Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 22. september 2004 / Timeline September 22, 2004
Version 3.521. September 2004, 23. September 2004
09/22/2004
EU vil ophæve våbenembargo mod Libyen
EU-landene nåede onsdag til enighed om at ophæve en
våbenembargo mod Libyen efter pres fra Italien, som siger, at
det nordafrikanske land har brug for bedre militært udstyr
for at stoppe illegal indvandring.
Ritzaus Bureau: EU vil ophæve våbenembargo mod
Libyen. I: kristeligt Dagblad, 09/22/2004.
09/22/2004
Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission Act;
Hudson-Fulton-Champlain Commission Act
Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission Act On 22 September 2004 the
House of Representatives passed the Civil War Sesquicentennial
Commission Act (H.R. 2449). The bill establishes a 25-member
commission that will plan, develop, and carry out programs and
activities that commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.
The commission is charged to cooperate and assist states and
national organizations to ensure a suitable national observance of
the sesquicentennial. The bill authorizes an expenditure of up to
$200,000 a year through 2016. There is also a special provision
authorizing $3.5 million to the National Endowment for the
Humanities for grants to universities, museums, and academic
programs with a national scope "that sponsor multi-disciplinary
projects, including those that concentrate on the role of African
Americans in the Civil War.", writes NCH WASHINGTONUPDATE.
09/22/2004
9 former and current US and UK government employees issue letter
supporting Danish whistleblower Frank Grevil
Unless otherwise noted, all signatories can be contacted through
michael@ellsberg.net
Frank Grevil¹s press contact is: Tom Clark
tclark@tiscali.dk
home (+45) 4444 1343
work (+45) 4452 6447
mobile (+45) 4095 0574 or (+45) 6062 1763
The following letter was posted on www.truthtellingproject.org
today:
OPEN LETTER TO THE DANISH GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC
We, the undersigned citizens of the United States and the United
Kingdom, have recently come to learn of the criminal proceedings
against our Danish fellow truth-teller, Mr. Frank Grevil.
As his case has been presented to us, Mr. Grevil is formally being
accused of leaking three classified "threat assessments" to a
Danish newspaper in January/February 2004, in order to substantiate
claims made verbatim to the same newspaper. These documents
demonstrated that his employer at the time, the Danish Defense
Intelligence Service, provided unbalanced intelligence on Iraqi
weapons of mass destruction prior to the decision of the Danish
Parliament to join the so-called "Coalition of the Willing" in
March 2003. These documents also showed how the Service its threat
assessments almost entirely upon similar assessments provided by
intelligence agencies in the United States and the United Kingdom,
the content of which later turned out to be based on bad
intelligence and in some cases even fabricated information.
We have learned that the Danish Parliament has recently taken
actions to enhance parliamentary control over the intelligence
service, which are clearly attributable to Mr. Grevil's
revelations. This lends great credibility to his claims, which
deserve in our opinion credit for serving the public interest
rather than punishment.
What Mr. Grevil has undertaken reflects in many ways what we have
done in our respective countries. With this letter, we want to draw
attention to the important role that unauthorized truth-telling
plays in a democratic state. In our experience, the proper chain of
command often does not work to correct corruption, crimes, lies,
cover-ups, or incompetence within state agencies. Disclosing
documents without authorization is frequently the only way to
expose these abuses or to substantiate verbal allegations about
them to the press.
We strongly recommend reevaluating Mr. Grevil's case on the basis
that his deed was done unselfishly and conscientiously, in order to
strengthen democracy, and government transparency, and true
national security.
SIGNATORIES
John H. Brown, Former Foreign Service Officer
Sibel Edmonds, Former Language Specialist, Federal Bureau of
Investigation
Daniel Ellsberg, Former official, U.S. Departments of Defense and
State
Katharine Gun, Former translator, GCHG, UK
Larry Johnson, Former Deputy Director for Anti-Terrorism
Assistance, Transportation Security, and Special Operations,
Department of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counter
Terrorism
Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatowski (karen@militaryweek.com), recently
retired from service in the Pentagon¹s Office of Near East
planning
Ray McGovern, Former Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency
Coleen Rowley, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation.
(Clarification of Coleen Rowley's Signature: "I have signed this
letter in support of Danish Major Frank Grevil in my personal
capacity and not as a representative of the FBI. I wish to further
clarify my view that the propriety of 'unauthorized disclosures,'
such as the one Major Grevil made, is limited to only the narrowest
of circumstances, to dire situations involving truly unlawful,
unconstitutional or deceptive actions on the part of higher
government officials entailing life and death consequences, for
example, the My Lai massacre or the Abu Ghraib torture incidents.
In less serious situations, I believe that the proper and most
constructive way of bringing concerns and problems to light is
through chain of command and other institutional mechanisms such as
Inspector Generals.")
Philip G. Vargas, Ph.D., J.D., Former Director, Privacy &
Confidentiality Study, Commission on Federal Paperwork
SIGNATORY BIOS
JOHN BROWN (JohnHBrown30@hotmail.com) was a member of the U.S.
Foreign Service from 1981 until March 10, 2003 and has served in
London, Prague, Krakow, Kiev, Belgrade and Moscow. His recent
articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation and The
Moscow Times. He is currently working on a book, "Propaganda and
U.S..Foreign Policy," a historical overview of the topic.
