Henry Paulson

What To Make Of Hank Paulson's "Texan" Threats On Ken Lewis's Job?

Moe Tkacik | April 24, 2009, 4:11PM

It's clear New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's probe into the taxpayer-supported Bank of America-Merrill Lynch merger has widened considerably since he began digging into Merrill's accelerated payout of $3.6 billion in bonuses before the disclosure of a devastating fourth quarter loss. But where is it all headed?

Yesterday Cuomo wrote a letter to Congress, the SEC and TARP Oversight chair Elizabeth Warren disclosing a few findings "that raise questions about the transparency of the TARP program, as well as about corporate governance and disclosure practices at Bank of America." But as former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson once said about such disclosures, the carefully-worded, heavily redacted documents "create more questions than they answer." The most headline-grabbing detail was Paulson's threat to fire Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis if he backed out of the bank's agreement to buy Merrill Lynch at the agreed upon $10 a share; the second was the revelation that the Fed and Treasury had left the SEC "in the dark" throughout the entire process.

The immediate question at hand is whether Lewis broke securities laws or violated his fiduciary duty to protect his shareholders when he went along with Paulson. Certainly many Bank of America shareholders believe so; the news was met with a statement from CtW, the shareholder group campaigning to oust Lewis in a proxy battle declaring that Lewis "violated their legal duties to shareholders in order to protect their own employment interests" when he decided not to invoke the deal's Material Adverse Change clause, which allows companies to get out of merger agreements under some circumstances. Bank of America shares have lost about two-thirds their value since the Lewis announced it was buying the investment bank.

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Media

Buchanan: Nicaraguan Leader Is "Scrub Stock"

Zachary Roth | April 24, 2009, 2:50PM

For the last decade or so, Washington has indulged Pat Buchanan as a sort of crazy political uncle. Everyone, it seems, has agreed to forget about his long track record of racially questionable commentary and writing, and to look kindly on his continued nativist leanings, because he's an entertaining and surprisingly insightful TV performer, and it's fun to watch him argue with Rachel Maddow.

But every now and then, the centrality to Buchanan's worldview of racial difference rises to the surface. In addition to his frequent MSNBC appearances, where he plays a mostly well-mannered, if hardline, conservative, Buchanan also writes a column for the far-right web magazine, Human Events. And that's where he gets himself into trouble.

His most recent effort, "The Rooted and The Rootless," takes as its premise the notion that there's a "blood-and-soil, family-and-faith, God-and-country kind of nation" that's competing with a minority represented by the "rootless" Obama and his "aides with advanced degrees from elite colleges who react just like him."

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Torture

Senate Report Accidentally Reveals SERE Instructors Trained CIA Officials In Torture

Brian Beutler | April 24, 2009, 11:24AM

One of the big revelations to come out of the Senate Armed Services Committee report on so-called aggressive interrogation techniques is an early July 2002 training session where officials from the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA)--the agency that oversees the SERE training program--provided "assistance to another government agency." Much of this section of the report is blacked out, so I'll connote blacked out sections with asterisks [***], but the report says JPRA was assisting this agency "on topics such as '*** deprivation techniques,' 'exploitation and questioning techniques,' and 'developing countermeasures to resistance techniques.'" According to the report, "[t]he training was intended to "prepare *** officers for rotations in Afghanistan and elsewhere."

Spencer Ackerman reported on this section in detail when the report was first released, noting what has long been reported, but never officially acknowledged. Spencer writes, "a JPRA team assisted a squad from 'another government agency' during the first six months of 2002 that would be 'sent to interrogate a high level al Qaeda operative.'"

"'Another government agency'," Spencer writes, "is a widespread euphemism for the CIA."

