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Intact Qualitative Research is a full-service, boutique consumer and B2B market research firm located in the heart of SOMA in San Francisco. In addition to designing a research facility with your needs in mind, we offer a full array of services in qualitative recruitment and project management for the Bay Area and all other major U.S. markets. We are committed to delivering the highest level of quality in finding the right people for every project, taking the conversation beyond the phone screener and understanding each person we place into research sessions.
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Journey of the Magi
by T.S. Eliot
Journey of the Magi Resources
Which is why he won the Nobel Prize. Check out his moving (and longwinded) acceptance speech.
Always a reliable source for all things poetry, Poets.org features an informative (and concise) bio of the guy, plus a plethora of poems to peruse.
For those of you up for a more in depth approach, check out the Poetry Foundation's extensive biography, and lengthy collection of Eliot's work. This site's sure to scratch your Eliot itch.
Some University of South Florida students get their research on. Group work for the win.
Grover Smith, Robert Crawford, and A. David Moody offer some good ideas on Eliot's poem. Put your thinking caps on, because this stuff's high falutin'.
This video's got read-along text, to go with the audio.
The only thing this song has in common with the poem is the title (and some themes). But still, it's worth a listen, if only because you want to sing "Moses was old!" at the top of your lungs. And don't we all?
The man. The legend. The poem.
Here's one scholar's take on an approximate route the Magi could have taken to get to Bethlehem. They went quite a ways, if we may say so. Couldn't the angel have asked a Syrian king or something?
He could paint like nobody's business, so thank goodness he had the chops to paint the moment the kings meet the newborn baby Jesus.
Take it from Shmoop: we've seen DaVinci's take on this scene at the Uffizi in Florence, and it's as awesome in person as it is on the screen.
This book, edited by A. David Moody, looks at many facets of T.S. Eliot's work from the perspective of many Eliot scholars throughout the world. If you're in love with Eliot's brain, this is a good place to start.
O Henry's most famous short story tackles the Magis' story in allegorical form. And Shmoop's got the goods to help you understand it.

subset: commoncrawl


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Read and rate Travel Journal Entries for Dubuque, Iowa, United States
Jun 27, 2015 - Dubuque and the mighty Mississippi
We visited the lovely town of Dubuque, Iowa on the mighty Mississippi. Here we saw the Fenelon Place elevator, said to be the world's shortest, steepest scenic railway, 296 feet in length, elevating passengers 189 feet from Fourth Street to Fenelon Place. Dubuque is also home to the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium. We spent quite a few hours here. This museum is somewhat unique among America's museums as its all about the Mississippi River. It also has an aquarium with tanks full of exotic looking aquatic creatures only found...Jump to full entry
Trip Journal
Oct 17, 2014 - Milwaukee, WI to Dubuque, IA
Day one, Trip three Destination: Dubuque, IA We made our way over to Madison after work today. We had some pizza from Ian's on Francis and picked Lauren up to complete our group. Ryan, Nick, Lauren, and I are heading down the great river road, eventually ending up in New Orleans. The drive to Dubuque was uneventful. It's starting to get dark kind of early, which leads to less exciting drives. We're staying at a campground right on the Mississippi River tonight. We shared some conversation and beer before heading to bed. We want to get to...Jump to full entry
Trip Journal
Sep 10, 2014 - It's not heaven, it's _____.
No Photos. We had hoped to get Larry's recliner fixed under manufacturer warranty, and since we were in range, we decided to swing by the Flexsteel factory in Dubuque, Iowa. They kindly offered to let us park in their parking lot and hook up to their power. It was altogether a pleasant night with the added bonus of being free. The bad news is that they could not fix the chair because it was an install problem....good news - the chair is fine. The young man who looked at it was able to jimmyrig it so that it at least works - but there is a...Jump to full entry
Trip Journal
Sep 1, 2014 - Dubuque Iowa
We spent all of today sightseeing in Dubuque. We headed to the center of town and made the 4th Street lift our first stop. Build in 1882 for private use, it provides some of the best views of Dubuque. Looking east, Wisconsin is across the river to the left and Illinois to the right. After walking around a bit we headed to the Port of Dubuque. The National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium was our first stop. This is a huge facility on the water front that provides information no only on the Mississippi but most waterways in the U.S. In...Jump to full entry
Trip Journal
Jun 25, 2014 - On The Road Again
June 25, 2014 After a long hiatus from traveling and writing to you, we are now back on the road again. A number of things have happened since our last blog. We did go to Gulf Shores, Alabama as planned and had a great visit with the Ringens. While in that area, we visited Mary's aunt Maxine Bendorf and cousins Lois Ann, Joan and Mary Lou in Pensacola, FL. Instead of moving on west, we returned to Summerfield, FL which is a story in itself. Prior to going to Gulf Shores, we spent some time golfing in the Lady Lake/Summerfield/The Villages...Jump to full entry
Trip Journal
Sep 17, 2011 - The Fields Have Ears
We have got to be in the prettiest setting we have seen so far. We are surrounded by corn fields. There is a picture perfect farm next door to us that we can't stop taking pictures of. It is like a beautiful painting and both of us find ourselves sitting and staring at it. Today, they are picking up the loose hay in the fields. It is better than watching tv. The corn stalks in the fields still have dry corn on them. I guess they will chop it all up for cattle feed or something. I was hoping to score a couple of ears for dinner, but they are...Jump to full entry
Trip Journal
Jul 13, 2011 - Is This Heaven? No It's Iowa
Today I drove from one end of Iowa - Sioux City- to the other end - Dubuque - on I20. What did I see? Beautiful, beautiful lush green farmland. Corn, soybeans, and something I didn't recognize. Healthy plants in gorgeous rolling fields - acres and acres - mile after mile. I never tired of the view. I made it to Waterloo in time for the one o'clock tour of the John Deere tractor assembly plant. No pictures allowed and I had to quick change from sandals to closed toe shoes. I took a seat on a tram , along with 39 other people, and got driven...Jump to full entry
Trip Journal
Jun 28, 2011 - A Fantastic River Museum
From Rustic Barn Campground & RV Park – Kieler, WI We have now been following the Mississippi River for just short of three months. Today we went to the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium in Dubuque, IA where we once again captured the history and facts we so enjoyed on the part of the river already traveled…..even learned a few new things about the section of river in our rearview mirror. It also offered us new facts, history and things to anticipate as we begin our last month of river travel. This museum complex is one of the...Jump to full entry
Trip Journal
Oct 21, 2010 - Dreams
It was time to check out the downtown area of Dubuque. After poking in a few shops, we rode the Fenelon Place Elevator. This funicular is described as the world's shortest, steepest scenic railway, 296' in length, 189' high. On top, one can see the historic Dubuque business district, the Mississippi River and 3 states. In 1882, everything shut down at noon for 1½ hour for dinner. J. K. Graves, a banker, lived on top of the bluffs and worked at the bottom. He had to spend ½ hour driving his horse and buggy round the bluff to get to the top...Jump to full entry
Oct 20, 2010 - Mines of Spain
The Dubuque Arboretum and Botanical Gardens is less than 2 miles for our hotel so we paid it a visit. It is the only arboretum and botanical garden in the USA staffed entirely by volunteers. Over 250 individuals maintain the trees, plants and shrubs, and seed-gifts which are all labeled throughout the garden. There are LOTS of labels! Although the season is over for most of the plants, the grounds were still quite attractive. There are walking paths every where. It was very pleasant - and free! Our next free attraction was the Mines of...Jump to full entry
Oct 19, 2010 - Effigy mounds
Moving day again so, as we journeyed from Onalaska (La Crosse), Wisconsin to Dubuque, Iowa, we again traveled along the Mississippi River. There are a series of dams and locks along our route. We spent quite a bit of time watching a towboat and its 12 barges move through one of the locks. It had to be done in 2 stages since all 12 barges could not fit in the lock at one time. The standard barge is 195 feet long and 35 feet wide. Its capacity is 1500 tons. These barges were carrying soy beans. That's an awful lot of soy beans! Tearing...Jump to full entry
Oct 3, 2010 - Dubuque, Iowa
We are over 800 miles into our trip and are now in Dubuque, Iowa staying at the Flex Steel Factory so we can get our couch frame fixed up in the morning. We arrived here about 12:30 and went shopping (they even have a Wally World here). After the shopping we did some sight seeing along the Ole Mississippi River (see Photos and read captions). Iowa reminds me a lot of upstate NY scenery wise beautiful flat farm land and lots of it. We took a walk along the River and low and behold Barb finds a brewery with wine tasting the best of both...Jump to full entry
Trip Journal


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The American Association of University Women (AAUW) is holding its annual book sale in Eau Claire. October 12 3-9pmOctober 13 9am - 5pmOctober 14 10am - 4pm
Eau Claire County Expo Center5530 Fairview DriveEau Claire, WI 54701
Click Here to access the online Public Inspection File
Viewers with disabilities can get assistance accessing this station's FCC Public Inspection File by contacting the station with the information listed below. Questions or concerns relating to the accessibility of the FCC's online public file system should be directed to the FCC at 888-225-5322, 888-835-5322 (TTY), or firstname.lastname@example.com.


