South Carolina already had the reputation as a key forum for dirty campaign tricks before 2000. It was, after all, the home of Lee Atwater. But 2000, with its variety of smears distributed by push polls, faxes, fliers, and emails, cemented it.

But you got South Carolina all wrong, Tucker Eskew, George W. Bush's campaign spokesman in 2000, wants you to know. In this interview shot for the forthcoming documentary on Atwater, Boogie Man, Eskew, an Atwater protege, objects to the idea that racist smears work there:

It's "an insult" and "unfair to suggest that a state like South Carolina is a bunch of rubes because of our past," he says. So why would the Bush campaign have gotten involved in something like that? The McCain illegitimate black baby smear was "just some crazy rumor that some one person may have spread." And as for the impact, maybe "a few hundred people" may have been affected -- a "few rubes." Certainly not the payoff that a campaign genius like Karl Rove (another Atwater protege) would waste time with.

From the necessarily spotty reporting on what really happened in 2000, however, it's apparent that the rubes were out in force that year, distributing fliers about McCain's "Negro child" and running phone banks to push that and other rumors. So far, this election seems very tame by comparison.

On the one hand, Mike Huckabee really is in a bind.

Common Sense Issues is calling millions of voters and telling them that John McCain wants to allow experiments on unborn babies and that Fred Thompson supports partial-birth abortion. He can't do anything to stop it. And in a deft bit of spin, he says the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law is at fault -- so it's John McCain's fault that Huckabee can't stop the group from smearing McCain.

He's criticized the calls, said he "wished they would stop," and now has gone so far as to tell NPR, "I personally wish all of this were outlawed." (He didn't mention that the calls actually are illegal under state law in South Carolina.)

On the other hand, from what the group has disclosed, it's apparent that most, if not all, of its major donors also support Huckabee.

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"You can take me out of the system, but that's like taking a bucket of water out of the ocean." Here's Allen Raymond, the New Hampshire phone jammer, talking about How to Rig An Election with Jon Stewart last night:

For those who missed it, here's my vote for the most memorable excerpt from the book.

Raymond has also been blogging over at TPMCafe this week.

From The Washington Post:

Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) testified yesterday that an FBI agent cursed at him and told him that "this is going to be the worst day of your life," just before agents searched his Louisiana home as part of the investigation that led to corruption charges against him.

At one point during the tense interview at his house in August 2005, Jefferson said, an FBI agent followed him to the bathroom. "I told him, 'Are you going to the bathroom with me?' " Jefferson said in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. "He said, 'Yes.' "

Minutes later, another agent informed Jefferson that $100,000 he had accepted from a government informant -- allegedly used to bribe the vice president of Nigeria -- had been supplied by the FBI. Leaning forward, the agent yelled, "Where is my [expletive] money?" Jefferson testified.

(The Hill helpfully fills in the expletive.) Jefferson didn't reply, "in the freezer." Instead, he says, he refused to answer any more questions at that point.

The Secret Service is in court responding to a lawsuit from Steven Howards, a man accused of assaulting Dick Cheney in June 2006. Howards' suit against five agents alleges that they violated his freedom of speech and civil rights after he touched Cheney on the shoulder and denounced the Iraq war. Meanwhile, the agents have accused one another of unethical and illegal conduct in their handling of Howards’ arrest. (New York Times)

Immediately before and after Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) bought 145,000 trailers through no-bid contracts. Later, when the trailers became problematic, FEMA sold the trailers for 40 cents on the dollar. Now, FEMA has offered to buy them back at the original purchase price because the trailers may be a health risk as a result of high levels of formaldehyde. Meanwhile, a UN official who recently toured the Gulf coast says that many of the poor displaced by Katrina resemble poor people every where else in the world who have been displaced by natural disasters. (Washington Post, AP)

Just yesterday, Bhutto’s Pakistan’s People Party called for the United Nations to conduct an inquiry into Bhutto’s assassination. Today, the CIA, in its most “definitive public assessment” to date, asserts that Bhutto was murdered by al Qaeda and allies of the tribal leader Baitullah Mehsud. (Financial Times)

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Sometimes it's just too easy.

For months, the White House has battling the D.C. watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington in court. The accusation is pretty straightforward: for more than a year between 2003 and 2005, the White House failed to archive emails, and the group had learned that as many as five million emails were lost as a result. The White House is required by law to retain them. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino responded that there had been a tech glitch: you know, we were transferring from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook and... oops:

Again, I wouldn't rule out that there were a potential 5 million emails lost, but we'll see if we can get to you. If it was 5 million, I think that, again, out of 1,700 people using email every day, again, there was no intent to have lost them.

As the months have worn on, the White House has mounted a much more belligerent response in court. But the decisions -- and the headlines -- have repeatedly gone against them to the point now where it's apparent that not only did they lose the emails, but they copied over the backup tapes as well.

