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As the historian Richard J Aldrich notes in the introduction to his excellent new history of the Cheltenham-based agency it represents by far our largest, most expensive, most productive – and yet most secret – intelligence effort. GCHQ: The uncensored story of Britain’s most secret intelligence agency instantly ranks as the most essential exposition of the hidden power wielded for 70 years by Britain’s information superweapon.

Not that very many have attempted to complete a picture from the few, widely scattered puzzle pieces available. One can well believe Aldrich’s book is the result of the 10 years work claimed on its dust jacket.

Indeed, apart from its heroic beginnings at Bletchley Park during World War Two, GCHQ’s presence in the popular consciousness is limited to vague paranoia and some awareness that what it does is frightfully clever and terribly secret.

The agency’s success in maintaining not just its secrecy, but a helpfully low profile, is best demonstrated in the book by its exposition of the intimate relationship between GCHQ and the US’ National Security Agency (NSA).

The legislation says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines or software firms that the US Government selects “shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed” by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined.

That emergency authority would allow the Federal Government to “preserve those networks and assets and our country and protect our people,” Joe Lieberman, the primary sponsor of the measure and the chairman of the Homeland Security committee, told reporters on Thursday. Lieberman is an independent senator from Connecticut who meets with the Democrats.

Due to there being few limits on the US President’s emergency power, which can be renewed indefinitely, the densely worded 197-page Bill (PDF) is likely to encounter stiff opposition.

TechAmerica, probably the largest US technology lobby group, said it was concerned about “unintended consequences that would result from the legislation’s regulatory approach” and “the potential for absolute power”. And the Center for Democracy and Technology publicly worried that the Lieberman Bill’s emergency powers “include authority to shut down or limit internet traffic on private systems.”

The idea of an internet “kill switch” that the President could flip is not new. A draft Senate proposal that ZDNet Australia’s sister site CNET obtained in August allowed the White House to “declare a cybersecurity emergency”, and another from Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) would have explicitly given the government the power to “order the disconnection” of certain networks or websites.

On Thursday, both senators lauded Lieberman’s Bill, which is formally titled Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, or PCNAA. Rockefeller said “I commend” the drafters of the PCNAA. Collins went further, signing up at a co-sponsor and saying at a press conference that “we cannot afford to wait for a cyber 9/11 before our government realises the importance of protecting our cyber resources”.

They said that Gary Brooks Faulkner, 52, was detained in the mountains of Chitral district north of Peshawar.

He had a pistol, dagger and a sword and was carrying night-vision equipment as well as Christian literature.

Police say Mr Faulkner was stopped near the border with Afghanistan’s Nuristan province, a known Taliban stronghold.

They say he told investigators after his arrest late on Sunday that he was on a solo mission to kill Osama Bin Laden who is thought to be hiding in the mountainous Afghan-Pakistan border area.

The al-Qaeda leader is the world’s most-wanted man, with the US offering a reward of up to $25m (£17m) for information leading to his capture.

‘God is with me’

Police say Mr Faulkner, who is from California, arrived as a tourist in Chitral on 2 June and was assigned a security escort before vanishing on Monday evening.

A search was then launched and he was found in a forest a few miles from the Afghan border.

“We have interrogated him and he has told us that he was on his way to Afghanistan to capture and kill Bin Laden,” Mumtaz Ahmed, a senior police official in Chitral told the BBC.

“We arrested him in the Bamburat valley close to the border with Nuristan province of Afghanistan.”

Police say that their suspicions grew when officers seized the pistol, the sword and night-vision equipment.

Mr Faulkner is now being questioned by intelligence officials in Peshawar, the main city in north-western Pakistan.

He has told police he visited Pakistan seven times, and this was his third trip to Chitral.

Police say that Mr Faulkner was also carrying a book containing Christian verses and teachings.

Asked if he felt he had a chance of tracing Bin Laden, he told police, “God is with me, and I am confident I will be successful in killing him,” the Associated Press reports.

The US embassy in Pakistan confirmed that a US citizen had been arrested and said it was seeking access to him.

Correspondents say that the Chitral area is widely seen as having escaped much of the violence that has blighted the rest of north-west Pakistan.

In April a Greek man who worked in one of the few museums in the area was released by the Taliban after being held by them for eight months.

Bin Laden has evaded a huge US effort to capture him since the attacks on the US of 11 September 2001 for which he is blamed.

Lachlan Cranswick, 41, vanished five months ago in a case that confounded police and the community and yielded few clues to his whereabouts. Police pulled a body from the Ottawa River near the town of Deep River on Friday.

Cranswick’s friend Chris Knight said police have already told Cranswick’s family in his native Australia that they believe the body is his.

“I heard from his family that the police had told them that the clothes and some identification on the body were Lachlan’s,” said Knight.

“They still had to do the forensics and autopsy to confirm but it’s virtually certain that it’s Lachlan that they found,” he said.

Police have not officially identified the body.
Vanished without a trace

Knight said the community would wait until the body has been officially identified before holding a memorial. He said Cranswick’s family plans to have him cremated and flown home.

Cranswick’s role as a scientist at the Chalk River facility led to speculation and international attention after he disappeared, but police said there was no evidence suggesting foul play.

