Pentagon and Bogus News: All Is Denied: "Early last year Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld disbanded the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence after it became known that the office was considering plans to provide false news items to unwitting foreign journalists to influence policymakers and public sentiment abroad. But a couple of months ago, the Pentagon quietly awarded a $300,000 contract to SAIC, a major defense consultant, to study how the Defense Department could design an 'effective strategic influence' campaign to combat global terror, according to an internal Pentagon document. " Sound familiar? Senior Pentagon officials said Thursday that they were caught unawares by the contract and insisted its language was a "poor choice of words" by a low-level staffer. They said the work did not reflect any backdoor effort to resurrect the discredited office and was merely a study to understand Al Qaeda better and find ways to combat it. "We are not recreating that office," said Thomas O'Connell, the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, the policy arm of the Pentagon that deals with the military's most secretive operators and whose staff wrote the document. But some critics of the former office voiced skepticism, saying that the contract amounted to a veiled attempt to create a low-budget copy of its ill-fated predecessor. A spokesman for SAIC referred all questions to the Pentagon.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/05/politics/05STRA.html

Op-Ed Columnist: Hack the Vote: "You don't have to believe in conspiracy to worry that partisans will take advantage of an insecure, unverifiable voting system. Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." No surprise there. But Walden O'Dell � who says that he wasn't talking about his business operations � happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States. For example, Georgia � where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories in the 2002 midterm elections � relies exclusively on Diebold machines. To be clear, though there were many anomalies in that 2002 vote, there is no evidence that the machines miscounted. But there is also no evidence that the machines counted correctly. You see, Diebold machines leave no paper trail. Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, who has introduced a bill requiring that digital voting machines leave a paper trail and that their software be available for public inspection, is occasionally told that systems lacking these safeguards haven't caused problems. 'How do you know?' he asks. What we do know about Diebold does not inspire confidence. The details are technical, but they add up to a picture of a company that was, at the very least, extremely sloppy about security, and may have been trying to cover up product defects." Early this year Bev Harris, who is writing a book on voting machines, found Diebold software � which the company refuses to make available for public inspection, on the grounds that it's proprietary � on an unprotected server, where anyone could download it. (The software was in a folder titled "rob-Georgia.zip.") The server was used by employees of Diebold Election Systems to update software on its machines. This in itself was an incredible breach of security, offering someone who wanted to hack into the machines both the information and the opportunity to do so. An analysis of Diebold software by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Rice Universities found it both unreliable and subject to abuse. A later report commissioned by the state of Maryland apparently reached similar conclusions. (It's hard to be sure because the state released only a heavily redacted version.) Meanwhile, leaked internal Diebold e-mail suggests that corporate officials knew their system was flawed, and circumvented tests that would have revealed these problems. The company hasn't contested the authenticity of these documents; instead, it has engaged in legal actions to prevent their dissemination.� http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/opinion/02KRUG.html

Bush Aides Say Attacks Won't Scare Allies Into Leaving Iraq:

Meanwhile, a toy gun can shut down congress. A radar glitch, the White House

"But all was not smooth on Monday after the latest attacks, and officials said the United States was not especially pleased with the latest move by the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, in setting up a meeting in New York on Iraq with Security Council and Arab diplomats." Secretary Powell has been stepping up the pressure on Mr. Annan to appoint a special personal representative in Iraq to replace Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was killed last summer. But United Nations diplomats say they doubt that Mr. Annan will move quickly, in part because of anxiety in the United Nations ranks. The fear at the United Nations, said one diplomat there, is that the attacks against the latest targets � coming on top of earlier attacks against Jordanian, Italian and United Nations offices � appeared well organized, as if they were an extension of the defense of Iraq by Saddam Hussein. "You may have toppled the statue, but you didn't take out the wiring that he set up to organize these attacks," said one diplomat, referring to Mr. Hussein. Some diplomats cautioned that although leaders of the nations fighting with the United States in Iraq were standing firm, the same could not be guaranteed of the people in their countries, where the attacks have had a huge and devastating psychological impact. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/politics/02DIPL.html

Self-Appointed Israeli and Palestinian Negotiators Offer a Plan for Middle East Peace: "'Our critics say that officials should make such agreements, not representatives of civil society,' Mr. Rabbo said. 'We could not agree more. But what can we do if officials do not meet, if governments do not negotiate? We can't wait and watch as the future of our two nations slides deeper into catastrophe.' [The full text of the Geneva Accord is available at www.nad-plo.org/cigeneva.php or www.heskem.org.il/Heskem_en.asp] " http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/international/europe/02PEAC.html?pagewanted=all&position=