12 Awesome Office Prank Videos

As long as there have been offices, there have been office pranks. There is just something about spending 8 hours behind a desk or inside a cubicle that awakens the prankster inside us all. And whether it's filling cars with golf balls, turning a cubicle into a miniature house, or making people fall out of their chairs, office pranks are some of the best pranks around! Here are 12 of the funniest office pranks you're likely to see (in no particular order).

1) Cubicle converted into a home

In what may go down as the most epic and flawlessly executed office prank ever, these co-workers turned someone's cubicle into a full-fledged house. The pranksters had plenty of time while their co-worker enjoyed a month long vacation. When he finally returned, he found that his regular old, run-of-the-mill cubicle had been transformed into a shed, complete with windows, shingles, paint, trim, flowers, a lamp and a mailbox.

2) Car full of golf balls

We all look forward to the end of the workday when we can head to our car and cruise home in the peace and quiet we worked all day to enjoy. What one man wasn't counting on, however, was the fact that a couple of his office buddies filled his SUV to the brim with golf balls during the day. The pranksters catch everything on camera from high above in their office building, from the man walking to his car to the torrential flood of golf balls that hits him when he opens the door. Classic!



3) Cubicle foiled

This man returned to work to find his cubicle and computer completely covered in tinfoil! You should be picking up on a common theme by now: leave your cubicle for extended times at your own risk!



4) 1000 balloons

These office clowns blew up 1,000 (that's right, one thousand) balloons by hand and put them all in their boss's office. It would've been pretty tough to pull that off during business hours, so these guys waited until the dead of night to come in at 12:20 in the morning and hatch their scheme.



5) 55lb bag of resin

One man came back from vacation to find 55lbs of nylon resin sitting open in his overhead cabinet. As the YouTube caption warns, "this is what happens when you fill an office with engineers!"



6) Mooning the photocopier - and breaking it!

One of the classic office pranks is sitting on the photocopier to get a picture of your rear end. It's funny, but not so much when you're so heavy that you actually fall through the glass when you sit on the photocopier! We can't be sure, but it must have been an interesting afternoon when it came time for this man's quarterly performance review!



7) Rigged desk

Everybody has days when they can't seem to get anything done, but it's especially difficult when someone glues your phone together and rigs your desk drawer to an air horn that blows every time you try to open it! The hard work and preparation pays off when the owner of the desk sits down and the rest of the office erupts in laughter.



8) Operation "Care Bare Stare"

In another chapter of the "you'd better watch your cubicle" saga, this man had his turned into a Care Bears shrine, complete with balloons, new wall tiling, and rainbow decorations.



9) Snakes in the Pringles

Everyone loves the old "snakes in the can" trick. These office clowns opted to stash their springing snakes into a female co-worker's Pringles can. The video is helpfully narrated, with arrows pointing to the victim and the Pringles can before the prank actually happens.



10) Computer scare

We've all been a victim of "that e-mail prank" where we stare at the screen for 2 minutes only to have a horrific, screaming face burst out of nowhere and scare the hell out of us. Most of us are surprised, but the woman in this video screams and falls completely out of her chair as her pranksters laugh in delight.



11) Rewired office

The pranksters in this video are in close competition with the prank number 1 for effort. They actually took the effort to rewire their technology-illiterate boss's entire office, making the light switch turn on the radio, the computer turn on the fan, the fan make loud rap music play, and so forth. The prank ends with the boss getting stuck inside a dark elevator while his pranksters watch him freaking out on the security camera. Priceless!



12) Rat in the donuts

These pranksters put a fake but moving and extremely lifelike rat inside a Dunkin' Donuts box and set it on the table. Watch the video and you'll see employee after employee walk by, open the box, and recoil in instinctive terror!

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There Is No Gas Shortage

"They see speculation in the market, I see decline in global inventories. I don't think this is a big surprise, that we've had a jump in price when there has been a decrease in crude inventories."— Energy Secretary Sam Bodman, Bloomberg News, Mar. 5, 2008

"It should be obvious to you all that the [gasoline] demand is outstripping supply, which causes prices to go up." — President George W. Bush, Associated Press, Mar. 5, 2008

One wonders if verifiable facts ever get in the way of this administration's statements on issues that are critical to the average American's wellbeing. After all, last time I checked, when politicians are elected to public office, or appointed, as is Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman, they must take an oath to the American people before assuming their new positions. How can they forget a sacred oath so quickly? Were they daydreaming when they took it, so it never meant anything to begin with? Maybe it's just another promise you have to make to get into office: When you're securely incumbent you can ignore even solemn oaths you took.

Obviously, the two quotes that led this article came from discussions concerning the current high price for oil on the futures market. Bodman appears to be protecting the speculators in oil, as opposed to looking after the interests of all Americans. President Bush, apparently, has never talked to the Energy Dept.'s Energy Information Agency to see whether gasoline demand is actually up. More troubling, the writer of that particular Associated Press article obviously didn't look up the EIA's numbers to verify the President's assertions. They weren't accurate.

1. There Is No Shortage

Gasoline reserves on hand are at the highest levels since the early 1990s, which is remarkable considering the nation's refineries have been cutting back on the production of gasoline because their margins have declined. In fact, average gasoline reserves on hand have risen since this past October, while oil reserves in this country have gone up virtually every week this year—and only fog in the Houston Ship Channel that kept oil tankers from unloading their crude one week kept it from being every week.

