Oh, THAT’S Who We Get to Kick Around

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Larry Craig, that’s who.

Shortly after a state judge denied his request to withdraw the Augustplea admitting to disorderly conduct, Mr. Craig said he had reversedhis previously announced decision to leave the Senate if he could notget the plea thrown out and would instead serve out his third term,which expires at the end of 2008. He said he would not run for a fourth.

Last we heard, Mark Geragos had withdrawn his Congressional subpoenas so he could try again.

A lawyer for a defense contractor accused of bribing former U.S.Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham on Tuesday withdrew subpoenas of a dozenHouse members after a federal judge indicated he was prepared to quashthem.

U.S. District Judge Larry Burns said he mightconsider enforcing the subpoenas if attorneys for Brent Wilkes coulddemonstrate the lawmakers had specific information related to thecharges and their testimony would be critical to Wilkes’ defense.

Wilkes’attorney, Mark Geragos, dropped his request but told reporters laterthat he planned to file new subpoenas against former House Speaker U.S.Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and four California Republicans.

[snip]

He is also considering subpoenas against up to 15 other House membersand four senators: Larry Craig, R-Idaho; Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii; CarlLevin, D-Mich., and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.

So perhaps Craig is sticking around to make Read more →

Waterboarding Is Fair Game

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I’m pooped so will have to return to this article. It explains how, after DOJ under Jack Goldsmith threw out John Yoo’s torture policies, Steven Bradbury came in and replaced them with still worse opinions.

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” ina legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared tohave abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authorityto order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’sarrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Departmentissued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very differentdocument, according to officials briefed on it, an expansiveendorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time providedexplicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination ofpainful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping,simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey,the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruisingclashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as theopinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues atthe department that they would all be “ashamed” when the worldeventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress Read more →

Who Do We Have to Kick Around Anymore?

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We already lost Abu Gonzales, Karl Rove, Monica Goodling, Kyle Sampson, Brad Schlozman, and Michael Elston. And now we’re losing Pete Domenici.

Veteran Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) is expected to announce tomorrowthat he will retire from the Senate in 2008, according to severalinformed sources, a decision that further complicates an alreadydifficult playing field for Republicans next November.

Domenicihas struggled with health problems over the last several years and hasbeen dogged by questions about the role he may have played in thefiring of U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias in Albuquerque. As a result,he had been long been rumored as a potential retirement. Domenici’sSenate office did not return a call this afternoon, but sources closeto the senator say he will fly home to New Mexico tomorrow to make theannouncement that he is retiring.

[snip]

The Senate ethics committee is investigating Domenci for a phonecall he placed to then-federal prosecutor Iglesias last October in apossible attempt to pressure him to indict New Mexico Democrats in acorruption probe just before the November election. Shortly afterIglesias said he rebuffed Domenici, his name appeared on a list of U.S.attorneys to be fired that was compiled by top Justice Departmentaides. Iglesias was dismissed Dec. 7.

Republican insiders insist that Domenici’s decision Read more →

About Those Emails? The Contractor Did It

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I guess if you make sure your contractors can’t reveal what they’ve done in your name, it becomes harder for others to discover what it is that you, personally, have done. But not impossible. The IT companies for the White House are denying that their the company that missed 5 million missing emails in their daily audits.

When Congress asked about 5 million executive branch e-mails that wentmissing, a White House lawyer pointed the finger at an outside ITcontractor.

The only problem? No such IT contractor exists, according tosources close to the investigation of a possible violation of theFederal Records and Presidential Records acts.

[snip]

Contrary to Roberts’ statement to the Oversight Committee, severalsources, including an IT company currently doing contractual work forthe Executive Office of the President, have told ChannelWeb that nooutside company had a managed services contract to audit the Executive Office of the President’s e-mail archiving system daily during the period when the e-mails went missing.

"There are many contractors working for the [Information Assurance]Directorate and no single one provided audit and archive functions,"said a spokesperson for Unisys, an IT security and hardware firm whichhas provided the Executive Office of the President "with a variety ofIT services that support the Office of Administration."

"We don’t believe that Unisys is the Information AssuranceDirectorate contractor to which Deputy Attorney General Keith Robertsreferred when he briefed Rep. Waxman’s committee in May," said LisaMeyer, director of public relations for the Blue Bell, Penn.-basedcompany.

For the record, we might want to distrust Unisys on this point. After all, they’re the company supposedly in charge of monitoring Homeland Security’s computer system. And they seemed to have missed basic things–like installing security devices on Homeland Security’s networks.

A Game of Telephone

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So AT&T says they’ll cut off your broadband if you say anything mean about them. But they say they don’t really mean that.

However, an AT&T spokesperson tells Ars Technica that thecompany has no interest in engaging in censorship but stopped short ofsaying that AT&T could not in fact exercise its ability to do so.

"AT&T respects its subscribers’ rights to voice their opinions andconcerns over any matter they wish.  However, we retain the right todisassociate ourselves from web sites and messages explicitlyadvocating violence, or any message that poses a threat to children(e.g. child pornography or exploitation)," the spokesperson told ArsTechnica. "We do not terminate customer service solely because acustomer speaks negatively about AT&T."

Note the tense of the verb. "Do not," not "Will not."

Meanwhile, my guy Dingell is getting impatient with waiting for lawsuits to reveal what the telecoms gave to the government on us.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the telecom industry, yesterday sent letters to three major carriers, AT&T, Qwest and Verizon, posing questions aimed at understanding what consumer information is being shared with the government.