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An anti-wrinkle gel cream infused with anti-oxidants to block 100% of free radicals and visibly reduce fine lines, dark circles and puffiness.
Don't let fine lines turn into wrinkles. This eye and lip cream smooths wrinkles with Matrixyl 3000, a powerful ingredient that nearly doubles the production of collagen. The unique combination of grape-seed polyphenols and vitamin C ester protects skin against wrinkle causing free radicals and keep your skin plump, youthful and smooth. Apply 360 degrees around the eye and lip area for maximum benefits.


text: Mansfield Walk to End Alzheimer's 2012 The 2012 Walk to End Alzheimer's was held on Saturday, October 13th at Richland Carrousel Park in Mansfield. The event helped to raise money and awareness for the Alzheimer's Association, which uses the funds to fight Alzheimer's Disease through the advancement of research. WMAN's Rusty Cates was the event chair. Tweet Photo 1 of 1


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|Rescue the fifth hostage from Riddler
This one unlocks once you've solved 320 Riddles.
Slide under bars to your right and use the REC on the Switch above. Slide under another set of bars, race to the other side and slide under more bars before you're crushed. Next, stand on the Red Panels to activate a game where you have to hit Question Marks with your Batarang a few times. Next use the REC behind you to push some boxes forward so you can throw Remote Batarangs above the gate in your way to hit Marks. Proceed to jump over the gap and climb up to the next puzzle. Use your Line Launcher twice to get to a place where you can use your Sequencer, then Line Launch out and to the right. Here, use your REC to push the boxes to the floor, then grapple up to the highest ledge. Use your REC again to push the boxes beneath you so you can proceed to the final part. Here you'll need to Line Launch 3 times without hitting the ground to save the hostage and get the Trophy.
|Rate this trophy
|Average Rating (Based on 1 votes)
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Rocksteady Studios
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
October 18, 2011
October 21, 2011
November 23, 2011
|Resolution: 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
|Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
|Players: 1
|ESRB: Teen
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User Score is based on 961 user ratings.


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A cuppa with Brother and Bones
October 26th, 2012 | by Shayne House
I caught up with Brother and Bones guitarist James back stage this week, over a lovely pre-gig cuppa. That's rock [&hellip
October 26th, 2012 | by Shayne House
I caught up with Brother and Bones guitarist James back stage this week, over a lovely pre-gig cuppa. That's rock [&hellip
May 6th, 2012 | by TeaSociety
Photo © Phil Dillon 'The Story Of My Life', is the first single to be taken from Theatre Royal's much [&hellip
August 5th, 2011 | by TeaSociety
Tea Appreciation Society present: Albert Jones Albert who? you may ask, but not for long. His debut ep "This Door" [&hellip
August 1st, 2011 | by TeaSociety
April 28th, 2011 | by TeaSociety
Tea is the new Rock 'n Roll… You know there's a time and a place for everything, and we totally [&hellip
January 28th, 2011 | by TeaSociety
Back in November 2010 we bid farewell to our old tea drinking musical chum Mr Martin Harley who set sail [&hellip
December 31st, 2010 | by TeaSociety
A little festive tune from our good friend, the tea guzzling Susie Clarke. Happy New Year's Eve to one and [&hellip
November 7th, 2010 | by TeaSociety
We're saying Bon Voyage to our dear friend Mr Martin Harley tonight who is off on a tour to Barbados. [&hellip
July 4th, 2010 | by TeaSociety
Lady Gaga is bigger than tea! almost… She has become the first living person to have 10 million fans on [&hellip
July 2nd, 2010 | by TeaSociety
The Anderson Council from New Jersey – USA Good sticker placement
June 17th, 2010 | by TeaSociety
A couple years back we were lucky enough to hang out with Carus Thompson on his UK tour, he hung [&hellip
June 13th, 2010 | by TeaSociety
Independent UK artist Susie Clarke rose to prominence on MTV show 'Get Seen Get Heard', in the seminal music channel's [&hellip
June 2nd, 2010 | by TeaSociety
TEA-HEE! Michael Jackson, pop star with his chimp friend 'Bubbles', sharing a cup of tea while on tour in Japan. [&hellip
June 1st, 2010 | by TeaSociety
Team Wunderlust from the Isle Of Wight music college playing last night in the Junction – Plymouth – nice tea [&hellip
© 2014 Tea Appreciation Ltd.


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After yet another massive letdown of a season by the Cincinnati Bengals, two brothers in Ohio have decided not only to not renew their season tickets but to invoice the team's owners for past games and related expenses.
Disappointed Cincinnati Bengals Season Ticket Owners Send Bill To Team Owners
Chevron Calls Out Pranksters Who Put Up Fake Site (Update: It Was All A Hoax)
UPDATE: This post was based on a hoax perpetrated by the corporate pranksters/filmmakers the Yes Men, who put out a fake press release under the Chevron name. The quote attributed to Chevron in the post came from the fake release. Thanks to Sara for pointing this out.
Is This The Right Way To Alert The Neighbors Of Crime In Your Neighborhood?
A man in Huntington Beach, CA, says he was just trying to let his neighbors know about a spate of recent robberies when he placed a 3'x10′ banner reading "We have a thief in the neighborhood" on his house. But now he's facing flack from some locals who say the sign only draws negative attention, especially if one is trying to sell one's home.
Phone Number On Chad Ochocinco's Cereal Box Is Actually Sex Line
We love football player/reality star/social media whore Chad Ochocinco (nee Johnson), even if he plays for he Bengals. In fact, we'd buy his Ochocinco's cereal if it were available here in NYC. Alas, it's not… And now it's being taken off shelves at grocery stores in Ohio because a phone number intended to push people to a kids charity actually belongs to a phone sex line.
Batman Is In Your Taco Bell Drive-Thru Stealing Your Food
Times are tough for the Dark Knight. But hey, even caped crimefighters need to eat.
Phones Loaded With Porn Rarely Go To People Who Appreciate Them
As if parents didn't have enough of a reason to hesitate to give their 10-year-olds cell phones, now they have to worry that the devices will be loaded with images that are quite a bit more graphic than what kids will see in elementary school sex-ed videos.
Dry-Erase Board Quitter Reveals Herself As Hoax
Yesterday, the web was abuzz with the story of a young woman named Jenny who quit her job by e-mailing everyone a series of photos in which she outed her boss as a lazy, Farmville-playing jerk. Well, we've all been had as the woman outed herself as an actress and the whole quitting thing as a hoax.
Man Voices Displeasure With Taco John's By Throwing A Live Snake Through Drive-Thru Window
If you have a grudge of some sort against your local fast food establishment, there are probably better methods of expressing yourself than pulling up to the drive-thru window and throwing a live snake at the employee inside.
Man Spends 24 Hours Inside A 24 Hour Fitness
BP Offices To Be Serenaded By Orchestra Of Vuvuzelas
Woe to those unfortunate souls who work in the London offices of British Petroleum. An angry soul in Brooklyn is marshalling an army of like-minded souls and arming each man, woman and child with the most deadly of instrument — the vuvuzela — for an impromptu concert outside your building.
Angry Driver Buys Police Department's Website, Launches Anti-Speed Camera Site
Brian McCrary in Bluff City, TN received a $90 speeding ticket in the mail earlier this year, thanks to an American Traffic Solutions speed camera the police department turned on in January. McCrary says when he looked up information to call the police department with questions about the ticket, he discovered something else: that their website's domain registration was about to expire. So he bought it.
Who's Behind Michael Jordan's "Nike" Skates?
With the heathen sports fans in Chicago going a little overboard in celebrating their first Stanley Cup finals in something like 128 years, they recently decked out the famous statue of Chicago Bulls basketball biggie Michael Jordan in a Chicago Blackhawks uniform, complete with a pair of Reebok skate blades attached to his Air Jordans. But somehow, over the weekend the Reebok logo was suddenly stickered over with the Nike "swoosh" logo. Is this good-natured pranksterism or cold, greedy brand management?
British Airways Locates Osama Bin Laden… In First Class
While the world continues its nearly decade-long hunt for terrorist Osama Bin Laden, the folks at British Airways have him located comfortably in first class — seat7-C to be precise.
Fake Pilot Flew Passenger Jets For 13 Years
Thomas Salme was working in maintenance at Scandinavian airline SAS, when he decided he wanted to move up into the cockpit. So, he did what any clever and ruthless crackpot would: He practiced on a flight simulator until he thought he was ready to fly, and then printed a fake pilot's license at home. He got a job at European airline Air One, and spent 13 years flying passengers around Europe until being caught in March. The heavy hand of justice: a $2,500 fine and a one-year grounding.
Darth Vader GPS Will Turn You To The Dark Side
He used the Force to search for rebel bases and track his errant son. And now Darth Vader can help you locate the nearest interstate — if you're willing to take a detour to the Dark Side first. Tom Tom has rolled out its first Star Wars GPS voice module, and everyone's favorite Sith Lord is ready to help you calculate every possible destination. Or, in Ani's own words: "Go around the roundabout. The circle is now complete."
Toxic Fumes At McDonald's That Didn't Come From Kitchen
A prank involving some sort of smoke bomb recently sent four employees of a Maryland McDonald's to the hospital and has authorities on the hunt for suspects.
Woman Takes Clothes Into Walmart Changing Room To Pee On Them
If there's any lesson to be learned from this story it's this: When you decide to take a bunch of clothes into a store's changing room with the intention of voiding your bladder all over them, do not leave your wallet behind.


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Romeo and Juliet
by William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet: Deny Thy Father Quiz
Think you've got your head wrapped around Romeo and Juliet? Put your knowledge to the test. Good luck — the Stickman is counting on you!
Q. How does Mercutio die?
He is trampled by a stampeding horse.
He is poisoned by Friar Lawrence.
He is attacked by a rabid dog.
He is stabbed by Tybalt.
Q. Why is Romeo banished from Verona?
Because he killed Tybalt (clearly, Verona is a very dangerous place)
Because of his love for Juliet
Because he was caught stealing
Because he wanted to bring sexy back
Q. What does the nurse bring to Romeo as a symbol of Juliet's love for him?
A rose (by any other name, it would still smell as sweet)
A ring
A love letter (sealed with a kiss)
A lock of Juliet's hair
Q. What does Friar Lawrence give to Juliet in preparation for her second wedding?
A book explaining why you are only allowed to be married to one person at a time
A bottle of sleeping potion
Something blue
A homeopathic remedy to soothe her frazzled nerves
Q. Why does Romeo poison himself?
He's tortured with guilt over the blood that is on his hands.
The whole "exiled" thing is getting to him.
He can't stand married life.
He finds a sleeping Juliet and thinks she's dead.


