Special Analysis: Judith Miller Sprung from the Big House

CNN.com is reporting that Judith Miller has agreed to testify before the grand jury considering evidence of criminal acts in the outing of former intelligence operative Valerie Plame. Miller claims the reason she has had the change of heart is that her source has released her from her promise of confidentiality.

It was supposed quite some time back that every Administration official of any note, include Libby, had signed a release. CNN quotes The New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller as saying that Miller had previously received a waiver from her source that was "only... generic," and Keller said that Miller"...believed she had ample reason to doubt it had been freely given."

Has Judith Miller agreed to testify because she was about to be indicted on felony conspiracy charges? Although that might never be known for sure, it is not beyond the realm of the likely that Fitzgerald was about to submit to the grand jury the vote for indictment of Miller on at least one count of criminal conspiracy. He would have conveyed this to her attorney, who would then have advised her that she needed to sing. The grand jury term expires within a matter of days, which means Miller, whose civil contempt citation would have ended at the expiry of the grand jury's term, had only a modest few days more to ride out at the federal pen. Under the circumstances, then, Ms. Miller's sudden change of position on testifying is striking in its timing.

Adding to the suspicions that what is happening now is not the process of justice moving apace, Miller has allegedly had a parade of visitors recently, not the least of whom was the new, recess-appointed UN Ambassador John Bolton, which goes to the prospect noted previously here at The Dark Wraith Forums that Bolton is somehow involved through his former underling David Wurmser, now a foreign policy adviser to Vice President Cheney.

Beyond speculation about a journalist's motives for surrendering to federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's demands are the implications on what has become of that U.S. attorney's case: it could be that Mr. Fitzgerald, nearing the end of the term of the grand jury and not wanting to empanel a new one to start all over again, is coming up bupkis. If Miller is corroborating testimony by Robert Novak or someone else, she provides the second of two witness needed under rules for indictments of Rove and Libby. But that's about it; and even there, Fitsgerald is stretching in the 11^th hour if he had to threaten criminal conspiracy to shake a squeal out of Judith "Mouthpiece for War" Miller. With the grand jury that has been considering evidence in the case of the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame nearing its termination, claims of impending, sweeping indictments look more and more like false hopes than reasoned assessments.

All of that being noted, though, Fitzgerald has spent an unknown amount of money over a period of almost two years, allowing trails to go cold, amateurs to tromp all over evidence, and the machinery of the courts under Bush Administration appointees at the Justice Department to wipe out what remained of journalistic source confidentiality.

The cumulative result of this long-running saga strikes the objective observer as pointing to a relatively good performance by some very sordid interests now controlling the stage in Washington.



The Dark Wraith would applaud them if he were a bit more generous.

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This article has been revised as of September 30, 2005, at 5:25 p.m. EDT.

Special Analysis Follow-up: Senator Frist in Media Klieg Lights

In the article, "Questions Surround Frist Blind Trust Stock Sale," published here at the Big Brass Blog, details were provided concerning the disposition by a blind trust for the Senate Majority Leader of all stock holdings in a public corporation that had previously been controlled by the Senator's family. From that article comes the gist of the issue that has been a cause of concern.

Questions arise in the case of the WH Frist 2000 Qualified Blind Trust with respect to the liquidation of HCA common stock from the trust portfolio because the order to dispose of the stock was issued by Mr. Frist on June 13, and the execution was completed before the company issued a warning about up-coming, disappointing earnings: the trustee could have waited as long as six months, at his discretion, but chose instead to execute the directive in a timely manner, commencing the liquidation eight days subsequent to HCA common stock reaching a high of $58.22 on June 22.

Although the Senator has denied any wrongdoing in the matter, CNN is reporting that both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York are now actively looking into the sale, possibly indicating that parallel civil and criminal investigations are under way. Although this aspect of the looming difficulties facing the Senator has been reported previously by, among other media outlets, the Washington Post, CNN is now quoting Senator Frist from a January 2003 television interview in which he was asked, because of his known family ties to the company, if a prudent investor should sell HCA stock. CNN quotes Senator Frist as saying, "So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock."

