http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/us/nsa-surveillance.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 8:28 AM
Subject: re: Senate Panel Presses N.S.A. on Phone Logs
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    Edward Snowden's revelations have shown the American people that James Clapper and Keith Alexander lied to Congress. Outrage has been widespread. The glaring exception is Diane Feinstein, who has reacted not as a U.S. senator charged with oversight of Intelligence activities, but as an asset of the Intelligence community, planted in the U.S. senate.

   This sort of "regulatory capture" is not unique to her committee. We have seen it in the non-enforcement of SEC regulations under Bush and in the sell-off of Wilderness areas under Reagan. In each case, it represents a corruption of our democratic institutions by special interests.

Barry Haskell Levine

Find more of my (largely one-sided) correspondence with the New York Times at:
htt://forgottencenter.blogspot.com/
Or write a letter of your own. Democracy only works when we engage in
the issues of our day

Senate Panel Presses N.S.A. on Phone Logs

By CHARLIE SAVAGE and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: July 31, 2013 519 Comments

• SHARPLY CHALLENGED THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY’S COLLECTION OF RECORDS OF ALL DOMESTIC PHONE CALLS, EVEN AS THE LATEST LEAKED N.S.A. DOCUMENT PROVIDED NEW DETAILS ON THE WAY THE AGENCY MONITORS WEB BROWSING AROUND THE WORLD.

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Christopher Gregory/The New York Times

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, expressed deep skepticism about the domestic phone records program.

 Declassified N.S.A. Documents on Data Collection

Read and search three documents related to the National Security Agency’s collection of phone records.

Related in Opinion

• Editorial: More Fog From the Spy Agencies (August 1, 2013)

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Christopher Gregory/The New York Times

Robert Litt, left, the top lawyer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, testified that the Obama administration was also “open to re-evaluating this program."

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the chairman, Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, accused Obama administration officials of overstating the success of the domestic call log program. He said he had been shown a classified list of “terrorist events” detected through surveillance, and it did not show that “dozens or even several terrorist plots” had been thwarted by the domestic program.

“If this program is not effective it has to end. So far, I’m not convinced by what I’ve seen,” Mr. Leahy said, citing the “massive privacy implications” of keeping records of every American’s domestic calls.

At the start of the hearing, the Obama administration released previously classified documents outlining the rules for how the domestic phone records may be accessed and used by intelligence analysts. And as senators debated the program, The Guardian published on its Web site a still-classified 32-page presentation, apparently downloaded by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, that describes a separate surveillance activity by the agency.

Called the XKeyscore program, it apparently gives N.S.A. analysts access to virtually any Internet browsing activity around the world, data that is being vacuumed up from 150 foreign sites.

Together, the new disclosures provided additional details on the scope of the United States government’s secret surveillance programs, which have been dragged into public view and public debate by leaks from Mr. Snowden, who remains stranded in a Moscow airport.

The hearing came a week after the House voted narrowly to defeat an amendment to shut down the N.S.A.’s domestic phone record tracking program. The 217-to-205 vote was far closer than expected, and it — along with shifting poll numbers — suggested that momentum against the domestic program was building. In recent days even some of the most outspoken supporters of the program have said they are open to adjusting it.

The Obama administration has been trying to build public support for its surveillance programs, which trace back to the Bush administration, by arguing that they are subject to strict safeguards and court oversight and that they have helped thwart as many as 54 terrorist events. That figure, Mr. Leahy emphasized, relies upon conflating another program that allows surveillance targeted at noncitizens abroad, which has apparently been quite valuable, with the domestic one.

Still, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she supported overhauling the program but keeping it in place because it generates information that might prevent attacks.

John C. Inglis, the deputy director of the N.S.A., said there had been 13 investigations in which the domestic call tracking program made a “contribution.” He cited two discoveries: that several men in San Diego were sending money to a terrorist group in Somalia, and that a suspect who was already under scrutiny in a subway bomb plot was using a different phone.

Robert S. Litt, the top lawyer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, testified that the Obama administration was also “open to re-evaluating this program” to create greater public confidence that it protects privacy while “preserving the essence of the program.” Administration officials have emphasized that the program collects only so-called metadata, and not the contents of phone calls.

Still, the top Republican on the committee, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, asked skeptical questions about the legal basis for the program while criticizing the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, for making inaccurate statements to Congress about it in March. Mr. Clapper has since apologized.

