Thomas Kontogiannis: thrice-convicted felon. Identity thief. Admitted money launderer to extremely crooked Congressman. And, in his own telling, counterterrorist.

Thanks to Judge Larry Burns, who earlier this week ordered four days of court transcripts in the murky Kontogiannis case unsealed, we have our first peek into the motivations of the shady Long Island businessman. Not avarice nor profit guided his actions, Kontogiannis told the court: he linked up with Duke Cunningham out of a post-9/11 sense of patriotism.

“My interest is (the) United States, basically. And (Cunningham) was in a position that I could reach and tell (the government) information that I was gathering from all over the world.”

Cunningham and Kontogiannis have a relationship stretching back years before 9/11. With his frequent travel abroad -- including on a strange trip with Cunningham to Saudi Arabia in December 2004 -- Kontogiannis told the court that he was in a position to help the government learn to fight terrorism, based on his network of contacts. Laundering money for Cunningham's boat and home purchases was merely, to Kontogiannis, a cost of doing business to keep the ear of a Congressman who served on crucial defense and intelligence committees. Asked if he was buying Cunningham's influence, Tommy K replied, "definitely."

Kontogiannis, in his own mind at least, isn't some ordinary shyster. He's Jack Bauer.

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First was the war over the benchmarks. Now there's the war for whose benchmarks really mark the benches.

In May, Congress mandated that the Government Accountability Office produce an assessment of whether the U.S. and the Iraqi government are meeting eighteen indicators of political, economic and military progress in Iraq. Unlike the analysis produced by the Bush administration -- preliminarily delivered in July, and to be finalized by September 15 -- the GAO study has to give a stark yes-or-no answer for the achievement of each so-called benchmark. Sure enough, a draft of the study, leaked to The Washington Post, finds that only three of the eighteen benchmarks have been met -- while the July White House assessment said about half of them had been.

As the Post reports, the GAO report casts doubt on whether progress is being achieved in several of the areas the Bush administration has highlighted. July's White House report, for example, cited "an overall decrease in sectarian violence" in Baghdad. The GAO, by contrast, finds that "the average number of daily attacks against civilians remained about the same over the last six months; 25 in February versus 26 in July." The Iraqi security forces remain dysfunctional: the GAO cites pervasive sectarianism in the Iraqi Army units sent to Baghdad for the surge, while the White House called their performance "satisfactory."

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Jack Abramoff is in prison. Ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) is in prison. Ex-Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) is in prison. Ex-Reps. Mark Foley (R-FL), Katherine Harris (R-FL), Tom DeLay (R-TX), Curt Weldon (R-PA), and Ex-Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT), all either lost or did not seek reelection. Gone, away, to be forgotten. This year was supposed to be different for the Republicans. But...

As The New York Times notes this morning, scandal has pursued them into 2007. “The real question for Republicans in Washington is how low can you go, because we are approaching a level of ridiculousness,” says one Republican strategist.

So what's the tally this year so far? Well, there is, of course, 1) Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) and 2) Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) with their sex scandals (the attempted restroom tryst and numerous successful hotel room trysts, respectively).

But then there's the much greater toll of just plain ol' corruption. 3) Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and 4) Rep. Don Young (R-AK) are under investigation for their ties to the oil company Veco (though that's just the tip of the iceberg for Young). 5) Reps. Tom Feeney (R-FL) and 6) John Doolittle (R-CA) have found themselves the focus of a reinvigorated Abramoff investigation (though Abramoff is in prison, he's still busily cooperating). 7) Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) had his house raided. 8) The FBI is investigating Rep. Gary Miller's (R-CA) land deals.

And then there's 9) Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) whose land deal with a businessman and campaign contributor became such a scandal that she finally just sold back the plot of land.

(Update: Thanks to a TPM Reader for pointing out that I omitted 12) Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and 13) Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) in my original round-up. Both are facing ethics committee investigations for their calls last October to former U.S. attorney David Iglesias about his office's investigation of a state Democrat.)