This was almost exactly two-and-a-half years before Mr. Frist, on June 13, 2005, ordered the administrator of the WH Frist 2000 Qualified Blind Trust to sell all HCA stock in the portfolio of the blind trust, an order that was executed shortly before the company issued an adverse earnings report that sent the stock price down by more than 15 percent.

According to the Seattle Times, Senator Frist was recently named by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as one of the 13 most corrupt members of Congress, which included such other notable Republicans as House Majority Whip Roy Blunt and outspoken GOP Senator Rick Santorum, as well as California Democratic Representative Maxine Waters.


The Dark Wraith has provided this update for citizens concerned not only about ethics in Washington, but also about compliance with the rule of law by the nation's leaders.

Special Analysis Follow-up: Blackwater USA and a Controversial Former Pentagon IG

Readers may recall that in the recent article, Let Slip the Mercenaries to Our Shores, presented here at The Dark Wraith Forums, a point of passing mention was made about a former Pentagon Inspector General, a gentleman named Joseph E. Schmitz:

Blackwater USA contracts with the United States government to provide security forces that primarily protect personnel and shipments moving across regions where conflict is anticipated or on-going. Generally speaking, its personnel have military backgrounds, and the company is but one of many thousands that offer employment to former employees of the Pentagon, creating what has come to be derisively known as a "revolving door" relationship between the military public sector and private sector companies seeking government contracts. Illustrative of this is the recent resignation of Defense Department Inspector General Joseph E. Schmitz under a barrage of accusations that he had actively blocked two investigations of criminal activity by senior Bush Administration officials: Mr. Schmitz has taken a position with the parent company of Blackwater USA, the private defense contractor that has now secured security work in New Orleans.

Confirming and extending the overall controversy surrounding Blackwater USA in general, and its appointment of Mr. Schmitz in particular, the LA Times reports on September 25, 2005, that Mr. Schmitz "...is now the target of a congressional inquiry and a review by the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, the oversight body responsible for investigating inspectors general, according to the documents and interviews."

For those readers who would care for some further insight that definitely qualifies as side meat but is nonetheless about as juicy as it gets comes the following passage from that LA Times article:

Schmitz comes from a family that is no stranger to controversy. His father was the ultraconservative Orange County congressman John G. Schmitz, who once ran for president but whose political career ended after he admitted having an affair with a German immigrant suspected of child abuse. Schmitz's sister is Mary Kay Letourneau, the Washington state teacher who served more than seven years in prison after a 1997 conviction for rape after having sex with a sixth-grade pupil with whom she had two children. After Letourneau's release from prison, she and the former pupil, now an adult, married each other.

No word has yet come from Blackwater field personnel regarding reaction to the character and quality of new additions to leadership of the paramilitary organization.


The Dark Wraith has herewith delivered follow-up information and context for concerned citizens to consider.

Special Analysis: Questions Surround Frist Blind Trust Stock Sale

From the Washington Post comes the story of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) ordering the manager of the WH Frist 2000 Qualified Blind Trust to unload all of his, his wife's, and his kids' stock in HCA, Inc., otherwise known as Hospital Corporation of America, (NYSE:HCA) shortly before the company issued an earnings report that sent the price of its stock down by 15 percent. Were Mr. Frist to have been privy to insider information, he would have been obligated not to act on that information as a matter of law under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, among other statutory proscriptions against using non-public information in trading of the securities of a public corporation.

Because the HCA stock was held in a blind trust, Mr. Frist would not in principle know exactly what the value nor amount of his holdings of the particular stock were. He has disclosed in public filings that the total worth of his trust holdings is between $7 million and $35 million, and there are indications that the trust was allocated some amount of stock valued at less than $15,000 in hospital companies, but that does not indicate per-share prices of the securities at the time of assignment, nor does it indicate stock of HCA that was included in the original transaction nor stock that was acquired by the trust subsequently.

