Listening To You – Mukasey Plays The Emotion Card

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The Bush Administration and their never say die FISA/Immunity push are like cockroaches. You can’t kill em, and they never go away. Well, they’re back again. Attorney General Michael Mukasey has graduated from DC water carrier to full fledged traveling snake oil salesman for the Cheney/Bush Administration and their sordid attempts to cover their own criminal wrongdoing via retroactive immunity for telcos.

Last night, Mukasey spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco and got so emotional in his desperate plea for retroactive immunity and unlimited snooping that he he welled up with tears in the process.

… Mr. Mukasey grimaced, swallowed hard, and seemed to tear up as he reflected on the weaknesses in America’s anti-terrorism strategy prior to the 2001 attacks. "We got three thousand. … We’ve got three thousand people who went to work that day and didn’t come home to show for that," he said, struggling to maintain his composure.

Isn’t that special? Who from this Administration of criminals, fools and incompetents will cry for the Constitution that has been shredded? Who will lament the privacy of ordinary American citizens that has been lost? Who will shed a tear for the souls that have been tortured, beaten, extinguished and/or disappeared? That would be left to us I guess. There is no justice; just us.

Here, from the San Francisco Chronicle, are a few more highlights from Mukasey’s traveling minstrel show:

Attorney General Michael Mukasey defended the Bush administration’s wiretapping program Thursday to a San Francisco audience and suggested the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks could have been prevented if the government had been able to monitor an overseas phone call to the United States.
The government "shouldn’t need a warrant when somebody picks up a phone in Iraq and calls the United States," Mukasey said in a question-and-answer session after a speech to the Commonwealth Club
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Mukasey also defended President Bush’s insistence on retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that have cooperated with the administration’s surveillance program, in which phone calls and e-mails between U.S. citizens and foreign terrorist suspects were intercepted without warrants.
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"They have cooperated," Mukasey said of the companies, without naming them. "It just ain’t fair to ask somebody to cooperate with the government" and face a lawsuit for substantial damages, he said.
If Congress denies the companies retroactive immunity, he said, the firms will withdraw their voluntary participation and the government will have to Read more →

Bushco Rolled Out A Parade Of Liars To Squelch Lichtblau, Risen & NYT

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A fairly significant article just posted at Slate by Eric Lichtblau on the jaded history of the publication, and withholding of publication for well over a year, of his and Jim Risen’s seminal story on the criminal warrantless wiretapping by the Bush Administration. Some of it we knew, some of it we guessed and some of it is first impression. As a whole however, it is stunning to digest.

For 13 long months, we’d held off on publicizing one of the Bush administration’s biggest secrets. Finally, one afternoon in December 2005, as my editors and I waited anxiously in an elegantly appointed sitting room at the White House, we were again about to let President Bush’s top aides plead their case: why our newspaper shouldn’t let the public know that the president had authorized the National Security Agency, in apparent contravention of federal wiretapping law, to eavesdrop on Americans without court warrants.
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As the door to the conference room opened, however, a slew of other White House VIPs strolled out to greet us, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice near the head of the receiving line and White House Counsel Harriet Miers at the back.
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The risk to national security was incalculable, the White House VIPs said, their voices stern, their faces drawn. "The enemy," one official warned, "is inside the gates." The clichés did their work; the message was unmistakable: If the New York Times went ahead and published this story, we would share the blame for the next terrorist attack.
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That shared skepticism would prove essential in the Times’ decision to run the story about Bush’s NSA wiretapping program. On that December afternoon in the White House, the gathered officials attacked on several fronts. There was never any serious legal debate within the administration about the legality of the program, Bush’s advisers insisted. The Justice Department had always signed off on its legality, as required by the president. The few lawmakers who were briefed on the program never voiced any concerns. From the beginning, there were tight controls in place to guard against abuse. The program would be rendered so ineffective if disclosed that it would have to be shut down immediately.

All these assertions, as my partner Jim Risen and I would learn in our reporting, turned out to be largely untrue.

Go read the entire article, it and you deserve nothing less. There was one great little aside that Read more →

Mr. Siegelman Goes To Washington

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From the NYT:

The House Judiciary Committee asked the Justice Department Thursday to temporarily release former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman from prison in early May to testify before Congress about possible political influence over his prosecution.

A spokeswoman for the committee said Siegelman, a Democrat serving more than seven years in a Louisiana prison, would travel to Washington under guard of the U.S. Marshals Service. She said Committee Chairman John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, believes Siegelman could provide important information about Justice Department practices under President Bush.

This is good news. Not necessarily because I think it will lend a lot of new facts that will do the trick to spring Siegelman from what appears to be a very bum rap, but because it will really build on the wave of national publicity started by the 60 Minutes segment.

