For Democrats, the stakes are high for Hans von Spakovsky's nomination to the Federal Election Commission. They say that a man who politicized the Justice Department and worked to disenfranchise voters has no place on the body regulating election issues. But the stakes for the fallout from his confirmation battle may be even higher.
Right now, the fight over von Spakovsky's nomination is at a stalemate. Senate Republicans insist that if von Spakovsky isn't confirmed, then none of the other three nominees to the Federal Elections Commission will get a vote. But a select group of Senate Democrats, led by Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Russ Feingold (D-WI), say that they'll prevent any vote on von Spakovsky if his nomination is tied to the other nominees. For now, neither side is budging.
In holding the other three nominees hostage, the Republicans have a clear strategy. The commission typically has six members, three of them Republicans and three Democrats. If the Senate did not vote on any of the four nominees up for confirmation, then the commission would be down to only two members by the end of the year, which would effectively incapacitate it. The commission requires four members to operate. To prevent that from happening, President Bush could stock the commission with recess appointees while Congress was out of session.
Either one of those scenarios is "fraught with potential danger," Fred Wertheimer, the executive director of the nonpartisan watchdog Democracy 21, told me.
The Blackwater guard who drunkenly shot a bodyguard for Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi in December 2006 was back working for a Department of Defense contractor by February, CNN reported this morning.
And in a letter House oversight committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) sent to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today, he asks why. He suggests that the reason it was so easy for the guard, Andrew J. Moonen, to get back to work, was because the State Department didn't inform the Defense Department about what the ex-Blackwater employee did to get initially expelled from Iraq. Moonen returned to Kuwait in February, CNN reported, working for Defense Department contractor Combat Support Associates (CSA).
During this week's Congressional hearing on Blackwater, a State official refused to tell Waxman anything about the incident -- including whether State had helped Moonen flee Iraq after the shooting.
"It is hard to reconcile this development with the State Department’s claim that 'We are scrupulous in terms of oversight and scrutiny not only of Blackwater but all of our contractors,'" Waxman writes.
Waxman requested all of the Departments documents concerning Moonen and the Christmas Eve, 2006 shooting.
Associated Press spokesman Jack Stokes confirms today that the AP still hasn't received a videotape confiscated by U.S. troops on Wednesday.
Lt. Colonel Scott Bleichwehl told the AP that the footage -- shot in the aftermath of a Baghdad bombing that wounded the Polish ambassador -- would be returned to the news organization "shortly," in the AP's paraphrase. The cameraman who shot the footage was detained by an unnamed U.S. unit for about 40 minutes, with no reason provided to him or the news organization.
Bleichwehl has yet to respond to two emails requesting comment about the episode, nor has Multi-National Corps-Iraq spokesman Lt. Colonel James Hutton.
It happened nearly five years ago, but House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) still has plenty of questions about the New Hampshire phone jamming case.
In a letter Wednesday, he asked Acting Attorney General Peter Keisler a number of questions about the case, focusing in particular on whether the Justice Department has "adequately investigated and prosecuted" the case. You can read the letter here.
On Election Day, 2002, remember, Republicans schemed to jam Democratic get-out-the-vote phone banks (here's our timeline of the scandal). The executive director of the New Hampshire GOP, Charles McGee, who hatched the scheme, subsequently explained that he'd gotten the idea from his time in the Marines, where he was taught to jam the enemy's communications. Both McGee and Allen Raymond, who ran the consulting firm that arranged the jamming, pled guilty and have served their time.
The case moved slowly -- the pleas not occurring until June of 2004. And it wasn't until after the 2004 election that James Tobin, who'd been the Republian National Committee's New England Regional Political Director, was indicted for his role in the conspiracy. He was ultimately convicted, but then the verdict was reversed on appeal. Tobin will go to trial again this December.
Democrats say it's no accident that the case took so long.
Not that State is conceding Blackwater or other private-security contractors protecting U.S. diplomats have done anything wrong, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is leaning in the direction of imposing a few restrictions on their activity in Iraq:
An internal State Department review ordered by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recommends overhauling U.S. diplomatic security practices in Iraq after the Blackwater USA shooting incident in which 13 Iraqis were killed, a senior U.S. official said Friday.
Rice has ordered the recommendations be followed, including requiring U.S. diplomatic security agents to accompany Blackwater-escorted convoys of U.S. diplomats in Baghdad, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
The government security service also will bolster monitoring of the private security escorts by installing video cameras in cars and recording radio traffic between convoys and the U.S. embassy.
"She wants to make sure there is a management feedback loop," McCormack told reporters.
What's not changed? Oh, yeah -- the rules of engagement that allow private firms to use lethal force with apparently minimal provocation, which U.S. military officials consider a liability. On the other hand, those video cameras are sure to capture some wacky bloopers:
By Peter Sheehy and Will Thomas - October 5, 2007, 9:44AM
A Government Accountability Office report described the ways in which the Federal Communications Commission broadcasts which items it is about to vote on “even though that information is not supposed to be released outside of FCC.” At issue is the extent to which some “stakeholders” gain advance access to FCC information and then gain a competitive advantage. One stakeholder informed the GAO that FCC staff calls them to directly inform them of scheduled votes. (Washington Post)
Representative Jim Cooper (D-TN) has proposed seven-year terms for inspector generals and new rules that subject them to removal for cause, rather than presidential whim. Cooper’s proposed law would also allow inspector generals to request funds directly from OMB and congressional committees, and establish a council to investigation any misconduct of the inspectors. (U.S. News & World Report)
Former Gov. Don Siegeleman will have to continue his case from prison, according to a recent court decision that denied him bail pending appeal. The judge ruled that Siegelman has failed to demonstrate that his appeal raises substantial questions of law or fact that might overturn the verdict. (Associated Press)
While the State Department has frequently covered for Blackwater, particularly over the Nisour Square incident, the military has tended to be more candid. "It may be worse than Abu Ghraib," a senior officer said last week, at a time when diplomats were, at most, conceding "there's an issue here" and urging calm in the aftermath of the shooting. That shouldn't be surprising: after all, it's the 160,000 troops in Iraq who suffer by association with reckless contractors.
Now, after Blackwater got off lightly at a Congressional hearing Tuesday -- in which Nisour Square was not explored -- the military is pressing the point harder. U.S. military reports from the scene at Nisour Square, separate from the initial Blackwater-penned "first blush" inquiry, portray Blackwater guards as out of control and trigger-happy, firing on Iraqi civilians and Iraqi security forces almost indiscriminately. "It was obviously excessive, it was obviously wrong," a U.S. military official tells The Washington Post.
The most significant new detail added by the U.S. military account about the chaos at Nisour Square on September 16: Contrary to Blackwater's frequently-repeated account, no Iraqi civilian or policeman fired upon its guards. The small-arms fire was, in other words, all coming from the contractors.
It looks like Veco plays favorites. Since 1993 the oil services company tangled in several of the Alaska corruption investigations has given Rep. Don Young (R-AK) more than two and a half times what it's donated to Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), the AP reports.
Young's raked in $180,630, while Stevens has only pocketed $70,500 (but that presumably doesn't include other perks like Veco employees remodeling his house or parking cars at his fundraisers.) Young and Stevens are both under federal investigation for their ties to the corporation. The FBI is particularly interested in the annual pig roast former Veco CEO Bill Allen would host for Young.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski has only pulled in a pittance ($41,250), but she's only been in Congress since late 2002, when her father bequeathed his seat to her to become governor of Alaska.
A statement just out from Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) after their opposition to Hans von Spakovsky's nomination scuttled a deal to move von Spakovsky quickly through the Senate:
“While at the Department of Justice, Hans von Spakovsky was directly involved in efforts to politicize the Department and use the Voting Rights Section to disenfranchise voters, rather than enforce our nation’s civil rights laws. As a recess appointee to the FEC he has been a committed, ideological opponent of the campaign finance laws he is supposed to enforce. Putting him at the head of the FEC is just another example of this administration putting the fox in charge of the hen house. We oppose his nomination, and any effort to tie his nomination to the other pending nominations to the FEC.”
