Quote:Walter Pincus also led the attack on Gary Webb when he published his series of articles on CIA involvement with the Contras and the drug industry. After Dark Alliance was published Pincus wrote: "A Washington Post investigation into Ross, Blandon, Meneses, and the U.S. cocaine market in the 1980s found the available information does not support the conclusion that the CIA-backed contras - or Nicaraguans in general - played a major role in the emergence of crack as a narcotic in widespread use across the United States."

The Washington Post refused to publish Webb's letters when he attempted to defend his views on the CIA. This included information that Pincus had been recruited by the CIA when he was at Yale University in order to spy on student groups at several international youth conferences in the 1950s. Later, Geneva Overholser, the Washington Post ombudsman, criticized Pincus and other reporters working for the newspaper: "A principal responsibility of the press is to protect the people from government excesses. The Washington Post (among others) showed more energy for protecting the CIA from someone else's journalistic excesses."

When Gary Webb committed suicide, French journalist, Paul Moreira, made a television documentary for France's Canal Plus. He interviewed Pincus and asked him why in October, 1998, he had not reported on the CIA's inspector general report admitting the agency worked with drug dealers throughout the 1980s. Pincus was unable to explain why he and other mainstream journalists completely ignored this report that helped to support Webb's case against the CIA.

Marc Cooper of LA Weekly argued that CIA controlled journalists destroyed Webb's career: "What I can say is that the media killed his career. That's obvious and it's really a nauseating and very discouraging story, because as a journalist, the only thing you have is your credibility. When that is shredded, there's no way to rebuild it... This is an outstanding case where three of the major newspapers in the country decided to take out somebody, a competitor whose mistakes seem by any measure to be very minor."

Pincus eventually admitted that he had carried out covert operations for the CIA in the 1950s and 1960s. However, he denied being a CIA asset later in his career. On 31st July, 1996, The Washington Post claimed that "some in the agency refer to (Pincus) as the CIA's house reporter." In 2002 Pincus won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.

According to an interview Pincus gave to Nick Schou (Kill The Messenger), the most important legacy of Gary Webb's book Dark Alliance was that it "encouraged the CIA to be less aggressive in its efforts against Islamic terrorism, which helped enable Osama bin Laden's 9/11 terrorist attacks."

Pincus also became involved in the Valerie Plame case. In October, 2003 he wrote an article where he claimed Plame worked for the CIA and had been responsible for sending her husband, Joe Wilson, to investigate reports that Iraq's government had tried to buy uranium in Niger.

Quote:July 11, 2013, 5:19 pm

How Acceptable Was Anonymous Speculation About Snowden's Laptops?

