Obama embracing some Bush-era anti-terror policies

Phone records program illustrates Obama's embrace of some Bush-era security policies

Associated Press -

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Five years into his presidency, Barack Obama presides over a national security apparatus that in many ways still resembles the one left behind by President George W. Bush. Drones are killing terrorism suspects, the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, holds "enemy combatants" and the government secretly collects telephone records of millions of Americans.

This from a president who in 2008 ran as the anti-Bush candidate who would get the U.S. out of Iraq, put an end to torture and redefine U.S. policies abroad.

But even as he has ended the war in Iraq, changed interrogation standards and sought to build foreign alliances, the former constitutional law professor also has disappointed some allies by embracing, and in some cases expanding, the counterterrorism policies that caused Bush to run afoul of civil libertarians.

Over the past two days, news accounts have revealed that the government has collected millions of Americans' phone records in the name of national security and has also conducted an Internet surveillance program that tracks people's movements and contacts that the Obama administration says is aimed exclusively at non-citizens outside the U.S. Both programs rely on the Bush-era Patriot Act, which Congress has since twice reauthorized with Obama's support.

The disclosures come two weeks after Obama declared in a major speech that when it comes to the nation's security "America is at a crossroads" and proposed a more targeted counterterrorism strategy. But even while calling for a national debate over the appropriate balance between security and freedom, that speech, and the reports of phone and Internet surveillance by the National Security Agency, underscored that Obama, like Bush before him, has an overriding preoccupation about a terror attack on U.S. soil.

"The top priority of the president of the United States is the national security of the United States and protecting the homeland, and we have to make sure we have the tools we need to confront the threat posed by terrorists," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Thursday in defending the collection of phone records.

That program is a "critical tool in protecting the nation from terror threats," Earnest added.

Obama supporters might be forgiven for thinking he would have had something else in mind.

Before becoming president, Obama unsuccessfully sought changes in the USA Patriot Act that would have placed restrictions on the very provision that his administration now uses to collect phone records.

The changes, proposed in a 2005 bill that Obama as a senator co-sponsored, would have required that "the records sought pertained to a terrorist or a spy or another agent of a foreign power," Gregory T. Nojeim, a senior counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said Thursday. "The surveillance that was revealed yesterday is of records that pertain to everyone else."

"It's disappointing , it's troubling and it's hard to justify given that alternatives that would protect both national security and civil liberties are available," added Nojeim, a former legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Seeking to quell the outcry, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued an unusual late-night statement Thursday saying that the records obtained are subject to strict court-imposed restrictions and that only a small fraction are actually ever reviewed.

"The court only allows the data to be queried when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization," he said.

He called the disclosure of the Internet surveillance program "reprehensible" and said it cannot be used to "intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person, or anyone located within the United States."

No doubt, Obama has been aggressive in the measures he has employed to fight terrorist threats. And while he has fruitlessly sought to close the detention facility for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo, he has broadened Bush's drone warfare program, even approving a drone strike abroad to kill an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was accused of having links to planned terror attacks. The Justice Department last month acknowledged that three other Americans also have been killed by drones, all unintended targets.

At the same time, the president has encouraged vigorous investigation of national security leaks. The Justice Department so far has prosecuted six government officials for sharing classified information and, in pursuing two other cases, has obtained the records of phones used by Associated Press journalists and the emails of a Fox News reporter.

"When you wake up every morning and get a PDB that outlines all the threats to the United States, it's a daily reminder of the things we need to do to protect the United States," Tommy Vietor, Obama's former National Security Council spokesman, said referring to the President's Daily Brief of intelligence data.

Politically, Obama has benefited from his counterterrorism policies, particularly the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden. During his re-election campaign last year, Obama got high approval ratings in public opinion polls for his record on national security.

And despite the stir caused by the NSA's acquisition of phone records, members of Congress, particularly those who serve on the House and Senate Intelligence committees, have been regularly apprised of the program in secret briefings. Many Democrats and Republicans defended the practice.

"This is a program that's been in effect for seven years, as I recall," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said. "It's a program that has worked to prevent not all terrorism but certainly the vast, vast majority. Now is the program perfect? Of course not."

The Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, said the program within the last few years stopped a terrorist attack in the U.S. He did not elaborate, but added: "It is a very valuable thing. It's legal. It's been authorized by Congress, judicial oversight and review."

Indeed, only a handful of lawmakers have raised public objections, but until now they had been couched because briefings on the matter are classified.

