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 Four
Page Four
- March 27: Ordinary Americans are being denied services by private businesses, who are using lists of suspected terrorists provided by the Treasury Department to check the names of customers and deny access to people with names similar to those on the list.
Anti-terrorism and homeland security
The Office of Foreign Asset Control's list of "specially designated nationals" has long been used by banks and other financial institutions to block financial transactions of drug dealers and other criminals. But an executive order issued by Bush after the 9/11 attacks has expanded the list and its consequences in unforeseen ways. Businesses have used it to screen applicants for home and car loans, apartments and even exercise equipment, according to interviews and a report by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. "The way in which the list is being used goes far beyond contexts in which it has a link to national security," says Shirin Sinnar, the report's author. "The government is effectively conscripting private businesses into the war on terrorism but doing so without making sure that businesses don't trample on individual rights." The report documents over a dozen cases where US customers have had transactions denied or delayed because their names were a partial match with a name on the list, which runs more than 250 pages and includes 3,300 groups and individuals. Few of the people on the list are US citizens; however, anyone who does business with a person or group on the list risks penalties of up to $10 million and 10 to 30 years in prison, a powerful incentive for businesses to comply. The law's scope is so broad and guidance so limited that some businesses would rather deny a transaction than risk criminal penalties, the report finds. - "The law is ridiculous," says Tom Hudson, a Maryland lawyer who advises car dealers to use the list to avoid penalties. "It prohibits anyone from doing business with anyone who's on the list. It does not have a minimum dollar amount.... The local deli, if it sells a sandwich to someone whose name appears on the list, has violated the law." Treasury Department spokeswoman Molly Millerwise says that businesses face "challenges" in complying with the rules, but insists that the department has extensive guidance on compliance, both on the OFAC Web site and in workshops with industry representatives. She also said most businesses can root out "false positives" on their own. If not, OFAC suggests contacting the firm that provided the screening software or calling an OFAC hotline.
- Tom Kubbany is one citizen victimized by the OFAC list. He is neither a terrorist nor a drug trafficker, just a mental health worker from Northern California with average credit and a successful home-ownership past. He couldn't understand why his mortgage broker told him lenders wouldn't touch him. When he reviewed his loan file, he found an OFAC alert provided by credit bureau TransUnion that said his middle name, Hassan, is an alias for Ali Saddam Hussein, purportedly a "son of Saddam Hussein." The record is unclear about when this Ali Saddam Hussein was born, but it was in either 1980 or 1983. Kubbany was born in Detroit in 1949. OFAC guidelines say that the discrepancy in birth dates signals a false match. Yet, Kubbany says, his broker decided not to proceed. "She just talked with a bunch of lenders over the phone and they said, 'No,'" he recalls. "So we said, 'The heck with it. We'll just go somewhere else.'" Kubbany worries that the alert will pursue him through another loan process. "There's a dark cloud over us," he says. "We will never know if we had qualified for the mortgage last summer, then we might have been in a house now."
- Another victim is Saad Ali Muhammad, an African-American and Islamic convert. Muhammad wasn't able to buy a used car three years ago; a salesman ran his credit report and found a reference to "OFAC search," followed by the names of terrorists including Osama bin Laden. The only apparent connection was the name Muhammad. The credit report, also by TransUnion, did not explain what OFAC was or what the credit report user should do with the information. Muhammad wrote to TransUnion and filed a complaint with a state human rights agency, but the alert remains on his report, Sinnar says.
- The lawyers' committee documented other cases, including that of a couple in Phoenix who were about to close on their first home, only to be told the sale could not proceed because the husband's first and last names -- common Hispanic names -- matched an entry on the OFAC list. The entry did not include a date or place of birth, which could have helped distinguish the individuals. In another case, a Roseville, California couple wanted to buy a treadmill from a home fitness store on a financing plan. A bank representative told the salesperson that because the husband's first name was Hussein, the couple would have to wait 72 hours while they were investigated. Though the couple eventually received the treadmill, they were so embarrassed by the incident they did not want their names in the report.
- The screening has become an "industry standard" in the apartment rental business, says James Maclin, a vice president at the Memphis-based Mid-America Apartment CommunitiesIt began about three years ago, he says, spurred by banks that wanted companies they worked with to comply with the law. Law professor David Cole has studied the list and at one point found only a single US citizen on it. "It sounds like overly cautious companies have started checking the list in situations where there's no obligation they do so and virtually no chance that anyone they deal with would actually be on the list," he says. "For all practical purposes, landlords do not need to check the list." (Washington Post)
- March 27: While it is well known that defense contractor Mitchell Wade paid bribes to convicted GOP House member Randy Cunningham that landed both men in jail, information is only now coming out about the direct connections between Wade's firm and the White House.
