William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, was known as an outspoken advocate for intelligence reform
The CIA is “out of control” and often refuses to cooperate with other parts of the national security community, even undermining their efforts, said former National Security Agency head William Odom, according to a recently released record of a 9/11 Commission interview.
By Sharon Weinberger
“The CIA currently doesn’t work for anyone. It thinks it works for the president, but it doesn’t and it’s out of control,” says a report summarizing remarks made by Odom, a retired three-star general who served as director of the NSA from 1985 to 1988.
Odom, who also served on the National Security Council staff during the Carter administration, was known as an outspoken advocate for intelligence reform. He died in 2008.
The 2003 interview, among others conducted by the 9/11 Commission, was posted on the website Cryptome, which is often compared to the secret-spilling WikiLeaks website. The report was not a leak, however, but one of many records relating to the 9/11 Commission that have been released and made available on the National Archives website.
“Quite a few remain ‘access restricted’ for classification review,” John Young, who runs Cryptome, told AOL News in an e-mail about the records, some of which he has reposted. “We expect to make an FOIA [Freedom of information Act] request for their release once we have a full listing of those restricted.”
In the commission interview, Odom portrayed CIA officers as individualistic, saying they were interested in writing “exposes.” He also accused the CIA of not sharing “humint,” meaning intelligence collected through contact with people, and of trying to sabotage the Pentagon’s own work in this area.
“The director of the CIA has as much reason to brief the president as the man on the moon,” Odom told the staff of the commission investigating the failure to prevent the terror attacks.
Odom also believed that intelligence officials weren’t held sufficiently accountable for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He said he believed that the heads of the NSA and the CIA should both have been fired by the president after 9/11 for “symbolic purposes.”
Many of Odom’s views had already been laid out in his book, “Fixing Intelligence,” which presented his ideas for overhauling the U.S. intelligence process. Some of the reforms Odom advocated to the commission, such as separation of the director of national intelligence from the head of the CIA, were eventually implemented.
While deeply critical of the CIA, Odom also had harsh words for other NSA directors, including Adm. Bobby Inman, whom he accused of “playing games” in Washington. He also said that Gen. Michael Hayden, then the director of the NSA, was “destroying” the agency and didn’t know his “intellectual limits.”
Obama claims “a world once divided [on Iran]. . .now stands as one” and that Iran is “isolated”. Is it Iran or the US & Israel who are “isolated”?
by Joshua Blakeney
Press TV: US president Barack Obama has asserted the country’s ironclad commitment to Israel’s security; while repeatedly threatening Iran with what he calls ‘all options on the table’.
Obama once again renewed US threats against Iran during his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress on January 24, saying that Washington will maintain pressure on the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program.
“America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal,” the US president said.
Iran has categorically refuted the US-led allegations regarding its nuclear program, insisting that the country’s nuclear program is only intended for peaceful civilian purposes.
Joshua Blakeney, staff writer from Veterans Today; joins Press TV to share his opinions on the issue of the US president’s State of the Union Speech.
What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.
Press TV: Joshua Blakeney thank you so much for joining us. Let us go directly to the first question which starts with what the US president in the State of the Union address said and is it really a disinformation and that is that, Iran is on the path of acquiring a nuclear weapon?
Blakeney: Yes, it was a quite myopic speech, coming from the president of the United States. I mean, I found it particularly telling that he made the statement that “the world was once divided and”, thanks to him, “the world is now united on the question of Iran.”
I am having some feedback, I apologize. But the reality is of course that the Non-Aligned Movement – which is consisted of a 120 nations – issued a statement just eight days ago in which they endorsed Iranian sovereignty and expressed their hostility towards the US encroaching on Iranian sovereignty.
And therefore that was one utterance from the President of the United States that was evidently false.
Obama forgot to mention in his State of the Union address that the 120 members of the Non-Aligned-Movement support Iranian sovereignty and denounce US-Israeli hostility towards Iran
Obviously the insinuation that Iran is trying to acquire nuclear weapons is buttressed by no evidence and of course the IAEA, [International Atomic Energy Agency], any statements they have made in which they have indirectly implied this, has been inferred from evidence, so called, provided to them by itsmember states like the United States and Israel and Britain and therefore their statements are not reliable at all.