In the same Bloomberg article that quotes from Bodman's CNBC appearance on Mar. 4, he also said that it was thanks to ethanol that the gasoline problem isn't even worse. He then added that the fact that making ethanol is forcing up prices of other farm commodities, including hog and chicken feed, is "nowhere near as important as trying to relieve pressure on [gasoline] supplies."

Of course, there is no pressure on gasoline supplies in this country as of today, but Bodman's statement must have made eyes roll among the executives at Pilgrim's Pride PPC; the Pittsburg, (Tex.) poultry producer announced 1,100 layoffs on Mar. 13, closing one processing plant and 6 of their 13 distribution centers because their company's outlay for chicken feed went up $600 million last fiscal year and was on track to increase by another $700 million this year.

Here's the scorecard, in case you missed it. There's no shortage of gasoline or oil in the U.S. today, and we have near-record reserves on hand. Meanwhile the Congressional mandate for ethanol has jacked up the price of chicken feed for Pilgrim's Pride, which is the U.S.'s largest processor of chickens and turkeys—by $1.3 billion. And that's for just one company processing chicken. This is what passes for acceptable to our Energy Secretary?

2. Demand Is DOWN, Yet Prices Are UP

Just so we can all get on the same page, here are the verifiable facts on oil supplies, production, and gasoline demand.

In January of this year, the U.S. used 4% less petroleum than we did a year ago. (Oil demand was down 3.2% in February.) Furthermore, demand has been falling slowly since July of last year. Ronald Bailey of Reason Online has pointed out that worldwide production of oil has risen 2.5% in the first quarter, while worldwide demand has grown by only 2%.

Production is expected to increase by 3.3% in the second quarter, and by as much as 4.1% by the third quarter. The net result is that the U.S. daily buffer for oil production against demand, which was a paltry 1.5 million barrels as recently as 2005, is now up to 3 million barrels in excess capacity today.

So what is going on here? Why would our Energy Secretary say there's a supply and demand problem when none exists? Why would he say that speculators have little or nothing to do with the incredibly high price of oil and gasoline, when it's clear they do? President Bush—a former oilman—gives the ever-growing demand for gasoline as the primary reason prices are so high, yet that notion can be dispelled with one minute of research. That's the problem with rhetoric; it rarely matches the facts.

3. Speculation is Up, and the Dollar Is Down

On the same day the President and our Energy Secretary made those foolish comments, no less an authority than ExxonMobil (XOM) Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson was quoted by Marketwatch as saying, "The record run in oil prices is related more to speculation and a weakening dollar than supply and demand in the market." He added, "In terms of fundamentals, fear of supply reliability is overblown."

As for the speculators, in 2000 approximately $9 billion was invested in oil futures, while today that number has gone up to $250 billion. Now, if any publicly traded company had an additional $241 billion put into its stock in the same period, its stock would rise out of sight too—even if the company was not worth anywhere near that amount of market capitalization.

Moving on to the weak U.S. dollar as a primary cause for skyrocketing oil prices—there is "some" truth in that statement. But consider this: The dollar has depreciated 30% against the world's currencies since 2002, while the price of oil has gone up 500%. So is it the weak dollar that has caused a 500% increase in the price of oil, or is it the extra $241 billion worth of speculation? You can make the call on that one.

Possibly just to ensure oil prices don't respond to real-world market conditions, Goldman Sachs (GS) forecast on Mar. 7 that turbulence in the oil market could cause oil to spike as high as $200 a barrel. This flies in the face of all known information—but then again, Goldman Sachs is the world's biggest trader of energy derivatives, and its Goldman Sachs Commodities Index is a widely watched barometer of energy and commodities prices.

What Is Washington Thinking?

Rounding out the list of experts discussing our oil and gasoline situation is Bill Klesse, head of San Antonio (Tex.) Valero Energy (VLO). He spoke in San Diego a week after those comments from Goldman Sachs, the President, and Secretary Bodman. Believe it or not, Klesse said poor margins may cause Valero to sell one-third of its refinery operations; he stated that poor margins in recent months had caused planned refinery expansions—which would have produced 500,000 more barrels per day—to be canceled. Moreover, according to a report from Reuters on Mar. 11, 2008, Klesse recently released the information that gasoline production has been curtailed in response to slowing demand.

Imagine that: Refiners cut gasoline production, yet gasoline reserves have grown to their largest since late 1992. So much for "surging demand."

Klesse also called for the government to start imposing a tariff on imported gasoline to protect U.S. refiners' profits. Protectionism? As famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith correctly said, "In America, the only respectable form of socialism is socialism for the rich."

Which takes us back to the original question: Why is Washington doing everything it can to convince us there is a shortage when there isn't one? After all, the only people they're protecting are those heavily invested in oil futures—and that's to the detriment of all other Americans.

We're Paying for What?

When it became undeniable that poor decision-making by company executives had put a respected 85-year-old U.S. institution in financial peril, why did the Federal Reserve rush in to save investment bank Bear Stearns (BSC)? Of course, we need to restore confidence in our financial institutions, but why protect the personal assets of those who were responsible for the mess? Both the corporation's officers and its board members should contribute their personal assets toward saving the bank they put in the ditch—the bank all of us are going to pay to bail out.

