Pelosi’s Advisory On Abu Zubaydah And Torture

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As Marcy noted back on April 29th, the issue of Nancy Pelosi’s briefing back in 2002 on the Bush/Cheney torture program, whether or not it was being applied to Abu Zubaydah and, if so, to what extent, has really turned into a he said-she said game. (See also here regarding the Porter Goss offensive against Pelosi and Harman).

So, it should not come as any surprise that yet another missive has been launched in this little passion play. Today’s strike comes courtesy of Rick Klein at ABC News:

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah in September 2002, according to a report prepared by the Director of National Intelligence’s office and obtained by ABC News.

The report, submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee and other Capitol Hill officials Wednesday, appears to contradict Pelosi’s statement last month that she was never told about the use of waterboarding or other special interrogation tactics. Instead, she has said, she was told only that the Bush administration had legal opinions that would have supported the use of such techniques.

MadDog has slithered into the depths of Human Events.com to find what they claim is "the report". He has also given us a hand glossary for the abbreviations. The Washington Post seems to think it is "the report" as well, for what it is worth:

In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress briefed on the tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House intelligence committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Pelosi has already, of course, issued a denial through a spokesman. More he said-she said. Quite frankly, without more, today’s play should be taken with a grain of salt. Multiple major news organizations have this hot off the press info right after Congress receives it and right wing hit rag Human Events (Jed Babbin) is pitching it as a slam on Pelosi. How very convenient. As further evidence of the need for grains Read more →

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Big Auto Musical Chairs

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Okay, I didn’t see this one coming.

General Motors is staring imminent bankruptcy dead in the eye:

In April, the automaker drew another $2 billion and has said it would expect to need another $2.6 billion from the U.S. Treasury before the June 1 deadline. That would take GM’s debt to the U.S. government to $18 billion.

GM has asked its three major creditor groups to write off at least $43 billion in debt in exchange for ownership stakes in a restructured company.

GM bondholders, who are owed $27 billion, have also been offered new stock in exchange for writing off debt in a bond exchange the automaker launched last week.

GM is targeting a reduction of at least $24 billion, or 90 percent, of its bond debt under the plan and has warned that it could be forced into bankruptcy if that cannot be achieved.

Read the entire article, it is a bleak picture for the General.

Good golly that sounds dire, I wonder what new ideas are afoot to reign in the size and voracious appetite for spending at GM? Well, glad you asked, because they want to acquire a significant stake in Fiat!

Four years after paying $2 billion to extricate itself from a partnership with Fiat, General Motors is seeking a stake in the Italian automaker in exchange for its Latin American and European operations.

General Motors is eager to cede control of its money-losing Opel unit in Germany. But Fiat has also expressed interest in G.M.’s other European operations as well as its historically profitable Latin American business, though the possible terms of such a deal have not been discussed publicly.

G.M., despite its precarious financial position, now feels it has a bargaining chip with its Latin American unit, and is negotiating with Fiat over what it might get in return.
…
But G.M. executives are holding out for at least 30 percent of the Fiat Auto Group, according to these people, who said they were not authorized to comment publicly because the discussions are fluid.

Fiat. You know, the same Fiat that is supposedly saving Chrysler by merging with it. A merger, by the way that is effectively being subsidized by the bailout funds from the US taxpayers. And they are going to cut a deal with GM, who is surviving almost exclusively by the good graces of the US taxpayer.

And here is a nice little kicker, Fiat is looking for Read more →

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The Value Of The Hometeam

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Sports are a fickle thing, they bring out the best and the worst of people. Professional sports franchises often come, in a way, to define their cities. Pittsburgh, home of the Steelers. Boston, home of the Red Sox. Detroit, home of the Red Wings. But what is their intrinsic value? What does it mean when they leave? The City of Phoenix may be about to find out:

Less than an hour before the National Hockey League commissioner planned to broker a deal to sell the Phoenix Coyotes and strip team owner Jerry Moyes of his duties Tuesday, Moyes filed for bankruptcy to sell to his own buyer.

Moyes, as part of a Chapter 11 reorganization filing, agreed to sell the team for $212.5 million to a BlackBerry wireless magnate who plans to move the team to a yet-to-be determined location in southern Ontario, Canada.

The move is not a certainty. Already, the NHL and Glendale, which leases Jobing.com Arena to the Coyotes, have objected to Moyes’ tactics. And other investors could outbid BlackBerry executive Jim Balsillie’s PSE Sports & Entertainment LP.

But the Coyotes, who have played in metro Phoenix since 1996, habitually have lost money in the desert, first when they shared an arena with the Phoenix Suns in downtown Phoenix and most recently in Glendale.

Moyes, who since 2001 has invested more than $310 million in the team, declined to be interviewed. Earl Scudder, his financial and legal adviser, said Moyes had no option but to file for bankruptcy because that was the only way to void the team’s lease with Glendale.

