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
March 2007, Week Three
Page Two
- March 16: Bush's escalation of US troop numbers in Iraq -- the vaunted "surge" -- may be getting even larger.
Iraq war and occupation
Already swelling over 25,000, the top commander of US forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, is now asking for another brigade, a combat aviation unit of between 2,500 and 3,000 more troops along with the commensurate transport helicopters and gunships, bringing the escalation close to 30,000 more American troops deployed in Iraq. A week ago, Bush announced that an additional 4,700 "suppprt troops" will join the 21,500 he ordered deployed in January. "This is the next shoe to drop," says one senior Pentagon official closely involved in the war planning. "[Y]ou cannot put five combat brigades in there and not have more aviation guys, military police, and intelligence units." In other words, the 21,500 numbers cited by Bush and his officials in the initial escalation announcement was merely the first of a much larger number. - "There is a problem in the way the administration reported the surge numbers to begin with," says Frederick Kagan, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who first conceived of the surge. "When they initially reported the numbers they only reported the combat strength of the brigades, and they did not count support troops" and other personnel that the operation would need. "Petraeus has now requested what many thought would be needed to begin with, but it looks like another surge."
- Some American commanders in Baghdad are already reporting that the amount of violence in that chaotic city is dropping, though military experts have long warned that the "surge" would do little more than send some of the Baghdad combatants to ground to wait it out, and others would leave the city to sow violence and discord in other areas of Iraq. (Boston Globe)
- March 16: The Arctic sea ice is at a "tipping point" that will lead to a catastrophic collapse of the ice pack and bring about radical climate changes in the Northern Hemisphere, according to a large number of scientists.
Global warming and the environment
These scientists blame the loss of approximately 38,000 square miles of Arctic sea ice to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as well as to natural variability in Arctic ice. Ever since satellite measurements of the Arctic sea ice began in 1979, the surface area covered by summer sea ice has retreated from the long-term average. This has increased the rate of coastal erosion from Alaska to Siberia and caused tremendous problems for polar bears, which rely on sea ice for hunting seals. In recent years the rate of melting has accelerated and the sea ice is showing signs of not recovering even during the cold, dark months of the Arctic winter. This has led to even less sea ice at the start of the summer melting season. Mark Serreze, a senior glaciologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, says the world is heading towards a situation where the Arctic will soon be almost totally ice-free during summer, which could have a dramatic impact on weather patterns across the Northern Hemisphere. "When the ice thins to a vulnerable state, the bottom will drop out and we may quickly move into a new, seasonally ice-free state of the Arctic," says Serreze. "I think there is some evidence that we may have reached that tipping point, and the impacts will not be confined to the Arctic region." The Arctic is one of the fastest warming regions on Earth and scientists fear that temperatures could rise even faster once sea ice melts to expose dark ocean, which absorbs heat more easily without its reflective cap of ice. "While the Arctic is losing a great deal of ice in the summer months, it now seems that it also is regenerating less ice in the winter. With this increasing vulnerability, a kick to the system just from natural climate fluctuations could send it into a tailspin," Serreze says. - During the late 1980s and early 1990s, changing wind patterns flushed much of the thick sea ice out of the Arctic Ocean and into the North Atlantic, where it drifted south and melted away. A thinner layer of young ice formed in its place, which more readily melts during the warmer, summer months -- leading to the appearance of a greater area of open water that absorbs sunlight and heat. The summer sea ice reached an all-time minimum in September 2005, with September 2006 the second lowest. "This ice-flushing even could be a small-scale analogue of the sort of kick that could invoke rapid collapse, or it could have been the kick itself. At this point, I don't think we really know," says Serreze. Julienne Stroeve from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado adds that the winter sea ice failed again this year to recover fully. "The freeze-up this year was again delayed, and ice extents from October through to December set new record lows during the satellite era," she says. Computer models suggest that summer sea ice could disappear altogether by 2080. Some forecasts even predict an ice-free summer by 2040. (Independent)
Valerie Plame Wilson testifies before Congress, and confirms that she was a covert agent
- March 16: Former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Plame outing
Plame tells the committee that she indeed did work in a "covert" status at the CIA, and calls her outing as a CIA agent by White House officials a "travesty." "I know I am here under oath, and I am here to say that I was covert," she says. She adds that some of what she learned during the Libby trial "shocked" her: "In the course of the trial of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, I was shocked by the evidence that emerged. My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in both the White House and the State Department. All of them understood that I worked for the CIA, and having signed oaths to protect national security secrets, they should have been diligent in protecting me and every CIA officer." - Little of what Plame tells the committee is new, but before now, few have heard her tell her side of the story. Her testimony shreds the claims of many conservatives and White House officials, who continue to insist against all evidence (and common sense, and even chronology) that Plame and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, were involved in a conspiracy to smear the White House. She denies recommending that her husband be sent to Niger in the 2002 mission to determine whether or not Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from that country. She says she is happy to say this under oath, and calls the allegation "incorrect" and not "square with the facts." She says a CIA colleague had mentioned that Wilson was qualified to do this assignment. She recalls feeling "ambivalent" about that, as she was concerned about looking after the couple's two-year-old twins at the time. But asked to pass this request on, she did.