Mr. Frist may order dispositions from the blind trust, but he may not direct the timings of those dispositions. In practical terms, however, even though the time and nature of the liquidation would be entirely at the discretion of the trustee in most circumstances, he or she would likely understand whether or not there was an urgency to the matter. In general, without the cooperation of a trustee affirming that he or she was pressured to sell stock at a specific time, it would be virtually impossible in many cases to prove that the trustee had responded to a timing directive from a beneficiary.

Questions arise in the case of the WH Frist 2000 Qualified Blind Trust with respect to the liquidation of HCA common stock from the trust portfolio because the order to dispose of the stock was issued by Mr. Frist on June 13, and the execution was completed before the company issued a warning about up-coming, disappointing earnings: the trustee could have waited as long as six months, at his discretion, but chose instead to execute the directive in a timely manner, commencing the liquidation eight days subsequent to HCA common stock reaching a high of $58.22 on June 22. The Washington Post article says that Frist's shares were sold on July 1, and those of his wife and kids were sold on July 8. On July 1, HCA common stock closed at $56.42; on July 8, HCA common stock closed at $54.50.


As of the market close on the day prior to publication of this article, HCA had generally continued to lose ground, dropping $1.35 on September 21, alone, to $47.41 per share, having never fully recovered from the investor sell-off resulting from that July earnings report. The accumulating loss avoided by the Frist blind trust portfolio could be substantial: considering that the sales were executed in the range of $56.42 to $54.50, a rough estimate of the weighted average sell price for his and his family's holdings might be approximately $55.50 per share. with the price now at about $47.50, the avoided losses currently amount to approximately $8.00 per share. If the level of holdings was, say, ten thousand shares (and there is no indication whatsoever that this is the actual figure), Mr. Frist's sell directive saved the trust portfolio from a loss of $80,000.

The concerns about possible insider information having been passed to Sen. Frist center at least to some extent on his family's ties to HCA, Inc. According to The Village Voice, Mr. Frist's father and brother were once officers of HCA. In fact, AP News via TBO.com reports HCA as the Frist "family's hospital company."

As a side note, the Hospital Company of America is no stranger to scandal: in 2002, HCA reached a $1.7 billion agreement to settle charges of overbilling of the government.

But whether or not the officers and directors of HCA continue to communicate with Frist family members is unclear, although the prior and possibly continuing relationship between Mr. Frist's family and the corporation could be argued to establish specific securities law guidelines on manner, level, timings, and special disclosures of sales of securities owned by Mr. Frist. Specifically, Section 16 of the Securities Exchange Act mandates reports be filed on Forms 3, 4, and/or 5 pursuant to sales of stock by insiders of a public corporation. Other sections of federal securities laws may be relevant, as well, in such transactions. In any event, the determination of whether or not any specific deviation from regulatory requirements was involved in the matter of the HCA stock liquidation by the Frist blind trust would be a matter for securities regulators to determine. As a point of modest comparison, the illicit gains from insider trading that resulted in Martha Stewart serving a prison term were approximately $60,000, although the significance of her punishment resulted largely from charges that she had attempted to conceal aspects of the trade that was alleged to have been executed on insider information.

The case with Mr. Frist and HCA common stock is notably different in a number of ways, perhaps most important among them being the direct connection between members of Frist's family and the corporation that was obligated to keep an earnings report under wraps until all shareholders and prospective investors could know its contents at the same time.

Whether or not Mr. Frist was privy to and used insider information prior to its public promulgation is unknown; but it is clear that those who remained shareholders of the corporation subsequent to the disposition of HCA stock by the WH Frist 2000 Qualified Blind Trust suffered losses that Mr. Frist, his wife, and his children did not.



The Dark Wraith leaves it to the readers of this article to decide the level of outrage appropriate to attach to this incident.

