Robert Mueller Visits House Judiciary Committee
On CSPAN3 and via the Committee website (though the latter didn’t work for me).
The two big issues will be the new guidelines for FBI investigations–which may allow racial profile–as well as the laughable case the FBI made that Bruce Ivins was the sole killer in the anthrax attack.
In an opening stated, Jerrold Nadler revealed that the FBI would not give staffers on HJC the new guidelines–they were able to see the guidelines, but not keep a copy. Nadler made a back-handed suggestion that the FBI had done so to prevent Congress from providing influence on those guidelines.
Mueller says the new guidelines are in the process of implementation and says they have [with emphasis] been briefed to HJC’s staff.
I guess input would be too much to ask.
Mueller on Ivins: "Special concern for the victims of the mailings … provide special information … included information about science developed for the investigation…. developed for the investigation … we have initiated discussions with National Academy of Sciences to undertake a review of the scientific approach … have provided as much information as we can."
Conyers starts out impatient: This has been months we’ve been trying to get a response to the seven questions I put to you."
Mueller: I’ve always made myself available … when it comes to QFRs, it goes through review and there is some delay. We worked to get to it back to you as soon as we could yesterday. We do our level best to get you responses as soon as we can. I will also sit down and discuss issues that may be on your mind.
Conyers talking about a raid conducted by 200 officers to find out who paid for the Cuyahoga County Dem Chair’s driveway paving. Mueller will get back to Conyers.
Nadler: Congratulations for your role in standing up against abuse of power [referring to Gellman’s exceprts of Angler]. In understanding bottom line of investigation and how accurate we can take it to be, it’s important to understand murder weapons: contained silica. Some observers say it may have been sophisticated additive, requires special expertise, former boss of Ivins says he did not have. Briefing last month, govt scientists say anthrax contained no additives. Scientists say a percentage higher than 1/2 of 1 percent has never been found naturally. What was the percentage of weight of silicon?
Mueller: I’d have to get back to you.
Nadler: You can tell us what that percentage was. Only handful of facilities having the expertise to make such a power–CIA contractor in OH. Were those facilities ever a target in investigation?
Mueller: You can assume we looked at every laboratory that had both type of Ames anthrax and individuals capable of undertaking drying of anthrax.
Nadler: And addition of silica, if that turns out to be the case. Why zero in on Detrick?
Mueller: Would have to get back to you. We developed morphology used in letters. That led to identifying the vial that was labeled RMR1029 found in Ivins’ laboratory. Clear identification of the anthrax in the letters that was in the vial. That in and of itself would give you one means of eliminating the others. We traced all the anthrax distributed from that vial.
Nadler: Do you agree there may be need of independent review of evidence, would bureau cooperate, what downsides could there be?
Mueller: Will request National Academy of Science to review it. Independent review.
Nadler: Get back to us with percentage of silica and why these other facilities ruled out.
Bobby Scott: Abusing your right to vote. Something FBI would have an interest in?
Mueller: With DOJ, we would examine.
Scott: Mortgage fraud, looking at individuals, or the systematic problem?
Mueller: Local level, 24 investigations at corporate level, misstatement of assets. 500 indictments. 1400 cases of local variety, 24 of corporate variety.
Maxine Waters and Conyers are trying to hammer on who would investigate the vote-caging using lists of foreclosures.
Artur Davis: SCOTUS hasn’t ever ruled on basis for police encounter v. basis for investigation.
Well, that wasn’t all that interesting. I’d imagine Pat Leahy’s hearing on oversight tomorrow will be a bunch more interesting.
Hi Marcy,
typo….add an “h” to “laugable” and keep up the good work!
Oh, now I’m torn. I’ve been watching the SJC. I suppose I could mute.
Do you have the link to the Senate hearing??
Yup — here. (Sorry: someone came to the door.)
Also watching the SJC subcommittee this morning. Unless my eyes deceive me there are 3 count them 3 Senators on the subcommittee that showed up this morning (oops, 4 I think showed up, but one left already). Good to know how seriously the Senate takes the rule of law.
Sorry for the OT EW, just had to get that off my chest. It’s a shame that Christy isn’t liveblogging this, especially after Marty Lederman’s visit the other day. Russ and Whitehouse are acquitting themselves well. I’ll never understand why Whitehouse voted for the FAA.
F*ck him.
Nadler should ask Mueller why he took the cowardly way of threatening to resign, instead of the real G-Man way of starting an investigation of Cheney’s and Addington’s sedition, when it became clear (per the book) that those two criminals had played DoJ (et als.) to further their warrantless wiretapping program.
good point.
Yeah, I think quite arguably he had an ethical duty to do both.
I wonder how many “I can’t recalls” we will hear today regarding the anthrax case.
conyers not a happy man. what’s the point of having a hearing? not going to give us answers.
Cheney cementing in place his ”markers”, his minimum accomplishments, the starting point for his neocon heirs. Otherwise known as concrete galoshes for the Constitution and your civil rights.
