In exclusive stunning admissions to The BRAD BLOG some 11 months after the 2004 Presidential Election, a "Diebold Insider" is now finally speaking out for the first time about the alarming security flaws within Diebold, Inc's electronic voting systems, software and machinery. The source is acknowledging that the company's "upper management" --- as well as "top government officials" --- were keenly aware of the "undocumented backdoor" in Diebold's main "GEM Central Tabulator" software well prior to the 2004 election. A branch of the Federal Government even posted a security warning on the Internet.

Pointing to a little-noticed "Cyber Security Alert" issued by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the source inside Diebold --- who "for the time being" is requesting anonymity due to a continuing sensitive relationship with the company --- is charging that Diebold's technicians, including at least one of its lead programmers, knew about the security flaw and that the company instructed them to keep quiet about it.

"Diebold threatened violators with immediate dismissal," the insider, who we'll call DIEB-THROAT, explained recently to The BRAD BLOG via email. "In 2005, after one newly hired member of Diebold's technical staff pointed out the security flaw, he was criticized and isolated."

In phone interviews, DIEB-THROAT confirmed that the matters were well known within the company, but that a "culture of fear" had been developed to assure that employees, including technicians, vendors and programmers kept those issues to themselves.

The "Cyber Security Alert" from US-CERT was issued in late August of 2004 and is still available online via the US-CERT website. The alert warns that "A vulnerability exists due to an undocumented backdoor account, which could [sic: allow] a local or remote authenticated malicious user [sic: to] modify votes."

The alert, assessed to be of "MEDIUM" risk on the US-CERT security bulletin, goes on to add that there is "No workaround or patch available at time of publishing."

"Diebold's upper management was aware of access to the voter file defect before the 2004 election - but did nothing to correct it," the source explained.

A "MEDIUM" risk vulnerability cyber alert is described on the US-CERT site as: "one that will allow an intruder immediate access to a system with less than privileged access. Such vulnerability will allow the intruder the opportunity to continue the attempt to gain privileged access. An example of medium-risk vulnerability is a server configuration error that allows an intruder to capture the password file."

DIEB-THROAT claims that, though the Federal Government knew about this documented flaw, originally discovered and reported by BlackBoxVoting.org in August of 2004, they did nothing about it.

"I believe that top Government officials had an understanding with top Diebold officials to look the other way," the source explained, "because Diebold was their ace in the hole."...

I've been working on a rather important story since I've returned home. You'll recognize it when you see it. Hopefully very soon. So apologies in the meantime for things having slowed down here a bit since my return. Plus, the good David Edwards, Winter Patriot and Joseph Cannon all deserve a bit of a break since pulling extra long Guest Blogging duty in the wake of my unexpectedly long summer "vacation". Hopefully they will each continue to contribute here, however, after a bit of a well-deserved rest. They are welcome any time and I can't thank them all enough for their tremendous work here while I was on the road. Especially since I'll soon be heading out for it again to make my way up to participate in the National Summit to Save Our Elections in Portland along with Thom Hartmann, Bob Koehler, Jesse Jackson Jr. and other illuminaries too numerous to mention at the end of the month.

Beyond that, I can't seem to get this E.J. Dionne piece from yesterday's WaPo out of my mind. Though Dionne may be jumping the gun a bit (anything and everything could happen any day now), his epitaph for the "End of the Bush Era" seems to be right on target. Or at least provide a bit of welcome and smart perspective to an America in trouble, but perhaps soon on the mend. Perhaps.

Here's a few key grafs, though I recommend you read the whole thing if you haven't already:

As I said (twice) read it all.

Every now and again, we like to remind BRAD BLOG readers how the wingnuts --- from the "mainstream" Washington Times to the top nutcase blogs like "Little Green Footballs" and "Powerline Blog" to the expected spinners at Fox "News" --- love to grab onto a lie, avoid bothering to check a single fact, and shove it down America's throat as if it had any basis in reality. Which all results in the actual mainstream corporate media like ABC and CNN repeating the horseshit as if it was actually true.