I have not yet seen anything additional as to details, such as who other witnesses would be, exactly what Conyers hopes to accomplish, etc. Perhaps we should help the Judiciary Committee out and come up with a game plan for them. Any suggestions?

UPDATE: Well. Wow. That was fast. I figured the request by Congress would turn up the heat on the 11th Circuit in relation to Siegelman’s release pending appeal, but I didn’t really want to jinx the concept by saying so in the post. BREAKING NEWS from The Birmingham News via TPM:

Former Gov. Don Siegelman will be released from prison, after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals granted him an appeal bond, the lead prosecutor in the case said.

Acting U.S. Attorney Louis Franklin said he received a courtesy call from the court today. "He’s going to be released," Franklin said.

He said he was disappointed but added, "The 11th Circuit has the discretion to do that, and I respect that.

Sometimes You Eat The Bear, Sometimes The Bear Eats You – Stearns Thoughts

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That whole financial disaster, black hole rivaling the Great Depression, collapse of the American economy thing is oh so last week eh? Because from what I can tell this week, Britney has been on a sitcom, Barrack (gasp!) has listened to a fiery preacher man, Bush and McCain say stupid things (okay, that is not news, but it is being reported on), and Hillary (gasp!) won’t quit a race that is essentially neck and neck (and this reference does not make this a thread for discussion of the horserace, so give that a rest). What happened to the biggest financial crisis in our nation’s history?

What was the the Bear Stearns takeover/bailout about anyway? Who really benefitted in the present? What does it portend for the future? I don’t have these answers; but I have a lot of questions and the ground seems to be morphing so fast on this that not only are we not getting answers, the real questions are getting left behind in the wake. To paraphrase Wilson Pickett, we need to "slow this mustang down" and think about what has occurred and where it will lead us for the future. Really, the implications are pretty incredible. The federal government, under the cover of a spring weekend, stepped in to force one private financial company to sell itself to another private financial company at a price more than fifteen times less than the market valuation at the time. And then the government pledged the public’s money to guarantee the worst parts of the deal. Wow. And here I thought the free market was the golden holy rule for those currently running our country into the ground.

How did something so huge, and with so many far ranging implications, happen literally overnight? One thing is sure, if the economy was as great as they say, and Bush and his band of merry pillagers were on top of everything as much as they claim, this never would have happened. There has been plenty of discussion about the sub-prime shitpile and the exponential rise in derivitives in the financial industry, but my question here is what really happened with the Bear Stearns deal itself? Thankfully, people that know a whole lot more about this than I do are starting to ask the right questions. Today’s example is an outstanding Read more →

Crewsing For A Bruising: The NSA Responds To EOP

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Three days ago, Saturday March 22, we discussed the hard driving charge being mounted in DC District Court by the National Security Archive and CREW in relation to the destroyed missing White House emails. In that post and discussion we dissected the Administration (EOP) brief in objection to the Order To Show Cause determination, and the affidavit of Theresa Payton filed in support thereof; and man did did you guys bring the analysis and tech savvy to the show. What kind of host would I be if I were to deny you the latest developments in the case? A couple of hours ago I received another communique from Melanie Fuchs, the attorney for the NSA. Without further adieu, and as Paul Harvey would say, and, now, for the rest of the story.

In light of your continuing interest in the White House e-mail case, I am sending you the National Security Archive’s reply in response to the Executive Office of the President’s filing last Friday. That filing, which was made in response to Magistrate Judge Facciola’s show cause order, opposed forensic copying of the EOP workstations. The Archive’s response, which includes the declaration of Al Lakhani, Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal Dispute Analysis and Forensic Services LLC, describes the significant risk that the emergency recovery backups tapes maintained by the EOP are not adequate for recovery of the missing White House e-mails from 2003-2005. Further, the response notes the lack of any support for the EOP’s assertion that forensic copying would be costly and burdensome, provides actual estimates of the cost of forensic copying, and points out several steps EOP could take to protect sources of missing e-mails including preserv ing external storage media (external hard drives, CDs, DVDs, paper copies, etc).

Here is the NSA Reply Pleading Re: OSC. Here is the Affidavit of Al Lakhani, the CREW/NSA expert witness. I think you all will like these documents a little better than the corresponding set filed by the Administration. I want to get this post up, so I will engage in further analysis along with you in the comments.

