Jim Gibbons

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Kate Klonick | June 27, 2008, 9:41AM

Yes, the caption at left is correct. That's Governor Jim Gibbons (R-NV), in a warm embrace with a former Playboy model who is most definitely not his wife.

Last we heard in the Gibbons v. Gibbons fiasco, the governor and the First Lady had called a truce in their acrimonious divorce proceedings.

But since that joint statement, Gibbons has been implicated in other acts of philandering: hundreds of text messages to a female "friend" and affectionate outings with younger women-- the most recent of which was caught on film.

The Nevada Appeal this morning, published a series of pictures of Gibbons and a female companion at a rodeo in Reno.

Gibbons responded in a brief statement to the Appeal:

What it shows, according to the governor, is him comforting a stressed out friend. "She was upset, crying," he said during a quick hallway interview with our reporter, who'd been trying to get a comment from the governor or his staff for two days. "She couldn't get her breath. I put my arms around her."

So who is the mystery parking lot woman seeking solace on Gibbons' shoulder?

According to the Appeal:

[W]e did a little checking on our own and now know his companion to be the ex-Playboy-model, ex-wife of an ex-Reno mayor. She is not the woman with whom he has widely been accused of having an affair of late and with whom he exchanged hundreds of text messages at all hours. But he has been seen around Reno with this woman, too. In fact, there are cell phone pictures of the two together at a Reno restaurant posted on area blogs.

Just for some context, the Appeal's photo spread comes in the midst of a huge budget crisis in Nevada.

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Topics: Jim Gibbons, Must Read

Must Read

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Kate Klonick | June 24, 2008, 9:42AM

The first in a series of inspector general reports investigating the politicization of the Justice Department is expected today, and the Washington Post has a sneak peek.

The report to be released today by DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine will, according to the Post, chronicle how young conservative law students were favored hires in stocking the DOJ's prestigious -- and heretofore non-partisan -- Honors Program.

Under former Attorney General John Ashcroft, oversight for the Honors Program, which had traditionally been the responsibility of senior career officials, fell under the purview of Ashcroft's key political advisers.

The honors program, which each year places about 150 law school graduates with top credentials in a rotation of Justice jobs, historically had operated under the control of senior career officials. Shifting control of the program to Ashcroft's advisers prompted charges of partisanship from law professors and former government lawyers who had worked under Democratic administrations.

Critics complained that the honors program favored conservative applicants, and turned down highly qualified prospects because of left-leaning affiliations:

One Harvard Law School graduate said that when he applied for the honors program a few years ago he was warned by professors and fellow students to remove any liberal affiliations from his résumé.

Concerned Justice employees also raised alarms last year by sending a letter to lawmakers who had been examining whether political considerations led to the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys.

Keep an eye out for Michael Elston in the report today. The former chief of staff to the deputy attorney generalwas named as a central figure in the politicization of the honors program over a year ago:

Allegations concerning political hiring for the Honors Program -- the Department's historically rigorous program for hiring entry-level lawyers -- have centered on Michael Elston, the chief of staff to the deputy attorney general. A group of anonymous Justice Department employees raised alarms with Congress last month, complaining that Elston rejected hundreds of potential applicants to the program last year seemingly based on their political backgrounds.

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Topics: John Ashcroft, Must Read

Must Read

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Kate Klonick | June 18, 2008, 10:00AM

Yesterday we learned about the CIA's larger involvement in developing torture techniques at Guantanamo Bay -- techniques previously thought to have been developed primarily by the military.

In an epic eight-hour, three-panel hearing, the Senate Armed Services Committee examined dozens of documents and grilled former Pentagon officials involved in developing the interrogation methods introduced in 2002.

(Among several good articles on the hearings, a good place to start isSpencer Ackerman's article at the Washington Independent.)

Key to the hearings were the minutes of a meeting between CIA counter-terrorism lawyer Jonathan Fredman and a group of military and intelligence officials who convened at the base in Cuba to discuss the use of harsher interrogation techniques on detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The techniques derived from a training regimen U.S. Special Forces troops used prepare troops to withstand torture --Survival Evasion Resistance Escape, or SERE.

The SERE program -- first introduced to many by a 2005 article by the New Yorker's Jane Mayer -- is not an interrogation program. Nor is it an intelligence-collection program. Instead, it's an obscure program across the different military services' special-forces wings that teaches troops how to withstand torture if captured. Instructors subject students -- under the rigorous watch of psychologists and physicians -- to various torture techniques, including waterboarding, prolonged stress positions, sleep deprivation and sensory manipulation. Waterboarding "is an overwhelming experience that induces horror, triggers a frantic survival instinct," Malcolm Nance, a former Navy SERE instructor who was himself waterboarded, testified to Congress in November. "As the event unfolded, I was fully conscious of what was happening: I was being tortured."

