Wayne Blanchard
Re: Security Cracks at the White House
Tue Sep 17 00:39:38 2002
208.152.73.123

Re: Security Cracks at the White House
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 22:06:20 -0400
From: "Wayne Blanchard" - wayne_rb@hotmail.com
To: apfn@apfn.org

Dear APFN: The most positive method to fight terrorism is to simply remove
the Bush Cabal from office. The un-elected White House occupant has assumed
the role of a De Facto Dictatorship,. We need the true NESARA law announcement
immediately, followed by the arrest and prosecution of the Bush/Cheney
alliance which has already been indicted for High Treason and other crimes.
For more definitive info, log onto:

www.fourwinds10.com

Time is of the essence!!

Wayne Blanchard, Sui Juris

>From: American Patriot Friends Network
>Reply-To: apfn@apfn.org 
>To: American Patriot Friends Network
>Subject: Security Cracks at the White House
>Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 14:58:17 -0700
>
>Insight on the News - National Issue: 10/01/02 = Special Report
>http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495;article=33178
>
>Security Cracks at the White House
>By John Berlau
>
>One year after the Sept. 11 attacks the national focus still is on homeland
>security. From local banks to city halls, officials frantically are working
>to make American institutions less vulnerable to terrorist attack. Many
>assumed the hardening for homeland security began at the White House. That,
>after all, is where the president resides and meets with his top advisers,
>so visitors who come and go must be the most closely scrutinized in
>Washington.
>But Insight has learned this may not be the case because of a new
>computerized access-control system put in place by the U.S. Secret Service —
>which still is headed by a director appointed by Bill Clinton — right after
>the Bush administration took office. Largely built in the final months of
>the Clinton administration, the system was advertised by its proponents as
>being quicker and more accurate than previous systems the Secret Service had
>relied on to clear visitors into the White House. But sources familiar with
>the way it has operated tell Insight that not only was the system never
>adequately tested, but it frequently breaks down and delivers inaccurate
>data about White House employees and guests.
>
>National-security concerns also have been raised concerning the ownership of
>the lead contractor on the system, a company called Ultrak Inc. After
>Ultrak's stock price tanked to around $1 last year, controlling interest in
>the Lewisville, Texas, company was acquired by Niklaus Zenger, a resident of
>Switzerland. Zenger, now Ultrak's new chief executive officer (CEO), also
>has ties to the Russian government, leading some security experts to worry
>about what now is a foreign-owned company having gained access to highly
>sensitive data concerning every aspect of who goes in and out of the White
>House and when.
>
>Critics of the system spoke to Insight with reluctance. All have tremendous
>respect for the Secret Service and the courageous agents who put their lives
>on the line to protect the president and the country. But, as one critic put
>it, "The new access-control system potentially poses, at best, embarrassment
>and, at worst, a threat to those whom it is intended to help protect: the
>president, vice president, government employees and Secret Service officers
>who are charged with the physical protection of the White House complex and
>its occupants."
>
>Checking carefully, Insight interviewed current and former Secret Service
>employees and others familiar with the access-control system and obtained
>documents that reiterated many of the concerns expressed.
>
>Most were deeply concerned but asked to remain anonymous. One of those who
>did speak for the record is Bill Castle, a Secret Service officer involved
>in protecting presidents from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton. Castle became a
>consultant to the Secret Service on information-technology programs after he
>retired in 1996. He tells Insight the system was rushed into operation and
>that there were problems immediately after it was installed in April 2001.
>
>"It wouldn't pull up names of people with White House passes as fast as the
>old system," Castle says. "The older system would get it in five seconds,
>and the new system took more than 20 seconds" per name. He says this made
>the processing of long lines of White House guests much slower.
>
>More importantly, Castle says, the system frequently failed to give accurate
>information about White House employees, the press corps and others with
>temporary or permanent passes to enter the White House. "The ladies in the
>[Secret Service's] pass-clerks office were really concerned that they
>couldn't get the hard-copy reports on which passes were active and which had
>expired, who should have access to the White House and who shouldn't," he
>says.
>
>Castle left the Secret Service in the fall of 2001. According to sources
>with knowledge of how the system currently functions, it usually doesn't
>take as long to process White House visitors through a line. But they say
>the system still has numerous problems ensuring accurate data about White
>House guests and employees. They say it also frequently crashes. In fact,
