Iraq

Would Googling Him Have Been So Hard?

Kate Klonick | June 11, 2008, 2:42PM

Success in Iraq is critical to U.S. national interests, which is why we've insisted on sending our best and brightest civilians there: loyal Republicans, young GOP political operatives, and in the case of Owen Cargol, a man who fancies himself "a rub-your-belly, grab-your-balls, give-you-a-hug, slap-your-back, pull-your-dick, squeeze-your-hand, cheek-your-face, and pat-your-thigh kind of guy."

As Inside Higher Ed reports today, Cargol resigned back in April as the first chancellor of the American University in Iraq, apparently for health reasons, but he'd been forced out of a previous position as president of Northern Arizona University after just four months for allegedly sexually harassing a NAU employee:

Cargol's 2001 resignation stemmed from allegations made by a Northern Arizona employee who alleged that Cargol, while naked in a locker room, grabbed the employee's genitals, the Arizona Republic reported. In a subsequent e-mail to the employee, Cargol described himself as "a rub-your-belly, grab-your-balls, give-you-a-hug, slap-your-back, pull-your-dick, squeeze-your-hand, cheek-your-face, and pat-your-thigh kind of guy."

The American University in Iraq, located in Sulaimaniya in the Kurdish-controlled north, was heralded as a progressive step towards democratization. It selected Cargol as its first chancellor in 2007, though why is unclear since, as Inside Higher Ed notes, his "checkered past. . . could have been revealed to university organizers in a simple Google search."

AU-I is a private, non-profit institution, but it was started with $10.5 million from the U.S. government and its board --which hired Cargol -- is stacked with prominent names:

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is chairman of the Board of Regents; and Barham Salih, Iraq's deputy prime minister, is president of the Board of Trustees. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq and a counselor to former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, sits on the board. So too does Fouad Ajami, head of Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Agresto, the new interim chancellor, brings his own bona fides. As detailed in Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Agresto has close connections to Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney's wife, Lynne Cheney, with whom Agresto served during a stint at the National Endowment for the Humanities. A self-described neoconservative who was "mugged by reality" in Iraq, Agresto "knew next to nothing about Iraq's educational system" when he arrived with orders to rebuild it, The Washington Post reported.

How Agresto and his colleagues came to select Cargol to head AU-Iraq is unclear, but Cargol's decision to reinvent himself as an administrator in the Middle East preceded his work in Iraq. Before he took the chancellor's post, Cargol was provost of Abu Dhabi University, a private institution in the United Arab Emirates.

Jim Gibbons

OMG! Gov. Gibbons Sends 867 Texts to His Female BFF

Kate Klonick | June 11, 2008, 11:28AM

Just when we thought the Gibbons' saga was over, it all starts again.

Throughout his very messy and public divorce with his wife of 22 years, Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons has repeatedly denied having an affair -- despite being seen cavorting around town with two married women half his age and a suspicious friendship he had struck up with Kathy Karrasch, a neighbor of the Gibbonses and the estranged wife of a Reno podiatrist.

But the Reno Gazette-Journal uncovered documents this week that reveal that in just 6 weeks the governor exchanged 867 personal text messages with Karrasch, making their relationship seem a little more than friendly:

With the intense volume of messages between March 3, 2007 and April 9, 2007, Gibbons wracked up $130 in cell phone charges for the state, which he promptly reimbursed when his chief of staff brought the personal messages to his attention. The text messages occurred throughout the day and night, on weekends and work days.

On one Friday, for example, Gibbons exchanged 160 text messages with Karrasch starting at 8:30 a.m. and ending at 11:45 p.m. On another night, Gibbons exchanged 91 messages between midnight and 2 a.m. with her.

The records also revealed 42 phone calls between Gibbons and Karrasch, mostly on the weekends and evenings. The records include two lengthy phone calls during working hours.

In a sensational motion filed two weeks ago by her attorney, Dawn Gibbons had attempted to unseal the couples' divorce proceeding, and accused her husband of having an "infatuation and involvement" with the unnamed woman who "for years stalked the man who could give her the public persona and prestige that apparently she craves."

On Monday of this week, the attorneys for Jim and Dawn Gibbons released a joint statement and stated that, "[t]he parties have agreed that there will be no further Public comment from either side while the parties attempt to resolve issues related to the divorce action."