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The Daily Muck

The Daily Muck

Ben Buchwalter | April 24, 2009, 9:21AM

The Obama administration will ask the Supreme Court to reconsider a 1986 ruling that police officers cannot question a defendant with representation unless the lawyer is present. In a court brief, the solicitor general said that the decision in Michigan v. Jackson should be overturned because it "serves no real purpose" and defendants should speak to police if they so choose. The judges supporting the ruling say it is especially aimed at poor or developmentally disabled defendants who could be tricked into giving incriminating information to prosecutors without a lawyer present. In the aftermath of the administration's invocation of the "state secrets" privilege, and support for the imprisonment of enemy combatants in Afghanistan, this position has further alienated civil liberties groups. (AP)

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Barack Obama

Obama: On Second Thought, Scratch That Commission Idea

Zachary Roth | April 23, 2009, 6:36PM

Is President Obama flipping back again on the subject of how to conduct torture investigations?

His press secretary, Robert Gibbs, told reporters today that Obama no longer favored the idea of a bipartisan commission to probe the issue. "The president determined the concept didn't seem altogether workable in this case," said Gibbs. And the Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, reports that Obama backed away from the position during a "lengthy exchange" earlier yesterday with House Minority Leader John Boehner.*

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Alberto Gonzales

Did Harman Break The Law?

Zachary Roth | April 23, 2009, 4:03PM

We've been wondering about something on this whole Jane-Harman/AIPAC story. (For the background, go here.)

When the Justice Department heard Harman on the wiretap, and as a result started to investigate her (a probe later reportedly shut down by Alberto Gonzales), what was the underlying crime she was suspected of, and how strong does the case against her appear to have been?

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Centra Bank

Do Banks Really Get Charged "Fees" For Repaying TARP Funds Early? (Hint: No)

Moe Tkacik | April 23, 2009, 3:51PM

It has been a big month for West Virginia's Centra Bank, whose executives have been interviewed in the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and on Fox News. On March 31, Centra became one of the first five banks to repay a TARP loan -- and it's mad as hell about the terms. The way Centra sees it, the bank was stuck with what it terms an "early repayment penalty" of $750,000 for paying back its $15 million injection just ten weeks after it had received it.

"What they did is wrong and fundamentally un-American," Centra CEO Douglas Leech told the Times, comparing the payout to being charged a 60% interest rate. Today John Fahey, a vice president at the bank, likened the transaction to being forced to pay a 999% premium Fortune.

Behind those bits of somewhat wild analogizing is a major campaign by big banks to get out of paying the government in full if they choose to return their TARP money early. Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein respective CEOs of JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, took up the issue with Obama himself at their April 10 meeting, and the American Bankers Association is lobbying Congress to relax the "penalties."

Here's their argument: TARP funds came with options to buy stock in the bailed out banks. The idea was that if the banks profited from the Treasury's injection of capital, taxpayers could share in the profits. The strike prices on the options were calculated on the basis of the average of the bank stocks during the 20 trading days prior to the TARP injections, and the warrants on all but fifteen of the 321 publicly-held banks are currently "out of the money" -- or considerably higher than it would cost to buy the shares today. But the warrants don't expire until 2018, so presuming bank stocks rise over the next decade, they are quite valuable. One analysis estimates that the government's warrants to buy Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan stock alone are worth $2.7 billion. If Goldman returned its TARP money this month, that would effectively mean they had paid a 19% annualized interest rate on the TARP funds, or nearly 10% of the entire injection -- a stiffer "penalty" than even Centra's 5%.

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Media

Maddow Cites TPMmuckraker On Sleep Expert

Zachary Roth | April 23, 2009, 1:05PM

Last night, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow cited our interview with James Horne, the sleep expert who says his work was distorted by Steven Bradbury in one of the OLC torture memos, to justify keeping people awake for 11 days.

Thanks for the shout out, Rachel!

Bank of America

Cuomo: Paulson Kept SEC Out Of The Loop On B Of A

Zachary Roth | April 23, 2009, 12:19PM

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has just released documents from his investigation into Bank of America, its receipt of government money, and those billions in bonuses that went to Merrill Lynch executives.

Here's one quick nugget we found: It looks like then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson didn't keep the SEC -- whose role, of course, is to protect investors -- informed on the government's intense December 2008 discussions with B of A about Merrill's losses, and possible government assistance for B of A.

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Ted Stevens

Justice Picking Up Tab For Stevens Six Defense

Zachary Roth | April 23, 2009, 11:39AM

Guess who's footing the bill for those fancy lawyers the Stevens Six have hired? We are.

