John Murtha

Murtha Taking Devil May Care Attitude To Corruption Probes

Zachary Roth | July 27, 2009, 2:12PM

The Feds may be circling uncomfortably close to Rep. John Murtha as they probe kickbacks to defense contractors and possible earmarks-for-campaign-cash deals. But the veteran Democratic power-broker doesn't seem to be sweating it. In fact, he's acting as defiant as ever.

A Murtha spokesman tells TPMmuckraker that the Pennsylvania congressman has not hired a lawyer in connection with the investigations.

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Bowe Bergdahl

Senior Military Officials on Bergdahl: 'He's Not A Deserter'

Rachel Slajda | July 23, 2009, 3:45PM

Yesterday, we reported that we hadn't heard a clear story from the Pentagon about how Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl was captured in Afghanistan. We started looking after a Fox News analyst claimed the soldier deserted (and therefore should be executed by the Taliban).

But last night, an NBC News correspondent reported that Pentagon officials are certain Bergdahl is not a deserter.

"Senior military and Pentagon officials, not only in Washington but there on the ground in Afghanistan, say there's no question he's not a deserter," said Jim Miklaszewski, NBC's Pentagon correspondent.

Video after the jump.

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Defense Department

U.S. Soldier Captured In Afghanistan: What Happened?

Zachary Roth | July 22, 2009, 3:45PM

We've told you recently about Ralph Peters, the Fox News analyst who accused a U.S. soldier, captured in Afghanistan, of deserting his buddies. Peters, a retired U.S. Army officer, said said the Taliban could save the U.S. "a lot of legal hassle" by executing the soldier.

But Peters' heartlessness and stupidity aside, the underlying story of the captured soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, is worth a closer look too -- especially because the Pentagon so far hasn't given a clear story about just how Bergdahl ended up in enemy hands.

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CIA

CIA Vet: Agency Doesn't Need Secret Program To Target al Qaeda

Zachary Roth | July 13, 2009, 3:57PM

Earlier today, we raised a few questions about the notion that the secret CIA program that Dick Cheney reportedly withheld from Congress concerned an effort to kill or capture al Qaeda leaders. And now a top counter-terror expert is doing the same.

Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, told TPMmuckraker that because we've been in a state of war against al Qaeda since just after September 11, there would have been no need for a secret CIA program that received special legal authorization.

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Donald Rumsfeld

Rumsfeld On Abandoning Geneva: 'All Of A Sudden, It Was Just All Happening'

Justin Elliott | July 3, 2009, 6:03PM

Donald Rumsfeld has finally said he's sorry. Sort of.

In an interview with biographer Bradley Graham, the former secretary of defense says he has regrets about the administration's controversial detainee policy.

The twist is that Rumsfeld doesn't regret the policy itself -- specifically the abandoning of the Geneva Conventions for detainees picked up in Afghanistan. Rather, he regrets how the policy was formulated.

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Defense Contractors

Book: Rumsfeld Didn't Cut Weapons Programs Because Of 'His Own Financial Situation'

Justin Elliott | June 30, 2009, 6:45PM

Here's an intriguing detail from the new 685-page tome on Donald Rumsfeld, Bradley Graham's By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld: Several Rumsfeld associates say the defense secretary didn't order any cuts of major weapons programs early in his tenure because of financial stakes he held in the defense business.

Rumsfeld valued his personal fortune at between $50 to $210 million at the beginning of the Bush Administration. The problem was many of the securities he held were in companies that did business with the DOD, which could put Rumsfeld in violation of government ethics rules.

So Rumsfeld had to divest some of these assets -- a whole lot of them, it turned out. And during that process, which went "slowly," Graham reports, Rumsfeld simply put off canceling any major weapons programs, a move some on his staff apparently expected him to make. Rumsfeld's specific thinking is unclear.

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Torture

In Push-Back On Torture Pics Report, Is Obama Mimicking Bush?

Zachary Roth | May 29, 2009, 1:16PM

We've told you in recent months about the Obama administration's disappointing tendency to mimic some of its predecessor's more troubling war-on-terror tactics. But is the administration's approach to public relations another area to add to the list?

Yesterday's aggressive push-back against the Daily Telegraph report on torture photos suggests it could be.

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Barack Obama

If Torture Stopped In 2004, How Is Obama Endangering Americans By Banning It?

Zachary Roth | May 15, 2009, 12:00PM

There's another part of Lawrence Wilkerson's widely circulated blog post from yesterday that hasn't been given the attention it deserves.

Wilkerson, the former US Army colonel who was Colin Powell's chief of staff at the State Department, wrote:

My investigations have revealed to me--vividly and clearly--that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering "the Cheney methods of interrogation", simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama's having shut down the "Cheney interrogation methods" will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?

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Patrick Tillman

Tillman's Parents Accuse New Afghanistan Commander Of Helping Cover Up Cause Of Son's Death

Zachary Roth | May 13, 2009, 1:26PM

Yesterday, we told you that Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the man just nominated to be our new top commander in Afghanistan, played a key role in the cover-up of the death of fallen NFL star Pat Tillman.

And now Tillman's parents don't seem too pleased about McChrystal's impending promotion.

