Archive for category: emptywheel

I’m starting a pool: Who will be the first top leader to be ousted for his role in a corruption scandal?

Will it be A, Pope Ratzinger, for sending a pedophile priest for the “gay cure” then back to working with children rather than to prison back when he was an Archbishop?

A widening child sexual abuse inquiry in Europe has landed at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI, as a senior church official acknowledged Friday that a German archdiocese made “serious mistakes” in handling an abuse case while the pope served as its archbishop.

[snip]

In Munich case, a priest from Essen, “despite allegations of sexual abuse, and in spite of a conviction — was repeatedly assigned work in the sphere of pastoral care by the then-Vicar General Gerhard Gruber,” who worked under Benedict when he was the archbishop.

The priest, identified only with the initial “H,” was moved to Munich in January 1980, where he was supposed to undergo therapy, a decision that was taken “with the approval of the archbishop,” according to the archdiocese’s statement. Benedict was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982.

Or will it be B, Timmeh Geithner, for helping Dick Fuld defraud investors?

Well, it is folks, as a [pdf] newly-released examiner’s report by Anton Valukas in connection with the Lehman bankruptcy makes clear. The unraveling isn’t merely implicating Fuld and his recent succession of CFOs, or its accounting firm, Ernst & Young, as might be expected. It also emerges that the NY Fed, and thus Timothy Geithner, were at a minimum massively derelict in the performance of their duties, and may well be culpable in aiding and abetting Lehman in accounting fraud and Sarbox violations.

We need to demand an immediate release of the e-mails, phone records, and meeting notes from the NY Fed and key Lehman principals regarding the NY Fed’s review of Lehman’s solvency. If, as things appear now, Lehman was allowed by the Fed’s inaction to remain in business, when the Fed should have insisted on a wind-down (and the failed Barclay’s said this was not infeasible: even an orderly bankruptcy would have been preferrable, as Harvey Miller, who handled the Lehman BK filing has made clear; a good bank/bad bank structure, with a Fed backstop of the bad bank, would have been an option if the Fed’s justification for inaction was systemic risk), the NY Fed at a minimum helped perpetuate a fraud on investors and counterparties.

This pattern further suggests the Fed, which by its charter is tasked to promote the safety and soundness of the banking system, instead, via its collusion with Lehman management, operated to protect particular actors to the detriment of the public at large.

And most important, it says that the NY Fed, and likely Geithner himself, undermined, perhaps even violated, laws designed to protect investors and markets. If so, he is not fit to be Treasury secretary or hold any office related to financial supervision and should resign immediately.

Enter your bet below and win a shiny hubcap!!!!

… what’s that you say? The correct answer is C, none of the above? Or rather, D, Eric Holder will be the first to be ousted, because he argued to uphold the Constitution and limit Presidential abuse of power?

(Shiny hubcap from http://www.flickr.com/photos/daryl_mitchell/ / CC BY-SA 2.0)

It has taken me a while. But I’ve finally gotten through the DOJ IG Report on exigent letters. Page numbers below will be to the PDF page.

Page 14: Footnote 1 notes there are Secret and TS/SCI versions of this report. Keep that in mind as you read the redactions–while it’s probably safe to assume that Feingold and Wyden (who are both on SSCI) have seen the entire report, it’s not clear who else will have seen the entire report.

Page 14: I hadn’t really noticed it before, but the time frame on the first IG Report’s investigation of exigent letters ended on December 16, 2005–the day that Eric Lichtblau and James Risen exposed the illegal wiretap program. That suggests that the use of exigent letters, among other things, may have changed on that date in response to the discovery of the program. Also note that in Fine’s first report on NSLs, he decided to lump 2005 in which the time frame–2002 to 2004–required by statute. This is parallel to what he did with Section 215, suggesting that there were significant changes in 2006 after disclosure of the overall program.

Page 18: Note that the IG Report doesn’t say when the Public Integrity Section declined to prosecute these abuses. I do hope Fine gets asked that question.

Page 24: Notes that most exigent letters issues from April 2003 to March 2006. That latter date suggests they implemented a fix with the PATRIOT revision passed that month.

Page 28: Note the organization of the Communication Exploitation Section (CXS):

• Document Exploitation (which became Digital Media Exploitation on March 26, 2006
• Communication Analysis Unit (the section that issued the exigent letters, and therefore working on communities of interest)
• Electronic Communication Analysis Unit (how does this differ from CAU???) (ECAU)
• Electronic Surveillance Operations and Sharing Unit (EOPS)

Does this suggest the EOPS collected this stuff and the others did network analysis on it?