This time, it's Scott Jennings, who worked under Karl Rove in the White House.
Jennings, among other things, was a frequent contact concerning the U.S. attorney firings for Justice Department aides Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling in the White House. The other Rove aide involved in the firings, Sara Taylor, left the White House earlier this year. When he was subpoenaed to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he refused to discuss the firings (or even discuss his role in appointing U.S. attorneys in general), citing executive privilege.
But we'll remember Jennings most of all for his remarkably effective parroting of the White House talking points about the political briefings Jennings gave at various department and agencies. Jennings, remember, gave the most infamous of those briefings, at the General Services Administration. After Jennings had finished his rundown of which GOP candidates were in trouble of losing reelection, GSA chief Lurita Doan asked aloud how GSA projects could be used to help "our candidates." Jennings reportedly replied that the top would be better discussed "off-line."
So in appreciation for Jennings' service, here's last months' TPMtv episode on the subject, complete with Jennings' and Taylor's mind-wracking message discipline:
This didn't get Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson in trouble:
"Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."
But maybe these words will: "I don't touch contracts." That's what Jackson told Congress last May to convince lawmakers that he'd never do something so outrageous as award a contract based on whether the contractor was a Republican.
But there's a problem with that, reports the National Journal -- it appears that Jackson did, in fact, touch at least one contract, and one for a friend of his. And the FBI is investigating:
Donohue's investigators are now working with the FBI, a federal grand jury in Washington, and prosecutors from the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section....
Investigators are exploring whether Jackson, despite that testimony, had actually lined up a contract at the HUD-controlled Housing Authority of New Orleans, or HANO, for a golfing buddy and social friend from Hilton Head Island, S.C. The friend, William Hairston, was paid more than $485,000 for working at HANO during an 18-month period, according to figures provided by HUD and a former HANO official. The work was not competitively bid.
In an interview, Hairston, a stucco contractor, said that Jackson had indeed helped him land the job at HANO. He said that the New Orleans housing agency, which HUD manages under receivership, was struggling to repair and rehab its housing units in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and needed a construction manager. "The secretary asked me if I would go to New Orleans and help them out," Hairston told National Journal.
Yesterday the AP reported that U.S. troops in Iraq confiscated an AP cameraman's videotape of the aftermath of a Baghdad bombing. A military spokesman, Lt. Colonel Scott Bleichwehl, explained that the troops were enforcing an Iraqi law prohibiting the photographing or videotaping the aftermath of acts of violence. That seemed strange -- U.S. troops enforcing Iraqi law?
So yesterday I asked U.S. military representatives in Baghdad about the confiscation, the alleged law, and the use of U.S. troops as law enforcement for a foreign country. A spokesman replied to me that he knew of no agreement or arrangement "that would compel [U.S. forces] to enforce Iraqi law." A spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy declined to comment on the matter at all -- even to confirm the existence of such an Iraqi media law -- and instead referred me back to the military. Making matters even stranger, my interlocutor in the military told me that a colleague "checked with the unit who responded to the scene of the attack... and they reported that there was no video tape confiscated" by U.S. troops. I was unable to learn the identity of the unit.
When I asked AP for clarification about what happened, AP representatives e-mailed me this just-updated story . Apparently U.S. troops detained the cameraman -- after first denying that they even had the videotape:
It's a prime example of the lawlessness in Iraq. The details are sketchy and disputed, but here they are: An Iraqi corruption judge, continually thwarted in his pursuit of justice, finally helps convict a high-ranking official. But then the official breaks out of jail. Or, rather, the official is helped out of jail by guards working for one defense contractor, but is then returned -- only to leave jail with the help of another. Allegedly.
Testimony today from Iraqi corruption judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi touched on the conviction of
Ayham al-Samarrai, the former Iraqi electricity minister. al-Radhi helped put al-Samarrai away for what the judge called "wasting" public funds. al-Samarrai is the highest-ranking official to be convicted of corruption in Iraq.
His name may be familiar to Blackwater watchers. Last month, an Iraqi defense official told McClatchy's Leila Fadel that Blackwater helped break al-Samarrai out of prison in the Green Zone last December. Today, however, al-Radhi suggested that the defense official was wrong. A rival private-security company, DynCorp, assisted al-Samarrai's prison break, al-Radhi said.
But DynCorp says it's a huge misunderstanding. "It's absolutely untrue," says spokesman Gregory Lagana. "We are absolutely 100 percent convinced it wasn't us." However, Lagana says, he knows why al-Radhi thinks DynCorp was behind it. Two DynCorp employees, one named George Dillman and another whom Lagana didn't recall, were stationed in Iraq to assist in training Iraqi policemen. Among the police stations the two were detailed to was the Green Zone station where al-Samarrai was detained. In October, al-Samarrai, who holds dual U.S.-Iraqi citizenship, told the DynCorp employees that he would be murdered if he was convicted.
House Transportation Committee ranking member Rep. John Mica (R-FL) said no one who works for him was involved in the infamous change to Rep. Don Young's (R-AK) Coconut Road earmark in the highway bill of 2005. Young chaired the committee back then, so the main culprit for the change (made after the bill passed both houses of Congress) has been one of his staffers.
The Hill reports that Mica queried his staff and believes that if a Republican Transportation staff member was involved, he/she no longer works for the committee:
[Mica] also said he was so concerned about how the earmark was inserted that he asked his entire Transportation Committee staff whether any of them had anything to do it.
“If they had, I would have fired them,” Mica remarked, noting that none were involved.
Many of the aides had remained on the committee after Young stepped down as chairman when Democrats assumed the majority in January.
Rep. David Price's (D-NC) bill putting private-security companies' activities overseas under U.S. civilian law has passed the House:
The House passed a bill on Wednesday that would make all private contractors working in Iraq and other combat zones subject to prosecution by U.S. courts. It was the first major legislation of its kind to pass since a deadly shootout last month involving Blackwater employees.
Democrats called the 389-30 vote an indictment in connection with a shooting incident there that left 11 Iraqis dead. Senate Democratic leaders said they planned to follow suit with similar legislation and send a bill to President Bush as soon as possible.
"There is simply no excuse for the de facto legal immunity for tens of thousands of individuals working in countries" on behalf of the United States, said Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Texas.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Wednesday derailed a plan blessed by Senate leaders to vote on controversial Federal Election Commission White House nominee Hans von Spakovsky, a move giving Democrats time to breathe in the ongoing Senate stalemate on FEC nominees.
According to Democratic Senate aides, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) struck a deal mid-week to hotline four FEC slots that must be confirmed by the Senate before next year. As part of the proposed deal, a voice vote on fellow commission nominees only would take place if no Senators objected to von Spakovsky’s nomination.
But a vote on the deal, which was expected to come to the floor as early as today, appeared to be off by mid-day Wednesday after Obama — and unconfirmed others — voiced concerns that von Spakovsky’s nomination was too controversial not to go through regular floor proceedings.
A Democratic aide said Senate offices continue to explore “concerns with Mr. von Spakovsky, if they rise to the level of other objections, as well as where the caucus lies.”
Obama earlier called von Spakovsky an "unacceptable nominee." For a rundown for why Dems would find von Spakovsky so objectionable, see here and here.
Rick Hasen has more on where things might go from here over at the Election Law Blog.
Classy guy, that Rep. John Mica (R-FL). Hearing about how Radhi Hamza al-Radhi's investigators have been tortured and murdered by militias affiliated with Iraqi political parties -- including the prime minister's -- Mica kept his eye squarely on the real target: Bill Clinton. Mica read out a list of what he described as the Clinton administration's misdeeds -- officials under indictment; officials who fled the country rather than testify; and, of course, impeachment -- to make the point, he said, that "no administration is left without corruption."
It's a responsible comparison. After all, Bill Clinton hung his opponents up on meat hooks, tortured them with power drills and sent Democratic Party-affiliated armed bandits to steal oil revenue in order to finance their illicit activities.
It was too much for Radhi, who, through translation, reminded Mica of the billions of dollars stolen by the Iraqi government and asked, "don't you think it deserves follow up and attention?"