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Defense Department

Lawmaker On Withdrawn IG Report: "The American People Have Been Misled"

Zachary Roth | May 6, 2009, 5:03PM

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) led the congressional charge against the Pentagon's use of retired military analysts to shill for the Iraq war on TV -- a program that was exposed in that Pulitzer-winning New York Times report.

Now the Pentagon Inspector General's office has withdrawn a report into the affair, which had largely exonerated the department, finding that it "did not meet accepted quality standards for an Inspector General work product." And DeLauro isn't mincing words about the news.

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Defense Department

UPDATED: Rumsfeld Ally Who Trashed Pulitzer-Winning Story Fires Back, Illogically, On Withdrawal Of IG Report

Zachary Roth | May 6, 2009, 3:33PM

The other day, two allies of Donald Rumsfeld spoke to US News, to trash the Pulitzer committee for awarding an investigative reporting prize to the New York Times' David Barstow, for his story on the Pentagon's use of retired military analysts to publicly cheerlead for the Iraq war.

"Does the Pulitzer give prizes for works of fiction? Perhaps they just got the wrong category," scoffed former Pentagon Assistant Secretary Dorrance Smith.

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Defense Department

Bush DOD Officials Mum On Using TV Military Analysts To Tout Admin Policies

Zachary Roth | May 6, 2009, 2:15PM

So, as the New York Times has reported, the Pentagon's Inspector General has taken the unusual step of withdrawing a report into the department's use of retired military analysts to tout Bush administration policies on network news shows.

The report, released just days before the Bushies left office in January, found that DOD didn't violate prohibitions on using public funds for propaganda, as part of a program that was exposed by David Barstow's Pulitzer-winning New York Times story.

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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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Office Of Net Assessment

Exclusive: Inside The Pentagon's Idea Factory

Justin Elliott | March 10, 2009, 5:35PM

The Great Siberian War Of 2030

Chinese And Russian Asymmetrical Strategies For Space Dominance (2010-2030)
--Index of Office of Net Assessment studies

A tiny office in the Pentagon employs a handful of military officers, teamed up with outside contractors, to study the future.

An index of reports produced by the Office of Net Assessment over the past 20 years, obtained by TPMmuckraker through the Freedom of Information Act, provides a window into the thinking and concerns at the highest levels of the Defense Department.

The jargony official description of the office -- often called the Pentagon's internal think tank -- refers to comparing U.S. "military capabilities" to those of other countries and identifying "emerging or future threats or opportunities for the United States." And, indeed, many of the ONA studies' titles reflect the abstruse interests of military academics (one effort is called Non-Standard Models Of The Diffusion Of Military Technologies: An Alternative View). Others, though, are downright Strangelovian: Fighting A Nuclear-Armed Regional Opponent: Is Victory Possible? [December 2007]; After Next Nuclear Use [July 2002].

The range of subjects includes energy: Future Asian-Pacific Hydrocarbon Demand (1996-2015) [December 1997]; weapons: Role Of High Power Microwave Weapons In Future Intercontinental Conventional War [July 2007]; and Islam: Occultation In Perpertuum: Shi'ite Eschatology And The Iranian Nuclear Crisis [May 2007].

There's the geopolitical: Preventing Large Scale State Failure [April 2008]; the historical: Normandy Retrospective [November 1996], The End of Religiously Motivated Warfare: Lessons From The Puritans And Beyond [June 2007]; and the postmodern: Information As Advertisement And Advertisement As Information [July 2008].

Some of the studies are more inscrutable: The Changing Images Of Human Nature [April 1995], Biometaphor For The Body Politic [March 2006].

The office specializes in looking at issues "20 to 30 years in the future," according to Jan van Tol, who served at ONA before becoming a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Van Tol says ONA has no more than 15 staffers. Most of the work is done by outside contractors. Despite its size, the influence of the office has been vast since its creation in 1973 by Andrew Marshall, the guru-like figure who still leads ONA. Fred Kaplan, in his book Daydream Believers, profiles Marshall, the so-called "Yoda" of the Pentagon. Kaplan explains the key to Marshall's longevity (he has kept his job longer than anyone at a policy level in Washington) -- and his influence:

"he built a far-flung network of acolytes and loyalists: officers whose unconventional projects he had encouraged and helped to fund; analysts whose work he had sponsored and whose ideas he had helped form; and high-ranking officials, as well as committee chairmen on Capitol Hill, who simply valued having a man of ideas so high up in the Pentagon."

The office reports to the Secretary of Defense, but "its informal channels are probably more important than what you'd find on an organizational chart" says Paul Bracken, professor of management and political science at Yale, who has written at length on net assessment.

"I think it is a powerful influence not just on the building, but on the country. Because there are so few organizations taking fresh looks at problems and not just looking at the fad of the moment," Bracken says.

ONA is perhaps best known for its Cold War work evaluating the strength of the Soviet Union relative to the United States. (The lingering Soviet focus is evident in the index of studies, for example a July 1991 report titled Could The Soviet Threat Go Away?). More recently Marshall was intimately involved in Donald Rumsfeld's project of "military transformation."

