The long arm of the law is just a little too short to push Sheriff Ricky Headley from office.

A grand jury recently indicted Headley on thirty-seven drug related charges, among them twenty-one felony counts that include dispensing drugs illegally and official misconduct. That's an increase from the original indictment, which included just two counts of wearing his uniform and driving his official vehicle while illegally obtaining prescription meds. Ricky, the sheriff for Williamson County, Tennessee, is facing expulsion from his job if found guilty of a felony; his trial is set for next July.

Until then, Ricky is sitting tight as sheriff. And, much to the chagrin of locals, there's nothing anyone can do about it. In almost every case of police abuse, the accused officer is put on leave pending a resolution of his case. That would be true even for Ricky's deputies, but not Ricky himself. As an elected official, no one can make Ricky do anything (with the exception of the state attorney general, who has not signaled an interest in the case). Local officials can't force him to step down, nor can they require him to take leave from his position. They can't even take away the car in which he allegedly made his drug runs.

Ricky has pleaded not guilty on all charges and says he intends to serve out the rest of his term (until 2010). And since he is all cleaned up (Ricky spent less than a month in rehab for his addiction to prescription drugs), he sees no reason not to be back out there enforcing the law. And so far, it doesn't look like he's going to change his tune.

Here's a whoops with a capital W.

This summer the House Judiciary Committee launched an effort to collect tips from would-be whistleblowers in the Justice Department. The U.S. attorney firings scandal had shown that much was amiss in the Department, and with the danger of retaliation very real, the committee had set up a form on the committee's website for people to blow the whistle privately about abuses there. Although the panel said it would not accept anonymous tips, it assured those who came forward that their identity would be held in the "strictest confidence."

But in an email sent out today, the committee inadvertently sent the email addresses of all the would-be whistleblowers to everyone who had written in to the tipline. The committee email was sent to tipsters who had used the website form, including presumably whistleblowers themselves, and all of the recipients of the email were accidentally included in the "to:" field -- instead of concealing those addresses with a so-called blind carbon copy or "bcc:".

Only the email addresses were exposed; none of the names or other identifying information of the whistleblowers was revealed. The blunder, however, was noticed by a number of people who had used the website form and received today's email. One disgruntled recipient replied to the entire list of whistleblowers angrily complaining about the snafu; two others forwarded the committee email to TPMmuckraker with similar complaints.

Compounding the mistake, the committee later sent out a second email attempting to recall the original email; it, too, included all recipients in the "to:" field, according to a recipient of the emails.

A committee spokesperson emailed the following statement in response to TPMmuckraker's questions:

The tip line was created to be a confidential method for Justice Department employees to provide the Judiciary Committee with information that might aid the Committee in its ongoing investigation of politicization at the Justice Department. Because of the confidentiality agreement, the Committee will not discuss any emails sent on this tip line. A technological error in a recent communication inadvertently disclosed certain email addresses. The Committee has not begun its review of the emails, and does not know if any of them are in fact from Justice Department employees as opposed to private citizens expressing more general views. The Committee apologizes for any concern this error may have caused, and is making every effort to protect the confidentiality of those who chose to provide information on the tip line.

It's not immediately clear whether the mistake will lead to the exposure of those who had contacted the committee. There are more than 150 recipient addresses revealed in the email. Some of the email addresses appear to be transparently fake, but there's also, much more troubling, a vice_president@whitehouse.gov carbon copied on the email, which is the public email address for Vice President Dick Cheney. In other words, an email containing the email addresses of all the whistleblowers who had written in to the committee tipline was sent to public email address of Vice President Cheney.

The purpose of today's mis-sent email was, ironically enough, to announce careful new procedures about to be put in place by the committee for reviewing the tips received through the committee's website. No one on the committee or any staff has reviewed any of the tips, pursuant to an agreement reached between committee Democrats and Republicans. Only "Members of the Judiciary Committee, and Committee staff specifically designated by the Democratic Chairman or Ranking Republican Member, will have access to the e-mails, and they are prohibited from removing any e-mail from Committee offices," today's email read. "This message is also to advise you that you have three business days...­ to notify us if you wish to withdraw your e-mail rather than have it reviewed by the Committee under these procedures."

The email can be read below the fold:

Read more »

Surprise, surprise! From the AP:

Defense contractor Brent Wilkes emphatically denied bribing former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham Friday as he took the stand in his trial, which had been suspended while wildfires ravaged San Diego County.

