TN State Rep Mike Kernell’s Son Served Search Warrent By FBI In YahooGate

There has been no outrage expressed by liberals over the Palin email “hack”. Why you ask? Because it is looking more and more likely one of their own is responsible. Now had this happened to Obama or Biden you can bet the liberals would be all expressing their outrage all over the news with this. This was a politcal stunt with hopes of exposing Palin’s non-transparency, however nothing was found by this “hacker” that incriminated Palin in doing anything wrong. I bet he thought he was going to get a good juicy email about troopergate…

Bummer… Feds break up a party to serve University of Tennessee student David Kernell with a search warrant! 
A court date was set for this week.

David is a self-described Obamacrat and his father Mike Kernell is a liberal Tennessee State Representative.
All signs pointed to the young Obama supporter as the Palin hacker.

David Kernell, 20, is a student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. (News5 photo)

The federal agents put a damper on that university party!
They had the students wait outsid while they took photos and evidence from inside the apartment for over an hour and a half.
WBIR reported:

The FBI is stepping up its investigation into the possibility that a University of Tennessee student hacked into the personal e-mail of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

A person who identified himself as a witness tells 10 News that agents with the FBI served a federal search warrant at the Fort Sanders residence of David Kernell early Sunday morning. Kernell lives in the Commons apartment complex at 1115 Highland Ave.

David Kernell is the son of Mike Kernell, a Democratic state representative from Memphis.

A Department of Justice spokesperson confirmed there has been “investigatory activity” in Knoxville regarding the Palin case, but she said there are no publicly available search warrants, and no charges have been filed.

A separate law enforcement source confirmed to 10 News that a search warrant was served on Kernell’s apartment.

According to the witness, several agents arrived at The Commons of Knoxville around midnight. 

They presented their badges upon entering Kernell’s apartment, where several students were having a party, and took down their names.

The witness tells us they asked him and those who did not live in the unit to go outside. He believes the investigators took about 1.5 to 2 hours taking pictures of everything inside the apartment. 

He says Kernell’s three roommates were also subpoenaed, and must testify this week in Chattanooga.

Jammie Wearing Fool and The Tennessean have more.

David Kernell and his father State Rep. Mike Kernell (D) met with a lawyer on Friday night.

A proxy server led the FBI to Kernell… but bloggers knew who the (suspected) hacker was on Thursday.

*** Would someone please forward this to the Los Angeles Times?

Denver Terror Plot Denied – More Political Correctness

A Somalian Muslim living in Canada, diagnosed with mental health problems and a loner living with his mother, one day tells his family he is going on vacation to Denver just before the Democratic National Convention shows up in a ritzy Hotel, dead of cyanide poisoning and a container with about 400 Grams of cyanide and the FBI tries to convince the general public into believing this was not a planned terrorist attack. Amazing.

Any imbecile can see this guy was prime meat for terrorist recruitment, he fits the profile of the weak mind that these organizations seek out. Then the fact that he just up and goes from Canada to Denver just before the convention… Stays in a ritzy hotel just blocks from the State Capital building… Now add on the 400 Grams of cyanide… .2 grams (1/5 of a gram) is lethal to humans… 400 Grams is enought to kill 2,000 people. Now remember that is the lethal dose, however should you put that in a water supply being used to at the convention, many more would be sick on top of the number dead.

The Somalian refugee group in MN wants you to hold off judgement that this was  a planned terrorist attack… What PC bullshit. Look at the circumstances and evidence and draw a logical conclusion.

The big question is why would Black Muslims want to attack the Democratic National Convention?

I would venture to say that this is similar to my theory on why the Black Leadership in the US will ensure that Barack Obama is not president, because it will hurt their cause. The Muslims cannot allow Barack Obama to become president of the US because of this Muslim family it will hurt their cause and take away their “entitlement” to engage in terror against America.

FBI terrorism experts are investigating whether the death of a Somali-born Canadian citizen — whose body was found Monday in a Denver hotel room with about a pound of extremely toxic sodium cyanide — is connected to the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

The Denver coroner said the man died of cyanide poisoning.

The cause of death was announced Thursday, but authorities haven’t determined whether 29-year-old Saleman Abdirahman Dirie committed suicide.

An FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force has been sent to Denver, although Special Agent Kathy Wright said there’s no information to conclude that Dirie had terrorist ties, the Rocky Mountain News reported.

