9/11: Inside the White House emergency bunker

 

On July 24, the US National Archives released a series of 356 never-before-seen photos, most of them taken on September 11, 2001 inside the emergency bunker under the White House.


The bunker is officially called the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), but White House officials also call it the shelter. It was constructed in 1942 underneath the East Wing of the White House, which was primarily built to cover the building of the bunker. It is said the PEOC can withstand the blast overpressure from a nuclear detonation.

The photos were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by Colette Neirouz Hanna, coordinating producer for the FRONTLINE documentary film team. They focus on the reaction from then-vice president Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials during the terrorist attacks.

How Cheney reached the White House emergency bunker was reconstructed in the official report of the 9/11 Commission...

http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2015/09/911-inside-white-house-emergency-bunker.html

It's OK to leak government secrets - as long as it benefits politicians

When it comes to classified information, some leaks are more equal than others. If you are a whistleblower like Edward Snowden, who tells the press about illegal, immoral or embarrassing government actions, you will face jail time. But it’s often another story for US government officials leaking information for their own political benefit.

Two stories this week perfectly illustrate this hypocrisy and how, despite their unprecedented crackdown on sources and whistleblowers, the Obama administration - like every administration before it - loves to use leaks, if and when it suits them.

Consider a government leak that ran in the New York Times on Monday. The article was about 300 of Hillary Clinton’s now notorious State Department emails, which had been hidden away on her private server for years and were turned over to Congress as part of the never-ending Benghazi investigation. “Four senior government officials” described the content of her emails to New York Times journalists in minute detail “on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to jeopardize their access to secret information”.

Surely the Obama administration will promptly root out and prosecute those leakers, right? After all, the emails haven’t gone through a security review and the chances of them discussing classified information are extremely high. (Even if they don’t, the Espionage Act doesn’t require the information to be classified anyways, only that information leaked be “related to national defense”.) But those emails supposedly clear Clinton of any wrongdoing in the Benghazi affair, which likely makes the leak in the administration’s interest...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/25/its-ok-to-leak-government-secrets-as-long-as-it-benefits-politicians

White House cybersecurity czar brags about his lack of technical expertise

Michael Daniel is the White House's cybersecurity coordinator, the man who "leads the interagency development of national cybersecurity strategy and policy" for the president. And in a recent interview with GovInfoSecurity, he argued that his lack of technical expertise gave him an advantage in doing that job.
 

"You don't have to be a coder in order to really do well in this position," Daniel said, when asked if his job required knowledge of the technology behind information security. "In fact, actually, I think being too down in the weeds at the technical level could actually be a little bit of a distraction."

"You can get taken up and enamored with the very detailed aspects of some of the technical solutions," he explained, arguing that "the real issue is looking at the broad strategic picture."

As Princeton computer scientist (and, full disclosure, my former advisor) Ed Felten points out, it's hard to imagine senior policymakers with responsibility for other technical subjects making this kind of claim. Imagine a White House economic advisor arguing that experience in the weeds of economic research would be a distraction, an attorney general making that claim about time in a courtroom, or a surgeon general bragging about never having set foot in an operating room...

http://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053819/white-house-cybersecurity-czar-brags-about-his-lack-of-technical

What odd guest appears to have showed up at the White House's July 4th party for military families?

Was Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi, the much-discussed Saudi national once identified as a "person of interest" in the Boston Marathon bombings, at the White House for a 4th of July celebration for military heros and their families?

Apparent pictures posted on the Internet and a Saudi news outlet say yes.

A Twitter feed appears to show photos of the young man posing before the edifice - decorated with red, white, and blue banners to celebrate the holiday - in addition to close-up photos of the first couple...

http://www.sott.net/article/264043-What-odd-guest-appears-to-have-showed-up-at-the-White-Houses-July-4th-party-for-military-families

White House & NRC Recommend 50 Mile Fukushima Evacuation, Yet Insist US Safe With Only 10

via vimeo.com

WH Situation Room

via flickr.com