Government Reports Wholesale Inflation Under Control

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday morning that prices at the wholesale level rose only modestly in August. After rising by one percent in July, the producer price index went up by only six-tenths of a percent in August, below forecasters' prediction of a seven-tenths of a percent rise. Excluding price changes in food and energy, the so-called "core" inflation rate at the wholesale level was zero.

With respect to the food and energy sectors, price increases were far less than some might have anticipated: the energy component of the overall index rose by only 3.7 percent for the month, and this was offset by declining food costs, which dropped by six-tenths of a percent.

The good news on the inflation front was widely seen as an indication that the Federal Reserve has been successful in its measured tightening of the money supply, giving hope to some analysts that the central bank might even pause in its incremental increases in the discount rate in the months ahead to allow the economy some breathing room as it recovers from the economic effects of Hurricane Katrina.

Dark Wraith CyberGloss

The Federal Reserve uses "open market operations" to put money into or drain money from the banking system, thereby stimulating short-term economic activity or slowing it down.

  Already, many believe that the Fed has added short-term liquidity to the economy. Stock prices that rose in the days after the calamitous hurricane indicated that few on Wall Street saw the damage as broadly affecting the economy, but this seemingly perverse reaction of stocks going up after a major natural disaster could have been the result of the Federal Reserve executing open market operations to push money into the banking system. A similar result was noted after the London bombings in early July, with the major stock indices jumping smartly even as the world was shocked by the attacks. It became evident shortly afterward that the Federal Reserve had been aggressively pumping money into the economy since the last day of June, which stimulated strong positive reactions in the financial sector that could not be overcome by adverse political and social events.

The same phenomenon could explain the recent surge in stock prices: Hurricane Katrina made landfall early on the morning of August 29, 2005, leaving widespread devastation in its path through Louisiana, Mississipi, and Alabama; but stock prices moved notably higher in the following days, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, for example, rising by 296.71 points, or 2.87 percent in the two weeks from the day the hurricane hit the U.S. mainland. The NASDAQ Composite index rose by 62.98 points, or 2.98 percent, and the Standard & Poor's 500 rose by 37.62 points, or 3.13 percent. These robust performance figures clearly show that Wall Street has taken a far more positive view of the tragedy in the Gulf Coast area than has the media in general, which has focused on the death, destruction, and hundreds of thousands of lives disrupted instead of keying on the potential business opportunities the newly cleared land will offer and the broader theme that the government and will place the nation further in debt to finance large-scale projects by select companies working hard to rebuild the area and to do so unencumbered by old regulations regarding workplace safety rules, environmental standards, and wage and hours laws.

In other news, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported on Wednesday morning that applications last week for home mortgages fell 1.4 percent after rising nearly seven percent in the week previous. Analysts attributed the slide to rising mortgage rates, which have only recently begun to show much sign of abating home buyers' and refinancers' appetites for new loans.

Dark Wraith CyberGloss

A long-term interest rate has a related short-term interest rate embedded in it, but other factors—called "risk," "maturity," and "liquidity" premiums—make the long-term rate different from (and usually higher than) the related short-term rate.

  The average rate on a 30-year, fixed rate mortgage now stands at 5.72 percent, slightly higher than the 5.68 percent of one year ago, but still below the 6.08 percent that it reached in March of this year. The long-expected drop-off in home sales due to rising interest rates has yet to materialize, but concerns always mount when mortgage applications show a dip as happened last week. Although the Federal Reserve has maintained upward pressure on short-term interest rates, it has no direct say over longer-term rates, which have not moved upward in lock-step with the shorter term rates the central bank can control through its open market operations. This interest rate weakness at the long end of the so-called yield curve gives some economists reason to believe that recessionary pressures are continuing to build in the economy because historically, when long-term rates actually fall below short-term rates, an economic downturn almost always follows.

In any event, if data provided by the United States government is to be believed, the American economy has shown significant resilience in the face of recent economic challenges, not the least of which is the misperception by many average citizens that inflation has been, and continues to be, a growing threat to purchasing power. The latest report on inflation at the wholesale level by the Bureau of Labor Statistics should put to rest any concerns that prices are spiraling out of control. On Thursday, the BLS will release its figures for inflation at the consumer level.

