Democracy Now! Daily Digest ~ A Daily Independent Global News Hour with Amy Goodman & Juan González ~ Monday, 4 November 2013
STORIES:
As Edward Snowden seeks clemency from the United States, The New York Times has revealed new details about how the National Security Agency is spying on targets ranging from the United Nations to foreign governments to global text messages. We are joined by New York Times reporter Scott Shane, who reports that the NSA has emerged "as an electronic omnivore of staggering capabilities, eavesdropping and hacking its way around the world to strip governments and other targets of their secrets, all the while enforcing the utmost secrecy about its own operations." The Times article reveals how the NSA intercepted the talking points of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ahead of a meeting with President Obama in April and mounted a major eavesdropping effort focused on the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali in 2007. The Times also reveals the existence of an NSA database called Dishfire that "stores years of text messages from around the world, just in case." Another NSA program called Tracfin "accumulates gigabytes of credit card purchases."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The Obama administration is rejecting calls to grant clemency to NSA leaker Edward Snowden just days after Snowden asked for international help to lobby the United States to drop the charges against him. In a letter given to a German lawmaker last week, Snowden wrote, quote, "Speaking the truth is not a crime. I am confident that with the support of the international community, the government of the United States will abandon this harmful behavior," he wrote.
On Sunday, White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer appeared on ABC This Week and was questioned by host George Stephanopoulos about Snowden’s appeal.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Are there any conditions under which President Obama would consider clemency?
DAN PFEIFFER: None that have been discussed.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: None at all.
DAN PFEIFFER: No.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: It’s not on the table?
DAN PFEIFFER: I—not that’s been discussed. He—look, Mr. Snowden violated U.S. law. There—and—and our belief has always been that he should return to the United States and face—and face justice.
AMY GOODMAN: That was White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer speaking on Sunday.
Meanwhile, The New York Times published a front-page piece Sunday headlined "No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming NSA," revealing many new details about secret NSA programs and the agency’s overseas surveillance capabilities, based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
New York Times journalist Scott Shane writes, quote, "From thousands of classified documents, the National Security Agency emerges as an electronic omnivore of staggering capabilities, eavesdropping and hacking its way around the world to strip governments and other targets of their secrets, all the while enforcing the utmost secrecy about its own operations."
The New York Times piece reveals how the NSA intercepted the talking points of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ahead of a meeting with President Obama in April and mounted a major eavesdropping effort focused on the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali in 2007.
The documents also detail how the U.S. spied on Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and gained the ability to scan the stream of international communications and pluck out messages tied to the supreme leader.
The NSA has also been active in Latin America. The Times reveals the NSA aided the Colombian army by monitoring movements of the FARC rebel group using eavesdropping gear aboard a Defense Department plane flying 60,000 feet over Colombia.
Venezuela was listed as one of six "enduring targets" by the NSA, along with China, North Korea, Iraq, Iran and Russia. Internal NSA documents describe the agency’s goal as, quote, "preventing Venezuela from achieving its regional leadership objectives and pursuing policies that negatively impact U.S. global interests," unquote.
The Times also reveals the existence of an NSA database called Dishfire that, quote, "stores years of text messages from around the world, just in case," unquote. Another NSA program called Tracfin, quote, "accumulates gigabytes of credit card purchases," unquote.
These are just some of the revelations in Sunday’s New York Times piece based on the leaks of Edward Snowden. Joining us now is the author of the piece, New York Times national security reporter Scott Shane, joining us by Democracy Now! video stream from Maryland.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Scott. First of all, talk about how you got all of this information, all of these leaks of Edward Snowden.
SCOTT SHANE: Well, what happened was, Edward Snowden did not give The New York Times any of his documents, in part because he was upset that the Times had held a story about NSA’s warrantless wiretapping for a year back in 2004, eventually published it the next year in 2005. But he did give, as people know, a lot of documents to Laura Poitras, to Glenn Greenwald and to others, and The Guardian was given a large collection of about 50,000 documents that were labeled as GCHQ—that’s Government Communications Headquarters—which is the British equivalent of NSA. And GCHQ worked so closely with NSA that probably about a third of those documents are NSA documents. The Guardian shared those 50,000 documents with us at The New York Times, and some of us at the Times have spent the last couple of months going through them.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what most shocked you by the documents you’ve gotten that are from the National Security Agency. We’ve gone through just some of the points. You begin your piece with Ban Ki-moon last April. Why don’t you start there?
SCOTT SHANE: Well, I wrote—I used to be with The Baltimore Sun, and I wrote a series on NSA back in 1995, so I can’t say that I was not shocked by any of this, but I think perhaps one of the most interesting questions these documents raise is the—you know, I referred to the agency as an omnivore. They’re under pressure from policymakers, from White House, from CIA, from DOD, from the State Department, to sort of be prepared to supply information on almost anything. A crisis breaks out tomorrow in a, you know, unexpected place, and NSA is under heavy pressure to produce intelligence from that place. And that, combined with a big budget and secrecy, has, I think, created a kind of—you know, what actually Secretary of State John Kerry called last week "automatic pilot," just a sort of automatic effort to snatch up any kind of electronic communication there is around the world.
