In its firestorm of coverage, the mainstream media has overlooked a potential link between the two biggest domestic terrorism stories of the day: the shootings at Ford Hood and the decision by the Justice Dept. to try accused 9/11 “mastermind” Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in New York City.

Five time Emmy-winning former ABC News correspondent and HarperCollins author Peter Lance shines a light on the man who may well be the greatest enigma in the “war on terror.”

His name is Ali Abdel Saoud Mohamed, aka Ali Amirki or “Ali the American,” the ex-Egyptian Army officer who penetrated the CIA (briefly) in 1984, the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg from 1987 to 1989 and the FBI where he served as an informant from the early 1990’s, interacting with top federal prosecutors and Special Agents as he trained the cell responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and “Day of Terror” plots. Earlier he moved Osama bin Laden’s entourage from Afghanistan to Khartoum, set up the al Qaeda training camps in the Sudan, trained the Saudi billionaire’s own personal bodyguard and later served as the principal plotter in al Qaeda’s five year mission to blow up the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Ali Mohamed was the ticking time bomb at Fort Bragg who should have redefined the Army’s rules for uncovering traitorous Islamic radicals in the ranks 20 years before Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan went on his alleged rampage at Fort Hood.

But more importantly, for all the critics who think trying KSM in the Southern District of New York is a bad idea, Ali Mohamed could represent the Feds’ best witness at trial; insuring once and for all that Khalid Shaikh will finally be brought to justice.

The spy who hid in plain site

In the years leading up to the 9/11 attacks, no single agent of al Qaeda was more successful in compromising the U.S. intelligence community than Ali Mohamed. A member of the radical Egyptian Army unit that murdered President Anwar Sadat in 1981, Mohammed escaped prosecution, but he was later purged from the Egyptian military due to his radical Islamic views.

In 1983 he caught the attention of Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, five years before the doctor with the spectacles and go-tee joined bin Laden to form al Qaeda. Al Zawahiri saw Ali as the espionage agent he needed to penetrate the U.S. Read more ?

I generally let my drawings do my talking and this toon pretty much says what I want to say.
However, I would like to add a little more. Like Diogenes looking for that honest man, in this day and age we are all still looking for the same, and with Boiling Frogs Post we have found an honest woman in Sibel Edmonds.

I want to congratulate Sibel on her new site and her effort to bring us what is so lacking in today’s mainstream media and even in some of the new internet media. In today’s media, there is an incredible amount of kissing up to politicians, carrying water for corporations and racing to put out the latest fluff stories that clearly insult our collective intelligence. And then there is the hate….

You won’t see that happening on Sibel’s site. I invite you to join her in her endeavor to bring out some honest journalism with bold, independent investigative reports, in-depth commercial-free Podcast interviews, independent editorials and analysis, original editorial cartoons and lively discussions.

Her project relies solely on your donations. Please contribute what you can, and help this site move forward. We really need the honesty. A big thank you to all of you that donate.

Please don’t forget to invite your friends to visit, register, comment, and join the Irate Minority Club at Boiling Frogs Post.

Paul Jamiol

Paul Jamiol has been cartooning and illustrating for the past 40 plus years. He has been recognized for his work locally, nationally and internationally. His cartoons and illustrations have been featured in numerous magazines, newspapers and on the internet. He has won multiple awards from state, regional and national press associations. On the international level, his cartoons have been exhibited and published in the Netherlands, Japan, Belgium, Brazil and France.

This project is solely dependent on your donations. Your contributions will allow us to:

• Purchase and publish investigative news stories and exposés
• Bring to you in-depth commercial free Podcast interviews
• Present independent editorials and analyses
• Showcase original editorial cartoons
• Facilitate lively discussions
• Maintain & Manage this Website

We need your support to make this project a reality. Please contribute what you can, and many thanks for all you do.