Dark Wraith CyberGloss

Most cost-of-living (COLA) adjustments calculated by the private and public sectors are based upon the inflation rate indicated by changes in the consumer price index.

  Should these numbers indicate that retail prices are as well under control as wholesale prices, there will be little justification for demands by workers and retirees for more than very modest cost-of-living adjustments in wages and retirement benefits from Social Security. Without the burden of having to pay more to people to compensate for the effect of inflation, both businesses and the federal government will be able to focus more resources on the important work that lies ahead in building a better America for the business community as it continues to thrive in an economy where even the largest natural disaster in more than a century cannot stop the stock markets from marching ever higher under the watchful help of an accommodating central bank and a fully engaged, one-Party system of rule.

Special Analysis Report: Let Slip the Mercenaries to Our Shores

Blackwater USA, a company based in North Carolina that provides private security forces to the Pentagon for on-going operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, has deployed no fewer than 50 and perhaps as many as 150 of its security personnel to the Gulf Coast region. A company online periodical dated September 5, 2005, details services that will be provided by the private contractor: airlift, security, humanitarian support, and logistics and transportation. These four areas are consistent with the company's listed mission services provided in war zones. The "security services" aspect is most directly indicative that the Blackwater personnel will be armed. Reports have already been published of Blackwater security personnel who "openly carry M-16's and other assault rifles."

The use of mercenaries by the United States is by no means an invention of the Bush Administration. In modern times, the Johnson Administration, as part of its "More Flags" initiative, hired soldiers of fortune from Korea, The Phillipines, and Thailand to supplement U.S. troops in the Vietnam theatre of combat. More recently, the Reagan Administration blurred the line between war by proxy using indigenous personnel and war by mercenary involvement in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s: while many, if not most, of the guerilla fighters were from Afghan tribes, the "base"—in Arabic, "al Qa'ida"—used by the Pentagon at the time included jihadists from Pakistan and other countries whose involvement, although in part inspired by religious considerations, was certainly funded in its military role by the United States. More importantly, it was during the Reagan years that private contractors, often but not always CIA front companies, became heavily involved in the transport of war materiel and support equipment to rebels in Central America. This was in addition to the far more direct military support, through training provided in Honduras under the direction of John Negroponte, of some of the most brutal attack squads destined for operations in Communist-controlled Nicaragua that the region had ever experienced.

Mercenaries as a vital, if ancillary, component of a total force matrix has a long history, indeed. The importance of such private contractors has varied from war to war, and there is considerable dispute about their criticality in the Pentagon's current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has been suggested that one important role they play is not in their limited combat configuration, but rather in the lack of transparency in their operations, and most importantly, in their casualty rates. Recognizing that deaths of military personnel in wars can have political consequences on the home front, transferring at least part of the death rate to private resources that do not have to disclose such information relieves the Pentagon of some of the backlash that would otherwise result from American personnel being killed, particularly as a war becomes less popular domestically and opposition to the war zeroes in on such matters as the number of service men and women dying and being severely wounded.

All of that having been noted, even if it can be reasonably argued that mercenary forces are important in the war resources inventory, their use by the United States federal government on domestic soil is, if not entirely unique, certainly without well-known precedent in the modern era (although private security firms have supplemented local and state law enforcement efforts from time to time). That these soldiers of fortune are, themselves, United States citizens blunts what would otherwise be a loud outcry; but their presence in the Gulf Coast region, in at least some role acting as patrols in the evacuated areas of New Orleans, has raised eyebrows and caused consternation.

