Documents, Secrets, and Lies

 

Read this article!

I love how the DOJ is rubbing Trump’s face in his nuclear lie @spockosbrain

Published by Spocko on September 7, 2022

Try us!

We can handle it! We don't really have to wait 10 years, do we?

President Barack Obama’s Justice Department is arguing that former Vice President Dick Cheney’s interview with prosecutors in the CIA leak case should remain secret for five to 10 years to persuade high-level government officials to cooperate in future investigations.

“In making public the Vice President’s interview, you will chill them,” Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Smith told Judge Emmet Sullivan during a two-hour hearing Tuesday on a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking release of records about the Cheney interview, which took place in 2004.

Sullivan sounded highly skeptical of the government’s arguments, but he said he had not decided how he would rule in the case “Where do I draw the line? This happened five years ago,” the judge said. “Would there be impediments to putting this information in a time capsule?”

As the hearing concluded, Sullivan said he thought Congress had drawn a “bright line” with language in the Freedom of Information Act that generally exempts information about pending investigations from disclosure, but not closed probes, like the CIA leak case. He also said he would stay any ruling so the government could appeal before he released any documents.

Smith said the Justice Department’s view was that a delay of five to ten years was appropriate, marked from the time the official or his or her administration left office. “It’s a judgment call,” Smith acknowledged.

Smith suggested that such a delay would make it more likely that the information was used for historical purposes and not for political embarrassment. “The distinction is between releasing it for historical view and releasing it into the political fray,” Smith said.

At a court session last month, Smith said the government feared the material could end up being used to mock Cheney on the “Daily Show.”

What's a little mockery between ah... um... acquaintances?

And does that have anything to do with this?

There appears no end in sight for when Dick Cheney, a rare former vice president with Secret Service protection, will lose his security detail. Whispers has learned that the political battler's Secret Service protection has been extended, though there were no details on the length. We don't know why President Obama OK'd the extension, which must be approved by the commander in chief because former veeps typically don't get any Secret Service security after leaving office. But indications are that the threats against Cheney, who's working on his biography at his homes in Virginia and Maryland, haven't lessened since his term expired.

Explains why Bush got his friends out of the country so fast

Doesn't it?

WASHINGTON — Documents gathered by lawyers for the families of Sept. 11 victims provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family, but the material may never find its way into court because of legal and diplomatic obstacles.

The case has put the Obama administration in the middle of a political and legal dispute, with the Justice Department siding with the Saudis in court last month in seeking to kill further legal action. Adding to the intrigue, classified American intelligence documents related to Saudi finances were leaked anonymously to lawyers for the families. The Justice Department had the lawyers’ copies destroyed and now wants to prevent a judge from even looking at the material.

The Saudis and their defenders in Washington have long denied links to terrorists, and they have mounted an aggressive and, so far, successful campaign to beat back the allegations in federal court based on a claim of sovereign immunity.

Allegations of Saudi links to terrorism have been the subject of years of government investigations and furious debate. Critics have said that some members of the Saudi ruling class pay off terrorist groups in part to keep them from being more active in their own country.

But the thousands of pages of previously undisclosed documents compiled by lawyers for the Sept. 11 families and their insurers represented an unusually detailed look at some of the evidence.

Internal Treasury Department documents obtained by the lawyers under the Freedom of Information Act, for instance, said that a prominent Saudi charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, heavily supported by members of the Saudi royal family, showed “support for terrorist organizations” at least through 2006.

But we already knew this.... and they are trying to get rid of the evidence.

Why? We already know if we really had wanted to retaliate against the 9/11 hijackers, we would have invaded Saudi Arabia.

If this was my great grandfather....

I'd be pissed.

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut - The U.S. Justice Department asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought by descendants of Apache leader Geronimo, whose remains were purported to be stolen long ago by members of a secret society at Yale University.

The government filed the motion June 10 to oppose a lawsuit filed in February by 20 of Geronimo's descendants, who want to rebury the warrior near his birthplace in southern New Mexico's Gila Wilderness.

Stupid Skull and Bones. Get another legal skull from somewhere and give Geronimo's head back to his descendants. How hard could it be?

You wouldn't hit a lawyer, would you?