A kind of bonus field of scandal has been campaign officials for the various Republican candidates and their various scandals.

And there are a couple holdovers from 2006, of course; scandal figures who've stuck around and managed to keep a relatively low profile. 10) Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) is still apparently under federal investigation. And 11) Rep. Ken Calvert's (R-CA) land deals are still winning scrutiny.

Republican scandal is one of Karl Rove's chief preoccupations. He's said that it was a mistake not to have addressed the scandals earlier, before the 2006 midterms. The effect of scandal even had a place in the political briefings that his aides gave to various departments and agencies over the past several years. Here, for instance, is a page from a briefing his aide Scott Jennings gave this January:

But it would appear that the GOP will be facing a similar dilemma all over again come next November. The question is: will things turn out any differently?

Note: As always, we keep a running tally of investigations and prosecutions of both Democrats and Republicans on our Grand Ole Docket.

It looks like Major John Cockerham might have some competition for his title as most-crooked contracting official in Iraq.

The New York Times reports that a plethora of criminal investigations, all part of a new Pentagon anti-corruption push, are open into what exactly happened to "weapons, supplies and other materiel" dispensed in that country as part of over $40 billion in reconstruction aid. And one of the investigations -- though it's maddeningly unclear as to what the charge even is -- centers around a former aide to General David Petraeus, now the commanding general in Iraq.

Contracting fraud in the effort to supply and equip Iraqi security forces, Afghan soldiers and U.S. troops is suspected to be immense. Over 70 cases are currently under investigation in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, according to the paper, for contracts worth more that $5 billion. So far, investigators have uncovered evidence of upwards of $15 million in bribes.

One such case involves Lieutenant Colonel Levonda Joey Selph, a master logistics officer who worked with Petraeus when he commanded the effort to train and equip Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005. Petraeus has already commented that he considered the rapid preparation of Iraqi soldiers and police to be a greater priority than scrupulous bookkeeping. As yet, Petraeus is not suspected of any wrongdoing -- and indeed, even what Selph is suspected of having done is unclear. But here's what is: Selph ran a massive logistics operation, and one that was ripe for abuse.

That operation moved everything from AK-47s, armored vehicles and plastic explosives to boots and Army uniforms, according to officials who were involved in it. Her former colleagues recall Colonel Selph as a courageous officer who was willing to take substantial personal risks to carry out her mission and was unfailingly loyal to General Petraeus and his directives to move quickly in setting up the logistics operation.

“She was kind of like the Pony Express of the Iraqi security forces,” said Victoria Wayne, who was then deputy director of logistics for the overall Iraqi reconstruction program.

Still, Colonel Selph also ran into serious problems with a company she oversaw that failed to live up to a contract it had signed to carry out part of that logistics mission.

It is not clear exactly what Colonel Selph is being investigated for. Colonel Selph, reached by telephone twice on Monday, said she would speak to reporters later but did not answer further messages left for her.

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We may never see his like again. Well, at least not until the confirmation hearings for his successor.

Alberto Gonzales, the Justice Department's master of disaster, has resigned as U.S. Attorney General. Whenever there's been a Bush administration scandal, the president's longtime confidante has been there -- from torture to warrantless surveillance to the U.S. attorney firings that ultimately proved to be his downfall. Two weeks ago, Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked the department's inspector general to open a perjury investigation into Gonzales.

Well, now Leahy won't have Gonzales to kick around anymore. From the New York Times story breaking the news of his departure:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. A senior administration official said he would announce the decision later this morning in Washington.

Mr. Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation, submitted his to President Bush by telephone on Friday, the official said. His decision was not immediately announced, the official added, until after the president invited him and his wife to lunch at his ranch near here.

Mr. Bush has not yet chosen a replacement but will not leave the position open long, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the Attorney General's resignation had not yet been made public.

