Brent Wilkes

Prosecutors Seek 25 Years for Duke Briber, "War Profiteer"

Paul Kiel | February 16, 2008, 12:24PM

From The San Diego Union-Tribune:

Federal prosecutors say Brent Wilkes is a war profiteer, a lecher and a liar whose decade-long bribery of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham netted him $46 million.

For that, and for orchestrating the largest congressional bribery scheme in history, they say the Poway defense contractor should be sentenced to 25 years in prison....

They blasted his once-high-flying lifestyle, belittled his claims of innocence and branded him an “overgrown frat boy” fueled by greed and avarice.

At minimum, Wilkes should receive no less than 16 years and eight months in prison, prosecutors said. That would be exactly twice the length of the sentence Cunningham received after pleading guilty to conspiracy and tax evasion.

Wilkes should get a longer sentence because he was the “architect” of the scheme and his profit was fatter and lack of remorse far greater than Cunningham's, prosecutors said. They describe the disgraced former Republican congressman from Rancho Santa Fe as “a broken old soldier” and Wilkes as an “unrepentant war profiteer.”

Prosecutors said Cunningham should be blamed for his role, but in a footnote said, “There can be little doubt Wilkes was the spider, and Cunningham the fly, in this web of corruption.”

The metaphors abound. Cunningham the broken old fly, Wilkes the unrepentant spider.

Earlier, probation officials had recommended a 60-year sentence for Wilkes. But it will be up to the judge on Tuesday.

Torture

Lieberman: Waterboarding is OK by Me

Paul Kiel | February 15, 2008, 4:37PM

Well, we know why Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) voted "nay" Wednesday. "[Waterboarding] is not like putting burning coals on people's bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological," he says.

And while Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has responded at length to explain why "enhanced interrogation" is OK when done by the CIA (but not the Army), we still haven't heard from one of the surprising "nay" votes: Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA). Our request for explanation has gone unanswered. But if you've seen him address this anywhere, please let us know.

Torture

We Do Not Torture Like The Spanish Inquisition... It's More Like the Khmer Rouge

Paul Kiel | February 15, 2008, 3:02PM

Can there be a prouder moment in our nation's history? Yesterday Justice Department Official Steven Bradbury rallied to the defense of the CIA's use of waterboarding, arguing that the technique used by the CIA was nothing at all like the "water torture" used by the Spanish Inquisition. "The only thing in common is the use of water," he argued.

But as Marty Lederman, a veteran of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, writes, in distancing the CIA's technique from that used by the Spanish Inquisition and the Japanese in World War II, Bradbury made it plain that the technique he was describing was closer to "the sort popularized by the French in Algeria, and by the Khmer Rouge. This technique involves placing a cloth or plastic wrap over or in the person's mouth, and pouring or dripping water onto the person's head." He quotes Darius Rajali, author of Torture and Democracy, as saying that this technique was "invented by the Dutch in the East Indies in the 16th century, as a form of torture for English traders."

So, in conclusion, comparing the CIA's technique to the Spanish Inquisition is preposterous. We're more in the mold of the Dutch 16th century/French in Algeria/Khmer Rouge way of doing things.

And if you're looking for a rebuttal after reading Bradbury's in-depth analysis of waterboarding's legality under the torture statute, see Marty:

Let's be very clear: This so-called "analysis" is at the very core of the OLC justification for waterboarding, and possibly several other components of the CIA program, as well. And it is flatly, 100% wrong, and indefensible, for reasons I have discussed at length. The fact that Judge Mukasey continues to abide by it is a scandal. And the fact that Congress has not said a word about this legal linchpin of the OLC/CIA regime is even worse.

Waterboarding, even the CIA version, entails excruciating and intense physical suffering. That's why they use it.

Torture

The Calculus of Torture

Paul Kiel | February 15, 2008, 2:06PM

Yesterday, Steven Bradbury, the Justice Department official who heads up the Office of Legal Counsel, testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. We posted video of him explaining how the waterboarding practiced by the CIA was miles away from that practiced by the Spanish Inquisition -- it was a much more careful and controlled practice (there's no jumping on the victim's stomach or vomiting of blood).

But that wasn't even the most crucial part of his testimony. Bradbury writes the legal opinions that tell the administration how far they can go. And when he (and earlier John Yoo) advised the administration that it was legal to waterboard prisoners, they had their reasons.

With regard to waterboarding, Bradbury explained with chilling sangfroid his legal reasoning. We've provided a full transcription of his answers below. It's the most detailed description of the Justice Department's analysis with regard to a particular interrogation technique ever given.

If you read on, you'll learn that "something can be quite distressing or uncomfortable, even frightening, but if it doesn't involve severe physical pain and it doesn't last very long, it may not constitute severe physical suffering." And you'll also learn that while the victim from waterboarding might panic from the sensation of drowning, the real question is whether "those factors cause prolonged mental harm." Bradbury concluded that waterboarding does not.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 drastically changed the equation, Bradbury testified, and the Department hasn't yet made an analysis of whether waterboarding is legal under its requirements. So for now it's off the table.

First, Bradbury discussed the torture statute under questioning by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ):

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Surveillance

Reyes: I Will Not "Back Down"

Paul Kiel | February 15, 2008, 12:30PM

As long as we're following the volleys back and forth in the surveillance battle, a number of readers have urged that we publish House intelligence committee Chair Silvestre Reyes' (D-TX) letter to Bush sent yesterday afternoon. So, without further ado, here it is is:

President George W. Bush

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

The Preamble to our Constitution states that one of our highest duties as public officials is to “provide for the common defence.” As an elected Member of Congress, a senior Member of the House Armed Services Committee, and Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, I work everyday to ensure that our defense and intelligence capabilities remain strong in the face of serious threats to our national security.

Because I care so deeply about protecting our country, I take strong offense to your suggestion in recent days that the country will be vulnerable to terrorist attack unless Congress immediately enacts legislation giving you broader powers to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans’ communications and provides legal immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in the Administration’s warrantless surveillance program.

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Surveillance

Bush Beats Drum... Again

Paul Kiel | February 15, 2008, 12:00PM

For the third morning in a row now, President Bush got in front of the cameras and accused Democrats of exposing the nation to attacks by refusing to pass the Senate's version of the intelligence bill.

This morning, Bush did his utmost to stress the calamity of letting the Protect America Act pass (the paperwork!) and made a direct argument that giving immunity to the telecoms for collaborating with his administration's warrantless wiretapping was a crucial national security issue. The highlights:

The American citizens must understand -- clearly understand that there still is a threat on the homeland, there's still an enemy which would like to do us harm, and that we've got to give our professionals the tools they need to be able to figure out what the enemy is up to so that we can stop it....

People say, oh, it doesn't matter if this law hasn't been renewed -- it does matter. It matters for a variety of reasons. It matters because the intelligence officials won't have tools necessary to get as much information as we possibly can to protect you. And it matters because these telephone companies that work collaboratively with us to protect the American people are afraid they're going to get sued.

And the American people have got to understand these lawsuits make it harder for us to convince people to help protect you. And so by blocking this good piece of legislation, our professionals tell me that they don't have all the tools they need to do their job.

Brent Wilkes

Foggo Bribery Case Moves to Virginia, Wilkes Charges Dropped

Paul Kiel | February 15, 2008, 11:50AM

Good news for Brent Wilkes! Well, sort of. On Tuesday, he's due to be sentenced for bribing Duke Cunningham, where he could face up to 60 years in prison.

But Wilkes was also on the hook for bribing his old buddy Dusty Foggo, then the executive director of the CIA. But no more. Prosecutors, apparently figuring that Wilkes has gotten his due, are dropping him from that case (though they say they could re-indict later) and have agreed to move the case to Virginia, as Foggo's lawyers had requested. From The San Diego Union-Tribune:

For the past several months, Foggo's Washington, D.C.-based lawyers have asked [Judge Larry] Burns to transfer the case out of California. They said it made sense because 90 percent of the actions alleged in the complaint took place in that area and not in Southern California, and virtually all the witnesses and documents are based there.

While Burns agreed the case should be moved, both prosecutors and Wilkes balked. But on Feb. 1, Wilkes dropped his objections to the move.

The government followed suit Thursday. In a brief court filing they said that “the government has recently uncovered evidence to support additional charges” against Foggo.