One of those critics, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said the public should know whether the Patriot Act is being interpreted narrowly or broadly by the administration and by the secret courts authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

"The document publicized yesterday certainly suggests that the secret interpretation of the law is much more like a barn door," Merkley said in an interview.

Merkley said he asked the Justice Department in December to declassify the opinions of the FISA court so Congress could debate whether to narrow the standards used to gather information. He said he has not received a reply.

"The response is totally inadequate," he said.

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APNewsBreak: Plan lifts Lower 48 wolf protections

This April 18, 2008 photo released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows a gray wolf. The Obama administration on Friday, June 7, 2013 proposed lifting most of the remaining federal protections for gray wolves across the mainland states, a move that would end four decades of recovery efforts but has been criticized by some scientists as premature. A rule being proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove most species of wolves from the endangered species list would end federal protection for any wolves that move into upstate New York or northern New England from Canada or elsewhere. (AP Photo/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Maps show the current population and potential habitat for Gray wolves in North America

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The Obama administration on Friday proposed lifting most remaining federal protections for gray wolvesacross the Lower 48 states, a move that would end four decades of recovery efforts but that some scientists said was premature.

State and federal agencies have spent more than $117 million restoring the predators since they were added to the endangered species list in 1974. Today more than 6,100 wolves roam portions of the Northern Rockies and western Great Lakes.

With Friday's announcement, the administration signaled it's ready to move on: The wolf has rebounded from near-extermination, balance has been restored to parts of the ecosystem, and hunters in some states already are free to shoot the animals under state oversight.

But prominent scientists and dozens of lawmakers in Congress want more wolves in more places. They say protections need to remain in force so the animals can expand beyond the portions of 10 states they now occupy.

Lawsuits challenging the administration's plan are almost certain.

The gray wolf's historical range stretched across most of North America. By the 1930s, government-sponsored trapping and poisoning left just one small pocket of the animals, in northern Minnesota.

In the past several years, after the Great Lakes population swelled and wolves were reintroduced to the Northern Rockies, protections were lifted in states where the vast majority of the animals now live: Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and portions of Oregon, Washington and Utah.

Under the administration's plan, protections would remain only for a fledgling population of Mexican gray wolves in the desert Southwest. The proposal will be subject to a public comment period and a final decision made within a year.

While the wolf's recent resurgence is likely to continue at some level elsewhere — multiple packs roam portions of Washington and Oregon, and individual wolves have been spotted in Colorado, California, Utah, the Dakotas and the Northeast — U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe indicated it's unrealistic to think the clock can be turned back entirely.

"Science is an important part of this decision, but really the key is the policy question of when is a species recovered," he said. "Does the wolf have to occupy all the habitat that is available to it in order for it to be recovered? Our answer to that question is no."

Hunting and agriculture groups wary of the toll wolves have taken on livestock and big game herds welcomed the announcement.

Jack Field, executive vice president of the Washington Cattlemen's Association and a rancher from Yakima, said he was "ecstatic" over the agency's announcement and believed it would make his colleagues more willing to accept the presence of wolves on the landscape.

"Folks have to understand that in order to recover wolves, we're going to have to kill problem wolves," Field said

Over the past several years, hunters and trappers killed some 1,600 wolves in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Thousands more have been killed over the past two decades by government wildlife agents responding to livestock attacks.

That's been a relief for ranchers who suffer regular wolf attacks that can kill dozens of livestock in a single night.

Supporters say lifting protections elsewhere will help avoid the animosity seen among many ranchers in the West, who long complained that their hands were tied by rules restricting when wolves could be killed.

Vast additional territory that researchers say is suitable for wolves remains unoccupied. That includes parts of the Pacific Northwest, California, the southern Rocky Mountains and northern New England.

Whether the species' expansion will continue without a federal shield remains subject to contentious debate.

The former director of the Fish and Wildlife Service under President Bill Clinton said the agency's proposal "is a far cry from what we envisioned for gray wolf recovery when we embarked on this almost 20 years ago."

"The service is giving up when the job's only half-done," said Jamie Rappaport Clark, who was with the agency when wolves were reintroduced in Idaho and Wyoming in the mid-1990s. She now heads the group Defenders of Wildlife.

Colorado alone has enough space to support up to 1,000 wolves, according to Carlos Carroll of California's Klamath Center for Conservation Research. He said wildlife officials had "cherry-picked" the available science to suit their goal, and were bowing to political pressure from elected officials across the West who pushed to limit the wolf's range.

