Iraq ‘regrets’ US decision to clear Blackwater guards

BBC | Jan 1, 2010

Iraq has criticised a US judge’s dismissal of all charges against guards from US security firm Blackwater over the killing of 17 Iraqis in 2007.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said an Iraqi investigation showed the men had committed a “serious crime” and Baghdad would seek to prosecute them.

The five had all pleaded not guilty to manslaughter. A sixth guard admitted killing at least one Iraqi.

The judge dismissed the charges against the guards over procedural errors.

District Judge Ricardo Urbina said the US justice department had used evidence prosecutors were not supposed to have.

Mr al-Dabbagh said the Iraqi government “regrets and is disappointed by the US court’s decision”.

“Inquiries carried out by the Iraqi government clearly confirm that the Blackwater guards committed a crime and used weapons when there was no threat necessitating the use of force,” he said.

He said Iraq would “act forcefully and decisively to prosecute the Blackwater criminals”.

The Iraqi human rights minister, Wejdan Mikhail, said she was “astonished” by the US move.

“There was so much work done to prosecute these people and to take this case into court and I don’t understand why the judge took this decision,” the AFP news agency quoted her as saying.

The commander of US forces in Iraq, Gen Ray Odierno, said the court’s decision could create local resentment against other security firms operating in the country.

“Of course we’re upset when we believe that people might have caused a crime and they are not held accountable,” Reuters quoted him as saying.

The killings, which took place in Nisoor Square, Baghdad, strained Iraq’s relationship with the US and raised questions about US contractors operating in war zones.

A man whose son died in the incident said he was surprised to hear the guards had been acquitted.

“But what can we do? We cannot do anything with the US government and their law,” he told Reuters.

Lawyers for the five guards say they were acting in self-defence, but witnesses and family members of those killed maintain that the shooting on 16 September 2007 was unprovoked.

A civil case against Blackwater brought by Iraqis – including relatives of some of the Nisoor Square victims – is still before a Virginia court.

It alleges that Blackwater employees engaged in indiscriminate killings.

Expecting justice, Iraqis get bitter shock as judge throws out Blackwater shooting case

CP | Jan 1, 2010

By Rebecca Santana

BAGHDAD — Iraqis seeking justice for 17 people shot dead at a Baghdad intersection responded with bitterness and outrage Friday at a U.S. judge’s decision to throw out a case against a Blackwater security team accused in the killings.

The Iraqi government vowed to pursue the case, which became a source of contention between the U.S. and the Iraqi government. Many Iraqis also held up the judge’s decision as proof of what they’d long believed: U.S. security contractors were above the law.

“There is no justice,” said Bura Sadoun Ismael, who was wounded by two bullets and shrapnel during the shooting. “I expected the American court would side with the Blackwater security guards who committed a massacre in Nisoor Square.”

What happened on Nisoor Square on Sept. 16, 2007, raised Iraqi concerns about their sovereignty because Iraqi officials were powerless to do anything to the Blackwater employees who had immunity from local prosecution. The shootings also highlighted the degree to which the U.S. relied on private contractors during the Iraq conflict.

Blackwater had been hired by the State Department to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq. The guards said they were ambushed at a busy intersection in western Baghdad, but U.S. prosecutors and many Iraqis said the Blackwater guards let loose an unprovoked attack on civilians using machine-guns and grenades.

“Investigations conducted by specialized Iraqi authorities confirmed unequivocally that the guards of Blackwater committed the crime of murder and broke the rules by using arms without the existence of any threat obliging them to use force,” Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement Friday.

He did not elaborate on what steps the government planned to take to pursue the case.

The shootings led the Iraqi government to strip the North Carolina-based company of its license to work in the country, and Blackwater replaced its management and changed its name to Xe Services.

Five guards from the company were charged in the case with manslaughter and weapons violations. The charges carried mandatory 30-year prison terms, but a federal judge Friday dismissed all the charges.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina cited repeated government missteps in the investigation, saying that prosecutors built their case on sworn statements that the guards had given with the idea that they would be immune from prosecution.

That explanation held little sway with Iraqis outraged over the case.

Dr. Haitham Ahmed’s wife and son were both killed in their car during the shooting.

“The rights of our victims and the rights of the innocent people should not be wasted,” he said.