Mr. Bush had repeatedly stood by Mr. Gonzales, an old friend and colleague from Texas, even as he faced increasing scrutiny for his leadership of the Justice Department, including his role in the dismissals of nine United States attorneys late last year and questions about whether he testified truthfully about the National Security Agency's surveillance programs.

The administration is sticking with the line that Gonzales did nothing wrong. An anonymous official is quoted as saying, "The unfair treatment that he's been on the receiving end of has been a distraction for the department," the official said. For a roundup of what Gonzales did to receive such "unfair treatment," our own Paul Kiel compiled a list of the now-vanquished AG's greatest hits.

Gonzales is expected to have a press conference at 10:30 or so. Stay tuned.

Now he tells us.

General Peter Pace became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2005, the first ever Marine to become senior military adviser to the president. Known as "Perfect Pete" inside the Pentagon, Pace was a consistent and steadfast supporter of the Iraq war. Throughout 2006, now considered something of a "lost year" in Iraq by war supporters, Pace painted a rosy picture of the war -- even describing it as going "very, very well" just weeks after the destruction of a major Shiite mosque sparked a new wave of intense sectarian fighting. Pace's boosterism cost him his job in June, when Defense Secretary Robert Gates declined to renominate him to another two-year term rather than face a grueling reconfirmation hearing.

Now that Pace is on his way out, though, he's singing a much different tune. The Los Angeles Times reports that Pace, following a recent trip to Iraq, will call for nearly half of the roughly 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq to come home by 2008.

Administration and military officials say Marine Gen. Peter Pace is likely to convey concerns by the Joint Chiefs that keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military. This assessment could collide with one being prepared by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, calling for the U.S. to maintain higher troop levels for 2008 and beyond.

Petraeus is expected to support a White House view that the absence of widespread political progress in Iraq requires several more months of the U.S. troop buildup before force levels are decreased to their pre-buildup numbers sometime next year.

Pace's recommendations reflect the views of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who initially expressed private skepticism about the strategy ordered by Bush and directed by Petraeus, before publicly backing it.

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Barbour Griffith & Rogers has long been a powerhouse GOP lobbying firm. Now, apparently, American politics are just too small-time. BGR, according to a report by IraqSlogger's Christina Davidson, is trying to influence Iraqi politics as well.

BGR, the firm started by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, has been promoting Ayad Allawi, the one-time Iraqi interim prime minister who over the weekend published an op-ed in the Washington Post calling for the parliamentary overthrow of current PM Nouri al-Maliki. The piece amounted to a trial balloon for American support for a second Allawi-led government, promising non-sectarianism and stability. Allawi has decades-old ties to the CIA, making him a known quantity to U.S. officials during a time of extreme frustration with Maliki.

But frustration alone doesn't get governments to fall. That's where BGR comes in. On August 17, the firm purchased the domain name Allawi-For-Iraq.com (the site's not yet live). Following publication of the op-ed, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) called on the Iraqi parliament to hold a no-confidence vote on Maliki. BGR circulated Levin's comments around Washington -- and particularly to Congressional staffers -- using the e-mail address DrAyadAllawi@Allawi-for-Iraq.com.

Yet BGR hasn't registered any affiliation with the ex-premier:

Allawi's relationship with BGR apparently is relatively new, however, because official Justice Department and Senate lobbyist tracking records provide no indication of the BGR-Allawi relationship.

BGR's Web site, which identifies dozens of BGR clients by name, makes no mention of Allawi.

But the firm's ties with Allawi perhaps shouldn't be so surprising. Among BGR's executives is Ambassador Bob Blackwill, who in 2004 served as the White House's Iraq coordinator. In that role, Blackwill was an enthusiastic booster of Allawi, helping manage the process that led to Allawi's selection by the U.S. and the U.N. as interim prime minister in advance of the dissolution of the Coalition Provisional Authority. After the 2005 elections in Iraq, Blackwill wrote a laudatory op-ed in The Wall Street Journal praising Allawi's strategy for crushing the insurgency: "Mr. Allawi's message is simple: Join us in building the new Iraq and accept its benefits or, if you support the insurgency, get ready to die."