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Back in 2012, I wrote a series of posts on the Obama Administration's extraordinary efforts to censor this title. (post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, post 5, post 6, post 7, post 8)
The title was part of some smart CYA on the part of George Tenet. When things started to go south with the torture program in 2003, he wrote this document, ostensibly putting order to the torture program, but also making it clear the whole thing operated on Presidential authority. (The document, which should have been released to David Passaro in his criminal trial for torturing a detainee who subsequently died, was withheld, which prevented him from pointing out anything he did, he did with Presidential approval, so Tenet's CYA didn't help him at all.)
The judge in ACLU's lawsuit to liberate torture documents, Alvin Hellerstein, decided the language should not be censored, and ordered the government release it. Then National Security Advisor Jim Jones wrote a secret declaration stating that it could not be disclosed. All the while, ACLU thought they were fighting to release a description of waterboarding, when in fact Hellerstein was trying to force the Administration to release the single detail that torture had been done on the President's order.
But the Second Circuit overruled Hellerstein, declaring these 8 words a source and method (for the record, I guessed exactly what was behind the redaction so their secret was only useful for legal challenges).
That the torture program operated pursuant to a Finding (that is, as a covert op) had long been known thanks to blabby CIA types like John Rizzo. But it was formally declassified as part of the Torture Report. It got released today as part of a Jason Leopold lawsuit.
So there you have it. "Presidential Memorandum of Notification of 17 September 2001." A secret Obama fought to the circuit court, now public for all the world to see.
It doesn't feel so momentous, does it?
By my count, John Rizzo completes his first lie in his purported "memoir," Company Man, at the 64th word:
55: Zubaydah
56: was
57: a
58: senior
59: figure
60: in
61: the
62: Al
63: Qaeda
64: hierarchy
Zubaydah complained in his diary (see page 84) before he was captured in 2002 that he was being called Osama bin Laden's heir when he wasn't even a member of al Qaeda. And in his Combatant Status Review Board hearing in 2007 (see page 27), Zubaydah described his interrogators admitting he wasn't Al Qaeda's number 3, not even a partner. And in a 2009 habeas document the government calls Zubaydah an Al Qaeda affiliate, not a member (see 35 to 36 and related requests).
And yet Rizzo tells this lie right in the first paragraph of his book.
Granted, I'm more sympathetic to this lie than many of Rizzo's other lies. I understand why he must continue telling it.
Back in 2002, Rizzo told John Yoo that Abu Zubaydah was a top al Qaeda figure during the drafting of the August 1, 2002 Bybee Memo authorizing torture. And based on that information, Yoo wrote,
As we understand it, Zubaydah is one of the highest ranking members of the al Qaeda terrorist organization, with which the United States is currently engaged in an international armed conflict following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
Our advice is based upon the following facts, which you have provided to us. We also understand that you do not have any facts in your possession contrary to the facts outlined here, and this opinion is limited to these facts. If these facts were to change, this advice would not necessarily apply.
Zubaydah, though only 31, rose quickly from very low level mujahedin to third or fourth man in al Qaeda. He has served as Usama Bin Laden's senior lieutenant.
If Rizzo were to admit that the representations he made to Yoo back in 2002 were false, then the legal sanction CIA got to conduct torture would crumble.
And unlike a lot of the lies CIA — and John Rizzo in particular — told DOJ during the life of the torture program, I'm not absolutely certain CIA knew this one to be a lie when they told it. CIA (and FBI) definitely believed Zubaydah was a high ranking al Qaeda figure when they caught him. In his CSRT, Zubaydah describes admitting he was al Qaeda's number 3 under torture. Though it's not clear whether that was the torture that took place before or after the memo authorizing that torture got written, raising the possibility that CIA presented lies Zubaydah told under torture to DOJ to get authorization for the torture they had already committed. But by the time of the memo, CIA had also had 4 months to to read Zubaydah's diaries, which make such matters clear (and had it in their possession, so that by itself should invalidate the memo). So they should have and probably did know, but I think it marginally conceivable they did not.
Still, that doesn't excuse journalists who have these facts available to them yet treat Rizzo as an honest interlocutor, as James Rosen is only the latest in a long line of journalists to do.
So as a service to those journalists who aren't doing the basic work they need to do on this story, I thought I'd make a list of the documented lies Rizzo tells just in the first 10 pages of his "memoir." These don't include items that may be errors or lies. These don't include everything that I have strong reason to believe is a lie or that we know to be lies but don't yet have official documentation to prove it. They include only the lies that are disproven by CIA and other official documents that have been in the public domain for years.
These lies, like Rizzo's lie about Abu Zubaydah's role in 9/11, also serve important purposes in the false narrative the torturers have told.
I've gone through this exercise (I'm contemplating a much longer analysis of all the lies Rizzo told, but it makes me nauseous thinking about it) to point out that any journalist who treats him as an honest interlocutor, accepting his answers — he made some of the same claims to Rosen as he made here — as credible without real challenge is just acting as a CIA propagandist.
Don't take my word for it — take the CIA's word, as many of Rizzo's claims are disproven by CIA's own documents!
Update, April 21: Ben Wittes, in his review of this tract: "Rizzo is just being honest." To be fair, Wittes appears to have meant it to describe Rizzo's unvarying viewpoint, always serving his loyalty to the CIA. But in a review that doesn't mention Rizzo's serial lies, it's embarrassing.
(1) Abu Zubaydah was not CIA's first significant "catch." Ibn Sheikh al-Libi was, though the CIA outsourced his torture to the Egyptians.
(3) Correspondence describes tapes of Abu Zubaydah's torture in April 2002, not July 2002, as Rizzo claims. (see PDF 1)
(3-4) Obviously, CIA had another option besides torture: to let the FBI continue interrogating Zubaydah. Even if you don't believe FBI had the success they claim to have had, they were an alternative that Rizzo makes no mention of.
(4) The first torture memo was not the August 1, 2002 one. Yoo wrote a shorter fax on July 13, 2002, which (according to the OPR Report) is actually the memo CTC's lawyers relied on for their guidance to the torturers.
(5) Jose Rodriguez did not decide to destroy the tapes in October; he decided on September 5, the day after first briefing Nancy Pelosi on torture (without having told her they had already engaged in it).
(5) CIA did not follow the guidelines laid out in the Bybee memo for waterboarding, as CIA's IG determined in 2004, and at least by the time the CIA IG reviewed the tapes, there was a great deal censored via damage, turning off the camera, or taping over of the content.(see PDF 42 and this post)
(6) The Gang of Eight was not briefed in 2002; only the Gang of Four (the Intelligence Committee heads) was. According to CIA's own records, only one Congressional leader got a timely briefing, Bill Frist in 2004 (though Pelosi was briefed as HPSCI Ranking Member in 2002).
(8) John McPherson did not review the tapes after Christmas, 2002; he reviewed them about a month earlier. (see this post and linked underlying documents)
(8) Jay Rockefeller was not briefed in January 2003; only a staffer of his was. See this post for all the lies they told Pat Roberts in that briefing.
(9) While John Helgerson did not write about techniques that had not been authorized, he did describe that the waterboard as performed did not follow the guidelines given by DOJ. (see PDF 42) Rizzo also doesn't note Helgerson's observations about the tampering done to the tapes, which may have hidden unauthorized techniques.
(10) It is false that the 9/11 Commission Report relied heavily on Abu Zubaydah's interrogations. They are cited just 10 times, and at least one of those was not corroborated.
Aspiring Senate Intelligence Chair Richard Burr has announced he will vote to declassify the Torture Report.
Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., also said he planned to vote to declassify.
Burr added: "We've already expressed our opposition to the content."
Declassifying, he said, is "the only way that we get minority views out there," because the Republicans plan to offer their views on the report.
This gives a pretty strong indication of where this Torture Report debate will go — and why CIA got so quiet all of a sudden, aside from former CIA lawyer John Rizzo's tireless propaganda efforts.
The Committee would have published dissenting views in any case, but Republican Susan Collins specifically included them in her support for the report.
What we're going to get will be the Executive Summary, Findings, and Additional and Dissenting Views. Because we'll get just the Executive Summary, we won't get much hard detail — aside from that which has been public for years — about the allegations that will appear in the Executive Summary, which will make it harder to rebut any claims CIA's defenders make.
Moreover, I would not be in the least surprised if the same rule that applies to CIA Publication Review Board decisions — that the writings of torture critics like Ali Soufan and Glenn Carle are aggressively censored, while the views of torture boosters like Rizzo and Jose Rodriguez will be permissively published — applied here. The CIA has — as McClatchy emphasizes — already assumed they'll do the declassification review. And in spite of calls for the White House to take the lead, I expect they won't. After all, the White House has relied on CIA to hide the Executive Privilege-lite documents (which I suspect would show that CIA only lied to some people at the White House, but not to people like David Addington). So CIA is owed something by the White House.
That mutual embrace of incrimination will provide the CIA a great deal of protection.
Remember, too, that torture critics have gotten recent warnings not to speak publicly, even while Rodriguez and Rizzo blather away.
And all this — what will surely be calls that Democrats have unfairly tainted noble Jose Rodriguez' reputation — will play out against electoral politics, as Republicans try to take out Mark Udall for his opposition to torture.
Thus far, too, the torture boosters have laid the groundwork to win this debate. Even ignoring Rizzo and Rodriguez' books, they've been working the press with details, as compared to the vague releases that the Torture Report will find CIA lied.
Which is my pessimistic way of saying that unless torture critics get a lot more serious about the propaganda onslaught the Republicans plan to launch to defend torture, this Torture Report release may not do all that much good at all. Torture critics largely lost this debate in 2009, and they'll actually have less new information with which to fight this if CIA gets its way on declassification.
The traditional media is catching up to my post the other day focusing on Robert Eatinger, the CIA lawyer who referred Senate Intelligence Committee staffers for criminal investigation. Welcome traditional media!!
Just to expand the discussion of how deeply involved CTC's lawyers — including, but not limited to, Eatinger — have been in torture, I thought I'd expand on my post from the other day with a timeline of CTC documents and consultation, most from its legal team, that might be among the 1,600 mentions of Eatinger in the Senate Torture Report that Dianne Feinstein referred to the other day.
I should note that for most, if not all, of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program, the now acting general counsel was a lawyer in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center—the unit within which the CIA managed and carried out this program. From mid-2004 until the official termination of the detention and interrogation program in January 2009, he was the unit's chief lawyer. He is mentioned by name more than 1,600 times in our study.
Note, some of this information relies on the OPR report; at least three of CTC's lawyers refused to cooperate with that report, two based on advice of counsel. Remember too that, just as happened with the SCIF CIA made the Senate Intelligence Committee use, between 10 and 61 torture documents disappeared from DOJ's OLC SCIF during the period when OPR was working on its report.
April 2002: Months before the first torture memo, CTC's lawyers, in consultation with NSC and DOJ, approved 24-48 hours of sleep deprivation for use with Abu Zubaydah (who, remember, was still recovering from life-threatening bullet wounds). The torturers promptly exceeded those limits. So CTC, on its own, approved the new amounts because, they claimed, Abu Zubaydah hadn't suffered any adverse consequences. (See PDF 113-114)
After consulting with the NSC and DOJ, CTC[redacted] originally approved 24-48 hours of sleep deprivation.
In April 2002 CTC[redacted] learned that due to a misunderstanding, that time frame had been exceeded.
However, CTC[redacted] advised that since the process did not have adverse medical effects or result in hallucinations (thereby disrupting profoundly Abu Zubaydah's senses or personality) it was within legal parameters.
After August 1, 2002: After the Bybee Memos laid out which torture techniques were permitted, then, CTC chief lawyer Jonathan Fredman sent out legal guidance to the torturers in Thailand. Rather than relying on the Bybee Memos, he relied on a July 13, 2002 John Yoo memo, purportedly prepared without the knowledge of Bybee (but, given the timing, probably written in response to Chertoff's refusal to provide pre-declination andwith coaching from David Addington). The earlier memo lacked some of the key caveats of the later ones.
September 6, 2002: On September 4, 2002, Jose Rodriguez and a lawyer from CTC briefed Nancy Pelosi and Porter Goss on torture. The following day, CIA started discussing destroying the torture tapes. Then, on September 6, a lawyer from CTC altered the record of the briefing to Pelosi and Goss. (see PDF 84 and PDF 11-12)
October 2, 2002: CTC top lawyer Jonathan Fredman briefs Gitmo about torture and says a number of inflammatory things about detainee treatment.
December 24, 2002: CTC completes memo advocating for destruction of torture tapes.
Early 2003: After DOJ told CIA's Inspector General to develop its own set of facts for review of any criminal liability in torture, John Yoo and Jennifer Koester start freelancing with CTC's lawyers to develop the "Legal Principles" or "Bullet Points" document which expanded on the analysis officially approved by OLC. Koester told DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility the document would be used to assess the legality of the torture.
She understood that the Bullet Points were drafted to give the CIA OIG a summary of OLC's advice to the CIA about the legality of the detention and interrogation program. [Koester] understood that the CIA OIG had indicated to CTC[redacted] that it might evaluate the legality of the program in connection with its investigation, and that the Bullet Points were intended to demonstrate that OLC had already weighed in on the subject.
June 16, 2003: In her review, Koester took out language CIA had included saying that "comparable, approved techniques" to those approved in the Bybee Memo did not violate law or the Constitution. But when CTC's lawyers sent the "Bullet Points" back to OLC in 2003 as an attempted fait accompli, that language had been inserted back into the memo.
April 2004: Eatinger takes over as top CTC lawyer.
Unknown date: CTC's lawyers write a declination memo recommending against charges for Salt Pit manager Matt Zirbel in the murder of Gul Rahman based on (according to Jay Bybee's characterization) an entirely intent-based exoneration. (see footnote 28)
Notably, the declination memorandum prepared by the CIA's Counterterrorism Section regarding the death of Gul Rahman provides a correct explanation of the specific intent element and did not rely on any motivation to acquire information. Report at 92. If [redacted], as manager of the Saltpit site, did not intend for Rahman to suffer severe pain from low temperatures in his cell, he would lack specific intent under the anti-torture statute. And it is also telling that the declination did not even discuss the possibility that the prosecution was barred by the Commander-in-Chief section of the Bybee memo.
May 11, 2004: White House meeting, possibly attended by Eatinger, at which White House lawyers tell CIA not to destroy torture tapes.
June 2004: According to John Rizzo, Eatinger attends White House meeting at which White House lawyers instruct not to destroy torture tapes.
August 4-5, 2004: CTC lawyers provide Daniel Levin additional information on waterboarding; the Torture Report found this information to be inaccurate.
August 19, 2004: Another CIA letter, from a lawyer other than John Rizzo, the Torture Report found to be inaccurate.
September 5, 2004: Another CIA letter, from a lawyer other than John Rizzo, the Torture Report found to be inaccurate.
September 19, 2004: Another CIA letter, from a lawyer other than John Rizzo, the Torture report found to be inaccurate.
February 2, 2005: A CTC lawyer worked closely with Daniel Levin to try to finish the Combined Memo before Levin moved to NSC. At that point, the Memo did not include waterboarding. Nevertheless, Levin did not complete it, and Steve Bradbury would add waterboarding back in when he completed the memo that April.
Febraury 14, 2005: CTC panics because Congress might hold hearings into detainee treatment.
March 1, 2005: Steven Bradbury's main contact for Combined and other torture memos is a CTC attorney. The Torture Report found information used in these memos to be inaccurate.
March 2, 2005: CTC sends Re: Effectiveness of the CIA Counterintelligence Interrogation Techniques to Steven Bradbury for use in Special Needs argument in torture memos. Similar memos that have been released have made demonstrably false claims. John Rizzo says CTC lawyers were involved in drafting this document.
April 15, 2005: CTC sends Briefing Notes on the Value of Detainee Reporting to Steven Bradbury for use in Special Needs argument in torture memos. Similar memos that have been released have made demonstrably false claims. Rizzo says CTC lawyers were involved in drafting this document.
May 10, 2005: Steven Bradbury completes two OLC memos — the Techniques Memo and Combined Memo — that the Torture Report found are based on inaccurate information.
May 30, 2005: Bradbury completes a third OLC memo — the CAT Memo — that the Torture Report found is based on inaccurate information.
November 8, 2005: The day CIA destroyed the torture tapes, someone from CTC/LGL gave HPSCI Chair Pete Hoekstra a briefing with no staffers present. (see page 32) The briefing was included in a summary of all Congressional briefings completed that day.
November 8, 2005: Eatinger and another CTC lawyer claim there is no legal reason to retain the torture tapes, in spite of several pending legal requests covering the videos. Jose Rodriguez orders their destruction.
January 25, 2006: Another letter from a lawyer other than John Rizzo that Torture Report may have found to be inaccurate.
April 19, 2006: Fax from a lawyer other than Rizzo that Torture Report may have found to be inaccurate.
May 18, 2006: Letter from a lawyer other than Rizzo, claiming torture techniques would be used for safety reasons, the Torture Report may have found to be inaccurate.
Update: h/t to DocEx blog for some additions to this timeline.
On several occasions, I have pointed to the arbitrary system our classification system constructs. It asks government employees to spy on their colleagues. It permits agencies to conduct fishing expeditions into personal information as part of the polygraph process. It permits Agencies to selectively approve propaganda under the guise of pre-publication review (most notably in the case of Jose Rodriguez and John Rizzo). By stripping sensitive unclassified jobs of their Merit Board protection, even lower level staffers who don't receive a clearance-related income boost are now subject to this arbitrary system. And Congress even tried to use pensions as another leverage point against cleared personnel.
The arbitrary nature of this system is perhaps most clear, however, when it comes to prosecutions.
Which is a point John Kiriakou made in an op-ed yesterday. In it, he suggests Leon Panetta and James Cartwright could be sitting next to him in Loretto Prison.
The [Espionage Act] states: "Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any … information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates … the same to any person not entitled to receive it … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both."
A transcript obtained by the organization Judicial Watch shows that, at a CIA awards ceremony attended by Boal, Panetta did exactly that. The CIA seems to acknowledge that Panetta accidentally revealed the name of the special forces ground commander who led the operation to kill Osama bin Laden, not knowing that the Hollywood screenwriter was part of an audience cleared to hear him speak. But intent is not relevant to Espionage Act enforcement.
U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled in my case that evidence of the accidental release of national defense information was inadmissible, and she added that the government did not have to prove that a leak of classified information actually caused any harm to the United States. In other words, the act of disclosing the kind of broad information covered by the Espionage Act is prosecutable regardless of outcome or motive.
The sensitivity of what Panetta revealed is not in question. The spokesman for the former CIA director said Panetta assumed that everyone present at the time of the speech had proper clearance for such a discussion. When the transcript of the speech was released, more than 90 lines had been redacted, implying that Panetta had disclosed a great deal more classified information than the name of an operative.
If an intent to undermine U.S. national security or if identifiable harm to U.S. interests are indeed not relevant to Espionage Act enforcement, then the White House and the Justice Department should be in full froth. Panetta should be having his private life dug in to, sifted and seized as evidence, as happened to me and six others under the Obama administration.
If Panetta and Cartwright aren't accountable while Drake, Kim and I have been crucified for harming U.S. national security — all of us accused of or investigated for the same thing: disclosing classified information to parties not authorized to know it — then what does that say about justice in America or White House hypocrisy?
Kiriakou goes on to call for changes in the Espionage Act to focus on issues of intent and harm.
Kiriakou is, of course, correct that he got punished for things that Panetta and Cartwright have (so far, at least) escaped such levels of punishment for. (I'd also add the unnamed real sources for the UndieBomb 2.0 leak, who are being protected by the scapegoating of Donald Sachtleben.)
But I'd go even further. Given reports that FBI is investigating whether Senate Intelligence Committee staffers violated the law for obtaining proof the Agency they oversee was hiding evidence from it, it's crucial to remember how Kiriakou's prosecution came about, which I laid out in this post.
It started when CIA officers claimed that when Gitmo defense attorneys provided photos of their clients torturers to them–having independently discovered their identity–the torturers were put at risk. DOJ didn't believe it was a security risk; CIA disagreed and went to John Brennan. And after Patrick Fitzgerald was brought in to mediate between DOJ and CIA, the prosecution of John Kiriakou resulted.
As a reminder of where this all started, it's worth reading this March 15, 2010 Bill Gertz article which was, AFAIK, the first public report of the investigation into the John Adams Project. It describes a March 9, 2010 meeting between Fitzgerald and the CIA.
The dispute prompted a meeting Tuesday at CIA headquarters between U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald and senior CIA counterintelligence officials. It is the latest battle between the agency and the department over detainees and interrogations of terrorists.
According to U.S. officials familiar with the issue, the current dispute involves Justice Department officials who support an effort led by the American Civil Liberties Union to provide legal aid to military lawyers for the Guantanamo inmates. CIA counterintelligence officials oppose the effort and say giving terrorists photographs of interrogators has exposed CIA personnel and their families to possible terrorist attacks.
According to the officials, the dispute centered on discussions for a interagency memorandum that was to be used in briefing President Obama and senior administration officials on the photographs found in Cuba. Justice officials did not share the CIA's security concerns about the risks posed to CIA interrogators and opposed language on the matter that was contained in the draft memorandum. The memo was being prepared for White House National Security Council aide John Brennan, who was to use it to brief the president.
The CIA insisted on keeping its language describing the case and wanted the memorandum sent forward in that form.
That meeting, of course, would have taken place the day after Fitzgerald was appointed. So immediately after Fitzgerald got put in charge of this investigation, he presumably moderated a fight between DOJ, which didn't think detainee lawyers pursuing their clients' torturers via independent means threatened to expose the torturers' identity directly, and CIA, which apparently claimed to be worried.
What happened with Kiriakou's sentencing today is many things. But it started as–and is still fundamentally a result of–an effort on the part of CIA to ensure that none of its torturers ever be held accountable for their acts, to ensure that the subjects of their torture never gain any legal foothold to hold them accountable.
The DC elite media continues to help John Rizzo promote his misleading memoir, this time with a Politico excerpt of his claim of how the torture techniques got chosen.
Here and elsewhere, Rizzo alludes to the one torture technique John Yoo rejected, though he says "DOJ" rejected it because it was "so gruesome." (Note the context in which this appears, though, as an afterthought to the sentence describing simulated drowning.)
Waterboarding: The interrogator would strap Zubaydah to an inclined bench, with his feet slightly elevated. A cloth would be placed over his forehead and eyes, and water would be applied to the cloth in a controlled manner—for 20 to 40 seconds from a height of 12 to 24 inches. The intention would be simulate the sensation of drowning. There was also another technique that I'm barred from describing that was so gruesome that the Justice Department later stopped short of approving it. [my emphasis]
As I reported almost 4 years ago, this technique actually should be unclassified, as DOJ released it in unredacted form in a draft of the Office of Professional Responsibility report.
