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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 profiteering by
lenders and loan servicers during foreclosures, Blackwater's new
privatized intelligence services to governments and corporations, the
history of the CIA's investigation of UFOs, and more. Each excerpt is
taken verbatim from the major media website listed at the link provided.
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Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team


Dubious Fees Hit Borrowers in
Foreclosures

November 6, 2007, New York
Times


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/business/06mortgage.html

As
record
numbers of homeowners default on their mortgages, questionable practices
among lenders are coming to light in bankruptcy courts, leading some
legal
specialists to contend that companies instigating foreclosures may be
taking advantage of imperiled borrowers. Because there is little
oversight of foreclosure practices and the fees that are charged,
bankruptcy specialists fear that some consumers may be losing their homes
unnecessarily or that mortgage servicers, who collect loan payments, are
profiting from foreclosures. Bankruptcy specialists say lenders
and loan servicers often do not comply with even the most basic legal
requirements, like correctly computing the amount a borrower owes on a
foreclosed loan or providing proof of holding the mortgage note in
question. “Regulators need to look beyond their current, myopic focus on
loan origination and consider how servicers’ calculation and collection
practices leave families vulnerable to foreclosure,” said Katherine M.
Porter, associate professor of law at the University of Iowa. In an
analysis of foreclosures in Chapter 13 bankruptcy, the program intended
to
help troubled borrowers save their homes, Ms. Porter found that
questionable fees had been added to almost half of the loans she
examined,
and many of the charges were identified only vaguely. Collectively they
could raise millions of dollars for loan servicers at a time when the
other side of the business, mortgage origination, has faltered. In one
example, Ms. Porter found that a lender had filed a claim stating that
the
borrower owed more than $1 million. But after the loan history was
scrutinized, the balance turned out to be $60,000. And a judge in
Louisiana is considering an award for sanctions against Wells Fargo in a
case in which the bank assessed improper fees and charges that added more
than $24,000 to a borrower’s loan.


Blackwater's Owner Has Spies for
Hire

November 3, 2007, Washington
Post


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110202165.html?hpid=topnews

The
Prince Group, the holding company that owns Blackwater Worldwide, has
been
building an operation that will [develop] intelligence ... for clients in
industry and government. The operation, Total Intelligence Solutions, has
assembled a roster of former ... high-ranking figures from agencies such
as the CIA and defense intelligence. Its chairman is Cofer Black, the
former head of counterterrorism at CIA known for his leading role in many
of the agency's more controversial programs, including the rendition and
interrogation of ... suspects and the detention of some of them in secret
prisons overseas. Its chief executive is Robert Richer, a former CIA
associate deputy director of operations who was heavily involved in
running the agency's role in the Iraq war. Because of its roster and its
ties to owner Erik Prince, the multimillionaire former Navy SEAL, the
company's thrust into this world highlights the blurring of lines between
government, industry and activities formerly reserved for agents
operating
in the shadows. Richer, for instance, once served as the chief of
the CIA's Near East division and is said to have ties to King Abdullah of
Jordan. The CIA had spent millions helping train Jordan's intelligence
service in exchange for information. Now Jordan has hired Blackwater to
train its special forces. "Cofer can open doors," said Richer,
who served 22 years at the CIA. "I can open doors. We can generally get
in
to see who we need to see. We ... can deal with the right minister or
person." "They have the skills and background to do anything anyone
wants," said RJ Hillhouse, who writes a national security blog called The Spy Who Billed Me.
"There's no oversight. They're an independent company offering freelance
espionage services. They're rent-a-spies."


Plan 9 from outer space

November 3, 2007, Sydney Morning
Herald (Australia's leading newspaper)


http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/plan-9-from-outer-space/2007/11/02/1193619145400.html

In
January 1979, The New York Times reported that despite repeated, feverish
denials, the CIA had indeed investigated the UFO phenomenon. The report
is
said to have so upset the then CIA director, Stansfield Turner, that he
reportedly asked his staff: "Are we in UFOs?" The answer was yes.
This year a raft of newly unclassified CIA documents revealed
that
the remote possibility of alien invasion elicited greater fear than the
threat of a Soviet nuclear attack. The subject of UFOs ... not only
focused the attention of the US government elite for 50 years, but of
some
of the greatest scientific and military minds of the era. The
CIA
documents show that despite decades of repeated public denials, behind
the
scenes there raged a series of inter-agency feuds that involved the
highest
levels of the US government. UFO files cover everything from "flying
saucers over Belgian Congo uranium mines" to Nazi "flying saucers". A
1953
memo shows that the physicist John Wheeler, while critically involved
with
Edward Teller in the creation of the hydrogen bomb, was available to the
"CIA attack on the flying saucer" problem. A secret 1995 report was
titled: CIA's role in the study of UFOs 1947-90: a diehard issue. Written
by Gerald Haines, the CIA's National Reconnaissance Office historian, its
detailed summary of CIA involvement inadvertently undermined its
"UFOs-don't-exist" conclusion. Although the air force was the agency
given the task of investigating UFOs from 1948 onwards, the CIA remained
deeply involved. Some of their highlights, quoting directly from the
documents, include: "[Since] 1947 there have been about 1500 official
reports of sightings and [of these] the air force carries 20 per cent as
unexplained."