- She confirms what many reporters and witnesses have already said, that an email she sent was "taken out of context" by Republicans in Congress and made to seem as if she had recommended him. A colleague who was cited as the source for this told her, with tears in his eyes, she recalls, that his words had been "twisted" and wrote a memo to this effect.
- All of Plame's information is documented elsewhere in this site.
- Democrat Henry Waxman, the chairman of the Oversight Committee, opens the hearing by destroying one of the central allegations against Plame -- that she was not a covert agent and, therefore, no one in the White House committed any crimes against her or the government by outing her identity to the press. Waxman reveals what CIA director Michael Hayden has cleared for him to state: that Plame was indeed a covert agent, and officially undercover, even though she was not overseas at the time of her outing. "Ms. Wilson worked on the most sensitive and highly secretive matters handled by the CIA," Waxman says, and adds that her work dealt with "prevention of development and use of WMD against the United States." Plame testifies that she had undertaken overseas assignments in the five years before she was outed, meaning that even the narrow provisions of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 would have been met in her case. That law makes it a crime to willfully disclose the identity of a US intelligence officer if the identity is classified and the person "has within the last five years served outside the United States."
- Plame herself says that she served her country "honorably and as a covert agent" until her name was exposed in the media "after a leak by administration officials." Both Plame and her CIA superiors have repeatedly confirmed that Plame was covert ever since she was outed by conservative columnist Robert Novak in July 2003. She said she had worked as a covert officer and classified position on Iraq's presumed WMD programs in the runup to war.
- While working out of Washington she also traveled to foreign countries on vital missions: "I was dedicated to this work. It was not common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit that everyone knew where I worked" (a direct rebuttal to National Review editor Jonah Goldberg's September 2003 claim that "Wilson's wife is a desk jockey and much of the Washington cocktail circuit knew that already"). Plame continues, "But all that service was abruptly ended when my name was disclosed.... In the course of the trial of Vice President Cheney's former Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, I was shocked at the evidence that emerged. My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in both the White House and the State Department. All of them understood that I worked for the CIA, and having signed oaths to protect national security secrets, they should have been diligent in protecting me and every CIA officer." She says that while some of them may not have known that she was covert, they did know she worked at the agency and this should have produced a quot;red flag. ...The harm that is done when a CIA's cover is blown is grave," referring to the "travesty of what happened to me." Noting that the CIA tries to hide identities from foreign officials, she finds it "a terrible irony that it was administration officials who destroyed my cover. ...My exposure arose from purely political motives."
- Plame goes on to denouce the "creeping, insidious politicizing of intelligence operations...politics and ideology must be stripped from our intelligence services."
- No one from the White House -- not Cheney, Rove, Libby, or anyone -- approached her to ask if her name could be disclosed. Asked if she had any theories on who told Rove about her status, she decline to speculate. She says she felt "awful" when she heard that Rove had told MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews that she was "fair game," and says she would feel the same about hearing that about any CIA agent. She says no one who had leaked her name has ever expressed any apology or misgivings to her.
- Naturally, committee Republicans try to redirect the thrust of her testimony. She tells Republican questioners that she had no idea whether or not any of the White House leakers knew she was covert, and that they should ask special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that question. Asked about the famous Vanity Fair photo of her, she says that the photo did no damage because her identify had long since been blown by the time the photo was taken at the end of 2003.
- A video of the hearing can be found in the Web pages of the Oversight Committee.
- Consortium News founder Robert Parry observes that Plame's testimony "destroyed some of the long-standing myths about her outing as a covert CIA officer that have been circulated for more than three years by George W. Bush's apologists...." Parry focuses on the Washington Post's editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt. Parry writes that "Hiatt and his editorial page cohorts have made trashing Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, and mocking the seriousness of Plame's exposure almost a regular feature, recycling many long-discredited White House talking points, including an attempt to question whether Plame was in fact 'covert.' After the March 16 hearing before [the] committee, those pro-Bush falsehoods stand in even starker disrepute -- as should the reputation of the Post's editorial page, which has never quite reconciled itself to how thoroughly it fell for Bush's Iraq War deceptions. Based on testimony before Waxman's committee, it also now is clear that while the Post was busy defending the Bush administration on the Plame affair, the White House was conducting a systematic cover-up of its role in the leak." As James Knodell, the director of the White House security office, testifies the same day as Plame, though Bush promised to get to the bottom of the Plame outing in September 2003, no security investigation was performed, no security clearances were suspended or revoked, and no punishment of any kind was meted out to anyone, particularly to Karl Rove, who personally outed Plame's classified identity to at least two reporters (see related March 16 item).