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and subcommittee chair Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) today demanded the Justice Department release secret legal opinions from 2005 and 2006 that The New York Timesdescribed today as "an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency."
The opinions, authored by acting Office of Legal Counsel head Stephen Bradbury, had been previously unknown until the Times wrote about them this morning -- even to the committee. And they were penned even as the Bush administration was publicly renouncing torture.
"Both the alleged content of these opinions and the fact that they have been kept secret from Congress are extremely troubling, especially in light of the Department’s 2004 withdrawal of an earlier opinion similarly approving such methods," Conyers and Nadler wrote. They also demand that Bradbury -- who has never been confirmed by the Senate despite serving as OLC chief for years -- testify about his justifications for such techniques as waterboarding. You can read their letter to acting Attorney General Peter Kiesler here.
For fans of circular reasoning, today's press gaggle was a classic. Here's White House spokeswoman Dana Perino reacting to this morning's New York Timesblockbuster that revealed secret Justice Department memos that authorized brutal interrogation techniques:
QUESTION: You maintain that the administration still does not torture?
PERINO: Correct....
QUESTION: But is it not possible that some of these classified opinions may have changed the definition of "torture"?
PERINO: No. I don't believe so. I have not seen them. But as everything was described to me, no, I don't believe that's possible....
QUESTION: But the idea that you can't discuss it and that you blanketly say there's no torture when, clearly, in the Department of Justice there has been a debate about if those techniques were too severe ... and to simply say there's no torture, but then to never provide any insight as to what the limitations are, with the exception of death or organ failure ...
PERINO: I'm not disputing that there can be legal disagreements between reasonable people who may look at something one way and another person looks at it in another way. I'm not disputing that. What I am saying is that we do not torture, and I disagree with the notion that just because information is leaked or provided to The New York Times or any other news organization that this country should ... that this government should then have to spell out any specifics. And I'm not confirming or denying anything that you just listed ... all the ones that you just listed.
QUESTION: How can you say that ... how can you say with assurance that we don't torture if you don't know what was in the ...
Substantive new evidence makes it look even more likely that politics played a role in the decision to prosecute Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL) on corruption charges.
Siegelman supporters have long claimed that Siegelman was targeted for being a successful Democrat in a largely Republican state.
According to documents obtained byTime, in 2002 a lobbyist and trash dump developer named Lanny Young told investigators, including representatives from the local US attorney's office, the Justice Department's public integrity unit and the Republican attorney general's office, that he'd given illegal gifts and contributions to Siegelman and a number of other powerful Alabama politicians. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Session's successor as attorney general and now federal judge William Pryor (R) were named.
One of Young's contracts with the state triggered the Siegelman investigation. Siegelman was acquitted on 25 of 32 counts, with about half of the charges stemming from Young's testimony.
Notably, none of the Republicans named by Young were ever investigated, reports Time's Adam Zagorin, let alone prosecuted. Zagorin also points out that "several of the lawyers involved in the Siegelman investigation were from Pryor's office and had worked for Sessions as well when he held the post." But instead of raising any issue of a possible conflict of interest, the investigators "chose not to recuse themselves but to simply ignore the allegations."
The documents obtained by Time are a sensitive portion of materials requested by the House Judiciary Committee -- but which have been so far withheld by the Department of Justice.
Here's how bad corruption is in Iraq. An Iraqi corruption judge, Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, the former head of the Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity, is testifying now before the House oversight committee. It's been known that institutional mechanisms in the Iraqi criminal code allow the Iraqi ministers to stifle corruption investigations. But al-Radhi, who is now seeking asylum in the U.S., stated that a whopping $18 billion has been lost to thieves in "nearly every ministry." (That's not the U.S.-provided Iraqi Relief and Reconstruction Fund.) Corruption, he said, is not just getting worse, but has "stopped" reconstruction efforts.
Al-Radhi testified that the Maliki government's corruption "has helped fund sectarian militias," as has that of Maliki's rivals in the Sunni parties. According to al-Radhi, the militias controlling cities like Taji (Sunni) and Basra (Shiite) control oil sales and use the revenue to buy weapons. "These militias are from the parties' blocs, and it is a source of revenue for them." Even worse is what happens to those who try to stop the corruption: The militias have systematically targeted al-Radhi and his investigators. His staff and their relatives have been kidnapped, detained, tortured and murdered. Their bodies have been found hung on meat hooks, tortured with power drills, and attacked by suicide bombers.
He said Maliki -- who recently issued counter-charges of corruption against al-Radhi -- has protected his deputies and "his relatives" from corruption investigations. These are allegations that the State Department tried to stop Waxman from airing publicly.
Video of al-Radhi's opening statement coming shortly.
"Lies, deceit, greed. Most of all greed. This case is all about greed," Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip Halpern told jurors as he laid out the government's case in his opening statements....
"The evidence will show the politician was bought by the defendant lock, stock and barrel," Halpern said, adding that the bribes include "the truly astonishing," such as machine gun lessons and the services of prostitutes.
Among the expected witnesses are Duke Cunningham's former staffers, former Pentagon officials, and Wilkes' nephew, who's expected to give the most detail about how his uncle kept Cunningham in pocket. Cunningham is on the prosecutors' witness list, but apparently is not likely to be called.
Wilkes' lawyer Mark Geragos will make his opening statement next Tuesday -- when we'll finally hear how he plans to get his client off the hook.
By Peter Sheehy and Will Thomas - October 4, 2007, 9:48AM
Federal Prosecutors have named top executives from TDC (a Louisiana-based company) as co-conspirators in William Jefferson’s alleged bribery scheme. TDC was awarded a $450,000 grant from a government agency that Jefferson attempted to influence. No word yet on whether TDC kept the cash in their freezer. (The Hill)
Just after Alberto Gonzaleswas sworn in as Attorney General, the Justice Department began retreating from its 2004 public declaration that torture is “abhorrent.” The New York Times reports that under Gonzales, the department issued new, highly secretive endorsements of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the CIA. James Comey, then deputy attorney general told department colleagues at the time that they would be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of the Gonzales-sponsored memos. (New York Times)
Under the recently enacted lobbying reform bill, former senators-cum-lobbyists are barred from working out in the senate gym during a one year “cooling off period” (in January the term will be extended to two years) but they are allowed to dine with colleagues in the Senate while active members discuss legislative agendas. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who organizes such lunches, insists, “"There's no lobbying that ever goes on," it’s just a “kind of a small courtesy to former senators." (Washington Post)
Off in Seattle, a former Army paratrooper lives and works behind the padlocked chain-link fence that surrounds his house. Though Blackwater will not confirm or deny whether he was an employee, he is the sole suspect in the shooting of the bodyguard of an Iraq vice president. His lawyer says he has not yet been charged with a crime. (NY Times)
Some farces, it turns out, can be avoided. The FBI team traveling to Iraq at the behest of the State Department to assist in the investigation of Blackwater's September 16 shooting at Nisour Square was supposed to be guarded by... Blackwater. (Shades of Darrell Issa's threat hover over that one.) However, the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security realized yesterday that the ensuing conflict of interest would be just too egregious.
Under Blackwater's State Department contract, the company provides security for all official travel outside the U.S.-protected Green Zone. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said that security for the team would be handled by the department's Diplomatic Security Service.
Of course, the DSS needed a bit of prompting, which is perhaps to be expected after chief Richard Griffin's vigorous defense of Blackwater on Tuesday. In a letter, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) urged (pdf) Condoleezza Rice to step back from the precipice of absurdity.
You can add Sen. Pete Domenici's (R-NM) name to the flurry of Justice Department officials who bowed out in the wake of the U.S. attorney firing scandal. The Washington Postreports that he's expected to retire next November rather than seek reelection.
A brief walk down memory lane: in October of 2006, Domenici called U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias to ask about whether an indictment against a prominent state Democrat on public corruption charges was forthcoming before the election. When Iglesias said no, "the line went dead."
After ducking questions about the first reports of the call this February, then saying "I have no idea what he's talking about," he finally admitted that he'd made the call and said he regretted it.
"The scandal at the Department of Justice has gone on long enough," said Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D-IL) back in March. "Careers have been destroyed and legitimate public corruption cases have been derailed. It is time for accountability -- it is time for the truth."