And I thought the Ban Ki-moon example was an interesting one. Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the U.N., very friendly to the United States, obviously a very public man, doesn’t—you know, doesn’t hide what he thinks. He was coming in April to the White House to—for a routine meeting with President Obama, and NSA collected his talking points before the meeting. Now, the White House won’t say whether President Obama was given and read those talking points in advance of the meeting, but, you know, it’s—if you think about it, it’s kind of hard to imagine that those talking points would contain anything terribly shocking. And, of course, there is the political cost of being caught essentially eavesdropping on the secretary-general of the U.N. That cost has now been paid. So, I think, you know, as long as they could remain secret about all this stuff, NSA’s instinct was: collect everything. You know, if the White House or whoever else in the government wants to read it, fine; if not, fine. But now I think the administration has a very difficult decision to make about balancing the political cost of spying, particularly on allies, on friendly countries, friendly people, against what—you know, what they might glean from that.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. We’re talking to Scott Shane, national security reporter for The New York Times. His front-page article, "No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming NSA." This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to New York Times national security reporter Scott Shane, his front-page article headlined "No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming NSA." Can you talk about some of the programs that you outline, from Polarbreeze to Dishfire, to the NSA’s SNACK, Social Network Analysis Collaboration Knowledge Services, Scott?
SCOTT SHANE: Well, one of the things that you find out going through these documents is at first they’re kind of baffling, because NSA, like most intelligence agencies, talks about everything in terms of code words. So, every program has a code name, and usually the code name reveals nothing about the program. And so, it takes a long time to sort of learn—like learning another language, it takes a long time to make sense out of any of this.
Dishfire, it turns out, is a program—it’s actually a database where text messages sent by cellphones around the world are collected and put into this Dishfire database. From the bits and pieces you can pick up from the documents, it appears to contain text messages in many languages, going back for many years. And there are documents that specifically say it’s useful for going back in time. If you find someone who turns up of interest, somebody who you think might be a suspected terrorist or somebody involved in nuclear weapons trade, or perhaps, you know, a Chinese diplomat of interest, you can go back at NSA into this Dishfire database and run some numbers through it and maybe come up with some text messages sent by that person in the past.
Polarbreeze is just mentioned in one document. It’s a—it’s a method by which somebody who is an American agent, who is using—appears to be using perhaps a phone in an Internet cafe, may in fact be sort of sucking out the contents or monitoring the exchanges on a nearby computer.
So, there are just hundreds and hundreds of these programs under various code names. And they’re—you know, they’ve all remained pretty much secret until Edward Snowden revealed all these documents starting last summer.
AMY GOODMAN: Scott Shane, TAO, the Tailored Access Operations, where the NSA—a division of the NSA breaks into computers around the world, sometimes leaving spyware after they leave?
SCOTT SHANE: I mean, that is clearly a division of NSA that’s increasingly important. When you think about what’s happened to NSA, as I mentioned in the article, CIA, human spying, has really not changed over the years. You try to recruit somebody to spy at the CIA just as people did hundreds—hundreds of years ago. But NSA, of course, has been transformed along with the kind of information revolution of the last 20 years—the rise of the Internet, the advance of email, the proliferation of personal computers and, most recently, the proliferation of smartphones.
So, TAO, Tailored Access Operations, they break into these computers around the world. They basically are very, very skilled hackers, and they—excuse me—they break in and still secrets from computers. They also, you know, plant Trojan software on computers—just like any hackers, but in a very organized fashion. Many countries—of course, the Chinese are very good at this—are doing this these days. They seem to be, I’d say, an increasingly important sort of method or division of collection for the NSA.
We also discovered a branch of TAO called Transgression. And the Transgression team does something quite interesting. They look for other countries or other hackers around the world that are breaking into computers that are of interest to NSA. And then they essentially follow those hackers in to the target computers. So, it’s a strange—it’s kind of like burglars who go around the neighborhood looking for open windows and doors that the burglars ahead of them have left, and then go in through those open windows and doors. And that’s sort of a twofer for the NSA, because they learn about the other countries’ hacking capabilities and they get to collect information from the target computers in a third country.
AMY GOODMAN: Scott Shane, after you published your piece, WikiLeaks tweeted, quote, ""NYTimes does NSA spoiler story, gutting over a dozen serious stories from rivals; justifies using Inman." The last part of that tweet refers to former NSA chief Bobby Inman. In your article, you quote his recommendation to his colleagues at the NSA who are embroiled in the spying scandal, saying—this is what Inman said—"My advice would be to take everything you think Snowden has and get it out yourself. It would certainly be a shock to the agency. But bad news doesn’t get better with age. The sooner they get it out and put it behind them, the faster they can begin to rebuild." Respond to both parts, what WikiLeaks said about the piece and what Inman said about just get it all out now.
SCOTT SHANE: Well, to start with Bobby Inman, he was NSA director from 1977 to 1981. One of the reasons I called him was that he was NSA director after the Senate’s Church Committee revealed what many people certainly consider to be abuses by NSA back in the mid-'70s. That was when thousands of Americans were on NSA watchlists, including civil rights activists, anti-Vietnam War activists and so on. So he has—he was actually in office and worked on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was the reform imposed in 1978 by Congress on NSA. So he's sort of been down this road before. And his advice to NSA, as you mentioned, was to sort of get everything out there, stop the drip, drip, drip of revelations, since there are still thousands and thousands of documents that have not been discussed by the media, and a lot of media organizations have them now. He said, you know, sort of get it out there and try to get this behind you; go ahead and have the debate and decide on what happens from there. Whether NSA is going to take that advice is unclear. It’s true that the Director of National Intelligence Office has been putting up documents online in recent weeks that it never would have considered putting up before the Snowden revelations, so they’re taking at least some of that advice.
