Another interesting morsel from State's 2005 inspector-general audit of Blackwater. Apparently the company billed the State Department for five armored vehicles that the contracting officer said were unnecessary -- and then double-billed State for the cost of the drivers.

As part of its proposed equipment costs, Blackwater included costs equating to [redacted] to purchase five armored vehicles plus operating expenses to be used to transport personnel to and from Baghdad Airport in Iraq. ... We discussed this with the contracting officer, who indicated that the contractor was not required to purchase these vehicles as they are not called for in the statement of work. Our review of the statement of work also did not disclose a requirement for these vehicles. ...

Blackwater also included costs equating to [redacted] operate these vehicles. Our review disclosed that these "drivers" are the protective security specialists deployed in Iraq. The cost for these personnel is already being recovered in the daily rates being proposed. As a result, inclusion of additional costs for drivers in dedicated overhead is, in effect, a duplication of labor costs.

That's bureaucratese for "Dude! They're ripping you off! Are you just going to take that?" And the State Department, like an abused child, just shrugs and hands over its lunch money.

Unfortunately, the 2005 audit does not indicate whether Blackwater threw any D's on its new vehicles.

So State wasn't thrilled about issuing Blackwater a no-bid contract in 2004 to protect its diplomats in Iraq. It turns out, in State's telling, that the audit conducted of the contract in January 2005 helped with one thing, at least: it pushed the cost of the contract down. However, State still re-upped with Blackwater later in 2005.

State Department logistics official William Moser explained in a House oversight committee hearing in October that State requested the audit because it feared Blackwater took advantage of the hectic circumstances under which the contract was issued. (State was rushing to set up its embassy, and so it hired Blackwater on a no-bid basis, since the company was already in Baghdad.) And, sure, it found massive problems. But on the bright side, Moser told an incredulous Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) in that hearing, the audit allowed State to knock off $25 million from the contract!

CUMMINGS: So the audit is done when?

MOSER: The audit was done, actually, in January of 2005. In other words, with the current contract award. And we actually negotiated down the cost of that contract by about $25 million.

The exchange isn't 100 percent clear, despite Cummings' repeated attempts at clarification. But according to Cummings, and confirmed by Moser, the 2004 contract was worth $300 million. (That's confusing to me: not only is the total redacted in the document released to me under FOIA, but a House oversight committee report found that Blackwater's contracts were worth only $48 million in 2004. Maybe it's wrong?) So figure that State saved a cool $25 million. But when? There are only two options: either the State Department renegotiated the 2004 contract, post-audit, and got a refund; or it scaled down Blackwater's subsequent bid -- on a competed contract issued in 2005 -- by $25 million.

Either way, if State got Blackwater to knock off $25 million, then Blackwater still pocketed 90 percent of what it sought from State. And all that came after an audit pointed out serious flaws in how Blackwater billed the government. Clearly it pays to be caught bilking the State Department.

According to an audit performed for the State Department inspector general of Blackwater's 2004 Iraq contract, it paid to be a guard for the private security firm. Page seven of the report -- excuse my handwritten notes in the margins -- shows that Blackwater charged the government for seven days' pay per week, even though the guards only had to work six. That method of accounting "is considered acceptable," the report says, if Blackwater properly accounted for its employees' actual work. And, wouldn't you know it: the company didn't.

The proposed "daily" labor rates are computed to recover the seven days pay over six "billing" days. This method is considered acceptable as long as these individuals only actually work six days and Blackwater bills for the six out of seven days actually worked. Our review of timekeeping procedures (Appendix 1), however, disclosed that, at present, Blackwater only accounts for the number of days these individuals are physically present while deployed at their duty station and not the days actually worked.

Let's look at that Appendix, shall we? It found that the company doesn't believe in such encumbrances as time sheets:

The contractor does not employ the use of individual employee "time sheets" for labor performed in Iraq. Rather, the contractor uses a system whereby a "muster" sheet is prepared by the agent in charge (AIC), (detail leader) simply indicating whether the individuals are physically present at their duty station or in travel or in other status on a daily basis. At the end of every pay period, the muster sheet is transmitted to the assistant program manager at Blackwater in Moyock, NC. ... The assistant program manager indicated that there have been instances where an individual was reported as being in-country at the duty station but was in fact in a travel status or otherwise not physically present at the duty station.

As a result, there is no individual employee certification of actual days worked or the hours actually worked. There is no approval of employees' time other than, as the contractor explained, the muster sheet is e-mailed to Blackwater by the AIC.

Hey Josh, can we switch TPM to that style of bookkeeping?

Just out from the AP:

A federal judge appeared reluctant Friday to investigate the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes while the Justice Department is conducting its own inquiry.

U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy is considering whether to delve into the matter and, if so, how deeply. The Bush administration is urging him to back off while it investigates.

"Why should the court not permit the Department of Justice to do just that?" Kennedy asked at a court hearing.