As it happened, the strategy didn't live up to its promises. The elections knocked Allawi out of power, as his tenure ended up alienating a large swath of the majority Shiite population. His attempts at enlisting American support to return to office -- a perennial rumor in Washington
over the past two years -- have all fallen short. Evidently, though, Blackwill and BGR evidently think that the time is right to get the old gang back together.

After initially granting tepid support to the current Iraqi government during the current fracas, President Bush clarified yesterday in his speech to the VFW convention that he supports Maliki, whom he called "a good guy." We'll see how long that lasts.

We've noted before this administration's extraordinary talent for secrecy. A growing number of agency reports, fact sheets, databases, and records have been re-classified, discontinued, or simply withheld.

And it seems that sometimes the administration surprises even itself. On the White House website, a trip to the Freedom of Information Act page about the Executive Office of the President gives you a list of the agencies subject to FOIA:

Right there, you can see that the Office of Administration is listed as an agency subject to FOIA. But apparently that's because the administration never gave it much thought.

In a motion filed yesterday, Justice Department lawyers argued that the Office of Administration is not subject to FOIA. Their reasoning: the office is not an "agency," by the definition of FOIA.

The motion was triggered by a suit from the D.C. watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, seeking documents relating to the disappearance of at least 5 million missing White House emails between 2003 and 2005. The White House has suggested that the problem stemmed from a move from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook.

But the Office of Administration's non-agency status hasn't stopped the office from processing plenty of FOIA requests up until now -- as many as 65 last year alone, the AP reports.

The Department lawyers admit as much in their motion, but say that doesn't matter. "To be sure," they write, "OA currently has regulations implementing FOIA and has not taken the position in prior litigation that it is not subject to FOIA." But every day is a new (secret) day in the Bush White House.

Once, Brent Wilkes built a railroad. Made it run. Made it race against time. Made it spend over $1 million to bribe a Republican Congressman in exchange for multi-million dollar defense contracts. (Allegedly!) Now, the tracks have supposedly come apart on Wilkes' financial railroad.

Yesterday, Judge Larry Burns, the San Diego federal district magistrate presiding over the multifaceted Duke Cunningham-related trials, ruled that Wilkes is too broke to afford representation in his upcoming trial for bribery, money laundering and conspiracy. Wilkes, of course, made millions as the head of defense contractor ADCS, thanks largely to Cunningham, who Wilkes (allegedly!) rewarded with cash and the occasional prostitute. Can he really be bankrupt?

The government doesn't buy it. Wilkes' current attorneys -- who apparently see the end of the gravy train in front of them -- submitted a sealed financial document to Burns claiming indigence. But prosecutors are fighting to have it released, claiming that Wilkes may have profited from a transaction shortly after his March indictment alongside his best friend, ex-CIA official Kyle "Dusty" Foggo. Reports the San Diego Union-Tribune:

During the hearing, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office questioned whether Wilkes should be allowed to have an attorney paid for by the government, noting that the defense contractor is believed to have greatly profited from his alleged crimes. In April, Wilkes sold a Poway building that owed millions in past-due mortgage payments for $16.8 million to a San Francisco real estate investment firm.

The government also wanted to view the financial affidavit, arguing the public has a right to know its contents, Jason Forge, a federal prosecutor, told the judge.

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What did John Ashcroft really know about the warrantless surveillance program?

According to FBI Director Robert Mueller's notes on the March 10, 2004 visit to Ashcroft's hospital room, Ashcroft told Andrew Card and Alberto Gonzales that "strict compartmentalization rules" by the White House prevented him from "obtaining the advice he needed" about the warrantless surveillance program. At first glance, I thought that meant that Ashcroft himself was prevented from knowing certain aspects of the program. Several commenters read it differently, and judged that Ashcroft was complaining that his key advisers were barred from information about the program that would inform Ashcroft about its legality. And today, the Washington Post backs them up, citing anonymous official sources.

