Iraq Contractors

Feds Unlikely to Charge Blackwater for Baghdad Shootings

Paul Kiel | May 9, 2008, 4:42PM

From the AP:

Blackwater Worldwide, the security contractor blamed by an angry Iraqi government for the shooting deaths of 17 civilians, is not expected to face criminal charges -- all but ensuring the company will keep its multimillion-dollar contract to protect U.S. diplomats.

Instead, the seven-month-old Justice Department investigation is focused on as few as three or four Blackwater guards who could be indicted in the Sept. 16 shootings, according to interviews with a half-dozen people close to the investigation.

So what does this mean? Well, for one thing, it would certainly seriously damage the company's prospects for government business -- especially its contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan -- if Blackwater were indicted. It also certainly wouldn't help the search for investors. But if a few bad apples get put to justice, well, prospects improve. Blackwater spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell tells the AP, "If it is determined that there are any individuals who need to be held accountable, we support that."

WaPo: Feds Probing Lawmakers' Use of Staffers

Paul Kiel | May 9, 2008, 2:23PM

Reps. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) and Jane Harman (D-CA) had a nasty surprise late last week when The Washington Post reported that Laura Flores, a former staffer who'd been busted for stealing $200,000 from her bosses' official accounts, was cooperating with the feds in an investigation of "whether members of Congress used phones, supplies and staff time for campaign purposes." The Post called it "an early-stage inquiry by the Justice Department's public integrity section." It isn't clear if the investigation is limited to, or even concentrated on, Harman and Abercrombie. Flores is getting a reduced sentence for her efforts.

Both Abercrombie and Harman have denied that there would be any reason for scrutiny. And there hasn't been a specific allegation that a Congressional staffer was paid to perform campaign activity. But the Post reported yesterday that both lawmakers had together managed to spend $2 million on their 2006 campaigns while spending only $5,000 of that on campaign workers. Both explain that by saying they used volunteers.

I asked Stan Brand, a veteran D.C. criminal defense and ethics lawyer and the former House general counsel, what he thought of the probe. He couldn't remember a prior example of the Justice Department going after lawmakers for using staffers for campaign work, but said there had been a number of prosecutions for having staffers work on a lawmakers' private business.

The problem for prosecutors, he said, is the vagueness of what would be an inappropriate activity outside a staffer's official duties. "So the courts have deferred in large measure to give the Congress some discretion in defining official duties. That's where the Justice Department has had difficult drawing that line itself." As a result, he said, prosecutors would need to "have a really clear cut and egregious case in this area to make a compelling prosecution."

Of course, this sort of thing is traditionally in the domain of the House ethics committee, but with the committee all but moribund, Brand said, the Department may be looking to "fill the vacuum." With the committee paralyzed, the Department might feel the need "to make a determination of whether something illegal has occurred here.... There's no basis for them to defer" to the committee.

The watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has seized the opportunity to demand that the committee investigate the use of staffers. Whether that will result in any action... don't bet on it.

Scooter Libby

Plame Renews Suit against Rove, Cheney, and Libby

Paul Kiel | May 9, 2008, 12:10PM

From the AP:

Former CIA operative Valerie Plame is trying to resurrect a lawsuit against those in the Bush administration she says illegally disclosed her identity.

A federal judge dismissed Plame's lawsuit last year, saying there was no basis to bring a case. Plame's lawyers asked a federal appeals court Friday to send the case back before the judge and force him to consider its merits....

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates dismissed the case, saying the law requires Plame's complaints be raised under the Privacy Act. Plame's attorneys say that law is insufficient. They asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to send the case back to Bates for reconsideration.

Details about the suit here, which was originally filed way back in July of 2006.

The Daily Muck

The Daily Muck

John Amick | May 9, 2008, 10:35AM

Television news networks have been remarkably quiet about the New York Times recent cover story detailing the practice of retired military analysts, many with ties to defense contractors, regurgitating Pentagon talking points on television news programs. Now Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and John Dingell (D-MI) have sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission "urging an investigation of the Pentagon's propaganda program." DeLauro also sent letters to five networks questioning their motives. Only ABC and CNN have anwsered thus far. (New York Times and Politico)

David Mason's name has been withdrawn by President Bush as a Federal Election Commission nominee. Some charge the move was made to fix John McCain's problems with the FEC. But McCain's camp respond that such controversy is "manufactured". Mason has voiced a negative opinion of allowing McCain to back out of a primary election public funding program. (Politico)

Longtime military vet Maj. Gen. Jay W. Hood was penciled in as the next senior American officer in Pakistan. But the military discreetly canceled his nomination once Pakistani news media picked up on Hood's former post: commander of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. (New York Times)

Read more »

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | May 9, 2008, 10:09AM

Once again, Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) invulnerability to the charms of lobbyists and his campaign supporters is put to the test.

This time it's The Washington Post going front page with the tale of McCain's role in a major Arizona land swap in 2005.

The basic thrust is this: a rancher owning 250 acres that intermingled with federally owned forest started pushing for a land swap that provide him with federal land in exchange for his own -- land that he could develop. Such land swaps are fairly common, though obviously easily abused. He was able to get the support of ex-Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ), but without McCain's backing the bill died in 2002.

After that, he decided to get smart and retained a number of lobbyists with connections to McCain. That, after all, is the way Washington works:

[The rancher Fred Ruskin], who is a pediatrician by training, said he realized he needed to hire lobbyists "to open communications with McCain's office."

He turned to some of McCain's closest former advisers. In 2002, he sought out Mark Buse, McCain's former staff director at the Senate commerce committee, which the senator chaired.

"I had gone to him to see if he had any advice as to how to deal with McCain," Ruskin said. "We had a couple of meetings and I paid him a little bit." Buse's federal lobbying records do not list the ranch as a client.

That year, lobbying records show, Ruskin also paid $60,000 to Michael Jimenez, another former McCain aide. Wes Gullett, who had worked in McCain's Senate office, managed his 1992 reelection bid, and served as deputy campaign manager for his 2000 presidential run, also lobbied on the bill, documents show. The watchdog group Public Citizen lists Gullett and his wife, Deborah, as bundlers who have raised more than $100,000 for McCain's White House bid. Ruskin also hired Gullett's partner, Kurt R. Davis, another McCain bundler and member of the senator's Arizona leadership team, to work with local officials and "to help with McCain if we needed help." Buse, Jimenez and Gullett did not return calls seeking comment.