The Justice Department confirmed to TPMmuckraker that the prosecutors -- who are being investigated for criminal contempt in connection to misconduct in the Ted Stevens case -- requested representation under a DOJ provision that applies to employees who run into legal trouble while doing their jobs, and that the request was authorized.

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Alberto Gonzales

Report: Angry Intel Officers Tipped Pelosi To Harman Wiretap

Zachary Roth | April 23, 2009, 11:18AM

Another day, another advance by CQ's Jeff Stein on his Harman-AIPAC story...

Late last night, Stein reported that, after Alberto Gonzales quashed the FBI probe into Rep. Harman for political reasons, intelligence officials, angry about Gonzo's move, told Nancy Pelosi about the wiretap that had picked up Harman talking to a suspected Israeli agent -- defying the AG's order that Pelosi not be informed.

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The Daily Muck

Ben Buchwalter | April 23, 2009, 9:35AM

The location of approximately forty prisoners held at CIA secret prisons is still unknown to the public, ProPublica reported Wednesday. The memos released last week showing that the Bush administration approved harsh interrogation techniques, confirmed that one prisoner, Hassan Ghul, was interrogated in a secret prison, but the CIA denies ever holding Ghul and his location remains a secret. The same is true for many war on terror prisoners. President Bush publicly acknowledged the CIA secret programs in 2006 and moved 14 prisoners "with little or no additional intelligence value" from secret prisons to Guantanamo Bay. (Pro Publica)

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George Bush

Senate Releases Declassified Narrative Of OLC Torture Opinions

Zachary Roth | April 22, 2009, 6:27PM

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) of the Senate Intelligence committee has just released a declassified narrative (pdf) of the OLC's development of its opinions on torture.

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder has already picked out a key excerpt, that sheds some light on just who in the Bush administration helped devise and approve the torture policies:

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Condi Rice

Condi Aide: Bushies Told Me Anti-Torture Memo Was "Inconvenient"

Zachary Roth | April 22, 2009, 5:50PM

As we noted, Philip Zelikow, a former top lawyer to Condi Rice at the State Department, yesterday wrote that the White House tried to destroy all copies of a memo he authored, which took issue with the legal opinions laid out in the infamous OLC torture memos.

Today, Zelikow appeared on MSNBC to flesh out that story. Among other things, he reveals that the Bushies said his memo was "inconvenient to have around." (Would it have been too much for Andrea Mitchell to have followed up by asking him who, exactly, said that?)

Watch:

Don Siegelman

Seventy-Five Ex-AGs To Holder: Review Siegelman Case

Zachary Roth | April 22, 2009, 5:29PM

Former Alabama governor Don Siegelman is stepping up his campaign to persuade Attorney General Eric Holder to take another look at his case.

Seventy-five former state attorneys general, including ten Republicans, have sent a letter to Holder saying that Siegelman's defense lawyers have raised "gravely troublesome facts" about whether he got a fair trial, reports the New York Times. The letter cites Holder's recent decision to ask that the charges against Ted Stevens be dropped, thanks to prosecutors' failure to turn over evidence to the defense, as required. It argues that there is evidence of similar misconduct in Siegelman's case, and that the charges should similarly be dropped if that's borne out in an investigation.

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Alaska

Report: Stevens Prosecutor Hires Rove Lawyer

Zachary Roth | April 22, 2009, 4:40PM

The Stevens Six have lawyered up. And what lawyers they are.

Legal Times reports that Nicholas Marsh, one of the public integrity prosecutors, has hired Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, of Patton Boggs.

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Guantanamo

Levin: DOJ Should Decide On Investigation For 'Abominable' Bush-era Memos

Brian Beutler | April 22, 2009, 4:15PM

Earlier today, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) spoke to MSNBC about the mammoth report his Armed Services Committee released last night. The report details the evolution of a brutal interrogation policy within the Department of Defense, and implicates, for the most part, a different set of officials than the familiar folks of the Bush Justice Department. Watch:

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Jane Harman

Rep. Harman Wiretapped? Or Overheard On A Wiretap?