SIBEL EDMONDS worked as a language specialist for the FBI's
Washington Field Office. During her work with the bureau, she
discovered and reported serious acts of security breaches,
cover-ups, and intentional blocking of intelligence that had
national security implications. After she reported these acts to
FBI management, she was fired in March 2002. Since then, court
proceedings on her issues have been blocked by the assertion of
"State Secret Privilege" by Attorney General Ashcroft; the Congress
of the United States has been gagged and prevented from any
discussion of her case through retroactive re-classification by the
Department of Justice; and the report on her case issued by the
Department of Justice Inspector General has been entirely
classified. Ms. Edmonds is fluent in Turkish, Farsi, and
Azerbaijani, and has an MA in Public Policy and International
Commerce from George Mason University GMU, and a BA in Criminal
Justice and Psychology from George Washington University.
DANIEL ELLSBERG is a lecturer, writer and activist on the dangers
of the nuclear era and unlawful interventions. He is best known for
releasing publicly the Pentagon Papers, the 7,000-page Top Secret
McNamara study of U.S. Decision-making in Vietnam, to the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee in 1969 and to the New York Times,
Washington Post and 17 other newspapers in 1971. His trial, on
twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was
dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against
him, which led to the convictions of several White House aides and
figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon.
Ellsberg joined the Defense Department in 1964 as Special Assistant
to Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs)
John McNaughton, working on Vietnam. He transferred to the State
Department in 1965 to serve two years at the U.S. Embassy in
Saigon. He started his career as a strategic analyst at the RAND
Corporation, and consultant to the Department of Defense and the
White House, specializing in problems of the command and control of
nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision-making and
returned there in 1967.
KATHARINE GUN worked as a translator for the British equivalent of
the National Security Agency. When she saw a memorandum from NSA
indicating that NSA and her agency were ³surging² their
intercept capability against UN Security Council members as yet
undecided on the resolution for war, she decided that this was an
illegal way to promote an illegal war and gave the story to the
press. In doing so, she risked two years in prison under the
Official Secrets Act. In the end, she walked free because her
defense was based on the defense of necessity and the UK government
was unwilling to share the UK Attorney General Lord
Goldsmith¹s opinions on the legality of the war.
RAY MCGOVERN worked for 27years as a career analyst in the CIA
spanning administrations from John F. Kennedy to George H. W. Bush.
He is now co-director of the Servant Leadership School, which
provides training and other support for those seeking ways to be in
relationship with the marginalized poor.
In January 2003, McGovern, along with other intelligence community
alumni/ae, created Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Through VIPS, he has written and spoken extensively about
intelligence-related issues and appeared in several documentaries
including "Uncovered: The Truth About the Iraq War" (Robert
Greenwald) and "Break the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on
Terror" (John Pilger).
McGovern¹s duties at CIA included chairing National
Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President's Daily Brief
(PDB). These, the most authoritative genres of intelligence
reporting, have been the focus of press reporting on "weapons of
mass destruction" in Iraq and on what the president was told before
9/11. During the mid-eighties, he was one of the senior analysts
conducting early morning briefings of the PDB one-on-one with the
Vice President, the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs, and the Assistant to the President for
National Security Affairs.
COLEEN ROWLEY was appointed a Special Agent with the FBI in 1981
and initially served in the Omaha, Nebraska and Jackson,
Mississippi Divisions. In 1984 she was assigned to the New York
Office and for about 7 years, where she worked on Italian Organized
Crime (specifically the Colombo Family of the LCN) and Sicilian
heroin drug investigations (some of the latter "Pizza Connection"
cases). During this time she served three separate Temporary Duty
Assignments as an Assistant Legal Attache in the Paris, France
Embassy and the Montreal Consulate.
In 1990 I received an "Office of Preference" transfer to
Minneapolis where she assumed the duties of Principal Legal Advisor
(now known as "Chief Division Counsel") which entailed oversight of
the Freedom of Information, Forfeiture, Victim-Witness and the
Community Outreach Programs as well as providing regular legal
training to FBI Agents of the Division and some outside police
training.
In April, 2003, following an unsuccessful and highly criticized
attempt to warn the Director and other administration officials
about the dangers of launching the war in Iraq, Rowley "stepped
down" from this (GS-14) legal position to go back to being a
(GS-13) FBI Special Agent. She has also begun to speak publicly on
the topic of ethics and ethical decision-making to various groups,
ranging from school children and business people to lawyers.
(Please see Rowley's clarification of her participation in this
letter, posted with her signature above.)
PHILIP VARGAS was appointed to a major US Congressional Commission
on Federal Paperwork in 1977. A report he and his staff prepared
was approved by agency commissioners and officials and had the
strong support of his supervisor, containing important and critical
information of costly waste and improper activities within the US
federal governmental system. This report was suppressed by the
Commission¹s Executive Director and his deputy..Vargas
delivered a copy to the President and Vice President at the White
House, and to other public officials and associations.
As a consequence, Dr. Vargas was summarily dismissed from his
position, though he carried out his responsibilities in accordance
with his agency's mandate and the US government's own Code of
Ethics. Vargas says: "I believe that citizens must have access to
the information of their government in order to be able to
participate meaningfully in the democratic process. I believe that
government secrecy is pervasive and that secrecy is the enemy of
democracy and freedom the more secrecy the less democracy and
the less freedom. For defending those basic democratic principles I
have paid a heavy price. But I would do it again if I had to."
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