I think that’s a good observation on the law and doing the right thing. Cheney would also have obstructed it and had Mueller fired, something he still had the power and, presumably, the willingness to do in ‘04, when he was pulling out the stops (e.g., Plame/Wilson) to burn dissenters and assist Bush’s re-election [sic].
“a raid conducted by 200 officers to find out who paid for the Cuyahoga County Dem Chair’s driveway paving”
Geez. That’s right up there with the Alice Martin plot to storm the legislature. WTH is wrong with these people? It certainly dampens the sympathy you might have for wails of “we’re underfunded” to see what it is they do with their funding.
I hope there will be some questions on Wecht.
I’m sure it is probably in an EW post or timeline, but I don’t think I had realized that there was a CIA contractor in OH who had the facilities to add the silica to the powder. I’m kind of wondering about that in and of itself, a CIA contractor rather than DOD contractor – whyfor is it that the CIA has its own bioweapons contractor?
Do you think Mueller is really that badly briefed on the anthrax investigation or is he just trying to get out of follow ups by saying he doesn’t have or know any of the info and will have to “get back” to them on everything?
The strategy on the anthrax investigation is clearly to use the science behind isolating the strain of anthrax (though not, arguably, the actual vial of anthrax) to distract from the crappiness of their general case.
Brief update on the SJC panels: First panel finished; I didn’t see all of it, but I hope that someone gets a YouTube of Whitehouse’s second session, where he laid out the “snare of classification” — well done. I’ll save further comments for later.
Is there a scientific report on this? This kind of analysis is well within my area of expertise, but I’m not at all clear on what they did here. My best guess is that they sequenced the entire genome of the anthrax from at least one of the letters, found several variants that are not usually seen in the known anthrax strains, and then tested a bunch of lab strains for these variants. For a scientific standpoint, that would be a good strategy, but you have to make sure you have the right controls, and I’m not convinced that they did.
oh yeah Rep Waters asking the F.B.I to pre-emptively invesigate questions about the elections “sound the alarm”
Rep Delahunt to Mueller “vigorous timely oversight” What a concept
OT – apologies for OT, but when people have a minute, there’s a very interesting item at WaPo today. Richard Cohen (of all people!) describes the 2008 as ‘farce’, and as a man who’s pick of Palin reveals that he’s sold his soul.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..inionsbox1
When even Cohen is saying things like this, one wonders whether the McCain campaign and GOP will have enough flying monkeys left (especially after they’ve sent so many at Joe Klein) to go after Cohen.
Sorry — back to post topic now…
Sorry, should read: “…describes the John McCain of 2008 as ‘farce’, ….”
I am with Cohen. I have been watching McCain’s face closely ever since he announced Sarah “fundamentalist” Palin as his V.P candidate. MHe does not look happy with the Palin selection. Not one bit.
He clearly does not like this Rovian strategy of going after the No Bubba Left Behind vote. McCain knows Sarah is not a qualified person to leave one heartbeat away from the Presidency. He knows watch his face.
Mueller: “I’ll have to get back to you”
Was this a comedy routine? This is one of the biggest, most controversial investigations in FBI history, of an unprecedented act of terrorism, and Mueller’s going to have to go back to the office and check out the basic facts?
This is the kind of crap that flies at the FBI?
Don’t they have phones at the FBI? Why don’t they just recess for 5 minutes so he can call someone who knows?
OT: Looks like the John-McCain-invented-the-Blackberry pseduo-story is gaining steam. It looks like it’s a totally bogus story, but the symmetry with the Al-Gore-invented-the-Internet pseudo-story (which was also completely false) is too much for the media to pass up.
Presumptuously speaking for many of your readers I would like to assume you’ll be watching the hearing tomorrow and will get back to us with your thoughts.
At some point Hillary/Amy needs to hand the Dem leadership her pair.
I second that motion. I’m really looking forward to the further grilling tomorrow.
Did anyone at the HJC raise today anything that might be considered related to the aggressive policing at St Paul/Minneapolis? There was all kinds of testimony from observers that the FBI were there, that actions had obviously been planned, that the reaction to citizens exercising their rights was excessive. The falafel/vegan-potluck question, in other words.
In terms of vote caging, we should start a national campaign to hae every democrat reregister to vote because the republicans have repeatedly tried to stop people from voting. It will be expensive, but how valuable is the right to vote. It will also draw attention to what the republicans are doing across the country.
Interesting that Mueller had all the stats on mtg fraud investigaion at his fingertips, just no idea what the percentage of silica that has been specifically yammered about and questioned in the public discourse.
I think he’s upgraded his operating system to Gonzales 3.0, replacing “I don’t remember” and “I was a POW” with “I’ll have to get back to you.”
THANKS for this, Marcy.
Big announcement today, related to the foreclosure list bit.
I’ll send this to my reporter handling this beat.