The Center for Biological Diversity on Friday vowed to challenge the government in court if it takes the animals off the endangered species list as planned.

Ashe said Friday's proposal had been reviewed by top administration officials, including new Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. But he dismissed any claims of interference and said the work that went into the plan was exclusively that of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Future recovery efforts would focus on a small number of wolves belonging to a subspecies, the Mexican gray wolf. Those occur in Arizona and New Mexico, where a protracted and costly reintroduction plan has stumbled in part due to illegal killings and inbreeding.

The agency is calling for a tenfold increase in the territory where biologists are working to rebuild that population, which now numbers 73 animals. Law enforcement efforts to ward off poaching in the region would be bolstered.

Wherever wolves are found, the primary barrier to expansion isn't lack of habitat or prey, but human intolerance, said David Mech, a leading wolf expert and senior scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in St. Paul, Minn.

Even without federal protection, he believes wolves are likely to migrate into several Western states. He added that they already occupy about 80 percent of the territory where they realistically could be expected to thrive, with sufficient prey and isolation from people.

Although Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Northern California might have enough habitat for wolves to thrive, Mech said that might not happen if hunters kill so many Northern Rockies wolves that it reduces the number that would disperse from packs and seek new turf.

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Flesher reported from Traverse City, Mich.

Budapest prepares for floods as Danube waters rise

Aerial view of a flooded garden plot near the river Danube in Deggendorf, southern Germany, pictured Friday, June 7, 2013. Heavy rainfalls in the past days caused flooding along rivers and lakes in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. (AP Photo/dpa, Armin Weigel)

Buildings and boats are reflected in the floodwater of the river Danube in Deggendorf, southern Germany, Friday, June 7, 2013. Heavy rainfalls in the past days caused flooding along rivers and lakes in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. (AP Photo/dpa, Marius Becker)

BERLIN (AP) — The crest of the flood-swollen Danube Riversurged toward the Hungarian capital of Budapest on Friday, while communities along the Elbe in Germany braced for high water as the river churned toward the North Sea.

Elsewhere in central Europe, communities were beginning to count the cost of devastating floods that have hit Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic.

At least 19 people have died over the past week, and experts say the economic damage in Germany alone could top 11 billion euros ($14.6 billion).

The Danube's crest left Austria on Friday and entered Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned that water levels were above the all-time highs.

"It is now certain that we will face the largest-ever flood on the Danube, so we must be prepared for the worst," Orban said Gyor, a western city on the Danube.

The crest was expected to reach Budapest on Monday, and MayorIstvan Tarlos said in a worst-case scenario up to 55,000 people may need to be evacuated. But he was confident that only the lowest-lying areas of the city would be exposed to the Danube's surge.

Tarlos said the Danube was expected to rise to around 8.95 meters (31 feet) in the downtown area, while the walls along the river and temporary defenses would be able to keep out waters up to 9.3 meters (30 feet, 6 inches).

Farther upstream in Hungary, about 900 people had to leave their homes because of the flood.

In neighboring Slovakia, the situation was critical in the border city of Komarno where the Danube was still rising and was expected to do so till Saturday. Rescuers, soldiers and volunteers have been filling sand bags to reinforce protective barriers.

In the Czech Republic, the government's central crisis committee ordered local authorities to leave all flood protection measures in place because meteorologists have forecast possible heavy rains for the next few days and the situation could get worse again.

"The flooding is not over yet," Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas.

In Germany, meanwhile, water levels were stabilizing in the south and east, even as the crest of the Elbe rolled northward.

Authorities said the greatest dangers remained in the Saxony-Anhalt town of Bitterfeld — where levees around a lake were threatening to collapse — and in Muehlberg in Brandenburg, where 2,000 residents were told to leave their homes.

Authorities in Magdeburg, the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt, reported that water levels in the Elbe were higher than during the record floods the region experienced in 2002. Since then, flood defenses have been significantly upgraded.

The German military said some 11,300 soldiers were helping build sandbag barriers and flying helicopters over flood zones to ensure levees and dams were holding.

A 74-year-old man died after he was hit by a vehicle carrying sandbags in the eastern German town of Wittenberg. Five other flood-related deaths have been recorded in Germany, ten in the Czech Republic, two in Austria and one each in Slovakia and Switzerland.

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Karel Janicek in Prague, Czech Republic, and Pablo Gorondi in Budapest, Hungary, contributed to this report.