Case in point, courtesy of Media Matters (via this morning's Al Franken show), is the falsehood repeated over and over again in the wingnut media and beyond about the "2000 school buses" that could have been used to evacuate everyone in New Orleans who needed evacuation, but sat instead in a parking lot unused.

Turns out, the city of New Orleans actually owns only 324 school buses, 70 of which are broken down (according to September 5, 2003, article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune) plus another 364 city owned public transit RTA buses. Bringing the total available fleet in New Orleans to less than 700. The Times-Picayune reported on July 8 in an article headlined "RTA buses would be used for evacuation: But plan still falls far short of needs" that "Even if the entire fleet was used, the buses would carry only about 22,000 people out of the city --- far short of the 134,000 people estimated to be without cars in a recent University of New Orleans study."

No excuses here for those available buses which were not being used (Mayor Ray Nagin has claimed they didn't have enough drivers for them, but we haven't verified that one way or another at this time.) Nonetheless, the wingnuts repeated the nonsense about "2000 unused school buses" over and over again as if it was based in reality.

So where did the wingnuts version of "reality" begin this time? The story apparently began (little surprise) when it was used in a Sep. 6 column by Washington Times managing editor-and-liar-in-chief, Wesley Pruden. He wrote instructed followers to say:

That claim was quickly and unsurprisingly linked by the popular wingnut blogs Power Line and Little Green Footballs, both of whom have shown an utter inability, day after day, month after month, year after year, to check a single fact, or do anything other than repeat one Republican talking point after another. Hence, they are both very popular amongst the faith-based Bush dead-ender crowd. That's what they're paid for.

Of course, Sean Hannity then raced to the airwaves that same evening to dutifully repeat the misinformation to Fox "News" viewers on Hannity & Colmes:

The next night on Hannity & Colmes, Newt Gingrich was called upon to continue spreading the misinfo:

In fact, the number of buses required to evacuate the city's approximately 100,000 elderly and disabled, according to the New York Times on Sep. 4, was 2,000, but as their article responsibly noted, that 2,000 number was "far more than New Orleans possessed."

Never mind responsibility and reality, though. Back to the wingnuts and the so-called myth of the "Liberal Media".

By last Sunday, Sep 11, the lie had become mainstream "reality" as the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's national security writer Jack Kelly wondered:

...And then the deed was finally done --- as Wingnut Horseshit becomes Conventional Wisdom --- on last Sunday morning's This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Gingrich was the guest, but it was "Liberal Media" elitist, Stephanopolous who made certain the lie got out to all of America across the ABC Television Network:

Not bad for a week's work. Mr. Rove and his America-Hating friends have certainly earned their pay check over the past week.

Kudos to Media Matters for their detailed tracking of all of this. And if you stop by over there (where all the audio and video is also available) be sure to check out how the Fox and Friends wingnuts also keep spinning the nonsense of when Gov. Blanco declared a state of emergency and those "Liberals" at CBS who repeated it thereafter, how the entire media gave a free pass to Bush's "dodged a bullet" claim about the levees, how O'Reilly is spinning numbers to trick America into believing that Bush is better on poverty than Clinton was, and oh, so many documented, out and out Right Wing lies we'd need about 2,000 unused school buses full of bloggers to report them all.

Today, for the first time in five years, George W. Bush took responsibility. For anything. AP was there to note this extraordinary moment in the history of mankind.

In related news, Hell reported record cold temperatures today and a small pig was spotted hovering over Ohio's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

As well, BRAD BLOG readers are urged to be on the lookout for four horsemen riding together and said to be mounted each on one white, one black, one red and one pale or ashen horse. Please report any such sightings immediately to FEMA or the U.S. Department of Homeland Security so that swift action may be taken. They're doing a heckuva job. Thank you.

