Well, that wasn't so hard, was it? After somewhat absurdly refusing to post an exhaustive report on the operational links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Iraq online (there were no links), the Pentagon has finally reversed course.

A statement from Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) Senate office:

"This afternoon, State Department officials briefed staffers from the offices of Senators Obama, Biden, Clinton, and McCain for approximately 90 minutes. There are still many unanswered questions, including why these passport files were accessed and for what purpose. Senator Obama believes a thorough investigation of these privacy breaches is necessary and expects one that is prompt and thorough."

Attorney General Michael Mukasey has an open mind. Way open. From The Legal Times' blog:

"We need to stay engaged here because the stakes are tremendous," Mukasey said. "We're willing and happy to work with Congress on a workable bill. The Senate passed a workable, bipartisan bill that contains some compromises. The House passed a bill that was neither bipartisan nor workable."

While Mukasey offered no hint that a compromise is in the works, he said the House proposal does not offer guarantees to the communications industry.

"The people we work with need to know that they can be secure in working with us," he said. "That would introduce the same level of uncertainty that would be introduced by having litigation go on in public...If you tell somebody that you've received assurances, but the propriety of your conduct is now up for grabs, that's not exactly reassuring."

Just a refresher that John McCain's tangle with the FEC has yet to be resolved:

Sen. John McCain has officially broken the limits imposed by the presidential public financing system, reports filed last night show.

McCain has now spent $58.4 million on his primary effort. Those who have committed to public financing can spend no more than $54 million on their primary bid.

So has McCain broken the law? The answer is far from simple.

Remember that the FEC chairman has written McCain's campaign to tell them that McCain has not withdrawn from the public funding system, because the FEC hasn't approved his request to withdraw -- and can't approve it until there are four commissioners. To which McCain's lawyers have replied, nuh uh.

For now, the McCain campaign will continue to spend away. Whether this will come back to haunt him somewhere down the line (assuming the FEC is functioning again someday)... well, who knows.

From NBC News:

Two of the government contractors who allegedly took a peek at Sen. Barack Obama's passport records worked for a Virginia-based firm called Stanley, Inc., according to U.S. government officials with knowledge of the State Department passport controversy.

Stanley, Inc., is headquartered in Arlington, Va. and is employee-owned. The State Department awarded it a contract for $164 million in 2006. The contract calls for Stanley to print and mail millions of new U.S. passports.

NBC News contacted a Stanley, Inc., spokeswoman this afternoon, and informed her that two sources had confirmed that employees at her firm were involved with the scandal. The spokeswoman would only comment: "We've been directed by the State Department to direct all media calls to them."

The government officials tell NBC News that Stanley Inc. fired the two workers. A worker at a second contracting company, not related to Stanley, Inc., also allegedly took a look at the Obama files and those belonging to Sen. John McCain. That person has been disciplined but not yet been fired, State Department officials say.

One Stanley, Inc., contractor allegedly looked at Obama's passport records on January 9, and then a second Stanley employee allegedly took a peek at similar Obama records on February 21, the officials said. Stanley, Inc., fired both workers after the alleged security breaches were discovered, the officials added.

We've posted a couple of times this week on the move by U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles Thomas O'Brien's decision to disband the public corruption unit in that office. On Monday, we quoted a former prosecutor in the unit on his view that the move "sends a message" to politicians that they don't need to be so careful. And yesterday, we relayed The Los Angeles Times' reporting on the move, which anonymously quoted a number of the prosecutors in the office who said that O'Brien had threatened them with retaliation if they publicly disputed the move.

But TPM Reader M thinks that O'Brien is getting a bum rap:

I recently left the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles for private practice, and I've followed the recent events in the office closely and talked to several folks who were at the meeting in question. I'm no loyal Bushie, and I've been outraged by what this administration has done to the U.S. Attorney's Office as an institution and experienced firsthand how hard it is to be a prosecutor in this administration. But Tom O'Brien is no Rachel Paulose. He's a career prosecutor and one of the best trial attorneys the office has seen in years. Yes, he's a Republican, but he was backed strongly by both Democratic senators Boxer and Feinstein for a job that most people figured was too radioactive to get Senate approval for anyone in the wake of the U.S. Attorney's scandal. O'Brien also done more to fix the budget problems, to boost morale, and enforce accountability in the office than any U.S. Attorney in LA in recent memory.

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Something about HUD chief Alphonso Jackson's reputation as the most cronyfied Bush administration official of all makes Sens. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Patty Murray (D-WA) think he might not be the best man for the job.

In a letter to President Bush today (which you can read in full below), the two, who chair on the two key oversight committees for HUD, say it's time for Bush to pull the rug out from under his most loyal cabinet member.

Federal investigators are currently probing the limits of Jackson's cronyism and whether he lied to congressional and HUD investigators when he proclaimed that he doesn't touch contracts. Besides that, a suit by Philadelphia's public housing director has exposed some of the embarrassing goings-on under Jackson. In testimony before Congress, Jackson has refused to comment on any of this, saying that he won't comment on an ongoing investigation. The senators write that Jackson has "effectively reject[ed] our oversight role."

The letter:

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For now, this much is clear: the State Department's inspector general -- or its acting inspector general since Cookie Krongard resigned in scandal -- will be handling the investigation into the passport breaches for the foreseeable future.

Although the State Department's inspector general has contacted the Justice Department about the breaches, that doesn't mean the Justice Department is actually investigating, State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack explained today during a briefing:

I wouldn't characterize this as a joint investigation. I'll let the DOJ characterize their level and nature of involvement.

We have invited them in to participate in the way that they see fit, again, for the reasons that I talked about: as a hedge against any potential further action that might be required that would require the DOJ to take a look at whether or not they would take any action. Again, that's completely their call.

It's just a way of ensuring that there is openness and transparency, and that if there is any need for further action, beyond just the I.G. investigation, that the Department of Justice would have the option of looking at what it is they would or would not do, having had access to all the information and how we did the investigation from the very beginning.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) wants to know why the State Department won't release the names of the contractors whose employees looked at Barack Obama's passport file.