Six months and several Department senior resignations later, it's a different time. The urgency is gone.
More than two months after the House Judiciary Committee passed contempt resolutions against White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former counsel Harriet Miers for ignoring committee subpoenas, it's still unclear when, or if, Democrats will hold a vote on the full floor.
The leadership has indefinitely delayed taking up the issue. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) toldThe Politico last month, “I don’t think anything is going to happen on that for a while,” and couldn't offer a range. Three weeks later, that hasn't changed.
And apparently scheduling concerns are not all that's at issue. A source familiar with the ongoing discussions told TPMmuckraker that getting the leadership to bring the contempt resolutions to the floor at all is an "uphill struggle."
The New York Times has a piece out today adding new details about the September 16 Blackwater shootings in Nisour Square. Relying largely on 12 Iraqis described as eyewitnesses, Iraqi investigators and a U.S. official familiar with one of the American investigations, the account suggests Blackwater's rules of engagement worked against both the Blackwater convoy and the Iraqis left dead and wounded.
The State Department's rules of engagement for Blackwater call for a series of escalating measures starting with signaled and verbal warnings to halt and progressing to the use of deadly force.
The Iraqi Interior Ministry account of the shooting is familiar by now: a car carrying a young family was ordered to stop by a traffic policeman so a Blackwater convoy could pass through. But the car rolled forward, resulting in Blackwater guards killing the driver, his wife and their young child -- and sparking the melee that followed.
But the Times reports that the car may have proceeded because its driver was already dead:
The car in which the first people were killed did not begin to closely approach the Blackwater convoy until the Iraqi driver had been shot in the head and lost control of his vehicle. Not one witness heard or saw any gunfire coming from Iraqis around the square. And following a short initial burst of bullets, the Blackwater guards unleashed an overwhelming barrage of gunfire even as Iraqis were turning their cars around and attempting to flee.
As the gunfire continued, at least one of the Blackwater guards began screaming, “No! No! No!” and gesturing to his colleagues to stop shooting, according to an Iraqi lawyer who was stuck in traffic and was shot in the back as he tried to flee. The account of the struggle among the Blackwater guards corroborates preliminary findings of the American investigation.
Yesterday, Erik Prince, CEO of Blackwater, said that it's far from clear that Blackwater did anything wrong. That response might be self serving, but it's not necessarily false -- at least from the perspective of the State Department-issued "escalation of force" policy.
Last month, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) had a simple message: the President's nominee for attorney general, Michael Mukasey, wasn't going anywhere until the administration finally handed over documents he'd long been seeking.
But now it appears that things are moving along, though it seems that the administration hasn't handed over anything.
In a letter this morning, Leahy listed roughly a dozen questions he wanted answers to -- all of them relating to whether Mukasey would lead the Justice Department differently from Alberto Gonzales (e.g. would he fire a large number of U.S. attorneys at the direction of White House political operatives?). We've posted that letter below.
Chief on that list, apparently, is whether Mukasey would work with Leahy in a way that Gonzales, who often ignored Leahy's queries, did not. Leahy writes:
With so much to do and so much damage that needs to be repaired, I had hoped that the White House would have taken advantage of the time since the resignations of Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Rove to work with us to fulfill longstanding requests for information so that we could all agree about what went so wrong at the Department of Justice and work together to restore it. Instead, they have left you to answer the unanswered questions and left longstanding disputes unresolved.
Leahy offered to meet with Mukasey October 16th as a prelude to a confirmation hearing.
Yesterday Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) asked if Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) "really" wanted to investigate Blackwater, since if he went to Iraq to snoop around, "Blackwater will be his support team."
When a team of FBI agents lands in Baghdad this week to probe Blackwater security contractors for murder, it will be protected by bodyguards from the very same firm, the Daily News has learned.
Half a dozen FBI criminal investigators based in Washington are scheduled to travel to Iraq to gather evidence and interview witnesses about a Sept. 16 shooting spree that left at least 11 Iraqi civilians dead.
The agents plan to interview witnesses within the relative safety of the fortified Green Zone, but they will be transported outside the compound by Blackwater armored convoys, a source briefed on the FBI mission said.
"What happens when the FBI team decides to go visit the crime scene? Blackwater is going to have to take them there," the senior U.S. official told The News.
A new Supreme Court term, a new chance for a legal challenge to the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance efforts. Today the ACLU asked the Court to take up a case it brought last year against the administration by American citizens who suspect that their communications were unlawfully monitored.
Last year, District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ordered an injunction on the surveillance in response to the case, an order that led to the Bush administration placing the program(s) under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (well, for the time being). The Justice Department objected, saying the plaintiffs in the case -- a collection of "prominent journalists, scholars, attorneys and national advocacy organizations" -- couldn't prove they had been surveilled, since the administration wasn't revealing who it spied upon. Circuit Court Judge Alice Batchelder sided with the government in July.
There's good news and there's bad news for lawmakers.
First the good news: Brent Wilkes' lawyer Mark Geragos withdrew the twelve subpoenas for House lawmakers after the judge signaled that he'd only approve them if they specifically related to Wilkes' defense -- i.e. the alleged bribes he gave Duke Cunningham.
Even though Geragos dropped the initial subpoenas, he told reporters later that he planned to file new ones against former House Speaker U.S. Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and California Republican Reps. John Doolittle, Duncan Hunter, Darrell Issa and Jerry Lewis.
The basis for all this, Geragos says, is that "we've got members who were on these plane flights with Mr. Cunningham [on Wilkes' plane], who were going to these dinners hosted by Mr. Wilkes." Presumably this would be part of Wilkes' defense that his gifts to Cunningham were just part of a system of which he was the victim.
So the lawmakers still on Geragos' list are there because they had a relationship with Wilkes. And perhaps not coincidentally, two of those five are already under federal investigation -- Lewis for his ties to Wilkes and other lobbyists and Doolittle for his ties to Jack Abramoff.
By Peter Sheehy and Will Thomas - October 3, 2007, 9:52AM
House Democrats are proposing new legislation that strengthens independent oversight of the Bush administration. Their proposed legislation would put more teeth into the 1978 law that established independent inspector generals by making it more difficult for the administration to fire inspector generals or otherwise control internal watchdogs. The White House is threatening a veto, arguing that the law will interfere with the president’s Constitutional right to fire inspector generals. (CQ Politics)
Ray Hunt, CEO of Hunt Oil, claimed (sub. req.) yesterday that he did not take advantage of his connections with Republicans- and specifically, the President- to help land an oil arrangement with the semi autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq. The State Department has previously claimed that it advised Hunt against the deal; Hunt claims he did not communicate with anyone in the government prior to the agreement. (Wall Street Journal)
If the White House won't talk, try the telecoms. ABC's investigative superstar Justin Rood reports that Congress is seeking information about the government's warrantless wiretapping programming by asking telecommunications firms about their role. The firms have until October 12th to suddenly become a part of the executive branch so that they can claim privilege. (ABC's The Blotter)
Rep. Peter Visclosky (D-IN) earmarks over $7 million for a technology start-up incubator to be built (sub. req.) in his state. The first five businesses to take up residence in the new building are all clients of the lobbying firm PMA. PMA is Visclosky's largest political contributor. Nothing to see here, folks. (Roll Call)
It was a major talking point for Erik Prince at yesterday's Blackwater hearing: Blackwater contractors discharged their weapons during only about one percent of the 16,000 missions they've undertaken since 2005. Relying on his company's statistics, Blackwater owner/CEO pointedly told the House oversight committee that his contractors fired their guns an average of 1.4 times a week, a discharge rate hardly befitting the company's reputation for recklessness.
Prince may have accurately reported his company's weapons-discharge statistics to the committee. But, reports Steve Fainaru in The Washington Post, contract employees for private-security companies in Iraq, including Blackwater, frequently under-report how many often they open fire.
[T]wo former Blackwater security guards said they believed employees fired more often than the company has disclosed. One, a former Blackwater guard who spent nearly three years in Iraq, said his 20-man team averaged "four or five" shootings a week, or several times the rate of 1.4 incidents a week reported by the company. The underreporting of shooting incidents was routine in Iraq, according to this former guard.
