The DNC Email Ruling

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The folks that read and participate at Emptywheel are, in my humble opinion, without any question the best anywhere at deconstructing email issues and cases, and it sure looks to me like some of the people litigating these various matters are picking up on that too. That being the case, who could possibly deny you more fodder?

The Democratic National Committee has been suing the DOJ in DC District Court to obtain some 68 pages of emails relaing to the US Attorney purge. The main reporting to date has been from Politico:

A federal judge has handed the White House a legal victory in a battle with the Democratic National Committee over e-mails related to U.S. attorney firings.

District Judge Ellen Huvelle of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled Thursday that the DNC does not have a right under the Freedom of Information Act to 68 pages of e-mails sent between White House and Justice Department officials simply because the White House e-mail traffic was transmitted on a server controlled by the Republican National Committee.
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In dismissing the DNC lawsuit, Huvelle ruled that it was "based on the false factual premise that White House officials only used their RNC e-mail accounts for political communications."

Additionally, Huvelle decided that just because an RNC server was used to send the messages — 68 pages out of more than 5,000 which have been denied to the DNC — it is not enough to automatically disqualify the Justice Department from claiming a FOIA exemption in refusing to release them.

"It is therefore clear that RNC e-mail accounts were used (rightly or wrongly) both for official and RNC business, and thus the nature of the server is not necessarily informative as to whether the document contained official or political communications," Huvelle wrote in her opinion.

I think there are two issues to be contemplated here. The first is the relative propriety of Huvelle’s decision, and foundation therefor, in the DNC case, and the second is what implications it may have for the greater mass of contentious email issues that are percolating in our midst. Here is the full opinion rendered by Judge Huvelle in Democratic National Committee v. United States Department of Justice, CV 20070-712 (ESH-DDC).

There were originally 5,337 pages of emails responsive to the DNC’s FOIA request, but agreement was reached as to all but 68 pages. All of the Read more →

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Questions

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Shew! I did it! I survived for a full week without WiFi or wireless.

And it was nice.

A million thanks to bmaz for watching the blog this week–looks like you guys had a lot of fun without me. And a million thanks for the birthday wishes.

I’ll post more substantively once I wade through the accumulated emails and posts and news. But for now I’ve got the following questions as I read through what you’ve guys have been reading through.

  • If the White House destroys hard drives of people who move on, and the people from whom we wanted email in January 2006 included three people who had already left OVP (Cathie Martin, Jenny Mayfield, and Scooter Libby), then does that mean we still don’t have emails from the relevant period for these three people (particularly the last two)?
  • If Brent Wilkes’ complaints about improper leaks of his impending indictment win him a get out of jail free card, does that mean Eliot Spitzer is out of all legal danger (even while the DA is making it known that he suspects Spitzer perjured himself)?
  • What does Eric Lichtblau mean when he refers to Dick Cheney’s tense relations with the NYT in December 2005?

As New York Times Editor Bill Keller, Washington Bureau Chief Phil Taubman, and I awaited our meeting, we still weren’t sure who would make the pitch for the president. Dick Cheney had thought about coming to the meeting but figured his own tense relations with the newspaper might actually hinder the White House’s efforts to stop publication. (He was probably right.)

After all, this meeting took place just a month after Cheney’s Cheney had been indicted for lying to cover up Cheney’s apparent order to leak Valerie Wilson’s identity to Judy Miller. That indictment came after the NYT made an ill-advised attempt to protect Libby–even after they knew Judy’s testimony was proof that Libby lied under oath. After having been served so well by his selective A1 cutout leaks to the NYT, why was he so cranky right after Libby was indicted?

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Wheel Squirrels Stumble Into Bear Nuts – An Economic Update and Forum

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A couple of days ago, we discussed what really happened, and what the longer term implications might be, in the Bear Stearns forced sale/bailout over the March 15-16 weekend. There have been several things that have come out since then that are right on point with what we were all chewing on. Some are directly on point to the Bear deal, some are tangentially related and some are just general economic/financial news and thoughts. Masaccio wanted somewhere to jaw about things economic related; and what masaccio wants, masaccio gets. In no particular order then, here are some of the nuts I have stumbled on; please add any and all of your own in the comments.

1) This one I added as an update to the first post, but it still sticks in my craw a little bit. There simply is no such thing as a conflict of interest to the group currently running our country I guess (and when a Supreme Court Justice doesn’t feel obligated to be concerned over interest conflicts, why should anyone else I suppose). At any rate, turns out that JPMorgan Chase & Co head Jamie Dimon held a Federal Reserve board seat while Chase was in negotiations with the Federal Reserve over a deal to acquire Bear Stearns at an insanely low price. How convenient.

