Fitz Speaks

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Via email from his spokesperson:

Wefully recognize that the Constitution provides that commutation decisions are a  matter of presidential prerogative and we do not comment on the exercise of that prerogative. 

We comment only on the statement in which the President termed the sentence imposed by the judge as “excessive.”   The sentence in this case was imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout this country.  In this case, an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws.  It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals.  That principle guided the judge during both the trial and the sentencing.

Although the President’s decision eliminates Mr. Libby’s sentence of imprisonment, Mr. Libby remains convicted by a jury of serious felonies, and we will continue to seek to preserve those convictions through the appeals process.

For the record, when I said almost the same thing on Hardball, I hadn’t gotten this yet in the email. Glad to see that my feeble mind is thinking along the lines of a great mind.

Update: Oh wait, I think I said the bit Read more →

George Bush Obstructs Justice

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Well, George did it. Made sure that Scooter wouldn’t flip rather than do jail time. He commuted Libby’s sentence, guaranteeing not only that Libby wouldn’t talk, but retaining Libby’s right to invoke the Fifth.

This amounts to nothing less than obstruction of justice.

Here’s Bush’s statement, in which a guy who is pushing to restore minimum sentencing laws says that Libby’s sentencing–which was the minimum according to the guidelines, was too tough:

Mr. Libby was sentenced to thirty months of prison, two years ofprobation, and a $250,000 fine. In making the sentencing decision, thedistrict court rejected the advice of the probation office, whichrecommended a lesser sentence and the consideration of factors thatcould have led to a sentence of home confinement or probation.

Irespect the jury’s verdict. But I have concluded that the prisonsentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting theportion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirtymonths in prison.

Update: Here’s an article about how the Bush Administration is pushing to restore minimum sentencing guidelines. And don’t forget that in AL, a judge has just upped the sentence against Don Siegelman.

Update: Here’s a link to the post showing that the research into the Wilsons went into overdrive as Read more →

More Funny Business with Record-Keeping?

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Holy Shit. Remember TALON and CIFA? Here’s a description I wrote in April:

It was designed to gather intelligence on threats to defense installments in the United States–to try to collect information (in the TALON database) on threatening people scoping out domestic bases. But it ended up focusing on peace activists and the lefty blogosphere’s ownJesus’ General.

Well, here are the three conclusions of a DOD IG report just released on the program:

  • TALON reports were generated for law enforcement and force protection purposes as permitted by DoD Directive 5200.27,1 and not as a result of an intelligence collection operation; therefore, no violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act occurred.
  • The Counterintelligence Field Activity did not comply with the 90 day retention review policy required by DoD Directive 5200.27. We could not determine whether the U.S. Northern Command complied with the policy requirement because all TALON reports were deleted from their database in June 2006 with no archives.
  • The Cornerstone database that the Counterintelligence Field Activity used to maintain TALON reports did not have the capability to identify TALON reports with U.S. person information, to identify reports requiring a 90-day retention review, or to allow analysts to edit or delete the TALON reports.

To explain why this is so fucking crazy, let me back up. 70% of CIFA’s staffers (the ones keeping the database on the quakers). One of the companies that got a chunk of that business is MZM. You remember: the company for which Mitch Wade was bribing Duke Cunningham to give big contracts?

Well, I’m still reading the report (I wanted to get this out there to see what others found). But these conclusions appear to say:

  • DOD says the domestic spying program was legal because–in spite of the fact that the organization is a spying/law enforcement hybrid–they consider it law enforcement activity and not spying (even though the Quakers on whom it collected data had not broken any laws).
  • DOD admits that CIFA–run by all those contractors who got their work through bribes–did not destroy the information they collected when they were supposed to.
  • The database they were using did not have the capabilities it needed to cross-check the data-collection.

And this is a doozy:

  • USNCO deleted the whole database in June 2006.