Wilkes' attorney, Mark Geragos, surprised prosecutors by calling Wilkes on the first day of trial in a week. The lawyer had not warned them he would be calling his client to the stand, and had not hinted in earlier hearings that Wilkes would testify in his own defense.

"Did you ever bribe him?" Geragos asked Wilkes, who took the stand in a gray suit.

"No, I didn't," Wilkes replied.

Presumably Geragos' direct examination was a little more elaborate than that. We're eager to hear more.

Update: The updated AP story has a lot more detail. Wilkes denied ever paying for or having sex with the prostitute who testified against him earlier in the trial. Flatly denied it. And there was this precious exchange:

Read more »

You know what Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell thinks of open debate about intelligence matters. After all, he's said repeatedly that public discussions of changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act have a direct result: "some Americans are going to die."

So this shouldn't come as a surprise:

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has reversed the recent practice of declassifying and releasing summaries of national intelligence estimates, a top intelligence official said Friday.

Knowing their words may be scrutinized outside the U.S. government chills analysts' willingness to provide unvarnished opinions and information, said David Shedd, a deputy to McConnell.

He told congressional aides and reporters that McConnell recently issued a directive making it more difficult to declassify the key judgments of national intelligence estimates, which are forward-looking analyses prepared for the White House and Congress that represent the consensus of the nation's 16 spy agencies on a single issue. The analysis comes from various sources including the CIA, the military and intelligence agencies inside federal departments.

Referring to the public release of the reports, Shedd said during a Capitol Hill briefing: "It affects the quality of what's written."

Earlier this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced that he'll be voting against confirming Michael Mukasey as attorney general. Today, over at The Huffington Post, he explains why -- with no weaseling:

Mukasey should not be confirmed because he could not muster a simple, straightforward answer at his confirmation hearing when he was asked the simple, straightforward question: Is the president of the United States required to obey federal statutes? "That would have to depend," he weaseled, "on whether what goes outside the statute nonetheless lies within the authority of the president to defend the country."

Here's Mukasey's dance around a similar question.

The mad proliferation of Blackwater investigations continues.

Earlier this week, House sleuth Henry Waxman (D-CA) accused Blackwater of hiding "tens of millions of dollars, if not more" in Social Security, Medicare and retirement taxes by classifying its security guards in Iraq as independent contractors.

Today, Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) piled on, asking for investigations of Blackwater's alleged tax dodge.

Obama and Durbin asked U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson for a full investigation and audit of the company's tax setup. Noting that legislation they introduced earlier this year would forbid contractors from using this kind of loophole, they write (the full letter is below):

It is difficult to fathom how Blackwater employees in Iraq can be considered independent contractors. They are trained by Blackwater, paid by Blackwater, and told whom to guard by Blackwater. These are not independent small businessmen establishing their own individual working relationships with those they are hired to protect.

As for Kerry, he wants the Senate Finance Committee, of which he's a member, to dig in and investigate too. So he wrote Chairman Max Baucus (R-MT) and ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to request an investigation.

All of the senators don't think much of Blackwater's reliance on a determination by the Small Business Administration that they could classify guards as independent contractors. First of all, as Spencer reported earlier this week, the SBA determination only dealt with an employee in Guam. More importantly, the SBA says it carries "no legal weight."

Unfortunately for Blackwater, Kerry is also the Chairman of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and he's on the case. Now he wants Blackwater to explain what the SBA finding has to do with anything. His letter to Prince, sent today, is also below.

Read more »

Better late than never. Three weeks ago, we reported that the House leadership seemed to be wavering in its pursuit of contempt citations for White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former counsel Harriet Miers. Both of them, remember, refused to even show up in response to a House Judiciary Committee subpoena relating to the U.S. attorney firings.

But now things seem to be moving along again. The Politico reports that vote counting has begun and quotes a House aide as saying that a vote is likely in the next couple of weeks.

The committee passed the resolutions in July, and once the House votes on them, they would be referred to the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. What happens then will be, to say the least, interesting. Michael Mukasey was a noncommittal on that question during his confirmation hearing last week. And the Miers and Bolten contempt citations aren't likely to be the only ones.

The Dems are apparently confident that they could easily pass the resolutions despite no likely Republican crossovers. For his part, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) has put the emphasis on institutional integrity, rather than subjecting Harriet Miers to a frog march:

Conyers said the contempt battle was not aimed at seeking criminal sanctions against Bolten and Miers personally, but would nonetheless surely spark a long legal fight over the reach of executive privilege.