While local law enforcement officials tried to downplay the incident, stressing that there was no sign of foul play in the death of Dirie, a Defense Department contractor said it’s likely a terror plot could have been in the works, considering the toxicity and reported amount of cyanide found with the 29-year-old from Ottawa.

“I don’t see how anybody could do anything but look into the possibility that this is a potential terrorist attack,” Dr. Andrew Ternay told CBS 4 News in Denver.

The FBI, however, said Wednesday that there’s probably no reason for them to go back to the fourth-floor room at the Burnsley Hotel, where Dirie was found.

The hotel is located about four blocks from the Denver state Capitol.

“It’s an isolated incident,” Denver Police Detective John White told the newspaper. They refused to speculate on why he had such a large quantity of the poisonous substance with him in the swanky all-suite hotel so soon before the convention in Denver, Aug. 25-28.

“We don’t think it’s any act of terrorism,” Sonny Jackson, a spokesman for the Denver Police Department, told FOXNews.com. “We have no reason to believe it was. Nobody knows what was in this gentleman’s mind.”

Jackson declined to elaborate on why the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force got involved in the case.

“That’s just normal,” said Jackson. “You’d have to ask them why they got involved. They may have more expertise with the chemicals.”

Sodium cyanide is commercially available and commonly found in rat poison and used to extract fold and other precious metals. When inhaled or ingested, the chemical prevents the body from processing oxygen. It can also be mixed with certain acids to produce extremely lethal cyanide gas, according to the Department of Justice.

In July, a person calling himself “Abdirahman Dirie” posted an online comment with a blog that discussed the killing of Christians by Islamic Courts and Islamists in Somalia. It was not known whether it was the same person as the Dirie found dead in Denver.

“Please on’t [sic] talk sh—t, that man [the Christian blogger] deserves what happened to him, simply because having the bible in one hand, and a bread in the other hand, is not a correct thing,! Kill Them, Kill them, Kill them, that is my massage [sic],!” — comment by Abdirahman Dirie, July 11, 2008 @10:33 p.m.

But the FBI echoed police, insisting terrorism isn’t suspected.

“At this point we don’t have any nexus to terrorism,” the FBI’s Wright told The Associated Press. She didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking comment from FOXNews.com.

Dirie’s sister, meanwhile, is upset over the implication that her brother might have been planning some sort of massive deadly attack.

“He was not a terrorist,” his sister, who declined to give her name, told the Montreal Gazette. “We don’t want to hear that word, it hurts us. It is against our religion.”

She told the Gazette that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia about three years ago and was taking medication.

She said her brother was “fine” and wasn’t suicidal. Police said they were investigating whether Dirie took his own life.

“That’s a possibility,” Jackson told FOXNews.com. “I’m not going to speculate. It’s just a death investigation at this point.”

Fire officials said they found a bottle of the white powder in Dirie’s room, about a quart by volume, that was confirmed by police Wednesday to be cyanide.

Jackson declined to confirm how much was found.

“We aren’t releasing any amount,” he told FOXNews.com. “We don’t even know how much. It’s basically readily available for commercial use.”

Investigators have not said why Dirie had cyanide or whether he worked in a job that would have involved using it. They also have not said how long Dirie had been in Denver or whether anyone had accompanied him, though he didn’t appear to have ties to the city.

The State Department said privacy laws prevented the release of any information about the type of visa Dirie may have had.

The Canadian Consulate in Denver said members of Dirie’s family were in Colorado to make arrangements to return his body to Canada.

Addirizuk Karod, manager of Ottawa’s Somali Centre for Family Services, told the Ottawa Sun that Dirie was a member of the city’s Somali community and had been to the center with friends.

Karod told the newspaper the Dirie family had left Somalia as refugees years ago and had become Canadian citizens.

Hotel general manager Jason Ford declined to offer specific information about Dirie. He said other guests have been moved from the fourth floor, where Dirie’s room was, to avoid inconvenience from the investigation.

An advocacy group for Somali immigrants cautioned against linking Dirie to terrorism.

The Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul, Minn., said Thursday that connecting Dirie’s death to terrorism “is a rush to judgment.”

Saddam’s Downfall

Here’s another story the liberal media does not want you to know. They are so intent on chanting that Bush Lied that they want to bury the truth.

