THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
February 2007:
Week Two
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State Department invokes "self-defense" article of UN Charter to justify unilateral war with Iran
- February 8: Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns says that the US can use Article 51 of the UN Charter, which has been used by member states in the past to justify unilateral military action, to justify a unilateral strike against Iran.
War with Iran
Hillary Mann, the former director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs on the National Security Council under Condoleezza Rice during Bush's first term, says, "When they state that the Iranians are building support networks to kill US soldiers -- I mean, I went to Harvard Law School, and that's a casus belli. Nick Burns recently invoked Article 51 of [the] UN charter. That's the right to self-defense. That means you don't need another UN Security Council resolution to go to war." Burns later backs away from the statement, saying that his invocation of Article 51 is not directed toward justifying war in any way, but is merely a general statement of any state's right to self-defense. "We are not planning offensive military operations against Iran," Burns says. "We are definitely on a diplomatic path. I do not believe that military conflict with Iran is inevitable or desirable." But Mann says that Bush and his senior officials, particularly Dick Cheney, have any real interest in diplomacy with Iran. "I think the president does believe the Iranian government is fundamentally illegitimate, and as long as Iran stays that way there will never be the freedom that needs to be brought to the Middle East," she says. "I attended meeting after meeting on Iran for years. This was the tenor of the discussions, that the Iranian government was shaky, a ripe apple on the tree.... And I don't think war fever has ever abated." (MSNBC) - February 8: If the United States were to attack Iran, the country would respond by striking US interests all over the world,
War with Iran
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says. Speaking to a gathering of Iranian air force commanders, Khamenei says, "The enemy knows well that any invasion would be followed by a comprehensive reaction to the invaders and their interests all over the world." (AP/Guardian) - February 8: According to the Congressional Budget Office, if the US began phased withdrawals of troops from Iraq now, those withdrawals could save the nation $447 billion over the next decade.
Iraq war and occupation
The CBO reports that so far the Iraq occupation has cost US taxpayers $351 billion. The total amount, approved and requested, by the Bush administration is $532 billion. The CBO uses two scenarios to extrapolate costs over the next years. First, under a "stay the course" scenario with a gradual drawdown that leaves 75,000 soldiers overseas in 2013 and each year thereafter, the cost would be $919 billion for the next ten years. The second scenario proposes a faster drawdown, leaving only 30,000 military personnel overseas over the 2010–2017 period, although not necessarily in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cost of that plan would be $472 billion for the next ten years. The CBO admits that its extrapolations are, by their very nature, uncertain. "The President has announced a plan to increase the number of military personnel deployed to Iraq, but it is not clear how many troops will be involved, how long the size of deployed forces will remain elevated, or what the nature of the United States' long-term military commitment in Iraq and elsewhere will be." it states. (Think Progress)
Rice says she doesn't remember 2003 Iranian diplomatic overtures
- February 8: While testifying to the Senate today, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice claims that she doesn't remember Iran making broad diplomatic overtures to the United States in 2003 (see earlier items related to Iran's diplomatic proposals).
War with Iran
But in June 2006, the Washington Post reported that administration officials, which certainly included Rice, were well aware of the overtures. The Post reported then that the State Department received via fax the Iranian proposals: "It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table -- including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups. But top Bush administration officials, convinced the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse, belittled the initiative. Instead, they formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the fax with a cover letter certifying it as a genuine proposal supported by key power centers in Iran, former administration officials said." - Democratic senator Chris Dodd grills Rice about the Iranian proposal. In return, Rice doesn't deny the overtures were made, but says that "I don't remember reading" such a fax. "I can't say categorically" that it didn't happen, she adds, but says she thought she would remember hearing about a step as dramatic as Iranian recognition of Israel. However, in 2006, Rice had a different recollection for National Public Radio, according to the Post article. "Earlier this month, she made the first official confirmation of the Iranian proposal in an interview with National Public Radio," the article read. "'What the Iranians wanted earlier was to be one-on-one with the United States so that this could be about the United States and Iran,' said Rice, who was Bush's national security adviser when the fax was received. "Now it is Iran and the international community, and Iran has to answer to the international community. I think that's the strongest possible position to be in."
- Former CIA official Flynt Leverett says he saw the document, and describes it as "a serious effort, a respectable effort to lay out a comprehensive agenda for US-Iranian rapprochement." Leverett, who served for a time as an aide to Rice when Rice was national security advisor, says Rice's apparent memory lapse is "really quite curious." Leverett had left his NSC post by the time the Iranians faxed the proposal to Washington, but he recalls, "What I was told from colleagues over at the NSC, people I knew on the NSC staff -- I don't know for a fact that it was put on [Rice's] desk, but it did go to the NSC. And I know for a fact that at State, it went all the way up to [then-Secretary of State Colin] Powell." When the fax arrived at the State Department in 2003, the senior director for the Middle East at the NSC was Elliott Abrams. An NSC spokeswoman says that Abrams has no recollection of the fax either. Leverett attempted to include information about the fax in a heavily redacted December 2006 op-ed for the New York Times, but was prohibited from doing so by the White House, who claimed the proposal was "classified."
- Dodd asks Rice to provide the cable traffic from the State Department during that period to the committee in closed session. Rice has not yet provided the documentation.
- National security analyst and historian Gareth Porter writes that Rice's carefully crafted denial is part of an overarching strategy aimed at fending off Congressional pressures for the administration to engage in diplomacy with Iran. Rice's denial is almost identical to those issued from the State Department in mid-January, when spokesman Tom Casey said, "To the best of my knowledge, there has been no direct communication from the Iranian government to us that occurred in 2003. ...If what you're asking me is, did the Iranian government provide a document to the Swiss or anyone else and say, 'Here, please give this document to the United States,' my understanding is that did not happen." State's strategy was apparently to imply that they believed the Iranian offer was concocted out of whole cloth by the Swiss Ambassador to Iran, Tim Guldimann. But Leverett's knowledge of the document, and the State Department's refusal to allow him to refer to the document in his December 2006 op-ed, suggests that the State Department did indeed know that the offer was genuinely from the Iranians. Porter writes, "The strategy of Rice's State Department to sow confusion regarding Iran's 2003 overture represents the latest twist of a policy based on diplomatic coercion rather than negotiations. Public awareness of the Iranian negotiating document presents a potential obstacle to the pursuit of the Bush administration's coercive diplomacy." (Washington Post/TPM Muckraker, TPM Muckraker, American Prospect)
- February 8: An astounding $12 billion, sent to Iraq as huge pallets of $100 bills shrink-wrapped and flown overseas in cargo planes, simply disappeared with no record of who received it or how it was spent.