And if you need some refreshing on the Foggo case, see here ("I am now, have been in the past, and will continue to as long as I breath [sic] - be your partner... so what do you want me to do?"), here, and here.

Reform

The Year in Earmarks

Paul Kiel | February 15, 2008, 11:16AM

12,881 earmarks. $18.3 billion. Taxpayers for Common Sense has cataloged them all, and you can see them right here in their awe-inspiring earmark database of this year's spending bills. Jump in and tell us what you find.

A number of journalists dove in to the database and here's what they came up with (TPMm research hounds Andrew Berger, Peter Sheehy, and Diane Vacca compiled this round-up):

Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) has received campaign contributions from each (sub. req.) of the 26 groups for whom he requested earmarks in the recent defense spending bill. An analysis by Roll Call shows that since the beginning of 2005, PACs and employees of those groups have given Murtha $413,250, of which $100,750 came "in the two weeks leading up to March 16, the original deadline for lawmakers to file their earmark requests." (Roll Call)

In terms of securing earmarks, Hillary Clinton (D-NY) ranks among the top ten in the Senate ($340 million) while Barack Obama (D-IL) ranks in the bottom 25% of the Senate ($91 million). John McCain (R-AZ) has rejected earmarks entirely. Since becoming the majority party, Democrats are responsible for 57% of the $18.3 billion spent on earmarks. (Washington Post)

Freshmen Democrats in the House are "among the biggest recipients of earmarked funds." Democratic leaders have distributed the funds with an eye towards aiding representatives in contested districts in the upcoming election. Further analysis of the study by Congressional Quarterly shows that Democratic minority lawmakers trailed white Democratic lawmakers' earmarks by a two to one ratio in the House. (The Hill, CQ Politics)

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The Daily Muck

The Daily Muck

Andrew Berger | February 15, 2008, 10:05AM

U.S. District Judge Richard Roberts has ordered the Bush administration to explain whether any evidence contained on videos of the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri - which the CIA destroyed in 2005 - was relevant to a case involving a Guantanamo detainee. Roberts argues that "the government has done nothing to prove that it didn't destroy evidence in the case." (AP)

The question of immunity for military contractors in Iraq is expected to make up a significant part of the upcoming negotiations between the U.S. and Iraq over a new "status-of-forces" agreement. In response to incidents like last September's shootings in which Blackwater security guards shot 17 Iraqis, members of the Iraqi government have been highly critical of immunity, while discussions at both the Pentagon and the State Department over whether to "ask the Iraqis to maintain status quo" are currently ongoing. (Time)

The Bush administration has asked the Supreme Court to review the recent appeals court ruling in Gates v. Bismullah requiring the administration to provide "evidence supporting the classification of more than 180 Guantanamo detainees as enemy combatants." The administration argues that the requirement is a "serious threat to national security." (New York Times)

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Surveillance

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | February 15, 2008, 9:43AM

What happened? The administration did everything right. The invocation of "countless American lives" hanging in the balance, the specter of terrorists delightedly chatting away undetected, the urgency emphasized by a threat to delay a long-scheduled presidential trip to Africa in order to secure the nation against attack.

That's right, the Protect America Act, the surveillance bill the administration pushed through Congress last August in a brilliantly executed squeeze play, will expire at midnight. The House should have already folded by now and simply passed the Senate's surveillance bill, complete with retroactive immunity for the telecoms. But the Dems haven't; they're sticking to the bill they passed months ago. What gives?

It might have something to do with the fact that the lapsing of the Protect America Act (PAA) won't substantially affect things at all. The old FISA law will kick back into effect. And authorizations granted under the PAA in the last six months to wiretap entire terrorist groups will stick for an entire year. In the words of House intelligence committee Chair Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), "Things will be fine."

In a conference call with journalists yesterday, Kenneth L. Wainstein, the head of the Justice Department's national security division, did his best to back up the president's warnings, but, according to The Washington Post, all he could come up with was that expiration of the law would require "more paperwork and time." The humanity!

But the Democrats seem callously immune to this new burden. The fear just didn't stick this time around (certainly by no fault of the White House). The House broke for a week's recess yesterday -- and not only did the Dems refuse to pass the Senate's version, but they also had the gall to pass contempt resolutions against White House officials on the same day.

It was, The New York Times reports, "the greatest challenge to Mr. Bush on a major national security issue since the Democrats took control of Congress last year."

So now it's down to the nitty gritty. House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI) has announced that he'll be working through the recess to reach a compromise. Presumably the other key players (Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), along with the ranking members on the intelligence and judiciary committees) will be sticking around too. We'll see what they come up with.

Surveillance

Reid: Bush Attempting to "Manufacture A Crisis"

Paul Kiel | February 14, 2008, 4:20PM

This morning, Bush stuck to the plan and tried to bring the squeeze on the House:

This Saturday at midnight, legislation authorizing intelligence professionals to quickly and effectively monitor terrorist communications will expire. If Congress does not act by that time, our ability to find out who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying, and what they are planning will be compromised.

So dire was the threat that Bush said that he was prepared to delay his scheduled trip to Africa.

Reid responded today by letter, saying that the fault for letting the Protect America Act lapse lay with Bush and the Republicans, and that he regretted Bush's "reckless attempt to manufacture a crisis." The full letter is below.

And so it goes.

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Congressional Subpoenas

Dem Aide: GOP Claims about Lantos Fracas "Preposterous"

Paul Kiel | February 14, 2008, 3:39PM

As we noted earlier, there was something of an uproar in the House this morning when a Republican called for a vote during the memorial service for Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA). The vote was part of a general Republican effort to delay the scheduled vote on contempt resolutions against White House officials.

As the Politico reported, there has already been plenty of rancor over the move. The Dems, via a spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) called the move "unjustifiable." But GOPers said it was justifiable, and explained that the Dems were really at fault because they broke their commitment to keep the House in recess during the memorial service:

"The reason for the chaos is the majority," [Jo Maney, a spokeswoman for Republicans on the House Rules Committee] said. "We made clear we would use every procedural rule" to delay the contempt votes.

"There was an agreement that there would be no votes during the service, but they [Democrats] rang the bells" to bring the House back into session, Maney said.

But a Dem leadership aide responded that that explanation doesn't hold water:

“This is the height of disrespect and completely shameful. None of their procedural options were denied by starting when we did; they just chose to call for a vote at the most inappropriate time. The idea that Republicans had no choice is preposterous, all they had to do was allow debate to continue for another 20 minutes and the service could have concluded in peace.”

We've bounced it back over to the Republican to side to see if they have a rejoinder. Here's video of Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL) explaining why he called the vote.

Update: Here's CQ's version of what happened.

Update: To cap it all off, see House Minority Whip Roy Blunt's (R-MO) floor comments on this below:

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U.S. Attorneys

House Passes Contempt Resolution against White House Officials

Paul Kiel | February 14, 2008, 2:26PM

Well, after all that -- after seven months, it's done. The House passed the contempt resolution against White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers, 223-32. Most Republicans, having staged their walk out, did not vote.

So now the ball's in Attorney General Michael Mukasey's court. He's expected to decline to enforce the citation of contempt, since both Bolten and Miers declined to testify as a result of an assertion of executive privilege.

The resolution included both a criminal contempt citation and the authorization for the House Judiciary Committee to sue the White House if Mukasey refuses to enforce the citation. You can read those here.

Update: Here's the final tally.

Surveillance

House GOP Stages Walkout During Contempt Vote

Paul Kiel | February 14, 2008, 1:53PM

Surprise!

When the Dems finally made a move to get a vote on the contempt resolutions against White House officials for ignoring subpoenas in the U.S. attorney investigations, the Republicans had a walkout all planned out. As Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) gave a speech haranguing the Dems for "political grandstanding" at a time of dire threats to national security (because work on the surveillance bill has still not been completed). They then filed out onto the steps, where a podium was waiting to complete the photo op.

No political grandstanding, indeed.

More in a sec.

Update: Here's video:

U.S. Attorneys

House GOPers Seek to Delay Contempt Vote

Paul Kiel | February 14, 2008, 1:43PM

The House GOP has been doing their best to kick this can down the road, even igniting something of a fracas. From The Politico:

During what was supposed to be a somber memorial service in Statuary Hall for Rep. Tom Lantos, who died Monday, the House chamber became mired in chaos over procedural votes.