Nevertheless, White House spokesman Tony Fratto sees no reason for contrition. He's a flack in the proud Bush tradition of Ari Fleischer and Tony Snow, and if there's a single tenet to that order, it's that you do not have to admit anything that is the result of deduction. Sure, common sense dictates that if emails have not been archived, and the backup tapes that would have recorded them have been recycled, then those emails are gone forever. But show me the missing emails, Fratto says:

Q Tony, on the subject, could you address the missing White House emails and the law suit? It is a subject of reports this morning. Are there in fact the emails missing? What's the likelihood of their recovery versus the --

MR. FRATTO: I think our review of this, and you saw the court filing on this, and our declaration in response to the judge's questions -- I think to the best of what all the analysis we've been able to do, we have absolutely no reason to believe that any emails are missing; there's no evidence of that....

Q So where are they?

MR. FRATTO: Where are what?

Q Where are part of --

MR. FRATTO: Which email? Look, no one will tell you categorically about any system -- any system, whether it's your system at Bloomberg or our system here at the White House, past and present, categorically that data cannot be missing.... We have no reason to believe that there's any data missing at all -- and we've certainly found no evidence of any data missing.

Of course, now House sleuth Henry Waxman is getting into the act and plans to hold a hearing . So things are going to get worse for the White House before they get better. But nobody can deny their tenacity.

Anticipating the 2008 election, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) has introduced a bill to ban "vote caging," the term for a time-tested GOP vote suppression technique.

To "cage" voters, operatives send out a mass mailing with "do not forward" labels. Those names attached to addresses that bounce back are put on a challenge list, which is then used to challenge those voters when they come to the polls. GOPers in states all over the country have used the technique for decades, especially targeting mostly African-American areas. Timothy Griffin, the former aide to Karl Rove who replaced one of the fired prosecutors in Arkansas, was forced to defend his role in an alleged 2004 caging scheme when he worked for the Republican National Committee.

A number of powerful senators are backing a similar bill in the Senate, including Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL), Hillary Clinton (D-NY), and Patrick Leahy (D-VT).

You can read the text of Conyers' bill here. A bullet point summary provided by his office is below.

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There are good days in court, and there are bad days in court. From The New York Times:

A federal judge said Thursday that he was “disappointed” about how investigators from the Central Intelligence Agency handled videotapes documenting the harsh interrogation of Al Qaeda detainees, and that he was considering questioning agency officials who watched the tapes about why they made no record of them in their files.

The judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court in Manhattan, said from the bench that he was stunned that the C.I.A. investigators had not kept records about the tapes, which were destroyed in 2005, even though the tapes were an important part of an internal C.I.A. review into interrogation methods.

“I’m asked to believe that actual motion pictures, videotapes, of the relationship between interrogators and prisoners were of so little value” that was no record of them was kept in C.I.A. investigative files, Judge Hellerstein said during a hearing over a freedom of information request involving the tapes.

“I just can’t accept it. If it came up in an ordinary case, it would not be credible,” the judge said, adding, “It boggles the mind.”

Actually things could have gone worse. The judge denied the ACLU's request to hold the CIA in contempt. But apparently he's not content to let the matter drop.

Yesterday, we quoted South Carolina's attorney general Henry McMaster as saying that since the Common Sense Issues robo calls seem to be against the law, they "should get some legal advice."

When I asked the group's executive director about this, he referred me to a two-page memo by the push polling firm they're paying to do the calls, ccAdvertising. You can read it here.

The bottom line is this: the group says that the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection
Act, which governs robo calls, had an explicit exemption for non-commercial calls. So far so good. But the law also allowed states to make laws that would close that loophole and forbid robo calls of all kinds, including political calls. Even so, the memo says, "states are responsible for defending their restrictions under the First Amendment." Their stance is that " the [law] and the First Amendment permit ccAdvertising to place prerecorded calls for a political purpose, without regard to state laws that purport to prohibit such calls." In other words: you're going to have to sue to stop us.

As I've pointed out, two states have sued the company -- and both won. The company doesn't seem to have suffered much, though. Maybe a $1 billion "hurting" would change that.

Not only did operations chief Jose Rodriguez order the CIA's torture tapes destroyed without authority from top CIA officials, but he then kept it quiet from Congress. That, at least, is the story that CIA's acting general counsel John Rizzo told the House intelligence committee yesterday, according to the AP.

Most of Rizzo's account doesn't really contradict what we know from prior media reports. From 2003 through 2005, White House and Justice Department lawyers (with a couple key exceptions) and top CIA officials all advised that the tapes should not be destroyed. But nobody gave an order to that effect. So when the issue arose again in November, 2005 after The Washington Post broke the CIA black sites story, Rodriguez asked again. Two CIA lawyers found that the agency had no obligation to preserve them.