Randy Cunningham corruption investigation
In July 2002, Wade signed a contract "to provide office furniture and computers for Vice President Cheney." Wade's company MZM had only been approved for federal contracting two months before, and it appeared odd that the first federal contract it ever landed was with the White House. It has also appeared fishy that Wade has long bragged of his inside connections to Cheney. - The contract was not for just office furniture and computers, as previously reported. According to the newly released book The Wrong Stuff, by Copley News Service reporters Marcus Stern, Jerry Kammer, Dean Calbreath, and George Condon, the contract was actually for screening the president's mail for anthrax and other biohazards. MZM received the contract just months after the anthrax mail scare shut down several offices on Capitol Hill -- an important contract by any measure.
- The contract might appear merely unusual until one puts together some more facts. In early 2002, Wade was still acting as a cutout for Brent Wilkes, another defense contractor awaiting trial on fraud and corruption charges in the Cunningham case. Wilkes was working hard in Washington to get into the anthrax-mail screening business himself. Wilkes's "in" was Republican House member John Doolittle, through Doolittle's wife Julie. Doolittle had already accepted fat "donations" from Wilkes, and in return greased the skids to get Wilkes, and later Wade, in line for lucrative White House contracts. Wilkes's flagship company, ADCS, was not having much success in selling its horrifically overpriced, underpowered document-scanner technology to the Pentagon, so Wilkes was branching out. Wilkes's idea, "MailSafe," was to have all Capitol Hill mail rerouted to a site in the Midwest, where ADCS employees wearing protective gear would scan the documents into computers and then e-mail it back to washington. Wilkes's idea was rudimentary at best, and the MailSafe company was little more than a crude Web site; he was in competition for federal contracts with several well-established firms who had long demonstrated the ability to scan mail. But those firms didn't have Wilkes's pull. The House Administration Committee, on which Doolittle sat, oversees the congressional mail system. Doolittle told his colleagues about MailSafe and introduced them to Wilkes, but the project never got off the ground. Interestingly, that committee was then chaired by Republican Bob Ney, a close crony of Jack Abramoff who is now serving time for his own fraud and corruption, Ney obligingly read into the House records a screed praising Wilkes -- as he had done before, for Abramoff associate Adam Kidan.
- So how did such a rudimentary, unproven company like MailSafe land a contract to screen the mail of the president and vice president? Questions about Wilkes's connection to Wade, Doolittle's and Ney's roles, and Wade's pull with Cheney, all remain unanswered. Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall writes, "The Wilkes-Wade business model was corrupting members of Congress and the executive branch in order to obtain pricey government contracts, often but not always for worthless products and services, and almost always stashed away in classified programs where the light of day could never expose their corrupt practices. And Wade's first contract was with the White House itself. So whose palm got greased?" (Talking Points Memo)
- March 27: Internal Justice Department documents show that DOJ officials tried to manufacture a number of spurious, but hopefully convincing, reasons why eight US attorneys were fired last year.
US Attorney firings
A November 2006 email between DOJ public affairs director Tasia Scolinos and senior Cheney aide Catherine Martin suggested that one reason could be spun around the controversy over illegal immigration. "The one common link here is that three of them are along the southern border," Scolinos suggested after reviewing a list of six US attorneys the administration was planning to fire. "You could make the connection that DOJ is unhappy with the immigration prosecution numbers in those districts." (At the time, the list of fired attorneys numbered six; a seventh was later added, and the eighth, Arkansas prosecutor Bud Cummins, had already been fired.) "Its only six US attorneys (there are 94) and I think most of them will resign quietly," Scolinos assured Martin. "I don't see it as being a national story -- especially if it phases in over a few months. Any concerns on your end?" Scolinos listed six US attorneys, and suggested that Martin say they were fired over immigration matters. Three of the six -- Arizona's Paul Charlton, Southern California's Carol Lam, and New Mexico's David Iglesias, were from border states. - Scolinos has insisted that no scheme of any kind was ever in place to justify the firings, and has continued to insist that her boss, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, had nothing to do with the early plans for the firings: "The Attorney General has no recollection of any plan or discussion to replace US attorneys while he was still White House Counsel." Scolinos has never admitted to her own role in the firings. According to documents released to the press from the DOJ, Scolinos sat in on at least eight and a half hours of meetings devoted to the subject, and she was also apparently involved in discussions about how to spin the story before the attorneys were fired in 2006 as well.