Who Let The Dogs Out? The Hounds Of Hatfill and the Federal Rules of Evidence

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On Marcy’s most recent Hatfill post, I made a mostly flippant comment on the dogs in the Hatfill case:

What if Hatfill is just a pig and leaves pizza crusts around everywhere he goes and the dogs are smelling that? What are the customary industry standards for certification of anthrax sniffing dogs anyway; and who sets and regulates them? Or is this just some “wonder mammal” like Lassie or Flipper or something? Was there video of the searches with the wonder dogs? Because there sure should have been. Or are these yet more video items of evidence that have been “misplaced”? What was the nature of the dog’s response? Did it emit a “plaintiff wail” like Nicole Simpson’s Akita? (Great trivia: Nicole’s Akita was named “Kato” too). I don’t see how the dog(s) here meet any evidentiary standards for admissibility or reliance by a court.

Despite it being mostly in jest, that comment had what I consider to be a critical, if not the critical, point in it. From what it appears, the only bit of "evidence" (and I use that descriptor loosely here, and in the generic sense, because I don’t think there was any proper evidence at all) against Hatfill that served as the basis for identifying him was that the dogs had alerted.

We all saw, in the tragic case of the late Richard Jewell, the horrendous and deleterious effects of a defective identification on an individual for an infamous crime. It is simply unconscionable to hang such a collar on someone without substantial credible hard evidence. And, quite frankly, the aura and implications of the anthrax case were, and are, far worse that the Atlanta Olympic park bombing. An entire nation was brought to a standstill and was trembling from a terrorist act that was capable of being repeated anywhere, at any time, in the country via the mail. So the United States government better have a pretty strong case before it implicates someone such as Hatfill in such a crime.

What substantial and credible hard evidence was the identification of Hatfill based on? Well, as has been previously discussed, he had worked in the bio-agent/anthrax field, had the technical expertise and, according to profilers, the personality to do the anthrax deed. The government indicates that he may be one of 50 or fewer people who had the skills to do it and had access to the strain. Then you add in allegations of violence in his past and ties to South African apartheid militias, and you can certainly understand why he was being looked at. While such information is not all entirely innocuous background, it is certainly nothing more than circumstantial and does not inculpate Hatfill; the only alleged link of Hatfill to the actual crime with the anthrax letters, at least that we are aware of to date, was the dogs. That’s it; there is nothing else. What are the standards for admissibility of dog scent Read more →

Feith Based Initiative At The Pentgon

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Grover Norquist can pretty much pull the drain plug now; the job of eviscerating the United States Government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub" is about complete. The latest breaking news out of the Pentagon is that the US mistakenly shipped ICBM warhead nuclear triggering mechanisms to Taiwan.

The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that it mistakenly shipped non-nuclear components for an intercontinental ballistic missile to Taiwan from a U.S. Air Force base in Wyoming.
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At a Pentagon news conference, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said the misshipped items were four nose cone assemblies for ICBMs. He also said they were delivered to Taiwan in March 2005 and had been sent instead of helicopter batteries that had been ordered by Taiwan.
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”It is a component for the fuse in the nosecone for a nuclear system,” Wynne said. ”We are very concerned about it.”

Well, that’s understandable. Because thermonuclear warhead triggers probably look just like helicopter batteries, right? Oy and ugh.

Apparently, the Cheney/Bush Administration planting of "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the planet" at the Pentagon is paying dividends even after Doug Feith is long gone, because there seems to be some real competence issues over there, and, critically, with regard to our military’s handling of it’s nuclear weapons. As you might recall, it was not long ago that there were some empty quivers and bent spears out of another upper mid-west Air Force Base. In late August, 2007, six live nuclear cruise missiles went missing.

The nuclear weapons were “lost” for 36 hours after taking off on August 29 on a cross-country journey from the remote Minot air force base in North Dakota to Barksdale in Louisiana. Major-General Richard Newton, air force deputy chief of staff, said there was an “unprecedented” series of procedural errors, which revealed “an erosion of adherence to weapons-handling standards”.

There is bound to be a lot of speculation and discussion on the latest incident that is just now being revealed in spite of the fact that it occurred all the way back in 2005. Hopefully, it will also renew the discussion of the Minot/Barksdale incident, which kind of faded from the national conscience (if you want a decent rundown on some of the various theories and weird facts on the Minot/Barksdale event, see here). So how will the Six Sigma management geniuses of the Bush Administration respond to these disturbing examples Read more →

Dougie’s Rant

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I’m less interested in the news that Dougie Feith is publishing a 900-page rant against his detractors in the Bush Administration and more interested in how a copy of that manuscript got liberated and delivered into the hands of Karen DeYoung, biographer of Feith detractor Colin Powell, and Thomas Ricks, all-around skeptic of Dougie’s disastrous war. The book appears to be primarily a long whining complaint that Colin Powell has retained moderately more of his credibility than Dougie and his allies in the Pentagon.