By MARGARET SULLIVANIt's the story that just won't quit: The tale of Edward J. Snowden and his leak of classified information about the United States government's secret surveillance of citizens.
Rife with skirmishes and subplots, overflowing with schadenfreude, one-upsmanship and bruised egos, it's also a matter of extraordinary national and global importance.
One of the latest developments is the question of whether Mr. Snowden as was suggested in a Times article on June 24 may have unwittingly provided classified information to China.
The Times article, the essence of which looked at the reasons that China allowed Mr. Snowden to leave Hong Kong, included this sentence about two-thirds of the way down: "Two Western intelligence experts, who worked for major government spy agencies, said that they believed that the Chinese government had managed to drain the contents of the four laptops that Mr. Snowden said he brought to Hong Kong, and that he said were with him during his stay at a Hong Kong hotel."
Mr. Snowden denied that his laptops were compromised by the Chinese (or the Russians): "I never gave any information to either government and they never took anything from my laptops," he said in an interview with Glenn Greenwald, the columnist for The Guardian who broke much of the biggest news over the past month as a chief recipient of Mr. Snowden's information.
In that piece, Mr. Greenwald took The Times to task for printing that "incendiary" speculation.
"In lieu of any evidence, The New York Times circulated this obviously significant assertion," he said, by "citing two anonymous sources saying they believed' this happened."
He continued: "From there, it predictably spread everywhere as truth." The New Yorker soon repeated it, citing The Times. "It was then used to demonize Snowden" in a wide variety of venues, Mr. Greenwald wrote. (The Huffington Post's Michael Calderone reported on this topic on Wednesday.)
Paul E. King, a Times reader in Fort Worth, said he was disturbed by what he read in Mr. Greenwald's column, and he raised good questions, wanting to know about The Times's standards on the use of anonymous sources. He also was concerned about the way such information in The Times can be manipulated for political purposes. (For example, government sources have reason to want to portray Mr. Snowden as a traitor.)
I asked The Times's foreign editor, Joseph Kahn, about how the sourcing was handled and about Mr. Greenwald's criticism.
Mr. Kahn said that it's important to see this passage in the story for what it is: An exploration of what might have happened, based on experts who did not claim to have direct knowledge. He also noted that, in a front-page article last year, The Times detailed the ways in which the Chinese government is able to penetrate digital devices; such cyber theft is a common enough practice that American government and business officials traveling in China take extraordinary measures to prevent it.
The recent article, he noted, said that the sources "believed, not that they were told." The Times provided further context and conditionality, he said, in the next sentence: "If that were the case, they said, China would no longer need or want to have Mr. Snowden remain in Hong Kong."
"It's a couple of steps removed from a strong assertion," he said.
Mr. Kahn was not the direct editor on the article and he said that foreign desk editors did not press the reporters to know their sources, nor did he think they needed to do so. That practice arises, he said, when an anonymous source is the basis for an article's premise or a central assertion.
"I don't think any of us saw this set of beliefs as being worthy of that high level of scrutiny," he said. Because of a concurrent discussion of another, related article, Mr. Kahn does know who one of the two sources is and remains confident of that person's knowledge and reliability.
In retrospect, knowing how the passage has been exaggerated and spun, would Mr. Kahn have wanted to see it handled differently?
"It's Monday morning quarterbacking," he said, but The Times could have added a sentence that made it clear that the sources did not have direct, specific information of what happened with Mr. Snowden's laptops.
Mr. Greenwald's argument is worth thinking hard about. Two sentences in the middle of a Times article on such a sensitive subject though they may be off the central point have the power to sway the discussion or damage a reputation. What The Times writes can quickly, and sometimes harmfully, become pundit fodder.
"The way it gets picked up is hard for us to control," Mr. Kahn said. "Obviously, we have to think about it."
He's right. So is the reader, Mr. King, who wrote: "I read the Times for the truth. I can read publication of speculation almost anywhere."

• Guardian staff
  
• The Guardian, Monday 19 August 2013 07.28 AEST
  

Quote: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation

The detention of my partner, David Miranda, by UK authorities will have the opposite effect of the one intended

[URL="http://www.theguardian.com/profile/glenn-greenwald"]
[/URL]

• • Glenn Greenwald
    
  • theguardian.com, Monday 19 August 2013 04.44 AEST
    
  
  