Instead, the Bush administration is protecting those responsible for creating yet another speculative bubble in oil futures, and is protecting investors in the ethanol industry—much to the detriment of food-processing companies such as Pilgrim's Pride. And the net result of all this is that the prices of crude and gasoline rise ever higher thanks to a "shortage" that does not exist, while food costs are soaring thanks in part to the ethanol mandate.

The Federal Reserve lowers interest rates, but the cost of mortgages goes up six weeks in a row—and last month Bank of America (BAC) credit-card holders started being charged more than 24% interest on new purchases.

This is what they call "Republican Prosperity?" Ronald Reagan was both right and wrong when he said, "Government is not the solution, government is the problem." And government is still the problem. Instead of a fair and open market they gave us a free-for-all marketplace with no regulations at all, which lately these "bubble boys" have sent south for all of us.

One would guess that Washington missed the obvious: Protect all U.S. consumers and you're also protecting business expansion.

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20% of companies pick up CEOs' taxes on perks

CEOs are just like the rest of us: They hate paying for things out of pocket if they can find someone else to foot the bill.

Fortunately for them, in many cases there is someone willing to pick up the bill for selected personal expenses: the shareholders.

A new study from The Corporate Library finds that the most common form of perk being granted to CEOs these days is something called a tax "gross-up." In plain English, it means that a company pays the taxes owed by the CEO on benefits granted by the company.

The Corporate Library, a shareholder watchdog group, found that 20% of major American companies, or 657 of nearly 3,300 examined, picked up the tab on at least one tax owed by the CEO.

"We are sure that many U.S. workers would be grateful if their employers also paid their income tax obligations," writes Paul Hodgson of The Corporate Library in the report.

Almost any perk granted to a CEO generates a tax bill, from an executive life insurance policy paid by the company to country club dues.

But one of the most common reasons cited by the report for tax "gross-ups" is use of the corporate jet. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, for security reasons, the boards of many companies have encouraged their CEOs to fly on private jets rather than commercial airlines when traveling on business. Public companies often allow the CEOs to use the corporate jet for personal travel as well.

Personal use of the company plane is a form of compensation to the executive, so it generates a tax liability. But rather than making the CEO pay tax on that benefit, dozens of companies in the Russell 3000 pick up the tax bill.

The Corporate Library report singles out Ryland Group (RYL), a home-building company, as the biggest provider of "gross-up" payments to its CEO. For 2007, Ryland provided CEO R. Chad Dreier with $4 million in gross-ups as part of a pay package that totaled $12 million. Ryland did not return calls for comment.

Revelations about corporate perks can create ill will among investors, says Ira Kay of the compensation consulting firm Watson Wyatt.

"We advise our clients to minimize perks as much as possible," he says. "It's an irritant to shareholders and a distraction from incentive plans that work well."

Alan Johnson of Johnson & Associates suggests that many companies maintain a corporate jet primarily to accommodate the CEO, or, if the company already has a corporate jet that's used for business, a CEO's needs can lead the company to lease another jet.

Some companies, such as General Mills (GIS), have canceled the personal-use-of-the-corporate-jet perk. It's a trend that's likely to grow, says Watson Wyatt's Kay.

Hodgson agrees. "There are more boards who are less happy paying for quite so many perks now that they've been exposed," he says. "I'm expecting a reduction in number and range of perks being paid."

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Wal-Mart: Brain-damaged former employee can keep money

(CNN) -- A former Wal-Mart employee who suffered severe brain damage in a traffic accident won't have to pay back the company for the cost of her medical care, Wal-Mart told the family Tuesday.

Debbie Shank, 52, has severe brain damage after a traffic accident in May 2000.

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"Occasionally, others help us step back and look at a situation in a different way. This is one of those times," Wal-Mart Executive Vice President Pat Curran said in a letter. "We have all been moved by Ms. Shank's extraordinary situation."

Eight years ago, Debbie Shank was stocking shelves for the retail giant and signed up for Wal-Mart's health and benefits plan.

After a tractor-trailer slammed into her minivan, the 52-year-old mother of three lost much of her short-term memory and was confined to a wheelchair. She now lives in a nursing home.

She also lost her 18-year-old son, Jeremy, who was killed shortly after arriving in Iraq. When Debbie Shank asks family members how her son is doing and they remind her that he's dead, she weeps as if hearing the news for the first time.

Wal-Mart's health care plan lets the retail giant recoup the cost of its expenses if an employee collects damages in a lawsuit. And Wal-Mart set out to do just that after Shank and her husband, Jim, won $1 million after suing the trucking company involved in the wreck. After legal fees, the couple received $417,000.

Wal-Mart sued the Shanks to recoup $470,000 it paid for her medical care. However, a court ruled that the company could only recoup about $275,000 -- the amount that was left in a trust fund for her care.

The Shanks appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court declined in March to hear the case. CNN told the couple's story last week, prompting thousands of angry blog responses and at least two online petitions to boycott the company.

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• Brain-damaged woman at center of Wal-Mart suit

On Tuesday, Wal-Mart said in a letter to Jim Shank that it is modifying its health care plan to allow "more discretion" in individual cases. Watch Wal-Mart reverse its decision »

"We wanted you to know that Wal-Mart will not seek any reimbursement for the money already spent on Ms. Shank's care, and we will work with you to ensure the remaining amounts in the trust can be used for her ongoing care," Curran said.

"We are sorry for any additional stress this uncertainty has placed on you and your family."