I mean... it was all in theory and stuff. We couldn't have predicted they would take the memos and run with it....

Former Bush administration officials are launching a behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign to urge Justice Department leaders to soften an ethics report criticizing lawyers who blessed harsh detainee interrogation tactics, according to two sources familiar with the efforts.

[snip]

The memos offered support for waterboarding, slamming prisoners against a wall and other techniques that critics have likened to torture. The documents were drafted between 2002 and 2005.

The sweeping investigation, now in its fifth year, could shed new light on the origins of the memos. Investigators rely in part on e-mail exchanges between Justice Department lawyers and lawyers at the CIA who sought advice about the legality of interrogation practices that have since been abandoned by the Obama administration.

Two of the authors, Jay S. Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge in Nevada, and John C. Yoo, now a law professor in Southern California, faced a deadline of yesterday to respond to investigators.

We can't recall exactly what it was that he did

That was good for the country. Nothing comes to mind. We can't recall.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales -- under whose tenure the Justice Department often appeared to take its orders from the White House political office -- sat down with the Wall Street Journal in an effort to clear his name. But we're guessing he did himself more harm than good.

Gonzo appeared genuinely unable to grapple with why he might be unpopular. "What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?" he asked.

He doesn't recall? Let's help him remember:

Quibbling with the Constitution and the right of Habeas Corpus.

Dragging his heels about sharing info on the anthrax attacks.

Harassing Ashcroft as he was recovering in the hospital from gall bladder surgery, trying to make him sign off on warrantless wiretapping.

Perverting the judicial system and FISA, and demanding that judges do what the president wants.

Lying to Congress. As Attorney General. LYING to the nation. Lying about the firing of the US attorneys.



Caging voters.

Going down to Gitmo and WATCHING an interrogation or two.

Quibbling about the meaning of the word torture and redefining torture so it no longer means torture even though it is just because Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld liked torture. (And those lawyers and doctors who helped establish torture techniques? We want their names.) And no one has asked the question WHY?



Being a total toadie for Georgie Bush. Surrounding himself with toadie minions, zealots intent on bringing the US a theocracy, and loyal bushies.



Being thrown under the bus and thinking we should feel sorry for him.



Blaming everybody else.

Being a toadie sucks when you're facing a war crimes tribunal, doesn't it, Abu?

crossposted at American Street

It couldn't happen to a nicer toadie

I-cannot-recall Gonzales is back in the news:

It's looking more and more like prosecutor Nora Dannehy's investigation into the US Attorney firings has Alberto Gonzales in its crosshairs.

Earlier this week we reported that Dannehy had contacted the ex-AG in connection with the probe.

Now, we've been tipped to legal filings showing that Gonzales' lawyer, George Terwilliger Jr. of White & Case, is no longer representing Gonzo in a separate case, a civil suit alleging that law students were denied DOJ jobs thanks to illegal politicization at the department under Gonzales.

Sibel Edmonds still frightens the Bush administration

And with good reason:

David Rose, author of the Vanity Fair article on Sibel's case, and the only other journalist who has been able to speak to some of the first-hand sources - from the FBI, Dept of Justice, and Congress - in Sibel's case, also reported how fearful his sources are:

The people that I talked to about these tapes are extremely nervous. There is a climate in America now which is punitive towards people who are suspected of disclosing information without authorization to journalists. The approach of the Bush administration is to punish people who come forward.

The good news is that Joe Lauria and the Times have a lot more information about the case that they haven't yet published, and are still actively investigating - 8 months after their first article was published, and 6 years since Sibel first went to Congress. It is no wonder that the FBI is nervous and issuing formal complaints.

Read the article if you want your hair to stand up on end....

Will there be justice?

Six attorneys rejected from civil service positions at the Justice Department filed a lawsuit today against former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and three other top officials for allegedly violating their rights by taking politics into consideration in the hiring process.

The suit is an attempt to hold top officials accountable for the hiring scandal that ultimately led to Gonzales' resignation last year, said Daniel Metcalfe, the attorney for the plaintiffs who is also executive director of its Collaboration on Government Secrecy at American University's Washington College of Law.