For those of you who participate in Thanksgiving rituals, I hope you had a nice and feast-full TGD holiday. I truly enjoyed mine; I’m still feasting. Other than that it was a short and fairly calm week. As for our site here, I have a few noteworthy updates:

Two Part Series by Peter Lance

This coming week, starting on Monday, we’ll be publishing a two-part exclusive series by Peter Lance. So what is it going to be about? Here is a hint:

The Fort Hood shootings and the decision by the Justice Department to try 9/11 “mastermind” Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in New York City. What do the two biggest domestic terrorism stories in months have in common?

The answer lies locked up somewhere in custodial witness protection.

Lance’s piece is very engaging, well-researched, and comprehensive. Stay tuned for Part I on Monday, November 30.

Boiling Frogs Podcast Show & iTunes

Our apologies to those who previously subscribed to iTunes on our old site – 123realchange.blogspot.com – we thought that you would automatically be re-directed to the podcasts on this site, but for some reason that we don’t understand, this did not occur. Also, anyone who clicked on the iTunes icon on our sidebar was directed to the wrong address and could not access our latest podcasts. We have resolved the problem and you will now be directed to the correct address in iTunes that will allow you to subscribe to all our podcasts. Unfortunately, for those of you who previously subscribed, you will need to do so again – but it only takes a couple of clicks – just click the iTunes icon & the rest will be self explanatory.

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed Joins Boiling Frogs Post

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed has joined Boiling Frogs Post’s Editorials & Analyses Contributors. I am delighted to have Nafeez’ insightful and rarely-covered analysis on topics of our interest: Terrorism, US Foreign Policy, Radicalization & Violent Conflicts, CIA-Terrorism Nexus, Central Asia-Afghanistan-Pakistan, and other related topics. Here is his bio: Read more ?

Kristina Borjesson relates her experiences and provides analysis of the current state of investigative and enterprise journalism in the US. She discusses the drastic decline in true investigative journalism, the role of the internet and the globalization of reporting, and the clashing of the two cultures: traditional media & independent reporters. Ms. Borjesson presents shocking real life examples illustrating behind the scene realities and pressures involved in Network TV, including HDNet and Dan Rather, and others. She talks about government and ownership pressures, and how these pressures successfully shape presented news, the two significant missing ingredients in news reporting today, and more!

Internationally acclaimed for her work, Kristina Borjesson has produced for major American and European television networks and published two groundbreaking books on the problems of the U.S. press: Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press & Feet to the Fire: the Media After 9/11, Top Journalists Speak out. Her awards include an Emmy and Murrow Award in TV, and the National Press Club’s Arthur Rowse award for Media Criticism and two Independent Publishers Awards for her books.

Here is our guest Kristina Borjesson unplugged!

 

 Interview with Kristina Borjesson [61:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Dear Mr. President:

Today is the official Presidential Turkey Pardon Day for 2009, your very first since taking office.  I understand you are planning to fly your pardoned bird(s) First Class to California, where they will live at Big Thunder Ranch at Disneyland. How lucky are these birds, how kind of you to value their lives and freedom, and how generous of you to release them.

Mr. President, there are many innocent human beings who have been caged for over six years, under deplorable conditions, including torture – despite being innocent and having done nothing wrong. Their last ten months of detainment and torture have taken place under your watch, per your orders, and with your instructions.

Your Bagram military prison in Afghanistan currently houses over one thousand Afghan detainees who have never been charged, none of whom have ever been given the right to an attorney, and every one of whom has been kept as secret and unidentified.

Even the individuals who were brought there from other nations, and held there for over six years with no charges, are not allowed to have their cases heard or represented.

Former detainees say Bagram resembles a concentration camp, where people are beaten and tortured regularly.

Experts describe it as “Guantanamo’s lesser-known evil twin“.

One of your own generals, Major General Douglas M. Stone, who was charged by you to investigate Bagram, has been saying that many of these detainees in Bagram are in fact innocent.

