More unanswered questions on Vegas atrocity

A bomb killed two and set off terror at a youth concert venue in Manchester, UK, in late May.

So a red flag should have gone up for U.S. security on potential concert soft targets in the United States.

One would have expected an immediate response from both the FBI and Homeland Security counterterror units: the drawing up of a list of potential music fest targets along with a report on the security flaws of each venue. Any such list would have underscored the obvious -- and not only in hindsight -- security problems at the Las Vegas venue.

The fact that the man identified as the shooter was evidently using such a list to case targets underscores that security officials would most likely have leapt into action after the Manchester bombing.

How is it that, say, the FBI's Las Vegas field office did not convey to local officials the security concerns found by counterterror experts? Was there a gum-up in communication? Bureaucratic folderol? Or did Washington experts drop the ball and draw up no such lists?

The press has not pursued this angle, as if the D.C. bureaus disdain anything that might trouble the security apparatus. By giving these questions a pass, the national press signals lawmakers not to bother raising the questions, as they will likely get no coverage.

Pentagon blocks found on news editorials

Initial draft; subject to revision.

Two news opinion pieces that challenged President George W. Bush's actions remain under a Pentagon cyber blockade, it has been learned.

One of two pieces by this writer concerned Bush's use of a signing statement as a means to impose a "line item veto" to override Congressional will on CIA funding. The other concerned views of experts on Bush's National Missile Defense plan, in which U.S. interceptor missiles would knock out incoming warheads by collision. The program was initiated largely in response to bellicose behavior by North Korea.

Both pieces were written before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but it is not evident whether they were barred by the Pentagon before or after the attacks. In the run-up to the Iraq war and during that conflict, this writer published various critical pieces, including one that targeted Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser and Iraq war hawk, and another that targeted the Murdoch press as being in collusion with Pentagon neocons like Perle.

The blocks were discovered Oct. 6 as this reporter, a combat veteran, was getting medical care at the Veterans Administration hospital in East Orange, N.J.

The VA and the active military share a computer system that, among other things, provides public internet access to VA and military patients, employees and service members.

During the WikiLeaks controversies, the Pentagon blocked access to sites, such as WikiLeaks, that apparently provided pilfered classified information.

The two pieces found blocked contained no classified information. But, this writer has, at times, reproduced WikiLeaks documents filched from the State Department when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state during President Barack Obama's first term.

While checking old links on the VA-Pentagon internet system, messages came up reading, "We're sorry. This page is blocked by your hospital." In one case, there was an option to return to the previous page; in the second case, the option pointed back to the "GetWell" network home page, ending the internet session. A search of Google discloses nothing about the URL, appserver.gain/assets/Globaldomain/Misc/BlockedPage.html .

This writer does not know how many other writers critical of Bush's defense activities may have been blocked. Nor, because time was limited, can the writer say how many of his other pieces are under an old cyber ban. But, to find two blocks in quick succession implies a wider censorship of Americans who wished to read "contraband" opinion while in the military or at the VA before smartphones changed the internet access landscape.

An array of critical reports and opinions by this writer that are dated from beyond the Bush era were not blocked by the Pentagon system, including an updated mirror article on the missile shield, now at

https://paulpages.blogspot.com/2013/11/this-essay-was-first-published-ca.html .

The link is to a 2002 version of the blocked essay.

The original web pages, hosted by Angelfire/Lycos, have been defunct for several years. The article on Bush's "signing statement" maneuver has not been recovered.

It is curious that the Pentagon would even notice some seemingly obscure Angelfire pages, that contained no classified information, and place them under interdict. It is possible that the writer's contribution to the SourceWatch piece triggered bureaucrats. Or it is possible that the pages came to the attention of a political operative in the Bush White House who took a narrow view of them.