Wal-Mart's reversal came as shock to Shank.

"I thought it was an April Fool's joke," he told CNN.

"I (would) just like to let them know that they did the right thing. I just wish it hadn't taken so long," Shank said. "But I thank them and I hope they come through with all that they said they're going to do.

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Fed Posts Map Showing Loan Conditions

The Federal Reserve is posting maps to illustrate subprime loan conditions across the U.S.

The Fed on Tuesday announced the maps will be maintained by its district bank in New York. Monthly updates are planned. The maps will display regional variation in the condition of securitized, owner-occupied subprime and alt-A mortgage loans.

The maps will show information for each state and most counties and zip codes. The information includes loans per 1,000 housing units, loans in foreclosure per 1,000 housing units, loans real estate owned per 1,000 housing units, share of loans that are adjustable rate mortgages, share of loans for which payments are current, share of loans that are 90-plus days delinquent, share of loans in foreclosure, median combined loan-to-value ratio at origination, share of loans with low credit score and high LTV at origination, share of loans with low- or no documentation, share of ARMs with initial reset in the next 12 months, share of loans with a late payment in the past 12 months. –Jeff Bater

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Size 16 Miss England hopeful Chloe unveils a curvy look in first official bikini shoot

Chloe Marshall is the teenage beauty queen who broke the mould by becoming the first size 16 beauty queen contender to make it to the finals of the Miss England contest.

And now she reveals her shapely body in the official Miss England bikini – not forgetting her tiara of course – in her first bikini photoshoot since winning the Miss Surrey title.

Posing confidently poolside in the brief white gem-embossed Miss England bikini which she'll wear in the pageant in July, Chloe appears completely lacking in self-consciousness.

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Curves allowed: Chloe Marshall poses confidently in an official Miss England bikini for her first magazine photoshoot

The 17-year-old trainee beautician doesn't look like your average beauty queen. And she couldn't be happier about it.

She said: "It's what I was born to do – posing for the camera. And as I keep saying, I love my body.

"People seem desperate to get me to say that I don't, that deep down I'm not happy and would rather be thin, but the fact is I wouldn't change myself at all.

"Do I have fat days? Of course, but what woman doesn't!"

Chloe beat a host of slimmer hopefuls to be named Miss Surrey earlier this month, and hopes to win the national competition in July.

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Winner: Chloe was the first size 16 competitor to win the Miss Surrey title, and will now compete for the Miss England title. She says she is completely happy with her curves and 'loves' her body

The Guildford-born plus-size model weighs 12st 8lb, is 5ft 10in tall and has a 38DD bust.

But although she is the average size for a woman, in the age which has seen the rise of the scarily thin size zero model, she certainly stands out.

Chloe said reaction has been mainly positive, but she admitted in an interview with Hello magazine, that there had been some snide remarks with one writer accusing her of "promoting obesity".

Chloe told Hello: "I'm a size 16, I eat well, I exercise regularly – I jog, swim, and work out with weights.

"What I am promoting is a healthy girl who looks after herself and doesn't try to force her body to be something its not."

The teenager, who has been signed up by the Models Plus agency, said most of her rivals were size eight or ten.

"Everybody thinks you have to be a tall, slim blonde and I'm a curvy brunette," she added.

"I want to show it is possible to be beautiful and not a standard size zero."

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Chinese Spy 'Slept' In U.S. for 2 Decades

Prosecutors called Chi Mak the "perfect sleeper agent," though he hardly looked the part. For two decades, the bespectacled Chinese-born engineer lived quietly with his wife in a Los Angeles suburb, buying a house and holding a steady job with a U.S. defense contractor, which rewarded him with promotions and a security clearance. Colleagues remembered him as a hard worker who often took paperwork home at night.

Eventually, Mak's job gave him access to sensitive plans for Navy ships, submarines and weapons. These he secretly copied and sent via courier to China -- fulfilling a mission that U.S. officials say he had been planning since the 1970s.

Mak was sentenced last week to 24 1/2 years in prison by a federal judge who described the lengthy term as a warning to China not to "send agents here to steal America's military secrets." But it may already be too late: According to U.S. intelligence and Justice Department officials, the Mak case represents only a small facet of an intelligence-gathering operation that has long been in place and is growing in size and sophistication.

The Chinese government, in an enterprise that one senior official likened to an "intellectual vacuum cleaner," has deployed a diverse network of professional spies, students, scientists and others to systematically collect U.S. know-how, the officials said. Some are trained in modern electronic techniques for snooping on wireless computer transactions. Others, such as Mak, are technical experts who have been in place for years and have blended into their communities.

"Chi Mak acknowledged that he had been placed in the United States more than 20 years earlier, in order to burrow into the defense-industrial establishment to steal secrets," Joel Brenner, the head of counterintelligence for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in an interview. "It speaks of deep patience," he said, and is part of a pattern.

Other recent prosecutions illustrate the scale of the problem. Mak, whose sentence capped an 18-month criminal probe, was the second U.S. citizen in the past two weeks to stand before a federal judge after being found guilty on espionage-related charges.

On Monday, former Defense Department analyst Gregg W. Bergersen pleaded guilty in Alexandria to charges that he gave classified information on U.S. weapons sales to a businessman who shared the data with a Chinese official.