From AP via Jesse at Stakeholder who has more:

Announcing that it is "time for Congress to exercise its duty to oversee the Executive Branch," the ranking minority member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers has just released a press statement announcing that four different U.S. House Committees will be voting on resolutions within the next week to request information on the outing of covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame.

Conyers describes the issue as a matter of "criminal and ethical misconduct" done "for political reasons, to retaliate against the operative's husband for successfully challenging the President's claim that Iraq had sought nuclear materials in Africa."

The resolutions will be forced to come to a vote in the House Judiciary, International Relations, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Armed Services Committee.

Conyers also calls former Attorney General John Ashcroft on the carpet for initially dragging his feet on the investigation and for remaining involved in it as it moved forward despite Ashcroft's "long-standing ties to Karl Rove."

UPDATE: On ConyersBlog, he also adds this:

The complete press release, along with scheduled dates and Internet URL's for watching and/or listening to the debates on the four separate resolutions in the four separate House committees follow...

AMERICAblog's John Aravosis has all the skinny and more first-hand photos of all of those Americans who gathered yesterday in DC on the 4th Anniversary of 9/11 to support George W. Bush and his War. The event was sponsored by the Pentagon, and attended by...probably...several!

Officially named by the Defense Department as the "America Supports You Freedom Walk", Seattle Times claimed that "about 1500" participated, though apparently photos of the gathering are nearly non-existant and some families of 9/11 victims have had it...

(Hat tip Kira, and all the BRAD BLOG commenters requesting more info on this event.)

UPDATE: Reverend Mykeru (otherwise known as Michael Cortese) sets out on an Operation Yellow Elephant mission in search of new army recruits at the Pentagon-sponsored (your tax dollars at work!) fenced-in, no-media-allowed, registration-required "Freedom Walk". Video here. Additional details on the day here. Well done, Rev. Myk!

(Hat tip BRAD BLOG commenter, NewYorker!)

Guest blogged by David Edwards

Michael Brown resigns as director of FEMA. After being removed from the Katrina disaster response effort, officials speculated that Brown would soon resign.

Streaming Video in Real Media format

Video in Windows Media format

This item came across the AP wires as we were on our final leg back to Los Angeles yesterday. I happened to catch the original headline as "Soldier Not Killed in Action in Iraq; Kin Not Told". I was surprised and saddened, upon clicking to read the full story, to learn that the "soldier" in question just happens to have been 1st Lt. Kenneth Michael Ballard, the only child of Karen Meredith, a Gold Star Mom who we interviewed on The BRAD SHOW [MP3] and got to know a bit while in Crawford, TX.

He was killed in Iraq on Memorial Day 2004...His mother was told it was an accident only last Friday...

The full article also recalls the Army's failure to give the real story to the parents of the NFL's Pat Tillman after he had been used as a poster-boy by the Army and the Bush Administration for his sacrifice. It was more than a year after being killed in Afghanistan before Tillman's parents were given the real skinny on how their son died. One wonders, had not Meredith made a bit of a media figure of herself through her public support of Cindy Sheehan in Crawford and beyond, whether the story of the bungling of her son's death would have made a headline anywhere. Which makes one wonder just how many other families --- who have not become known to the media --- likely have similar stories of incompetencies from "the army we have."

I have been honored to wear a duplicate dog tag of 1st Lt. Kenneth Ballard --- in memory of both him and the thousands of others pointlessly killed in this ridiculous war --- since her mother gave one to us in Crawford. I was sorry to learn that there was even more reason to be troubled by his death yesterday.

Hopefully Karen's burden is made slightly easier knowing that there are thousands of us out here who do give a damn about both her, and the sacrifice that she and her son have made for this country. I think of both of them now every day...