One of the preoccupations of the office is American dominance. As I've previously reported, the office earlier this decade ordered a monograph, the length of a short book, that examined ancient empires to glean lessons for the U.S. Two studies in the index are titled simply Preserving American Primacy [January 2006] and Preserving U.S. Military Superiority [August 2001].

In the past decade-plus, ONA has turned its sights to Asia, focusing obsessively on China as the next Soviet-style rival power to the United States. In some of the China work, the apprehension of American military planners is palpable. One March 2006 study is called Rising China Redux: Imperial Memories In A Modern Milieu; a 2005 report addresses The Chinese Penchant For Surprise. Another from 1997 is on Chinese Defense Equipment Modernization to the Year 2020.

The index, while extensive, is not comprehensive. Several studies with classified titles were withheld. The studies' authors are generally listed as individual academics or outside contractors like the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank, government consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton, or lesser-known firms like Scitor Corporation and IHS International.

Some more highlights from the index, which you can read in full here, after the jump:

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Barack Obama

Thanks To Obama's Order, Military Drops Charges In Gitmo Trial

Zachary Roth | February 6, 2009, 1:00PM

In one of his first acts as president, Barack Obama issued an executive order instructing prosecutors in military commissions to seek delays in the proceedings, in order to allow his administration to review the comissions process as a whole.

All but one judge complied with the prosecutors' requests. That one, Army Colonel Jame Pohl, declined to do so.

But now, the Associated Press reports, Susan Crawford, the top legal authority for Guantanamo's proceedings, has decided to drop the charges in the case over which Pohl is presiding, thereby bringing the case into compliance with Obama's order.

The case being prosecuted is that of Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi citizen of Yemeni descent accused of planning the October 2000 Al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole warship, which killed 17 service members.

The Pentagon says that Nashiri will remain in prison, and new charges can be filed. But
prosecutors will have to start from square one.

A group representing family members of victims of terrorist attacks has been vocally opposed to Obama's order, and isn't happy about Crawford's move.

According to the AP:

Retired Navy Cmdr. Kirk S. Lippold, the commanding officer of the Cole when it was bombed in Yemen in October 2000, said he will be among family members of Cole and 9/11 victims who are meeting with Obama at the White House on Friday afternoon.

Groups representing victims' families were angered by Obama's order, charging they had waited too long already to see the alleged attackers brought to court.

"I was certainly disappointed with the decision to delay the military commissions process," Lippold, now a defense adviser to Military Families United, said in an interview Thursday night. "We have already waited eight years. Justice delayed is justice denied. We must allow the military commission process to go forward."

Laurie Mylroie

Saddam-Qaeda Conspiracy Theorist Surfaces Writing Iraq Reports For The Pentagon

Justin Elliott | January 29, 2009, 5:53PM

It's a truism that neoconservatives have a talent for failing upward: for repeatedly getting important things wrong and not seeing their careers suffer - for, in fact, being handed new opportunities to pursue their work (see, e.g., Kristol, Bill; and Hayes, Stephen).

Today we can add another name to that list: Laurie Mylroie, the quintessential conspiracy theorist of the Iraq War era, wrote reports about Iraq for the Pentagon as recently as Fall 2007, years after she was discredited, according to documents obtained by TPMmuckraker.

Mylroie is the author of two studies -- "Saddam's Strategic Concepts: Dealing With UNSCOM," dated Feb. 1, 2007, and "Saddam's Foreign Intelligence Service," dated Sept. 24, 2007 -- on a list of reports from the Pentagon's Office Of Net Assessment [ONA], obtained by TPMmuckraker through the Freedom Of Information Act. The ONA is the Defense Department's internal think tank, once described by the Washington Post as "obscure but highly influential."

Those who follow the neoconservative movement closely are stunned that Mylroie has surfaced again -- and especially that she is doing government-sponsored work on Iraq. "It's kind of astonishing that the ONA would come even within a mile of her," says Jacob Heilbrunn, author of They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons. "I think she is completely discredited."

"I'm shocked," Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation says. "If this came out in 2007, she was presumably working on it in 2006, and, by that time, the fate and fortunes of a lot of these people was already switching."

Why is it so astonishing that a government agency would hire Mylroie to write about Iraq? While her career as an Iraq specialist started out auspiciously enough -- she studied and later taught at Harvard, wrote a book on Saddam with Judith Miller in 1990, and served as an adviser to the 1992 Clinton campaign -- Mylroie later veered outside the mainstream and became enamored with theories rejected by virtually everyone else in the field.

Heilbrunn suggests Mylroie has been underappreciated as one of the intellectual progenitors of the Iraq war. "She was one of the original fermenters of the idea that Saddam Hussein had these intimate ties with Al Qaeda," he says.

In the definitive profile of Mylroie, written for the Washington Monthly in 2003, terrorism analyst Peter Bergen locates Mylroie's turn in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, when she developed her theory that the Iraqi government was behind the attack. Bergen sums up the animating principle of Mylroie's work: that "Saddam was the mastermind of a vast anti-U.S. terrorist conspiracy in the face of virtually all evidence and expert opinion to the contrary." (For a good example of Mylroie Logic, read her Sept. 13, 2001, WSJ op-ed "The Iraqi Connection," in which she argues that Iraq had a hand in 9/11 because ... well, mainly just because.) Bergen goes on:

Mylroie believes that Saddam was not only behind the '93 Trade Center attack, but also every anti-American terrorist incident of the past decade, from the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to the leveling of the federal building in Oklahoma City to September 11 itself.