At 6:30 am this morning my time - 5:30 am on the East Coast of the US - I received a telephone call from someone who identified himself as a "security official at Heathrow airport." He told me that my partner, David Miranda, had been "detained" at the London airport "under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000."
David had spent the last week in Berlin, where he stayed with Laura Poitras, the US filmmaker who has worked with me extensively on the NSA stories. A Brazilian citizen, he was returning to our home in Rio de Janeiro this morning on British Airways, flying first to London and then on to Rio. When he arrived in London this morning, he was detained.
At the time the "security official" called me, David had been detained for 3 hours. The security official told me that they had the right to detain him for up to 9 hours in order to question him, at which point they could either arrest and charge him or ask a court to extend the question time. The official - who refused to give his name but would only identify himself by his number: 203654 - said David was not allowed to have a lawyer present, nor would they allow me to talk to him.
I immediately contacted the Guardian, which sent lawyers to the airport, as well various Brazilian officials I know. Within the hour, several senior Brazilian officials were engaged and expressing indignation over what was being done. The Guardian has the full story here.
Despite all that, five more hours went by and neither the Guardian's lawyers nor Brazilian officials, including the Ambassador to the UK in London, were able to obtain any information about David. We spent most of that time contemplating the charges he would likely face once the 9-hour period elapsed.
According to a document published by the UK government about Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, "fewer than 3 people in every 10,000 are examined as they pass through UK borders" (David was not entering the UK but only transiting through to Rio). Moreover, "most examinations, over 97%, last under an hour." An appendix to that document states that only .06% of all people detained are kept for more than 6 hours.
The stated purpose of this law, as the name suggests, is to question people about terrorism. The detention power, claims the UK government, is used "to determine whether that person is or has been involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism."
But they obviously had zero suspicion that David was associated with a terrorist organization or involved in any terrorist plot. Instead, they spent their time interrogating him about the NSA reporting which Laura Poitras, the Guardian and I are doing, as well the content of the electronic products he was carrying. They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop "the terrorists", and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name.
Worse, they kept David detained right up until the last minute: for the full 9 hours, something they very rarely do. Only at the last minute did they finally release him. We spent all day - as every hour passed - worried that he would be arrested and charged under a terrorism statute. This was obviously designed to send a message of intimidation to those of us working journalistically on reporting on the NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ.
Before letting him go, they seized numerous possessions of his, including his laptop, his cellphone, various video game consoles, DVDs, USB sticks, and other materials. They did not say when they would return any of it, or if they would.
This is obviously a rather profound escalation of their attacks on the news-gathering process and journalism. It's bad enough to prosecute and imprison sources. It's worse still to imprison journalists who report the truth. But to start detaining the family members and loved ones of journalists is simply despotic. Even the Mafia had ethical rules against targeting the family members of people they felt threatened by. But the UK puppets and their owners in the US national security state obviously are unconstrained by even those minimal scruples.
If the UK and US governments believe that tactics like this are going to deter or intimidate us in any way from continuing to report aggressively on what these documents reveal, they are beyond deluded. If anything, it will have only the opposite effect: to embolden us even further. Beyond that, every time the US and UK governments show their true character to the world - when they prevent the Bolivian President's plane from flying safely home, when they threaten journalists with prosecution, when they engage in behavior like what they did today - all they do is helpfully underscore why it's so dangerous to allow them to exercise vast, unchecked spying power in the dark.
David was unable to call me because his phone and laptop are now with UK authorities. So I don't yet know what they told him. But the Guardian's lawyer was able to speak with him immediately upon his release, and told me that, while a bit distressed from the ordeal, he was in very good spirits and quite defiant, and he asked the lawyer to convey that defiance to me. I already share it, as I'm certain US and UK authorities will soon see.

• The Guardian, Monday 19 August 2013
  

Glenn Greenwald (right) and his partner David Miranda, who was held by UK authorities at Heathrow airport. Photograph: Janine Gibson