In March, the Reston company WaveLab pleaded guilty to violating export laws when it shipped militarily sensitive power amplifiers to China, according to court papers. A lawyer for the company said it neglected to get proper licenses and did not engage in "underhanded" behavior.

Dongfan Chung, a Boeing engineer arrested in February for allegedly passing classified space shuttle and rocket documents to Chinese officials, was accused in court documents of responding to orders from Beijing as long ago as 1979 -- making him a second alleged longtime agent.

Yesterday, federal prosecutors in Chicago indicted a software engineer for allegedly stealing business trade secrets and trying to take more than 1,000 paper and electronic documents from a telecommunications company on a one-way trip to China last year.

The cases are among at least a dozen investigations of Chinese espionage that have yielded criminal charges or guilty pleas in the past year. Since 2000, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have launched more than 540 investigations of illegal technology exports to China.

The FBI recently heightened its counterintelligence operations against Chinese activities in the United States after Director Robert S. Mueller III cited "substantial concern" about aggressive attempts to use students, scientists and "front companies" to acquire military secrets.

Recent prosecutions indicate that Chinese agents have infiltrated sensitive military programs pertaining to nuclear missiles, submarine propulsion technology, night-vision capabilities and fighter pilot training -- all of which could help China modernize its programs while developing countermeasures against advanced weapons systems used by the United States and its allies.

"The intelligence services of the People's Republic of China pose a significant threat both to the national security and to the compromise of U.S. critical national assets," said William Carter, an FBI spokesman. "The PRC will remain a significant threat for a long time as they attempt to develop their military capabilities and to develop their economy in order to compete in today's world economy."

While military technology appears to be the top prize, the Chinese effort is also aimed at commercial and industrial technologies, which often are poorly protected, several officials said. "Espionage used to be a problem for the FBI, CIA and military, but now it's a problem for corporations," Brenner said. "It's no longer a cloak-and-dagger thing. It's about computer architecture and the soundness of electronic systems."

Calls placed to the Chinese Embassy in Washington requesting comment on recent spy cases were not returned. But Chinese officials have repeatedly denied that their country is stealing military technology. "We have reiterated many times that allegations that China stole U.S. military secrets are groundless and made out of ulterior motives," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said at a recent news conference in Beijing, commenting on the Mak case.

But U.S. intelligence and defense officials say China has been able to use technology of U.S. origin in a new generation of advanced naval destroyers and quiet-running, stealthy submarines.

Some of those secrets may have been obtained with the help of Mak, a 67-year-old electrical engineer who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1985 along with his wife, Rebecca Chiu Mak. The two settled in Southern California, where Mak eventually accepted a job with Power Paragon, a defense contractor that specialized in advanced naval propulsion technology. In 1996, Mak was given a security clearance at the "secret" level, which gave him access to sensitive engineering details for U.S. ships and submarines.

In 2003, Mak became the subject of an intensive federal investigation that included court-ordered wiretaps, secret property searches and the clandestine installation of a video camera inside his home. Through surveillance, FBI agents discovered that Mak was in the process of copying thousands of pages of technical documents onto computer disks, which he arranged to send to China using his brother and sister-in-law as couriers.

According to court documents, the Maks encrypted the disks to avoid detection and used coded words to arrange a drop-off of the disks to a Chinese intelligence operative. In one phone conversation, the brother, Tai Wang Mak, intimated that he would be traveling with his wife and a third companion he described as his "assistant" -- a reference, prosecutors said, to the disks, hidden in his luggage.

The plan was foiled on Oct. 28, 2005, when agents arrested Tai Wang Mak as he was preparing to board a plane at Los Angeles International Airport. Chi Mak and his wife were arrested at their home the same day.

A key piece of evidence was a to-do list of apparent intelligence targets, written in Chinese script. The note, which had been shredded, was retrieved from Chi Mak's garbage and painstakingly reassembled to reveal what prosecutors said were instructions from Beijing on the kinds of technology Mak should seek to acquire.

Mak, who testified in his defense at his six-week trial, denied he was a spy and said the information he copied was available from nonclassified sources on the Internet. Defense witnesses said that much, if not all, of the documents acquired by Mak were not officially classified, though transmitting them to China was prohibited under U.S. export laws. Mak's attorney, Ronald O. Kaye, said his client was a scapegoat for other U.S. intelligence failures and a "symbol of the government's cold war against the Chinese."

In another recent case, former Northrop Grumman scientist Noshir Gowadia, who helped build the B-2 bomber, was indicted last fall for allegedly sharing cruise missile data with the Chinese government during a half-dozen trips to China. He is scheduled to go on trial in October.

A defense lawyer for Gowadia did not return calls, but Gowadia's family in Hawaii has told local journalists that the charges stem from a misunderstanding.

Robert Clifton Burns, a Washington lawyer who specializes in export cases, said the Chinese acquisition of sophisticated U.S. technology "is fast coming out from under the radar" as authorities crack down on such shipments to foreign powers. But Burns, who closely tracks prosecutions in the area, said the government sometimes overstates the risks of exporting U.S. items.

"People who violate export laws should be thrown in jail, no question about it," Burns said. But he added that there are also people "who would be better addressed by . . . a civil result where they get a small fine."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

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A look inside Al Qaeda

The militant is known as Abu Ubaida al Masri, and charting his path reveals his vulnerabilities and those of the terrorist group.