Iraqis have followed the case closely and said the judge’s decision demonstrated that the Americans were considered above the law.

“I was not astonished by the verdict because the trial was unreal. They are using double standards and talking about human rights, but they are the first to violate these rights. They are killing innocents deliberately,” said Ahmed Jassim, a civil engineer in the southern city of Najaf.

Dozens of Iraqis have filed a separate lawsuit alleging that Blackwater employees engaged in indiscriminate killings and beatings. That civil case was not affected by Urbina’s decision and is still before a Virginia court.

Mohammed al-Kinani, whose son was killed, said he had been invited once to the U.S. by the Justice Department as a witness but said he went two more times after that to follow the case.

“I will not despair,” he said.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the commanding general in Iraq, said he understood that people would be upset with the decision.

“Of course people are not going to like it, because they believe that these individuals conducted some violence and should be punished for it, but the bottom line is, using the rule of law, the evidence is not there,” he said. “I worry about it because clearly there were innocent people killed in this attack.”

Of all the private security companies that mushroomed in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion, Blackwater was the most well-known and vilified.

Their employees were at the centre of what is considered one of the key moments of the war. A vehicle with four Blackwater employees driving through the western city of Fallujah, a centre of the Sunni insurgency, was hit by gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades in March 2004. Their charred, mutilated bodies were dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates river.

The bloody incident was one of the key reasons the U.S. military attacked Fallujah in April 2004.

Another Blackwater guard, Andrew Moonen, was accused by the family of a guard for an Iraqi vice-president of shooting and killing the guard without provocation on Christmas Eve of 2006 after Moonen got drunk at a party in the Green Zone and then got lost. Moonen’s lawyer has described the incident as self-defence.

An October 2007 report by a House of Representatives committee called Blackwater an out-of-control outfit indifferent to Iraqi civilian casualties. Blackwater chairman Erik Prince told the committee that the company acted appropriately at all times.

Were the incident to happen again today, the legal outcome might be much different. The U.S.-Iraqi security pact that took effect Jan. 1, 2009, lifted the immunity that foreign contractors had in Iraq. A British security contractor accused of shooting two colleagues is currently being held in Iraq and could be the first Westerner to face an Iraqi court since the immunity was lifted.

Associated Press Writers Katharine Houreld, Saad Abdul-Kadir and Bushra Juhi contributed to this report.

Blackwater trial: 15 minutes of gunfire which left 17 dead

guardian.co.uk | Jan 1, 2010

by Martin Chulov

When a Blackwater convoy approached Baghdad’s fortified green zone just after midday on 16 September, 2007, the hundreds of Iraqi drivers inching through the choking traffic witnessed a familiar scene.

Iraqi guards waved through three armoured trucks towards a military lane spilling off Nissour Square in the central city. Any private vehicle that even tries to enter is often fired on.

Abdul Wahad Abdul-Kahad remembers grinding to a stop as non-Iraqi guards cleared a path for a second Blackwater convoy. A helicopter hovered overhead.

“It was about noon,” he recalled. ”I heard a bursts of fire enter the car in front of me. It caught fire and a lady and her son were killed. I tried to drive away down the wrong side of the road but they shot at me and hit me in the arm.”

There was screaming and blood all around as Iraqi police and soldiers tried to return fire on the Blackwater guards who had started the shooting.

“The shooting may have continued for 15 minutes,” Abdul-Kahad said. “It’s hard to be sure. I was crouched and bleeding in my car for an hour until Iraqi guards came to rescue me. I still haven’t recovered from what I went through.”

An Iraqi police officer who cleared a path for the first Blackwater crew to enter the square said the shooting had been unprovoked.

“The man in the third car fired three or four shots randomly,” the police officer, Salman, told his American lawyers who provided a videotape of his account to the public broadcaster NPR. He said the first shooter was “big, had a moustache and was white.”

Salman saw the car in front of Abdul Kahad catch fire. “Boom, boom, boom,” he said. “The car had started moving very slowly by itself because it was an automatic car. It was moving toward the square, and at this moment they started shooting the car with big machine guns. And then the car exploded.”

When the scene was cleared, 17 people were dead. Apart from two Iraqi security officers, all were civilians.