On July 25, 2002, the Defense agency that oversees the SERE program, known as the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, or JPRA, was contacted by a representative of Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes for information about SERE practices for the "exploitation process" -- that is, getting detainees to cooperate with their interrogators. The next day, JPRA's chief of staff, Air Force Lt. Col. Daniel Baumgartner, sent Haynes a lengthy memorandum explaining how the program worked.

. . . Baumgartner's memorandum was not the last time SERE techniques were introduced into the interrogation bloodstream. On the week of Sept. 16, 2002, JPRA officials invited a contingent of senior Guantanamo-based officers to a briefing session at Ft. Bragg, N.C. Haynes and his legal counterparts at the Central Intelligence Agency, Justice Dept. and the vice president's office visited Guantanamo the following week for an update on interrogations. The minutes of that meeting record that the commander of the detention facility "did take Mr. Haynes and a few others aside for private conversations."

Just the week after that, a senior CIA lawyer, Jonathan Fredman, instructed Guantanamo officers on various SERE-pedigreed torture methods, including waterboarding. "If the detainee dies," Fredman said, "you're doing it wrong." In response, the chief Guantanamo Bay attorney, Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, said, "We will need documentation to protect us."

The Washington Post today emphasized that the meeting records, specifically Feldman's statements, revealed the CIA's larger involvement in advising on the torture techniques, the creation of which was previously thought to fall mainly under the purview of the Defense Department.

Baumgarten and Beaver testified about their involvement:

Before the Senate panel, Baumgartner said he did not realize that Haynes wanted to use SERE techniques on enemy combatants. "I had no idea how it would be used," he testified. "When tasked by my higher headquarters... I can't really turn around and tell the flag officers and the senior executive service people no."

Beaver testified today for the first time since Haynes declassified her guidance in mid-2004. She said she intended for the techniques to be used under supervised and restricted circumstances. It turned out that not a single other military lawyer submitted written guidance in support of the SERE-derived techniques. "In hindsight," Beaver told the Senate panel, "I can only conclude that others chose not to write on this issue in order not to be linked to it. For me, that was not an option."

Meanwhile, Haynes attempted to distance himself from the policy.

Haynes, who retired from the Pentagon in April, after his nomination to the federal judiciary foundered, pled ignorance. "No, sir, I don't remember it at the time," Haynes said when asked if he had received Baumgartner's memorandum. "But I saw it a long time ago... it's possible I saw it at the time."

Pressed by Levin on how he could not have seen a memorandum concerning terrorism detentions and interrogations, Hayes replied, "the recipient is the Office of the Secretary of Defense General Counsel, which [was] not my precise title."

For more coverage, also see Ackerman's live blog of the hearing as it took place.

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Kate Klonick | June 16, 2008, 12:01PM

Brad Schlozman, the former Justice Department official who left the Department in August 2007 after he openly admitted to "boasting" about his hiring of conservative Republicans, is the focus of a new turn in the DOJ's investigation into the 2006 U.S. attorneys firing scandal.

You might remember Schlozman as the head of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division-cum-U.S. attorney in Kansas City, and most recently, his work at Main Justice. Schlozman famously talked of replacing Clinton appointees with "good Americans" and keeping tabs on a lawyer who he had heard, "didn't even vote for Bush."

The Wall Street Journal reports today that lawyers have filed for a grand jury referral, which could lead to criminal charges, in order to investigate Schlozman's involvement in improper prosecutions during his time running the DOJ's civil-rights division in general. The referral appears specifically tied to possible perjury in his 2007 congressional testimony.

The Journal, summarizes Schlozman's past role in the investigation:

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Schlozman conceded boasting to associates about the number of Republicans he managed to hire at the department. The allegations against him helped feed months of scandal that eventually forced the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in August.

. . . At a Senate hearing last June, Democrats zeroed in on allegations that Mr. Schlozman was part of an effort by Republican political officials to pursue vote-fraud investigations in important swing states as a way to gain electoral advantage.

Mr. Schlozman's promotion to the U.S. attorney's office in Kansas City came after the department asked his predecessor, Todd P. Graves, to resign. Mr. Graves was among several U.S. attorneys who had shown reluctance to bring vote-fraud-related cases, according to testimony and documents gathered by Senate investigators last year.

After Mr. Schlozman's arrival in Kansas City, prosecutors filed charges against workers from a left-leaning activist group, Acorn. The workers eventually pleaded guilty to violations related to voter registration. The timing of the indictment, five days before a close Senate election, drew criticism from Democrats.

Schlozman filed a clarification of his Congresional testimony, in which he had first stated that he was "directed" to pursue the timely prosecution of the voting group by superiors. In his later revision he took "full responsibility" for prosecutorial discretion:

"I want to be clear that, while I relied on the consultation with, and suggestions of, the Election Crimes Branch in bringing the indictments when I did, I take full responsibility for the decision to move forward with the prosecutions related to Acorn while I was the interim U.S. Attorney," he said in the clarification.

DOJ inspectors are hoping to complete the investigation in the coming weeks:

Separate investigations into the department's handling of the prosecutor firings and related issues, which are being conducted by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility and the Inspector General, are expected to be completed within the next few weeks, lawyers familiar with the probe said. Both want to abide by department guidelines aimed at clearing up politically sensitive investigations well before the elections, to avoid accusations they could influence the outcome.