Blackwater USA contracts with the United States government to provide security forces that primarily protect personnel and shipments moving across regions where conflict is anticipated or on-going. Generally speaking, its personnel have military backgrounds, and the company is but one of many thousands that offer employment to former employees of the Pentagon, creating what has come to be derisively known as a "revolving door" relationship between the military public sector and private sector companies seeking government contracts. Illustrative of this is the recent resignation of Defense Department Inspector General Joseph E. Schmitz under a barrage of accusations that he had actively blocked two investigations of criminal activity by senior Bush Administration officials: Mr. Schmitz has taken a position with the parent company of Blackwater USA, the private defense contractor that has now secured security work in New Orleans.

The complexity of backchannel relationships between the government that needs private goods and services and the companies that offer them has many aspects, some of which will never be fully known or understood by those not directly involved. In the case of mercenaries now patrolling the nearly abandoned streets of New Orleans, this matter is moot in light of the broader issue of the overall militarization of the Gulf Coast region, which has now become a base of military operations, complete even with warships on the Mississippi, for the entire region. Considered in the large scheme of what has become a common, accepted, and vital part of warcraft under the Bush Administration, the deployment of mercenaries on a new battlefront that is within the borders of the United States of America, itself, is not at all shocking: it is war as usual.

The only difference is that, now, war has come home to America.


The Dark Wraith has spoken.

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This article has been updated as of 8:30 p.m. EDT on September 10, 2005, with new information regarding private security force levels provided by Ron Brynaert.

Special Analysis: Yahoo! Accused of Providing China with Information to Jail Reporter

Shi Tao was sentenced in April by a Chinese court to ten years in prison, ostensibly for sending state secrets in an e-mail message. The e-mail message in fact contained his notes on a government document that set forth restrictions on Chinese media. The France-based group Reporters without Borders alleges in a September 6, 2005, article that Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sunnyvale, California, based Yahoo! Inc. (NasdaqNM:YHOO) "...provided the Chinese investigating organs with detailed information that apparently enabled them to link Shi’s personal e-mail account (huoyan-1989@yahoo.com.cn) and the specific message containing information treated as a 'state secret' to the IP address of his computer."

Yahoo! and other companies, including Microsoft, providing e-mail, search engine, and browser support add-ons have been accused in recent months of seeking access to the enormous Chinese market by acquiescing to censorship and other content restriction requirements of the Chinese government, which has recently become more aggressive in curtailing use of and access to the Internet and in censoring television and other broadcast media content that challenge state-mandated cultural values.

Yahoo! recently paid US$1 billion to acquire a 40% stake in Alibaba.com, which is China's largest online commerce company.

Pravda reports that Yahoo! has declined to comment on the allegations by Reporters without Borders because it has yet to fully review the report by the advocacy group.

Should those allegations against Yahoo! prove accurate, three recommendations are in order:

a Congressional hearing should be held to investigate the delivery by U.S.-based companies to foreign governments of personal and proprietary information collected from individuals, particularly as such information might be delivered to and used by nations on human rights watch lists compiled by the State Department and other officially recognized, international bodies;

a bill should be submitted to Congress seeking to amend the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to include language criminalizing the delivery by U.S. companies of information to any other country when such conveyance is carried out with the intent to advance an overall plan or scheme to achieve commercial advantage in the markets of that country; and

a cessation of usage of services offered by Yahoo! should be instituted by reporters and their media outlets until such time as can be established an independently verifiable regime for protection of the privacy of all individuals, groups, companies, and other entities for whom Yahoo! holds proprietary, personal, or otherwise private information.

To be indifferent to the complicity of an American company in the imprisonment of a reporter of any country is to allow further challenges to and erosion of individual rights to privacy and freedom of the press worldwide. Ultimately, every journalist in the world is endangered by the actions of corporations that are willing to surrender the rights of individuals for profitable opportunities.

For bloggers to ignore this emerging threat is to stand willing to be victims one day of similar actions, which might occur not in a socially repressive, free-market country like China, but in a far closer but equally socially repressive, free-market country.



The Dark Wraith has spoken.

