cryptogon.com

Blackwater — sorry, Xe Services — really wants to turn the PR page from the bad old days of Nisour Square, when the infamous private security firm’s guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians. It’s no longer owned by Erik Prince, who may be involved in yet another shady mercenary firm. It’s on a hiring spree for new executives. And that’s kind of the problem.

Xe’s new owners, USTC Holdings, aren’t exactly bringing in scandal-free talent to run Xe v.2.0. On Monday, they announced Xe’s new “Chief Regulatory & Compliance Officer,” a new position for the company, will be Suzanne Folsom, most recently of insurance giant AIG.

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Some of the most notable changes apply to the lowest category of investigations, called an “assessment.” The category, created in December 2008, allows agents to look into people and organizations “proactively” and without firm evidence for suspecting criminal or terrorist activity.

Under current rules, agents must open such an inquiry before they can search for information about a person in a commercial or law enforcement database. Under the new rules, agents will be allowed to search such databases without making a record about their decision.

Mr. German said the change would make it harder to detect and deter inappropriate use of databases for personal purposes. But Ms. Caproni said it was too cumbersome to require agents to open formal inquiries before running quick checks. She also said agents could not put information uncovered from such searches into F.B.I. files unless they later opened an assessment.

The new rules will also relax a restriction on administering lie-detector tests and searching people’s trash. Under current rules, agents cannot use such techniques until they open a “preliminary investigation,” which — unlike an assessment — requires a factual basis for suspecting someone of wrongdoing. But soon agents will be allowed to use those techniques for one kind of assessment, too: when they are evaluating a target as a potential informant.

Agents have asked for that power in part because they want the ability to use information found in a subject’s trash to put pressure on that person to assist the government in the investigation of others. But Ms. Caproni said information gathered that way could also be useful for other reasons, like determining whether the subject might pose a threat to agents.

The new manual will also remove a limitation on the use of surveillance squads, which are trained to surreptitiously follow targets. Under current rules, the squads can be used only once during an assessment, but the new rules will allow agents to use them repeatedly. Ms. Caproni said restrictions on the duration of physical surveillance would still apply, and argued that because of limited resources, supervisors would use the squads only rarely during such a low-level investigation.

Others, however, have argued that Greece’s debt of 330 billion euros, or $473 billion, while too large for the country to bear, is small enough to allow banks and other institutions to take a loss without bringing the world financial system to its knees.

But the comparisons between Greece and Lehman grew more frequent last week as global markets reeled, spurred in part by the view that Germany’s insistence that private investors participate in a second rescue package for Athens would overcome the objections of the European Central Bank.

“It is a valid concern,” said David Riley, head of sovereign ratings at Fitch. “The Rubicon would be crossed — we would have a sovereign default event and that can be quite a shock, not just for the peripheral countries but for Spain and beyond.”

On the 40th anniversary of the leak to the press, the National Archives, along with the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon Presidential Libraries, has released the complete report. There are 48 boxes and approximately 7,000 declassified pages. Approximately 34% of the report is available for the first time.

What is unique about this, compared to other versions, is that:

– The complete Report is now available with no redactions compared to previous releases

– The Report is presented as Leslie Gelb presented it to then Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford on January 15, 1969

– All the supplemental back-documentation is included. In the Gravel Edition, 80% of the documents in Part V.B. were not included

The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase.”

Financed with a $2 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet.

The American effort, revealed in dozens of interviews, planning documents and classified diplomatic cables obtained by The New York Times, ranges in scale, cost and sophistication.

Dear Noam,

I am writing to you and a number of other friends mostly in the US to alert you to the extraordinary banning of my film on war and media, ‘The War You Don’t See‘, and the abrupt cancellation of a major event at the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe in which David Barsamian and I were to discuss free speech, US foreign policy and censorship in the media.

Lannan invited me and David over a year ago and welcomed my proposal that they also host the US premiere of ‘The War You Don’t See’, in which US and British broadcasters describe the often hidden part played by the media in the promotion of war, notably in Iraq and Afghanistan. The film has been widely acclaimed in the UK and Australia; the trailer and reviews are on my website www.johnpilger.com

The banning and cancellation, which have shocked David and me, are on the personal orders of Patrick Lannan, whose wealth funds the Lannan Foundation as a liberal center of discussion of politics and the arts. Some of you will have been there and will know the Lannan Foundation as a valuable supporter of liberal causes. Indeed, I was invited in 2002 to present a Lannan award to the broadcaster Amy Goodman.

What is deeply disturbing about the ban is that it happened so suddenly and inexplicably: 48 hours before David Barsamian and I were both due to depart for Santa Fe I received a brief email with a ‘sorry for the inconvenience’ from a Lannan official who had been telling me just a few days earlier what a ‘great honor’ it was to have the US premiere of my film at Lannan, with myself in attendance.

I urge you to visit the Lannan website www.lannan.org. Good people like Michael Ratner, Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald are shown as participants in discussion about freedom of speech. I am there, too, but my name is the only one with a line through it and the word, ‘Cancelled’.

Neither David Barsamian nor I have been given a word of explanation. All my messages to Lannan have gone unanswered; my calls calls are not returned; my flights were cancelled summarily. At the urging of the New Mexican newspaper, Patrick Lannan has issued a one-sentence statement offering his regrets to the Lannan-supporting ‘community’ in Santa Fe. Again, he gives no reason for the ban. I have spoken to the manager of the Santa Fe cinema where ‘The War You Don’t See’ was to be screened. He received a late-night call. Again, no reason for the ban was forthcoming, giving him barely time to cancel advertising in The New Mexican, which was forced to drop a major feature.

There is a compelling symbol of our extraordinary times in all of this. A rich and powerful individual and organization, espousing freedom of speech, has moved ruthlessly and unaccountably to crush it.

With warm regards

John Pilger

A new entry on Sunday in the blog, which for months was purportedly written by a lesbian Syrian-American woman living in Damascus, asserted that the entire saga was a hoax.

The post, which came days after an entry saying the blogger had been arrested, was signed by “Tom MacMaster” in Istanbul, Turkey.

In it, the author says the narrative was fictional but insists it “created an important voice for issues I feel strongly about”.