The answer, it seems, is that there's an investigation going on, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Sean McCormack said last night: "there's an investigation aspect to this so we want that to be able to proceed in as clear a manner as it possibly can." During today's briefing, he indicated that might change -- at least, they'll "take a look at it":

Question: OK. And another question: Can you name the two companies or contractors that these people -- that the three people worked for?

McCormack: At this point we're not prepared to release the name of the contractors. There could be a point here at which we will. There's been a request in from the Hill for that information, along with a lot of other information. So we'll take a look at that.

At the moment, I'm not prepared to provide that. But we'll take a look at it.

Question: Why are you not naming the companies? It's a public contract.

McCormack: Yes. No. Look, it's a legitimate question. We're taking a look at it.

I think that at this point we've just started an investigation. We want to err on the side of caution and allow investigators to get a start without some of the attention that comes with talking about the names of the contractors.

We'll see. It's something that we're taking under advisement. But at this point in time, we're not going to talk about it.

During a briefing going on now, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Sean McCormack said that follow-up checks by the Department after the breaches of Barack Obama's passport file uncovered two other breaches of presidential candidates: one of Hillary Clinton and one of John McCain.

McCormack said that the breach of Clinton's file had occurred this past summer by a trainee in the Passport Office and only happened because trainees are encouraged to do test searches (they usually pick a family member, McCormack said) and one employee decided to use Hillary on his or her test run.

The McCain breach, he said, was done by one of the same employees who had peeped at Obama's file. It was "detected earlier this year," he said, but "I don't have the exact date." That employee has been "disciplined," he said, but is still working with the contractor. McCormack later said that employee "no longer has access to this kind of information."

Update: Here's video of that briefing:

A statement out from Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-NY) Senate office:

This morning, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice contacted Senator Clinton in order to inform her that the Senator's passport file was breached in 2007. The State Department will be briefing Senator Clinton's staff this afternoon to provide details about the recent unauthorized breaches of passport records. Senator Clinton will closely monitor the State Department's investigation into this and the other breaches of private passport information.

House sleuth Henry Waxman (D-CA) has questions. His full letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is below:

Dear Madam Secretary:

Yesterday, Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, the Under Secretary of State for Management, confirmed that three contract employees working for two State Department contractors gained unauthorized access to the passport records of Senator Barack Obama. When Ambassador Kennedy was asked for the identities of the contract employees and the companies, however, he declined to provide them:

Question: Are you releasing the names of any of these three contractors or the companies for which they were contracting on behalf of the State Department? …

Ambassador Kennedy: In a word, no.

I am writing to request that you provide the Oversight Committee by Monday with the identities of the companies involved in these breaches. I also believe this information should be made publicly available.

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is the principal oversight committee in the House of Representatives and has broad oversight jurisdiction as set forth in House Rule X.

Sincerely,

Henry A. Waxman
Chairman

On Sept. 16th of last year Blackwater guards leading a diplomatic convoy fired shots into Nisour Square in Baghdad, killing 17 civilians, including a 9-year-old boy. Blackwater offered each victim $20,000 in compensation, but, like other victims and their relatives, the boy's father has declined the buyout, and is now attempting to file a lawsuit against the company. (ABC News)

Speaking of Blackwater, House Democrats are requesting documents regarding a loophole in overseas contracting. House Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman, (D-California) sent letters to five executive agencies, marking the beginning of a congressional investigation into how and why a policy enabling possible fraudulent contracting was established. (Associated Press and Oversight.house.gov)

The US Justice Department is defending the practices they employed in pursuing the case against for New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Officials claim the involvement of a public official, as well as large sums of money, warranted the unusually intensive investigation into a prostitution ring, a crime that rarely garners federal scrutiny. (New York Times)

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Another Watergate? The scheming of would-be plumbers searching for vulnerabilities in the possible Democratic presidential nominee's past?

Or three bored cube rats who were just looking out of "imprudent curiosity?"

Thrice this year, on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14, contract employees of the State Department accessed Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) passport file. So far, everything beyond that simple data point is unclear.

The State Department refuses to release the names of the contractors (there are apparently two) or the employees -- two of whom have been fired, one "disciplined." It's not clear what information, exactly, they accessed -- "whether the employees saw anything other than the basic personal data such as name, citizenship, age and place of birth that is required when a person fills out a passport application."

And, of course, it's not clear why they were doing it. The verdict of a "preliminary investigation," the State Department says, is that they were motivated by "imprudent curiosity."

And at this point it's unclear who will do more than a preliminary investigation. Although Undersecretary of State Patrick F. Kennedy told reporters last night that they were asking the State Department's inspector general (an office still stinging from the resignation of Cookie Krongard) to investigate, but as the AP points out, the inspector general probably wouldn't be able to do much because the employees no longer work for the Department. So who else will? The searches may have violated the Privacy Act, but another State Department official says it's premature to consider whether the FBI or Justice Department should be involved. Meanwhile an "administration official" tells The Washington Times that the FBI is conducting a "preliminary inquiry."

State Department officials say that the breaches came to light as a result of a reporter's query yesterday afternoon (it's not clear exactly what that query was). The Department's database flags the access of the files of "high profile" people, so it was easy to discover the breaches once they were looking for them. Why weren't they discovered before?

"I will fully acknowledge this information should have been passed up the line," Kennedy told reporters in a conference call Thursday night. "It was dealt with at the office level."

So what about those supervisors? It's unclear. The contractors, Kennedy says, do work like data entry, customer service and other administrative tasks for the Department.

The whole thing compels a comparison to 1992, when Steven Berry, a Republican appointee at the Department, was discovered to have pulled Bill Clinton's passport records. The independent counsel selected to investigate, Joe DiGenova, found after a three-year, $2.2 million probe, that Berry had indeed been up to no good, but no one higher up the chain had known about it and it wasn't criminal anyway.

The State Department is apparently going to be briefing the Obama campaign later today. We'll keep you updated.

Earlier this week, we reported on the decision by U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles Thomas O'Brien to disband the office's public corruption unit. The official line from O'Brien was that disbanding the 17-lawyer unit would actually boost the number of public corruption investigations, because other units would now have the opportunity to take on such cases. The was a line of reasoning with which a former prosecutor from that office disagreed.

