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Mitt Romney’s 47 Percent: Who Does Not Pay Income Taxes?

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By AMY BINGHAM (@Amy_Bingham) Sept. 18, 2012

Mitt RomneyMitt Romney gave up on winning support from nearly half of the American electorate in May, telling wealthy supporters at a private fundraiser that he could not hope to win the votes of the 47 percent of Americans who, he said, do not pay federal income taxes.

The comment was part of a 30-minute speech riddled with controversial statements which was secretly videotaped and posted online this week. In it, Romney characterized that group of income-tax-free Americans as being “dependent on the government” and feeling “entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”

So who are these 47 percent of Americans that Romney is not going to “worry” about winning over?

In 2011 those 76 million people, about 46 percent of the people who filed taxes, did not pay a penny in income taxes, according to an analysis of IRS data by the bipartisan Tax Policy Center. But that does not mean nearly half of America skirted their federal tax burden.

Nearly two-thirds of the households that did not pay income tax in 2011 were on the hook for payroll taxes, a 4.2 percent tax that is automatically deducted from workers’ paychecks to fund Social Security and Medicare.

Only 18 percent of tax filers did not have to pay either income tax or payroll taxes.

Nearly all of the people who did not pay either type of tax were elderly – 10.3 percent of total tax filers – or had incomes less than $20,000 – 6.9 percent.

But it’s not just low-income people who get out of paying income taxes. About 1 percent of the top 1 percent of income earners, those making about $533,000 or more, did not pay income taxes. That’s roughly 13,000 tax filers.

And 4,000 millionaires are also escaping that burden, according to a Tax Policy Center analysis.

The majority of people who pay zero income tax, though, are low-income families. Last year 99 percent of people earning less than $10,000 per year paid no income tax. Roughly 78 percent of the households that did not pay income tax were below the poverty line.

Many of these low-income earners may not even realize they do not pay income tax. According to an April Gallup poll, 50 percent of people who earn less than $30,000 per year said the amount they pay in income taxes is too high. More than 80 percent of those people do not pay a dime of income tax.

They are on the hook, though, for a host of other taxes such as sales taxes, property taxes, state income taxes and excise taxes on items like alcohol, gasoline and cigarettes.

Besides these income-tax-free voters, Romney also conceded to Obama voters who are “dependent on the government” for things like health care, food and housing.

About 38 percent of Americans rely on the government for their health care, according to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Whether they are low-income and get their care through Medicaid (54 million people), are elderly and receive insurance through Medicare (46 million people), are low-income children and are covered under the Children’s Health Insurance Program (5.5 million kids), or are current or former members of the military and receive health care through the Departments of Defense or Veterans Affairs (12.5 million people), more than 109 million Americans get their health insurance through government programs.

Noonan: The Democrats’ Soft Extremism

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Updated September 7, 2012, 10:08 p.m. ET

Obama is out of ideas, and Clinton’s speech was unworthy of him.

Barack Obama is deeply overexposed and often boring. He never seems to be saying what he’s thinking. His speech Thursday was weirdly anticlimactic. There’s too much buildup, the crowd was tired, it all felt flat. He was somber, and his message was essentially banal: We’ve done better than you think. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

There were many straw men. There were phrases like “the shadow of a shuttered steel mill,” which he considers writerly. But they sound empty and practiced now, like something you’ve heard in a commercial or an advertising campaign.

It was stale and empty. He’s out of juice.

His daughters have grown beautiful.

As for Joe Biden, I love him and will hear nothing against him. He’s like Democrats the way they used to be, and by that I do not mean idiotic, I mean normal—manipulative only to a normal degree, roughly aware of the facts of normal life, alert to and even respecting of such normal things as religious faith. I wish he did not insist on referring to his wife as “Dr. Jill Biden.” I’m sure she has many doctorates, but so do half the unemployed in Manhattan.

John Kerry was on fire. It was the best speech of his career. He drew blood on foreign policy: “Talk about being for it before you were against it!” Obama will take that message, on Afghanistan, into debate.
***

Was it a good convention?