The hearing marked the first time that administration lawyers spoke in public and under oath about the matter since the CIA disclosed this month it destroyed the tapes of officers using tough interrogation methods while questioning two al-Qaida suspects.

Now here's an interesting development in the CIA tapes case. Yesterday, the James Madison Project -- a good-government, anti-secrecy non-profit -- filed suit in federal court to get the CIA to disclose documents related to the 2005 destruction of the interrogation videotapes. Apparently the JMP recently filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the documents, and the lawsuit is to expedite the processing of that FOIA.

Here's a statement from JMP's executive director:

The public deserves to know the truth underlying the CIA’s questionable conduct in destroying the interrogation videotapes of terrorist suspects, and that those responsible are held accountable for any improper or unlawful activities.

Par for the course from a goo-goo lawyer, right? Well, here's the interesting thing. JMP's executive director is Mark Zaid. Zaid is the attorney for John Kiriakou, who led the 2002 interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, and who also told ABC News that Abu Zubaydah was tortured by his interrogators. Kiriakou is currently under criminal investigation by the Justice Department to determine whether he illegally disclosed classified information in his ABC News interview. So if the CIA ends up executing the FOIA in any expeditious way, it might be handing those documents over to the lawyer for a man it sought to have prosecuted -- though, if they suggest illegality in the actual interrogation, they might prove problematic down the road for Kiriakou.

However, Zaid tells us, the lawsuit has nothing to do with his representation of Kiriakou. He filed the FOIA before Kiriakou retained him, he says.

A report prepared for the State Department's inspector general in January 2005, and obtained by TPMmuckraker, shows Blackwater's accounting system for its no-bid, multimillion dollar Iraq contract was "not considered adequate for accumulating costs on government contracts."

The report is an audit of Blackwater's contract prepared by the accounting firm of Leonard H. Birnbaum. It has been referred to by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (pdf) and in a 2006 story in The Nation, but has not been made publicly available until now. It was obtained by TPMmuckraker after we filed a Freedom of Information Act request in October with the State Department for Blackwater-related documents. You can read the 2005 State Department report in our Documents Collection here.

Much of the document is redacted -- including any description of how Blackwater's accounting system in Iraq operated, as well as any numerical figure for the size of the contract. (In 2004, the year that the report covers, Blackwater held contracts from the federal government totaling $48 million, of which the State Department contract was a portion.) But the unredacted portion of the report finds problems with how Blackwater tallied its labor costs, its overhead-expense costs, and its indirect costs. It also found that Blackwater cited its profit from the contract as a cost it incurred, and billed the government for it -- resulting in what the report called "a pyramiding of profit."

The State Department was under a massive time-crunch in mid-2004 to stand up its new Baghdad embassy as the Coalition Provisional Authority went out of business that June. As a result, State Department logistics official William Moser explained to Congress, State opted to sign a no-bid contract for diplomatic security services with the company already on the ground: Blackwater. "We did not like doing a sole source award for Blackwater," Moser told the House oversight committee in October. No wonder: Blackwater, apparently, took advantage of the opportunity.

Yet despite its own internal watchdog's finding of fraudulence in Blackwater's Iraq contract, months later, the State Department re-signed a deal with the company to provide security for U.S. diplomats.

We'll bring you more from this report throughout the day. And in the coming days, we'll be bringing you more documents on Blackwater that we've acquired through the Freedom of Information Act. I know that's what I wanted for Christmas!

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger intends to sue the federal government for its decision to block California from reducing its greenhouse gas emissions faster than under the president’s emissions-reduction plan. The governor, who no longer drives Hummers, stated that "it's another example of the administration's failure to treat global warming with the seriousness that it actually demands.” Meanwhile, Henry Waxman (D-CA) has called on the Environmental Protection Agency to “preserve and produce all documents relating to” the decision to block California’s efforts to go green. (Reuters)

Blackwater now faces a new suit from the estate of an Iraqi man gunned down by Blackwater guard who opened fire on “innocent bystanders in and around Al Watahba Square in Baghdad on Sept. 9.” The suit on behalf of the victim, who was the father of a newborn daughter, “alleges that heavily armed Blackwater mercenaries, known in company parlance as “shooters,” fired without justification and killed five civilians, including Mr. Albazzaz, who was standing outside his rug store.” (Center For Constitutional Rights)

Rudy Giuliani took the written, photographic and electronic record of his eight years in office — more than 2,000 boxes -- with him when he stepped down as Mayor under an unprecedented agreement that didn't become public until after he left office. The AP reviewed Rudy's years as mayor and discovered a pattern of secrecy, where City Hall withheld requested information from public groups and journalists and the mayor's own whereabouts were deliberately hidden, especially during his extramarital affair. (AP)

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A lot of people want to talk to John Kiriakou. After the leader of the team that interrogated senior al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in 2002 -- one of the detainees whose interrogation was secretly recorded -- went public, a lot of confusion remained. Did Abu Zubaydah really break after 35 seconds of waterboarding, as Kiriakou said? Or, as the FBI's Dan Coleman and others have said, did Abu Zubaydah's interrogation yield the best information through non-coercive techniques? Very few people are sure of the answer. Many want to ask Kiriakou more questions.