On the WikiLeaks tweet, I’m not sure I understood the point.
AMY GOODMAN: I think his point is it’s sort of what Bobby Inman said, just get it all out in one article a little bit the way WikiLeaks’ information was gotten out. I think one of the impacts of the Snowden leaks, the documents he released to Laura Poitras and to Glenn Greenwald, are how slowly they’re coming out in these in-depth pieces all over the world, you know, whether we’re talking about Angela Merkel—it’s not that they didn’t have this information before, but it’s just coming out, the German chancellor, has caused an uproar in Germany. In fact, right now they’re asking perhaps Edward Snowden to either come to Germany or somehow testify as they investigate this further. You know, everything that’s happened in Brazil, with Dilma Rousseff not coming to the United States for a state visit because of the Globo piece that Glenn Greenwald also co-authored. But not summarizing, but doing in-depth reporting on each of these revelations.
SCOTT SHANE: Yeah, well, I think—you know, to compare what we’ve done here in the story that ran yesterday with WikiLeaks, I think there is a difference. And it’s a really interesting debate that’s going on about journalism these days. We went to the NSA and the DNI’s Office, Director of National Intelligence Office, some time ago with—I went to them with many of the points that I intended to use in my story and essentially gave them the chance to respond or to make an argument that some of this would be too damaging to national security, would be dangerous to either individuals or to programs. And after extensive discussions, we did take out some points, some details, from the story that ran. WikiLeaks, generally speaking, has sort of put stuff out there without—you know, sort of unexpurgated.
I have to say that from my observation, from my conversations with The Guardian, I think everybody who’s gotten these documents has been somewhat selective in putting them out. That applies to Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian itself, The Washington Post. I think they—you know, I think everybody recognizes that there’s a difference between important information the public should have and information that’s perhaps less newsworthy and could do real damage to important intelligence programs that, you know, could, among other things, prevent a terrorist attack.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me end with this question. We just have a minute. James Clapper, head of national intelligence, clearly lied to Congress when he says the U.S. wasn’t spying on Americans. The White House is still pushing for the prosecution of Snowden, and yet no prosecutions of NSA officials or intelligence officials, like Clapper, have been discussed. What about that?
SCOTT SHANE: Well, there’s clearly a big contradiction that has not been resolved between President Obama saying that he welcomes the debate that we’re now having about NSA, about surveillance domestically, overseas, and the prospect of a long prison term for Edward Snowden if he comes back to the United States. So, you know, it’s—I think it’s—it’s pretty clear, I think it’s fair to say, that Snowden broke the law. It’s also pretty clear to a lot of members of Congress that there’s—that he started a debate that is quite important to sort of the future of the intelligence agencies and to American democracy. How you sort that out, you know, I guess we’ll find out over the next months and maybe even years.
AMY GOODMAN: Scott Shane, I want to thank you very much for joining us. And, of course, he says—Edward Snowden says that he was exposing the fact that the U.S. government itself was breaking the law. Scott Shane is national security reporter for The New York Times. His front-page article is headlined "No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming NSA." We’ll link to it at democracynow.org. When we come back, a broadcast exclusive: A Pakistani-American journalist returns to Pakistan to look at the effects of drone attacks on the ground. Stay with us.
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The Pakistani government is warning of a new rift with the United States after a CIA drone strike that killed the head of the Pakistani Taliban. Hakimullah Mehsud and six other militants died on Friday when U.S. missiles hit their vehicle in North Waziristan. Mehsud had a $5 million bounty on his head and was accused of responsibility for thousands of deaths. The attack came just as the Pakistani government had relaunched peace talks with the Taliban. In a broadcast exclusive, we air a documentary that highlights the stories of civilians directly impacted by drone attacks in Pakistan: "Wounds of Waziristan," directed by Madiha Tahir. "Waziristan is only half the size of New Jersey. How would it feel if bombs rained over New Jersey for nine years?" asks Tahir in the film. "Would you be frightened? If they killed your son, your cousin or your husband, and got away with it, would you be angry? You probably couldn’t forget about it if you tried. You’d be haunted."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a new film called Wounds of Waziristan. It’s by Pakistani-American journalist Madiha Tahir. Madiha traveled to Northwest Pakistan to interview people affected by the U.S. drone war. Today we air the film in a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: There’s a wide gap between U.S. assessments of such casualties and non-governmental reports. Nevertheless, it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in every war. And for the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss. For me and those in my chain of command, those deaths will haunt us as long as we live.
MADIHA TAHIR: What does it mean to be haunted by loss?
[translated] How is your brother’s condition?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] When he’s alone, he doesn’t do well. He’s OK when he is with someone. He remembers his baby girl a lot. She was his love.
