It Depends on What the Definition of “Agency” Is

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I get the feeling that someone in the White House told OVP that their claim to be a Fourth Branch of government carried some serious risk to the White House. After all, if Cheney now claims he’s not in the Executive Branch, then he’s got to hand over the Energy Task Force documents, right?

So now David Addington has revised his rationale, claiming that OVP is simply not an agency.

"Dear Senator Kerry," Addington writes. "The executive order onclassified national security information — Executive Order 12958 asamended in 2003 — makes clear that the Vice President is treated likethe President and distinguishes the two of them from ‘agencies.’"

No longer satisfied with the Vice President’s office’s claim thatCheney is actually an admixture between the legislative and executivebranch, Addington now posits that the Vice President’s office is not an"agency."

"The executive order gives the [Information Security OversightOffice], under the supervision of the Archivist of the United States,responsibility to oversee certain activities of ‘agencies,’ but not ofthe Vice President or the President."

Luckily, we can revert to Clinton for clear language as to what an "agency" is in the relevant Executive Order:

     (i) "Agency" means any "Executive agency," as defined in 5 U.S.C.105, and any other entity within the executive branch that comes intothe possession of classified information. [my emphasis]

Bush adds a bit to Clinton’s clear language when he amends the EO in 2003. But there’s still that funny clause encompassing any entity within the executive branch that comes into possession of classified information.

     (b)  "Agency" means any "Executive agency," as defined in 5 U.S.C. 105; any "Military department" as defined in 5 U.S.C. 102; and any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.[my emphasis]

So either Addington is still relying on the "not within the executive branch" gag, or he’s making an even more ridiculous argument than Clinton made about his blow job.

And I bet Clinton’s blow job was a lot more fun than the one Addington is giving us.

Judge Huvelle Was Not Amused

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I did some coverage of the cynical games Steve Griles played to try to get the 5 months prison time turned into a bunch of community service for his own fake non-profit. I suspected such games would not go over well with Judge Huvelle–who, after all, is the one who tacked 3 months on top of Bob Ney’s plea agreement because of his violation of the trust of public service.

So I’m not surprised she went tough on the cynical Griles, doubling the prison time in his plea agreement.

"You held a position of trust as number two in the Department ofInterior and I will hold you to the highest standard," she told Griles."I find that even now you continue to minimize and try to excuse yourconduct and the nature of your misstatements."

Good for Huvelle–Griles not only lied to the Senate, but he sold away our nation’s resources to his closest friends, the resource industry.

I’m curious whether getting a harsh sentence might make Griles think seriously about cooperating on the other, more serious side of the affairs he’s involved in. He is surely a subject of interest in the investigation into the royalties games that DOI played, not least since he Read more →

Does Brit Hume Think NSA Spying Only Happens to Bad Guys?

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The Family Jewels are online now, and page 27 confirms something that should have been obvious. Under the Celotex II program, Brit Hume came under CIA surveillance during the time he worked for Jack Anderson, who was often under surveillance.

So who will be the first enterprising Fox guest to ask Hume whether he believes, along with all the wingnuts of the world, that only bad people come under illegal government surveillance?

Or did the government surveillance find something, um, compromising, which is why Hume is such a favorite interviewer every time the Republican elite has something awkward to disclose?

Henry Gets Impatient

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Here’s the best part of Waxman’s latest letter to Fred Fielding.

I respectfully request that the interviews that the Committee has beenseeking be scheduled without further delay. If this cannot beaccomplished, I will recommend to the Committee the issuance ofsubpoenas at our next business meeting, which is currently scheduledfor June 28. [my emphasis]

It’s a nice touch. A two day deadline, at a time when the WH has ducked most of the scrutiny relating to Cheney’s latest power grab to be a Fourth Branch. Yeah, it sucks that the original deadling was sometime in early April. But Waxman’s use of the media cycle is definitely worthy of someone who represents Hollywood.

And here’s my second favorite part of Waxman’s letter:

I do not doubt your good faith in proposing that the Committee considerinterviews with other White House officials before seeking testimonyfrom Mr. Card. But it has now been over two months and the Committeestill has not been able to arrange an interview with Alan Swendiman,the Director of the Office of Administration; Mark Frownfelter, aformer White House security officer; and Jeff Thompson, the formerDirector of the White House Security Office. This continued delay isimpeding the Committee’s inquiry and is not in the nation’s interest.[my emphasis]

I’m Read more →

Does the “Royalty Management Subcommittee” Sound Like Something We’d Find in Cheney’s DOI?

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Because today, on the eve of the WaPo’s revelations about Cheney’s first-hand intervention in Department of Interior policies, such a Subcommittee met in secret (how else!!) for the first time. Who ever said these thugs don’t have a sense of irony?

The actual mandate is not–as it might seem, given the title–to fulfill Cheney’s every need. Rather, it’s supposed to study:

  • The extent to which existing procedures and processes for reporting and accounting for federal and Indian mineral revenues are sufficient to ensure that the Minerals Management Service receives the correct amount.

  • The audit, compliance and enforcement procedures and processes of the Minerals Management Service to determine if they are adequate to ensure that mineral companies are complying with existing statutes, lease terms, and regulations as they pertain to payment of royalties.