"My clients wish that they hadn't had to bring this lawsuit -- they would have greatly preferred to be working inside the Justice Department, where by all rights they deserved to be, defending the government in court rather than standing as victimized examples of government wrongdoing," said Metcalfe, a former longtime Justice Department official.

This case won't get anywhere with Mukasey hanging around. Hope this lawsuit arrives in court AFTER January 20th, 2009....

From the same guys who helped the Bush administration start a war

The FBI wants to show how they know it's Bruce Ivins who sent out the anthrax. Riiiiiiggght.

Greg Gordon of McClatchy lists some of the unanswered questions:

WASHINGTON — Despite the Justice Department's pronouncement that former Army microbiologist Bruce Ivins unleashed the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people, three central questions about the case remain unanswered:

_ Can the FBI prove that a flask of anthrax in Ivins' bioweapons laboratory at Ft. Detrick, Md., contained the same mutated strain of finely milled powder that was in the envelopes that were mailed to two U.S. senators?

_ Did Ivins, who committed suicide last week, have the technical capability to produce that form of anthrax?

_ Why, after he came under suspicion in 2005 or earlier, was Ivins allowed to retain a high-level security clearance that enabled him to continue working in the bioweapons laboratory at Ft. Detrick, apparently until this summer?

And as emptywheel at Firedoglake says:

While what I've seen of their case so far makes a pretty compelling argument that Ivins was involved in creating the anthrax, they've got nothing that explains how it walked out of Ft. Detrick, got into envelopes, and got sent to a bunch of media figures and senators. Importantly, their "motive" for the selection of Leahy and Daschle is piss poor.

And, as I've said twice already, if they take their "motive" seriously: a desire to make sure anthrax vaccines were continued, a desire to pass the PATRIOT Act, and a reason to dislike Daschle and Leahy, Scooter Libby (who also lived in an area where he could have gotten those envelopes) and Dick Cheney had much stronger motives for sending the anthrax.

But don't worry, the FBI says. We've got Ivins 200 miles away and no real motive and no real evidence tying him to the emptying the flask, but since we used some really cool science to place Ivins with the flask, that should be good enough for you.

Emptywheel also has an excellent timeline.

Brave Sir Karl ran away

To avoid this?:

This morning, Karl Rove refused to appear before the House Judiciary Committee to testify about the politicization of the Justice Department, despite a subpoena. During the hearing, Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) revealed that Rove had not only skipped out of the hearing, but had skipped out of the entire country.

Actually he's back again. But I think we need to encourage him to visit France: (Under international law, authorities in France are obliged to open an investigation when a complaint is made while the alleged torturer is on French soil.)



Send Karl Rove to jail! Even if it's just for the smug look on his face at the end of this interview.

Impeachment can't happen fast enough

Because if we don't demand justice now, these loyal Bushies will be back in government dismantling even more of our Constitution. We need to fire or check every single person hired during the Bush administration.

Blue Girl of Blue Girl, Red State: (my bold)

On March 1, 1976, in the the wake of the abuses of COINTELPRO being made public after contentious congressional hearings over domestic spying and assassinations, President Ford created an intelligence oversight board of private citizens with top security clearances to rein in abuses and sniff out illegal spying activities. Ford created the Intelligence Oversight Board to serve as a watchdog over spying agencies by executive order to put off an angry congress enacting more sweeping legislation to curtail the activities of the intelligence communities against American citizens. At the time Ford issued the order he told the Congress "I believe [the changes] will eliminate abuses and questionable activities on the part of the foreign intelligence agencies while at the same time permitting them to get on with their vital work of gathering and assessing information."

Thirty two years later - practically to the day - the current occupant signed a super-double-secret executive order gutting the oversight panel and stripping it of authority.

"It's quite clear that the Bush administration officials who were around in the 1970s are settling old scores now. Here they are even preventing oversight within the executive branch. They have closed the books on the post-Watergate era," said Tim Sparapani, senior legislative counsel to the ACLU.

But Bush downsized the board's mandate to be an aggressive watchdog against such problems in an executive order issued on Feb. 29, the eve of the anniversary of the day Ford's order took effect. The White House said the timing of the new order was "purely coincidental.