Has anyone read Glennzilla yet today? He addresses these hearings and he doesn’t like it one bit. He’s pissed that Mueller is basic stonewalling Congress and they are letting him get away with it.
The second SJC panel has just been adjourned. All those witnesses were fascinating, a couple of them disturbing.
Patrick Philbin on the subject of Boumediene and habeas, as (to me) he fuzzed the distinctions between POWs and Bush’s new category of illegal enemy combatants (some of them charged with specific crimes) — man, I would have to read that over to catch all of it. I’m sure he means what he says and I’m sure he has a very good legal education, but he maybe does not have such a good international historical education. And then there was Prof Rotunda, who played up to Brownback’s worries about closing GTMO: comparing it to all the alternatives she ran through, she made GTMO sound like summer camp and all alternatives impossible, which is nonsense but I guess that’s her job.
The other witnesses on the second panel were great and I’m sorry I’m not doing them justice. On the earlier panel, Harold Koh of Yale Law School was outstanding — as we say in baseball, give that man a contract.
Feingold’s and Whitehouse’s questions throughout deserve study. Whitehouse closed with a statement summarizing three key concerns: secrecy, closing GTMO, and … (long pause for senior moment here …) Anyway, he obviously valued the statements of most of the witnesses very highly. It always seems a bit of a shame to me that so much of their good work doesn’t go further.
Do you have a link to yesterday’s hearings?
31 – Despite the halo effect that the media is creating for them now, Philbin and Goldsmith were, imo, arguably more to blame than Yoo for the human trafficking, torture, child disappearances, etc.
They both had tremendously more chops than Yoo and prior to 9/11, Goldsmith and Posner cemented their spot in what passes for the firmament when you are looking down, with a treatise on international law the basically posits that the chief exec of a country can do whatever they feel they can get away with when it comes to citizens of other nations and other nations – – treaties and laws don’t really mean much.
Philbin started the “illegal combatant” ball rolling with the first door opening memo and he did it knowing full well that the only reason for his memo was to “legalize” torture at Presidential whim. I give a bye for it in general, bc of the timing and what he might have believed in his heart (that although he was handing over the power of attainder he only thought it would be used against bad guys, not cab drivers and drunken Germans partying away from their wives in Macedonia and stray Canadians and children – infants.
But the fact is that he and Goldsmith have never, despite Goldsmith’s self glorifying more recent novella, backed away from human trafficking, disappearing, torture and kidnap as fine and dandy. And they both abhor the thought that the tales of who was tortured, and killed, and why, and on what lack of evidence and on whose say so and whose policies – would ever come out. They are Straussian in predeliction if not conditioning there, the
fairy talestory has to hold together for history as one with no greys, one untarnished, of good over evil – and they guys who, as Goldsmith and Posner point out, are “big enough” to “win” get to claim the mantle of “good” and make sure that is the only story told.Rove isn’t the only one in the whole admin who believed in controlling the narrative. It’s why I find it so interesting that the OLC memos are so bereft when it comes to a “facts” section – they didn’t even have facts to redact for most of them. The facts didn’t matter – they could make them up and fill them in later – that’s what happens when you can control the narrative unchecked. And it keeps happening, bc the narrative suits the Dems as much as the Repubs – it allows for passive inaction, with only a little window dressing to offer a pretense that they are doing anything.
How many times has Koh been there over the last few years? And still nothing.
They should devote a whole hearing to nothing but the Seton Hall kids and their work. Nothing will come of that either, but they at least deserve as much face time as a fraud like Philbin.
As a stray Canadian, Mary, I hear you. And we still have a few stray Canadians — that, along with my anger at our own collaborating compradors, is one of the reasons some of us can’t stop.
War crimes…haul them off
You’d think they’d have staff at the office listening in. If cooperation was intended, then the response “I’ll have to get back to you” could be replaced with “I expect a response from the office in a few minutes.”
[Since Tiananmen Square, actually] We’ve been used to seeing public officials who do not understand the ability of on-line information networks to damage their talking points.
But here’s an official who doesn’t seem to know how hollow rings a claim that “It’s ok because we’ve given you a briefing” after plain old print has carried accounts of undocumented briefings and how the Bush administration has used them to stymie further Congressional action. (ref: The Dark Side, The Way of the World, now Angler; I’m sure there are others.)
Mueller might have intended to make some kind of mollifying statement. In some possibly mythical past in which the main business of the executive branch was not to keep its doings secret from the other two branches and the public, so it might have sounded: “I see; then I must talk with my chief of staff.” And we all turn to our coffee and cake and nice evening. But not now.
Anybody know anything about Ed Lake and why he can be positive that the silica got into the underside of the spore coats naturally?
He can’t seem to believe that the rest of us are that stupid. We’re conspiracy nuts – scientists and laymen, alike – if we can’t get that this was naturally occurring and that Bruce Ivins could do this alone.
Other than his bio on the site, how’d he get to be an expert?
http://anthraxinvestigation.com/