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The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease. The Agriculture Department tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Kansas-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows. Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too. The Agriculture Department regulates the test and argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry. A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn't have the authority to restrict it. The ruling was to take effect June 1, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal -- effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge plays out. Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is linked to more than 150 human deaths worldwide, mostly in Britain. There have been three cases of mad cow disease in the U.S.
While troop numbers are surging, the media that cover them are leaking away, worn out by the danger and expense of covering a war that refuses to end. Many of the journalists who are in Iraq have been backed into fortified corners, rarely venturing out to see what soldiers confront. And the remaining journalists who are embedded with the troops in Iraq — the number dropped to 92 in May from 126 in April — are risking more and more for less and less. Since last year, the military’s embedding rules require that journalists obtain a signed consent from a wounded soldier before the image can be published. Images that put a face on the dead, that make them identifiable, are simply prohibited. Ashley Gilbertson, a veteran freelance photographer who has been to Iraq seven times ... said the policy, as enforced, is coercive and unworkable. “They are not letting us cover the reality of war,” he added. “I think this has got little to do with the families or the soldiers and everything to do with politics.” Until last year, no permission was required to publish photographs of the wounded, but families had to be notified of the soldier’s injury first. Now, not only is permission required, but any image of casualties that shows a recognizable name or unit is off-limits. And memorials for the fallen in Iraq can no longer be shown, even when the unit in question invites coverage. James Glanz, a Baghdad correspondent ... for The New York Times ... said that “This tiny remaining corps of reporters becomes a greater and greater problem for the military brass because we are the only people preventing them from telling the story the way they want it told.”
When my son was killed in Iraq earlier this month at age 27, I found myself pondering my responsibility for his death. Among the hundreds of messages that my wife and I have received, two bore directly on this question. Both held me personally culpable, insisting that my public opposition to the war had provided aid and comfort to the enemy. Each said that my son's death came as a direct result of my antiwar writings. This may seem a vile accusation to lay against a grieving father. But in fact, it has become a staple of American political discourse, repeated endlessly by those keen to allow President Bush a free hand in waging his war. What exactly is a father's duty when his son is sent into harm's way? Among the many ways to answer that question, mine was this one: As my son was doing his utmost to be a good soldier, I strove to be a good citizen. As a citizen, I have tried since Sept. 11, 2001, to promote a critical understanding of U.S. foreign policy. I genuinely believed that if the people spoke, our leaders in Washington would listen and respond. This, I can now see, was an illusion. The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight. Indeed, by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as "the will of the people." To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party.
Note: The author, Andrew Bacevich, is a conservative professor on international relations at Boston University. The title of his highly praised 2006 book, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, establishes the case for an American empire which is not benign. For more on the war machine, click here.
By Dr. Michael Wilkes. When is a disease really a disease? Young doctors in training work hard, and so do lots of other people. When people work 24 hours in a row ... the body feels tired. Is this fatigue an abnormal physiologic state requiring medication and treatment, or is it a normal part of belonging to the human race? If abnormal, then doctors and pharmaceutical companies argue that the fatigue requires treatment. If it is normal -- despite a movement to label it as an illness -- then post-work fatigue belongs to the growing phenomenon of disease-mongering. "Disease-mongering" ... is the process of trying to convince healthy people that they are sick, or people with minor problems that they have extremely worrisome symptoms. This is all in an attempt to sell treatments. Countless examples of disease-mongering are driven by the pharmaceutical industry's drive to sell drugs. Conditions such as female sexual dysfunction syndrome, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, toenail fungus, baldness and social anxiety disorder (a.k.a. shyness) are a few places where the medical community has stepped in, thereby turning normal or mild conditions into diseases for which medication is the treatment. Most pharmaceutical companies devote huge amounts of money to prevent, control and cure diseases. When their profits don't match corporate expectations, they invent "new" diseases to be cured by existing drugs. What happens to real diseases when [the media] are filled with information promoting disease mongering? Government funding for public health campaigns pales by comparison with the billions spent by pharmaceutical companies on disease mongering intended to increase the markets for their products.
Note: For more reliable information about major corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, click here.