“Nothing can excuse this kind of behavior from a senior administration official of any administration, especially on matters of such grave importance,” Mr. Grassley said.

A series of slides describing XKeyscore, dated 2008, make it clear that the security agency system is collecting a huge amount of data on Internet activity around the globe, from chats on social networks to browsing of Web sites and searches on Google Maps. The volume of data is so vast that most of it is stored for only three days, although metadata — information showing logins and server activity, but not content — is stored for a month. Several of the pages were redacted by The Guardian.

Some of the servers the agency uses are run by foreign intelligence services of friendly nations, including Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, but other servers may be on the soil of countries unaware the agency is mining Internet “pipes” on their soil. Some of the harvesting of data takes place on the coasts of the United States, and along the Mexican border. Most sites are in Europe, the Middle East, and along the borders of India, Pakistan, and China.

The intelligence analysts search for terrorist cells by looking at “anomalous events” — someone searching in German from Pakistani sites, or an Iranian sending an encrypted Microsoft Word file. But one slide says the system can be used to identify anyone “searching the Web for suspicious stuff.”

The presentation says the system enables analysts to identify and pursue leads even if they do not yet know the name, or the e-mail address, of a suspect. “A large amount of time spent on the Web is performing actions that are anonymous,” it explains.

One example of how analysts might use the system is to search for whenever someone has started up a “virtual private network” in a particular country of interest; the networks are pipelines that add greater security to online communications. N.S.A. analysts are able to use the system to extract the activity retrospectively from “raw unselected bulk traffic,” the documents say, and then decrypt it to “discover the users.”

The agency said its surveillance of the Internet was part of its “lawful foreign signals intelligence collection” and not “arbitrary and unconstrained.” The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Mike Rogers, and the ranking Democrat, C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger, said, “The program does not target American citizens.”

The XKeyscore presentation claimed the program had generated intelligence that resulted in the capture of more than 300 terrorists. By contrast, the documents released by the government about the domestic phone log program were more abstract.

They included briefing papers to Congress from 2009 and 2011 about the “very large scale” logging of Americans’ calling records — along with a related program that logged Americans’ e-mails, and that was shut down later in 2011 — portraying the programs as providing a vital and important capability.

But Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee who has been a leading critic of the bulk collection programs, said the program had been shut down because officials were unable “to provide evidence to support the claims” of operational value. Mr. Wyden has also questioned the utility of the phone log program.

The new documents also included an April “primary order” by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that supported orders requiring phone companies to turn over all customer records. It said the government may access the records only when there are “facts giving rise to a reasonable, articulable suspicion” that the number to be searched is associated with terrorism.

However, it said that the results of each inquiry are then placed in a “corporate store” that analysts may search without any such limits. Intelligence officials have separately said that search results include not just a target’s phone records, but also exponentially larger sets of the records of people in as many as three concentric circles around the target
.

More Independence for the FISA Court

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/opinion/more-independence-for-the-fisa-court.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 7:52 AM
Subject: re: More Independence for the FISA Court
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

     "If the surveillance court is to be considered part of the American justice system, it needs to start looking more like an actual court." Just changing the appointment process won't cut it. To be a proper part of our Judiciary system the FISA court would need both an adversarial system and--more importantly--an avenue of appeal up to the Supreme Court. 

      In the U.S., the sovereignty of the People is demonstrated in (rare instances of) Jury nullification. The people on the jury report to no one. Whom they call guilty is guilty, whom they deem innocent is innocent. That level of  finality belongs only to the People (as jurors), to the Supreme Courts (interpreting law) and to the President (pardoning crimes).

   As long as the FISA court has no adversarial process and reports to no one, it is no duly constituted part of our Judiciary. It is a sham court, wholly belonging to our Executive. Our Founding Fathers would have been appalled.

Barry Haskell Levine

There are so many deeply troubling things about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that it is difficult to know where to begin, but a good place might be the method by which the court’s judges are chosen.

All 11 of the current members were assigned to the court by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. In the nearly eight years he has been making his selections, Chief Justice Roberts has leaned about as far right as it is possible to go. Ten of those 11 members were appointed to the bench by Republican presidents; the two previous chief justices put Republican-appointed judges on the court 66 percent of the time, as reported by Charlie Savage in The Times.

The FISA court considers government requests for warrants to collect phone and Internet data, among other things, on an enormous scale. The judges hear only the government’s argument. There is no adversary present to represent interests of those whose privacy would be violated — which could well involve millions of Americans. The court’s rulings, some of which include novel interpretations of constitutional law, remain secret.