Democrats angrily denounced the GOP as insensitive for calling a "motion to adjourn" — essentially a dilatory tactic — while dignitaries were still giving tributes to Lantos, a Holocaust survivor who was chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. But Republican aides shot back quickly, saying it was Democrats who broke an agreement to keep the House in recess during the memorial service....

More at Huffington Post.

We'll have results from the vote when the House finally gets to it.

Torture

Justice Dept. Official: CIA Waterboarding Was Subject to "Strict Limitations"

Paul Kiel | February 14, 2008, 1:12PM

The CIA's use of waterboarding was legal and not torture, a Justice Deparment official argued this morning, because it was a "procedure subject to strict limitations and safeguards" that made it substantially different from historical uses of the technique by the Japanese and the Spanish Inquisition.

Steven Bradbury, the Justice Department official who heads up the Office of Legal Counsel, is testifying before a House Judiciary subcommittee this morning. And he made an unexpected argument when Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) asked him whether waterboarding violated the law against torture.

It did not, he said. And he argued that what the CIA did bears "no resemblance" to what torturers in time past have done. "There's been a lot of discussion in the public about historical uses of waterboarding," he said. But the "only thing in common is the use of water," he said. Here's video:

The Spanish and Japanese use of "water torture," he said, "involved the forced consumption of a mass amount of water." Asked by a Republican whether Bradbury was aware of any "modern use" of waterboarding that involved the "lungs filling with water," Bradbury said no.

The Japanese forced the ingestion of so much water that it was "beyond the capacity of the victim's stomach." Weight or pressure was then applied by standing or jumping on the stomach of the victim, sometimes leading to "blood coming of the victim's mouth." The Spanish Inquisition would use the technique to the point of "agony or death."

But the CIA wasn't doing that, he argued. "Strict time limits" were involved -- presumably governing the length of time that interrogators could induce the sensation of drowning. There were "safeguards" and "restrictions" that made it a much more controlled procedure. Because of that, he said, the technique did not amount to torture.

But Bradbury said that subsequent laws and Supreme Court decisions passed in 2005 and 2006 had changed his office's analysis, and in 2006 the CIA removed waterboarding from its authorized battery of interrogation techniques.

Update: Once again, here's former Navy instructor describing the technique of waterboarding, and here's a video demonstration.

CIA Tapes

Negroponte: Destroyed Torture Tapes? I Don't Remember

Paul Kiel | February 14, 2008, 12:24PM

Late last year, Newsweek added a significant wrinkle to the CIA's destroyed torture tapes scandal. Then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte had apparently "strongly advised against" destroying the tapes in a memo, "the only known documentation that a senior intel official warned that the tapes should not be destroyed." That potentially meant trouble for Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA official who ordered the tapes destroyed.

But, during an interview with WNYC's Brian Lehrer yesterday, Negroponte said that he'd totally forgotten about that whole destroyed tapes thing before the scandal blew up in December of last year. He doesn't dispute having written the reported memo, but seems to be baffled that the tapes have become such an issue:

Until this issue was written about I had frankly forgotten that this issue might have existed in any way, shape or form. And apparently what these emails suggest is that somebody had suggested to me that these tapes first of all existed and secondly that they be destroyed, and apparently the emails suggest that I objected to that, that I said I didn’t think that would be a good idea. Now some people will say “how can you possibly not vividly remember something like this?” And the fact of the matter is that one handles and deals with so many different issues in any given day or time, I just didn’t happen to recall this situation.

Apparently Negroponte was immune from the anxiety at the CIA 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."

You can listen to the interview here and a transcript is below:

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Torture

Justice Dept. Official Continues Administration's Waterboarding PR Offensive

Paul Kiel | February 14, 2008, 11:24AM

Two weeks ago, Attorney General Michael Mukasey came to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee armed with a fact that should have placated the Dems. He knew he was set to get walloped if he said again that his mind still wasn't made up on waterboarding. So he told the panel that waterboarding isn't currently legal -- but his mind still isn't made up as to whether it's absolutely illegal.

But that didn't seem to placate anybody. Instead of the Dems reacting with delight that waterboarding wasn't currently authorized by the Justice Department, they were shocked at Mukasey's argument that the technique could possibly be authorized for use in the future.

But with the Senate passing a bill that would absolutely ban waterboarding, the administration has kept at it. And today, Steven Bradbury, the controversial acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, reiterated what Mukasey said late last month. And once again, Bradbury says that waterboarding might be used, but before it was used, the CIA would need to first determine that it's "necessary to obtain information on terrorist attack planning or the location of senior al Qaeda leadership." That's the administration's "bright line" against torture.

This time, the administration seems to be getting the coverage it's wanted. The AP takes a look at Bradbury's testimony and headlines (seemingly forgetting Mukasey's testimony), "Justice Dept: Waterboarding not legal: Justice Department Says for First Time That Waterboarding Is Not Now Legal."

But while Bradbury doesn't say anything new about waterboarding, he does give the most detailed narrative I've seen for how the Justice Department has reacted to Congress' and courts' attempts to prohibit the use of torture. You can read the whole thing here. More from Marty Lederman on this here.

Surveillance

"Things Will Be Fine"

Paul Kiel | February 14, 2008, 10:18AM

The dreaded hour is nigh upon us!

You heard President Bush yesterday, didn't you? The "lives of countless Americans" are in the balance!

That's because this Saturday, the administration's sweeping surveillance bill, the Protect America Act, lapses. Several American cities are sure to be in flames by Monday.

That, at least, was the idea behind the administration's vintage surveillance squeeze play. House Dems were supposed to be in such an alarmist tizzy that they'd have no choice but to accede to the Senate's version of the surveillance bill. Faced with the terrible choice of exposing the American populace to imminent danger or simply letting a couple telcos off the hook for doing what the President told them to do, the choice was supposed to be clear. The failure of an effort to extend the law for 21 more days yesterday in the House should have closed the deal.

But if more people start thinking like Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), maybe that won't pan out. When the Protect America Act lapses and the old FISA law kicks back into effect, he says, we won't be any more vulnerable. "Things will be fine.”

Or, as The New York Times explains:

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The Daily Muck

The Daily Muck

Andrew Berger and Peter Sheehy | February 14, 2008, 10:08AM

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is proposing legislation that would place limits on the administration's ability to use the state secrets privilege to argue for the dismissal of lawsuits on the grounds that revealing evidence would endanger national security. The bill would require the administration to allow the court to review the evidence it claims should be privileged. In the past, the Bush administration has invoked the privilege without making all the evidence in question available to the court. (AP)

Last year only one campaign - that of Hillary Clinton - rented out the mailing list of her donors. The brokerage company that rented the list - for a song - is a subsidiary of a massive data-collection company, Info U.S.A. Info U.S.A.'s CEO Vin Gupta has spent $900,000 flying the Clintons on private jets, donated more than $1 million to the Clinton's New Year's party, contributed more than $1 million to Bill Clinton's presidential library, and paid Bill Clinton millions in consulting fees. The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun an informal inquiry into Gupta's corporate spending on behalf of the Clintons. (NPR)

United States attorney for New Jersey Christopher Christie, Jr. who has had a successful career prosecuting corruption in New Jersey, is himself facing heightened scrutiny after it was revealed that he awarded former Attorney General John Ashcroft - who was once Christie's boss - a no-bid contract worth at least $28 million to monitor a settlement between the government and a medical supply company. Democrats also contend that Christie, a Republican who worked on the campaign staff of former President George H.W. Bush and was a fundraiser for President George W. Bush in 2000, has engaged in partisanship while carrying out the duties of his office. (New York Times)

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Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | February 14, 2008, 9:23AM

It's a mighty fine line to walk. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) opposes torture. But when the Senate held a vote yesterday that would effectively prevent the CIA from employing torture by restricting interrogation techniques to those under the Army Field Manual, he voted against it.

You can read his extended explanation of that vote below. But here's what it comes down to. The bill yesterday would have restricted the CIA to the Army's rules for interrogating detainees. McCain believes that the CIA should have a freer hand. That includes the use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

Now, the Justice Department and the CIA haven't said exactly what those are. But precisely because the White House knew that they'd be fighting this battle, they've made quite an effort over the past month to broadcast that waterboarding is not on the list of possible techniques. That's what their PR offensive has been all about; waterboarding is off the table (for now), so let us keep our toys. Those other techniques "are reported to include stress positions, hypothermia, threats to the detainee and his family, severe sleep deprivation, and severe sensory deprivation," as Marty Lederman notes.

