Murat Kurnaz, a German resident, was captured in Pakistan in 2001 as a suspected terrorist and imprisoned for two months at a U.S. base in Afghanistan. Kurnaz insists that he was hung from a ceiling for five days and was checked periodically by doctors who determined that the torture could continue. Kurnaz, who was eventually freed (the U.S. military gave no reason why) also alleges that he was systematically tortured again in 2005. (Washington Post)

Within hours of its launch, the Bush administration's eavesdropping plan that the NSA implemented in October 2001, generated protests and sharp legal debate. Eric Lichtblau's new book, Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice, also reveals that within 12 hours of the program's launch, FBI technicians "stumbled" upon it, creating a "firestorm of anxiety." (New York Times)

In 2003, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) co-sponsored a law that would limit the role of money in politics by expanding the federal matching system for presidential candidates. But in 2006 and 2007, he refused to add his name to similar laws. (Boston Globe)

A report by Albany County District Attorney P. David Soares reveals that Darren Dopp, Spitzer's former communications director, has provided strong evidence that former Governor Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) directly ordered him ("in a profanity-laced exchange" ) to give reporters records on Senate Republican leader Joseph Bruno's use of state aircraft. Soares believes that had Spitzer not resigned, he could have been indicted. (AP)

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A federal judge has ruled that the Department of Justice is allowed to exempt 68 pages of e-mails sent between White House and Department of Justice officials from a Freedom of Information Act request made by the Democratic National Committee - despite the fact that the e-mails were sent using accounts controlled by the Republican National Committee - because the RNC accounts were used for both official and political business. The DNC had argued that because the accounts were controlled by the RNC, the e-mails could not be exempted from a Freedom of Information request. (The Politico)

As Americans in the Green Zone were told to remain in fortified structures and the Iraqi government prepared for an emergency session, President Bush announced that "normalcy is returning back to Iraq" despite the fact that "some ... seem unwilling to acknowledge that progress is taking place." (Reuters, McClatchy)

Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, the lawyer for Osama bin Laden's former driver, alleges that the Bush administration is attempting to turn his client's trial into a political show trial by orchestrating war-crimes convictions. Mizer has accused Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, who serves as the legal advisor to the White House official overseeing the military tribunals -- of exercising "unlawful command influence" and being "so closely aligned" "with the prosecutorial function that he cannot continue to provide the requisite impartial advice to the convening authority." (LA Times)

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Three anti-war U.S. lawmakers, Jim McDermott (D-WA), Mike Thompson (D-CA), and then-Representative David E. Bonior (D-MI), accepted travel to Iraq in October 2002 that had been secretly financed by Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency. The travel was arranged through a Michigan charity official who has been charged with "with setting up the junket for Hussein's government." None of the lawmakers have been charged with any misconduct and a DoJ spokesman says there's no evidence any of them knew that Hussein had backed the trip. (AP)

U.S. military leaders privately informed President Bush yesterday about their concerns that U.S. military forces have been strained by the long war in Iraq. The briefing was conducted in a secure room at the Pentagon referred to as "the tank." Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell remarked, "armed with all that, the president must now decide the way ahead in Iraq." (USA Today)

Puerto Rico Governor Anibal Acevedo-Vila has been implicated in a corruption probe involving federal campaign-finance crimes. Fund-raiser Robert M. Feldman and three other Philadelphians have also been charged. The governor was charged with conspiracy to violate federal campaign laws, wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the the IRS and filing a false tax return. (Philadelphia Inquirer)

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The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in the case of two American citizens held by the U.S. military in Iraq who are challenging their proposed transfer to the Iraqi legal system. The arguments, which centered on the question of jurisdiction, may intersect with arguments being made in the cases of some Guantanamo detainees. (New York Times)

In 2006 the U.S. accidentally shipped four nuclear-missile detonators to Taiwan. The acknowledgment of this mistake comes on the heels of the Pentagon's admission last fall that a B-52 mistakenly carried armed nuclear missiles across the U.S. The Pentagon failed to detect the missing triggers for more than one year. (McClatchy)