"The thing is, even the good companies, how many bad incidents occurred where guys involved didn't say anything, because they didn't want to be questioned, or have any downtime today to have to go over what happened yesterday?" he said. "I'm sure there were some companies that just didn't report anything."
Defense and State Department officials conceded that the terms of most contracts require the security firm to report their shooting incidents, but in practice, few comply. The apparent silence among contractors has led to a lack of understanding by the U.S. about the true rates of contractor violence in Iraq. Last year, for instance, officials with the Army Corps of Engineers grew concerned that their bodyguards from Aegis, a British-run firm, had turned "out of control" because of their high numbers of reported shootings. But a closer look determined that Aegis only appeared trigger-happy because of its high pace of operations and under-reporting by its competitors. Functionally, whether or not contractors tell responsible officials in the State or Defense Departments about their shooting incidents "is up to them," according to an ex-ACE program manager.
The senators did their best to wring more information from Jack Goldsmith about the administration's warrantless surveillance program during today's hearing. It was Goldsmith's legal analysis, after all, which led to the Justice Department leadership's revolt in 2004. But it was a mixed result.
Since the beginning of this year, the Senate Judiciary Committee has been seeking documents from the Justice Department and the White House about the legal basis for the program. They're still waiting.
And today, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) tried a more modest tack. He tried to get Goldsmith to say what Constitutional principle had been violated by the program. Goldsmith replied that the executive branch had told him that he couldn't discuss any aspect of his legal analysis. Specter asked again, and Goldsmith again said that he'd been instructed not to.
Goldsmith did manage to add some details, however. He revealed that only four lawyers at the Justice Department were permitted to examine the program -- that's including the attorney general and Goldsmith himself. When asked why the administration had so restricted that access, he said that it was probably because they did not want the legal analysis (that had, until Goldsmith, allowed the program to go forward) scrutinized.
As it was, he said, the basis for the program was "a legal mess" when he took over the Office of Legal Counsel in 2003 -- the "biggest," he said, he'd ever encountered.
If the House ethics committee doesn't investigate the Coconut Road earmark that someone slipped in to a 2005 highway bill at the behest of then-transportation chair Rep. Don Young (R-AK), then a watchdog group may file a lawsuit to get to the bottom of it.
The non-partisan Taxpayers for Common Sense called on the House ethics committee to review how $10 million listed for a highway widening project ended up making its way to a project benefiting a developer and major Young campaign contributor after both chambers voted on the bill. But despite the fact that the change seems a blatant violation of House rules, chances are the infamously inert ethics committee won't jump to action.
Watchdog group Public Citizen told The Hill that it would consider taking the matter before a judge if the ethics committee doesn't act.
Perhaps it slipped Rep. Darrell Issa's (R-CA) mind when he was detailing Blackwater CEO Erik Prince's Republican bona fides*, but Prince is not only a supporter of Republican candidates. Last summer, he and his wife shelled out $10,000 in contributions for a Green.
It was part of an effort by connected Republicans (lobbyists and millionaire CEOs among them) to recruit Green Party candidate Carl Romanelli to enter the 2006 Senate race. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) was trailing Dem moderate Bob Casey in the polls -- and Romanelli, the scheme went, could take some of those liberal votes away from Casey.
Ultimately Republicans raised more than $150,000 for Romanelli (who once told me, "This is America, money is like air. It's out there. You just have to be tenacious enough to go get it.") in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to get him on the ballot.
*Update: Actually, Prince's Green contributions didn't slip Issa's mind. Or rather, Issa appeared to at least be remotely familiar with them -- which, unfortunately, ended up making him look rather silly. Here's Issa during a second round of questioning:
Amb. Satterfield has a unique vantage point here. In 2005, he was the deputy chief of mission in Baghdad -- the No. 2 official at the U.S. Embassy. During that time, the Democratic staff on the committee determined (pdf), Blackwater personnel shot and killed an "innocent bystander" in the central-south city of al-Hilla. According to a State Department email that the committee obtained, the Blackwater guards "failed to report the shooting, covered it up" and were subsequently fired. But there wasn't evidence that State investigated, although Satterfield said State "thoroughly" investigates each discharge of a firearm. So, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA), wanted to know: was there an investigation of the al-Hilla incident?
"We will get back to you," Satterfield said.
Lynch was incredulous. Didn't Satterfield, the former deputy chief of mission, recall whether the embassy investigated an improper shooting and subsequent apparent cover-up? "Not with the detail it deserves," he said. "I would prefer to respond to you in writing." Pressed repeatedly, Satterfield finally said he "cannot recall" if the incident was ever investigated.
Waxman complained that the committee received "a better response from Blackwater than the State Department."
Diplomatic security chief Richard Griffin, at long last, confirmed Blackwater's rules of engagement for dealing with potential vehicular threats. The bottom line? "One does not have to wait until the protectee or co-worker is physically harmed before taking action," Griffin said. His account corroborated one given by Blackwater CEO Erik Prince during Prince's testimony
On the back of every motorcade, State's Griffin said, there should be a warning in Arabic and English to stay back, with lights and sirens indicating drivers not to approach. Security officials are supposed to give hand signals and verbal commands to approaching vehicles to stay back. "If they still haven't gotten the driver's attention," security officials will shoot flares or shine a bright light into the vehicle. If the driver continues, Blackwater guards might "throw a bottle of water" at the car, and from there, if "that all fails," the guards are to fire into the radiator to disable the car. Should that not work, the guards are authorized to shoot into the windshield. It's "an escalation of force policy," Griffin said.
Blackwater CEO Erik Prince might have been unable to shed light on it. But William H. Moser, the deputy assistant secretary for logistics management, confirmed that in 2004, Blackwater received a "sole-source" contract for security -- in other words, a no-bid contract.
It was an "urgent situation," Moser explained. In 2004, the State Department had to make a rapid transition to assume diplomatic responsibilities with the demise of the Coalition Provisional Authority, and so "we decided to do a sole-source contract for Blackwater's services." He said that State was uncomfortable with the award, and asked the inspector-general to perform an audit at the end of 2004 -- which found that Blackwater had overbilled State for an undisclosed amount of money. (The company charged the government separately for "drivers" and "security specialists" who were in fact the same people.)
The next year, Blackwater was incorporated into State's Worldwide Protective Services contracting process, and its contract was "competitively awarded."
Blackwater CEO Erik Prince completed his testimony, and now State Department officials are explaining the scope of their contract with Blackwater.
Ambassador David Satterfield, Condoleezza Rice's special adviser on Iraq, wanted to emphasize "how seriously" Secretary Rice takes investigating the September 16 incident. He announced that Ambassador Patrick Kennedy -- a longtime diplomat and intelligence official -- is opening a separate investigation into State's broader practices in Iraq, including "how we provide security for our employees, including the rules of engagement" and the relevant laws that apply.
Unfortunately for Satterfield, the next State representative, Richard Griffin, the assistant secretary for diplomatic security -- whose bureau hired Blackwater in Iraq -- didn't appear as eager to shed light on an arguably antecedent incident: the December 2006 shooting by a drunken Blackwater employee of a guard for Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi. Why, Waxman wanted to know, did the State Department facilitate the departure of the Blackwater contractor from Iraq?
"It's not appropriate for me to comment," Griffin said, citing an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department. (In which, it's worth saying, no charges have yet been brought.) That individual "no longer had reason to be in Iraq" was about all that Griffin would say. "The area about what laws are available for prosecution is very murky," he added. "Lack of clarity is part of the problem."
So, Waxman asked, was there any question among state officials whether a potential crime had occurred? "That's your judgment as to what happened," Griffin said. "I was not there. That's why the Justice Department is investigating." Griffin added that he doesn't know what State has told the Justice Department about the incident.
Two bits of testimony Prince would come to regret: He said earlier today that Blackwater gets about 90 percent of its business from federal contracts, and he said that, "as an example," under some of the contracts Blackwater has, it earns about a 10 percent profit margin. But Prince balked at saying how much money Blackwater actually makes in Iraq. Since the beginning of the war, Blackwater has been awarded contracts worth roughly $1 billion. "We're a private company," he said. "The key word there is private."