Not least of whom: the Justice Department.

Jonathan Landay of McClatchy reports that the CIA has referred Kiriakou's case to the Justice Department. No, the department isn't investigating whether Kiriakou's role in Abu Zubaydah's interrogation was potentially illegal. That would be an admission that the torture apparatus established after 9/11 is illegal, and you know that Michael Mukasey and Mark Filip can't make up their minds about that. Rather, the FBI wants to know if Kiriakou criminally disclosed classified information by speaking to ABC News about the interrogation.

What's more, Kiriakou's former employer, the CIA -- which surely wasn't happy about seeing Kiriakou confirm on TV that his team waterboarded Abu Zubaydah and then call waterboarding torture -- won't confirm that it dimed him out.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment when asked if the agency had sought a criminal probe of Kiriakou. But the spokesman, George Little, added, "Separate and apart from any specific instance, when the agency has reason to believe there has been a possible violation of the law, such as the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, it has an obligation to refer the matter to the Department of Justice."

Quoth Kiriakou's attorney, Mark Zaid -- your go-to lawyer if you're a CIA official in legal jeopardy: "it wouldn't surprise me and I wouldn't find it unusual" if the CIA turned around and got Justice to open a criminal investigation into Kiriakou for the disclosure. None dare call it retaliation.

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In the aftermath of the New Hampshire phone jamming, the Republican National Committee could have gone two ways, Allen Raymond writes in his new book. They chose the scapegoating/stonewalling route.

The question of whether they had any help from the political appointees at the Department of Justice is one House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) wants an answer to. His letter today to Attorney General Michael Mukasey (a follow-up to the one he sent in October) is below.

Since the crime at issue happened more than five years ago, let me refresh you on the details. Our timeline of the scandal is here.

Charles McGee, then the executive director of the New Hampshire GOP, was the one who had the genius idea of jamming Democratic phone lines. He called Jim Tobin, the New England Regional Director of the Republican National Committee, to ask for help implementing it. Tobin then called Raymond, whom he knew from working on the 2000 Steve Forbes campaign and who ran a telemarketing consulting firm, to see if he could do the job. Raymond said he could, and things went on from there.

The jamming scheme came to light in early 2003, but it took until the summer of 2004 before Raymond and McGee pleaded guilty. Tobin himself, who fought the charges tooth and nail with the backing of the RNC (who dropped $3 million on his lawyers), wasn't indicted until the December after the 2004 election.

Democrats have long alleged that the Justice Department slow-rolled the probe. The FBI only assigned one, part-time agent to the case, they say, and prosecutors refused to follow the case to its logical conclusion, such as charging the New Hampshire GOP.

A McClatchy piece yesterday substantiated a number of those complaints, quoting an anonymous official as saying that the probe was delayed in order to avoid the scandal clashing with the 2004 election. Conyers' letter takes that ball and runs with it, demanding answers.

Raymond himself provides some grist for Conyers' mill.

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From Roll Call (sub. req.):

Following hours of intense talks that ended in a standoff, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) decided late Wednesday to move several dozen nominees but still keep the Senate in business over the monthlong holiday break to block President Bush from making any controversial recess appointments while Senators are out of town....

But the two sides didn’t see completely eye to eye, as Bush pushed to include in the deal Steven Bradbury’s nomination to be assistant counsel to the attorney general. Bradbury is unpopular with Democrats for his controversial role in formulating the administration’s position on torture.

“I tried very hard to work with the president but he indicated he would still use the recess ... to appoint objectionable nominees,” Reid said on the Senate floor Wednesday night. “My only solution is to end this and call a pro forma session again.”

For a refresher on who Steve Bradbury is, and why the administration would want him in office so badly, see our earlier rundown here.

Is it the end for Hans von Spakovsky?

From what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said on the Senate floor last night, it appears so. Given the ongoing opposition to Spakovsky by Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Russ Feingold (D-WI), Reid called for a vote on the individual nominees to the Federal Election Commission. But the Republican leadership, as they have from the beginning, insisted on voting on the four nominees, both Democratic and Republican, together, thus protecting Spakovsky from being voted down, but also preventing the confirmation of any of the other nominees.

At the end of the year, von Spakovsky's recess appointment to the commission will expire. Of course, that could lead to other problems, but our favorite vote-suppression guru wouldn't be one of them.

Reid's remarks are below.

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As Josh wrote earlier this week, I've been gobbling up the new tell-all by Allen Raymond, the former GOP consultant of New Hampshire phone jamming fame.

You might wonder why Raymond, a life-time Republican operator, decided to write the book (which is due out in early January). The short answer, as he writes: "when the shit hit the fan, my political party and my former colleagues not only threw me under the bus but then blamed me for getting run over."