- In the case of Lam, the explanation about a failure to aggressively prosecute immigration cases doesn't stand up (it doesn't stand up for Charlton or Iglesias, either). Rather, Lam's firing seems directly related to her successful prosecution of powerful GOP House member Randy Cunningham. Less than a month before Cunningham pled guilty in Lam's prosecution, 19 Republican members of Congress complained to Gonzales that Lam was too lax on prosecuting immigration cases. When Lam notified the DOJ that her investigation of Cunningham's cronies -- in and out of Congress -- would be continuing, and that more high-ranking Republicans might be drawn in. Immediately thereafter, Republican congressman Darrell Issa began waging a media war against Lam. In May 2006, Issa leaked an altered, falsified document to the Associated Press which he claimed demonstrated Lam's laxity towards prosecuting immigration cases. Issa took his bogus allegations to CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight.
- The explanation worked for a brief time after Lam was fired. But newly released documents show that the Department of Justice was prepared to back Lam up in her fight against Issa at a time when immigration was a major political issue. The department had prepared statistics demonstrating that immigration-related prosecutions had gone up under Lam's tenure, to counter the media fallout from the falsified document Issa had leaked. E-mails between key Justice Department officials show that they had clearly taken Lam's side in the matter. Further, official DOJ job reviews indicated that Lam's office, which had devoted fully half of its resources to prosecuting illegal immigration-related cases, had "appropriate" priorities. The DOJ had even hoped to help arrange a meeting between the congressman and Lam in order to, in the words of one DOJ official, "ratchet down the venom coming from Issa." Lam thought the issue was settled, but instead she was fired, supposedly over her handling of immigration cases. (Truthout)
- March 27: FBI agent Dan Dzwilewski, head of FBI's San Diego office, was warned to keep his mouth shut about the firing of US attorney Carol Lam after he told a newspaper reporter her firing would hurt the agency's ongoing investigations and speculated politics was involved.
US Attorney firings
The threat to Dzwilewski came to light during FBI director Robert Mueller's testimony before the Senate today. Mueller defends the warning, saying, "I do not believe it's appropriate for our special agents in charge to comment to the media on personnel decisions that are made by the Department of Justice." Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein retorts, "I profoundly disagree. He was simply saying that it would affect cases that were ongoing. And I think he's entitled to his opinion." Feinstein is the one who relates the incident before the Senate Judiciary Committee. - During the hearings, Mueller says he isn't aware of any damage to ongoing investigations by Lam's firing. Lam successfully prosecuted former House member Randy Cunningham on an array of high-dollar fraud and corruption charges; since her December 7 firing, the investigation surrounding Cunningham's influence in the defense industry has gone dormant.
- On January 13, the San Diego Union-Tribune quoted Dzwilewski as saying Lam was crucial to ongoing investigations. "I guarantee politics is involved" in her firing, he said. Feinstein says her chief counsel had called the FBI's San Diego office to verify the accuracy of the story. She says the office confirmed it was true "but they also said they'd been warned to say no more." (Reuters/ABC News)
- March 27: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales gives a carefully parsed interview to NBC's Pete Williams, in which he stutteringly denies any wrongdoing in the firings of eight US attorneys and attempts to spin the entire controversy into an unwarranted attack on himself and his family.
US Attorney firings
(Interestingly, Gonzales flees a press conference earlier in the day after being peppered with questions about the firings.) The lies and contradictions to his previous statements are, of course, plain to see during the interview. Gonzales begins by whining, "Let me begin with the attacks on my credibility, which really have pained me and my family. You know, I have grown up -- I grew up with nothing but my integrity. And someday, when I leave this office, I am confident that I will leave with my integrity. The United States attorneys that were asked to resign were appointed by this president, they serve, like me, at the pleasure of the president. I asked for their resignation not for improper reasons. I would never have asked for their resignations to interfere with a public corruption case or in any way to interfere with an ongoing investigation. I just wouldn't do that. And if you look carefully at the documentations we've provided to Congress, there's no evidence of that." - Gonzales repeats the line that his own Office of Professional Responsibility and the DOJ's Inspector General are looking into the firings, not to determine the truth behind the firings, but "to make it clear and reassure the American people that nothing improper happened here." He says, with unintentional humor, "I believe in truth and accountability, Pete. And everything that I've done is supportive of that principle. I directed the department to turn over over 3,000 pages of documents." (He does not address the fact that it took weeks for the DOJ to turn over the documents, and only after subpoenas were threatened; he also ignores the fact that many documents remain undisclosed.) "I've got nothing to hide in terms of what I've done," he says. "And we now want to reassure the American public that number improper happened here. If I find out that, in fact, any of these decisions were motivated, the recommendations to me were motivated for improper reasons to interfere with the public corruption case, there will be swift and -- there will be swift and decisive action. I can assure you that." People will be fired, he assures Williams.
