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Dear friends,

Below
are one-paragraph excerpts of important news articles you may have
missed.
These news articles include revealing information on illegal government
surveillance, pending legislation affecting press freedom, photographic
evidence of UFOs at Roswell, and more. Each excerpt is taken verbatim
from
the major media website listed at the link provided. If any link fails to
function, click
here. Key sentences are highlighted for those with
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Tod Fletcher and Fred
Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team


In Intelligence World, A Mute
Watchdog

July 15, 2007, Washington
Post


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/14/AR2007071400862.html

An
independent oversight board created to identify intelligence abuses after
the CIA scandals of the 1970s did not send any reports to the attorney
general of legal violations during the first 5 1/2 years of the Bush
administration's counterterrorism effort, the Justice Department has told
Congress. The President's Intelligence Oversight Board -- the principal
civilian watchdog of the intelligence community -- is obligated under a
26-year-old executive order to tell the attorney general and the
president
about any intelligence activities it believes "may be unlawful." The
board
was vacant for the first two years of the Bush administration. The
board's
mandate is to provide independent oversight, so the absence of such
communications has prompted critics to question whether the board was
doing its job. "It's now apparent that the IOB was not actively employed
in the early part of the administration. And it was a crucial period when
its counsel would seem to have been needed the most," said Anthony
Harrington, who served as the board's chairman for most of the Clinton
administration. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick J.
Leahy (D-Vt.) added: "It is deeply disturbing that this administration
seems to spend so much of its energy and resources trying to find ways to
ignore any check and balance on its authority and avoid accountability to
Congress and the American public."


'Code Orange' for press freedom

July 15, 2007, San Francisco
Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/15/EDGU9R0PAC1.DTL

The
arguments against a federal shield law might be frightening if they were
not so ludicrous.
There are two ways to reassure yourself that legislation to allow
journalists to protect the identity of confidential sources will not be
exploited by terrorists, thugs, identity thieves, sleazy sleuths and
anarchists who expose trade secrets.
One is to look at the experience of 49 state laws that grant varying
levels of protection for journalists using anonymous sources.
The other is to read the bill.
"The Free Flow of Information Act of 2007,'' sponsored by Reps. Mike
Pence, R-Ind., and Rick Boucher, D-Va., does not provide an absolute
right
for journalists to protect their sources. Under their HR2102, a
journalist
could be forced by the courts to reveal his or her source if the
disclosure involved:
-- A threat to national security.
-- A threat of imminent death or significant [bodily] harm to a person.
-- A trade secret of significant value.
-- Personal financial or health information.
[The] Justice Department, which has wielded subpoenas and threats of jail
time against journalists in pursuing government leaks, has never liked
the
idea of a shield law. So it was hardly a surprise when it recently
testified against HR2102. What was eye-poppingly outrageous was a
Justice official's straight-faced attempt to suggest that criminals or
terrorists would invoke the bill's protection for journalists to thwart
prosecutors.
"Totally absurd," House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said of
the terrorism argument. However, the dangers that overzealous
prosecutors pose to a free and independent press that Pence calls
"essential to an informed" electorate are very real and growing. As Pence
put it, "there may never be another Deep Throat" if whistle-blowers
become
worried that journalists cannot keep a promise of confidentiality.


Fame from outer space

July 15, 2007, Fort Worth
Star-Telegram (One of the leading newspapers of Texas)


http://www.star-telegram.com/metro_news/story/169727.html

J. Bond
Johnson is one of this newspaper's most famous photographers. He has been
portrayed in Hollywood films and documentaries and discussed at length in
magazine articles. His photos have been a prominent exhibit for almost
two
decades in a museum that draws 150,000 visitors a year. And they are "the
most frequently requested images from our Fort Worth Star-Telegram
collection -- really from all of our photo collections," said Brenda
McClurkin of the University of Texas at Arlington Library of Special
Collections. That's because on a warm afternoon in July 1947, Johnson, at
the age of 21, took the only known photographs of the supposed remains of
the UFO crash near Roswell, N.M.. What looked like beams of balsa wood
and
sheets of tinfoil were laid out on the carpet in the office of the
airfield
commander, Maj. Gen. Roger M. Ramey. Boxes around the office were thought
to hold more wreckage that had not been examined. Ramey and Maj. Jesse A.
Marcel, who brought the debris from Roswell, posed for pictures holding
the material. After filling both sides of three glass-plate negatives ...
Johnson, on deadline, rushed back to the paper, printed his photos,
handed
them -- still wet -- to his editors and went home. By sunrise the next
morning, his photos of the shiny material adorned newspapers around the
world, accompanied by a story that the Army had explained the wreckage as
a fallen weather balloon. "I asked him one time if he believed
the
artifacts were from alien beings," said his daughter, Janith Johnson.
"Having the conservative and religious background that he did, he said,
'I
don't know, but it was like nothing I have ever seen on this
earth.'"