Beneath the funny hats, the sweet-faced delegates, the handsome speakers and the babies waving flags there was something disquieting. All three days were marked by a kind of soft, distracted extremism. It was unshowy and unobnoxious but also unsettling.

There was the relentless emphasis on Government as Community, as the thing that gives us spirit and makes us whole. But government isn’t what you love if you’re American, America is what you love. Government is what you have, need and hire. Its most essential duties—especially when it is bankrupt—involve defending rights and safety, not imposing views and values. We already have values. Democrats and Republicans don’t see all this the same way, and that’s fine—that’s what national politics is, the working out of this dispute in one direction or another every few years. But the Democrats convened in Charlotte seemed more extreme on the point, more accepting of the idea of government as the center of national life, than ever, at least to me.

The fight over including a single mention of God in the platform—that was extreme. The original removal of the single mention by the platform committee—extreme. The huge “No!” vote on restoring the mention of God, and including the administration’s own stand on Jerusalem—that wasn’t liberal, it was extreme. Comparing the Republicans to Nazis—extreme. The almost complete absence of a call to help education by facing down the powers that throw our least defended children under the school bus—this was extreme, not mainstream.

The sheer strangeness of all the talk about abortion, abortion, contraception, contraception. I am old enough to know a wedge issue when I see one, but I’ve never seen a great party build its entire public persona around one. Big speeches from the heads of Planned Parenthood and NARAL, HHS Secretary and abortion enthusiast Kathleen Sebelius and, of course, Sandra Fluke.

“Republicans shut me out of a hearing on contraception,” Ms. Fluke said. But why would anyone have included a Georgetown law student who never worked her way onto the national stage until she was plucked, by the left, as a personable victim?

What a fabulously confident and ingenuous-seeming political narcissist Ms. Fluke is. She really does think—and her party apparently thinks—that in a spending crisis with trillions in debt and many in need, in a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose, in a time when parents struggle to buy the good sneakers for the kids so they’re not embarrassed at school . . . that in that nation the great issue of the day, and the appropriate focus of our concern, is making other people pay for her birth-control pills. That’s not a stand, it’s a non sequitur. She is not, as Rush Limbaugh oafishly, bullyingly said, a slut. She is a ninny, a narcissist and a fool.

And she was one of the great faces of the party in Charlotte. That is extreme. Childish, too.

Something else, and it had to do with tone. I remember the Republicans in Tampa bashing the president, hard, but not the entire Democratic Party. In Charlotte they bashed Mitt Romney, but they bashed the Republican Party harder. If this doesn’t strike you as somewhat unsettling, then you must want another four years of all war all the time between the parties. I don’t think the American people want that. Because, actually, they’re not extreme.
***

Bill Clinton is The Master. That is stipulated. Almost everyone in the media was over the moon about his speech. It was a shrewd and superb moment of political generosity, his hauling into town to make the case, but it was a hack speech. It was the speech of a highly gifted apparatchik. All great partisan speeches include some hard and uncomfortable truths, but Mr. Clinton offered none. He knows better than so much of what he said. In real life he makes insightful statements on the debt, the deficit and the real threat they pose. He knows more about the need for and impediments to public-school reform than half the reformers do. He knows exactly why both parties can’t reach agreement in Washington, and what each has done wrong along the way. But Wednesday night he stuck to fluid fictions and clever cases. It was smaller than Bill Clinton is.

Still, he gave the president one great political gift: He put Medicaid on the table. He put it right there next to the pepper shaker and said Look at that! People talk Medicare and Social Security, but, as Mr. Clinton noted, more than half of Medicaid is spent on nursing-home care for seniors and on those with disabilities such as Down syndrome and autism. Will it be cut?

Here’s what I’m seeing the past 10 years. The baby boomers have been supporting their grown children and their aged parents. They are stressed, stretched and largely uncomplaining, because they know that as boomers—shallow, selfish—they’re the only generation not allowed to complain. And just as well, as complaints are the only area of national life where we have a surplus. But they are spiritually and financially holding the country together, and they’re coming to terms with the fact that it’s going to be that way for a good long time. They’re going to take a keen interest in where Medicaid goes.