And not surprisingly, the current lawyers there don't think much of that either. But, reports The Los Angeles Times, O'Brien warned them not to dispute that publicly:

[I]n interviews with The Times, several members of the disbanded unit challenged that explanation, saying the move was intended to punish lawyers for a perceived failure to produce and for bad-mouthing their boss, U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O'Brien.

The lawyers described a meeting last week in which an angry O'Brien derided attorneys in the office for working too few hours, filing too few cases and for speaking ill of him to subordinates.

They said O'Brien also threatened to tarnish their reputations if they challenged the official explanation for the unit's dismantling in conversations with reporters. Members of the unit contacted by The Times either spoke on the condition that they not be named or declined to comment. Several said they wanted to talk about the situation but feared reprisals if they did so.

Lawyers from that office also say that O'Brien's move might lead to an increase in the number of prosecutions, but they will be more in the mold of "filings against postal employees stealing mail and other relatively minor cases but 'don't look for any long, drawn-out City Hall corruption cases.'"

The misleading spin doesn't end there, however. The spokesman for the office told the Times that the Los Angeles' office was completely unique -- that no other office in the country has an entire section of lawyers specializing in public corruption cases.

That's not true. The public integrity unit in Manhattan's U.S. Attorney Office is famously handling now-ex-Gov. Elliot Spitzer's (D) entanglement with the Emperor's Club prostitution ring, and U.S. Attorney for Chicago Patrick Fitzgerald has a public corruption section in his office -- an office that's handled the wide-ranging investigation into the administration of Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D).

Actually, given those units' recent success in making the lives of governors miserable, you can bet that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) isn't too upset about this move.

The Environmental Protection Agency's reaction to oversight has been less than friendly. Administrator Stephen Johnson's crew never misses the chance to redact the particularly embarrassing parts of agency documents. House sleuth Henry Waxman (D-CA) has already issued two subpoenas for EPA documents when they weren't promptly forthcoming.

But now the EPA wants a little something from Waxman: transcripts for the interviews Waxman's staff has done with seven senior EPA staffers. Waxman is investigating Johnson's decision to overrule the unanimous recommendation of his legal and technical staff and block California's greenhouse gas rules.

Now, why would the agency want to know what its own employees are telling congressional investigators? A cynic might say that Johnson wants to know what his staff are saying so that he's prepared for any unpleasant questions when Waxman finally asks him to testify before the House oversight committee. After all, there's such a gulf between the EPA's staff and the political appointees that union representatives have backed out of a cooperation agreement. But the EPA says otherwise:

The EPA "has an interest in ensuring that the information provided ... by agency employees in their official capacity is accurate and complete," wrote [EPA Associate Administrator Christopher Bliley] in a letter dated March 14, a day after Waxman had issued a subpoena for 196 internal EPA documents.

It's a reasoning reminiscent of the agency's refusal to turn over documents showing that Johnson had ignored his staff's recommendation. Agency lawyers argued then that the documents shouldn't be turned over because "many of the documents are pre-decisional and thus do not reflect the Agency’s full and complete thinking on the matter." So you might say that the EPA frequently expresses discomfort with the idea of the public getting information that the EPA would rather keep mum.

A quick update on the House's lawsuit against Harriet Miers and White House chief of staff Josh Bolten. From The Politico:

The House General Counsel's Office, which is representing the Judiciary Committee in a civil contempt lawsuit against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, has asked a federal judge to set up an expedited schedule to resolve portions of the case, a schedule that would require a ruling by this summer, according to court documents filed today.

The Justice Department, which is representing Bolten and Miers in the case, countered that the only reason the Judiciary Committee is seeking a speedy determination of the case is so that it "recommence prior to Congress' August recess" its investigation into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006. The Justice Department wants a slower review of the contempt case, and it is already warning that it may appeal any ruling that goes against it.

What the House wants is to just settle the White House's more expansive claims of privilege -- namely, that Miers didn't even need to show up in response to the House Judiciary Committee's subpoena and that both Bolten and Miers didn't even need to indicate what sort of documents the White House were claiming privilege for.

A private conference is scheduled for tomorrow. The judge's decision will likely indicate whether the House has any hope of hearing any actual testimony from Miers or seeing any documents from Bolten during the Bush administration.

Who says that Scooter Libby is going unpunished?

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was disbarred from practicing law in the nation's capital on Thursday.

I Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted to lying to a grand jury and investigators last year.

The former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney was convicted last year of lying to a grand jury and federal agents probing the leak of the identity of a CIA agent, Valerie Plame Wilson.

"When a member of the Bar is convicted of an offense involving moral turpitude, disbarment is mandatory," the District of Columbia Court of Appeals wrote in its opinion, which is posted on its Web site.

It's all part of the president's "measured" approach to Libby's commutation. Sure, Libby won't have to serve that 30 month jail sentence. But the remaining punishments (the bother of reporting to a probation officer, the inconvenience of disbarment, that $250,000 fine) are "harsh."

No one will ever say that Rep. Don Young (R-AK) can't handle the tough questions. OK, so maybe he tends to handle them by shouting down his questioners, but the man can take care of himself.

Well, Young is due for his first debate of the campaign tonight. But unfortunately there won't be any questions about why Young has paid defense attorneys almost $1 million, or whether he violated the Constitution in order to benefit a major campaign contributor, or any of his other entanglements.

That's because it's all about fish:

The kinds of questions that so annoyed the incumbent, Don Young, that he canceled a press conference last month -- his relationship to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff or why he's spent nearly $1 million on legal fees -- will be off limits in Kodiak.

The debate is part of the Comfish exposition and moderator John Whiddon, president of Island Seafoods and the Kodiak Chamber of Commerce, said any question not directly related to fishing will be ruled out of order.

Somehow you got to figure that someone will manage to work their way under Young's skin nonetheless. The debate will feature six participants, minus Young's prominent Republican primary challenger Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell. But Dem Jake Metcalfe, whom Young has dubbed "Jake the Snake," will be there to get him riled up.

