Update no.672

Update from the Heartland

No.672

27.10.14 – 2.11.14

Blog version:  http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/

To all,

As this Update goes in the can, tomorrow is duty day – the duty of every citizen to vote.  It could be a very interesting day.  The chips shall fall where they may.

The follow-up news items:

-- Both nurses infected with Ebola in Dallas [669-71] were released from treatment and quarantine.  No new infections have been detected.  Perhaps now we can move beyond the hysteria and focus on dealing with the disease at its source

-- Rumors abound regarding adjunct actions associated with the Brown killing in Ferguson, Missouri [661].  The coroner’s final report was leaked.  The grand jury supposedly has completed its inquiry and the findings pending; rumor has it they will not indict Officer Wilson.  Then, more disturbing and disappointing news, folks are alluding to street rumors that there will be more violence and rioting, if Officer Wilson is not indicted.  Ain’t justice grand?

Congratulations must go to the World Series champion San Francisco Giants after their 3-2 victory over the Kansas City Royals in Game 7.  The dramatic bottom of the 9^th inning, two-out triple kept the Royals’ hopes alive to the very end.  The Royals fans were classy and magnificent.  However, the true Most Valuable Player for the championship series was Giant’s pitcher Madison Bumgarner, who was nothing short of awesome, no matter which side you cheered for in this series.  Well done by both teams.

On Tuesday, an Orbital Sciences Antares supply rocket exploded seconds after liftoff from NASA’s Wallops Island launch facility.  From the various video clips of the launch sequence, I suspect a high-speed, high-pressure, fuel pump experienced an uncontained, catastrophic failure that took out one engine (half of the first stage thrust) as well as structurally compromised the vehicle.  The first stage was equipped with two modified Soviet-built NK-33 engines, using kerosene and liquid oxygen (LOX) as fuel and oxidizer.  It appeared the vehicle had nearly fallen back on the launch pad by the time the range control button was pushed – quite a spectacular pre-dawn event.

On Friday, Virgin Galactic's Space Ship Two spacecraft launched from the White Knight mother ship and later broke up in flight over the Mojave test range in Southern California. One experimental test pilot was killed and the other survived with “moderate to severe” injuries; no other injuries were reported. The NTSB indicated the spacecraft’s unique, reentry, tail-feathering system may have prematurely deployed.  This was apparently the first flight test of a new rocket motor using a thermoplastic polyamide propellant, changed from the hybrid engine using hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) fuel and nitrous oxide oxidizer.  As an experimental flight test, the event was well documented and the root cause will likely be determined promptly.  Sir Richard Branson had hoped to begin revenue flights to the edge of space in 2015.  I suspect that objective is now doubtful, yet I expect Sir Richard to achieve his vision in due course.

This has been a rough week for the aerospace business.  As many may know, on Thursday, a Beechcraft Model 200 KingAir crashed into the Cessna Flight Safety Training Center, on takeoff from Wichita Mid-Continent Airport.  The solo pilot reported a left engine failure just after takeoff.  The aircraft was reported to be lightly loaded, so it had plenty of power to fly safely with one engine out.  For reasons not yet known, the pilot lost control of the aircraft.  In addition to the pilot, three others in a working flight simulator were killed.  A former colleague and Textron Aviation certification engineer lost his wife in the accident; she was performing as a Russian-English translator for a Russian pilot undergoing type certification simulation.  Based on the facts we know so far, it would appear the pilot became distracted at a crucial moment or failed to maintain his airspeed above the single-engine minimum control speed.  The NTSB indicated they recovered the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR); there was no indication the aircraft was equipped with a Flight Data Recorder (FDR).  I suspect they will sort this one out in comparatively short order.

Occasionally, I happen upon an historic event or episode that may be of interest to the wider audience of this humble forum.  In this instance, the tidbit at issue here has applicability to an important contemporary public debate topic – warrantless surveillance.

            During my continuing research and writing on To So Few – Book III – Explosion, I came upon a clue that sparked my curiosity and sent me on a tangential journey of discovery and enlightenment.  The ambiguous kernel appeared in a history book I recently finished reading. 