Raymond's telemarketing consulting firm engineered the 2002 New Hampshire phone jamming, where Republicans jammed Democratic get-out-the-vote phone banks. But it wasn't his idea (it was the New Hampshire GOP's executive director's), and he was referred to the job by a big-wig from the Republican National Committee (more on this shortly). Yet when the story broke, his former co-conspirators did all they could to pin the thing entirely on him.

So, with nothing left to lose, Raymond walks readers through his rise in the ranks at the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (where he encounters Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), whom he frequently compares to "a sheet of drywall"), and finally on to create his own telemarketing firm, which he started with the help of Haley Barbour, now the governor of Mississippi. He also gives great insight into the murky world of phone tricks.

You might say he holds a grudge. But you can't say he minces words. "Back in 2002," he writes, "just about every Republican operative was so dizzy with power that if you could find two of us who could still tell the difference between politics and crime, you could probably have rubbed us together for fire as well."

Or in case he wasn't clear, he writes about heading to prison for his role in the jamming: "After ten full years inside the GOP, ninety days among honest criminals wasn't really any great ordeal."

So about those phone tricks. The jamming, Raymond says, was a unique stunt. Much more common were false information campaigns via robocalls, push polling, and then sneakier stunts like the one described in the passage below.

To set the scene: Raymond got a call in 2000* from two former colleagues in New Jersey who ran a consulting shop called Jamestown Associates. They were working for Dick Zimmer, who was running against Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), the incumbent, and they were pulling out all the stops. (Ed. Note: This post originally stated that this happened in 2002 -- that was my mistake, not Raymond's.)

They'd already succeeded in getting a Green Party candidate on the ballot to drain liberal votes from Holt (a favorite GOP trick). And they had already put Raymond's firm to work calling Green-oriented households and urging them to support the Green candidate.

But what came next was "even better":

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From The Washington Post:

It's true that in Washington, adversaries often wind up drinking together after hours. But when insiders at the FBI saw that Sen. Ted Stevens had RSVP'd "yes" to last Friday's annual director's holiday bash, the hunters couldn't quite conceive of partying with the prey. FBI agents raided the Alaska Republican's home less than five months ago as part of a sprawling corruption probe.

Every member of Congress is invited to the party, but Stevens was among those who had replied to say he'd be attending. But the embattled senator must have gotten cold feet: He was a no-show at the packed party, where handcuffs and holsters abound.

Take heart, California's Fourth Congressional District. Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) may be under federal investigation for taking bribes from Jack Abramoff, but he's got due process on his side. And he says he's going to litigate his way to at least one more term:

Rep. John Doolittle disclosed Wednesday that his attorney is fighting subpoenas issued to him for office records and that he believes the investigation of him will be on hiatus for one to two years while the constitutionality of the subpoena is fought out in the courts....

In a telephone news conference Wednesday, Doolittle said the legal battle is delaying the federal investigation.

"My attorney tells me that this issue alone – the constitutional issue presented by those subpoenas, which as you know is also being litigated against the Justice Department by the U.S. House of Representatives – is going to take one to two years to resolve," Doolittle said.

He was asked: "Do you see your case stretching one to two years down the road then?"

"Since the subpoenas involve me and my office, that's what I am saying – one to two years on this issue alone," he said.

We've had some fun keeping track of the various muddled descriptions of the advice that White House lawyers gave the CIA about the torture tapes.

But The Washington Post has the clearest description yet of the unclear counsel:

When told that some high-ranking CIA officials were demanding that the tapes be destroyed, the White House lawyers "consistently counseled caution," said one U.S. official familiar with Hayden's testimony. Another source said that Harriet E. Miers followed up with a similar recommendation in 2005, making her the fourth White House lawyer "urging caution" on the action.

But: "other intelligence officials recalled White House officials being more emphatic at the first meeting that the videos should not be destroyed." To be sure, all of-the-above could be true.

Meanwhile, there's this:

[CIA Director Michael] Hayden's message to lawmakers last week was that the White House officials neither advocated destroying the tapes nor counseled against their destruction.

Why so much confusion?

"People are trying to recall stuff that happened four or five years ago," said [one former senior attorney for the CIA]. "They are trying to speak with honesty and candor, but they are also having to get 'lawyered' up themselves -- they have to protect themselves."

To be sure, their lawyers are "urging caution."