- Parry says that those with long memories remember the Post as a newspaper unafraid to challenge the US goverment and expose its crimes and wrongdoings, a reputation largely built on its exposure of Richard Nixon's Watergate coverup. But a new day has dawned at the Post, and the newspaper is now actively complicit in another White House coverup. Such, writes Parry, "would not come as a surprise to anyone who has read the Post's editorial pages over the past six years." But instead of Hiatt being "fired long ago for his work lining up the misguided 'inside-the-Beltway' consensus behind invading Iraq...he remains one of the capital's most influential journalists."
- But even though Plame, her husband, dozens of investigative reporters, and the CIA itself have all found that Plame was indeed a covert agent when she was publicly outed by Novak, Hiatt and the Post editorial staff have consistently refused to accept the reality of her covert status, and instead complained that, because they believed that Plame hadn't been stationed overseas within the last five years, she could not have been covert within the bounds of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. One of the most egregrious examples of this was the February 18, 2007, publication in the Post's Outlook section of a long and hatefully inaccurate article on Plame and the Libby case by conservative lawyer Victoria Toensing, printed on the same day that the Libby jury began its deliberations. (See the item about Toensing's article in the February 2007 page of this site.) Toensing followed her frequent TV appearances, criticizing and mocking Libby's prosecution, with the article, where she wrote bluntly, and wrongly, "Plame was not covert. She worked at CIA headquarters and had not been stationed abroad within five years of the date of Novak's column." Toensing was referring to her "belief" that Plame was not covert as defined by the standards of the IIPA, but also ignored the fact that Plame was working undercover in a classified CIA position and was running agents abroad whose safety would be put at risk by an unauthorized disclosure of Plame's identity. Toensing had every opportunity to become informed of this, but asserted otherwise; either she was tremendously ignorant of the basic facts as they had been presented in the media for the last four years, or she was just flat lying to her readers. Worse, Toensing, who helped author the IIPA, was wrong about the legal details of the Act. The law doesn't require that a CIA officer be "stationed" abroad in the preceding five years; it simply refers to an officer who "has served within the last five years outside the United States." By the IIPA standard, Plame was covered. Why Toensing didn't acknowledge this is a question worthy of consideration.
- Toensing herself testifies before Waxman's committee later in the same day, as noted earlier in this item. When she is asked about about her flat assertion that "Plame was not covert," she says that Plame was indeed not covert, "[n]ot under the law. I'm giving you the legal interpretation under the law and I helped draft the law. The person is supposed to reside outside the United States." But she is wrong: the law itself says "served" abroad, not "reside." When asked whether she had spoken to the CIA or Plame about Plame's covert status, Toensing replies, "I didn't talk to Ms. Plame or the CIA. I can just tell you what's required under the law. They can call anybody anything they want to do in the halls" of the CIA. Parry sums up her statement: "In other words, Toensing had no idea about the facts of the matter; she didn't know how often Plame might have traveled abroad in the five years before her exposure; Toensing didn't even get the language of the statute correct. ...At the hearing, Toensing was reduced to looking like a quibbling kook who missed the forest of damage -- done to US national security, to Plame and possibly to the lives of foreign agents -- for the trees of how a definition in a law was phrased, and then getting that wrong, too."
- Did the Post retract Toensing's February 18 "indictments" article, or express regret that it was so hideously inaccurate, to the point that it had the potential to mislead the Libby jury? Not hardly. This is in part because, as Parry observes, "Toensing'sattack lines also matched the Washington Post's editorial positions which have consistently hammered Wilson and made light of White House wrongdoing in the case." A March 7 Post editorial followed Libby's conviction with more of the same, "manufacturing" what Parry calls, accurately, "a false history of the case." Instead of focusing on the facts of the case, and the concepts surrounding it, Hiatt and his editorial staff continued to present falsehoods about the case, as well as cloaking their bankrupt claims in childish ad hominem mockery -- among other characterizations, calling Joseph Wilson "a blowhard." As with almost every other editorial pronoucement concerning Plame, Wilson, and Libby, "everything in this Post attack...was either a gross distortion or a lie, often parroting long-discredited White House talking points" and even contradicting the reporting in its own front pages. (In his article, Parry deconstructs the Post editorial step by painful step. Click the Consortium News link at the end of this article for the breakdown.)