Romney-Ryan take note: this will arrive as an issue.
***

So: was it a good convention? We’ll know by the polls, by the famous bounce, or lack of it. A guess? Dead-cat bounce. Just like the Republicans got.

Maybe Mr. Clinton made a bigger, more broadly positive impression than I suspect; maybe a sense the Democrats were extreme will take hold. People left both conventions talking about only one thing: the debates. They know they didn’t move the needle in Tampa and Charlotte. The people in charge of politics aren’t so good at politics anymore.

Feds: Sebelius violated federal law by campaigning for Obama

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Published September 13, 2012 – FoxNews.com

Kathleen SebeliusHealth and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius violated federal law when she campaigned this winter for President Obama, federal investigators announced Wednesday.

Sebelius broke the law by making “extemporaneous partisan remarks” during a speech in February at a Human Rights Campaign Event in Charlotte, N.C., according to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC). She made the comments in the city that would later host the Democratic National Convention.

“One of the imperatives is to make sure that we not only come together here in Charlotte to present the nomination to the president, but we make sure that in November, he continues to be president for another four years,” Sebelius said, according to the agency and reported first by The Hill newspaper.

The agency said Sebelius’ comments violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits public officials from campaigning in an official capacity.

The agency said the Department of Health and Human Services after the event reclassified the trip from official to political and that the federal government was reimbursed for related costs.

However, the OSC still concluded Sebelius had violated federal law and has sent the report to the president — the procedure for a government official appointed by a president and confirmed by the Senate.

OSC spokeswoman Ann O’Hanlon said there is no formal rule for dealing with an appointed official in violation of the act. However, the agency investigates at least 100 cases such cases annually with “a great majority” of them being resolved internally and violators getting a suspension.

O’Hanlon said the remaining cases are sent to the Merit System Protection Board, which can decide to terminate the employment of a non-appointed federal employees or given them a 30-day suspension.

Still, Maureen Ferguson and Ashley McGuire of the Catholic Association are calling for Sebelius’ resignation.

“Throughout her tenure at Health and Human Services, most of Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ actions have advanced the president’s political interests,” they said in a joint statement.

Sebelius could not be reached late Wednesday afternoon, but her response to the findings is supposed to be in the report forwarded to the president.

She also discussed state politics in the Feb. 25 speech, urging voters to defeat a ballot proposal opposing gay marriage and to elect a Democratic governor, according to The Hill.

More Americans opting out of banking system

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By Danielle Douglas, Published: September 12

Chase ATMIn the aftermath of one of the worst recessions in history, more Americans have limited or no interaction with banks, instead relying on check cashers and payday lenders to manage their finances, according to a new federal report.

Not only are these Americans more vulnerable to high fees and interest rates, but they are also cut off from credit to buy a car or a home or pay for college, the report from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said.

Released Wednesday, the study found that 821,000 households opted out of the banking system from 2009 to 2011 and that the so-called unbanked population grew to 8.2 percent of U.S. households.

That means that roughly 17 million adults are without a checking or savings account. Another 51 million adults have a bank account, but use pawnshops, payday lenders or rent-to-own services, the FDIC said. This underbanked population has grown from 18.2 percent to 20.1 percent of households nationwide.

The study also found that one in four households, or 28.3 percent, either had one or no bank account. A third of these households said they do not have enough money to open and fund an account. Minorities, the unemployed, young people and lower-income households are least likely to have accounts.

Stubbornly high unemployment and underemployment have placed millions of Americans in precarious financial positions, leaving them unable to absorb overdraft charges or minimum-balance fees.

In the past year alone, Wells Fargo, Capital One and SunTrust have alerted customers to pending fee hikes on checking accounts or have raised overdraft charges. Banks say service charges are needed to offset the loss of revenue from a cap on debit-card transaction fees imposed by the government.

“Banks need to have pricing and practices that consumers can trust and allow them to build wealth and have economic mobility,” said Deborah Goldstein, chief operating officer at the Center for Responsible Lending. “If the account fees will leave them worse off, then its going to be a challenge for people to use banking services.”

