Which former aide to Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) was the more formidable cooperator?

Will Heaton was sentenced to just two years probation as a reward for the effort (e.g. wearing a wire, taking documents) the young chief of staff put into nailing his boss over to the feds. Ney eventually pled guilty to corruption charges and was sentenced to thirty months in prison.

But Neil Volz, Heaton's predecessor who left to work for Jack Abramoff, might have the greater claim. Despite the fact that Volz played both sides of the fence (essentially working for Abramoff when he was still Ney's aide and then moving over to help Abramoff bribe his former boss and other pols), prosecutors are recommending that he also receive no jail time, but instead get house arrest. That's because, as The Hill reports, Volz has been pulling overtime as a cooperator, not only dishing information on Ney, but also serving as a sort of consultant for investigators on how Capitol Hill works:

In February 2006, he began providing “unlimited cooperation in dozens of debriefings, and his cooperation was substantial, especially in connection with the investigation and prosecutions of Ney, Heaton and [General Services Administration chief of staff] David Safavian,” according to the document.

In the memo, prosecutors said Volz “has spent and continues to spend countless hours providing information about other matters under investigation by the Department of Justice, as well as insight into how staff members and lobbyists conduct business before Congress and the Executive Branch.”

They also said that Volz’s cooperation is ongoing, and could involve other separate DoJ investigations. His cooperation could help prosecutors snare other lawmakers under FBI investigation and those who prosecutors believe may be implicated in the Abramoff bribery scandal.

There are some things you probably don't know about Thomas Kontogiannis. For one thing, he has a civil engineering degree from the University of Athens. For another, he shrugged off forfeiting over $1 million in ill-gotten gains during his guilty plea in February. But one true mystery remains: why'd he launder money for Duke Cunningham?

It turns out, listening to the man himself, there's the high-minded reason. And then there's... well, the expected reason.

It was never personal interest. My interest is United States, basically. And [Cunningham] was in a position that I could reach out and tell them information that I was gathering from all over the world.

Sure, there's that. (Assuming it's true.) But then Tommy K levels with us.

Second, it is good to have a powerful Congressman that if you ever need anything, you can ask him to help you or assist you in what you might need.

Now that's the Tommy K we've come to know and love.

When assistant US attorney Steve Feaga tossed a cryptic obstruction of justice accusation at Gov. Don Siegelman (D) earlier this week, what was he talking about?

I spoke with Siegelman's lawyer Vince Kilborn this afternoon. He said he isn't sure what Feaga meant by the obstruction comment, but that prosecutors did approach him about six weeks ago with a reduced-sentence offer if Siegelman cooperated in another case (though, not several cases as Feaga insinuated). Siegelman decided not to testify against Tuscaloosa physician Phillip Bobo in a Medicaid fraud case, despite the "attractive" prospect of a reduced sentence. Bobo was acquitted by a jury on Aug. 20. Kilborn pointed out, however, that opting not to cooperate with prosecutors is not obstruction of justice. So the mystery continues.

The one time Greg O'Connell, lawyer for Thomas Kontogiannis, answered my phone calls, he respectfully told me he wasn't going to talk with me and ended the conversation. My loss: I'd love to ask him about this statement he made in court on February 23.

I only have the broadest understanding of the things that this government is asking my client to do.

In context, O'Connell was imploring Judge Burns to keep as much of the hearing transcripts classified as possible, so it's possible that his plea of ignorance is something of a rhetorical gambit -- i.e., how can the public be permitted to know aspects of the case forbidden even to Kontogiannis' attorney? But maybe the substance of his cooperation is so super-secret that even O'Connell, a former assistant U.S. attorney, is in the dark.

(A digression: Even if his lawyer is in the dark, Kontogiannis is getting some plush treatment. The North Country Times reports tracking Kontogiannis to a "five-star hotel in Greece." In February, Kontogiannis surrendered his passport and was forbidden travel outside of federal custody. Usually, that means travel occurs only for family or urgent business, and it's an open question what in the world Kontogiannis is doing in the lap of Grecian luxury.)

Get the party horns out! Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of the FBI's raid on the offices of six Alaska state legislators (including Ben Stevens'), Veco and other undisclosed locations. Sadly, none of the "Corrupt Bastard Club" paraphernalia has surfaced on Ebay.

KTUU reports that the raid marked a public turning-point. Gov. Sarah Palin (R), for instance, ousted Gov. Frank Murkowski last year in the primary and went on to win the general election on a campaign touting ethics reform.

"It was a manifestation of the need for the ethics reform that so many Alaskans were craving and were calling for anyway," Palin said.

Whatever happened to the federal investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)?

