September 11, 2013 archive

On This Day In History September 11

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

September 11 is the 254th day of the year (255th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 111 days remaining until the end of the year. It is usually the first day of the Coptic calendar and Ethiopian calendar (in the period AD 1900 to AD 2099).

On this day in 1941, ground is broken for the construction of The Pentagon.

The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, “the Pentagon” is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.

Designed by the American architect George Bergstrom (1876-1955), and built by Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, general contractor John McShain, the building was dedicated on January 15, 1943, after ground was broken for construction on September 11, 1941. General Brehon Somervell provided the major motive power behind the project; Colonel Leslie Groves was responsible for overseeing the project for the Army.

The Pentagon is the world’s largest office building by floor area, with about 6,500,000 sq ft (604,000 m2), of which 3,700,000 sq ft (344,000 m2) are used as offices. Approximately 23,000 military and civilian employees and about 3,000 non-defense support personnel work in the Pentagon. It has five sides, five floors above ground, two basement levels, and five ring corridors per floor with a total of 17.5 mi (28.2 km) of corridors. The Pentagon includes a five-acre (20,000 m2) central plaza, which is shaped like a pentagon and informally known as “ground zero”, a nickname originating during the Cold War and based on the presumption that the Soviet Union would target one or more nuclear missiles at this central location in the outbreak of a nuclear war.

On September 11, 2001, exactly 60 years after the building’s groundbreaking, hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 was crashed into the western side of the Pentagon, killing 189 people, including five hijackers, 59 others aboard the plane, and 125 working in the building.

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The Other 9/11: Chilean Coup 40 Years Later

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Forty years ago on September 11, a US backed coup d’état took place in Chile, led by the Chilean Army Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet overthrew the elected socialist President Salvador Allende, ending civilian rule a week before its 48th anniversary. The coup established a military dictatorship with support from the CIA and DIA, that ruled Chile until 1990 that was marked by numerous human rights violations. According to various reports and investigations 1,200-3,200 people were killed, up to 80,000 were interned, and up to 30,000 were tortured by his government including women and children.

Pinochet’s rule ended in 1990 after a 1988 plebiscite led to democratic elections for the Presidency and Congress. Pinochet stepped down from the presidency continuing to serve as Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army until 10 March 1998. On 10 October 1998, Pinochet was arrested in London in connection with numerous human rights allegations, but following a legal battle was released and returned to Chile in March 2000. In 2004, Chilean Judge Juan Guzmán Tapia ruled that Pinochet was medically fit to stand trial and placed him under house arrest. By the time of his death on 10 December 2006, about 300 criminal charges were still pending against him in Chile for numerous human rights violations, tax evasion, and embezzlement during his 17-year rule and afterwards.

Pinochet’s arrest in London came as a result of the life long efforts of Spanish attorney Juan Garcés, who was an personal adviser to Allende and was with him on the day of the coup. Garcés left the presidential palace before it was bombed, charged by Allende to tell the world what he had witnessed.

Juan Garcés joined Democracy Now!‘s hosts Amy Goodman and Aaron Maté to discuss his efforts to bring Pinochet to justice.



Transcript can be read here

In Part 2, Peter Kornbluh, author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, joins the conversation to discuss how US politicians, banks and corporation aided the coup.



Trascript can be read here

In the last segment, the discussion turns to the U.S. role under President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger.

Peter Kornbluh, who spearheaded the effort to declassify more than 20,000 secret documents that revealed the role of the CIA and the White House in the Chilean coup, discusses how Nixon and Kissinger backed the Chilean military’s ouster of Allende and then offered critical support as it committed atrocities to cement its newfound rule. [..]

In 1970, the CIA’s deputy director of plans wrote in a secret memo: “It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. … It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [the U.S. government] and American hand be well hidden.” That same year President Nixon ordered the CIA to “make the economy scream” in Chile to “prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him.”



Transcript can be read [here

It appears that the US is still at it.

About those German intercepts

I find it quite telling that after all the revelations about NSA and GCHQ (and for that matter the Bundesnachrichtendienst) eavesdropping, Kerry and the Obama Administration are left with mere assertions we’re supposed to accept on faith alone while the BND is providing actual intercepts that tell a quite different story.

Syrian forces may have used gas without Assad’s permission: paper

Reuters

Sun Sep 8, 2013 8:17am EDT

Syrian brigade and division commanders had been asking the Presidential Palace to allow them to use chemical weapons for the last four-and-a-half months, according to radio messages intercepted by German spies, but permission had always been denied, the paper said.