- Williams asks him to explain the contradiction between his assertions of his non-involvement in the firings with recently disclosed e-mails that show he was, indeed, involved (see earlier items). Gonzales instead blames his former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson: "When I said on March 13th that I wasn't involved, what I meant was that I -- I had not been involved, was not involved in the deliberations over whether or not United States attorneys should resign. After I became attorney general, I had Kyle Sampson coordinate a department review of the performance of United States attorneys. And I expected him to -- to consult with appropriate Department of Justice officials who had information and knowledge about the performance of United States attorneys. From time to time, Mr. Sampson would tell me something that would confirm in my mind that that process was ongoing. For example, I recall him mention to me that -- inquiry from the White House about where were we in -- in identifying underperformers? And there are other similar type reminders that occurred during this process that I'm going to discuss specifically with the Congress. I was never focused on specific concerns about United States attorneys as to whether or not they should be asked to resign. I was more focused on identify -- or making sure that the White House was a prop -- was appropriately advised of the progress of our review. And I was also concerned to ensure that the appropriate Department of Justice officials, people who know -- knew about the performance of -- of United States attorneys, that they were involved in the process." Gonzales's incoherence does nothing to explain his lies and self-contradictions. He continues, "Now, of course, ultimately at the end of the process or near the end of the process, the recommendations were -- were presented to me. There had been a lot of work done to review the performance of the United States attorneys. And recommendations were presented to me that reflected the recommendations of Kyle Sampson and of others in the department. And so there was obviously a discussion with respect to that -- that recommendation. And, of course -- having decided there will be changes, there was -- there was a discussion about how do we implement this change? And so that is in -- in essence -- the context of my involvement and the substance of my comments on March 13th. ...I was not involved in the deliberations during the process as to who -- who should or should not be -- asked to resign."
- Williams tries to rephrase Gonzales's sashaying, asking, "So you didn't get into the decision about specifically which U.S. attorneys to include on this list until the very end?" Gonzales replies, "Absolutely. Now, that's not to say that during the process I may not have heard about the performance -- or particular matter with respect to the United States attorney. For example -- we've already confirmed that Senator Domenici did call me about the performance of the United States attorney [David Iglesias] in New Mexico. The president -- the White House has already confirmed that there was a conversation with the president, mentioned it to me in a meeting at the Oval Office -- in terms of concerns about -- about the commitment -- to pursue voter fraud cases in -- in three jurisdictions around the country. I don't remember that conversation, but what I'm saying is during the process there may have been other conversations about specifically about the performance of US attorneys. But I wasn't involved in the deliberations as to whether or not a particular United States attorney should or should not be asked to resign. ...I don't recall being involved. Let me -- let me be more — more precise because I know that -- with respect to this particular topic, people parse carefully the words that I use. ...And -- and I wanna be careful about what I say. And, of course, at the end of the day, I will have the opportunity to present my story to the Congress, as will other DOJ officials -- Department of Justice officials.
- In flat contradiction to statements from other officials and from disclosed e-mails and documents, Gonzales says the White House "as far as I know...did not play a role in -- in adding names or taking off names." He then retreats to explaining the obvious: "Now, obviously these are -- appointees of the president. The White House was involved in placing them in their position. The White House would have to be at least informed if a decision was going to be asked -- to ask for people's resignation. There's nothing improper about that. And, of course, there's nothing improper about the White House communi- communicating, as a general matter, complaints about Department of Justice employees. I want to know if, in fact, the White House has received a complaint or has con -- concerns about the performance of a department employee, I would wanna know about it. And I'd like to hear -- I'd like to hear it from the White House."
- Gonzales continues to blame the firings on his underlings, saying, "I depended on the people who knew about how those United States attorneys -- were performing -- people within the department -- who -- who would have personal knowledge of -- about these individuals, who would have, based upon their experience, would know what -- what would be the appropriate standards that a United States attorney should be asked to -- to achieve." But when Williams asks the obvious followup question, "Given that, then how can you be certain that none of these US attorneys were put on that list for improper reasons?" Gonzales asserts, "I know the reasons why I asked you -- these United States attorneys to leave. And it -- it was not for improper reasons. It was not to interfere with the public corruption case. It was not for partisan reasons." In other words, he doesn't know why they were fired, he knows virtually nothing about their firings, but he knows the firings were proper.
- Williams actually drills down a bit, asking, "To put this question another way -- if you didn't review their performance during this process, then how can you be certain that they were fired for performance reasons?" Gonzales continues to two-step: "I -- I've given -- I've given the answer to the question, Pete. I know -- I know the reasons why I made the decision. Again, there's nothing in the documents to support the allegation that there was anything improper here. And there is an internal -- department review to answer that question, to reassure the -- the American people that there was nothing improper that happened here.