Pentagon officials are at odds over military strategy in Iraq. Ground commanders, like Gen. David H. Patraeus, advocate an inflated troop presence, while the Joint Chiefs believe otherwise. (Los Angeles Times)

Rep. Henry Waxman, (D-California) is calling for an investigation in faulty electrical wiring of American military bases in Iraq following the electrocution death of Staff Sgt. Ryan D. Maseth, a 24-year-old Green Beret. (New York Times and Speaker.gov)

Health and Human Services Director Michael Leavitt sent a letter to the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology outlining the Bush administration's policy that allows physicians with moral objections to abortion to refuse referring patients to other outlets. (ThinkProgress.org)

(John Amick wrote this post -- ed)

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Dick Cheney: master diplomat, negotiator and conciliator?!

Ever since late February, the Iraqi government had been deadlocked over legislation that laid out guidelines for provincial elections. That was because one man on Iraq's three-member Presidency Council had objected to the law, calling it unconstitutional. The law would pave the way for the elections to take place on October 1st, a development that would be sure to have an effect on the U.S. election just a month later.

But yesterday, that member, Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi, suddenly withdrew his objection. The move came just two days after Vice President Dick Cheney met with Mehdi. So did Cheney have anything to do with that change? Well, it depends on who you ask. From The New York Times::

[Laith Shubar, an adviser to Mr. Mehdi,] said that Mr. Cheney had called Mr. Mehdi in February to ask about his objections to the law, but that the issue did not come up again when Mr. Cheney visited Mr. Mehdi here this week. A spokesman for Mr. Cheney said he could not comment on the meeting, but in an interview on Wednesday with ABC News, Mr. Cheney said, referring to Mr. Mehdi: “I talked with him about that, and a number of others. They expect they’ll have that resolved shortly.”

Shubar says the reversal came because Mehdi "received a promise from the Parliament speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashadani, that lawmakers would discuss the possibility of making changes to the legislation." Sounds like pretty thin gruel.

Meanwhile, the Times reports:

Early on Wednesday morning, American forces accidentally killed three Iraqi police officers, including a lieutenant in the special forces, just outside Hawija, a Sunni town about 140 miles north of Baghdad, an American military statement said. The statement said the officers were shot and another wounded when the Iraqi police, responding to a call for assistance, entered “at a high rate of speed” a cordoned area where American forces were operating about 2:30 a.m..

The police lieutenant, Abdul Amir Hamid Salih, 39, had escaped five assassination attempts and had to change his cellphone number every week because of death threats from insurgents, said his father, Hamid Salih. Lieutenant Salih’s house was burned down six months ago by insurgents, who offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who killed him, his father said.

Hamid Kareem Hussein, the wounded police officer, said, “We were surprised when the Americans asked us for help at night, so we went to this village and we faced gunfire.

“The lieutenant said, ‘Call them on the loudspeaker and tell them we are policemen and that they asked for us,’ and then everything cut out and I didn’t feel anything,” he said, adding, “It’s a tragedy. I hate the police, and I hate Iraq.”

Here's another nugget from Eric Lichtblau's new book.

It's well known that The New York Times held the story about the warrantless wiretapping program for more than a year. A concerted lobbying campaign by the administration at first convinced editors at the Times not to run the story in late 2004. But Lichtblau adds a new detail about how one of the few Democrats who had been briefed on the program seemed to take the administration's side of things.

The administration's main contention (beyond lying about there being no dissent about the legality of the program) was that reporting the existence of the program would compromise it and tip off the terrorists. In his book, Lichtblau tells how a few months after the story was held, he happened to be covering a House hearing where he heard Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) argue passionately for stronger civil liberties safeguards in the reauthorization of the Patriot Act.

Lichtblau saw this as an opportunity to question Harman about the warrantless wiretapping program, since Harman, as a member of the "gang of eight," was one of the four Democrats who'd been briefed on it. He writes:

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In his re-election battle with Al Franken, Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) can use all the help he can get. And Democrats are saying that it looks like the White House is working behind the scenes to do what they can.

Remember that one of the key revelations last summer of Karl Rove's machinations in the White House Office of Political Affairs was his use of cabinet members to create free publicity for endangered Republicans. Agency heads or officials who traveled only a handful of times on off years suddenly found themselves whipped into service in an election year. Republicans facing tough challenges could count on a constant stream of photo-ops with administration officials announcing good things for his or her constituents. Rove called the operation his "asset deployment" team.

It looks like the White House may still be at it. From The Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings was in Minnesota on Tuesday to announce a proposed pilot project for the federal No Child Left Behind law that would give 10 states more flexibility in addressing struggling schools' specific needs....

However, Minnesota doesn't yet have enough of those schools to participate in the pilot project, prompting some to question why Spellings made the announcement here and whether it was an effort to help Sen. Norm Coleman in his reelection campaign.

Spellings appeared at the state Department of Revenue and the State Capitol alongside Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Coleman.

"It certainly smells that no Democrats were invited to this event, when we already know that this administration has politicized Cabinet agencies," said Matthew Miller, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "It looks like a stunt to help Norm Coleman's campaign."

So -- Spellings announced a pilot program in Minnesota that won't even be taking place in Minnesota and none of Minnesota's Democratic lawmakers were invited to the event. The Department of Ed explained to the Star-Tribune that Coleman was invited "because he's sponsoring legislation related to No Child Left Behind." And I guess Pawlenty was there just to be there.

Spellings is currently on a 17-state tour. It'll be interesting to see if any Democrats make it to the dais.

From the AP:

President Bush has chosen veteran prosecutor Ken Wainstein to be his new White House-based homeland security adviser, The Associated Press has learned....

He currently heads the Justice Department's anti-terror efforts. He has also been the top federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia, and the top lawyer at the FBI.

Funny that the appointment should come one day after Newsweek publishes a story on the White House's "friggin' embarrassing" inability to fill the post.

In March of 2004, virtually every member of the Justice Department's leadership was prepared to resign over the administration's warrantless wiretapping program. Thanks to former Deputy Attorney General James Comey's testimony, that much is well known. But even as Congress has debated giving the telecoms immunity from civil suits for participation in that program, it's still not understood precisely what was going on that caused such a revolt.