This could mean Assad may not have personally approved the attack close to Damascus on August 21 in which more than 1,400 are estimated to have been killed, intelligence officers suggested.



Bild said the radio traffic was intercepted by a German naval reconnaissance vessel, the Oker, sailing close to the Syrian coast.

Intercepts caught Assad rejecting requests to use chemical weapons, German paper says

By Matthew Schofield, McClatchy

Monday, September 9, 2013

Syrian President Bashar Assad has repeatedly rejected requests from his field commanders for approval to use chemical weapons, according to a report this weekend in a German newspaper.

The report in Bild am Sonntag, which is a widely read and influential national Sunday newspaper, reported that the head of the German Foreign Intelligence agency, Gerhard Schindler, last week told a select group of German lawmakers that intercepted communications had convinced German intelligence officials that Assad did not order or approve what is believed to be a sarin gas attack on Aug. 21 that killed hundreds of people in Damascus’ eastern suburbs.



The newspaper’s article said that on numerous occasions in recent months, the German intelligence ship named Oker, which is off the Syrian coast, has intercepted communications indicating that field officers have contacted the Syrian presidential palace seeking permission to use chemical weapons and have been turned down.

The article added that German intelligence does not believe Assad sanctioned the alleged attack on August 21.



European foreign ministers on Saturday issued a statement calling the Aug. 21 attack a “war crime,” but said nothing should be done without U.N. approval. New opinion polls over the weekend in France, Germany and Great Britain showed strong disapproval of military action in Syria. The British poll, done for The Sunday Telegraph, indicated only 19 percent of the population backs the idea of military action with the United States, while 63 percent oppose it. The polls in France and Germany showed similar margins of opposition.

Meanwhile, a new tabulation of the dead from the Aug. 21 incident raised more questions about Obama administration officials’ account of what took place.

The Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies, an anti-Assad group, said that it had been able to document 678 dead from the attacks, including 106 children and 157 women. The report said 51 of the dead, or 7 percent, were fighters from the Free Syrian Army, the designation used to describe rebels that are affiliated with the Supreme Military Council, which the U.S. backs.



U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said 1,429 people died Aug. 21, included 426 children, but has not said how the United States obtained the figures. Other estimates have ranged from a low of “at least 281” by the French government to 502, including “tens” of rebel fighters and about 100 children, by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based group that tracks violence in Syria.

Obama’s Case for Syria Didn’t Reflect Intel Consensus

Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service

Sep 9 2013

The evidence indicates that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper culled intelligence analyses from various agencies and by the White House itself, but that the White House itself had the final say in the contents of the document.

Leading members of Congress to believe that the document was an intelligence community assessment and thus represents a credible picture of the intelligence on the alleged chemical attack of Aug. 21 has been a central element in the Obama administration’s case for war in Syria.

That part of the strategy, at least, has been successful. Despite strong opposition in Congress to the proposed military strike in Syria, no one in either chamber has yet challenged the administration’s characterisation of the intelligence. But the administration is vulnerable to the charge that it has put out an intelligence document that does not fully and accurately reflect the views of intelligence analysts.

Former intelligence officials told IPS that that the paper does not represent a genuine intelligence community assessment but rather one reflecting a predominantly Obama administration influence.

In essence, the White House selected those elements of the intelligence community assessments that supported the administration’s policy of planning a strike against the Syrian government force and omitted those that didn’t.



The issuance of the document by the White House rather than by Clapper, as had been apparently planned, points to a refusal by Clapper to put his name on the document as revised by the White House.

Clapper’s refusal to endorse it – presumably because it was too obviously an exercise in “cherry picking” intelligence to support a decision for war – would explain why the document had to be issued by the White House.



A clear indication that the White House, rather than Clapper, had the final say on the content of the document is that it includes a statement that a “preliminary U.S. government assessment determined that 1,429 people were killed in the chemical weapons attack, including at least 426 children.”

That figure, for which no source was indicated, was several times larger than the estimates given by British and French intelligence.

The document issued by the White House cites intelligence that is either obviously ambiguous at best or is of doubtful authenticity, or both, as firm evidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack.

It claims that Syrian chemical weapons specialists were preparing for such an attack merely on the basis of signals intelligence indicating the presence of one or more individuals in a particular location. The same intelligence had been regarded prior to Aug. 21 as indicating nothing out of the ordinary, as was reported by CBS news Aug. 23.