Iraq war and occupation
The details of the disappearance of 363 tons of bills, sent from the Federal Reserve in New York City to Baghdad in C-130 cargo planes, are being revealed in hearings conducted by the House (see items above). Committee chairman Henry Waxman says the way the cash had been handled was mind-boggling. "The numbers are so large that it doesn't seem possible that they're true," he says. "Who in their right mind would send 363 ton of cash into a war zone?" The committee details the casual manner in which the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority disbursed the money, which came from Iraqi oil sales, surplus funds from the UN oil-for-food program and seized Iraqi assets. "One CPA official described an environment awash in $100 bills," a committee memorandum reports. "One contractor received a $2 million payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrink-wrapped bundles of currency. Auditors discovered that the key to a vault was kept in an unsecured backpack. They also found that $774,300 in cash had been stolen from one division's vault. Cash payments were made from the back of a pickup truck, and cash was stored in unguarded sacks in Iraqi ministry offices. One official was given $6.75 million in cash, and was ordered to spend it in one week before the interim Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds." The minutes from a May 2004 CPA meeting reveal "a single disbursement of $500 million in security funding labelled merely 'TBD', meaning 'to be determined'." The memo concludes: "Many of the funds appear to have been lost to corruption and waste...thousands of 'ghost employees' were receiving paychecks from Iraqi ministries under the CPA's control. Some of the funds could have enriched both criminals and insurgents fighting the United States." - According to Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, the $8.8 billion in funds to Iraqi ministries were disbursed "without assurance the monies were properly used or accounted for." But, according to the memorandum, Bowen "now believes that the lack of accountability and transparency extended to the entire $20 billion expended by the CPA." To oversee the expenditure the CPA was supposed to appoint an independent certified public accounting firm. "Instead the CPA hired an obscure consulting firm called North Star Consultants Inc. The firm was so small that it reportedly operates out of a private home in San Diego." Bowen found that the company "did not perform a review of internal controls as required by the contract."
- As detailed above, senior US officials, including former CPA chief Paul Bremer, were spectacularly unconcerned about the money because much of it was not US taxpayer funds. Bremer arrogantly informed the committee yesterday that "the subject of today's hearing is the CPA's use and accounting for funds belonging to the Iraqi people held in the so-called Development Fund for Iraq. These are not appropriated American funds. They are Iraqi funds. I believe the CPA discharged its responsibilities to manage these Iraqi funds on behalf of the Iraqi people." Bremer's financial adviser, retired Admiral David Oliver, is quoted as telling the BBC that he has no clue what happened to the billions. "I have no idea," he said. "I can't tell you whether or not the money went to the right things or didn't -- nor do I actually think it's important." He replied to a question about "billions of dollars have disappeared without trace" by retorting, "I'm saying what difference does it make?"
- It makes a tremendous difference. As author and columnist Larry Beinhart reminds his readers, the CPA was granted about $21 billion for the reconstruction of Iraq, under the control of Bremer. Shortly after the first of many Halliburton scandals erupted -- this one about the overcharging for gasoline from Kuwait -- Congress passed a bill requiring accounting and competitive bids for that money. Instead, Bremer stopped spending that money. He turned instead to another, less accountable source of money, Iraqi funds. Those funds were a combination of accounts seized during the reign of Saddam Hussein, including some of his personal accounts, and the millions salted away in the UN's Oil for Food program, now also under Bremer's control, along with Iraq's own oil revenues. The funds totaled a whopping $19 billion. Those Iraqi funds were never supposed to be spent by the CPA. Instead, they were to be held for Iraq and spent by its own government, once one was in place. However, as Bremer well knew, there was no oversight and no accounting restrictions on those funds. And no one would ever hold him accountable -- once an Iraqi government came into power, Bremer would turn control over to it and disappear. In the months that Bremer was in control, over $18 billion of those funds went missing, with little trace. On the other hand, Bremer only spent $500 million of the $21 billion appropriated by Congress.
- Between the two, Iraq had around $40 billion allocated for reconstruction. That money was supposed to rebuild hospitals and schools, power plants, water and sewer systems, the electrical grids, and even implement garbage collection. None of that has been done. Instead, pallets full of cash were flown to Iraq and given away to, well, whoever. Suitcases of hundred-dollar bills were handed out to military personnel (reportedly none below the rank of major), who drove off with it. Beinhart writes that the money was handed out "[w]ith no accounting. Not even digital cell phone pictures of, here, here's the sewer we had dug, here's the kindergarten we built. Nothing. Just a suitcase full of hundred dollars bills and have a nice day."
- Beinhart gives one example, gleaned from the Boston Globe: "One chunk of the money -- $1.4 billion - was deposited into a local bank by Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq but could be tracked no further. The auditors reported that they were shown a deposit slip but could find no additional record to explain how the money was used or to prove that it remains in the bank." Beinhart writes, "This was all known at least two and half or three years ago." But did the mainstream media pick up on it? Salon broke the story in May 2004. "By 2005, a Nexis search showed only three stories in the mainstream media relating to it. The one quoted above [the Globe story], another in the Baltimore Sun and one on the inside pages of the New York Times. I wrote about it in Fog Facts, Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin, published in October, 2005."
- Beinhart asks, "Why wasn't it a big story then? And why is it now? Because it's not about the story. It's not about the drama of the story. It's not about the significance of the story. The significance of the story is that it explains a great deal about why Iraq never did get reconstructed. It illustrates how this administration runs just about anything. And it should post a warning sign -- in flashing neon colors -- when they ask for money again. For more of the same thing. Especially when they don't want to account for what happened then and can't say how they've fixed it now. It's about the source of the story. The source of the story determines if it gets covered and how big the coverage is. ...The story gets coverage now, because it comes from the chairman of a congressional committee. Which [is] 'authoritative.' Also easy, because the hearings are scheduled and the press invited and press releases are handed out. It didn't get coverage for almost three years. Anyone in the mainstream media, who covers the war, Iraq, the administration, spending, and waste in government should be asking themselves why? Why have they become simply transmitters for official handouts? Instead of journalists. These are questions, of course, for all journalists. It is a question in particular for the Washington bureau of the New York Times. Which had the story, printed one piece of it, then deliberately walked away from it." (Guardian, Huffington Post)
- February 8: Further examination of Bush's military budget proposal shows that his budget is larded with dozens of high-tech weapons that won't be ready for years, and will have no impact on the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations.