The technique is mock burial.
They planned to use simulated drowning and simulated burial.
And Yoo didn't reject it outright: he told Rizzo he would "need more time" if he wanted that technique to be approved.
Although Yoo told us that he had concluded that the mock burial technique would violate the torture statute, he nevertheless told the client, according to Fredman and Rizzo, that he would "need more time" if they wanted it approved.
Moreover, Yoo likely rejected it not because he found it gruesome (remember, Yoo has said he would seriously consider authorizing torturers crushing a child's testicles to make his father talk). He almost certainly rejected it because Ali Soufan called the torturers' plan to stick Abu Zubaydah (whose gunshot wounds were still not entirely healed) into a coffin, "borderline torture," and then left the torture site and complained to his superiors. So (again, this is supported but not confirmed by the public record) when Michael Chertoff — then head of the Criminal Division and trying to ensure he wouldn't have to charge the torturers with torture because the FBI witnessed and then complained about it — reviewed the techniques, this one presented a problem.
That DOJ approved, instead, both small and large box confinement shows they had no squeamishness with putting someone inside a box to simulate death. And we have reports that small or large box confinement got used as mock burial later in the torture program.
Plus, Rizzo does provide one other detail that helps explain one detail of how they planned to simulate burial.
For the small box, the interrogator would have the option to place a harmless insect inside.
That is, the insect they approved for use with Zubaydah was tied to the small — not the large — box. Stick him in a box, make him think he was buried alive, only to find an insect crawling around in there, as if he were 6 feet under.
Perhaps that's why they never used the insect? Because they could never conduct unfettered live burial like they wanted, because Ali Soufan objected to it.
In any case, Rizzo will no doubt get a lot of mileage claiming that DOJ got squeamish about a single torture technique. But the truth is DOJ got cornered by the legal dilemma presented by a complaint about a coffin.
As I have noted in the past, John Rizzo has gone on the record to admit that the torture program was authorized by a Presidential Memorandum of Notification.
A few days after the attacks, President Bush signed a top-secret directive to CIA authorizing an unprecedented array of covert actions against Al Qaeda and its leadership. Like almost every such authorization issued by presidents over the previous quarter-century, this one was provided to the intelligence committees of the House and Senate as well as the defense subcommittees of the House and Senate appropriations committees. However, the White House directed that details about the most ambitious, sensitive and potentially explosive new program authorized by the President—the capture, incommunicado detention and aggressive interrogation of senior Al Qaeda operatives—could only be shared with the leaders of the House and Senate, plus the chair and ranking member of the two intelligence committees.
As always, CIA dutifully followed White House orders, [my emphasis]
Two years ago, at least, when he was trying to diss Congress using demonstrably false claims about the degree to which they had been briefed, John Rizzo claimed that the authority for the torture program all came directly from George Bush (Michael Hayden has said the same).
Not so today, apparently.
Steve Coll reports that Rizzo's memoir claims Bush knew nothing about the details of torture his authorization provided the legal cover for.
Rizzo's most remarkable account concerns President Bush. Essentially, Rizzo concludes that Bush has lately invented a memory of himself as a someone who was well informed and decisively in favor of waterboarding certain Al Qaeda prisoners, when, as far as Rizzo can tell, Bush seems not to have known at the time what the C.I.A. was doing.
In "Decision Points," his 2010 memoir, Bush recalled that George Tenet provided a list of brutal interrogation techniques the C.I.A. proposed to use, and that Bush overruled "two that I felt went too far." Later, when Tenet asked the President directly if he could employ waterboarding on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Bush wrote that he answered, "Damn right."
Yet, according to Rizzo, "The one senior U.S. Government national security official during this time—from August 2002 through 2003—who I did not believe was knowledgeable about the E.I.T.s was President Bush himself. He was not present at any of the Principals Committee meetings … and none of the principals at any of the E.I.T. sessions during this period ever alluded to the President knowing anything about them."
Some of the chronology of events related to the C.I.A. interrogations that Bush provides in "Decision Points" doesn't compute, according to Rizzo. Also, Rizzo would certainly have known if Bush had banned two techniques, but Rizzo has "no idea" what Bush might have been referring to in his memoir. Throughout this period, Rizzo, as he remembers it, was in daily contact with George Tenet, who said "nothing about any conversations he had with the president about E.I.T.s, much less any instructions or approvals coming from Bush."
Rizzo writes, "It simply didn't seem conceivable that George [Tenet] wouldn't have passed something like that on to those of us who were running the program." Rizzo got in touch with Tenet while preparing "Company Man" and Tenet confirmed "that he did not recall ever briefing Bush" on specific interrogation techniques being used at C.I.A. prisons. "I have to conclude that the account in Bush's memoir simply is wrong," Rizzo concludes. [my emphasis]
There are, as there always are with John Rizzo's claims, obvious gimmicks. He apparently discusses the period from August 2002 — the date when DOJ's OLC authorized torture for Abu Zubaydah, at which point much, if not all of the techniques approved, had already been used on him — through 2003, the year before Bush issued a second authorization for the torture program in Tenet's last days. The key authorizations from the White House came before August 2002, as the torture was happening (and Coll should review these details if he wants to review Rizzo's memoir competently). And we know Tenet did record Bush's authorization for the program — he did it in a document Rizzo handled.
Moreover, there are other public claims that refute Rizzo's claim, as when Glenn Carle described being told CIA had a letter from the President authorizing it to go beyond SERE with detainees.
"We don't do that sort of thing," [Glenn Carle responded to a CIA Counterterrorism Center Deputy about "going beyond SERE" with a detainee].
"We do now," Wilmington's voice was flat. The conversation remained quiet.
"What about EO12333? We've never done that sort of thing. The Agency'd never do that. We'd need a finding, at least."
"We have it." Wilmington's manner brightened a little. "We have a letter from the president. We can do whatever we need to do. We're covered." [my emphasis]
In other words, Rizzo's claims don't mean much (except that, goddamnit I'm going to have to read his stinking memoir).
But hey, let's take him at his word. Because if Bush really was ignorant about the torture program, then it means the entire thing was illegal.
If CIA's former top lawyer wants to claim the torture program was illegal, who are we to doubt him?
In a piece making the obvious comparison between fugitive spy Robert Seldon Lady and accused Espionage fugitive Edward Snowden, Tom Englehardt writes off the press silence about presumed American assistance to Lady in fleeing an international arrest warrant as the reality of being the sole superpower.
It's no less a self-evident truth in Washington that Robert Seldon Lady must be protected from the long (Italian) arm of the law, that he is a patriot who did his duty, that it is the job of the U.S. government to keep him safe and never allow him to be prosecuted, just as it is the job of that government to protect, not prosecute>, CIA torturers who took part in George W. Bush's Global War on Terror.
So there are two men, both of whom, Washington is convinced, must be brought in: one to face "justice," one to escape it. And all of this is a given, nothing that needs to be explained or justified to anyone anywhere, not even by a Constitutional law professor president. (Of course, if someone had been accused of kidnapping and rendering an American Christian fundamentalist preacher and terror suspect off the streets of Milan to Moscow or Tehran or Beijing, it would no less self-evidently be a different matter.)
Don't make the mistake, however, of comparing Washington's positions on Snowden and Lady and labeling the Obama administration's words and actions "hypocrisy." There's no hypocrisy involved. This is simply the living definition of what it means to exist in a one-superpower world for the first time in history. For Washington, the essential rule of thumb goes something like this: we do what we want; we get to say what we want about what we do; and U.N. ambassadorial nominee Samantha Powers then gets to lecture the world on human rights and oppression.
This version of how it all works is so much the norm in Washington that few there are likely to see any contradiction at all between the Obama administration's approaches to Snowden and Lady, nor evidently does the Washington media.
Englehardt doesn't mention Sabrina De Sousa's claims about the CIA's kidnapping of Osama Mustapha Hassan Nasr (Abu Omar) and Italy's subsequent prosecution of those involved. Adding her in the mix makes it clear how closely immunity for the Commander in Chief and his top aides is part of this superpower big-footing.
De Sousa, who says she served as an interpreter for the kidnappers on a planning trip, but not in the operation itself, was convicted and sentenced in Italy in part because the government refused to invoke diplomatic immunity (she admits she worked for CIA, but was under official cover).
The kidnapping did not meet US standards for renditions, but Station Chief Jeff Castelli wanted to do one anyway, and pushed through its approval even without Italian cooperation.
Despite concerns with the strength of Castelli's case, CIA headquarters still agreed to move forward and seek Rice's approval, De Sousa said. She recalled reading a cable from late 2002 that reported that Rice was worried about whether CIA personnel "would go to jail" if they were caught.
In response, she said, Castelli wrote that any CIA personnel who were caught would just be expelled from Italy "and SISMi will bail everyone out."
Of her CIA superiors, De Sousa said, "They knew this (the rendition) was bullshit, but they were just allowing it. These guys approved it based on what Castelli was saying even though they knew it never met the threshold for rendition."
Asked which agency officials would have been responsible for reviewing the operation and agreeing to ask Rice for Bush's authorization, De Sousa said they would have included Tenet; Tyler Drumheller, who ran the CIA's European operations; former CIA Director of Operations James Pavitt and his then-deputy, Stephen Kappes; Jose Rodriguez, then the head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, and former acting CIA General Counsel John Rizzo.
De Sousa says the Italians and Americans colluded to protect the highers up, while prosecuting her and other lower level people.
De Sousa accused Italian leaders of colluding with the United States to shield Bush, Rice, Tenet and senior CIA aides by declining to prosecute them or even demanding that Washington publicly admit to staging the abduction.
Calling the operation unjustified and illegal, De Sousa said Italy and the United States cooperated in "scape-goating a bunch of people . . . while the ones who approved this stupid rendition are all free."
Note, she doesn't say this, but some of the people in the chain of command for this kidnapping — in both the US and Italy — were also involved in planting the Niger forgeries used to start the Iraq War. And, of course, a number of the Americans were involved in the torture program and its cover-up.
Since then, De Sousa has used all legal avenues to blow the whistle on this kidnapping.
De Sousa said that she has tried for years to report what she said was the baseless case for Nasr's abduction and her shoddy treatment by the CIA and two administrations.
Her pleas and letters, however, were ignored by successive U.S. intelligence leaders, the CIA inspector general's office, members and staff of the House and Senate intelligence committees, Rice, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder, said De Sousa.
Assuming De Sousa's story is correct (and an anonymous source backs its general outlines), then it adds one more reason why Lady quietly got to return to the US while Snowden will be loudly chased around the world.
What Americans are buying off on — along with superpower status that may defund schools in exchange for empire — with their silence about the disparate treatment of Sady and Snowden, then, is not just the ego thrill of living in a thus far unrivaled state.
It's also, implicitly, the kind of immunity for the Commander in Chief and executive branch that shouldn't exist in democratic states.
A bit of a row has started between Jay Rosen and Will Saletan for the latter's attempt to "see how [the torturers] saw what they did" in this post. Frankly, I think Rosen mischaracterizes the problem with Saletan's post. It's not so much that Saletan parrots the euphemisms of the torturers. It's that he accepts what John Rizzo, Michael Hayden, Jose Rodriguez, and Marc Thiessen said — in a presentation with multiple internal contradictions even before you get to the outright demonstrable lies — as the truth.
I'm particularly troubled by the way Saletan takes this assertion (which is based on the pseudo science behind the torture):
EITs were used to break the will to resist, not to extract information directly. Hayden acknowledged that prisoners might say anything to stop their suffering. (Like the other panelists, he insisted EITs weren't torture.) That's why "we never asked anybody anything we didn't know the answer to, while they were undergoing the enhanced interrogation techniques.
And concludes this, which I take to be Saletan's belief, not the torturers':
Fourth, the right question to ask about the EIT program isn't whether people lie under torture but whether using torture to train human beings in obedience is wrong despite the payoffs.
In an effort to take the torturers' comments — and very notable silences, which Saletan doesn't discuss — in good faith, Saletan presumes we might treat obedience among detainees being exploited as one of its "payoffs."
Doing so ignores how the Bush Administration used torture to get detainees to tell useful lies, the most important of those being that Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda, which is one of the key pieces of "intelligence" that was used to get us into the Iraq War. That lie from Ibn Sheikh al-Libi — extracted through the use of mock burial and waterboarding, the two main forms of torture discussed in the panel — contributed directly to the unnecessary deaths of 4,000 Americans, to say nothing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
Hayden's claim we always knew the answer to questions we asked under torture
Here's the full exchange from which Saletan takes as truthful the assertion that torture is about "learned helplessness" (no one here uses Mitchell and Jessen's term, but that's what we know they called it).
MR. THIESSEN: Mike, one of the – one of the scenes, you have the interrogator throws the – whoever the detainee is down and starts pouring water over his face and starts shouting, when's the last time you saw bin Laden? And I think that gets to a deep misunderstanding of how interrogation actually worked. And one of the things you explained to me when I was working on my book and on the president's speech was that there's a difference between interrogation and debriefing, and the purpose of interrogation was not – we actually didn't ask questions that we didn't know the answers to. It was to ascertain whether they were being truthful or not. (So if you ?) walk through that?
MR. HAYDEN: I'm almost willing to make an absolute statement that we never asked anybody anything we didn't know the answer to while they were undergoing the enhanced interrogation techniques. The techniques were not designed to elicit truth in the moment – which is what was, you know, tell me this or I'll hurt you more, I'm not your friend – for about a third of our detainees. By the way, for two thirds of our detainees, this wasn't necessary. Now, I'm willing to admit that the existence of the option may have influenced the two-thirds who said, well, let's talk, all right? I mean – I mean, let's be candid with one another. But for about a third, techniques were used not to elicit, again, information in the moment, but to take someone who had come into our custody absolutely defiant and move them into a state or a zone of cooperation, whereby – and then you recall the scene in the movie after the detainee is cleaned up and they're having this lengthy conversation – for the rest of the detention, and in some cases it's years – it's a conversation. It's a debriefing. It's going back and forth with the kind of dialogue that you saw in that scene about a – about a third of the way through the movie.
You know a lot of people kind of reflexively say – they'll say anything to make you stop, which may actually be true. That's why we didn't ask them questions while this was going on. Again, as John said, I mean, you know – these things weren't gentle or kind, but the impact – and I think Jose's written very thoughtfully about this – the impact was psychological. The impact is you are no longer in control of your destiny, all right? You are in our hands, and therefore, that movement into the zone of cooperation as opposed to the zone of defiance. But Jose's got more of the fine print on that. [my emphasis]
As I mentioned the other day, I still haven't seen the movie, so I'm not sure. But Thiessen's effort to dismiss the claim that we asked detainees where Osama bin Laden was while being waterboarding may be an effort to rebut Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's assertion that he lied about OBL's location to get them to stop waterboarding him — all while hiding the importance of the courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who would eventually lead to OBL.
Now, Hayden's claim is so obviously false as to be almost pathetic.
The ticking timebomb that blows up Hayden's claim
It's a claim that Rodriguez — in the very same appearance — undermines, when he describes turning to torture out of sheer ignorance.
MR. THIESSEN: Follow-up, Jose. I mean, take us back to – since we're pulling the broader picture – take us back to September 11 th , 2001. You know, we've just been hit – there's smoke in the ground in New York, buildings have fallen, the Pentagon is broken. And what do we know about al-Qaida? I mean, did we know that KSM was the operational commander of al Qaida or that he had this – or that members of his network – or all this information that we take for granted that we know now?
MR. RODRIGUEZ: Yeah, we didn't know that much. Continue reading
Update: Let me make this clear: I am not commenting on the content of the movie. I am commenting on the content of John Rizzo's reactions to the movie, particularly his depiction about when and how and by whom "the box" was approved, which — as I say several times — get to the core of the legal problems with torture.
In a development I could have predicted, one of former CIA Acting General Counsel John Rizzo's chief complaints with Zero Dark Thirty has to do with how the movie depicted "the box." (This exchange comes from the first comments Rizzo made at an AEI event with him, Dick Cheney flack Marc Thiessen, former CIA Director Michael Hayden, and the director of the torture program, Jose Rodriguez).
MR. RIZZO: The interrogation scenes – I mean, they were – they were striking. They were hard to watch for me, having lived through this and how the – how the actual techniques came to be, and all the safeguards we put on them, all the monitoring by medical personnel during the course of the interrogation – you know, again, it's a movie, so you know, the character in the movie, the interrogator, seemingly making stuff up as you went along, you're not talking – OK, bring on the water and –
MR. : (Off mic) – get the buckets.
MR. RIZZO: – and get the buckets – now, the box – people have asked me about the box. And since this whole thing has been declassified now, most of you probably know that one of the techniques was a box, putting a detainee in a box for a – for a limited duration. Now, the box in the movie is not the kind of box that was – that was used. When I say all this, I don't want to downplay or leave any impression that the actual program, the actual – the actual waterboarding was, you know, was tame or benign. I mean, it was a very aggressive technique, as were all the – all the others. But – so on the whole, I mean, I went into it – I went into it telling myself it was going to be a movie. I was frankly relieved that there were no lawyers involved in the movie. (Laughter.) I would have just spent the next four years at cocktail parties explaining why I wasn't that lawyer. So I was – so I mean, on the whole, it's as they said. It was a mixed bag, but it was a terrific movie. And you know, I think it did really take no sides and Miss Bigelow and Mr. Boal, I think, skillfully teed up the complicated moral questions of all of this we're facing, especially in those first few scary months after the 9/11 attacks.
MR. THIESSEN: Can I – just to follow up on that. I mean, you know, you were the chief legal officer at the time. I mean, would you have authorized the interrogation techniques the way they were depicted? I mean, explain the difference in the box – (chuckles) – explain the – you know, explain that you – do people just throw somebody on a mat and start pouring water over their heads? I mean –
MR. RIZZO: No, no, the – first of all, you know, it was – it was "Mother, May I." Those interrogators were not allowed to adlib. There were certain specific –as the memos – OLC memos show at the time, I mean, it was a – there was a meticulous procedure to undertake. And before the use of the waterboard – they will confirm this – the interrogators at the site would have to come back in writing, explain why they thought the waterboard was necessary, it would be approved at headquarters. During the time the waterboard was used, which was only until mid-2003, it took the CIA director to approve the use. So it was a much more modern program. Now, the box – I mean, a box is not pleasant. First of all, there is – there was a big box authorized that the detainee could stand in and a smaller box. It wasn't – it didn't appear to me to be quite as small as what was depicted in the movie. But yes, there was a box technique. But again, the – I mean, when I – you know, everyone can look at this in a different way. I just had the impression from the scene that the guy was sort of, you know adlibbing as he went along, which was, believe me, far from the – far from the reality. [my emphasis]
The box — particularly the apparent portrayal (I haven't yet seen the movie) that the torturer ad-libbed when he introduced the box — is as big a concern of Rizzo's as waterboarding is.
Of course it is.
That's because the coffin — later dubbed a small box to give it legal cover — used to conduct a mock burial with Abu Zubaydah is the at the heart of the legal problems with torture.
As these posts lay out (one, two, three, four), one of several main reasons CIA asked the Office of Legal Counsel for a memo authorizing torture is because Ali Soufan saw Abu Zubaydah's torturers prepare to put Abu Zubaydah in a coffin (it's unclear whether he or his partner Steve Gaudin saw them actually use the coffin). That is one of the things — perhaps the thing — that Soufan labeled "borderline torture." And because an FBI officer had told CIA's contractors he might need to prosecute them for what he had seen, CIA needed more durable legal cover than the daily approvals given by Alberto Gonzales every night.
Because an FBI officer had labeled the things approved by the White House, on the President's authority, illegal.
Which is why John Rizzo and John Yoo started writing first the July 13, 2002 memo generally authorizing torture (this memo is what the CIA would ultimately rely on to claim things like the murder of Gul Rahman were legal) and then, several weeks later, the Bybee Memo laying out the approved torture techniques in detail.
John Rizzo tried to get John Yoo to approve the technique that had already been used on Abu Zubaydah, the one Ali Soufan had labeled illegal. He tried to get mock burial approved as a technique; he kept trying right up until the last days before the Bybee Memo was finalized. But for some reason — I suspect, because Michael Chertoff had already agreed with the FBI that the mock burial Ali Soufan complained about was illegal — it was not included in the final list.
Instead, John Yoo and Jay Bybee approved "small box confinement." Something that, if everyone remained silent about the intent and desired effect of shoving someone in a coffin-shaped box and leading them to believe they'd be buried alive, would both retroactively approve the use of a coffin that Abu Zubadayh's (and Ibn Sheikh al-Libi's) torturers had already used, but also let them use mock burial in the future, in spite of the fact that John Yoo — even John Yoo — had deemed it illegal.
One of the main things an FBI officer judged illegal — mock burial, a technique that had already been used, on the authority of the President — is the only single torture technique John Yoo ever deemed illegal.
Again, I have not yet paid to see the CIA's propaganda effort. But John Rizzo, at least — the man who tried so hard to get the OLC to approve mock burial — is very concerned both about the size of the box in question (the SERE document used to label it "small box confinement" prescribed size and time limits), but more importantly that torturer in the movie is depicted as using the coffin-shaped box without first getting approval for it.
The movie, it seems, shows a torturer using a coffin before John Yoo and John Rizzo would have deliberated for weeks and decided to call it small box confinement. The movie, it seems, shows a torturer using a coffin to conduct a mock burial [Update: I've been told they don't do a burial in the movie, though it does depict adlib], and doing so in terms that make it clear that the coffin preceded the DOJ approval for it.
I'm extrapolating from Rizzo's comments, but it seems likely that his problem with the box is that ZD30 depicts its use in precisely the terms that make it illegal, the one act of torture labeled illegal as it was happening, one of the main acts of torture the OLC memos were designed to provide legal cover for.
Frankly, I'm sympathetic to Rizzo's complaint that this depiction of a torturer ad-libbing by using a coffin is inaccurate (though not to his claim that it was an OLC memo that limited the torture). After all, we know that the White House was responding to the torturers' "Mother, May I" on a daily or near-daily basis.
We know that the White House was renewing its Gloves Come Off Memorandum of Notification approval for things like mock burial at each step of the process. So it's not like the torturers executed a mock burial without approval.
The problem, however, is that they executed a mock burial with the President's approval, weeks and months before the DOJ would deem that one torture technique illegal.