In his new book on the Justice Department under George Bush, New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau, who, along with James Risen, broke the warrantless wiretapping story, sheds more light on this episode (while leaving plenty unexplained). But putting Lichtblau's telling together with recently reported details about the National Security Agency's data driftnet, it's possible to come to a fuller understanding of what was going on.

Shortly after 9/11, the administration began a much more aggressive surveillance program, a program that had two main components: an aggressive data mining program led by the National Security Agency and wiretapping done without a warrant that stemmed from leads generated by the data mining.

While that program was ongoing, the FISA court was still approving warrants submitted by the Justice Department like normal. But sometimes the two processes crossed. Sometimes the Justice Department would want a wiretap for someone who had already been wiretapped without a warrant. Lichtblau reports that "some 10 to 20 percent of all court warrants fell into this area of 'double coverage.'" Department lawyers had a clear reason for wanting to go through the court if possible: they could not build a legal case against a suspect if the surveillance was illegal.

In that case, the Department, with the consent of the chief judge of the FISA court, set up a system where only the chief judge would handle such applications -- since none of the other judges were privy to the program. It was a dicey process. James Baker, the Justice Department official in charge of intelligence issues, set up a process where any Department lawyers working under him could "opt out," if he or she didn't feel comfortable forwarding such a wiretap application to the court, Lichtblau reports. "Several lawyers" took him up on that offer.

But about that data mining. The NSA's driftnet spat out leads that FBI agents found largely useless. Lichtblau explains:

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From The New York Times:

A sheaf of documents that a federal court forced the Treasury Department to release indicate there have been repeated complaints from American consumers who have been falsely linked to terrorism or drug trafficking during routine credit checks, the organization that sought the documents in a lawsuit said Tuesday.

The more than 100 pages of documents released Monday to the organization, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco, include a variety of complaints about the list maintained by the Office of Foreign Asset Control in the Treasury Department, said Philip Hwang, a lawyer for the group....

The documents include e-mail messages from a Navy veteran who had been unable to use the Internet service PayPal, and an 18-year-old who wrote to say that he was not a Libyan minister who was apparently on the list.

A client of a Maryland Toyota dealer reported being checked by a salesperson for tattoos because of a Treasury list match.

A Treasury Department official was baffled by the last claim, saying information on the list did not include physical characteristics....

Another official said the department did not have numbers on how many people might have been falsely identified, since institutions can check their clients’ identity against the list and ignore it if something like the date of birth obviously does not match the person in front of them.

Remember that, according to The Wall Street Journal, the Treasury Department feeds transaction information to the National Security Agency for their vast data driftnet. So it's possible that a mistake on that watchlist could have led to much more than an inconvenience during a credit check.

If you're curious, the Treasury Department posts its watch list here (pdf).

The Detroit City Council made clear their wish to oust Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick with a 7-1 no confidence vote on Tuesday. Kilpatrick is under fire after text messages revealed that he lied in court testimony about an affair with his former chief of staff. In response to the vote, Kilpatrick said he would not quit. He is, after all, on a mission from God. (Detroit Free-Press)

Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore -- currently running for the U.S. Senate -- was the chairman of a Bear Stearns subsidiary tied to some the highest-risk securities associated with the mortgage industry crisis. (Associated Press)

Five years ago, President Bush commenced the United States with a war in Iraq. The anniversary is this week, after an expensive (long term cost at $4 trillion) half-decade of violence and inner turmoil. Original cost-calculations by the Bush Administration to liberate the Iraqi people and build an entirely new government: $50 to $60 billion.(New York Times)

(This post was written by John Amick --- ed)

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I think everyone can agree that if you go to the trouble of organizing an Iraqi political reconciliation conference, it's generally a bad sign if a number of key players don't even show up.

The idea behind the conference pushed by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was to have a national "dialogue."

The largest Sunni bloc, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's party, and a prominent minority party of Shiites and Sunnis all boycotted the conference. No representatives of the insurgency (either Baathist or militia members) were there. Supporters of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr walked out of the conference, as did a prominent Sunni tribal leader who's been key to the so-called "Anbar Awakening."

Typical of Iraq, the boycotters don't even concur on their reason for boycotting. The New York Times focuses on pique by some blocs that they didn't get a proper invitation (Maliki's people say everybody got an official invitation). The AP reports that one Sunni bloc "said they would not participate in the conference until Shiite lawmakers address their political demands" -- so they won't talk reconciliation until their grievances are reconciled. And then there's a more direct explanation from that Anbar tribal leader, who's quoted in The Los Angeles Times (under the headline "A no-reconciliation conference"):

The organizer noted that Sunni tribes, which have revolted against Al Qaeda in Iraq, attended the conference. But one of their main leaders, Sheik Sulaiman, decided to lead his delegation out of the conference.

"I didn't stay any longer than it took me to smoke my cigarette. It was a total failure, because the Iraqi politicians are a failure," Sulaiman said.

This is why even Gen. David Petraeus says that "no one" in the U.S. and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation."

Happy 5th Anniversary, everybody.

Last time we checked in with Steven Bradbury, the guy who tells the administration how far they can legally go (the head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel), he was explaining to Congress that the waterboarding technique used by the CIA on detainees was nothing at all like the "water cure" technique used by the Spanish Inquisition (it's actually similar to the Khmer Rouge). He also explained in detail his reasoning for why waterboarding was not in violation of the criminal statute barring torture.

This is the guy currently with the power to issue "advance pardons" for administration lawbreaking.

He is clearly not a man who shrinks from airing his views. And in a rare interview (sub. req.) with Legal Times, Bradbury proclaims that he's enjoying the healthy, vigorous debate occasioned by the administration's interrogation and surveillance policies.

Of course, Democrats might have a different way of seeing things. Bradbury has effectively run the office since 2004, even though his nomination has been blocked by Democrats. He has been nominated five times. Dems have even charged that the administration is breaking the law by keeping Bradbury atop the Office of Legal Counsel. The Vacancies Reform Act bars non-Senate-confirmed appointees for holding their jobs for longer than 210 days. But the Justice Department has responded that Bradbury is not breaking the law because he is not the official acting head of the office; he's officially the deputy who's carrying out the duties of the chief because the position is vacant. So voila! no problem.

