CIA Fraud In State Secrets Assertions

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There is a new case causing a stir on the state secrets front today. The case is Horn v. Huddle et. al, is filed in the DC District, and has been quietly going on behind the scenes since 1994. From Del Wilber at the Washington Post:

A federal judge has ruled that government officials committed fraud while defending a lawsuit brought by a former DEA agent who accused a CIA operative of illegally bugging his home.

In rulings unsealed Monday, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth wrote that he was also considering sanctions against five current and former agency lawyers and officials, including former director George Tenet, for withholding key information about the operative’s covert status.

The rulings, issued in recent months, highlighted what the judge called fraudulent work by CIA lawyers in defending a suit that Lamberth said had a lengthy and "twisted history."

Here is the ruling issued by Judge Royce Lamberth today that set off the firestorm.

There is a lot of great background on the case, and events behind it, in an old post from Bill Conroy at Narco News in 2004:

Former DEA agent Richard Horn has been fighting the U.S. government for the past 10 years trying to prove the CIA illegally spied on him as part of an effort to thwart his mission in the Southeast Asian country of Burma.

After being removed from his post in Burma, Horn filed litigation in federal court in Washington, D.C., in 1994 accusing top officials for the CIA and State Department in Burma of violating his Fourth Amendment rights.

After languishing in the federal court system for some 10 years, Horn’s case was dismissed in late July of this year [2004] after crucial evidence in the case was suppressed on national security grounds.

…

What really happened in the Horn case, though, is not supposed to come out, if the government has its way. From the start, Horn’s litigation was sealed and critical evidence that could have supported his claims censored by the court.

Specifically, the evidence – two federal Inspector General (IG) reports that centered on Horn’s accusations – was determined by the court to be protected from disclosure based on something called state secrets privilege. The privilege, which was established as part of a 1953 Supreme Court ruling known as the Reynolds case, allows the government to deep-six information if it is deemed a threat to national security.

“Having determined that state secrets privilege bars disclosure of the IG Reports and certain attachments … the case cannot continue and Read more →

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California’s Detroit

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Like Atrios, I view this partly with the awe of watching a massive slow-moving trainwreck.

About a year and a half ago, well before Mendota started making headlines, things had gotten bad enough that Riofrio stopped selling fresh milk at his store. Too few could afford it anymore. In the last few months, the downward spiral has greatly accelerated. Farmers in Westlands, who’ve yanked about 100,000 acres out of production since 2000, say they may now be forced to idle as many as 150,000 more for lack of water.

The issues at play are complicated. They’re also fraught with bad blood. Farmers are set to receive only 3.7 million acre-feet of water this year from federal and state plumbing systems–about 2 million acre-feet less than in a normal year. Some environmentalists, however, have been quick to accuse the growers of overstating the problem. They say farmers have extra water stored both above and below ground and have gotten supplies transferred from other locations.

[snip]

What’s critical for policymakers to keep in mind is that, in the end, none of this squabbling matters. It’s simply a distraction from the one thing they should be focused on: The people of Mendota are suffering terribly — and steps need to be taken right away to bring them relief.

First, U.S. officials have to resist pressure from environmental groups and others and allow, at least temporarily, for the partial lifting of the fish protections. It won’t completely solve things, but it will help. It will also send a crucial signal of support to Riofrio and his customers, who are fast becoming a more endangered species than Chinook salmon or delta smelt.

Second, and most important, federal, state and local officials need to coordinate on a long-term economic development strategy — and put some serious dollars behind it. This must go way beyond the $260 million in federal stimulus money that’s been promised by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to patch up ailing irrigation infrastructure across the state.

The real question is what emerges after the almonds, tomatoes and cantaloupes disappear. What happens as ever more Central Valley farmland is retired, as is inevitable? What does the future look like for the northwest corner of Fresno County? Will the usual solution — building a new prison — be all that’s conceived? Read more →

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The Real Reason They’re Hiding Cheney’s Interview?

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Ostensibly, DOJ is trying to withhold Dick Cheney’s interview materials for the following three reasons (in order of their centrality to the argument):

  1. Law enforcement privilege: If DOJ turns over Cheney’s interview, it will make future Vice Presidents unwilling to cooperate in investigations. This argument fails given the evidence that it has long been routine to release interview materials from high ranking White House figures, going back to the era of Cheney’s first White House job under Nixon, continuing through the investigation conducted parallel to the one Cheney participated in on Iran-Contra, and up through Bush’s predecessor, Clinton. Thus, Cheney’s cooperation itself proves the lie of DOJ’s argument.
  2. Deliberative and presidential privilege: Much of the contents of Cheney’s interview comprise his description of deliberations within the White House regarding how to respond to Joe Wilson. This argument fails, in significant part, because much of this was already released during the trial. Furthermore, with the knowledge of at least two other White House officials, Dick Cheney’s lawyer leaked key portions of this to Michael Isikoff in April 2006.
  3. National security classification: Finally, DOJ argues that it can’t turn over material already made public, such as the names of Cheney’s and Libby’s briefers, David Terry and Craig Schmall. DOJ and CIA may actually even be protecting the name of that secret CIA officer, Valerie Plame Wilson!