Reps. Peter Welch (D-VT) and Christopher S. Murphy (D-CT) pounded on the question. "How can you say that information isn't relevant?" Murphy said, saying "my constituents pay 90 percent of your salary. Welch, "just trying to do the math," pointed out that 10 percent of $1 billion is $100 million, but Prince repeatedly backed off the figure, saying that he couldn't factor in "depreciation" off the top of his head for when, for instance, Blackwater loses armored cars or helicopters. Murphy said Prince's plea of ignorance is "hard to believe."
Prince's reply? "I'm not a financially driven guy." He did, however, offer that, last year, his salary was in the ballpark of $1 million.
Blackwater CEO Erik Prince said his "understanding" is that his company is subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act and the War Crimes Act. Well, asked Betty McCollum (D-MN), is the State Department, who hired Blackwater, under the UCMJ?
"I wouldn't be presumptuous to answer for the State Department," Prince replied. So it's just a "feeling" Prince has, that Blackwater is under the UCMJ, McCollum asked? "Legal opinions I respect" indicate as such, he said. But he couldn't state that for a fact? "That's correct."
During Darrell Issa's second go-round, he raised an issue that no other member of Congress did: Prince's long family ties to the GOP. Only Issa didn't make the point he wanted to.
Prince seemed uncomfortable about the line of questioning, and confused about its source being a Republican. Was his sister, Betsy DeVos, a "large contributor" to President Bush? "Probably." Did she attend the Republican National Convention in 2000 and 2004? "Probably did." Is it generally the case that his family is known as a Republican family? He paused. "Yes." And is he aware that Blackwater is known as a Republican company?
"Blackwater's not a partisan company," Prince said. "We execute the mission given us. ... Yes, I have given individual political contributions in college, and when I was a member of the active-duty armed services, and probably will in the future." He said he "did not give up that right when I became a defense contractor."
Issa ran out of time, but scrambled to say that he was trying to make the point that "labeling some company as Republican" because of a family's background "is inappropriate." To laughter, Waxman replied, "The only one doing that is you!"
This morning, Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to talk about his rocky time in the administration. Much of Goldsmith's difficulties, of course, centered around his efforts to revise earlier Department memos defining torture, such as the infamous 2002 "Bybee memo" (named after Goldsmith's predecessor Jay Bybee) that defined torture as "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." Goldsmith called that reasoning "severely flawed."
During today's hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked Goldsmith where that definition had come from. "It came from a health care statute designed to define the circumstances under which there was an emergency situation warranting health care benefits," he answered. He explained that "severe pain" is hard to define, and so the lawyers likely cast around for a way to define it -- but that the health care code probably wasn't the best place to look.
Defense Secretary Bob Gates recently said that he thought future defense contracts with the Defense Department (Blackwater has non-Iraq contracts with DOD) should include "non-compete" clauses so private-security companies don't poach U.S. troops out of the overtaxed military. What does Prince think about that?
It might be onerous for the troops, Prince responded. It would be "fine" with him, he testified, "but not everyone who joins the military serves 20 years." There isn't direct evidence, he said -- truthfully -- that contractor recruiting has led to greater departures from the military than would otherwise exist. What's more "it would be upsetting to a lot of soldiers if they didn't have the ability to use the skills they learned in the in military in the private sector." It would be akin to telling an engineer on a nuclear submarine that he or she couldn't become a civil engineer post-retirement, Prince contended.
Gates, however, never said that future contracts with DOD should ban U.S. troops from eventually going into any profession -- only that companies in-theater not actively recruit U.S. troops serving in that theater.
Rep. John Tierney (D-MA) read out a raft of quotes from U.S. military counterinsurgency experts -- Gen. David Petraeus and Col. Pete Mansour, to name two -- who say it's better for counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq if contractors fell within the military chain of command. Running Iraqis off the road, Mansour said, according to Tierney, comes at the "detriment of the mission" of convincing Iraqis that the U.S. is looking out for their best interests.
"We know we're part of the total force," Prince replied, but he didn't say that his efforts don't come into conflict with the mission. Instead, he said that Blackwater guards have only discharged their weapons in one percent of their 16,000 missions in Iraq. (He didn't say anything about running Iraqis off the road.) Similarly, he asked for understanding about the dangers that Blackwater guards face in Iraq, and to illustrate the point, displayed a photo of the carnage after a suicide car bombing successfully attacked a Blackwater-operated Chevy Suburban. The broader question of whether Blackwater hurts counterinsurgency efforts, as some experts contend, went unaddressed.
Although the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) called Blackwater's contracts with State -- and before that with the Coalition Provisional Authority -- "no-bid contracts," Blackwater CEO Erik Prince wouldn't comment on SIGIR's definitions. But he said that because his company's security services were on the "GSA Schedule" -- that's the General Services Agency's list of services that contractors offer to the government for purchase -- they are "considered a bid." Prince said, "[I]t's like buying something from the Sears catalog," and he expected that his competitors had the same arrangement with State.
Waxman read from a July 2004 SIGIR assessment that said several Blackwater contracts were "sole-source directed." Prince said that no member of his company, to his knowledge, reached out to anyone in the White House or Congress for assistance in getting contracts (nor, he added, did his wife's well-connected GOP family), despite how rapidly Blackwater's contracts in Iraq ballooned from 2003 to the present.
Update: Prince, after conferring with aides, said that "one of the contracts I said was GSA schedule was in fact sole-source." He said he didn't know anything further and would get information to the committee about which contract that was and why.
Prince wouldn't make excuses for the drunken Blackwater contractor who, last December, killed -- and possibly murdered -- a security guard for Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi. He was fired, Prince said, since "he violated our policies." But Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) asked why Blackwater flew the now-ex-employee out of Iraq, which sounded to Maloney like he was fleeing a crime scene, as the Justice Department had started an investigation. "We can fire, we can fine, but we cannot detain," was Prince's answer. Did Blackwater help him flee the country? "It could easily be," Prince said.
How restrictive are Blackwater's rules of engagement for using force? Rep. Patrick McHenry, a Republican from Blackwater's home state of North Carolina, asked Prince what he meant by the "use of force continuum" that his contractors in Iraq used. Are their rules dictated by the State Department? "Yes sir," Prince replied.
Are they similar to the Defense Department's rules of engagement? McHenry asked.
"Yes, they're essentially the same," Prince said -- before correcting himself. "Sorry, that's the Department of Defense rules for contractors. We do not have the same rules as soldiers."
Late Update: Prince just testified that State's ROE is limited to "-- defensive fire, sufficient force to extricate ourselves from situation."
It didn't seem at the beginning of this hearing that any part of Blackwater's operations in Iraq had a thing to do with MoveOn.org's "Betray Us" ad. But that impression didn't account for the vigorous argumentation of Rep. Darrell Issa.
Issa brought out a massive placard of the ad showing General David Petraeus and launched into a full-bore assault on his Democratic colleagues, who, he implied, ran the ad themselves in the New York Times. "What they couldn't do to our men in women in uniform," he said -- presumably meaning run their names through the dirt -- they'll now do to Blackwater. "I'm not here to defend Blackwater," Issa said with the utmost sincerity, "but I am here to defend General Petraeus and members of the military." (Blackwater contractors, by the way, make on average six times more than U.S. troops in Iraq.)
The hearing is simply "a repeat of the MoveOn ad," Issa says, which seems to be the line the GOP is taking. One of Issa's GOP colleagues said that the Democrats first tried to discredit the President, then the U.S. military, then the Iraqi government and "they're trying to discredit contractors now." Several GOP members of the panel moved to adjourn the hearing, for fear of slander. Some kinds of slander, anyway.
Welcome to the Rayburn House Office Building, where Erik Prince, owner of Blackwater, and a clutch of State Department officials are getting grilled by the House oversight committee about proper procedure -- and potential wrongdoing -- for Blackwater and other private security companies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The thin, baby-faced Prince walked in wearing a crisp blue suit, a starched white shirt, and his shoulders square. He gave a quick smile before sitting at the witness table. An associate in a black suit behind him clapped him on the back for support during what's sure to be an uncomfortable hearing.