Iran clearly is trying to develop a civilian nuclear program, like France has; like many countries in the world have; which is completely justifiable and indeed legal.
And so the president of the United States I think reflected not necessarily his own perspective but those of his backers. You know, the United States political system is one where money speaks; in a capitalist system those who own capital have political clout.
And the statements that Barack Obama made vis-à-vis the Middle East, and really in general to do with domestic economics also, I believe, were the product of his backers.
And we know who is supporting the Democrat Party financially and what their agenda is in terms of Middle East policy.
And that in my humble opinion is to promote the interest of the state of Israel, often in fact jeopardizing traditional US-Middle East policy which was to try and do bilateral negotiations within ensconced Middle East regimes. And therefore this speech has to go down as an embarrassment.
And in fact if you look, if you go to about an hour, into Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address in about an hour into it, you will see that when he mentions Iran and when he mentions his ironclad support for the State of Israel, that actually only about half of the Congress persons clapped which might indicate that there is some discontent with this tendentious policy of the United States towards the State of Israel.
Press TV: Joshua Blakeney, this all options on the table is something again perhaps, maybe because of a reelection year for Obama maybe its a signal and some say for the Israeli lobby at the same time the great length that the United States is going to get sanctions on Iran.
We know that they have made and introduced the sanctions, trying to get EU [European Union] which they got their approval even though it’s at the behest of Europe in terms of what they are going through regarding the Euro zone crisis, of course going with his co-worker [US Secretary of the Treasury] Timothy Geithner all the way to China and we saw what happened there regarding getting China on board and of course then with India.
I mean what is it that the US president means with this ‘all options on the table’?
Blakeney: Well, I think it is largely empty rhetoric from the President of the United States and I think there is a tendency among the political class to think if they repeat something as many times as possible that it would begin to be true.
And Barrack Obama said in his State of the Union address that the world is now united against Iran and that is patently false, is Venezuela against Iran? Is China against Iran? Is the Non-Aligned Movement of 120 nations against Iran?
I do not think so, so we are seeing the decline of Anglo-America and this kind of Euro- American imperialist world that the planet has been victim of for the past 500 years really since 1492 and we are living in a multipolar world now, one where Iran has some agency.
China and Iran continue to trade with each other irrespective of the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and E.U.
And if the European Union and the United States wants to work in Israel’s interests and against its own interests of doing commercial dealings with Iran, then Iran will go elsewhere and trade its resources and goods with other nations which I think is a good thing. I think it is good that we are living in a multipolar world.
One of the intellectuals authors of the “war on terror” was an individual named Charles Krauthammer, who in 1990 authored a paper entitled The Unipolar Moment, in which he said, oh this moment after the Soviet Union has declined US must jumped on it, because it won’t be there for ever.
And that unipolar moment, you know, metastasized into the invasion of Iraq and the invasion of Afghanistan. But I believe that actually they cannot invade and attack Iran because they are bereft of soldiers for a start; they’re overstretched militarily, the United States, and moreover Iran has a capability to defend itself. Press TV: So what is it [the US] trying to do there when it keeps saying it Joshua Blakeney, I mean, some say well it is a distraction from the problems that he [Obama] is facing at home. And I am talking about the Occupy movement, do you agree with that?
Joshua Blakeney and Mark Glenn critically analyze Barak Obama’s State of the Union speech on Press TV.
Iran is on the right side of history contributing to the success of the Bolivarian Revolution in Latin America. Iran and many nations in Latin America are at the forefront of the resistance to the international imperialism of the US, Britain and Israel
Blakeney: Yes, to an extent. You know it offers a scapegoat, a smokescreen to distract people. So I do agree to a large extent with what my colleague said.
You know the fact of the matter is that US politicians need to pander and Kowtow to the Israel lobby in the United States.
JJ Goldberg did a study in the 1990′s in which he deduced that 45% of Democrat party donations came from individuals who are partisan to the State of Israel.
And in 2006 Richard Cohen did a study in the Washington Post, in which he indicated 60% of the Democrat Party [money] comes from individuals whose primary allegiance is to the state of Israel.
So if 60% of the Barack Obama’s money is coming from individuals whose first priority is Israel, is it very surprising that Barack Obama would have this so called ‘ironclad’ consensus with the state of Israel?