COPENHAGEN -- If Al Qaeda strikes the West in the coming months, it's likely the mastermind will be a stocky Egyptian explosives expert with two missing fingers.

His alias is Abu Ubaida al Masri. Hardly anyone has heard of him outside a select circle of anti-terrorism officials and Islamic militants. But as chief of external operations for Al Qaeda, investigators say, he has one of the most dangerous -- and endangered -- jobs in international terrorism.
He has overseen the major plots that the network needs to stay viable, investigators say: the London transportation bombings in 2005, a foiled transatlantic "spectacular" aimed at U.S.-bound planes in 2006, and an aborted plot in this serene Scandinavian capital last fall.

But pursuers have captured or killed his predecessors and have been gunning for him. He prowls Pakistani badlands one step ahead of satellites and security forces.

Although periodic reports of his death have proved false, rumors resurfaced after recent American airstrikes. Asked whether Masri is alive, a Western anti-terrorism official said, "It's a question mark."

Masri himself can be described that way. Authorities know only bits and pieces of his biography. They know his face, having identified an unreleased photo, but not his real name.

"He is considered capable and dangerous," said a British official, who like others in this report declined to be identified. "He is not at the very top of Al Qaeda, but has been part of the core circle for a long time. He is someone who has emerged and grabbed our attention as others were caught or eliminated in the last couple of years. Perhaps he rose faster than he would have otherwise."

The Times has charted Masri's rise in interviews with anti-terrorism officials and experts from Europe, the United States and the Middle East, and a review of case files and academic and intelligence reports. The stories of man and network intertwine, revealing the dangers and vulnerabilities of both.

Masri's emergence reflects Al Qaeda's resilient, hydra-like structure. As leaders fall, mid-level chiefs step up, shifting tactics and targets with determination and innovation.

But Al Qaeda seems diminished despite insistent propaganda and an onslaught of violence in Iraq, South Asia and North Africa. The network has not pulled off an attack in the West since 2005.

"We have to be careful not to fall prey to our fears," said a senior British anti-terrorism official. "The language of 2001, 2002, gave an inflated view of Al Qaeda's size and structure. It's not the Red Army, it's not even the Irish Republican Army. . . . There have been advances by AQ at the ideological level, it has spawned franchises, but don't lose sight of the operational setbacks that AQ has suffered."

The plots attributed to Masri were ambitious, but authorities infiltrated two cells long before they could strike. Some trainees seemed more fierce than talented. And the number of seasoned field commanders dwindles, former CIA officer Marc Sageman said in an interview.

"Al Qaeda's bench is shrinking," Sageman writes in his latest book, "Leaderless Jihad." "Yes, there are trained and still quite competent terrorist trainers around, and they are more visible in Waziristan [in Pakistan], but the long-term prospect of Al Qaeda central in the Afghan-Pakistani theater is diminishing."

But other experts see signs of resurgence. Last year, U.S. spy agencies warned that Al Qaeda had "protected or regenerated" its leadership and ability to attack the United States by carving out a haven in Pakistani tribal areas.

Masri is in his mid-40s, according to an Italian translation of a German investigative file. His nom de guerre means "The Egyptian Father of Ubaida." Little is known about his youth. He belongs to a generation of Egyptians who have dominated Al Qaeda since they fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, officials say.

Masri followed the classic itinerary after Afghanistan, officials say. He fought in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the early 1990s, went on to Chechnya and was wounded, according to the Italian file. He lost two fingers -- a common disfigurement suffered by Al Qaeda veterans from combat or explosives. Masri also spent time in Britain, according to the file. In 1995, he surfaced in Munich, Germany, under an alias and requested asylum. His associates there included a Moroccan computer science student who married the daughter of Ayman Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, and Jordanian operatives who led a 2002 plot for shooting attacks on Jews.

In 1999, authorities rejected Masri's asylum claim and jailed him pending deportation. But he was released instead for reasons that are unclear.

Tanned and muscular

By 2000 he was back in Afghanistan serving as an instructor at a training camp near Kabul, where he taught about explosives, artillery and topography, according to the file. Shadi Abdalla, a former Bin Laden bodyguard, described him in later testimony as 5 foot 7, muscular and tanned, with graying black hair and a graying beard.

During the U.S.-led military operation in Afghanistan in late 2001, Masri fought in the 055 Brigade, a paramilitary unit that took heavy casualties covering Bin Laden's escape into Pakistan, according to Rohan Gunaratna, author of "Inside Al Qaeda." Holed up in the border region, the survivors split into two wings, he said. Internal operations ran combat in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where Masri helped the Taliban regroup. External operations oversaw attacks elsewhere.

After the capture in 2003 of the manically prolific Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind, Masri's duties shifted. He joined a group of chiefs who tried to keep targeting the West, mainly Britain.

They succeeded on July 7, 2005, killing 52 people in synchronized public transportation bombings in London. The lead bombers were groomed in Pakistan by Abdul Hadi, a former Iraqi military officer, according to officials and court testimony. Masri's name emerged as a planner working with him.

"He's considered a player," a U.S. anti-terrorism official said. "He comes up on the radar screen a few months after July 2005."

In January 2006, an airstrike killed 18 people in the Bajaur region of Pakistan. The press reported, inaccurately, that Masri and three other leaders died in the rubble.

The plane plan

Masri had embarked on his biggest task yet: a mega-project intended to match the carnage of the Sept. 11 attacks by blowing up airplanes en route from Britain to the United States. Half a dozen British militants traveled to Pakistan for training.