The truth is simple, Saddam Hussein had a program to convince the world that he had weaopons of mass destruction and had all intentions of starting it up once the heat was off. He had the assests in place to resume the program at will, sort of like Iran’s “suspended” nuke program…

The program was so good they he believed it himself…

But the liberals will keep chanting that Bush Lied… Wake up, it is only a lie if he knew it to be false and said it anyways… Bush, Congress, intel agencies around the world, governments around the world believed that he had weapons of mass destruction. The liars are the ones that deny they believed it or campaign that they only believed it because of Bush’s lies…

NEW YORK – Saddam Hussein allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction to deter rival Iran and did not think the United States would stage a major invasion, according to an FBI interrogator who questioned the Iraqi leader after his capture.

Saddam expected only a limited aerial attack by the United States and thought he could remain in control, the FBI special agent, George Piro, told CBS’s “60 Minutes” program in an interview to be broadcast Sunday.

“He told me he initially miscalculated … President Bush’s intentions,” said Piro. “He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998 … a four-day aerial attack.”

“He survived that one and he was willing to accept that type of attack,” Piro said.

In 2003, a close aide of Saddam’s told The Associated Press that Saddam did not expect a U.S. invasion and deliberately kept the world guessing about his weapons program, although he already had gotten rid of it.

Keeping up the illusion of weapons program
Saddam publicly denied having unconventional weapons before the U.S. invasion, but prevented U.N. inspectors from working in the country from 1998 until 2002 and when they finally returned in November 2002, they often complained that Iraq wasn’t fully cooperating.

Piro, a Lebanese-American who speaks Arabic, debriefed Saddam after he was found in an underground hideout near his home city north of Baghdad in December 2003, nine months after the U.S. invasion.

Piro said Saddam also said that he wanted to keep up the illusion that he had the program in part because he thought it would deter a likely Iranian invasion.

“For him, it was critical that he was seen as still the strong, defiant Saddam. He thought that (faking having the weapons) would prevent the Iranians from reinvading Iraq,” Piro told Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes.”

Piro added that Saddam had the intention of restarting an Iraqi weapons program at the time, and had engineers available for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Kuwait invasion after insult to Iraqi women
Piro also mentioned Saddam’s revelation during questioning that what pushed him to invade Kuwait in 1990 was a dishonorable swipe at Iraqi women made by the Kuwaiti leader, Sheik Jaber Al Ahmed Al Sabah.

During the buildup to the invasion, Iraq had accused Kuwait of flooding the world market with oil and demanded compensation for oil produced from a disputed area on the border of the two countries.

Piro said that Al Sabah told the foreign minister of Iraq during a discussion aimed at resolving some of those conflicts that “he would not stop doing what he was doing until he turned every Iraqi woman into a $10 prostitute. And that really sealed it for him, to invade Kuwait,” said Piro.

Russian Spys In The UN Stole $500 Million in Iraq’s Oil For Food Program

Well another reason has surfaced on why Russia was against invading Iraq…

UNITED NATIONS —  A former Russian top spy says his agents helped the Russian government steal nearly $500 million from the U.N.’s oil-for-food program in Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Sergei Tretyakov, who defected to the United States in 2000 as a double agent, says he oversaw an operation that helped Saddam’s regime manipulate the price of Iraqi oil sold under the program — and allow Russia to skim profits.

Tretyakov, former deputy head of intelligence at Russia’s U.N. mission from 1995 to 2000, names some names, but sticks mainly to code names. Among the spies he says he recruited for Russia were a Canadian nuclear weapons expert who became a U.N. nuclear verification expert in Vienna, a senior Russian official in the oil-for-food program and a former Soviet bloc ambassador. He describes a Russian businessman who got hold of a nuclear bomb, and kept it stored in a shed at his dacha outside Moscow.

The 51-year-old Tretyakov had never spoken out about his spying before this week, when he granted his first news media interviews to publicize a book published Thursday. Written by former Washington Post journalist Pete Earley, the book is titled “Comrade J.: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America after the End of the Cold War.”

“It’s an international spy nest,” Tretyakov said of the U.N., during an interview this week with The Associated Press. “Inside the U.N., we were fishing for knowledgeable diplomats who could give us first of all anti-American information.”

His defection was first reported by the AP in 2001. Shortly after, the New York Times broke the news that he was not a diplomat, but a top Russian spy who was extensively debriefed by the CIA and the FBI.

Some of the people named or referenced by a code name in the book have denied Tretyakov’s claims. The Russian mission to the U.N. said Friday it would have no immediate comment.

Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, described Tretyakov’s allegations as potentially serious violations of law and U.N. rules.

But Dujarric said it would be up to others to prosecute if the allegations are substantiated: “Since the U.N. can’t prosecute, it is now up to national governments to prosecute.”

