The Pentagon has quietly posted the huge (8,000 page) New York Times Freedom of Information Act file that served as the basis for David Barstow’s remarkable investigative piece on the conflicts of interests of former military officers who work as media analysts.  The Times has been working on the story since 2005.

You can view the documents first hand at http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/milanalysts/.

The Associated Press tested drinking water in a number of places and discovered that traces of a wide range of Big Pharma’s products are reaching people through their local water supply. The AP story is important, but, sadly, an old story without, so far, a very happy ending.

Public health officials have known for years that America’s over-the-counter and prescription drug dependency was affecting virtually everyone because our sewage treatment plants could not get rid of the chemicals in the drugs humans passed back into the water supply. To put it plainly - all of us are getting a small dose of a cornucopia of drugs. By all of us I mean children, fish, birds and all creatures dependent on water are getting tiny involuntary stealth prescriptions.  The drug makers and President Bush’s EPA assure us the doses are too small to worry about. So they don’t. But considering the source of the reassurance, perhaps you should.

In the summer of 2005 NRNS reporter Maggie Master assisted The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin with a story on the same subject. We have linked to the story here because even though it was played well in one of the nation’s most important newspaper, neither Congress nor the Executive Branch did anything to protect our water supply from ourselves. We have also included a link to the excellent AP story that received wide attention this week. The point of both stories is that government moves glacially on public health and environmental issues any time huge corporate interests are at stake. The drug industry has the best lobbyists in Washington. So don’t hold your breath waiting for help from Congress or the White House. Apparently the Bush Environmental Protection Agency is more interested in protecting big pharmaceutical companies than human and animal health.

In the meantime try to ease the tide of drugs in the water supply by not flushing old drugs down the toilet or throwing them in the trash destined for landfills. Big Pharma should fund a program to help the public dispose of old medication responsibly. Maybe free mailing envelopes for out-of-date medications back to the companies that make them as well as drop-off boxes at pharmacies.

To some of the old timers the CIA is still a cherished priesthood. Like most priesthoods, these members do all they can to protect the reputation and what is often the mythology of the CIA.  The aging members of the priesthood have been very busy the last few years as more and more about CIA mismanagement and venality has emerged publicly.

Among the fiercest defenders of the CIA’s crumbling reputation is the Association For Intelligence Officers – AFIO. Here the CIA’s lies and myths are perpetuated and books and articles by authors who dare point out discrepancies are attacked.

One AFIO message is that its members won the Cold War and if there were excesses, so what? We won. At AFIO, the CIA body count is intellectualized and made digestible. 

The AFIO intelligence mindset is an alternate universe where facts are ignored. In the real world the Agency is considered a failure by most people who understand our secret history. AFIO, as the CIA’s apologist, it seems, has a tough sale.

This week the sale just got a little tougher.

British MI6 traitor George Blake, who at 85 is apparently still breathing in Moscow and had recently been honored by Vladimir Putin, reared his ugly head in the form of a new book written by Blake’s KGB handler. One of the supposed great victories of the Cold War - how the CIA had tapped into the main communications line between East Berlin and Moscow by digging a secret tunnel into East Berlin – was, in fact, a myth.  It turns out it was all known to the Russians before the first spade of dirt turned.

To many, the BBC stands as the gold standard in journalism: It has lots of resources, bright correspondents, able producers and a great web site. There is just one problem. It is missing the one element—more important than money, expensive technology and all the rest—necessary to do great journalism. It lacks the intestinal fortitude to broadcast stories important to its country that might get its government, and in particular its national security apparatus, in trouble. That is the Beeb’s great weakness. It is funded by the British people through the government. So when a story, no matter how important, proves too embarrassing for its paymasters, BBC management takes notice.

In journalism school the mantra is “without fear or favor.” It’s not a slogan they adhere to at the BBC. A case in point is that of Atif Amin, a British Customs agent who, in doing his job, tried to shut down the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network only to be blocked by U.S. and British intelligence. When the story of Amin’s curtailed investigation got out recently, the British government lashed out and tried to discredit him. The BBC took a powder, refusing to touch the story. Its sister service, BBC America, has also studiously ignored the story.

On December 5, British authorities raided Amin’s house ostensibly searching for evidence that he had provided information about his investigation of the Khan network to myself and my colleague, David Armstrong, for our book America and The Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise. The justification given by authorities in obtaining their search warrant against Amin was rubbish. The details of Amin’s investigation were known to intelligence organizations from Europe to the U.S. and we were able to piece together the story through a variety of sources. Amin’s great transgression was that when asked by reporters about the facts laid out in our book, he confirmed them. And as a patriotic Briton concerned for the present and future safety of his fellow countrymen, he spoke his mind about what he considered to be a perilous error in judgment on the part of MI6 and the CIA. He was removed from his job because the British government wanted to discredit him as a witness to its failure to deal intelligently and swiftly with A.Q. Khan’s nuclear smuggling ring.