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Topics: Bradley Schlozman, Must Read

Must Read

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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.

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Topics: Must Read, Samuel Israel III

Must Read

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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.

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Topics: Iraq Contractors, Must Read

Must Read

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Kate Klonick | June 6, 2008, 11:02AM

Phase II, the 200+ page Senate intelligence committee's report on pre-war intelligence in Iraq, has revealed the disconnect between what was espoused by Bush Administration officials in the days building up to the war in Iraq, and what was actually known. Besides the simple absence of intelligence, it has also been revealed that the Administration advanced arguments in contradiction of what the intelligence actually showed, in making its case for war.

We've covered Rumsfeld's false testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, and the general outcry from both sides of the aisle over the report.

Today, the LA Times has a good summary of excerpts from the report, which highlight the chasm between what was said by the President and Vice President, and what was actually known:

Statements in dozens of prewar speeches and interviews created the impression that Baghdad and Al Qaeda had forged a partnership. But the report concludes that such assertions "were not substantiated by the intelligence" being shown to senior officials at the time.

Claims that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had met with an Iraqi agent in Prague, for example, were dubious from the beginning and subsequently discounted. The idea that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had provided chemical and biological weapons training to Al Qaeda hinged on intelligence from a source who soon was discredited.

Bush officials strayed even further from the evidence in suggesting that Hussein was prepared to provide weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda terrorist groups -- a linchpin in the case for war.

In October 2002, for example, Bush warned in a key speech in Cincinnati that "secretly, and without fingerprints, [Hussein] could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own." The threat was repeated frequently in the run-up to war but was "contradicted by available intelligence information," the committee says.

On post-war prospects, the report contrasts the rosy scenarios conjured by Cheney and others with more sober intelligence warnings that were being presented to senior officials.

Cheney's prediction that U.S. forces would "be greeted as liberators" was at odds with reports from the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, which warned nearly a year earlier that invading U.S. forces would face serious resistance from "the Baathists, the jihadists and Arab nationalists who oppose any U.S. occupation of Iraq."

Other findings show that it seems Pentagon officials were duped by known Iranian counterintelligence. From McClatchy:

A small group of Pentagon officials collected dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran from Iranian exiles whom Defense Department counterintelligence investigators said might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," the Senate Intelligence Committee reported Thursday.

The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have tried to use a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator and who remain determined to combat what President Bush this week called an "existential" threat from Iran.

A 2003 report by the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity, the Senate committee said, concluded that Michael Ledeen, the American civilian who brokered the contacts through Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian exile whom the CIA in 1984 labeled a "fabricator," and other Iranians "was likely unwitting of any counterintelligence issues related to his relationship with Mr. Ghorbanifar." [Emphasis ours.]

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Must Read

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Kate Klonick | June 5, 2008, 9:35AM

As the Bush years wind to a close, and administration officials slink back to jobs in the private sector, the road ahead of Daniel Gonzalez, the chief of staff for Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, seems bleak.

From the New York Times:

Hoping to pursue a career in an entirely different field from telecommunications, Mr. Gonzalez invested in a small energy company three years ago and then joined the company's board in 2006. The company, law enforcement officials say, turns out to have been a fraudulent venture that took more than $54 million from investors.

In what looks to be a Ponzi scheme, Gonzalez personally guaranteed bank loans to the company of over $10 million, even though his personal worth was only in the hundreds of thousands, the banks allege. Gonzales disputes that allegation.

The energy company, MCube Petroleum, was founded by Robert Miracle, who appears to have a more checkered past than he presented to investors. Gonzalez's involvement with the company, began when he was introduced to Miracle by a childhood friend.

Mr. Miracle, who was born in 1960, represented himself as a seasoned businessman. In a company overview, he said he had more than 20 years of experience at Toyota and NASA and served as an adviser to Frank G. Wells, the former president of Disney.

But an affidavit by a criminal investigator for the Internal Revenue Service said that Mr. Miracle had never worked for Mr. Wells, and that in 1994, Mr. Miracle had been convicted of felony theft in Oregon for stealing textbooks from a community college. The affidavit said that, rather than working at Disney, Mr. Miracle might have been involved in reselling textbooks from universities.

Through his lawyer, Miracle denies any wrongdoing:

Mr. Miracle's lawyer, Greg Hollon, denied that his client had committed fraud. "We are confident that when the whole story is heard, and all of the facts of this matter properly understood, he will be vindicated," Mr. Hollon said. He added he could not discuss the details of the case because of the pending criminal investigation.

While it seems possible that Gonzalez was the victim of a con by Miracle, the question of why he would ever personally guarantee $10 million in company loans remains unknown.

Friends and colleagues are puzzled about why he took such a large risk. Asked why his client would guarantee a promissory note of $10 million when his net worth was so much smaller, Mr. Willey said, "I cannot give an answer."

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