Military-industrial complex
It is, however, a Christmas list for Pentagon officials and defense contractors eager to lap up billions in taxpayer funding for their pet projects. The military budget, presented as necessary for supporting the troops in the Middle East, seeks $400 million this year alone to fund a pair of F-35 fighters, even though the new model of plane won't be ready for combat until at least 2010. It also contains $74 million to begin designing a spy plane that won't be tested for two years. In the war budget, the Pentagon lists the planes among the costs of "reconstituting the force," or replacing equipment lost in battle. The administration has requested more than $51 billion in such replacement spending for the rest of this year and next. In 2005, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the price tag for replacing equipment lost in Iraq would be no more than $8 billion each year. "There are a number of reasons to be suspicious" that programs requested as war spending may not go to the war, says Steve Kosiak, a defense budget specialist at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. "Reconstitution costs have really jumped. That's a big question mark." - While Pentagon officials have told Congress that the funding is needed to buy ammunition, communications gear, and other equipment in high demand in the field, and that the funds would also replace armored vehicles, helicopters, and other aircraft that have been lost, the details of the budget request tell a different story. Analysts note that the Pentagon is seeking extra dollars for non-Iraq-specific projects that have either spiraled in cost or are facing constraints in the regular defense budget. They say that only a handful of planes have been lost in the war and that the president's request goes well beyond replacing those aircraft. For example, they said, only three F-16 fighters have crashed during the war, but the president is asking for a dozen F/A-18 fighter jets. Other requests include 22 new C-130J Hercules cargo planes; seven new V-22 Osprey transport aircraft; and six copies of a new plane called the Growler that jams radar and that made its first test flight in August. Analysts call the Pentagon requests a "shopping list."
- One of the most controversial requests is the $300 million for further development of the V-22 Osprey, a problem-plagued aircraft which has never been deployed. Boeing has yet to deliver an operational version of aircraft, designed to take off vertically like a helicopter but fly like a plane. The 2006 annual report by the Pentagon's top weapon evaluator said the Osprey remains plagued by "frequent part and system failures." "They have a whole appropriation for the V-22 Osprey," says Laura Peterson , a senior policy analyst at Taxpayers for Common Sense. "That is not something that has been deployed in theater before, so there is no reason for it to be included in a war budget." The budget proposal has expanded since the Pentagon broadened the definition of "war costs" in the fall of 2006 to include its pet projects. (Boston Globe)
- February 8: Senate Republicans, fresh from backstabbing Senate Democrats by first backing, then voting against, a resolution demanding that Bush not escalate the troop presence in Iraq, now say they are once again backing full and open debate on Iraq in the Senate (see items from February 6 and others for more).
Iraq war and occupation
GOP senator John Warner, who voted against the resolution he co-authored, writes a letter signed by six other Republican senators saying that they may attach the Warner-Levin resolution to any bill sent to the Senate for a vote in the coming weeks. The senators -- Warner, Chuck Hagel, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Norm Coleman, Gordon Smith, and George Voinovich -- write to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, calling the war "most pressing issue of our time" and declaring, "We will explore all of our options under the Senate procedures and practices to ensure a full and open debate." GOP senators are reeling under a firestorm of criticism over their two-faced tactics in pretending to support the resolution, then uniting -- along with "Democrat" Joseph Lieberman -- in voting to block debate on it. "Monday's procedural vote should not be interpreted as any lessening of our resolve to go forward advocating the concepts" of the resolution, the letter says. "The current stalemate is unacceptable to us and to the people of this country." - The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Peter Pace, says he welcomes Congressional debate and adds that, while potential enemies may take some comfort from the rancor, says they "don't have a clue how democracy works."
- Senate Democrats don't believe their colleagues. Reid spokesman Jim Manley says, "Senator Reid gave Senator Warner and the others a chance to vote for their own resolution on Monday, but only two of them [Coleman and Snowe] chose to do so. Hopefully this letter signifies that the others have had a change of heart, and will be willing to vote for their own resolution in the future."
- House Democrats are considering a straightforward resolution that opposes the troop increase, without the multiple provisions that complicated Warner's text. Senior House Democrats predicte that their measure will attract overwhelming party support and possibly as many as 30 GOP votes. House Democratic leaders initially said they would allow the House to vote on Republican alternative resolutions, but now House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says the leadership may not allow those alternatives to come to the floor for a vote. While Hoyer says the decision is in the interest of "clarity," it seems clear that House Democratic leaders do not intend to allow themselves to be shanghaied in the same manner as their Senate colleagues. However, the resolution will be broadly worded enough to allow Republicans to feel comfortable voting for it. (Washington Post, ABC News)
- February 8: NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert continues to testify in the Lewis Libby perjury case.
Lewis Libby perjury trial
Russert spends most of his time defending his memory, ethics, and credibility under harsh questioning from Libby's lead defense attorney Theodore Wells. Yesterday, Russert testified that he never discussed outed CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson with Libby, refuting Libby's contention that he first learned of Plame's identity from Russert (after "forgetting" he learned it in June from his boss, Dick Cheney). Wells tries to suggest Russert was eager to see Libby face charges, and played a video clip of Russert discussing the impending indictment with MSNBC's Don Imus in which Russert joked and laughed in describing his anticipation of a big news story the day Libby was indicted in October 2005. Russert asserted to Imus the day was "like Christmas Eve." Russert explains he was eager for the story to unfold like any big event. "Did you take joy in Mr. Libby's indictment?" Fitzgerald asks during follow-up questioning. "No, not at all," Russert says. "And I don't take joy in being here," in the courtroom as a witness. Fitzgerald rests the government's case.
(MSNBC ["Fact File"]) - February 8: The Senate is moving to rewrite the law that now allows the Attorney General to remove US attorneys and replace them with "interim" appointees that can serve indefinitely without review by the Senate.
US Attorney firings
The change will revert the law back to what it was before a member of Republican senator Arlen Specter's staff, acting on behalf of the Justice Department, surreptitiously inserted a measure in the USA Patriot Act reauthorization that allows the administration to appoint US Attorneys in perpetuity without Senate confirmation. Three Republicans, including Specter, vote for the change. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he will "do everything I can" to bring the bill to the floor. - While attorney general Alberto Gonzales and other Bush officials insist that their actions are anything but political, the facts show otherwise. A study of reported federal investigations of elected officials and candidates shows that Bush's Justice Department pursues Democrats far more than Republicans. 79% of elected officials and candidates who've faced a federal investigation (a total of 379) between 2001 and 2006 were Democrats, the study shows, while only 18% were Republicans. During that period, Democrats made up 50% of elected officeholders and office seekers during the time period, and 41% were Republicans during that period, according to the study. "The chance of such a heavy Democratic-Republican imbalance occurring at random is 1 in 10,000," according to the study's authors. The vast disparity came not from the more high-profile investigations of state-wide or federal officeholders (the disparity there was 55-44 Democratic), but from the far more numerous investigations of local officials. The study found that 85% of the 309 local officials and candidates who faced investigation were Democrats. "The chance of such a heavy Democratic-Republican imbalance occurring at random is 1 in 10,000," according to the study's authors. (TPM Muckraker, TPM Muckraker, TPM Muckraker/Carpetbagger Report)
- February 8: The Senate Judiciary Committee votes to end the Justice Department's power to replace federal prosecutors and unilaterally replace them with "interim" appointees that do not require Senate confirmation.
