ABC finally got a hold of President Bush to respond to its story that top administration officials, as members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, had signed off on "enhanced interrogation" techniques in 2002 that included waterboarding. And Bush doesn't understand what the big deal is:
"Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people." Bush told ABC New s White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And, yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."...
Bush said the ABC report about the Principals' involvement was not so "startling."
The AP reported yesterday that the administration officials involved in the meetings "took care to insulate President Bush" from the decisions made during them.
House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI) on today's story:
I am deeply troubled by reports of FBI agents contacting former jurors who failed to convict Dr. Wecht. Whether reckless or intended, it is simply common sense that such contacts can have a chilling effect on future juries in this and other cases. When added to the troubling conduct of this prosecution, there is the appearance of a win at all costs mentality. The committee continues to investigate this matter.
Earlier this week, House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI) invited John Yoo to testify before the committee on May 6th about the infamous legal memos on torture that he issued while with the Department of Justice. If Yoo did not want to appear, Conyers wrote, then the panel would subpoena him.
Now Conyers, following up on the reports in the last couple of weeks about the role of top administration officials in authorizing the use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques including waterboarding, has invited a slew of current and former officials to testify at the hearing. Among those invited are former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former CIA Director George Tenet, former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Chief of Staff to the Vice President David Addington, and former Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin, who headed up the Office of Legal Counsel for a brief time.
Says Conyers: “New and troubling allegations suggest that the decisions on torture came from the highest levels of government. These reports, if true, represent a stain on our democracy. The American people deserve to hear directly from those involved.”
Of course, you can be sure that this White House, the most ardent defender of executive privilege in our lifetime, would never, ever allow Addington, the great prophet of executive privilege, to testify under any circumstances. And it also seems unlikely that any members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee (Tenet and Ashcroft) will testify about content of those meetings. But it's worth a shot.
John Yoo is a professor of law at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law. He's never been a particularly popular faculty member there, but the recent release of his March, 2003 Justice Department memo, in which he advised that military interrogators could torture detainees as long as their only motivation wasn't sadism, has made him considerably less popular. Earlier this week, the National Lawyers Guild called for Berkeley to fire Yoo.
In a statement posted on the school's website today, the school's dean Christopher Edley, Jr. offers a statement "as dean, but speaking only for myself" for why he does not think that Yoo should be fired.
His argument largely comes down to this:
As critical as I am of his analyses, no argument about what he did or didn't facilitate, or about his special obligations as an attorney, makes his conduct morally equivalent to that of his nominal clients, Secretary Rumsfeld, et al., or comparable to the conduct of interrogators distant in time, rank and place. Yes, it does matter that Yoo was an adviser, but President Bush and his national security appointees were the deciders.
Because of "the complex, ineffable boundary between policymaking and law-declaring," Edley writes, too many questions remain to pass judgment on Yoo beyond finding his legal reasoning flawed:
I believe the crucial questions in view of our university mission are these: Was there clear professional misconduct—that is, some breach of the professional ethics applicable to a government attorney—material to Professor Yoo’s academic position? Did the writing of the memoranda, and his related conduct, violate a criminal or comparable statute?
Absent very substantial evidence on these questions, no university worthy of distinction should even contemplate dismissing a faculty member. That standard has not been met.
Two jurors said Thursday they were unnerved by FBI requests for home visits to explain why they deadlocked in the federal public corruption trial of former Allegheny County coroner Cyril H. Wecht.
Experts said the practice of using FBI agents to contact and interview jurors in their homes after mistrials was unusual, but the U.S. Attorney's Office in Pittsburgh characterized it as "commonplace."
"I thought it was kind of intimidating," the jury foreman said about the FBI phone call.
Said another juror, "I found it kind of unusual."
A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's Office in Pittsburgh tells the paper that prosecutors just wanted to chat about the case with the jurors, a "commonplace" practice. The FBI agents were simply setting up the appointments. It is true that it's commonplace for lawyers from both sides to speak to jurors after a trial to get feedback. But there are two important distinctions here.
First, prosecutors didn't seek to poll or speak to jurors before making their determination as to whether to retry the case. If they had, the jurors would have said that most of them were ready to vote to acquit. "That seemed to us to be vindictive," Dick Thornburgh, the former attorney general under President George H.W. Bush and a lawyer for Wecht, told me. "It's how [the prosecutors] have behaved the whole case." The jury foreman has even said that the prosecution seemed "politically driven." (See our rundowns of the case here and here.)