It may seem strange to greet with relief a book [A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier] that chronicles the brutal life of a former child soldier, but given what our society considers printworthy, it is refreshing that the memories and reflections of 26-year-old Ishmael Beah receive attention. Beah was born in 1980 in rural Sierra Leone. "The only wars I knew about," Beah writes, "were those that I had read about in books or seen in movies such as Rambo: First Blood, and the neighbouring Liberia that I had heard about on the BBC news." But Beah was to find out about war in the worst way. In 1991, when he was 11, his country descended into a brutal and chaotic civil war between Foday Sankoh's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the largely ineffective and corrupt Action Peoples Congress (APC). At the centre of the conflict were issues of representation and control over Sierra Leone's diamonds. The conflict was to last through most of the 1990s and, in common with the civil war in Liberia, became intimately linked with the use of child soldiers. According to the United Nations, there are 300,000, if not more, child soldiers around the world. The majority of these children - some as young as six - live and fight in sub-Saharan Africa, and their plight has largely been ignored by the west. Beah's book stands as a vivid testament to his time as one of the nameless and faceless 300,000. After fleeing from rebels who sacked his village, getting separated from his older brother and friends, surviving alone in the forest and evading execution, Beah - at 12 - was inducted into a government corps of boy soldiers. Beah's life became a series of violent spells where killing was "as easy as drinking water".
Note: For more on the ravages of modern war, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
A former Federal Emergency Management Agency videographer accused of killing his wife in Denver is seeking political asylum in Argentina, claiming the U.S. government wants him silenced for what he saw in the smoldering ruins of the Twin Towers after 9/11. Kurt Sonnenfeld's efforts to avoid extradition have gained interest from human rights organizations in South America and broad attention from conspiracy theorists on the Internet. Sonnenfeld, 44, is charged with first-degree murder in the New Year's Day 2002 shooting death of his 36-year-old wife, Nancy. Sonnenfeld is quoted by the Argentine newspaper el Pais as saying, "I realized that they were after something else: the tapes of Ground Zero in my possession." Sonnenfeld said he was arrested by Interpol agents on the new Denver charges a week after delivering a demo video of 9/11 footage to a TV producer in Argentina. "I find that extremely coincidental," he said. In other interviews with Argentine media, Sonnenfeld is quoted as saying, "What I saw (at 9/11) leads me to the terrible conclusion that there was foreknowledge of what was going to happen — the precautions that were taken to save certain things that the authorities there considered irreplaceable or invaluable. For example, certain things were missing that could only have been removed with a truck. Yet after the first plane hit one of the towers, everything in Manhattan collapsed and no one could have gotten near the towers to do that." Sonnenfeld is quoted as saying documentation was removed from U.S. intelligence agencies in the World Trade Center, including the CIA, prior to the attacks.
Note: To read a more recent, powerful Voltaire Network interview with Kurt Sonnenfeld, click here. The truth is coming out more all the time!
The Spitzer administration announced the settlement of all insurance claims at ground zero yesterday, ensuring that $4.55 billion will be available for rebuilding the World Trade Center site. The agreement, which the insurers described as the largest single insurance settlement ever undertaken by the industry, ended a protracted legal battle with insurers over payouts related to the terrorist attack. All the parties to yesterday’s settlement signed confidentiality agreements barring them from saying how much each insurance company would pay. “The train is now moving down the tracks,” said Larry A. Silverstein, the 76-year-old developer who had leased the World Trade Center complex six weeks before the Sept. 11 attack. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the land at ground zero and built the trade center, will get about $870 million from yesterday’s settlement, which is to go toward the cost of erecting the $3 billion Freedom Tower. Mr. Silverstein will get the remaining $1.13 billion. The insurance battle has been complicated from the start by the circumstances of Mr. Silverstein’s lease of the trade center and the destruction of the complex by terrorists six weeks later. At that time, two dozen insurers had signed binders pledging to provide $3.5 billion in insurance coverage, but had not finished the documents. An ugly dispute developed over which insurance policy was in effect at the time of the attack.
Note: In a PBS documentary on 9/11, Mr. Silverstein, commenting on the collapse of World Trade Center 7, stated that as the building was burning, he told the chief of the New York fire department, "maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And they made that decision to pull, and then we watched the building collapse." Watch this video clip here. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on 9/11 from reliable major media sources. Then explore the excellent, reliable resources provided in our 9/11 Information Center.