- Gonzales then repeats the old assertion that everything to do with the firings isn't in the documents released to Congress: "The -- the -- the evaluations of individual United States attorneys is -- is not solely contained within the documents. Obviously, people have personal observations, personal views that may not be reflected in those documents. Those will -- will be presented -- to the Congress at the appropriate time."
- Tiring of the chase, Williams tosses Gonzales a softball, asking why he has chosen to stay and "fight this issue." Gonzales gives a nicely memorized answer, without the usual stuttering and hesitation: "I think that every Cabinet official has to ask themselves -- every day -- Is it still appropriate for me to lead a Cabinet department? It's something that I've been asking myself more lately than perhaps others. Because at the end of the day, it's not about Alberto Gonzales. It's about this great Department of Justice -- that does so many wonderful things for the American people. And our record here in the past two years in the area of civil rights, in the area of protecting our kids against child predators, protecting the country against terrorism, making our neighborhoods safe from drugs and gangs has really been outstanding. Also about public corruption. Our public corruption record has been tremendous. So we've done some great things. I believe that that can still continue. Obviously have -- I -- we have to deal with this situation with the Congress. We have to reassure the American people that nothing improper happened here. And I'm confident that -- that we'll be able -- be able to do that. But I also believe that -- that we can still move forward and still continue to do great things for the American people. And as long as I have the confidence of the president, I intend to do just that." (MSNBC [link to video], Chicago Tribune)
- March 27: Slate provides a useful table of "who's who" in the US attorney firing scandal.
US Attorney firings
The chart, linked immediately below, focuses on the prime players in the investigation, including Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, Harriet Miers, Paul McNulty, Kyle Sampson, and Monica Goodling. (Slate) - March 27: The current media slam on Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is that he refuses to give policy specifics and, therefore, is lacking in substance as a serious candidate.
Media manipulation and marketing by GOP
Today the Associated Press piles on, printing an article headlined "Is Obama All Style and Little Substance?" which falsely claims that Obama, a senator, has "delivered no policy speeches" while campaigning "and provided few details about how he would lead the country." The assertion is a lie. On March 2, Obama delivered what the Chicago Tribune called a "major policy speech on US-Israel policy," and numerous news reports indicate that in campaign speeches across the country, Obama has offered policy proposals on Iraq, education, the environment, energy, and health care. - The article, written by AP reporter Nedra Pickler, itself disproves the Republican-friendly claim. In a trailing paragraph, Pickler writes, "Obama has offered a plan to get troops out of Iraq, beginning with a drawdown in May that would extended through a March 2008 goal of redeploying all combat troops. The plan is unlikely to become reality with Bush in office, but is what Obama says he would do if he were in the Oval Office today." Obama discussed his Iraq plan during his February 10 address announcing his candidacy.
- His March 2 speech gave a raft of specifics about what he would do to get US troops out of Iraq, how his policies would help "prevent Iraq from becoming a haven for international terrorism and reduce the risk of all-out chaos," and how US troops would remain in the Middle East. Obama's policy plan also includes what he calls "a robust regional diplomatic strategy that includes talking to Syria and Iran -- something this administration has finally embraced." Obama also discussed his plan for dealing with Iran, and went into detailed descriptions of his plan to handle Iran and its nuclear threat.
- Obama has frequently laid out detailed policy plans in the areas of education, environment, energy, and health care. Media Matters gives detailed excerpts to news reports of Obama's speeches, and links to more complete coverage. (Media Matters [multiple sources])
- March 28: The US Navy mounts the largest war-game exercise in the Gulf since the 2003 invasion of Iraq -- but this time the focus seems to be on Iran.
War with Iran
"This marks the first time the [carriers] John C. Stennis and Dwight D. Eisenhower strike groups have operated together in a joint exercise while deployed to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet," says Navy spokesman Lieutenant Commander Charlie Brown. The sea and air exercises will be conducted amid growing tension in the region following Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines, including one woman. Brown denies that the exercise is aimed at exerting pressure on Iran or any other country. "This exercise demonstrates the importance of the ability of both strike groups to plan and conduct dual task force operations as part of the US's long-standing commitment to assuring friends and allies and to maintaining maritime security and stability in this region," Brown says. Brown adds that the French aircraft carrier group anchored by the Charles de Gaulle, which has been in the Arabian Sea since mid-March, will not be involved in the exercises. (Gulf News) - March 28: Retired Army general Barry McCaffrey says that the situation in Iraq is dire. "The population is in despair," McCaffrey says in a report he wrote in his capacity as a professor at West Point. "Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate."