Finally, an answer. It's been stalled, reports Scot Paltrow in The Wall Street Journal, due partly to the departure of top prosecutors from the office (including former U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles Debra Yang) and partly to budget shortages. Paltrow's piece focuses mostly on those shortages in offices across the country, the often-forgotten backdrop to the U.S. attorney firings.

The last time we checked in on Lewis, prosecutors were focusing on his relationship with his lobbyist buddy Bill Lowery, whose firm's bread-and-butter business was cashing in on its relationship to Lewis (it continues to do well). But Paltrow reports that prosecutors had also hit another vein:

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David hinted at it on the main page this morning: reporters on the Kontogiannis story have long wondered whether Tommy K might be a U.S. intelligence asset. After all, he has an amazing knack for staying out of jail despite at least two convictions, he's an international businessman, and the government went to extraordinary lengths to keep his identity secret in his current plea arrangement -- including delaying Kontogiannis' fingerprinting for months after his guilty plea. Now, in the unsealed transcript of Kontogiannis' February 22 hearing, Judge Larry Burns provides some strong hints in that direction.

In February, when arranging Kontogiannis' guilty plea, the government requested that Burns keep the proceedings under seal -- a highly unusual request -- pending the development of an unspecified "investigation." Burns, attempting to strike a balance between the government's need to pursue its investigation and the public's right to open court proceedings, decided to give the government a renewable 30-day closure period. "The court's experience is that deadlines tend to move an investigation on," Burns said on February 21. A memo provided by the government explaining both the facts of Kontogiannis' involvement with the investigation and the legal arguments justifying the extraordinary secrecy would remain sealed permanently, to be released "over my dead body," Burns promised the next day.

However, at that subsequent hearing, Burns still grappled with striking the proper balance. A sticking point was how the court would even place in the record the fact that the case was sealed without making public who the case concerned -- an imperative for both prosecutors and Kontogiannis' counsel.

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When Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) says he isn't going to talk to reporters about any investigation, he means it. Yesterday he declined to even give his thoughts on the Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) scandal, Alaska NBC affiliate KTUU reports.

Do you believe in God? Are you gay? Have you cheated on your spouse? What's your position on abortion? Should gays be allowed to marry? Have you contributed to Republican candidates? What kind of conservative are you?

Welcome to Bush's Department of Justice. Those are just some of the questions that investigators think may have been asked during interviews for both career and political positions at the Department over the past three years.

They come from a questionnaire (pdf) sent out from the Department's inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility, the two offices conducting the joint investigation of politicization at the DoJ. The questionnaire (as reported yesterday by Bloomberg and The Washington Post) recently went out to an untold number of people who'd applied for spots at the DoJ. Investigators are trying to get a hold on how widely politicized the hiring process was at the Department.

Former Department White House liaison Monica Goodling admitted to "crossing the line" with regard to career employee hiring decisions when she testified before Congress. But she was pretty hazy about the details. (Did she ask about political contributions? She couldn't "rule that out.")

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Yesterday we promised to check out the obstruction of justice accusation a prosecutor launched at jailed former Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL).

It's a puzzling accusation, as the AP's report made clear. Was assistant US attorney Steve Feaga pointing to Siegelman's media campaign of claiming his case was politically motivated? Feaga said Siegelman and his co-defendant (who have both been convicted of corruption charges) are "reaching out from their jail cells" trying to sway events. When asked for specifics, Feaga said "it should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention."

Randall Eliason, a former prosecutor for the US Attorney's office in Washington, DC, told me the obstruction of justice charge is probably not related to Siegelman's PR campaign. Eliason said a prosecutor must show there is a pending proceeding in order to establish obstruction.

"It's pretty unlikely that the allegation would be that they are obstructing their own case by talking to the media," Eliason told me. Siegelman is waiting on an appeal, but Eliason said the appeal proceedings will be based on the trial record, not subsequent media coverage.

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Kontogiannis just can't stop snitching.

This time around, his cooperation helped lead to the indictment of one-time ADCS bigwig Brent Wilkes, as well as his own nephew, John Michael. From the February 21, 2007 hearing, here's a telling exchange between prosecutor Jason Forge and Judge Larry Burns:

THE COURT: How long ago was the plea agreement struck with Mr. Kontogiannis?

FORGE: Your honor, the date, the content -- within the past couple of weeks, February 9, 2007. We signed it when it was struck. We did not reach an agreement and postpone. It was struck just before we indicted the case against Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Michael, and that was a requirement for the plea.