A Florida man may have accidentally invented a machine that could solve the gasoline and energy crisis plaguing the U.S.. [John] Kanzius, 63, invented a machine that emits radio waves in an attempt to kill cancerous cells while leaving normal cells intact. While testing his machine, he noticed that his invention had other unexpected abilities. Filling a test tube with salt water from a canal in his back yard, Kanzius placed the tube and a paper towel in the machine and turned it on. Suddenly, the paper towel ignited. Kanzius performed the experiment without the paper towel and got the same result -- the saltwater was actually burning. [He] said he showed the experiment to a handful of scientists across the country who claim they are baffled at watching salt water ignite. Kanzius said the flame created from his machine reaches a temperature of around 3,000 [°F]. He said a chemist told him that the immense heat created from the machine breaks down the hydrogen-oxygen bond in the water, igniting the hydrogen. "You could take plain salt water out of the sea, put it in containers and produce a violent flame that could heat generators that make electricity, or provide other forms of energy," Kanzius said. He said engineers are currently experimenting with him in Erie, Pa. in an attempt to harness the energy. They've built an engine that, when placed on top of the flame, chugged along for two minutes. Kanzius admits all the excitement surrounding a new possible energy source was a stroke of luck. Someone who witnessed his work on the cancer front asked him if perhaps the machine could be used for desalinization. "This was an experiment to see if I could heat salt water, and instead of heat, I got fire," Kanzius said.
Note: Why aren't millions of dollars being channeled to explore this exciting field further? To watch a video clip of this exciting machine igniting sea water, click here.
Powerful governments and armed groups are spreading fear to divert attention from human rights abuses ... Amnesty International said yesterday in its annual assessment of rights worldwide. "The politics of fear is fueling a downward spiral of human rights abuse in which no right is sacrosanct and no person is safe," said Irene Khan, secretary general of the human rights watchdog. Governments are undermining the rule of law and human rights with "short-sighted fear-mongering and divisive policies." The United States is "the leading country using fear to justify the unjustifiable," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA. "The U.S. used to be in a position to speak out effectively against torture and military tribunals. We can't do that now because we are carrying out some of the same practices," he said. The organization urged the new U.S. Congress to take the lead in restoring respect for humane standards and practices at home and abroad. Citizens in many countries are being manipulated by fear, the group said. Amnesty applauded civil society for its "courage and commitment" in the face of abuses. Marches, petitions, blogs and armbands "may not seem much by themselves," the report said, "but by bringing people together they unleash an energy for change that should not be underestimated. People power will change the face of human rights in the 21st century."
A Purdue University engineer and National Medal of Technology winner says he's ready and able to start a revolution in clean energy. Professor Jerry Woodall and students have invented a way to use an aluminum alloy to extract hydrogen from water — a process that he thinks could replace gasoline as well as its pollutants and emissions tied to global warming. But Woodall says there's one big hitch: "Egos" at the U.S. Department of Energy, a key funding source for energy research, "are holding up the revolution. The hydrogen is generated on demand, so you only produce as much as you need when you need it," he said in a statement released by Purdue this week. So instead of having to fill up at a station, hydrogen would be made inside vehicles in tanks about the same size as today's gasoline tanks. An internal reaction in those tanks would create hydrogen from water and 350 pounds worth of special pellets. The hydrogen would then power an internal combustion engine or a fuel cell stack. "It's a simple matter to convert ordinary internal combustion engines to run on hydrogen," Woodall said. "All you have to do is replace the gasoline fuel injector with a hydrogen injector." "The egos of program managers at DOE are holding up the revolution," he told MSNBC.com. "Remember that Einstein was a patent examiner and had no funding for his 1905 miracle year," Woodall added. "He did it on his own time. If he had been a professor at a university in the U.S. today and put in a proposal to develop the theory of special relativity it would have been summarily rejected."
Note: For a treasure trove of reliable information on clean, new energy sources, click here.