With that sort of help, McCain became much more engaged. But McCain spokesman Brian Rogers "said that McCain does not recall being lobbied by his former staff members on the land swap and that 'no lobbyist influenced Senator McCain on this issue.'"

Nevertheless, somehow, some way Ruskin eventually ended up with his swap. And the company that's been hired to develop his new property is run by Steven A. Betts, "a longtime McCain supporter" who's raised $100,000 for McCain this election. (McCain's camp says that Betts' involvement was never discussed prior to the bill's passage.)

Now, is this is a major scandal? No. But like The New York Times' story last month, it shows McCain delivering for a campaign contributor in a way that belies his claim that he underwent a Road to Damascus conversion after the Keating Five scandal.

Torture

GOP Senator Floats Compromise Torture Measure

Paul Kiel | May 8, 2008, 6:01PM

Senate Dems are still pushing a measure that would limit CIA interrogators to methods approved in the Army Field Manual -- this would effectively ban waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

President Bush and a number of Senate Republicans, including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), have opposed that measure, saying that it is too restrictive for the CIA, and Bush vetoed the bill after it passed Congress. Now Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) is floating a compromise, reports the AP:

Rather than prescribe what the intelligence agency is allowed to do in an interrogation, Bond wants to write into law only what the CIA cannot do: force detainees to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner; have hoods or sacks placed over their heads or duct tape over their eyes; be beaten, shocked, or burned; threatened with military dogs; exposed to extreme heat or cold; subjected to mock executions; deprived of food, water, or medical care; or waterboarded.

There's no word in the piece of how Dems are reacting to the proposal.

TPM Reader Post Change

Paul Kiel | May 8, 2008, 5:47PM

Some of you might have noticed that the feed for recent reader posts has disappeared from the right sidebar. Not to worry! Andrew explains here.

David Vitter

Senate Ethics Committee Clears David Vitter

Paul Kiel | May 8, 2008, 4:44PM

The Senate ethics committee has dismissed a complaint against Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) for soliciting prostitution.

The complaint was filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The group had charged that Vitter's solicitation of prostitutes in Washington, D.C. and Louisiana had broken the law and thus was "improper conduct" that ought to be punished. Vitter reportedly used the D.C. Madam's escort service, in addition to repeatedly visiting a prostitute in New Orleans back in 1999.

The committee dismissed the complaint, according to the letter, because "the conduct at issue" occurred before Vitter's run for the Senate, he was not charged criminally, and because it "did not involve use of public office or status for improper purposes."

The letter, signed by all six members of the committee, adds: "The Committee also wishes to make clear that this decision to dismiss this matter without prejudice should not be taken as personal approbation or acceptance by any of the members of the Committee of the kind of conduct alleged in this matter. In fact, if proven to be true, the Members of the Committee would find the alleged conduct of solicitation for prostitution to be reprehensible."

You can see the letter here.

Update: The response from CREW's Naomi Seligman is to the point: "The Senate Ethics Committee has once again done what is does best: nothing.... While Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who committed suicide last week, was found guilty of operating a prostitution ring, Sen. Vitter has not been held accountable for his activities. He walks away without even a slap on the wrist."

Jack Abramoff

President Signs Bill Overhauling Immigration Laws for Marianas

Paul Kiel | May 8, 2008, 4:31PM

Unfortunately for Bob Schaffer, it doesn't look like the U.S. will be adopting the guest worker system from the Norther Marianas as a model any time soon. From the AP:

Workers in the Mariana Islands will receive the protection of U.S. labor law under a bill signed Thursday by President Bush.

Debate over whether to extend federal labor and immigration law to the Marianas, in the northwestern Pacific, had been sullied by reports of sweatshop labor and past associations with the lobbying scandal surrounding Jack Abramoff, whose firm was hired by the islands to oppose the changes.

The measure, approved by Congress last month, creates a federally run guest-worker program in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, which includes Saipan and 13 other islands north of Guam.

Iraq

Audio: Military Analysts Laud "The Leader" Rumsfeld

Paul Kiel | May 8, 2008, 2:29PM

Last month, The New York Times published its front-page exposé of the Pentagon's strategy of using military analysts. The retired officers who frequently appeared on TV were the ideal vehicle to broadcast the administration's message on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Message force multipliers," Pentagon officials called them.

Well, earlier this week, the Pentagon released all of the documents that had been turned over to the Times. It is a staggering load. But most immediately intriguing is audio of some of the briefings at the Pentagon, including two featuring Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

The audio we've excerpted here comes from a meeting on April 18, 2006. It was an emergency meeting called because earlier in the month, several retired generals had hit the airwaves demanding that Rumsfeld resign. 17 analysts attended the briefing, which featured Rumsfeld and then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Peter Pace. It was a remarkable display of servility, with one analyst at one point proclaiming that Rumsfeld need to get out there on the "offense," because "we'd love to be following our leader, as indeed you are. You are the leader. You are our guy." Here's the audio:

Another analyst chimed in to the effect that, though PsyOps or "brainwashing" are dirty words, it was necessary to get out there on offense. "You know what they call PsyOps today, they call those public relations firms," another said approvingly. Finally, Rumsfeld had to throw up his hands: "You people should be taking notes. I'm taking all the notes!" It sure was an eager group.

A transcript is available here (pdf) for those who want to follow along at home. The excerpt above begins at the bottom of page 18. It cuts at one point to the top of page 20. The full audio of the briefing is here (wav).

Unfortunately, the transcript does not name the analysts when they speak (it just says "Question"), meaning that it is not easily possible to figure out which of them said what. A list of the participants, however, is here.

The Times reported that the meeting was a rousing success for the Pentagon:

Read more »

Hans von Spakovsky

McConnell Spikes White House FEC Compromise

Paul Kiel | May 8, 2008, 11:35AM

Well, that was quick.

As I noted yesterday, the White House offered a "compromise" to the FEC deadlock -- except that they refused to withdraw the centerpiece of the conflict, Hans von Spakovsky. Oh, and the offer also included replacing the sitting Republican commissioner David Mason, who's been creating trouble for the McCain campaign. The only aspect of the offer that could be characterized as a compromise was the promise from White House officials that Senate Republicans would now agree to have a vote on Spakovsky separately from the other uncontroversial FEC nominees.