The shooting became a flashpoint for a city that had become as fatigued by the excesses of foreign companies as it had by the year’s incessant violence. Resentment boiled over at security company convoys that operated with impunity throughout the lawless streets.

After the shooting, Iraqis took to the airwaves in large numbers to complain about security companies, which they saw as a foreboding presence and, in some ways, a throwback to the Saddam days when the state-sanctioned gun-slingers could shoot at will.

As the violence grew throughout 2004-5, security details rarely hesitated before firing a burst from a machine gun at any car that even inadvertently strayed close. They operated outside the law. But even worse was a strong feeling that the companies operated without respect for Iraqi citizens.

For almost seven years, Iraqis had slammed their brakes at the hulking armoured convoys of security firms that terrified civilians. The most infamous name was Blackwater.

Soon after the fall of Baghdad, security companies arrived in droves seeking the lucrative contracts that were soon to flow in helping raise a state from the post-Saddam ruins.

Blackwater won the lead contract to defend key US government institutions, including the Baghdad Embassy. Its numbers grew rapidly, drawing largely on ex-US military special operations units. At $600 per day, it was fast, if not always easy, money for ex-soldiers used to one third of the salary, worse conditions and often higher risk.

A resentment quickly grew in the highly competitive, macho private security scene that Blackwater operatives were the proletarian guard, the rest were foot soldiers. Blackwater was soon the biggest private army in Iraq and could have laid a claim on being the biggest and most powerful private force anywhere in the world.

“They came and they went, as they should have,” said Rihab Abdul Karim, whose nephew was killed in Nissour Square. “They were arrogant with the power they had. They thought they answered to no-one. And with this verdict, maybe they were right.”

AP: Bomber in CIA attack was not searched, courted as potential informant

Intelligence official says the man was being courted as possible informant

msnbc.com | Jan 1, 2010

KABUL – The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA employees at a remote outpost in southeastern Afghanistan had been invited onto the base and had not been searched, two former U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Thursday.

A former senior intelligence official says the man was being courted as an informant and that it was the first time he had been brought inside the camp. An experienced CIA debriefer came from Kabul for the meeting, suggesting that the purpose was to gain intelligence, the official said.

The former intelligence official and another former official with knowledge of the attack spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The CIA would not confirm the details, and said it was still gathering evidence on the incident.

“It’s far too early to draw conclusions about something that happened just yesterday,” said spokesman George Little.

Blow to tight-knit spy agency

A separate U.S. official suggested the bomber may have set off the explosives as he was about to be searched.

The bombing on Wednesday dealt a blow to the tight-knit spy agency. Among those killed was the chief of the CIA post, whom former officials identified as a mother of three. Six more agency personnel were wounded in what was considered the most lethal attack for the CIA since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001 and possibly even since the 1983 embassy bombing in Beirut.

It also was the single deadliest attack for Americans in Afghanistan since eight soldiers were killed in an insurgent attack on a base in the east on Oct. 3.

President Barack Obama and CIA Director Leon Panetta were joined by several leading lawmakers on Thursday in praising agency employees for their work.

“Those who fell yesterday were far from home and close to the enemy, doing the hard work that must be done to protect our country from terrorism,” Panetta said in a statement confirming the deaths. “We owe them our deepest gratitude, and we pledge to them and their families that we will never cease fighting for the cause to which they dedicated their lives — a safer America.”

In a letter to CIA employees, Obama said their fallen colleagues came from a “long line of patriots” who had helped to keep the nation safe despite grave risks.

Obama acknowledged that the spy agency has been tested “as never before” since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The CIA did not release information about the victims, citing the sensitivity of their mission and other ongoing operations. Harold E. Brown Jr., a State Department employee of Fairfax, Va., died in the attack, his father, Harold E. Brown Sr., told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The younger Brown, 37, who grew up in Bolton, Mass., served in the Army and remained a major in the reserves. He is survived by a wife and three children ages 12, 10 and 2.

Deep bench in Afghanistan

According to one former agency employee, the death toll represents a significant portion of the CIA’s clandestine force in the region, but that many of the agency’s employees have experience in Afghanistan.

“The bench is deeper in Afghanistan than it is anywhere in the world,” the former employee said.

The bigger question for CIA operations will probably be whether the agency moves to tighten safety rules for its employees, the former employee said.