Here's another hurdle for the government to clear in the litigation of wartime detainees: finding prosecutors. Roughly one quarter of the Justice Department's civil appellate staff have refused to participate in the cases, citing disagreement with the government legal approach to the cases. Thankfully, the government isn't letting a little internal dissent (or three Supreme Court rulings) slow down their prosecutions. (U.S. News)

Loose lips sink ships. The Director of National Intelligence's recent comments--in which he acknowledged for the first time the role of private companies in the controversial surveillance program -- has been cited by at least one telecommunications firm as a reason why the government can't have their case thrown out of court. You might recall the interview; McConnell was lambasting loose-talking politicians and journalists. (Associated Press)

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) has released emails from White House staffers showing they explicitly intended to use the former Surgeon General for political gain, and according to the President's agenda. (Reuters)

Once more for the cheap seats: Waxman wants those emails. Yesterday he sent a new letter to Fred Fielding requesting information about White House emails that went uncollected due to an oversight in the Presidential Records Act enforcement. Now Waxman is citing officials from the Office of Administration that told him the email archive system wasn't all it cracked up to be; sometimes it captured only a few emails, sometimes it captured none at all. (Associated Press)

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Thomas Kontogiannis: thrice-convicted felon. Identity thief. Admitted money launderer to extremely crooked Congressman. And, in his own telling, counterterrorist.

Thanks to Judge Larry Burns, who earlier this week ordered four days of court transcripts in the murky Kontogiannis case unsealed, we have our first peek into the motivations of the shady Long Island businessman. Not avarice nor profit guided his actions, Kontogiannis told the court: he linked up with Duke Cunningham out of a post-9/11 sense of patriotism.

“My interest is (the) United States, basically. And (Cunningham) was in a position that I could reach and tell (the government) information that I was gathering from all over the world.”

Cunningham and Kontogiannis have a relationship stretching back years before 9/11. With his frequent travel abroad -- including on a strange trip with Cunningham to Saudi Arabia in December 2004 -- Kontogiannis told the court that he was in a position to help the government learn to fight terrorism, based on his network of contacts. Laundering money for Cunningham's boat and home purchases was merely, to Kontogiannis, a cost of doing business to keep the ear of a Congressman who served on crucial defense and intelligence committees. Asked if he was buying Cunningham's influence, Tommy K replied, "definitely."

Kontogiannis, in his own mind at least, isn't some ordinary shyster. He's Jack Bauer.

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"Anticorruption cases concerning the Ministry of Education have been particularly ineffective….[T]he Ministry of Water Resources…is effectively out of the anticorruption fight with little to no apparent effort in trying to combat fraud…."

That's not the assessment of some goo-goo liberal watchdog. It's the judgment of a team of officials in the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, surveying what it considers endemic corruption throughout the Iraqi government. The Nation's David Corn obtained a copy of the team's 70-plus page report, which finds that militias and criminal gangs have turned government ministries into private sectarian fiefdoms.

The report, which was drafted by a team of U.S. embassy officials, surveys the various Iraqi ministries. "The Ministry of Interior is seen by Iraqis as untouchable by the anticorruption enforcement infrastructure of Iraq," it says. "Corruption investigations in Ministry of Defense are judged to be ineffectual." The study reports that the Ministry of Trade is "widely recognized as a troubled ministry" and that of 196 corruption complaints involving this ministry merely eight have made it to court, with only one person convicted.

The Ministry of Health, according to the report, "is a sore point; corruption is actually affecting its ability to deliver services and threatens the support of the government." Investigations involving the Ministry of Oil have been manipulated, the study says, and the "CPI and the [Inspector General of the ministry] are completely ill-equipped to handle oil theft cases." There is no accurate accounting of oil production and transportation within the ministry, the report explains, because organized crime groups are stealing oil "for the benefit of militias/insurgents, corrupt public officials and foreign buyers."

Some of the biggest offenders are, unsurprisingly, in the ministries controlling the Iraqi security forces. The Ministry of Interior, in charge of the Iraqi police, "has been co-opted by organized criminals who act through the 'legal enterprise' to commit crimes such as kidnapping, extortion, bribery, etc." At the Ministry of Defense, there's "a shocking lack of concern" over disappearance of over $850 million from the Iraqi Army's procurement budget in an apparent theft. (That about rivals the alleged theft by Ayad Allawi's defense minister, Hazem Shaalan.)

Corn writes that "you can practically see the authors pulling out their hair" over the damage documented in the report. Visitors to Baghdad familiar with the U.S.'s diplomatic attempts to stanch the official illegality won't be surprised. In March, I attended a briefing in Baghdad with Boots Poliquin, the U.S. embassy's deadly-earnest top anti-corruption official, who explained with evident disappointment that an Iraqi public law called Article 136B allows any ministry to "essentially stop" a corruption investigation. The report Corn obtained is most likely authored by Poliquin's shop, the Office of Accountability and Transparency, and it promises to cast a long shadow over any upbeat assessment given by Ambassador Ryan Crocker next month about the ability of the Iraqi government to actually, well, govern.