Powell, Feith argues, allowed himself to be publicly portrayed as a dove, but while Powell "downplayed" the degree and urgency of Iraq’s threat, he never expressed opposition to the invasion. Bremer, meanwhile, is said to have done more harm than good in Iraq. Feith also accuses Franks of being uninterested in postwar planning, and writes that Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security adviser during most of Feith’s time in office, failed in her primary task of coordinating policy on the war.

He describes Bush as having wrestled seriously with difficult problems but as being ill-served by subordinates including Powell and Rice. Feith depicts former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld with almost complete admiration, questioning only his rough handling of subordinates.

How remarkable that two credible journalists with superb ties to Powell and Franks (and Bremer, whom Dougie also attacks) happened to obtain a copy of the manuscript in plenty of time to do interviews with all those Dougie attacks in the book, huh? DeYoung and Ricks seem barely able to contain their disdain for "the stupidest fucking guy on the planet."

Despite its bulk, the book does not address 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. Nor does Feith touch on the assertion of his fellow war architect, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, that Iraq would be able to pay for its reconstruction with oil revenue.

Feith says surprisingly little new about the conduct of the war on the ground, instead focusing on the policy battles in Washington and asserting that most accounts thus far have been written from the point of view of the State Department and the CIA. He attacks those criticisms as "fear-mongering" that serves the interests of Read more →

Monday Cheney Games

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Vice President Cheney and his lovely wife have snuck off to Dallas for a secret visit (h/t TP).

Vice President Dick Cheney was visiting Dallas on Monday for undisclosed reasons.

I was going to engage in some utterly irresponsible guessing about why the Vice President (and his lovely wife) would need to steal off to Dallas without any warning: heart surgery, quail hunting, and Halliburton meetings all came to mind.

But then I read Ken Silverstein’s account of mounting fighting between Turkey and the Kurds.

The Turkish offensive, which has been green-lighted by the Bush Administration, was criticized by the Iraqi government. “We know the threats that Turkey is facing, but military operations will not solve the PKK problem,” a government spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, told The Guardian. Meanwhile, Kurdish anger towards the United States is growing. “We are their friends and we thought we were their allies,” the newspaper quoted Muhammad Qadir, a shopkeeper in Irbil, as saying. “We don’t support the PKK, but we are angry that the Americans are allowing the Turks to wage war against our fellow Kurds.”

A former U.S. official who works in northern Iraq emailed me to say:

The United States is being skillfully handled by the Turks, who are dragging the U.S. into a policy disaster in Kurdistan. The Kurds have moved a lot of fighters and equipment quietly into the area, and are prepared to strike the Turks. Massoud [Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish leader] has issued all the press comments he can to publicly warn that Kurdish patience is gone. The United States is either ignoring the signals or missing them…The Kurds can and will bloody the Turks badly in a fight.

And I couldn’t help but recall that Ray Hunt, the spooked up oil billionaire who made his own private deals with the Kurds, lives in Dallas. Read more →

Don’t Cry For The Telcos – Bush & Cheney Are The Only Ones That Are Dying For Immunity

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The issues surrounding the FISA legislation are still roiling in Congress, thanks to the sudden appearance of a spine and principle by the Democrats in the House of Representatives (and correspondingly, with no thanks to the spineless and craven counterparts in the Senate, especially Jello Jay Rockefeller, the SSCI, and Harry Reid for bringing the horrid Intel committee bill to the floor instead of the far superior Judiciary bill). The most contentious issue has been, and continues to be, the proposed retroactive immunity for telco companies. Since the ugly head of the issue was first raised last summer with the railroaded passage of the Protect America Act, I have been arguing vehemently that the telcos are not in any grave danger financially from the civil suits currently pending. If their conduct is as has been described to date, they are already protected from liability for the actions that have been described, both by existing statutory immunity and by a right to indemnification from the government. The full court press for immunity by the Administration is entirely about cover for the lawless Bush Administration, and not about the impending financial demise of the telcos.

This post will go back over some of the basis for my argument that has been laid out previously, both here at Emptywheel and, earlier, at The Next Hurrah. I will also try to relate a few basics on what the general concept of indemnification is, and how it relates to contracts, in this case the agreements between the telcos and the Bush Administration. I have been making this argument for quite some time now, since last August, and have yet to have anybody put a significant dent in it; but it is no good if it cannot hold up to scrutiny. In that regard, I have posited my theory to several other lawyers expert in the field of governmental/Fourth Amendment litigation, including some extremely knowledgeable on the very civil suits at issue here, and all have agreed with the validity of my premise.

The Argument: The Bush Administration, with the help of telco providers (telelphone, cellphone, internet and other communication providers) engaged in massive wiretapping and datamining efforts, ostensibly to protect the United States from attack by terrorists. The legality of much of these programs has been questioned in many fora, but the germane ones for the immunity demand by the Administration are the civil suits that have been filed against both Read more →