Archive for category: emptywheel

Remember the King Ranch, where Dick Cheney shot an old man in the face? Well, American citizens aren’t allowed access to the shootings that happen on the Ranch. But they’re paying the bills. NPR and the CIR report that Dick and Rove’s buddies have been one of the biggest recipient of subsidies from farm bills from 1999 to 2005, sucking in $8.3 million over the time. CIR lays out how much this farm welfare pays to receive such goodies.

Additional reporting by CIR shows that from 1997–2006, King Ranch madeat least $960,000 in federal campaign contributions, including softmoney. The contributions came from King Ranch’s PAC, executives, andboard members.

Since 2001, King Ranch spent at least $850,000 on lobbying. To lobbyfor the Farm Bill, King Ranch hired Katharine Armstrong, whose familyowns the ranch where Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot attorney Harry Whittington.

Though you gotta wonder: how much credit does a hyper-connected farm welfare recipient get for covering up the Vice President’s drunken shooting accidents?

Update: mainsailset is right: the King Ranch is the ranch down the street, not the one where Cheney did the horrible deed. The King Ranch folks were invited to lunch on Sunday, the day that Cheney was still recovering Read more →

Via C&L, John McKay made some really revealing comments in Spokane on Friday.

The U.S. Inspector General may recommend criminal prosecution ofdeparted Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at the conclusion of aninvestigation, possibly as early as next month, the fired former U.S.attorney for Western Washington told a Spokane audience Friday.

[snip]

McKay said he was summoned to Washington, D.C., in June andquestioned for eight hours about possible reasons for his firing byinvestigators with the Office of Inspector General, who will forwardtheir final report to Congress.

“My best guess is it will be released sometime next month,’’ andlikely will include recommendations for criminal prosecutions ofGonzales and maybe others, McKay said.

Gonzales “lied about” reasons for the firings when questioned underoath in July by the Senate Judiciary Committee and now has hired alawyer and is refusing to answer questions from the Inspector General,McKay said.

First, we’re going to get a public report from OIG. This is a key result of pressure from Sheldon Whitehouse, among others, who realized that AGAG had attempted to put Office of Professional Responsibility in charge of the investigation, and therefore bury any conclusions with a non-public report.

Then, consider the timing. McKay says he got called to DC for an entire day of testimony. At Read more →

I’m not really surprised by the reason the lead prosecutor for Gitmo detainees quit–as reported by the WaPo. The Administration wanted show trials in time for the 2008 election, and they were willing to use classified information to do so.

Politically motivated officials at the Pentagon have pushed for convictions of high-profile detainees ahead of the 2008elections, the former lead prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay said last night, adding that the pressure played a part in his decision to resign earlier this month.

I’m just a little curious about the timing. The guy the Administration  put in to "nano-manage" the prosecutions, General Thomas Hartmann, only came on this summer.

Hartmann arrived as legal adviser to the convening authority lastsummer, and suddenly, Davis said during a lengthy interview, his officewas inundated with what he called "nano-management," including requeststo oversee cases that had previously been left solely to prosecutors.

Part of the new focus, Davis said, was to speed up cases that wouldshow the public the system was working. Davis said he wanted to focuson cases that had declassified evidence, so the public could see theentire trial through news coverage. That would defuse possibleallegations that the trials were stacked against defendants.

But Hartmann said Read more →

Via Laura Rozen–there are several interesting things in this article. First, Bush has given over the family jewels–the legal opinions justifying their illegal domestic wiretapping program. He has given them to SJC, but not to HJC.

Across the Capitol, Senate Intelligence Chairman John D. RockefellerIV, D W.Va., said his staff Tuesday reviewed legal opinions and otherdocuments the panel had sought related to the NSA program. He said hisstaff was allowed to take notes, but he hadn’t been briefed on theircontents yet and intended to view them for himself.

[snip]

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, Jr.,D-Mich., in a letter to White House counsel Fred Fielding, complainedthat the documents were being provided to Senate Intelligence, but notto his panel or the House Intellligence Committee.

I’m betting that in approximately 4 days, the Republicans will accuse Democrats of leaking materials that were actually leaked by Richard Shelby.

Second, it appears that Republican posturing about a bill is now considered news.

I did my big timeline yesterday to try to pin down how much of what we suspect to be the warrantless wiretap program started in early 2001, rather than post-9/11 as Bush has always claimed. As I pointed out in my timeline, it’s clear that Nacchio walked into the February 27 meeting expecting to talk about Groundbreaker. He remained willing to do Groundbreaker. But he was also asked to do something which he was unwilling to do.

My big question is: when did the access to the switches happen, when did the data mining of purportedly international data being, and when did the data mining of domestic data happen?

Let’s start with this comment from William Ockham, who knows a lot more about the telecom side of this than I.

First, I think Nacchio and Qwest objected to at least two differentovertures from NSA. In early 2001, I think the NSA asked them to dowhat AT&T did in San Francisco, set up a tap in to their fiberoptic backbone. In a sense, emptywheel is correct in saying that thisactivity was part of Groundbreaker. I think it would be more accurateto say that Groundbreaker was a cover for this activity. Qwest wouldhave objected on the grounds that FISA prohibited wire communicationinterception inside the USA, even if the communication was "foreign toforeign". Qwest was dumped from the Eagle Alliance (Groundbreakerconsortium) because it wouldn’t play ball.

After 9/11, the NSA came back and asked for "metadata" about theircustomers and Qwest refused based on the 1996 Telecommunications Act.This may have been the trigger for Nacchio’s prosecution (if oneassumes it was a selective prosecution).

Both of these illegal activities were precursors to the so-calledTSP. The fiber optic taps provided the means for interceptingcommunications world-wide and the customer activity data mining wasprovided the means for identifying the supposedly suspicions needles inthe haystack.

Now look at this statement Nacchio’s lawyer, Hebert Stern, issued after last year’s USA Today story; the statement exactly supports WO’s speculation.

In light of pending litigation, I have been reluctant toissue any public statements. However, because of apparent confusionconcerning Joe Nacchio and his role in refusing to make privatetelephone records of Qwest customers available to the NSA immediatelyfollowing the Patriot Act, and in order to negate misguided attempts torelate Mr. Nacchio’s conduct to present litigation, the following arethe facts.

In the Fall of 2001, at a time when there was noinvestigation of Qwest or Mr. Nacchio by the Department of Justice orthe Securities and Exchange Commission, and while Mr. Nacchio wasChairman and CEO of Qwest and was serving pursuant to the President’sappointment as the Chairman of the National Security TelecommunicationsAdvisory Committee, Qwest was approached to permit the Governmentaccess to the private telephone records of Qwest customers.

Mr.Nacchio made inquiry as to whether a warrant or other legal process hadbeen secured in support of that request. When he learned that no suchauthority had been granted and that there was a disinclination on thepart of the authorities to use any legal process, including the SpecialCourt which had been established to handle such matters, Mr. Nacchioconcluded that these requests violated the privacy requirements of theTelecommunications Act.

Accordingly, Mr. Nacchio issuedinstructions to refuse to comply with these requests. These requestscontinued throughout Mr. Nacchio’s tenure and until his departure inJune of 2002. [my emphasis]

In other words, the Administration made a request in fall 2001 for "access to the private phone records of Qwest customers." If Stern means "fall" at all literally, then this request came after 9/11–and it could well match the October 2001 time frame described for the start date of the warrantless wiretap program. Stern’s reference to the Telecommunications Act makes it clear that this data relates to domestic customers. Now, Stern is responding directly to the USA Today article that exposed the domestic aspect of this program, and which made the following specific comment about Qwest.