And second, using the FBI to contact jurors is far from commonplace (Jerry McDevitt, another of Wecht's attorneys, told me that the agent who'd contacted the jurors was not even the agent who had worked on the Wecht case). Thornburgh told me that it was "unprecedented" in his experience. A former federal prosecutor told the Tribune-Review that it was unusual. And a veteran defense attorney from the Pittsburgh area told the paper that he'd never heard of such a thing. And there's a reason:
"If I'm a prospective juror in the second trial, and I'm hearing stories that if I don't agree with the government that I might get calls from the FBI, that could have a very, very deleterious impact," [the attorney] said. "I would think that's very bothersome to have that happen."
Last month, the judge handling the House's suit against Harriet Miers and White House chief of staff Josh Bolten set a schedule that will culminate in a June hearing, when both sides will get to argue. Up until then, both sides will be submitting written arguments pleading their side of the case.
First up were lawyers for the House, who wrote, "Not since the days of Watergate have the Congress and the federal courts been confronted with such an expansive view of executive privilege as the one asserted by the current presidential administration and the individual Defendants in this case." You can read the entire 45-page motion here.
House lawyers, following through on the contempt citations from the House Judiciary Committee, are trying to convince the judge to rule with them on certain narrower questions of executive privilege in an attempt to actually get hear from Harriet Miers and see some White House documents relevant to the U.S. attorney firings sometime this year.
Yesterday we detailed Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer's ties to the Northern Mariana Islands, Jack Abramoff's prize client, and particularly the islands' governor, Benigno Fitial.
The Denver Postfollowed up and put the question to Schaffer as to why he'd been so loyal to a little island territory thousands of miles away. The answer? Quit asking. From the Post:
Schaffer campaign manager Dick Wadhams declined Thursday to discuss his candidate's role in island politics. "The Denver Post continues its character assassination of Bob Schaffer," he said.
When Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud Qosi, a Sudanese detainee at Guantanamo Bay, was arraigned Thursday he refused to accept legal representation and informed the military court that he would boycott future proceedings. In a "rambling statement" he told the judge, "I leave in your hands the camel and its load for you to do whatever you wish." (LA Times)
An advisory panel of scientists has slammed the Environmental Protection Agency's Administrator Stephen Johnson for ignoring its advice and implementing air quality standards that fail to protect public health. When Johnson lowered the allowable ozone levels that are considered healthy (from 80 parts per billion to 75 parts per billion) 345 counties nationwide were deemed to be in "violation of the federal air quality standards for ozone, commonly known as smog." (AP)
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates apologized to Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) after Gates told Levin he must be confused for believing that the Pentagon was still involved in the physical reconstruction business in Iraq. Levin had received a letter from the Pentagon discussing an allocation of $600 million in reconstruction aid, yet Gates mistakenly told Levin that the money must have been for something else. After receiving a note from an aide that confirmed Levin's understanding, Gates admitted that “[T]here are actually things that go on that I don’t know about." (Politico's "The Crypt")
And in the same line of questioning with Sen. Levin and the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gates said he doesn't hold out hope for getting troop levels in Iraq down to 100,000 by 2009, despite the past prospects he's had on the subject. (ThinkProgress)
Thanks to ABC News and the AP's follow-up yesterday, we now have a very good idea of how the U.S. began to torture detainees in early 2002, even before the Justice Department had officially blessed the techniques by way of the infamous August, 2002 memo by John Yoo.
ABC reported earlier this week that certain brutal interrogation techniques were approved by the National Security Council's Principals Committee following Abu Zubaydah's capture in March, 2002. Among the members of that council were Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and it was chaired by Condoleezza Rice, then the National Security Advisor.
The question was what CIA interrogators could do to Zubaydah and by extension other high value detainees. (It's worth recalling what FBI agents say about what information Zubaydah ultimately provided.) The obvious background to all this is that the CIA interrogators did not want to later find themselves prosecuted for using torture. So everything got this high-level sign off, down to the smallest detail, according to the AP:
At times, CIA officers would demonstrate some of the tactics, or at least detail how they worked, to make sure the small group of "principals" fully understood what the al-Qaida detainees would undergo.
At the same time, John Yoo and colleagues at the Justice Department were busy working on a clear legal authorization for all of this.
He described the pressure of the situation last week to Esquire:
Yoo: The interrogation question came up, I think, in March, when Abu Zubaydah was captured. That’s what provoked that question....
Esquire: You weren’t under extraordinary time pressure?
Yoo: We were under time pressure.
Esquire: Days, weeks?
Yoo: The final version we didn’t get done till August. But we would show drafts before.
Esquire: They were taking action?
Yoo: They needed to have a sense before it was finalized what the basic outlines are.
Esquire: How long did it take to give an answer, go ahead do it?
Yoo: I don’t remember.
Esquire: Weeks, months?
Yoo: Probably weeks.
Esquire: So that’s a fair amount of time pressure, Zubaydah’s in custody.
Yoo: If you had the luxury of time, you’d spend years on this, without a doubt.
Esquire: What concerns came up, back and forth with the White House?