There are so many threads here it is hard to know where to start. The arrogance of an owner. The bankrupt state of a national sports franchise. And not just any hockey franchise either, one run by the Great One, the greatest hockey player ever, Wayne Gretzky and playing in one of the newest most state of the art single sport dedicated stadium in the league. Oh, and hey, does the line "no option but to file for bankruptcy because that was the only way to void the team’s lease with Glendale" not sound an awful lot like the mantra of the Obama Administration and the auto manufacturers trying to shed those pesky dealership agreements?

So, apparently the market value of the Phoenix Coyotes is 212.5 million – if the team is shipped off to somewhere in Read more →

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The New Journalism

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graphic by allthingscahill

graphic by allthingscahill

Sometimes tectonic shifts are underfoot and society fails to recognize the acts and effects. Such is the case with journalism and its daily outlets, newspapers and television. Newspapers are dying left and right, those that are not are struggling to stay alive and relevant. The most recent glaring example is the Boston Globe.

The Boston Globe has been published for over 137 years and, over that period, became one of the grand ladies of the news press. You would think that the purchase of, and partnership with, the Globe in 1993 by the New York Times would place the Globe in a position of strength in even these perilous times. Not so. From Eugene Robinson in today’s Washington Post:

Despite the whole Red Sox vs. Yankees thing, employees of the Boston Globe were mostly relieved in 1993 when the paper was bought by the New York Times Co. for an astounding $1.1 billion. If the era of local family ownership had to end, nestling beneath the wing of one of the world’s great newspapers seemed the best alternative. And if the Times was willing to pay so much, it must have been serious about putting quality ahead of the bottom line.

That was then. Now, after several rounds of painful cutbacks and layoffs at the Globe, the Times is squeezing a further $20 million in savings from the Boston newspaper’s unions — and threatening to shut down the paper if the demand is not fully met. The economics of our industry are cruel and remorseless, but still it’s alarming to witness what looks like an act of cannibalism.

To be fair, the Globe is reportedly on pace to lose about $85 million this year. The New York Times Co. is hardly in a position to swallow a loss of that magnitude, given that the company’s flagship newspaper is waging its own fight against a rising tide of red ink.

So that is the background for the discussion I want to have. My proposition is that it is not just the financial status of the major newspapers in decline, it is also, and even more significantly, the quality of content. Quite frankly, the traditional press has become deficient in both content and quality. I am not sure that it has ever been so apparent as in the last two to three weeks on the issue Read more →

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The al-Haramain Case Stays On Track

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graphic by BobsViews

graphic by BobsViews

It was late and welcome news Friday afternoon when Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision came in. Marcy already gave some cogent analysis on where the punches were pulled in the decision and where they landed. I actually think (yes, yes, I know I am usually the voice of pessimism) that the punches landing will prove to far outweigh those pulled.

First, and foremost, Judge Walker has kept the suit alive in the face of all the adversity thrown in his path by both the Bush/Cheney Administration and, now, that of Obama. This fact alone entitles Judge Walker to a king’s ransom of gratitude from anybody that gives a tinker’s damn about the rule of law and the Fourth Amendment, because Obama has been following Bush in pulling every stunt in the bag out to defeat the right of citizens to hold their government accountable for the illegal and unconstitutional acts it perpetrates on them. Take the recent unconscionable assertion of sovereign immunity for instance. Please.

The seminal importance of Walker’s decision to proceed simply cannot be overstated. It is, quite simply, a ruling by a Federal court, albeit it a preliminary one, that the "Bush Program" was illegal. And keep in mind that it is not just the al-Haramain case that hangs in the balance of this determination, but potentially all the consolidated cases, including Jewell, too. As Marcy has explained, the ability of the of the plaintiffs in the remaining consolidated cases to establish the existence of illegal surveillance, separate and distinct from al-Haramain, may be effectively non-existent due to the state secrets assertion (even discounting the heinously bogus sovereign immunity assertion) made by Bush/Cheney and now Obama. In the face of the state secrets claim there is no way for the plaintiffs to establish standing as plaintiffs having been illegally surveilled. Because of "the sealed document", in the form of a surveillance log that was inappropriately forwarded to al-Haramain’s attorneys, the plaintiffs in al-Haramain have the ability to establish directly illegal surveillance.

So there is that, but there is also the process that Judge Walker has laid out in order to carry the action forward down the tracks. Having reviewed the sealed document, and the other filings made under seal (including those detailing the notorious "inaccurate information" previously lodged by the Bush administration), and determined that the case will proceed, there has to be a path crafted to allow the case to proceed and still protect the secrecy of information that is legitimately national security protected. As Marcy said:

In other words, Walker has Read more →

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The CIA Directors Protecting Themselves

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The AP reports that along with John Deutsch and Michael Hayden, George Tenet and Porter Goss have criticized Obama’s release of the torture memos.