President Bush has asked Congress to pass legislation exempting oil-rich Libya from being sued by victims of state-sponsored terrorism (through the assets Libya has in the United States). Congress has already granted Iraq immunity to such laws at President Bush's request. The administration claims exempting Libya would encourage their support in the current fight against terrorism. (AP)

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Five years into Mr. Bush's war and long after the declaration of "mission accomplished," the U.S. death toll in Iraq has reached 4,000. More than 97 percent of these losses occurred after that declaration. Though the administration continues to ban images of coffins coming home, The New York Times and Huffington Post provide us with the faces of the dead. (Think Progress, New York Times, Huffington Post)

"Curveball," the Iraqi defector whose stories - many of which turned out to be false - were used by the U.S. to make the case for invading Iraq, told Der Spiegel recently that "he is not to blame for the war and that he never said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction." Curveball's accounts of Iraq's weapons program were used by then Secretary of State Collin Powell in his speech to the United Nations in February 2003. (ABC)

The recent revelations that employees of private companies with government contracts improperly accessed the passport files of both Barack Obama and John McCain is adding to concerns that the federal government is relying too much on private contractors to carry out its work. The questions follow recent controversies over the use of private military contractors, such as Blackwater, in Iraq. (AP)

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David Kay, the man who headed the Iraq Survey Group and the Bush administration charged with finding WMD in Iraq after the U.S. invasion, believes that the U.S. intelligence efforts were the biggest “fiasco of my lifetime.” In an interview, Kay asserts that the CIA never spoke to “Curveball” (the Iraqi source who told the Germans that the Iraqis were constructing mobile weapon labs) and the Germans never provided the Americans with “Curveball’s” real name. (Speigel Online International and War & Peace)

Roger Stone, the political operative who has been involved in dirty tricks since the Nixon administration and who was fired from Bob Dole’s campaign when The National Enquirer reported that Stone and his wife were advertising for threesomes (Stone denied it), sent a letter to the FBI four months ago alleging that Eliot Spitzer “used the services of high-priced call girls'' in Florida. Stone, who told the FBI - through his lawyer - that “Gov. Spitzer did not remove his mid-calf length black socks during the sex act,” made these claims several months after he was accused of leaving a “threatening phone message at the office of Bernard Spitzer, the ex-governor's father, regarding ''phony'' campaign loans involving his son's unsuccessful 1994 bid for attorney general.” We are not sure where this sordid set of alleged facts fits in our Spitzer timeline. (Miami Herald)

Chile’s ambassador to the U.N. alleges in his new book, A Solitary War: A Diplomat's Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons, that the Bush administration’s efforts to corral support for the Iraq war engendered enduring “bitterness” and “deep mistrust” among allies in Europe and Latin America. Bush allegedly threatened economic retaliation against nations that withheld support, “spied on allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S pressure to endorse the war.” (Washington Post)

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On Sept. 16th of last year Blackwater guards leading a diplomatic convoy fired shots into Nisour Square in Baghdad, killing 17 civilians, including a 9-year-old boy. Blackwater offered each victim $20,000 in compensation, but, like other victims and their relatives, the boy's father has declined the buyout, and is now attempting to file a lawsuit against the company. (ABC News)

Speaking of Blackwater, House Democrats are requesting documents regarding a loophole in overseas contracting. House Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman, (D-California) sent letters to five executive agencies, marking the beginning of a congressional investigation into how and why a policy enabling possible fraudulent contracting was established. (Associated Press and Oversight.house.gov)

The US Justice Department is defending the practices they employed in pursuing the case against for New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Officials claim the involvement of a public official, as well as large sums of money, warranted the unusually intensive investigation into a prostitution ring, a crime that rarely garners federal scrutiny. (New York Times)