But Rizzo, who's been acting general counsel since 2004, says that even after that, he advised against destroying them. And he told the committee that then-CIA Director Porter Goss "also recommended" the same. Rodriguez went ahead and ordered the tapes destroyed anyway.

Here's how "a congressional official," who's seen the some 300 pages of documentation that the CIA has so far turned over, described it to the AP:

"If you look at the documents, you get very close to a direct order (not to destroy the tapes) without it being, 'Jose, you're not going to do this,'" the official said....

The...official said the committee will try to determine whether any CIA officials suggested "with a wink and a nod" that the tapes should be destroyed, and whether Rodriguez was being forced to take the blame.

And remember that The Washington Post reported yesterday that "Rodriguez was neither penalized nor reprimanded, publicly or privately" after he ordered the tapes destroyed. Update: Now Rodriguez's lawyer is reiterating this -- and saying that Goss never objected before he ordered the tapes, either.

That's not all that Rizzo pinned on Rodriguez.

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This is certainly the nastiest line we've heard in the push polls going out to about a million South Carolinians. Respondents who say that they're supporting John McCain are told "Fact: McCain voted to allow scientific experiments to be done on unborn children." (Thanks to TPM Reader NC for flagging this for us.)

Patrick Davis, the executive director of Common Sense Issues, the group that's been paying for the automated calls, confirmed to me that such a line is used in the script: "He's in favor of stem cell research. That's the issue."

The medical experiments on unborn babies line is actually an old favorite of the group -- they used it in 2006 against now Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), when he was running against GOPer Michael Steele.

Update: The New York Times reports on another line in the calls:

The call first asked whom the listener was supporting in the primary. If the listener said Mr. McCain, the automated voice said that not only did Mr. McCain support research on “unborn babies,” but that in writing the McCain-Feingold bill tightening rules on campaign donations, Mr. McCain had created “the most restrictive assault on free speech ever passed in America.”

The call referred to the bill as the “McCain-Feingold-Thompson law,” evidently because Mr. Thompson had also backed it.

In the middle of an FBI interview in August 2005 when his New Orleans home was raided, representative William Jefferson (D-LA) dialed the House general counsel’s office. Jefferson also received calls on his cellular phone, including one from someone who is now identified as "Lobbyist A" in the federal indictment against Jefferson. Recent FBI testimony about these calls – intended to show that Jefferson was not subjected to coercive interrogation – did not clarify whether the calls came before or after the FBI found $90,000 in Jefferson’s freezer. (The Hill)

Oregon pollster Bob Moore, whose company Moore Information has been linked to complaints about push polls relating to presidential candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain - agreed yesterday to appear in a New Hampshire court - but only to fight a subpoena, not comply with one. Moore said in a statement that his company "has never, currently does not nor will ever engage in push polling" and his attorney calls the investigation "baseless." (AP)

When former representative Mark D. Siljander (R-MI) was first elected to Congress he believed that he won because "God wanted me in” and he frequently sported a "Jesus First" button. Now Siljander has become the first former member of Congress to be indicted for conspiring with an Islamic terrorist group. The government alleges that Siljander received $50,000 from an Islamic organization to lobby Congress to keep that organization off the list of terrorist organizations and that money was stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development and that Siljander lied to federal agents about his involvement. (Washington Post)

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"McCain camp goes on offense in S.C." headlines the Los Angeles Times. "McCain Takes the Fight To Negative Opponents" echoes the Washington Post.

The campaign is doing its best to show that it won't let 2000 happen again, when still unknown dirty tricksters called South Carolina voters to ask them whether they knew that McCain had illegitimately fathered a black baby. But so far, the campaign's response to the attacks has been far more notable than the attacks themselves.

As we've been amply documenting here, McCain has indeed been the target of push polls this time around, but so have his opponents Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson -- with the notable exception of Mike Huckabee. The calls, numbering around seven million so far in various primary states, are the work of the Huck-supporting group Common Sense Issues, and the attacks are pretty standard GOP negative fare so far.

And then there's Vietnam Veterans against John McCain. Recently, the group sent a mailer to approximately 80 newspaper editors in South Carolina accusing McCain of selling out his fellow POWs in Vietnam. On Tuesday, the McCain campaign (which is working hard to appeal to vet voters) made one of McCain's former fellow POWs available to the media to respond to the smear. The story, picked up by the AP and Wall Street Journal among others, got national play -- undoubtedly more play than the group would have been able to get on its own.

I spoke to the founder of Vietnam Veterans against John McCain, Jerry Kiley, yesterday. He told me that the group hasn't "actively sought donations at this point," and that the next step for the group will be mailings "going out to our network," with the intention that the mailing would then be forwarded on to local media there. The group just doesn't have the funds to send mailings directly to voters -- nor, as they declared they would in their statement of purpose, to run radio and TV ads. Things "could change," he told me, "if we received a sizable donation," but he wasn't holding out much hope.