"He was involved in recruiting, overseeing the lesson plan, so to speak," the U.S. anti-terrorism official said.

The innovative techniques required special instruction. Masri envisioned his operatives injecting the liquid explosives, a highly concentrated hydrogen peroxide mix, with a syringe into the false bottoms of innocuous containers such as sports drinks, sneaking the components aboard and assembling bombs after takeoff.

"The airline plot is his thing," a Western intelligence official said. "And it is a major plot."

Investigators think only one or two trainees had contact with Masri. Trainees had autonomy to instruct and supervise a dozen fellow militants back in Britain, officials say. In turn, investigators believe Masri got direction from his bosses, who often communicate with the command structure through messengers.

"We have patchy intelligence on the relationship and structure between external operations figures and Zawahiri and Bin Laden," the senior British official said. "In the really big plots, we think they played a role."

Investigators monitored the plotters for months, managing to film inside their London safe house. In August 2006, police rounded them up. The attack was weeks away and would have targeted five planes, the U.S. anti-terrorism official said.

Three months later, Pakistani helicopter gunships blew up a remote madrasa, killing about 80 people but missing Masri, officials say. In late 2006, however, Israeli, Turkish and U.S. spies teamed up to capture Hadi, the former Iraqi military officer, in Turkey as he was en route to Iraq to improve relations with the Al Qaeda offshoot there, officials say.

Masri assumed more control. He allegedly turned his aim to another part of Europe he knows. Last spring, he taught bomb-making in compounds in North Waziristan to aspiring suicide attackers, including a 21-year-old Pakistani living in Denmark and a 45-year-old Pakistani-German, according to U.S. and European officials.

A U.S. anti-terrorism source sees Masri's role as a symptom of decline. "The fact he trained them himself shows you some of the limitations of the network," the source said.

In any case, Masri's pupils apparently displayed more fervor than stealth. Aided by U.S. intercepts of communications to Pakistan, Danish police put the 21-year-old under surveillance along with his associates, one of whom had been in Pakistan at the same time. As in London, police got deep inside the alleged cell, U.S. and European officials say.

Police installed clandestine cameras and microphones in the 21-year-old's apartment in a scruffy area that mixes immigrant families and young Danes. In early September, the cameras filmed the 21-year-old and an Afghan suspect as they sang militant songs and mixed TATP, the explosive used in the London attacks. The two even conducted tests of detonators in a vestibule, officials say.

Two days later, police jailed them. Last week, prosecutors filed formal charges against three suspects. Seven others remain under investigation. The alleged target has not been disclosed. Al Qaeda has threatened Denmark because of the publication here of cartoons seen as insulting to the prophet Muhammad.

In the cross hairs

Masri's ongoing contact with foreign operatives put him in the cross hairs. U.S. forces have unleashed a flurry of airstrikes in Waziristan this year, killing a top Libyan chief, Abu Laith al Libi, and other Arab militants in late January.

Recent intelligence suggests that Masri died too, officials say. But they say they have no confirmation, no Internet eulogies of the kind that celebrated Libi.

Cultivating the art of survival through anonymity, Masri may have beaten the odds once again. Or it may be that, for strategic reasons, both sides want to keep his fate ambiguous as a successor emerges.

The external operations chief, the senior British official said, has "the job with the lowest life expectancy in international politics."

rotella@latimes.com

Special correspondent Dirk Laabs in Hamburg, Germany, and Noha El-Hennawy of The Times' Cairo Bureau contributed to this report.

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Top Bush Administration officials pressured underlings to use torture tactics at Guantanamo

Of Guantanamo interrogators: “You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas.”

"Torture at Guantánamo was sanctioned by the most senior advisers to the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense, according to the international lawyer and professor of law at University College London Philippe Sands, who has conducted a forensic examination of the chain of command leading from the top of the administration to the camp at Guantánamo," Vanity Fair will report on newstands today.

The article directly contradicts the administration’s account to Congress, which placed responsibility on military commanders and interrogators on the ground for the practices banned by the Geneva Conventions.

Excerpts from the magazine's release follow. The full story is available here.

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Sands reports that these senior advisers face a real risk of criminal investigation if they set foot outside the United States, despite the Military Commissions Act, signed into law by President Bush in 2006. The hitch is that their immunity is good only within U.S. borders, and rather than protecting them, the act may lead to an eventual investigation by foreign governments. For some, the future may hold “a tap on the shoulder.” Sands consulted a judge and prosecutor in a major European city, both of whom are familiar with these sorts of cases. The prosecutor called the act “very stupid,” explaining that it would make it much easier for investigators outside the U.S. to argue that possible war crimes would never be addressed in their home country. “It’s a matter of time,” the judge told Sands. “And then something unexpected happens, when one of these lawyers travels to the wrong place.”

Sands talks with everyone from high level members of the administration to soldiers on the ground at Guantánamo, among them: Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense, General Richard Myers, former joint chiefs chairman, and Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver, who was charged with writing a document providing legal authority for harsh interrogation.

