Archive for category: emptywheel

ABC has now caught up to Jeremy Scahill. In this Blackwater installment, they describe sketchy details of two Blackwater operations in Afghanistan/Pakistan, one in 2003, and one in 2006.

CIA officials acknowledge that two private contractors were killed in Afghanistan in 2003 when they and other members of a CIA paramilitary team were in a firefight with Taliban fighters on a remote road.

In another case, in 2006, 12 Blackwater “tactical action operatives” were recruited for a secret raid into Pakistan by the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command, according to a military intelligence planner. The target of the planned raid, code-named Vibrant Fury, was a suspected al Qaeda training camp, according to the planner, who said he did not know the outcome of the mission.

It’s not clear whether this on the record discussion of planning for an op in 2003 is the same one named above, in which two contractors (presumably BW) were killed. But note the explanation: a desire to avoid oversight.

A U.S. Army officer who ran human intelligence collections activities in Afghanistan in 2003, Tony Shaffer, says he never worked directly with Blackwater personnel but frequently encountered them in secret operations run by the military and the CIA.

“I actually met with the CIA and Blackwater operatives who were working together, totally hand in glove, to conduct operational planning and support of their objectives, which are paramilitary operations along the border,” said Shaffer, then a Major but now a Lieutenant Colonel who teaches at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies.

“The idea was to bring to bear additional resources for specific special operations missions,” he said. “The purpose for that, in my judgment, may have been to avoid some level of oversight.”

In 2006, the purpose of using BW was to provide forces that were otherwise unavailable because they were occupied in Iraq.

In the case of Operation Vibrant Fury, military personnel say the decision to request Blackwater personnel came after a request for military “tier one” operatives was denied.

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Steven Rattner, the Master of the Universe who may have had to step down from the Obama Administration because of ties to a kickback scandal, tells us we’re ignorant for thinking that Ben Bernanke might not the best guy to run the Fed.

But much of the barrage of criticism is unfair, and some of it is simply ignorant.

For a guy calling others ignorant, though, what is supposed to be a defense of Bernanke (but is, instead, a defense of MOTUs generally) is really stupid.

Start with Rattner’s endpoint–that, rather than putting together a systemic regulator free from the incestuous ties to the banks that the Fed has (or, better yet, reimposing Glass-Steagall), Congress should give the Fed that power.

In return, instead of looking backward, we should give the Fed the tools it needs so that the unwinding of the next AIG doesn’t need to result in an unjust enrichment of stakeholders.

I’ll leave you all to chew on that sentence for a bit, with its “instead of looking backward” refrain even while it calls for giving the Fed more power. But for the moment, keep in mind that Rattner’s basically arguing not that Bernanke should be confirmed (the logic behind the timing of his op-ed), but that Bernanke should be confirmed and be given vastly increased powers.

Now, one of the reasons for that, presumably, is because (Rattner asserts) the Fed has “independence” from those it regulates.

[The Fed] “should remain adamant about its need for independence in conducting monetary policy”

But here are three of the lame-ass excuses Rattner gives for the mistakes the government’s MOTUs made last year and before:

• “The refrain from all quarters after the bailout of Bear Stearns in the spring was that the next floundering bank needed to be allowed to fail”
• “All of the regulators should have been more attentive to the irresponsible lending practices and excessive risk-taking of our major financial institutions than the free-market principles of the incumbents allowed. … Regulators were not the only ones at fault; the constant push, particularly by liberals, toward the worthy goal of increased homeownership put people into homes they couldn’t afford.”
• Policymakers labored under “unfathomable pressure” last fall

Everyone was saying the next bank had to be allowed to fail, everyone was pushing increased homeownership, and policymakers were under unfathomable pressure.

Three of the five excuses Rattner gives his buddies are that they they were under some kind of pressure, and in two cases, that pressure was distinctly political (the “unfathomable pressure” in the last instance refers to time stress as much as everything else). In a piece arguing for the independence of the Fed, then, Rattner says they fucked up because they were under too much political pressure to make the decisions they did.

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I’m not much interested in the gate-crashing Salahis. But I am interested in two data-points that suggest Republicans are preparing to use the gate-crashing episode like they did the travel office attack under the Clintons.

First, there’s this tweet from Karl Rove.

Good question @rip120751. SS getting bad rap. Haven’t gotten to bottom of this, likely low-level WH staffer involved—we’ll see.

And then there’s this post from Michael Isikoff, in which he seems to have reverted to both his form and his beat of the mid to late 90s. In it he credulously repeats the story of a former Bush political appointee who burrowed into the career staff at the White House before Bush left. Said burrower suggests that by stripping her of her responsibilities, White House social secretary Desiree Rogers allowed the gate-crashers to break in.

The White House staff member whose job was to supervise the guest list for state dinners and clear invitees into the events says she was stripped of most of her responsibilities earlier this year, prompting her to resign last June.

The account of Cathy Hargraves, who formerly served as White House “assistant for arrangements,” raises new questions about whether changes that she says were made by President Obama’s social secretary, Desiree Rogers, may have contributed to the security lapses that permitted Virginia socialites Michele and Tareq Salahi to crash the state dinner for India’s prime minister last week and get themselves photographed with the president.

[snip]

Hargraves tells Declassified in an exclusive interview that, while she had originally been hired as a White House political appointee in 2001, she landed a new position on the White House residence staff in 2006 and was specifically detailed to the social office to work on state dinners.

And Michael Isikoff–who surely knows the implications of someone being burrowed in before a President leaves–accepts Hargraves’ claims that she’s not political at all.

In some ways, Hargraves’s account is reminiscent of culture clashes that have arisen in the past between outgoing and incoming White House staff members. Moreover, Hargraves acknowledges that the new Obama staff may have distrusted her because she had originally served as a political appointee in the office of the cabinet secretary under President Bush. But Hargraves, who is a registered nurse by profession, says she has never worked on a political campaign and, as far as she is concerned, her loyalty was to the White House as an institution, not to the Bush administration.

Because registered nurses who get hired as political appointees never had any political agenda, not at all.

Especially when they appear to be reading from Karl Rove’s script.