But now Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says they won't. It's either a vote on all the nominees together or nothing. So... no progress has been made. The FEC will remain shut down.

Torture

Senators Call for Investigation of Alleged Drugging of Detainees

Paul Kiel | May 8, 2008, 11:05AM

As The Washington Post reported late last month, a host of former detainees have come forward to say that they were drugged by CIA and military interrogators. Put that together with the fact that John Yoo's 2003 torture memo authorized the use of drugs on detainees, and you have plenty of grounds for suspicion.

Today Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI), Joe Biden (D-DE) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE) followed up and signed letters to both the CIA and Defense Department inspectors general calling for an investigation. The letter to the DoD IG is below.

Read more »

The Daily Muck

The Daily Muck

John Amick | May 8, 2008, 10:30AM

Republicans in Washington D.C. have asked Office of Special Counsel chief Scott Bloch to resign. This follows an FBI-led raid of his offices uncovered documents related to an investigation into allegations of Bloch's political bias and obstruction of justice in an office designed to protect whistleblowers and enforce rules on political activity in federal workplaces. (Washington Post)

Pentagon officials are pointing to the suicide bombing in Iraq by Guantanamo detainee Abdullah Salih Al Ajmi as a justification of holding prisoners there until the government is sure they are innocent. The Pentagon went on to release a list of a dozen former Guantanamo prisoners they claim have been released and then returned to fighting against the U.S. and its allies. (Boston Globe)

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is once again crying foul over ads from the organization Freedom's Watch. The DCCC claims the conservative group did not follow election guidelines by not reporting more than $600,000 of television ads in Louisiana and Mississippi elections. Freedom's Watch says the ads followed the rules, yet the complaint filed by the DCCC accuses the group of airing "electioneering communications" on April 22 and 29 regarding the race for a Louisiana Congressional seat without proper notice to the FEC. (Roll Call)

Read more »

Surveillance

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | May 8, 2008, 9:59AM

Three for three?

National Security Letters have been the FBI's favorite toy for the past several years, and who can blame them? With none of the hassle of a warrant and a gag order that ensures stealth, the NSL is a counterterrorism investigators best friend. The FBI issues tens of thousands of NSL requests each year (nearly 50,000 in 2006). After a major review by the Justice Department's inspector general last year found a host of abuses, FBI Director Robert Mueller promised that the FBI would clean up its act. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the number of NSLs issued has gone down -- just that agents are on alert that they can't be so sloppy.

Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and ACLU announced that they'd succeeded in getting the FBI to back down from an NSL request issued in late 2007. The request had gone to the Internet Archive and had requested personal information about one of the Archive's users, including the individual's name, address, and any electronic communication transactional records. It just so happens that the Archive's Digital Librarian Brewster Kahle is on EFF's board of directors, and he decided to fight the request. Except it wasn't easy due to the gag order that accompanied the letter: "Because they initially were not allowed to discuss the NSL over the phone, Kahle and his attorneys had to drive to one another's offices whenever they wanted to talk about the case."

But Kahle's lawyers at the EFF and ACLU were ultimately successful -- and the ACLU says this means that they've won every time they've gone to court to fight a NSL:

Every time an NSL has been challenged in court, the FBI has backed off, said Melissa Goodman, an ACLU staff attorney. "That calls into question how much the FBI needed the information in the first place, and finally, whether the FBI needs this kind of sweeping and unchecked surveillance power."

The two other instances of NSL withdrawals involved a library and an Internet consulting business. In February 2004, the FBI served an NSL on the Internet firm. In November 2006, the FBI withdrew the letter, after a lawsuit by the ACLU, but maintained the gag order, which is why the firm has not been publicly identified. The lawsuit, which challenges the constitutionality of the law authorizing NSLs, is still pending.

In July 2005, the FBI served an NSL on Library Connection, a library consortium in Connecticut. That year, the ACLU sued on grounds similar to the other case. In April 2006, the FBI withdrew the gag order. Three months later, it withdrew the NSL as well.

Meanwhile the FBI says that the information requested was "relevant to an ongoing, authorized national security investigation." I guess they'll just have to get the information some other way.

Dick Cheney

Conyers Issues Subpoena to Addington

Paul Kiel | May 7, 2008, 6:14PM

Mark your calendar: June 26th, Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff David Addington will testify to the House Judiciary Committee about the administration's interrogation policy. Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) made it official in a subpoena issued to Addington today. Addington has indicated that he will show up, but I'll believe it when I see him in the witness chair.

All Muck is Local

All Muck Is Local: Animal House

Paul Kiel | May 7, 2008, 6:09PM

It's hard to say exactly where all the trouble started for Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann (D), because there's so much trouble.

But Dann's says he's not going anywhere. That's despite a virtually unanimous call from Ohio elected officials, including the Democratic governor, that he resign. Dann's resolve is firm. Now state lawmakers are mulling impeachment, though not everyone agrees on that course of action. As one Dem lawmaker put it, "I don't know whether we should impeach somebody for being stupid." So Dann might survive after all, the many, many very embarrassing details notwithstanding.

If you had to pinpoint the source of Dann's downfall, it would have to be Anthony Gutierrez.

Gutierrez is a heavy drinking lecher and the world's worst pickup artist. He is also an old friend of Dann's. So when Dann was elected the state's attorney general in 2006, he put his buddy Tony in charge of the AG's general services.

Dann also moved into a condo in Columbus with Gutierrez and another buddy, Leo Jennings III, who became Dann's communication director. The mens' wives did not move with them, remaining in faraway Youngstown.

And there they lived the bachelors' life without incident. Until September 10th.

That night, Gutierrez succeeded in convincing Cindy Stankoski, a 26 year-old staffer in the office, to go out drinking with him. They went to one bar, and then another, and then another. He drank Crown Royal and ordered Grey Goose vodka for her. The next step was to get her back to the condo. He bragged about the power he wielded in the AG's office and told her that his relatives back in Youngstown had Mafia ties. He rang up Dann, who urged Stankoski to come on over. They'd even get Hawaiian pizza for her. Gutierrez pushed, telling her that she'd be OK with "the big dogs." She relented.