Yoo: There wasn’t a lot of back and forth -- people would say this is wrong, you need to delete this. I think that there was no pressure from any other agency from within the department that the opinion was going too far -- or that it wasn’t going far enough. It was very much hands off. That doesn’t surprise me considering how sensitive the issue was, people wanted the office I think to take the full responsibility.
The memo that emerged, the so-called Bybee memo, after the then-chief of the Office of Legal Counsel who signed off on it (even though Yoo, the deputy, actually authored it ), was just what the doctor ordered, the "Golden Shield," as it was called, for the CIA's interrogations. The Office of Legal Counsel, remember, has the power to effectively issue "advance pardons" for activity of dubious legality.
ABC quotes a source as saying that Ashcroft at one point asked aloud after one Principals meeting, "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly." Nevertheless, Ashcroft did sign off on Yoo's "Golden Shield," a memo that was later withdrawn by Jack Goldsmith after he took over at OLC. Goldsmith has called that memo "slapdash" and deeply flawed.
But the "Golden Shield" did not end the Principals meetings. ABC reports that the CIA was still nervous and still returned again and again for approval from the Principals Committee for the OK for certain "enhanced interrogation" techniques even after Goldsmith had withdrawn the Bybee memo:
But the CIA had captured a new al Qaeda suspect in Asia. Sources said CIA officials that summer returned to the Principals Committee for approval to continue using certain "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Then-National Security Advisor Rice, sources said, was decisive. Despite growing policy concerns -- shared by Powell -- that the program was harming the image of the United States abroad, sources say she did not back down, telling the CIA: "This is your baby. Go do it."
When Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer freely offered earlier this week that the Northern Mariana Islands, notorious for human rights abuses and sweatshops, were a great model for a nationwide guest worker program, it seemed to be coming out of the blue. But a look at Schaffer's time in the House (where he represented Colorado's 4th District from 1997 through 2003) shows that he was one of the most reliable allies for the islands, which were represented for most of that time by lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The Denver Postreported today on a trip Schaffer took to the islands in August of 1999. The trip was nominally funded by the Traditional Values Coalition, though like all the other junkets to the islands, it was really organized by Abramoff.
Schaffer's spokesman Dick Wadhams told the paper that Schaffer has never met Abramoff or spoken to Abramoff. But Schaffer was a remarkable ally for the islands nonetheless, especially for a lawmaker from Colorado. My call to the Schaffer campaign this afternoon was not returned.
In October of 1999, for instance, Schaffer wrote a letter to Ben Fitial praising him and endorsing him for election into the commonwealth's legislature. The letter, written on Congressional letterhead, was published in the islands' newspaper The Saipan Tribune alongside two other endorsements from Reps. John Doolittle (R-CA) and Don Young (R-AK) four days before the election. You can see those here. Doolittle is under investigation for his ties to Abramoff, and one of Young's former aides on the House transportation committee has pleaded guilty to taking bribes from Abramoff.
As has been reported, Fitial's election was crucial for Abramoff, who had recently lost the lobbying contract for the islands. After Fitial was elected, Abramoff sent two associates of then-Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) to the islands in order to make sure that Fitial was elected Speaker. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2005 that Delay aide Michael Scanlon (who's since pleaded guilty as part of the Abramoff investigation) and former Delay aide-turned-lobbyist Ed Buckham (who remains under investigation for his ties to Abramoff) were able to convince two legislators to switch their votes to Fitial with promises of federal appropriations. Fitial subsequently led the effort to reinstate the contract with Abramoff.
Whoops. Just days after Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer touted the Northern Mariana Islands as a model for a national guest worker program, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to pass a massive omnibus bill that included a provision to overhaul the Marianas' immigration laws. The bill passed on a 91-4 vote.
The bill will extend U.S. immigration laws to the islands and establish a federally administered guest worker program there -- quite the opposite of what Schaffer said he thought ought to happen: "I think members of Congress ought to be looking at that model and be considering it as a possible basis for a nationwide program."
The reason for the overwhelming vote, of course, is because the islands are notorious for human rights abuses, particularly the exploitation of guest workers in slave labor conditions. Lobbyist Jack Abramoff, with the help of key House Republicans like ex-Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), was able to squelch similar legislation for years, even despite bipartisan support in the Senate.
Of course one of his main tools for persuading lawmakers was sponsoring trips over to the islands. As The Denver Postdetailed today, Schaffer, then a congressman, traveled there in 1999 in an Abramoff-planned trip and declared himself unconcerned with what he found: "The workers were smiling; they were happy." That's a picture from his visit above.
Update: Ouch. In a statement just out from Rep. George Miller (D-CA), who has been seeking to pass such legislation for literally a decade, he applauds passage of the bill and notes that with Abramoff and DeLay gone, "[v]ery few people would defend the status quo in the CNMI, which has done such damage to workers and their families over the years." Except Bob Schaffer.