"The country is not a one-size-fits-all, a one-description-fits-all. It's much more a mosaic," the U.S. official in charge of training Iraqi security forces, Lieutenant General James Dubik, told military analysts today on a conference call. And he's got a point. So maybe it's fitting that the Pentagon's last two quarterly reports show all sorts of unexplained shifts -- even on the exact same pieces of data.

Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, told reporters at a National Security Network briefing today that the Pentagon reports can't keep their stories straight when it comes to the incidences of sectarian attacks and murders. Take two most recent reports, from March (pdf) and June (pdf).

On page 17 of both reports is a graph entitled "Sectarian Murders and Incidents" that tallies sectarian attacks by month. The March report lists that, for instance, December 2006 hosted over 900 sectarian "incidents" resulting in just under 1300 murders. But in the June report, the numbers shade up: December 2006 hosted over 1000 incidents yielding over 1600 murders.

Similarly, the March report listed a decline of about 150 sectarian murders from September to October 2006. But the June report changes that to an increase of nearly 400 murders during that same time period. Speaking generally, the June report makes 2006 look like a more deadly, sectarian year than did its March predecessor, but there are exceptions: April 2006 had 700 sectarian murders in the March report, but somehow, that figure drops to under 400 murders in the June report.

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The transcript is below.

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Hot on the heels of the GAO report today suggesting the Bush administration is playing fast and loose with the Iraq benchmarks comes a letter to Congress urging scrutiny over how the administration is quantifying allegedly-improving security in Iraq. The liberal National Security Network writes today that "US officials have recently claimed that violence is down and specifically civilian deaths in Iraq have decreased. No evidence has been provided to the public that supports this claim."

The letter -- signed by former Clinton Defense Secretary Bill Perry, Princeton's Anne-Marie Slaughter, former Clinton and Bush 43 counterterrorism aide Rand Beers, and six other security wonks -- urges disclosure of statistics underlying the claim. "Not only is accurate reporting the key to sound policy, it is also the responsibility of government to those who have lost loved ones to this horrific conflict."

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Earlier this week, Judge Larry Burns ruled that four days' worth of sealed proceedings surrounding Thomas Kontogiannis' guilty plea in the Duke Cunningham case should be made public. The prosecution in the case, for unspecified reasons, has argued for months that the case proceed in secret. Earlier this month, prosecutors agreed to release portions of certain transcripts -- but still want others to stay under wraps. Burns order just pertains to those portions that prosecutors have agreed to release.

It's unclear when the transcripts will be released. But they'll represent the first disclosures in the case since the court released the fact of his plea in June. And maybe we'll learn the "security reasons" why Kontogiannis wasn't fingerprinted for months.

No wonder Ayad Allawi thinks he can get the Bush administration to propel him back to power in Iraq. The two men see eye to eye on the public's right to see into their operations.

Asked by Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff of Newsweek to disclose who's funding his $300,000-over-six-month lobbying effort by GOP firm Barbour, Griffith and Rogers, Allawi said:

“Of course not. They may be killed by the Iranians, they may be killed by the sectarian people … These are details I am not interested in answering.”

Shades of Mike McConnell's statement that "some Americans are going to die" because of the public Congressional debate over revising FISA!

Only Allawi's not alone. After Allawi's comment on CNN Sunday that he's getting funded by unnamed "supporters," Justice Department officials told BGR that it needed to be more forthcoming about who's paying Allawi's legal bills. BGR tells the magazine that it intends to fully comply with its legal obligations, but that may not mean much for actual disclosure. The firm has the option of changing its listed client from Allawi to his political party, the Iraqi National Accord: "Under the law, lobbying firms are usually permitted to list foreign political parties as their clients without identifying the financial sponsors of those parties."

The busiest employee of the Department of Justice by far must be the inspector general, Glenn Fine.

A couple of weeks ago, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked Fine to investigate whether outgoing-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had misled the Congress and press on a number of occasions. Fine, in a letter sent today (you can read it here), has responded that he's already looking into it.

That's because Fine is already juggling a number of investigations. And those investigations will necessarily touch on Gonzales' public statements. Writes Fine:

"The OIG has ongoing investigations that relate to most of the subjects addressed by the Attorney General's testimony that you identified. In particular, the OIG is conducting a review relating to the terrorist surveillance program, as well as a follow-up review of the use of national security letters. In addition, the OIG is conducting a joint investigation with the Department's Office of Professional Responsibility into allegations regarding the removal of certain United States Attomeys and improper hiring practices.