In his interview, Bradbury proclaims that he "very much respects" the role of the Senate in confirming nominees:

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From Newsweek:

The Bush administration has been rebuffed in its efforts to find a high-profile candidate to fill the top White House counterterrorism post.

The failure to find a successor to Frances Fragos Townsend, who resigned last January as assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, has frustrated White House aides, given the significance the Bush administration has attached to the job....

Among those who have turned down the job—or made clear they weren't interested in replacing Townsend—are retired Army Gen. John Abizaid, former chief of U.S. Central Command, and retired Adm. James Loy, former Coast Guard commandant and deputy homeland security secretary, according to three sources knowledgeable about the issue who, like others quoted in this article, asked for anonymity when discussing White House personnel moves. (Neither Abizaid nor Loy responded to requests for comment.) The sources said most of the top candidates the White House contacted expressed little interest in signing on so close to the end of President Bush's second term. "It's a friggin' embarrassment," said one source who is involved in the recruitment process. The source noted that Townsend announced her resignation last November but didn't leave the post until January—in part to give the president plenty of time to find a replacement.

From Justin at ABC:

The White House has three days to explain why it shouldn't be required to copy its computer hard drives to ensure no further e-mails are lost, a federal judge ordered Tuesday....

The order, issued Tuesday morning by a federal magistrate judge in Washington, D.C., comes in a case brought against the Bush administration by the National Security Archive, a nonpartisan group affiliated with George Washington University....

Judge Facciola rejected as "draconian" a proposal by the Archive that would have forced the White House to quarantine every computer workstation it had. Instead, Facciola proposed the White House make a "forensic copy" of all preservable data on every computer that could have been used by an employee between 2003 and 2005, the period in question....

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the White House "fully intends to comply" with the order, which is currently being reviewed.

Yesterday on TPM, Josh noted a report (sub. req.) in The Recorder, a California legal news publication, that the U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles, Thomas O'Brien, had disbanded the office's public integrity unit.

The 17 attorneys in that section of the office "will be redistributed among the major fraud and organized crime sections, which now will have a mandate to battle corruption," the Recorder reported. The office's spokesman tried to put as bright a face on it as possible, saying "Our view is that it's a significant enhancement of the public corruption unit. We now have over 70 lawyers who essentially will be able to step up to the plate."

That's clearly some weak spin. But I asked a former prosecutor from the office's public integrity unit to give me a sense of what this means.

That former prosecutor didn't think the move was "politically motivated," instead attributing the move to a desire to improve the office's statistics. U.S. attorneys frequently experience pressure to increase the number of prosecutions as evidence of performance. Remember that Justice Department officials used former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam's lower immigration case numbers as justification for her firing (ignoring her office's concentration on busting illegal immigration rings). "Public corruption cases are very difficult and very time consuming," the former prosecutor explained. "A lot of that doesn't result in a statistic."

Of course, that doesn't mean that the cases don't have a disproportionate impact. "The fact of an investigation into the earmark process [i.e. the Duke Cunningham scandal and by extension the investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)]," really had a huge impact in opening up debate of how that process has been corrupted by money. That doesn't happen if you're not looking at it every day.

"My concern is the message that it sends," the lawyer continued. "The existence of the section, the fact that talented, smart, aggressive prosecutors are looking at cases, sends a message to public officials that they need to be careful." Now another message has been sent.

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The Justice Department's review of the nation's terrorist watch list reveals that the list is incomplete, not up to date, and inaccurate. Many of the agencies that contribute information to the list, which is managed by the Terrorist Screening Center, lacked standard rules for sharing relevant data, and FBI field agents submitted names to the list without proper vetting. (LA Times)

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is now investigating alleged conflicts of interest within the scientific panels that help shape policy at the Environmental Protection Agency. Of most immediate concern is the "case of eight scientists who were consultants or members of EPA science advisory panels assessing the human health effects of toxic chemicals while getting research support from the chemical industry on the same chemicals they were examining." Meanwhile, Deborah Rice, a prominent toxicologist, was removed from an EPA panel when the The American Chemistry Council questioned her objectivity. (AP)

The U.S. government is now in the business of censoring artwork by Guantanamo Bay detainees. Sami al-Haj, a Sudanese cameramen for the Al-Jazeera TV network, commemorated his 431st day on hunger strike by drawing a picture that reflects the "nightmares of what I must look like, with my head double-strapped down, a tube in my nose, a black mask over my mouth, with no eyes and only giant cheek bones," but the government will not release it. Lawyers for al-Haj have hired a political cartoonist to create drawings based on al-Haj's descriptions. (USA Today)

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The administration threw everything it had at the Democrats. Statement after statement after statement on the White House lawn. TV ads, web ads. Letters from the attorney general and director of national intelligence raising the alarm about the danger the country is in. Even a TV appearance by the DNI himself to highlight the "increased danger."

And what did it get them? At the end of last week, nearly a month after the Protect America Act lapsed, the House passed a bill that does not contain retroactive immunity -- the bill even contains a provision that dispenses with the administration's main legal argument for blocking the lawsuits, the state secrets privilege.

So what now? No one on the Democratic side of the aisle seems to have bought the administration's line that the lapse of the Protect America Act is cause for concern. Wiretaps authorized by that law can go until August of this year. Wiretaps of new targets would have to be authorized under the old FISA law. But the authorities granted by the PAA are so broad (it authorizes wiretaps of entire terrorist groups) that as of two weeks after the law's lapse, no warrants of wiretaps for new targets had yet been required. That makes the administration's claim that such warrant requests will create a mountain of paperwork look pretty silly.

There seems to be a definite lack of urgency (despite the Republicans' terrifying web ad). And as the Politico reports, that lack of urgency on top of the considerable differences between the House and Senate surveillance bills -- most evidently on the issue of retroactive immunity -- means that the prospects for passing any bill through both houses appear dubious:

“I don’t know if there is a dire need to get it done tomorrow,” said one Senate Democratic aide. “Obviously we would like to see a resolution on this, but that is really hard to do when the House is voting on legislation that won’t pass the Senate and Republicans won’t even come to the table.”