This, however, seems like two sides of the same coin. If Ashcroft couldn't consult with senior legal advisers about Program X, the White House was essentially keeping Ashcroft -- and the Justice Department -- in the dark about the legal basis for the surveillance program, expecting him to simply bless the effort without asking too many questions. After all, Ashcroft's tenure showed a consistent deference to presidential prerogative -- most notably, when he warned the Senate about the Patriot Act that "those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists." If Ashcroft couldn't vet the program with his legal advisers, it's an open question about what he really "knew" about its legality. Sure enough, as soon as the program was opened to Ashcroft's deputy, Jim Comey, a longtime U.S. attorney and Justice official, Comey saw a program riddled with legal problems.

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The Justice Department argued yesterday before a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that two class-action lawsuits involving warrantless surveillance needed to be thrown out of court for potentially exposing state secrets. And it practically got laughed out of court.

The two cases, Hepting v. AT&T and al-Haramain v. Bush, both center on aspects of the secret surveillance effort run by the National Security Agency after September 11, 2001. In the former case, an ex-AT&T employee claims that the company illegally provided the government with access to a panoply of subscriber information through a system of communications hubs along the west coast. The latter case involves an al-Qaeda-linked charity that claims to have evidence that it was the target of illegal surveillance.

The Justice Department claims that neither case can go forward without compromising crucial intelligence-gathering materials, and asked the judges to dismiss them. Deputy Solicitor General Gregory G. Garre and DOJ lawyer Thomas M. Bondy didn't find them particularly sympathetic.

"This seems to put us in the 'trust us' category," Judge M. Margaret McKeown said about the government's assertions that its surveillance activities did not violate the law. " 'We don't do it. Trust us. And don't ask us about it.' "

At one point, Garre argued that courts are not the right forum for complaints about government surveillance, and that "other avenues" are available. "What is that? Impeachment?" Pregerson shot back.

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One of the best defenses the U.S. has against terrorism is the resistance of American Muslims to radicalization. Al-Qaeda can -- and does -- attempt to place sleeper cells inside the U.S., but its resource-intensive task would be made much easier if the nation's Muslims, estimated at between three and six million, embraced Osama bin Laden's contentions of an irreconcilable conflict between the west and "true" Islam. Instead, owing largely to comparative socio-economic opportunity and the U.S.'s high rates of religiosity, U.S. Muslims are overwhelmingly more likely to work with the FBI than with al-Qaeda. But a report set to be released today by the NYPD warns that one of the U.S.'s best defenses against terrorism is in danger of eroding.

As previewed by ABC News, the report warns of over two dozen population "clusters" in the northeastern U.S. "on a path" to terrorism.

In a report to be made public today, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly concludes the 9/ll attacks were an "anomaly" and the most serious terror threat to the country comes from clusters of "unremarkable" individuals who are on a path that could lead to homegrown terror.

The report by the NYPD intelligence division, "Radicalization in the West and the Homegrown Threat," plots "the trajectory of radicalization" and tracks the path of a non-radicalized individual to an individual with the willingness to commit an act of terror, multiple sources say.

"The threat is real; this is not some bogey man we are creating here. There are individuals who are proselytizing, inciting angry young men to go down this path," said [Rand Corporation terrorism expert Brian] Jenkins, who reviewed and contributed to the NYPD report.

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What's happening in Room 641A of 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco remains one of the most closely-held secrets in the U.S. government. According to a former AT&T employee who assisted two technicians cleared to work in the telecommunications complex on Folsom Street, 641A served as a vacuum cleaner for phone calls and e-mails of terrorism suspects, routing them to the National Security Agency.

The claims made by the ex-employee, Mark Klein, are the basis for a class-action lawsuit against AT&T and affiliated telecoms for illegally harvesting information from U.S. citizens. Tomorrow, reports The Washington Post, judges from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments as to whether the class action should go forward -- or whether the government is right that 641A is a state secret, and can't be litigated without compromising national security. The answer probably won't be determinative -- both sides have vowed to appeal up to the Supreme Court -- but if the case is shut down, a public window on the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance activities, recently blessed by a Congressional overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, will slam shut.