  • The operations of the Royalty in Kind program to ensure that adequate policies, procedures and controls are in place to ensure that decisions to take federal oil and gas royalties in kind result in net benefits to the American people.

In other words, it’s supposed to fix the processes that resulted in DOI giving away our oil resources to the lowest bidder. (Who ever said these thugs don’t have impeccable business sense?)

Given that the Subcommittee appears to be going to great lengths to avoid any kind of transparency, however, it’s not clear the Subcommittee will really find the best solution to the problem. Every time this Administration’s DOI has hidden its work, it has resulted in still more cronies walking away with our nation’s resource wealth. Which, if you think about it, is almost the same thing as fulfilling Cheney’s every need.

Some Questions

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Paul Kiel has an important post on vote caging that raises one big question for me.

Kiel’s post quotes the RNC spokesperson as connecting the vote caging activities in Florida with allegations about ACORN registration drives.

In response to Palast’s story, the Republican spokeswoman denied ina statement that the list had been generated in order to challengevoters. But she went on to argue that Jacksonville “has been affectedby massive fraud efforts this year as a result of the work of ACORN, athird party organization supporting the Kerry campaign and theDemocrats.”

One of the wonderful prevarications offered by Brad Schlozman is that the ACORN investigation–which in MO found almost nothing and was self-reported–is national.

You’ll recall that Brad Schlozman indicted 4 former ACORN workers (oneof whose name he got wrong) for submitting fraudulent voter reginformation. Well, he strongly suggested that the indictments were notpart of a national investigation (a few Senators hammered him on thispoint–suggesting that, since the investigation was not national, itshouldn’t have been filed before the election). But, at the same time,Schlozman indicated over and over again that the investigation is national.

Does anyone get the feeling that a specious investigation into ACORN is serving as the basis for caging nationwide? Anyone have details Read more →

Well Then, We’ll Take Away Executive Privilege for Everyone Else

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David Shuster (and to a lesser degree Chris Matthews) is the one person in the MSM who recognized Dick Cheney for what he was early on. Which is why Shuster’s interview of Cheney-hack Ron Christie is so good. Shuster uses the Libby case to expose the problems with Cheney’s method of working around other cabinet members and he smacks Christie down, just as I would have done, by pointing out that Cheney probably ordered Libby to leak Plame’s identity.

But I’d like to highlight how Christie justified Cheney’s theories of the Fourth Branch of government.

The fact of the matter is that the Vice President of the United States is the one person who is in a position to give candid advice to the President of the United  States. He wants to ensure that there are certain barriers that are not overcome by those who just want to poke around and look for the sake of looking. There needs to be a certain amount of candor that that individual can have when advising the President.

This is my transcription, so I could be wrong. But I’m pretty sure that Christie claimed that Cheney was the only one who could give Bush candid Read more →

It’s Called R-E-C-U-S-A-L

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Tom Maguire usually takes himself more seriously than this. After reading the WaPo’s series on Dick, he chose to ignore the widespread criticism on the part of hardcore conservatives of OVP’s dismantling of the Constitution and instead claim that the WaPo article was proof–proof at last!!!–that "Fitzgerald’s prosecution of Libby may have been politically motivated."

To prove that "Fitzgerald’s prosecution of Libby may have been politically motivated," Maguire ferrets out the abundant evidence that John Ashcroft didn’t get along with his Imperialness. He picks one event involving Ashcroft from 2001, another event involving the no-longer AG Ashcroft (and Gonzales) from 2005, then nods to the Comey hospital confrontation from March 2004.

All cited as evidence that "Fitzgerald’s prosecution of Libby may have been politically motivated"–that a guy who was not appointed or supervised by Ashcroft, who brought an indictment a year after Ashcroft’s resignation, was politically motivated.

Look. Using this evidence, you could (if you really wanted to) make the argument that Ashcroft’s decision to continue the investigation past Armitage’s confession and Libby’s first lies was political. You might argue that Ashcroft’s decision to–gasp!–recuse himself in December 2003 was political. (You’d of course have to ignore the centrality of Comey’s decision to Read more →

Sources: Or, Tedious Kremlinology

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I’ve talked about Cheney’s and Addington’s Methods. Now I’d like to inventory the sources that Gellman and Becker used for their articles, as a way to understand where the shifting loyalties of the Administration lie. One thing that becomes clear by mapping this out is the centrality of Josh Bolten to many of the more damning accusations against Cheney. Thus, while these articles may reflect the fingerprints of Poppy (likely) or Scooter (implausible, IMO), I think it is primarily an attempt by the COS and possibly Condi to bring Cheney under control, aided by former Administration lawyers they know to have soured on Cheney’s ways.

The anonymous sources at the bottom serve as a way of filling out who the named sources are below. For a list of all the people mentioned in the articles, see this page.

John Ashcroft: John Ashcroft is a named source (albeit a vague one) for a key confrontation in Gonzales’ office and a likely unnamed source for some of the other disputes. It’ll be interesting to see if he increasingly makes such public comments, seeing as how his testimony before HPSCI the other day clearly backed up Comey’s.