Yesterday, we noted that the jury had hung in the case of forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, a prominent Pennsylvania Democrat and former coroner of Allegheny County, and that the jurors seemed inclined towards acquittal. Wecht's attorneys, among them former attorney general Dick Thornburgh, have charged that U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan pursued the case out of political motivations.
Today, the jury foreman, speaking to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, was even more explicit: "[A]s the case went on my thoughts were this was being politically driven."
During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing this morning, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) questioned Attorney General Michael Mukasey about that October, 2001 Justice Department memo in which John Yoo found that the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens against "unreasonable searches and seizures," had "no application to domestic military operations."
Has that memo been withdrawn? If not, was it still in force? Feinstein wanted to know.
She found it difficult to pry an answer loose. "I can't speak to the October, 2001 memo," Mukasey said when she asked whether it had been withdrawn. He said that Yoo's later March, 2003 memo -- which broadly authorized the use of torture by military interrogators on unlawful combatants -- had been withdrawn, but refused to discuss that October, 2001 memo.
Here's video of the exchange:
That memo remains classified, and Mukasey said that working to declassify portions of or entire secret Justice Department legal memos by Yoo and others was a "priority" of his, but he refused to supply a timeline for when he might make those determinations. He was very mindful of Congress' "legitimate oversight role," he said.
"This isn't a question of oversight," Feinstein said. "I'm just asking you, 'Is this memo in force that the Fourth Amendment does not apply?"
"The principle that the Fourth Amendment does not apply in wartime is not in force," Mukasey replied.
"That's not the principle I asked you about," Feinstein countered. The memo referred to domestic military operations, she said.
"There are no domestic military operations being carried out today," Mukasey replied.
"I'm asking you a question. That's not the answer."
"I'm unaware of any domestic military operations being carried out today," he repeated.
"You're not answering my question," she said.
Finally, Mukasey responded, "The Fourth Amendment applies across the board whether we're in wartime or peacetime. It applies across the board."
When Feinstein pronounced herself satisfied, Mukasey said, "with due respect, I don't think there's anything really new about that answer." He went on to imply that Yoo's discussion of the applicability of the Fourth Amendment had not been a crucial aspect of that memo. "The discussion of which that was a part... means the inaptness... the suggested inapplicability of the Fourth Amendment as an alternative basis for finding that searches discussed there would be reasonable."
"But Mr. Yoo's contention was that the Fourth Amendment did not apply and that the President was free to order domestic military operations," Feinstein replied.
"Without regard to the Fourth Amendment?"
"Yes."
"My understanding is that is not operative."
The Washington Postreported last week that the Justice Department "repudiated the idea that there are no constitutional limits to military searches and seizures in a time of war, saying it depends on 'the particular context and circumstances of the search.'"
The ACLU has petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen who alleges that he was abducted in December 2003 and then tortured by the CIA. El-Masari was denied his day in a U.S. court when the Bush administration successfully employed a state secrets defense. (AP)
A Saudi detainee at Guantanamo Bay who has denounced the U.S. government's case against him as a "sham," had himself removed from his military tribunal as a protest. Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza Al-Darbi, whose brother-in-law was one of the September 11 hijackers, stated that "history will record these trials as a scandal," Al-Darbi said. "I advise you, the judge, and everyone else who is present to not continue with this play, this sham." Al-Dabri, who is yet to be classified as an enemy combatant, has also claimed that he was beaten in custody and left hanging from handcuffs while he was detained and interrogated at Bagram air base. (Los Angeles Times)
A senior official of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention testified to Congress that climate change "is likely to have a "significant impact on health" and that the "CDC considers climate change a serious public health concern." Though this testimony relates directly to the EPA's regulatory policies on CO2 emissions, the official refused to comment directly on whether the Environmental Protection Agency should regulate CO2 under the federal Clean Air Act. (AP)
After all that talk, finally a decision. Behold, America, your new (sort of) way forward in Iraq:
President Bush plans to announce today that he will cut Army combat tours in Iraq from 15 months to 12 months, returning rotations to where they were before last year's troop buildup in an effort to alleviate the tremendous stress on the military, administration officials said.
The move is in response to intense pressure from service commanders who have expressed anxiety about the toll of long deployments on their soldiers and, more broadly, about the U.S. military's ability to confront unanticipated threats. Bush will announce the decision during a national speech, in which aides said he will also embrace Army Gen. David H. Petraeus's plan to indefinitely suspend a drawdown of forces.
The twin decisions may set the course for U.S. policy in Iraq through the fall and perhaps for the rest of Bush's presidency....
The bottom line seems to be that after pulling out the extra forces Bush sent last year, the United States will keep about 140,000 troops in Iraq at least through the November presidential election....