Mr. President, to this date you have said and done nothing about this Human Rights Abuse of mammoth proportions. You have never even so much as mentioned Bagram in any of your speeches. Is that turkey you are freeing today entitled to more respect, rights, and freedom, than these long-caged and tortured innocent human beings?

Mr. President, please give these human beings half as much value as you give your turkey(s). Otherwise, Mr. President, be prepared, because next time you frown upon and point to the Chinese Government’s record on Human Rights, next time you speak out on the Iranian Regime’s flawed and undemocratic practices, next time you single out any nation for their absence of Human Rights values, you will be written off as a “turkey”, and your words will be laughed off as nothing but “Turkey Talk”, a meaningless repetition of words, gobble, gobble, gobble…

Respectfully,

Sibel Edmonds, A Boiling Frog

I want to revisit a topic which happens to be extremely important to me, both personally and politically, and even more important to our civil liberties.

Some of you have already read my brief piece on Richard Horn & the CIA dishing out $3 million to buy silence in this narco scandal. Those of you who have not read it click here and read it – because this story also goes to the heart of a very significant and ongoing issue: The State Secrets Privilege.

My recent heads-up piece on Horn focused mainly on the CIA’s attempt to hush another narco scandal where the agency was directly and actively involved. Although I introduced Horn as ‘another recipient of the government’s State Secrets Privilege invocation’, I didn’t delve into the significance of this case on this repeatedly used and abused draconian privilege. This was partly due to wrongly assuming that the media, at least the alternative media, would have gotten all over it since lately the SSP has been a quite fashionable and talked about topic among the wanna-be progressive community. Well, I was wrong. Despite the scandalous nature of the case, and despite the massive implications to SSP, those who’ve been publicizing themselves and cashing in using SSP did not touch or mention the case.

The last time I wrote about the State Secrets Privilege and how it was being misrepresented and twisted by puppets in the media my blood was very close to reaching the boiling point. This time, with this recent Horn case and its direct SSP implications, my blood actually did reach the boiling point. In fact it is boiling now!

Here are a few excerpts from my previous piece on the State Secrets Privilege, starting with the intro:

During the past few months I have been actively following the latest activity on the state secrets privilege (SSP). First, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this issue of extreme importance to our civil liberties and constitutional rights was finally getting long-over-due and deserved attention from the media. After all, the memories of fighting SSP in the federal courts all the way up to the Supreme Court, holding press conferences together with the ACLU to bring needed media attention to this draconian abuse, making the rounds in Congress to have them address this ‘privilege’ through legislation to restrict its misuse and abuse, are still fresh and vivid for me.

Then I started detecting some troubling common trends showing up in media reports and subsequently in discussions and statements within Congress. The most suspicious of these came in the form of sanitizing major SSP abuse cases from reports put forth by both the mainstream media and some in alternative publications. The first invocation of the SSP by the Bush Administration was in my case. Back then, if you had done a Google search on ‘state secrets privilege’ you would have come up with only ‘7’ results; three of them repeats. After successfully getting away with SSP invocation in my case, the administration opened the flood gates for others. Now I invite you to search all the archived news reports on SSP in the last year or so. As you will see, in every single report in which the abuses of SSP and its history are cited, you will not find this first case; my case. Further, if you were to look for other major abuses of SSP, such as the Barlow Case, you will find none. The valid cases cited are mainly limited to:

I then went on citing the cases covered by the MSM and pseudo-alternative alike: Khalid Al-Masri, Maher Arar, Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, and Binyam Mohamed. Read more ?

Our Boiling Frogs Show is now officially a weekly-based Podcast interview series. The interviews will be posted every Friday afternoon. Our upcoming guests: Mizgin Yilmaz, Kristina Borjesson, Mark Klein, Pepe Escobar, and Russ Baker. We are scheduling several other exciting and informative interviews; stay tuned.

We have an updated version of Joe Lauria’s FROM FLATBUSH TO THE STREETS OF KANDAHAR here. My site statistics report says it’s been widely clicked-upon & downloaded, so check it out if you haven’t read this solid piece, and go back and re-read it if you’ve read the original piece and want more!