>Secret Service agents had to rely on a backup system for more than a day in
>early August.
>
>Special Agent Marc Connolly, a Secret Service spokesman, acknowledges the
>system was down in August, but insists "that was scheduled routine
>maintenance." Commenting generally on the system, Connolly tells Insight,
>"It's a state-of-the-art system, and we're really pleased with its
>performance." When asked if there have been any errors, Connolly replies,
>"Not that I'm aware of."
>
>So how serious is this? Sources familiar with the new system say it has
>given inaccurate data about telephone numbers, birth dates, expiration dates
>of passes, dates and times of arrivals and departures and, most importantly,
>arrest records. "There have been occasions when White House pass-holders'
>pictures have been erroneously displayed on computers with personal
>information belonging to entirely different pass-holders," one source says.
>
>Such malfunctions have the potential to harm White House security policies
>in two main ways, sources say. One is that the computer wrongly will list
>people with legitimate business at the White House as "Do Not Admits," thus
>blocking or delaying their access. The other, more dangerous, problem is
>that visitors who shouldn't be admitted, including potential terrorists or
>assailants, will be let into the White House by a computer system that
>wrongly processes the data on individuals.
>
>All the sources are careful about not exaggerating. They point out that
>there is a backup system that dates from the 1980s, but warn that it is
>being phased out. They also note that Secret Service agents carefully
>monitor guests even after they're admitted. Still, an incident that occurred
>in the summer of 2001, a few months after the new system was installed,
>indicates why some believe the new system already may have compromised
>national security.
>
>In late June 2001, a uniformed Secret Service officer removed Abdallah
>Al-Arian, a 20-year-old Muslim intern for Rep. David Bonior (D-Mich.), from
>a White House meeting on President George W. Bush's faith-based initiatives.
>During the meeting, the officer approached Al-Arian and asked him to leave
>White House premises immediately. A media firestorm ensued as Islamic groups
>issued statements condemning Al-Arian's removal as discrimination against
>Muslims and demanding apologies from the Bush administration and Secret
>Service. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer issued an apology from the
>administration at a press conference.
>
>But, in the wake of Sept. 11, some terrorism experts now say there was
>nothing to apologize for because the Secret Service had good reason to eject
>Al-Arian. His father is none other than Sami Al-Arian, the University of
>South Florida professor whose shouts at public rallies of "Damn America!"
>and "Death to Israel!" have been reported widely and who is suspected of
>raising money for the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Abdallah's
>uncle is Mazen al-Najjar, who was deported to the United Arab Emirates in
>August for suspected links to Islamic militants.
>
>While the reported and suspected actions of Abdallah's father and uncle
>don't make him guilty of anything, and friends in Washington vouch for him,
>terrorism authorities say these connections are more than sufficient to
>restrict access to the White House. "Given the situation, the Secret Service
>officer's action was entirely appropriate," says Stephen Schwartz, an expert
>on Islamic extremism and author of the forthcoming book, The Two Faces of
>Islam.
>
>Castle and others say that if the access-control system had been working
>properly, the Secret Service and Bush administration would have been saved
>this embarrassment. A properly functioning system simply would have flagged
>Al-Arian as "Do Not Admit" and his name never would have appeared on the
>invitation list, they say. Diligent Secret Service officers apparently
>performed an additional check on the meeting guests after the access-control
>system let Al-Arian in and then found the information about his father and
>uncle, the sources speculate. "If the access-control system were working
>properly, this shouldn't have happened," Castle says. "But it doesn't sound
>like it was working properly."
>
>But Connolly stands by the Secret Service's previous apology to Al-Arian.
>"That incident had nothing to do with an error in the access-control
>system," he says. "We continue to say that the error was that he should not
>have been removed."
>
>Another source says the system also was found to be working improperly
>earlier this year when it had difficulty retrieving the dates and times of
>arrivals and departures of Enron officials visiting the White House. These
>records were needed for investigations of the Enron scandal.
>
>Meanwhile, concern also has arisen about the volatile stock price and
>foreign purchase of Ultrak, the system's lead contractor. In July the
>electronic-security company's share price hit a low of 73 cents, and it has
>hovered around $1 for more than a year. Sales for the six months ending June
>30 decreased by more than 20 percent from a year ago, a decline the company
>attributes in a press release to losing Sam's Club wholesale stores as a