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Here's a guide for future intelligence chiefs who want to take a shortcut around the law. Start out with a genuine problem. Propose a genuine solution, but build into it a bit more leeway for intelligence collection. Negotiate slowly and deliberately. Then use the threat of a terrorist attack at the end of the congressional session to ram through an evisceration of the problematic law, carving out from it all meaningful protections for American citizens. Watch a stunned opposition acquiesce.

Both the Washington Post and the New York Times present that general outline to explain how the Bush administration gutted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act earlier this month. As reported earlier, the FISA Court ruled in March -- the Post provides the date -- that foreign-to-foreign communications, previously unprotected under FISA, required warrants for surveillance as they passed through U.S. communication switches. Admiral Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, saw the National Security Agency "losing capability," in the words of one intelligence official, due to a surveillance backlog generated by the Court ruling.

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The drumbeat against Iran from the administration has been constant this year -- reaching its highest pitch in February, when anonymous military briefers laid out the case to reporters. The Quds force, an elite military brigade, the administration line went, was channeling EFPs (explosively formed penetrators, a particularly dangerous type of IED) into Iraq to be used against U.S. soldiers.

The complications of the case were brushed aside, but despite an organized media offensive by the administration, it was not a wholly successful campaign. But lately the case has been revived. And now McClatchy reports that Dick Cheney has been pushing for strikes against Iranian forces in Iraq. But don't worry -- Cheney says that the administration ought to wait for "hard new evidence":

Behind the scenes, however, the president's top aides have been engaged in an intensive internal debate over how to respond to Iran's support for Shiite Muslim groups in Iraq and its nuclear program. Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iraq run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy....

Cheney, who's long been skeptical of diplomacy with Iran, argued for military action if hard new evidence emerges of Iran's complicity in supporting anti-American forces in Iraq; for example, catching a truckload of fighters or weapons crossing into Iraq from Iran, one official said.

There is the expected divide within the administration on the question -- with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the other side. But a Cheney spokeswoman tells McClatchy "'the vice president is right where the president is' on Iran policy."

Note: The Los Angeles Times has an interesting companion to McClatchy's piece this morning, reporting on Bush's continued attempts to convince Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki that Iran is "not a force for good." From Maliki's perspective -- and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's -- things are obviously a lot more complicated.

Here's a painful Guantanamo Bay irony: What to do with detainees slated for repatriation who fear abuse back home?

That's a serious obstacle confronting the Bush administration as it considers shuttering the facility. The U.S. has legal restrictions barring it from sending people to countries where they're likely to be tortured. As much as human rights groups object to the indefinite detentions and harsh interrogations at Guantanamo, they also don't want to see further abuses occur in the name of closing the camp down, a problem the New York Times spotlights today.

Case in point: Ahmed Belchaba, an Algerian whom the Department of Defense no longer considers a danger to America. He's contesting his repatriation in a case set to be heard by Chief Justice John Roberts.

Lawyers for Mr. Belbacha have said he is at risk of torture or death by Islamist radicals because he once served in the Algerian army, and by the government, which is likely to view him as a terrorist because of his tenure at Guantánamo.

In a filing on Wednesday, the Justice Department opposed any order barring a transfer of Mr. Belbacha, saying that “as the United States has explained, it is in no one’s interest to detain enemy combatants longer than is necessary.”

That case could open courthouse doors to dozens of similar claims by detainees who do not want to be sent home.

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That was a short honeymoon for Admiral Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence. His nomination to the top intelligence job was viewed as a rare instance of Bush-administration maturity, as his tenure at the helm of the National Security Agency earned him a great deal of bipartisan respect. The chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), greeted his confirmation the next month by beaming, "It is hard for me to imagine a better choice than Admiral McConnell."