An 18-month investigation into the oil-for-food corruption, led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, culminated in an October 2005 report accusing more than 2,200 companies from some 40 countries of colluding with Saddam’s regime to bilk the humanitarian program in Iraq of $1.8 billion.

The program was aimed at easing Iraqi suffering under U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It allowed Iraq to sell oil provided the bulk of the proceeds were used to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods and to pay war reparations. Volcker’s reports blamed shoddy U.N. management and the world’s most powerful nations for allowing corruption in the $64 billion program to go on for years.

Tretyakov defected to the United States with his wife and daughter in 2000, after serving as a double agent passing along secrets to the U.S. government. He calls his defection “the major failure of Russian intelligence in the United States” and warns that Russia, despite the end of the Cold War, harbors bad intentions toward the United States.

The decision to defect, he said, was made only after his mother died in 1997, and he had no other close relatives alive in Russia who could be used to blackmail him. The Tretyakovs now live in retirement in an undisclosed location.

“I got extremely disgusted with the Russian government, and I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. I’m not very emotional. I’m not a Boy Scout,” said Tretyakov, who was accompanied during the interview by his wife, Helen, and Earley. “Knowing people who are running Russia, I started feeling that it’s immoral to help them. And finally in my life, when I defected, I did something good in my life. Because I want to help United States.”

Fireworks Kids – Three’s Company

Well authorities have arrested a third person in connection to the Fireworks kids… The third suspect has been identified as Karim Moussaoui a fellow USF student who was scheduled to gradute Saturday… I wonder if he will still be awarded his degree…

CAIR has been suspiciously quite about this lately…

Well maybe Moussaoui was just being misunderstood and everything will be cleared up when he reaches trial…

What is amazing is that people suspected of acting against our country and involved with terrorist activities are released on bail…

Goose Creek Two update: Now there’s a third

By Michelle Malkin  •  December 15, 2007 06:26 PM

Well, it looks like the Goose Creek Two have company. The Tampa Tribune reports on a third arrest related to the two Muslim young males just driving around with, you know, fireworks:

A University of South Florida student has been arrested on a weapons charge in connection with a case against two other students accused of transporting explosives.

Karim Moussaoui, 28, went to a shooting range with the two other students, Youssef Megahed and Ahmed Mohamed, on July 11, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court. Moussaoui told the FBI he took pictures and didn’t fire any weapons, the complaint states.

On that date, Megahed signed a membership agreement and rented a Glock 17, which is a 9 mm handgun, at the Shoot Straight Gun and Archery Range at 3909 N. U.S. 301, the complaint states.

Moussaoui and others are shown entering the range eight days later on a surveillance video the Shoot Straight provided to the FBI, according to the complaint. Agents searching a computer found in Megahed’s home found pictures of Moussaoui “standing at a firing lane possessing a shoulder-fired weapon and wearing the type of hearing protection shooters use at a shooting range.”

Federal authorities have charged the international student with “possession or receiving of a firearm by a person admitted to the United States under a non-immigrant visa.”

“We’ve known since the summer they were interested in this person,” said USF spokesman Ken Gullette, referring to Moussaoui.

Moussaoui is from Morocco and has been living in a campus residence hall and studying computer engineering, Gullette said. He was scheduled to be awarded his undergraduate degree Saturday.

His parents arrived Wednesday from Morocco to attend his graduation.

At today’s hearing, they signed a $50,000 signature bond for his release. Moussaoui surrendered his passport and travel documents.

Yep. Nothing to see here, right? Debbie Schlussel and Bill Warner dig a little deeper into the affidavit:

As Bill Warner points out, the affidavit, signed by Tampa FBI Agent William Ortiz, accompanying the complaint notes that in August, Moussaoui told New York FBI Agents about his activities in July at a shooting range with Megahed:

4. On or about August 12, 2007, MOUSSAOUI told New York FBI Agents that on one occasion, he and AHMED LNU (a person now known to the FBI as AHMED ISHTAY) went to a shooting range with YOUSSEF SAMIR MEGAHED. He claimed that MEGAHED went to the range but that MOUSSAOUI and AHMED remained in the store browsing. MOUSSAOUI told New York FBI Agents he did not see what type of weapon MEGAHED used on this visit to the range.[Emphasis added.]

So why is the New York FBI office involved when the activities of all of three of these people, thus far disclosed, occurred in Florida and South Carolina.

Apparently, they have a strong tie to New York–either Muslim terrorists there or a terrorist attack planned for the area.