Brian Beutler | April 22, 2009, 4:03PM

Was Rep. Jane Harman wiretapped? Or was she simply overheard in a conversation with somebody whose phone was wiretapped? If the former, it would be a bombshell, and if you read this piece from Roll Call--titled "Pelosi Knew About Harman Wiretap--you might infer that she was. The article reports that, at Christian Science Monitor lunch with reporters, "Pelosi said she was not told what federal eavesdroppers picked up on the call -- and never alerted Harman to it."

"It was not my position to raise it with Jane Harman," Pelosi told reporters at the Christian Science Monitor lunch. "In fact, I didn't even know if what they were talking about was real. All they said was that she was wiretapped."

Though the full truth is hard to ascertain, the entire context of Pelosi's remarks suggest this was more a case of slipped tongue than spilled beans.

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AIPAC

Harman-AIPAC: The Latest Developments

Zachary Roth | April 22, 2009, 3:48PM

Some recent developments in the fast-moving Harman-AIPAC story to update you on...

- Nancy Pelosi told reporters that she was briefed "a few years ago" by the NSA that they had wiretapped Harman, but wasn't told what was found, and never alerted Harman.

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Torture

Administration, Military, Knew Techniques Were Torture, Ineffective--Pressed Ahead Anyhow

Brian Beutler | April 22, 2009, 2:57PM

One of the key takeaway's of the Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee treatment is the extent to which administration and military officials were warned that a). some SERE techniques amounted to torture and b). that they would be extremely ineffective at acquiring intelligence from prisoners. They were, after all, based on techniques used by Chinese Communists to elicit false confessions.

But the people who nonetheless approved of or supported the techniques weren't swayed.

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Torture

Trio Of Senators Ask Obama Not To Prosecute Bush Attorneys

Brian Beutler | April 22, 2009, 2:02PM

Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman have sent a letter to President Obama urging him not to prosecute Bush Justice Department officials who wrote legal rationales for torture. "[T]he Department of Justice is currently conducting an internal ethics review of the OLC memos," the trio write, "but that is a quite a different matter from making legal advice with which we may disagree into a crime."

This has been a common refrain from these three for some time, but this letter belies the facts that the use of torture predated the memos that were written to retroactively justify it, and that the Attorney General has independent authority to investigate and, possibly, prosecute their authors. I've pasted the full text of the letter below the fold.

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Bailout

Bailout Fraud Prosecutor Nets First Catch

Zachary Roth | April 22, 2009, 1:41PM

In an interview with The Hill published yesterday, Neil Barofsky, the inspector general for the bailout, said that he was pursuing 20 criminal and civil investigations into potential fraud in the TARP program.

And it looks like at least one has now paid off.

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Torture

House Member Asks Sec. State To Intervene On Torture Prosecutions

Brian Beutler | April 22, 2009, 12:21PM

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee today. She's appearing to testify on the administration's foreign policy but earlier Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), a senior Republican on the committee, gave her an earful about torture prosecutions. Watch:

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Jerrold Nadler

Nadler On Torture And Bybee

Zachary Roth | April 22, 2009, 11:47AM

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), who sits on the House Judiciary committee (and also happens to be TPM's congressman) went on MSNBC's Countdown last night to repeat his call for the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee, who, while a member of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, wrote one of the torture memos released last week.

Nadler also said he supported the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate whether Bush administration officials, including Bybee, committed crimes.

Watch:

Torture

Levin's Torture Report: A Round-Up

Brian Beutler | April 22, 2009, 10:05AM

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) has picked up where he left off almost a year ago last night by unveiling an unclassified report (PDF) detailing the origins of U.S. torture policies and the route those policies took through the government and into the darkened rooms where military interrogators put them into practice.

The release of this report is coincidental to last week's release, by the Obama Justice Department, of a series of Bush-era memos written to justify a number of torturous CIA interrogation techniques.

Levin got this process rolling in June of last year, releasing a shorter report and a series of Pentagon memos--the fruits of a two year investigation--which painted a more skeletal picture than last night's report does.