- Parry concludes, "The Post's March 7 editorial also was part of a long pattern of deception by Hiatt and his editorial team when writing about the Iraq war. They have let their neoconservative ideology blind them to facts, reason and fairness. In a normal world, a newspaper would praise Joe Wilson for his dedication and patriotism -- both for undertaking the CIA mission and blowing the whistle on the President's abuse of intelligence to lead the nation to war. A newspaper also might be expected to demand stern accountability from the Bush administration for not only damaging national security by exposing Valerie Plame's identity but for then misleading the public and mounting a cover-up of the facts. To this day -- closing in on four years since the White House started its anti-Wilson campaign -- political adviser Karl Rove retains his security clearance and neither Bush nor Cheney have issued an apology to the Wilson-Plame family or to the country for damaging an important national security operation. But the Post editorial board can't seem to get past its own gullibility in buying into the administration's bogus WMD claims in 2002-03. Rather than apologize for enabling Bush and Cheney to lead the nation into a disastrous war, Hiatt and his boss, Washington Post publisher Donald Graham, apparently think they can ignore their responsibility to the readers and to the nation. That immunity -- and hubris -- should end with, at minimum, the firing of Fred Hiatt." (Editor and Publisher, New York Times, Consortium News, Think Progress [link to video])
- March 16: Dr. James Knodell, director of the Office of Security at the White House, tells the House Oversight Committee that he knows nothing about any internal investigation or report into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson.
Plame outing
The White House had first opposed Knodell testifying but after a threat of a subpoena from the committee yesterday, he was allowed to appear today. Knodell testifies that although everyone who had participated in the leaking of classified information was required to attest to their leaking, he knew of no one, including Karl Rove, who had actually done so. He says that he had started at the White House in August 2004, a year after the leak, but his records show no evidence of a probe or report there: "I have no knowledge of any investigation in my office." Bush promised a full internal probe as far back as September 2003, but according to Knodell, no probe ever took place, and a probe is not happening now. Knodell says he had "no" conversations whatsoever with Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, or anyone else about the leak. In fact, he says he learned of the entire imbroglio from press reports. - The Democrats' response is telling. Committee member Elijah Cummings calls Knodell's revelations "shocking." Committee chairman Henry Waxman calls the lack of action by Knodell's office a "breach within a breach." Eleanor Holmes Norton calls it a "dereliction of duty." A shaken Knodell promises to go back to the White House and "review this with senior management." He admits that leaking classified information calls for action, whether the leak was accidental or on purpose. But Democrats challenge his assertion that no probe was necessary since a criminal investigation was underway. They say that the criminal probe, into the actions of Lewis Libby, was narrowly focused, started well after the leak -- during which the White House apparently did nothing -- and that in any case, the White House was required to carry out its own probe and deny security clearances to anyone who had leaked classified information. They demand to know why Rove's security clearance had not been revoked, a question Knodell is unable or unwilling to answer. At one point, Waxman says he regrets not being able to put up a video of the president promising a full probe but then cracks, "I guess we will leave that to the Daily Show."
- Hours after Knodell's testimony, Waxman sends a letter to White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten that reads in part, "To assist the Committee in its investigation into these issues, I request that you provide the Committee with a complete account of the steps that the White House took following the disclosure of Ms. Wilson's identity (1) to investigate how the leak occurred; (2) to review the security clearances of the White House officials implicated in the leak; (3) to impose administrative or disciplinary sanctions on the officials involved in the leak; and (4) to review and revise existing White House security procedures to prevent future breaches of national security." (Editor and Publisher/Truthout, House Oversight Committee/Buzzflash)
- March 16: Captured 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, interrogated and tortured for years at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, claims to have not only engineered the 9/11 attacks, but to have killed American hostage Daniel Pearl.
9/11 attacks
The "confession" is released in a blaze of orchestrated fanfare from the Bush administration, in what many believe is an attempt to distract Americans from the myriad failures in Iraq and the Justice Department currently dominating the headlines. But many experts believe that Mohammed's confession may either be falsely reported, or, if real, merely an example of a tortured criminal telling his captors what they want to hear. "I have never known a criminal -- either terrorist or otherwise -- that didn't exaggerate," says one expert. - Former CIA field officer Robert Baer, writing for Time, has serious doubts about the validity of Mohammed's confession. He writes, "It's hard to tell what the Pentagon's objective really is in releasing the transcript of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession. It certainly suggests the Administration is trying to blame KSM for al-Qaeda terrorism, leading us to believe we've caught the master terrorist and that al-Qaeda, and especially the ever-elusive bin Laden, is no longer a threat to the US. But there is a major flaw in that marketing strategy. On the face of it, KSM, as he is known inside the government, comes across as boasting, at times mentally unstable. It's also clear he is making things up. I'm told by people involved in the investigation that KSM was present during Wall Street Journal correspondent Danny Pearl's execution but was in fact not the person who killed him. There exists videotape footage of the execution that minimizes KSM's role. And if KSM did indeed exaggerate his role in the Pearl murder, it raises the question of just what else he has exaggerated, or outright fabricated."