But by voting against the bill, McCain is saying that the CIA should have a free hand to employ techniques along these lines. At the same time, he stresses that the 2006 Detainee Treatment Act, the bill he himself sponsored, prohibits the use of any cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment and treatment that "shocks the conscience." He hasn't said which of the techniques listed above meet that description. But he trusts that the Justice Department and CIA will arrive at a "good faith interpretation of the statutes that guide what is permissible."

Attorney General Michael Mukasey gave a taste of what that "good faith" interpretation is when he testified before Congress. What "shocks the conscience" depends on the circumstances, he said. Waterboarding might very well be OK, he argued, if the situation were dire enough.

But McCain says that waterboarding is torture. And as he says in his statement below, "It is, or should be, beyond dispute that waterboarding 'shocks the conscience.'" So he disagrees with the administration's "good faith" interpretation. But apparently he still has faith.

Confused? It's certainly not a position that's easily summarized. The major papers take a run at it this morning, and, well, the nuance just doesn't come through.

From The New York Times:

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Senate Ethics Committee Wags Finger at Larry Craig

Paul Kiel | February 13, 2008, 6:36PM

The Senate ethics committee sent a letter admonishing Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) this evening. We'll have the letter and details in a moment.

Update: Here's the letter.

Update: The complaint dings Craig for disorderly conduct (“The Committee accepts as proven your guilty plea”), trying to bully the cop who busted him by showing his business card and asking “What do you think about that?” among other things.

His attempt to erase the guilty plea, the senators write, is a craven attempt to avoid fault: “Your claims to the court, through counsel, to the effect that your guilty plea resulted from improper pressure or coercion, or that you did not, as a legal matter, know what you were doing when you pled guilty, do not appear credible.”

The senators also ding him for using campaign funds to pay his legal bills without first seeking approval from the committee.

They conclude:

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Surveillance

Strange Bedfellows Block Dem Effort to Extend Surveillance Bill

Paul Kiel | February 13, 2008, 6:18PM

Well, that wasn't expected. An odd collection of Republicans, liberal Dems, and Blue Dogs banded together this afternoon to shoot down the House leadership's attempt to extend for 21 days the administration's surveillance bill, the Protect America Act, which is set to expire Friday.

I suppose everyone had their reasons. The Republicans because they want to help the administration put the squeeze on the Dems and pass the Senate's version of the intelligence bill. The liberal Dems (e.g. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)) because they opposed the Protect America Act in the first place -- see Holt speaking on that here. And the few Blue Dogs (e.g. Leonard Boswell (D-IA) and Collin Peterson (DFL-MN)? I suppose they don't want any more delay on the issue. The full catalog of Dems, 34 in all, is below.

In any case, now it's time to see whether the administration's squeeze play will pay off. Either the House Dems will fold and the administration will get its prized retroactive immunity for the telecoms, or the dreaded time lapse will occur. And what happens then? From CQ:

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Torture

Reid: Bill Is Opportunity to Condemn Torture

Paul Kiel | February 13, 2008, 5:50PM

Harry Reid:

"The Senate today declared that the Army Field Manual works and torture does not. In sending the President a bill that establishes one interrogation standard for the entire U.S. government, we are taking an important step toward restoring our moral leadership in the world. Military and foreign policy experts agree that torture is counterproductive. It elicits unreliable information, puts U.S. troops at risk and undermines our counterinsurgency efforts.

"It is now up to the President to show his own moral leadership and sign this bill into law. And if he refuses to do so, I hope the Republicans who voted for this bill's passage will stand up to the President and override his veto."

Torture

Senate Passes Bill with Ban on Waterboarding

Paul Kiel | February 13, 2008, 5:35PM

So now it's on to that veto. The Senate just narrowly passed the intelligence authorization bill, which contained a provision that would effectively ban the CIA's use of waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" techniques forbidden by the Army Field Manual.

The final vote was rather close -- 51-45, with a few Republicans crossing over to make the difference. There were a couple remarkable "no" votes, though, from senators who've vocally opposed the use of waterboarding. Both Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who's vocally opposed the use of waterboarding, and Arlen Specter (R-PA) voted against. We've inquired why and we'll let you know what we find out.

Update: Here's the tally.

MLB Steroids Scandal

Waxman and Clemens' Lawyers Go Head to Head

Paul Kiel | February 13, 2008, 4:29PM

I’m not sure if we’ll be adding a category for Best Legal Eagle Blowup to the Golden Duke Awards, but if we did, this might take the prize.

Roger Clemens' hearing today was mostly a cordial one, all things considered. But at one point, things broke down to the point where Clemens' two top-flight lawyers Lanny Breuer (formerly President Clinton's special counsel in the Lewinsky affair) and Rusty Hardin were standing behind him, their hands on his shoulders in an attempt to silence him, shouting at Waxman. Here's the video:

The issue itself was over a rather minute detail. As I understand it (not being a Mitchell Report-ologist), Brian McNamee, Clemens former trainer and main accuser, has said that Clemens first approached him about using steroids and human growth hormone after a party at slugger Jose Canseco's Miami home in 1998. Clemens' lawyers have gone after McNamee's credibility on this, offering proof that Clemens was in fact not at that party. McNamee says he saw him there.

Again, the party in and of itself is not a very consequential detail. But since it goes to McNamee's credibility, Clemens' lawyers have been hammering on it. And during Rep. Henry Waxman's (D-CA) questions, Waxman revealed that when Waxman's committee inquired after the name of Clemens' nanny at the time who was supposedly at this party, Clemens' lawyers immediately tracked her down and interviewed her at Clemens' home. The nanny would supposedly be a key witness on this ultimately inconsequential detail.

Waxman didn't allege anything exactly, but it was clear from his questions that he was hinting that Clemens' lawyers had wanted to get to the nanny first in order to make sure she remembered things "correctly." Clemens' lawyers were enraged, Hardin at one point shouting in response to one of Waxman's questions about whose idea that was, "It was my idea! It was my idea to investigate what witnesses know, just like any other lawyer in the free world does!"

Transcript of the exchange is below.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Conyers Introduces Contempt Resolution, Call for Lawsuit against White House

Paul Kiel | February 13, 2008, 3:23PM

As expected, things are finally moving forward in the House today to bring contempt resolutions against White House officials for ignoring Congressional subpoenas as part of the U.S. attorney firings investigation.

House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI) introduced two resolutions this afternoon related to the subpoenas. The first is a criminal contempt resolution against White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers -- both were subpoenaed and did not respond, citing the White House's invocation of executive privilege. But Conyers also filed a resolution that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) file a civil suit against the White House.

Update: You can read both of those resolutions as prepared here. The second resolution would authorize the House Judiciary Committee to go to court, where it would be represented by the House general counsel

That second resolution would serve as an available alternative should Attorney General Michael Mukasey follow through on his threat not to enforce the criminal citation. The battle would then head into court, where a judge would have a shot at sorting out the White House's far-reaching assertion of privilege.

The House rules committee is expected to meet and begin work on both of these resolutions in the next hour.

Torture

Senate Set to Pass Bill Banning Waterboarding

Paul Kiel | February 13, 2008, 3:06PM

This is what the administration's recent pro-waterboarding PR offensive had been leading up to. But the Republican side backed down.

Later this afternoon, the Senate will be voting on a bill authorizing the government's intelligence activities. Included in that bill is a measure sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that would restrict the interrogation methods the CIA could use to the Army Field Manual, which bans waterboarding and other harsh techniques currently used by the CIA. The Republicans had been expected to challenge that provision, forcing a vote. But they didn't. After a vote on the bill in 90 minutes or so, it will be on its way to the President, who has already announced that he will veto it.

So why the sudden retreat? It's not clear how the votes would have come down, exactly. But Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has frequently spoken out against waterboarding, was considered a key vote, creating the potentially awkward situation of him taking a stand against the president. 60 votes would have been needed to retain the measure. Now that situation has been avoided -- for now. If the president follows through with his veto threat, the Senate would hold a vote to override the veto, and McCain's vote would become an issue again, though perhaps this time, not such a crucial one.

MLB Steroids Scandal

Clemens Makes Bid for Golden Duke Award

Paul Kiel | February 13, 2008, 12:25PM

It's a nightmare scenario for a witness. When Roger Clemens went to testify this morning before the House oversight committee, lawmakers, armed with testimony from two other witnesses, tried to spring what they could on him to catch him in a lie.