2) If there is any doubt about the fact that what is happening in relation to investment houses and the fear they sense from the financial struggles as to their continued ability to leverage and manipulate derivitive financial instruments, contemplate this:

Eight of the 10 largest donors so far to the U.S. presidential campaigns are Wall Street banks, led by Goldman Sachs, according to research Thursday from a political watchdog group. Goldman and its executives have pumped $1.7 million into the races, with 70 percent going to Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, despite former CEO Henry Paulson’s present job as treasury secretary for the Republican Bush administration.
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After Goldman, top-giving banks are Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan Chase, which is buying troubled rival Bear Stearns in a government-engineered bailout.

3) Remember my question as to whether this was all a one off deal or was setting up some type of revolutionary precedent? Arguably this is slightly different than the $30 billion guarantee in the Chase purchase, but still, the Read more →

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The New Colombian Gold and What the FARC Is Up With Weapons Dealers?

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As you may recall, there is a lot of spooky intrigue raising it’s ugly head lately in South America. It is hard to tell if the Bushies are just trying to screw up every continent before they leave office, or if there is some type of master plan, especially between South America and the Middle East. As a quick recap, early in March we saw Soviet Russian arms dealer extraordinaire Viktor Bout arrested in Thailand on what appears to have been a US warrant stemming from information "obtained" in a Colombian execution raid into Ecuador to kill Raul Reyes, the FARC Number 2, based upon US suggestion and intelligence. The upstart of all that seemed to be that FARC was trying to either obtain and/or sell uranium. Oh and by the way, the rumor was nicely planted that FARC had been given $300 million to get involved in this uranium terrorism by Hugo Chavez our new arch-enemy from Venezuela. Then, of course, there is our old friend Chiquita Bananas who, as opposed to Chavez/Venezuela, we do know has supported FARC terrorism. Jeebus.

The latest piece of this convoluted puzzle comes today with the announcement that the FARC uranium has been "found".

The seizure of up to 66 pounds of low-grade uranium linked to the FARC rebels adds weight to the evidence found in a captured rebel laptop that the guerrillas were interested in buying and selling the material, according to the Colombian Defense Ministry.

But the 30 kilos of uranium found Wednesday in plastic bags dug up about three feet from a road in southern Bogotá was "impoverished," the ministry said, and in that state could not have been used to make a radioactive bomb.

Uranium is the new "Colombian Gold"! The bit about the uranium being found 3 feet from the road to the FARC camp is almost hilarious. Almost. Um, let’s see, Chavez, terrorists, uranium and a fortuitously discovered laptop computer. That doesn’t sound at all like any Fourth Branch government we all know and love does it? Especially not on the heels of the recent visit the Saudis received from Cheney.

The other half of this two headed post involves a different arms merchant freakshow, this one being underwritten by the US government. In a long expose just published in the New York Times, the story is told of a couple of skateboard punk looking Read more →

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Sometimes You Eat The Bear, Sometimes The Bear Eats You – Stearns Thoughts

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That whole financial disaster, black hole rivaling the Great Depression, collapse of the American economy thing is oh so last week eh? Because from what I can tell this week, Britney has been on a sitcom, Barrack (gasp!) has listened to a fiery preacher man, Bush and McCain say stupid things (okay, that is not news, but it is being reported on), and Hillary (gasp!) won’t quit a race that is essentially neck and neck (and this reference does not make this a thread for discussion of the horserace, so give that a rest). What happened to the biggest financial crisis in our nation’s history?

What was the the Bear Stearns takeover/bailout about anyway? Who really benefitted in the present? What does it portend for the future? I don’t have these answers; but I have a lot of questions and the ground seems to be morphing so fast on this that not only are we not getting answers, the real questions are getting left behind in the wake. To paraphrase Wilson Pickett, we need to "slow this mustang down" and think about what has occurred and where it will lead us for the future. Really, the implications are pretty incredible. The federal government, under the cover of a spring weekend, stepped in to force one private financial company to sell itself to another private financial company at a price more than fifteen times less than the market valuation at the time. And then the government pledged the public’s money to guarantee the worst parts of the deal. Wow. And here I thought the free market was the golden holy rule for those currently running our country into the ground.

How did something so huge, and with so many far ranging implications, happen literally overnight? One thing is sure, if the economy was as great as they say, and Bush and his band of merry pillagers were on top of everything as much as they claim, this never would have happened. There has been plenty of discussion about the sub-prime shitpile and the exponential rise in derivitives in the financial industry, but my question here is what really happened with the Bear Stearns deal itself? Thankfully, people that know a whole lot more about this than I do are starting to ask the right questions. Today’s example is an outstanding Read more →

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What To Get Teh Woman Who Knows Everything

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I am probably going to get in deep doo doo for this, but, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm". I have thought about doing this since Marcy took off for vacation, but have been hesitating because I wasn’t sure about letting the cat out of the bag as to her birthday. But, what da ya know, Looseheadprop has freed that kitty in her latest post at FDL (very nice post and timeline she did I might add, so take a gander at it).