Both houses are in recess for the next two weeks. And when the Senate gets back, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has planned a push on economic issues. How surveillance will fit into that agenda when the Senate likely doesn't have the 60 votes to even begin debate on the House's bill is not at all clear. And even if the Senate did pass something eventually, the distance between the House leadership and key Senate Democrats like Senate intelligence committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) on the issue of immunity makes the fate of such a bill unsure.

One thing that is sure is that conservatives think they have a winner of an issue here. So either from billionaire-funded attack groups or the Republican Party committees, the ads targeting House Democrats on the issue will keep coming. So far, however, such ads have had zero impact.

If no bill does pass in the next couple months, the next flashpoint seems likely to be July, shortly before the wiretaps authorized under the Protect America Act will actually begin to lapse.* You can be sure that the administration will mount another offensive. We'll see if that one is any more successful.

*Update: This post originally said that the authorizations under the Protect America Act will lapse in August. The authorizations are good for one year, meaning that authorizations from August of 2007 will lapse that month, but later authorizations will not lapse until a full year after their initiation. Thanks to TPM Reader CR for the fix.

Rep. Don Young (R-AK) is not the type to back down without a fight. Or even without an unnerving display of belligerence. Remember his threat to bite another lawmaker "very much like the mink in my state that kill their own."

It seems recently that the whole world is against him. During this past weekend's state Republican convention, Young was blindsided when Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell announced that he would be running in the Republican primary. Parnell is an ally of the popular and pregnant Republican Gov. Sarah Palin, who's defined herself in opposition to the old guard of Alaskan politics, namely Young and Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), the Bridge to Nowhere team.

Young was already an unhappy lawmaker before that surprise. But he's clearly determined to make his case to voters on his merits: namely, on his remarkable earmarking abilities. In his speech this past weekend (during which the above picture was taken), Young defended bringing pork home to the state, proclaiming that "there hasn't been a state community that hasn't come to me and Sen. Stevens to ask for an earmark," and: "If you don't want earmarks, then don't ask me for them."

What Young's campaign is not based on is disclosure and transparency. That was made abundantly clear during his press conference last month, during which he testily rebuffed question after question. (Strike "change," too, a word he uttered with disgust.) You can see the highlights here:

Young has refused to comment at all on why he's spent more than $850,000 on defense lawyers. Is he under investigation for his ties to Veco? to Jack Abramoff? Other areas of interest? Not telling. How many jurisdictions are you being defended in? "I have no idea." (You can see the whole session here.) A taste:

Young said his constituents have not asked him about the legal fees. It's just the media, he said.

A television reporter objected that, as an Alaskan and a voter, he was a constituent.

"Did you vote for me last time?" Young asked him.

"No sir," the reporter replied.

Young was no more forthcoming on questions about his infamous Coconut Road earmark: whether he managed to change the text of a bill after it was passed by Congress in order to benefit a major campaign contributor.

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Preparations begin for the end of the Bush administration.

From the AP:

The CIA announced Monday that it will now pay the full cost of legal liability insurance for about two-thirds of the agency workforce....

One shift is already looming: A change in administrations could make it more likely lawsuits will be filed against CIA interrogators for a controversial program approved by the Bush White House — the use of harsh interrogation techniques and the secret movement of prisoners, known as extraordinary rendition.

The insurance comes from private companies to cover legal expenses that arise out of actions undertaken in the course of a CIA officer's official duties. It is meant to cover potential litigation expenses including damages. It covers legal expenses associated only with those activities undertaken after liability insurance is taken. The reimbursement program began in 2000.

Agency Director Michael Hayden on Monday announced that he had expanded the pool of those eligible to be reimbursed for insurance to include all employees involved in covert activities, not just those involved in counterterrorism and counterproliferation.

As the president of one of the companies that provides the insurance to CIA agents and other government officials put it, "The things that help us are any negative events related to the federal government, and there have been plenty.”

Late last week, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) sat down with The Chicago Tribune and The Chicago Sun-Times for 90 minutes each to answer questions about all things Tony Rezko.

As a result, the Tribune's editorial board pronounced themselves satisfied:

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama waited 16 months to attempt the exorcism. But when he finally sat down with the Tribune editorial board Friday, Obama offered a lengthy and, to us, plausible explanation for the presence of now-indicted businessman Tony Rezko in his personal and political lives.

The most remarkable facet of Obama's 92-minute discussion was that, at the outset, he pledged to answer every question the three dozen Tribune journalists crammed into the room would put to him. And he did.

The outcome of the more combative Sun-Times interview seemed similar, so that near the end, there was this exchange:

Q: Comparing the benign-ness of the fact pattern and the trouble it's caused you, do you think you've mishandled this at all?

A: I think that running for president is a series of gauntlets you have to run. And I think that we could have - setting aside the initial mistake which I deserve some blame for, I have acknowledged publicly - I think that understanding that there would be heightened interest in me, that Rezko had been finally indicted and arrested, that there was gonna be a need for us to do this again, I think was, it probably would have been good for us to do earlier. There's no doubt about it.

The main revelation of the two interviews was that Rezko had raised about $100,000 more for Obama than the campaign had disclosed before, making it a total of approximately $250,000. The reason for the discrepancy, Obama explained, was that it was impossible to discover just what contributions Rezko had been responsible for in his state senate and run for the House in 2000. Obama estimated that Rezko helped raise between $50,000 to $60,000 in his run for the House and the remainder for his three state senate campaigns.

And about that house deal. Obama was much clearer about the timeline of how Rezko came to be involved in the deal. Remember that Rezko purchased the side yard of Obama house, raising suspicions that Rezko had helped out as a favor to Obama.