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Pentagon officials are at odds over military strategy in Iraq. Ground commanders, like Gen. David H. Patraeus, advocate an inflated troop presence, while the Joint Chiefs believe otherwise. (Los Angeles Times)

Rep. Henry Waxman, (D-California) is calling for an investigation in faulty electrical wiring of American military bases in Iraq following the electrocution death of Staff Sgt. Ryan D. Maseth, a 24-year-old Green Beret. (New York Times and Speaker.gov)

Health and Human Services Director Michael Leavitt sent a letter to the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology outlining the Bush administration's policy that allows physicians with moral objections to abortion to refuse referring patients to other outlets. (ThinkProgress.org)

(John Amick wrote this post -- ed)

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The Detroit City Council made clear their wish to oust Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick with a 7-1 no confidence vote on Tuesday. Kilpatrick is under fire after text messages revealed that he lied in court testimony about an affair with his former chief of staff. In response to the vote, Kilpatrick said he would not quit. He is, after all, on a mission from God. (Detroit Free-Press)

Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore -- currently running for the U.S. Senate -- was the chairman of a Bear Stearns subsidiary tied to some the highest-risk securities associated with the mortgage industry crisis. (Associated Press)

Five years ago, President Bush commenced the United States with a war in Iraq. The anniversary is this week, after an expensive (long term cost at $4 trillion) half-decade of violence and inner turmoil. Original cost-calculations by the Bush Administration to liberate the Iraqi people and build an entirely new government: $50 to $60 billion.(New York Times)

(This post was written by John Amick --- ed)

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The Justice Department's review of the nation's terrorist watch list reveals that the list is incomplete, not up to date, and inaccurate. Many of the agencies that contribute information to the list, which is managed by the Terrorist Screening Center, lacked standard rules for sharing relevant data, and FBI field agents submitted names to the list without proper vetting. (LA Times)

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is now investigating alleged conflicts of interest within the scientific panels that help shape policy at the Environmental Protection Agency. Of most immediate concern is the "case of eight scientists who were consultants or members of EPA science advisory panels assessing the human health effects of toxic chemicals while getting research support from the chemical industry on the same chemicals they were examining." Meanwhile, Deborah Rice, a prominent toxicologist, was removed from an EPA panel when the The American Chemistry Council questioned her objectivity. (AP)

The U.S. government is now in the business of censoring artwork by Guantanamo Bay detainees. Sami al-Haj, a Sudanese cameramen for the Al-Jazeera TV network, commemorated his 431st day on hunger strike by drawing a picture that reflects the "nightmares of what I must look like, with my head double-strapped down, a tube in my nose, a black mask over my mouth, with no eyes and only giant cheek bones," but the government will not release it. Lawyers for al-Haj have hired a political cartoonist to create drawings based on al-Haj's descriptions. (USA Today)

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President Bush is in no rush to make good on his 2005 promise to expedite a massive backlog of Freedom of Information Act requests. In fact, he has appointed a person to manage already low expectations and inform citizens just how long their request may take to be reviewed. The National Security Archive, a private research group at The George Washington University, says that because unanswered requests only declined from 217,000 to 212,000 over two years, "many of the same old scofflaw agencies are still shirking their responsibilities to the public." (AP)

Questions about Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson's role in his alleged efforts to punish a housing authority director for not helping a friend, remain unanswered even after a round of Senate testimony last week. Jackson refused to answer most questions about an e-mail exchange in which Jackson's assistants discussed how they could make life "less happy" for the Philadelphia Housing Authority director Carl Greene by stripping his agency of federal funds. Jackson claimed that a judge's gag order prevented him from discussing the matter but Senator Specter (R-PA) discovered that this order did not apply to congressional testimony. (Washington Post)

President Bush is the "decider," except when Stephen Johnson, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is the "decider." Johnson has vehemently rejected allegations that the EPA weakened its new smog reduction standards because of orders from Bush. Though records show that Bush became personally involved, Johnson declared, "I made the decision." (AP)