Noteworthy Stories & Links

Welcome Comrade Maobama

Pepe Escobar has a two-part series on Obama’s China Visit at Asia Times. For those of you who may not know; I happen to be a big fan of Mr. Escobar, his solid track record in investigative journalism, his bold and witty writing style, and his untainted and independent stand when it comes to real reporting. When you get a chance check out ‘The Best of Pepe Escobar’ at Asia Times . Here is his part I:

Welcome Comrade Maobama, Part I

As mentioned above, last week we interviewed Mr. Escobar, and will publish the interview in about 4 weeks. 

Lobbyists Boldly Craft & Insert Provisions to the House Bill

As the numbers and actions of sold out spineless representatives in Congress increase, the lobby industry’s takeover of Congress and our legislation gets bolder and bolder. Here is a recent example presented by the Sunlight Foundation:

More than a dozen lawmakers inserted statements supporting a biotechnology provision added to the House health care bill that was crafted by lobbyists for the biotechnology firm Genentech.

Wait a minute before you start waving the ‘oh the shameless Republicans,’ or ‘sold out spineless Democrats’ flag, because this ain’t partisan, as most significant problems rotting our nation are not:

The Genentech lobbyists crafted two statements — one for Democrats and one for Republicans — for lawmakers to insert into the Congressional Record. The collection of lawmakers is very bipartisan with ten Republicans and eight Democrats issuing near identical statements. (One Democrat, Rep. Heath Shuler, inserted the Republican statement.)

As for the implications? Here is a sound, important, but still micro-level conclusion on implications being cited by several sites and forums: Read more ?

Americans and citizens from all over the world are slowly awakening to find that things just might not be as they seem.

Sibel Edmonds has launched BOILING FROGS POST, a website that allows you to explore what you won’t get from the mainstream media. It is a place where investigating and understanding the truth is the only thing that matters; not the political consequences or how daunting the challenges may be to make things right again.

After 9/11 Sibel began working for the FBI as a translator. When she saw the crimes and incompetency at The Bureau, she became a Whistleblower, risking her career, as she attempted to reveal the disturbing things she found there. Thus, we are certain that you can count on Sibel to select investigative material based on truth, as well as that which will keep you best informed.

We hope that you will join us in putting BOILING FROGS POST at the top of your daily must reads for news and insight. Let’s rally reader and financial support for Sibel’s efforts to educate all of us, as to when, how and why bad things happen at the crossroads of U.S. government and foreign policy.

After all, it is only as informed citizenry that we can, as we have in the past, properly mobilize our efforts and focus our energies, in order to make things right again, for humanity’s sake.

Mindy Kleinberg, Lorie Van Auken,
Patty Casazza & Monica Gabrielle

This project is solely dependent on your donations. Your contributions will allow us to:

• Purchase and publish investigative news stories and exposés
• Bring to you in-depth commercial free Podcast interviews
• Present independent editorials and analyses
• Showcase original editorial cartoons
• Facilitate lively discussions
• Maintain & Manage this Website

We need your support to make this project a reality. Please contribute what you can, and many thanks for all you do.

Joe Lauria relates the latest developments in the United Nations, including the controversies involving the elections in Afghanistan, the removal of Peter Galbraith, and the liability of having an American as the second man in office. He discusses the recent UN report on the Taliban’s funding, including heroin related funds and associated outcomes, the chronic and widespread corruption within the Afghan government, and President Obama’s dilemma when it comes to Af-Pak. The interview also includes his perspective on factors contributing to the fading away of the traditional roles of the press in the US, the media blackout on ‘deep politics,’ shortcomings of amateur news blogs, and more!

Joe Lauria is an author, foreign affairs correspondent and investigative reporter. He has covered the United Nations for 19 years for numerous newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the London Daily Telegraph, the Montreal Gazette and the Johannesburg Star. Joe is a member of the Sunday Times of London’s investigative unit. He is co-author of A Political Odyssey, a look at America’s defense industry and the false threats it thrives on.