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Kate Klonick | June 11, 2008, 9:45AM

A convicted hedge fund manager, set to start his 20-year prison term next week, disappeared into the night, in what investigators suspect is a faked suicide.

The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that Samuel Israel III, the former chief of Bayou Management LLC, disappeared on Tuesday. His car was found near Bear Mountain Bridge over Hudson River, with an enigmatic message written in dust on his car: "suicide is painless."

Despite the ominous note, no body has been recovered and no witnesses saw anyone jump from the bridge:

[Bruce] Cuccia, [a New York state police investigator] said that, since 1980, more than 40 people have jumped to their deaths from the bridge, which marks one of the deepest points of the Hudson River. He said it would be impossible to survive the 150-foot fall.

The bodies of almost all jumpers are found quickly, Mr. Cuccia said. "I will be satisfied in a few days that if the body doesn't come up, he didn't jump," he said.

U.S. Marshalls have taken over the case and launched an international manhunt, a sign that Israel is indeed the latest white-collar criminal to go on the run:

Police in 2006 found one fugitive money manager, Kirk Wright, 37, living in Miami Beach. He had disappeared after his hedge fund collapsed, costing investors $150 million. A federal jury recently found him guilty of defrauding thousands of investors in International Management Associates, including many professional football players.

Mr. Wright had claimed the fund was performing well, when it was actually losing money, and he was spending client's money on jewelry, real estate, cars and a wedding. Over Memorial Day weekend, shortly after being brought to an Atlanta jail, he hanged himself.

In another instance, in January 2006, shortly before being sentenced for stealing at least $27 million from investors, hedge-fund manager Angelo Haligiannis had double-parked his Jeep Cherokee in Manhattan, cut off his ankle monitor and fled. Last fall the 35-year-old was arrested in a luxurious resort on the Greek island of Crete, vacationing with his wife and daughter.

Also last year, Michael Berger, who defrauded clients of his Manhattan Investment Fund, was arrested by Austrian police, driving toward Salzburg five years after he had originally disappeared. Betting that technology and Internet stocks would fall in the late 1990s, Mr. Berger lost roughly $400 million when his hedge fund collapsed in 2000.

If Israel did not in fact jump from the bridge, this will be the second faked suicide attempt for Bayou. Early in the federal investigation, a note was found in the empty offices of the company by a beleaguered investor. The note, penned by Daniel Marino the firm's chief financial officer, began: "This is my suicide note and confession." Marino never attempted suicide.

Police have recently recovered $100 million of the $400 million lost by investors through Bayou. Both Israel and Marino were convicted on fraud charges in 2005 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Iraq

Phase II: What Was Missing

Kate Klonick | June 10, 2008, 5:50PM

Last week the Senate intel committee released their report on pre-war intelligence in Iraq, which confirmed the disconnect between intelligence information espoused by Bush Administration officials and what was actually known.

The parameters of Phase II were negotiated between Senate Republicans and Democrats, for years, so it was maybe doomed to be a document with glaring omissions. But as damning as parts of the report were (Rumsfeld's false testimony, etc.) it probably could have been a lot worse for the executive branch, had not large swaths of White House communications been excluded from the scope of the investigations.

As Walter Pincus of the Washington Post writes, "the panel did not review 'less formal communications between intelligence agencies and other parts of the Executive Branch.'"

Which basically means that only the speeches and public press statements by senior officials, fell within the purview of the intel. committee's investigation. As Pincus points out, that leaves out a number of the other ways the administration misled the public before going into Iraq:

One obvious target for such an expanded inquiry would have been the records of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a group set up in August 2002 by then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr.

The group met weekly in the Situation Room. Among the regular participants (many have since left or changed jobs) were Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; and policy aides led by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, as well as I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.

As former White House press secretary Scott McClellan wrote in his recently released book, What Happened, the Iraq Group "had been set up in the summer of 2002 to coordinate the marketing of the war to the public."

"The script had been finalized with great care over the summer," McClellan wrote, for a "campaign to convince Americans that war with Iraq was inevitable and necessary." [Emphasis ours]

Beyond rehashing sentiments of the Senate intel. committee's purposeful stonewalling and foreshortening of the investigation, Fred Kaplan at Slate
takes a different read on the line "less formal communications between intelligence agencies and other parts of the executive branch." Kaplan believes the line addresses the covert pressure the White House placed on the CIA to play up its pro-war intelligence:

Another intriguing point, made fleetingly in the Senate report's preface, is that the committee reviewed "only finished analytic intelligence documents"--not "less formal communications between intelligence agencies and other parts of the executive branch."