Special Analysis: The Area Denial Option: From Fallujah to New Orleans

On a recent, beastly hot morning at Edwards Air Force Base, as reported by Wired News, military and law enforcement officials were shown the latest in acoustical technology designed to hail, communicate to, and warn crowds of people. The companies demonstrating their devices were American Technology Corporation (NASDAQ:ATCO) and HPV Technologies LLC. American Technology has donated four of its Long Range Acoustical Devices (LRADs) to the military for use in the on-going hurricane relief emergency operations in Louisiana.

American Technology Corp. and HPV Technologies LLC dominate the market for sonic devices that can communicate commands as far away as a mile with a sound clarity that is amazing. If this were their exclusive or even primary function, there would be little controversy. That is not the case, however: these devices, in their most important role, are non-lethal weapons for crowd control and dispersal, and they have been deployed and used in situational theatres of operations for some time, now. As a point of comparison about sound levels, a smoke detector pumps out sound at 80 to 90 decibels; one of these acoustical devices can push sound in the 2100 to 3100 Hertz range at up to 150 decibels. According to Richard Salvi, director of the Center for Hearing and Deafness at the University at Buffalo, "That's a sensitive region for developing hearing loss... The longer the duration, the more serious it is." American Technology Corporation Vice President of Military and Government Operations Carl Gruenler said, "Inside 100 yards, you definitely don't want to be there."

As just mentioned, American Technology features the Long Range Acoustical Device, otherwise known as The Sound of Force Protection^®, which projects high-quality sound up to a mile. According to the company, the cone of sound can be varied from 15° to 30°, and it features both microphone and MP3 input capabilities.

For shorter ranges, American Technology offers the Medium Range Acoustic Device™ (MRAD™), otherwise known as The Sound of Emergency Notification™, which projects high-quality sound up to 300 meters. This device is described by the company as "Man-Portable." It features microphone, MP3, CD, tape, and laptop computer input capabilities.

Other products in the company's family of The Sound of Emergency Notification™ are the SoundSaber devices, which feature flat panel technology, making them attractive for quick deployment in space-constrained situations, including indoor and outdoor events.

According to Newsweek, not only have the Marines taken them into combat situations in places like Fallujah, and not only has the Navy secured a number of them for use in the Persian Gulf, but law enforcement authorities across the United States are considering the purchase and deployment of LRADs and MRADs: the list from Newsweek includes "...Miami, Los Angeles, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the Department of Homeland Security..." In a company press release dated August 26, 2004, American Technology Corporation noted that the New York City Police Department had purchased two of the devices and intended to use them if necessary against protesters at the Republican National Convention. In that same press release, it was disclosed that the United States Border Patrol had acquired LRADs.

The devices are also now in use by the military forces of other nations. In a June 10, 2005, communiqué as reported by the Seattle Weekly, AP correspondent Amy Teibel described protesters at the West Bank wall "...overcome by dizziness and nausea, after the vehicle-mounted device began sending out bursts of audible, but not loud, sound at intervals of about 10 seconds..."

The acoustical devices now in operational use from Israel to Iraq to the streets of America are not the "pain ray" machines of Raytheon Corp., which are designed to create an unbearable burning sensation that will drive people away, nor are LRADs of the acoustical variety in the very low-frequency ranges long sought by some musicians to cause their fans to defecate: there is still considerable dispute about exactly what frequencies induce which biological reactions, although research is surely continuing apace for entertainment as well as military applications.

American Technology is clearly a leader in non-lethal weaponry for crowd notification, riot control, and area denial. With the introduction of this technology to the domestic law enforcement situation management inventory, the same successful results achieved by Israelis against Palestinian and Israeli protesters and by Coalition forces against Iraqis is now available to manage the ever-increasing threat that Americans in large numbers pose to civil order.

And with the generous donation of devices by American Technology Corporation to the United States for use in New Orleans, the nation's armed forces will now have greater assurance that law and order will be maintained among those who would otherwise, like many other enemies of America, pose a clear and present threat by virtue of their desperation.



The Dark Wraith has spoken.