(NOTE TO BUSH APOLOGISTS, DEAD-ENDERS AND OPPORTUNISTS: The above article is critical of the Army's bureaucratic power structure, not those who are putting their life on the line every day for your "President's" war. You can save your cynical, appalling and divisive "Support the Troops!" sloganeering and propagandizing for those who are too stupid to tell the difference between a Chinese-made car magnet on the back of your SUV and true support for the men and women of our armed forces who put their lives on the line on behalf of this country. We support them no end. We wish you'd become one of them --- if you still support this idiotic war --- instead of acting like you actually support them. If you actually did support those folks, you'd be calling for the same accountability from the same abusive and incompetent officials that The BRAD BLOG has been calling for for months on end. And may God bless America.)

Guest blogged by David Edwards

In an exclusive report, London's newspaper The Mail revealed that although euthanasia is illegal in Louisiana Doctors were forced to kill patients as the situation became worse in New Orleans:

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

You may notice that it comes from an entirely different angle than does Jeff Wells, and both of them come from different angles than I do. I can't say I agree completely with either Kraig or Jeff. But they both make valid points, and in both cases their work is surely important enough, and rigorous enough, to post here. Here's Kraig:

It has been almost four years now since 9/11 and the dust, literally and metaphorically speaking, has settled. It is long overdue that we as a nation take a look at the events of that day with dispassionate, analytical, objective, realistic eyes instead of just accepting the "official" 9/11 story at face value.

I mean, has anyone else noticed that the "official" 9/11 story just doesn't pass the "smell test"? In fact, it reeks. See, the "official" story isn't meant to be analyzed but simply taken at face value; this is because at even a cursory examination of the details it unravels VERY quickly. Let's take a good look at some of the more salient points that tear the guts out of the"official" 9/11 story:

Guest blogged by David Edwards

According the latest edition of Denver's Boulder Weekly:

More here...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Don't look now, but it's September 11th. Four years on, and still we have nothing. No answers. No accountability. No truth. No justice. Just two horrible and totally unnecessary wars, many thousands of people dead, many more thousands of people maimed, our country --- indeed the whole world --- transformed in many ways, none of which seem to be for the better, and nothing of value. Nothing of any value at all.

What's a blogger to do?

I don't know. I honestly do not know. But it's not for lack of trying. I have sat here for hours, trying to write something that would make sense of it all. But I can't --- I just can't. Because it doesn't make any sense, unless you look at it from the proper angle. And I can't seem to get the right angle on it at the moment.

Fortunately, I know somebody who looks at things from an angle I can't quite reach. Permit me to introduce Jeff Wells, author of the excellent blog Rigorous Intuition.

In Jeff's words,

If you don't read anything else today, please spend a few minutes with Jeff's post of August 2004, "The Coincidence Theorist's Guide to 9/11". It starts like this:

Of course everyone is welcome to his or her own opinion.

Another fine selection from amongst our 50+ hours of LIVE broadcasting recently on the ground in Crawford, Texas will be reBRADcast on both Saturday and Sunday. The IBC Radio Network tells us they will be looping the program all day and night on both days, so you should be able to jump in any time! It'll certainly be up and rolling by our usual 7pm ET starting time.

Amongst the folks to be featured: Truthout.org's ace Cindy Sheehan blogger SCOTT GALINDEZ, organizer of the upcoming massive Sep. 24-26 rallies in D.C., LESLIE CAGAN of United for Peace and Justice, Iraq Vet PATRICK RESTA with an important message for George W. Bush and a live ceremony and interview with DENNIS BANKS, co-founder of the American Indian Movement. Plus one kick-ass --- and windy --- song from Camp Casey's default soundboard operator, JESSE DYEN. All that and much more from our Monday, 8/28 "Operation Noble Cause" broadcast from Camp Casey II.

I should finally be off the road by the end of this weekend. A bit more than a month after having been sidetracked from what what was to have been --- in Gilligan parlance --- just "a three hour tour". Nonetheless, there will likely be more Saturday night "encore reBRADcasts" in store for the next several weeks...The reasons for that to become clear (hopefully) in the not-too-distant future...Until then, please enjoy the show...

(And yes, we'll still accept help for gas money for the last leg of our trip home.)