But Bush's decision will affect only those troops sent to Iraq as of Aug. 1 or later, meaning that those already there still have to complete 15-month tours. Bobby Muller, president of Veterans for America, an advocacy group, said that nearly half of the Army's active-duty frontline units are currently deployed for 15 months, and that Bush's decision leaves them out.
And how will you know whether things are going well, well enough to expect any troop withdrawals before the end of the year? As Gen. David Petraeus made abundantly clear this week, it's not clear. It's a lack of clarity shared at the highest levels of the administration:
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration had abandoned the benchmarks [Congress set for Iraq] as a strict standard of progress because establishing a secure Iraq would also depend on factors other than political and military progress.
Over two days of testimony, General Petraeus repeatedly was asked to explain the conditions that would allow further withdrawals, but he answered that they were not based on some easily defined measurements.
Asked for elaboration, the senior administration official said, "It's a very hard concept to explain publicly because it doesn't feature a sort of setting of the dial. It features what we call a running assessment."
Of all the innumerable times that lawmakers asked Gen. David Petraeus over the last two days for some indication of what success in Iraq is, this answer seemed as clear as any of them. At least in this answer, there was no reference to success being "conditions-based" or any mention of "battlefield geometry." Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) asked "Please tell us, general, what is winning?"
"Ambassador Crocker and I, for what it's worth, have typically seen ourselves as minimalists. We're not after the Holy Grail in Iraq, we're not after Jeffersonian democracy," Petraeus responded. "We're after conditions that would allow our soldiers to disengage."
For those who've been watching the Iraq debate, this sort of "minimalism" is nothing new. After all, administration officials have been saying since the start that a "Jeffersonian democracy" isn't likely to take root in Iraq (even Paul Bremer said "We're not going to have a Jeffersonian democracy here" in 2003). But with Iraq, there never can be enough minimalism.
The House Judiciary Committee has concentrated on three cases as instances of political prosecutions pursued by President Bush's Justice Department.
Yesterday, one of those three, the trial of Dr. Cyril Wecht, a celebrity forensic pathologist, prominent Pennsylvania Democrat, and former coroner of Allegheny County, ended in a hung jury. After fifty hours of deliberations, the jury was hung and obviously going to stay hung. Prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Pittsburgh leaped at the chance for a re-trial, which has been scheduled for May.
If the views of a juror is any indication, conviction will be difficult. Rev. Stanley Albright, a juror who was excused last week when he became ill, told the AP, "I couldn't find the crime."
Albright was the only Wecht juror to be interviewed on the record by the media, because Judge Arthur Schwab asked all jurors not to talk to the media or attorneys from either side after he declared the mistrial. Schwab had the jury on the case seated anonymously and then ensured that the jury left the courtroom before the media or the attorneys could speak to them. It was a series of moves that Wecht's lawyers, who've repeatedly tried to get Schwab removed from the case, say is unprecedented: "Who's ever heard of anything like this?" A handful of jurors spoke anonymously to The Pittsburgh-Tribune Review, one saying that "a majority of the jury thought he was innocent."
Dick Thornburgh, who served as attorney general under Pres. George H. W. Bush, testified to the House Judiciary Committee in October that the case brought by U.S. Attorney Mary Buchanan was a raft of "nickel and dime transgressions" trumped up into an indictment.
The government's case relied on charges that Wecht had used resources from his coroner office for his private practice. Most of the counts of wire fraud against Wecht related to his use of county fax machines ($3.96 worth, his lawyers say) for his personal business. He was also charged with improperly billing the county for gasoline and mileage costs -- for a total of $1,778.55, his lawyers say.
Rather than leading to a sprawling two-year federal prosecution, Thornburgh said, Wecht's transgressions should have been referred to the state ethics commission. So why was the case brought? Wecht is a high-profile Democrat, "an ideal target for a Republican U .S. Attorney trying to curry favor with a Department which demonstrated that if you play by its rules, you will advance," Thornburgh said, also noting that Buchanan had prosecuted "not one" Republican, while prosecuting Democrats in a "highly visible manner."
Yesterday, Thornburgh said that he'd appeal personally to Attorney General Michael Mukasey to bring an end to the case: "He knows what our grievances are. I think we can make a persuasive case that this prosecution should be dismissed forthwith." Thornburgh earlier had worked with then-Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty to ensure that Wecht was allowed to turn himself in: Buchanan, he's said, wanted to subject Wecht to a "perp walk."
The House Judiciary Committee has been consistently rebuffed by the Justice Department in its requests for documents from the case -- along with documents from the Georgia Thompson case in Wisconsin, which was dramatically overturned on appeal, and former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman's case, which awaits appeal, Siegelman just having been released from prison.