US Attorney firings
At least seven US attorneys have been fired in recent weeks and replaced by political cronies of Bush and other Republicans. The Judiciary Committee voted 13-6 to send the measure to the Senate floor, where it is certain to face opposition from Republicans who oppose giving more appointment power to federal judges. (Federal judges, not the Department of Justice, used to nominate US attorneys.) Three Republicans -- Arlen Specter, Charles Grassley, and Orrin Hatch -- joined all the panel's Democrats in backing the bill. The measure will eliminate a provision in the USA Patriot Act that gave the attorney general new power to replace fired US attorneys indefinitely, avoiding the Senate confirmation process. It will allow the attorney general to appoint an interim US attorney for 120 days. If after that time someone had not been nominated and confirmed by the Senate, authority to appoint an interim US attorney would fall to the district court. The bill would apply to any interim US attorneys who have not been confirmed, including those appointed to replace the seven prosecutors who have been fired since the Patriot Act reauthorization went into effect. - The Justice Department opposes the bill, saying the attorney general's authority to choose prosecutors should not be handed to courts because district court judges, they contend, are often unqualified to make such decisions. "We are disappointed by congressional efforts to restrict our ability to appoint our own employees for temporary periods of time while a permanent nominee is selected," says Justice spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos.
- Senate Democratic leaders have also sent Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a letter asking him to publicly answer several questions about the matter, including any role that presidential adviser Karl Rove might have had in replacing Arkansas US Attorney Bud Cummins with former Rove adviser Tim Griffin. Senate Democrats accuse the administration of slipping the provision into the Patriot Act reauthorization that took effect last March with the intent of circumventing the Senate confirmation process and rewarding political allies. Specter, who wrote the reauthorization as chairman of the committee, says he was unaware of the provision and opposes it. The provision was apparently slipped into the reauthorization in the early morning hours before the bill came up for a vote by then-Judiciary Committee chief counsel Michael O'Neill, a hardline conservative aide to Specter. Many Democrats believe that the provision has given Gonzales and the Bush administration the opportunity to target prosecutors currently pursuing criminal investigations against a number of Republicans.
- Earlier this week, Gonzales's deputy, Paul McNulty, told the panel that some of the ousted prosecutors were fired for performance-related causes he would not describe, while others were asked to leave without cause. Democrats demanded the performance reports of all seven dismissed prosecutors and threatened to subpoena the material. McNulty retorted that the reports might not detail any reasons for dismissal. (Washington Post, Salon)
- February 8: Former US attorney John McKay says his resignation was ordered by the Bush administration without explanation seven months after he received a favorable job evaluation.
US Attorney firings
"I was ordered to resign as US attorney on December 7 by the Justice Department," says McKay, who until recently headed the DOJ's Western Washington office. "I was given no explanation. I certainly was told of no performance issues." McKay has chosen before now not to comment on his resignation. McKay is speaking out now in part because on February 7, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Justice Department has fired McKay and six other US attorneys in the West because of "performance-related" reasons he would not divulge. - Democrats aren't buying McNulty's explanations any more than they bought Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's hollow reassurances about the wholesale replacement of US attorneys in favor of political replacements. Senator Patty Murray of Washington says, "John McKay has worked diligently for our region and it is deeply disconcerting that he could have been let go for political reasons. Congress and the American people have no tolerance for the politicization of the US attorney's office." And federal judges are equally shocked and angry. Robert Lasnik, the chief US District Court judge for the Western District of Washington, says he and his fellow judges cannot understand the firing and are dismayed that the Justice Department implied there was anything wrong with McKay's performance. "This is unanimous among the judges: John McKay was a superb US attorney," says Lasnik. "For the Justice Department to suggest otherwise is just not fair. By every measure, the performance of his office improved during his tenure. If you talk to local prosecutors, or local sheriffs, or the FBI or the ATF, they never had the kind of service from the US attorney's office in terms of service, cooperation and aggressive handling of cases that they had under John McKay's leadership. We're busier than ever before because they're bringing more cases." McKay, a 2001 Bush appointee, finished his tenure as US Attorney on January 29, and is now teaching at Seattle University Law School.
- McKay's last performance review was highly favorable, receiving strong praise from a 27-member DOJ evaluation team who themselves interviewed over 170 federal and local law enforcement officials in March of 2006. "McKay is an effective, well-regarded and capable leader of the [US attorney's office] and the District's law enforcement community," according to his evaluation. McKay was especially commended for working closely with other federal agencies as well as state and local authorities and law enforcement officials in Canada. "[McKay] has been responsible for major advances in a cooperative cross-border effort," the report says. "All involved in these efforts pointed to US Attorney McKay as the individual most responsible for the dramatic increase in cooperation."
- One of McKay's most high-profile court cases was his arguments on the government's behalf in the sentencing of Ahmed Ressam, who was convicted of plotting to detonate a bomb in Los Angeles International Airport as part of the December 1999 "Millenium Plot." The 22-year sentence Ressam received was less than McKay sought; worse, a three-judge appeals panel threw out both the sentence and one of the charges Ressam was convicted of. Federal prosecutors will ask for the appeal to be reheard by the entire circuit court. Although Ressem's appeal and sentencing victories are black marks on McKay's record, according to King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng, who is heading a committee to help select McKay's permanent replacement, says McKay's pursuit of terror suspects, from Ressam to a local group that sought to establish a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon, was a hallmark of his tenure, as was improving communication between state and federal law enforcement. "That statement that it was 'performance-related,' no one can understand what was meant by that," Maleng says. "It isn't just that he did a good job. He did an outstanding job." Even Ressem's lawyer, Tom Hillier, is surprised. "If this was done for political reasons, it shows a fundamental disrespect for the independence of the US attorneys," Hillier says. "It's definitely bad policy for an administration to be accepting resignations for what it sees as performance issues, particularly if they're not giving any information about what those issues are. John McKay vigorously enforced the laws in this district."