Mylroie's theories wouldn't have mattered - except that she had the ear of Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Jim Woolsey, et al. Perle blurbed Mylroie's January 2001 book, Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein's War against America, as "splendid and wholly convincing."

In response to TPMmuckaker's questions about the selection process for ONA researchers, a DOD spokesperson said in a statement: "All aspects of researchers and research institutions are considered, with an 
emphasis on obtaining the widest range of possible intellectual approaches in order to provide a fully balanced approach to the analysis of future developments."

And how did the Pentagon use Mylroie's Iraq reports? Says DOD: "These reports were part of a multi-scope research effort to identify the widest possible range of analysts whose expertise was likely to generate insights and concepts which would contribute to Net Assessments on-going work to develop and refine trends, risks, and opportunities which will shape future (2020) national security environments."

Mylroie's work for the Pentagon is all the more interesting because, as her star faded along with the Iraq war, she largely disappeared from the public sphere. Her most recent public writings consist of a nasty spat with other writers on the right in 2008. The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, himself a prominent perpetuator of falsehoods about Saddam-Al Qaeda links, is one of a group of journalists who cannot stomach Myrloie out of annoyance that her work helps to discredit their own, somewhat less feverish theories. Hayes has reported, with distaste, that Mylroie believes "al Qaeda is little more than an Iraqi 'front group.'" For more, read Daniel Pipes on "Laurie Mylroie's Shoddy, Loopy, Zany Theories - Exposed."

While Mylroie is often identified as an "adjunct fellow" at the American Enterprise Institute, an AEI spokesperson calls that category "a very loose relationship" and says that the main link between Mylroie and the think tank was the publication of her book back in 2001.

Laurie Mylroie did not respond to emails seeking comment. The DOD spokesperson has promised to send me copies of Mylroie's Iraq reports. We'll tell you more when we hear anything.

Barack Obama

Military Judge Rejects Obama's Request For Delay Of Gitmo Proceeding

Zachary Roth | January 29, 2009, 2:38PM

Last week, in one of its first moves, the Obama administration told its military prosecutors to ask for delays in the proceedings of 21 Guantanamo detainees who have been charged, so that their cases, and the military commissions process as a whole, could be reviewed.

Most military judges have complied with that request. But one judge, Army Colonel James Pohl, has now declined to do so, saying he found the government's reasoning "unpersuasive," reports the Washington Post.

Pohl wrote:

The Commission is unaware of how conducting an arraignment would preclude any option by the administration. Congress passed the military commissions act, which remains in effect. The Commission is bound by the law as it currently exists, not as it may change in the future.

Pohl is presiding over the case of Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi citizen of Yemeni descent accused of planning the October 2000 Al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole warship, which killed 17 service members.

The Pentagon may now be forced to withdraw the charges against Nashiri if it wants to impose the broader delay. It could bring them up again, but that would bring the case back to square one, costing the government time.

But the wider impact of Pohl's opinion isn't yet clear. It may be limited to this specific case, but it could also potentially throw a wrench into the new administration's plan to put the process on hold pending a review, and even complicate Obama's plan to close Guantanamo.

We'll keep you posted as things become clearer.

Late Update: The ACLU has called on Defense Secretary Robert Gates to withdraw the charges against Nashiri so that the charges can be tried in a legitimate court. In a statement, the group's executive director, Anthony Romero, said:

Judge Pohl's decision to unabashedly move forward in the al-Nashiri military commission case shows how officials held over from the Bush administration are exploiting ambiguities in President Obama's executive order as a strategy to undercut the president's unequivocal promise to shut down Guantánamo and end the military commissions. Judge Pohl's decision to move forward despite a clear statement from the president also raises questions about Secretary of Defense Gates - is he the 'new Gates' or is he the same old Gates under a new president? Secretary Gates has the power to stop the military commissions and ought to follow his new boss' directives.

Later Update: But the commander of the USS Cole, Kirk Lippold, who is now affiliated with Military Families United, a group that bills itself as a "the nation's premier military family advocacy organization", takes the opposite view. Lippold said in a statement:

Today's decision is a victory for the 17 families of the sailors who lost their lives on the USS Cole over eight years ago. This trial is a long overdue step toward accountability and justice for the attacks on the USS Cole. The seventeen American sailors who lost their lives on October 12, 2000, when we came under suicide terrorist attack by al Qaeda, were not just sailors. They were sons and daughters, husbands and wives, and friends to so many. The sacrifice of these sailors and all of our brave military service members who have died to protect this country and apprehend terrorists is a key reason why we should not close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay precipitously.

By President Obama signing the executive order to close Guantanamo Bay within a year, he is not considering or addressing the impact on the families who have paid so dearly to defend our freedom.