Sitting at the same table -- on the other side of an investigator on the Mitchell Report on steroids in baseball -- was Brian McNamee, Clemens' former trainer, who has said under oath and said again today that he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone (HGH) a number of times.

And in the first round of questions, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) came at Clemens with a second line of attack: Clemens' friend and former teammate Andy Pettite had told the committee under oath that he'd had a couple conversations with Clemens and one key conversation in particular where Clemens had told him that he'd taken HGH. Ouch. You can see video here:

Clemens denies it all. He's already called McNamee a liar and launched a lawsuit against him. As for Pettite, Clemens said that he must be "misremembering," and said that the conversation was really about "a TV show, something that I've heard about three older men that were using HGH and getting back their quality of life from that." Cummings kept producing more details from Pettite's testimony and Clemens kept claiming that Pettite had misremembered. The denials culminated in this memorably tangled answer:

"Once again, Mr. Congressman, I think he misremembers the conversation that we had. Andy and I's relationship was close enough to know that if I would have known that he had done HGH, which I now know, if he was knowingly knowing that I had taken HGH, we would have talked about the subject. He'd have come to me to ask me about the effects of it."

So should Clemens be up for Best Testimonial Trainwreck in 2008?

A transcript of the exchange is below.

Read more »

Surveillance

Bush: Dem Effort to Extend Surveillance Law That Must Not Lapse Is Unacceptable

Paul Kiel | February 13, 2008, 12:12PM

Yup, here we go again. Beat that drum!

Right on cue, Bush made a statement from the Oval Office this morning to deliver a simple message to House Democrats: if they do not immediately fold and pass the Senate's version of the surveillance bill, then they are jeopardizing "the lives of countless Americans." Because "at this moment, somewhere in the world, terrorists are planning new attacks on our country." House Dems want more time to negotiate the differences between the House and Senate bills, so they've asked for an extension to the administration's sweeping Protect America Act, which passed in an alarmist panic back in August.

But no. That is unacceptable. The only possible course of action is to embrace the Senate bill, a "good bill":

Unfortunately, the House has failed to pass a good bill. And now House leaders say they want still more time to reach agreement with the Senate on a final bill. They make this claim even though it is clear that the Senate bill, the bill passed last night, has significant bipartisan support in the House.

Congress has had over six months to discuss and deliberate. The time for debate is over. I will not accept any temporary extension....

The House's failure to pass the bipartisan Senate bill would jeopardize the security of our citizens. As Director McConnell has told me, without this law, our ability to prevent new attacks will be weakened. And it will become harder for us to uncover terrorist plots. We must not allow this to happen. It is time for Congress to ensure the flow of vital intelligence is not disrupted. It is time for Congress to pass a law that provides a long-term foundation to protect our country. And they must do so immediately.

The Daily Muck

The Daily Muck

Andrew Berger and Peter Sheehy | February 13, 2008, 10:05AM

The maverick reform candidate John McCain claims on the campaign trail that Jack Abramoff and "his lobbyist cronies" have felt the impact of his efforts to combat the lobbying industry. But campaign finance filings show that McCain accepted more than $100,000 from employees of Abramoff's old firm, Greenberg Traurig. McCain has also accepted more than $400,000 from lobbying firms and 59 of his "bundlers" are lobbyists. (Huffington Post)

The trial procedures for Guantanamo Bay detainees that Congress approved in 2006 may prevent defense attorneys from mounting a fair and adequate defense of their clients. Civilian lawyers for the detainees are not allowed to have private meetings with the defendants, will not be allowed to share classified information with their clients, and must turn over all of their mail and notes to the military. The Bush administration has also stated that evidence obtained through torture will not be permissible, but evidence secured through "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" treatment will be allowed. (Washington Post)

The Bush administration has decided to cut over $193 million in funding for UN peacekeeping missions in Africa. According to the Better World Campaign, because U.S. funding for the UN is already low these cuts will bring the total unpaid for peacekeeping next year to more than $600 million. President Bush, appropriately enough, is scheduled to visit Africa beginning this Friday. (ABC's "The Blotter)

Read more »

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | February 13, 2008, 9:51AM

“Some people around here get cold feet when threatened by the administration,” is how Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) put it.

Yesterday, the Senate enthusiastically endorsed the Administration's wireless wiretapping program (and voted to stop the 40 or so lawsuits against the telecoms for cooperating with it). Now the question becomes whether members of the House will stand by their bill, which contains stronger court oversight of the spying and does not contain retroactive immunity for the telecoms.

The early signs from the House leadership have been that they will strongly oppose the Senate version. The chairmen of the two relevant committees, House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI) and House intel committee Chair Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), both say they oppose the Senate bill. Conyers has said outright that he opposes such immunity, while Reyes says he needs more time to review the documents from the program "to make a determination." The House leadership has been making similar noises.

But it will indeed be a battle. The administration has put the pressure on any way it can. It's threatened to veto any bill that does not grant retroactive immunity to the telecoms. It is refusing to agree to any further extension of the Protect America Act -- which, after last month's 15-day extension is set to lapse this Friday -- and is revving up for another round of excoriating Democrats for attempting to extend that deadline while simultaneously warning what a calamity it will be if the bill does lapse.

And, as in August, when both houses passed the administration's sweeping Protect America Act, a group of moderate Democrats in the House are set to bolt. From The Los Angeles Times:

Senior congressional aides said there was no clear path to a compromise on the issue. But a series of recent defections by moderate Democrats in the House raises prospects that the White House position -- or something close to it -- eventually may prevail....

Reluctant to be portrayed as depriving the government of a key tool in the war on terrorism, 21 members of a bloc of moderate House Democrats signed a letter endorsing the Senate approach. Senior Democratic aides said those defections suggested there might be enough support in the House to pass the Senate bill.

The back channel negotiations have already begun. And as no one seems to be able to tell what might happen next, we'll just have to wait and see.

Surveillance

Feingold: My Hope Is with The House

Paul Kiel | February 12, 2008, 6:11PM

Some sharp words from Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI):

“The Senate passage of this FISA bill, while not surprising, is extremely disappointing. The Senate missed a golden opportunity to pass a bill that would give our intelligence officials the tools they need to go after suspected terrorists while also safeguarding the privacy of law-abiding Americans. Instead the Senate, with the help of too many Democrats, is yet again giving the administration sweeping new powers – and letting it off the hook for its illegal wiretapping program. I hope that our House colleagues will hold a stronger line, and refuse to accept the deeply flawed Senate bill. The calls from Americans tired of having their rights and their Constitution trampled on by this administration are only growing louder. Congress should stand up for the American people, and the Constitution, by opposing such a badly flawed bill.”

Surveillance

Senate Passes Surveillance Bill

Paul Kiel | February 12, 2008, 5:56PM

On a final 68-29 vote, the Senate just easily passed the surveillance bill with retroactive immunity for the telecoms intact. Once again, a large number of Dems crossed over.

Since most of the amendments that sought to add civil liberty protections to the bill were voted down, the bill that's emerging from the Senate is only a slight improvement of the administration's Protect America Act. As CQ reported this morning:

According to most experts and advocacy groups, the bill would only slightly rein in the new powers granted to the administration in the temporary law (PL 110-55).

The new bill would authorize the president to conduct warrantless surveillance of foreign targets even when they are communicating with someone in the United States.

Among the Dems voting for the bill were Sens. Jim Webb (D-VA), Kent Conrad (D-ND), Max Baucus (D-MT), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Evan Bayh (D-IN), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Bob Casey (D-PA), Ken Salazar (D-CO), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Tom Carper (D-DE), and Mary Landrieu (D-LA). Note: both Whitehouse and Baucus voted for the Dodd/Feingold amendment.

So now it's on to see what will happen in negotiations with the House.

Torture

Durbin Requests Inspector General Investigate DoJ Authorization of Waterboarding

Paul Kiel | February 12, 2008, 5:22PM

Following through on his earlier threat, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), along with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), wrote to the Justice Department's inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility today to request that he investigate the Department's authorization of waterboarding.

Such an investigation, like a similar ongoing probe into the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, would focus on the circumstances surrounding the Department lawyers' advice (were they clearly just doing the bidding of the White House?) and whether they followed DoJ rules and standards in coming to that conclusion. It's up to the inspector general and OPR whether to launch the probe, however. The senators also asked that the results of any probe be made public.