Update/Correction: This post originally stated that the judge on the case had ordered jurors not to speak to the media or Wecht's attorneys. In fact, the judge asked, but did not order, the jurors not to speak to all attorneys on the case.
As we've often observed before, EPA chief Stephen Johnson has a remarkable capacity for withholding information. And now he's make a strong bid to making the EPA the most subpoenaed Bush administration agency.
Today, House oversight committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) issued his thirdsubpoena to the EPA this year. Waxman's committee has been investigating Johnson's decision, made against the unanimous recommendation of his legal and technical staff, to block California's attempt to institute tough greenhouse gas limits for cars and trucks.
Waxman says that his staff "has found evidence that EPA officials met with the White House" about the rule, but that "EPA has refused to disclose the substance and extent of its communications with the White House." Waxman's subpoena seeks about 100 EPA documents involving the White House.
Johnson has thus far stonewalled Congressional attempts to get more information about those White House meetings, telling Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) that he couldn't disclose anything about them because "I value the ability to have candid discussions that are part of good government."
FBI wiretaps picked up the voices of several members of Congress in their conversations with Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.).
The House General Counsel’s office recently notified those members after the Department of Justice (DOJ) told the House lawyers that the lawmakers’ voices had been intercepted during the FBI’s investigation of Renzi’s land deal, according to three GOP sources.
It is unclear which members were taped and whether Renzi’s home, office, and/or cell phones were tapped. And there is no indication of alleged wrongdoing by any member other than Renzi; the Renzi indictment does not mention or allude to other legislators and the use of wiretaps is not mentioned in it.
Nevertheless, as the prosecution of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) has made apparent, any criminal matter involving lawmakers is thorny. So any use of the wiretaps at the trial is likely to be the subject of a protracted legal battle involving Constitutional issues.
It's partly because of such issues, no doubt, that Renzi's trial has been pushed back from its original scheduled start this month until October.
Attorneys for Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a detainee being held as "enemy combatant," argued to an appellate court yesterday that a memo that the Justice Department declassified and released only last week proves that their client's detention is illegal. According to the attorneys, the memo "makes plain as day that al-Marri was declared an enemy combatant based on discredited legal opinions and for the illegal purpose of abusive interrogations." (Washington Post)
The Washington Post has published a guide to the 11 multicolored charts that General Petraeus presented to Congress yesterday because "a close look at the facts indicates that the data often lacked context or were misleading." In the case of Petraeus' first chart, the paper notes that "the figures for 2009 appear to be based on guesswork, and Petraeus's office declined to provide supporting information." (Washington Post)
Jury deliberations have resumed in the trial of the six men accused of conspiring with al Qaeda to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago. The Bush administration has claimed that this case is an important accomplishment in the war on terror but the first trial ended in a deadlocked jury and Neal Sonnett, past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, believes the case is "more hype than evidence." (ABC's "The Blotter")
In the annals of public service, it was not a high point. Last Halloween, at a fundraising event for charitable organizations held at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Headquarters Building, they held a costume contest. And the winner was a white lawyer dressed in dreadlocks and prison stripes.
When it came time to present himself to the judges, amng them Julie Myers, the chief of ICE, he said "I’m a Jamaican detainee from Krome — obviously, I’ve escaped.” Krome is an ICE Detention facility in Miami that is mostly filled with Jamaican, Haitian and Latin American detainees. The judges, Myers among them, laughed, according to a report (pdf) issued yesterday by the House Committee on Homeland Security. Later, Myers posed with the winner:
At some point later that day, Myers apparently realized that others might not appreciate the fun of the costume and ordered that the pictures be destroyed. In a letter to Congress in November of 2007 (after news of the costume broke), Myers explained that she "was not aware at the time of the contest that the employee disguised his skin color," but that she believed "that it was inappropriate for me to recognize any individual wearing an escaped prisoner costume.”
So on that same day, she ordered the pictures deleted, according to yesterday's report, as part of ""a coordinated effort to conceal the circumstances surrounding the party." Myers' nomination was still pending before the Senate at that time. The committee report is titled "The ICE Halloween Party: Trick, Treat, or Cover-up?" The committee appears to come down on the cover-up side of the question.
As for Myers, her spokesperson tellsThe New York Times that trying to curb the damage wasn't the same thing as a cover-up:
Kelly A. Nantel, an agency spokeswoman, confirmed Tuesday that Ms. Myers had ordered that the photographs be deleted, but said she had done so because she belatedly realized that the costume was inappropriate and that it would be offensive if the photos were included in any agency publications.
But Ms. Nantel said that Ms. Myers never tried to cover up that the event had occurred. In fact, Ms. Myers sent a message to all agency employees two days after the party acknowledging that “a few of the costumes were inappropriate.”
“To suggest she somehow coordinated a cover-up is absolutely false,” Ms. Nantel said.