Banks say it is difficult to make money serving lower-income communities because the cost of managing their accounts outweighs the return.

“There has to be a recognition that there are costs to providing accounts and those costs have to be covered,” said Nessa Feddis, vice president and general counsel at the American Bankers Association. She estimated that it costs banks up to $300 a year to maintain a checking account because of expenses such as processing transactions.

National Community Reinvestment Coalition chief executive John Taylor argued that banks could make up some of that cost by the sheer volume of new accounts.

Feddis disagreed. “You can’t take a losing account and make it up in bulk,” she said. “You’re not going to spend money to lose money.”

Without access to traditional banks, Taylor said, Americans are susceptible to abusive practices at non-bank institutions and are likely to remain trapped in a vicious cycle of financial strain.

“A part of changing the condition of unbanked people is keeping them away from predatory lenders who keep them mired in debt,” he said. “One of the reasons you had all of these mortgage companies preying on low-income communities is because there were no options.”

A report from SNL Financial in April showed that banks have closed dozens of branches in neighborhoods with a median household income of $25,000 or less since 2007, shifting resources to areas where the median income is $100,000 or more.

“The [Community Reinvestment Act] has had a significant impact over the last 30 years, but did not contemplate some of the new abuses that we’re seeing and the way banking has changed,” Goldstein said. “But we’ve now seen financial reform that includes additional consumer protection.”

Congress passed the act in 1977 to address the shortage of credit available to low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. Consumer advocates, however, say that regulation has fallen short of ensuring that banks offer reasonably priced services.

The newly minted Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has jurisdiction over non-bank institutions and plans to weed out predatory practices. The agency reviews compliance with federal consumer financial laws such as the Fair Credit Act.

In the past year, a quarter of households have used at least one type of alternative financial service, such as a tax refund anticipation loan or money order, the FDIC study found. Some households, 7.5 percent, said they simply did not trust or feel comfortable dealing with banks. Another 6.6 percent said they could not open accounts because they lacked required identification or suffered from poor credit.

A growing number of consumers without bank accounts are turning to prepaid cards, with nearly 18 percent of households, up from 12 percent in 2009, reporting the use of such products.

Feddis of the banking association said prepaid cards are an innovative tool that banks could use to serve lower-income communities without incurring much cost.

“There are fewer ways to access the account, so there are fewer opportunities for fraud, which banks pay a lot to protect against,” she said.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledges stock fall, says company has overcome hurdles before

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledges stock fall, says company has overcome hurdles before
By Associated Press, Published: September 11

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t enjoyed watching his company’s stock price plunge this summer, but he is relishing the opportunity prove his critics on Wall Street wrong.

“I would rather be in a cycle where people underestimate us,” Zuckerberg said Tuesday. “I think it gives us the latitude to go out and make some big bets.”

Zuckerberg, 28, spoke to a standing-room-only audience at a tech conference in San Francisco in his first interview since Facebook Inc.’s rocky initial public offering in May. The social networking leader’s stock has lost nearly half its value since the IPO, lopping more than $50 billion from Facebook’s market value.

Zuckerberg said the drop “has obviously been disappointing,” but he said it’s a great time to “double down” on the company’s future.

“Facebook has not been an uncontroversial company,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s not like this is the first up and down we have ever had.”

Among other things, Facebook Inc. has repeatedly faced criticism and user rebellion over its policies and practices affecting data privacy.

Wearing a gray T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, Zuckerberg appeared Tuesday in a half-hour “fireside chat” in San Francisco at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference organized by technology blog TechCrunch.

After he began speaking, Facebook’s stock increased 65 cents, 3.4 percent, hitting $20.08 in after-hours trading. That’s on top of a 3.3 percent gain during Tuesday’s regular session.

“We have a pretty good compass,” Zuckerberg said. “I always like to think that when folks are being too nice, we aren’t as good as they say they are. And when the media is being too critical, we are not as bad as they say we are.”

Investors have been concerned about Facebook’s ability to keep growing revenue, especially as more people use it from mobile devices, where there is less room to how ads.