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President Bush has issued an executive order weakening the Intelligence Oversight Board, which was created by the Ford administration following a Congressional investigation into abuses by intelligence agencies. Among the changes: the order "deleted the board's authority to refer matters to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation" and "terminated the board's authority to oversee each intelligence agency's general counsel and inspector general." (Boston Globe)

The goal posts have been moved so many times that it's worth recalling that when President Bush called for a "surge" of troops in Iraq, the stated goal was to create the stability required for the Iraqi government to function effectively and begin the process of reconciliation. By that standard, General Petraeus conceded yesterday that the "surge" has failed. Petraeus informed the press that "no one" in the U.S. and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation," or in the government's ability to provide basic public services. (Washington Post)

A recently released Justice Department report revealed the FBI's abuse of intelligence-gathering privileges through the use of "national security letters," and yesterday two government audits of this abuse revealed that the agency obtained records that the FISA court had deemed protected by the First Amendment." Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department's Inspector General discovered that the FBI attempted to skirt the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court after it twice rejected an FBI records request because "the 'facts' were too thin" and the "request implicated the target's First Amendment rights." (Washington Post)

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Lawyers for Ali al-Marri, a detainee held at the Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina, will assert in court papers that al-Marri was systematically abused and informed that there were numerous videotapes depicting the FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency's handling of him. In a related matter, Defense Department officials are reviewing interrogations at military facilities from Iraq to Guantánamo Bay, and have found approximately 50 tapes, including one that depicts a detainee being forcibly gagged. In February, Seton Hall Law’s Center for Policy and Research reported that it had discovered "new evidence of a longstanding government practice of recording interrogations at Guantánamo Bay," suggesting that "the two CIA tapes that were destroyed were only a tiny fraction of perhaps 24,000 recorded interrogations." (Washington Post, New York Times, Seton Hall University School of Law)

The White House's Office of Management and Budget proposed a new rule last year that obligated contractors to report waste or fraud they encountered in government contract work. However, the rule has a loophole that exempts such mandatory reporting on foreign soil. (Washington Post)

Two detainees at Guantanamo Bay were captured and imprisoned as juveniles. Mohammed Jawad was captured when he was 16 and Omar Khadr was captured when he was 15. The detainees' lawyers are asking for leniency but Military prosecutors say that there is no provision for juvenile status under the 2006 war-crimes tribunal laws. (AP)

Despite high profile support for an earmark moratorium, any measure banning lawmakers' ability to fund home-state projects is likely to fail. The Senate will likely reject the moratorium today and even Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who initially seemed supportive of reform, has tempered her support. Meanwhile, The Hill reports that "congressional candidates in tight races, from Alaska to New York, are vowing to pursue earmarks despite the intensifying movement against pet projects." (Washington Post, The Hill)

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The House, overcoming the objections of 23 Democrats and 159 Republicans, has finally passed a much debated ethics bill that will, for the first time ever, allow nonmembers to initiate investigations. The reform measure comes at time when two House lawmakers are under indictment, two have been sent to prison, and several others are under federal investigation. (Washington Post)

John McCain boasts that he was crusading against excessive spending and legislative corruption when he helped block the Boeing-Air Force air tanker contract. But lobbyists in his campaign, including his finance chair, helped Airbus beat out Boeing last year for a $35 billion contract to build aerial refueling tanker planes. McCain is under scrutiny in this deal because he sent letters "urging the Defense Department, in evaluating the tanker bids, not to consider the potential effects of a separate United States-Airbus trade dispute." (Washington Post, New York Times)

All Muck Is Local favorite Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (D) accused his critics yesterday of having an "unethical, illegal, lynch mob mentality." Kilpatrick is facing calls for his resignation over a text messaging scandal that revealed he had a romantic relationship with his chief of staff and has led to possible perjury charges. (AP)

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The Antoin "Tony" Rezko trial has focused attention on a "vaguely worded" e-mail that alludes to Barack Obama's role in empowering a state health planning board that Rezko allegedly packed with associates - many of whom made political contributions to Obama. At the time that the e-mail was written, the board was set to expire and Obama was chairman of the Illinois Senate’s health committee. (New York Times)