Rather unfortunately for Myers, the pictures were not completely deleted and were restored. They were released to CNN in February as a result of a FOIA request.
In any case, the committee has used the occurrence to point out the lack of diversity at ICE and DHS more broadly, noting that ICE has zero African-American senior executives and 28 whites. It's a point that lawmakers were able to demonstrate when Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff last visited the committee:
Anger among some African American lawmakers about diversity in the Homeland Security Department led to a testy exchange with Chertoff during a March hearing. Lawmakers asked Chertoff's staff to stand. About 10 people stood.
Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.) pointed out that all the staff members were white men. "Please reassure me that your staff is more diverse than that," he asked Chertoff, who seemed taken aback.
"That is definitely the case," Chertoff said, as other lawmakers looked visibly skeptical.
Hearings on diversity in the department are planned for next month.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) finally got his turn during today's Senate foreign relations committtee hearing and used it to question Ambassador Crocker and Gen. Petraeus on what "success" would be in Iraq, focusing on the strength of Al Qaeda in Iraq and Iranian influence as key benchmarks.
After questions about the status quo in Iraq of these two areas, Obama proceeded to ask Crocker and Petraeus whether that status quo could be called success if maintained without such a high level of U.S. troops in Iraq.
Here's video of Obama's questions:
His point, he said, was that the "definition of success is so high," such as wiping out AQI and eliminating any undue Iranian influence, then success would be unattainable. But that if the criteria for success was a "messy, sloppy status quo," not dissimilar to the current state of affairs, though without U.S. troops holding the country together, then that was attainable.
Such a state of affairs, Obama said, could be achieved with "measured, but increased pressure" on the Iraqis via troop withdrawals (he was keen to point out that "nobody is asking for a precipitous withdrawal") and a "diplomatic surge" in the region.
Here's video of Obama's conclusion:
"Our resources are finite," he said, and "when you have finite resources, you have to define goals tightly and modestly."
Crocker generally agreed with Obama's definition of success in Iraq ("this is hard and this is complicated"), though he did not stipulate to Obama's somewhat more modest characterization of what success would look like.
House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI) wants to former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo to discuss his now-infamous March 14, 2003 memo that broadly authorized the use of torture by military interrogators of unlawful combatants.
Conyers has gone ahead and scheduled a hearing for May 6th on the memo and invited Yoo in a letter today. But it's apparent from the letter that Yoo is not too enthusiastic about the prospect of testifying to Congress. He's apparently raised concerns to committee staff that the topics covered might "implicate executive confidentiality interests" and generally indicated that he'd rather not appear.
But given that Yoo has spoken with a variety of news outlets about the memo and other matters, Conyers points out, there's no reason why he couldn't talk to Congress. And while Conyers has invited Yoo to appear voluntarily, he makes it clear that he will issue a subpoena if Yoo declines.
Hopefully lawmakers will use the opportunity to ask Yoo why it was that he signed the memo himself, bypassing even the attorney general.
Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, immediately cast a different tone on the Republican side than the one that prevailed throughout the earlier hearing, led by the ranking member on that committee, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).
Earlier, McCain started from the assumption of what success means and seemed to take for granted the means of achieving it. Lugar's take was much different.
In his opening statement, Lugar offered a sweeping analysis of the situation in Iraq and concluded that today's hearing was actually much different than the one held last September:
At that time, the President was appealing to Congress to allow the surge to continue to create breathing space for a political accommodation. Today the questions are whether and how improvements in security can be converted into political gains that can stabilize Iraq despite the impending drawdown of U.S. troops. Simply appealing for more time to make progress is insufficient. The debate over how much progress we have made and whether we can make more is less illuminating than determining whether the Administration has a definable political strategy that recognizes the time limitations we face and seeks a realistic outcome designed to protect American vital interests.
At the moment, according to Lugar, the administration clearly has no "definable political strategy." He looks forward, he said, to discussing with Petraeus and Crocker "how the United States can define success and then achieve our vital objectives in Iraq."
Towards the end of this morning's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) elicited the plainest assessment yet of the day from Gen. Petraeus.
Given the complexity of the situation in Iraq, Bayh wanted to know, "isn't it true that a fair amount of humility is in order in rendering judgments about the way forward in Iraq, that no one can speak with great confidence about what is likely to occur?"
Petraeus seemed to grow a bit irritated at the insinuation that he'd been painting an overly rosy picture. "It's why I've repeatedly noted that we haven't turned any corners, we haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel. The champagne bottle has been pushed to the back of the refrigerator. And the progress, while real, is fragile and is reversible," he replied.
Later, Petraeus again refused to venture any guess about when there might be further drawdowns of troops from Iraq after July.