What Ray Anderson calls his “conversion experience” occurred in the summer of 1994, when he was asked to give the sales force at Interface, the carpet tile company he founded, some talking points about the company’s approach to the environment. So he started reading about environmental issues, and thinking about them, until pretty soon it hit him: “I was running a company that was plundering the earth,” he realized. “I thought, ‘Damn, some day people like me will be put in jail!’” He devoted his speech to his newfound vision of polluted air, overflowing landfills, depleted aquifers and used-up resources. Only one institution was powerful enough and pervasive enough to turn these problems around, he told his colleagues, and it was the institution that was causing them in the first place: “Business. Industry. People like us. Us!" He challenged his colleagues to set a deadline for Interface to become a “restorative enterprise,” a sustainable operation that takes nothing out of the earth that cannot be recycled or quickly regenerated, and that does no harm to the biosphere. The deadline they ultimately set is 2020, and the idea has taken hold throughout the company. Mr. Anderson said that through waste reduction, recycling, energy efficiency and other steps, Interface was “about 45 percent from where we were to where we want to be.” Use of fossil fuels is down 45 percent ... he said, while sales are up 49 percent. Globally, the company’s carpet-making uses one-third the water it used to. The company’s worldwide contribution to landfills has been cut by 80 percent. And in the process, Mr. Anderson has turned into perhaps the leading corporate evangelist for sustainability.
Retired TV station owner and broadcast engineer, John Kanzius, wasn't looking for an answer to the energy crisis. He was looking for a cure for cancer. Four years ago, inspiration struck in the middle of the night. Kanzius decided to try using radio waves to kill the cancer cells. His wife Marianne heard the noise and found her husband inventing a radio frequency generator with her pie pans. "I got up immediately, and thought he had lost it." Here are the basics of John's idea: Radio-waves will heat certain metals. Tiny bits of certain metal are injected into a cancer patient. Those nano-particals are attracted to the abnormalities of the cancer cells and ignore the healthy cells. The patient is then exposed to radio waves and only the bad cells heat up and die. But John also came across yet another extrordinary breakthrough. His machine could actually make saltwater burn. John Kanzius discovered that his radio frequency generator could release the oxygen and hydrogen from saltwater and create an incredibly intense flame. "If that was in a car cylinder you could see the amount of fire that would be in the cylinder." The APV Company Laboratory in Akron has checked out John's ... invention. They were amazed. "That could be a steam engine, a steam turbine. That could be a car engine if you wanted it to be." Imagine the possibilities. Saltwater as the ultimate clean fuel. A happy byproduct of one man searching for the cure for cancer.
Note: Though this exciting breakthrough was reported in dozens of local media, not one major news outlet found it worthy of mention. To verify this yourself, click here.
Pediatrician Rupin Thakkar's first inkling that the pharmaceutical industry was peering over his shoulder ... came in a letter from a drug representative about the generic drops Thakkar prescribes to treat infectious pinkeye. In the letter, the salesperson wrote that Thakkar was causing his patients to miss more days of school than they would if he put them on Vigamox, a more expensive brand-name medicine made by Alcon Laboratories. "My initial thought was 'How does she know what I'm prescribing?' " Thakkar said. "It feels intrusive ... I just feel strongly that medical encounters need to be private." He is not alone. Many doctors object to drugmakers' common practice of contracting with data-mining companies to track exactly which medicines physicians prescribe and in what quantities -- information marketers and salespeople use to fine-tune their efforts. The concerns are not merely about privacy. Proponents say using such detailed data for drug marketing serves mainly to influence physicians to prescribe more expensive medicines, not necessarily to provide the best treatment. "We don't like the practice, and we want it to stop," said Jean Silver-Isenstadt, executive director of the National Physicians Alliance. (Thakkar is on the group's board of directors.) "We think it's a contaminant to the doctor-patient relationship, and it's driving up costs." The American Medical Association makes millions of dollars each year by helping data-mining companies link prescribing data to individual physicians. It does so by licensing access to the AMA Physician Masterfile, a database containing names, birth dates, educational background, specialties and addresses for more than 800,000 doctors.
Note: For more reliable, verifiable information about major corruption in the drug industry, click here.