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) started the hearing by paying Prince a backhanded compliment. So many of the scions of the nation's "wealthy and politically connected families" don't join the military, Waxman said, before thanking Prince, who was a Navy SEAL before founding Blackwater, for his service.
Waxman said that at the request of the FBI, which has just announced the opening of an investigation into the September 16 shootings by Blackwater at Baghdad's Nisour Square, the hearing will not take public testimony from Prince or from State Department officials on that incident. However, Waxman said he wanted to assure the families of those Blackwater guards killed in Fallujah in 2004 that "Blackwater will be accountable today."
You might say it's been a bad year for John Michael, Thomas Kontogiannis' nephew. From The San Diego Union-Tribune:
One of two defendants set to stand trial this week in connection with the laundering of bribe money to former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham has meningitis, and his trial will be postponed.
U.S. Judge Larry A. Burns did not set a new date for John Thomas Michael, a 35-year-old mortgage broker from Long Island in New York.
The trial of the other defendant, Poway defense contractor Brent Wilkes, will go ahead with a slight delay.
Jury selection will begin tomorrow but the opening statements and first witnesses will not be heard until Oct. 9.
By Peter Sheehy and Will Thomas - October 2, 2007, 9:50AM
The Inspector General of the Department of Justice issued a blistering report showing that turncoat Robert Hanssen eluded detection for decades not because he was a master spy, but because of the FBI’s woefully inadequate internal monitoring procedures. (USA Today)
No more Enrons(at least none that get caught). That seems to be the message coming out of Congress with a host of new legislation that, according to Bloomberg News, will limit investigators' ability to go after white-collar criminals. "Pre-Enron, U.S. attorneys never brought these cases, and after this bill is passed, they will quit bringing them again," says one former SEC auditor. (Bloomberg)
Oscar S. Wyatt, the eighty-three year old Texas oilman accused of bribing Saddam Hussein’s government and subverting the U.N.’s oil-for-food aid program in Iraq, pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court. He must surrender more than $11 million in assets and faces 18 to 24 months in prison. (AP)
Yesterday a district court judge knocked down a 2001 White House order that allowed the current and former presidents discretion over the release of non-sensitive documents from past administrations. The judge called the order "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with law." Of course, Justice Roberts might not feel the same way. (AP, OMBWatch)
When Blackwater CEO Erik Prince marches up to the Hill for a hearing today, he's sure to be confronted a portrayal of his guards as trigger-happy, remorseless, greedy mercenaries -- or as one former Blackwater employee put it, "lazy f**ks [who] care about one thing, money."
Prince's response, as indicated by his prepared statement (pdf), is to counter that with an image of U.S. military men and women "volunteering" to serve their country (although for a pot of money):
Under the direction and oversight of the United States Government, Blackwater provides an opportunity for military and law enforcement veterans with a record of honorable service to continue their support to the United States. Words alone cannot express the respect I have for these men and women who volunteer to defend U.S. personnel, facilities, and diplomatic missions. I am proud to be here today to represent them.
And countering Henry Waxman's numbers, Prince defends Blackwater's performance with his own numbers. Waxman's House oversight committee report showed that Blackwater had been involved in 195 "escalation of force" incidents since 2005, an average of 1.4 shooting incidents per week. From January 2005 to April 2007, Blackwater employees used their weapons 168 times. Waxman also reported that, in 80 percent of those incidents, Blackwater fired first.
Prince offers a different metric: in 2007, his guards have opened fire during only 56 of the their 1,873 security details for diplomatic visits outside the Green Zone. That's "less than three percent of movements," he says. (Think of all the times they didn't shoot.) As to what percentage of those incidents had Blackwater guards firing first, he doesn't say. Thirty Blackwater guards have been killed in Iraq, he says.
And, of course, Prince offers a version of the September 16th Mansour incident. According to the Iraqis, the Blackwater fired first, after a car didn't slow down enough at a traffic stop. In Prince's telling, the Blackwater guards came under fire first and from a variety of attackers (men toting AK-47s and "approaching vehicles that appeared to be suicide bombers"), some of whom "appeared to be wearing Iraqi National Police uniforms, or portions of such uniforms. Only five of the twenty Blackwater guards at the scene that day fired their weapons, Prince says. Based on "everything we currently know," he concludes, "the Blackwater team acted appropriately while operating in a very complex war zone in September 16."
The hearing starts at 10 this morning; we'll be providing running updates throughout.
To the rapidly growing number of overlappingprobes of Blackwater (some more probing than others), you can add this one:
Amid questions of reckless behavior by U.S contractors, the FBI is sending a team to Iraq to investigate the role of Blackwater USA in last month's shoot-out in Baghdad that killed 11 Iraqis, an FBI spokesman said Monday.
FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said the agency was making the move at the request of the State Department to examine evidence in the Sept. 16 shooting and to pursue possible criminal charges in light of allegations that guards working for Blackwater might have shot innocent Iraqi citizens.
"The results of the investigation will be reviewed for possible criminal liability and referred to the appropriate legal authority," Kolko said.
In addition to Blackwater's Erik Prince, the House oversight committee will hear testimony from top State Department officials -- including the Iraq coordinator, David Satterfield -- about Blackwater's contracts with State. Material found by the committee's Democratic staff suggests that State officials helped create an environment where Blackwater guards could use deadly force with minimum reprisal.
After an infamous December incident wherein a drunken Blackwater contractor shot and killed a bodyguard for Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi, one U.S. embassy official wrote to another:
Will you be following in up Blackwater [sic] to do all possible to ensure that a sizable compensation is forthcoming? If we are to avoid this whole thing becoming even worse, I think a prompt pledge and apology -- even if they want to claim it was accidental -- would be the best way to assure the Iraqis don't take steps, such as telling Blackwater that they are no longer allowed to work in Iraq.
Tomorrow morning, the House oversight committee will hear testimony from Erik Prince, the owner of embattled private-security company Blackwater, about his company's operations in Iraq. Blackwater is in the news right now for the disputed shootings on September 16 in Baghdad that left 11 Iraqis dead. But the committee's Democratic staff has put together a compendium (pdf) of questionable incidents and practices that Prince will surely be asked about tomorrow. Here's a sampling:
* Blackwater has been involved in 195 "escalation of force" incidents since 2005, an average of 1.4 shooting incidents per week. From January 2005 to April 2007, Blackwater employees used their weapons 168 times, compared to 102 times for rival DynCorp and 36 for rival Triple Canopy during that same time frame.
According to the majority staff, Blackwater operatives fired the first shot in 80 percent of those cases, though its contract with the State Department only permits the use of "defensive" force.
* A single Blackwater security contractor costs the government $1,222 every day to guard U.S. civilian personnel, or $445,000 per year. That's six times the cost of getting a U.S. Army soldier to perform the same function. As P.W. Singer observed last week, private security companies increasingly exist to free up tasks for U.S. troops, ensuring a sort of dependence on contracting occurs for a military coping with the strain of deployments for two wars.
* The State Department's attitude to Blackwater shootings is most often a directive to compensate the victim's family, "rather than to insist upon accountability or to investigate Blackwater personnel for potential criminal liability."
* Blackwater's initial contract to protect U.S. diplomats in Iraq, in 2003, was a no-bid contract. So was its 2004 successor. On that one, Blackwater stood to earn a maximum of $338 million, but actually received $488 million from State between June 2004 and June 2006. In total, Blackwater has earned upwards of $1 billion in government contracts since 2001.
Will Brent Wilkes beat the rap? Or has he said his last Boom Shaka Laka?
We'll soon find out. The trial for one of Duke Cunningham's favorite defense contractors is set to begin Wednesday, when Wilkes will try to convince a jury that the hundreds of thousands of dollars of gifts and payments that he gave Cunningham weren't bribes.
But Wilkes' lawyer Mark Geragos had a number of requests today before the trial gets started. Among them was a motion to preclude any evidence that Wilkes had provided Cunningham with prostitutes.