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Torture

Turley: We Need A Special Torture Prosecutor, Not Some Lame Commission

Zachary Roth | April 22, 2009, 10:02AM

Jonathan Turley, the media-friendly George Washington Law School professor, who's an outspoken advocate of curbing executive power, gave a bravura performance on MSNBC's Countdown last night, on the subject of possible torture prosecutions.

Arguing that investigations aren't just necessary but long overdue, Turley made two important points that have been getting a bit lost in the rapid-fire debate lately.

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The Daily Muck

The Daily Muck

Ben Buchwalter | April 22, 2009, 9:25AM

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) called for an investigation into whether AIG and other medical benefits providers denied costly treatment for civilian contractors injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a letter Tuesday to Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who chairs the Subcommittee on Domestic Policy of the House Oversight Committee, Cummings said he was "absolutely disgusted to read about the atrocities that individuals are being forced to endure as they attempt to get treatment for the injuries they received while serving our country." The LA Times and ABC News reported last week that providers of medical benefits were unwilling to fund basic medical needs like artificial limbs, surgery, and psychological counseling. (LA Times)

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Jane Harman

Blitzer v. Harman

Zachary Roth | April 22, 2009, 9:00AM

We didn't get to this yesterday, but as part of her media blitz to beat back CQ's report, Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) went on CNN to again deny that she intervened with anyone on the AIPAC case.

And Wolf Blitzer actually did a pretty good job of pressing her...

Watch:

Jay Bybee

Feingold Latest To Call For Bybee Impeachment

Zachary Roth | April 21, 2009, 6:17PM

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) is the latest to call for the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee, in response to the release of those torture memos last week.

Bybee wrote one of the memos in 2002, when he served in the Justice Department's Office of Special Counsel.

Here's Feingold's statement:

The just released OLC memos, including the 2002 memo authored by Jay Bybee, are a disgrace. The idea that one of the architects of this perversion of the law is now sitting on the federal bench is very troubling. The memos offer some of the most explicit evidence yet that Mr. Bybee and others authorized torture and they suggest that grounds for impeachment can be made. Clearly, the Justice Department has the responsibility to investigate this matter further. As a Senator, I would be a juror in any impeachment trial so I don't want to reach a conclusion until all the evidence is before me.

Media

White House Press Corps Badgers Gibbs On Torture Stance

Zachary Roth | April 21, 2009, 4:45PM

The White House press corps gave Robert Gibbs a hard time today about President Obama's comments this morning that left the door open to prosecutions of Bush officials for torture.

It's true that the president's comments go further than anything he'd said before, and could suggest that the White House is tacking this way and that on a crucial subject. That impression is strengthened by the fact that the White House has now had to walk back Rahm Emanuel's comments from Sunday that the Bushies wouldn't be prosecuted.

Late Update: Looks like The Huffington Post's Sam Stein had the same response to the briefing that we did.

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John Conyers

Conyers To Hold Hearings On Torture Memos

Zachary Roth | April 21, 2009, 4:39PM

Rep. John Conyers, who chairs the House Judiciary committee, has announced that he plans to hold hearings into the Bush-era OLC memos released last week.

Despite his pledge to hold hearings in his own committee, Conyers said he agrees with President Obama's statement that he favors a probe conducted by a bipartisan commission, rather than solely by a congressional committee.

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Timothy Geithner

Only A Taxpayer Would Mistake Tim Geithner For A "Banker"

Moe Tkacik | April 21, 2009, 3:11PM

Too often a tedious standoff between the somnolent/dry and the grandstanding/gratuitous, Congressional hearings about the financial crisis have nevertheless produced a few moments of existential clarity. (We refer, obviously, to the time in December when Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings asked Neel Kashkari if he was a "chump", which was surely a question on the lips of anyone who had glimpsed the then-TARP overseer's high school yearbook photos.)

But Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's appearance before a the TARP oversight panel this morning yielded a similarly exchange when AFL-CIO Associate General Counsel Damon Silvers dared to accuse Geithner of being a "banker":

Partial transcript after the jump.