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I've been experimenting with a new technique for making portrait photographs that pop. In situations where I would previously have used light to separate my subject from the background I am looking instead into using depth of field. This is nothing new of course and I used it in my 50 Strangers set but it does have its limitations when shooting wider environmental portraits. Lenses simply aren't fast enough to create a super shallow depth of field at wider angles.Enter Bokeh Panoramas a technique initially conceived by an amazing wedding photographer called Ryan Brenizer and often referred to as the Brenizer Method. The idea of stitching lots of photos together is not new but what Ryan did was come up with a new application for the technique. The basic idea, shoot with a medium telephoto length lens with a wide aperture, such as an 85mm f1.8 on a full frame body, to get a shallow depth of field and stitch multiple frames together to create a wide angle shot.
Ryan has many great examples over on google+ and a B&H video explanation on his blog. They are well worth checking out. One of the best tutorials I found was here by Daifuku Sensei. The thing I liked about it is that it clearly shows the number of frames required to create the panorama and how they overlap each other.I had several failed attempts at the technique but now have some of the best pictures of roughly human sized sign posts and statues ever taken! When I first started trying the method I was reluctant for some reason to overlap my shots too much. I was worried that when moving on to a human subject this would segment the person into too many frames and make the stitching problematic. This is still a concern but what I have realised is it's better to have too many frames than not enough and then to apply masking to ensure the best frame of the model is used by the stitching program.What I have learnt is the key frame, the one including the model's face is the one to get first. Meaning you can worry less about your model moving. But before you take any frames you need to let your model know what you're about to do. Explain that you just need them to hold a pose past the point when they hear the shutter go, to hold it even though you appear to be randomly shooting something else and most importantly not laugh at your impression of James Cordon doing the robot in Gavin & Stacey! If they do move it's not the end of the world, but setting the scene and trying to minimise movement will make your life simpler. You also need a clear idea in your head as to where the boundaries of your shot need to be. Just how much in each direction of your subject do you want to cover? Then come up with a method of ensuring you cover the entire area overlapping each frame by 1/4 to 1/3 of a frame. Personally I've found holding the camera in landscape orientation seems more intuitive and easier to ensure I've covered the entire scene, but technically it makes no difference. You've still got to overlap in all directions in the same way.So once you've taken all of your frames, what then? Well the next thing I've found is you need some serious computing power or a love of drinking tea whilst it stitches them together for you! Crunching all of those 1s and 0s is not quick. Photoshop CS5 can automate the process of creating a panorama for you and worked very well on some of my test images. It results in a file with multiple layers, one per frame and then adds a mask to each layer to include only the necessary parts of each frame. I liked this method as it meant the mask of each frame could be tweaked slightly should there be movement between each frame that you wanted to compensate for manually. With more complicated examples including more frames it simply seemed to give up though and did not complete the masking process.
I then found an application called Hugin and best of all it's free! It seemed to work well where Photoshop had failed and produced great results.Through trial and error I have come up with the following steps for stitching the images together successfully:
Once you've created your panorama Brett Maxwell has written a web page which allows you to work out what the equivelant focal length and aperture you would have needed to take your image. Which is quite fun to find out. The image above for example was shot with an 85mm lens @ f1.8 and is mad up of 26 frames resulting in a 149 megapixel image equivelant to 32mm @ f0.68!
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I'm very much a lighting photographer. When I look at a scene, a location, almost immediately I'm looking for an ambient light I can control at less than or equal ot 1/250th second so I can bring in some off camera flash as the key light. This control appeals to me. It means I know what I'm going to get. When photographing street style it has its limitations though. Carrying lightstands, umbrellas and soft boxes gets tiring. You can't just grab your bag and go. It's also good for everyone in every discipline to step out of their comfort zone every now and again, pushing what they know and running the risk of failing.
So the rules say you should find a shaded location out of harsh sunlight when shooting portraiture. And that's fine, if what you're looking for is a safe exposure, a good photograph. Shooting into the sun is breaking the rules, photography 101 says don't do it. But I think it has a distinctly summer feel. Just look at that hair light and warm golden tone and not a flash in sight!
The danger of shooting into the sun is that you get a completely washed out frame with huge lens flare. Clearly as I explained above I'm no expert but the way I see it the trick is to let enough light in to give you the haze and a little bit of lens flare but not so much that it simply washes everything out. In this shot that is achieved by finding a spot where the sun just clips the top of the building (frame top left) washing out the buildings, giving great hair light and allowing me to bounce it back up from frame bottom left with a 42" gold reflector. You could equally catch the sun in some trees, or above someones head / shoulder to get the same effect.
So reason number 1 for photographing street style or street portaits?
It allows you to experiment with new techniques with absolutely no risk. The worst that can happen is you take an awful picture and you have to laugh it off with your impromptu model. No ones lost any money, there's no client who's going to get upset and all you've lost is 5 minutes of your and someone elses time.
At best you get a cracking picture and make some money out of the prints!
Richard C Hill is a photographer based in Milton Keynes. Shooting many forms of portrait photography from fashion and beauty images through to relaxed portraiture and dynamic sports images. With a contemporary and well lit photograpic style Richard shoots in a Milton Keynes based studio and on location both locally and in London. Obsessed with photography. His main focus as a photographer is to photograph both "interesting" and "beautiful" people.