For the most part, this argument doesn’t make sense at all. Most importantly, the core argument–that releasing this interview will inhibit future cooperation–is belied by the last half century of history. Nevertheless, for some reason DOJ has decided to fight release of this document. That’s partly because, I think, this fight started last year, while Cheney still had sway to make it happen. It’s partly because of Obama’s fear of doing anything that would look political. Still, something must explain why Obama’s DOJ is making this crappy argument with such intensity. Something–aside from the defense of secrecy in general–must explain DOJ’s almost comical efforts to keep this interview hidden in spite of the long history of releasing similar interviews.

As I suggested in this post, their concern appears to be much more narrow. I suspect they’re not trying to protect the content of Cheney’s interview, in the abstract. Rather, they’re trying to protect the content because of what Cheney said.

Read more →

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“C” Is for Cheater

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If I were the wife of one of the boys shacking up at C Street who had not yet admitted an extramarital affair, I’d be getting nervous about now.

Former Congressman and C Street resident Chip Pickering’s estranged wife has filed a lawsuit against Pickering’s alleged mistress. Leisha Pickering is suing Elizabeth Creekmore-Byrd for alienation of affection.

Rep. Pickering, a Republican from Mississippi, allegedly continued seeing his college sweetheart while they were both married. According to the suit, some of the "wrongful conduct" occurred at the C Street facility for Christian congressmen — the same one where Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) have lived, and where Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC) has recently sought counseling.

Let’s see. Zach Wamp. Bart Stupak (a Dem). Jim DeMint. Sam Brownback. And of course, C Street’s resident ObGyn, Tom Coburn.

Any of you have something you want to tell us?

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Bacon, Boobs & A Blowjob: All Star Trash Talk

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Bacon Bra

What the hell, somebody (h/t Kalium) had to write a post with this title, why not me? And fear not fearless readers, I intend to deliver on all elements promised. And let’s get that out of the way early.

For the bacon, I present a full fledged pig. John Kyl, who I am embarrassed to say, represents the fine state I reside in, Arizona. If it were not for bad Senators, I would have no Senators at all. Here is John Kyl, in transcript form, interacting ("questioning" is too nice for what he was doing) with Sotomayor. I have had to live with this asswipe representing me and not being able to pay enough attention to the jerk because I was worried about Uncle Fester McCain. It is the definition of conundrum. Kyl is like the Gooper Milli Vanilli, he will lip synch whatever cretinous right wing horse manure is available, and he never disappoints.

For the boobs, see the graphic attached hereto. Or check out the latest from MC Steele or Sarah Palin. Enough said.

Blowjob. There, I said it. And I am the second person on this blog to do so!! Now, I dunno if y’all have heard tell or not, but my friend, The Most Right Prim & Proper Ms. Marcy Wheeler, done gone and upset the delicate sensibilities of the Ms. Vanderbilt Ladies Couch Fainting Association, or at least Tam. Hall division thereof, into a bit of the vapors.

Goodness now, what shall we do? Well, it turns out, if you are in the media, you want to cluck cluck that a modern woman might use the term "blowjob" on cable TeeVee. Oh my, It does make one faint, eh? This is delicate tripe coming from a woman employed by a network making its bones on the Bill Clinton prurient diversion.

Now the Trash Talk. It is the Major League Baseball All Star Game tonight and President Barack Obama is throwing out the first pitch and appearing in the broadcast booth with Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. The best moment in my All Star history is banned player Pete Rose sliding into home on Ray Fosse in the 1970 All Star Game.

Football isn’t here yet. Nor is basketball. It is the Mid-Summer Classic, the MLB All Star Game. And POTUS is there. Read more →

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Working Thread on Warrantless Wiretapping IG Report

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Timed perfectly so al-Haramain can’t use it in its latest brief. Though I imagine Judge Walker will read it closely.

Here’s the report.

Consider this an working thread.

Update: The report admits how AGAG tried to avoid perjury: multiple programs were authorized with the same presidential finding, and he was just referring to one when he lied to Congress about any dissent on the program.