Instead, they're planning "an email campaign." Groups of like-minded vets throughout the country will get the email chain started, he said, "so it will spread very quickly throughout the country."

So they're not exactly the second coming of the well-funded Swift Boat Vets (one of whom said he was "appalled" by their attack on McCain). They don't have $22 million to spend. But they are certainly admirers -- even making an homage in their South Carolina mailing. As we pointed out yesterday, the mailing had a label with the Swift Boat Vets' icon on it. But we couldn't figure out if it said Swift Boat Vets for Truth or Swift Boot Vets for Truth:

The winner, Kiley, told me, is Swift Boot Vets. "We actually named ourselves the Swift Boot Vets because we want to boot McCain out of the primary."

Update: Here's video of McCain responding to the mailers on Fox News:

A number of TPM readers have written in with descriptions of the pro-Huckabee push polls done by Common Sense Issues, and we had a very good idea of how they went. But it helps to hear one. Luckily, one South Carolinian was able to record the latter half of the call, and Jeffrey Taylor, blogging at Reason, posted a link (wav).

We've transcribed the call below. Unfortunately, the man who recorded it missed the beginning, but here's how that would have gone. A male voice says "this is a call from Election Research with a 45-second survey" (sometimes it's from "Data Research" -- they're both names used by the calling firm, ccAdvertising). The voice then asks who you support. If you say Fred Thompson, you get a slew of reasons why Thompson is not half the man Mike Huckabee is. The transcription shows how that goes.

Now, there seems to be a specific question about state politicians at the end of each call that varies from state to state. In the example below, it's about Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). In the Nevada calls, voters who said they had a favorable view of Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) were asked what they thought about Reid wanting to surrender in Iraq and hand over our freedoms to "Islamo-fascists."

Again, we'd love to hear other recordings. So if you manage to get one, please email it in to tips(at)tpmmuckraker.com.

The transcription:

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We've been tracking Common Sense Issues, the Mike Huckabee-supporting push polling group, closely (click here to see our past coverage). They've already made millions of calls and last night, they unleashed another onslaught on South Carolina, where they'll call a million homes over three days. All told, that means they've made approximately 6 million calls so far this election (see update below).

The group's executive director told me that they're "well within the law." But one thing that hasn't been clear is whether any of the states will call the group's bluff and prosecute them.*

South Carolina has a law against automated phone calls. And the state's attorney general, Henry McMaster, is co-chair of John McCain's state campaign. In a phone interview today, he told me that his office was still gathering information about the calls, but that "I'd advise anybody making automated calls that they should get some legal advice."

The state's law carries a potential civil penalty of $1000 per call, McMaster said, meaning that the state could hypothetically seek a $1 billion penalty (see update below). "It takes much less than that to put a hurting on most folks," he added.

McMaster is a member of the McCain's so-called "Truth Squad," an effort by the campaign to counter negative attacks, and the campaign released a statement from him earlier today responding to the "several misleading claims" about McCain in Common Sense Issues' push polls. When I asked him whether it might be a conflict of interest for him to pursue a case against a group backing a rival candidate, he said no: "It doesn’t make any difference who we’re supporting or not supporting. In my state, everybody knows everybody. It’s a small place. You just have to be ethical and do your job and overlook those kind of things."

*Note: The firm that's been doing the calls on Common Sense Issues' behalf is ccAdvertising (also known as FreeEats.com). And their legal record isn't encouraging. That company has already lost twice in federal court. In 2004, they challenged North Dakota's do-not-call law and lost (they'd made approximately 235,000 calls polling a range of GOP hot-button issues). The company was fined $20,000. And in 2006, they challenged Indiana's do-not-call law and lost (the group made 400,000 calls attacking Rep. Byron Hill (D-IN)).

Thursday Update: It's been hard to get a handle on just how many calls the group has been making, but the group's executive director gave me an estimate of approximately 5 million this morning. That's based on his count of 850,000 in Iowa, 400,000 in New Hampshire, 3 million in Michigan, approximately 50,000 in Florida, over 1 million in South Carolina and approximately 500,000 in Nevada. This post originally gave an estimate of 7 million based on earlier numbers provided by Davis.

The post originally estimated a maximum penalty of $2 billion based on there being roughly 2 million calls in the state. But Davis would only characterize it as "over 1 million."

From the AP:

A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations was indicted Wednesday as part of a terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida and Taliban supporter who has threatened U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan.

The former Republican congressman from Michigan, Mark Deli Siljander, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about lobbying senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.

A 42-count indictment, unsealed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., accuses the Islamic American Relief Agency of paying Siljander $50,000 for the lobbying — money that turned out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Siljander served in the House from 1981 until 1987.

No surprise here:

Justice Department officials have told Congress that they face serious legal difficulties in pursuing criminal prosecutions of Blackwater security guards involved in a September shooting that left at least 17 Iraqis dead.