MADIHA TAHIR: So the story isn’t so much about the dead. It’s the way they haunt the living, the way they linger, the way they hang on.
The U.S. began bombing Pakistan in 2004. Now it’s nine years later, and the American conversation on drone attacks is only just beginning.
I’ve lived most of my life moving between America and Pakistan. One sees itself as the center of the world, and the other is on the margins. But Waziristan, where most of the drones attack, is at the margins of that margin. Like so many Americans and Pakistanis, I knew very little about the place.
Waziristan is part of what’s called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA. It’s in Pakistan, and it borders Afghanistan. And it has been bombed before, nearly a hundred years ago by the British when they occupied India. The British used the tribal areas as a buffer zone. They bombed it to suppress rebellion. They called it "air policing." They said there was no law here, so force was necessary.
Waziristan is only a day’s drive from the capital, but checkpoints dot the border. No one can go there independently. Pakistan’s security forces have killed many people here. The insurgents have, too. And now the American drones are doing the killing.
When it comes to language, nobody describes the insurgents—or the Pakistani military’s tactics—as precise. But that very word, "precise," is often thrown around in discussions about the American drone program. These attacks are described as "neat," "surgical" tactics in precision-based warfare. They seem to suggest that killing can be like surgery. You can take out the bad without disturbing the good. No consequences for anyone. No sorrow. No loss. They promise a death that isn’t a death at all. And that’s why drones are becoming acceptable among Americans as a way to kill in Yemen, in Somalia and in Pakistan.
And Waziristan? Waziristan is made to seem a world away.
So how could I be haunted by what I didn’t know? Ghosts can only haunt if we feel their presence. And the dead can only persist if the living can recall them.
Karim first made that world real to me. I met him in 2011. Here’s me playing a radio story I had done about him.
... Pakistan since 2004. They’re controlled by the CIA, and they’re supposed to be secret. The U.S. doesn’t confirm or deny the strikes, and it generally doesn’t release information on who’s been killed. But the local and international media do report on the attacks.
KARIM KHAN: [translated] In 2009, my home was attacked by a drone. My brother and son were martyred. My son’s name was Hafiz Zaenullah. My brother’s name was Asif Iqbal. There was a third person who was a stone mason. He was a Pakistani. His name was Khaliq Dad.
Their coffins were lying next to each other in the house. Their bodies were covered with wounds. Later, I found some of their fingers in the rubble.
As you know, my son had memorized the Qur’an. He was a security guard at the girls’ school, and he was studying for grade 10. My brother had a master’s degree in English. He was a government employee. He loved to debate, but he was so short, he didn’t reach the dais, so they wouldn’t give him many chances to make speeches.
MADIHA TAHIR: I met Saddam a couple of years later. He’s a school-going teenager with a shy smile and a quiet, apologetic demeanor.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: Yaar, sorry.
MADIHA TAHIR: It’s OK.
The attack just missed him. He was sleeping next door.
But when he talks about the attack, he’s completely serious.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] It happened at 9:00 p.m. On my home.
MADIHA TAHIR: [translated] On your home?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] Yes.
MADIHA TAHIR: Who died?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] My sister-in-law and my niece were martyred. When the attack happened, my mother told me to get my sister-in-law. I told her, "OK, you go. I’ll get her." I already knew she was martyred, but I didn’t want to tell my mother, because she would cry.
After the attack, my brother came home. He asked about his baby daughter. I told him she was alive. But he found out. He went into shock. We took him to the hospital. They gave him an IV. After some days, we sent him to a hospital in Peshawar. The doctor there prescribed some medication. That helped him a little.
MADIHA TAHIR: This is Pakistan. And this is America. What if someone brought death to your hometown? That’s Waziristan. And that’s New Jersey. It’s where I grew up. We moved there after a military dictator began destroying Pakistani society. The events that would force my family out would also wound Waziristan.
GEN. MUHAMMAD ZIA-UL-HAQ: [translated] The government of Mr. Bhutto has ceased to exist. The whole country is under martial law. National and provincial assemblies have been dissolved.
MADIHA TAHIR: That man was General Zia-ul-Haq. Those were the 1980s. Pakistan’s tribal areas were being used as a staging ground for the American war against the Soviet Union.
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: We have with us six of the Afghanistan freedom fighters. There’s a man here whose wife was killed in front of their two children. Another one has lost his brother in the tunnel.
MADIHA TAHIR: They’re still losing brothers. Waziristan is only half the size of New Jersey. How would it feel if bombs rained over New Jersey for nine years? Would you be frightened? If they killed your son, your cousin or your husband, and got away with it, would you be angry? You probably couldn’t forget about it if you tried. You’d be haunted.
The British thought you were all savages. Now the Americans think you’re all militants.
AMY GOODMAN: Chris Woods, can you talk more about the redefinition of "civilians" outlined in The New York Times piece, President Obama embracing this disputed measure of counting civilian casualties, in effect counting all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants?
CHRIS WOODS: This revelation really is extraordinary, that any adult male killed in effectively a defined kill zone is a terrorist, unless posthumously proven otherwise.
ALYONA MINKOVSKI: U.S. drone strike that’s killed eight alleged militants along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
LI DONGNING: A U.S. drone strike on suspected Islamist militants in Northwest Pakistan has killed at least 10 people there.