David Iglesias

Iglesias' New Gig Came Through Military, Not Bush Administration

Zachary Roth | January 21, 2009, 3:39PM

When we learned that David Iglesias -- one of the US Attorneys purged by the Bush administration for political reasons -- is going to be prosecuting Guantanamo detainees as a member of the Navy JAG corps, it struck us that he appeared to have been on the job for a little while. That would suggest he was tapped for the assignment by the Bushies -- which would be ironic given his past.

Turns out that's not exactly the case. Iglesias told TPMmuckraker that he had responded to an email sent out by the Navy JAG corps, looking for prosecutors for the assignment. His application was eventually approved, he said, by that office and by the Office of Military Commissions, which is run by Susan Crawford -- the retired general who last week told the Washington Post unequivocally that we tortured Mohammed al- Qahtani, a Gitmo detainee.

In other words, it appears that it was the uniformed military, rather than the civilian DOD, that brought Iglesias on board.

As for the value of his new work, Iglesias said: "It's important for people to have confidence in what's going on, in light of all the problems the office has had over the years" -- which have included allegations of rigged prosecutions.

And he called the new leadership under Defense Secretary Bob Gates "fantastic," adding "they get it."

David Iglesias

Fired US Attorney To Prosecute Gitmo Cases

Zachary Roth | January 21, 2009, 11:25AM

David Iglesias -- the former US Attorney who was fired in 2006 for failing to prosecute politically motivated cases as aggressively as the Bush administration and its allies wanted -- has a new job.

Iglesias, a member of the US Naval Reserve JAG corps, has been reactivated as part of a special prosecution team for Guantanamo detainees, he told a New Mexico news station this morning.

"One hundred percent of what I'm doing is prosecuting terrorist cases out of Guantanamo," he said.

Igleisas explained that he had already begun the work, having travelled to the facility once, and expecting to go back.

"It's the most significant set of orders I've had in my 24 years of navy service," he added. "The level of detail that I'm looking into some of these terrorist groups, it just takes my breath away."

And he signaled what seemed to be a change in tone from the Bush years. "We want to make sure that those terrorists that did commit acts will be brought to justice -- and those that did not will be released."

Asked about the unlikelihood of being named to a frontline job in the war on terror, after being fired as a US Attorney for alienating the Bush administration, Iglesias allowed: "It's been very ironic."

Here's the video:

We've got our own call in to Iglesias...

DOJ Office Of The Inspector General

DOD Pundit Report Finds No Wrongdoing

Zachary Roth | January 16, 2009, 4:30PM

The DOD's just-released report on its TV pundit hiring program finds that the department did not violate prohibitions on using public finds for propaganda by ceding the networks with retired military analysts (RMAs).

Here's the key passage:

The Comptroller General has interpreted the publicity and propaganda riders to prohibit three types of activities--self-aggrandizement or puffery, partisanship, and covert communications. Applying these standards, we found the evidence insufficient to conclude that RMA outreach activities were improper. Further, we found insufficient basis to conclude that OASD(PA) conceived of or undertook a disciplined effort to assemble a contingent of influential RMAs who could be depended on to comment favorably on DoD programs.

With regard to RMAs who had ties to military contractors, extensive searches found no instance where such RMAs used information or contacts obtained as a result of the OASD(PA) outreach program to achieve a competitive advantage for their company.

But it also admits at the end that the report wasn't informed by much information from the networks themselves:

We requested interviews with the official responsible for the news divisions at five networks: ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, and NBC. All declined our request for an interview. ABC, CNN, and FOX provided formal written responses to our inquiry. NBC forwarded copies of their responses to Congresswoman DeLauro and the New York Times. CBS provided "off the record" remarks.

Given that the networks appear to be just as culpable as DOD here, if not more so, that seems like a serious flaw.

Defense Department

Pentagon Releases Report On TV Pundits Program

Zachary Roth | January 16, 2009, 4:13PM

It's Friday at 4pm on the last business day of the Bush administration.

So of course, the Pentagon has just released its report on its TV pundit program, which it used to promote the Iraq war, that the New York Times uncovered last year.

It's here.

Dick Cheney

Top Military Official: We Tortured

Zachary Roth | January 14, 2009, 10:38AM

George Bush and Dick Cheney are continuing to insist we haven't committed torture. But that's now been contradicted by the Bush administration official whose job is to decide whether to bring Guantanamo detainees to trial.

"We tortured [Mohammed al-] Qahtani," the convening authority of military commissions, Susan Crawford, told the Washington Post's Bob Woodward. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" (for prosecution).

Al-Qahtani is a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the 9/11 attacks.

According to the Post, the techniques used included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, which left al-Qahtani in a "life-threatening condition."

Crawford told Woodward:

The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge (to call it torture).

The Post adds:

[Crawford] is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.

George Bush

Conyers Wants Criminal Probe Of Bush Officials' Wrongdoing

Zachary Roth | January 14, 2009, 9:41AM

Over the weekend, President-Elect Obama said we should "look forward as opposed to looking backwards" on the question of prosecuting Bush administration officials for torture, illegal wiretapping, and other possible crimes committed in the name of national security.