In a private briefing in mid-December, officials from the Justice and State Departments met with aides to the House Judiciary Committee and other Congressional staff members and warned them that there were major legal obstacles that might prevent any prosecution....

The officials from the Justice and State Departments “didn’t say they weren’t going to prosecute,” said one Congressional aide who attended the briefing. “They said there would be a lot of difficulties.”

To review: it's debatable whether Blackwater can even be prosecuted because they don't seem to be covered by any law. Beyond that, the State Department provided the Blackwater guards involved in the incident with limited immunity in order to get their version of events, thus further compromising the investigation. And don't forget that Blackwater quickly mended the trucks involved in the incident, destroying key evidence as to whether the guards were actually under attack when they opened fire (Blackwater says that State gave them the green light to do that).

So those are the difficulties. The DoJ did launch a grand jury investigation after the FBI determined that the guards had indeed opened fire without provocation. But don't hold your breath.

Is the ragtag Vietnam Veterans against John McCain giving swift boating a bad name?

Yes, said Swift Boat Veterans and POW’s for Truth treasurer Weymouth Symmes. "I don't think there's any truth to that at all. He was a hero, in my opinion. I'd be appalled if anybody questioned his war service."

The reason I asked is that the anti-McCain group seems to be piggybacking on the Swift Boat Vets in their recent mailer, which was sent out to 80 newspaper editors. (For a quick summary of the group's attack and McCain's response, see the AP.)

In the mailer (above), you can see the icon for the Swift Boat Vets for Truth in the lower left hand corner. But Symmes said that the real Swift Boat Vets isn't affiliated with the group -- or any group active in the 2008 race. In fact, he'd never even heard of the group, adding "they must be a pretty small and obscure group, I would guess."

In fact, on closer inspection, the Swift Boat Vets icon has a North Carolina address, the same as the anti-McCain vet group. And we've been having an internal debate here at TPM whether, in a possible precaution against charges of infringement, it actually says Swift Boot Vets for Truth:

We've been playing phone tag with Jerry Kiley, one of the founders of the group, and hope to speak to him later this afternoon to sort all this out.

As for the size of the group and it's supporters, it's not clear. They filed papers with the FEC last February and March establishing the group, announcing in a statement of purpose that "We will collect donations to pay for a web site, radio and TV ads exposing John McCain only (negative advertizing). We are completely independant (sic) and not connected to any political organization. All of the money collected will be used for the express purpose of defeating John McCain.” But they've reported no contributions since then, even failing to file the required mid-year report, which won them a chiding letter from the FEC.

Kiley, along and another Vietnam vet, Ted Sampley, who's part of the effort, also ran a Vietnam Veterans against John Kerry website in 2004. They've also been after McCain for a while; they registered the Vietnam Veterans against John McCain website back in 2005.

Sampley* has quite a history with McCain, going back to the 1980's, even getting into a fight with McCain's longtime aide Mark Salter. Here's an account from a long piece in the Phoenix New Times back in 1999:

*Update/Correction: This post originally said that Sampley is an Arizona resident -- he's actually in North Carolina. Another of the group's founders, Earl Hopper, is in Arizona.

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Oops. From the AP:

The White House has acknowledged recycling its backup computer tapes of e-mail before October 2003, raising the possibility that many electronic messages — including those pertaining to the CIA leak case — have been taped over and are gone forever.

The disclosure came minutes before midnight Tuesday under a court-ordered deadline that forced the White House to reveal information it has previously refused to provide.

Among the e-mails that could be lost are messages swapped by any White House officials involved in discussions about leaking a CIA officer's identity to reporters.

Before October 2003, the White House recycled its backup tapes "consistent with industry best practices," according to a sworn statement by a White House aide.

Backup tapes are the last line of defense for saving electronic records.

Update: CREW, which filed the suit, has more on the White House's filing.

Larry Craig’s poorly executed bathroom sex may be a case of first impression for the Senate Ethics Committee, but a recent ACLU brief notes that the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled 38 years ago that people who have sex in closed stalls in public restrooms “have a reasonable expectation of privacy.” The ACLU brief, filed on Craig’s behalf, asserts that "the government cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Senator Craig was inviting the undercover officer to engage in anything other than sexual intimacy that would not have called attention to itself in a closed stall in the public restroom.” (Boston Globe)

Representative Ted Poe (R-TX) is furious that he and other lawmakers cannot get an answer from the Department of Justice (DOJ) regarding its handling of the case of the woman who says she was raped and sexually assaulted by KBR/Halliburton employees in the Green Zone. So far, DOJ has not filed any charges and has failed to prosecute a similar case in which the accused assailant confessed to physically harassing behavior. Democratic Senators Daniel Akaka (HI), Barack Obama (IL), and Jon Tester (MT) have joined Poe in demanding answers from Michael Mukasey. (ABC’s “The Blotter”)