What is the value of a human life? This came to mind recently, thanks to U.S. Marines, who, in early March, went on a killing rampage near Jalalabad in Afghanistan. A platoon of elite Marine Special Operations troops was ambushed by a suicide bomber in a minivan and one was wounded. Initially, it was reported that as many as 10 Afghans were killed and 34 wounded as the platoon fled the site. Later, it was admitted that the Marines had wielded "excessive force" after the ambush had ended. The Marines were reported to have murdered "12 people -- including a 4-year-old girl, a 1-year-old boy and three elderly villagers.'' According to a report by Carlotta Gall of the New York Times, a "16-year-old newly married girl was cut down while she was carrying a bundle of grass to her family's farmhouse." After much protest in Afghanistan, Col. John Nicholson met with the families of the Afghans who had been killed and wounded by the Marines. He offered this official apology: "I stand before you today, deeply, deeply ashamed and terribly sorry that Americans have killed and wounded innocent Afghan people." And then he paid about $2,000 per death to family members. The military calls these "condolence payments." We also know something about how the U.S. government evaluated the worth of the lives of slaughtered American innocents after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The family or spouse of a loved one murdered that day was also given a monetary value -- $1.8 million. The U.S. government has indeed offered the world an evaluation of what price slaughter should exact in the deaths of innocents: The value of a civilian slaughtered ... on Sept. 11: $1.8 million. The value of a civilian slaughtered by U.S. Marines near Jalalabad, Afghanistan: $2,000.
Note: For more astonishing information on how the military mishandles your tax dollars, click here.
Many respected engineers have been trying for years to bring a compressed air car to market, believing strongly that compressed air can power a viable "zero pollution" car. Now the first commercial compressed air car is on the verge of production and beginning to attract a lot of attention, and with a recently signed partnership with Tata, India's largest automotive manufacturer, the prospects of very cost-effective mass production are now a distinct possibility. The MiniC.A.T is a simple, light urban car. How does it work? 90m3 of compressed air is stored in fibre tanks. The expansion of this air pushes the pistons and creates movement. It is incredibly cost-efficient to run – according to the designers, it costs less than one Euro per 100Km (about a tenth that of a petrol car). Its mileage is about double that of the most advanced electric car (200 to 300 km or 10 hours of driving), a factor which makes a perfect choice in cities where the 80% of motorists drive at less than 60Km. The car has a top speed of 68 mph. Refilling the car will ... take place at adapted petrol stations to administer compressed air. In two or three minutes, and at a cost of approximately [US$2] the car will be ready to go another 200-300 kilometres. As a viable alternative, the car carries a small compressor which can ... refill the tank in 3-4 hours. At the moment, four models have been made: a car, a taxi (5 passengers), a Pick-Up truck and a van. The final selling price will be approximately [US$11,000]. "Moteur Development International" (MDI) ... has researched and developed the Air Car over 10 years.
Note: Why aren't U.S. automakers interested in this breakthrough technology? For abundance of reliable information on the exciting new developments in auto design for super-efficient mileage, click here.
Fifteen years ago, then-Gov. Bill Clinton got him fired from his job as "leader of the free world." But that doesn't seem to bother former President George H.W. Bush too much these days. The political odd couple -- one a gregarious baby boomer, the other a genteel guardian of the greatest generation and both members of the world's most exclusive club of former American presidents -- was on the road again this weekend. They've helped raise more than $1 billion in U.S. aid for tsunami victims and more than $130 million for those devastated by Hurricane Katrina. No matter what the future may hold for either the Bush or Clinton clan, it's clear the friendship struck between two formal rivals is not just for show. "I cannot tell you the selfish pleasure I get out of working with President Clinton," Bush told the near graduates of the University of New Hampshire. "It's a very selfish feeling I have in my heart that we can be out there transcending politics, doing something to help others." Clinton returned the compliment. "Our differences are important; they matter. They make life more interesting and they aid the search for truth," he said, "but our common humanity matters more." President Clinton, who spoke of "seeing" and recognizing ourselves in others, said, "There's nothing beyond the reach of our common endeavor because it's our common endeavor." "You don't have to be a president to be a leader and to touch the lives of your fellow countrymen," former President Bush said.