- Baer notes an almost-total lack of corroborating evidence for Mohammed's claims. He told interrogators that he was "responsible for the 9/11 operation from A-Z." "Yet," Baer writes, "he has omitted details that would support his role. For instance, one of the more intriguing mysteries is who recruited and vetted the fifteen Saudi hijackers, the so-called 'muscle.' The well-founded suspicion is that Qaeda was running a cell inside the Kingdom that spotted these young men and forwarded them to al-Qaeda. KSM and al-Qaeda often appear bumbling, but they would never have accepted recruits they couldn't count on. KSM does not offer us an answer as to how this worked. KSM has also not offered evidence of state support to al-Qaeda, though there is good evidence there was, even at a low level. KSM himself was harbored by a member of Qatar's royal family after he was indicted in the US for the Bojinka plot -- a plan to bomb twelve American airplanes over the Pacific. KSM and al-Qaeda also received aid from supporters in Pakistan, quite possibly from sympathizers in the Pakistani intelligence service. KSM provides no details that would suggest we are getting the full story from him. Although he claims to have been al-Qaeda's foreign operations chief, he has offered no information about European networks. Today, dozens of investigations are going on in Great Britain surrounding the London tube bombings on July 7, 2005. Yet KSM apparently knew nothing about these networks or has not told his interrogators about them."
- Baer concludes, "The fact is al-Qaeda is too smart to put all of its eggs in one basket. It has not and does not have a field commander, the role KSM has arrogated. It works on the basis of 'weak links,' mounting terrorist operations by bringing in people on an ad hoc basis, and immediately disbanding the group afterwards. Until we hear more, the mystery of who KSM is and what he was responsible for is still a mystery." (Chicago Tribune)
- March 16: As the White House attempts to close ranks and resist widening calls for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's resignation, fired US attorney David Iglesias tells CBS's Katie Couric,
US Attorney firings
"I believe, and I think all my colleagues believe, the real reason [for his firing] is partisan politics. I believe I was fired because I did not play ball with two members of the Republican delegation here in New Mexico. I did not give them privileged information that could have been used in the October and November time frame. ...I got great office reviews. I was not on any kind of resignation list until November 15, 2006, and that was two weeks after I received two very inappropriate calls from two Republican members of Congress." Iglesias's charge that Republicans Pete Domenici and Heather Wilson helped bring about his firing for political reasons come as another House Republican, Dana Rohrbacher, says Gonzales should go. - Republicans close to the White House say Bush is in "his usual posture: pugnacious, that no one is going to tell him who to fire." But sources also say that Gonzales's firing is just a matter of time. One source says he's never seen the administration in such deep denial, and Republicans are growing increasingly restless for the president to take action. And the White House has now backed away from previous claims that former White House counsel Harriet Miers, whom Bush once tried unsuccessfully to plant on the Supreme Court, was the first one to raise the idea of firing US attorneys, as e-mails proving that Miers was just one of a number of White House officials involved in the firing scheme have surfaced. Now the White House blames "hazy memories" on its previous denials and lies. Presidential press secretary Tony Snow previously had asserted Miers was the person who came up with the idea, but now he says, "I don't want to try to vouch for origination. At this juncture, people have hazy memories." The White House is still resisting calls for Miers and White House political guru Karl Rove to testify before Congress, and it continues to delay on the delivery of Justice Department documents to Capitol Hill.
- Snow says it is not clear who first floated the more dramatic idea of firing all 93 US attorneys shortly after Bush was re-elected to a second term. "This is as far as we can go: We know that Karl recollects Harriet having raised it and his recollection is that he dismissed it as not a good idea," Snow says. "That's what we know. We don't know motivations. ...I don't think it's safe to go any further than that." Asked if Bush himself might have suggested the firings, Snow says, "Anything's possible...but I don't think so." He says Bush "certainly has no recollection of any such thing. I can't speak for the attorney general. I want you to be clear here: Don't be dropping it at the president's door."
- House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers says that his committee "must take steps to ensure that we are not being stonewalled or slow-walked on this matter. ...I will schedule a vote to issue subpoenas for the documents and officials we need to talk to." His Senate counterpart, Charles Schumer, adds, "We hope that this delay is not a signal they will not cooperate. The story keeps changing, which neither does them or the public any good."
- Rohrbacher joins the growing chorus demanding Gonzales's ouster. "Even for Republicans, this is a warning sign...saying there needs to be a change," he says. "Maybe the president should have an attorney general who is less a personal friend and more professional in his approach." Democrats are more outspoken in their comments on Gonzales. "They don't know anything about running government. They're just political hacks," says House member James Clyburn. "Gonzales is just a political hack." Other Republicans are more muted in their criticisms, many agreeing with Senator Susan Collins, who says, "I do not think the attorney general has served the president well, but it is up to the president to decide on General Gonzales's continued tenure." Among the Justice Department officials named in the subpoenas is Associate Deputy Attorney General William E. Moschella. Lawmakers want him to testify about whether the White House consented to changing the Patriot Act last year to let the attorney general appoint new U.S. attorneys without confirmation.