“Remember – no handcuffs,” Conyers said in an interview Thursday, noting that contempt of Congress is a misdemeanor.

Sen. Ted Stevens' (R-AK) superstar white collar defense lawyer Brendan Sullivan made Washingtonian's list of most influential DC law and lobbying types.

Sullivan's other famous clients had included Oliver North and several Duke lacrosse players. And what drives this successful lawyer? He's pretty up front:

“By the time somebody comes to me, they are pretty far up the creek,” Sullivan has said. “The good thing is they will pay almost anything.”

Note: the rankings weren't based on discretion.

Last week Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) called for the Justice Department's voting rights chief John Tanner to be fired. And in written questions to attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey this week, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) asked Mukasey to review Tanner's record and consider whether he ought to be canned.

In the question, Kennedy noted Tanner's reasoning that voter ID laws actually discriminate against whites because "'minorities don't become elderly the way white people do.'" The "remarks display a shameful lack of understanding and sensitivity that is unacceptable in the person charged with enforcing the nation’s laws against voting discrimination," he wrote.

Tanner will appear before a House judiciary subcommittee on Tuesday, where he's sure to be questioned about those remarks, others where he said that African-Americans tend to carry picture ID because of racial profiling, and his role in whitewashing a Justice Department review of Columbus, Ohio voting problems in the 2004 election and forcing through approval of a controversial voter ID law in Georgia -- among other things. It's not going to be a fun hearing for Tanner. The chairman of that subcommittee, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), called on Tanner to resign yesterday.

"The Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division has failed miserably in its responsibility to enforce the Voting Rights Act during this Administration," Sen. Kennedy said in a statement. "The latest shameful revelations from the Section drive home the urgent need for the next Attorney General to install strong leadership to allow the Voting Section to return to its historic role in ensuring access to the ballot."

Kennedy's question to Mukasey is below.

Read more »

Bad news for Ben Stevens. Another Veco executive testified in federal court to paying the one-time state Senate President, and son of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), $250,000 in bogus consulting fees.

Former Veco vice president Rick Smith's testimony came during the trial of state Rep. Vic Kohring (R-AK), accused of accepting bribes from Veco and unsuccessfully trying to get the company to pay off his $17,000 credit card debt. Veco's Bill Allen previously testified about the bogus consulting fees paid to Stevens, in yet another, earlier Alaska corruption trial.

Kohring's lawyers have long argued that their client was unfairly netted in an investigation shooting for the two Stevenses. One even told investigators they "dun got the wrong man." While the younger Stevens was paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars in monthly retainer fess for his lobbying services while in office, Kohring has been charged with accepting $2,600 in cash.

The FBI raided Ben Stevens' legislative office last year, but he has not been charged with a crime.

Yesterday, the White House finally agreed to turn over those warrantless surveillance documents that Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has been seeking for so long. Now the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman is pressing for a response to another age-old request: documents relevant to the administration's interrogation policy.

Earlier this week, the White House turned over what Leahy describes as "four previously undisclosed documents" relating to the administration's torture policy. All of them, however, precede Alberto Gonzales' tenure as attorney general. So in a letter to White House counsel Fred Fielding today (reproduced below), Leahy requested documents from that murkier era, including the 2005 and 2006 Office of Legal Counsel opinions reported by The New York Times earlier this month (both opinions were signed by OLC acting chief Steve Bradbury). Leahy's House counterpart Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) has also requested those. Leahy notes in the letter, which is co-signed by the panel's ranking member Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), that they made general requests for this stuff a year ago.

Leahy also presses Fielding to release an unclassified version of a March 13, 2003 memo by John Yoo to William J. Haynes, the Pentagon's general counsel. In his book The Terror Presidency, former OLC chief Jack Goldsmith describes the memo as similar to the infamous "Bybee Memo" (pdf), saying that it contained "abstract and overbroad legal advice" which led to the department adopting specific techniques that "contained elaborate safeguards." Goldsmith later withdrew and replaced that analysis. After years of opposition from Democrats over Haynes' role in approving those techniques, the administration finally withdrew Haynes' nomination to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in January of this year.

The letter:

Read more »

Yet another regular reminder that the investigation of Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) is churning to its conclusion.