Iraq war and occupation
McCaffrey is well-respected and influential; he fought in Vietnam, commanded a division during the 1991 Gulf War, and served as the commander for US military operations in Central America and South America. After retiring, he became Bill Clinton's director of drug policy. McCaffrey privately briefed White House officials on his conclusions. - McCaffrey writes that the US military is in "strategic peril," a sharp contrast to his previous views. In 2005, he concluded in a similar report that "momentum is now clearly with the Iraqi government and coalition security forces." In a 2006 assessment, he wrote: "It was very encouraging for me to see the progress achieved in the past year."
- McCaffrey is contemptuous of the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki, writing that the government is "despised" by Iraq's Sunnis, seen as "untrustworthy and incompetent" by Iraqi Kurds, and even has "little credibility among the Shia populations from which it emerged." The government lacks dominance in every province, he adds. One result is that "no Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat, reporter, foreign NGO [nongovernmental organization], nor contractor can walk the streets of Baghdad, nor Mosul, nor Kirkuk, nor Basra, nor Tikrit, nor Najaf, nor Ramadi, without heavily armed protection." Militias and armed bands are "in some ways more capable of independent operations" than the Iraqi army, he writes.
- McCaffrey is gloomy about the continuing strength of the insurgency. At this point, he says, about 27,000 fighters are being held, and at least 20,000 others have been killed, yet enemy combatants continue to produce new leaders and foot soldiers. The result, five years into the war, he said, is that "their sophistication, numbers and lethality go up -- not down -- as they incur these staggering battle losses."
- There is some good news, he notes: the leadership of the US military forces under General David Petraeus has improved, and the al-Maliki government has relented in allowing US forces to attack elements of the radical Mahdi Army. He also notes that US and Iraqi forces have changed their basic approach to operations, with soldiers now living on small outposts across Baghdad. Iraqi forces also are better equipped than before. In Anbar province, he writes, "There is a real and growing groundswell of Sunni tribal opposition to the al-Qaeda-in-Iraq terror formations."
- If the US is to develop a stable Iraq, it must do so immediately: "We have very little time left." The dilemma facing the US government, he writes, is that US forces probably will have to be reduced substantially within three years, but the insurgency will go on for many years more. (Washington Post)
- March 28: A Congressional probe raises new questions about convicted former GOP power broker Jack Abramoff's role in the 2003 demotion of Frederick Black, the former US attorney in Guam.
US Attorney firings and Jack Abramoff scandal
Congress wants to know if a report compiled by the Department of Justice's inspector general took into account the fact that White House officials had been using email accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee before concluding that Black was not demoted for political reasons. Black had served as interim US attorney in Guam for twelve years and was appointed by former President George H.W. Bush before being abruptly replaced in May 2003. Black was a political enemy of Abramoff, who was lobbying for numerous individuals under investigation by Black for public corruption; of Black, Abramoff wrote in May 2002, "I don't care if they appoint Bozo the Clown, we need to get rid of Fred Black." Black, a well-regarded prosecutor who'd held the position since 1991, began investigating Abramoff for a $324,000 contract the lobbyist had received from Guam's highest court, and asked the Justice Department for assistance. The DOJ forwarded the information to then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. Instead of receiving help, Black was pushed out of his job. - The apparent purging of Black at Abramoff's behest demonstrates the clout the lobbyist wielded at both the DOJ and the White House. Then-White House political director Ken Mehlman, the recent chairman of the Republican National Committee, told White House official Leonard Rodriguez, a protege of Karl Rove, to "reach out to make Jack aware" of all Guam-related information, including candidates for US attorney, according to the IG report. The decision to replace Black with someone more anemable to the administration's, and Abramoff's, desires originated much higher up than with either Sampson or McNulty. According to the IG report, Sampson told the investigators that after receiving permission from the DAG, AG and White House counsel to replace a US attorney, "he would then discuss the US Attorney candidate recommendations with the president." After the Attorneygate scandal broke, Bush contradicted this, claiming that he "never brought up a specific case nor gave [Gonzales] specific instructions." Either Bush or Sampson is a liar -- or perhaps both are.