Here is our guest Joe Lauria unplugged!

 

 Interview with Joe Lauria [66:13m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

We had just emailed the link to our interview discussing the ‘real’ history of Afghanistan on Sibel Edmond’s boilingfrogspost.  As soon as it was emailed a Verizon response spit back immediately with a notice declaring the email we had just sent was spam.   When the culprit turned out to be our friend Sibel’s website we called Verizon to clear up the problem. This was clearly not spam and should be easily reinstated, we thought. While a very chatty employee attempted and failed to fix our problem, we innocently asked how can we get this address back in business. That is when the real fun began. According to the laws of Verizon Central, once you’ve been labeled spam, there is only one course of action and it goes like this:

1. Verizon uses an unnamed third party who decides what is spam.

2. This unnamed third party also reviews complaints like ours.

3. We were told to send the “offending” email to spamdetector.update@verizon.net.

4. The unnamed third party would make a secret decision within 24 hours.

5. If the unnamed third party decides it is spam, regardless of our complaint we will not hear back.

That’s it. There is no recourse to challenge the decision. There isn’t even a confirmation that the email we sent to this third party was received at all.  Of course, after 24 hours we still couldn’t send out an email containing the link. Read more ?

In Part one of my piece, I attempted to explain the nature and scope of the US Warrantless Wiretap Program and the growing Surveillance Regime being built in this country. In Part 2, I will compare and contrast the growth and structure of the aforementioned Surveillance Regimes with other countries’ corresponding Systems of surveillance and control. I will also spotlight the International Surveillance Industry and its efforts to market its products by offering this technology to governmental power centers around the world.

Back in 1992, I was living in Vallejo, Ca, a working-class/Navy town in the northeastern San Francisco Bay Area. At that time, there was a local news story about a local drug dealer facing his third-strike conviction under California’s Three-Strikes law who had a brilliant idea. If I blow up the police evidence room and destroy my incriminating evidence, they can’t convict me. He knew the local police evidence storage wasn’t in the Police station, but at the local library of all places. He also knew that if he blew up just the library, sooner or later, the police would get around to him as a suspect. So he hired two other guys he knew who actually managed to find and steal enough explosives to construct three bombs. They planted the first bomb outside the local Solano County government office which detonated late at night doing little damage. The second bomb they planted against the outside wall of the evidence storage room at the library, but a local kid discovered it and the police were able to successfully defuse the bomb. So the two guys planted the third bomb next to the ATM at the local Wells Fargo branch, which also detonated with little damage, as another diversion. Unfortunately, for all concerned, the ATM camera had captured perfect pictures of the two men and police were able to solve the case in short order.

I offer the preceding story to illustrate a point. Had those 2 men just left town in 1992, taken a powder, gone to Buffalo, chances are they would have probably gotten away with it as the surveillance technology had not become so advanced, ingrained and integrated into society. Had those guys attempted the same crime today, their first bomb placement would have been recorded by surveillance cameras surrounding the government building, their facial features subjected to facial recognition software and their identities established from police and prison records, their fingerprints correlated to evidence from the explosives theft site, and their movements tracked from RFID chips embedded in their new “Real ID” driver’s licenses  thus apprehending them before they had a chance to place their second bomb.

I had my first personal experience in Biometric Access in 2000 at Level 3. I had been administratively transferred from the Outside Plant Department on the Central Coast of California to the LA Metro office as I had responsibilities for their fiber routes out to San Bernardino and up to Santa Barbara. Level 3 had installed fingerprint scanners at all access points into their equipment rooms and my prints had to be inputted into the system. I also saw the installations of workplace cameras throughout the facility, where the main long haul fibers terminated into my equipment and then branched off to two floors full of Cisco routers. Since Level 3 was marketing itself as “The Carriers’ Carrier” and selling off a lot of dark fiber to other firms, I took note. Read more ?