The incident occurred at a former military base on the edge of Khost city, the capital of Khost province which borders Pakistan and is a Taliban stronghold.

Full Story

Report: TSA nominee misled Senate panel

UPI | Jan 1, 2010

WASHINGTON, Jan. 1 (UPI) — The Transportation Security Administration nominee misled U.S. senators about improperly accessing confidential records years ago, documents indicate.

The documents obtained by The Washington Post said TSA nominee Erroll Southers indicated he accepted responsibility for a “grave error in judgment” 20 years ago when he accessed confidential criminal records about his then-estranged wife’s boyfriend, the newspaper reported Friday.

The revelation comes as congressional Democrats press for a quick confirmation of Southers, whose nomination has been blocked by Republicans. Since a failed airline bombing on Christmas, lawmakers have been pressured to put in a permanent chief at TSA, a key agency in enforcing airline security.

The Senate homeland security committee approved Southers’ nomination Nov. 19. The next day, the former FBI agent wrote to committee chairman Sen. Joe Lieberman, Ind-Conn., and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the ranking Republican, saying his account during committee hearings about the incident were incorrect. Southers said in the letter he recalled that he conducted two database searches himself, downloaded confidential law enforcement records about his wife’s boyfriend and passed information on to a police department employee, the Post said.

Accessing such information without proper cause is a violation of the federal Privacy Act.

A spokeswoman for Lieberman said in a statement the senator “believes that Erroll Southers is an outstanding candidate to lead the TSA. Twenty-two years ago, Mr. Southers committed a serious error in judgment. He admitted that error and was disciplined for it.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would work to maneuver around the GOP block to force consideration of the Southers nomination when the Senate returns to Washington later this month.

CIA suicide bomber was invited on base

Telegraph | Dec 31, 2009

The bombing , which came as President Barack Obama’s surge is gathering pace, represented the biggest loss of life suffered by the US intelligence agency since an attack in Beirut in 1983. The CIA said on Thursday a further six agents had been injured in the attack.

On Thursday night it was reported that the bomber had been invited onto the base and had not been searched.

A former senior intelligence official told the Associated Press that the man was being courted as an informant and that it was the first time he had been brought inside the camp.

The official said a senior and experienced CIA debriefer came from Kabul for the meeting, suggesting that the purpose of the session was to gain intelligence.

That official and another former intelligence officer with knowledge of the attack spoke to the news agency on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak publicly.

The CIA would not confirm the details, and said it was still gathering evidence.

“It’s far too early to draw conclusions about something that happened just yesterday,” said spokesman George Little.

A separate US official suggested the bomber may have set off the explosives as he was about to be searched.

The bombing was expected to deal a major psychological blow to the spy agency, if not its ability to collect valuable intelligence on Taliban and al-Qaeda forces operating along Afghanistan’s eastern border with Pakistan.

Western troops accused of executing 10 Afghan civilians, including children

The report into the deaths has provoked demonstrations. (/Ahmad Masood/Reuters)

London Times | Dec 31, 2009

by Jerome Starkey In Kabul

American-led troops were accused yesterday of dragging innocent children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead.

Afghan government investigators said that eight schoolchildren were killed, all but one of them from the same family. Locals said that some victims were handcuffed before being killed.

Western military sources said that the dead were all part of an Afghan terrorist cell responsible for manufacturing improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have claimed the lives of countless soldiers and civilians.

“This was a joint operation that was conducted against an IED cell that Afghan and US officials had been developing information against for some time,” said a senior Nato insider. But he admitted that “the facts about what actually went down are in dispute”.

The allegations of civilian casualties led to protests in Kabul and Jalalabad, with children as young as 10 chanting “Death to America” and demanding that foreign forces should leave Afghanistan at once.

President Karzai sent a team of investigators to Narang district, in eastern Kunar province, after reports of a massacre first surfaced on Monday.

“The delegation concluded that a unit of international forces descended from a plane Sunday night into Ghazi Khan village in Narang district of the eastern province of Kunar and took ten people from three homes, eight of them school students in grades six, nine and ten, one of them a guest, the rest from the same family, and shot them dead,” a statement on President Karzai’s website said.

Assadullah Wafa, who led the investigation, said that US soldiers flew to Kunar from Kabul, suggesting that they were part of a special forces unit.