But after last week's rapid, controversial revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, in which McConnell played chief Congressional negotiator, lawmakers are wondering: Was McConnell set up by the Bush administration? Or is he a willing flunky?

At issue is Thursday's FISA deal. As TPMmuckraker reported, Democrats left a marathon negotiation session with McConnell believing he had agreed to a deal. The proposed revision to FISA would allow the NSA to obtain foreign communications without a warrant. But soon they learned that the White House had rejected the bargain and were left perplexed by McConnell's acquiescence -- a confusion compounded by Friday's Senate passage of a far broader bill.

Despite Democratic recollections of McConnell citing "pressure" from above, both he and the White House now deny that there was ever any "deal" for the administration to scrap. But the acrimony that followed among Democrats, fueled by widespread criticism of the act from civil libertarians and of the Democrats from the press, was intense. After all, the administration used McConnell to negotiate its bill in order to exploit his credibility: its other principal architect, Alberto Gonzales, is politically radioactive. Chairman of the House intelligence committee Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) tells The Los Angeles Times that while he thinks McConnell negotiated in good faith, "I think he got caught up there at the end in the politics of it."

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Welcome to the black sites, the off-the-books detention facilities where the CIA subjected senior al-Qaeda captives to a methodically harsh regime of interrogation.

In this week's The New Yorker, Jane Mayer gives the first reportorial glimpse into the black sites after the Washington Post exposed their existence in 2005. She relies on new sources, including those with direct knowledge of the interrogations, as well as on the Council of Europe's investigation into European Union complicity with the CIA on terrorism detentions.

Inside the black sites, detainees are subject to psychological and physical abuse -- from simulated drowning to prolonged nudity -- so severe that CIA officials fear prosecution. Yet many CIA veterans describe the interrogations there as "nothing like Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo," in the words of a former chief of the agency's Counterterrorism Center, Robert Grenier. "They were very, very regimented. Very meticulous."

Some of the methods employed in the black sites, however, did appear in both Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, where the U.S. military, not the CIA, primarily handled detention and interrogation operations. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the architect of 9/11, was paraded on a dog leash, much like at Abu Ghraib. Black-site denizens, additionally, are subject to exposure to extremely cold cells, which can induce hypothermia, and extended periods of sleeplessness, both of which have been documented by official inquiries (pdf) into Guantanamo Bay. While Mayer's article does not explore the connection, she reports that psychologists from the Special Forces' program to survive torturous interrogations, known as SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape), helped design the interrogation regime, much as they had at Guantanamo.

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How about post-facto FISA review, guys? Interested?

That's the message from Admiral Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence. After a week of grueling briefings on Capitol Hill lobbying for an overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, McConnell last night released a statement reluctantly endorsing putting terrorist surveillance back under FISA Court supervision -- with certain restrictions. The key passage:

However, to acknowledge the interests of all, I could agree to a procedure that provides for court review—after needed collection has begun—of our procedures for gathering foreign intelligence through classified methods directed at foreigners located overseas. While I would strongly prefer not to engage in such a process, I am prepared to take these additional steps to keep the confidence of Members of Congress and the American people that our processes have been subject to court review and approval.

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Even as Congress seeks to determine whether Alberto Gonzales lied under oath about the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, the Democrats have been negotiating with the administration to update the surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

As The Los Angeles Times reports this morning, the alleged need for such a fix was precipitated by a FISA court judge's ruling, which restricted the ability of the National Security Agency to collect information on multiple surveillance targets under a single warrant. Additionally, the FISA Court apparently balked at allowing the NSA to collect intelligence on persons whose location inside or outside the U.S. is unknown. Indeed, there's a lot that isn't clear about the ruling -- the FISA Court meets in secret -- but the Bush administration has apparently persuaded congressional leaders that it creates a cumbersome standard for surveillance, given the extent of the threat from terrorism.

Back in January, remember, the administration brought its warrantless wiretapping program -- known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which monitors communications between persons in the U.S. and "known" terrorists abroad -- under the auspices of FISA, making it no longer warrantless.