Also in Sands’s article:

DOUGLAS FEITH ON HOW THE ADMINISTRATION EVADED THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS:

Feith confirms that the logic of the law was not followed with respect to Geneva, rather it deliberately created a legal black hole into which the detainees were meant to fall—and that was the point. “Didn’t the administration’s approach mean that Geneva’s constraints on interrogation couldn’t be invoked by anyone at Guantánamo?” Sands asked Feith. “Oh yes, sure,” Feith replied. “Was that the intended result?” “Absolutely.” Sands writes that he asked again: Under the Geneva Conventions, no one at Guantánamo was entitled to any protection? “That’s the point,” Feith reiterated. As he saw it, either you were a detainee to whom Geneva didn’t apply (al-Qaeda fighters, because they weren’t part of a state); or you were a detainee to whom Geneva applied but whose rights you couldn’t invoke (members of the Taliban, because they hadn’t worn uniforms or insignia). What was the difference for the purpose on interrogation? Sands asked. Feith answered with a certain satisfaction: “It turns out, none. But that’s the point.”

When Sands asks Feith whether he was at all concerned that the Geneva decision might have diminished America’s moral authority, Feith tells Sands, “The problem with moral authority” was “people who should know better, like yourself, siding with the assholes, to put it crudely.”

According to Sands, Feith’s arguments were so clever that General Richard Myers, joint chiefs chairman, continued to believe that Geneva’s protection remained in force, and was “well and truly hoodwinked,” a seasoned observer of military affairs tells Sands.

MEETING OF HIGH-LEVEL ADMINISTRATION LAWYERS ON SEPTEMBER 25 AT GUANTÁNAMO TO DISCUSS TACTICS:

A delegation of the administration’s senior lawyers, including Dick Cheney’s chief counsel (later his chief of staff) David S. Addington, White House counsel (later attorney general) Alberto Gonzales, Pentagon general counsel Jim Haynes, and the C.I.A.’s John Rizzo arrived at Gitmo on September 25. “They wanted to know what we were doing to get this guy [Mohammed al-Qahtani, allegedly a member of the 9/11 conspiracy and the so-called 20th hijacker],” Major General Michael Dunlavey, who ran Joint Task Force 170, which oversaw military interrogations, tells Sands, “and Addington was interested in how we were managing it.… They brought ideas with them which had been given from sources in D.C. They came down to observe and talk.” Throughout this period, says Dunlavey, Rumsfeld was “directly and regularly involved.”

LT. COLONEL DIANE BEAVER ON WASHINGTON’S ROLE IN DEVISING TACTICS, AND JACK BAUER’S INFLUENCE:

Sands reports that Beaver, who was charged with writing a document providing legal authority for harsh interrogation, confirms new details of the crucial meeting that took place at Guantánamo, and she tells Sands she “kept minutes” at other brainstorming sessions in which new techniques were discussed. The younger men would get particularly excited, she says: “You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas.” Beaver also notes that ideas arose from other sources, such as the television show 24. Jack Bauer, the main character, had many friends at Guantánamo, says Beaver: “He gave people lots of ideas.” It was clear to Sands that Beaver believed that Washington was directly involved in the interrogations, and her account confirms what others tell Sands—that Washington’s views were being fed into the process by people physically present at Guantánamo.

BEAVER ON HER ROLE AT GUANTÁNAMO:

Sands reports that Beaver was set up as a fall guy of sorts. Someone more fully schooled in the relevant law might have questioned what she was being asked to do. “It was not my job to second-guess the president,” Beaver tells Sands. Despite other memos prepared by administration lawyers, none other was cited as bearing on aggressive interrogations. Beaver tells Sands she was insistent that the decision to implement new techniques be properly written up, and that the paper trail to the top be clear. “I wanted to get something in writing,” she tells Sands. “That was my game plan. I had four days. Dunlavey gave me just four days.” Beaver tells Sands that she never imagined her work would not be vetted by someone higher up the chain. What she didn’t know at the time, according to Sands, was that those same people had already made their decisions, had the security of legal cover from the Justice Department, and, although confident with that protection, had no intention of soiling their hands by weighing in on the unpleasant details of interrogation.

GENERAL RICHARD MYERS AND A FORMER PENTAGON OFFICIAL ON HOW THE HAYNES MEMO DID NOT GO THROUGH THE USUAL CHANNELS OF APPROVAL:

Myers confessed to Sands that he was troubled that normal procedures had been circumvented with regard to the Haynes Memo [An “action memo” written in November 2002 listing proposed techniques of aggressive interrogation]. “You don’t see my initials on this,” he tells Sands, as he holds the paper. “You see I’ve just ‘discussed’ it,” he says, noting a sentence in the memo to that effect. “This was not the way this should have come about.” He tells Sands of the “intrigue” that was going on around the time of the memo, “that I wasn’t aware of,” he says, “that was probably occurring between Jim Haynes, White House general counsel, and Justice.” A former Pentagon official provides further confirmation that the memo got special handling, telling Sands that Lieutenant General Bantz Craddock, Rumsfeld’s senior military assistant, noticed the memo was missing a buck slip, an essential component that shows a document’s circulation path, and which everyone was supposed to initial. There was no signature from the general counsel’s office, so it went back to Haynes who signed off with a note that said simply, “Good to go.”

Philippe Sands is an international lawyer at Matrix Chambers and a professor at University College London. This is his first article for Vanity Fair, and is based on several years of reporting. Sands is the author of numerous books—a full account of this article will appear in Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values (Palgrave Macmillan), out in May 2008.

The May issue of Vanity Fair hits newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on April 2 and nationally on April 8.

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