But yesterday, the House Judiciary committee got behind a very different approach, releasing a nearly 500-page report that recommends establishing a blue-ribbon commission -- along the lines of the 9/11 commission, but with subpoena power -- to investigate whether crimes were committed. (Last week, as we reported over at Election Central, Judiciary chair John Conyers and nine other lawmakers introduced a bill to set up such a commission.)

The report also advocates an investigation by the Justice Department, potentially involving a special prosecutor. And in addition to focusing on issues of torture, wiretapping, and the like, the report also recommends continuing to probe matters like the leaking of the name of former CIA agent Valerie Plame, and the US Attorney firings.

It'll be interesting to see how Democrats will reconcile Conyers' aggressive stance, which seems to enjoy broad support among the party's base, with Obama's more cautious approach.

Barack Obama

Top Pentagon Official: Obama Team Still "The Opposition"

Zachary Roth | December 31, 2008, 5:57PM

The Hill reports today:

Despite keeping Defense Secretary Robert Gates in the Pentagon, President-elect Obama's transition team informed 90 Bush appointees their services will not be needed after Inauguration Day.

It's worth pointing out that another roughly 160 political appointees were kept on. But here at TPMmuckraker, we were more interested in what came next.

The paper reported that, in response to the Obama team's move, Jim O'Beirne, the special assistant to the secretary of defense for White House liaisons, sent an email to the dismissed DOD staffers, in which he suggested that they were being removed by political opponents as a result of their effectiveness in carrying out Bush administration policies.

Reports The Hill:

In the email, O'Beirne tried to assure the soon-to-be displaced employees that the decisions were based on "policy change in the Obama administration" and not based on performance.

However, he said, if employees "harbor residual doubts" then they can "content yourself with the likelihood that it was your outstanding performance as a Bush appointee that drew the opposition's attention to you."

"In that regard, you may take justifiable satisfaction that you were among the first to be chosen," O'Beirne wrote.

Now, this way of thinking -- that being removed by "the opposition" (that is, the man who'll be our president) is a badge of honor, because it shows that you were committed to implementing the policies of the previous president -- is misguided coming from anyone.

But The Hill doesn't note that in the case of O'Beirne, a longtime GOP operative who's married to the conservative commentator Kate O'Beirne, it's perhaps not surprising. Consider this excerpt from a Washington Post story from 2006:

After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade.

In other words, O'Beirne led the disastrous process in which key posts in the Coalition Provisional Authority were given to Heritage Foundation research assistants who knew nothing about Iraq but were loyal to the GOP. And we all know how that turned out.

So perhaps it's to be expected that O'Beirne would continue to see government only through the prism of politics. Still, it's an outlook that's rarely expressed so crassly.

Thanks to reader W.M. for the tip.

George Bush

Dems Bash Burrowing Bushies

Zachary Roth | November 19, 2008, 10:38AM

Yesterday we flagged a Washington Post report about the "burrowing" of Bush administration political appointees into career jobs at various departments -- most prominently Interior -- where it will be difficult for the incoming Obama administration to dislodge them.

Bush certainly didn't invent what's sometimes called the "headless nail" phenomenon, but he's taking a bit of heat for the news nonetheless. Yesterday, reports the Post in a followup, Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Diane Feinstein wrote in a letter to the White House:

Today's report reveals that senior members of your administration are undermining your public commitment to ease the transition by reorganizing agencies at the eleventh hour and installing political appointees in key positions for which they may not be qualified," they wrote. "We respectfully urge you to stand by your public commitment to a smooth transition by directing executive agencies immediately to halt any conversions of political appointees to career positions.

And White House press secretary Dana Perino was forced to deny that there's an orchestrated effort to embed loyalists in the bureaucracy.

But there's evidence that the burrowing under Bush has been extensive, and hasn't just been confined to the administration's waning days. The Post adds:

The Government Accountability Office has long tracked such political-to-career conversions, and it reported in May 2006 that during the first four years of the Bush administration, 144 political appointments were converted to career positions. Thirty-six were at the Health and Human Services Department, 23 were at the Justice Department, 21 were at the Defense Department and 15 were at the Treasury Department.

It'd be nice to know just which Bushies have already embedded themselves in those departments. We'll see what we can find out...

Blackwater

Small Business Admin. Couldn't Explain Why It Approved Small Business Status For Blackwater

Andrew Tilghman | July 28, 2008, 6:39PM

Private military contractor Blackwater and its affiliates may have wrongly received more than $100 million in contracts that were supposed to be set aside for small businesses, according to an inspector general's report released today.

At issue was a November 2006 determination by the Small Business Administration that a Blackwater affiliate, Presidential Airways, was a small business with less than 1,500 employees.

Blackwater contended, and the agency agreed, that its more than 1,000 workers providing security for the State Department overseas were not employees, but independent contractors. That made the company appear smaller on paper than it actually is.

The SBA Inspector General said that assessment was incorrect, based on SBA regulations.

How the agency made that determination regarding Blackwater is unclear, the report concluded.

"We're not sure how that happened," Glenn Harris, chief counsel for the SBA inspector general's office, said in an interview with TPMmuckraker. "We're not saying there was misrepresentation. ... It could be contracting-officer error."