Note:
For a concise summary of UFO evidence from highly-respected former US
government and military officials, click here.



Librarians Say Surveillance Bills Lack Adequate
Oversight

November 2, 2007, Washington
Post


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/01/AR2007110102233.html

A
little-remarked feature of pending legislation on domestic surveillance
has provoked alarm among university and public librarians who say it
could
allow federal intelligence-gathering on library patrons without
sufficient
court oversight.
Draft House and Senate bills would allow the government to compel any
"communications service provider" to provide access to e-mails and other
electronic information within the United States. The Justice Department
has previously said that "providers" may include libraries, causing three
major university and library groups to worry that the government's
ability
to monitor people targeted for surveillance without a warrant would chill
students' and faculty members' online research activities.
"It is fundamental that when a user enters the library,
physically
or electronically," said Jim Neal, the head librarian at
Columbia
University, "their use of the collections, print or electronic,
their communications on library servers and computers, is not going to be
subjected to surveillance unless the courts have authorized it."
The librarians said their concern about such monitoring is rooted in
recent history. In the summer of 2005, FBI agents handed an
administrative
subpoena called a national security letter (NSL) to a Connecticut
librarian, and demanded subscriber, billing and other information on
patrons who used a specific computer at a branch library. NSLs can be
approved by certain FBI agents without court approval. The agents ordered
the librarian to keep the demand secret. But he refused to produce the
records, and his employer filed suit, challenging the gag order. A
federal
judge in September 2005 declared the gag order unconstitutional. The
Association of Research Libraries, ... the American Library Association
... and the Association of American Universities ... each say they seek
to
amend the draft bills to make clear that the term "communications
provider"
does not include libraries.

Note:
For more eye-opening reports from major media sources on the erosion of
civil liberties, click
here.



N.Y.'s Cuomo alleges appraiser, lender
collusion
upped home values

November 2, 2007, San Francisco
Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/11/02/MNO8T4NNM.DTL

In a
major legal action alleging misdeeds in the mortgage business, New York's
attorney general [Andrew Cuomo] has accused appraisers of helping fuel
the
nation's foreclosure crisis by pumping up home values at the behest of
lenders and other real estate professionals. The lawsuit said that First
American eAppraiseIT, a subsidiary of Fortune 500 company First American
Corp., caved in to pressure from Washington Mutual to rely on "proven
appraisers" who were willing to inflate home prices. Washington Mutual
profited from the artificially high appraisals because they allowed the
company to close more home loans at greater values, the lawsuit said.
First American, a provider of business information, title insurance and
related services, wanted to win more business from Washington Mutual, the
suit said. The lawsuit comes in the midst of the nation's subprime
lending
crisis, which industry experts say could cause up to 2 million homes to
be
lost to foreclosure over the next couple of years. Most subprime
foreclosures are caused by a confluence of two factors: mortgage payments
that rise when adjustable loans reset, and home prices that are lower
than
the amount owed on the mortgage. A moribund real estate market has caused
prices to flatten or fall. But if home prices were artificially
high to begin with - which would be the case if appraisers inflated
values, as the lawsuit alleged - the likelihood increases of homeowners
owing more on the mortgage than their properties are worth. Cuomo said
fraudulent appraisal practices were pervasive in the industry.
At
a news conference announcing the lawsuit, he said lenders, mortgage
brokers, real estate agents and others frequently pressured appraisers to
"come in with the right number, the number that justifies the
transaction"
so that everyone in the chain would receive commissions.


From the Desk of Donald Rumsfeld . .
.

November 1, 2007, Washington
Post


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/31/AR2007103103095.html

In a
series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid "physical labor" and
wrote of the need to "keep elevating the threat," "link Iraq to Iran" and
develop "bumper sticker statements" to rally public support for an
increasingly unpopular war. The memos [reveal] a defense
secretary disdainful of media criticism and driven to reshape public
opinion of the Iraq war. In a 2004 memo on the deteriorating situation in
Iraq, Rumsfeld concluded that the challenges there are "not unusual."
Pessimistic news reports ... simply result from the wrong standards being
applied, he wrote in one of the memos obtained by The Washington Post.
Under siege in April 2006, when a series of retired generals denounced
him
and called for his resignation in newspaper op-ed pieces, Rumsfeld
produced
a memo after a conference call with military analysts. "Talk about
Somalia,
the Philippines, etc. Make the American people realize they are
surrounded
in the world by violent extremists," he wrote. People will "rally" to
sacrifice, he noted after the meeting. "They are looking for leadership.
Sacrifice = Victory." The meeting also led Rumsfeld to write that he
needed a team to help him "go out and push people back, rather than
simply
defending" Iraq policy and strategy. "I am always on the defense. They
say
I do it well, but you can't win on the defense," he wrote. "We can't just
keep taking hits." Rumsfeld suggested that the public should know that
there will be no "terminal event" in the fight against terrorism like the
signing ceremony on the USS Missouri when Japan surrendered to end World
War II. "It is going to be a long war," he wrote. In one of his longer
ruminations, in May 2004, Rumsfeld considered whether to redefine the
terrorism fight as a "worldwide insurgency." The goal of the enemy, he
wrote, is to "end the state system, using terrorism, to drive the
non-radicals from the world."