Pretty funny.

For ten years, well before 9/11, the CIA has had a secret unit, Alec Station, dedicated to finding Osama bin Laden. Yesterday, it confirmed the unit was closed last year.

The CIA's rationale: Bin Laden isn't so dangerous anymore because terror groups no long work in a "hierarchal" fashion. They are more spread out, which according to the CIA, warrants a focus on "regional trends rather than on specific organizations or individuals."

Former CIA official Michael Scheurer, the first chief of Alec Station, disputes the CIA's assessment.

"This will clearly denigrate our operations against Al Qaeda," he said. "These days at the agency, bin Laden and Al Qaeda appear to be treated merely as first among equals."

Johnny Cash's 5th album in his American series, ''American V: A Hundred Highways," recorded in the months before he died while he was sick with diabetes and other ailments, is being released today. The New York Times has this review.

It's the most moving musical rumination on mortality since Warren Zevon's last album before lung cancer killed him.

You can buy a copy of the cd or download it now:

For the 4th of July, Ain't that America for You and Me: John Mellencamp and Pink Houses

Suggestions for tomorrow?

The Dukesters haven't had an open thread all week and they are busting the comments at the seams, so here's one for them.

Murray Waas breaks news in PlameGate today:

Bush told prosecutors he directed Cheney to disclose classified information that would not only defend his administration but also discredit Wilson.

However, Waas reports, Bush did not tell Cheney to leak Valerie Plame's identity.

Some snippets:

by Last Night in Little Rock

For years I wanted to read about the revered Eric Sevareid of CBS News (the reason why below the jump). I collected four books about him, and I'm on vacation reading them. The current biography is from 1995.

I find that in 1965, Morley Safer was covering the Vietnam War for CBS News, and they caputured on film a U.S. Marine using his Zippo lighter to set thatched huts on fire. Back in NYC, the CBS News hierarchy immediately realized the import of what they had, and it ran on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite on August 5, 1965.

Johnson administration officials questioned Safer's loyalty to America and demanded that he be dismissed, but CBS stood by him. Yet it would be a mistake to remember the media's role as one of opposition to the war. For the most part, until 1968, the mainstream media shared the administration's goals. Only gradually did they question first the effectiveness of the means used, and then their morality.

Wikipedia is more blunt:

Safer's report on this event was broadcast on CBS News and was among the first reports to paint a bleak picture of the Vietnam War. President Lyndon Baines Johnson called CBS's president and accused Safer and his colleagues of having "shat on the American flag."

So, TL readers, is de rigeur for those conducting the war of the day to question the loyalty of any American who questions that war, whatever the time period. It belongs to no political party. Apparently never did.

Update: Lieberman must collect 7,500 signatures by Aug. 9, the day after the Democratic primary in order to run as an "unaffiliated candidate" on the November ballot. Coverage of his announcement: New York Times; CBS; Reuters

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Joe Lieberman is made a major announcement at 1:00 pm ET.

Lieberman is running as a Dem in the primary. But he's having staffers put out petitions in case he loses the primary so he can run as a "petitioning Democrat."

The AP reports here. The Hartford Courant here.

Update: The affidavit in support of the arrest warrant detailing the alleged crimes is here.

Update: Steven D. Green of North Carolina has been charged in federal court with rape and murder:

Federal prosecutors charged a veteran of the Iraq war with murder and rape Monday in connection with the killing of an Iraqi woman and members of her family.
Steven D. Green, a 21-year-old former private first class who was discharged from the Army, appeared in a federal magistrate's courtroom in Charlotte Monday.

More here.

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The Washington Post has new details in the case of the five U.S. soldiers charged with raping an Iraqi girl and killing her family in Mahmudiyah.

Abeer Qasim Hamza was 15 years old. It appears she had been targeted. After raping and killing her they tried to set her on fire.

Let's try this again. As New York Times editor Bill Keller said on Face the Nation yesterday, and the Boston Globe reported last week, Operation Swift and the Administration's war on terror financing was no secret. From the Globe:

Victor D. Comras , a former US diplomat who oversaw efforts at the United Nations to improve international measures to combat terror financing, said it was common knowledge that worldwide financial transactions were being closely monitored for links to terrorists. ``A lot of people were aware that this was going on," said Comras, one of a half-dozen financial experts UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recruited for the task.....

Indeed, a report that Comras co-authored in 2002 for the UN Security Council specifically mentioned SWIFT as a source of financial information that the United States had tapped into. The system, which handles trillions of dollars in worldwide transactions each day, serves as a main hub for banks and other financial institutions that move money around the world. According to The New York Times, SWIFT executives agreed to give the Treasury Department and the CIA broad access to its database.

Here is the U.N. report. Check out Paragraph 31: [Add: Link may not be operational this morning, it was fine last night.]

In 2004, in noting that one of Rudy Giuliani's last acts in office was to rename the Manhattan Detention Complex (better known as 'The Tombs') the "Bernard Kerik Detention Complex," I wondered if Rudy would ever live down his endorsement of Kerik.

On Saturday, one day after Kerik pleaded guilty to two corruption-related misdemeanors, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered Kerik's name removed from the complex. Within hours, it was physically stripped from the building, which will again be known as the Manhattan Detention Complex.

As for Kerik, he's "unfazed." [More...]

In honor of Bernie Kerik's name being stripped from the Manhattan Detention Complex, fomerly known as the Tombs, before it became the Bernard B. Kerik Detention Complex, here's Eric Burden and the Animals singing "The House of the Rising Sun."