The paper also cites a purported intercept by U.S intelligence of conversations between Syrian officials in which a “senior official” supposedly “confirmed” that the government had carried out the chemical weapons attack.

But the evidence appears to indicate that the alleged intercept was actually passed on to the United States by Israeli intelligence. U.S. intelligence officials have long been doubtful about intelligence from Israeli sources that is clearly in line with Israeli interests.

You know, it’s not like Assad isn’t aware we’re spying on him so who are we protecting the “sources and methods” from?  Congress?  The United States people?

Get Out Of Jail Free

Inside the End of the U.S. Bid to Punish Lehman Executives

By BEN PROTESS and SUSANNE CRAIG, The New York Times

September 8, 2013, 8:57 pm

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s eight-member Lehman Brothers team, having hit one dead end after another over the previous two years, concluded that suing the bank’s executives would be legally unjustified. The group, noting that prosecutors and F.B.I. agents had already walked away from a parallel criminal case, reached unanimous agreement to close its most prominent investigation stemming from the financial crisis, according to officials who attended the meeting, which has not been reported previously.

But Mary L. Schapiro, the S.E.C. chairwoman, disagreed. She pushed George S. Canellos, who supervised the Lehman investigation as head of the S.E.C.’s New York office, to explain how executives who presided over the biggest bankruptcy in United States history could escape without a single civil charge.

“I don’t get it,” she said during a tense exchange with Mr. Canellos in her private conference room in Washington, according to the officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly. “Why is there no case?” she continued, staring at Mr. Canellos, instructing him to continue investigating whether Lehman misled investors. “The world won’t understand.”

She was right. Five years after Lehman’s collapse hastened a worldwide economic panic, the government faces lingering questions about the decision to spare executives like Richard S. Fuld Jr., who ran Lehman for 14 years until its demise. Not a single senior executive from any Wall Street bank faced criminal charges from the crisis, either. And the government’s deadline for filing most charges will expire this month, the anniversary of Lehman’s collapse, providing a reminder of the case and its unpopular outcome.



The S.E.C. quietly reached the decision in 2012 after officials sparred for months over whether Lehman omitted “material” information in disclosures to investors, an important legal standard. Mr. Canellos argued that the omissions were not material. And those who questioned that reasoning – like Ms. Schapiro, as well as some accountants and enforcement officials – acquiesced to Mr. Canellos’s team, which was closest to the evidence.

The S.E.C. also debated the culpability of top Lehman executives. But Mr. Canellos’s team argued that Mr. Fuld did not know that Lehman was using questionable accounting practices despite testimony from another Lehman executive that suggested otherwise. Ms. Schapiro did not override his judgment after S.E.C. officials cautioned her that it could be unethical for a political appointee like herself to do so. Mr. Canellos also had the backing of Robert S. Khuzami, who ran the S.E.C.’s enforcement unit at the time.



The S.E.C.’s decision came in stark contrast to a report by Lehman’s bankruptcy-court examiner, who accused executives of using an accounting gimmick to “manipulate” the balance sheet.

“There were many instances where the S.E.C. had information and didn’t act,” the examiner, Anton R. Valukas, a former federal prosecutor who is now chairman of Jenner & Block, said in an interview.



In his report on Lehman’s failure, a rebuke that spanned more than 2,200 pages, Mr. Valukas, the bankruptcy-court examiner, outlined accounting maneuvers that he called “balance sheet manipulation.”

The practice allowed Lehman to transfer securities off its balance sheet, presenting them as collateral to an outside lender, which in turn offered Lehman a short-term loan. Lehman treated the transactions as sales rather than as debt, which meant the firm looked as if it had less debt than it actually did. “Unable to find a United States law firm” to approve the maneuver, Mr. Valukas said, Lehman hired a law firm in London to bless it.



Lehman highlighted the reduction in a public earnings call but never disclosed that it partly stemmed from Repo 105. As such, Mr. Valukas outlined possible civil claims against Mr. Fuld and his chief financial officers, including Erin Callan, who was the C.F.O. during much of the year in which Lehman collapsed. Mr. Fuld, he said, was “at least grossly negligent” for allowing Lehman to make “materially misleading” statements about the firm’s health.