ERIN BURNETT: Five al-Qaeda militants were killed in a U.S. drone attack.
NIC ROBERTSON: Three U.S. drone strikes have killed five suspected al-Qaeda militants.
ZAKKA JACOB: At least 45 suspected militants have been killed by missiles launched by U.S. drone aircraft.
BILL O’REILLY: Now they’re looking around like this.
KEVIN OWEN: An airstrike on Sunday killed five alleged militants.
BILL O’REILLY: What we do now is we find out someone having a Big Mac in Islamabad, they’re out of here.
UNIDENTIFIED: These reports of these alleged deaths of children and innocent civilian casualties, in general, are complete rubbish.
MADIHA TAHIR: That’s Javeria’s [phon.] funeral photo. She was less than a year old. The photos of many of the people living in the tribal areas don’t exist, so local journalists began to take photos to document their deaths. Their deaths would have to stand in for their lives.
NOOR BEHRAM: [translated] Around seven children were martyred in this attack. It also struck a home. Twenty-one people were killed in this attack—seven women and three children. When I arrived, there were bodies everywhere. This child was killed in that attack, too. There were one or two other kids, as well.
MADIHA TAHIR: This is Shahzad Akbar. He’s Karim’s lawyer. They’ve filed a case against drone attacks in Pakistani courts. He told me why it’s difficult to narrate his clients’ lives for the court and the media.
SHAHZAD AKBAR: For example, you know, when I have a client and we want—OK, this was a person who was killed, so we’d like to construct his life on photographs. You know, you have family photos and—of when he was young, when he was in school, when he was in teens and when he grew up—in all those photos. They’re missing. They’re not there, because, you know, you don’t have the culture of taking pictures for that matter.
NOOR BEHRAM: [translated] This attack was in South Waziristan. When I got there, I saw body parts—hands, feet. When a drone attack happens, the media claims to know how many terrorists were killed. Actually, you only find body parts on the scene, so people can’t tell how many have died. That’s why the media reports it incorrectly.
KARIM KHAN: [translated] Our Pakistani government thinks of itself as a front line in this war. They only visit after an attack to check if they’ve destroyed us completely and to see if the body is in pieces or intact. That’s all.
MADIHA TAHIR: I asked Saifullah Khan Mehsud to explain the Pakistani government’s relationship to the tribal areas. Saifullah Khan is a researcher at the FATA Research Center. He’s from South Waziristan himself.
SAIFULLAH KHAN MEHSUD: FATA is like Federally Administered Tribal Areas. I mean, it’s governed by an archaic law that was introduced by British in that area, known as the Frontier Crime Regulation Act. So it’s still that system whereby, you know, the president—the governor, on behalf of the president, appoints a political, you know, agent in that area. The office of the political agent basically has all the judicial and legislative—legislative, the executive and the judicial power, you know, in his hands, in the hands of the political agent. So, you know, there is absolutely no accountability. If a political agent, you know, kind of comes up and makes a decision, a judicial decision or any kind of decision, there is no other authority, no body there available which can actually hold him accountable.
MADIHA TAHIR: People in the tribal areas call this colonial-era system "the black laws." Under these laws, people living in the tribal areas didn’t even get the right to vote 'til 1996. So the "tribal areas" are a political category, a place haunted by its past. It just means a place where colonial laws still exist, and the Pakistani constitution doesn't apply, a place with at least four different kinds of security forces, from militias to the army. The Pakistani state still claims there is no law here, so force is necessary. It means a place that’s kept invisible.
And that’s been to the advantage of the U.S. and the Pakistani army. America has paid billions to the Pakistani security forces. Together, they have used Pakistan, and especially Waziristan. During the Cold War, it was to battle communism and to fund and train the mujahideen.
REPORTER: ... entering Afghanistan, this is the source which is potentially the most damaging. This is a training camp for Afghan guerrillas, or mujahideen. These camps aren’t supposed to exist on Pakistan’s soil, a contradiction which is circumvented, not very neatly, by the technical point that they are in an area only partly controlled by Pakistan—the tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan.
MADIHA TAHIR: Now, it’s to support the U.S. as it occupies Afghanistan. So, America, the Pakistani security forces and the insurgents they’ve created, they’re linked. And for decades they’ve been destroying Waziristan together. And now America is just blowing the place up. The reason? They say there’s no law here, and force is necessary.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: So neither conventional military action nor waiting for attacks to occur offers moral safe harbor, and neither does a sole reliance on law enforcement in territories that have no functioning police or security services, and indeed have no functioning law.
KARIM KHAN: [translated] You asked me a question about terrorism. Can I ask you one? What is the definition of "terrorism" or "terrorist"?
MADIHA TAHIR: [translated] I don’t know. What do you think it is?
KARIM KHAN: [translated] I think there is no bigger terrorist than Obama or Bush, those who have weaponry like drones, who drop bombs on us while we are in our homes. There are no greater terrorists than them.
MADIHA TAHIR: [translated] Did you play with her?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] Yes. She had just learned to say "Dad." She used to say, "Dad, Dad." But now she’s been martyred.
They circle overhead, seven or eight of them.
