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Dear friends,
Below
are one-paragraph excerpts of important news articles you may have
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These news articles include revealing information on new evidence that
the
NSA's surveillance of the American public predated 9/11, Dick Cheney's
decades-long campaign to increase the powers of the presidency, the
influence of the drug industry on medical schools, and more. Each excerpt
is taken verbatim from the major media website listed at the link
provided. If any link fails to function, click
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Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team
Former CEO Says U.S. Punished Phone
FirmOctober 13, 2007, Washington
Posthttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101202485.html
A former
Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for
insider trading, has alleged that the government withdrew opportunities
for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused
to
participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the
company thought might be illegal. Former chief executive Joseph P.
Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA
approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks
... about participating in a warrantless surveillance program to gather
information about Americans' phone records. In the court filings
disclosed
this week, Nacchio suggests that Qwest's refusal to take part in that
program led the government to cancel a separate, lucrative contract with
the NSA in retribution. He is using the allegation to try to show why his
stock sale should not have been considered improper. He has claimed in
court papers that he had been optimistic that Qwest would overcome weak
sales because of the expected top-secret contract with the government.
Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27,
2001, suggests that
the Bush administration was seeking to enlist
telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the
terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have
been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless
surveillance efforts. In May 2006,
USA Today reported
that the NSA had been secretly collecting the phone-call records of tens
of millions of Americans, using data provided by major telecom firms.
Qwest, it reported, declined to participate because of fears that the
program lacked legal standing.
Note:The Bush Administration has claimed that the NSA surveillance of the
American public was a necessary response to the attacks of 9/11. But
this
story reveals that the surveillance began before 9/11, shortly after
Bush
took office. The obvious question is, why? For many other reliable,
verifiable reports that suggest the official explanation of the events of
9/11 is false, click
here.
Cheney's LawOctober 16, 2007, Frontline
(PBS)http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/cheney/etc/synopsis.html
For
three
decades Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a secretive,
behind-closed-doors campaign to give the president virtually unlimited
wartime power. Finally, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Justice Department
and the White House made a number of controversial legal decisions.
Orchestrated by Cheney and his lawyer David Addington, the department
interpreted executive power in an expansive and extraordinary way,
granting President George W. Bush the power to detain, interrogate,
torture, wiretap and spy -- without congressional approval or judicial
review.
"The vice president believes that Congress has very few
powers to actually constrain the president and the executive branch,"
former Justice Department attorney Marty Lederman tells
Frontline. "He believes the president should have the final word
-- indeed the only word -- on all matters within the executive branch."
After Sept. 11, Cheney and Addington were determined to
implement
their vision -- in secret. The vice president and his counsel found an
ally
in John Yoo, a lawyer at the Justice Department's extraordinarily
powerful
Office of Legal Counsel. In concert with Addington, Yoo wrote memoranda
authorizing the president to act with unparalleled authority. "There were
extravagant and unnecessary claims of presidential power that were wildly
overbroad to the tasks at hand," [former Assistant Attorney General Jack
L. Goldsmith] says. As the White House and Congress continue to face
off
over executive privilege, the terrorist surveillance program, and the
firing of U.S. attorneys,
Frontline tells the story of what's
formed the views of the man behind what some view as the most ambitious
project to reshape the power of the president in American history.
Note:To watch this revealing
Frontline video, click
here.
U.S. Medical Schools, Drug Makers Share Strong
TiesOctober 16, 2007, Washington
Posthttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/16/AR2007101601409.html
More
than
half of department chairs at U.S. medical schools and teaching hospitals
have financial ties with the drug industry, a new study finds. "There is
not a single aspect of medicine in which the drug companies do not have
substantial and deep relationships, [including] doctors-in-training,
resident physicians, researchers, physicians-in-practice, the people who
review drugs for the federal government and the people who review
studies," said lead researcher Eric Campbell, associate professor at the
Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard
Medical School in Boston. "Drug companies have relationships with
everyone," he continued. "They're involved in every aspect of medicine.
Someone has to decide which of these is OK." The study, the first to
examine the extent of these institutional relationships, is published in
the Oct. 17 issue of the
Journal of the American Medical
Association. "I think the paper is a very valuable contribution, in
that it provides what's probably the first comprehensive documentation of
the extent of relationships that involve department chairs, and
department
chairs are certainly the key agents of overseeing and maintaining the
day-to-day operations of a medical school or teaching hospital," said Dr.
David Korn ... at the Association of American Medical Colleges in
Washington, D.C. The issue of medicine's ties to industry has been a hot
one of late. One study found that third-year medical students get, on
average, one gift or attend one activity sponsored by a drug maker each
week.
"Now it's up to the policymakers and people who run medical
schools," said Campbell. "They need to come up with some rules and they
need to be new rules. I believe there's very little reasonable
justification for why drug companies should be involved in the education
of medical students."Note:For a powerful overview of medical corruption, click here.
Pentagon Review Faults Bank Record
DemandsOctober 14, 2007, New York
Timeshttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/washington/14letter.html
An
internal Pentagon review this year found systemic problems ... in the
military’s efforts to obtain records from American banks and consumer
credit agencies in terrorism and espionage investigations, according to
Pentagon documents. The newly disclosed documents, totaling more than
1,000 pages, provide additional confirmation of the military’s expanding
use of what are known as national security letters under powers claimed
under the Patriot Act. The documents show that the military has issued at
least 270 of the letters since 2005, and about 500 in all since 2001. The
documents were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by two
private advocacy groups, the American
Civil
Liberties Union and the Electronic
Frontier Foundation.
The New York Times first disclosed the
military’s use of the letters in January, and senior members of Congress
and civil liberties groups criticized the practice on grounds that it
seemed to conflict with traditional Pentagon rules against domestic law
enforcement operations. The documents raise a number of apparent
discrepancies between the Defense Department’s internal practices and
what
officials have said publicly and to Congress about their use of the
letters. The documents suggest, for instance, that military officials
used
the F.B.I. to collect records for what started as purely military
investigations. And the documents also leave open the possibility that
records could be gathered on nonmilitary personnel in the course of the
investigations.
Civil liberties advocates said recent controversy
over the Department of Defense’s collection of information on antiwar
protesters made them suspicious of the assertion that the letters had
been
used exclusively to focus on military personnel. “We are very skeptical
that the D.O.D. is voluntarily limiting its own surveillance power,”
said Melissa Goodman, a staff attorney for the A.C.L.U..
Ven 19 Oct - 10:44 par mihou