Although Blackwater did provide some information indicating the size of the company, the SBA appears to have overlooked evidence that the company was too large to qualify as a small business.

SBA did not follow-up on or attempt to reconcile conflicting information in its files that the total number of Blackwater employees -- even excluding the security personnel hired under Federal contracts -- exceeded the applicable size standard.

The SBA IG forwarded its report to the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, which together awarded Blackwater some 39 contracts that were set aside for small business. SBA only accesses whether a company is eligible for small-business contracts.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House oversight committee, questioned Blackwater's conduct.

"The SBA IG report raises serious concerns about whet her Blackwater made false statements about its small business status to the federal agencies that awarded these contracts," wrote in a memo to his committee today.

A spokeswoman for Blackwater denied any wrongdoing by the company.

"Over the past several years, expert accounting and outside legal counsel have determined that Blackwater's classification of security personnel as independent contractors is reasonable, correct and legally protected," said Anne Tyrell, the spokeswoman.

She said the IG's report "draws no conclusions" and was "unnecessarily speculative."

The Small Business Administration did not respond to a request for comment.

Late Update: The SBA issued a statement noting that the the IG report questions its reasoning in the size determination but did not declare it incorrect.

The lack of clarity, the report says, depends on various interpretations of whether nearly 1,000 security personnel hired for a Department of State contract were employees and should have been counted against the 1,500-employee limit, or whether they were contractors and should not have been counted.

"As a legal matter, some factors suggested Blackwater's security personnel were employees; other factors suggested they were independent contractors. The company also represented that those staff were considered independent contractors for IRS purposes," the statement said.

Iraq Contractors

DoD IG: KBR Overcharged The Navy After Hurricane Katrina

Andrew Tilghman | June 17, 2008, 6:40PM

We pointed out this morning the New York Times story that suggested KBR was over charging the military on Iraq-related contracts and threatening to cut off services to combat troops if the bills weren't paid.

Now here's another one about KBR's billing. This time from the Department of Defense Inspector General. And it looks at the company's role in the clean-up efforts after Hurricane Katrina.

The Houston Chronicle reports:

The Pentagon Inspector General said he could find no documentation in Navy contracting files to back up KBR claims it paid fair and reasonable prices to subcontractors that served meals in New Orleans.

"The prices KBR agreed to pay were greatly inflated," the 86-page audit said.

"The Navy paid approximately $4.1 million for meals and services we calculate should have cost $1.7 million, more than a $2.3 million difference," said the audit, signed by Assistant Inspector General for Acquisition Management Richard Jolliffe.

. . . Altogether, the audit requested that the Navy seek refunds of at least $8.5 million for "inappropriate" payments to KBR.

Curt Weldon

A Joint U.S.-Russian Weapons Company?

Andrew Tilghman | June 13, 2008, 1:56PM

More from Sharon Weinberger over at Wired regarding former Rep. Curt Weldon's ties to Russia.

We learned earlier this week that Weldon's under investigation in what is "an element of a broader U.S. Justice Department probe into what officials suspect are efforts by Russian-backed firms to gain influence or gather information in Washington."

Now Weinberger, who co-wrote a book about nuclear weapons, found this nugget in her notes. In 2006, Weldon told her that he met with Sergey Chemezov, a former KGB officer and then the head of Rosoboronexport, which handles Russian weapons exports.

"Chemezov offers--it's an amazing offer with Putin's support... there are countries in the Middle East that are approaching Russia to buy replacement weapons and spare parts. Chemezov is here to say, "We want to work with America to either establish either a joint company, or even an American company that would act as a front for weapons these nations want to buy. So American would not think we're going behind their back."

Weldon thought it was a great idea.

Defense Department

Russian Group Had $97M Deal With U.S. Missile Defense Agency

Andrew Tilghman | June 12, 2008, 4:39PM

The other day we told you about the Russian not-for-profit group that was giving undisclosed payments to the wife of former Rep. Curt Weldon's chief of staff.

Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican who lost his reelection bid in 2006, had sought federal grants for International Exchange Group, which was run by a Russian with ties to the Kremlin. IEG was involved in "promoting U.S.-Russia business exchange, including nonproliferation issues."

IEG popped up again this week. Over at Wired Sharon Weinberger, who recently co-wrote a book about nuclear weapons, pointed out another connection the group had to the U.S. government.

IEG signed a deal with the U.S. military's Missile Defense Agency back in 2004 promising to provide "Russian radar data" for use with the U.S. missile defense's early warning system.

From Wired:

But the entire structure of IEG was suspect, and smacked of conflict of interest: why should the U.S. government have to pay an openly Kremlin-linked nonprofit in order to ensure government cooperation?

It didn't pass the smell test with upper-level decision makers at the Pentagon, who halted the 2004 deal at the last minute.

Weldon's connection here is unclear. But he has promoted the Russian group and he's also a longtime supporter for the Defense Missile Agency.

Weldon has been under federal investigation for a couple of years concerning his actions on behalf of a natural-gas company, Itera International Energy LLC, which has longstanding connections to alleged Russian organized-crime figures. Weldon just dumped his last $80,000 in campaign money into his legal defense fund.