At the condo, there was pizza and tequila. Another female staffer from the office, oddly enough, was there too. Stankoski felt awkward and very drunk. She sent a string of text messages to a friend: "im at marc dann's place..." then "pick me up" then "Girl...im in a weird situation.. iem w marc dann...." then "drunnnnk."

When she asked to lie down, Gutierrez directed her to his bedroom. She awoke several hours later to find three of her buttons on her pants undone. Gutierrez was lying besides her in his underwear.

Read more »

Scott Bloch

Watchdog: Doc Shows Bloch Ginned Up White House Investigation to Protect Himself

Paul Kiel | May 7, 2008, 3:13PM

Since 2005, Special Counsel Scott Bloch, whose office is charged in part with protecting federal whistleblowers, has been under investigation for retaliating against whistleblowers in his own office and generally politicizing the OSC.

Now government watchdog POGO says they've discovered evidence that Bloch's apparent motivation for launching a very well publicized probe was to make himself invulnerable:

An extraordinary document obtained by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) from inside the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) reveals that Special Counsel Scott Bloch created a special task force to investigate sensitive and high-profile matters and then ignored virtually every recommendation made by it. The document lends support to POGO's theory that Bloch used the task force to launch an investigation of the White House, issuing demands for documents termed by his own task force as "overly broad," to create the appearance of a conflict of interest with an ongoing investigation into allegations that Bloch himself had engaged in misconduct.

POGO has posted the document here (pdf). As they say, the document shows that Bloch worked to maximize the probe of Karl Rove and other White House aides against the recommendation of his own advisors. You might say that shows he was just being aggressive, but his task force evidently thought they were wasting their time by getting into matters the OSC had no authority to investigate.

Scott Bloch

Bloch Party

Paul Kiel | May 7, 2008, 2:01PM

Some more detail in this morning's papers on that raid yesterday at the Office of Special Counsel that involved two dozen FBI agents serving subpoenas on 17 employees in a raid that lasted more than five hours. All indications remain that this is a probe focused on Special Counsel Scott Bloch, but Government Executive reports that the scope is surprising:

But OSC employees said the grand jury subpoenas seek a wide range of information that goes beyond Bloch's deletion of computer files or treatment of agency employees.

Investigators have demanded all files on OSC's investigation last year into allegations of improper political activity by Lurita Doan, the former head of the General Services Administration, who was forced to resign last week by the White House.

In addition, investigators demanded documents related to OSC's investigation into allegations that Secretary of State Rice used federal resources to travel to campaign appearances supporting President Bush's re-election in 2004. Bloch's office closed the case, finding no violation by Rice.

Oh, and don't forget the towels:

An official present during the raid yesterday said federal agents asked for access to computers and e-mail messages from Bloch and from the mid-level workers who received subpoenas. Investigators also sought credit card receipts, an agency employee said. Some staff members had complained that Bloch used agency funds to buy for his office restroom $400 hand towels decorated with a special OSC seal, according to another person familiar with the raid.

The towels were a legit perk, a spokesman told Justin at ABC:

"Scott, as a presidentially-appointed, Senate-confirmed member of the administration gets an allowance for things," spokesman Jim Mitchell explained. "He paid about $300 for some towels that had the OSC seal on it. He took a couple home, which he paid for himself."

Global Warming

Dem Senators Berate EPA Official

Paul Kiel | May 7, 2008, 12:05PM

It's gotten to be pretty routine. An EPA official goes up to Capitol Hill and straight-facedly insists that the agency is all about transparency and science, and Democratic senators respond by calling it a lie.

But this morning, it wasn't EPA chief Stephen Johnson who made the trip. This time the EPA sent Assistant Administrator for the Office of Research and Development George Gray instead. Why couldn't Johnson make it? Gray didn't seem sure, but explained to an angry Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) that Johnson had been having back problems. In March, Boxer implied that Johnson had planned an official trip to Australia in order to avoid having to attend in Congressional hearings in April. Maybe all that flight time wasn't good for his back.

But the Democrats didn't hold up on Gray. Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Boxer went round and round with him, as he continued to insist that "transparency is key" to the EPA's decision process and that the administrator's decisions were based on science. Boxer was most direct, saying at the end of his testimony that Gray's insistence that only science had been considered "is a big lie.... You've tried to defend the indefensible, and you have failed as far as this senator is concerned."

Gray proved himself a fine substitute for Johnson, however. When the senators pressed him on why Johnson had gone along with the White House and overruled the recommendation of the agency's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee in setting a higher level for smog-forming ozone in the air, Gray wanted everyone to understand that it was "actually a very good example" of the "way in which the uncertainty of science plays an important role in decisions." Gray counseled that "science does not give us a single or precise answer."

But Whitehouse didn't seem to be buying it. "The people that you chose to be the experts unanimously supported this recommendation.... These were the best scientists in the country and you ignored them." Gray responded that Johnson hadn't "ignored" them -- he'd just come to a different conclusion. He did allow, however, that in addition to "scientific considerations," there had been "science policy considerations," which are a "part of moving the scientific process forward." But the EPA wouldn't discuss it's communications with the White House, he said, saying that it was important to keep "discussions with the rest of the federal family" private.

The Daily Muck

The Daily Muck

John Amick | May 7, 2008, 10:16AM

The Environmental Protection Agency says there is a "distinct possibility" that the agency will not cleanse contaminated drinking water of the toxin perchlorate, a rocket fuel ingredient that has been found in water of 35 states. Perchlorate affects the thyroid and can cause health risks in fetuses. The EPA claims that fixing the problem may not do any good and, instead, may issue a health warning. (Associated Press)

Attorneys of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay believe their phones have been bugged by the U.S. government, they claim in court filings that seek an answer on possible surveillance. The Justice Department did not comment on the allegations, but have said as recently as March that they could neither confirm nor deny spying on detainees' lawyers because saying so would compromise U.S. intelligence sources and methods. (New York Times)

White House e-mails from a critical three-month period that includes the March 23, 2003, invasion of Iraq are missing, White House officials say. The Bush administration says the files may be found on computer backup tapes due to the way they were dated and are hoping an archiving system could possibly recover the lost e-mails. (Washington Post)

Read more »

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | May 7, 2008, 9:57AM

Nobody does compromise quite like the Bush administration.