MADIHA TAHIR: [translated] You mean in a week?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] No, no! I mean daily. They fly very low at night. It’s very stressful. A lot of people lose their minds. They go to Peshawar for treatment. When they come near, I go into my room and close the door to shut out the noise. I don’t like the sound at all.
MADIHA TAHIR: Noor Behram had showed me the photos of the dead. But I wanted to understand how they come to haunt the living. I spoke with Dr. Javed Akhtar. He’s a psychiatrist. Lots of people who suffer from the violence in Waziristan come to him. He didn’t want to appear on camera, but he told me about how the bombing impacts people.
DR. JAVED AKHTAR: [translated] The suddenness of a drone attack and its impact—the things that are happening here now, and especially the drone attacks—they happen completely out of the blue. Within a second your world is turned upside down. You can’t hug a body that’s been blown apart. You can’t hold him and cry. So the neighbor or brother or sister or wife of the dead, she doesn’t know what to do. Whom can she hold near? She doesn’t get closure.
MADIHA TAHIR: So what does it mean to be haunted by loss?
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred throughout conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, but as commander-in-chief, I must weigh these heartbreaking tragedies against the alternatives.
MADIHA TAHIR: There is no escape for the haunted. There are no alternatives for the haunted. The loss lingers. The sorrow persists. In a haunted land, the dead do not exist among the living. The living exist among the dead.
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] I feel guilty about being alive. My sister-in-law is dead. Why am I alive? I should be dead, too. That would be good. I wish I had also been martyred that day. Death would have been better than this kind of life.
MADIHA TAHIR: [translated] Why do you say that?
SADDAM HUSSEIN: [translated] I say it because I’m sick of drone attacks. I’m tired of innocent people being martyred. That’s why I don’t like my life anymore. I study, but I’m not really interested in it anymore. When I hear a drone has attacked, I feel ill all day.
KARIM KHAN: [translated] Even if we are afraid, what can we do? Run away and leave our homes and land? No, that can’t happen.
AMY GOODMAN: The new film, Wounds of Waziristan, directed and narrated by Pakistani-American journalist Madiha Tahir. Democracy Now! media fellow Messiah Rhodes co-produced and edited the film. This has been a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive. You can watch the film online at democracynow.org, tell your friends, share on Facebook and Twitter. You can also watch our interview with a Pakistani family whose grandmother was killed in a U.S. drone strike. Her two grandchildren, eight-year-old Nabila and 12-year-old Zubair—at the time, those were their ages—were wounded in the attack. They joined us in our studio last Thursday after becoming the first drone victims to testify before Congress. You can tune into Democracy Now! on Tuesday, when we’ll be joined by three-time Academy Award-winning director and screenwriter, Oliver Stone, joins us for the hour to talk about the Untold History of the United States.
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HEADLINES:
Morsi Rejects Military Rule in 1st Court Appearance
Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi appeared in court today four months after his ouster in a military coup. Morsi faces charges surrounding the deaths of protesters killed in a rally against his government last December. Today’s hearing marked Morsi’s first court appearance since his ouster, a period that has seen hundreds of his supporters shot dead by state forces. Morsi told the court he remains Egypt’s legitimate president and reportedly chanted, "down with military rule." The trial has been adjourned until January.
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Kerry Begins Mideast Tour in Egypt, Saudi Arabia
On the eve of Mohamed Morsi’s trial, Secretary of State John Kerry visited Cairo for talks with his counterpart Nabil Fahmy. Kerry addressed the recent U.S. decision to scale back military aid to Egypt’s government.
Secretary of State John Kerry: "Of course we understood that the decision with respect to some aid, which has been held back for a period of time — we knew that in some places, obviously, that wouldn’t be well received. But it’s not a punishment. It’s a reflection of a policy in the United States under our law. We have a law passed by the United States Congress regarding how certain, you know, events unfold with respect to the change of a government in a country, and we’re bound by that."
After Egypt, Kerry flew to Saudi Arabia for talks with Saudi King Abdullah.
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Pakistan Reviews U.S. Ties After Drone Kills Taliban Leader on Eve of Talks
The Pakistani government is warning of a new rift with the United States after a CIA drone strike that killed the head of the Pakistani Taliban. Hakimullah Mehsud and six other militants died on Friday when U.S. missiles hit their vehicle in North Waziristan. Mehsud had a $5 million bounty on his head and was accused of responsibility for thousands of deaths. The attack came just as the Pakistani government had relaunched peace talks with the Taliban. Pakistani officials were reportedly set to meet with a delegation of Taliban representatives the following day. Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar called the strike "an attack on regional peace."
Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar: "Brick by brick, in the last seven weeks we tried to evolve a process through which we can bring peace to Pakistan. And what have you done? You have scuttled it on the eve of the day, or one day before, 18 hours before, a formal delegation of respected 'ulema,' or religious leaders, was to fly out to Miranshah and hand over this formal invitation, both as far as the venue is concerned and also as far as certain other issues were concerned."
In addition to announcing a review of U.S. ties, the Pakistani government also summoned the U.S. ambassador to warn of a "standoff" unless drone attacks cease. Also denouncing the strike, the leading Pakistani opposition leader, Imran Khan, proposed a ban on NATO supply trucks inside Pakistan. Khan accused the U.S. of sabotaging the peace talks.