- McKay's "interim" replacement, named directly by Gonzales without Senate oversight, is Jeffrey Sullivan, the chief of the criminal division in the US attorney's office for Western Washington. The Patriot Act reauthorization allows Gonzales to appoint Sullivan and others for indefinite "interim" terms without going through the Senate, but Gonzales has promised to submit all of his choices for confirmation. As yet, Gonzales has not submitted a single name to the Senate for confirmation. (AP/National Examiner)
- February 8: With Congressional Democrats working to overhaul railroad safety laws for the first time since Republicans took control of the House in 1994, panicky railroad industry executives are preparing for the onslaught -- by hiring relatives of Washington lawmakers and staff members to lobby on behalf of the industry.
Congressional oversight
Days after Jennifer Esposito became majority staff director of the House transportation panel's subcommittee on railroads, her father, Sante Esposito (the former chief council of the subcommittee), and brother Michael Esposito (like Jennifer, a former committee intern) signed up as railway lobbyists. House Democrat Daniel Lipinski has just taken a seat on the subcommittee, and in the coming weeks his father and predecessor in Congress, William Lipinski, will register as a railroad lobbyist as well. The new lobbyists join Bud Shuster, a former Republican congressman and chairman of the transportation committee who lobbies for railroads and whose son, Bill Shuster, also a Republican, has just joined the railroads subcommittee. It is legal for family members (although not spouses, in some instances) to lobby Congressional members, mostly because no one has ever thought to ban it. - The industry is quite ingenuous in its explanation. Peggy Nasir, spokeswoman for the Association of American Railroads, which hired Shuster, Lipinski, and the two Espositos, merely says, "Like every other industry, we felt it was important to have representatives from both the Democratic and Republican side. We are meeting all the standards we need to meet for lobbying." Jennifer Esposito has already said she will refuse to meet with her father or brother on any railroad-related issues. "Train accidents are going up, and it's something that we feel needs to be addressed," she says. "I don't think that just because they hired my father, somehow there will be some conversation that will change my boss's mind." Her father and brother, she says, "are working for my adversaries."
- Congress wants to overhaul the outdated safety standards of the Federal Railroad Safety Program, which has not been updated since 1994. Before now, no Republican House leaders wanted to bother with updating the antiquated and ineffective safety standards. Now, with government figures showing an increase in railroad accidents and fatalities over the past decade, watchdog agencies, accident victims and many Democratic lawmakers want improved track and crossing inspections, better accident investigations, and heavy fines for companies that break the rules. Corrine Brown, chairman of the railroads subcommittee, hopes to ready a rail-safety bill before June. Since 1994, train use has risen 17 percent, according to government figures, while accidents have increased by one-third. There are 421 federal inspectors checking tracks and equipment nationwide, leaving safety monitoring largely to the industry. (Washington Post)
- February 8: Brent Budowsky, a columnist and former aide to Democratic senator Lloyd Bentsen, writes an open letter to Senate Republicans about their two-faced "support" for open debate on Iraq.
Iraq war and occupation
Budowsky writes in part, "For four years of failure and bloodshed in the Iraq war, you have issued warnings, concerns, sage advice, and major suggestions for change. For four years, the man who calls himself the Decider has given you nothing but contempt for your views, confident that in the end, you would vote with your party. For four years, you have proven him brilliantly right in his judgment of you, as he was deadly wrong in his conduct of war. For four years, you advised no, and voted yes." - "Three years ago, you issued more warnings, counsel, and sage advice and were treated with the same disrespect that was shown to our commanders when their advice, too, was ignored. Three years ago, you advised no, and voted yes, again. Two years ago, again. One year ago, again. And now with this latest tragedy and spectacle in the Senate, again. You issued warnings, advice, and sage counsel again. You said no and voted yes, again. You were disrespected, again, by the President who ignored your advice, again, and you voted to enable yet another escalation that you know is wrong, again. You were reduced to voting against your own resolution."
- "The Majority Leader, in a show of good faith and bipartisanship, supported including the key provision in the Gregg proposal into the Warner proposal. He made a mistake. I made a mistake in advising senior Democrats to work with you in good faith. And you know very well that the only reason the Republican leadership, in league with Karl Rove's shop, demanded a vote on the Gregg proposal was that it would help promote the escalation that you oppose, but enabled, again. My mistake was one of character judgment. Senator Reid's mistake was an attempt at statesmanship. Your mistake was putting a party line vote designed to promote the escalation, over the high principle of trying to prevent the escalation you oppose."
- "Four years ago. Three years ago. Two years ago. One year ago. And now this week. Again. So you voted against your own resolution, in the name of demanding a second resolution designed to promote the escalation that you oppose. And this from the party that criticized John Kerry for flip flopping?"
- "The Senator from Arizona [John McCain] accused you, and me, and Senator Reid of favoring a vote of no confidence in the troops. Once upon a time, when Senator McCain was younger and truer and his idealism trumped his ambition, he would have known such a statement to be untrue. The advocates of this escalation have learned nothing from mistakes, except to believe that their short pants McCarthyism can bully and intimidate good men into doing bad things. If there are two men who should never be accused of voting no confidence in the troops, it is you, Senator Hagel and Senator Warner. But, then again, if there are two men who should have made public votes consistent with their private views, after four years, it is you, as well. Again."
- "How more powerful and right it would have been, for you to charge like lions to the Senate Floor and answer the defamation that you voted no confidence in the troops, in terms as strong as the false accusation. Instead, you retreated to the Republican cloakroom, and cast a party line vote. Again. For four years, you have been wiser, smarter, more knowledgable and experienced than those who disrespected your advice, as much as they disrespected the advice of military leaders. For four years, you said no and voted yes. For four years, you enabled policies in war you knew were wrong. For four years, the failure became more deadly, the carnage became more ugly, the casualties became more painful, the damage to our troops and our country and our credibility around the world, and our military force structures, and our deterrent, and our national unity became more grave and extreme. Yet for four years, the Senators from Virginia and Nebraska issued their words of warning and their counsels for change, but in the end, for four years, based on the real votes on the floor of the Senate, Virginia and Nebraska might as well have been represented by Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman."
- "What a shame. What a waste. What a tragedy for our country." (Buzzflash)
- February 9: Defense Secretary Robert Gates says that serial numbers and other markings on bombs suggest that Iran is linked to the explosives used by Iraqi insurgents.