"Under the old rules, whenever the oversight board learned of intelligence activity that it believed might be "unlawful or contrary to executive order," it had a duty to notify both the president and the attorney general. But Bush's order deleted the board's authority to refer matters to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation, and the new order said the board should notify the president only if other officials are not already "adequately" addressing the problem. (emphasis added)

Bush's order also terminated the board's authority to oversee each intelligence agency's general counsel and inspector general, and it erased a requirement that each inspector general file a report with the board every three months. Now only the agency directors will decide whether to report any potential lawbreaking to the panel, and they have no schedule for checking in.

We need accountability, we need exposure, we need justice.

We need impeachment on the table.

Now.

The gauntlet has been thrown down and your blood should run cold.

This is the very definition of a Constitutional crisis.

Digby of Hullabaloo: (my bold)

The Attorney General is saying that the President can do anything he wants, break the law any way he wants, as long as the President's own Justice Department, populated his own handpicked officials, validates it. And he's saying it directly to members of Congress, essentially telling them that they don't exist. They have no power to prosecute because the Justice Department won't take up the case, and the courts have no power to adjudicate because these are official state secrets. There is only one branch of government that matters.

[snip] David Kurtz:

President Bush has now laid down his most aggressive challenge to the very constitutional authority of Congress. It is a naked assertion of executive power. The founders would have called it tyrannical. His cards are now all on the table. This is no bluff.

Why are we not arming ourselves with pitchforks and torches? Frankenstein's monster is loose and we can't get anyone to notice. Even in Congress.

NTodd of Pax Americana quotes the Rolling Stone:

Quietly, while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been inspiring Democrats everywhere with their rolling bitchfest, congressional superduo Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have completed one of the most awesome political collapses since Neville Chamberlain. At long last, the Democratic leaders of Congress have publicly surrendered on the Iraq War, just one year after being swept into power with a firm mandate to end it.

[snip]

The really tragic thing about the Democratic surrender on Iraq is that it's now all but guaranteed that the war will be off the table during the presidential campaign. Once again — it happened in 2002, 2004 and 2006 — the Democrats have essentially decided to rely on the voters to give them credit for being anti-war, despite the fact that, for all the noise they've made to the contrary, in the end they've done nothing but vote for war and cough up every dime they've been asked to give, every step of the way.

Even beyond the war, the Democrats have repeatedly gone limp-dick every time the Bush administration so much as raises its voice. Most recently, twelve Democrats crossed the aisle to grant immunity to phone companies who participated in Bush's notorious wiretapping program. Before that, Democrats caved in and confirmed Mike Mukasey as attorney general after he kept his middle finger extended and refused to condemn waterboarding as torture. Democrats fattened by Wall Street also got cold feet about upsetting the country's gazillionaires, refusing to close a tax loophole that rewarded hedge-fund managers with a tax rate less than half that paid by ordinary citizens.

But the war is where they showed their real mettle. Before the 2006 elections, Democrats told us we could expect more specifics on their war plans after Election Day. Nearly two years have passed since then, and now they are once again telling us to wait until after an election to see real action to stop the war. In the meantime, of course, we're to remember that they're the good guys, the Republicans are the real enemy, and, well, go Hillary! Semper fi! Yay, team!

How much of this bullshit are we going to take? How long are we supposed to give the Reids and Pelosis and Hillarys of the world credit for wanting, deep down in their moldy hearts, to do the right thing?

Look, fuck your hearts, OK? Just get it done. Because if you don't, sooner or later this con is going to run dry. It may not be in '08, but it'll be soon. Even Americans can't be fooled forever.

Except there are some people awake and unafraid of the Bush cabal. Emptywheel notes that Steven Bradbury's nomination is being forestalled in the Senate because of this very thing. I chose just one of the many links: (my bold)

And the Politico:

While there are scores of pending appointments, much of the acrimony can be traced back to Steven Bradbury, nominated to the post of assistant attorney general, office of legal counsel.

Despite the banal title, the office issues legal opinions which are binding on the executive branch. While serving in the position as acting assistant attorney general, Bradbury signed memorandums authorizing the use of harsh CIA interrogation techniques, which Democrats have characterized as torture.

In December, Reid offered to confirm 84 stalled administration nominees in exchange for the withdrawal of Bradbury's nomination, but the White House declined, according to Reid.