Three months after Logistics Health Inc. hired a Bush appointee who had supervised military health programs at the Pentagon for six years, Logistics won a $790 million medical services contract. Logistics, which is headed by Bush’s former Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, was underbid by two other companies but still won the contract. The two competing firms have filed a complaint with the Government Accountability Office. (LA Times)

Just last month, Senator Robert Menendez’s (D-NJ) former senior aide Kay LiCausi, now a political consultant, was honored as one of the “top forty business people under the age of forty” by NJBIZ magazine. Now, federal investigators are scrutinizing LiCausi’s lobbying contracts with organizations aided by Menendez. (Harpers)

Two former top executives of DBH Industries, the leading supplier of body armor to the U.S. military, falsely inflated the value of the inventory of DHB's top product, the Interceptor vest, according to charges brought yesterday. The two were also indicted on charges of insider trading and tax evasion in a scheme that earned them almost $200 million and could earn them up to 70 years in prison. (CBS)

Read more »

If you're a corrupt pol looking for lessons in the Duke Cunningham story, you've found dozens. Don't make a bribe menu, first and foremost. But it's also probably not a good idea to shoot a video of your Hawaii vacation with your (alleged) briber.

Prosecutors entered the following 90-second video into evidence last week during the trial of Brent Wilkes. In it, you can see Wilkes, his nephew Joel Combs (who's testifying against his uncle), and Duke himself silently weaving in and out of coral reefs. And one diver, just to drive home who the trip was all about, is swimming around with a large rock with "DUKE" on it. You can see him in the image above handing it to the man himself.

Ah, the memories. Seth Hettena, the author of a book on Cunningham, Feasting on The Spoils, posted the video on his blog, where he's been covering the trial:

Duke lumbers into view at about the fifty second mark. And of course that's Wilkes at the end there, suddenly bursting out with "Bali Hai!" on the deck of the boat. This is the same guy known at his company for suddenly yelling "Boom shaka laka!" and "Yeah, baby!" when he got good news (like, say, Duke had delivered millions in earmarks). Not so hard to imagine.

This is the same 2003 trip, of course, where Wilkes treated Duke to prostitutes on two consecutive nights. At least they had the good sense not to add a "Goofing Around in A Hot Tub" section to the vacation video.

Before the hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) wasn't shy about saying what he thought of Michael Mukasey: "I like him." And the attorney general nominee breezed through the first day of questioning. But day two got rough. And now the chairman seems to be wavering in his support of Mukasey. From the AP:

Judge Michael Mukasey's nomination for attorney general ran into trouble Thursday when two top Senate Democrats said their votes hinge on whether he will say on the record that an interrogation technique that simulates drowning is torture. "It's fair to say my vote would depend on him answering that question," Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., told reporters late Thursday.

"This to me is the seminal issue," said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, another member of Leahy's panel. Asked if his vote depends on whether Mukasey equates waterboarding with torture, Durbin answered, "It does."

Leahy has refused to set a date for a vote on Mukasey's nomination until he clarifies his answer to that question.

Separately, a Democrat familiar with the panel's deliberations said Mukasey may not get the 10 committee votes his nomination needs to be reported to the Senate floor with a favorable recommendation unless he says, in effect, that waterboarding is torture.

The issue, of course, is Mukasey's "massive hedge" of an answer to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse's (D-RI) question about whether waterboarding is torture (watch the exchange here). Earlier this week, the Democrats on the committee penned a letter to Mukasey, giving him a primer on the old torture technique and asking again for an answer. His confirmation might depend on it.

Condoleezza Rice took pains to insist today that the U.S. "would not support a policy that would prevent investigations" in Iraq of government officials for corruption charges. But she repeatedly demurred from passing judgment on a decree signed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office manager, which was provided to the House oversight committee by former top corruption judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi. In that document, Maliki informs corruption judges that his approval is required before bringing charges against practically any senior government official. Here's the document (pdf), signed April 1, 2007:

Peace, mercy and blessings of Allah be upon you!

It has been decided not to refer any of the following parties to the court until approval of His Excellency, the Prime Minister, is obtained:

1. Presidential Office
2. Council of Ministers
3. Current and Previous Ministers

With appreciation

Signed by
Dr. Tariq Najim Abdullah
Prime Minister's Office Manager

At a few moments during the hearing, both Rice and ranking Republican Tom Davis (R-VA) suggested that maybe Maliki was trying to referee a bureaucratic dispute between Iraq's numerous anti-corruption agencies. Hands-on management style and all that. That still wouldn't explain all the murder and torture of corruption judges, but otherwise, the explanation is perfectly sound.