If you're a regular reader of TPM, you're familiar with Hans von Spakovsky and in particular, Spakovsky's remarkable track record at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. It is because of that record -- one of ignoring, marginalizing, and intimidating career lawyers in order to institute restrictive voting laws all over the country, a pattern amounting to "institutional sabotage" as one former career attorney there put it -- that Senate Democrats (Barack Obama and Russ Feingold in particular) opposed his nomination to the Federal Election Commission.

Spakovsky was one of four nominees -- two Dems and two GOPers -- to the commission. The other three were uncontroversial. Senate Republicans insisted that all nominees be voted on together, and the Democrats objected: Spakovsky would have to get his own vote. The Republicans refused, and there things have stood for more than four months. Without the necessary number of commissioners, the FEC has essentially shut down.

It is a problem that has a relatively simple solution: if the White House were to submit another nominee, that nominee would more than likely be quickly confirmed without much trouble.

Instead, the Bush administration proposed something different yesterday.

Spakovsky remains a nominee. Instead, the administration has submitted a new nominee to replace the current chairman, David Mason. Mason is one of the only two seated commissioners, and it just so happens that he's been creating a whole lot of trouble for John McCain lately.

In February, the McCain campaign notified the FEC that it was withdrawing from the public financing system for the primary. Although McCain had once opted in, his campaign said that it had never received public funds and so could opt out. The move meant that McCain would not be bound by the $54 million spending limit for the system.

But Mason balked. McCain couldn't just opt out -- the FEC had to approve his request before he could. And Mason also indicated that a tricky bank loan might mean that McCain had locked himself in to the system. That would be disastrous for the campaign, since the Dem nominee would have a tremendous spending advantage through August. So McCain's campaign has continued to spend away, far surpassing the limit already. The Democratic Party has filed a complaint with the FEC and has also taken the matter to court.

And now Mason is getting the boot.

So where's the compromise, exactly? A White House spokeswoman tells The New York Times that Republicans are now willing to have a separate vote for Spakovsky. Whether that actually is the case, we shall see. If so, that means Democrats will have the chance to actually vote down Spakovsky once and for all.

But there is no shortage of cynicism about the White House's move. As Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21 put it: "The only apparent reason for President Bush to drop Commissioner David Mason at this stage, an FEC candidate he had twice proposed for the Commission, is to prevent him from casting an adverse vote against Senator McCain on important enforcement questions pending at the Commission. The questions deal with Senator McCain's request to withdraw from the presidential primary public financing system and the consequences of a loan the McCain campaign took out and the collateral provided for the loan."

Iraq

Pentagon Report on Iraq Debacle "Remains Classified"

Paul Kiel | May 6, 2008, 3:54PM

Earlier this week, I noted an excerpt from the new book by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, where he told how Donald Rumsfeld had ordered a report by the Joint Warfighting Center of the bungled occupation of Iraq, but when Rumsfeld got the results, he'd ordered it squelched.

Sanchez writes that he was told by one of the people who'd done the study that when they'd presented their findings to Rumsfeld, he'd "just shut us down" and said "This is not going anywhere." According to Sanchez, the report validated his account that the entire Pentagon leadership knew that he'd had inadequate support when he'd been in command of the U.S. forces in Iraq after the fall of Hussein. It also showed that Gen. Tommy Franks had discarded the original plan, which called for a twelve-to-eighteen-month occupation deployment.

Sanchez added: "From that, my belief was that Rumsfeld's intent appeared to be to minimize and control further exposure within the Pentagon and to specifically keep this information from the American public."

Susanne Moore, media operations chief at the Joint Forces Command, told me today that the report actually had been finished and published in late 2006 -- but that it "was and remains classified."

So why is a historical report classified? "It has all the earmarks of an abusive classification," Steve Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy Project, told me. "The report has been publicly characterized as an embarrassing document, and an allegation has been made by an informed source that the motive for withholding was to avoid embarrassment and disgrace, which of course is not a legitimate use of the classification system. So it demands further investigation by Congress to get to the bottom of it."

Karl Rove

FBI Raids Home, Office of Office of Special Counsel

Paul Kiel | May 6, 2008, 1:13PM

From The Wall Street Journal:

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents raided the Office of Special Counsel here, seizing computers and documents belonging to the agency chief Scott Bloch and staff.

More than a dozen FBI agents served grand jury subpoenas shortly after 10 a.m., shutting down the agency's computer network and searching its offices, as well as Mr. Bloch's home. Employees said the searches appeared focused on alleged obstruction of justice by Mr. Bloch during the course of an 2006 inquiry into his conduct in office.

The independent agency, created by Congress in the wake of the Watergate scandal, is charged with protecting federal employees and deciding whether their complaints merit full-scale investigation -- a first line of defense against fraud and mismanagement in government. It also enforces a ban on U.S. employees engaging in partisan political activity.

The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Mr. Bloch had used "Geeks on Call," an outside computer-service firm, to erase his computer and those of two former staff members in December 2006....

The computer erasures became part of that investigation and are one of the reasons behind today's raid, employees said.

To refresh your memory, Bloch's agency is a little known one that is charged with investigating whistleblower complaints, Hatch Act violations, and the like -- but who is himself being investigated for retaliating against whistleblowers and politicizing his office. The Office of Personnel Management's inspector general has been conducting that investigation since 2005. The feds are apparently investigating whether Bloch tried to obstruct that investigation by deleting his hard drive, among other things.

To give you an idea how fraught this investigation is with unique issues, Bloch is not only busily investigating the White House for political briefings Karl Rove and his aides made to various agencies, but he's also conducting an investigation of the politicization at the Department of Justice and issues related to the U.S. Attorney firings -- a probe that he complained was being blocked by the DoJ. Of course, he can't do much to block the DoJ investigation of him.

Update: NPR, also reporting on the raid, reports that the entire's office email system was shut down this morning.

Torture

Lawsuit Mars Abu Ghraib Contractor's PR Blitz

Paul Kiel | May 6, 2008, 12:04PM

Talk about bad timing! Just as CACI International was ramping up for its book tour -- the company's CEO has penned "Our Good Name," which according to the flap copy is "CACI's story of facing one of the biggest scandals in recent history...and coming out honorably with its head high" -- an Iraqi man has sued CACI, saying that employees tortured him when he was held in Abu Ghraib.