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George Bush

CAP Circulating Petition To Impeach Bybee

Zachary Roth | April 21, 2009, 2:46PM

Think Progress, the blog of the Center for American Progress, is circulating an online petition calling on Congress to impeach Jay Bybee, who, while at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, wrote one of the torture memos released last week. Bybee is currently a federal judge.

CAP is led by John Podesta, a close White House ally who helped run Barack Obama's transition.

Think Progress joins Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Rep. Jerry Nadler, the New York Times, and the Center for Constitutional Rights in calling for Bybee's impeachment.

Late Update: Sen. Pat Leahy, who chairs the Judiciary committee, has called on Bybee to step down from the bench, though he doesn't seem to have mentioned anything about impeachment.

Condi Rice

State Dept Lawyer: White House Tried To Destroy My Alternative Memo On Torture

Zachary Roth | April 21, 2009, 2:06PM

As David noted over at TPM, there was some potentially big news in a blog post that was written this morning over at Foreign Policy by Philip Zelikow, a top State Department lawyer under Condoleezza Rice.

Zelikow wrote that, in 2005, he had written a memo on the legality of harsh interrogation techniques that expressed an "alternative view" to the OLC memos. He continued:

My colleagues were entitled to ignore my views. They did more than that: The White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo. I expect that one or two are still at least in the State Department's archives.

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Neil Barofsky

TARP Watchdog: Bailout Basically A Disaster

Moe Tkacik | April 21, 2009, 1:57PM

TARP watchdog Neil Barofksy appeared on CNBC today to discuss the 250-page report card on the bailout the SIGTARP office (that's Special Inspector General of the Toxic Assets Relief Program, but you knew that) submitted today to Congress. The tenor of his appearance was a great deal milder than that of his report. Asked if he worried that his prosecutorial zeal would dissuade financial institutions from participating in federal programs to restore the system to health, he emphasized that those who "play by the rules" had nothing to worry about. "Those institutions -- those banks, those creditors, those those hedge funds -- that are seeking to steal from the system, to game this program -- I hope we do scare them off," he told the program Squawk Box.

The scary thing, of course, is that from the sound of his report there still aren't many rules governing the bailout -- and in part as a result, it's in danger of destroying the government's credibility. Video and excerpts after the jump.

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Jane Harman

Why Did The NSA--And Not The FBI--Conduct The Wiretap Which Snagged Harman?

Brian Beutler | April 21, 2009, 1:56PM

Sunday's bombshell article by Jeff Stein--and the New York Times' helpful follow up piece--open up so many new lines of inquiry it's hard to know where to begin. But a few things definitely stuck out at us. One question we had is why, according to Stein's story, did the NSA (and not the FBI) conduct the wiretaps? (Yesterday afternoon a couple reports emerged indicating that perhaps the FBI, and not the NSA had done the surveillance, but the Times story seems to confirm what Stein wrote).

Why the curiosity? Well, for one thing, at the time Harman's conversation was supposedly recorded, the FBI had long been investigating the conduct of AIPAC officials under suspicion of passing on classified information and the Harman conversation allegedly involves an attempt to obstruct the DOJ's case. Harman has strenuously denied any wrongdoing, but assuming the taps were conducted in conjunction with the AIPAC investigation, this was certainly the FBI's bailiwick, and, for that matter, the FBI has real investigative capability whereas the NSA, though equipped with robust interception capability, does not. NSA furthermore is almost largely in the business of foreign intelligence surveillance, so why would they become involved?

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Jane Harman

CORRECTED: CQ's Stein On Countdown

Zachary Roth | April 21, 2009, 1:35PM

We didn't have the chance to get to this earlier but CQ's Jeff Stein went on MSNBC's Countdown last night to talk about his now-famous report on Jane Harman and AIPAC*.

Among other things, Stein said that there are "several people who have known this for some time."

And interestingly, he adds that, according to his sources,the investigation into Harman that Time first reported on back in 2006 "never got started" because it was quashed by then-AG Alberto Gonzales.

The whole segment is worth watching...

