| September 23, 2004 | - After maintaining for three years that Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen captured in Afghanistan, was so grave a threat to the United States that merely permitting him to meet with his lawyer would fatally compromise national security, the Bush Administration (having been told by Justice Antonin Scalia that "the very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive") declined to defend its case against Hamdi in open court and announced that he will be stripped of his citizenship and released in Saudi Arabia.
| Source:
Boston Globe, Washington Post, ZNet
|
| December 11, 2001 | - A maximum-security prison in Waupun, Wisconsin, appointed a witch to serve as a volunteer chaplain.
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| November 20, 2001 | -
Congress finally passed a bill to nationalize airport security; 28,000 federal passenger and baggage screeners will be deployed within a year.
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| November 20, 2001 | - House Republicans insisted that some airports be given the option to hire private security companies after three years.
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| November 13, 2001 | - Employees of Argenbright Security, the airport security firm, were fired after they let a man carrying seven knives, a stun gun, and pepper spray through a security checkpoint in Chicago.
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| November 13, 2001 | - Another passenger jet crashed in New York City; Congress was still haggling over whether to nationalize airport security.
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| November 6, 2001 | -
Congress continued to debate whether to nationalize airport security; antigovernment Republicans, including President Bush, oppose the plan as an unwarranted expansion of federal power.
| |
| October 30, 2001 | - Some died; others were upset that their security had been completely overlooked by federal officials.
| |
| October 16, 2001 | - The major American television networks agreed, out of patriotism, they said, to a request by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice not to broadcast future statements by Osama bin Laden; Rice said she was concerned about secret messages being communicated to “sleeper” terrorists in the United States but did not reveal how she would prevent such evil-doers from viewing the speech via the Internet or satellite television.
| |
| October 16, 2001 | - House Republicans were opposing legislation that would federalize national airport security because they didn't want to see an increase in the federal payroll.
| |
| October 16, 2001 | - Argenbright Holdings Ltd., an airport security contractor, was in trouble again for hiring convicted felons to screen passengers at Philadelphia International Airport; the company, which last year was fined $1.2 million and placed on probation for a related offense, has also committed major violations at La Guardia, Logan, Dulles, Los Angeles, and Reagan National airports.
| |
| October 2, 2001 | -
Republicans were arguing that drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was now a matter of national security.
| |
| September 4, 2001 | - Gideon Ezra, Israel's deputy minister for internal security, had a bright new idea for fighting
terrorism: kill the families of people who kill Israelis.
| |
| August 28, 2001 | - The Bush Administration announced that by next month the government surplus, excluding Social Security, will be closer to $600 million than the $122 billion it calculated back in April.
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| August 14, 2001 | -
President George W. Bush defended his monthlong Texas vacation after a poll showed a majority of Americans disapproved: “I'm working on lots of issues,” he said. “National security matters.”
| |
| July 10, 2001 | -
Israel's
security cabinet decided that it would continue to use death squads to eliminate suspected Palestinian
terrorists.
| |
| July 3, 2001 | - A large hippopotamus killed a security guard on a golf course in Johannesburg, South Africa.
| |
| May 29, 2001 | - An honors student in Fort Myers, Florida, was suspended and banned from her graduation after a school
security guard found a kitchen knife in her car; the young woman, who spent the weekend in jail on a felony weapons-possession charge, tried to explain that the knife was left there accidentally after she moved house over the weekend.
| |
| May 22, 2001 | -
Israeli
security forces assassinated five Palestinian soldiers as they prepared a late-night snack, which was a mistake, as it turned out, since the intended targets were stationed in another guardhouse nearby.
| |
| May 22, 2001 | - The Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot observed that “only a revenge-seeking fool could believe that eliminations and missile fire, the demolition of neighborhoods, the killing of soldiers and civilians and the destruction of homes could restore personal calm and security.” A Palestinian
suicide bomber killed ten Israelis and wounded 100 others at a shopping mall; Israel responded with F-16 air strikes.
| |
| May 8, 2001 | -
Israeli
security forces using tanks and bulldozers destroyed a Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza; a spokesman described the action as “engineering work.” Segregation was on the rise in American cities, according to new census figures.
| |
| March 13, 2001 | - The new Israeli government of national unity under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was preparing to introduce legislation that would legalize the torture of Palestinian prisoners; such torture was legal in Israel until 1984, and until 1999, Shin Bet, the domestic security service, was allowed to use “moderate physical pressure” during interrogations.
| |
| March 6, 2001 | -
Israeli
security forces killed six Palestinians over the weekend, including a forty-three-year-old mother and a nine-year-old boy.
| |
| February 27, 2001 | -
Israeli
security forces assassinated a leader of the militant Hamas movement.
| |
| February 20, 2001 | -
Russia's Federal Security Service, the heir to the KGB, said it would once again investigate anonymous accusations against Russian citizens, a practice banned by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988.
| |
| February 20, 2001 | - A Palestinian
security officer was sentenced to die for collaborating with the occupying Israeli security forces.
| |
| February 20, 2001 | -
Israel
assassinated a Palestinian
security official; Prime Minister Ehud Barak congratulated the army on a job well done.
| |
| January 30, 2001 | - A man with no security clearance managed to walk right up to President George W. Bush in the Capitol and shake his hand; the same man did the same thing at President Bill Clinton's second inaugural.
| |
| November 14, 2000 | -
Zimbabwe's supreme court declared that the recent seizures of white-owned farms were illegal and ordered the government to evict black squatters occupying the farms; the government, which has ignored two previous court orders on the subject, said there was “no going back.” Indonesian troops in Aceh, on the island of Sumatra, were killing civilians suspected of collaborating with rebels; bodies of men arrested by security forces routinely turn up dead, mutilated, dismembered.
| |
| October 31, 2000 | -
Republican partisans were running a knock-off of the famous “Daisy” commercial used by LBJ against Barry Goldwater in 1964; the ad claimed that Clinton and Gore sold the nation's security to the Red Chinese.
| |
| October 31, 2000 | -
Russian hackers penetrated Microsoft's computer network using a well-known Trojan attack and for six weeks had access to the company's internal computer records, including the source code of some programs; the security breach was discovered only when system administrators noticed passwords being emailed to an address in St.
| |
| September 19, 2000 | - There were reports that former CIA director John Deutch, who was recently accused of downloading classified CIA material (including information about covert operations) to his personal, unsecured computer, also violated security rules by downloading classified material when he worked at the Pentagon.
| |
| September 19, 2000 | - Auditors gave seven out of twenty-four government agencies a failing grade for computer security; overall the government received a D-.
| |
| September 12, 2000 | - The leaders of Aryan Nations, a white supremacist
cult in Idaho, were ordered by a jury to pay $6.3 million in damages to a woman and her son who were beaten by Aryan Nations security guards; after the verdict, Richard Girnt Butler, the pastor of Aryan Nations, said: “This is nothing. We have planted seeds.”
| |
| September 12, 2000 | - A Pentagon
security gate popped up and wrecked a car carrying the German
defense minister; two years ago the same thing happened to the Japanese defense minister.
| |
| August 29, 2000 | - Deutch's security violations were discovered in 1995; Janet Reno initially had decided not to prosecute him.
| |
| August 15, 2000 | -
New York
Police Commissioner Howard Safir, who suffers from prostate cancer, said that he would resign to take a job with a private security firm.
| |
| August 15, 2000 | - The Archdiocese of Guatemala issued a report on the abduction of children during the country's 36-year civil war; it found that most of the abductions were carried out by government security forces.
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