War with Iran
"I think there's some serial numbers, there may be some markings on some of the projectile fragments that we found" that point to Iran, he says. Gates's statement is the first "hard" evidence of Iranian complicity with Iraqi insurgents who are targeting American forces in Iraq -- while the rhetoric has been strong, the evidence has been lacking. (As noted later in this site, Gates is wrong about the Iranian connection.) Gates's claims about Iranian bombs will be included in the so-called "Iran dossier" to be released, in attempts to prove administration claims about Iran's involvement with Iraqi insurgents. The dossier also includes claims that Iranians are training Iraqis in military techniques. - It is unclear how much information will actually be revealed in the dossier. US intelligence agencies do not want to expose sources or reveal classified information. But weapons seized from caches around Iraq will be displayed, say administration officials. Other evidence includes documents captured when US-led forces raided an Iranian office January 11 in Irbil in northern Iraq. (AP/USA Today)
US propaganda campaign against Iran mounts, with the complicity of the New York Times
- February 9: The New York Times reports unequivocally that Iran is supplying the newest and most deadly bombs used against Americans in Iraq.
War with Iran
Unfortunately, reporter Michael Gordon, who collaborated with former Times reporter in spreading administration-sourced propaganda and misinformation in the runup to the Iraq invasion, relies on anonymous sources who provide no hard evidence of the charges. The allegation is being used as justification for potential military action against Iran by administration officials, but if the allegation is false -- as it is later proven, see items below -- then Gordon and the Times are once again planting misinformation in America's most influential newspaper. Gordon writes, "The assertion of an Iranian role in supplying the device to Shiite militias reflects broad agreement among American intelligence agencies, although officials acknowledge that the picture is not entirely complete." Throughout the article, Gordon cites interviews with "civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies" who have "provided specific details to support what until now has been a more generally worded claim, in a new National Intelligence Estimate, that Iran is providing 'lethal support' to Shi'ite militants in Iraq." But neither Gordon nor his anonymous sources provide any basis for the allegations. - The charges center around what Americans call the "explosively formed penetrator," a particularly deadly type of roadside bomb being used by Shi'ite groups in attacks on American troops in Iraq. Attacks using the device have doubled in the past year, and have prompted increasing concern among military officers. In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less than a quarter of the total, military officials tell Gordon.
- Many observers are calling the Times on their apparent decision to once again play along with administration propaganda. Greg Mitchell, the editor of the influential Editor and Publisher, writes of Gordon's article, "Saturday's New York Times features an article, posted at the top of its Web site late Friday, that suggests very strongly that Iran is supplying the 'deadliest weapon aimed at American troops' in Iraq. The author notes, 'Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile.' What is the source of this volatile information? Nothing less than 'civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies.' Sound pretty convincing? It may be worth noting that the author is Michael R. Gordon, the same Times reporter who, on his own, or with Judith Miller, wrote some of the key, and badly misleading or downright inaccurate, articles about Iraqi WMDs in the run-up to the 2003 invasion." In January, Gordon, during an interview with PBS's Charlie Rose, made his own feelings about the situation in the Middle East quite clear: "So I think, you know, as a purely personal view, I think it's worth it one last effort for sure to try to get this right, because my personal view is we've never really tried to win. We've simply been managing our way to defeat. And I think that if it's done right, I think that there is the chance to accomplish something." (New York Times/Jihad Watch, Editor and Publisher, Daily Kos [multiple sources])
Pentagon report shows that Pentagon lied about intelligence in runup to Iraq invasion
- February 9: The Defense Department's Inspector General, Thomas Gimble, releases a report that shows the Pentagon purposely manipulated intelligence in an attempt to show that Saddam Hussein had links to al-Qaeda, for the purposes of misleading public and political opinion before the US invasion of Iraq.
Prewar intelligence on Iraq
Feith's office "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda," according to portions of the report. Feith's assessment in 2002 that Iraq and al-Qaeda had a "mature symbiotic relationship" was not supported by available intelligence but was nonetheless used by policymakers. The Democratic head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, calls the report "very damning," and says, "That was the argument that was used to make the sale to the American people about the need to go to war." The Pentagon's work, "which was wrong, which was distorted, which was inappropriate...is something which is highly disturbing. ...The bottom line is that intelligence relating to the Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship was manipulated by high-ranking officials in the Department of Defense to support the administration's decision to invade Iraq. The inspector general's report is a devastating condemnation of inappropriate activities in the DOD policy office that helped take this nation to war." However, the IG report says that such intelligence manipulation, while clearly unethical and wrong, is not illegal -- probably because no one has ever considered the need to make such intelligence manipulation illegal. - The report focuses primarily on former undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith and his secretive Office of Special Plans. (See related items throughout this site for more on Feith and the OSP. Note that the OSP originated as the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, or PCEG.) Democrats, like many other experts and observers, contend that Feith lied to Congress about the so-called connections between al-Qaeda and Hussein, along with other non-existent threats posed by Iraq, but Gimble's report does not make this claim. Levin and other Democrats have long asserted that Bush took the United States to war based on misleading and false intelligence reports from Feith's office as well as other sources. Levin says the report proves what has been said for years: that Feith's policy shop deliberately shaped and created false intelligence in regards to the Iraq-al-Qaeda link. In 2005, Levin asked the IG's office to determine whether Feith's offices' activities were appropriate, and if not, what remedies should be pursued. The 2004 report from the Sept. 11 commission found no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda before the US invasion.
- The report also excoriates the OSP's assertions that an Iraqi intelligence officer met with 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta in Prague during the summer of 2001, assertions that Feith characterized as a "known contact" but had long since been disproven. That claim figured heavily in statements by Dick Cheney and other senior administration officials alleging a link between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi regime. Three versions of the briefing prepared by Feith's office were presented in August and September 2002 to Lewis Libby, then Cheney's chief of staff; Rumsfeld; and then-deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley. But only "some of the information" in those briefings was "supported by available intelligence," the report says. The version of the briefing presented to senior Bush officials contained different information than a presentation to the CIA. Left out of the version for the CIA, says the report, was "a slide that said there were 'fundamental problems'" with the way the intelligence community was presenting the evidence. While Pentagon officials said that no senior policymakers mistook these briefings as "intelligence assessments," the report says that administration officials had indeed cited classified intelligence that allegedly documented a close al-Qaeda-Iraq relationship. The report says that Feith's OSP "was inappropriately performing Intelligence Activities...that should be performed by the Intelligence Community."
- It should be repeated that the July 2004 "Final Report" from the 9/11 commission made the same findings. It found, "To date we have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al-Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States" In other words, Feith and his group lied. Bush then perpetuated the lie by saying, days before the report was publicly released but well after he and his officials were aware of the commission's findings, "[T]here was a relationship" between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. When ABC's Diane Sawyer pressed him to clarify his previous statements that, "as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he [Saddam] could move to acquire those weapons." Bush merely replied, "So what's the difference?"