We believe that through those investigations and other OIG reviews we will be able to assess most of the issues that you raise in your letter."

Leahy responded in a statement (in full below) that he's "pleased" that Fine is examining Gonzales' statements.

In June, Fine also confirmed to Leahy that he was investigating whether Gonzales had obstructed Congress' investigation of the U.S. attorney firings by having a conversation with Department aide Monica Goodling about his recollections.

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Can they all just get along?

From The New York Times:

White House officials said Wednesday that the search for a successor to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales would probably last at least several days. The officials said they were trying to strike a conciliatory tone with Senate Democratic leaders who will control the confirmation.

The officials said a nominee might not be announced until after President Bush had returned on Sept. 9 from Australia....

In hopes of smoothing the nominee’s way, senior White House officials have contacted Congressional leaders to sound them out about candidates.

The contacts are routine for all cabinet nominations, although Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who is on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he was struck by the cooperative tone he had heard in a conversation about nominees with the White House counsel, Fred F. Fielding, who is overseeing the search.

“In the past,” Mr. Schumer said in an interview, “the White House has talked about consultation, but they were the most wooden conversations I ever had. This was the first time there was a real back and forth.”

Alberto Gonzales's resignation was just the latest in the steady flow of departures by senior Justice Department officials involved in the U.S. attorney firings. But Brian Roehrkasse, the Department spokesman who served as the leadership's attack dog as the firings scandal intensified, is staying where he is. In fact, Roehrkasse, formerly the deputy director of public affairs, was actually promoted to the top spot in the office earlier this month.

Just about every story in the major papers on the scandal this spring and summer featured Roehrkasse's rebuttals. That, of course, is his job. But just as a number of statements from Department officials to Congress have proven false, so have a number of Roehrkasse's public statements. And Roehrekasse surprised many with his personal attacks on the fired U.S. attorneys, most famously calling them "former disgruntled employees grandstanding before Congress." The former prosecutors, of course, had been subpoenaed to appear.

Roehrkasse replaced the former director, Tasia Scolinos, after she retired from the Department. Scolinos is perhaps best known for her brainstorming on how to handle the U.S. attorney firings, for instance suggesting in an email that the "one common link" among the fired prosecutors was that "three of them are along the southern border so you could make the connection that DOJ is unhappy with the immigration prosecution numbers in those districts." Scolinos' suggestion, of course, was duly employed.

Burt Brandenburg, who served as the Justice Department's director of public affairs during the Clinton administration, said being the DoJ's spokesperson is a tough job, dealing with complex issues in a highly politically charged atmosphere. "Every day's a Super Bowl," he said. But "there's a tradition of attorney generals of both parties that you have to be the grown-up, that you have to have some of the thickest skin in Washington and can't be as political as your critics.... You're held to a higher standard."

Roehrkasse has fallen well short of that standard, making a string of public statements about the firings that were dubious at best (e.g. that they were performance-related and part of a "routine process") and downright false at worst (like some of Gonzales'). Below is our brief round-up of the worst of the worst.

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Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D) has already been convicted of a crime, and he and his co-defendant are in jail pending an appeal of their convictions. But according to a prosecutor on the case, Siegelman's efforts at getting his conviction overturned have crossed the line into obstruction of justice.

Speaking during a hearing for former Siegelman aide Nick Bailey, Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Feaga said Siegelman and Scrushy had been doing things from behind bars to "manipulate events" - acts that could be considered a crime.

Feaga did not provide details to U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller, and he would not elaborate in an interview outside the courtroom.

"It should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention" to what is going on, Feaga said, "and it will be more obvious in the coming months."

Siegelman, of course, has been arguing that the Republican U.S. attorney, at the prodding of Karl Rove, went to extraordinary lengths to secure a conviction against him, a popular Democratic former governor. Presumably Feaga is referencing the Siegelman legal team's attempts to drum up coverage of their claim that the original prosecution was politically motivated. But is that illegal? We'll have some perspective on that shortly.

A federal prosecutor filed court papers yesterday formally rejecting the assertion that he indirectly profited from the ill-gotten largesse of several-time-felon Thomas Kontogiannis.

Two weeks ago, attorneys for John Michael, who's facing money laundering charges in the Duke Cunningham scandal, issued a j'accuse of their own. It so happened that Phil Halpern, an assistant U.S. attorney on the Michael case, had an uncle named Leonard, who lived on the same Nassau County, New York cul-de-sac as Tommy K. Two years after Leonard died in 2003, Tommy K's daughter, Annette Apergis, bought the Halpern property using an account of her father's connected to laundering money for Cunningham-directed bribes. Michael attorney Ray Granger asked, essentially: What are the odds?