What is the New York connection? And who is Ahmed Ishtay a/k/a Ahmed Lnu? What is his role in this terrorist conspiracy?

Stay tuned. We’ll be watching.

Wonder if Moussaoui knows that funky jailhouse sign language, too?

Well Moussaoui’s parents want justice for his wrongful arrrest. Well lets see, even if he did not have anything to do with the terrorist plot of the Fireworks Kids,  he still violated the rules governing his visa and thus commited a crime which, if what they say is true of his respect for our Constitution and laws, he will acknowledge that he was wrong…

By ELAINE SILVESTRINI, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 15, 2007

TAMPA – Hamou Moussaoui and Anissa Zekkari came to the United States from Morocco on Wednesday, proud parents, eagerly anticipating their son’s graduation from the University of South Florida with three degrees.

On Thursday morning, their world turned upside down. They were thrust, they said, into hell.

“Instead of having an engineer, we have a prisoner,” Hamou Moussaoui said Friday. He said he feels the $300,000 he spent on his son’s education slipping through his fingers.

His son, Karim, 28, was arrested, charged under what his attorney says is a little-used law that makes it a federal crime for someone in this country on a student visa to possess a firearm. The charge – punishable by up to 10 years in prison – arose from a visit to a Tampa firing range authorities say Karim Moussaoui made in July with friends who were later arrested.

The friends, Youssef Megahed and Ahmed Mohamed, both Egyptian nationals, were charged in August with transporting explosives after their car was pulled over in South Carolina. Mohamed also was accused of trying to help terrorists by posting a video on YouTube in which he demonstrated how to use a remote-controlled toy to detonate a bomb.

For the Moussaoui family, association with that case and media stories linking Karim to explosives are horrifying.

All he did was pose for a picture with an unloaded gun, they say. “A souvenir picture turned out to be a crime,” said Zekkari, speaking through an interpreter hired by The Tampa Tribune. She said she fainted when she heard of her son’s arrest, and has not slept since.

Karim Moussaoui, smiling confidently about 24 hours after his release from federal custody, said he’s not worried about what’s going to happen to him. “I’m definitely confident justice will take place,” he said, “since I only took a little souvenir, since we don’t have guns in our country, and I have the best lawyer in Tampa, Mr. Stephen Crawford.”

He said he was up late Wednesday night studying for his last exam. He finally crawled into bed at 4 a.m. to rest up before the test, scheduled for 1 p.m. Thursday.

At 6 a.m., he said, 10 FBI agents knocked on his door. They put guns to his roommates’ heads, but not to his.

“They got me some clothes, sneakers and a shirt,” he said. “It was a peaceful arrest. I had no clue what was going on … They just took me out.”

He said he was taken to the federal courthouse downtown, fingerprinted, photographed and otherwise processed. He was interviewed by a probation officer about his background. Then his attorney, Crawford, showed up.

“I feel I was being treated as subhuman, since they have animal rights,” Karim Moussaoui said. “I felt criminalized without being a criminal.”

Family Expects Justice To Be Served

The family was interviewed in Crawford’s office Friday afternoon. Under the attorney’s direction, they would not discuss the specifics of the charges.

Like their son, however, the parents said they trust the right thing will happen. “We’re always optimistic,” Zekkari said. “Our son didn’t do anything wrong.”

“There is justice,” Hamou Moussaoui said. “We’re in a country of justice and democracy.”

Karim Moussaoui had planned on returning to Morocco to take over his father’s business after his graduation today, but now he is being forced to remain in Florida until his legal case is decided.

About to lose the right to live in his dorm room, he must find an apartment with a telephone so federal probation officers can monitor his whereabouts and he can be fitted with an electronic ankle bracelet.

Two of his three degrees are in jeopardy, he said; he is negotiating with the university about making up the missed exam. “I missed a final in a class where I have all 100s,” he said.

Without the exam, he will get a D, which will keep him from getting two degrees, he said. It would be “the one D in my life.”

He said his degrees in computer science and computer information systems are in jeopardy, but he expects he will graduate with at least a degree in computer engineering.

His parents had planned to leave Sunday. Now they’re unsure what they will do. Probably, they said, one of them will remain behind while the other returns home.

The family business, Cabinet D’ Expertises Hamou Moussaoui, provides engineering expertise and consulting on construction and testifying in court. Hamou Moussaoui said he built the business from nothing more than 25 years and now has 12 experts who work in Casablanca, Marrakesh, England and Senegal.