- In late 2001, after Bush had ordered then-counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke to investigate the possibility of any links between al-Qaeda and Hussein, Clarke wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice that concluded, "the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak...bin Laden resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein's regime." But, according to Clarke, "it got bounced by the national-security advisor, or deputy. It got bounced and sent back, saying, 'Wrong answer.... Do it again.'" Three days later, during a September 15, 2001, meeting of Bush's "war cabinet" at Camp David, some members discussed the possibility of the war on terrorism getting bogged down in Afghanistan. Rice suggested "that they think about launching military action elsewhere as an insurance policy in case things in Afghanistan went bad.... They would need successes early in any war to maintain domestic and international support." Wolfowitz told the gathering: "Iraq was a brittle, oppressive regime that might break easily. It was doable. He estimated that there was a 10 to 50 percent chance Saddam was involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks. The US would have to go after Saddam at some time if the war on terrorism was to be taken seriously." Two days later, Bush told the National Security Council that he believed "Iraq was involved," but he would not "strike them now. I don't have the evidence at this point." While he never got the evidence, the plans for attacking Iraq were already underway. That same day, he signed a secret directive that not only launched the planning for a war with Afghanistan, but ordered the Pentagon to begin preparing military options for an invasion of Iraq.
- The 9/11 commission also debunked the Atta-in-Prague story, and showed that by May 2002, the CIA was reporting that the Atta story was false. And in June 2002, the CIA published a report that showed the meeting "likely never occurred." Yet in September 2002, Dick Cheney said on Meet the Press that the evidence of Atta's visit to Prague had been deemed "credible" by the CIA -- another lie. Again, Feith and the PCEG/OSP was still feeding Cheney false intelligence reports, which Cheney deliberately used to foment his lies. The PCEG did not simply "study the policy implications of relationships among terrorist organizations and their sources of support," as Feith falsely testified to the Senate in 2004, but also, according to the Senate report, "reviewed both raw and finished intelligence and did undertake their own intelligence analysis after looking at the IC [Intelligence Community] products and discovering that what they needed had not been produced by the IC." Walter Uhler notes, "What's worse, without exception, Feith's PCEG produced intelligence products that consistently exaggerated the number, type, significance and danger of the ties it found between Iraq and al-Qaeda. And although it was wrong on every one of its assessments, not one of its errors resulted in underestimating the threat. This pattern of errors in one direction suggests fraud and the 'fixing' of intelligence, not mere incompetence." It was then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz who ensured that the highest officials in the White House received Feith's false intelligence briefings.
- Feith says he is pleased that the report concludes his office's activities were not illegal nor unauthorized (it is well documented that Feith was acting at the behest of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney), but takes issue with the report's findings that the OSP's actions had been "inappropriate." Feith says, "The policy office has been smeared for years by allegations that its pre-Iraq-war work was somehow 'unlawful' or 'unauthorized' and that some information it gave to congressional committees was deceptive or misleading." He calls the IG's conclusion "bizarre" that some of the OSP's intelligence-gathering activities were unauthorized, and implies that every lie and misstatement issued by the OSP was authorized by his superiors, specifically Wolfowitz. Feith is now a lecturer at Georgetown University.
- As extensively documented elsewhere in this site, the controversy over prewar intelligence centers in part around Feith, Wolfowitz, and the small, ideologically partisan group of analysts brought in to skew intelligence about Iraq to help administration officials justify the invasion. Their own wild claims were used to help buttress the warlike rhetoric being employed by Bush, Cheney, and other officials.
- The Senate Intelligence Committee included the Office of Special Plans in its investigation into the prewar intelligence on Iraq, but the committee did not finish that portion of its work when it released the first part of its findings in July 2004. (AP/ABC News, Washington Post, Walter Uhler)
- February 9: Senate Democrat Carl Levin, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, says he will ask current and former White House aides to testify about a report by the Pentagon's inspector general that criticizes the Pentagon for compiling "alternative intelligence" that made the case for invading Iraq.
Prewar intelligence on Iraq
(See the above items for more information.) Among those that will be called, says Levin, include national security advisor Stephen Hadley and former Cheney chief of staff Lewis Libby. Both received a briefing from the defense secretary's policy office in 2002 on possible links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government. The committee will likely have to subpoena Hadley and Libby to compel their testimony. The two may also be asked to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee. - On February 9 (see above item), the Pentagon's IG, Thomas Gimble, castigated intelligence reports from former undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith and his team for providing false information as a basis for invading Iraq. "The actions, in our opinion, were inappropriate, given that all the products did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intel community, and in some cases were shown as intel products," Gimble told the committee on February 9.
- Conservative Democratic representative Ike Skelton, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, says that Feith's office exercised "extremely poor judgment for which our nation, and our service members in particular, are paying a terrible price." Senate Republicans continue to justify Feith's false intelligence by blaming the CIA: as Jeff Sessions says, Feith's superiors at the Pentagon had asked him to re-examine intelligence on links between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Therefore, Sessions says, there was no need for the briefers to point out that their conclusions differed from those of the CIA, because the briefing was intended as a "critique" of the agencies' conclusions. A similar argument has been made in a formal rebuttal to the inspector general that was prepared by Mr. Feith's successor at the Pentagon. (New York Times/Truthout)
- February 9: The presitigious Council on Foreign Relations warns in a just-released report that the situation in Iraq is beyond repair, and says that US forces must be pulled out whatever the result of the current "surge" of troops into Baghdad.
Iraq war and occupation
The CFR report, written by Stephen Simon, says that a US military victory is impossible in Iraq, where "amateurish" post-invasion rule by American officials had seen Iraq collapse into civil war. "The United States has already achieved all that it is likely to achieve in Iraq," Simon writes. "Staying in Iraq can only drive up the price of those gains in blood, treasure and strategic position. The time has come to acknowledge that the United States must fundamentally recast its commitment to Iraq. It must do so without any illusions that there are unexplored or magic fixes, whether diplomatic or military. ...Some disasters are irretrievable." According to the CFR report, the US invasion "plunged the country into a civil war that brought about the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, wrecked the country's already debilitated infrastructure, and spurred violent sectarian rivalries. ...The crisis has now moved beyond the capacity of Washington to control on its own.... The United States lacks the military resources and the domestic and international political support to master the situation." Simon also says that the administration's focus on Iraq has left the situation in Afghanistan adrift, allowing the Taliban to regroup and once again threaten the US in the region. "By siphoning resources and political attention away from Afghanistan, a continuing military commitment to Iraq may lead to US losses in southwest Asia," Simon writes. American failures since the March 2003 invasion had cost Bush public support at home, making military disengagement inevitable, the report warns. "It is now just a matter of time. Better to withdraw as a coherent and somewhat volitional act than withdraw later in hectic response to public opposition to the war in the United States." (AFP/Yahoo! News) - February 9: Liberal columnist and author Joe Conason writes that the "sudden, explicitly political dismissal and replacement of United States attorneys" by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is not merely "troubling," much less a foible or an oopsie by the Department of Justice, but part of the Bush administration's systematic attempt to gut the powers of the other federal branches of government in order to focus all significant powers into the executive branch.