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BERKELEY -- UC Berkeley should focus more on its undergraduate students to make sure they don't "fall through the cracks and waste precious time and money," the new chancellor said Tuesday night, echoing comments by Gov. Jerry Brown last week.
Chancellor Nicholas Dirks made the comments during a live Internet broadcast on YouTube on Tuesday night in an event sponsored by the Cal Alumni Association, the first of its kind at UC Berkeley.
Dirks spoke on issues raised by more than 1,000 questions submitted before the broadcast.
"I think we can do better" with services provided in UC Berkeley's undergraduate education, Dirks said in the hourlong broadcast, adding that the school has been preoccupied with research and rankings of graduate programs.
"If you don't have the most comprehensive forms of attention paid to the undergraduate experience, you're not dealing with the first and foremost part of our public operation," he said.
His comments echoed those of Brown last week who unveiled a 5 percent increase in funding for the University of California system, along with bigger increases for community colleges and the California State University system. The money for higher education, Brown hinted at his news conference, comes with an understanding that students get more support so they can get through the system faster.
The price of tuition and books are so high these days that "it argues very strongly for making sure students get their degree much sooner than is the case today," Brown said.
Dirks said although the school only gets 12 percent of its money from the state, down from 30 percent in 2004, he hasn't given up on squeezing more money out of Sacramento. UC Berkeley's total budget is about $2.1 billion.
"I've been spending a lot of time in Sacramento and have been talking with the governor," Dirks said.
At the same time, he would like to turn up the heat on the wealthy individuals and corporations for funding.
"I came from Columbia University, where we had an $8 billion endowment," said Dirks, who was vice president there before moving to Berkeley in June. "A 5 percent payout from that helps. Until we build an endowment, we can't say we can do without state funding."
UC Berkeley has an endowment of about $1.2 billion.
Dirks ruled out ramping up online classes to make the school more affordable because "we would be losing the essence of what we do here."
While announcing no new programs or details on how he would help make UC Berkeley more affordable, which he said runs $13,000 a year for California residents before fees, he said current tuition support programs mean about 40 percent of students pay no tuition at all.
"But the bottom line is that education is expensive," Dirks said. "We're in a different world now."
Contact Doug Oakley at 925-234-1699. Follow him at Twitter.com/douglasoakley.


