News Items

  • Calls to Suspend Syrian Refugee and Other Recent Anti-Muslim Statements by Government Officials

    Compiled by the Institute for Public Accuracy with Arun Kundnani and Deepa Kumar. Kundnani said: “While it’s very easy to denounce Trump’s recent repugnant, bullying statements — and much of the political class has — it’s important to keep several things in mind: First, as the compilation of statements by elected officials makes clear, he made these statements after many officials from across the country made scores of statements playing on unfounded fears against Syrian refugees and other Muslims.”

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  • Classified Politics: A System and a Clinton in Disrepute

    It is most unlikely, however, that Hillary Clinton will fall victim to accusations that rely on improper over-­classification. The State Department and White House, including President Obama himself, sought to protect her and to minimize the effects of her behavior. The case is extremely high­-profile, Democrats in Congress would attack any borderline classification, and a host of well-­paid lawyers would rise to her defense. Improperly classified items or those deemed Sensitive but Unclassified may be redacted from publicly released documents, but it is hard to imagine that Mrs. Clinton would be falsely accused of felonies.

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  • Video of Sterling News Conference

    Please enjoy the full video of Holly Sterling’s news conference, which was her first such appearance since her husband’s trial and imprisonment. The news conference also featured Thomas Drake, Delphine Halgand, Ray McGovern, and Jesselyn Radack.

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  • Open Letter to President Obama from Holly Sterling

    Does the government have no shame in destroying one man’s life and wasting tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to punish a man who had the audacity to do two things: Stand up for his constitutional rights and utilize proper channels provided to him to express concern for the citizens of our country? I am deeply saddened by our lives’ events that Jeffrey and I have suffered and endured. You publicly committed to a transparent government led by your administration, yet it has been shrouded in mistruth and secrecy.

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  • Unprecedented News Conference: Wife of Imprisoned CIA Whistleblower to Speak Out

    Jeffrey Sterling was convicted under the Espionage Act as a source for New York Times reporter James Risen’s book State of War. He began serving his three-and-a-half year prison sentence in June. His wife’s news conference will be the first time the spouse of a CIA whistleblower has made such an appearance.

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  • Cultural Shift Needed on Police Militarization

    Police militarization is a 25 year long trend that has only grown in momentum over time. The restrictions on militaristic gear directed by the White House while important symbolically, will certainly not substantively impact this trend in and of itself. Police militarization at this point is as much a cultural problem as it is a material one, and reversing the cultural trend toward police militarization will require more far reaching efforts.

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  • Watch the Short Documentary “The Invisible Man: CIA Whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling”

    “‘The federal courtroom in northern Virginia where Holly and Jeffrey Sterling returned for the sentencing on May 11 was the scene of a disturbing, though scantly reported, simulation of justice in late January. At the outset, covering the trial, I noted that ‘prospective jurors made routine references to ‘three-letter agencies’ and alphabet-soup categories of security clearances.’ Steeped in a local atmosphere of deference to mega-employers like the CIA and Pentagon along with numerous big contracting firms nearby, ‘the jury pool was bound to please the prosecution.’”

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  • On Jeffrey Sterling: From the Filmmaker of “Invisible Man”

    “The most shocking element of this story it that Jeffrey Sterling seems to be punished because he ‘pulled on Superman’s cape’ first with a racial discrimination suit they were able to squash and then by reporting what he considered a dangerous CIA operation to the proper government channels for hearing such a concern.”

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  • News Conference: Whistleblowers Weigh In on Policy

    William Binney (NSA), Thomas Drake (NSA), Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers), Raymond McGovern (CIA), Jesselyn Radack (Justice Department), Coleen Rowley (FBI) and Kirk Wiebe (NSA) spoke at this news conference, sponsored by ExposeFacts.org, a project of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

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  • Netanyahu Victory Opens Door for One-State Solution

    Just before the election, Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu ruled out the creation of a Palestinian State, which means that he repudiated the two-state solution to the dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians. This has been the pronounced objective of American foreign policy since the Madrid Conference and the Middle East Peace Negotiations in 1991 held under the auspices of the United States government and with the full support of the international community.

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  • Bush and Nukes in India

    President Bush will be visiting India and Pakistan this week. A major agenda item is a nuclear agreement between the U.S. and India. The following analysts are available for interviews. (India is 10.5 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Time.) M. V. RAMANA Faculty member at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development in…

  • Sectarianism in Iraq: Roots and Alternatives

    HADANI DITMARS Ditmars is the author of the just-released book Dancing in the No Fly Zone: A Woman’s Journey Through Iraq and has covered Iraq since 1997. She said today: “Pre-invasion Iraq despite the twin tyrannies of sanctions and Saddam had been a cosmopolitan, multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-lingual society. The people self-identified as Iraqis first, not…

  • Port Security

    Dubai Ports World, a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates, is slated to buy a British company, Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., which runs major commercial operations at ports in six U.S. cities. PRATAP CHATTERJEE Chatterjee is executive director of CorpWatch and was in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates last month. He…

  • Execution and Medical Ethics: “Do No Harm”

    AP reports that the execution of Michael Angelo Morales, scheduled for 12:01 a.m. Tuesday in California, was delayed “after two anesthesiologists refused to participate because of ethical concerns about their involvement.” COREY WEINSTEIN, M.D. A doctor in private practice in California and a correctional medical consultant, Weinstein said today: “I was on the American Public…

  • Abu Ghraib

    AIDAN DELGADO Delgado was with the 320th Military Police Company at Abu Ghraib; he is now a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. More Information JENNIFER HARBURY Harbury is the director of the Stop Torture Permanently (STOP) Campaign and author of the recent book Truth, Torture, and the American Way. More Information LILA RAJIVA…

  • · Haiti · Iran · Egypt

    BILL FLETCHER Fletcher is the president of TransAfrica Forum and is available for interviews about the Haitian elections. More Information MUHAMMAD SAHIMI Sahimi is professor of chemical engineering at the University of Southern California and co-author, with Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, of the recent op-ed “Defusing Iran with Democracy.” More Information SHERIF HETATA…

  • Response to Katrina: “One Failure After Another”

    MALCOLM SUBER Suber works with the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund. He said today: “It wasn’t Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans, it was the government failure on the levees. And it’s been one failure after another since. The government has failed to ensure that people can return to their communities and now FEMA is evicting…

  • Medicare: Rich HMOs, Sick Patients

    STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER Associate professor of medicine at Harvard University, Woolhandler said today: “The Bush health agenda is to privatize Medicare — to shift the taxpapers’ money away from sick patients and toward the drug and insurance industries. The Medicare Part D bill included over $40 billion in excess payments to HMOs. Because the Medicare Part…

  • Military Spending: How Big? How Effective?

    CINDY WILLIAMS Principal research scientist at the Security Studies Program of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Williams is editor of the books Holding the Line: U.S. Defense Alternatives for the Early 21st Century and Filling the Ranks: Transforming the U.S. Military Personnel System. She said today: “In terms of military spending, we still have not…

  • Cartoon Controversy: Beyond the Caricatures

    AS’AD ABUKHALIL AbuKhalil has been writing extensively about the cartoon controversy on his blog. He said today: “The double and triple standards of Western governments are quite clear, even if you take ‘freedom of expression’ as a criterion of analysis. Al-Manar TV, for example, has been banned from Europe and the U.S. … [but] European…

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