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Luis Hernandez is laughing as he sells fake drivers licenses and Social Security cards to illegal immigrants near a park known for shady deals. The joke, to him, is the government's promise to put people like him out of business with a tamperproof ID card. "One way or another, we'll always find a way," said Hernandez, 35, a sidewalk pitchman who is part of a complex counterfeiting network operating around MacArthur Park, a teeming area near downtown. No matter what the federal government does, sellers vow to keep providing authentic-looking IDs for as little as $150, to anyone who wants...

WASHINGTON — President Bush stepped into the Justice Department's constitutional confrontation with Congress on Thursday and ordered that documents seized in an FBI search of a congressman's office be sealed for 45 days. "The Department of Justice's search was part of an important investigation of alleged public corruption. At the same time, the bipartisan leadership of the House of Representatives believe the search violated the constitutional principle of separation of powers and the speech and debate clause of the Constitution," according to the president's statement.

WASHINGTON - President Bush stepped into the Justice Department's constitutional confrontation with Congress on Thursday and ordered that documents seized in an FBI raid on a congressman's office be sealed for 45 days. The president directed that no one involved in the investigation have access to the documents under seal and that they remain in the custody of the solicitor general.

WASHINGTON - The FBI's raid on a Democrat's office rippled through Capitol Hill Wednesday, with Republicans demanding that the bureau surrender documents and other items its agents seized under what lawmakers said were unconstitutional circumstances. "I think those materials ought to be returned," said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, adding that the FBI agents involved "ought to be frozen out of that (case) for the sake of the Constitution." A day earlier, the Illinois Republican complained personally to President Bush about the Saturday night raid of Rep. William Jefferson (news, bio, voting record)'s legislative office, saying it violated the Constitution's separation...

SAN FRANCISCO - The question of whether documents obtained during the Bush administration's domestic spying program should remain under seal is one of the central issues in a lawsuit challenging the program. The lawsuit, brought in U.S. District Court by privacy advocate Electronic Frontier Foundation, accuses AT&T Inc. of illegally cooperating with the National Security Agency to make communications on AT&T networks available to the spy agency without warrants. The goal of the lawsuit is to dismantle warrantless eavesdropping on Americans in the United States, a practice the Bush administration confirmed in December. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker set a...

Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union have asked the FBI to reveal any post-Sept. 11 surveillance of Southern California Muslims. The ACLU made the request for documents Monday, after Islamic leaders said the FBI gave them little information when they alleged that investigators had been monitoring local Muslims and mosques. Using the Freedom of Information Act, the ACLU filed the request on behalf of six Islamic organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, along with several individual Muslims. Shakeel Syed, head of the Islamic Shura Council, said many Southern California Muslims...

The treasure trove of captured documents from Saddam Hussein’s regime collectively known as Harmony, which are now available for translation by anyone with access to the internet, continues to yield indications of WMD programs. As much of the press continues to pick around at intelligence assessments and analyses pre- and post- war which were in error, it is carfeully averting its eyes from evidence that Saddam was hiding the illegal weapons he had, was working closely with terrorists and had every intention of continuing to produce WMDs as soon as the sanctions program -already weakened-was over. The bloggers are not...

In pages 63 and 64 of document Document CMPC-2003-002284 , there is secret and confidential memo dated September 16 1998 concerning a meeting of the National Monitoring Department to discuss how to destroy some “non necessary documents” and keep the necessary one in a safe place according to the memo but the most important part of the memo is a pareagraph on how to handle “The Researches That Cannot Be Declared and that is related with the previous Prohibited Programs of WMD and how to make sure that information about these researches will not leak to the outside because it...

Translated Text of an Iraqi Document Concerning Kuwait POWs As the opening date of Operation Freedom neared, Qusai Saddam Hussein-one of Saddam’s bloodthirsty sons, made arrangements to move captured Kuwaiti prisoners into critical locations, to serve as “human shields”. There were 448 Kuwaitis, captured during the First Gulf War ,when Saddam made his infamous incursion into Kuwait. By the terms of the UN Cease Fire agreements –signed by Iraq on 3/03/91- all Kuwaitis were supposed to have been freed and repatriated without delay. Clearly,this never happened ; and sadly,the ultimate fate of these 448 helpless captives is unknown. CMPC-2003-012666 Republican...