Of course Tenet and Goss would criticize Obama’s decision. Both of them are personally implicated by revelations in the memos.

As I noted (as did William Ockham–I stole his transcription), the May 30, 2005 memo makes it clear that people at CIA Headquarters ordered Abu Zubaydah to be waterboarded additional time(s)–for the 83rd time, perhaps?–even after interrogators working with him directly believed he was complying with their demands.

This is not to say that the interrogation program has worked perfectly. According to the IG Report, the CIA, at least initially, could not always distinguish detainees who had information but were successfully resisting interrogation from those who did not actually have the information. See IG report at 83-85. On at least one occasion, this may have resulted in what might be deemed in retrospect to have been the unnecessary use of enhanced techniques. On that occasion, although the on-scene interrogation team judged Zubaydah to be compliant, elements with CIA Headquarters still believed he was withholding information. [Redaction of more than one full line] See id, at 84. At the direction of CIA Headquarters interrogators, therefore used the waterboard one more time on Zubaydah. [Redaction of ~3/4 of a line] See id, at 84-85.

We can’t pin this on Tenet directly, though we do know Bush was pressuring Tenet at the time to deliver some kind of intelligence that would substantiate Bush’s public assertions that Abu Zubaydah was important within the Al Qaeda ranks.

"I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,"

And in any case, we know that the one time when even the CIA agrees Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded "needlessly," it was done on the order of CIA headquarters under Tenet’s leadership.

Also as I noted, the May 10, 2005 "Techniques" memo reveals that Abu Zubaydah’s interrogator far exceeding OLC guidlines on how to administer waterboarding. 

The IG Report noted that in some cases the waterboard was used with far greater frequency than initially indicated, see IG Report at 5, 44, 46, 103-04, and also that it was used in a different manner. See id. at 37 ("[T]he waterboard technique  … was different from the technique described in the DoJ opinion and used in the SERE training. Read more →

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BREAKING NEWS: Judge Vaughn Walker Keeps Al-Haramain Alive!

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graphic by politicalbase

graphic by politicalbase

The decision just came to me hot from a source involved in the case. Judge Walker has entered his order on al-Haramain. [pdf]

The court has, in keeping with its orders dated January 5 (Doc #537/57), February 13 (Doc #562/71) and February 19 (Doc #566/75), reviewed the Sealed Document and the parties’ various submissions on the subject of appropriate measures to prevent disclosure of classified information while allowing “both parties [] access to the material upon which the court makes a decision.” RT, Hearing held January 23, 2009 (Doc #532/67) at 34 and Doc #562/71 at 2,3.

The United States, in response to the court’s directive to “inform the court how it intends to comply with the January 5 order” (Doc #562/71 at 3) has offered up three similar-sounding alternatives all of which appear geared toward obtaining a stay of this court’s proceedings and review by the court of appeals, even though its simultaneous attempts to obtain review as of right and by means of an interlocutory appeal of the January 5 order failed in February (Doc #562/71 and Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, Inc v Obama, No 09-15266 (9th Cir February 27, 2009)). As both this court and the court of appeals have determined that this matter is properly before the court, the United States should now comply with the court’s orders.

Accordingly, the parties are hereby ordered to meet and confer regarding the entry of an appropriate protective order which shall be entered herein before the court rules on the merits. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has successfully employed protective orders in the In Re Guantánamo Bay Detainee Litigation, D DC No Misc 08-0442 TFH, even providing for the use of top secret/sensitive compartmented information (TS/SCI). See, for example, the documents at docket numbers 409 and 1481 in that matter. The United States has advanced no argument that would suggest a reason why the court’s use of a protective order in instant matter modeled on those in use in the Guantánamo Bay would not adequately protect the classified information at issue here.

The parties shall submit to the court a stipulated protective order on or before May 8, 2009. If the parties are unable to agree on all terms, they shall jointly submit a document containing all agreed terms together with a document setting forth the terms about which they are unable Read more →

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Does This Explain DOJ Reluctance to Turn Over AIG Monitoring Documents?

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TPMM has two posts noting that DOJ has been reluctant to turn over to the Oversight Committee the documents pertaining to its Delayed Prosecution Agreement with AIG, whereas SEC has been more forthcoming.

Last month, as we noted at the time, House Oversight committee chair Ed Towns formally asked the Justice Department for records kept by a government monitor, who since 2004 has had access to high-level internal deliberations at AIG.

But DOJ seems to be dragging its heels.

Today — 15 days after Towns made his legally binding request, and 13 days after the deadline he set for Justice to respond — department spokesman Ian McCaleb told TPMmuckraker: "We’re working on submitting a response." Asked what was causing the hold up, McCaleb declined to elaborate.