If the surveillance court is to be considered part of the American justice system, it needs to start looking more like an actual court. For starters, there is no good reason the chief justice should have sole authority to appoint the court’s judges. Already, critics of the current system have floated numerous alternative ways for selecting FISA court judges.

One idea worth considering, offered by Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, is for each of the chief judges of the federal appeals courts to select one judge for the surveillance court.

This approach could minimize the risk of politicizing the process. A further step might be to require the chief judges’ choices to be submitted for approval to a board consisting of members of Congress with experience in intelligence matters and experts with experience in protecting civil liberties.

The professional qualifications of the judges appointed by Chief Justice Roberts are not in question. But given the extent to which the FISA court’s rulings have infiltrated our lives, it is appropriate for the public to have a voice in who sits on it.

The authority of our judiciary derives from its independence and its accountability. At the very least, the power to select the judges who are making secret law should not rest in the hands of one man
.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/opinion/a-bipartisan-warning-on-surveillance.html?_r=0

To the Editor:

   To his credit, when president Obama has something important to say, he has said it directly to the American people, and has said it well. Disposable "White House Spokesmen" have been relegated to sending up untested political weather balloons. This one deserves to go down in a hail of gunfire. To suggest that Congress' efforts to set bounds on unreasonable search and seizure is not "...the product of an informed, open and deliberative process" is an outrageous provocation. It is the Executive that has kept us in the dark here, gathering all our secrets into its own dark web and revealing nothing.

   I voted for "change" in 2008 and I voted for "transparency in government" in 2012. And I'll go on voting for them until I get them. This isn't it.

Barry Haskell Levine

Find more of my (largely one-sided) correspondence with the New York Times at:
htt://forgottencenter.blogspot.com/
Or write a letter of your own. Democracy only works when we engage in
the issues of our day

EDITORIAL

A Bipartisan Warning on Surveillance

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Published: July 25, 2013Lawmakers have given the Obama administration a bipartisan warning: patience is growing thin with its expansive and unwarranted surveillance of Ameri

In one of the most unusual votes in years, the House on Wednesday barely defeated an amendment to curtail the National Security Agency’s collection of every phone record, limiting it to records of people targeted in investigations. The vote was 205 to 217, and what was particularly remarkable was that 94 Republicans supported the limits, along with 111 Democrats who stood up to intense lobbying by the White House and its spy agencies.

The amendment was sponsored by Representative Justin Amash, a Republican of Michigan, one of the most anti-government libertarians in the House. On this issue, he found common ground with Democrats and moderate Republicans who are also concerned that the N.S.A. is needlessly violating the privacy of ordinary citizens.

Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Republican of Wisconsin and an author of the Patriot Act, said the measure imposes the standard for collecting data in a criminal trial. Representative Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat of New York, said the amendment would reimpose the original intent of Congress.

“No administration should be permitted to operate above or beyond the law as they have done in this respect,” Mr. Nadler said.

The arguments for unlimited record keeping were remarkably thin. A White House spokesman said the amendment was not “the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process” — a laughable assertion considering how uninformed the administration wants the public to be about the loss of privacy. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, said supporters seemed to have forgotten Sept. 11.

But the closeness of the vote suggested that a growing number of lawmakers no longer respond reflexively to the waving of the 9/11 flag, or the patronizing insistence of government officials that they should be trusted implicitly. That reflects an increasing skepticism in the public, as reflected in several opinion polls, as people become aware that the N.S.A. isn’t following the common-sense practice of spying only on those suspected of terrorism.

A 51 percent majority in the House with strongly bipartisan opposition is hardly a vote of confidence in a program as intrusive as universal phone-record collection. More and more lawmakers and voters are starting to pay attention to the arguments of longtime intelligence critics like Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who said on Tuesday that the opportunity had finally arrived to stop an omnipresent surveillance state that once seemed irreversible.

Raising the Wrong Profile

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/opinion/coates-raising-the-wrong-profile.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 8:49 AM
Subject: re: Raising the Wrong Profile
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    Of course, Ray Kelly's candidacy to head the Department of Homeland Security is doomed; as a New Yorker, he is unpalatable to Southern Senators. If president Obama want's to bring Michael Bloomberg's vision of order to our borders, he should bring in Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor. When Bull ran Birmingham, those people knew their place. No one got uppity. And they certainly didn't sneak in the back door of the nation, or through the front door of the White House.