Ray: Sammi provides us with a follow up meeting between a Pakistani cleric and the Vice President of Iraq. The main topic is establishment of a secret relationship between the Taliban and Iraq through Iraqi Intelligence apparatus for the purpose of assisting each other against the United States. Context: before the Taliban took full control of Kandahar, there were several factions fighting to gain power. There is another document at the FMSO website in which Saddam and his ministers discuss Afghanistan and how the different factions are vying for control. These meetings lend very strong support to the conclusion that...

The federal government is making public a huge trove of documents seized during the invasion of Iraq, posting them on the Internet in a step that is at once a nod to the Web's power and an admission that U.S. intelligence resources are overloaded.

I've set out to create a sort of information clearinghouse of post-war information on Iraq's WMDs, ties to terror groups, ties to Al Qaeda in particular, Russia providing aide to Saddam, etc. I wanted to have post with a lot of background so as newly released documents continue to roll in and get translated and liberals whine "so what, this is just one document", we can always link back to this post or find older links in it. It started out mainly just for my personal use, for when I post on developments as they come, I will always link...

President Bush has made errors, as all humans do, but one thing he has not been guilty of is bad faith. The same cannot be said of his critics. One thinks of those liberals and Democrats who accused President Bush of "lying" about weapons of mass destruction and about ties between al Qaeda and Iraq particularly now, because last week, after an unaccountable delay of three years, the administration declassified and released thousands of documents captured from Saddam's regime. They offer more proof of what we've already learned from other sources: that Hussein was in collusion with al Qaeda; that...

March 23, 2006 — Following are the ABC News Investigative Unit's summaries of five documents from Saddam Hussein's government, which the U.S. government has released. The documents discuss Osama bin Laden, weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda and more. The full documents can be found on the U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office Web site: http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/products-docex.htm. Note: Document titles were added by ABC News. "U.S. War Plan Leaked to Iraqis by Russian Ambassador" Documents dated March 5-8, 2003 Two Iraqi documents dated in March 2003 — on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion — and addressed to the secretary of...

For the second day in a row, as we were "going to press" ABC News put a gist of a newly released Iraq Regime document on their website. But again Sammi provides a full translation of the document CMPC-2003-001950. Parenthesis are the translators: Office of the Presidency Mr. Secretary (of the President) Subject: Meeting with the Russian Ambassador Best of our salutes, We would like to inform you that the Russian ambassador met this evening with the general director of Foreign Economic Relations and the General Director of the Grains Trade and told us the following: 1- Provide the necessary...

“ Ambiguous” Document Raises Interesting 9/11 Questions This is the text of a document seized from Iraqi Intelligence files during Operation Iraqi Freedom. It is one of the translated documents aired by ABC TV in March,2006, and may have been printed in your hometown newspaper. Please keep in mind it was written on 09/15/01. In the name of God the merciful the compassionate Presidency of the Republic Intelligence Service 2/913/5th directorate Sir: Director General of the 5th directorate Subject: Information Our Afghani source #002 (info on him in paper slip ‘1’) has informed us that Afghani consular Ahmed Dahistani (info...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Exasperated, besieged by global pressure, Saddam Hussein and top aides searched for ways in the 1990s to prove to the world they'd given up banned weapons. "We don't have anything hidden!" the frustrated Iraqi president interjected at one meeting, transcripts show. At another, in 1996, Saddam wondered whether U.N. inspectors would "roam Iraq for 50 years" in a pointless hunt for weapons of mass destruction. "When is this going to end?" he asked. It ended in 2004, when U.S. experts, after an exhaustive investigation, confirmed what the men in those meetings were saying: that Iraq had eliminated...

(More on its way at the Iraq Files)the Iraqi files Iraqi documents are released to this site Afghanistan documents here    

Joseph Shahda of Randolph earns his living as an engineer. But in his spare time, he's an intelligence agent, working to ferret out the truth about the regime of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. When the US government on Thursday began publishing captured Iraqi government documents on the Internet, Shahda eagerly began to translate the files into English and publish them on a conservative website. ''I feel a sense of duty," said Shahda, a native of Lebanon who supports President Bush's decision to invade Iraq. ''I think it's a duty for people who know Arabic to translate the documents."US officials...

Where's the reporting on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program? When President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, the gleeful liberal press reported daily on our lack of finding Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. However, two former Iraqi military leaders and tapes of Saddam Hussein and his cronies have recently painted a different story. Alas, other than one TV station, I have found no coverage of either the tapes nor these commanders' accounts. Is this yet another example of liberal bias in the media? In tapes going back to 1995 -- four years after some liberals claim Hussein...