After over a year of demands, four months of subpoenas and an immeasurable amount of acrimony and mutual distrust, the White House has finally agreed to let Senators Pat Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) -- and possibly even the whole Senate Judiciary Committee -- review the legal basis for the warrantless surveillance program. Apparently politics can compel what subpoenas can't. Congressional Quarterly:

The White House has offered leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee access to legal documents related to the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program, senators said Thursday.

But Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., said while the White House had offered the documents to both him and the panel's ranking Republican, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, he was pushing for the entire committee to receive access to the documents.

The Bush administration is asking Congress to grant retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies being sued for their alleged role in the NSA program.

A Judiciary Committee aide had said the panel was holding off on a markup of legislation rewriting the rules for electronic surveillance until it received access to those documents, which pertain to the legal foundation of the NSA program.

Two Senators on the judiciary committee who saw the documents via their seats on the intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), ultimately voted for retroactive telecom immunity. Could Specter and Leahy possibly be next? Stranger things have happened -- like, for instance, the disclosure of these documents to the judiciary committee leaders. The committee will hold a hearing on the surveillance legislation Wednesday.

Man, is it a good thing Condoleezza Rice expressed "regret" that State waited until last month to start reviewing its relationship with Blackwater. And it's particularly nifty that she isn't "personally following" every little multi-million dollar discrepancy, shenanigan or blooper. Because then she might have to explain why State Department officials, back in 2005, chatted in internal e-mails about how Blackwater was killing Iraqi civilians and yet were outside the law:

Internal State Department e-mails, obtained by the Blotter on ABCNews.com, show top officials were extensively briefed about repeated incidents of Blackwater security guards killing innocent civilians more than two years ago. ...

Yet, the e-mails show that State Department officials had extensive knowledge of a growing problem in the summer of 2005, and complained about a lack of a compensation program for civilian victims.

"Obviously it is not pleasant meeting with these individuals with nothing more to offer than apologies, condolences and vague promises," wrote a State Department security officer based in al Hillah, Michael Bishop, to his superiors at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Two years later, the State Department recommends making appropriate "condolence or compensation" payments, as well. And Iraqis love that!

You didn't think there could be an entire House oversight committee hearing on corruption in Iraq without the exploits of Howard "Cookie" Krongard making an appearance, did you?

Krongard, recall, is the State Department inspector general accused by his own subordinates of scuttling Iraq-related corruption investigations and then retaliating against his accusers for snitching to Henry Waxman. (Allegedly!) Pointing to the hearing's cavalcade of State-related corruption problems -- cost overruns on building the U.S. embassy in Baghdad; lax supervision of a $1.2 billion DynCorp contract to train Iraqi police; that whole Blackwater thing -- Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) asked if perhaps having a more "vigilant" IG might have been helpful.

Rice's answer? Nah, not really.

Krongard, she said, "very much" wants to respond to the committee's "allegations against him," and she all but promised he'll finally testify. But she emphasized that, in several cases -- the DynCorp controversy, for instance -- the State Department had uncovered for itself the extent of corruption-related problems in Iraq and either provided that information to the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, or took action itself. Sometimes, even, Krongard's "very active" office contributes to "how we find things."

Why Rice thinks it's exculpatory that the State Department is aware of billions of dollars worth of corruption problems despite the problems' persistence is, well, a bit unclear. But take that, Waxman! Every now and then, Krongard actually does his job.

Maybe the corruption trial of former state legislator Rep. Vic Kohring (R-AK) is really a call for healthcare reform. Kohring learned the age-old HMO lesson (never, ever go out of network) the hard way and ended up begging Veco executives for cash when faced with collection agency calls.

Kohring says a spinal surgery in 2002 at the Mayo Clinic, which wasn't on his health plan's preferred provider list, set him back thousands of dollars. One credit card still had a $17,000 balance in March 2006. With collection agencies harassing him and his house, worth about $100,000, not selling, he approached Veco executives Bill Allen and Rick Smith with an idea. He would lobby other state lawmakers to support a piece of pipeline legislation in exchange for some cash. He never received the $17,000.

Kohring's lawyer has argued prosecutor's nabbed his small fish client when they should have been pursuing the big fish: Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and former state Senate President Ben Stevens. The lawyer, Wayne Anthony Ross, wrote in a letter to federal prosecutors: "You dun got the wrong man." Father and son Stevens, who are both under investigation for their connection to Veco, have not been officially accused of wrongdoing (yet), but Kohring is charged with accepting $2,600 in cash and lining up a Veco summer internship for his nephew worth $3,000.