It gets weirder.

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Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) is going to donate $23,000 of her Presidential campaign funds to charity after it became public that the man who raised the cash is wanted in California. Norman Hsu is wanted for failing to appear in court for a 1991 charge of grand theft auto. But shirking the support of Hsu might be more costly than it first seems; Hsu has quietly become one of the largest campaign supporters in the country, and has claimed that he could bring in over $1 million to Hillary's campaign. (Associated Press, WSJ's Washington Wire)

Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) is desperately trying to find his way out-- of his guilty plea for lewd conduct. Craig has suggested that he will try to withdraw his plea, which in someone's mind will make this whole story go away. Legal analysts aren't so sure; although Craig could withdraw his plea, he then might face more serious charges, and be subject to the release of more details about his restroom romp. (LA Times)

Last December, four Marine Corps infantryman were charged with rampaging into Haditha, killing 24 civilians after one of their friends was killed by a roadside bomb. Today, the charges on two of the men have been dismissed and dismissal has been recommended for another man. Legal issues have thwarted the prosecutors, who were unable to even prove that the killings violated the American military code of justice. (NY Times)

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First was the war over the benchmarks. Now there's the war for whose benchmarks really mark the benches.

In May, Congress mandated that the Government Accountability Office produce an assessment of whether the U.S. and the Iraqi government are meeting eighteen indicators of political, economic and military progress in Iraq. Unlike the analysis produced by the Bush administration -- preliminarily delivered in July, and to be finalized by September 15 -- the GAO study has to give a stark yes-or-no answer for the achievement of each so-called benchmark. Sure enough, a draft of the study, leaked to The Washington Post, finds that only three of the eighteen benchmarks have been met -- while the July White House assessment said about half of them had been.

As the Post reports, the GAO report casts doubt on whether progress is being achieved in several of the areas the Bush administration has highlighted. July's White House report, for example, cited "an overall decrease in sectarian violence" in Baghdad. The GAO, by contrast, finds that "the average number of daily attacks against civilians remained about the same over the last six months; 25 in February versus 26 in July." The Iraqi security forces remain dysfunctional: the GAO cites pervasive sectarianism in the Iraqi Army units sent to Baghdad for the surge, while the White House called their performance "satisfactory."

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Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) isn't wasting any time. On August 4, literally the day that the Protect America Act passed the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote to Conyers and intelligence committee chair Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), imploring them to come up with alternative legislation for foreign-to-domestic surveillance.

And this afternoon, Conyers announced that his House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the now-gutted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on September 5, the first Thursday back after the Congressional recess.

The current act expires in six months, but relentless pressure from liberals in the House to immediately scale back its vast powers is forcing Pelosi's hand. During the debate over the act on August 4, Conyers focused on "reverse targeting" -- warrantless surveillance of a person inside the U.S., potentially occurring when he or she speaks to someone abroad -- so expect the committee hearing to reflect that focus.

Who will Bush nominate to be the next attorney general?

Although there haven't been any signs so far that the administration is interested in working with Democrats to name a broadly acceptable replacement, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) wants to talk it over.

"I look forward to working with you in your selection of a nominee to serve as the next Attorney General of the United States," Leahy wrote to Bush today. "I hope that you will engage with Senate leadership and share your thoughts so that meaningful consultation can result and the Senate will be better able to fulfill its constitutional advice and consent role. I am available to meet with you in Washington after Labor Day and urge that Senator Specter be included as well."

A couple of weeks ago, Leahy also wrote Bush to see if they couldn't work out a deal for the testimony of Karl Rove and other former White House aides.

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Long before he was internationally infamous as the Homeland Security secretary who dithered while New Orleans drowned, Michael Chertoff helmed the Justice Department's Criminal Division, placing him at the top of all federal criminal prosecutions. He left the position in 2003 to take a federal judgeship -- but not before severely misconstruing, under oath, a chain of events in the 2001 interrogation of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh. As it turns out, a sworn statement, made by an attorney in the division's Terrorism and Violent Crime Section, John De Pue, contradicts Chertoff's testimony to Congress, something that can't bode well for his rumored nomination for attorney general.

Chertoff, in 2003, testified that he was unaware of internal dissent over a decision by the FBI to interview Lindh without the presence of his family-retained lawyer. "I have to say, Senator," he told Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), "that the Professional Responsibility [Advisory] Office was not asked for advice in this matter. I'm familiar with the matter. I was involved in it."