They live comfortably in Casablanca with a villa and a 3 1/2 -acre farm, they said. Zekkari works as a schools inspector, stressing the importance of education to their children, who also include two daughters.

Zekkari said she’s involved with an organization called “Morocco Feminists International,” which defends women against violence.

‘He Has Nothing To Do With It’

In addition to education, the parents said, they stressed “good behavior” to their son. “General respect, politeness” were the values passed on.

They said Karim loves the United States and pushed to come here to study.

“He doesn’t like when other people say bad things about America,” Hamou Moussaoui said of his son.

He said Karim calls the U.S. Constitution an example to the world. In America, he said, “everything is spacious” and people have “a beautiful life.”

Hamou Moussaoui said his son never left his side growing up. “I wanted to teach him the right way.”

The parents said they learned of their son’s arrest when two FBI agents came to their hotel Wednesday morning.

“I felt paralyzed,” Hamou Moussaoui said. “I couldn’t move.”

The couple didn’t know where to go, what to do. They didn’t even have a rental car. They called Crawford, who they said calmed them down, assuring them he would do his best to have their son released that day.

None of this makes any sense, they said.

“My son doesn’t talk about politics,” Hamou Moussaoui said. “Politics doesn’t do anything for him. Terrorism – he has nothing to do with it. He has one goal – his education and being successful.”

Another Dearborn Terrorist Overlooked By The Liberal Media

The Dearborn connection still being ignored by those charged with our nations security. Here is a high level espionage case where the culprit was providing services for Saddam. Another arguement for not only controlling immigration, but citizenship grants as well.

When will the people of the country and the leaders take a firm stance and kick these people out of our country. Revoking of US Citizenship is allowable and should be inforced when people commit crimes against our country.

Clearly there is a problem in Dearbornistan and it needs to be addressed before it is too late.

One third of Dearborn, Michigan’s population of an estimated 100,000 in this Detroit suburb ar Muslims. There is a large concentration of Iraqi and Lebanese immigrants among the Muslim population there. Doubtless many of them are loyal Americans, you would think, else wise why would the FBI throw a bear hug around the community and do outreach to them, or the embattled head of the DHS customs and border security chief Julie Myer’s rush out there to speak at a Dearborn Hezbollah ’social club’. The recent guilty plea by illegal immigrant, marriage fraudster and Hizbollah ‘mole’ in the FBI and CIA, Lebanese Muslim Nada Nadim Prouty. This Muslim community doesn’t think twice about making contributions to charities or zakat that front for terrorist groups in the Middle East.

Now we have the case of Ghazi Al-Awadi, 78. According to this AP report Ghazi is a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Iraq. He plead guilty in July to acting as an agent of the government of Iraq under Saddam’s regime passing on information to the executed dictator’s intelligence service. He got sentenced to 18 months in the Federal pen. He could have received upwards of 51 months.

Get this he was released from jail in 1996 after serving six years in a manslaughter conviction for stabbing son-in-law.

Waterboarding Necessary Sometimes

The controversial waterboarding technique is a necessary tool for interrogators of terrorists and on top of that it works for extracting information. Many reports  talk about how torture does not get reliable information out of the suspect, however if you carefully read the transcripts carefully, you will see that attacks were prevented due to information optained using waterboarding on Abu Zubaydah.

Now, should this be used on every terrorist suspect? No. But there are terrorists that have intimate knowledge of operations and plans and these ones need to given incentive to talk, if that incentive is torture, then so be it.

This interview with a former CIA intel officer outlines where it is necessary and the value of such techniques. See the video and transcripts at the end of the post…

A leader of the CIA team that captured the first major al Qaeda figure, Abu Zubaydah, says subjecting him to waterboarding was torture but necessary.

In the first public comment by any CIA officer involved in handling high-value al Qaeda targets, John Kiriakou, now retired, said the technique broke Zubaydah in less than 35 seconds.

“The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate,” said Kiriakou in an interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC News’ “World News With Charles Gibson” and “Nightline.”

“From that day on, he answered every question,” Kiriakou said. “The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”

Kiriakou said the feeling in the months after the 9/11 attacks was that interrogators did not have the time to delve into the agency’s bag of other interrogation tricks.”Those tricks of the trade require a great deal of time — much of the time — and we didn’t have that luxury. We were afraid that there was another major attack coming,” he said.

Kiriakou says he did not know that the interrogation of Zubaydah was being secretly recorded by the CIA and had no idea the tapes had been destroyed.