“At around 1 am, three nights ago, some American troops with helicopters left Kabul and landed around 2km away from the village,” he told The Times. “The troops walked from the helicopters to the houses and, according to my investigation, they gathered all the students from two rooms, into one room, and opened fire.” Mr Wafa, a former governor of Helmand province, met President Karzai to discuss his findings yesterday. “I spoke to the local headmaster,” he said. “It’s impossible they were al-Qaeda. They were children, they were civilians, they were innocent. I condemn this attack.”

In a telephone interview last night, the headmaster said that the victims were asleep in three rooms when the troops arrived. “Seven students were in one room,” said Rahman Jan Ehsas. “A student and one guest were in another room, a guest room, and a farmer was asleep with his wife in a third building.

“First the foreign troops entered the guest room and shot two of them. Then they entered another room and handcuffed the seven students. Then they killed them. Abdul Khaliq [the farmer] heard shooting and came outside. When they saw him they shot him as well. He was outside. That’s why his wife wasn’t killed.”

A local elder, Jan Mohammed, said that three boys were killed in one room and five were handcuffed before they were shot. “I saw their school books covered in blood,” he said.

The investigation found that eight of the victims were aged from 11 to 17. The guest was a shepherd boy, 12, called Samar Gul, the headmaster said. He said that six of the students were at high school and two were at primary school. He said that all the students were his nephews. In Jalalabad, protesters set alight a US flag and an effigy of President Obama after chanting “Death to Obama” and “Death to foreign forces”. In Kabul, protesters held up banners showing photographs of dead children alongside placards demanding “Foreign troops leave Afghanistan” and “Stop killing us”.

Hekmatullah, 10, a protester, said: “We’re sick of Americans bombing us.” Samiullah Miakhel, 60, a protester. said: “The Americans are just all the time killing civilians.”

Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said that there was “no direct evidence to substantiate” Mr Wafa’s claims that unarmed civilians were harmed in what it described as a “joint coalition and Afghan security force” operation.

“As the joint assault force entered the village they came under fire from several buildings and in returning fire killed nine individuals,” he said.

• Eight Americans were killed in an attack in eastern Afghanistan yesterday (Jerome Starkey writes). Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said that the dead were not uniformed soldiers. Afghan sources said that they were civilians killed in a suicide attack on a compound in Khost province. The US Embassy in Kabul said: “Eight Americans have been killed in an attack on RC-East,” referring to the military region of eastern Afghanistan that includes 14 provinces.

Anti-terror drill by Mumbai police triggers panic

Mock drill at mall, panic in vicinity

timesofindia.indiatimes.com | Dec 28, 2009

by Nitasha Natu

MUMBAI: Rumours of a terror attack flew thick and wide as platoons of cops surrounded the Oberoi Mall in Goregaon (E) on Monday morning to conduct a mock drill. Sidewalks were jammed with onlookers, including those who had come down from the extended suburbs to find out if their kin working in the mall were safe. The drill was conducted for two hours, where a total of 250 cops ‘nabbed’ 12 terrorists and ‘rescued’ hostages. By this time, the Western Express Highway at Dindoshi was chock-a-block. Traffic cops had to rush to untangle the mess.

“We had made announcements on loudspeakers, asking people not to panic,” said additional commissioner Ram Pawar.

“The idea was to familiarise our personnel with the topography of the spot. If an actual attack takes place in future, our teams should know how to tackle it. A detailed study was conducted for three days.”

Local police, regional Quick Response Teams and combat mobiles were pressed into action. The area outside the mall was cordoned off and shoppers were escorted out by the mall staff. As part of the mock drill, 12 men posing as terrorists entered the mall, ‘shooting’ people. The 12 ‘terrorists’ took refuge at the third floor of the mall. The police arrived and, along with the mall staff, evacuated the customers. The cops then decided on the best way to tackle the terrorists and finally nabbed them, firing dummy bullets.

But the sound of gunfire only led to motorists panicking further. “Memories of 26/11 came back to me in a flash. I called up home and asked my family to stay put,” said Bharat Trivedi, who was driving down the Goregaon flyover. A middle-aged woman, whose son works at a store in the mall, refused to calm down till the security brought him out to meet her.