For an idea of why that is so fuckedinthehead, here’s a little chronology I put together a while back:

  • September 2002, then Deputy Secretary of Defense for Counter-Intelligence Burtt (the guy who resigned yesterday) establishes CIFA to oversee counterintelligence units of the armed services; consulting on the new agency was James King, recently retired director of National Imagery and Mapping Agency and MZM vice president
  • Late 2002, Cunningham got Mitchell Wade a data storage contract worth $6 million, of which $5.4 was profit
  • January 2004, Cunningham added $16.5 million to defense authorization for a “collaboration center” that appears to include business for Wade’s company
  • December 2005, Pincus reveals a CIFA database contains raw intelligence data on peace activists (and, presumably, Jesus’ General)
  • March 2006, prosecutors in the Cunningham case announce they’re reviewing CIFA contracts to MZM
  • March 2006, Stephen Cambone announces an investigation of CIFA’s contracting–the investigation is (like the investigation into Dougie Feith) “ongoing”
  • May 2006, Porter Goss resigns under allegations of ties to the Wilkes/Wade bribery ring
  • May 2006, House Intelligence Committee (Peter Hoekstra‘s Committee) first moves to exercise oversight on CIFA
  • August 2006, CIFA director and deputy director resign

Let’s look at the key time frame, with this new datapoint inserted, shall we:

  • March 2006, prosecutors in the Cunningham case announce they’re reviewing CIFA contracts to MZM
  • March 2006, Stephen Cambone announces an investigation of CIFA’s contracting–the investigation is (like the investigation into Dougie Feith) “ongoing”
  • May 2006, Porter Goss resigns under allegations of ties to the Wilkes/Wade bribery ring
  • May 2006, House Intelligence Committee (Peter Hoekstra‘s Committee) first moves to exercise oversight on CIFA
  • June 2006, USNCO destroys all the TALON reports
  • August 2006, CIFA director and deputy director resign

Get it? Carol Lam is closing in on MZM and its contracting. Two very compromised Republicans announce they’re going to review this stuff. And then one month later … POOF!!! All the records of this domestic spying program disappear, like magic!! And then two months later the guys running the program resign, suddenly.

Now, honestly, I need to review the whole report–I’ll either update this or do a new post. But I wanted to put this up here to get people reading the report.

Update:

Here’s the sole explanation they offer for the incredible disappearing USNCO database:

We could not determine whether USNORTHCOM complied with the DoD 90-day retention review policy because all TALON reports were deleted from JPEN on November 30, 2005, without being archived, and the system was turned off in June 2006.

Notice how they change the date, November 2005 for June 2006? Know what happened just two days before these reports were deleted, on November 28, 2005? Duke Cunningham made his plea deal. There. That makes you feel better, doesn’t it?

Though it appears that some of the records remained on the CIFA database.

And here’s their explanation for why CIFA wasn’t deleting info on Americans:

Only CIFA information technology personnel had the ability to delete TALON reports. As a result, CIFA maintained TALON reports without determining whether information on organizations and individuals should be retained for law enforcement and force protection purposes.

Want to bet these IT folks are contractors? Contractors who owe their jobs to earmarks and occasionally bribes?

The Report from Wilson’s Trip, Again

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Once upon a time in a land called Plameology, I was utterly obsessed with the CIA report on Joe Wilson’s trip. As I pointed out some time ago, the trip report, in addition to Valerie’s identity, was classified at the beginning of leak week. And as I pointed out over the weekend, it is crystal clear that Libby, at least, leaked material from this, knowing it was classified, with no claim it had been declassified. Moreover, he probably leaked it to Novak, though both claim Libby said nothing of substance to Novak when they spoke on July 9.

My renewed interest in the trip report comes from a line recently unsealed from Tatel’s opinion refusing Judy’s and Cooper’s attempt to quash her subpoena. In a part of the opinion that supports the argument that Rove perjured himself (presumably about both his Novak and his Cooper conversations), Tatel included the following quote from Novak’s grand jury testimony:

According to Novak, when he “brought up” Wilson’s wife, “Mr. Rove said, oh, you know about that too” (II-154) and promised to seek declassification of portions of a CIA report regarding the Niger trip, which Rove said “wasn’t an impressive piece of work or a very definitive piece of work” (II-158).