Update: The role of non-OLC, non-FBI parts of DOJ in the program:

DOJ’s Office of Intelligence Policy and Review … worked with the FBI and the NSA to address the impact PSP-derived information had on proceedings under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). DOJ’s National Security Division also handled potential discovery issues that may have involved potential PSP-related information in international terrorism prosecutions.

All vague and non-dated…

Update: OPR hasn’t completed its review of OLC’s role in approving the program. Damn that’s taking some time.

Update: This is a load of crap designed to cover up for the March 2004 hospital scene and the fact that OLC was given primacy over AG in approving the program.

The Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel reviewed this information to assess whether there was "a sufficient factual basis demonstrating a threat of terrorist attacks in the United States for it to continue to be reasonable under the standards of the Fourth Amendment for the President to [continue] to authorize the warrantless searches involved" in the program. The Office of Legal Counsel then advised the Attorney General on whether the constitutional standard of reasonableness had been met and whether the Presidential Authorization could be certified "as to form and legality."

[snip]

Although there was no legal requirement that the Authorization be certified by the Attorney General or other Department of Justice official, current and former DOJ officials told us that this certification added value by giving the program a sense of legitimacy. Former Attorney General Gonzales stated that the NSA was being asked to do something it had not done before, and it was important to assure the NSA that the Attorney General had approved the legality of the program.

Note, Gonzales was interviewedd for this, but Ashcroft refused. Yoo also refused. And it doesn’t even say whether they tried to interview Jim Comey or Jack Goldsmith!! (Mueller did agree to be interviewed.) Scratch that–Comey was interviewed.

Update:

Initially the analysts who prepared the threat assessments were not read into the PSP and did not know how the threat assessments would be Read more →

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Why Is Hampton Embarrassing “the Family”?

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Last night, Rachel did a superb job on a story we were the first to cover: Doug Hampton’s efforts to get "the Family" to get John Ensign to stop sleeping with Hampton’s wife (see Hampton’s full interview here).

Now, in Hampton’s description of "the Family," he emphasizes they’re good men. And when Hampton first spoke, he did not mention "the Family" directly–we figured that out based on Ensign roomie’s Tom Coburn’s involvement. 

But I wonder. Are Hampton’s now-extensive discussion of "the Family" and Sanford’s off-hand reference to it mistakes, or intentional efforts to expose the group?

For Hampton’s part, I suspect he may have appealed to "the Family" because he knew–or hoped–it would be a quick way to a pay-off. And, given Coburn’s statement that Ensign should have done as "the Family" told him to do, Hampton may have had good reason to believe so. That is, the reference that initially got me and Citizen92 looking at the circumstances of this confrontation closely …

In fact one of the confrontations took place in February 2008 at his home in Washington DC (sic) with a group of his peers. One of the attendee’s (sic) was Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma as well as several other men who are close to the Senator.

… May have been an implicit threat to expose the group, a reference explicit enough to communicate to Ensign and "the Family" that he’d describe the group’s involvement if he did not get the pay-off they had recommended last year. Which is what we’re seeing now, Hampton’s revenge for the failure of "the Family" to resolve it amicably.

Then what of Sanford’s weepy reference, coming just a week or so after Hampton’s partial exposure of "the Family"?

Did your wife and your family know about the affair before the trip to Argentina?

Yeah. We’ve been working through this thing for about the last five months. I’ve been to a lot of different–I was part of a group called C Street when I was in Washington, it was a Christian Bible study of some folks that ask Members of Congress hard questions that I think were very very important. I’ve been working with them. 

[snip]

It was discovered five months ago.

That’s a part of me that wonders whether Sanford–who appears to be discovering emotions usually first experienced during adolescence–just lost all filter in his confusion. But I’m not sure. Read more →

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Tom Coburn and “the Family” Tried to Buy Off Ensign’s Mistress

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Tom Coburn, the Senate’s resident morality shrill, has a weird idea of how to enforce "Family" values. He and other members of the cultish "Family" apparently tried to help Ensign buy off his mistress.

Hampton and Ensign were bonded by their conservative evangelical faith. Hampton said he reached out to intermediaries involved in a Christian fellowship home in Washington, D.C., where Ensign and several other powerful Washington figures live.

The group, including Coburn, a well-known conservative, confronted Ensign and suggested that the Hamptons needed to be given financial assistance — in the millions of dollars — to pay off their $1 million-plus mortgage and move them to a new life away from Ensign.

During the confrontation, Ensign agreed to write a letter to Cynthia Hampton expressing remorse, Hampton said.

The letter, which was authenticated by Ralston’s executive producer Dana Gentry, is filled with contrition: “I was completely self-centered and only thinking of myself. I used you for my own pleasure not letting thoughts of you, Doug, Brandon, Blake or Brittany come into my mind,” he wrote, referring to the Hampton children.