Director Michael Moore says the U.S. health care system is driven by greed in his new documentary "SiCKO," and asks of Americans in general, "Where is our soul?" He also said he could go to jail for taking a group of volunteers suffering ill health after helping in the September 11, 2001 rescue efforts on an unauthorized trip to Cuba, where they received exemplary treatment at virtually no cost. In "SiCKO" he turns his attention to health, asking why 50 million Americans, 9 million of them children, live without [coverage], while those that are insured are often driven to poverty by spiraling costs or wrongly refused treatment at all. But the movie, which has taken Cannes by storm, goes further by portraying a country where the government is more interested in personal profit and protecting big business than caring for its citizens, many of whom cannot afford health insurance. "I'm trying to explore bigger ideas and bigger issues, and in this case the bigger issue in this film is who are we as a people?" Moore told reporters after a press screening. "Why do we behave the way we behave? What has become of us? Where is our soul?" One section of the film explains how a U.S. man severed the tip of two fingers in an accident and was told he would have to pay $12,000 to re-attach the end of his ring finger, and $60,000 to re-attach that of his index finger. "Being a hopeless romantic, Rick chose his ring finger," Moore quipped in a typically sardonic voiceover. It also follows a woman whose young daughter falls seriously ill but who said she was refused admission to a general hospital and instructed to go to a private one instead. By the time she got to the second hospital, it was too late to save the girl.
Even as the congressional Democratic leadership fights with President Bush over changing his Iraq war policy, the House rejected two measures that would have barred the Bush administration from military operations against Iran without congressional approval. The votes in the Democratic-controlled House received little press attention because they came late Wednesday night amid a crush of amendments to the $646 billion fiscal year 2008 military authorization bill. The bill includes $142 billion for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I thought it was pathetic that members would not stand up for their constitutional prerogatives,'' Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said Thursday. DeFazio had proposed a measure that said no military operations could be undertaken against Iran without specific congressional approval, barring an Iranian attack against the United States or its military. "It shouldn't matter where members stand on the issue'' of possible military action against Iran, DeFazio said. "You should stand up for your constitutional prerogative.'' Rep. Barbara Lee [commented] "The president's saber rattling against Iran is only increasing and is eerily similar to the march to war with Iraq. We must act to prevent another war of pre-emption." DeFazio's amendment lost handily, 136-288. The second measure [which] barred the Defense Department from using any money authorized for 2007-2008 under the bill to plan a "major contingency operation'' in Iran ... also lost.
Note: The lopsided defeat of Rep. DeFazio's amendment described in this article clearly indicates that a majority in both parties are clearly committed to supporting the war machine. Click here for a highly decorated U.S. general's take on this. Another San Francisco Chronicle article from the same day reveals the two-party consensus against any new Congressional ethics legislation.
In a collision of 21st-century science and decades-old conspiracy theories, a research team that includes a former top FBI scientist is challenging the bullet analysis used by the government to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot the two bullets that struck and killed President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The "evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed," concludes a new article in the Annals of Applied Statistics written by former FBI lab metallurgist William A. Tobin and Texas A&M University researchers Cliff Spiegelman and William D. James. The researchers' re-analysis involved new statistical calculations and a modern chemical analysis of bullets from the same batch Oswald is purported to have used. "This finding means that the bullet fragments from the assassination that match could have come from three or more separate bullets," the researchers said. "If the assassination fragments are derived from three or more separate bullets, then a second assassin is likely." [They] urged that authorities conduct a new and complete forensic re-analysis of the five bullet fragments left from the assassination in Dallas.
Note: For more reliable, verifiable information on the JFK and other assassinations, click here.
A bipartisan group of senators is pushing legislation that would force the CIA to release an inspector general's report on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The CIA has spent more than 20 months weighing requests under the Freedom of Information Act for its internal investigation of the attacks but has yet to release any portion of it. The agency is the only federal office involved in counterterrorism operations that has not made at least a version of its internal 9/11 investigation public. The law requires agencies to respond to requests within 20 days. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and two other intelligence committee leaders -- chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and senior Republican Kit Bond of Missouri -- are pushing legislation that would require the agency to declassify the executive summary of the review within one month and submit a report to Congress explaining why any material was withheld. "It's amazing the efforts the administration is going to stonewall this,'' Wyden said. "The American people have a right to know what the Central Intelligence Agency was doing in those critical months before 9/11.'' Completed in June 2005, the inspector general's report examined the personal responsibility of individuals at the CIA before and after the attacks. The CIA has not released any documents to The Associated Press or other organizations that began requesting the information at least 20 months ago. Groups including the National Security Archive have clashed with the agency over its FOIA policies. Last year, the archive gave the CIA its prize for the agency with the worst FOIA record. ''CIA has for three decades been one of the worst FOIA agencies,'' archive Director Thomas Blanton said this week.
Note: For more reliable information on what US intelligence agencies knew about the coming attacks, click here.
Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.