At any rate, Friday is our intrepid leader Marcy’s birthday. I am here to tell you, keeping this here car known as the Emptywheel blog well maintained, full of fuel and on the road is more work than it looks like. Marcy not only does that consistently day in and day out, she does it with a style, grace, competence and consistency that is unmatched in the blogosphere. The effort she leads here is not only informational and enjoyable reading, it is of demonstrated importance in the effort to expose and repair all of that which is currently broken in our government. Quite frankly, I think you all know this better than I can put into words anyway.

So, in light of the foregoing, I am going to suggest that we have a little fundraising effort for the one that makes all of this possible here. I feel a little goofy doing this, but, you know, I can’t think of any more valuable or worthwhile endeavors. So, if you have a couple of extra Euros, please contribute to keeping this the finest forum in the toobz. You folks are the greatest readers and participants anywhere. Thank you.

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Who Let The Dogs Out? The Hounds Of Hatfill and the Federal Rules of Evidence

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On Marcy’s most recent Hatfill post, I made a mostly flippant comment on the dogs in the Hatfill case:

What if Hatfill is just a pig and leaves pizza crusts around everywhere he goes and the dogs are smelling that? What are the customary industry standards for certification of anthrax sniffing dogs anyway; and who sets and regulates them? Or is this just some “wonder mammal” like Lassie or Flipper or something? Was there video of the searches with the wonder dogs? Because there sure should have been. Or are these yet more video items of evidence that have been “misplaced”? What was the nature of the dog’s response? Did it emit a “plaintiff wail” like Nicole Simpson’s Akita? (Great trivia: Nicole’s Akita was named “Kato” too). I don’t see how the dog(s) here meet any evidentiary standards for admissibility or reliance by a court.

Despite it being mostly in jest, that comment had what I consider to be a critical, if not the critical, point in it. From what it appears, the only bit of "evidence" (and I use that descriptor loosely here, and in the generic sense, because I don’t think there was any proper evidence at all) against Hatfill that served as the basis for identifying him was that the dogs had alerted.

We all saw, in the tragic case of the late Richard Jewell, the horrendous and deleterious effects of a defective identification on an individual for an infamous crime. It is simply unconscionable to hang such a collar on someone without substantial credible hard evidence. And, quite frankly, the aura and implications of the anthrax case were, and are, far worse that the Atlanta Olympic park bombing. An entire nation was brought to a standstill and was trembling from a terrorist act that was capable of being repeated anywhere, at any time, in the country via the mail. So the United States government better have a pretty strong case before it implicates someone such as Hatfill in such a crime.

What substantial and credible hard evidence was the identification of Hatfill based on? Well, as has been previously discussed, he had worked in the bio-agent/anthrax field, had the technical expertise and, according to profilers, the personality to do the anthrax deed. The government indicates that he may be one of 50 or fewer people who had the skills to do it and had access to the strain. Then you add in allegations of violence in his past and ties to South African apartheid militias, and you can certainly understand why he was being looked at. While such information is not all entirely innocuous background, it is certainly nothing more than circumstantial and does not inculpate Hatfill; the only alleged link of Hatfill to the actual crime with the anthrax letters, at least that we are aware of to date, was the dogs. That’s it; there is nothing else. What are the standards for admissibility of dog scent Read more →

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Feith Based Initiative At The Pentgon

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Grover Norquist can pretty much pull the drain plug now; the job of eviscerating the United States Government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub" is about complete. The latest breaking news out of the Pentagon is that the US mistakenly shipped ICBM warhead nuclear triggering mechanisms to Taiwan.

The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that it mistakenly shipped non-nuclear components for an intercontinental ballistic missile to Taiwan from a U.S. Air Force base in Wyoming.
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At a Pentagon news conference, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said the misshipped items were four nose cone assemblies for ICBMs. He also said they were delivered to Taiwan in March 2005 and had been sent instead of helicopter batteries that had been ordered by Taiwan.
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”It is a component for the fuse in the nosecone for a nuclear system,” Wynne said. ”We are very concerned about it.”

Well, that’s understandable. Because thermonuclear warhead triggers probably look just like helicopter batteries, right? Oy and ugh.