            As the world tumbled headlong into the great war of the mid-century, the United States found itself woefully un-prepared for modern warfare, not least of which, was counter-intelligence or counter-espionage operations.  The investigation and prosecution of the Rumich spy ring in 1938, shocked isolationist Americans into the realities of modern warfare.  The federal government’s investigative service – Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – had begun developing an infantile counter-espionage capability in the aftermath of the Rumich debacle; yet, it was the arrival back in the United States of naturalized American citizen Wilhelm Georg Debrowski (AKA William G. “Bill” Sebold) of German heritage in February 1939 that changed the landscape for the FBI and the American People.  Sebold sought out the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s New York City office and informed him of being forced (coerced) into spying for the Abwehr (German military intelligence).  The two-year investigation eventually resulted in the arrest, trial, conviction and sentencing of 30 German spies, including Hermann W. Lang who betrayed the vaunted Norden bombsight to the Germans.

            Since the Supreme Court’s divided Olmstead v. United States [277 U.S. 438 (1928)], the FBI had been operating under rather liberal guidance regarding warrantless wiretap surveillance.  Then, the Court began to constrain government surveillance with its narrow ruling in the case of Nardone v. United States [308 U.S. 338 (1939)].  FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover complained that the Nardone ruling was hindering the FBI’s investigative ability in the Sebold investigation as well as other on-going and future spy cases.  In May 1940, with Europe ablaze, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered Attorney General Robert Jackson to authorize investigative agencies, i.e., the FBI, to carry out warrantless wiretap surveillance of suspected spies.  Pinning down the President’s order was not so easy, but eventually I boiled it down to a memorandum order for the record (then quite secret) on 21.May.1940.  The FBI used its new presidential authority to full advantage in the successful prosecution of the German spy ring(s) [13.12.1941].

            I think we can all understand and appreciate the presidential memorandum authority in the light of surrounding events.  Yet, what is far more significant is the reality that Hoover continued to use the 1940 presidential authority to carry out warrantless surveillance of anyone he deemed subversive or potentially subversive until the Supreme Court closed down such conduct with its Katz v. United States [389 U.S. 347 (1967)] decision.  The government’s warrantless surveillance (FBI, NSA) resulted in the Venona Files, the feeding of Joe McCarthy’s Red-hunting, as well as the political files Hoover held on Martin Luther King, John & Robert Kennedy, among so many others Hoover did not like or with whom he wanted political leverage.  While Hoover’s actions were used to the benefit of the United States warfighting effort, the tools provided to him in 1940 were forgotten and not rescinded at war’s end.  Hoover certainly did not advertise his secret authority and made sure those who did know where fearful enough to not challenge the capability.  While this new information (at least to me) sheds new light on the Church Committee [1975-76] and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) [PL 95-511; 92 Stat. 1783], it does not alter my opinion that FISA went too far in over-correcting for past abuses by Hoover, Nixon’s Plumbers, among others.

News from the economic front:

-- The U.S. Federal Reserve announced it would hold short-term interest rates near zero for a “considerable time,” and would stop its long-running bond-purchase stimulus program at the end of October.  Apparently, Fed officials believe their actions helped blunt the Great Recession and aided economic recovery, and there recovery work is nearly done.  The Fed also upgraded its assessment of the country’s employment performance and acknowledged some short-term downside risks remain regarding inflation.

-- The U.S. Commerce Department reported the nation’s 3Q2014 GDP grew at a solid annual rate of 3.5%, propelled by solid gains in business investment, export sales and the biggest jump in military spending in five years.  The 3Q result follows a 4.6% rebound in 2Q, after a 2.1% contraction in 1Q2014 due to harsh winter weather effects.

-- The Bank of Japan unexpectedly announced additional economic stimulus measures, increasing its asset purchases at an annual rate of ¥80T (US$724B), up from its ¥60-70T level in the last near two years, as its 2% inflation target looked increasingly untenable.  The move appears to highlight concerns about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's economic recovery plan after a national sales tax increase in April that appears to have dampened consumer spending.

No comments or contributions from Update no.671.

My very best wishes to all.  Take care of yourselves and each other.

Cheers,

Cap                        :-)