That is, according to Novak, Rove promised to declassify the trip report, even while providing a judgment about it. And, by all appearances, Tatel thinks that grand jury testimony supports the case that Rove lied in his own grand jury testimony.

Inmate 28301-016

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The Appeals Court decision not to grant Libby bond pending appeal, along with last week’s Cheney series, may well ensure that Libby does some jail time, however short.

Appellant has not shown that the appeal raises a substantial question.

I’m not holding my breath yet, mind you. But it’s going to have to be an untimely pardon or commutation … or jail time for Scooter Libby.

Update: With this unanimous decision, that makes two more Republican appointees who think Scooter should probably go to jail. How many more Republicans, coming out in favor of incarceration for Libby, will it take to quiet the raging Libby Lobby?

Did They Try to Replace Iglesias with Rogers?

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McClatchy has a story that shows that Pat Rogers, one of the key players behind the firing of David Iglesias, was an officer in the voter fraud group American Center for Voting Rights.

Iglesias said he only recently learned of Rogers� involvement assecretary of the non-profit American Center for Voting RightsLegislative Fund – an activist group that defended tighter voteridentification requirements in court against charges that they weredesigned to hamper voting by poor minorities.

Rogers, a former general counsel to the New Mexico Republican Party anda candidate to replace Iglesias, is among a number of well-connectedGOP partisans whose work with the legislative fund and a sister groupplayed a significant role in the party�s effort to retain control ofCongress in the 2006 election.

That strategy, which presidential adviser Karl Rove alluded to in anApril 2006 speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association,sought to scrutinize voter registration records, win passage of tougherID laws and challenge the legitimacy of voters considered likely tovote Democratic.

This is the Thor Hearne group generating false concern over non-existent voter fraud cases.

As McClatchy pointed out in its article and I’ve been pointing out for some time, Rogers is or was also a candidate to replace Iglesias. We know Domenici has Read more →

Classification Is Not Declassification

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Frank Rich has a column out that means well–but repeats a Cheney talking point in a way that does more harm than good. He focuses on the connection between Bush’s revised Executive Order on classification and the CIA Leak argues that, when Bush gave Cheney classification authority equivalent to his own, he also gave him declassification authority equivalent to his own.

But few noticed another change inserted five times in the revised text:every provision that gave powers to the president over classifieddocuments was amended to give the identical powers to the vicepresident. This unprecedented increase in vice-presidential clout,though spelled out in black and white, went virtually unremarked incontemporary news accounts.

Rich’s construction here is uncharacteristically sloppy. Bush only explicitly gave Cheney the power to classify information (that is, to take unclassified information and make it classified). Here’s the relevant passage from the Executive Order:

Sec. 1.3.  Classification Authority.  (a)  The authority to classify information originally may be exercised only by:

(1)  the President and, in the performance of executive duties, the Vice President;

By using the phrase, "every provision that gave powers to the president over classifieddocuments," Rich implies that this power included classification and declassification. But Bush did not revise the key section of the EO that defined Declassification Authority.

‘‘Declassificationauthority’’ means:

(1) the official who authorized the original classification, if thatofficial is still serving in the same position;

(2) the originator’s current successor infunction;

(3) a supervisory official of either; or

(4) officials delegated declassification authority in writing by theagency head or the senior agency official.

In other words, while Bush gave Cheney the power to classify information, he didn’t change the rule that only the originator, the successor, the supervisor of the originator, or someone specifically delegated can declassify information. The claim–that Cheney has the ability to declassify at will (as opposed to classify at will)–is an error that TPMM made last week as well.

The Silence Surrounding Novak’s Testimony

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This post follows on my wildarsed guess that one of the things that appears in the two-page gap is discussion of Libby’s and Novak’s super-secret July 9 meeting. I’d like to point out–and speculate on–several weird bits in Novak’s trial testimony. Full credit: Jeff Lomonaco identified several of these in a conversation with me, but I happen to know he’s at an undisclosed location with crappy Toobz access, so I’m going to run with it and he’ll just have to call in any comments!! Jeff and I have discussed some of these at some length, but I think they make more sense if, indeed, the Libby-Novak meeting is mentioned in the two-page gap.