>customer for its security products.
>
>In late 2001, Ultrak was taken over. At Ultrak's June shareholder's meeting,
>Zenger was made sole CEO of Ultrak. Other board members from France and
>Great Britain also were seated. As a result, says a company spokesman, all
>members of the board are foreign nationals, except one.
>
>Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission confirm that Zenger is a
>resident of Switzerland, but press reports show he has close ties with
>Russia. According to the Financial Times, Zenger worked as a consultant for
>the state-owned Tass news agency. Oddly, the article didn't specify whether
>he worked there before or after the fall of the Soviet Union. But the
>British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) reported that, in 1992, Zenger led a
>delegation touring the nuclear facilities of Arzamas-16, set up under the
>Soviet Union as its nuclear-weapons command center. Zenger was shown "the
>technology of making parts using powder and highly durable materials,
>various ways of using the energy of a directed explosion for dividing bulky
>metal structures," according to the BBC translation of a Tass report.
>According to the Financial Times, Zenger also has worked as a consultant to
>the United Nations and is "a lawyer who is fluent is six languages."
>
>Zenger may be a fine chap, say high-level security experts with whom Insight
>spoke, but a foreign-controlled company whose CEO has ties close enough to
>the Russian government to be toured through its nuclear command center
>should not be anywhere near the chain of authority of a highly sensitive
>data system at the White House.
>
>"I think it's scary," says Gary Aldrich, formerly the senior agent in the
>FBI liaison office at the White House and now president of the Patrick Henry
>Center, after Insight apprised him of the situation. "I just don't think
>foreign-owned corporations should have such influence in the policies and
>procedures that involve our most secure facilities. As soon as it's outside
>the control of the U.S. government, and we're not dealing with U.S.
>citizens, I have a problem with that."
>
>Ultrak spokesman David Paul says the Secret Service never has indicated that
>Zenger's controlling interest in the company was a problem. "Everybody who's
>worked on it has had the appropriate security clearance," Connolly says.
>When asked about the alleged problems with the Ultrak-built system, Paul
>tells Insight, "We've been told by counsel that because of the nature of
>it — Secret Service — we're not really allowed to comment on specifics."
>
>Critics of the system with whom Insight spoke say that not only was it never
>adequately tested, but Ultrak and some Secret Service officials developing
>it did not seem concerned that a complex system controlling access to a
>facility as important as the White House needed to be dead-on accurate and
>free of bugs. "This system could have been for a bank, an apartment
>building, anything as far as they were concerned," an alarmed insider says.
>But it was for the White House.
>
>Other sources explain that the Secret Service previously had failed in an
>attempt to integrate the functions of the existing computer systems and was
>in a rush in late 1999 and 2000 to get a new system online by the time a new
>president took office in 2001. In the process, they say, key details were
>overlooked. Insight has obtained a paper written in December 2000 by
>computer specialists at the Secret Service that expresses concern that the
>system was being tested only at the factory and not at a government
>location.
>
>"As the overall test plan is now constituted, no government personnel will
>have even touched it before it has been totally installed in the White House
>complex as a replacement for the existing and reliably functioning
>[systems]," the paper says. "A number of key documents, functional items and
>necessary system properties are missing, incomplete or only partially
>understood by the project team."
>
>The paper urged that the system at least be tested in a part of the White
>House complex to get the bugs out before implementing it. "I personally feel
>there wasn't enough stress put on the system when it was tested," says
>Castle, who was one of the paper's authors. Unfortunately, he says, those in
>charge did not follow the paper's recommendations before implementing the
>system in the White House in April 2001. "They just unplugged the old
>system" and put employees to work on the new system cold-turkey, he says.
>Another source says those who expressed criticisms were made to feel they
>were part of the problem.
>
>"We're extremely confident with the testing procedures before the system was
>implemented," Connolly assures Insight.
>
>Sources say security problems with the White House computers that control
>access to the president reflect a larger problem with the administration of
>the Secret Service. A June article in U.S. News and World Report charged
>that the Secret Service's Office of Inspection and the Inspector General's
>Office of its parent, the Treasury Department, give "inadequate oversight"
>in disciplining misconduct.
>
>For instance, there is the alleged problem with Clinton-appointed Secret
>Service Director Brian Stafford, who sometimes appears to be distracted.
>According