Geragos reasons that prosecutors are just out to dirty his client:
There is little probative value in presenting the testimony of professional call girls, persons admittedly in the business of regularly breaking the law and making a living through illegal vice. The real purpose of presenting that evidence is to sully Mr. Wilkes in the eyes of the jury. Mr. Wilkes was married during the alleged incident, and the government seeks to drag out a dirty story of adultery and vice, not to prove any element of the alleged offenses.
Former Alaska Senate president and son of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), Ben Stevens, hasn't said much publicly since his legislative office was raided last year by federal agents. But this weekend an Anchorage talk radio show host said something about Uncle Ted that angered Stevens enough to call in. (I guess dialing up talk radio shows when you're facing legal and ethical troubles is just what you do in Alaska...)
On air, Stevens volunteered that he is under investigation by the FBI, the IRS and the the National Marine Fisheries Service, but maintained his innocence and called this whole investigation a "feeding frenzy" and a "blood bath." The show's host, Dan Fagan asked him about the Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board, where Stevens and his father's former top legislative aide, Trevor McCabe, served together while simultaneously accepting consulting fees from the very companies they awarded federal grants. The grants themselves, of course, came from Ben's dad.
"I didn't receive anything [while on the board]," Stevens told Fagan. "I've got a 30-year relationship with the fishing business. I've been working for many companies and many entities and some of that overlapped, but it didn't have anything to do with what happened on that board."
Sometimes you've just gotta admire a well-oiled machine.
The PMA Group, headed by a former aide to Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), have long had a simple system. Clients pump hundreds of thousands into his campaign committee, and Rep. Murtha uses his legendary porkbarreling skills to ensure PMA's clients get their millions. It worked fine while Murtha was still in the minority, and it's working great now.
Roll Calltotaled (sub. req.) up the damage last month:
-- Murtha's defense appropriations subcommittee recently passed its 2008 bill. PMA clients came away with 36 earmarks -- one-third of the total projects in the bill -- worth a total of $100.5 million.
-- The three lawmakers on Murtha's committee responsible for earmarking that money -- Reps. Murtha, Jim Moran (D-VA) and Pete Visclosky (D-IN) -- are getting the expected support from PMA clients, who donated $542,350 in the first six months of this year, or 26 percent of the trio's total fundraising. Everybody's back got scratched.
And today, Roll Callreports that House intelligence committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) is getting in on the act:
Among the unanswered questions from the nine-hour delay in May for eavesdropping on the communications of Iraqi insurgents: Why did it take four hours for an emergency-FISA-warrant request to be sent to the Justice Department's FISA office after the National Security Agency's general counsel determined there was sufficient probable cause?
According to Dean Boyd, the spokesman for the DOJ's National Security Division, Justice Department lawyers who were reviewing the case on May 15 weren't initially satisfied with NSA's determination. Ultimately, it's the Justice Department that argues before the FISA Court for warrants, meaning that it's DOJ lawyers who would face criminal penalties if the court found, after the fact, that the government hadn't cleared the probable-cause threshold.
"This is not something we take lightly," Boyd told me. "We had to resolve very novel legal issues as quickly as possible while abiding by the statute." Boyd, citing classification restrictions, would not elaborate on what those "novel legal issues" were, but said that the four hours were taken up by DOJ lawyers' discussions with NSA and FBI officials before the case was taken to DOJ's FISA office at 5:15 p.m on the fifteenth.
That's left some officials familiar with the case perplexed. "The [probable cause] is the easiest part of the puzzle," says a government official. "It's not probable cause like it is in a criminal case, it's just finding that the target of the surveillance is an agent of a foreign power." In the case of Iraqi insurgents who had kidnapped U.S. troops, the source says, that should be a near-instantaneous finding.
By Peter Sheehy and Will Thomas - October 1, 2007, 10:00AM
The private security firm Blackwater has nixed a $5.5 million expansion plan of its training center in North Carolina, ostensibly because of the negative press it has received in the past few weeks. Of course, given that Blackwater has been awarded a new $92 million Pentagon contract, times aren't so hard. (McClatchy)
Charles Riechers had the best job ever. While waiting for White House confirmation to a civilian post at the Air Force, Riechers was wanting for a little extra cash. So the Air Force did what any good future employer would do: they set him up with an intelligence contractors who could pay him without requiring him to do any work. (Washington Post)
Did we say 5 subpoenas? Apparently, six Doolittle aides have been subpoenaed. (Sacramento Bee)
In response to motions filed by representative William Jefferson's (D-LA) attorneys, the government produced documents that included a description of the FBI confronting Jefferson with a video of him accepting $100k bribe from a government informant. According to the prosecution document, Jefferson sank into his chair and "questioned how his reputation could survive." Good question. (WashPo)
Just when you think you've heard the most outrageous of Alaska earmarking shenanigans, news breaks that Sen. Ted Stevens clarified, via email,
that a $3 million earmark was meant to be handled by his personal friend and big-time campaign contributor, Bob Penney.
The Anchorage Daily Newsreports that in 2004, state officials were puzzled by a line buried in an appropriations bill: "$2 million is for the Kenai River; $1 million for the Russian River."
When state officials asked Stevens to clarify, his office replied with a simple email: "The $2 million for the Kenai River; and $1 million for the Russian River go to Bob Penny [sic]." Then it listed the phone number of a company founded by developer Bob Penney. That's $3 million in taxpayers' money.
The ADN reports that Penney's club, the Kenai River Sportsfishing Association, was the supposed intended recipient. Some environmentalists, unsurprisingly, argue the group shouldn't be handling preservation projects. A few fishermen and a retired biologist, Ken Tarbox, recently formed their own group, the Kenai Area Fisherman's Coalition, and wrote to the governor on Sept. 14 complaining about the earmark process saying it is unethical and possibly illegal. Tarbox argues the state should direct conservation projects, not Penney's group.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that Penney got such special treatment. Penney, you may recall, brought Stevens in on a Utah land deal that turned a $15,000 investment into $125,000 in just twelve months -- the same year the $3 million earmark appeared. Penney told The Anchorage Daily News at the time that he and his fellow investors invited Stevens in "appreciation for all he's done for Alaska and the country. We respect him very, very much."
Penney is also the colorful character who co-hosts a $1 million fundraiser with Stevens on the Kenai River each year where powerful politicians, heads of major corporations and lobbyists meet up for cigar-smoking, drinking and influence swapping. The Anchorage Daily News heard Stevens describe the event in 2002:
''We invite people we think can afford to put a contribution into the till,'' [Stevens] said, ''and people they want to meet.''
In the Arizona legislature, one DUI on your record is fine. But two is really pushing things.
State Rep. Trish Groe (R-AZ) is preparing for her arraignment this Monday on one count of aggravated DUI and another of false reporting, entered in a September 18th indictment.
Groe was pulled over last March, after an officer noticed her swerving at 70 mph in a 55 mph zone . At first she denied having been drinking, but then informed the officer that she was a “functional alcoholic." Two separate tests confirmed her blood-alcohol content was roughly twice the legal limit. Shortly after the arrest, Groe took a leave of absence from her legislative position and checked into a rehabilitation clinic.
But the woes have returned now that her arraignment date approaches. In Arizona, a DUI is generally treated as a misdemeanor and judges usually shorten the 30-day sentence down to 10 days. However, Groe’s case is compounded by the fact that she lied to the officer about having a valid driver’s license. In actuality, her license had been revoked due to an outstanding ticket in California. This bumps her charge up to a felony. In addition, it certainly won’t help her case that Groe had already been arrested for a DUI in 1999 (also in California).
Local Democrats began calling for her resignation immediately after the indictment. Republicans, always sensitive to the judicial process, have insisted that the system do its job before any rash decisions are made. Groe will be required to leave her position only if she is convicted of a felony. Since it is likely that her case will be argued down to a misdemeanor she may be able to keep her public position, but it is unlikely that she will entirely avoid jail time.
Only a month before, Groe wrote on her blog (in response to another representative’s legislation), “How about focusing on enforcement of the current law against reckless driving instead of passing new legislation?” Presumably, come Monday she’ll get her wish.
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