“The mall’s role was to ensure that customers remained calm and were led to safety. We also provided bunkers, mall layout plans and security reinforcement to the cops, in addition to a hotline with the Dindoshi police station,” said the mall’s business head Shibu Philips.

_________

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Mumbai attack: Did America keep mum on 26/11?

China Manufacturing Expands

WSJ  | Jan 1, 2010

By J.R. WU

BEIJING — China’s Purchasing Managers Index rose again in December, the ten straight month of expansion in manufacturing activity.

The index rose to 56.6 in December from 55.2 in November, the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing said Friday. A PMI reading above 50 indicates growth, while a reading below 50 indicates contraction.

Key activities of employment, imports and new orders grew, while new export orders fell, although they remained above the expansionary threshold, according to the federation’s data, which compiles the views on the PMI’s 11 component subindexes from more than 700 enterprises in China.

The PMI data suggest China’s economic growth rate in the fourth quarter of 2009 may have been its highest since the onset of the global financial crisis in late 2008.

The December reading shows China’s economic rebound continues to consolidate, but it may still be too soon to be overly optimistic about the trend, said PMI analyst Zhang Liqun in the federation’s statement.

Of the 11 categories that compose the PMI, nine rose, one fell, and one was unchanged in December compared with November.

The new export orders component, an indication of future exports, fell to 52.6 in December from 53.6 in November, the federation said.

Among components that rose, employment reached 52.2 last month, compared to November’s 51.1, while at the same time new orders were up, at 61.0 from 58.4.

The imports component also rose slightly, to 52.5 in December from 52.2 in November. Output was up at 61.4 last month, compared to 59.4 in November.

The federation’s PMI is the first of China’s economic indicators issued every month. China will issue data for its fourth-quarter gross domestic product and other December economic indicators later this month. The country’s quarterly economic year-on-year growth has been steadily rising since the start of 2009, boosted by massive stimulus measures.

Control of Climate Policies by Unaccountable Bureaucracies; The Canadian Example

It involved the role of bureaucrats at Environment Canada (EC) in determining national policy on climate change

canadafreepress.com | Jan 1, 2010

By Dr. Tim Ball

CanadaFreePress published some of this article a few years ago but few saw it because it was quickly pulled after I received a legal threat I was financially unable to fight. Legal threats to silence people are a common practice of supporters of human caused global warming. I related my experience to Dr Fred Singer and he immediately named the lawyer. How did he know? He and others had received threats from the same lawyer.

The threats are part of personal attacks and other tactics perpetrated by nasty web sites like Desmogblog, organized by James Hoggan, Chairman of the Board of the David Suzuki Foundation. William Connolley perpetuated many of the smears through his control of climate entries on Wikipedia. We now know those who were attacked were viewed as real threats by the CRU gang and their supporters at Realclimate.

Now the web of lies and deception associated with climate science are exposed it is time to revisit what triggered the legal attack on the CFP article. It involved the role of bureaucrats at Environment Canada (EC) in determining national policy on climate change, particularly the role of Gordon McBean former Assistant Deputy Minister (ADM). Canadian bureaucrats were more important than most appointed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) about who MIT Meteorology professor and former IPCC member Richard Lindzen wrote, “Most of the 2500 members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are bureaucrats appointed by their governments to push a political agenda.” “It is no small matter that routine weather service functionaries from New Zealand to Tanzania are referred to as ‘the world’s leading climate scientists.’ It should come as no surprise that they will be determinedly supportive of the process.”
Bureaucratic Bastions

Scientists associated with the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) also controlled the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) whose Reports became the bible for politicians developing global energy and economic strategies.  Their corrupted climate science needed a permanent conduit to the politicians. Maurice Strong, mastermind of the IPCC, used his skills with bureaucratic systems and through the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) involved national weather agencies that then controlled politicians. Strong’s close connections to former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin apparently meant early Canadian involvement. It continues as the government web page notes; Environment Canada is a strong supporter of, and an active participant in, the IPCC. Dr. John Stone (Environment Canada, retired), holds a position on the Bureau and Working Group II, Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Art Jaques, Director, Greenhouse Gas Division, Environment Canada, is a member of the Task Force Bureau on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. As well, over 30 Canadian scientists from government, universities and the private sector are participating as authors and editors for the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report. John Stone’s position is critical as the liaison between the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) group and the IPCC. The ACIA Reports are almost the sole source for Arctic coverage in the 2007 IPCC Report.