Hezbollah-backed Syrian troops press offensive

A UN soldier stands next to a shelter inside a UN base near the Quneitra crossing between the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights and Syria Friday, June 7, 2013. Syrian rebels on Thursday briefly captured a crossing point along a cease-fire line with Israel in the contested Golan Heights. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

A UN soldier looks through binoculars towards Syria from an observation point on Mt. Bental in the Golan Heights, near the border between the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights and Syria, Friday, June 7, 2013. Syrian rebels on Thursday briefly captured a crossing point along a cease-fire line with Israel in the contested Golan Heights. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian troops backed by Hezbollah fighters pressed forward with their offensive in the country's opposition-held heartland on Friday, taking two small villages and entering a third near a strategic town that was captured by the government earlier this week, while the U.N. asked donor countries for $5.2 billion in humanitarian aid as it predicted the number of refugees could more than double by the end of the year.

Buoyed by Wednesday's victory in the strategic town of Qusair, pro-government forces have directed their efforts toward driving rebels from strategic areas to the north, including the cities of Homs and Aleppo.

Government forces faced little resistance Friday as they took control of the villages of Salhiyeh and Masoudiyeh, just north of Qusair, activists and the state news agency SANA said. On Thursday, the rebels also lost control of the nearby village of Dabaa.

The push brought Assad's troops to the edge of Buwaydah village, also north of Qusair, where most of the rebels who withdrew from Qusair took up positions and regrouped. State TV reportedgovernment troops broke into the village Friday night and were pursuing rebels there.

Fierce fighting in the area in the past three weeks has left dozens of rebels, troops and Hezbollah fighters dead.

Since joining the battle in Qusair in full force in April, Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, has helped tip the balance of power to Assad's side.

The acting head of the main opposition group, the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition, warned the growing role of Iranian-backed Hezbollah in the conflict was widening the sectarian divide and jeopardizing any hopes for peace talks.

"The intervention of Hezbollah starts to transfer the problem into a sectarian conflict, a sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites," George Sabra told The Associated Press in an interview in Copenhagen. "The problem will (spread) all over the Middle East, to Lebanon, to Turkey, to Iraq, to Jordan and maybe to the Gulf."

"The problem is not between the Syrian people and the regime; it is between the Syrian people and invasion of Hezbollah and Iran," he added.

Hezbollah soldiers who back Assad's regime, he added, are now "all over the country" including in Aleppo and Damascus. His claims could not be independently verified, although activists have said that Hezbollah members were deployed in two Shiite villages in the northern Aleppo province.

Hezbollah fighters have also replaced Syrian troops at dozens of checkpoints surrounding Homs, according to Tariq Badrakhan, an activist in the city.

"Hezbollah is putting in all its weight," he said on Skype, citing residents in areas just outside the rebel-held old city.

The World Food Program said it has distributed urgent food aid to "vulnerable families" in Qusair — enough to feed 2,500 people — through the Syrian Red Crescent society on Thursday, marking the first time aid workers have entered the town in months. The U.N. Security Council also urged the regime to immediately allow humanitarian groups into Qusair to provide food and medical aid to civilians.

Sporadic clashes also broke out Friday in the Syrian area of Quneitra near the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, a day after rebels briefly seized control of a border crossing to the area that was later recaptured by government troops. The fighting prompted Austria to announce it was withdrawing its peacekeeping contingent that is part of a U.N. force that patrols the Israeli-occupied area, heightening fears in Israel that Syria's civil war is increasingly spilling over its doorstep.

Russian President Vladimir Putin offered Friday to send Russian troops to the Golan to replace the Austrians. His offer was quickly shot down by Josephine Guerrero, a spokeswoman for the U.N. peacekeeping department. She said the disengagement agreement does not allow the participation of troops from a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry, in a statement, called Austria's decision to withdraw its peacekeepers "regrettable" and said it welcomed Putin's offer to replace them with Russian troops.

The Syrian conflict started with largely peaceful protests against Assad's regime in March 2011, but later degenerated into a bloody civil war that has killed more than 80,000 people, according to United Nations officials.

The conflict has also raised tensions considerably in neighboring Lebanon, which is sharply split along sectarian lines and between supporters and opponents of Assad. The open involvement by Hezbollah fighters in Syria has further enflamed sectarian hatreds in Lebanon — a fragile country scarred by its own 15-year civil war — and led to recurrent and deadly street clashes between opposing groups.