Attorney General Michael Mukasey is limiting White House access to information about Department of Justice investigations to only those cases “where it is important for the performance of the president's duties" and crucial "from a law enforcement perspective.” Gonzales’ protocols authorized more than 40 Justice Department officials and 400 White House officials to keep tabs on investigations. During the Clinton administration, only seven White House and Justice officials were permitted to receive such information. (McClatchy)

The Justice Department refused to send any representation to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security hearing yesterday on the brutal gang rape of KBR/Halliburton employee, Jamie Leigh Jones, in the Green Zone more than two years ago. Representative Ted Poe (R-TX) (Jones’ Representative who received a call from the victim’s father when she was still locked inside of a shipping container) told the committee, “what Jamie will tell you paints a picture of lawlessness – where criminals go unpunished and victims are vilified. For American civilian contractors, Iraq is reminiscent of the Old Western days and no one seems to be in charge.” (ABC’s “The Blotter,” The Gavel)

The chief of the State Department’s embassy-building program (Charles Williams) will be retiring before the completion of the $730 million embassy in Baghdad. This is not his first disgraceful and early departure. Williams “resigned from two other high-profile jobs -- head of the $4 billion New York City School Construction Authority and then chief operating officer of the D.C. public schools. In New York, an “audit found that he had given misleading information on the progress of projects he was overseeing” and in D.C. “an audit said he authorized shoddy contracting procedures and left the school system vulnerable to waste and fraud.” (Washington Post)

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We all can get along. At least for the time being.

After the House intelligence committee threatened to issue subpoenas yesterday, the Justice Department backed down. Now the CIA will begin forking over documents relating to the destruction of the torture tapes, and the committee will hear from their second witness, the CIA's general counsel John Rizzo.

The DoJ seemed keen to paint Congress' reaction to their letter last Friday as an overreaction. Spokesman Brian Roehrkasse told the New York Times that "the department has 'no desire to block any Congressional investigation' and has not advised the C.I.A. against cooperating with the committee." And the AP relays that Department officials "denied they had changed their stance on the investigation."

And indeed, if you look at their letter to the committee from last Friday, where they "respectfully request" that the committee sit on their thumbs until the DoJ probes into the tapes' destruction wraps up, they have a point. They were just askin'. But somehow the graciousness and subtlety of the letter was lost on the House intelligence committee, who pronounced themselves "stunned" that the Department would move to block their investigation and said that, indeed, they'd been "notified that the Department of Justice has advised CIA not cooperate with our investigation."

Really, if the DoJ was just asking, it should have been pretty clear off the bat that the answer was "no." But apparently the threat of subpoenas was needed to drive the point home.

Now, while The Washington Post, straightforwardly calls this a reversal on the Department's part, the Times hedges, calling it a "partial resolution." Take, for instance, Roehrkasse (take him, please!):

“The wisdom, propriety and appropriateness of the decision to destroy these tapes are worthy and compelling subjects of an oversight investigation,” Mr. Roehrkasse said. But he said officials were still concerned that a Congressional inquiry could cause “disruption of our initial witness interviews, the delay and disruption of our document collection, and the tainting of any future criminal prosecutorial action because of Congressional grants of immunity to witnesses.”

Accordingly, things will get interesting when it comes to Jose Rodriguez, the CIA official who ordered the tapes' destruction. The committee wants to talk to him in January, along with Rizzo. But, with Rodriguez's lawyer crying about witchhunts and scapegoats, that's going to be hairy:

Officials said Mr. Rodriguez’s appearance before the committee might involve complex negotiations over legal immunity at a time when the Justice Department and the intelligence agency were reviewing whether the destruction of the tapes broke any laws.

So enjoy the inter-branch comity while it lasts.

From Charlie Savage at The Boston Globe:

The Bush administration is dropping a plan to take control over the promotions of military lawyers, following an outpouring of alarm over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly objected to the White House's policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism.

Under the proposal, first reported by the Globe on Saturday, politically appointed lawyers in the Pentagon would have gained the power to veto the appointment or promotion of any member of the Judge Advocate General's Corps, the military's 4,000-member uniformed legal officers group.

Update: The bad link has been fixed.

Jeez. Not only is Hans von Spakovsky's FEC nomination bound up in the Senate, but one of his pet causes, having states reject voter applications if the data does not match driver's license or Social Security records, has hit a snag in Florida.

Civil rights groups argued that the policy amounted to "disenfranchisement-by-bureaucracy." Now a federal judge has agreed:

U.S. District Judge Stephan Mickle on Tuesday sided with the NAACP's request for a preliminary injunction suspending Florida's 2-year-old "voter match" law while courts decide whether it violates federal laws protecting the right to vote....

Lawyers for Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning contended the matching process is required to prevent voter fraud....

But in his order Tuesday, Mickle wrote that Florida's match law "stands as an obstacle" to the objectives of the federal Help America Vote Act, by making it harder to vote.

"Though it is true that prevention of voter fraud and prevention of voter disenfranchisement were both goals of HAVA, the impetus for the Act was to respond to the millions of votes that went uncounted -- not the millions of incidents of voter registration fraud," Mickle wrote.

The House intelligence committee looks ready to follow through on its threat:

In a direct challenge to President Bush, a House panel said Wednesday it has prepared subpoenas to force CIA officials to testify about the agency's secret destruction of interrogation videotapes.

The Justice Department had blocked the officials from appearing at a closed hearing before the panel this week, citing the department's ongoing investigation into the destruction of videotapes of the harsh interrogation of two al-Qaida suspects in 2002. The CIA destroyed the tapes in 2005.