Read more »

It took two different questioners -- and a reversal of her initial position -- but Condoleezza Rice finally acknowledged that State should have acted earlier to rein in Blackwater. "I certainly regret that there was not the oversight that there should have been," she said. Was that so difficult?

Condoleezza Rice knows deep down that she wants the State Department to cooperate with the House oversight committee's investigation of Iraqi corruption issues. She just wants to make sure that sources and methods are protected, and that the committee stays discreet, she said during today's hearing.

Unfortunately, obscure bureaucrats like State's Joel Starr have told the committee that it can't publicly discuss things like "Broad statements/assessments which judge or characterize the quality of Iraqi governance or the ability/determination of the Iraqi government to deal with corruption, including allegations that investigations were thwarted/stifled for political reasons."

"I didn't make this directive," Rice said when Rep. Pat Lynch (D-MA) read it to her. "Consider it rescinded." Whether that'll make a difference is unclear: Rice still wants to discuss most aspects of corruption in closed session.

Waxman asked the bottom line question: is corruption cash from the Iraqi government funding attacks on the U.S.? No more retreating behind requests for a closed session or pleas to request sources and methods.

Rice: "There are militias being funded by multiple sources, including people who are able to use the Iraqi system to bring funding to their militias, yes, especially in the south." She said, however, that it would get worse if Iran could fund Shiite militias unimpeded in the wake of a U.S. withdrawal.

How well are the State Department's anti-corruption efforts in Iraq managed? Don't ask Condoleezza Rice.

Rep. John Tierney (D-MA) laid it all out. Not only are there duplicative U.S. offices in Baghdad to oversee anti-corruption efforts -- the Anti-corruption Working Group and the Office of Accountability and Transparency, to name two -- but coordination is so bad that the OAT for months boycotted the meetings of the AWG. Rice said she was "not aware" of that.

Another point she wasn't aware of: OAT has had, according to Rep. Tierney, four acting or permanent directors in the past ten months alone. The most recent one isn't a diplomat or a trained anti-corruption official at all, but rather a "paralegal" who works at the U.S. embassy. "I should get back to you with a sense of how we manage these programs," she replied.

From ABC's The Blotter:

Even as she accepted the resignation of State's security chief Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice quietly promoted two senior staffers who directly oversaw controversial Blackwater security operations, sources tell ABC News....

Current and former officials were outraged.

"It is ironic; on the day the assistant secretary for DSS resigns, the two people with oversight responsibility for the program get promoted," said one current State Department official who asked not to be named....

"They both got promoted in the face of all this mismanagement and controversy -- talk about government B.S.," said another. "What does it say when State promotes the two people into DS' most senior positions, when if they had properly managed the programs under the responsibility, we wouldn't be in this mess?"

So much for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ending State's recent stonewalling of the House oversight committee. Rice is testifying this morning about corruption in Iraq, a subject that the committee has been digging into for months. She's just not saying much:

Is Rice aware of ex-corruption Judge Rahdi Hamza al-Radhi's statement that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued "secret orders" to stop his investigations? "The questions you're asking get into areas where there are concerns about exposure of sources." She said that while "no one is more concerned" about corruption than the State Department, she isn't "personally following every investigation."

Well, asked Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), did Maliki obstruct a corruption investigation of Maliki's cousin, the ex-transportation minister, as Radhi testified? It turns out she "can't comment." While Rice said she would review the case -- even though Waxman personally gave documents on Radhi's charge to one of Rice's subordinates -- "nothing is to be gained by speaking prematurely."

According to transcripts released by the US Court of Appeals, Abdallah Higazy confessed to a crime he did not commit because the FBI threatened his family with torture in Egypt. According to Andrew Sullivan, “the Court tried to keep this part of the judgment classified, yanking it from the official site after mistakenly posting it - but not till the interrogation details were exposed. Higazy's false confession - that he was using a radio transmitter in his hotel room to converse with terrorists in airplanes - was rendered moot by the owner of the transmitter, an airline pilot who had also stayed in the room, subsequently claiming it from the hotel as his own. But that didn't stop the threat of torture. And that didn't stop the conviction.” (Atlantic, “The Daily Dish”)