* This sentence has been corrected from an earlier version that wrongly said Stein had appeared on Hardball.

Alberto Gonzales

Harman: "If There Are Tapes Out There, Bring It On!"

Zachary Roth | April 21, 2009, 1:19PM

Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) just appeared on MSNBC to give a guns blazing denial of the allegations in CQ's explosive report from yesterday.

The congresswoman, speaking to Andrea Mitchell, reiterated her claim that she didn't intervene with anyone -- not the Justice Department, or the White House -- in the AIPAC case. And she renewed her call for DOJ to disclose all the material associated with the investigation into her that, according to CQ's report, Alberto Gonzales helped stymie.

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Barack Obama

Obama: Torture Prosecutions For Bushies Is A Question For AG

Zachary Roth | April 21, 2009, 12:27PM

President Obama is leaving the door open for prosecutions of Bush DOJ officials who provided the legal rationale to support torture policies.

In comments to reporters this morning, Obama said he didn't support prosecuting CIA officers who were carrying out the policy. But:

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Jane Harman

Harman Calls For Release Of Wiretapping Materials

Zachary Roth | April 21, 2009, 11:56AM

Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) has just released a letter she sent to Attorney General Eric Holder. Harman calls on Holder to give her all materials related to the government wiretapping of her, and to the investigation into her, so that she can release them publicly.

Harman also, crucially, takes her denial further than yesterday, saying she never contacted either DOJ or the White House or anyone else to seek favorable treatment for anyone.

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Torture

Senator: OPR Torture Report Likely To Be "Devastating"

Zachary Roth | April 21, 2009, 11:28AM

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) went on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show last night, to talk about the fallout from the release last week of the Bush administration's torture memos. And his appearance added to the growing sense that pressure is mounting to hold the memos' authors accountable.

Whitehouse, who sits on the Senate Judiciary committee, did temporarily pour a little bit of cold water on the spate of calls to impeach Jay Bybee, the author of one of the memos, who is now a federal judge. He said that it's "certainly possible" that Bybee should be impeached, but that first, we should wait for the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility to release its long-held report into the authorship of the memos.

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Steve Rattner

If Steve Rattner's Scandal Sounds A Lot Like Bill Richardson's, There's A Reason For That

Moe Tkacik | April 21, 2009, 11:24AM

It may not be sexy like Kwame's sexting, or Larry's bathroom stall rendezvous, or Foggo's prostitutes in hot tubs, but for sheer scale of conspicuous muck, the state pension fund scandals bubbling up around the country are in a league of their own. And while it may be hard for you to get your head around as fundamentally dry a subject as state pension funds, the underlying alleged wrongdoing is same as it ever was: billions of dollars in state business steered to politically connected firms, kickbacks, and taxpayers left holding the bill.

You don't have to scratch too far beneath the surface to find the same patterns--and sometimes the same players--emerging from state to state.

Let's start with Obama car czar and billionaire money manager Steve Rattner. Last Friday the Wall Street Journal reported that Rattner was the money manager referenced in an SEC indictment in a pay-for-play scheme run by the top adviser to the former New York State Comptroller that allegedly siphoned more than $30 million off asset managers seeking investments from the state pension fund.

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Torture

White House: Rahm Didn't Mean What He Said On Not Prosecuting Bushies For Torture

Zachary Roth | April 21, 2009, 10:06AM

On Sunday, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel went on ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos and clearly declared that the Obama administration would not prosecute the Bushies who "devised" torture policies.

That seemed to go further than anything the administration had said before. So yesterday we called the White House to get a more formal statement on the issue. And when we didn't hear back, we got to wondering: had Rahm been freelancing, and gotten out ahead of White House policy?