Apparently, the Cheney/Bush Administration planting of "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the planet" at the Pentagon is paying dividends even after Doug Feith is long gone, because there seems to be some real competence issues over there, and, critically, with regard to our military’s handling of it’s nuclear weapons. As you might recall, it was not long ago that there were some empty quivers and bent spears out of another upper mid-west Air Force Base. In late August, 2007, six live nuclear cruise missiles went missing.

The nuclear weapons were “lost” for 36 hours after taking off on August 29 on a cross-country journey from the remote Minot air force base in North Dakota to Barksdale in Louisiana. Major-General Richard Newton, air force deputy chief of staff, said there was an “unprecedented” series of procedural errors, which revealed “an erosion of adherence to weapons-handling standards”.

There is bound to be a lot of speculation and discussion on the latest incident that is just now being revealed in spite of the fact that it occurred all the way back in 2005. Hopefully, it will also renew the discussion of the Minot/Barksdale incident, which kind of faded from the national conscience (if you want a decent rundown on some of the various theories and weird facts on the Minot/Barksdale event, see here). So how will the Six Sigma management geniuses of the Bush Administration respond to these disturbing examples Read more →

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Of Easter Eggs, Spitzer and Stones In Glass Houses

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Ah, the constantly evolving case of Bungalow Eliot and all the Spitzer snitchers. I have, for the most part, held off on too deep of an analysis on Spitzer because I didn’t think we had anything resembling the real story to operate from, and it kind of plays into the hands of the puppetmasters to constantly race down the false paths they provide (works on the media every time though eh?). That has not changed; the one thing we know for sure is that we don’t know the whole story for sure.

If I wasn’t the first to say that this was an investigation of a person searching for a crime to validate it after the fact, I was right up there. Every now and then even brain dead squirrels find a nut. The Public Corruption section of the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, clearly in conjunction with DOJ Main, went on an Easter egg hunt in Eliot Spitzer’s yard under the pre-determined assumption that there were eggs there, and were prepared to plant some if they couldn’t find any. That much is fairly evident at this point, but how did this convoluted persecution really start? And why?

The latest revelation is, of course, that the mondo bondage Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone is knee deep in the primordial muck on the Spitzer hunt. Sex, prostitutes, money, power and dirty political tricks; who could have ever imagined that the Stoner might be involved? Eh, okay, we all should have known. By now, you have all probably got the basics on the Stone angle that has emerged; but just in case, here is a brief recap. Roger Stone is a long time GOP dirty trick and bag man. On Friday March 21, by way of a McClatchey article from the Miami Herald, we learned that:

Almost four months before Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sex scandal, a lawyer for Republican political operative Roger Stone sent a letter to the FBI alleging that Spitzer ”used the services of high-priced call girls” while in Florida.

The letter, dated Nov. 19, said Miami Beach resident Stone learned the information from ”a social contact in an adult-themed club.” It offered one potentially identifying detail: The man in question hadn’t taken off his calf-length black socks "during the sex act.”

Interesting that Roger Read more →

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Hard Drives To Hell

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Emails? We don’t need no stinkin hard drives and email! And that is pretty much what the Bush Administration has told Judge John Facciola and the DC District Court, not to mention you, me and the rest of the citizens the government is supposed to work for. As you will recall, CREW and the National Security Archive (NSA) have been fighting Bushco for some time now over the missing emails. Yesterday I received the following in an email from the lead attorney on the matter for the NSA, Meredith Fuchs:

Since you have been following the White House e-mail story, I thought you would be interested in the latest government filing. Striking that they failed to respond to the court’s specific questions. Even though they are engaged in a major project trying to find hundreds of days worth of e-mail, they still don’t scknowledge that they have a problem.

Moreover, there are some things that simply are not credible in Ms. Payton’s declaration. For instance, she claims that EOP replaces 1/3 of their computers each year and so there are not likely to be any around from 2003-2005. Yet, she also says EOP has no record of which computers were replaced and when. How do they know they are not replacing the same 1/3 each year if there is no record.

Ms. Fuchs has a knack for the understatement when she muses that "there are some things that simply are not credible", both as to Theresa Payton’s statements and the government’s position as a whole. In a sick kind of way, you almost have to marvel at the intestinal fortitude of the Bushies to so ferociously and completely yank the chain of every court they come in contact with. Whatever the people and their Congress want, whatever the courts demand, the answer from the Bush Brigade is always "nope". The audacity of nope.

Here is the EOP (Government) Response pleading filed yesterday (3/21/08), and Here is the sworn declaration in support thereof filed by everybody’s favorite technical guru, Theresa Payton.

As you will recall, CREW and NSA had applied for an Order To Show Cause, which was granted by Judge Facciola with a return deadline of yesterday. In a nutshell, the Administration has responded that it has destroyed most all of the hard drives that could contain the missing Read more →

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