But the disappearance was strange: Cranswick vanished after taking out the garbage not long after finishing work on Jan. 18. His car was still in his garage and his wallet and personal belongings were in his unlocked house.

Knight said he thinks that whatever happened was likely an accident.

In the Honda were six guns, ammunition and military-style clothing. The man, active duty military, reportedly was absent without leave.

But the military security guard didn’t know that.

Only the IDs raised a flag. They appeared to be fake, base officials said Tuesday.

Authorities identified the pair who tried to enter the base’s Bayshore Boulevard gate about 5 p.m. Monday as Spc. Christopher Paul Kilburn, and Micah Goodier of Palm Beach County.

Kilburn had been stationed with Alpha Company, 1-16th 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kan. He was charged with desertion and will be turned over to the Army.

The man would be under military jurisdiction, said MacDill spokesman Mark Graff.

But Goodier, a civilian, could wind up in federal court if prosecuted, according to Col. Dave Cohen, 6th Air Mobility Wing vice commander.

The pair’s motive for trying to get into the base with the guns is unclear, he said, but was not believed to be an act of terrorism.

Base officials will work with Kilburn’s chain of command to determine any possible charges against him, Cohen said.

Tuesday morning, the entrance gates at MacDill were open as usual and traffic was flowing.

“At no point was the security of MacDill Air Force Base breached,” Cohen said. “The system worked exactly as it was supposed to.”

The South Tampa base houses the headquarters of Central Command, which runs the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and Special Operations Command.

On May 19, an off-duty FBI agent shot and killed an Army veteran after a confrontation and chase at the base. The veteran had been visiting the base.

Officials say man, who was AWOL at the time, and the woman had three rifles, three handguns and loads of ammunition in their sport utility vehicle when they tried to enter the base.

Investigators say this is not an attempted terrorist act, but have not explained why they were trying to drive in with fraudulent military id’s and a cache of weapons.

The base was already on edge after An FBI agent fatally shot a veteran at the base last month after an altercation.

CBS 12 spoke to Micah Goodier’s brother Tuesday night via Facebook. Jace Goodier says his sister, who hails from West Palm Beach, has been released to the custody of her husband.

He did not know what she was doing with that man who is now being charged with desertion.

The pair were stopped around 5:00 pm (2100 GMT) trying to enter MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, site of the headquarters of US Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, base spokeswoman Katherine Holt said in a statement.

The suspects “presented fraudulent identification and were questioned” by security guards at the base gate, she said.

When the guards searched their vehicle “a dog alerted on a scent that led to the discovery of ammunition and weapons. Six weapons and ammunition were found in the vehicle.”

The Air Force identified the suspects as Specialist Christopher Paul of the Kansas-based First Infantry Division and a female civilian, Micah Noel Goodier of Palm Beach, Florida.

The Army specialist is being charged with desertion and will be turned over to Army authorities, Holt said.

Goodier will face charges pending a decision by federal prosecutors.

The two “did not actively resist” during the incident and were held for questioning.

The vice commander at the base, Colonel Dave Cohen, praised the guards, and said there was no security breach at the base.

No motive was given for the suspect’s actions, but the military said an investigation was underway.

The MacDill base earlier said the alleged intruders were driving a sport utility vehicle, and that fire department and explosive disposal units were dispatched to the scene but found no bombs.

Farmers are scratching their heads and some are worried their crops may be lost to the mysterious plague.

It’s happening along a large swath of land near the Shelby and Tipton county border along Herring Hill Road and elsewhere near the Mississippi River bottoms.

Tiny dots appear to have burned onto leaves of all types of plants, and they appear different depending on the plant.

On corn stalks, the dots seem to turn white in the center.

On other plants, a white dust speckles the leaves and then destroys the green life underneath.

“We found it all in the herbs, in the flowers, in the plum tree, in the weeds,” said organic farmer Toni Holt. “It’s apparently in everything.”

Holt grows organic produce that she sells at area farmers’ markets.

As she and other farmers inspect the new growth covered in the perplexing plague, they fear their entire crop may be lost.

Less than ten miles from Holt’s crops, the damage could possibly hit hundreds of acres of corn at Wilder Farms.

It appears to have hit everything in its path.

There does not seem to be anything in common with the affected plants.

The Holts raise organic crops, so they don’t spray pesticides on any of their fruits and vegetables.

The first thought among some was a new parasite or insect caused the damage, but Wilder farms sprays pesticides and the damage there is exactly the same.

Farmers first noticed the damaging dots over the weekend.

Then Holt came home to find baby birds dead in their nests.

“There are two dead birds hanging out of two different bird houses, so we’re concerned about that. We don’t know if it’s related, but it’s alarming,” said Holt. “We’ve got horses, we’re concerned about the horses on the grass. We’ve got chickens. We sell our eggs at the market.”

Farmers we spoke with are convinced something in the air caused this damage.

General Electric Co.’s financing arm has led C$5.66 billion ($5.5 billion) of bond sales this month, 10.5 percent of total global issuance and double the currency’s share in May, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Issuance in Switzerland’s currency jumped to 3.08 billion francs ($2.7 billion), or 5.1 percent of sales, from 1 percent the previous month, as companies including Bayerische Motoren Werke AG of Munich tapped the market.