Are UFOs Real?

July 13, 2007, CNN


http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0707/13/lkl.02.html

LARRY
KING: A return to Roswell, New Mexico, where the UFO controversy
began 60 years ago with the man who says his father showed him debris
from
an alien spacecraft. Dr. Jesse Marcel ... was shown UFO debris
by
his father, Major Jesse Marcel. Tell us about your dad. DR. JESSE
MARCEL,
JR.: He was the base intelligence officer for the 509th Bomb Group, which
is the bomb group that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan that won the war.
KING: They were based at Roswell? MARCEL: They were. As the intelligence
officer, his job was to investigate unusual events. He found a large area
of strange looking debris. This was not remains of a weather balloon. He
picked up a certain representative portion of the debris, brought it in
to
Roswell. KING: Julie Shuster ... your father was ... Walter Haut. He
was
public information officer. JULIE SHUSTER: My father ... issued the press
release [which] basically said ... we have in our possession a flying
saucer. And he used the words "not of this Earth." KING: Julie, did
your
father go to his grave believing? SHUSTER: Yes. He was very firm in the
fact that he said it was not of this Earth. FIFE SYMINGTON, FORMER
GOVERNOR OF ARIZONA: I saw the Phoenix Lights
along with hundreds if not thousands of people. To my astonishment this
large sort of delta-shaped, wedge-shaped, craft moved silently over the
valley ... dramatically large, very distinctive leading edge with some
enormous lights. I was absolutely stunned. It was definitely not an
airplane. And it was certainly not high-altitude flares because flares
don't fly in formation. We have a lot of evidence, a lot of photographs,
a
lot of news media coverage of it. You can't just [say] everybody in
Phoenix
was hallucinating.

Note:
Isn't it interesting that Roswell happened to be the military base for
what at the time was the only nuclear-equiped jet squadron in the world?
For Dr. Marcel's book The Roswell Legacy, click
here. This interview also includes Dr. Stanton
Friedman, a nuclear physicist who has spent many years studying
Roswell and has little doubt that the military covered up the incident.
Note that CNN fails to mention in the entire interview that Friedman is a
respected nuclear physicist who worked numerous years with top
corporations in this capacity. For lots more reliable, verifiable
information on this intriguing topic, see our UFO Information
Center.


Marine says beatings urged in
Iraq

July 15, 2007, Los Angeles
Times


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-marines15jul15,0,7740534.story

A Marine
corporal, testifying Saturday at the murder trial of a buddy, said that
Marines in his unit began routinely beating Iraqis after being ordered by
officers to "crank up the violence level." Cpl. Saul H. Lopezromo said
Marines in his platoon, including the defendant, Cpl. Trent D. Thomas,
were angry when officers criticized them as not being as tough as other
Marine platoons. "We're all hard-chargers, we're not there to mess
around,
so we took it as an insult," Lopezromo said. Within weeks of allegedly
being scolded, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman went out late one night
to find and kill a suspected insurgent in the village of Hamandiya near
the Abu Ghraib prison. Unable to find their target, the Marines and
corpsman dragged another man from his house, fatally shot him, and then
planted an AK-47 assault rifle near the body to make it look like he had
been killed in a shootout, according to court testimony. "We were
told to crank up the violence level," said Lopezromo, who testified for
the defense. He indicated that during daily patrols the Marines became
much rougher with Iraqis. Asked by a juror to explain, he said, "We beat
people, sir." Lopezromo said he believed that officers knew of
the beatings, and ... said he saw nothing wrong in what Thomas and the
others did. "I don't see it as an execution, sir," he told the judge. "I
see it as killing the enemy." He added that Marines, in effect, consider
all Iraqi men as part of the insurgency. Prosecution witnesses testified
that Thomas shot the 52-year-old Iraq at point-blank range after he had
already been shot by other Marines and was lying on the ground. Lopezromo
said a procedure called "dead-checking" was routine. Marines are taught
"dead-checking" in boot camp ... he said.