The administration's first proposal, apparently, was to take the power to authorize NSA surveillance of foreign targets away from the FISA court and give it to the attorney general . The Democrats, unsurprisingly, said no -- noting that it's generally a bad idea, but especially a bad idea with this attorney general. The administration came back late yesterday with a proposal that the director of national intelligence would have to sign off too. Again, the Democrats said no.

And here's the Dem proposal, as described by The Washington Post this morning:

Congressional Democrats outlined a temporary plan yesterday that would expand the government's authority to conduct electronic surveillance of overseas communications in search of terrorists.

The proposal, according to House and Senate Democrats, would permit a secret court to issue broad orders approving eavesdropping of communications involving suspects overseas and other people, who may be in the United States. To issue an order, the court would not need to identify a particular target overseas, but it would have to determine that those being targeted are "likely," in fact, overseas.

If a foreign target's communications to a person inside the United States reaches a "significant" number, then an court order based on probable cause would be required. It is unclear how "significant" would be defined.

This would seem to lower the bar in terms of the evidence needed to initiate surveillance. The FISA court has a probable cause standard to initiate surveillance of a member of Al Qaeda or some affiliated group. Apparently the Democrats' plan would initially lower that bar -- allowing the targeting of "suspects" -- but then require probable cause once the number of wiretaps became "significant," whatever that means.

Hopefully clarity will enter into whatever ultimate compromise bill emerges. Negotiators are racing to finish and vote on a proposal before the congressional August recess begins Monday. Unless the bill defines critical terms like "significant" and specifies what standard the government will have to meet to begin surveillance on a given target, the compromise will either snarl in congress, depriving the NSA of a tool it says it urgently needs, or protections on Americans' civil liberties will erode even further. Pick your poison.

As we've reported before, Alberto Gonzales' careful parsing of the NSA's surveillance program reflected an administration-wide strategy to obscure just what the administration was up to before senior Justice Department officials refused to continue the activities.

So it shouldn't be a surprise that the director of national intelligence is in on the fun. As we noted yesterday, Michael McConnell sent a letter last afternoon to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) that purported to clarify the issues behind Gonzales' testimony (see below). Gonzales testified, remember, that there had not been disagreement concerning the program that President Bush publicly disclosed in December, 2005. But in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last week, FBI Director Robert Mueller confirmed that the disagreement had been over the NSA surveillance program, a.k.a. the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

McConnell helps muddy the water in his letter (Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) uncharitably calls it "gobbledygook" full of "weasel words"). There was no single surveillance program, McConnell writes, but "various intelligence activities" that had been authorized in a presidential order. And those activities weren't characterized as being in a program until the President was forced to publicly disclose a "particular activity," i.e. "the targeting for interception without a court order of international communications of al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist organizations coming into or going out of the United States." The phrase "Terrorist Surveillance Program," McConnell says, refers only to that specific activity. (Entertainingly enough, he doesn't independently characterize the TSP as a program - just a "particular activity".) Notably, McConnell's letter is the first time that the administration has publicly admitted that "Bush's order included undisclosed activities beyond the warrantless surveillance of e-mails and phone calls that Bush confirmed in December 2005."

Now, none of this weasel wording is new. But it is entertaining to see McConnell bend over backwards to avoid characterizing the bundle of activities authorized by the President in a single order as a program. To admit as much, of course, would be to admit that there was a single NSA program. And that's a slippery slope.

Of course, Bob Mueller and former Deputy Attorney General James Comey don't seem to be in on the fun. To them, there is and was a single program, albeit a program that has undergone major changes.

But wait! There's more! Sen. Specter has said that he still is awaiting a letter from Gonzales which will "interpret" McConnell's letter. It will be, in essence, a parsing of McConnell's parsing. Specter says that he'll only decide whether Gonzales perjured himself after reviewing Gonzales meta-parse. So stay tuned.

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