James Baker: Is quoted in part two and shares his notes in part one (though the notes may come from someone’s library). Baker states clearly that Cheney has been about the accumulation of power.

Brad Berenson: Curiously, the designated GOP firewall defense lawyer is a boisterous source for these articles (though, from personal experience, I can attest he is approachable). He seems intent on minimizing his own role–and that of John Yoo (whom he calls a "supporting player").

Josh Bolten: Bolten seems to be an important source for these stories, which raises very interesting questions about Bush’s own view of the article. The quote that best sums up Bolten’s critical attitude towards Cheney’s power is this one: "The vice president didn’t particularly warm to that," Bolten recalled dryly. Bolten is, of course, describing how Cheney refused to play an ordinary VP role, with some apparent bemusement. There’s a later quote–The White House proposal, said Bolten, the chief of staff, "did not come out exactly as the vice president would have wanted."–that sounds like Bolten gloating.

David Bowker: Source for some of the issues affecting Powell.

Bryan Cunningham: Cunningham seems to be the source for the details about how Cheney and Addington bypassed Bellinger. He has left government to go into private consulting, so presumably his loyalties may be very anti-Cheney. Note that Bellinger himself is a Rice loyalist; if he is a source for this it would lend credence that she participated in this effort.

Gordon England: England describes his dismay about Addington’s maneuvers on torture.

Tim Flanigan: Flanigan offers nowhere near as many on the record comments as Berenson and Yoo. It may be he’s stuck in the position of defending the indefensible, and therefore remains more quiet. His most telling comment, however, is this one:

he still believes that Addington and Yoo were right in their"application of generally accepted constitutional principles." But heacknowledged that many battles ended badly. "The Supreme Court,"Flanigan said, "decided to change the rules."

That is, he’s just bummed (and talking) because Addington’s efforts backfired.

Mike Gerson: Mike Gerson is described as an opponent to black sites, yet describes Cheney’s motives favorably. There are a few more comments that similarly criticize Cheney while treating him as honorable which may come from him.

Bob Graham: There’s no surprise seeing Graham provide details about the domestic wiretap program. He is one source (potentially the only one) reporting on the first briefing on the program given by Cheney.

David Gribben: Curiously, the article describes David Gribben as a friend from grad school. It doesn’t mention he was also a Defense and Halliburton employee while Cheney was in charge, or that he was instrumental in the transition. Gribben’s named quote seems to defend Cheney’s method of sending "messages" while firing disloyal employees, which sure suggests Gribben remains loyal. As the one named OVP staffer in the article (Matalin aside) Gribben may be the source for some of the comments about Cheney’s intentions.

Mary Matalin: Matalin is one of the surrogates for Cheney and Addington (both of whom declined to be interviewed). She stresses how important Cheney is, without commenting on the legality or efficacy of what he has done.

Brian McCormack: McCormack is one of the many people that has moved from Cheney’s staff eventually onto Bush’s (which surely helps Cheney keep tabs). Curiously, McCormack moved through the corrupt world of Defense acquisitions before ending up in a public liaison function (which, according to Susan Ralston, works with outside constituencies, which means he may remain in the corrupt world of crony contracting. McCormack’s named quote is fairly vanilla, though he seems to be one of the few people who would talk about how Cheney set up his fiefdom even before Bush v. Gore was decided.

Alberto Mora: One of the military lawyers fighting back against Cheney, Mora is a likely source for some of the later meetings on torture.

Dan Quayle: Dan Quayle is a named source used to (humorously, IMO) depict how far out of the norm Cheney is. There are few interesting questions of loyalty in what he says.

William Taft: A Powell loyalist, Taft shows up admitting that he was an easy mark because he misunderstood the stakes of the fight.

John Yoo: Yoo is a named source for one incident where Cheney and Addington ignored his advice (not to spread the use of torture to the military). He may well be the source for some of the very detailed descriptions of the Addington/Yoo/Flanigan/Gonzales interactions.

Addington’s Methods

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Before I get too deep in the detail of today’s installment of WaPo’s series on Cheney, I’d like to remind you of a point I made in my Take Back America speech. While David Addington’s theories on executive power are tremendously dangerous, Addington does believe in the rule of law. He admitted in his Libby trial testimony, for example, that the "Treated as Top Secret/SCI" stamp that OVP had used with all the evidence turned over to investigators was not covered by the Presidents EO on classification. And he described scolding Dan Bartlett after the White House exonerated Libby and Rove publicly in Fall 2003. Whereas Alberto Gonzales appears to blithely transgress all normal legal limits on behavior (as when he coached Monica Goodling’s testimony), Addington respects those limits, so long as they don’t clash with the power of the presidency.

Which is why this passage from the WaPo article is so telling:

Flanigan said that Addington’s personal views leaned more toward Olsonthan against him, but that he beat back the proposal to grant detaineesaccess to lawyers, "because that was the position of his client, thevice president."

The issue was whether enemy combatants could have a lawyer represent them. And on that issue, Addington appears to have suppressed his own judgment (which sounds like a pragmatic judgment on how best to retain presidential powers) in favor of Cheney’s intractable stance.