Now retired, Kiriakou, who declined to use the enhanced interrogation techniques, says he has come to believe that water boarding is torture but that perhaps the circumstances warranted it.

“Like a lot of Americans, I’m involved in this internal, intellectual battle with myself weighing the idea that waterboarding may be torture versus the quality of information that we often get after using the waterboarding technique,” Kiriakou told ABC News. “And I struggle with it.”

But he says the urgency in the wake of 9/ll led to a desire to do everything possible to get actionable intelligence.

That began with Abu Zubaydah’s capture following a series of raids in which Kiriakou co-led a team of CIA officers, FBI agents, a Port Authority police officer named Tom McHale and Pakistani police, including a SWAT team.

And, in the case of Abu Zubayda, it ended with waterboarding.

“What happens if we don’t waterboard a person, and we don’t get that nugget of information, and there’s an attack,” Kiriakou said. “I would have trouble forgiving myself.”

The former intelligence officer says the interrogators’ activities were carefully directed from Langley, Va., each step of the way.

It wasn’t up to individual interrogators to decide, ‘Well, I’m gonna slap him.’ Or, ‘I’m going to shake him.’ Or, ‘I’m gonna make him stay up for 48 hours.’

“Each one of these steps, even though they’re minor steps, like the intention shake, or the open-handed belly slap, each one of these had to have the approval of the deputy director for operations,” Kiriakou told ABC News.

“The cable traffic back and forth was extremely specific,” he said. “And the bottom line was these were very unusual authorities that the agency got after 9/11. No one wanted to mess them up. No one wanted to get in trouble by going overboard. So it was extremely deliberate.”

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And it was always a last resort.

“That’s why so few people were waterboarded. I think the agency has said that two people were waterboarded, Abu Zubaydah being one, and it’s because you really wanted it to be a last resort because we didn’t want these false confessions. We didn’t want wild goose chases,” Kiriakou said.

And they were faced with men like Abu Zubaydah, Kiriakou says, who held critical and timely intelligence.

“A former colleague of mine asked him during the conversation one day, ‘What would you do if we decided to let you go one day?’ And he said, ‘I would kill every American and Jew I could get my hands on…It’s nothing personal. You’re a nice guy. But this is who I am.'”

In that context, at that time, Kiriakou says he felt waterboarding was something the United States needed to do.

“At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do. And as time has passed, and as September 11th has, you know, has moved farther and farther back into history, I think I’ve changed my mind,” he told ABC News.

Part of his decision appears to be an ethical one; another part, perhaps, simply pragmatic.

“I think we’re chasing them all over the world. I think we’ve had a great deal of success chasing them…and, as a result, waterboarding, at least right now, is unnecessary,” Kirikou said.

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Brian Ross: “Did it compromise American principles? Or did it save American lives? Or both?”

John Kiriakou: “I think both. It may have compromised our principles at least in the short term. And I think it’s good that we’re having a national debate about this. We should be debating this, and Congress should be talking about it because, I think, as a country, we have to decide if this is something that we want to do as a matter of policy. I’m not saying now that we should, but, at the very least, we should be talking about it. It shouldn’t be secret. It should be out there as part of the national debate.”

A CIA spokesperson declined to specifically address Kiriakou’s comments.

In a statement, the CIA reiterated its long standing position that “the United States does not conduct or condone torture. The CIA’s terrorist interrogation effort has always been small, carefully run, lawful and highly productive.”

Transcripts:

Click Here for Part One of the Transcript with John Kiriakou.

Click Here for Part Two of the Transcript with John Kiriakou.

Video Interview

Former CIA Agent Speaks Out, Part 1

Former CIA Agent Speaks Out, Part 2

Former CIA Agent Speaks Out, Part 3

Former CIA Agent Speaks Out, Part 4

Former CIA Agent Speaks Out, Part 5

Former CIA Agent Speaks Out, Part 6

Former CIA Agent Speaks Out, Part 7

Former CIA Agent Speaks Out, Part 8

Former CIA Agent Speaks Out, Part 9

Former CIA Agent Speaks Out, Part 10

Hezbollah Supporter Penetrates FBI

Dearbornistan strikes again… Not only immigration rules been bypassed but one of the suspects got jobs at both the FBI & CIA and accessed files of investigations in Detroit regarding Hezbollah as well as identities of Agents investigating them.