- Meanwhile, at least one Justice Department official, Associate Deputy Attorney General William Moschella, says the firings were not attempts to bypass the Senate confirmation process but merely an attempt to end what he calls the meddling of judges in filling vacant prosecutors' jobs, an incredibly specious excuse. Under the former law, federal judges could appoint interim US attorneys in jobs that were vacant for more than 120 days. "There's a conspiracy theory about this and it's nothing other than that," Moschella says. Moschells and other Justice Department officials will be given the chance to prove their claims in testimony before Congress in the upcoming days. (CBS News)
- March 16: Former US attorney H.E. "Bud" Cummins of Little Rock wonders whether or not he was fired because of a probe he opened into alleged corruption by Republican officials in Missouri amid the November 2006 Senate race, one of the closest and most hotly contested in the nation.
US Attorney firings
Unlike the other seven US attorneys, Cumming was told in June 2006 that he was being "let go" in order to make room for a crony of Karl Rove, Tim Griffin, whose most notable experience was as a Republican National Committee political operative. - In January 2006, Cummins had begun looking into allegations that Missouri givernor Matt Blunt had rewarded GOP supporters with lucrative contracts to run the state's driver's license offices. Cummins handled the case because US attorneys in Missouri had recused themselves over potential conflicts of interest. The probe was barely off the ground before Cummins learned that he would be fired. Cummins says he is disgusted that the Bush administration may have fired him and the others for political reasons. "You have to firewall politics out of the Department of Justice," he says, "because once it gets in, people question every decision you make. Now I keep asking myself: 'What about the Blunt deal?'"
- If Cummins was fired to scotch his election-year investigation of Blunt, his firing would equate with that of New Mexico's David Iglesias, who refused to improperly accelerate his probe of New Mexico Democrats to suit the GOP's election-year plans. "As we examine how these US attorneys were fired, we must not lose sight of the real story," says Democratic representative Rahm Emanuel. "The fired US attorneys were aggressively investigating public corruption cases, and they were fired ostensibly for job performance -- which in this White House means you're guilty of doing your job."
- Cummins opened the probe against Blunt after Missouri newspapers began reporting that Blunt had awarded positions in the state's license fee agencies to political supporters, including the wife of the US attorney in Kansas City, Todd Graves. Cummins followed standard Justice Department protocol in refusing to acknowledge that a probe had commenced, and Cummins says that although he "had no communication with anybody in any senior level" at the Justice Department, Blunt had hired a private attorney whose inquiries were raising questions. "[Blunt's] attorney said it was creating a lot of media in Missouri about political pressure and other allegations that the governor was under investigation," Cummins says, adding that the attorney wanted assurances that the governor was not the target "because we'd like to be able to say that." Cummins refused to comment to the attorney because the investigation was confidential. Shortly thereafter, he was going to be fired by the Justice Department. On October 4, he announced that the investigation was being closed without bringing any indictments, saying that "at no time was Governor Blunt a target, subject or witness in the investigation, nor was he implicated in any allegations being investigated. Any allegations to the contrary are uninformed and erroneous." The announcement came just four weeks before the Missouri Senate vote in which Democrat Claire McCaskill very narrowly upset GOP incumbent Sen. Jim Talent.
- Cummins is careful to insist that he isn't sure that the Blunt investigation cost him his job, writing in an e-mail to the investigative Web journal TPM Muckraker that "I do not know of any connection whatsoever to the Missouri investigation and my firing. I am not asking myself (or anyone else) about that." He also says that Los Angeles Times reporter Richard Serrano either misquoted him or misunderstood him during their interview when he reported Cummins wondering whether or not the Blunt case impacted Cummins's firing. But Cummins also adds, "Now, it appears that improper political considerations were on the table when some or all of the US Attorneys were fired. This has cost DOJ its credibility. Now, many folks are asking questions they weren't asking before about the motivations behind various prosecutions and policies. I submitted to the reporter that one example was his call to me. I believe I probably said 'Now you are asking me -- what about the Blunt deal?'\ to illustrate the point that people are questioning things that weren't an issue before the information about the firings was recently disclosed. ...I am asking myself why the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General are not making it a priority to retract the lies that have been told about my seven colleagues (they have essentially told the truth in my case). I do not know why the seven were fired. It no longer matters to them or me. We served at the pleasure of the President, we were asked to leave and we did. But it did not have to do with their 'performance.' They all served loyally, professionally, ethically, and effectively. There is no evidence that performance was any consideration in these decisions at all. The President may now want to go in a different direction. The move is unprecedented, but is his absolute legal right. But he should be thanking them and commending them for excellent service, not permitting his subordinates to slander those professional reputations to protect themselves. It is simply wrong." (Los Angeles Times, TPM Muckraker)
- March 16: Another New York Times editorial excoriates Bush's Justice Department for not only firing the eight US attorneys, but for politicizing the judicial process in regards to Republican pressures to investigate bogus "voter fraud" allegations against Democrats surrounding the November 2006 midterm elections.