Years ago, I warned Henry Hengeveld of EC that convincing politicians of global warming due to human production of CO2 was difficult, but twice as difficult once they were convinced. The theory was unproven and total adoption so early placed them on a treadmill of denial. No bureaucrat would risk telling those politicians who adopted it as their political position that it was wrong. EC bought the theory completely. Instead of following scientific method of disproving the hypothesis Environment Canada worked to prove it was correct by ignoring evidence and stifling questioners.

Gordon McBean was the person responsible for the singular and devastating direction the department took.  He came with a PhD and quickly achieved high rank. He brought his political view of environmental issues and particularly global warming expressed in a speech to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1995. He spent his career promoting these views and virtually destroyed the Canadian weather service while wasting billions of dollars. The Auditor General put the cost at $6.8 billion from 1997 to 2005.

McBean also established his post-bureaucratic career by using $61 million of money to set up the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS) a climate research organization that he took over as Chair in the month he retired. This agency only funded research that proved the human caused warming theory or the impact of warming. The current government stopped the funding.

Interestingly, McBean’s bio on Wikipedia makes no mention of his role as a bureaucrat. It does mention he orchestrated a letter with another CRU associate and IPCC member, computer modeler Andrew Weaver, in response to the letter signed by 60 scientists asking the Canadian Prime Minister for an open debate.

Why were they afraid of a debate? They got 90 signatures but the majority were Environment Canada employees or people benefiting from government largess. In the fall of 2008, McBean pushed for more funding. Foundation Chair Gordon McBean met with new Environment Minister Jim Prentice late last fall and walked away hopeful the minister would fight for foundation funding at the budget table. McBean continues as a lead author for the ACIA.

McBean’s influence went beyond his role with EC. He was a principal participant in the formation of the IPCC and chaired the preliminary meeting in Villach, Austria in 1985 attended by the CRU leaders Jones and Wigley. Canadian appointees to the IPCC always excluded most Canadian experts, a situation that continues today. He directed department funding and resources into studying global warming, but only to prove the hypothesis. I realized what was going on years ago when they spent $300 million on a computer incapable of simulating global climate or climate change.

To cover these wastes they took money from other programs that now make any hope of good science impossible. There are fewer weather stations in Canada now than in 1960, and many were replaced with Automatic Weather Observing Stations (AWOS). Many important activities and data collection practices were abandoned. When I chaired the Assiniboine River Management Advisory Board (ARMAB) in Manitoba the worst flood on record occurred. We asked Water Resources why they didn’t forecast the event. They said they had no data on the amount of water in the snow in the valley.  We learned EC had canceled flights that used special radar to determine water content. Savings as I recall were $26,000. The cost of unexpected flood damage was $7 million to one level of government alone. Loss of weather data means long continuous records essential to any climate studies will fail. This data cannot be replaced or replicated.

Another egregious example of ECs failure was cancellation of support for a joint program with the National Museum of Canada in the 1980s and 1990s. Run under the auspices of the National Museum of Natural Sciences it was titled “Climatic Change in Canada During the Past 20,000 years.” This program brought together a multitude of experts in all different aspects of climate and climate reconstruction and produced volumes of collected papers that put Canada in the forefront of climate research and reconstruction. To my knowledge none of these experts was called to testify before Parliamentary hearings on Kyoto or were appointed to the IPCC. EC deliberately excluded Canadian climate experts ‚Äì something that continues to this day. Although climate change became political the unaccountable bureaucrats at Environment Canada controlled it.

They took the singular and unsupportable position that climate change due to human CO2 was fact. It put them on the treadmill I warned Henry Hengeveld about. They thwarted the standard method of science to disprove a theory. They deliberately excluded experts who challenged the science. When Natural Resources Minister David Anderson said they had consulted all Canadian climate experts on the Kyoto Accord, I traveled to Ottawa with seven others and in a press forum announced we were never consulted. They used all the power and vehicles of government to promote their false claims to the public. The EC web site continued to carry the ‘hockey stick’ graph long after it was discredited among other erroneous information. A wider problem was all other government agencies had to accept their claims as the basis for their policies and planning. The inclusion of so many bureaucrats in the IPCC almost guarantees that similar situations occurred in most other governments.