Of concern here is the sharing of information as well as the use of information. The CIA had knowledge of problems with Prouty, yet did not disclose this information with the FBI, ultimately leading to the hiring of Prouty by the FBI. Then the CIA, knowning she was suspect, stole her away from the FBI and gave her a job at the CIA…

A perplexing thought is this woman is free on bond, walking around the streets doing as she pleases… She is an illegal alien as she fraudulently optained citizenship, she compromised the identity of agents working on cases, more than likely undercover agents, she perjured herself and impeded a criminal investigation, she broke into federal computers 6 times…

That’s right the Dearbornistan connection… The Islamic Nation does not have to abide by US law, Dearbornistan is a sovereign Muslim Nation…

The safety of agents are at risk and our courts are pandering to the whim of a terrorist. This woman and all those involved, including the men they paid to become US citizens need to be in jail and deported at the earliest possible time.

Note the husband, a known Hezbollah supporter, of one of the convicted fled to Lebanon in 2005…

  

Violated FBI files named snitches

December 6, 2007

BY DAVID ASHENFELTER

FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

An illegal immigrant who parlayed a sham marriage into citizenship and key jobs at the FBI and CIA made five unauthorized inquiries into an FBI computer system to find out about investigations of Hizballah, a federal prosecutor said in court papers filed Wednesday in Detroit.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Chadwell didn’t indicate why Nada Nadim Prouty, a Lebanese immigrant who once lived in Taylor, wanted the information or what she did with it. But he said four of the inquiries involved files containing the names of confidential FBI informants

In another development, a federal official familiar with the case said the CIA had access to derogatory information about Prouty before the FBI hired her in 1999, but failed to disclose it when the FBI contacted the CIA during a background check.

Had the information been disclosed, the official said, the FBI might not have hired her. More perplexing, the official said, is why the CIA hired Prouty away from the FBI.

The CIA declined comment.

The court papers filed Wednesday said Prouty made at least one unauthorized inquiry to find out whether one of the investigations of Hizballah involved her brother-in-law, fugitive La Shish restaurant owner Talal Chahine. Prosecutors have said Chahine is a supporter of Hizballah, which the U.S. government has designated as a terrorist group.

The latest details about Prouty’s unauthorized computer inquiries were laid out in an indictment of Chahine.

U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, a Brighton Republican and ex-FBI agent who serves on the House Intelligence Committee, said the Prouty episode is alarming. She pleaded guilty in the case last month in Detroit.

“I think this is a very serious security breach,” Rogers said Wednesday, adding that the House Intelligence Committee has started looking into the case and hopes to conduct hearings in late January.

Michael Cutler, a former federal immigration agent from Brooklyn, N.Y., who has testified before Congress on immigration and terrorism issues, called it “a very disturbing picture. … My concern is what she did with the information and what happened to the confidential sources.”

Meanwhile, the indictment said Chahine, 51, formerly of Plymouth, wrote letters to immigration officials in 1992 to falsely say that Prouty’s first marriage was legitimate and that he personally knew Prouty and her husband.

It said Chahine told an FBI agent before Prouty was hired that he wasn’t aware of anything in her background that could be used to subject her to coercion or compromise or reflect badly on her character.

Chadwell wouldn’t elaborate on the court papers, the latest twist in an unfolding scandal involving Chahine, his wife, her sisters and the sisters’ former roommate, who became a Marine captain and pleaded guilty Tuesday. The women are accused of hiring U.S. citizens to marry them so they could stay in the United States.

Prouty, 37, of Vienna, Va., pleaded guilty to citizenship fraud and accessing an FBI computer system without authorization on two occasions, in 2000 and 2003. She wanted to find out whether she, her sister and Chahine were being investigated by the FBI and to learn details about a Detroit-based investigation of Hizballah.

Wednesday’s court papers listed six unauthorized inquiries from 2000 to 2003, five of them involving Hizballah. In May this year, Prouty falsely told FBI agents that she hadn’t accessed the FBI computer to find out whether one of the Hizballah investigations involved Chahine, court documents said.

Prouty’s lawyer, Thomas Cranmer, said he couldn’t comment. Prouty is free on bond pending sentencing next year. She quit the CIA last month.

Last week, Prouty’s sister Elfat El Aouar, 40, of Plymouth pleaded guilty to citizenship fraud. She married Chahine in 2000 and is serving 18 months in prison for helping him evade $6.9 million in federal taxes on his Dearborn restaurant chain. He fled to Lebanon in 2005.

Contact DAVID ASHENFELTER at 313-223-4490 or ashenf@freepress.com