Cruelly, the lawyers for Emad al-Janabi, which include lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights, have used CACI's own book against the company. The suit alleges that the book reveals that CACI's internal investigation failed to include any interviews of detainees or of a former employee whistleblower. The suit was filed in Los Angeles in order to target former CACI contractor Steven "Big Steve" Stefanowicz.

Note: For those looking for another beach read this summer from the same genre (self glorifying autobiography by an infamous contractor's CEO), there's also Erik Prince's "We Are Blackwater."

Torture

Yoo, Feith, Ashcroft Agree to Testify

Paul Kiel | May 6, 2008, 10:47AM

Earlier this morning, the House Judiciary Committee authorized a subpoena for David Addington, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, to testify about the administration's torture policy.

And now the AP reports that John Yoo, probably the most infamous of the infamous characters that walked the halls of the Justice Department during the Bush administration, has agreed to testify as well without compulsion. That's a departure from his original position, when he said that he could not testify about his role in authorizing the use of torture because he had not received the green light from the DoJ.

The AP adds: "Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and former Assistant Attorney General Dan Levin have also agreed to give testimony at a future hearing. Former CIA Director George Tenet is still in negotiations with the committee."

The Daily Muck

The Daily Muck

John Amick | May 6, 2008, 10:21AM

Based on a figure from the RAND Corporation calculating around 20 percent of U.S. troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, as well as established suicide rates for patients with similar conditions, the National Institute of Mental Health is worried the number of suicides among returning veterans might eclipse the amount killed in Iraq. The Pentagon did not dispute these claims. (Associated Press and Bloomberg)

An internal audit of the State Dept. found that as many as 400 employee laptops from the Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program are missing. The unit is designed to help train and provide equipment for foreign police, intelligence and security forces. The department is now scrambling around its Washington offices to take inventory of all registered laptops. (Congressional Quarterly)

The FBI, the IRS and federal prosecutors around the country are teaming up to investigate whether some mortgage lenders willingly accepted falsified income profiles from borrowers. The task force, first formed in January to examine 14 mortgage companies involved in localized activity. The inquiry has since expanded its reach to well-known operations like Countrywide Financial Corporation. (New York Times)

Read more »

Torture

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | May 6, 2008, 10:13AM

Forget about the frustration at the slow pace of the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. You know it's got to really burn the administration to miss a good chance for a PR coup.

But as The Washington Post reports this morning, things are moving at such a glacial pace down in sunny Guantanamo that it seems impossible at this point that any of the September 11th suspects will begin trial before the election -- or even before the Bush administration leaves office.

You know that's got to burn because of comments made by the Pentagon officials heading up the trials. The former chief prosecutor there testified that he was told that he should really push to land plea deals or indictments before the election. And another member of the prosecution team said the Pentagon's top legal adviser in its commissions office wanted to pursue certain cases ahead of others because they would "seize the imagination of the American public" and make a splash.

But the only case that seems at all likely to go to trial before the election is that of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the alleged driver for Osama bin Laden. And the pretrial hearings for that have been far from pretty -- with Gitmo's former chief prosecutor testifying about the politicization of the system, and Hamdan, who says he has been addled by torture and prolonged solitary confinement, himself proclaiming that he won't participate in what he sees as a rigged system.

The apparent problem is that it just takes a long time to work out the kinks of a made-up process. As a lawyer from Human Rights Watch puts it, "Every little detail ends up being contested, because it's an entirely new system of justice."

But administration officials are trying to keep their chins up, their eyes on the prize. In answering criticisms that the process will be occasionally and arbitrarily shielded from the press, Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, the top legal authority in the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions and the man who was, according to those prosecutors referenced above, so keen on landing indictments before the elections, is unapologetic. Certain things have to be blocked from the press to ensure that classified or sensitive information is not disseminated, he says. And besides, who needs publicity?

Hartmann said that within the military commissions process, "the principal obligation is not to the press," and that the cases are full, fair and open because of the rights afforded to the defendants. "That's what we do in the American system of justice," he said.

Congressional Subpoenas

House Panel Votes to Authorize Subpoena to Addington

Paul Kiel | May 6, 2008, 9:47AM

The next step in the House Judiciary Committee's attempts to hear from the architects of the administration's interrogation policy: the panel just voted to authorize a subpoena for David Addington. Last week, Addington indicated that he might appear to testify if the committee subpoenaed him. It's not clear yet when that hearing might be.

The committee also is seeking to hear from John Yoo, John Ashcroft, Doug Feith, former CIA Director George Tenet, and former lawyer in the Office of Legal Counsel Daniel Levin. The committee continues to negotiate with all of those possible witnesses about appearing in the future, according to a press release yesterday. During the vote just now, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said that "most" of the witnesses the committee wanted to hear from had agreed to appear.

Election 2008

Louisiana Robo Caller Unmasked!

Paul Kiel | May 5, 2008, 6:30PM

Over the weekend, there were reports of robo calls during Louisiana's 6th District special election, during which State Rep. Don Cazayoux had narrowly beaten Republican Woody Jenkins. In the calls, which went out to Baton Rouge's African-American neighborhoods on election day, a voice told voters to teach white Democrats a lesson by staying home and not voting. It signed off "Friends of Michael Jackson," according to The Advocate.

But Jackson, an African-American state lawmaker who'd lost in the primary to Cazayoux, said he had nothing to do with the calls. So whodunnit?

The answer: Darrell Glasper, who told me that he was a political independent who'd made the calls because he said African-Americans "have been loyal for so long and received so little." Glasper, an African-American, said that he was an acquaintance and supporter of Jackson's, but that he'd made the calls without Jackson's knowledge and had stopped the calls at Jackson's request. He'd made 10,000 or so by that time, he said.

Glasper's company Magnolia Computers came up on the caller ID for the robo calls, reported a reader of the local blog The Daily Kingfish. The Daily Kingfish also had a transcript of the calls:

"I'm very upset that the National Democratic Party favored Don Cazayoux from New Roads over Michael Jackson. The Democratic Party raised $850,000 for Don Cazayoux which is the only reason Michael Jackson lost in the Democratic runoff. The National and State Democratic Parties always seem to back the white democrat over the black democrat and that's wrong. A lot of us who are supporting Michael Jackson feel the National Democratic Party need to be taught a lesson. We're not voting for Don Cazayoux because we believe Woody Jenkins will be a lot easier to beat in November when Senator Barack Obama is on the ballot. You haven't heard many black elected officials supporting Don Cazayoux. On Saturday we're going to stay home and see how the National Democratic Party do without us."

