Army's Surgeon General Knew Of Outpatient Conditions Before WaPo Article
"Though he has since dodged the question in a television interview, the officer in charge of medical care for the U.S. Army was told more than two months ago that the Army's outpatient medical care program was dysfunctional, yet he apparently took no action in response. The Army's outpatient services include the substandard treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that has been the subject of a number of recent articles in the Washington Post and a series of stories in Salon in 2005." (Salon)

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Ashcroft Holding Ethically Questionable Pizza Luncheon
"A pizza luncheon to be hosted this Wednesday by former Attorney General turned consultant John Ashcroft for some of his old political appointees has raised eyebrows in the Justice Department's ethics office, U.S. News has learned. The ethics office, which provides Justice employees with guidance on a wide range of ethics questions, has not instructed invitees not to attend the lunch." (U.S. News & World Report)

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Questions of Cost-Cutting in Army's Disabilities Ratings
"The Army is shortchanging troops on their disability retirement ratings to hold down costs, according to veterans advocates, lawyers and service members...The number of soldiers approved for permanent disability retirement has plunged by more than two-thirds, from 642 in 2001 to 209 in 2005, according to a Government Accountability Office report last year. That decline has come even as the number of soldiers wounded or injured in Iraq has soared above 15,000." (Army Times)

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Expert Declares Padilla Mentally Unfit for Trial
“Alleged al-Qaida operative Jose Padilla suffers from intense stress and anxiety after being imprisoned in isolation for years and cannot adequately help his lawyers prepare for a criminal trial, a mental expert testified Thursday.” Padilla is charged with helping al-Qaida operatives in North America provide supplies, money, and new recruits to other terrorist cells. (Time)

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Lobbying Work Nice Fit for Ex-lawmakers
Despite a number of scandals casting a dark shadow over the influence of interest groups in Washington, a total of five of the the 39 lawmakers voted out last November have found jobs as lobbyists in the capitol. (USA Today) After stepping down as the governer of Maryland, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. is opening an office of a North Carolina law firm in the Baltimore area that will include a public affairs consulting group. (The Baltimore Sun)

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Slow Going For Gitmo Trial Preparations
Hoping to charge between 60 and 80 of its 400 Guantanamo Bay detainees, the military has been agressively preparing cases by poring over 40,000 pages of amassed documents. With some prisoners having remained in the facility for over 5 years years without receiving formal charges, Pentagon legal adviser Thomas Hemingway argued that "if they want a faster process, we are going to need additional resources." (Associated Press)

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Lobbyists Lost Steam in '06
"Ethics jitters and the distraction of campaign season hit K Street with a one-two punch last year, as the top lobbying firms posted negligible growth. Revenues for the top 25 shops inched north of the $400 million mark for the first time ever, but earnings across the board climbed just 2 percent for the period. That’s compared to 2005, when the biggest firms grew by 9 percent. " (Roll Call)

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Pelosi Appoints Jefferson to Homeland Security Panel
"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who stripped embattled Rep. William Jefferson of his seat on a powerful tax committee last year, has decided to put him on the Homeland Security panel, infuriating some Republicans who charge he may be a security risk. Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat, was kicked off the Ways and Means Committee amid a federal bribery probe, yet still won re-election to a ninth term." (Associated Press)

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Iraq Auditors Count $10 Billion Wasted
"About $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on Iraq reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses, and federal investigators warned Thursday that significantly more taxpayer money is at risk. The three top auditors overseeing work in Iraq told a House committee their review of $57 billion in Iraq contracts found that Defense and State department officials condoned or allowed repeated work delays, bloated expenses and payments for shoddy work or work never done." (Associated Press)

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Patriot Act's Provision on U.S. Attorneys to Come Under Scrutiny in Senate
"Congressional Democrats and some Republicans are trying to change part of the USA Patriot Act that allows the Bush administration to fire and replace federal prosecutors indefinitely without Senate confirmation. Freshly briefed by the Justice Department on the forced resignations of some of the seven U.S. attorneys since the act took effect, Senate Democrats planned to bring a bill to the floor Thursday that would impose a 120-day deadline on the amount of time a replacement could serve without Senate confirmation." (Associated Press)