Barry Haskell Levine

Find more of my (largely one-sided) correspondence with the New York Times at:
htt://forgottencenter.blogspot.com/
Or write a letter of your own. Democracy only works when we engage in
the issues of our day

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/us/politics/bipartisan-backlash-grows-against-domestic-surveillance.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 12:09 PM
Subject: Re: Bipartisan Backlash Grows Against Domestic Surveillance
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   When Congress immunized the big telecoms in 2008, it precluded civil litigation for damages; it did not (and could not) preclude criminal prosecution.  Congress subsequently gutted the FISA statue but these warrantless wiretaps were crimes--violating both the FISA statute and our Fourth Amendment rights--when they were committed between 2001 and 2008. The American people's interest won't have been served until they are prosecuted.

Barry Haskell Levine

Bipartisan Backlash Grows Against Domestic Surveillance

By JAMES RISEN

Published: July 17, 2013WASHINGTON — The Obama administration faced a growing Congressional backlash against the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance operations on Wednesday, as lawmakers from both parties called for the vast collection of private data on millions of Americans to be scaled back.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, was among the lawmakers who expressed skepticism about the collection of private data by the National Security Agency.

Related

• British Agency Is Cleared of Illegal Data Gathering (July 18, 2013)

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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Senator Al Franken, Democratic of Minnesota, said in an interview that he planned to introduce legislation mandating public disclosure of programs.

During a sometimes contentious hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Republicans and Democrats told administration officials that they believed the government had exceeded the surveillance authorities granted by Congress, and warned that they were unlikely to be reauthorized in the future.

Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, said that no one in Congress believed that the counterterrorism laws enacted since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were meant to allow for the collection of phone records of virtually everyone in America.

“The government is stockpiling sensitive personal data on a grand scale,” said Representative Ted Deutch, Democrat of Florida. “Intelligence officers, contractors and personnel only need a rubber-stamp warrant from the FISA court to then learn virtually everything there is to know about an American citizen,” he said, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

While administration officials defended the surveillance during the hearing, several lawmakers said that the data collection was unsustainable, and that Congress would move to either revoke the legislative authorization for the bulk collection now or at least refuse to renew it when it expires in 2015. Mr. Sensenbrenner interrupted James Cole, a deputy attorney general, to say, “Unless you realize you’ve got a problem, that is not going to be renewed.”

Wednesday’s hearing was part of a counteroffensive emerging against the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance since the scope of the spying operations was exposed by Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor.

A coalition of Silicon Valley companies and civil liberties groups plans to press President Obama on Thursday to disclose more information about the agency’s surveillance operations so that Americans can have a more informed public debate. Much of the controversy involves the agency’s bulk collection of telephone data, which includes which numbers have called other numbers and time and length of calls, but not the content.

 In a letter to top administration officials, the group will ask that the government start opening up the surveillance process by allowing companies to publicly disclose the number of secret requests for data they receive from the N.S.A., the number of individuals the requests cover, and whether the requests involve the content of communications or other data, according to a draft of the letter and interviews with officials from the companies and organizations involved.

 The group, which includes Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter, and organizations including the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundationand the American Civil Liberties Union, urge in their letter that the government publish the same information, and that Congress should enact new legislation mandating greater openness in the surveillance process. 

  The letter does not demand an end to the domestic surveillance. But it is still significant because it allies the corporations that are directly involved with the government’s surveillance collection with some of the most vocal critics of the administration’s efforts to keep the N.S.A. domestic spying program in the shadows.  Microsoft sent a similar letter on its own to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

The coalition letter also comes as momentum is building in Congress to require greater public disclosure on the programs. “I am beginning to see a lot of Republicans fight on this issue,” Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat and member of the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview. “I think the situation is extremely fluid, but I know a lot of people are interested in doing something.”

Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, said in an interview that he planned to introduce legislation mandating public disclosure along the same lines as the recommendations in the coalition’s letter, while Representative Rick Larsen, a Washington Democrat, said in an interview that he was planning to introduce similar legislation in the House on Thursday.

On Tuesday, Mr. Sensenbrenner and Representative Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat who is the ranking minority member on the judiciary panel, sent a letter to Mr. Holder and James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, also asking that the companies be allowed to disclose more information publicly about government demands for data.

Mr. Sensenbrenner released a letter Wednesday from the Justice Department, defending the scope and the legality of the government’s surveillance operations. The department said that it was necessary for the N.S.A. to collect such large volumes of domestic telephone data to perform the analysis necessary to identify suspected terrorist activity.