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President Bush is in no rush to make good on his 2005 promise to expedite a massive backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests. In fact, he has appointed a person to manage already low expectations and inform citizens just how long their request may take to be reviewed. The National Security Archive, a private research group at The George Washington University, says that because unanswered requests only declined from 217,000 to 212,000 over two years, "many of the same old scofflaw agencies are still shirking their responsibilities to the public." (AP)

Questions about Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson's role in his alleged efforts to punish a housing authority director for not helping a friend, remain unanswered even after a round of Senate testimony last week. Jackson refused to answer most questions about an e-mail exchange in which Jackson's assistants discussed how they could make life "less happy" for the Philadelphia Housing Authority director Carl Greene by stripping his agency of federal funds. Jackson claimed that a judge's gag order prevented him from discussing the matter but Senator Specter (R-PA) discovered that this order did not apply to congressional testimony. (Washington Post)

President Bush is the "decider," except when Stephen Johnson, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is the "decider." Johnson has vehemently rejected allegations that the EPA weakened its new smog reduction standards because of orders from Bush. Though records show that Bush became personally involved, Johnson declared, "I made the decision." (AP)

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Beyond the decision to invade in the first place, it was no doubt the most disastrous decision of the war. In May of 2003, the U.S. disbanded the Iraqi Army, rendering more than 200,000 armed Iraqis angry and unemployed. This morning, The New York Times provides the most detailed account yet of how the decision went down. It's not pretty.

The original plan, concocted by the seasoned and competent Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, was to not disband the army. Only the Republican Guard would be disbanded. The reason was clear, according to a March, 2003 PowerPoint presentation given at a National Security Council meeting. Said one slide of the presentation: “Cannot immediately demobilize 250K-300K personnel and put on the street.”

Exactly whose idea it was to disband the army, no one can say. No, Paul Bremer won't take the credit for it. But Bremer and his deputy did champion the idea. And in late May, he told the president and his aides that he was going to disband the Iraqi Army the next day. The president signed off on it. But it's pretty remarkable who did not:

Colin L. Powell, the secretary of state and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was never asked for advice, and was in Paris when the May 22 meeting was held.

Mr. Powell, who views the decree as a major blunder, later asked Condoleezza Rice, who was serving as Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, for an explanation.

“I talked to Rice and said, ‘Condi, what happened?’ ” he recalled. “And her reaction was: ‘I was surprised too, but it is a decision that has been made and the president is standing behind Jerry’s decision. Jerry is the guy on the ground.’ And there was no further debate about it.”

And then there's the question of whether Bremer consulted the military command in Iraq about the decision. Funny story, that. The senior commander there at the time, Lt. Gen. David D. McKiernan, had clearly opposed the idea of disbanding the army. And when the time came to see if he would sign off on the plan to disband the army, Bremer assigned a retired officer on his staff, Col. Greg Gardner, to check in on McKiernan. For some reason, the two sides can't seem to agree on whether McKiernan signed off:

Mr. Bremer’s headquarters was in the Green Zone in central Baghdad, while General McKiernan’s was at a base near the Baghdad airport several miles away. Colonel Gardner said that there were problems with telephone communications but that he finally reached a member of General McKiernan’s staff who told him that the general accepted the decree.

“I got the impression that Lieutenant General McKiernan was not all that keen about the course of action,” Colonel Gardner said, “but was clearly told that he did endorse the draft.” Colonel Gardner added that he could not recall the name of the staff officer he spoke with.

General McKiernan, however, asserted that he neither reviewed nor backed the decree. “I never saw that order and never concurred,” he said. “That is absolutely false.”

Lt. Gen. J. D. Thurman, who serves as the Army’s chief operations officer and was the top operations officer for General McKiernan at the time, had a similar recollection. “We did not get a chance to make a comment,” he said in an e-mail message. “Not sure they wanted to hear what we had to say.”

Bremer did apparently notify Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld before the decree and says that Rumsfeld approved in a phone conversation. If that is the case, Rumsfeld doesn't seem to have thought much about it. And if you sense a pattern here, it's that those who might have thought much about it weren't consulted:

“Anyone who is experienced in the ways of Washington knows the difference between an open, transparent policy process and slamming something through the system,” said Franklin C. Miller, the senior director for Defense Policy and Arms Control, who played an important role on the National Security Council in overseeing plans for the postwar phase. “The most portentous decision of the occupation was carried out stealthily and without giving the president’s principal advisers an opportunity to consider it and give the president their views.”

No one can say that Texas Republican staffer Todd Gallaher didn't give 110 percent. Unfortunately for Gallaher, however, his efforts weren’t appreciated.

Last Monday he was forced to resign from his post on the staff of state Sen. Bob Deuell (R-TX) because of the uproar caused by his scheming. And on Friday the Texas attorney general’s office confirmed that Aransas County Sheriff Mark Gilliam filed a complaint claiming that Gallaher was behind the smear campaign against him in the March 4 Republican primary.

Gilliam, the incumbent, was running against County Constable Bill Mills. The sheriff says he received e-mails before the election threatening him to “back off” or be publicly humiliated.

Subsequently, the voters of Aransas County received pictures of Gilliam carousing shirtless at a party, mooning the guests and pretending to kiss a man.

The pictures were authentic, if 18 years old, but the sender’s e-mail address, repjuangarcia@hotmail.com, was clearly deceptive. The voters assumed it belonged to Democratic state Rep. Juan Garcia, whose district includes Aransas County. When Garcia learned of the e-mails from callers who had received them, his IT staff tracked them down from the Capitol to Sen. Deuell’s office to Gallaher’s state computer. (Gilliam also traced the e-mails he received to Deuell’s office.)

But Gallaher denies the charge that he posed as Garcia. He was using an identity he created long ago, a “super hero-like caricature” he named “Republican Jaun Garcia” [sic], he says. Though Gallaher has produced sketches of the cartoon character from the 90s, showing that the name is “Jaun” and not “Juan,” the name was spelled correctly in the e-mail address.

And it appears that Gallaher was not working pro bono. An examination of campaign finance records revealed that Mills, Gilliam’s successful opponent, paid between $17,000 and $11,000 (accounts vary) to a political consultant in Austin whose address is Gallaher’s post office box.

Gilliam isn’t contesting his loss in the primary, but he’s charging Gallaher with using state property with the intent of “harming or defrauding another,” a criminal offense under the Texas Penal Code. “This is an allegation of blackmail and of serious criminal acts,” he said.

Gallaher’s troubles don’t end there.

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