Read more »

Surveillance

Conyers to White House: We Need to Know More about Wiretapping

Paul Kiel | February 12, 2008, 3:55PM

Signaling the fight ahead when lawmakers get together to sort out the differences between the Senate and House surveillance bills, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) wrote White House counsel Fred Fielding today to deliver two messages: 1) from what he's seen of the documents relating to the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, there's no reason to grant the telecoms retroactive immunity (he prefers the term "amnesty"), and 2) Congress needs to know more before it can be expected to consider granting that amnesty.

The administration suddenly gave Conyers, along with a limited number of members of his committee and the full House intelligence committee, access to documents relating to the program late last month. It was obviously part of the administration's drive to secure immunity for the telecoms. But Conyers says that hasn't worked for him:

...review and consideration of the documents and briefings provided so far leads me to conclude that there is no basis for the broad telecommunications company amnesty provisions advocated by the Administration and contained in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) bill being considered today in the Senate, and that these materials raise more questions than they answer on the issue of amnesty for telecommunications providers.

Beyond that, Conyers asks a list of questions about the scope and success of the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, along with a slew of documents related to the program that he hasn't seen. Chief among the documents Conyers wants to see is the October, 2001 memo from John Yoo in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that originally authorized the warrantless wiretapping program.

Read more »

Surveillance

Dodd: It's up to The House

Paul Kiel | February 12, 2008, 2:54PM

Speaking to a conference call of reporters this afternoon, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) said that, reflecting on the string of defeats in the Senate today, he thought the House was the best hope for stripping retroactive immunity from the final surveillance bill.

"We've lost every single battle we had on this bill [in the Senate].... We're not getting anywhere at all" he said. "The question now is can the House do better." After the bill passes in the Senate, as is expected late today or tomorrow, the bill would head to a conference. There, conferees from both houses will try to hash out the significant differences between the House and Senate versions, the issue of retroactive immunity chief among them.

However, Dodd said, if the final bill emerging from that powwow does contain retroactive immunity, he said he'd "absolutely" filibuster that bill; he'd use "whatever vehicles we can" to stop it.

The Senate had "just sanctioned" the "single largest invasion of privacy in the history of the country," he said. When asked why he thought so many Dem senators had crossed over, he replied: "Unfortunately, those who are advocating this notion that you have to give up liberties in order to be more secure are apparently prevailing. They seem to be convincing people that you're at risk politically or we're at risk as a nation if we don't give up rights."

Update: And right on cue, here's Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) saying that he can't support retroactive immunity.

Ted Stevens

Paper: Docs Show Stevens Arranged Fed Funded Bailout for Former Aide

Paul Kiel | February 12, 2008, 2:20PM

The feds are probing whether Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) was on the take from execs at the oil company Veco. One focus in particular has been whether CEO Bill Allen paid for Stevens to jack up his Alaska home and another floor. Allen, cooperating with investigators, even taped phone conversations with Stevens. That much is clear.

But there's another angle to the investigation which seems to center on Stevens' possible use of earmarks to stuff his buddies' pockets. One of those earmarks that's getting a lot of attention is a $1.6 million appropriation Stevens made in 2005 to the Alaska SeaLife Center for it to buy property partially owned by Trevor McCabe, a former aide and close associate of Stevens. McCabe is also tied up in another area of investigation with Stevens' son Ben.

According to this detailed blow-by-blow account of the deal by The Anchorage Daily News, an aide from Stevens' office and a lobbyist teamed up in order to make sure that McCabe and his partners got their money. They had some trouble finding the right organization to close the deal. The City of Seward, where the property is located, was eventually ruled out, because the requisite public oversight would prove too hairy -- it wasn't a sure thing. That's why the funds made their way to the SeaLife Center, a marine research center and tourist attraction that's grown up on $50 million in public money.

As the ADN summarizes the deal:

The backdoor arrangement described in the documents appeared to assure that a money-losing real estate venture by the partners would be bailed out by U.S. taxpayers without any need for the earmark itself to be explicit about its intent. As passed into law, the public language of the legislation only spoke vaguely about "various acquisitions."

The FBI is digging on this, along with the inspector generals from the Interior and Commerce departments.

Surveillance

Senate Votes to End Debate on Surveillance Bill

Paul Kiel | February 12, 2008, 12:44PM

The Senate is very close to wrapping its work on the bill today.

Part of the agreement between the parties was a cloture vote before moving on to the final vote. That passed easily, with only 29 Dems voting against. The final vote on the bill is expected later today.

Update: Here's the final tally.

Surveillance

Senate Votes Down 3rd Amendment on Telecom Immunity

Paul Kiel | February 12, 2008, 12:19PM

This one was an amendment by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Ben Cardin (D-MD). It went down 41-57.

The amendment was another attempt at compromise over retroactive immunity for the telecoms. Under the amendment, the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court would have reviewed the telecoms' participation in the administration's warrantless wiretapping program to determine whether that participation "complied with the legal requirements of FISA or was legal or undertaken in good faith with an objectively reasonable belief that such assistance was lawful." If the court found that the companies should have known that what they were participating in was illegal, the pending lawsuits against the telecoms would have been allowed to continue.

Once again, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), unwilling to compromise, voted nay along with a number of senators who'd also voted down the attempt to strip retroactive immunity from the bill, Sens. Tom Carper (D-DE), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mark Pryor (D-AR), and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) among them.

Update: Here's the final tally.

Surveillance

Senate Defeats 2nd Retroactive Immunity Amendment

Paul Kiel | February 12, 2008, 12:01PM

After soundly rejecting the Dodd/Feingold amendment, the Senate also took up a bill by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) (co-sponsored by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)) which would have substituted the government as the defendant in the lawsuits against the telecoms over the administration's warrantless wiretapping program.

This vote was no closer, going down 30-68, with some Dems who'd voted to strip retroactive immunity voting against it (Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) among them). It seems this was a compromise that made no one happy.

Update: Here's the final tally.

Surveillance

Senate Votes to Give Retroactive Immunity for Telecoms

Paul Kiel | February 12, 2008, 11:19AM

Let there be no doubt: a majority of senators, and a large number of Democrats, think the telecoms should not suffer the hazard of accountability for cooperating with the administration's warrantless wiretapping program. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) took to the floor last night to give a speech asking, "This is our defining question, the question that confronts every generation: The rule of law, or the rule of men?" The resounding answer: the rule of men.

The Senate voted on the Dodd/Feingold amendment, which would have stripped retroactive immunity from the surveillance bill just now. The final tally was 31-67; crossing over to vote nay were Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Evan Bayh (D-IA), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Ken Salazar (D-CO), Tom Carper (D-DE), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Jim Webb (D-VA), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Kent Conrad (D-ND), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). Update: Here's the official tally.

Presidential candidates Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Barack Obama (D-IL) were present for the vote – voting nay and yea, respectively.

Surveillance

Senate Votes Down Surveillance Oversight Amendment

Paul Kiel | February 12, 2008, 11:00AM

Next up on the Senate floor this morning was an amendment to provide more oversight of surveillance involving Americans, sponsored by Sens. Russ Feingold (D-WI), Jim Webb (D-VA), and Jon Tester (D-MO). See below the fold for Sen. Webb's description of how the amendment would have worked.

A number of Democrats joined together to vote this one down, resulting in a resounding 35-63 defeat.

Read more »

Surveillance

Senate Votes on Surveillance Bill

Paul Kiel | February 12, 2008, 10:46AM

The voting on the lion's share of the amendments to the surveillance bill will take this morning and afternoon in the Senate. We'll keep you updated as the results come in.

The first major vote was on Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) amendment to make clear that FISA is the "exclusive means" by which the government could conduct surveillance. As Feinstein said in her pitch, “The President does not have the right to collect the content of Americans’ communications without obeying the governing law -- and that law is FISA. Let there be no doubt: FISA has been – and continues to be – the exclusive means for electronic surveillance in this country. This amendment simply reaffirms and strengthens the existing law.”

Well, Democrats couldn't convince enough Republicans that there should be no doubt. And the doubt will remain. The bill failed 57-41, since it needed 60 votes, according to prior agreement between Republicans and Democrats. Update: Here's the tally for that.

We'll keep you updated as the (probably dismal) results come in.