The House Intelligence Committee's threat marked the second challenge to a White House attempt to shut down independent investigations into the matter, and escalates a fight over which branch of government properly has jurisdiction.

It seems they haven't issued the subpoenas yet. This is more of a last chance threat for the DoJ to back down. Ball's in your court, Mr. Mukasey.

Today, Mark Filip, the administration's nominee to be Michael Mukasey's deputy, had his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. And much like his future boss did during his hearing, Filip (like Mukasey, a former federal judge) treaded lightly, seeming deferential while also proving elusive on certain key questions. Here's video:

When Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA ) asked whether waterboarding is torture, he punted, parroting Mukasey's answer exactly. Like Mukasey, Filip called the practice "repugnant." But stopped short, explaining that since Mukasey is conducting a review, he couldn't "get out in front of him on that question." He added: "if I am confirmed... I would view it like any other legal question and take a long hard look at it, and if I had a view other than his, I would tell him so."

Kennedy responded that after what Mukasey went through at his hearing, "We thought you'd be able to give a response."

When Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) pushed Filip on the Justice Department's recent stance that Congress had to sit on its thumbs until the Department finished its probe of the CIA's destruction of its torture tapes, he got pretty much the same result. To Specter, the issue is clear (see video below) that Congress has "pre-eminence over the Department of Justice on these investigations."

Specter asked if Filip agreed. He dodged: "I would hope, Senator, that I don't have to pick between the two." Some sort of agreement could be worked out with Congress, he said. When Specter tried again, all he got was "I would work very hard to find common ground."

The situation right now, to refresh your memory, is devoid of common ground. The Department has asked the CIA to refuse all Congressional requests until its probe wraps up.

But Specter said that he remains optimistic. He spoke with Mukasey the day before, he said, and hoped that conversation was just "the beginning" of more discussions.

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Victory! Or not quite. The White House's public freak-out over the New York Times has won them... a correction to the Times' sub-headline:

Catherine Mathis, senior vice president of corporate communications for the newspaper, stated that the sub-headline has been changed, adding that a correction would be printed. However, Mathis also pointed out that the White House did not challenge the contents of the article.

A TPM Reader runs through how the Times might phrase that correction:

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Maybe Harry Reid knows how to play this game after all.

Last week, the Senate Democratic leader confused the political world by deciding to put two different versions of a Senate surveillance overhaul up for a floor vote, with the base text being the version despised by civil libertarians. The Solomonic decision pleased no one, and Reid ended up yanking the bill until next month after liberal opposition -- most notably, a filibuster by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) -- jeopardized passage of anything.

Reid, however, has to keep his eyes on two calendars. The first calendar has February 1 circled on it. That's the date the Bush administration's broad surveillance measure, known as the Protect America Act, expires. Failure to pass a new bill by that date opens Democrats to the inevitable GOP charge that they're BFF with Osama bin Laden. The second calendar is the primary schedule. As Dodd has demonstrated, placing the surveillance debate in the context of the presidential race makes passing a bill more difficult, as candidates jockey to appease liberal constituencies that passionately oppose the legalization of President Bush's warrantless surveillance program.

So what's left for Reid to do? Punt. Quoth The Hill:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday he would seek to extend a controversial interim wiretapping law through February to avoid the early presidential primary season.

Reid said Senate Democrats might have a better chance of resolving internal disputes and moving a rewrite of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) once the early primaries have concluded.

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TPMm Reader AF doesn't think much of the White House's response to this morning's New York Times story:

The White House pushback is focused exclusively on 1) the President, 2) Dana Perino and 3) Tony Fratto. However, "administration officials" and "senior administration officials" have certainly commented on the story. To wit:

From CNN, 12/8/07:

"Later Friday, two senior administration officials told CNN that then-deputy White House counsel Harriet Miers was aware of the tapes and told the CIA not to destroy them."

From the Washington Post, 12/11/07:

" Administration officials have said that Justice Department and White House lawyers, including longtime Bush aide Harriet E. Miers, had recommended against destroying the tapes."

Seems to me that the White House wants to have it both ways. They officially decline to comment while on background administration officials offer exculpatory details. This is reminiscent of their position on the Plame scandal. At the outset there were blanket denials of responsibility followed up by repeated "no comments." It also highlights this administration's penchant for selective leaking.

As is now world-famous, last week, guards for Blackwater shot down Hentish, a dog living at The New York Times's Baghdad compound. With the single pull of a trigger, the already P.R.-troubled security company forced the American people to choose whether they love dogs more than they hate reporters.

But don't send Blackwater to the pound just yet. According to Eason Jordan, former CNN exec and current potentate of IraqSlogger, the Times bureau is home to many a snarling canine. One even took a bite out of Jordan himself:

It was a stunning, painful sneak attack that landed me in the emergency room of the U.S. Army's hospital in Baghdad's Green Zone.