Tomorrow a federal judge will hear arguments to decide whether Las Vegas casinos can be used as caucus sites in the Democratic primary in Nevada later this week. If permitted, the caucusing on the strip will undoubtedly boost the turnout of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, which has endorsed Barack Obama. The Nevada State Teachers Union and other plaintiffs in the suit (who support Hillary Clinton) against caucuses on the strip, allege that the plan creates a “preferred a class of voters.” The suit has led to charges that the Clinton campaign is attempting to suppress the voter turnout. (Washington Post)

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We've heard CIA Director Michael Hayden's confusing and risible explanation for why the CIA's torture tapes were destroyed. And there have been a number of media accounts citing dozens of unanimous government officials that haven't managed to shed much light. But today's Washington Post provides about as clear of a narrative as we're likely to get on why the tapes were made, when they were made, and why they were destroyed.

Here's what they came up with: "the taping was conducted from August to December 2002 to demonstrate that interrogators were following the detailed rules set by lawyers and medical experts in Washington, and were not causing a detainee's death." CIA officials have also said that videotapes of the interrogations would have been very useful for reviewing what the detainees had said.

And here's why they were destroyed, according to the Post. The Post broke news of the CIA's black sites in November of 2005. That made CIA officials even more nervous that "the agency could be publicly shamed and that those involved in waterboarding and other extreme interrogation techniques would be hauled before a grand jury or a congressional inquiry." At the same time, the station chief in Bangkok, who'd had the tapes in a safe in the U.S. Embassy compound there for three years, was retiring and "wanted to resolve the matter before he left." So he sent a cable to CIA headquarters asking if he could destroy them.

The rest we know. Then-operations chief Jose Rodriguez checked with two CIA lawyers who said that the agency was not required to preserve them. Since no one in the administration had directly forbidden the destruction of the tapes, he went ahead and gave the station chief the go-ahead.

And no one seemed to be very upset after the deed was done: "Word of the resulting destruction, one former official said, was greeted by widespread relief among clandestine officers, and Rodriguez was neither penalized nor reprimanded, publicly or privately, by then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss, according to two officials briefed on exchanges between the two men."

The Post also has more details on the Justice Department and White House discussions about the tapes:

The tapes were discussed with White House lawyers twice, according to a senior U.S. official. The first occasion was a meeting convened by Muller and senior lawyers of the White House and the Justice Department specifically to discuss their fate. The other discussion was described by one participant as "fleeting," when the existence of the tapes came up during a spring 2004 meeting to discuss the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, the official said.

And can you tell who's missing in this tally?

Those known to have counseled against the tapes' destruction include John B. Bellinger III, while serving as the National Security Council's top legal adviser; Harriet E. Miers, while serving as the top White House counsel; George J. Tenet, while serving as CIA director; Muller, while serving as the CIA's general counsel; and John D. Negroponte, while serving as director of national intelligence.

If you said David Addington, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, you were right. Alberto Gonzales is another notable exception. Although The New York Times has reported that Addington, who's done so much to shape the administration's torture policy, took part in discussions about the tapes, he somehow didn't make the list here. The Times also cited a "former senior intelligence official" as saying that "there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes." But the official wouldn't specify who that was. I think we might have our winners.

House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI) thinks it's nice that the Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation of the CIA's destruction of its torture tapes, but it's not good enough. John Durham may be a tough, unimpeachable prosecutor, but he'll still be reporting up the chain to Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

Arguing that the Department has a "clear conflict of interest" because "high Administration officials" are necessarily implicated -- they approved the interrogation methods documented on the tapes and were involved in the discussions about whether to destroy them -- Conyers wrote Mukasey today to formally request that he appoint a special counsel. 18 Democratic members of the committee also signed on. Conyers has consistently called for a special prosecutor to be appointed.

The letter is posted in full below. A judiciary subcommittee will be holding a hearing to hear from experts on the subject this Thursday.

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We here at TPM get hundreds of emails each day, ranging from reader emails to press releases. And it took me a while to notice that on October 10th of last year, the Justice Department stopped sending us their releases. We had been on their list for well more than a year.

Now, my immediate impulse was not to expect the worst. But suspicion is natural to a muckraker. Last spring and summer, we published countless posts related to malfeasance at the Department (actually, I count 682 posts under our U.S. Attorneys tag), coverage which several mainstream outlets have acknowledged. Not only that, but I had done a story enumerating the false statements that Brian Roehrkasse, the Department's Director of Public Affairs, had made in the course of the U.S. attorney scandal. (Bud Cummins, one of the fired U.S. attorneys, subsequently published his own piece calling Roehrkasse a "willing liar.") Perhaps someone had derived a certain petty satisfaction by knocking us off the list.