In a rare statement, the Lebanese army warned Friday of "plots" to drag the country back to civil war.

The military vowed to take firm action against anyone who tries to tamper with the country's security, saying "the use of weapons will be met with weapons."

Also Friday, the U.N. launched its biggest humanitarian appeal ever to help millions of Syrians suffering the effects of the conflict. The $5.2 billion requested at an international conference in Geneva represents a sharp increase from the $3 billion the U.N. had previously estimated it would need this year, of which only $1.4 billion has so far been pledged.

"The situation has deteriorated drastically," said Valerie Amos, the U.N.'s top humanitarian official. The number of Syrian refugees in neighboring countries could more than double to 3.5 million by the end of the year, U.N. refugee chief Antonio Guterres said at a news conference in Geneva.

Meanwhile, French president Francois Hollande called on Friday for the release of two French journalists, Didier François and photographer Edouard Elias, who are missing in Syria, declining to provide details.

"Their lives are at risk, so I cannot say anything more," Holland told reporters during a state visit to Tokyo. "I want them released as soon as possible."

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Associated Press writers Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

Iranian candidates quarrel over nuclear talks

Supporters of the presidential candidates, Ali Akbar Velayati, shown in the poster at right, and Saeed Jalili, center on the poster, attend a street campaign after Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran, Friday, June 7, 2013. Iranian Presidential election will be held on June 14, 2013. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Iranian worshippers perform their Friday prayers at the Tehran University campus in Tehran, Iran, Friday, June 7, 2013. Iranian Presidential election will be held on June 14, 2013. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's eight presidential candidatesquarreled about talks with world powers over the country's disputed nuclear program Friday as they held their final televised debate ahead of next week's election.

Iran's president does not have control of central issues like nuclear development policy but does generally enjoy a close relationship with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that can prove influential. The issue also has come to the fore as the Islamic Republic's ailing economy has emerged as a major focus of campaigning ahead of the June 14 vote.

Iran is suffering from 30 percent inflation and 14 percent unemployment. Western oil and banking sanctions over its refusal to stop uranium enrichment have deeply cut its revenues. The U.S. and its allies fear that Iran may be aiming to develop a nuclear weapon, a charge Tehran denies.

Iran was referred to the U.N. Security Council after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in 2005 with a bombastic style and hard-line platform.

Iran's former nuclear negotiator, the centrist Hasan Rowhani, suggested a more conciliatory stance at the negotiating table.

"We should look broadly. Once people live under economic hardships, their dignity is undermined. It's very good to see (nuclear) centrifuges rotating but only when people could make ends meet, when factories and industry could run smoothly," he said. "All our problems (under Ahmadinejad) are because all efforts were not made to prevent the (nuclear) dossier from being sent to the Security Council."

Most of the sanctions, leveled for Iran's refusal to stop uranium enrichment, have been imposed during the tenure of Iran's main nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, who also is running for president.

Jalili, a Khamenei loyalist and the most hard-line of the eight candidates, accused Rowhani of appeasing the West, attacking his record as chief negotiator and saying he temporarily shut down the country's program a decade ago out of fear.

"Rowhani says in his book . that Iran received little, (Europeans) didn't keep their promise and instead came forward with more demands," he said.

Iran temporarily suspended uranium enrichment in 2003 as a confidence building measure to dispel suspicions that it was seeking a nuclear weapon. However, it resumed nuclear activities after three European countries — Britain, France and Germany — demanded the permanent shutdown of the enrichment program.

Independent conservative candidate Mohsen Rezaei, a former commander of the country's Revolutionary Guards, said Rowhani's and Jalili's positions were both extreme in their own right.

He accused the U.S. and its allies of avoiding meaningful talks in the hopes that sanctions will force Tehran into making concessions. As a solution, he proposed shoring up the country's flagging economy to boost Iran's negotiating position.

"The nuclear talks should come to a conclusion more quickly," he said. "The West is buying time so that the sanctions hit the economy more seriously... We should prove we have a competent economy that renders sanctions ineffective. The economy is the way to get out of the deadlocked talks. When it's proved that sanctions are ineffective, then the Americans will come to the negotiating table."

Another Khamenei loyalist, Ali Akbar Velayati, said Iran should seek to ease the sanctions while preserving its nuclear program.

"We should insist on our right to uranium enrichment and lead the country wisely so that we avoid estrangement from other countries at the same time," he said.