Imran Khan: "I feel saddened to say this, but just as the dialogue was about to start today, those Taliban who were to take part in the talks, including Hakimullah Mehsud, were killed by yesterday’s drone attack. It was done to sabotage the talks."
The Pakistani Taliban has reportedly picked Khan Sayed as its new leader. He previously served as second in command.
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LAX Shooting Suspect Penned Anti-TSA Hate Letter
The suspect in Friday’s armed attack at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) could face the death penalty for shooting dead a Transportation Security Administration officer and wounding five other people. Paul Ciancia is charged with murdering a federal officer and committing violence at an international airport. LAX police head Patrick Gannon described the attack.
Patrick Gannon: "9:20 this morning, an individual came into Terminal 3 of this airport, pulled a assault rifle out of a bag and began to open fire in the terminal. He proceeded up into the screening area, where TSA screeners are, and continued shooting and went past the screeners back into the airport itself. Personnel officers from airport police, Los Angeles Airport Police, responded immediately to the calls. They tracked the individual through the airport and engaged him in gunfire in Terminal 3 and were able to successfully take him into custody."
The slain victim, Gerardo Hernandez, was the first TSA agent to die in the line of duty since the agency’s creation following the 9/11 attacks. He was a married father of two who had emigrated from El Salvador as a teenager. Citing a law enforcement source, the Southern Poverty Law Center says the gunman, Paul Ciancia, was carrying a note making racist, homophobic and sexist slurs about government officials and describing the TSA in conspiratorial terms. Ciancia remains in critical condition and unresponsive to police questioning.
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Obama Admin Rejects Snowden Clemency; Report Details U.N. Spying
The Obama administration is rejecting calls to grant clemency to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden just days after Snowden asked for international help. In a letter given to a German lawmaker last week, Snowden called on the United States to drop charges against him, writing: "Speaking the truth is not a crime." On Sunday, White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer ruled out clemency and said Snowden should return to face criminal charges. In some of the latest of Snowden’s disclosures, The New York Times reports the NSA intercepted the talking points of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ahead of a meeting with President Obama in April. The NSA also mounted a major eavesdropping effort focused on the United Nations climate change conference in Bali in 2007.
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U.K. Police Linked Greenwald’s Partner to "Terrorism"
A newly disclosed document shows the British government justified detaining the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald by accusing him of "espionage" and "terrorism." In August, David Miranda was on his way home to Brazil when he was held for nine hours at London’s Heathrow airport. He faced repeated interrogation and had many personal items seized, including thumb drives carrying information used by Greenwald in his reporting on National Security Agency surveillance. An internal police order authorizing Miranda’s detention from that day says: "Intelligence indicates that Miranda is likely to be involved in espionage activity." It continues: "We assess that Miranda is knowingly carrying material, the release of which would endanger people’s lives. Additionally the disclosure or threat of disclosure is designed to influence a government, and is made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause. This therefore falls within the definition of terrorism."
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U.N. Climate Panel: Global Warming Endangers World’s Food Supply
The United Nations’ top scientific panel on climate change has concluded global warming will threaten the world’s food supply in the coming decades. A leaked draft of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s next report warns climate change could reduce crop production by 2 percent each decade for the rest of the century, driving up prices and plunging millions more into hunger and starvation. It is the first time the IPCC has issued a dire warning on global warming’s threat to the world’s food supply. The report also warns global warming could "exacerbate" a number of other problems, including poverty, water scarcity and war. The panel’s report is formally due in March. According to NASA, new data shows this past September tied 2005 for the warmest September on record.
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Israel Prepares New Annexation Plans Ahead of Kerry Visit
Israel is preparing a new round of annexation projects in the occupied West Bank. On Sunday, the Israeli government issued tenders to build more than 1,800 homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It is also reportedly planning to build a new separation wall along its border with Jordan. The moves come ahead of a visit by Secretary of State John Kerry to encourage U.S.-brokered peace talks.
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Syrian Opposition Says Assad Departure a Precondition for Geneva Talks
The pending Geneva peace conference on Syria appears further in doubt after months of delay. On Sunday, the opposition Syrian National Coalition said a timetable for the departure of President Bashar al-Assad remains a precondition for its involvement. The coalition also rejected the inclusion of Iran at the negotiating table. The Syrian government, meanwhile, accused Secretary of State John Kerry of interference for publicly backing a handover of power.
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2 French Journalists Killed in Mali
Two French journalists have been found dead following their abduction in Mali. Claude Verlon and Ghislaine Dupont of the radio network RFI were kidnapped after interviewing a separatist leader in Mali’s north. Twelve suspects have been arrested for the pair’s murder. France invaded northern Mali earlier this year to fight rebel forces.
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Book: Obama Aides Mulled Replacing Biden with Clinton for 2012 Campaign
A new book claims President Obama’s campaign team considered replacing Vice President Joe Biden with Hillary Clinton for Obama’s re-election bid. The idea was reportedly discussed, but ultimately abandoned because it would not significantly improve Obama’s chances. At the White House, Press Secretary Jay Carney said Obama never considered dropping Biden from the ticket.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney: "What I can tell you, without a doubt, is that the president never considered that, and had anyone brought that idea to him, he would have laughed it out of the room."