I think that this is historically precedented, if you look in 1965 for example, when the British empire was trying to extend self determination and self rule to the inhabitants of the Rhodesia, the natives of Rhodesia, we saw the local crazed ethnic nationalists form a schism in the British empire and rise up and declare independence likewise the US after the Cold War had no use for Israel anymore.
The divergence between a rational U.S. Middle East policy and the Israeli Middle East policy of denying Arabs and Muslims cohesion and stability is analogous with the divergence of interests between the declining British Empire and regional Rhodesian white ethnic nationalists in 1965 (as portrayed from 5 mins 52 seconds in the above video). ]
After 1967 Israel proved itself to be a formidable fighting force and within the context of the Cold War the United States could use Israel to smash up this or that Arab nation or to extend its Middle East policy.
After the Cold War what use did the US have for Israel or for South Africa? In the case of South Africa, the Afrikaners did not have a lobby in the United States and so the US cast them adrift in the 1980′s and the VETO they provided them in the United Nations dissipated.
Unfortunately, what would have been logical and rational from the perspective of US hegemony who would obviously want to win over Middle East governments to resist the hegemony of the …..
Press TV: Joshua Blakeney, the US president said that this is the right time for the United States to be on the right side of the Middle East.
Is the US on the right side of the Middle East? Quickly [we have] twenty seconds or less.
Blakeney: No, it is definitely not. In the 1980s the Israeli government formulated a new policy of wanting to destabilize the Middle East which goes against US oil interests, against the US rational interests as a global hegemon.
Some of the main political parties in Turkey are pointing the finger at the US and Israel over a botched airstrike that had killed around 34 civilians in the southeast of the country last month.
The victims were targeted by Turkey’s F-16 fighter jets as they were initially believed to be members of the armed separatist group of Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK, but were later confirmed to be a group of local smugglers.
The airstrike was widely believed to be the result of an intelligence failure.
Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, the BDP, has called on the government to declare the source of intelligence that had led to the deadly attack. A senior member of the party has criticized the US ambassador to Turkey who had said the source of the intelligence should be kept secret.
Following the US ambassador’s remark, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition party, Republican People’s party, advised Turkish journalists to ask from the Israeli embassy about the source of the intelligence. He had earlier urged Ankara to openly declare whether it obtained the intelligence from Israel or the US.
The controversy over the reported role of Israeli and US drones in the deadly airstrike comes as some politicians have called for an immediate end to what they call Turkey’s intelligence reliance on Israel and the US.
Turkey uses Israel’s Heron drones and the US Predator drones for gathering intelligence in its fight against the PKK, but the credibility of the intelligence obtained by the drones has been questioned by some politicians in the country.
Turkish government has vowed that it will carry out an investigation into the airstrike, mainly by closely reviewing four hours of footage related to the airstrike.
via PressTV – BDP blames US & Israel for deadly Turkish airstrike.
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday sidestepped a delicate dispute between two allies over the World War I-era killing of Armenians in Turkey.
Clinton was asked why the United States has not matched a move by French lawmakers to criminalize denial that the killings were genocide. The French legislation has enraged Turkey, which has threatened sanctions if French President Nicolas Sarkozy signs the bill.
The U.S. administration has avoided calling the killings genocide despite support for recognition by both Clinton and President Barack Obama when they were senators.
Clinton said the administration was wary of compromising free speech. She said the issue was best left for scholars.
“To try to use government power to resolve historical issues, I think, opens a door that is a very dangerous one to go through,” Clinton said at an event with U.S. State Department employees.
via Clinton sidesteps dispute between Turkey and France over genocide legislation – The Washington Post.
Islamic prayer ‘got into his spirit’ while filming ‘Taken 2’ in Istanbul
By Cristina Everett / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Read more:
Liam Neeson, who was raised Catholic, said Islamic prayer ‘got into his spirit’ during his time in Istanbul.
Liam Neeson may have found a new faith during his time filming in Istanbul.
The Irish actor admitted to the U.K.’s Sun newspaper that he is considering giving up his Catholic beliefs in order to become a Muslim.
Neeson, 59, went on to explain that Islamic prayer “got into his spirit” when he spent time in the Turkish city working on the action-thriller “Taken 2.”