Zuckerberg said it was “really easy for folks to underestimate how really fundamentally good mobile is for us.”

He made it clear that Facebook wants to make money and will do that by figuring out mobile. Although Zuckerberg has long talked about the company’s mission to make the world more open and connected, he acknowledged, “we can’t just focus on that.”

Zuckerberg had spoken during Facebook’s first earnings conference call as a public company in late July, but has been largely out of the spotlight since. In a recent regulatory filing, Facebook said Zuckerberg does not plan to sell any shares in the company for at least the next 12 months. That proved to be a point of relief for investors who are worried about post-IPO “lock-up” expirations that allow early investors and insiders to sell their shares. It’s a sign that Zuckerberg has faith in Facebook’s long-term future. The question now is, whether that’s enough?

Facebook began trading publicly in mid-May following one of the most anticipated stock offerings in history. The IPO priced at $38, at the top of a projected range that Facebook had already boosted just days earlier.

__

AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this story.

US Embassy in Algiers warns of protests

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Sep 12, 8:56 AM EDT

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — The U.S. Embassy in Algiers is warning Americans in the country to avoid non-essential travel amid calls for protests after an attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya.

The embassy said in an emergency message to U.S. citizens that unspecified groups are using online social networks to organize demonstrations in front of the embassy Wednesday “to protest a range of issues.”

It warns Americans to avoid large gatherings and non-essential travel in and around the embassy and other official buildings.

The U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three American members of his staff were killed Tuesday night in an attack on the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi by protesters angry over a film they see as ridiculing Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

Statement by President Obama on the Attack in Libya

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By National Journal Staff – September 12, 2012 | 7:26 a.m.

Christopher StevensBelow is a statement released by the White House from President Obama on the killing of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya.

I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Right now, the American people have the families of those we lost in our thoughts and prayers. They exemplified America’s commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations and people around the globe, and stand in stark contrast to those who callously took their lives.

I have directed my Administration to provide all necessary resources to support the security of our personnel in Libya, and to increase security at our diplomatic posts around the globe. While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.

On a personal note, Chris was a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States. Throughout the Libyan revolution, he selflessly served our country and the Libyan people at our mission in Benghazi. As Ambassador in Tripoli, he has supported Libya’s transition to democracy. His legacy will endure wherever human beings reach for liberty and justice. I am profoundly grateful for his service to my Administration, and deeply saddened by this loss.

The brave Americans we lost represent the extraordinary service and sacrifices that our civilians make every day around the globe. As we stand united with their families, let us now redouble our own efforts to carry their work forward.

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U.S. ambassador to Libya killed in Benghazi attack

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By Tamim Elyan and Omar al-Mosmari – BENGHAZI, Libya | Wed Sep 12, 2012 7:40am EDT

(Reuters) – The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff were killed in a rocket attack on their car, a Libyan official said, as they were rushed from a consular building stormed by militants denouncing a U.S.-made film insulting the Prophet Mohammad.

Gunmen had attacked and burned the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, a center of last year’s uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, late on Tuesday evening, killing one U.S. consular official. The building was evacuated.

The Libyan official said the ambassador, Christopher Stevens, was being driven from the consulate building to a safer location when gunmen opened fire.

“The American ambassador and three staff members were killed when gunmen fired rockets at them,” the official in Benghazi told Reuters.

There was no immediate comment from the State Department in Washington. U.S. ambassadors in such volatile countries are accompanied by tight security, usually travelling in well-protected convoys. Security officials will be considering whether the two attacks were coordinated.

Libyan deputy prime minister Mustafa Abu Shagour condemned the killing of the U.S. diplomats as a cowardly act.

The consular official had died after clashes between Libyan security forces and Islamist militants around the consulate building. Looters raided the empty compound and some onlookers took pictures after calm returned.

In neighboring Egypt, demonstrators had torn down an American flag and burned it during the protest. Some tried to raise a black flag with the words “There is no God but God, and Mohammad is his messenger”, a Reuters witness said.