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) took her time today to begin with a statement emphasizing the toll the war is taking on the U.S. armed forces, a cost, she said, that ought to be weighed against the cost of staying in Iraq indefinitely. "It's time to begin the orderly process of removing our troops."
Here's video of that:
Clinton began by focusing her questioning on the coming long-term security agreement between Iraq and the U.S. Earlier in the hearing, Ambassador Ryan Crocker had been at pains to stress that "the agreement will not establish permanent bases in Iraq" and might actually prohibit them (whatever that is worth), and that the "agreement will not specify troop levels" or "tie the hands of the next administration." But the agreement would not go to Congress, he said.
Clinton, who's been pushing legislation that would force the administration to submit the agreement to the Senate, as is required of formal treaties, said that "seems odd to Americans," for the administration to cut such a deal without Congressional consent -- at the same time that the Iraqis might submit the agreement to its parliament.
Clinton also wanted to know what conditions might possibly have existed that would have caused Petraeus to not extend the current strategy. Petraeus answered by ticking off the factors involved in deciding, but added that "it's not a mathematical exercise."
Here are Clinton's questions:
Update: Transcript of Sen. Clinton's exchange with Petraeus and Crocker:
Even more than Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) found it impossible to suppress his admiration for Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Petraeus deserves that fifth star, Graham said, and Crocker (who has devoted his career to public service in the Middle East) should go someplace not horrible (presumably far away from the Middle East):
Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker have given an overall positive review of U.S. progress in Iraq today, but both have laden those statements with clear caveats. When asked about political reconciliation in Iraq, Crocker has tended to prefer characterizing it as "moving in the right direction."
But Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) thinks that all too much emphasis has been put on the caveats. Clearly criticizing the questioning by Democrats today, Lieberman said that "there's a kind of hear no progress in Iraq, see no progress in Iraq, and most of all, speak of no progress in Iraq."
Lieberman, at least, sees no harm in overstating the progress in Iraq: "The Iraqi political leadership has achieved a lot more political reconciliation and progress since September than the American political leadership has."
Finally, he seemed to indicate that if only Democrats would accept the clear success of the surge, we "can move to more success so we can bring more of our troops home."
Thereafter, Lieberman went into a kind of reprise of his questioning last September, wanting to know about Iran's activity in Iraq.
Last time Gen. David Petraeus went up to Capitol Hill to give his big update, he wasn't 100% ready for prime time. That was most evident when Sen. John Warner (R-VA) asked if success in the Iraq war will make America safer. His response was a blunt "I don't know."
Today, Warner gave Petraeus the opportunity for a second bite of the apple. "Is all this sacrifice bringing about a more secure America?" Warner asked. And this time, Petraeus was ready -- with a mind-numbing battery of talking points, from which he was apparently reading:
Finally, Warner had to interrupt Petraeus, saying "my time on the clock is moving pretty quickly. It was a fairly simple question: Does that translate into a greater security for those of us at home?" He wanted an answer "just in simple language."
Finally, Petraeus came back with an assurance that "I do believe it is worth it."
Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) wanted more detail on those evaluations by Gen. Petraeus? How long will it be before U.S. troops begin to leave Iraq, he wanted to know? Three months? Six months?
"It could be right then," Petraeus answered, meaning after that 45 day evaluation period after July, or "it could be longer."
OK, Levin said, assuming that everything goes perfectly, how many U.S. troops would remain in Iraq at the end of the year? Petraeus didn't take the bait: "I can't give you an estimate on that."
Levin also grilled Petraeus on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Basra offensive. Was it really all on him?
"Would you say that Maliki followed your advice?" Levin wanted to know. "No, sir.... there's no question but that it could have been better planned and that the preparations could have been better."
Gen. David Petraeus' opening statement was no surprise either, with the general providing a battery of slides showing that U.S. forces have made great strides in curbing violence, building up the Iraqi forces, etc. -- but adding the necessary caveat that "innumerable challenges remain."
Towards the end, Petraeus said that starting in July, when the troop level will return to its pre-surge level, he would begin a "45 day period of consolidation and evaluation." After that period, he'd make further recommendations "as conditions permit." That arrangement does not allow a "set withdrawal timetable," he said, but the process would continue with recommendations (more of the same or draw down troops) made every 45 days.
Update: Here's how Petraeus put it:
After weighing these factors, I recommended to my chain of command that we continue the drawdown in the surge to the combat forces and that upon the withdrawal of the last surge brigade combat team in July, we undertake a 45-day period of consolidation and evaluation. At the end of that period, we will commence a process of assessment to examine the conditions on the ground and over time determine when we can make recommendations for further reductions. This process will be continuous, with recommendations for further reductions made as conditions permit.
This approach does not allow establishment of a set withdrawal timetable, however it does provide the flexibility those of us on the ground need to preserve the still-fragile security gains our troops have fought so far and sacrifice so much to achieve.
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