against her. Jones’ appeal to the EEOC is still pending — as is Jones’ future.

“I remember telling one federal agent that the package incident put the president’s life on the line,” Jones says. ”He said, ’What about your life?’ ”

Stay tuned …

I thought this was really a pretty good list of sources, all around. Bumped into the anonymous listing on Twin Cities Indymedia. I deleted the link to Anarchist's Cookbook because you can find it yourself and I don't feel like providing links to explosive recipes. (They say it contains mistakes designed to backfire on the would-be anarchist. Don't mess with those recipes...)

This is a really long list, that gets from everything from housing, to background checks, to activist databases, obligatory Mao quotations, thinktanks, the all-important UFO-oriented "ruling elite shadow government" and its secret detention centers, as well as 'fictitious business names', Gnostic scriptures and Polluters By Zip Code. Especially useful: search engines that "cheat". They index pages that are flagged NO-INDEX for Google and the rest.

If you went through every site on this whole list, yep, i think you would probably know everything! Hah.

Seek & Yee Shall Find! Welcome To The Best Activist's Information Source Of 2007!

Best 2007 Activist's Information Source

I'm reposting this in full because basically it cuts right through the Case. Globalresearch.ca sez: "The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed." Click our nice image for more on the Sibel Edmonds case. I don't have a formal introduction to what it's all about on that page, but this story should help quite a bit. Our best to Mr. Stanton for a useful item for all. This was also posted on Let Sibel Edmonds Speak! blog operated by Lukery. The alternate title was "Turkey's Con Game: US Officials On the Take, FBI Provides Cover" on Lukery's site. We'll have more background on this soon, as well as a better collection of links, background and info on this most weird of post-9/11 (and 9/11-linked) DC espionage episodes.

Turkey and America: the Corridors of Intelligence and Geopolitics by John Stanton

Global Research, April 5, 2007

“Turkey is not as politically stable or as secular domestically as they would have you believe”, said one long time observer of US-Turkish relations in Washington, DC. “The Turks do not have a large community across the United States like, say, the Armenians and the Greeks who have been here a long time. Because of this you see a very large Turkish presence inside Washington, DC”.

Lacking a legitimate national grassroots organization, Turkey has built a notable presence inside the corridors of power in Washington, DC by spreading cash around and buying direct access to key US decision makers in and out of the US government. It all seems legitimate enough: campaign donations/junkets for members & staff of the US Congress (FMOCs); consulting fees to former FMOCs, US military generals, US State Department employees; and promises of billions of dollars in contracts to US corporate representatives operating in Washington, DC. With so much money chasing politicians, consultants and contractors of all stripes, there's bound to be some corrupt and even criminal activity. No seasoned observer of politics anywhere is completely surprised at the occasional and well timed conviction of a white collar criminal.

But Sibel Edmonds' seems to have stumbled into the really big white collar crime ring that ties an old George Bush I family friend, Brent Scowcroft—and his American Turkish Council--in with former US Ambassador to Turkey Marc Grossman; members of the Turkish Caucus in the US Congress; Douglas Feith, (once had his security clearance revoked and was rumored to be watched by the FBI) who once greased arms sales to Turkey back in the 1990's, is a famed Zionist, formerly of the Pentagon and now at Georgetown University in Washington, DC; the Bob Livingston Group (Livingston a FMOC), who has gotten very wealthy via Turkish business; and Joe Ralston the former USAF general whose bank account has blossomed after joining Lockheed Martin and being put on the Turkish payroll as a counter-Kurdish insurgency expert. Finally, former Speaker of the US House Dennis Hastert seems a natural part of the ring whose claim to fame may become that he kept debate on the Armenian Genocide Resolution off the House floor during his tenure and was the subject of a Vanity Fair piece.

Many of us have written on Ms. Edmonds' case and after so many years find it infuriating that the FBI continues to shut her up behind a State Secret Privilege holding. Taking recent events at the Department of Justice as guides, it is probably safe to say that Ms Edmonds' is being silenced because of some sort of State Embarrassment Privilege. The Department of Justice, of which the FBI is a subsidiary, is seeing its credibility quotient crushed under the weight of Attorney General Albert Gonzales' arrogance and the adolescent antics of his staff. Meanwhile at the FBI, Director Mueller is under fire for the antics of his staff and its abuse of PATRIOT Act provisions to catch common criminals, not “terrorists.”

A few thoughts come to mind here. First, the FBI apparently was illegally monitoring subjects associated, somehow, with the Edmonds' matter and, perhaps, saving a savory scandal for the right time. J Edgar Hoover, former FBI Director, was skilled at that sort of subterfuge. If the illegal monitoring allegation is true, that's another damaging blow to the Justice Department and the US justice system.

Second, Ms Edmonds must have stumbled upon the payola racket that Turkey had been running and there were so many big US names involved in so many high places that to air that laundry would damage US credibility not so much abroad, as right here in the USA. Imagine one one news day FMOCs, active members of the US Congress, US military personnel, US State Department people, US Justice Department folks all get nailed for being in on the Turkish gig or at least knowing about it. And what could be worse than the FBI, DEA and CIA knowing about it? Foreign intelligence agencies, of course.

Third, if it is true that Turkey is not as secular or as politically stable as its proponents in Washington, DC and Ankara say, then the whole Turkey-as-US strategic partner and would-be European Union partner would be one of the better smoke and mirrors acts sold to the US public, and the world, in recent memory.

The reality is that Turkey remains a distant and unknown entity for most Americans, although if Ms. Edmonds were allowed to speak freely it may become a well known country. It's a product that is difficult to sell to citizens here in the USA as a strategic necessity, as a wonderful vacation land, or as a dynamic society full of business opportunity. The harsher side to the story is that Turkey has threatened to invade Northern Iraq/Kurdistan should it declare its independence, or if an upcoming referendum on oil-rich Kirkuk goes the Kurds way; the Turks brutally repress their Kurdish population; free speech and tolerance of government critiques are in short supply; and, in reality, the Turkish military holds the keys to power in Ankara.

Lastly, according to the observer of US-Turkish relations, “It seems to me that the government in Ankara, Turkey is always working on propaganda, on slogans. Trying too hard. If you visit Turkey you'll notice everywhere you go that there is a picture of Turkey's founder Attaturk. It reminds me sort of like Soviet times where you'd see a picture of Lenin everywhere. The Turks spend too much time worrying about petty resolutions like those recognizing the Armenian Genocide.”

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in political and national security matters. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.