In spite of Bush's little breakfast theater yesterday, everyone seems to get that this argument is about Steven Bradbury, and only secondarily about Bush's neanderthal choices for a number of his other nominations.

But no one seems to get the reason why Bush has forced this stand-off with the Senate. As I pointed out several weeks ago, the re-appointment of Bradbury--whether or not he is confirmed--serves as a control on Mukasey from now until the end of Bush's Adminstration.

...the re-appointment guarantees that Bradbury can continue to act as OLC head through the end of Bush's term. It ensures that Dick and Addington have their stool (in both senses of the word, I suspect) in the heart of DOJ, preventing any real roll-back of Dick's Constitutional atrocities.

No matter what Mukasey's intentions, it seems, Bush and Dick now have their insurance that Mukasey can only do so much to fix this Administration's shredding of the Constitution.

More importantly, as yesterday's HJC hearing proves, having Bradbury in OLC authorizing whatever atrocities BushCo dream up gives them immunity from federal prosecution for those atrocities; Attorney General Mukasey has made it clear that he will not investigate or prosecute anything that has OLC sanction. (And read Marty Lederman for why Mukasey's stance, though logically atrocious, is legally justifiable.) The very best we can wish for, from Mukasey, is that he won't sign off on any more Pixie Dust and Waterboarding opinions (though that assumes that Addington and Bradbury will show him the opinions, which may not be a safe assumption).

George Bush would forgo all his other 84 appointments because he wants to remain safe from prosecution and probably would like the insurance of immunity for any of his actions going forward. Democrats need to make this clear--Bradbury is about more than a personnel dispute, it's about whether the President is above the law.

Avendon Carol of The Sideshow quotes Charles Pierce of Media Matters:

For the past couple of weeks, they've just gotten blatant about it. The administration of George W. Bush is bound by no law, bound by no precedent, bound not even by the forms of democratic self-government, let alone its actual substance, which is being used as a throw-rug in John Yoo's den these days. They will torture and the Congress can do nothing. Their powers to spy, to search, and to seize are unlimited and Congress is not remotely entitled to know even what those powers are. They can imprison without trial. They can force corporations -- and, indeed, individuals within the government -- to violate the law. They are not subject to treaties. They are not subject to oversight, nor even subpoenas. Read this swill from yesterday. Through his actions, and from the mouths of his minions, George Bush is now claiming fully the powers of a tyrant, by any reasonable definition of the term.

This is the only issue in the presidential campaign. It is the only truly existential threat to the country.

Above the law?

Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat:

This is about the failure of either of the other two branches of government to curb the Bushists' appetite for unchecked executive power.

If Mukasey will not investigate, Congress must investigate Mukasey, along with anyone else involved in this transparently unconstitutional exercise of executive power. To all appearances, Mukasey forswore himself in his confirmation hearings. Now it is time for Congress to pursue his misdeed. He must not be allowed to insulate higher officials in the executive branch, especially but not limited to Messrs. Bush and Cheney, from responsibility for their unconstitutional acts. If obtaining a priori DoJ approval to commit acts prohibited under established international law and to violate the Fourth Amendment rights of every American who picks up a telephone or writes an email isn't evidence of criminal and likely even unconstitutional acts, what protections of our fundamental rights and civil liberties do we have left? Either this matter is pursued, probably by Congress, or we have nothing, and our supposed rights and liberties mean nothing.

I'll take Kurtz's assertions a step further, and reiterate my call for impeachment of at least Bush and Cheney, along with every other high executive branch official who participated in the decision that the executive is permitted to freelance. The Constitution says otherwise. I stand by the Constitution's plain language... and I stand by its prescribed remedy.

Amen.

Mukasey goes after the last standing stronghold of a free people,

Proving he is a real friend of the neocons.

Glenn Greenwald:

.... before his nomination was formally announced, the White House chose Bill Kristol to announce his selection and, in a lengthy article, to vouch to conservatives for what a fine AG Mukasey would make.

Mukasey was a long-time supporter of the neocons' favorite candidate, Rudy Giuliani and, prior to becoming Attorney General, was part of the Giuliani campaign. And it was Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer -- both with neoconservative leanings (war supporters both, among other things) -- who jointly enabled Mukasey's confirmation by becoming the only Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote in his favor.