So, because of that suspicion, and knowing the difficulty of extracting a response from the Department, I asked one of our TPM research hounds, Andrew Berger, to call their Office of Public Affairs every day until we got back on their distribution list -- or until we got an explanation. He started his mission last Monday. Finally, today, we got our answer, one that will strike TPMm readers as vintage Bush DoJ. They just don't have room for our email address on the distribution list:

Mr. Berger,

I appreciated your desire to be in tune with DOJ press releases, however, unfortunately I am not able to add you to our distribution list. As you may realize we have a lot of requests to be put on our media lists and we simply are not able to put everyone on the list. We do however have all our press releases on our website and update them the minute they are released so I would suggest looking there. You can also always call us with press inquiries. Thanks again for your interest.

Sincerely,

Jamie Hais
Press Assistant
Office of Public Affairs
Department of Justice

For the record, this is the first time that any Congressional office or government agency has told us this.

We've since asked Ms. Hais for an explanation of the Department's criteria for inclusion. And we'll keep calling.

2012, 2020, forever. Whatever the terms hashed out between the administration and Nouri al-Maliki's government, the administration has said that they won't have to consult Congress to finish the deal.

As we reported back in November, that wouldn't be unusual, as these types of agreements (called Status of Forces Agreements) are typically handled solely by the executive branch. It's not a "formal" treaty, the kind the Constitution dictates must be ratified by two-thirds of the Senate. And White House war adviser Douglas Lute has made it clear that the negotiations "will lead to the status of a formal treaty."

But Congress is maneuvering to make sure that they get a say. Today, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) will introduce the Iraq Strategic Agreement Review Act of 2008, which would require the administration to consult with Congress on the agreement and withhold funds for the agreement if it did not come in the form of a formal treaty. “We simply cannot allow the Administration to finalize an agreement that could lead to permanent bases in Iraq and other major economic and political commitments without Congressional consultations and approval," she says in a statement on the bill.

Last month, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) introduced a similar bill in the Senate, which would also withhold funds for any agreement that wasn't a formal treaty. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is as of now the sole co-sponsor. The bill was referred to the Senate foreign relations committee. It seems likely that Senate Republicans will put their vaunted obstruction powers to work on this one.

Update: Here's the text of the bill.

From The Los Angeles Times:

Congress asked the Justice Department to investigate whether former AL MVP Miguel Tejada lied to House committee staff when he was interviewed in 2005 in connection with the Rafael Palmeiro steroids case.

House Oversight and Government Committee chairman Henry Waxman opened today's hearing into the Mitchell Report about drug use in baseball by announcing that he and ranking minority member Tom Davis sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey today.

You can read the letter, which walks through the interview with Tejada, here (pdf).

It's a date. The last time they tangoed, they stepped on each others' toes. But the Senate Judiciary Committee will be hearing again from Attorney General Mukasey, for the first time after his narrow confirmation, on January 30th.

Things started out rough for Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

First he only managed confirmation by the skin of his teeth, because he refused to brand waterboarding as torture. Then he ticked everybody off when the Justice Department asked Congress to shut down their investigations of the CIA torture tapes' destruction until the DoJ finished up. And then there's the KBR rape case.

But Mukasey's a man with a big heart and big plans. Or something like that. Roll Call reports (sub. req.) that Mukasey "has shelved any animosity he might feel toward Democrats."

Among the signs of good will: occasionally consulting with members of Congress (with Alberto Gonzales as your predecessor, it's easy to impress). He's already reached out to a number, Roll Call reports, including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), whose questions caused all that waterboarding-trouble, and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). A Justice Department aide is quoted saying "The new attorney general’s view is whether we’re going to agree or disagree on the merits, I want to have a good personal relationship with Pat Leahy.”

That will be put to the test when Mukasey appears before the Senate Judicary Committee at the end of this month (Update: the hearing has been scheduled for January 30th). Leahy has promised to grill Mukasey about the CIA tapes investigation and his views on waterboarding. And a Leahy aide tells Roll Call that the proof is in the pudding: “The relationship between the attorney general and the Judiciary Committee is still developing, and there are outstanding requests from the chairman and others for information and cooperation.”

And about House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI)? He got a "courtesy call," before Mukasey was confirmed and though "they got along personally, Justice Department aides said, the House is particularly partisan." So it seems that the charm offensive won't be concentrating on the House.

The House intelligence committee had a choice: Hear what the CIA official who actually ordered the destruction of the torture tapes has to say -- inevitably compromising the ongoing criminal investigation? Or kick the can down the road.

The House intelligence committee will deal with this later:

Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the former Central Intelligence Agency official who ordered the destruction of interrogation videotapes in 2005, will not be required to appear on Wednesday at a closed Congressional hearing on the matter but may be called to testify later, an official briefed on the inquiry said Monday.