PORTRAYAL OF PROPHET

U.S. pastor Terry Jones, who had inflamed anger in the Muslim world in 2010 with plans to burn the Koran, said he had promoted “Innocence of Muslims”, which U.S. media said was produced by an Israeli-American property developer; but clips of another film called “Mohammad, Prophet of Muslims”, had been circulating for weeks before the protest.

That film portrayed Mohammad as a fool, a philanderer and a religious fake. In one clip posted on YouTube Mohammad was shown in a sexual act with a woman.

Jones, a pastor in Florida whose latest stunt fell on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, triggered riots in Afghanistan in 2010 with his threat to burn the Koran.

Many Muslims consider any depiction of the Prophet offensive and any depiction of him can cause outbursts of anger in the Islamic world and among Muslims in Europe.

Libya’s interim government has struggled to impose its authority on a myriad of armed groups that have refused to lay down their weapons and often take the law into their own hands.

It was clearly overwhelmed by Tuesday night’s attack on the consulate that preceded the assault on the ambassador.

“The Libyan security forces came under heavy fire and we were not prepared for the intensity of the attack,” said Abdel-Monem Al-Hurr, spokesman for Libya’s Supreme Security Committee.

In Benghazi, unidentified men had shot at the consulate buildings, while others threw handmade bombs into the compound, setting off small explosions.

LOOTED

On Wednesday morning, the compound stood empty, with passers-by freely walking in to take a look at the damage.

Walls were charred and a small fire burned inside one of the buildings. A small group of men was trying to extinguish the flames and three security men briefly surveyed the scene.

A Reuters reporter saw chairs, table and food lying alongside empty shells. Some blood stains could also be seen in front of one of the buildings. Three cars were torched.

The crowd of around 2,000 protesters in Cairo was a mixture of Islamists and teenage soccer fans known for fighting police and who played a part in the revolt that toppled Egypt’s leader Hosni Mubarak last year.

The fortress-like U.S. mission is near Tahrir Square, where Egypt’s uprising began and the scene of many protests since. Youths danced and chanted football songs. A Reuters reporter said they appeared to climb into the embassy compound almost as an afterthought.

“We sacrificed dozens and hundreds during the uprising for our dignity. The Prophet’s dignity is more important to us and we are ready to sacrifice millions,” said mosque preacher Mohamed Abu Gabal who joined the protest.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a statement late on Tuesday, confirmed the death of the U.S. consular diplomat in Libya, who was not identified, and condemned the attack there; but she made no mention of an attack on the Ambassador’s car.

(Additional reporting by Hadeel Al Shalchi in Tripoli, Sarah N. Lynch and Arshad Mohammed in Washington, and Reuters reporters in Cairo and Benghazi; Writing by Edmund Blair and Tom Pfeiffer; editing by Ralph Boulton and Janet McBride)

Jailed doc who helped nail Bin Laden warns Pakistan sees U.S. as ‘worst enemy’

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By Dominic Di-Natale – Published September 10, 2012 – FoxNews.com

Jailed Doctor Shakil AfridiPESHAWAR, Pakistan – Pakistan’s powerful spy agency regards America as its “worst enemy,” and the government’s claims that it is cooperating with the US are a sham to extract billions of dollars in American aid, according to the CIA informant jailed for his role in hunting down Usama bin Laden.

In an exclusive interview with Fox News, Shakil Afridi, the medical doctor who helped pinpoint bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound before last year’s raid by SEAL Team 6, described brutal torture at the hands of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, and said the agency is openly hostile to the U.S.

“They said ‘The Americans are our worst enemies, worse than the Indians,’” Afridi, who spoke from inside Peshawar Central Jail, said as he recalled the brutal interrogation and torture he suffered after he was initially detained.

“I tried to argue that America was Pakistan’s biggest supporter – billions and billions of dollars in aid, social and military assistance — but all they said was, ‘These are our worst enemies. You helped our enemies.’”

The ISI, Afridi said, helps fund the Haqqani network, the North Waziristan-based militant group that was last week designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The agency also works against the U.S. by preventing the CIA from interrogating militants captured by Pakistan, who are routinely released to return to Afghanistan to continue attacks on NATO forces there.