The Washington Monthly features 37 short essays on torture. Though the contributors are from across the political spectrum, the unifying message of the articles" is, "simply, Stop." (Washington Monthly)

A new report from Human Rights First, entitled "Tortured Justice" criticizes "the use of evidence tainted by torture and other inhuman treatment" in the cases against detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. The report also states that the use of such evidence is "tainting the legitimacy of the proceedings, both at home and in the eyes of the international community; alienating US allies and empowering terrorists." (AFP)

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If only they had listened to Doug Feith. In a soon to be released "massive score-settling work" on the run-up to the Iraq war, Feith skewers Colin Powell, the CIA, Gen. Tommy R. Franks (who called Feith "the f***king stupidest guy on the face of the earth") and L. Paul Bremer for their misguided pre-invasion planning and mismanaged occupation. Feith asserts that the State Department and intelligence experts undermined his genius work and President Bush's policies. While Feith praises Donald Rumsfeld, he elides "some of the basic facts of the war, such as the widespread skepticism inside the top of the U.S. military about invading Iraq, with some generals arguing that doing so would distract attention from the war against global terrorists." (Washington Post)

In The Nation, the author of Air Wars: The Fight to Reclaim Public Broadcasting explains how John McCain "broke the rules while doing the bidding of media mogul Lowell "Bud" Paxson, a major contributor to McCain's 2000 presidential campaign" and how "McCain's staff lied it [sic] about it then and they are inventing new lies even now." (The Nation)

After four years of investigations, the Senate Intelligence Committee is finally ready to release a report critiquing President Bush's claims about Iraq's WMD program in the buildup to the Iraq war. Though the report details the numerous wildly erroneous White House assertions that provided the pretext for invading Iraq, officials assert that the report stops short of alleging that the Bush manipulated intelligence. In short, one official has concluded that "the left is not going to be happy. The right is not going to be happy. Nobody is going to be happy." (LA Times)

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Based on guidance by Bill Clinton and his reliance on President Bush's November 2001 order that expands former presidents' ability to keep internal White House records private, federal archivists will prevent public access to Clinton's papers on the 140 pardons he issued in his last days - including his granting of clemency to fugitive millionaire Marc Rich. The decision has blocked USA Today's Freedom of Information Act Request for information about White House pardon communications and pardon requests rejected by the Justice Department. (USA Today)

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee issued a report calling for Murray Energy - the company in charge of the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah where six miners were buried alive - to be "fully investigated" because it ignored crucial warning signs and maintained an illegal agreement with federal regulators. The Senate's blistering report called upon the Department of Labor to refer the case to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation of Murray Energy, but the Mine Safety and Health Administration alleges that it is wrong for the Senate to call for an investigation before it has concluded its probe. (Salt Lake Tribune)

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has asked a federal judge to order the White House to explain "alleged inconsistencies between testimony at a congressional hearing last week and what the White House told a federal court in January" concerning the controversy over missing White House e-mails. (AP)

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FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted to Congress yesterday that his agency had improperly spied on Americans through the use of administrative subpoenas called national security letters. According to Mueller, a Justice Department report will soon document the agency's recurring invasion of Americans' privacy in 2006. An FBI audit shows that the FBI potentially violated laws or its own policies on more than 1,000 occasions from 2003 to 2005. (Washington Post)

The newly proposed Office of Congressional Ethics, if enacted into law, will only be allowed to initiate new investigations during July and August. Moreover, any investigation that OCE pursues must be approved by the House ethics committee but that committee is notorious for its glacial movement. One GOP aide notes that “it’s interesting Democrats have devised an ‘ethics reform’ bill that basically guarantees that investigations are punted until after Election Day." It's also interesting that Democratic leaders failed to rally support for their own measure and bring the bill to a vote (sub. req.) yet again. (Politico, Roll Call)

