The release of the long-awaited CIA inspector general report on torture has been postponed once again.
The ACLU, which is suing to have the report released, just announced that the government is asking for yet another postponement on the date of the report's release -- this time, until August 31. The CIA had earlier said it would release the report June 19. That was then pushed back to June 26, and then again to July 1.
Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised at this point. But the latest example of the Obama administration mimicking the Bushies in opting for secrecy over openness feels like one of the most infuriating yet.
The Justice Department is declining to release Dick Cheney's interview with federal investigators looking into the Valerie Plame leak, arguing -- as it did under President Bush -- that doing so would discourage future high-level officials from cooperating with criminal investigations.
The bell has finally tolled for Allen Stanford.
Federal prosecutors today filed a criminal indictment against the billionaire Texan, as well as three other Stanford Financial Group executives and the former head of the Antiguan bank regulatory agency, charging them with helping to orchestrate a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.
Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel under President Bush, has finally testified, behind closed doors, as part of Congress's investigation of the US attorney firings, reports FOXNews.com.
That raises an obvious question: When will Karl Rove do the same? Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, told TPMmuckraker last month that he expected Rove to testify in early June. But today Luskin did not immediately return our call.
But the Times also, to its credit, released Comey's emails in full, allowing us all to make our own judgments about what they show. And after a close look at the emails, it seems clear that the paper could have used them to write a very different story -- with a very different effect on the public debate.
The Justice Department has announced an investigation into whether federal crimes were committed in connection with the murder of Dr. George Tiller.
In a press release, DOJ writes that it will probe whether there were violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act or other federal statutes in the case.
It looks like it wasn't just the Ted Stevens case in which Justice Department prosecutors screwed up.
Attorney General Eric Holder has found similar missteps in the convictions of two former Alaska state representatives, Victor Kohring and Peter Kott, and has asked that the two be released from prison, reports the AP.
Those convictions sprang from the same wide-ranging probe of corruption in Alaska politics. It was also the same DOJ prosecution team. Five of the six prosecutors in the Stevens case -- William Welch, Joseph Bottini, James Goeke, Nicholas Marsh, and Edward Sullivan -- ran the Kohring and Kott prosecutions.
Jack Abramoff's wife and five children are living "just above the poverty line" in a house with a leaky roof which they can't afford to live in but, given its depressed price, also can't afford to sell.
That's according to lawyers for the disgraced former lobbyist, who are arguing in court that Abramoff should be allowed to keep spending a tax refund of more than $520,000 to pay legal and other bills. Last month, the Justice Department moved to stop Abramoff from using the refund to pay the bills, arguing that he first must pay $23 million in restitution to the Indian tribes he swindled.
We told you earlier today about Alberto Gonzales' apparent use of the nomination of the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice -- a distinction for which Gonzo himself was once a top candidate -- to rehabilitate his reputation.
But judging by the way that the ex-AG's name is being invoked today -- as a prime example of an unqualified political hack who was seen to be in the running for the top court thanks largely to his personal ties to the president -- that rehab campaign doesn't seem to be going so well.
Watch:
Amazing as it seems, there was a time not so long ago, when people were talking about a very different potential first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice: Alberto Gonzales. That never came to pass, of course. But it hasn't stopped Gonzo from using the Sotomayor nomination to get himself back in the media spotlight, making the rounds on cable news to discuss the historic moment.
Still, we can't help but feel there's a longer-term agenda behind the ex-AG's recent media tour. Call it the self-rehabilitation of Alberto Gonzales.
TPMmuckraker favorite Alberto Gonzales went on CNN this afternoon to talk Sotomayor.
But Wolf Blitzer also asked him about the ongoing torture debate. And it was interesting to see that Gonzo -- who was White House counsel at the time the torture policies were first formulated -- seemed eager to shift any blame onto the Justice Department he would later go on to lead.
Pressed by Blitzer about his role in approving torture, he first clarified that he wasn't at the Justice Department at the key time, and said "It's the responsibility of the Department of Justice to provide legal guidance on behalf of the executive branch."
In other words: blame Ashcroft, Yoo, and Bybee.
Of course, it's unclear how that stance lines up with a report that Gonzo, while at the White House, personally signed off on CIA requests to conduct torture.
Gonzo also assured Blitzer: "I stand by my record," and "I did my best to defend our country."