An account given by De Pue in 2002 casts serious doubt on Chertoff's statement. You can read his statement here.

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Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) -- whose home was raided by the FBI late last month -- told an NBC affiliate in Alaska, KTUU, he still isn't sure if he is the "target" of the federal investigation.

"I'm not sure I'm a target yet. I've not been told I'm a target. But as a practical matter, the situation -- I shouldn't have answered that question either," Stevens said. "I was not a target of those other investigations, is what I was saying."

As we've noted before, the "target" line is a favorite one of scandal subjects who want to sound as if things aren't all that bad. But it sounds like Stevens needs some convincing.

Yesterday we raised an eyebrow at Ayad Allawi's Sunday statement that he's "not party to the exact amount" of his lucrative lobbying contract with GOP power-firm Barbour Griffith Rogers. Now, Christina Davidson of IraqSlogger, who broke the story in the first place, adds an interesting wrinkle: If Allawi is, as he said on Sunday, getting his money from an anonymous "supporter," he's legally obligated to disclose his benefactor's identity.

Watching Allawi's interview with Wolf Blitzer, it seems that Allawi only mentioned his patron as a way of dispensing with a distraction from his core message that he has a "six-point plan" to save Iraq. But that admission comes with a host of legal complications, Davidson writes, if Allawi and BGR want to stay on the right side of the Foreign Assets Registration Act.

FARA requires persons representing foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity to publicly disclose their relationship, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of activities on behalf of that principal.

In filing papers with the Department of Justice, required for compliance with FARA, BGR's Dan Murphy registered Allawi as the sole foreign principal the firm would be representing, checking of the appropriate box to confirm that he was not being “financed by a foreign government, foreign political party, or other foreign principal.” If an Iraqi is indeed paying for Allawi’s US activities, BGR is required by law to disclose the identity of the financier.

Looks like we might be step closer to learning where Allawi's money is coming from -- whether from former Defense Minister (and probable crook) Hazem Shaalan; from Mashal Nawab, who paid for Allawi's last lobbying contract in Washington; or someone else.

When Rep. Don Young (R-AK) dishes out pork, it sticks.

After Lee County twice tried to return a mysterious $10 million earmark for an unwanted Coconut Road Interchange, Rep. Don Young (R-AK) warned the Florida county that it was jeopardizing receiving federal funds in the future. Lee County faces a similar fate again, after voting to return the $10 million to Congress in hopes of getting it reauthorized for a broader (and wanted) project.

The News Press reports that the Florida Department of Transportation will not approve the county's budget through 2012 unless it overturns the reauthorization vote and allows more time for public comment on the issue.

Locals who want the county to forge on with the $10 million extra-Constitutional project, like, say, those married to developers who pushed for the deal, should have a fair shake at voicing their opinion.

Jack Abramoff is in prison. Ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) is in prison. Ex-Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) is in prison. Ex-Reps. Mark Foley (R-FL), Katherine Harris (R-FL), Tom DeLay (R-TX), Curt Weldon (R-PA), and Ex-Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT), all either lost or did not seek reelection. Gone, away, to be forgotten. This year was supposed to be different for the Republicans. But...

As The New York Times notes this morning, scandal has pursued them into 2007. “The real question for Republicans in Washington is how low can you go, because we are approaching a level of ridiculousness,” says one Republican strategist.

So what's the tally this year so far? Well, there is, of course, 1) Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) and 2) Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) with their sex scandals (the attempted restroom tryst and numerous successful hotel room trysts, respectively).

But then there's the much greater toll of just plain ol' corruption. 3) Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and 4) Rep. Don Young (R-AK) are under investigation for their ties to the oil company Veco (though that's just the tip of the iceberg for Young). 5) Reps. Tom Feeney (R-FL) and 6) John Doolittle (R-CA) have found themselves the focus of a reinvigorated Abramoff investigation (though Abramoff is in prison, he's still busily cooperating). 7) Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) had his house raided. 8) The FBI is investigating Rep. Gary Miller's (R-CA) land deals.

And then there's 9) Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) whose land deal with a businessman and campaign contributor became such a scandal that she finally just sold back the plot of land.

(Update: Thanks to a TPM Reader for pointing out that I omitted 12) Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and 13) Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) in my original round-up. Both are facing ethics committee investigations for their calls last October to former U.S. attorney David Iglesias about his office's investigation of a state Democrat.)

A kind of bonus field of scandal has been campaign officials for the various Republican candidates and their various scandals.

And there are a couple holdovers from 2006, of course; scandal figures who've stuck around and managed to keep a relatively low profile. 10) Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) is still apparently under federal investigation. And 11) Rep. Ken Calvert's (R-CA) land deals are still winning scrutiny.