“It is now indisputable that militancy in Pakistan is supported by the ISI […] Pakistan’s fight against militancy is bogus. It’s just to extract money from America,” Afridi said, referring to the $23 billion Pakistan has received largely in military aid since 9/11.

Afridi gave unprecedented insight into activity inside the infamous basement prison where he was initially held beneath the ISI’s headquarters at Apbara, in the capital Islamabad. He described how during his own interrogation, in which he was tortured with cigarette burns and electric shocks, ISI officers attacked him for assisting the U.S. Afridi helped pinpoint Bin Laden’s compound in the weeks before the May 2, 2011, raid in Abbottabad.

He described a regime of perpetual torture and interrogation for large numbers of detainees, some of whom include radicalized white Western male converts to Islam who had been apprehended while traveling to Afghanistan to fight NATO troops or to be trained in militant camps in the region’s tribal belt.

One of the officers who interrogated him had also escorted an American official visiting from Washington to an interview with a highly sought militant Abdul Karim Agha, in November 2011.

Agha had told him afterward that an ISI officer had whispered instructions in his ear as he walked into the interrogation room to feign sudden illness so he could not be interviewed.

“They said to him, ‘You tell this person ‘I am very sick, I cannot talk today,’” he related. “The American official protested, saying he’d only been given a week to stay in Pakistan with the expectation of interrogating him two or three times. But the ISI told him that the interrogation was postponed for three weeks, and so he had to leave.

“I was told by others that the ISI advises militants to make things up to tell CIA interrogators, pretend this and that,” Afridi told Fox News.

Afridi’s comments are likely to further complicate relations between the U.S. and Pakistan, which have become strained in the past two years over their joint fight against extremist militants.

Washington has repeatedly pressured Islamabad to eradicate extremist safe havens in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan, most recently the Haqqani Network, the fundamentalist group closely allied to the Taliban and the remnants of Al Qaeda’s original leadership.

Afridi said that before he was moved to Peshawar in May, he met Abdul Kayyum, the nephew of a chief of the Wazir tribe, who had been apprehended by the ISI for reasons that are unclear.

Kayyum explained to the doctor that three years earlier, his uncle, Khan Marjakee, had been instructed by the ISI to raise funds from the tribal community for the Haqqanis, which Marjakee then did.

“Without doubt, the Haqqanis are 100 percent supported by the ISI,” said Afridi.

Afridi said there were many militants of different nationalities, often Afghans, held at Apbarra. Arab detainees were given “first-class treatment and first-class food,” while some radicalized Westerners were singled out for abuse.

“The militants were told by the ISI, ‘According to the Americans, we’re supposed to arrest you. We don’t want anything to do with you, but will support you by letting you go. Go back to Afghanistan and steer clear of the Americans.’ And then they would be released.”

Among other detainees at Apbarra were numerous white Westerners, identified as being from the U.S., U.K., Germany and the Netherlands. Afridi would talk to an American, referred to only as Brown, as the doctor was the only person who spoke fluent English there.

Brown was held for four months after he crossed illegally into Pakistan from Iran and was arrested in the southwest city of Quetta, notorious for its links with the Taliban. He had told the ISI he was on his way to Afghanistan.

“He was white skinned, had red hair and tattoos,” Afridi said. “He was a mason by profession and told me he came for jihad. He had converted to Islam five years before and had adopted the Muslim name Ismael.

“When he came back from interrogation, he told me he had been beaten very seriously. I last saw him on May 1. I have no idea what happened to him.”

After holding Afridi for 12 months, the ISI produced a report on his involvement with the CIA and the vaccination drive that was unsuccessfully used as a decoy to obtain DNA samples from those living inside Usama bin Laden’s compound at Abbottabad in northern Pakistan.

He strongly denied confessing anything to the various army majors in the ISI who questioned him during his months of interrogation.

“I was told stories about what to say as statements and forced to write statements,” he said. “When I refused, the major said, ‘When we give you pain, then you will write.’”

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