The attacker: Scratch, one of The New York Times' Baghdad bureau dogs, whose vicious bite opened three deep gashes in my right hand, sending blood spewing in all directions.

I'm a proud dog owner, and if Blackwater or anyone else messes with Kingsley, I'm violating D.C.'s handgun ban. But it's hard not to sympathize with what Jordan writes:

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Back in August, we pointed out that Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse, unlike virtually the entire senior leadership at the Department, survived the U.S. attorney scandal. In fact, he more than survived it: Despite serving as Alberto Gonzales' attack dog (and giving statements that ranged from misleading to lies), he emerged with a promotion to director of public affairs at the DoJ.

It's all too much for former U.S. Attorney for Little Rock Bud Cummins, who often found himself on the wrong end of Roehrkasse's spin, to bear. So in this issue of the Washington Monthly, he takes aim, calling on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to fire Roehrkasse.

After noting some of hiss biggest whoppers, he observes that the "pattern of deception employed by this young man is deeply unsettling to me....

Now, I don't have any way of knowing how Brian Roehrkasse came to make so many dubious or misleading statements. I've never met the man or communicated with him directly. For all I know, his superiors were writing them, and he was simply reading them. But once you realize you are being repeatedly marched out to say untrue things, integrity dictates that you push back or resign before you do it again. Fool me twice, shame on you. Fool me over a dozen times, I'm a willing liar."

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It's not every day you see the White House spokesperson going out of her way to respond to a news piece, but they really didn't like this morning's piece in the New York Times on the involvement of administration lawyers in discussions on the CIA tapes. In particular they objected to this line:

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged. (my emphasis)

Dana Perino says administration officials haven't "publicly commented on facts relating to this issue" -- so if they haven't acknowledged anything, how could the Times account be different?

Of course, given the amount of reporting that's been done on this story based on anonymous sources, it seems likely that the Times was referring to background discussions with administration officials, not their public comments. And we agree with the White House that the Times' story is "pernicious and troubling" -- but it seems like that's better applied to the CIA tapes fiasco overall rather than the Times' reporting.

Full statement below.

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Lawrence Ray, a former “most trusted lieutenant” of Bernie Kerik’s and an acquaintance of Rudolph Giuliani’s, is making life difficult for Bernie and Rudolph. Ray, now a convicted felon serving prison time, has turned over to federal authorities “half a dozen boxes of e-mails, memos, faxes, financial statements, photographs and other materials about Kerik's alleged wrongdoing.” Last spring, Ray’s friend Sidney Baumgarten, a New York lawyer, told Giuliani’s former deputy mayor that Ray would not release “damaging” information about Giuliani if he provided help with Ray’s legal troubles. (Washington Post)

Private security firm Blackwater is buying a fleet of aircraft and ground vehicles, including its own airship, hoping to expand into U.N.-style peacekeeping and humanitarian aid. The company says it wants to win contracts to secure failed states before the U.N. arrives, and perhaps repair its severely damaged reputation. (Wired)

The Bush administration's nominee to be assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs today gave the Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki an "F" for failing to meet key legislative benchmarks. The nominee, Mary Beth Long, said the Iraqi government has not yet succeeded in passing de-Baathification legislation or approving hydrocarbon laws including an oil revenue sharing agreement, among other legislative goals. (The National Journal)

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The gang's all here!

Really, can you have a botched cover-up without Alberto Gonzales involved? And how can there be a torture scandal without David Addington's great big mug?

The New York Times reports today that Gonzales and Addington were among the White House lawyers (Harriet Miers was also among them) who advised the CIA on what to do with the torture tapes. What's not entirely clear, however, is what they advised to the CIA to do.

The story up until now had been at least somewhat simple. White House and Justice Department lawyers had been unanimous in their advice: do not destroy the tapes. But those in the camp of Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA operations chief who gave the order to destroy the tapes, have said that the White House's advice wasn't unequivocal ("They never told us 'Hell, no'"). For lack of any clear directives or advice from on high, Rodriguez had them destroyed.

But now the story gets murkier:

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Some other officials assert that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes. Those officials acknowledged, however, that no White House lawyer gave a direct order to preserve the tapes or advised that destroying them would be illegal.

The Times can't hope to sort all this out, only reporting that there are "conflicting accounts." Thankfully, Newsweek has reported that there is "an extensive paper—or e-mail—trail" of all this back and forth. So at least investigators have that going for them (of course, it depends on who's investigating).

And to add to the murk, ass-saving, and back-biting, the Times reports that the CIA lawyers who gave Rodriguez the legal green light didn't really mean it to be the green light. After he was given written advice by two lawyers, Steven Hermes and Robert Eatinger, that "he had the authority to destroy the tapes and that the destruction would violate no laws," he went ahead. But:

Current and former officials said the two lawyers informed the C.I.A.’s top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, about the legal advice they had provided. But officials said Mr. Rodriguez did not inform either Mr. Rizzo or Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director, before he sent the cable to destroy the tapes.

