Salon.com > Paisley Dodds

Cameron testifies to Parliament in hacking probe

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:31:00 +0000

Prime Minister David Cameron emphatically denied claims that his staff tried to stop an inquiry into a phone hacking and police bribery at the News of the World and defended his decision to hire one of the tabloid's editors as his communications chief.

In a raucous emergency session Wednesday in Parliament, Cameron admitted, however, that both the ruling Conservatives and the opposition Labour parties had failed to pursue key developments in the hacking case over the years.

"The greatest responsibility I have is to clear up this mess," Cameron told lawmakers, promising that a government inquiry would investigate whether other media organizations besides News of the World also committed illegal acts over the years.

Cameron cut short his Africa trip to appear before the House of Commons, which delayed its summer break to debate issues engulfing Britain's political and media elite and Rupert Murdoch's global communications empire, News Corp., which owned the troubled News of the World.

Cameron's former communications chief Andy Coulson -- a former editor at the tabloid -- is among 10 people who have been arrested in the scandal. One person has been cleared by police.

British targets found near body of al-Qaida leader

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:12:24 +0000

The Ritz Hotel in London and the elite private school Eton were among a handful of possible British terror targets that a senior al-Qaida leader was considering before he was killed in Somalia last week, a British security official said Thursday.

Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people, was killed when he failed to stop at a routine checkpoint outside of Mogadishu, Somalia's capital.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called the 38-year-old's death a "significant blow to al-Qaida, its extremist allies, and its operations in East Africa."

British officials have said they see al-Qaida affiliates in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as being a significant threat to British interests.

"He was a fairly big player, but there is nothing to suggest that any reconnaissance had been done or that any of the attacks were imminent," a British security official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence matters.

It was not exactly clear how officials found the information on the British targets. There was no immediate evidence to suggest that Mohammed was working with British contacts or that he even understood where some of the intended targets were.

Spies hack al-Qaida’s Inspire magazine

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 13:41:56 +0000

Britain's spy agencies have a new message for terrorists: make cupcakes, not war.

Intelligence agents managed to hack into the extremist Inspire magazine, replacing its bombmaking instructions with a recipe for cupcakes.

It's the first time the agents sabotaged the English-language magazine linked to U.S.-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an extremist accused in several recent terror plots.

The quarterly online magazine, which is sent to websites and email addresses as a pdf file, had offered an original page titled "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom" in one of its editions last year. The magazine's pages were corrupted, however, and the instructions replaced with the cupcake recipe.

"We're increasingly using cybertools as part of our work," a British government official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters said Friday, confirming that the Inspire magazine had been successfully attacked.

The hackers were reportedly working for Britain's eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, which has boosted its resources in the past several years.

Pakistan’s leader says world losing Afghan war

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:14:00 +0000

The U.S.-led coalition's battle against the Taliban has already been lost because of its failure to win over the Afghan people, Pakistan's president warned before talks with the British prime minister, who has accused Pakistan of exporting terrorism.

In an interview published online Tuesday by French daily Le Monde, President Asif Ali Zardari -- widow of Benazir Bhutto -- said the coalition "underestimated the situation on the ground and was not conscious of the scale of the problem" against the Taliban largely because "we have lost the battle to conquer the heart and soul" of the Afghan people.

Zardari, who was traveling from Paris to London on Tuesday, said long-term help was needed, and military reinforcements were only a small part of the solution.

The interview was conducted in English, but Le Monde said no English-language transcript was available.

Zardari was in Europe amid growing concern that some elements in Pakistan's intelligence service and military maintain links to known terrorists. Wikileaks, the self-described online whistle-blower, recently posted leaked U.S. military documents that alleged Pakistan's unwillingness to sever its historical ties to the Taliban and deny Taliban fighters sanctuary along the border between the two nations.

Haitian ceremonies raise questions of faith

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:42:00 +0000

Thousands of Haitians crowded churches in the capital Friday for a national day of mourning a month after the magnitude-7.0 earthquake killed more than 200,000 and left this Caribbean country struggling for survival.

Parishioners filled churches in Port-au-Prince's Petionville suburb and set up loudspeakers so those in the streets could follow. Religious leaders gathered for an ecumenical ceremony near Haiti's shattered National Palace to pay their respects to the dead.

Hymns and gospel music pumped throughout the city's apocalyptic landscape of flattened concrete and sloping buildings.

"This day is about honoring all those we lost and looking toward the future," said Percil St. Louis, 43, a Catholic. "We all need to come together as a nation."

Those killed in the Jan. 12 quake included church leaders, missionaries and children studying at faith-based schools. The Roman Catholic archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Joseph Serge Miot, was among those who perished.

Leaders from all of Haiti's major religions were taking part in the ecumenical ceremony, but it was only at the last minute that Voodoo priests were included. Voodoo leaders worried the Christian ceremony would fall short of rituals they usually perform when praying for the safe passage of souls in the spirit world.

Gitmo soldier details sexual tactics

Thu, 27 Jan 2005 22:44:00 +0000

Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man's face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider's written account.

A draft manuscript obtained by The Associated Press is classified as secret pending a Pentagon review for a planned book that details ways the U.S. military used women as part of tougher physical and psychological interrogation tactics to get terror suspects to talk.

It's the most revealing account so far of interrogations at the secretive detention camp, where officials say they have halted some controversial techniques.

"I have really struggled with this because the detainees, their families and much of the world will think this is a religious war based on some of the techniques used, even though it is not the case," the author, former Army Sgt. Erik R. Saar, 29, told AP.