Page 29: Note the final date for the exigent letter range here is November 13, 2006, which is different from the December 16, 2005 used elsewhere

Page 34: Note how Company A (AT&T per EFF’s math) does something (maybe “analyze” toll records) that the other two providers don’t do (per footnote 26).This is almost certainly the community of interest analysis. This may sugges that by default mean they were working with massive data collection, since it would mean they had access to the signals of their competitors?

There also must be internet analysis in here (which presumably might be the ECAU), which itself would seem to require telecom assistance. So I wonder whether that fully-redacted paragraph describes a contract that does both phone and internet analysis?

Page 35: Does the redaction showing the size of the contract midway down the page appear to be 10 digits? Suggesting the contract would be in the single million range? (That making the digits something like this: $X,XXX,XXX) Though the amount for Company B seems to consist of words, not just numbers.

Page 36: The language about whether companies were able to provide subscriber data or not closely resembles language surrounding Section 215, which was used during some of this time period to get subscriber data (though possibly in larger batches). And note the redacted second half of the first full paragraph on this page says that they were also doing something in addition to giving meta data and subscriber data. And footnote 28, saying that Company A would only provide subscriber data, suggests that that company (AT&T?) was demanding more than one of the others was, legally.

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Since Richard Shelby continues to hold several of Obama’s military nominees hostages to his efforts to help France’s Airbus win a lucrative contract, I thought we ought to meet the professionals whose service Shelby sees fit to disrupt.

In this post, I’ll look at Frank Kendall, who was nominated to serve as Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (PDUSD) for Acquisition and Technology on August 6, 2009.

Kendall appears intent on fixing some of the urgent management and cost problems with defense acquisitions, and he appears to have the management experience to get that done. Yet Shelby is holding up his nomination to benefit Airbus.

Kendall describes the job of PDUSD for Acquisition and Technology as serving as the Chief Operating Officer for Defense Acquisition, under the direction of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition. The USD for Acquisition, Dr. Ashton Carter, has committed to fixing some of the urgent problems with our defense acuisitions–see POGO’s positive response to Carter here. As such, Kendall would be implementing Carter’s efforts.

Kendall summarized this qualifications to serve in this function in his pre-hearing questionnaire this way:

I have over 35 years experience in the areas of national security, defense, and acquisition. My education includes degrees in engineering, business and law. I served on active duty in the Army for over ten years including in operational units and research and development commands. As a civil servant I worked as a systems engineer and systems analyst. I spent over eight years in the Pentagon on the Under Secretary for Acquisition’s staff first as Assistant Deputy Under Secretary for Strategic Systems (Defense Systems) and then as Director, Tactical Warfare Programs. Outside of government I have been the Vice President of Engineering for Raytheon Company and a consultant on national security and acquisition related matters, principally program management, technology assessment, and strategic planning, for a variety of defense companies, think tanks, and government laboratories or research and development organizations.

And when asked to describe the biggest challenges he would face in the PUSD for Acquisition, he focused on efforts to increase the acquisition workforce in order to effectively manage DOD’s huge programs.

I anticipate a major challenge in ensuring that the Department’s acquisition programs are executed within cost, schedule, and performance goals. I understand that many programs are falling short in this area and I would work to regain control of existing programs and to ensure that new programs do not repeat these problems. There is a challenge and opportunity in growing both the size and capability of the acquisition workforce particularly in the areas of program management, engineering, contracting, and cost estimating. I also believe there is a need to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the transition of technologies from the science and technology community into acquisition programs. Finally, maintaining the strength and resiliency of our national defense industrial base is a challenge that I anticipate will require attention.

Among other ways he described to address these challenges include using more prototypes, attending to technology transfer and manufacturing base, retaining inherently governmental functions in government, limiting consolidation among defense contractors, supporting in-sourcing (that is, replacing contractors with civilian employees), and limiting time and material contracts.

In short, Kendall has a lot of no-nonsense ideas that will make our military more effective for less money.

That’s what Richard Shelby is impeding by holding Kendall’s nomination hostage.

In the face of Kendall’s intelligent response to fixing defense contracting, the Senators from Alabama (Jeff Sessions also has placed a hold on Kendall’s nomination) want to corner him into committing to a particularly approach to the Tanker contract for which Airbus would bid against Boeing. Consider this exchange between Kendall and Jeff Sessions from Kendall’s nomination hearing October 22, 2009:

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Senator Reed.

I congratulate all of you on your nominations. I think the Senate will do its duty and you’ll move right along.

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