US Attorney firings
"In its fumbling attempts to explain the purge of United States attorneys, the Bush administration has argued that the fired prosecutors were not aggressive enough about addressing voter fraud," the Times writes. "It is a phony argument; there is no evidence that any of them ignored real instances of voter fraud. But more than that, it is a window on what may be a major reason for some of the firings. In partisan Republican circles, the pursuit of voter fraud is code for suppressing the votes of minorities and poor people. By resisting pressure to crack down on 'fraud,' the fired United States attorneys actually appear to have been standing up for the integrity of the election system." - At least two of the eight fired attorneys, John McKay and David Iglesias, appear to have been sacked because of their refusal to pursue these witch hunts against Democrats and Democratic voters. "There is no evidence of rampant voter fraud in this country," the Times writes. "Rather, Republicans under Mr. Bush have used such allegations as an excuse to suppress the votes of Democratic-leaning groups. They have intimidated Native American voter registration campaigners in South Dakota with baseless charges of fraud. They have pushed through harsh voter ID bills in states like Georgia and Missouri, both blocked by the courts, that were designed to make it hard for people who lack drivers' licenses -- who are disproportionately poor, elderly or members of minorities -- to vote. Florida passed a law placing such onerous conditions on voter registration drives, which register many members of minorities and poor people, that the League of Women Voters of Florida suspended its registration work in the state. The claims of vote fraud used to promote these measures usually fall apart on close inspection, as Mr. McKay saw. [As one example,] Missouri Republicans have long charged that St. Louis voters, by which they mean black voters, registered as living on vacant lots. But when the St. Louis Post-Dispatch checked, it found that thousands of people lived in buildings on lots that the city had erroneously classified as vacant."
- The Times adds that voter fraud charges were not the only excuses Republicans have used to skew the judiciary process. "The United States attorney purge appears to have been prompted by an array of improper political motives," it writes. "Carol Lam, the San Diego attorney, seems to have been fired to stop her from continuing an investigation that put Republican officials and campaign contributors at risk. These charges, like the accusation that Mr. McKay and other United States attorneys were insufficiently aggressive about voter fraud, are a way of saying, without actually saying, that they would not use their offices to help Republicans win elections. It does not justify their firing; it makes their firing a graver offense." (New York Times)
- March 17: The US is the only one of eight leading countries to battle a growing consensus on the need to protect the world's enviroment, according to German environmental ministers.
Global warming and the environment
Environmental ministers and representatives of the Group of Eight (G8) nations -- the US, Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Japan, and Russia -- are planning for a meeting in June to discuss targets for protecting the enviromment. "On two issues, the United States were the only ones who spoke against consensus," says German environment minister Sigmar Gabriel after the meeting. He says the US is the only one of the eight nations who continues to oppose a global carbon emissions trading scheme like the one used in the European Union, and continues to reject the idea that industrialized nations should help achieve a "balance of interests" between developing countries' need for economic growth and environmental protection. But Gabriel says he wasn't surprised. "I would have been disappointed if I'd expected something different." Representatives from China, India, South Africa, Brazil, and Mexico will also attend the summit. Developing states like China cite the US's intrasigence as a reason for their own refusal to accept reduction targets. "People have been talking about technology transfers but this hasn't happened," says China's environment minister Xie Zhenhua.said. (Reuters/Yahoo! News) - March 17: The US is officially funding Kurdish Iranian resistance groups in hopes that they will eventually overthrow the Iranian government, according to author Reese Ehrlich.
War with Iran
Ehrlich, who wrote the upcoming book The Iran Agenda, tells the International Press Service that "the United States is officially funding armed groups to overthrow the Islamic government" in Tehran. Ehrlich says that the Bush administration's current strategy with the Iranian resistance groups is primarily focused on media propaganda, such as websites and satellite television and radio stations, but also includes covert military training. Ehrlich says that the US is sponsoring these groups in armed attacks against Iranian targets inside the country. Many members are formerly of Iran's Mujahedeen al-Khalq (MEK), which has been listed for years by the US as a terrorist organization. "I believe that Kurds and other minorities within Iran have legitimate grievances," Ehrlich says. "They are not allowed to learn in their local languages and face other forms of discrimination. But the US finds the most extremist of minority groups and encourages them to engage in violence." Of the resistance groups, he says, "The PJAK [Party of Free Life of Kurdistan] is affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and has become a nationalist cult built around the personality of Abdullah Ocalan. MEK is really a cult, run by very secretive and authoritarian leaders. Both these groups consider themselves social democrats, but ironically, they receive the most support from extreme right wingers in the US." - Ehrlich says, "US military officials I spoke with deny any US support of PJAK. The official position of the Bush administration is to support Iranians to bring about a new government, but they don't officially call for 'regime change.' In reality, the US is doing everything in its power to overthrow the Iranian government and install one friendly to the US." He notes that leaders of two Iranian resistance groups met with midlevel State Department officials in 2006, but the content of those meetings is classified.
