SECRECY & THE SECURITY STATE - page 31

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) responded to the White House’s decision to abandon its Afghanistan withdrawal plan by calling on President Obama to keep even more troops there to fight what is already the United States’ longest-running foreign war. The Senate Armed Services Committee chair said that the administration’s plans to keep only 5,500 troops in Afghanistan beyond 2017 puts “our mission in Afghanistan, as well as our men and women serving there, at greater risk.” “All of us want the war in Afghanistan to be…

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Top secret documents published on Thursday provide fresh insight into US security forces’ long-running drone assassination program. The information, which came in the form of PowerPoint slides, was provided to The Intercept by an anonymous source. It details details the CIA and Pentagon’s use of unmanned aerial vehicles for targeted strikes that occurred between 2011 and 2013, and sheds light on the inner-working of the program. “Taken together, the secret documents lead to the conclusion that Washington’s 14-year high-value targeting campaign suffers from an overreliance on signals intelligence,…

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President Obama has scrapped plans to end the War in Afghanistan before he leaves office. White House officials told the Associated Press Thursday that the US will keep its current force size of nearly 10,000 soldiers in tact through 2016, and that it will plan to indefinitely keep roughly 5,000 troops there. The AP said the scaling back of that force will occur “at a pace still to be determined by commanders.” The administration had previously been hoping to pare down the US contingency in Afghanistan to an embassy…

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Defense officials have described it as important if the US military wants to maintain “technological superiority.” The Senate Armed Services Committee has requested briefings on it. But the Pentagon is unable to keep tabs on how it uses 3D printers. While military officials aren’t totally in the dark, they’re unable to “systematically track” the Defense Department’s use of so-called “additive manufacturing,” according to a Government Accountability Office report published Wednesday. “DOD officials could not readily tell us the activities underway or the amount of funding…

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Twenty former top ranking officials and two key lawmakers from both parties are calling on the US and its NATO partners to maintain troop levels in Afghanistan “at or close to present levels.” The recommendations come through endorsements of an Atlantic Council paper released Wednesday, according to The New York Times. “The main argument of the paper, which was written by James B. Cunningham, a former ambassador to Afghanistan, centers on the need to continue helping Afghan forces, and to give the next American administration as…

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The Department of Justice has steadily reduced the number of corporate criminals it prosecutes every year, despite there being no signs of improved behavior by the business community. Syracuse University released a report Tuesday showing that the DOJ took legal action against only 237 corporate defendants in 2014—a 29% drop from 2004. The number of referrals sent to US Attorneys to prosecute businesses, meanwhile, actually increased slightly over the decade. The university found 2,171 referrals in 2014–up from 2,116 in 2004–and more than nine times the number of…

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The highest court in the land heard opening arguments Tuesday in a case that could lead to the early release of thousands of inmates dealt mandatory life sentences as minors. While the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that sentencing minors to life without parole is a violation of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment, the ruling didn’t apply retroactively. In Montgomery v. Louisiana, the court will determine whether or not it should. The case was brought by Henry Montgomery, a 69-year-old who…

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Two psychologists contracted by the Central Intelligence Agency to help construct its post-9/11 torture program are being sued by former detainees. The suit was filed in a Washington state federal court on Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the three men–two living and one dead. Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, and the estate of Gul Rahman are all claiming that the three men were harmed at CIA “black sites” by methods developed by Drs. James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.…

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