“The call to prayer happens five times a day, and for the first week, it drives you crazy, and then it just gets into your spirit, and it’s the most beautiful, beautiful thing,” he told the newspaper.
“There are 4,000 mosques in the city,” he added. “Some are just stunning, and it really makes me think about becoming a Muslim.”
Neeson, who was raised a devout Catholic, served as an altar boy during his youth and was named after a local priest in Northern Ireland.
However the actor, who stars in the upcoming action flick “The Grey,” has previously expressed his opinions toward religion.
“I was reared a Catholic, but I think every day we ask ourselves, not consciously, what are we doing on this planet? What’s it all about?” he has said. “I’m constantly reading books on God or the absence of God and atheism.”
via Liam Neeson may convert to Islam: Actor says he’s considered ‘becoming a Muslim’ – NY Daily News.
At the Instanbul Grill owner Senol Aydemir shows a gyro wrap (left) and a chicken kabob meal. (DONNA FISHER, THE MORNING CALL / January 20, 2012)
By Susan Gottshall, Special to The Morning Call
Bethlehem’s Istanbul Grill opened little more than a month ago, but already business was brisk on a recent Saturday night — and I understood why by the time I left.
The Turkish-Mediterranean cuisine was fresh and well-prepared; the fast-food-like atmosphere was casual and easy-going; and there was friendly, attentive table service, too.
In a narrow, middle-of-a-block retail space, Istanbul Grill’s kitchen greets diners just inside the front door. The decor of the nondescript dining room, just behind the kitchen, features neutral tones, diner-style tables and chairs and Middle Eastern prints scattered here and there.
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Many Mediterranean favorites grace the menu here: hummus, stuffed grape leaves, spinach pie, kebabs and gyros. Hot appetizers include spinach pie and “sigara borek” (feta cheese filling in homemade filo dough) and lentil soup. Lunchtime wraps feature skewered marinated lamb cubes, grilled meatballs and boneless chicken thigh, seasoned with herbs and spices, wrapped around a vertical rotating skewer.
Shared falafel ($5.95) and baba ghanoush ($5.95) launched our meal. The former, standard fare small patties of ground chickpeas, crisped outside, were green inside, thanks to the addition of fresh vegetables to the chickpeas.
Baba ghanoush (eggplant spread seasoned with garlic, tahini and lemon dressing), just a tad smoky, also presented clean uncomplicated flavor, thanks to the notes of lemon. We dove right into the basket of warm pita triangles, perfect dipping accompaniment.
Mixed grill ($21.95), also shared, was just right for two. Featuring three types of kebabs — marinated lamb, mixed ground beef and lamb, and marinated chicken — the assortment included rice and salad.
Each part of the mixed grill was super, making it a great value considering that one entree fed both of us. The meat was tender and juicy, with seasoning that enhanced the flavor; the rice, combined with orzo, was light and fresh; ditto for the impeccable, barely-dressed salad, which included a grilled tomato and grilled green pepper — tasty, endearing touches.
Take-out tabbouleh ($6.95) made a fine lunch the next day. Its profusion of parsley made this salad beautifully green, a foreshadowing of the season just around the corner.
I was surprised that the baklava wasn’t made on the premises, so I sampled the rice pudding instead, which is made in the restaurant’s kitchen. This happy ending was simple and satisfying, just like Istanbul Grill.
Dinner for two and a take-out lunch for one totaled $60, including tax and tip.
Susan Gottshall is a freelance restaurant reviewer for Go Guide. Gottshall attempts to remain anonymous during restaurant visits. All meals are paid for by The Morning Call.
•Accessibility: Premises and restrooms wheelchair accessible.
•Location: In city center on north side of W. Broad Street between N. Guetter and N. New streets, just a few storefronts from the Boyd Theater. On-street metered parking 8 a.m.-9 p.m. daily except Sundays and selected holidays.
via Restaurant review of Istanbul Grill in Bethlehem – mcall.com.
Press TV: Joshua Blakeney, this all options on the table is something again perhaps, maybe because of a reelection year for Obama maybe its a signal and some say for the Israeli lobby at the same time the great length that the United States is going to get sanctions on Iran.