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Government Contractor Dwarfs Competitors
One of the most well-endowed government contractors, the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), also stands as one the most secretive. Having provided support to the NSA's wiretapping program and the FBI's software update, both of which turned out to be "colossal failures," SAIC has receieved far less scrutiny than mega-contractors Halliburton and Bechtel. Nevertheless, with an employee payroll of 44,000 and a 2006 profit that reaced $8 billion, SAIC looks poised to continue its under-the-radar growth in the coming year. (Vanity Fair)

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Washington Executive Skirts Lobbying Regulations
He’s a lobbyist’s lobbyist – a Washington insider whose central concern in past months has been poking holes in the Democratic Congress’ efforts to curtail the influence of lobbying in the capital. And by running a long campaign that successfully eased travel restriction in the new legislation, American Society of Association Executives president John H. Graham IV has been able to do just that. (The Washington Post)

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Fired CIA Official Files Lawsuit
“A federal judge has ruled that a CIA agent identified only as ‘Doe,’ allegedly fired after he gathered prewar intelligence showing that Iraq was not developing weapons of mass destruction, can proceed with his lawsuit against the CIA. The judge has ordered both parties to submit discovery requests–evidence they want for their case–to be completed by March 15, according to the CIA agent's lawyer and a spokesman for the Justice Department, which is defending the CIA in court.” (U.S. News & World Report)

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Cheney's Secrecy Fight Reaches a Key Point
"An important legal ruling is pending over Vice President Cheney's refusal to disclose statistics on document classification and declassification activity. The Information Security Oversight Office, which is responsible for the policy and oversight of the government's security classification system, has asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to direct Cheney's office to disclose these statistics." (U.S. News & World Report)

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Russert Denies Role in Plamegate
Testifying as the final prosecution witness in Scooter Libby's perjury trial, NBC News journalist Tim Russert denied ever mentioning CIA officer Valerie Plame's name, asserting that he discovered her identity only after reading an article by columnist Bob Novak. As the trial comes to its conclusion, the newsman's testimony stands as a firm contradiction to Libby's claims of having learned of Plame's identity through Russert, and could further damage the defense of the former White House official. And by the way, you can hear a recording of Libby's grand jury testimony here. (The Washington Post)

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Cheney's Son-in-Law Hindering DHS Oversight Effort
"The Department of Homeland Security refuses to cooperate on oversight activities, according to testimony offered today by GAO Comptroller General David Walker and Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner. The investigators highlighted the role of Philip Perry — Chief Counsel of the Department of Homeland Security and Vice President Cheney’s son-in-law — as the major stumbling block in their investigations." (Think Progress)

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A Far-Off Airport Holds a Clue to Renditions
A remote, snow-covered airport in Poland seems an unlikely site for international intrigue and CIA malfeasance. Nevertheless, "in late 2002 and 2003, there was a flurry of unusual activity at Mazury-Szczytno International Airport, a former military facility that happens to be near a Polish intelligence training complex where European investigators suspect the CIA maintained a secret interrogation and detention facility." (Chicago Tribune)

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Senators Still Unclear on Arar Rendition
After a top-secret meeting, Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) said they still have more questions than answers about why Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen whom U.S. authorities rendered to Syria, where he says he was tortured, is still on the no-fly list. (Globe and Mail)

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FBI Agent's Testimony Damages Libby's Claim
The government's case churned on yesterday in the perjury and obstruction trial of former Dick Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby with testimony from FBI agent Deborah S. Bond, who said that Libby claimed in questioning that he had not been the source of the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. (NYT) Also damning to Libby was a video shown to jurors of White House spokesman Scott McClellan telling reporters that Libby was not the source of the leak, which undercuts his claim that he was scapegoated to protect others in the administration. (LA Times). There's a helpful witness rundown here. (AP)

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The Still-Hampered Iraq Rebuilding Effort
The Special Inspector General of Iraq Reconstruction reported yesterday that "despite nearly $108 billion that had been budgeted for the reconstruction of Iraq since the 2003 invasion, the country’s electrical output and oil production were still below prewar levels and stocks of gasoline and kerosene had plummeted to their lowest levels in at least two years." Many American contractors are suspected of having wasted funds; others, such as DynCorp, which "[billed] the United States for millions of dollars of work that was never authorized and [started] other jobs before they were requested," may have committed outright fraud. (The New York Times)

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