“There was an expectation on the part of those providing legal guidance that additional bases would be touched,” said one government official with knowledge of the matter. “That didn’t happen.”

Robert S. Bennett, a lawyer for Mr. Rodriguez, insisted that his client had done nothing wrong and suggested that Mr. Rodriguez had been authorized to order the destruction of the tapes. “He had a green light to destroy them,” Mr. Bennett said.

So to sum up: after three years of apparently contradictory and equivocal advice from both the CIA and top levels of the government, Rodriguez finally destroyed the tapes after receiving legal advice that he could. But the lawyers who told him that say he should have touched "additional bases" before he did. And none of this explains why the CIA and the administration kept the tapes secret for three years, possibly criminally obstructing multiple investigations.

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson is a man who values loyalty.

Back in 2006, he aired his philosophy for awarding HUD contracts:

"Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

Of course, things have unraveled for Jackson since then. A Congressional investigation and inspector general probe launched in the wake of his comments. And now a federal grand jury is investigating whether he lied to investigators when he told them that he doesn't "touch contracts."

Evidence is mounting that Jackson did indeed touch contracts -- in particular, contracts for his friends and, the National Journal reports today, companies that owe him large sums of money.

And here's where loyalty comes back into play. Late last month, a senior HUD official abruptly resigned from his post, effective January 4th. The official, Orlando Cabrera, gave no other explanation than that he was leaving to "spend time with my wife and kids."

Today's Journal gives a good idea of why he might have left:

Orlando Cabrera, the outgoing assistant secretary for public and Indian housing, was among those questioned. When contacted by National Journal, Cabrera acknowledged that investigators had interviewed him. "I have been questioned as a witness," he said, "and I have been told that I am not a target of the investigation." Cabrera and Jackson are not on speaking terms. HUD insiders say that the secretary was angry with Cabrera for speaking to investigators and considers him "a snitch."

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We may finally get some answers about how Rep. Don Young (R-AK) managed to change the text of a bill after it was passed by Congress in order to benefit a major campaign contributor.

In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) today, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) called for the creation of a select committee comprised of both representatives and senators to investigate the miraculous change to the 2005 transportation bill.

To review the circumstances of Young's extra-Constitutional wizardry: Young, then the chairman of the House transportation committee, inserted a $10 million earmark to widen I-75 in Florida's Collier and Lee Counties in the 2005 bill. The project was supported by local officials. That was the version passed by Congress. But because of Young's unique position, he was able to make a crucial change: the bill later signed by the President had different language, directing the $10 million to an I-75 interchange at Coconut Road. That project had been opposed by local officials, but aggressively backed by real estate mogul Daniel Aronoff, who'd thrown a $40,000 fundraiser for Young that year.

This August, we plowed into the 800-page 2005 bill to see whether there had been any other substantial changes. We found that out of approximately 6,370 earmarks, Young's had been the only to undergo such a change. It's unclear how Young managed that feat, and he's refused to answer reporter's questions about it.

Back in September, the non-partisan watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense filed a complaint with the House ethics committtee about the change. But as expected, the infamously inert committee has done nothing.

Currently pending on the floor of the Senate is a bill that offers a number of corrections to the 2005 bill; among them is a measure that would undo Young's change, freeing up the $10 million for the original interchange project which local officials wanted. It's unclear who authored that provision.

But today, Sen. Coburn (R-OK) said that he'd object to the passage of any bill that corrects the Cocount Road language without a "full and open investigation":

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If you thought Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) was going to let the berries in his state go unresearched and the vistas of alternative uses for salmon unexplored just because he's under federal investigation for past earmarks (among other things), then you thought wrong. Roll Call (sub. req.) reports that Stevens pulled down $88 million in earmarks in this year's omnibus spending bill. Among them:

According to a preliminary review of the bill, Stevens is listed as inserting 17 earmarks into the bill, worth more than $25 million. The earmarks would cover a variety of projects, including $824,000 for alternative salmon products, $975,000 for berry research, $332,000 for “new crop opportunities,” $133,000 for native plant commercialization, $700,000 for the Mountain View revitalization project in Anchorage and $7.5 million for the Denali Commission to undertake transportation infrastructure projects in the state.

Unfortunately, there appears to be no earmark this year to create another Salmon-30-Salmon (see above).

Maybe his last letter got lost in the mail?

In a bit of epistolary throat-clearing, House oversight committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote Attorney General Michael Mukasey today to reiterate his request two weeks ago. The White House has arbitrarily blocked former Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald from turning over records of his interviews during the Valerie Plame leak investigation of White House officials, including the President, Waxman wrote then, but it's your call, Mikey, not theirs, on whether to fork it over. Apparently Waxman got no response.

Waxman adds helpfully in his letter today (which you can read below) that since Scooter Libby has dropped his appeal, "there remains no further pending litigation associated with the Fitzgerald investigation."

He concludes: "I urge you to cooperate with Congress’ investigation into these unanswered questions."

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