"Paid for by Friends of Michael Jackson."

Glasper told me that he'd been frustrated by the Democratic Party's lack of support for Jackson when he'd run in the primary against the white Cazayoux -- there was no get out the vote operation, he said, and "without money in the community Jackson couldn't make it." But that support, he said, materialized on Cazayoux's behalf in the general election. "That's my interpretation of how they play the political games." (Of course, there's nothing remarkable in the fact that the party did not run a GOTV effort within the Dem primary but did against the Republican candidate.)

When I asked him why he'd signed off the calls "Friends of Michael Jackson," when the calls were not in fact from Jackson's campaign, he said "I'm a friend of Michael Jackson's." When I pressed, he said that the calls "may have said friends or by a friend," he can't remember.

But Glasper, who up until recently served as chairman of BREC, an agency that operates public park and recreation facilities and programs throughout East Baton Rouge Parish, was unapologetic about the calls. When I told him that the Louisiana State Democratic Party said the calls violated election law and were likely to take the matter to court, he told me "This is America, you can say what you want."

Torture

Senate GOP Blocks DOJ IG From Investigating Torture

Paul Kiel | May 5, 2008, 4:17PM

From The National Law Journal:

Congress is close to enacting the most significant boost in three decades in the independence of the cadre of government watchdogs -- federal inspectors general -- but the lawmakers have retreated from a key change involving the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Senate on April 23 approved, by unanimous consent, S. 2324, the Inspector General Reform Act of 2008. But the bill passed only after the lawmakers agreed to an amendment by Senator Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., which, among other items, deleted a provision giving the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) jurisdiction to investigate misconduct allegations against department attorneys, including its most senior officials.

Unlike all other OIGs who can investigate misconduct within their entire agency, Justice's OIG must refer allegations against department attorneys to the department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). The latter office, unlike the OIG, is not statutorily independent and reports directly to the attorney general and the deputy attorney general....

President Bush had threatened to veto the House bill for a variety of reasons. The Kyl amendment to the Senate bill was seen by many as a vehicle for the White House's objections.

OPR, which reports to the attorney general, is currently conducting a variety of very sensitive investigations for the administration. The office is probing the Department's approval of the administration's warrantless wiretapping program. And recently it announced that it is investigating the Department's legal memos authorizing the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture by CIA and military interrogators.

It is conducting those probes because Inspector General Glenn Fine cannot. The bill which passed the House would have changed that, as Fine himself pointed out in a letter (pdf) to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) back in February, when he told them that he could not investigate the Department's authorization of torture because "under current law, the OIG does not have jurisdiction to review the actions of DOJ attorneys acting in their capacity to provide legal advice." Fine added: "Legislation that would remove this limitation has passed the House and is pending in the Senate, but at this point the OIG does not have jurisdiction to undertake the review you request."

And with Kyl's amendment, it appears that Fine won't be getting that jurisdiction any time soon.

The National Law Journal quotes a former DoJ IG on why some people want to tie Fine's hands:

Read more »

Lurita Doan

Doan Fired for Being A "Distraction"

Paul Kiel | May 5, 2008, 11:46AM

Former GSA chief Lurita Doan tells her story about how she got the axe:

Q: Tell us about the logistics of how this all happened. It's been pretty much universally reported that you were asked to resign by the White House. If you could tell us if that is indeed what happened, and then if you could tell us how it happened.

Doan: Well Francis, you know, it's a real thrill to go to the White House. You get to walk up that curved drive to the West Wing, and.... and I have a deep, and a really lasting respect for President Bush who... who I believe is a truly great man, but... but during my 22 months as Administrator of GSA, I had never met with any senior White House person - not once. So here I am, I'm sitting down for the first time with (White House Chief of Staff) Josh Bolton and (White House Counsel) Fred Fielding and less than thirty seconds into the meeting I was told that the White House is requesting my resignation. It was humbling, and frankly, it was bizarre. So naturally, I immediately stated "I serve at the pleasure of the President" and I immediately gave my resignation, but... but it was absolutely surreal.

Q: Was there any discussion of why this was happening?

Doan: Of course I naturally asked why do they want my resignation.... [A]nd I was surprised to be told that from the White House point of view I was considered - and this is a direct quote - a "distraction".

As Government Executive reported last week, Doan doesn't think that her firing had anything to do with the alleged Hatch Act violations -- but rather with her ongoing feud with the GSA's inspector general.

Bernard Kerik

Sanchez: Kerik Was Focused on Busting Baghdad Whorehouses

Paul Kiel | May 5, 2008, 11:20AM

More score settling. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez opens fire on Bernie Kerik's time training the Iraqi police in Iraq:

"He is a very energetic guy. He is very confident - overconfident to an extent - and he is very superficial in his understanding of the requirements of his job," Sanchez said. "His whole contribution was a waste of time and effort."...

Sanchez said Kerik focused more on "conducting raids and liberating prostitutes" than training the Iraqis.

"They'd get tips and they'd go and actually raid a whorehouse," Sanchez told The News. "Their focus becomes trying to do tactical police operations in the city of Baghdad, when in fact there is a much greater mission that they should be doing, which is training the police."...

Kerik denied arresting any prostitutes in Iraq and said the Army always knew about his operations.

Jim Gibbons

Mucky Nevada Gov. Files for Divorce

Paul Kiel | May 5, 2008, 10:51AM

To call Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons' tenure troubled doesn't quite capture it.

It started off with a bang with accusations that he'd drunkenly assaulted a cocktail waitress in a parking garage in the middle of the night. That probe was eventually closed due to insufficient evidence. And then there's the federal investigation as to whether he took bribes from a defense contractor while he was a congressman. And now he's seeking a very public divorce from his wife.