In other words (though the authors don't put it in these terms), the committee once again evaded the key question of whether the White House pressured the Central Intelligence Agency into hardening its October 2002 NIE on Iraq.

Unless this question is addressed, the report is beside the point. Its full, ungainly title is "Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information." If those same government officials politicized the intelligence information, then the report only perpetuates the sham. (I am not saying this is the case, only that the committee should have investigated whether it is--should have reviewed those "less formal communications.")
[Emphasis ours]

In sum, while Phase II shed light on the "lies," or "misstatements," or "misinformation," or "whatever-you-want-to-call-it," of the administration's public claims in the days leading up to the Iraq war, it still leaves much to be desired in terms of scope and accountability.

John Murtha

FBI Investigation of PA Pentagon Contractors Reveals More Money, Contracts

Kate Klonick | June 10, 2008, 2:05PM

What started as an FBI investigation into suspicious payments to an unconfirmed nominee for an Air Force position, has grown to include seven contracts between the Pentagon and two tax-exempt defense firms in Pennsylvania.

In 2007, the FBI began an internal investigation after an article in the Washington Post revealed that the Air Force had used Commonwealth Research Institute (CRI) to pay Charles Riechers, a senior civilian who was waiting on finalization of his White House nomination to principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition.

In October 2007, Riechers was found dead in an apparent suicide.

Since then, the scope of the federal investigation has broadened, and the FBI and Pentagon's Defense Criminal Investigative Service issued subpoenas in April to CRI and its parent company, Concurrent Technologies.

Those subpoenas are seeking information about at least seven contracts between the two non-profits and the Pentagon. From the Post:

Contracting documents obtained by The Post show that four of the contracts, worth up to $130 million, were awarded to Concurrent over several weeks in May and June 2002. Investigators also are examining a Concurrent deal in 2006 that was worth up to $45 million.

Investigators also want to know about two CRI deals, one from 2003 worth up to $10 million and another awarded without competition in 2006 that is worth up to $45 million.

All seven contracts were awarded by the Department of the Interior's National Business Center. The center has an interesting track record on non-competitive contracts:

The Pentagon has used that center for billions of dollars in purchases in recent years, though audits have found that the center often awarded contracts without competition or checks to determine whether prices were reasonable. One audit in late 2006 found that the center "routinely violated rules designed to protect U.S. Government interests."

Perhaps one more interesting twist to the story, involves the $226 million in earmarks that CRI and Concurrent have received in recent years, through Rep. John Murtha (D-PA).

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Kate Klonick | June 10, 2008, 11:25AM

Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army reports for The Nation on the shadowy Blackwater's growing foray into the world of private espionage.

The privatization of intelligence has grown dramatically under President Bush, with Washington paying $42 billion annually in private intelligence contracts, compared to just $17.5 billion in 2000. As Scahill points out, it means that 70% of the U.S. intelligence budget is going to private companies, which creates an interesting market for government operatives.

Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, started Total Intelligence Solutions in April 2006 in order to capitalize on this growing demand for privatized intelligence services:

"Total Intel brings the...skills traditionally honed by CIA operatives directly to the board room," [Blackwater's vice chair Cofer] Black said when the company launched. "With a service like this, CEOs and their security personnel will be able to respond to threats quickly and confidently -- whether it's determining which city is safest to open a new plant in or working to keep employees out of harm's way after a terrorist attack."

As Scahill writes, Total Intel's leadership "reads like a Who's Who of the CIA 'war on terror'":

In addition to the twenty-eight-year CIA veteran Black, who is chair of Total Intelligence, the company's executives include CEO Robert Richer, the former associate deputy director of the agency's Directorate of Operations and the second-ranking official in charge of clandestine operations.

From 1999 to 2004, Richer was head of the CIA's Near East and South Asia Division, where he ran clandestine operations throughout the Middle East and South Asia. As part of his duties, he was the CIA liaison with Jordan's King Abdullah, a key US ally and Blackwater client, and briefed George W. Bush on the burgeoning Iraqi resistance in its early stages.