Although there are still facts missing -- such as whether this Subpoena was actually approved by Mukasey rather than Gonzales -- it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the Grand Jury Subpoena was done at least with Mukasey's assent. It seems rather clearly to signify the intent of his Justice Department to more aggressively pursue reporters who disclose information embarrassing to the President.

It's hard to overstate how threatening this behavior is. The Bush administration has erected an unprecedented wall of secrecy around everything it does. Beyond illegal spying, if one looks at the instances where we learned of lawbreaking and other forms of lawless radicalism -- CIA black sites, rendition programs, torture, Abu Ghraib, pre-war distortion of intelligence, destruction of CIA torture videos -- it is, in every case, the by-product of two forces: government whistleblowers and reporters willing to expose it.

Grand Jury Subpoenas such as the one issued to Risen have as their principal purpose shutting off that avenue of learning about government wrongdoing -- the sole remaining avenue for a country plagued by a supine, slothful, vapid press and an indescribably submissive Congress. Mukasey has quickly demonstrated that he has no interest in investigating and pursuing lawbreaking by high government officials, but now, he (or at least the DOJ he leads) seems to be demonstrating something even worse: a burgeoning interest in investigating and pursuing those who expose such governmental lawbreaking and turning those whistleblowers and investigative journalists into criminals.

Right. No free press, no real journalism, no ability for checks and balances over the worst administration ever. Thanks.

And tell us again how waterboarding is not torture, Mukasey. That one is always good for a laugh.

Update: Glenn Greenwald links to Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent:

The Justice Department is going after New York Times reporter Jim Risen for the non-crime of revealing President Bush’s illegal domestic surveillance program. It’s pathetic and unsurprising—a fixture of Bush Justice—that the activity DOJ pursues isn’t the blatant illegality of Bush violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but instead the fact that government sources blew the whistle to a great investigative reporter. The right response from the press, and the public, is to put one arm around Risen and, with the other arm, extend a single finger in the direction of the Justice Department.

Sibel Edmonds is finally getting attention

And look who has run this article! The American Conservative:

Charismatic and articulate, the 37-year-old Edmonds has deftly worked the system to get as much of her story out as possible, on one occasion turning to French television to produce a documentary entitled “Kill the Messenger.” Passionate in her convictions, she has sometimes alienated her own supporters and ridden roughshod over critics who questioned her assumptions. But despite her shortcomings in making her case and the legitimate criticism that she may be overreaching in some of her conclusions, Edmonds comes across as credible. Her claims are specific, fact-based, and can be documented in detail. There is presumably an existing FBI file that could demonstrate the accuracy of many of her charges.

[snip]

Edmonds’s revelations have attracted corroboration in the form of anonymous letters apparently written by FBI employees. There have been frequent reports of FBI field agents being frustrated by the premature closure of cases dealing with foreign spying, particularly when those cases involve Israel, and the State Department has frequently intervened to shut down investigations based on “sensitive foreign diplomatic relations.” One such anonymous letter, the veracity of which cannot be determined, cites transcripts of wiretaps involving Marc Grossman and a Turkish Embassy official between August and December 2001, described above, in which Grossman warned the Turk that Brewster Jennings was a CIA cover company. If the allegation can be documented from FBI files, the exposure of the Agency cover mechanism took place long before journalist Robert Novak outed the company in his column on Valerie Plame in 2003.

[snip]

Curiously, the states-secrets gag order binding Edmonds, while put in place by DOJ in 2002, was not requested by the FBI but by the State Department and Pentagon—which employed individuals she identified as being involved in criminal activities. If her allegations are frivolous, that order would scarcely seem necessary. It would have been much simpler for the government to marginalize her by demonstrating that she was poorly informed or speculating about matters outside her competency. Under the Bush administration, the security gag order has been invoked to cover up incompetence or illegality, not to protect national security. It has recently been used to conceal the illegal wiretaps of the warrantless surveillance program, the allegations of torture and the CIA’s rendition program, and to shield the telecom industry for its collaboration in illegal eavesdropping.