Watch:
For a while now, it's been clear that, as former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan testified earlier this month, Abu Zubaydah was tortured well before the Justice Department issued its first opinion approving enhanced interrogation techniques in August 2002.
So we've been wondering about the procedure by which that treatment was authorized. And it looks like a crucial new report from NPR may have offered an answer.
More fallout from the release of the torture memos.
The Los Angeles Times reports that sleep deprivation was "one of the most important elements in the CIA's interrogation program, used to help break dozens of suspected terrorists, far more than the most violent approaches." It was also "among the methods the agency fought hardest to keep."
In fact, former CIA director Michael Hayden reportedly (and unsuccessfully) lobbied the White House not to expose its use by releasing the memos that described it, asking: "Are you telling me that under all conditions of threat, you will never interfere with the sleep cycle of a detainee?"
Could the long-running FBI corruption probe into former Pennsylvania GOP congressman Curt Weldon be winding down, without charges?
That's what the Philadephia Daily News suggests, noting the fact that the Justice Department recently sent letters to people whose conversations were intercepted as part of the investigation, including the paper's own reporter, William Bender.*
Via Think Progress:
Jay Bybee may not be responding to Pat Leahy's invitation that he testify before the Senate Judiciary committee. But that doesn't mean he isn't trying to get out his side of the story behind the scenes.
It looks like the Bushies are going all in to limit the damage from those torture memos.
The Washington Post reports that former Bush administration officials have launched a "behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign," designed to pressure DOJ to soften its forthcoming ethics report into the lawyers who approved torture.
You can say one thing for John Ashcroft: he's not short on chutzpah.
In an op-ed in today's New York Times, the former attorney general points out a thorny problem that the Justice Department may face as a result of the financial crisis: if there's evidence that a company that has received significant amounts of bailout money committed fraud or other financial crimes, how do the Feds prosecute that company, while still protecting the health of the company on behalf of taxpayers?
The answer, according to Ashcroft: deferred prosecution agreements.
It's worth trying to clear up some of the confusion on a key point that came out of yesterday's post.
We wrote that, after reading the transcript of Jane Harman's wiretapped conversation with the suspected Israeli agent, then-CIA director Porter Goss signed off on the Justice Department's application for a FISA warrant to wiretap Harman herself.
Did the people -- whoever they may be -- who leaked details about Rep. Jane Harman's wiretapped conversation with a suspected Israeli agent, break the law?
The law quite clearly prohibits the unauthorized disclosure of classified information "concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government." And Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy, confirmed to TPMmuckraker: "It seems crystal clear that if this was a FISA wiretap," as appears to be the case, "then whoever disclosed it committed a felony."
Congress has asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a 2005 memo written by a top State Department lawyer, which is said to have taken an alternative view on the legality of torture to that famously offered by DOJ lawyers.
In a letter to Clinton, Reps John Conyers and Howard Berman, who chair, respectively, the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees wrote that the memo "may shed important light on the process by which these interrogation practices were evaluated, approved, ad implemented by the former Administration." Reps Jerry Nadler and Bill Delahunt, who chair subcommittees of Judiciary and Foreign Affairs, respectively, also signed on.
As the calls for his impeachment grow louder, Jay Bybee -- the Bush OLC lawyer who wrote one of the torture memos, and who is now a federal judge -- has been given the chance to share his side of the story.
The unlikely invitation comes from Pat Leahy, the chair of the Senate Judiciary committee. In a letter sent to Bybee today, Leahy invites him to testify before the committee about his role in writing the memos.
A court has rejected the Obama administration's claim of the state secret privilege.
Via the blog Legal Pad: A three-member panel of the 9th circuit Court of Appeals ruled this morning on a request from the government that it dismiss the Jeppesen case, which focuses on the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.
CBS News has some new developments in the criminal probe into AIG...
We knew that Joe Cassano, the former head of AIG's Financial Products unit, was in investigators' crosshairs for potentially giving misleading public statements about AIGFP's position. But the network now reports that the Justice Department is also looking closely at two of his deputies -- Andrew Forster, an executive vice president, and Thomas Athan, a managing director -- for the same reason.
TPM Media Sites
Talking Points Memo
TPMDC
TPMCafe
Approved Sites
Washington Independent
The Blotter
ThinkProgress
War&Piece
Taxpayers for Common Sense
Mother Jones
Sunlight Foundation
Harper's
POGO blog
PC Action Fund
Josh
Zachary