At issue is information compiled by James Cole, a lawyer with Bryan Cave, who was placed as a government monitor inside AIG, as part of a 2004 deferred prosecution agreement after AIG had been charged with helping clients avoid taxes. As Towns put it in his letter, Cole "had a seat at the table" for the string of cataclysmic developments at AIG over the last few years. Whatever reports or other information he compiled could therefore be of great value to investigators, like Towns, who are probing the causes of last fall’s financial collapse, which was triggered by the failure of AIG’s Financial Products unit.

There are a couple of data points that might begin to explain DOJ’s reluctance to turn over what it has received from Cole.

First, DOJ signed not one, but two deferred prosecution agreements with AIG. The first, in 2004, pertained to a scheme AIG-FP engaged in with PNC to shift assets off its books. The second, in 2006, pertained to a deal with Gen Re, again to shift assets around to hide risk. Now, both these schemes go back to 2000 and 2001; the actions AIG took did not take place while Cole was monitoring it. Nevertheless, AIG got two bites at the Delayed Prosecution Agreement, which does not appear to be true for any other corporations as of May of last year.  And, as this article on these early scams make clear, the intent was largely the same with both: to hide risk. So you might think AIG’s failure to admit to the second scheme until 2005 would undermine its claim to be cooperating in good faith with the DPA in 2004.

More interesting, though, is the squabble that the Fraud section at DOJ had with the US Attorney’s office in CT a few weeks back.  Read more →

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Cables and Toobz, Again

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Many of you who kept linking to the news on the cable cuts in CA’s South Bay were pointing in this direction. (h/t Susie)

This week in the San Francisco Bay Area, the fiber-optic cable network was purposely sliced at four distinct locations. Where a hacker cannot succeed, bolt cutters will do. Read more in The Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog. Once the cables were cut, Internet service was flaky for the region and completely out for 50,000 customers. On top of that, the landlines would not work and the cell-phone towers in the area went dead.  [snip] How much work would it take to find some choke points that you could cut for the purposes of disrupting data communications in an area? How would this affect the so-called smart grid? The peculiar nature of the four cuts around the Bay Area indicated to me that someone was mapping how they would affect the region, keeping in mind that by cutting the cable in key areas you might be able to take down half the country. If more cuts are made in the future, then someone is trying to reverse-engineer the network to find the most vulnerable points of disruption.

The MarketWatch article speculates that the intentional cuts were an attempt to map how to shut off parts of the system. But what it doesn’t question–but a lot of you already had–was whether these intentional cuts had anything to do with the cable cuts made in the Middle East last year, which took down Egypt and Pakistan, and much of the rest of the Middle East.

We know whoever cut the cables last year (intentionally or not or some combination thereof) demonstrated clear choke points in international internet traffic. Now is someone trying to do the same within the US?

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Louis Freeh Defending Iran-Contra Type Arms Deals Along with Bandar

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There’s an aspect of the Louis Freeh interview on Frontline I find fascinating.

In defense of his client, Saudi Prince Bandar, on allegations that Bandar received billions in bribes associated with a huge BAE defense contract, Freeh mostly tries to pretend there’s a meaningful distinction between the Saudi family and high government officials in it. Thus, the plane and estate that Bandar got in connection with the BAE deal are actually government-owned facilities he has use of.

And conveniently, Freeh hasn’t looked at the Swiss Bank Accounts or the Yamamah contract, so he can’t comment on their legality.

But I’m also fascinated by a more subtle tactic Freeh uses–to implicate high ranking Americans (and Brits) in the use of the funds. 

He explains away that structure of the al Yamamah contract to Congressional intransigence during the Reagan Administration. Congress wouldn’t let the Administration sell planes to Saudi Arabia, so what was Reagan to do except encourage Margaret Thatcher to set up a big corrupt contract to bypass this restriction?

Freeh: In other words, the United States, was not able to sell the Saudis F15s, and I think you understand the origin to this contract. The King sent Prince Bandar, my client, to President Reagan with very specific instructions, “Buy F15s.” And of course the United States had armed the Saudi armed forces for the last 20 years before that.

President Reagan said to my client, “Congress will never approve the sale of F15s.” My client then went up to the hill, spoke to senior leadership on both sides of the aisle, and they said, “We can’t authorize the purchase of F15s by the King of Saudi Arabia.” He went back to President Reagan who said, “Go talk to Maggie Thatcher,” which my client did. That’s how Tornados and the treaty, not the contract but the treaty between the two countries, was originated.

He wanted to buy the planes in the United States.

[snip]

So there was only one bidder here by default and that was the British Aerospace Systems and the Toranado, at least as the contract began. So the way the treaty was set up, if the Ministry of Defense and Aviation wanted to purchase U.S. arms, U.S. arms could be purchased through BAE and DESO, which was the U.K. Ministry that did the purchasing, and that was sort of a way to purchase arms, transparent way to purchase arms, Read more →

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