US Attorney firings
Conason calls it Gonzales's "coup d'etat." Strong words, but backed by the realities of the situation: Conason writes, "Again, the White House and the Justice Department have been exposed in a secretive attempt to expand executive power for partisan purposes. And again, their scheming is tainted with a nasty whiff of authoritarianism. There is much more at stake here than a handful of federal jobs." - Before Bush, US attorneys were appointed with the advice and consent of the state and local authorities. The process was always somewhat partisan, with Republicans tending to appoint Republicans and Democrats tending to appoint Democrats, but the appointees are supposed to be as nonpartisan as possible, with confirmation by the full Senate part of the vetting process. No more. With the infamous late-night codicil to the USA Patriot Act now in force, Gonzales can fire any US attorney he pleases and replace that attorney with an "interim" choice whose term of service is indefinite. No Senate confirmation is required. Why are these attorneys so significant in a political sense? Conason writes, "These prosecutors must police the politicians. They are expected to guard the nation's judicial system against the varieties of political abuse that are typical of authoritarian systems. They are granted a substantial degree of independence from the government in Washington, including the attorney general who functions as their boss. To ensure that no US attorney could be fired on a whim and replaced with a malleable hack, the relevant statute required that whenever a vacancy occurred in midterm, the replacement would be appointed by federal circuit judges rather than by the president. Getting rid of irksomely honest and nonpartisan prosecutors was difficult if not impossible."
- But the Patriot Act codicil destroys that check and balance. The codicil was slipped in to the reauthorization legislation by an aide to Republican senator Arlen Specter, in a procedure so hush-hush that even Specter claims he didn't know it had been done. (Specter supports a bill to reverse the procedure.) The staffer, Michael O'Neill, is a law professor at George Mason University, and once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. O'Neill, according to the right-wing Washington Times, was appointed as the Senate Judiciary Committee's chief counsel so that Specter, a moderate Republican viewed with deep distrust by party conservatives, could reassure them of his loyalty to the Bush White House. "Right-wing distrust had almost ousted the Pennsylvania moderate from the Judiciary chairmanship, and appointing O'Neill was apparently the price for keeping that post," Conason observes. "Evidently O'Neill rewarded Specter by sneaking through legislation to deprive him and his fellow senators of one of their most important powers, at the behest of an attorney general intent on aggrandizing executive power. The results of this backstage betrayal -- now playing out in a wave of politicized dismissals and hirings -- were perfectly predictable and utterly poisonous."
- The most suspect of the eight US attorney firings is Southern California's Carol Lam, who is working on a wide-ranging corruption case that has already landed former GOP House member Randy Cunningham in jail, and has spread to former CIA honcho Kyle Foggo and his defense contractor buddy Brent Wilkes. (See the February 13 item about the indictment of Foggo and Wilkes, below.) Conason writes, "Cunningham is supposed to be cooperating, but if Bush replaces her with a partisan stooge, he may be able to keep his secrets." Two other firings are equally suspect: Bud Cummings, the Little Rock, Arkansas attorney canned to make way for Karl Rove acolyte Tim Griffin, and Paul Charlton of Arizona. Conason suspects that Griffin, who has little experience in civilian prosecutions, might be in place to monkeywrench the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. And Charlton was pursuing an uncomfortable investigation of Republican House member Rick Renzi.
- Conason writes that on February 8 (see above item), "the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to restore the old nonpartisan system for replacing US attorneys and to require Senate confirmation of all new appointees. The full Senate and the House of Representatives should do likewise, despite Republican opposition, but that is not enough. The Senate Democrats should continue to probe the attorney general's little coup d'etat and all of the resulting appointments. That is the best way to discourage future usurpations -- and to frustrate whatever skulduggery was afoot this time." (Salon)
- February 9: Journalistic eminence and former CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite warns that the drive for ever-greater profits by the corporations that own the various media outlets threaten the basis of journalistic freedom, and threaten American democracy.
Conservative media slant
Today's journalists no longer have the freedom or the resources "to expose truths that powerful politicians and special interests often did not want exposed," he says during a speech at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Instead, "they face rounds and rounds of job cuts and cost cuts that require them to do ever more with ever less." Cronkite warns, "It's not just the journalist's job at risk here. It's American democracy. It is freedom." - Cronkite says news accuracy has declined because of consolidations and closures that have left many American towns with only one newspaper. And as broadcasters cut budgets and air time for news, "we're all left with a sound bite culture that turns political campaigns into political theater." Until the owning corporations accept their civil responsibilities for a free and vigorous press, the situation will only worsen.
- Cronkite's views are echoed by FCC commissioner Michael Copps, who says that looser broadcast regulations such as those that had, but no longer, required stations to regularly prove they serve the community interest have resulted in less local coverage, less diversity of opinion and fewer jobs for journalists over the past quarter century. The Bush-controlled FCC is considering relaxing the rules even more. The agency decided in June to reopen the hotly disputed issue of ownership limits, which currently restrict the number of radio and television stations that one owner can have as well as cross-ownership between newspapers and broadcasters. Many of the broadcast television networks and large media companies such as the Tribune Company and Gannett have complained that current restrictions are outmoded in a digital age in which consumers also have the internet and cable TV from which to choose. "We have more outlets now, more in sheer numbers, engaged in news presentation than we've ever had," says Tom Rosenstiel, a former political reporter for the Los Angeles Times and now director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "The problem is most of them are not engaged in a lot of serious news gathering. They are largely engaged in repackaging material that other people have produced."
- Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of the Associated Press, says that getting news to report on has become increasingly difficult, even as individuals have more outlets online and elsewhere in which to distribute information. She says cities and states have passed more than 1,000 laws affecting access to public records in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The United States and other governments around the world are also raising barriers. "That's a very troubling trend," she says, "and it's one where I think whatever your view is about who owns the media, who's a journalist, none of us can get this information." (AP/CommonDreams)
