Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence. Consider:

We have had a second fake underwear bomb plot, a much more fantastic one than the first hoax. The second underwear bomber was a CIA operative or informant allegedly recruited by al-Qaeda, an organization that US authorities have recently claimed to be defeated, in disarray, and no longer significant.

This defeated and insignificant organization, which lacks any science and technology labs, has invented an “invisible bomb” that is not detected by the porno-scanners. A “senior law enforcement source” told the New York Times that “the scary part” is that “if they build one, they probably built more.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that “the plot itself indicates that the terrorists keep trying to devise more and more perverse and terrible ways to kill innocent people.” Hillary said this while headlines proclaimed that the US continues to murder woman and children with high-tech drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Africa. The foiled fake plot, Hillary alleged, serves as “a reminder as to why we have to remain vigilant at home and abroad in protecting our nation and in protecting friendly nations and peoples like India and others.”

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress that the fake plot proves the need for warrantless surveillance in order to detect–what, fake plots? In Congress Republican Pete King and Democrat Charles Ruppersberger denounced media for revealing that the plot was a CIA operation, claiming that the truth threatened the war effort and soldiers’ lives.

CONTINUED at Activist Post. Written by Paul Craig Roberts.

He could have breezed through security at any airport.

A terrorist wearing the latest underwear bomb would not have been caught by the TSA’s most conscientious human screeners or its highest-tech fullbody scanners, experts told The Post yesterday. But the country ducked a disaster by employing an age-old weapon: a double agent.

With the help of American allies in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, the secret agent inserted himself into the terrorists’ secret inner circle, and became so trusted, the thugs accepted his offer to board a US-bound plane wearing the bomb.

CONTINUED at NY Post.

Taliban bombers attacked a heavily fortified guesthouse used by Westerners in Kabul on Wednesday, announcing the start of their annual “spring offensive” in defiance of calls from visiting US President Barack Obama that the war was ending.

Seven people were killed after attackers in burqas detonated a suicide car bomb and clashed with guards at the “Green Village” complex of guesthouses used by the European Union, the United Nations and aid groups, officials said.

The assault raises fresh concern about the resilience of the insurgency on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death as NATOwinds down its combat presence in the next two years and hands over responsibility for security to Afghan forces.

The Taliban said the assault was a riposte to Obama, who just hours earlier signed a new partnership pact in Kabul to govern Afghan-US relations after 2014 — a deal the insurgents dismissed as “illegitimate”.

In an election-year address, Obama presented himself as a commander-in-chief capable of ending two long wars, following the US withdrawal from Iraq, and crushing Al-Qaeda, and tried to conjure up a new dawn for a US public exhausted by conflict and recession.

CONTINUED at Yahoo News.

A federal judge has turned aside calls to publicly release video and photographs of the U.S. military raid and aftermath that left al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden dead.

Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, had asked the Department of Defense to comply with a Freedom of Information request for the material, especially photos of the September 11 mastermind lying dead on the third floor of his Pakistan hideout.

The group argued it was being “irreparably harmed” by the Obama administration’s “unlawful withholding of requested records.”

But Judge James Boasberg ruled Thursday there were legitimate national security interests to deny disclosure.

CONTINUED at CNN.

The paratroopers had their assignment: Check out reports that Afghan police had recovered the mangled remains of an insurgent suicide bomber. Try to get iris scans and fingerprints for identification.

The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan’s Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held — and others squatted beside — the corpse’s severed legs.

A few months later, the same platoon was dispatched to investigate the remains of three insurgents who Afghan police said had accidentally blown themselves up. After obtaining a few fingerprints, they posed next to the remains, again grinning and mugging for photographs.

CONTINUED at the LA Times.

Taliban militants battled their way into a prison in northwest Pakistan on Sunday, freeing close to 400 prisoners, including at least 20 described by police as “very dangerous” insurgents, authorities and the militants said.

The raid by more than 100 fighters was a dramatic display of the strength of the insurgency gripping the nuclear-armed country. The escaped prisoners may now rejoin the fight, giving momentum and a propaganda boost to a movement that has killed thousands of Pakistani officials and ordinary citizens since 2007.

The attackers, armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, stormed the prison before dawn in the city of Bannu close to the Afghan border, said police officer Shafique Khan. They used explosives and hand grenades to knock down the main gates and two walls, said Bannu prison superintendent Zahud Khan.

“They were carrying modern and heavy weapons,” said Zahud Khan. “They fired rockets.”

Once inside the building, the attackers headed straight to the area of the prison where death-row prisoners were being kept, he said. They fought with guards for around two hours, setting part of the prison on fire before freeing the 380 inmates, including at least 20 “very dangerous Taliban militants,” said Shafique.

One escaped prisoner, Adnan Rashid, was on death row for his involvement in an assassination attempt against former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, said Zahud Khan.

The prison in Bannu housed 944 inmates.

CONTINUED at the Chicago Sun Times.

A mock movie poster warns al-Qaida wants to return to New York City, but authorities say there’s no evidence of an actual threat.

Investigators learned about the online amateur graphic on Monday. The graphic shows the Manhattan skyline at sunset with “Al Qaeda” in bold type followed by “Coming Soon Again in New York.”

Al-Qaida has been blamed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which destroyed the World Trade Center and killed thousands of people.

New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne says an overseas, Arab-language Internet site posted the graphic on its “artwork and design” page. He says the NYPD has been monitoring the site.

FBI spokesman J. Peter Donald says the agency takes all threats seriously and “there is no specific orcredible threat to New York.”

Source: Yahoo News.