Both Senators Grassley and Leahy, a Republican and a Democrat, who interviewed her at length in 2002, attest to Edmonds’s believability. The Department of Justice inspector general investigation into her claims about the translations unit and an internal FBI review confirmed most of her allegations. Former FBI senior counterintelligence officer John Cole has independently confirmed her report of the presence of Pakistani intelligence service penetrations within the FBI translators’ pool.

Edmonds wasn’t angling to become a media darling. She would have preferred to testify under oath before a congressional committee that could offer legal protection and subpoena documents and witnesses to support her case. She claims that a number of FBI agents would be willing to testify, though she has not named them.

But this information is not good:

Prior to 2006, Congressman Henry Waxman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee promised Edmonds that if the Democrats gained control of Congress, he would order hearings into her charges. But following the Democratic sweep, he has been less forthcoming, failing to schedule hearings, refusing to take Edmonds’s calls, and recently stonewalling all inquiries into the matter. It is generally believed that Waxman, a strong supporter of Israel, is nervous about exposing an Israeli lobby role in the corruption that Edmonds describes. It is also suspected that Waxman fears that the revelations might open a Pandora’s box, damaging Republicans and Democrats alike.

[snip]

Sibel Edmonds makes a number of accusations about specific criminal behavior that appear to be extraordinary but are credible enough to warrant official investigation. Her allegations are documentable: an existing FBI file should determine whether they are accurate. It’s true that she probably knows only part of the story, but if that part is correct, Congress and the Justice Department should have no higher priority. Nothing deserves more attention than the possibility of ongoing national-security failures and the proliferation of nuclear weapons with the connivance of corrupt senior government officials.

C'mon, Waxman! You've been a hero in pursuing corruption and injustice so far. Take on Sibel Edmonds' case and let the truth be told. Corruption on this level must be addressed even though it looks like it's both sides of the aisle.

We say yes, but you say no.

Bush signed the OPEN Government Act which made the FOIA stronger, but now he's trying to ignore the law and shift things to the Justice Department. Does that mean he has more loyal Bushies there?:

In August, the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government reported that “current government handling of FOIA requests is deteriorating” and that the Justice Department was “consistently granted the lowest percentage of [FOIA] appeals of any agency.”

On New Years Eve, facing “congressional pushback against the Bush administration’s movement to greater secrecy,” President Bush signed the OPEN Government Act, toughening the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The legislation — unanimously passed by the House and Senate — would push agencies to respond more quickly to records requests.

But now, the White House is doing everything it can to neuter the law. Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) said yesterday that Bush’s FY2009 “funds for the Office of Government Information Services authorized under the newly enacted OPEN Government Act will be shifted to the Department of Justice” from the National Archives. Congress Daily reports:

“But by shifting the funding to the Justice Department, OMB would effectively eliminate the office, because it appears no similar operation would be created there,” according to an aide to Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT). […]

National Archives officials are relatively independent of political pressure, the staffer explained, “but DOJ is different.” Government transparency advocates consider the department hostile to efforts to improve FOIA responsiveness, in part because it represents agencies sued by FOIA requesters.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), a cosponsor of the OPEN Government legislation said he “does agree with Senator Leahy and would oppose that effort” of the adminstration.

Okay, the first thing the new Democratic president needs to do is fire everyone in the Department of Justice who was hired on after January of 2001, or has had close connection to the Bush administration during these eight long years. The Department of Justice should protect the law not the president's ass. It's about freedom of information not secrecy. It's about justice not cover.

crossposted at SteveAudio.

A peek into future corporations

If we hold no one accountable for their actions:

Former Halliburton/KBR employees have described an atmosphere of “rampant sexual harassment.” Poe has also confirmed that his office has heard from multiple other women who were victims of sexual assault while working for KBR in Iraq.

But... no one will pursue Jamie Leigh Jones' rape case:

The Bush administration has been anything but cooperative. Both the State and Justice departments refused to give Poe “answers on the status” of the investigation. The DoJ “refused to send a representative” to a Congressional hearing last month, and the State, Defense and Justice departments all missed Nelson’s deadline for answering questions.

Now, the Inspector General of the Department of Defense has written to Nelson and other lawmakers, saying that his agency will not investigate the allegations:

In letters to lawmakers, DoD Inspector General Claude Kicklighter said that because the Justice Department still considers the investigation into Jones’ case open, there is no need for him to look into the matter.