"Congress has a duty to inquire about whether [the governmentsurveillance program] violates the Constitution, as well as consumerprotection and Read more →

One Small Victory for Oversight

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One lingering suspicion that they’re just moving this off the books:

After several requests from the Homeland Security Committee callingfor a moratorium on the controversial use of spy satellite imagery fordomestic purposes, the Department has heeded the call and delayed itsplanned October 1st launch of its new National Applications Office(NAO). The Department has cited the need to address unanswered privacyand civil liberties questions from Congress – as addressed in theCommittee’s September 6th hearing on the matter and also in lettersfrom August 22nd and September 6th from Committee Members.

Rep.Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), Chairman of the Committee on HomelandSecurity, released the following statement regarding the decision:

“Whilewe are pleased by the Department’s decision to go back to the drawingboard and get it right, we are troubled by its silence on the secondpart of our request: that Congress also be provided ‘a full opportunityto review the NAO’s written legal framework, offer comments, and helpshape appropriate procedures and protocols.’

Even putting aside my suspicion this is just another head fake to move surveillance beyond the grasp of Congress, Thompson’s point remains. The Administration thus far refuses to allow Congress some input into what appropriate use of satellite surveillance of civilians would be.

Well, at least Read more →

Has Dick Cheney Outlasted Bill Leonard?

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Bill Leonard is resigning at the end of the year.

It is with deeply mixed emotions that I inform you I have decided to leave government service at the end of the calendar year.

[snip]

I will miss all the great public servants at the National Archives as I move on to the next phase of my professional life. Nonetheless, I look forward to new opportunities to serve this great nation and the American people.

Leonard, of course, is the guy who took on Dick Cheney’s creative theories about classification and declassification. As Secrecy News notes,

In pursuit of that integrity earlier this year, Mr. Leonard famously challenged the Office of the Vice President, which decided in 2003 that it would no longer submit to longstanding classification oversight procedures.

After the Federation of American Scientists filed a formal complaintconcerning the OVP’s non-compliance, Mr. Leonard urged Cheney aideDavid Addington to reconsider its position. When Addington ignored therequest, Mr. Leonard exercised his authority to raise the issue withthe Attorney General, who is obliged by the executive order onclassification to render an interpretation of the order’s requirements.

Althoughno response from the Attorney General was forthcoming, the episodeturned the Vice President and his unchecked secrecy into an object ofpublic ridicule. Read more →

$290 Million on Scrapped Surveillance Programs

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The Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee are trying to force the Administration to implement procedures for protecting the privacy of Americans before it will approve funding that will fund the Administration’s domestic satellite surveillance program. In their letter to the Democrats who oversee this appropriation, they put a price tag on all the surveillance programs the Administration has had to scrap because they didn’t first implement procedures to protect Americans’ privacy. That number? $290 million dollars.

In the last three years, at least four programs — including the $140million Secure Flight Program; the $100 million Computer AssistedPassenger Prescreening System II (CAPPS II) program; the $42 millionAnalysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and SemanticEnhancement (ADVISE) program; and the $8 million MultistateAnti-Terrorism Information Exchange Pilot Project (MATRIX) — have beeneither cancelled or suspended by the Department as a result of itsfailure to adhere to applicable privacy rules and regulations. Weappreciate that Democrats on the House Homeland Security AppropriationsSubcommittee played a critical role in bringing to light thevulnerabilities of these programs. Each of these programs, ifimplemented, would have compromised the privacy rights of hundreds ofthousands, if not millions, of Americans. We do not want the Departmentto repeat the same mistakes with this program.

Given the Read more →

Is Larry Craig Sticking Around for Immunity from Subpoena?

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Larry Craig’s not gonna go, he says. At least not yet.

That’s not that big a surprise–he had been threatening to un-resign since early in September. Though his decisions to resign and then un-resign correlate curiously with his receipt of a subpoena in the Brent Wilkes trial.

August 13: Subpoenas issued (to House members)
August 27: Roll Call busts Craig’s bust
August 28: "I am not gay and I have never been gay."
September 1: Craig resigns, effective September 30
September 4: Craig says he may un-resign
September 5: Subpoenas served (to House members)
September 26: Craig says he’s staying put, for now
October 2: Scheduled subpoena date for all House members subpoenaed (and probably Craig too)

Now, Craig was still in Idaho the first week of the month, so I assume he was officially served his subpoena after the House members. Though word of the Wilkes subpoenas may have surfaced by the time Craig did his resignation headfake.

Craig called himself an old friend of Duke Cunningham and claims that he was ignorant to Duke’s bribing ways. But Wilkes Craig also appears to have been a clear recipient of a quid pro quo–where he supported an earmark for Wilkes in exchange for at least $43,500 in donations from Wilkes’ employees. Read more →

The Congressional Appropriations Process and How It Works

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The House response to the Brent Wilkes subpoena is now online–it’s 81 pages long. I’ll comment more on the rationale for quashing the subpoenas in an update (I’ve got a talk to go give shortly, but the short version is speech and debate). But some initial details:

  • The subpoena to Ike Skelton has been withdrawn
  • Wilkes also subpoenaed: Carl Levin and Jay Rockefeller (no doubt in their role as Armed Services and SSCI Chair), Larry Craig, Daniel Inouye (both recipients of Wilkes largesse; here’s a question–is Craig sticking around the Senate to retain immunity? And will the Senate let him?), and Josh Bolten, Robert Gates and Gordon Craig

After some back and forth, the General Counsel of the House was able to get Geragos to explain that he was interested in information "concerning the congressional appropriations process and how it works." No, really?

There’s more detail on the subpoenas to Hunter and Lewis (big surprise) and Murtha and Reyes, as follows.