The U.S. State Department believes in second chances when it deals with problematic private contractors. First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co., the firm attempting to complete the massive U.S. Embassy complex in Baghdad, is part of team that recently won a $122 million State Department contract to build a U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia. Never mind the massive construction defects, allegations of criminal misconduct, forced labor, and cost overruns in the Baghdad project, the Kuwaiti company is run by a Lebanese businessman who is an ally of Syria and the Iranian-backed Islamic militant group Hezbollah. (McClatchy)

Secretary Rice admitted yesterday that the U.S. government was a poor host to a Canadian citizen (Maher Arar) whom it sent to Syria where he was allegedly tortured. Rice clarified the U.S. position in this case of mistaken extraordinary rendition by stating, “we do absolutely not wish to transfer anyone to any place in which they might be tortured.” (New York Times)

The U.S. government has spent $38 million dollars on a computerized accounting system to help the Iraqi government move beyond Saddam Hussein's bookkeeping methods but now the project is on hold because the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad prefers paper. Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, stated that “nobody noticed” when the information system was inoperable for an entire month because nobody uses it to produce reports. (Washington Post, New York Times)

Read more »

If Blackwater seems to have a bunker mentality, there are some ready explanations. First, the company has a lot to answer for. Second, it's got a relentless inquisitor on its heels. And not to be forgotten: in Iraq, at least, its employees (sorry, "independent contractors") actually live in a bunker.

Paul von Zielbauer and James Glanz of The New York Times provide a fascinating glimpse into the maze of stacked trailers that comprise Blackwater's Green-Zone compound. It says a lot that the compound is surrounded by 25-foot high concrete barriers topped with razor wire inside the safest place in Iraq: denizens liken it to a minimum security prison. Outside is the enemy. Not merely insurgents, infuriated Iraqis, and disdainful Iraqi government officials, but frustrated U.S. troops, unreliable diplomats and FBI inquisitors delving into the company's mistakes in last month's Nisour Square shootings.

The bunker mentality, however, may be dissipating. Some Blackwater officials were openly critical of the company's actions to the Times reporters:

“Some guys are thinking that it was not a good shoot, that it was not warranted,” said one Blackwater contractor, using military jargon for an episode that results in a wrongful death. “I don’t think there was criminal intent involved. I just think it was the application of the use of deadly force gone horribly wrong.”

He added, “To mitigate one threat, 17 people had to die?”

Read more »

Blackwater is continuing its aggressive public-relations push. And it needs your help.

Earlier today, the company sent out an e-mail to supporters urging them to contact their Congressional representatives (who are otherwise misinformed by "negative propaganda") and get the word out about Blackwater's value to U.S. national security. The email is posted in full below.

Via ThinkProgress.

Read more »

The private security industry is trying to make sense of the announcement today from Baghdad that the Iraqi government is revoking a CPA-era edict, known as Order 17, immunizing contractors from prosecution in Iraqi courts. Some believe that the State Department will succeed in an anticipated attempt to prevent Americans from appearing before an Iraqi judge, while warning that if a full revocation succeeds, American companies or individual contractors might simply up and leave Iraq rather than potentially face charges in an immature justice system.

Doug Brooks, president of the International Peace Operations Association -- otherwise known as the private-security lobby -- took a cautious approach, saying he wanted to reserve judgment until the State Department and the Pentagon made its views known. But he pointed out that most contractors -- not just security contractors, but contractors involved in reconstruction, as well -- hire Iraqis to do significant amounts of grunt work, which westerners supervise. "If you say anyone not Iraqi is now under Iraqi law -- such as it is -- you'll lose a lot of oversight and management capabilities," Brooks says. That's because he expects his member organizations on the ground in Iraq to either shed their American staff or experience difficulty recruiting Americans to go to Iraq in the future. "It would be enormously risky to stay. Individual contractors would have to take a hard look" at remaining in Iraq.

That's how private-security expert P.W. Singer sees it as well. Two models for Iraq security contracting exist: what Singer calls the ArmorGroup model, where Americans supervise Iraqis and so-called "third country nationals," who are neither Iraqi nor American; and the Blackwater model, where nearly all aspects of the job are filled by Americans. (Blackwater's workforce in Iraq is 80 percent American, according to the company.) "One corporate response could be a shift more and more towards model one," Singer says.

Read more »

You're used to the usual humdrum charges that the Justice Department's voting rights section has been turned to the aim of voter suppression, rather than voter protection. So count this as a new variety of alleged corruption.