Mr. Franken said that he believed the administration now agreed that there needed to be greater public debate and disclosure, even though the White House has continued to defend the secret programs. “I think that if there were greater transparency, Americans would have a better understanding of these programs,” he said.

While prominent Internet companies are pushing for fuller disclosure, some of the nation’s largest telecommunications firms were not willing to sign on, according to several people involved in the coalition. Some of those businesses have previously received legal immunity from Congress for their involvement with the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, and have close and longstanding ties to the N.S.A.

But the Silicon Valley Internet firms that did sign did so because they are increasingly concerned that the N.S.A. controversy that erupted in the wake of Mr. Snowden’s disclosures could damage their credibility, particularly with customers overseas.

“The commercial issue is whether people around the world are going to trust American Internet companies with their data,” said Andrew McLaughlin, the chief executive of Digg, a social news Web site, and a former White House Internet policy adviser in the Obama administration. “If you are in the government in Germany, you might think twice about using an American company as your cloud partner. You might see American companies not winning those kinds of contracts.”

Scott Shane contributed reporting
.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/opinion/the-senate-clings-to-the-filibuster.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 8:11 AM
Subject: re: The Senate Clings to the Filibuster
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   We have long known that Harry Reid boxed in his earlier days. Only now does he evince a flair for bridge as well.  For years, the senate has been paralyzed by the mere threat of a Republican filibuster. Now, Harry has learned to get his way by the mere threat of filibuster reform. It is a tool that he should use again and again. This time, we win the confirmation of Richard Cordray. Next time, maybe we'll bring the Federal bench up to fighting strength. And if at last the Republicans balk, he should carry out the threat. Then we'll get filibuster reform. And that will be a win, too.

Barry Haskell Levine

EDITORIAL

The Senate Clings to the Filibuster

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Published: July 16, 2013 CommentER

For Richard Cordray, who has waited for two years to be permanently appointed as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the wait is over. He was confirmed on Tuesday,after a deal was reached to avoid a ban on filibusters on presidential nominations. Senate Republicans agreed to allow the up-or-down vote on his nomination, as well as on six other appointments.

That’s a great relief to the bureau, which can now operate without a political sword over its head, and to the National Labor Relations Board and the Export-Import Bank, which were also promised a working quorum of members as part of the deal. The threat made by the majority leader, Harry Reid, to change the Senate’s filibuster rules ended the current crisis by persuading Senator John McCain and other mainstream Republicans to give in and allow President Obama votes on his nominations. (Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, showed how little he deserves that title by voting to continue a filibuster on Mr. Cordray and staying out of the deal, leaving the real leadership to more sensible members of his caucus.)

But there is always another crisis to come. That’s why it’s regrettable that Mr. Reid and the Democrats didn’t vote to change the rules for this Senate and for a future one controlled by Republicans. They should have stood up for the principle that simple-majority votes should determine confirmation of executive appointments, not a 60-vote threshold that gives minority parties a veto over a president’s team and that was unintended by the Constitution.

The deal will allow simple-majority confirmation votes for Gina McCarthy and Thomas Perez to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and the Labor Department, respectively. It will allow a vote for Fred Hochberg to be confirmed again as president of the Export-Import Bank. Mark Pearce, the chairman of the labor-relations board, would also get a reappointment vote.

If Mr. Obama agrees to pull two other nominees to the board — Richard Griffin and Sharon Block — whom Republicans have been blocking since 2011, he will be guaranteed votes on replacements of his choice. That will keep the labor board operating for years, but it’s an unfortunate bit of blackmail that Republicans needed for backing down on everything else. The two nominees were eminently qualified for their jobs, but have been caught up in a lawsuit over the question of whether their recess appointments by Mr. Obama are constitutional. Of course, if they hadn’t been filibustered in 2011, the lawsuit would never have come about.