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Obama Campaigns for McAuliffe in Virginia Race
On Sunday, President Obama campaigned in Virginia for Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe ahead of Tuesday’s gubernatorial election. McAuliffe is squaring off against Republican Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia’s attorney general. In his remarks, Obama seized on the impact of the recent government shutdown.
President Obama: "You’ve seen an extreme faction of the Republican Party that has shown again and again and again that they’re willing to hijack the entire party and the country and the economy, and grind progress to an absolute halt if they don’t get 100 percent of what they want. Now, you know, this isn’t just speculation. We just saw it last month. Here in Virginia, you felt the pain of the first government shutdown in 17 years, and there aren’t lots of states that felt more of the pain than folks right here in Virginia."
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Day Laborers Rally for Immigration Reform, Workplace Safety
In New York City, day laborers and their allies gathered Sunday to call for immigration reform and to highlight the role of immigrant workers in the recovery effort after Superstorm Sandy, just over one year ago. The workers rallied in Foley Square to call for relief from deportation for workers who helped rebuild the city. The protest came on the heels of a New York Daily News report showing 74 percent of construction workers who die on the job are Latinos, even though census figures show Latinos account for just 41 percent of such workers. Pablo Alvarado of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network said safety for relief workers is a key demand.
Pablo Alvarado: "After a natural disaster, workers need to be protected. FEMA comes in, and they bring relief to homeowners, to a lot of people who are affected. But workers’ rights, people who go in, the first responders, people who go in and take out the contaminated waters, they don’t even receive a glove or a helmet. That needs to change."
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The Rising Resistance to Obama’s Drone Wars by Amy Goodman
“I wasn’t scared of drones before, but now when they fly overhead I wonder, ‘Will I be next?’” That is the question asked by 9-year-old Nabila Rehman, from northwest Pakistan. She was injured in a drone attack a year ago, in her small village of Ghundi Kala. She saw her grandmother, Mamana Bibi, blown to pieces in the strike. Her brother Zubair also was injured. Their case has become the latest to draw attention to the controversial targeted killing program that has become central to President Barack Obama’s foreign policy and global war-making.
“We really just have a very simple message to the U.S.: How do you justify killing a grandmother? How does that make anyone safer?” Mustafa Qadri posed the question on the “Democracy Now!” news hour. Qadri authored a new Amnesty International report titled “‘Will I Be Next?’ U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan.”
Nabila and Zubair are unique among the growing number of drone-strike victims: They were able to appear before Congress, along with their father, Rafiq ur Rehman, to testify about the strike and the devastation it brought to their family. They are featured in a new documentary being released for free on the Internet this week, “Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars,” by Brave New Films. In it, Rafiq, a primary-school teacher, describes that day:
“People enjoyed life before the attacks. It was 2:45 on October 24th of 2012. After school finished I went into town to buy school supplies.” When he returned home, they told him his mother was dead. There was a crater where her garden was. She was picking okra with the children. “That’s where my mother was killed,” Rafiq continues. “My family has been destroyed since my mother was killed.” Nine children in all were injured, as this drone strike fit a typical pattern, with one initial strike, followed closely by another to hit the rescuers.
13-year-old Zubair testified before Congress: “When the drone fired the first time, the whole ground shook and black smoke rose up. The air smelled poisonous. We ran, but several minutes later the drone fired again. People from the village came to our aid and took us to the hospital. We spent the night in great agony at the hospital, and the next morning I was operated on.”
Attacking rescuers is a war crime. Mustafa Qadri from Amnesty International explained: “For example, some laborers in a very impoverished village near the Afghanistan border, they get targeted, eight die instantly in a tent; those who come to rescue or to look for survivors are themselves targeted. In great detail, eyewitnesses, victims who survive, tell us about the terror, the panic, as drones hovered overhead. ... There’s a very high threshold for proving [war crimes]. With the secrecy surrounding the program, the remoteness of this area, we can only get the truth once the U.S. comes clean and explains what is the justification for these killings.”
President Obama himself consistently defends the accuracy and legality of the targeted killing program. He was directly challenged on it recently, though, by his own 16-year-old human-rights hero, Malala Yousafzai. She is the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen for her outspoken support for educating girls and women. Many thought she would win this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. While the White House did not publicize her comments, Malala released a separate statement about her visit with the Obamas, saying, “I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education it will make a big impact.”
Resistance to Obama’s drone wars is growing. In upstate New York, in a surprise ruling, five anti-drone activists were acquitted after being tried for blocking the gate of Hancock Field Air National Guard Base near Syracuse. Code Pink is organizing a national conference in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 16-17, called “Drones Around the Globe: Proliferation and Resistance.” And at least one drone pilot, Brandon Bryant, a former sensor operator for the U.S. Air Force Predator program, has now spoken out about the horrors of killing innocent civilians and the post-traumatic stress disorder that followed.
While only five members of Congress (all Democrats) came to hear the Rehman family testify, the words of young Zubair are now on the record, a painful testament to Obama’s policy of so-called targeted killing with drones:
“I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer gray skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray. And for a short period of time, the mental tension and fear eases. When the skies brighten, though, the drones return, and so, too, does the fear.”
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,000 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller. © 2012 Amy Goodman
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
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