Scahill points out there are drawbacks to this kind of free-market approach to national security and intelligence:

In Iraq, Blackwater has banked on the idea that it is a sort of American Express card for the occupation. But for the future, Prince has a different corporate model, as he indicated in his speech. "When you send something overseas, do you use FedEx or the postal service?" he asked.

There are serious problems with this analogy. When you send something by FedEx, you can track your package and account for its whereabouts at all times. You can have your package insured against loss or damage. That has not been the case with Blackwater. The people who foot the sizable bill for its "services" almost never know, until it is too late, what Blackwater is doing, and there are apparently no consequences for Blackwater when things go lethally wrong. "We are essentially a robust temp agency," Prince told his fans in Michigan. He's right about that one. A temp agency serving the most radical privatization agenda in history.

George Bush

Bush and Abramoff Meet: Four New Photos

Kate Klonick | June 9, 2008, 5:53PM

Late this afternoon the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released six photographs cited in today's report that show President Bush meeting with jailed uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The pictures contradict the White House's previous statements that the President met with Abramoff only two times:

While the Committee obtained no evidence that Mr. Abramoff ever personally lobbied the President or that the President personally directed an action in response to a request by Mr. Abramoff, the Committee did receive evidence that Mr. Abramoff met the President and was photographed with him six times. Four of the six photographs occurred at political receptions.

In a statement today, the White House spokesman Tony Fratto responded to the House committee report "There's nothing new of any significance in it. it is warmed-up leftovers. It confirms what has become clear in all of this -- Abramoff was spectacularly unsuccessful in influencing administration policy."

The photos released by the committee actually look like black and white photo copies of the originals. They are very dark and grainy. We have lightened the picture below to make it more discernible. It is, according to the committee, a photo of Mr. Abramoff, Pam Abramoff, President Bush, and First Lady Laura Bush taken at a December 10, 2001, Hanukkah party at the White House.

The rest of the photos are below the fold:

Read more »

Jim Gibbons

Dawn Gibbons Goes Dark

Kate Klonick | June 9, 2008, 4:59PM

As we previously reported, Gov. Jim Gibbons (R-NV) has been going through a very messy divorce with the First Lady, Dawn Gibbons.

Two weeks ago, Dawn made not-so-veiled threats to implicate the governor in one or more scandals by opening their divorce proceedings to the public.

But in a joint statement released today from Gov. Gibbons and Dawn Gibbons' attorneys, it seems that the future-former First Lady has had a change of heart:

     JOINT STATEMENT BY COUNSEL
     (Gibbons Matter)

The Governor and The First Lady have entered into an agreement to suspend litigation activities in an attempt to resolve issues regarding the divorce action filed by the Governor. While they are in negotiations, no court documents will be filed.

     The First Lady has agreed to move to the guest house on the Mansion grounds and the Governor shall reside in the Mansion.

     The Governor and the First Lady will share the Public Areas of the Mansion for their respective Public Duties with their respective staff coordinating the scheduling with each other.

     The parties have agreed that there will be no further Public comment from either side while the parties attempt to resolve issues related to the divorce action.

     Dated June 9, 2008

     CALVIN R. X. DUNLAP      GARY SILVERMAN

Karl Rove

House Committee Report: Abramoff Through Rove Influenced White House Policy

Kate Klonick | June 9, 2008, 2:55PM

Back when the Jack Abramoff scandal was exploding across Washington in 2005 and 2006, the White House went to great lengths to publicly distance itself from the Republican uberlobbyist -- even though anyone who knew anything about Republican politics knew Abramoff was hard-wired into the very fabric of the modern GOP.

Following Abramoff's guilty plea in January 2006, President Bush said, "I don't know him." A White House spokesperson stated that Abramoff had only attended "a couple of holiday receptions . . . then a few staff-level meetings on top of that." And through a spokesperson, Rove said that he "remembers they had met at a political event in the 1990s. ... Since then, he would describe him as a casual acquaintance." Later, we learned that Rove and Abramoff met on D.C. street corners, Jack in his limo, to avoid detection in White House phone and visitor logs.

But the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report issued today detailing the ties between Abramoff and the Bush White House specifically stated that the White House's own investigation into Abramoff's contacts there had been cursory at best.

This evidence suggests that the White House failed to conduct even the most basic internal investigation of the White House relationship with Mr. Abramoff before making public statements characterizing the connection between Mr. Abramoff and the White House.