But after sending the letter, which bears the date “Feb. 2008,” Hampton said Ensign quickly disavowed it in a conversation with Cynthia Hampton and continued to pursue her.

Hampton said that on that same February weekend, Ensign told him, “I’m in love with your wife.”

Here’s the letter, which is even more juvenile than Sanford’s love emails to his mistress.

So I wonder. Is this a formal policy of "the Family," to buy off members’ mistresses? Did they try to buy off Sanford’s mistress (remember, Sanford was getting martial counseling from "the Family" just like Ensign). Was there an implicit understanding that after their mortgage got paid off by Ensign, they would have to be silent about it, even during Ensign’s potential 2012 Presidential run?

And who else’s mistresses has "the Family" bought off?

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Pride And Petulance

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Today is Victory In Iraq Day. For Iraqis. Well, actually, it is the day American troops (yes we are the only ones left; even our "special friends", the Brits, left long ago) officially marked their exit from urban areas to be concentrated in centralized bases in the countryside. From the New York Times:

With parades, fireworks and a national holiday, the Iraqi government celebrated the final withdrawal of American troops from the country’s cities on Tuesday, trying to exploit a political milestone to trumpet what the prime minister called sovereignty from foreign occupation.

Indeed, in spite of the still tenuous security situation in many areas, it is and should be a day of celebration of the return of another piece of sovereignty for the Iraqis. They will never truly stand until they stand on their own; it will be painful, fitful and slow, but it is a necessary process.

And how are neocons and some elements of the military (by no means all) taking the events of the day? Not well of course. The Dick, Cheney, is concern trolling that the U.S. troop withdrawal might “waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point.”

The neocons and PNACs who ginned up this war, and lied us into it, are worried about the frailty of the situation because of the American sacrifice. There were no WMDs, no links to al-Qaida, no threat form Sadaam to the US or anybody in the region at the time, and the one real power in the region, Iran, has been strengthened. And Dick Cheney marks the occasion by whining about our sacrifice. The Iraqis must be thrilled to here those words.

As CNN’s Michael Ware reports in the attached video clip, no one, whether American, Iraqi or otherwise, should demean or devalue the efforts and lives lost by the American military, they did the job they were told to do, but the bigger picture on the Iraqi adventure is very ugly, and contrary to Dick Cheney, it is the sacrifice of the Iraqis that ought to be considered, because the American loss is insignificant to the hell we hath wrought upon Iraq. The US military and coalition forces have lost about 4,500 casualties (and nearly 1,400 contractor deaths which no one ever mentions).

The carnage on the Iraqi populous has been far more devastating however:

Thus, the best guess Read more →

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Jenny Sanford Lays The Wood To Lovey Govey

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Holy smoke Batman. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape; you don’t spit into the wind. And you don’t mess around with Jen.

AP’s Bruce Smith has, through Yahoo News, put up an interview with Jenny Sanford; and it is a doozy. Do go read the entire piece, it is totally deserving. Many key questions are addressed, and Jenny Sanford puts on a tour de force.

How did Jenny find out about her husband’s affair:

Sanford said she discovered her husband’s affair early this year after coming across a copy of a letter to the mistress in one of his files in the official governor’s mansion. He had asked her to find some financial information, she said, not an unusual request considering her heavy involvement in his career.

Fascinating, and it means Jenny was not the one who forwarded the salacious Romeo/Juliet emails to The State newspaper, because The State received them in December of 2008. I have a feeling that eliminates her father too, and militates in favor of someone in the South Carolina state government, probably around the Governor’s office.**

What does Jenny think of Mark having gone to Argentina to see Maria?

That he had dared to go to Argentina to see the other woman left her stunned. "He was told in no uncertain terms not to see her," she said in a strong, steady voice.

Heh, well maybe not that stunned because:

…her husband repeatedly asked permission to visit his lover in the months after she discovered his affair.

Oh. My. That’s gonna leave a mark. It is not the kind of thing you put out on the record unless you are leaving a serious marker to own the narrative, and boy is Jenny Sanford doing that. And Jenny is not blind to anything going on here either; she has a grip.

On her philandering husband’s pelotas.

Think Jenny has any illusions about the extended stroll Mark just took through Buenos Aires? Nuh uh. Asked whether she thinks he has ended the tryst with Maria:

"I guess that’s what we will have to see. I believe he has," she said. "But he was down there for five days. I saw him yesterday and he is not staying here. We’ll just see what kind of spirit of reconciliation he has himself."

As Marcy emailed a bit ago:

The State Read more →

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