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COLUMBUS, Ohio — A lot of NHL coaches prefer not to talk about the opposition, or pay a quick compliment and let it go at that.
But Columbus Blue Jackets coach Ken Hitchcock went on at length Tuesday about the Sharks team that his will face at Nationwide Arena tonight.
"There's a reason they win," Hitchcock said of a San Jose team that has climbed to No. 2 in the Western Conference and will be looking for its sixth consecutive victory. "It's not because they have a lock on the talent. It's because they play the game the right way.
"Their team is a product of the environment that's created by the coaches. It's a team that gets after you offensively, it's a team that gets after you defensively," said Hitchcock, whose Blue Jackets lost to San Jose 6-3 at HP Pavilion on Oct. 8. "They go to the hard areas to check, they go to the hard areas to score. We're always trying to get our players to fight for space rather than look for space. They're where we want to get to."
Sharks coach Todd McLellan took the compliment, then raised questions about its accuracy and suggested Hitchcock had another audience in mind besides the reporters he was addressing.
"I respect Hitch's comments, but we're not that way all the time," McLellan said. "We have our warts. We try to work through them just like every other team."
Hitchcock, McLellan added, "is one of the best motivators in the league" and praising the competition is "a very good motivating tactic."
To drive home his point, McLellan offered his thoughts on Columbus.
"I would say about their team that they're extremely well coached and will come at us with everything they have on the forecheck," McLellan said. "Their goaltender (Steve Mason) has played with a lot of confidence over the last three or four games. They beat some very good teams lately. There's a lot of that that I'm going to use to motivate our team as well."
Regardless of Hitchcock's intent, the points he raised in contrasting the Sharks with the Blue Jackets are legitimate, according to two players who came to San Jose from Columbus.
"He sees the game and he's very smart," left wing Jody Shelley said of Hitchcock, his Blue Jackets coach during two seasons. "He knows what he wants to get out of his players. He knows what it takes to win and he knows the Sharks play the style everyone wants to play — big, fast, control the game. He's right. We fight for the ice and that's what he's trying to get going there."
Center Manny Malhotra, who signed with the Sharks as a free agent after three seasons under Hitchcock in Columbus, cited another contrast between the teams.
"There's definitely a difference in the cultures of the teams, the environment in the room," Malhotra said. "There's a different atmosphere here where the expectations levels are high and guys are pushing one another to get to that expectation level."
But don't all teams have that peer pressure?
"No, that's not the case," said Malhotra, who played for the New York Rangers and Dallas Stars before coming to Columbus and San Jose. "There are always different levels of accountability, and in this locker room, it's the highest I've ever seen."
Hitchcock might have had nice things to say about the Sharks, but he did have enough confidence in his own team to state flat out that Sharks left wing Dany Heatley would not repeat his plus-six performance of Oct. 8 when Heatley had a hat trick and the Sharks won 6-3.
"He won't be plus-six tomorrow," the Columbus coach said.
Heatley seemed to take that as a good-natured challenge.
"We'll see," he said.
For more on the Sharks, see David Pollak's Working the Corners blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/sharks. Contact him at 408-920-5940.