And the Wall Street Journal reported this week, the probe of Weldon may be "a broader U.S. Justice Department probe into what officials suspect are efforts by Russian-backed firms to gain influence or gather information in Washington."

Defense Department

Today's Must Read

David Kurtz | May 26, 2008, 11:35AM

Maybe we'll eventually get to the bottom of just what the Pentagon was up to when it cultivated the TV networks' supposedly independent military analysts as part of a massive PR push to support Bush Administration policy in Iraq. Well, it's pretty obvious what it was up to. But maybe we can better learn the full scope of the domestic PR effort undertaken.

The New York Times' April expose on the massaging of public opinion through "message force multipliers" (a term only the Pentagon could come up with) has now prompted at least two investigations. The program was suspended following the initial NYT report.

The Department of Defense inspector general announced last Friday that it was undertaking a investigation of the program, and the Congress' own General Accountability Office has "already begun looking into the program and would give a legal opinion on whether it violated longstanding prohibitions against spending government money to spread propaganda to audiences in the United States."

The investigations come after the House last Thursday passed an amendment to this year's military authorization bill mandating investigations by the DOD IG and the GAO. Democrats argued that the program amounted to illegal domestic propaganda. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) called the program part of "a military-industrial-media complex" (with apologies to Eisenhower).

Meanwhile, the TV networks have remained largely silent, as their credibility and transparency have been tarnished by the revelations about the program. As Media Matters has documented, the military analysts named in the Times piece appeared or were quoted more than 4,500 times on broadcast networks, cable news channels, and NPR. One minute they were giving ostensibly objective analysis, the next they were fawning over Rummy in private as "the leader."

Defense Department

Pentagon IG Slams Contractors for Poor Humvee Armor

Spencer Ackerman | July 11, 2007, 5:37PM

Despite knowing that alternatives existed for providing vehicular armor kits to the Army and Marine Corps, Pentagon procurement officials awarded over $2 billion in "sole-source" contracts to two big defense companies that had difficulty delivering the armor on time, according to a June 27 Defense Department Inspector General report. At the time the contracts were awarded to Force Protection and Armor Holdings, senior officials argued for competitive bidding.

Says the report:

Force Protection, Inc., did not perform as a responsible contractor and repeatedly failed to meet contractual delivery schedules for getting vehicles to the theater. In addition, (U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Command) Life Cycle Management Command and Marine Corps Systems Command decisions to award commercial contracts to Force Protection, Inc., may have limited the Government's ability to ensure it paid fair and reasonable prices for the contracts.

As for Armor Holdings -- which, by the way, is being purchased by the much-investigated BAE Systems -- one subsidiary, Simula Aerospace and Defense Group, delivered to TACOM armor kits with "missing and unusable components" and missed several shipment deadlines, resulting in "increasing risk to the lives of soldiers." According to the IG report, Simula didn't qualify under the Federal Acquisition Regulation as a "responsible prospective contractor," but it got its contracts anyway.

Read more »

Defense Department

Anchors Aweigh! Behind the Supremacy of the Navy

Spencer Ackerman | June 8, 2007, 4:24PM

First Admiral William J. Fallon took over as head of U.S. Central Command, even though it's the Army and Marines that are most engaged in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now Admiral Mike Mullen, the chief of naval operations, has been nominated to become the next head of the joint chiefs of staff. If approved, that means a Naval officer will helm the joint chiefs, Central Command, Southern Command, Pacific Command (an understandably typical position for an admiral) and Special Operations Command. What's up with the Navy's commanding position?

One factor is obvious, says Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute: The Navy "has not been tarred by the failure in Iraq." In other words, it's precisely because the Navy doesn't have the degree of skin in the game that the ground services have that admirals are making for attractive nominees for vacancies at key commands. That certainly tracks with Defense Secretary Gates's worry that General Peter Pace's prospective renomination hearing would have become a rancorous reexamination of the Iraq war. And it's doubly surprising, given how the Navy was the service most comfortable with ex-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the man most closely associated with Iraq other than President Bush. "The irony is that the Navy culture was always able to get along with Rumsfeld, but otherwise rolled rather quickly with the Rumsfeld reversal" underway thanks to Defense Secretary Gates. No one can say the Navy is anything but buoyant. "The Navy has an intellectual tradition stronger than that of the other services," Thompson adds, referencing the overrepresentation of Naval officers on the Joint Staff.

Read more »

Defense Department

So Long, "Perfect Pete"

Spencer Ackerman | June 8, 2007, 1:06PM

Breaking news: Marine General Peter Pace -- "Perfect Pete," as he's known inside the Pentagon -- is out as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after serving less than two years. Pace's announced departure comes just after the deputy joint chiefs chairman, Admiral Edmund Giambastiani, announced his own retirement last week.

ThinkProgress links to a report from defense expert Loren Thompson speculating that Pace's departure is "related more to the triggering of certain retirement benefits than his close association with the discredited former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld." Defense Secretary Bob Gates announced the nomination of Admiral Mike Mullen to replace Pace.

Update: Gates explained in a press conference that he feared Pace couldn't get through a nomination for another two-year term as chairman without it becoming a "contentious" forum on the administration's performance on Iraq and Afghanistan.