- In May 2002 Abramoff used his influence to kill a risk-assessment report of Guam and the neighboring Northern Marianas Islands (CNMI), requested by Black, that called for federalizing immigration laws on the islands, a move that might have jeopardized the influx of cheap labor to CNMI and Abramoff's $1.6 million lobbying contract with its local government. Abramoff learned of the report from John Ashcroft's then-chief of staff, David Ayres, whom he hosted at a Washington Redskins game. "We'll hope that higher ups will take some time to squash this," Abramoff wrote. Sure enough, the report never came out, and the DOJ demoted its author, regional security specialist Robert Meissner. Meissner's boss at the time was the then-US attorney for Eastern Virginia, Paul McNulty, who is now Gonzales's deputy. McNulty is a longtime Republican operative who served as spokesman for House Republicans during Bill Clinton's impeachment, and never tried a single case before becoming US attorney. McNulty now stands accused of misleading Congress about the reasons for the eight US attorneys' dismissals. Meissner discussed his risk-assessment report with McNulty on multiple occasions and told several colleagues he believed McNulty helped suppress the report and curtail his career. "Bob told me he thought McNulty had everything to do with it," says one colleague of Meissner's in the Bush administration knowledgeable about Guam's political affairs. Another colleague says, "McNulty was kind of the fireman at Justice. He was the guy trying to run around and put a lid on things that could become political, especially with Abramoff." McNulty also apparently intervened in the IG's investigation of Black's removal; according to sources close to the investigation, when Black contradicted administration testimony, he was told by IG investigators, "That's not the scope we were given by DAG" -- at the time, McNulty.
- Unsurprisingly, many of the same DOJ and White House officials who are being investigated for their role in the firing of eight US attorneys were involved in ousting Black, including Alberto Gonzales (then counsel to Bush), Gonzales's former chief of staff Kyle Sampson, and Bush himself. As with the US attorney firings, questions are rampant about the nature of the coordination between the White House and the DOJ over Black's removal. In both cases, officials coordinated and participated in meetings with DOJ and White House staff who were planning the replacement of US attorneys. In the Guam case, Sampson served as a liaison for communications between then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and the White House. Sampson met directly with Bush prior to announcing Black's demotion to gain approval for the candidate for Black's replacement, Leonardo Rapadas. The inspector general's report stated that "Sampson said that he believes the normal procedures were followed in this case -- that is, after the interview panel had agreed to propose Rapadas, the interview panel obtained concurrence from the deputy attorney general and the attorney general." Sampson told the investigators "he believes he [subsequently] presented Rapadas's candidacy to the president, and the president approved the nomination, pending successful completion of a background investigation."
- On November 7 Black informed the DOJ of his preliminary investigation of Abramoff. Days later, Guam's new Republican Governor, Felix Camacho, wrote a letter to the White House asking to keep Black on. Yet on November 19, a day after Black subpoenaed the Abramoff contract, the administration announced that it was nominating Rapadas. Black was subsequently barred from handling any public corruption cases. Reporter Ari Berman writes, "Black's story parallels that of dismissed US Attorney Carol Lam in San Diego, who successfully prosecuted Congressman Duke Cunningham on bribery charges. Kyle Sampson, who called for Lam's firing a day after she pursued search warrants for a top GOP military contractor and CIA official, also oversaw the ouster of Black, according to the IG's report."
- The DOJ's inspector general found many connections between Abramoff and Black's firing, including Abramoff's deep connections in the White House to monitor and prod along the effort to replace Black -- but, again unsurprisingly, the inspector general concluded that Abramoff did not influence either the decision to demote Black or replace him with Rapadas. The IG report leaned heavily on administration testimony, including that of the now-discredited Sampson, and failed to include crucial information backing up Black's claims. For example, while the report stated that the White House had decided to replace Black with Assistant US Attorney Leonard Rapadas in March 2002, other evidence suggests that it was only after Black began his aggressive pursuit of Abramoff later that year that a decision was made to install Rapadas -- the nephew, as it happened, of a major figure in the Gutierrez investigation. David Sablan, who headed the Guam Republican Party at the time, says he received a call in September 2002 from a DOJ lawyer named Juan Carlos Benitez, who told him that "Rapadas was not selected for the US attorney position out here and that I was to come up with another person or persons for the position."
- However, the White House's use of private e-mail accounts through the Republican National Committee calls into question whether the inspector general had adequate information to make that conclusion. Inquiries from Democrat Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, include documentary evidence that a former aide to Karl Rove and Abramoff used an RNC email account to communicate with the convicted lobbyist about official government business in order to avoid leaving a paper trail of their exchanges. Waxman also writes, "The investigation also found that Barry Jackson, deputy assistant to the president and deputy to the senior adviser, used a 'georgewbush.com' email account to communicate with Neil Volz, an Abramoff associate who has been convicted of public corruption charges. In one case, Mr. Abramoff sent Ms. Ralston an email on her RNC account asking her to 'pass on to Karl that Interior is about to approve a gaming compact...for a tribe which is an anathema to all our supporters,'" and requesting "some quiet message from WH that this is absurd," Waxman writes, quoting from the Ralston and Abramoff email exchange. "This email was forwarded to Jennifer Farley in the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, who apparently then warned one of Abramoff's associates about the dangers of leaving a record of their communications. According to an email Mr. Abramoff received from his associate Kevin Ring: 'Your email to Susan was forwarded to Ruben Barrales and on to Jen Farley, who read it to me last night. I don't know what to think about this, but she said it is better not to put this stuff in writing in their email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc.... Just letting you know what she said.'"