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The Daily Muck

The Daily Muck

Ben Buchwalter | April 21, 2009, 9:30AM

Armed guards who once worked for the defense contracting company Blackwater Worldwide -- now renamed "Xe" -- will remain in Iraq much longer than was previously reported, government officials told the AP Monday. Xe guards will continue work in Southern Baghdad and the company's aviation wing will continue to provide air security for U.S. diplomats through September. After a group of Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in late 2007, the Iraqi government refused to renew Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq. Last month, the State Department announced that it would replace Xe with Triple Canopy as its primary defense contractor in Iraq. But these statements by government officials show that the change is taking longer than once thought. (AP)

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Jane Harman

NYT: Harman Said She'd Have More Pull With White House

Zachary Roth | April 21, 2009, 9:20AM

The New York Times adds some details to yesterday's blockbuster CQ report about Rep. Jane Harman and AIPAC.

Here are the key nuggets from the Times story:

* The report confirms that the call on which Harman agreed to take action in the AIPAC case in return for helping her get the House intel chair job was indeed picked up by the NSA, as Stein reported, rather than the FBI or other agencies, as some reports yesterday had suggested.

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Barack Obama

Tapper Presses Gibbs On State Secrets

Zachary Roth | April 20, 2009, 6:50PM

Jake Tapper of ABC News asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs today about a subject we've been writing about lately -- the administration's several invocations of the state secrets privilege, despite Barack Obama's criticism, as a presidential candidate last year, of President Bush's use of the privilege.

In response, Gibbs talked about the need to balance transparency with the need to protect national security.

Watch:

Allen Stanford

Stanford Rages: "I Start To Get An Itch To Grab Somebody By The Throat"

Zachary Roth | April 20, 2009, 6:05PM

Allen Stanford has gone on a PR blitz in an effort to clear his name. But from the looks of it, he may already be regretting doing so.

The Texas billionaire, accused earlier this year by the SEC of orchestrating a "massvie ongoing fraud," sat down today with the New York Times, in the office of his lawyer, Dick DeGuerin. That interview was preceded by one with the Houston Chronicle.

The Times' writeup is worth excerpting at length:

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Justice Department

The Harman-AIPAC Story: A Timeline

Zachary Roth | April 20, 2009, 5:29PM

CQ's blockbuster story, about a wiretap that picked up Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) discussing the AIPAC spying case with a "suspected Israeli agent", picks up on a sequence of complex events from several years ago, and involves several moving pieces.

So we thought it would be worthwhile to put together a timeline of events laying out the major reported developments in this sprawling story.

Without further ado:

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Wiretapping

Harman: I Never Contacted DOJ On AIPAC Case

Zachary Roth | April 20, 2009, 2:51PM

Rep. Jane Harman's office has released a statement in response to CQ's report that the congresswoman was heard on an NSA wiretap telling an "Israeli agent" that she would press the Justice Department to ease up on the AIPAC spy case in return for political help.

The CQ Politics story simply recycles three year-old discredited reporting of largely unsourced material to manufacture a 'scoop' out of widely known and unremarkable facts - that Congresswoman Jane Harman is and has long been a supporter of AIPAC, and that some members of AIPAC regarded her as well-qualified to chair the House Intelligence Committee following the 2006 elections. Congresswoman Harman has never contacted the Justice Department about its prosecution of present or former AIPAC employees and the Department has never informed her that she was or is the subject of or involved in an investigation. If there is anything about this story that should arouse concern, it is that the Bush Administration may have been engaged in electronic surveillance of members of the congressional Intelligence Committees.

George Bush

Nadler And NYT: Impeach Bybee For Torture Memo

Zachary Roth | April 20, 2009, 2:36PM

More fallout from last week's release of the Bush DOJ's torture memos...

Both Congressman Jerry Nadler and the New York Times are calling for Jay Bybee, the author of one of the memos, who's now a federal judge, to be impeached.

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The Daily Muck

The Daily Muck

Ben Buchwalter | April 20, 2009, 9:30AM

A U.N. torture expert said Saturday that the United States has an obligation to prosecute CIA officers who used harsh interrogation tactics to question detainees in the War on Terror. Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special rapporteur in Geneva, told the AP that the U.S. had to abide by the U.N. Convention against Torture to make torture illegal and seek justice against those who used it. Nowak criticized President Obama's logic in the decision announced Thursday not to prosecute CIA officers who used the tactics -- including waterboarding. "The fact that you carried out an order doesn't relieve you of your responsibility," Nowak said. (AP)

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