In reality, the Committee uncovered extensive contacts between Abramoff team and the White House, including access to Rove and direct influence on White House policy, from unseating Department of Interior official Alan Stayman to affecting nominating processes:

One action that White House officials took at the request of Mr. Abramoff was to intervene to force the removal of a State Department official, Alan Stayman. In a previous position at the Office of Insular Affairs in the Department of the Interior, Mr. Stayman had advocated positions opposed by the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, then a client of Mr. Abramoff. Mr. Stayman was appointed to his position at the Department of State during the Clinton Administration.

In a recent Committee deposition, Monica Kladakis, then-Deputy Associate Director in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel (OPP), confirmed that OPP became involved in Mr. Stayman's removal after White House officials were contacted by Mr. Abramoff's team.

The White House led the committee in 2006 to believe that the extent of the Abramoff connections existed only between Abramoff and Rove's mutual secretary, Susan Ralston. Ralston was painted to be the whole of Abramoff's connection to the White House and her resignation was the culmination of a 4-day investigation by the White House, described by the deputy press secretary as a "thorough" review of the matter.

But in the Committee's examination of Ralston's relevant correspondence, specific electronic conversations shed light on Ralston's role as a conduit between Abramoff and Rove, rather than a stopping point.

One example of the Abramoff team's access to the White House regarding the nomination process is a February 20, 2001, e-mail from Susan Ralston to Matt Schlapp to let him know that Jack Abramoff had called Karl Rove a few days earlier to discuss appointments at OIA.

According to this e-mail, Mr. Abramoff had heard that Esther Kia'aina was going to be
considered for a position and "wanted to let Karl know that he didn't think this was a good idea."

Ms. Ralston continued, "Karl asked that you return his call." Ms. Kia'aina was not appointed to a position at OIA.

Beyond nominations and appointments, Abramoff, through Rove, also played a hand in creating White House policy:

On a number of occasions, White House officials used information Mr. Abramoff provided in policy deliberations. For example, in September 2002, when Matt Schlapp, then-Deputy White House Political Director, asked Ms. Ralston if Karl Rove wanted "Fred Radewagon to get strong consideration" for appointment to the position of Director of OIA. Ms. Ralston replied minutes later with the note, "Definitely not Radewagon. Here's the intel I got on him."

The rest of her e-mail quotes directly, without attribution, from an e-mail Jack Abramoff had sent her the previous month. In this e-mail, Ms. Ralston passed on information from Mr. Abramoff to support her assertion that Mr. Rove would not support Mr. Radewagon. Mr. Radewagon did not get the appointment.

Jack Abramoff

House Committee Details Abramoff Connections to Bush White House

Kate Klonick | June 9, 2008, 11:47AM

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a "proposed" report this morning finding that Jack Abramoff did indeed have "personal contact with President Bush" and that Abramoff and cohorts were "held in high regard" by White House officials.

The proposed report also finds that Abramoff and his associates "influenced some White House actions" and gave White House officials "expensive tickets and meals."

The report (.pdf), technically a draft of the committee's findings, will be marked up and voted on by committee members in a meeting on Thursday.

We'll be looking through the report and bringing you updates, but in a first read through here are some findings that stuck out.

Abramoff and team gave gifts to Carlos Bonilla, at the time a Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and now an economic policy advisor for John McCain:

On October 18, 2001, Kevin Ring sent an unknown number of tickets to an unknown event to Mr. Bonilla by courier. In addition, in response to an offer from Kevin Ring, Mr. Bonilla requested and was provided with two tickets to sit in the Abramoff suite for the November 20, 2001, Washington Wizards game.

The report confirms much of what was already known about the Abramoff-led effort to oust Department of Interior official Alan Stayman, Abramoff's nemesis on issues involving his client, the Mariana Islands:

One action that White House officials took at the request of Mr. Abramoff was to intervene to force the removal of a State Department official, Alan Stayman. In a previous position at the Office of Insular Affairs in the Department of the Interior, Mr. Stayman had advocated positions opposed by the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, then a client of Mr. Abramoff. Mr. Stayman was appointed to his position at the Department of State during the Clinton Administration.

In a recent Committee deposition, Monica Kladakis, then-Deputy Associate Director in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel (OPP), confirmed that OPP became involved in Mr. Stayman's removal after White House officials were contacted by Mr. Abramoff's team.

Late Update: McCain Camp: Advisor Linked to Abramoff No Longer with Campaign