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Cobblers boss Aidy Boothroyd is familiar with O'Donovan, 27, having signed him for the Sky Blues in June 2010 when he was in charge at the Ricoh Arena.
"Roy is a striker who can also play in both wide areas," said Boothroyd. "He has played a number of games in the Premier League and was someone I tracked very closely when I was at Colchester. I then took him to Coventry when I went there.
"He is fit, athletic, mobile and he has an eye for goal. He will give us a different kind of threat to the other players we have at the club.
"I have worked with him before and he is a good character. I know what we are getting with Roy and I am very pleased we have been able to bring him in."
Roy Keane took O'Donovan to Sunderland from Cork City in 2006. He made 17 appearances for the Black Cats before enjoying a series of loan spells, including at Hartlepool, where he scored nine goals in 15 games at the end of the 2008/09 season.
- Sports & Recreation
- Soccer
- Aidy Boothroyd


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Organ and Choral Scholars at Lincoln find themselves at the heart of a thriving musical community centred on, but not restricted to, the Lincoln College Choir, recognised as one of the finest mixed voice chapel choirs in the University of Oxford.
There are normally two Organ Scholars in residence at any one time, so the College makes elections in two out of each three years. The next elections will be made for entry in 2016 and 2017. The Senior Organ Scholar is known as the Hollingsworth Organ Scholar. Further details of the application process will be available on this webpage at the beginning of Michaelmas Term 2015. We welcome applications from candidates coming straight from school, although deferred entry is possible. Organ Scholars may read Music, English, Engineering, or Biochemistry. Organ Scholars reading music are directed by the Music Tutor, Dr Suzanne Aspden, who is a Lecturer in Music at Lincoln, and a Fellow of Jesus, another college on Turl Street. Dr Elenor Giraud, Lord Crewe Junior Research Fellow in Music at Lincoln College, provides further support to musical activity in College.
The Hollingsworth (Senior) Scholar is awarded an annual scholarship of £500, and the Junior Scholar is awarded an annual scholarship of £350. The College also pays for organ lessons for both Scholars. The Organ scholars are offered accommodation in College for all three or four years of their undergaduate course. Their rooms are two of the best sets available for undergraduates and there is an upright piano in each room. The magnificent Chapel organ was built by William Drake in 2010 and is available for practice throughout the day and evening. There is also a grand piano in the College's Oakeshott Room available for practice and recitals.
The Organ Scholars are responsible to the Chaplain for the choir, which they oversee and direct, and for all the music in Chapel. The repertoire is wide-ranging, and Organ Scholars are encouraged to develop their own interests.There are also opportunities to involve instrumentalists in chapel worship, and to organise concerts and other performances in a range of contexts. The website for the Lincoln College Chapel Choir has extensive information on recent activities, tours, and recordings.
In recognition of the stature of the choir and its central place in the life of the College, Lincoln elects 1-4 Choral Scholars (available to students of Lincoln college) each year from amongst Sopranos, Altos, Tenors and Basses and 2-3 Choral Exhibitioners (open to any university student). There is no quota for any one part and no restriction on subjects studied. Scholars and exhibitioners receive an annual scholarship of £100, and are offered free individual singing lessons. It is envisaged that they will take a central role in the life of the choir, and that they will also be active in the wider musical life of the College. There is no separate application process. Scholars and exhibitioners are selected by audition and interview from amongst the members of the choir.
The Rector, Chaplain and other Fellows are also glad to lend their active and enthusiastic support to the Organ scholars, to the Choral Scholars and to the choir, and the College underwrites costs for recordings.


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JAN 21, 2013 - Business Insider
A Must Read - Share
Aaron Swartz's legal team and family are justifiably outraged at federal prosecutors, a man prosecuted by one of the same attorneys said. Swartz's former lawyer said this week that Assistant United States Attorney Stephen Heymann knew the 26-year-old was suicidal but was "heedless" in pursuing him. Swartz's family has said the same, claiming he was "killed by the government." Now Stephen Watt, who pleaded guilty to computer crimes in 2008 after being prosecuted by Heymann, is also coming out swinging against the prosecutor. Heymann cared more about his record than justice, Watt says.
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I am contemplating on heading over to Best Buy tonight at midnight to buy Black Ops 2 but still having fun with Halo 4. Not sure what I am going to do. Anyone else on 1up attending a midnight release?
Call of Duty Black Ops 2-midnight release
Nov 12, 2012 8:25AM PST
Comments (3)
Nope....Posted: Nov 12, 2012 12:00AM PST by BrandonDumsky
After last year's mistake of listening to the hype that never seems to diminish and waiting in the literal freezing rain, I decided to sit this one out. Granted, they are totally revamping the killstreak system and having some kind of Pick Ten layout, but I think I can wait another night.