As reported by Al Kamen in The Washington Post today, "the acting deputy director of the section, Susana Lorenzo-Giguere, has been accused of collecting a $64 per diem, including on weekends and the Fourth of July, while spending half of June and most of July and August with her husband and kids at their beach house on Cape Cod."

You can read the referenced complaint here, which is addressed to the Justice Department's inspector general. The most sensational accusation, to be sure, is not that Lorenzo-Giguere managed to get paid while staying at her beach house, but that the Department "files lawsuits not because of the merits of the underlying claims but because the venue of the targeted defendant allows Ms. Lorenzo-Giguere to compel taxpayer funding of her annual summer retreat to Cape Cod."

The author of the complaint (redacted in the version TPMmuckraker obtained) notes that certain motions by Lorenzo-Giguere raised arguments "the United States had never raised in similar circumstances in any other litigation." Both lawsuits referenced in the complaint dealt with alleged discrimination against Spanish-speaking voters; the section has pursued a large number of such cases, while virtually abandoning the section's traditional emphasis on protecting African-American voters.

A Department spokesman told Kamen, "The Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating the allegations, and upon conclusion of the investigation the Department will take appropriate action."

Only 38 days after the Nisour Square shootings and a myriad of sub-scandals and related controversy, and someone at the State Department has finally lost his job. ABC News reports that Richard Griffin, the top diplomatic security official at Foggy Bottom, has agreed to resign after Amb. Patrick Kennedy's recommendations on overhauling State's relationship with its security contractors amounted to a tacit rebuke of his tenure.

The AP, reporting on an internal e-mail announcing the resignation, adds:

"He read his letter of resignation at the weekly Diplomatic Security staff meeting," said the e-mail, which was read to The Associated Press by one its recipients. "There was no detailed reason provided and no effective date identified at this time."

When testifying to the House oversight committee earlier this month about contractor operations, Griffin copped an attitude. As Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) pressed him on why the State Department helped Blackwater evacuate a contractor who'd drunkenly killed an Iraqi vice president's bodyguard, Griffin all but told Waxman that he wouldn't answer questions about it:

Here's video from yesterday's House Judiciary Committee hearing on selective prosecutions, where ex-Gov. Don Siegelman's (D-AL) was the marquee case:

As we reported yesterday, Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) made a hard run at Jill Simpson, the Republican lawyer who's testified that Alabama Republicans often chattered about how the Justice Department and local U.S. attorneys would take Siegelman down. Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) rose to her defense, and Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney himself and lawyer for Siegelman, testified that the case took on a new life in 2005 after officials in Washington got involved.

You can see video of former attorney general Dick Thornburgh's testimony here.

Update: This post originally mistakenly identified Davis as a Republican.

The trial of Brent Wilkes is on temporary hiatus due to the wildfires, but we've got your Duke Cunningham fix anyway.

Unfortunately, it seems a sure thing now that Cunningham himself won't testify at the trial. As a kind of substitute, here's (mp3) audio of the phone conversation that ended his Congressional career. It's available through the website for The Wrong Stuff, the book on Cunningham by the Copley News team that broke the story.

In early June of 2005, Copley reporter Marcus Stern came across records for Cunningham's now-infamous way-above-market house sale to defense contractor Mitch Wade (Wade himself sold the house months later for a loss of $700,000). And during that phone call, Stern got the other half of the quid pro quo he was looking for: Cunningham's admission that he'd written letters to help Wade's company MZM score contracts (that's at about the five minute mark). Four days later, Stern's story came out; five months later, Cunningham pleaded guilty.

It's a little bit of journalistic history and a lesson (if you needed one) that just because someone keeps his cool, it doesn't mean he's not lying. Take a listen.

The metaphorical statue of L. Paul Bremer III has come crashing down. Today the Iraqi government formally revoked one of the Coalition Provisional Authority's enduring vestiges -- a decree of immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts for U.S. security contractors.

The Iraqi government announced on Wednesday that it has decided to formally revoke the immunity from prosecution granted to private security companies operating in the war-ravaged country.

"The cabinet held a meeting yesterday and decided to scrap the article pertaining to security companies operating in Iraq that was issued by the CPA (Coalition Provision Authority) in 2004," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement.

"It has decided to present a new law regarding this issue which will be taken in the next cabinet meeting."

Expect a massive controversy to follow. What will the State Department do if Iraqi judges issue arrest warrants for American contractors? Will heavily-armed contractors submit to Iraqi warrants, or will they openly defy the law of an allegedly sovereign country? More to come.