President Bush seems intent on securing a conviction of a Guantanamo Bay detainee (other than that of the Australian prisoner who made a plea deal) before his term expires. With new charges just filed against another Guantanamo prisoner, the trial calendar is full and resources for defendants are scarce. This appears to be an effort to set "up dry runs of the untested legal process that will be used to prosecute self-professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and five other "high-value" prisoners later this year." (LA Times)

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Lawyers for Omar Khadr, a Canadian who will be tried by a military commission in Guantanamo Bay on "charges that include murder, related to a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan that left a U.S. soldier dead," are investigating whether a video of Khadr that appeared on CBS' 60 Minutes last fall was leaked by Vice-President Dick Cheney's office. According to Khadr's lawyer, former Guantanamo chief prosecutor Col. Morris Davis "thinks it's possible or likely this tape came from the vice-president's office." If the allegations are true, he says, it would be a "clear violation of the protective orders that are in place" in the case. (CTV)

The towns of Brattleboro and Marlboro, Vermont have passed articles of indictment against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for their violations of the U.S. Constitution. Though one supporter of the articles remarked that he hoped the two were impeached before they were arrested in Vermont, the latter is unlikely because Vermont is the only state in that President Bush has never visited. (USA Today)

When FBI Director Robert Mueller testifies at the Senate today he will face questions about alleged civil rights violations during terror and spy investigations, including the use of national security letters. Last year the Justice Department's inspector general reported that the FBI, between 2003 to 2005, collected personal data on citizens without authorization and in non-emergency situations. (AP)

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A high profile trial for two former high-ranking Shiite government officials accused of kidnapping and killing "scores of Sunnis" has ended abruptly, despite intense preparation for the trial and extensive evidence, because prosecutors dropped the case. A U.S. legal adviser believes that this stunning collapse "shows that the judicial system in Iraq is horribly broken" and "sends a terrible signal: If you are Shia, then no worries; you can do whatever you want and nothing is going to happen to you." (Washington Post)

When Edgar Domenech, the 23-year veteran of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (he was second-in-command for four years), told the Justice Department about mismanagement at ATF, Justice first ignored him but then demoted him, denied him a bonus, and attempted to give him a poor job review. Domenech, who yesterday filed a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, realizes that "In retrospect, I was naive to believe that the department would welcome my honesty." (Washington Post)

The White House issued an executive order on Friday that takes some of the powers given to the Intelligence Oversight Board and shifts them to the Director of National Intelligence. The administration says the change is designed to strengthen the office of the National Intelligence Director, while critics argue that it will weaken oversight and "dilute the independent board's investigatory powers in favor of a member of the president's administration." (AP)

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Manfred Nowak, the torture investigator for the U.N., said yesterday that he has heard "credible" allegations that in 2002 and 2003 the U.S. detained terrorist suspects on the island of Diego Garcia, a British territory housing a joint U.S. and UK military base. Britain has revealed that the U.S. has used the island in the past as a refueling stop for secret renditions, but says that the U.S. has "denied using the island as a detention center." (AP)

Given President Bush's remarks to newspaper editors that "I don't want you reading my personal stuff," it is not surprising that the White House has been so negligent in archiving its e-mails. Recent Congressional testimony and court filings reveal that the CEO president disregards "fundamental principles that well-run private companies adhere to routinely." Despite two federal laws that require preservation of White House e-mail, approximately 1,000 days of e-mail are missing from the White House. (AP)

On the eve of the Pentagon's first death penalty trial, the American Bar Association has told President Bush that inadequate resources available to the Chief Pentagon Defense Counsel and the fundamental lack of due process in the Guantanamo Bay tribunal system undermine American standards of justice. The ABA's president emphasized that Guantanamo detainees "cannot challenge their detention by habeas corpus," "the standards for admissibility of evidence could allow for convictions based on rank hearsay," and "statements secured through coercion could be introduced against a defendant.'' (Miami Herald)

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