Republican scandal is one of Karl Rove's chief preoccupations. He's said that it was a mistake not to have addressed the scandals earlier, before the 2006 midterms. The effect of scandal even had a place in the political briefings that his aides gave to various departments and agencies over the past several years. Here, for instance, is a page from a briefing his aide Scott Jennings gave this January:

But it would appear that the GOP will be facing a similar dilemma all over again come next November. The question is: will things turn out any differently?

Note: As always, we keep a running tally of investigations and prosecutions of both Democrats and Republicans on our Grand Ole Docket.

We've written about Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's (R) impressive talent for securing federal Katrina aid funds. That might come from his former role as RNC chairman. But it might also have to do with the fact that he still receives monthly checks from Barbour Griffith & Rogers Inc., the lobbyist firm he helped to start. Haley says all the money coming is part of a pension; others say it's generally good practice to disclose these things. (Bloomberg)

The only officer prosecuted in the Abu Ghraib scandal was acquitted on all three abuse charges, though he was found guilty on one count of disobeying a direct order in connection with the investigation. (The Boston Globe)

The federal government is shifting its investigation of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) to Kay LiCausi, his former chief of staff. Menendez had been accused of having conflicts of interests with some of his legislation, but now the concern is that LiCausi (who moved right from Congress to be a lobbyist) might be the source of the conflict. (NY Times)

The GOP leadership is seeking an investigation into Sen. Larry Craig's (R-ID) bathroom imbroglio. Meanwhile, CREW is curious why Republicans are willing to bring an investigation against Craig but were unwilling to do so against Rep. Vitter (R-LA).

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With the Pentagon's inspector general set to arrive in Iraq in a few weeks to personally investigate allegations of corruption in, among other places, the training of Iraqi security forces, it's worth remembering that suspicions of wrongdoing in the command led one officer to take his own life out of apparent shame. In a suicide note left on his bed in Baghdad, Lt. Colonel Ted Westhusing wrote, "I didn't volunteer to support corrupt, money grubbing contractors, nor work for commanders only interested in themselves." Westhusing, 44, killed himself on June 5, 2005.

Much about Westhusing's case remains a mystery. According to a definitive Los Angeles Times exploration of his death published in November 2005, the committed Christian and West Point graduate began working for the training command, known as MNTSC-I, in January of 2005. General David Petraeus, who now leads U.S. forces in Iraq, commanded MNTSC-I in 2004 and 2005. Westhusing's primary responsibility was to oversee a private company, USIS, which held a $79 million contract to train Iraqi special forces, and Petraeus told him he had exceeded "lofty expectations."

In May, however, someone -- apparently a USIS contractor -- slipped him an anonymous four-page letter contending widespread corruption within the company and the command. Journalist Robert Bryce obtained the letter (pdf) earlier this year for a piece in the Texas Observer:

Recently I was told that USIS... is only missing 4 weapons. Now, we just spent the last 9 months with almost 200 weapons missing so I wondered how we went from 200 to 4. The missing weapons are common knowledge within the camp and no one seems to be trying to hide it. The take on it is that the Iraqis are stealing them and it is not our problem. This is not true. A lot of weapons were signed out by instructors and never returned. ...

Our Log guys have lost total control over what is issued. If you try to match up what USIS is charging the government, the inventory on camp and what has been issued to Iraqis it will not even be close.

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It's hard to keep track of all of Rep. Don Young's (R-AK) scandals. But we're here to help. Here's a snapshot of what we know about all the ways Young has managed to get into trouble.

Coconut Road
McClatchy reported last week that investigators have begun scrutinizing Young's now famous $10 million earmark for a Florida interchange. Whether the earmark was a quid pro quo for a big time contributor is only half the story. Young also appears to have changed the bill's language after it passed Congress in order to make sure that the money went where (or to who) he wished.

Dennis Troha
As we noted in our post on Young's remarkable fundraising record in the run-up to the 2005 transportation bill, Wisconsin businessman Dennis Troha is reportedly cooperating with investigators regarding his contributions to Young and other lawmakers. Troha allegedly gave his support in exchange for a measure that was inserted into the bill.

Veco
The FBI is also scrutinizing Young's dealings with Alaska oil services company Veco Corp. At issue is whether he accepted bribes in exchange for political favors over the course of his long friendship with former Veco CEO Bill Allen. In January, Young tried to make amends by returning $38,000 to Allen for the decade-worth of pig roast fundraisers the executive held in Young's honor each year in Anchorage. From 1996 to 2006, when Allen played host to the pork gala, Veco and its employees gave Young at least $157,000. Young was chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for six of those years.

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