Operation Foxden, delayed by turf war between the FBI and the CIA, given green light three days before the al-Qaida attacks

The US government shut down a series of court cases arising from a multimillion pound business dispute in order to conceal evidence of a damning intelligence failure shortly before the 9/11 attacks, MPs were told.

Moreover, the UK government is now seeking similar powers that could be used to prevent evidence of illegal acts and embarrassing failures from emerging in court, David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, told the Commons.

The Justice and Security green paper being put forward by Ken Clarke’s justice ministry has already faced widespread criticismfrom civil rights groups, media representatives and lawyers working within the secret tribunal system that hears terrorism-related immigration cases.

Davis demanded to know how its proposals could be prevented from being used to cover up crimes and errors. “In light of previous revelations about the UK government’s complicity in torture and rendition of detainees to locations like of Libya, Afghanistan, or illegally into American hands … how will the Government prevent the Justice and Security green paper proposals being misused in a similar way to cover up illegal acts and embarrassments rather than protect national security?”

Davis said that in 1998 the FBI seized upon an opportunity to eavesdrop on every landline and telephone call into and out of Afghanistan in a bid to build intelligence on the Taliban. The Bureau discovered that the Taliban regime had awarded a major telephone network contract to a joint US-UK venture, run by an American entrepreneur, Ehsanollah Bayat and two British businessmen, Stuart Bentham and Lord Michael Cecil.

“The plan was simple” Davis said. “Because the Taliban wanted American equipment for their new phone network, this would allow the FBI and NSA, the National Security Agency, to build extra circuits into all the equipment before it was flown out to Afghanistan for use. Once installed, these extra circuits would allow the FBI and NSA to record or listen live to every single landline and mobile phone call in Afghanistan. The FBI would know the time the call was made and its duration. They would know the caller’s name, the number dialled, and even the caller’s PIN.”

But the plan, Operation Foxden, was delayed by a turf war, during which “the FBI and the CIA spent more than a year fighting over who should be in charge”, he said.

The operation was eventually given the green light on 8 September 2001 – three days before the al-Qaida attacks. “A huge opportunity was missed,” Davis said.

He added that when Bentham and Cecil sued Bayat in the New York courts, and Bayat lodged a legal claim against the two Britons, the case was struck out and all records removed from the courts public database on the grounds of State Secrets Privilege, a legal doctrine that permits the US government to shut down litigation on the grounds of national security. The Britons attempted to sue in London, Davis said, but the case failed because “so long is the reach of the American State Secrets Privilege” that they were prevented from discussing key details of the US case.

“Through heavy-handed use of State Secrets Privilege, US agencies can dictate what British judges in British courts are entitled to know, and how much British citizens in British courts are entitled to say,” Davis told MPs. “What chance did Bentham and Cecil, or anyone else in a similar position, have of getting a fair hearing when American intelligence agencies can shut down cases without explanation in the US, and use State Secrets Privilege to control what evidence courts can see in the UK?”

Davis said that when he talked about this episode with “someone in the know in one of the agencies involved” he was told: “Ten years have passed, and the culpable people have retired or moved on, so it’s no longer embarrassing.”

Davis said the British green paper proposals are “more Draconian than State Secrets Privilege”, and added: “Giving a government agency an absolute right to secrecy encourages bad behaviour.

“This is the same State Secrets Privilege, and same American government, that the British green paper on Justice and Security is designed to protect,” Davis said, adding that the case demonstrates “how intelligence agencies misuse these laws, not to protect our security, but to avoid their own embarrassment and cover up criminal activity.”

Bayat has previously denied that he or any of his companies acted unlawfully and said that they have never acted as “an agent, informant or spy”. He could not immediately be contacted to comment on Davis’ speech.

The foreign officer minister Jeremy Browne told MPs: “The green paper proposals will enable better scrutiny [of government], which is a vital element in a healthy democracy.” He added that proposals are “not about covering up embarrassment, it is about enabling the work of the courts”.

Reprieve’s Executive Director, Clare Algar, director of the legal charity Reprieve, said: “This demonstrates just how ready the intelligence services are to cry national security in order to cover up their own embarrassment. It is yet another compelling example – if one were needed – of why we cannot let the UK Government’s plans for secret justice go ahead.”

Source: The Guardian.

The Al Qaeda fanatic who murdered seven people in south west France died in a vicious gunfire battle after police stormed his apartment following a 32-hour siege.

The Toulouse terrorist burst out of his flat’s bathroom ‘shooting insanely’ at officers, before leaping to his death from a window.

In scenes reminiscent of a Hollywood film, Mohammad Merah, 23, unleashed round after round from automatic weapons after gas cannisters were thrown into his apartment and police stormed in.

Two officers were injured, including one who is still in a serious condition.

CONTINUED at The Daily Mail.

Mohammed Merah, the suspect in the killing of seven people outside a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, fits the pattern of an al-Qaeda intelligence asset. According to the BBC, he was on the radar of French authorities because of visits he made to Afghanistan and the “militant stronghold” of Waziristan in Pakistan.

More specifically, Merah was handled by France’s DCRI intelligence service “for years,” according to Claude Guéant, the interior minister.

Merah, a French citizen of Algerian origin, was arrested on December 19, 2007, and was sentenced to three years in jail for planting bombs in the southern province of Kandahar in Afghanistan.

In April of 2011, the United States admitted it has operated secret military prisons in Afghanistan where suspected terrorists are held and interrogated without charges.

The notorious Bagram airbase detention center is operated by the Joint Special Operations Command and the DIA’s Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC).

CONTINUED at Infowars. Written by Kurt Nimmo. Videos at link.