Torture

The "Clean Team"

Paul Kiel | February 12, 2008, 10:11AM

From The Washington Post:

The Bush administration announced yesterday that it intends to bring capital murder charges against half a dozen men allegedly linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, based partly on information the men disclosed to FBI and military questioners without the use of coercive interrogation tactics....

FBI and military interrogators who began work with the suspects in late 2006 called themselves the "Clean Team" and set as their goal the collection of virtually the same information the CIA had obtained from five of the six through duress at secret prisons.

To ensure that the data would not be tainted by allegations of torture or illegal coercion, the FBI and military team won the suspects' trust over the past 16 months by using time-tested rapport-building techniques, the officials said....

Prosecutors and top administration officials essentially wanted to cleanse the information so that it could be used in court, a process that federal prosecutors typically follow in U.S. criminal cases with investigative problems or botched interrogations. Officials wanted to go into court without any doubts about the viability of their evidence, and they had serious reservations about the reliability of what the CIA had obtained for intelligence purposes.

"It was the product of a lot of debate at really high levels," one official familiar with the program said. "A lot of people were involved in concluding that it may not be the saving grace, but it would put us on the best footing we could possibly be in. You can't erase what happened in the past, but this was the best alternative."

The Daily Muck

The Daily Muck

Andrew Berger and Peter Sheehy | February 12, 2008, 10:01AM

Government prosecutors announced Monday that they are seeking the death penalty in the case against six men suspected of plotting the suicide-hijackings of September 11, 2001. The trial, which will be the first in the history of the Guantanamo detention system, faces a number of questions, including "whether waterboarding constitutes torture, how statements obtained by coercion are to be handled, whether detainees may be so psychologically damaged that they may not be able to assist in their defense and exactly what the rules of the trials are to be." The case also raises the possibility that the administration's interrogation methods will be themselves put "on trial" as defense lawyers are likely to question the reliability of evidence obtained through coercive methods. (New York Times, Boston Globe)

A federal Judge has granted Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) the right to collect a "very limited" amount of information from the White House Office of Administration regarding the 10 million e-mails that the White House failed to maintain. CREW, which sued the White House Office of Administration under the Freedom of Information Act, is attempting to prove that the Office of Administration is subject to the public records law and the judge rejected an offer by that agency to provide its own description of its functions and responsibilities. (USA Today)

The House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating the CIA's destruction of videotapes of interrogations of terrorist suspects, will be allowed to view videotapes of an interrogation that are in the CIA's possession. Neither the suspect nor the interrogators have been identified publicly and it is not clear how the CIA obtained the tapes. (New York Times)

Read more »

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | February 12, 2008, 9:32AM

It's amazing how seriously people can take a little thing like a presidential caucus.

Everyone has been all over the Washington Republican Party's back over this caucus result thing. But as the party's spokesman laid out to me yesterday, Chairman Luke Esser owed it to the party faithful to announce results Saturday, because no one likes to go to bed with things unresolved.

OK, so it seems that at least four counties had transmitted the wrong information to the party on Saturday. They were supposed to be counting the stated preference of the elected precinct delegates, and they'd counted the sign-in sheets, which reflected the preference for all their caucus attendees -- two measures that seem to have little to do with one another. Oops. As the party spokesman stressed to me yesterday, it's their first time reporting results on the same day, so perhaps mistakes were inevitable.

But never fear! The party has fixed that mistake (at least partially, one of those counties hasn't provided the correct information yet) and John McCain is still in the lead. With 96% percent reporting, he's up 25.6% to Mike Huckabee's 23.3%.

Now maybe the media and Mike Huckabee's lawyers will get off the state GOP's back. The main thing to realize, they want everyone to know, is how little Saturday's caucus bears any relation to the final slate of delegates Washington State will send to the national Republican Convention this summer. From The Seattle Times:

Due to the way Republicans select their delegates, the results could bear little resemblance to the presidential preferences of the 40 Washington state delegates ultimately sent to the GOP national convention in September.

"Nobody won or lost anything on Saturday," said Vance, now a public affairs consultant and McCain supporter. "But every other state had been able to report a 'winner,' so there was expected there would be a 'winner' in Washington state."

So the "winner" of the "caucus" (according to the party's "count") was McCain. Probably. So enough with the fuss already.

Bob Ney

Ney Due to Be Released in August

Paul Kiel | February 11, 2008, 6:29PM

How time flies.

At the end of this month, exactly one year after he entered prison, ex-Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), so far the only congressman to go to jail for taking bribes from Jack Abramoff, will move to a halfway house, Roll Call first reported (sub. req.) this morning. And then, because of good behavior, he's due to be released in August, shaving approximately 13 months off his 30-month sentence.

A key issue in Ney's sentencing was that he was a "functional alcoholic," who would sometimes crack open his first beer as early as 7:30 AM. Ney's lawyer tells The Columbus Dispatch that Ney, aka Inmate #28882-016, has been involved in an alcohol treatment program at the minimum security prison, and he's doing "pretty well."

Election 2008

Washington GOP: State Chair Was Giving His "Analysis"

Paul Kiel | February 11, 2008, 5:57PM

We've been trying to get a handle today on just what's been going on up in Washington state, and I just got off the phone with a spokesman for the Washington Republican Party. Here, at least, is his explanation of what happened on Saturday.

The process as he described it was this: Washington Republicans showed up at their precinct caucuses on Saturday. Each caucus-goer indicated their presidential preference on a sign-in sheet at the door. Then each caucus elected precinct delegates from among those in attendance at the caucus. Each precinct then reported the presidential choice of its elected delegates as indicated on their sign-in sheets. The precincts report up to their respective counties and the counties in turn report to the state GOP.

So why did the state GOP Chair Luke Esser decide to pack it in early on Saturday night? It's a relatively chaotic process, the spokesman said, which was made more chaotic by their first try at same-day reporting. He stressed that the process was "all voluntary." The last results came in around 10 PM. And that was it; the tendency was natural to fold up early, he said. "People want to be fresh for the next day."

So why did Esser call the race with 13% of the delegates still outstanding? "He was giving his analysis," the spokesman said. "He said it appears John McCain has won. This wasn't a certainty." (The party's press release, titled "Sen. McCain Wins Republican Precinct Caucuses in Washington State," bore no such ambiguity.) People who had participated in the caucuses had naturally "expected to hear results and hear analysis of what they had spent the whole day doing," he explained.

Esser's pronouncement had nothing to do with any favoritism for McCain, he said. That's "misinformation." He would have done the same for any other candidate.

The remaining results, he said, are slow going. They probably won't get to 100% today. The state gets results from the county, but some of the precincts are apparently tardy in reporting to the counties. The spokesman said that was as expected. "People went off to work on Monday. People had services on Sunday."

A whole separate issue is the uncertain correlation of Saturday's caucus results with the delegates that the Washington GOP will ultimately send to the convention. The spokesman compared Saturday's results to a "flash poll" that's just a step on the way to the GOP selecting the state's 18 delegates for the convention. And he stressed that they were "at-will" delegates who could change their choice for president at any time.

A Washington blogger who attended the GOP caucuses writes that presidential preference never "came up" in selecting their delegates. The post, titled "What The Washington GOP Precinct Caucus Results Mean," begins, "Nothing."

CIA Tapes

Investigation Focused on Tapes, Not Torture

Paul Kiel | February 11, 2008, 2:13PM

John Durham, the prosecutor tapped by Attorney General Michael Mukasey to probe the destruction of the CIA’s videotapes of interrogations, finally laid out in detail the purview of his investigation last week. And it’s clear that his focus is on the tapes themselves – not what they might show.

Given Mukasey’s refusal to investigate the use of waterboarding, that’s not much of a surprise. Mukasey had also allowed that Durham could look at the possible use of torture “if it leads to showing motive” for the destruction. Durham’s summary of his investigation jibes with that -- showing that it’s all about the tapes, but that why someone might have destroyed the tapes will also be key to his investigation:

The questions under active review in this investigation focus on whether any federal criminal offenses were committed in connection with the destruction of the…videotapes. More specifically, the investigation team is actively reviewing whether any person or persons obstructed justice, made false statements, or acted in contempt of court or Congress in connection with the destruction of the videotapes. With respect to potential obstruction of justice offenses, we are investigating whether the destruction of the videotapes violated any order issued by any federal judicial officer, and, if so, what the persons’ knowledge, motive, and/or intent was in destroying the tapes or causing their destruction….