Yes, there have been happier times, such as during this 2005 cruise, which was paid for by his defense contractor buddy:

The Daily Muck

The Daily Muck

John Amick | May 5, 2008, 10:30AM

A former aide to Reps. Jane Harman (D-CA) and Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) was sentenced to six months in jail for embezzling money from her employers' accounts to help fund political campaigns. Investigators are looking into other congressional staff members and their involvement into similar campaign-support activity at the request of their bosses. (Wash Post)

The role of defense contractors in Iraq will increase soon, as the military officials are openly calling for such privatized troops to live with (for the first time) Iraqi military groups while they help train the fledgling army. Defense contracting has come under scrutiny from Congress of late, yet one Pentagon official says the step of using non-U.S. military is a "natural step" in the training of the Iraqis as American forces draw down. (The Hill and Washington Post)

A major defense contractor used by the U.S. in Iraq, MPRI out of Virginia, was found to have used a shell company in Bermuda to subcontract the defense work. The offshore companies set up to avoid taxation were started just months after signing a $400 million contract to provide military support in Iraq. (Boston Globe)

Read more »

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | May 5, 2008, 9:58AM

Five years after the invasion of Iraq, there seems to have been a rash of accounting lately.

Consider: in March, the Joint Forces Command released (after a pathetic attempt at squelching it) a report definitively proving that there were no operational links between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al Qaeda. That same month, The New York Times provided a detailed account of Paul Bremer's infamous decision to disband the Iraqi Army. And then of course there's Doug Feith's book, which purports to show how things would have gone so much better if everyone had just listened to Doug Feith -- a thesis that's necessarily met incredulity in a number of brutal interviews.

Some of this is just because enough time has passed that the players feel safe giving interviews. But then there's also the case of suppressed information that's finally seeing the light of day. In February, for example, the Times revealed that a 2005 report by the publicly-funded RAND Corporation had been buried because its conclusions were inconvenient. The report faulted just about everyone in the administration for not adequately preparing for securing postwar Iraq.

And here's what appears to be another example of a buried report. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of U.S. Forces in Iraq from the beginning of the occupation until 2004, has written a memoir. And he has a couple scores to settle. One, to be sure, is that he thinks he was scapegoated for the abuses at Abu Ghraib. The other has to do with how he was left in command of Iraq with far too few troops.

In an excerpt from the book published in Time, Sanchez tells how Rumsfeld, two years after that disastrous year in Iraq, called Sanchez into his office to try to diffuse blame. Rumsfeld hadn't known that Sanchez, commander of the Army's V Corps, was left in charge while CENTCOM and CFLCC [coalition land forces] staffs had pulled out, he said, and he'd written a memo of that official version to prove it.

But Sanchez wasn't buying it, he writes, and told Rumsfeld, "I just can't believe you didn't know." Rumsfeld flipped out. The meeting ended, Sanchez writes, with Rumsfeld saying that he was going to order a report to find out what happened. But that didn't go so well:

[Adm. Ed Giambastiani, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs] assigned the task to the Joint Warfighting Center and gave them a pretty tight timeline. So it wasn't long before I was giving the investigative team a complete rundown of everything that had happened in Iraq between May and June 2003. I later learned that Gen. Tommy Franks, however, had refused to speak with them.

A few months later, I was making a presentation at the Joint Warfighting Center and ran across several of the people involved with the study. "Say, did you guys ever complete that investigation?" I asked.

"Oh, yes sir. We sure did," came the reply. "And let me tell you, it was ugly."

"Ugly?" I asked.

"Yes, sir. Our report validated everything you told us -- that Franks issued the orders to discard the original twelve-to-eighteen-month occupation deployment, that the forces were drawing down, that we were walking away from the mission, and that everybody knew about it. And let me tell you, the Secretary did not like that one bit. After we went in to brief him, he just shut us down. 'This is not going anywhere,' he said. 'Oh, and by the way, leave all the copies right here and don't talk to anybody about it.'"

"You mean he embargoed all the copies of the report?" I asked.

"Yes, sir, he did."

From that, my belief was that Rumsfeld's intent appeared to be to minimize and control further exposure within the Pentagon and to specifically keep this information from the American public.

Update: Here's William Arkin's take on Sanchez.

All Muck is Local

All Muck is Local: Who's Laughing Now?

Lila Shapiro | May 4, 2008, 12:09PM

The last time we checked in with Kwame "Busted Is What You See!" Kilpatrick, he was denying all charges, saying he'd been punished by God, and continuing to serve as Mayor of Detroit. This week brought more of the same.

On Tuesday, the full slew of the hundreds of text messages exchanged between Kilpatrick and former Chief of Staff Beatty were released. And Kilpatrick? To quote another American fabulist, Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

The messages, written over four months in 2002 and 2003, were originally intended to be released at the time of Kilpatrick and Beatty's trial for retaliating against city police whistleblowers in August 2007. But as we've noted before, Kilpatrick's lawyers fought hard to keep them under wraps -- all in vain, because The Detroit Free Press got their hands on them. These new messages were also released to the Press as a result of the paper's lawsuit against the City of Detroit for more information on the mayor's secret $8.4 million settlement with the whistleblowers, a key part of which was to keep the text messages private.

The text messages run the gamut of evidence from indications that Beatty and Kilpatrick had been conspiring to orchestrate the removal of the whistleblowing police officers to lots and lots of sex talk... with a lot of LOL thrown in for good measure (the Kilpatricks still maintain a house on Leslie Street, in addition to the mayor's mansion):

But he has sobered up a bit since then. Late Tuesday, during a budget plan meeting with city residents he said:

"It's unfortunate that in Detroit only, you're guilty till proven innocent," he told the group of about 100. "There's a lot of bad information being presented in front of you, and hopefully by the end of this, we'll all see things pretty clearly."

Afterward, he told reporters: "I don't think that, at all, this is a smoking gun that everybody thought it would be."

And with that, everyone continues to await Kilpatrick's magical exoneration.

However, Detroit's hopes for a new mayor remain cloudy. One of the problems may be that the judge presiding over Kilpatrick's upcoming criminal trial, Ronald Giles, is a family friend and contributor to Kilpatrick's mayoral campaign. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy requested that he be removed from the case, but District Chief Judge Marylin Atkins refused to remove Giles, or any other judge.

In a nine-page decision, Atkins concluded there was no basis to remove Giles or any other judges.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy called Atkins' decisions "particularly disturbing" and "sadly incomplete."