Will this agreement hold for the next round of appointments? Democrats say that is implicit in their victory and that Republicans will no longer be able to summon 41 votes to block a nominee. But that sounds overconfident. Within a few weeks, Mr. Obama will nominate someone to lead the Homeland Security Department and may have a chance to name a new chairman of the Federal Reserve. If Democrats are forced, once again, to threaten a change in the rules to get votes for those nominations, they may wish they had established a more durable principle this week by ending the nominations filibuster for good
.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/world/middleeast/israel-airstrike-targeted-advanced-missiles-that-russia-sold-to-syria-us-says.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sun, Jul 14, 2013 at 8:04 AM
Subject: re: Israel Airstrike Targeted Advanced Missiles That Russia Sold to Syria, U.S. Says
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   It is long established in American law that--when one class of citizen (hereinafter "Blacks") is routinely apprehended and punished for a transgression that is ignored in others (hereinafter "Whites")--there is a pattern of discrimination that can itself be the matter of a criminal prosecution. Yet that is exactly what this Obama administration has established in matters of State Secrets. White leakers (of Valerie Plame's identity, of the bombers in Latakia...) are not pursued while Black leakers face solitary confinement and exile.

   America has a secrecy problem. The electorate is not allowed to know enough of the nation's business to exercise its sovereignty meaningfully.  The fix for that is not to dribble out selective items to apply tactical pressure on our allies. The fix is to trust the People. Or drop the sham of a Republic.

Barry Haskell Levine

Israel Airstrike Targeted Advanced Missiles That Russia Sold to Syria, U.S. Says

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

Published: July 13, 2013 — Israel carried out an air attack in Syria this month that targeted advanced antiship cruise missiles sold to the Syria government by Russia, American officials said Saturday.

The officials, who declined to be identified because they were discussing intelligence reports, said the attack occurred July 5 near Latakia, Syria’s principal port city. The target was a type of missile called the Yakhont, they said.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, declined to comment on the strike, as did George Little, the Pentagon spokesman.

The Russian-made weapon has been a particular worry for the Pentagon because it expanded Syria’s ability to threaten Western ships that could be used to transport supplies to the Syrian opposition, enforce a shipping embargo or support a possible no-flight zone.

The missile also represented a threat to Israel’s naval forces and raised concerns that it might be provided to Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that has joined the war on the side of the Syrian government.

The attack against the missiles came to light after Syrian rebels said that they were not responsible for large explosions at Latakia on July 5, and that a missile warehouse had been hit. American officials did not provide details on the extent of the damage or the number of missiles struck.

Israeli officials have said they would not take sides in the civil war in Syria, but they have made it clear that Israel is prepared to carry out airstrikes to prevent sophisticated weapons from being diverted to Hezbollah.

The strike near Latakia, first reported by CNN, was the fourth known Israeli air attack against targets in Syria this year.

Israel has a longstanding policy of silence on pre-emptive military strikes. In October, Israeli officials declined to discuss reports that Israeli airstrikes had destroyed a weapons factory in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital. Israel has also never acknowledged bombing a nuclear reactor in 2007 that was under construction in Syria.

While the Obama administration has been cautious about getting involved militarily in the Syria crisis, the Israeli attack this month underscored how the conflict has continued to draw in outside powers. Iran has been ferrying weapons to Damascus on flights that pass through Iraq’s airspace and has sent members of its paramilitary Quds Force to help the Assad government.

Thousands of Hezbollah fighters have gone to Syria to fight alongside Syrian government forces, as have Iraqi Shiite fighters, with the strong encouragement of Iran. Russia has continued to supply arms to the Syrian government.

On the other side of the conflict, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have provided weapons to the rebels. The United States has provided “nonlethal” military aid, including food and medical kits, and pledged to expand support to the armed wing of the opposition.

In late January, Israel carried out an airstrike against a weapons convoy that carried Russian-made SA-17 surface-to-air missiles, which Israeli officials believed were to be provided to Hezbollah.

In May, Israeli warplanes conducted two days of airstrikes. Among the targets was a shipment from Iran of Fateh-110 missiles, surface-to-surface missiles able to strike Tel Aviv from southern Lebanon. American officials say the Israelis carried out their airstrikes by launching air-to-ground weapons from planes outside of Syrian airspace.

The Russian decision to deliver the Yakhont missile prompted objections from the Pentagon. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned in May that it would “embolden the regime.”

For Israel, it represented a serious danger as well. In July 2006, an antiship missile fired by Hezbollah seriously damaged an Israeli ship off the coast of Lebanon.

The Yakhont system is far more sophisticated than the one used in the July 2006 attack, and in recent months there has been speculation that the Yakhont cache in Syria would be Israel’s next target.

During a visit to an army base last week, Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, restated Israel’s approach to the Syrian conflict: that it would not get involved except to stop weapons transfers. “We have established red lines when it comes to our own interests, and we are sticking to them,” he said.

Jodi Rudoren contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.