Central questions for this investigation include: who within the federal government knew of the existence of the videotaped interrogations at issue; who was aware of the various orders that might have required the preservation of the videotapes; and who was involved, in any way, in the decision and/or directive to destroy the videotapes.

In other words, whether any of this will lead to an examination of the interrogation techniques that were used on the two detainees whose interrogations were videotaped is unclear.

Durham made the disclosure, which was first reported by The New York Times this weekend, as part of the government’s bid to convince a federal judge to withdraw an order to explain the tapes’ destruction. You can read it here.

Election 2008

The Funny Side of Disenfranchisement

Paul Kiel | February 11, 2008, 12:27PM

TPM Reader JW writes in with a little window into the mind of Washington GOP Chair Luke Esser, who decided to stop counting votes on Saturday night just because.

It's a column from Esser's college days, and a column that was clearly intended to be humorous at that. So it should be taken with a grain of salt. On the eve of the 1986 midterm elections, Esser wrote in the University of Washington's paper that he was praying for rain, because that would drive Democratic-voting "shiftless deadbeats" away from the polls. He explained, "Years of interminable welfare checks and free government services have made these modern-day sloths even more lazy. They will vote on election day, if it isn’t much of a bother. But even the slightest inconvenience can keep them from the polling place."

And since, he wrote, "[m]any of the most successful anti-deadbeat voter techniques (poll taxes, sound beatings, etc.) that conservatives have used in the past have been outlawed by busybody judges," he was organizing a "Rain Dance" for conservatives that night. Ha ha ha.

Election 2008

Huck Plays The USSR Card

Paul Kiel | February 11, 2008, 11:52AM

In a race that's been marked by GOPers noisily competing to claim the mantle of Reaganism, Mike Huckabee seized an easy opportunity on CNN this morning to resurrect the old foe: "That is not what we do in American elections... Maybe that's how they used to conduct it in the old Soviet Union, but you don't just throw people's votes out and say, 'well, we're not going to bother counting them because we kind of think we know where this was going.'"

Well, the Washington state GOP chair Luke Esser was successfully bullied into finishing the state's count earlier than he'd planned -- and finally getting "as close as we can" to counting 100% of the vote.

That accelerated rate has put the GOP closer to that goal -- now it's at 93%, up from 87% when Esser decided to call it quits Saturday night. But assuming that they eventually get there, the counting is sure to get plenty of scrutiny. And given that this was a caucus with only about 13,500 Republicans turning out (with a couple hundred votes the difference between Huckabee and McCain), what would be otherwise minor charges of disenfranchisement take on greater importance. The Huckabee camp is already citing reports of supporters getting elbowed aside (see the "irregularities" campaign chairman Ed Rollins claimed last night) -- in particular three supporters say that those running the caucus didn't follow the correct process. One in particular is most outspoken:

Kim Davis of Lakewood in Pierce County outlined her experience in an e-mail....

"I think that was the trigger that fired the shot," [Huckabee Washignton volunteer leader Joseph] Fuiten said.

In an interview, Davis said she "absolutely" thought McCain supporters rigged voting in her precinct because she and a Ron Paul supporter were denied a chance to run to be delegates.

"They didn't follow the process. No one got to talk. No one got to vote," she said.

"I felt like what they did was wrong," she said. "If they could do that to us, I wondered how many other places could that have happened."

We'll see.

The Daily Muck

The Daily Muck

Andrew Berger and Peter Sheehy | February 11, 2008, 10:32AM

This week Col. Lawrence J. Morris, the newly installed Guantanamo chief prosecutor, will publicly detail a series of criminal charges against six men suspected (sub. req.) of plotting the suicide-hijackings of September 11, 2001. Morris has waited for this moment for years as the Bush administration's military tribunal system has suffered legal setbacks, internal conflicts, revelations of detainee abuse, and embarrassing disclosures about its effort to conduct show trials. (Wall Street Journal)

President Bush used his State of the Union address to excoriate lawmakers for spending taxpayer dollars on their pet projects, yet Bush's new budget includes plenty of executive earmarks. Bush's pork includes $330 million for combating pests such as the emerald ash borer and sirex woodwasp, and $800,000 for the Neosho National Fish Hatchery in Missouri. (New York Times)

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates suggested that after the last of the troops deployed to Iraq as part of the surge return to the U.S. in July, no more American troops will leave Iraq for at least another month and possibly even longer. If there is indeed a "freeze" on the withdrawal of U.S. forces later this year, it is possible that there will "be nearly as many U.S. troops in Iraq at the end of 2008 as were in the country when the administration announced plans for the surge more than a year ago." (Wall Street Journal)

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Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | February 11, 2008, 9:47AM

Back in the summer of 2005, just as journalists were toiling to produce the first books on what had gone so horribly wrong in Iraq, the Army was handed a thorough study by the RAND Corporation, its federally-financed research arm.

And it came, as one might expect, to some sharp conclusions. It faulted the President and Condoleezza Rice, Don Rumsfeld's Pentagon, Colin Powell's State Department, and Gen. Tommy Franks' Central Command for a variety of shortcomings, all essentially for their role in not adequately preparing for securing postwar Iraq. The report provided a strategy for how the Army and the government in general might avoid a similar plight the next time around (the short version: try preparing for the aftermath).

Unclassified versions of RAND reports are regularly made public, and the researchers had hoped a version of this report would be too. But, as The New York Times reports this morning, the Army wasn't happy with the product. So they buried it. The reason, an Army official explains, is that the report was just too gosh darn informative:

“After carefully reviewing the findings and recommendations of the thorough RAND assessment, the Army determined that the analysts had in some cases taken a broader perspective on the early planning and operational phases of Operation Iraqi Freedom than desired or chartered by the Army.... Some of the RAND findings and recommendations were determined to be outside the purview of the Army and therefore of limited value in informing Army policies, programs and priorities.”

Another Pentagon official, this one whispering to the Times anonymously, gives another version:

A Pentagon official who is familiar with the episode offered a different interpretation: Army officials were concerned that the report would strain relations with a powerful defense secretary and become caught up in the political debate over the war. “The Army leaders who were involved did not want to take the chance of increasing the friction with Secretary Rumsfeld,” said the official, who asked not to be identified because he did not want to alienate senior military officials.

Of course, the report still isn't publicly available, and from what the Times describes, it would make for interesting reading. Overlaying the various critiques of the agencies, the report cites a general principle (The Cheney Principle of Prewar Bravado?) that explains the general failure:

One serious problem the study described was the Bush administration’s assumption that the reconstruction requirements would be minimal. There was also little incentive to challenge that assumption, the report said.

“Building public support for any pre-emptive or preventative war is inherently challenging, since by definition, action is being taken before the threat has fully manifested itself,” it said. “Any serious discussion of the costs and challenges of reconstruction might undermine efforts to build that support.”

All Muck is Local

All Muck Is Local: D.C. Data Disposal

Diane Vacca | February 10, 2008, 11:10AM

It was still dark last Wednesday morning when the cleaning crews pulled into the alley behind a Washington, D.C., mall, but not so dark that they didn’t notice some unusual items left for them to pick up with the rest of the trash. The two 3-foot-high servers were clearly labeled “PROPERTY OF D.C. OFFICE OF TAX AND REVENUE.”

Now, who puts a server out on the street? More to the point, who would dump servers belonging to an agency that’s in the midst of a federal investigation of what’s described as the biggest corruption scandal in the city’s history? (See our artful rendering of what it might have looked like above.)

The garbage collectors notified Melvin Barnes, the building maintenance man.

“At first, I was thinking, ‘Man, who's putting this stuff here?’” said Barnes. “But when I saw the labels of the tax office, with all this stuff going on, I was like, ‘Uh oh.’”

“All this stuff”—the alleged embezzlement of at least $20 million in a money-laundering scheme and its investigation— has been front-page news in Washington for months. Two employees of the city tax office are among the ten people who’ve been arrested in connection with the scandal.

The former supervisor of the tax office, Harriette Walters, has been charged with approving hundreds of fraudulent property tax refund checks made out to to phony companies and handing them over to a group of her relatives and friends. She allegedly instructed her co-conspirators to cash the checks at a Baltimore branch of Bank of America, where Walter Jones, the former assistant bank manager of the branch, would accept them. In one month alone, three bogus checks totaling $1.1 million were cashed through Bank of America. Jones was arrested last December.

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