The Valukas report, released in March 2010, appeared to provide a road map for the federal investigation into Lehman executives. But soon after its release, according to the officials involved in the inquiry, prosecutors and the F.B.I. lost interest in the case. They discovered that Repo 105 had nothing to do with Lehman’s failure and was technically allowed under an obscure accounting rule. Noting that London lawyers had approved Repo 105, prosecutors in Manhattan also worried they could not prove that executives intended to mislead investors.



Mr. Canellos, a former federal prosecutor who is now the co-head of the S.E.C.’s enforcement unit, did not budge. Despite the political pressure, he told colleagues at one of the meetings, they could not bring a case if the evidence was lacking.

“Our job is to seek justice,” he said.

Not with a Bang but a Whimper – the SEC Enforcement Team’s Propaganda Campaign

Bill Black, Naked Capitalism

Monday, September 9, 2013

The New York Times has one of those “inside” stories that unintentionally demonstrate the collapse of justice and financial reporting. This genre involves the media reporting gravely (and uncritically) the administration’s claims that its failure to prosecute any elite for the largest and most destructive financial frauds in history actually demonstrates the exceptional ethical rectitude of the non-prosecutors and non-enforcers. Journalists, unlike alchemists, can transmute dross into gold. In the NYT’s account a pathetic failure of competence, integrity, and courage at the SEC is reimagined as a fantastic triumph of vigor and ethics on the part of the SEC enforcement attorney who refused to seek to hold Lehman’s senior officers accountable for their violations but otherwise became the scourge of elite frauds. In the end, he is promoted for his dedication to “justice” and is now the anti-enforcement leader of the SEC’s enforcement group.

“Justice” became an oxymoron in the Bush and Obama administration. It now means that the elite frauds that became wealthy through their crimes that drove our financial crisis should enjoy de facto immunity from prosecution. The NYT, however, pictures the SEC as an ultra-aggressive enforcer that virtually never fails to take on the elite CEOs leading the control frauds. The entire piece is one extended leak by the SEC’s enforcement leadership which has been severely criticized for its failure to recover the fraudulent profits that elite Wall Street bankers obtained by running the control frauds.



The pattern of SEC action with regard to elite banks and elite fraudulent bankers demonstrates that they are treated far differently than smaller, non-financial corporations. (Note that this ignores the most important differences – the elite banksters’ frauds are far less likely to be investigated or sued by the SEC and enjoy de facto immunity from prosecution.) The Stanford study does not include cases that the SEC failed to investigate or bring.)

The controlling officers of firms, not the corporation, make decisions. They are happy to trade off penalties that will be paid by the firm. Those penalties sound large but they merely represent the modest cost of doing fraudulent business to ensure that the controlling officers escape individual accountability. The SEC can only achieve deterrence and take the profit out of elite fraud by making the criminal referrals and conducting the investigations that convict senior officers of felonies for their frauds and by recovering all of the officers’ fraudulent proceeds.

The SEC data demonstrate its epic failure in preventing the current crisis (the SEC was useless) and deterring future crises (the SEC leaves the fraudulent wealthy officers immensely wealthy). The SEC has tried to bring enforcement actions against the senior officers of only three of the elite financial institutions (banks). It has sued twelve senior officers of those three banks (or four if we depart from the SEC’s practice and call Fannie and Freddie different cases). It’s biggest “success” left the former CEO of Countrywide with virtually all of the vast wealth that the SEC claims to be the product of fraud. It obtained $80,000 (also almost certainly paid by an insurer) from the CEO of IndyMac, the largest fraudulent seller of fraudulent mortgage loans. That is it for the senior officers of the elite banks whose frauds the SEC says drove the financial crisis.

The SEC, as always, focuses its enforcement on non-elite corporations where it is far easier for its enforcers to rack up higher numbers of “successes.” The “66 senior” individual defendants were overwhelmingly employed by non-elite banks. The SEC’s own data demonstrate that it is a paper tiger when it comes to the elite banksters who grew wealthy by leading the frauds that caused the mortgage fraud crisis.

New York City Election Thread

According to The New York Times exit polling de Blasio not only has a comfortable lead in the Democratic Mayoral Primary, but looks to have enough of a margin to avoid a run-off.

Unfortunately (or not, liberal identifying voters give him a strong margin) according to the same exit polling Scott Stringer seems poised to defeat Eliot Spitzer in the Comptroller race.

The victory for de Blasio is good news because it represents a strong rebuke to City Council Chair Christine Quinn who has nothing but identity politics and tribalism to distinguish herself from Bloomberg whom she has enabled for years.

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