To make it up to Jeff, here’s a link to his book, from which I’m transcribing these bits.

Fitzgerald Objects

The first weird bit is a successful objection Fitzgerald makes when Wells tries to get Novak to say he testified–before the grand jury–that Libby hadn’t told Libby anything about Plame. Ted Wells is trying to establish that Novak testified willingly at alltimes, including about his conversation with Libby. Novak has just laidout how he agreed to discuss Armitage, Rove, and Harlow in an interviewafter the prosecutors brought waivers from those three people. ThenWells moves to Rove’s grand jury testimony:

Wells: I’ll show you a copy of your Grand Jury testimony, dated February 25–

Fitzgerald: We’ll stipulate to the date, February 25, 2004.

Walton: Very well.

Now, reading this with some distance, it appears that Fitzgerald istrying to prevent Wells from handing Novak his grand jury testimony. Iseem to recall, though, that this exchange was a response to Novak’searlier (in his discussion of the interviews with Fitzgerald) claim tohave forgotten dates, so it may be entirely innocuous.

Kontogiannis’ Seal

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Laura asks why the government (and Kontogiannis, in a filing submitted yesterday) would fight to continue to seal the transcripts from his four hearings before Judge Larry Burns.

In an unusual step, Kontogiannis’ guilty plea was done in a secret,closed hearing. The plea agreement was unsealed earlier this month, andlast week Burns ordered that transcripts of four hearings related tothe plea also be made public.

Federal prosecutors objected in motions filed under seal lastweek. Yesterday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal ordered thedocuments to remain secret and scheduled a hearing for the week of Aug.6.

Now the government is making an argument that these transcripts include classified information–an argument they apparently haven’t made before.

At a hearing in federal court in San Diego yesterday, Burnssaid that the government invoked federal laws dealing with classifiedinformation in their papers filed last week.

He said that when the secret hearings took place four monthsago, prosecutors knew that the information would become openeventually, and did not object then.

The judge appeared irked that the government was now objecting to theinformation becoming public and was raising the issue of classifiedinformation “for the first time ever.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Forge said government lawyersdecided after the hearings that they wanted more information keptsecret than they first believed was necessary.

Without going into details, Forge told Burns “the scope of theinformation the government viewed as non-disclosable turned out to bebroader” than they originally thought.

Meanwhile, John Michael’s lawyer suggests this is something more than an effort to keep classified information sealed.

Mind the Gap: the Libby-Novak Call

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You wouldn’t think that I–after babbling about this for two years and beating up the press for ignoring it–would miss an opportunity to highlight the super-secret Libby-Novak meeting, do you? Only that’s what I did yesterday, when I was puzzling through the remaining two-page gap in the Tatel opinion. Duh.

My post yesterday made the argument that, in addition to laying out the background for the Cooper-Rove conversation (and Rove’s prevaricating about it) and pointing out the discrepancies between Rove’s story and Novak’s, the two-page gap must explain why a bunch of seeming extraneous quotes from grand jury testimony appear in the unsealed portion. Those quotes include:

  • Two details of Cheney’s involvement tied to Libby’s leaks without a larger explanation of Cheney’s importance in the leaks
  • A description of Armitage’s somewhat implausible story of learning he was Novak’s source
  • The following claims from Novak as to the sourcing of his column:

Novak identified Armitage’s comment as an “offhand revelation” from “asenior administration official” who was “no partisan gunslinger.”(II-20.) He referred to Rove simply as “another official” who said,“Oh, you know about it.”

One thing that could very logically tie these loose ends together is a discussion of the Libby-Novak conversation that happened on July 9. After all, it would provide a way to reintroduce (and explain) the Cheney involvement, it would provide a reason to doubt the "Armitage as primary source" story, and it would provide a reason to question Novak’s claim that he had two and only two sources.