“[T]he U.S. Justice Department has issued a statement that they are investigating the allegations,” wrote Kicklighter’s office to Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who had requested he look into the matter. “No further investigation by this agency into the allegations made by [Jones] is warranted.”

Creating all that new 'reality' really went to their heads:

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

The 'new empire' has been run by barbarians who have little regard for human suffering.

All well and good, Senator Specter

But this time, don't capitulate, do it.

Blackwater is deliberately unaccountable

Jeremy Scahill lists the reasons:

Federal agents investigating the Sept. 16 killing of 17 Iraqi civilians by operatives of the Blackwater security company have concluded that 14 were victims of unjustified and unprovoked shootings. Some died in a hail of bullets as they fled. The investigators also have rejected assertions by Blackwater that its forces were defending themselves, saying there is no evidence to support that claim.

This initial glimpse into the evidence uncovered by the FBI bolsters the Iraqi government's claim (made within hours of the shootings in Baghdad's Nisoor Square) that the killings were criminal, as well as the findings of a U.S. military investigation that called all 17 of the killings unjustified. But that raises a crucial and complicated question: Who will prosecute the killers?

The answer may be no one. That certainly seemed to be the view of veteran diplomat Patrick Kennedy, who recently reviewed the State Department's use of private security. Kennedy and his team came back from Baghdad concluding that they were "unaware of any basis for holding non-Department of Defense contractors accountable under U.S. law."

Although the FBI conclusions appear damning, each of the three potential avenues for prosecuting Blackwater have fatal flaws:

U.S. civilian law: The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 provides for prosecution in federal court of U.S. contractors for crimes committed overseas. The problem is that this law only applies to contractors working for or directly accompanying the U.S. military. Blackwater works for the State Department in Iraq as "diplomatic security," which is separate from military operations. Legislation has been introduced that would expand the act to apply to all contractors, but not retroactively. The Justice Department might argue that the Blackwater guards were indeed accompanying the military, but courts could well throw out such a case.

U.S. military law: In late 2006, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) inserted an amendment in the Defense Authorization Act that places all U.S. contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the court-martial system. But this has not been tested, and the Department of Defense has shown no desire to use this option against any security contractors -- let alone ones who aren't working for the military. Facing a military prosecution, Blackwater could even get support from civil libertarians, who would see it as a creep toward applying military law to civilians.

Iraqi law: The Iraqi government wants to prosecute the Blackwater shooters in its courts, but that isn't going to happen. The day before L. Paul Bremer III ended his tenure as the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in June 2004, he issued Order 17. It grants all contractors sweeping immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts. There is a provision that allows the U.S. to lift immunity in individual cases, but Washington would never hand over a U.S. citizen to an Iraqi court.

"These legal loopholes amount, in practice, to a license to kill with impunity," says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is suing Blackwater for wrongful death and war crimes in federal court over the shootings. "There is no genuine deterrence to acting unlawfully."

Even if the Justice Department moves forward, the investigation was contaminated from the start. The State Department's initial report on the shooting was drafted by a Blackwater contractor on U.S. government stationery. Two weeks passed before the FBI was dispatched to investigate; for two weeks, the only people looking into this crime were from a non-law-enforcment agency, the State Department, which had potential culpability of its own.

Then there is this fact: The State Department inspector general, Howard Krongard, who previously has been accused of impeding investigations into Blackwater, has direct family ties to the company. His brother, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, former CIA executive director, this year joined Blackwater's advisory board as a paid consultant. While at the CIA, Krongard played a role in Blackwater's first soldier-for-hire contract in Afghanistan in 2002.

Deliberately setting up mercenaries above the law. And Blackwater wants to operate inside the United States.

Not only do we need new laws, we need a new government. Fire everybody who was hired in after January 2001 for starters. The whole place is contaminated.

Torture?

We don't do torture.



We just call it by a different name and that gives the Bush administration deniability. Via Digby at Hullabaloo, the New York Times:

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President Bush’s second term and Mr. Gonzales’s tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil.

Why on earth did they want to use torture in the first place? Besides getting off on it, I mean. It doesn't work, it is the coward's way to a solution, and it loses us the moral high ground. Why did they do it?