The partner of the Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National SecurityAgency was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through London's Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.
David Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald, was returning from a trip to Berlin when he was stopped by officers at 8.05am and informed that he was to be questioned under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The controversial law, which applies only at airports, ports and border areas, allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals.
The 28-year-old was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows before officers must release or formally arrest the individual. Accordingto official figures, most examinations under schedule 7 over 97% last less than an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours.
Miranda was released, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.
Since 5 June, Greenwald has written a series of stories revealing theNSA's electronic surveillance programmes, detailed in thousands of files passed to him by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The Guardian has also published a number of stories about blanket electronic surveillance by Britain's GCHQ, also based on documents from Snowden.
While in Berlin, Miranda had visited Laura Poitras, the US film-maker who has also been working on the Snowden files with Greenwald and the Guardian. The Guardian paid for Miranda's flights.
"This is a profound attack on press freedoms and the news gathering process," Greenwald said. "To detain my partner for a full nine hours while denying him a lawyer, and then seize large amounts of his possessions, is clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ. The actions of the UK pose a serious threat to journalists everywhere.
"But the last thing it will do is intimidate or deter us in any way from doing our job as journalists. Quite the contrary: it will only embolden us more to continue to report aggressively."
A spokesperson for the Guardian said: "We were dismayed that the partner of a Guardian journalist who has been writing about the security services was detained for nearly nine hours while passing through Heathrow airport. We are urgently seeking clarification from the British authorities."
A spokesperson for Scotland Yard said: "At 08:05 on Sunday, 18 August a 28-year-old man was detained at Heathrow airport under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. He was not arrested. He was subsequently released at 17:00."
Scotland Yard refused to be drawn on why Miranda was stopped using powers that enable police officers to stop and question travellers at UK ports and airports.
There was no comment from the Home Office in relation to the detention. However, there was surprise in political circles and elsewhere. Labour MP Tom Watson said he was shocked at the news and called for it to be made clear if any ministers were involved in authorising the detention.
He said: "It's almost impossible, even without full knowledge of the case, to conclude that Glenn Greenwald's partner was a terrorist suspect.
"I think that we need to know if any ministers knew about this decision, and exactly who authorised it."
"The clause in this act is not meant to be used as a catch-all that can be used in this way."
Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act has been widely criticised for giving police broad powers under the guise of anti-terror legislation to stop and search individuals without prior authorisation or reasonable suspicion setting it apart from other police powers.
Those stopped have no automatic right to legal advice and it is a criminal offence to refuse to co-operate with questioning under schedule 7, which critics say is a curtailment of the right to silence.
Last month the UK government said it would reduce the maximum period of detention to six hours and promised a review of the operation on schedule 7 amid concerns it unfairly targets minority groups and gives individuals fewer legal protections than they would have if detained at a police station.
The government of Brazil issued a statement in which it expressed its "grave concern" over the detention of one of its citizens and the use of anti-terror legislation. It said: "This measure is without justification since it involves an individual against whom there are no charges that can legitimate the use of that legislation. The Brazilian government expects that incidents such as the one that happened to the Brazilian citizen today are not repeated."
Widney Brown, Amnesty International's senior director of international law and policy, said: "It is utterly improbable that David Michael Miranda, a Brazilian national transiting through London, was detained at random, given the role his partner has played in revealing the truth about the unlawful nature of NSA surveillance.
"David's detention was unlawful and inexcusable. He was detained under a law that violates any principle of fairness and his detention shows how the law can be abused for petty, vindictive reasons.
"There is simply no basis for believing that David Michael Miranda presents any threat whatsoever to the UK government.

Quote:

Iran: Stop Holding Reporters' Relatives Hostage

Journalists' Families Targeted in Campaign Against Media

February 3, 2012

Detaining a BBC reporter's relative seems to be part of a wider campaign to harass Iranian journalists by putting pressure on them and their families. It suggests that authorities detained the relative to silence the reporter and the BBC. It also sends a message that the government's long arm of repression can extend well beyond borders.



Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director




(New York) The Iranian government has been intimidating and detaining relatives and friends of foreign-based Persian-language journalists to obtain information or silence them, Human Rights Watch said today. A family member of a BBC reporter whom Iranian authorities arbitrarily detained and held as a hostage for close to two weeks is one of the latest victims in a new wave of arrests against journalists and bloggers prior to parliamentary elections due on March 2, 2012.
In mid-January, security forces raided the home of a BBC Persian employee's relative in Tehran, searched and confiscated their belongings, and transferred the person to Evin prison. Hours later, a man claiming to be the relative's interrogator at Evin contacted the BBC employee in London, seeking information about the BBC in return for the family member's freedom. Human Rights Watch has learned that authorities released the detainee on bail several days ago.
"Detaining a BBC reporter's relative seems to be part of a wider campaign to harass Iranian journalists by putting pressure on them and their families," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "It suggests that authorities detained the relative to silence the reporter and the BBC. It also sends a message that the government's long arm of repression can extend well beyond borders."
A man who claimed he was an interrogator at Tehran's Evin prison contacted the BBC employee through the internet. The man asked about the employee's job, and said if the employee cooperated and provided him with contacts and sources at the BBC, the authorities would free the detained family member. Around two weeks later, the authorities released the family member on bail. It is not known whether authorities have charged the family member with a criminal offense, Human Rights Watch said.
A BBC staff member who spoke to Human Rights Watch expressed concern for the targeting of journalists' family members. "My colleagues and I at the BBC have been exposed to almost daily insults and personal attacks on various pro-government websites and blogs inside Iran, but this is really a red line for us, and we can't stay silent," the journalist said. "Our families should not be victimized because of our personal decisions to work for the BBC. Nor should they become a pawn in a larger political game between Iran and other countries."
The BBC decided to publicize the campaign against its employees and their family members and friends in Iran during a news broadcast on February 2. During the broadcast, Sadeq Saba, the head of BBC Persian, said that, during the past few weeks, Iranian authorities had intimidated, interrogated, and arrested several family members and friends of BBC Persian employees in an apparent campaign to silence BBC Persian. He also said there is evidence suggesting that some of those interrogated or detained may have been forced to participate in televised confessions that they worked or cooperated with BBC Persian inside Iran; he flatly denied that BBC Persian has any presence inside Iran. Saba told Human Rights Watch that during the past few weeks the pressure against family members and friends of BBC employees has intensified. He said the Iranian government's actions were "unprecedented" and "inhumane."
Iranian authorities have been particularly sensitive to the role of BBC Persian television, which launched operations in January 2009, because of its extensive coverage of the disputed 2009 presidential election. During the post-election crisis, BBC Persian television conducted hundreds of telephone interviews with protesters and witnesses who provided accounts of deaths, injuries, and arbitrary arrests carried out by security forces. Since June 2009, the authorities and pro-government websites have repeatedly attacked the BBC and anyone inside or outside the country whom they believe works for or cooperates with the British news outlet. On September 17, 2011, Iranian security forces arrested six independent filmmakers for allegedly cooperating with BBC Persian on a documentary. They transferred them to Evin prison's notorious Ward 240, which the Iranian Intelligence Ministry controls, but later released them.
Human Rights Watch has also documented jamming and interference of satellite feeds by Iranian authorities of BBC Persian, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, and other foreign-based Persian-language broadcasts. In May 2010, Ezatollah Zarghami, the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (Iran's state-run broadcast company), publicly acknowledged that his government engages in jamming of foreign broadcast satellites. Human Rights Watch has monitored numerous pro-government websites run from inside Iran, including the Young Journalists' Club, which regularly post articles, blogs, and messages containing personal attacks against individuals who work for BBC Persian.
The arrest and intimidation of family members of BBC Persian employees takes place amid escalating political tensions between Iran and the United Kingdom. On November 29, protesters breached the walls of the UK embassy compound in Tehran apparently in response to an announcement that the UK would sanction Iran's central bank and push for a European Union boycott of Iranian oil. Following the attack, the UK recalled its ambassador and shut down its embassy in Tehran.
During the past few weeks, Human Rights Watch has received information that authorities may be holding at least two other journalists and bloggers, detained during the recent wave of arrests, in Ward 2-A, which Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps control. On January 15 and 17, security forces arrested Parastou Dokouhaki and Marzieh Rasouli respectively. They have detained several other journalists and bloggers during the past three weeks. The arrests come amid repeated warnings by senior officials that Iran's enemies would seek to destabilize the country during the March parliamentary elections. Human Rights Watch has received information suggesting that authorities may have arrested Dokouhaki and Rasouli in an attempt to link them to BBC Persian.
On January 24, Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi announced that security and intelligence forces had uncovered and disrupted various plots to undermine the legitimacy of the upcoming parliamentary elections. He claimed that the "link between the seditionist elements and the state's enemies has already been established and there is lots of evidence [to support this]." It is not yet clear whether the arrests of family members of BBC staff, along with others who have been detained since the beginning of the year, are connected to Moslehi's January 24 announcement.
As of December, 42 journalists and bloggers were in prison in Iran, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. According to rights groups, more than 60 journalists were forced into exile in 2011 alone, and authorities have shut down at least 40 publications since 2009. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly called on the authorities to unconditionally release all journalists and bloggers detained or facing charges related to their exercise of fundamental rights, including freedom of expression.
"The recent wave of arrests, especially against relatives of journalists working abroad, is a reprehensible escalation in the current campaign to stifle freedom of information in Iran," said Whitson. "It is a sober reminder of the lengths Iranian authorities will go to control the airwaves, newspapers, and the internet even if it means ruining the lives of Iranians at home and abroad."

Greenwald: Brazil's Intervention Likely Kept Partner from Being Charged Under UK Terrorism Law