- Ehrlich says that while the Iranian Kurdish resistance groups are supported by the Iraqi government (whose president, Jalal Talabani, is a Kurd), the relationship is complex, as Talabani himself is friendly with the current Iranian government. The Iranian Kurdish groups are allowed to operate out of Iraq, where they are involved with the Kurdish pesh mirga, or Kurdish irregular troops, and at least one of those groups, PJAK, conducts armed raids in Iran from bases in Iraq. The KRG (Kurdish Regional Government) "claim[s] they can't stop PJAK because of the rugged mountain terrain. In reality, they just look the other way, since PJAK has US and Israeli backing." And the Iranians have retaliated; in 2006, Iranian forces twice shelled Iraqi Kurdish villages, killing five civilians, as a warning to the KRG. "In the past, Iran has asked the KRG to shut down opposition groups operating in Kurdistan." Ehrlich says. They even made a deal with one of the Iraqi Kurdish groups to attack KDPI's camp. [KDPI is another Iranian Kurdish resistance group.] But KDPI was warned in advance and no one was hurt. Right now the KRG relies on the US, and the US wants Iran attacked. So I don't think Iran's entreaties will go anywhere. If the general political situation changes, however, who knows?" (IPS/AINA)
- March 17: Think Progress highlights Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's lie to Congress on January 18, when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that "with respect to every United States attorney position in this country, we will have a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed United States attorney."
US Attorney firings
E-mails confirm that Justice Department and White House officials were already planning to install Rove protege Tim Griffin as the US attorney in Little Rock well before Gonzales's testimony, by using the now-infamous Patriot Act provision that allows the president to appoint "interim" US attorneys for indefinite periods of time amd thusly bypass the Senate confirmation process altogether. The administration knew that its plan to skirt Congress would be met with severe criticism, and had already planned for the situation. In a December 19 e-mail, Kye Sampson, then Gonzales's chief of staff, wrote to a White House aide, explaining the administration's strategy for countering the criticism: "We should gum this to death. [A]sk the senators to give Tim a chance...then we can tell them we'll look for other candidates, ask them for recommendations, evaluate the recommendations, interview their candidates, and otherwise run out the clock. All of this should be done in 'good faith,' of course." There was, of course, no "good faith" in any of the DOJ's schemes with the White House, and the Sampson scenario to "run out the clock" on Griffin is going on right now. - On February 15, Griffin announced that he would not seek Senate confirmation for his "interim" position, and Republican senator John Boozman of Arkansas, a staunch Bush ally, said in mid-March that he "is interviewing candidates to recommend as replacements for Griffin. ...It is my goal to produce a list of three strong candidates to forward to the White House for consideration," he said. Boozman added it would "take between six and nine months" to identify Griffin's replacement. Meanwhile, as the White House waits to name a new nominee and Bush's term winds to an end, Griffin has said that he is ready and willing to serve until the end of Bush's term. Few believe that any replacement for Griffin will ever be named. (Think Progress [multiple sources])
- March 17: Bob Perry, the Houston home builder and prominent Republican financier who was the prime source of funds for the organization "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" in 2004, has been named a member of 2008 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's "Texas Leadership Team."
"Swift Boat Veterans" and campaign smears
Perry will coordinate fundraising for Romney in Texas and elsewhere. The naming of Perry gives a strong hint as to the kind of campaign Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, intends to run. Perry donated $4.5 million to the SBVT, a so-called "527" organization that came under intense fire for spreading scurrilous and baseless lies about then-presidential candidate John Kerry's Vietnam service. (Much more about the SBVT can be found elsewhere in these pages.) Perry funded similar pro-GOP groups in 2006, including the Economic Freedom Fund, which ran smear campaigns against Democrats in Georgia, Iowa and West Virginia, and A Stronger America, which financed similar ads attacking Democrat Mike Hatch in his Minnesota gubernatorial bid last year. Kerry's spokesman, David Wade, says that it is "appalling but not surprising that a Texas tycoon famous for funding lies would now bankroll a presidential campaign built on flip-flopping and fiction." (Washington Post)