The House's probe goes on, though, even without its star witness. The CIA's general counsel John Rizzo will testify tomorrow, the Times reports.

In response to investigations by the Justice Department, the CIA Inspector General, and Congress, the CIA has begun a search for more audio or videotapes of interrogations. Officials believe that the CIA does not have any more recordings that it made itself, but that it may have recordings made by other intelligence services. (Newsweek)

Congressional leaders and government watchdog groups are continuing to ask questions about no-bid contracts awarded by federal prosecutors to former Bush administration officials to monitor corporations as part of settlements in fraud and corruption cases. Questions about corporate monitors - who are paid by the companies they monitor - first arose when it was revealed recently that former attorney general John Ashcroft was awarded a no-bid contract worth over $25 million. (Washington Post)

The competition for former Rep. Roger Wicker's (R-MS) seat on the House Appropriations Committee is shaping up as a battle over the Republican Party's disposition towards earmarks. Former Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) says that the appointment of Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who has been critical of the earmark process, would make a "major statement" that the Republican Party is serious about "ending wasteful earmarks and bringing transparency to the Appropriations Committee." (The Hill)

Read more »

Back in November, President Bush and Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki hashed out the principles for the two countries' "enduring relationship": a long-term American troop presence in Iraq and preferential treatment for American investments in return for a guarantee of security for the Iraqis. It was a deal we summarized at the time as "U.S. To Stay In Iraq Forever."

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that when the two sides sit down at the table, the definition of "enduring" raises some eyebrows.

The Iraqi defense minister, Abdul Qadir, is in Washington, D.C. to continue work on defining the American commitment in Iraq. A formal agreement will emerge by July, The New York Times reports. As TPM alum Spencer Ackerman reported here, such an agreement would not require Congress' approval, but would require the Iraqi parliament's OK.

So... the numbers. Qadir tells the Times that 2012 and 2020 are his target dates -- for full internal security and security against external threats, respectively. What that means for the size of our "enduring presence" isn't so clear:

“According to our calculations and our timelines, we think that from the first quarter of 2009 until 2012 we will be able to take full control of the internal affairs of the country,” Mr. Qadir said in an interview on Monday, conducted in Arabic through an interpreter.

“In regard to the borders, regarding protection from any external threats, our calculation appears that we are not going to be able to answer to any external threats until 2018 to 2020,” he added.

He offered no specifics on a timeline for reducing the number of American troops in Iraq.

The Times' notes that Qadir's projections were slightly less dire last year, when he projected full security by 2018. But if there's anything the Iraq War has taught us, it's to take government prognostications very lightly.

Here's another section from Lawrence Wright's New Yorker piece on Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell that shouldn't be overlooked. Wright reports on McConnell's Cyber-Security Policy, a plan that "will propose restrictions that are certain to be unpopular....

In order for cyberspace to be policed, Internet activity will have to be closely monitored. Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer, or Web search. "Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation," he said. Giorgio warned me, "We have a saying in this business: 'Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'" (my emphasis)

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A TPM Reader writes in about Common Sense Issues' calls in Michigan:

I got a call from Huck's "independent" push pollers [Friday night]. It was a robo-call with a script that was micro-targeted for my Democratic union household. The robo-voice, which asked "poll" questions and left me time to answer, was an African-American male voice. Wanted to know if I was aware that "there is no real choice in the Michigan Democratic primary this year" and encouraged me to vote in the Repub primary instead.

Also asked if I was aware that the Machinists Union had endorsed Huckabee "for the first time in history..." (I assume by tonite they will add the Painters, too.) And if I knew that Huckabee was a fighter for working families, etc.

At the end, the robo-voice said the poll "was not affiliated with or authorized by any candidate or committee," but all the "questions" were designed to communicate positive information about the Huckster.

It's a classic ploy for these types of calls to play on ethnic and racial stereotypes -- though in this instance, the pollsters seem to have chosen their voice with the idea that a typically African-American male voice would appeal to Democrats. (When I asked Common Sense Issues' executive director Patrick Davis* whether it was accurate to characterize the voice in these calls as "an African-American male voice," he said "it could be.") Former dirty trickster Allen Raymond writes in his book How to Rig An Election that he had an array of actors available to portray a range of stereotypes, including "angry black man," which was deployed to frighten middle-class whites.

Unfortunately for the group, one of the Michiganians to get one of the group's two million calls in the state (most of which are going to Republicans) was Mitt Romney supporter Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI). He told the Politico that it was "an attack call masquerading as a poll."

Hoekstra also said that there was no disclaimer at the end of the call identifying the group behind the call. Davis says that the calls always have such a disclaimer, which is required by law. So please: TPM readers, if you get one of these calls, let us know what you hear. And if you're lucky enough to get one on your answering machine, we'd love to hear it.

*Update/Correction: This post originally referred to the group's executive director as Rick Davis. His name is Patrick.

5 million calls and counting.</