- Abramoff responded to that exchange, according to Waxman, writing in an e-mail: "Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her RNC pager and was not supposed to go into the WH system." According to the inspector general's report, e-mail communications between Leonard Rodriguez -- the White House staff member tasked with finding a replacement for Black -- and Jack Abramoff did indeed occur, and that Rodriguez communicated with Abramoff "at the behest of Ken Mehlman." Mehlman "recommended or suggested that [Rodriguez] reach out to make Jack aware of issues related to Guam." Rodriguez "recalled sending one email to Abramoff stating that Rodriguez would be the point person on the US attorney nomination, and if Abramoff had any issues or concerns that he should bring those to Rodriguez's attention," according to the IG report.
- The report added that: "Rodriguez said that the communications with Abramoff about Guam issues was one-sided. Rodriguez's description of these communications was confirmed by our review of Abramoff's emails." Rodriguez was, naturally, cleared of impropriety by the DOJ, and a review of Abramoff's emails was deemed sufficient to conclude that Abramoff did not exert influence over the selection process for Black's replacement, despite an admission by Rodriguez that he contacted Abramoff and told him to "feel free to contact me directly for any requests from Guam," according to the IG report.
- However, Waxman's finding that Abramoff communicated with Ralston, Rove's then-assistance, through a private RNC e-mail account suggests that the DOJ inspector general had not obtained e-mail correspondence between Abramoff and the White House because RNC emails can be destroyed, whereas e-mails sent using a White House account are automatically archived, in conjunction with the Presidential Records Act. Waxman's assertion that White House officials used outside email addresses to sidestep archiving procedures raises new questions about Abramoff's role in Black's firing and whether he sent additional emails about the Guam case to White House officials' RNC accounts, which would not have been netted in the inspector general's probe. According to Naomi Seligman Steiner, deputy director of the watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW), "There were misstatements in the DOJ inspector general report that were never investigated. [CREW] hopes that with the current scandal making headlines, officials will take a second look at the findings of the IG report."
- Congressmen George Miller and Nick Rahall say that the probe into the fired US attorneys must be widened include the circumstances surrounding the demotions of Black and Meissner -- and the DOJ cannot be trusted to investigate itself. "It is necessary now to re-examine this case," they wrote in a letter to the House and Senate Judiciary Committee chairs on March 13, "as it may represent the beginning of a pattern of behavior by...officials in the Bush Administration to politicize the work of US attorneys and to quash their independence." (Truthout, The Nation)
- March 28: Documents turned over to Congress by the Department of Justice show that Kyle Sampson was responsible for lying to Congress about Karl Rove's involvement in replacing a US attorney.
US Attorney firings
Sampson, who was attorney general Alberto Gonzales's former chief of staff before resigning in disgrace over the firings, is scheduled to testify before Congress tomorrow (where he will equivocate about his involvement in the earlier lie to Congress: see item below). - On February 23, acting assistant attorney general Richard Hertling wrote Democratic senator Chuck Schumer and other senators in response to questions about the appointment of Timothy Griffin, a former aide to Rove. In the letter, Hertling stated "The Department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin." (See other items about Griffin throughout these pages.) But, e-mails show that Hertling lied to Schumer and the other senators. In December 2006, Sampson wrote that Griffin's appointment was "important to Harriet [Miers], Karl [Rove], etc." Other emails showed that Rove's deputy had been intimately involved in the effort to get Griffin installed as the US Attorney in Eastern Arkansas.
- Hertling says in a letter accompanying the DOJ documents that his assertion wasn't true, and says, "We sincerely regret any inaccuracy." He refuses to take responsibility for the lie, and appends 202 pages of documents that he says "reflect...the preparation and transmittal of the February 23 letter." These documents show that Sampson is ultimately responsible for Hertling's lie. One document in the batch is a February 8 e-mail from Sampson that was almost a verbatim draft of Hertling's letter. In Sampson's e-mail, he advised Hertling to say, "I am not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the Attorney General's decision to appoint Griffin." Whether Hertling knew of Rove's role in the Griffin appointment is not yet known; it has long been known that Sampson knew of Role's involvement. (TPM Muckraker [link to documents])
- March 28: A group of federal prosecutors slam Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in a private meeting, questioning Gonzales's firings of eight of their colleagues, complaining that the firings have undermined morale, and question his leadership and competence.
US Attorney firings
Several of the prosecutors said the dismissals caused them to wonder about their own standing and distracted their employees. Others ask Gonzales about the removal of Daniel Bogden, the former US attorney in Nevada, a respected career prosecutor whose ouster has never been fully explained by the Justice Department. They also want to know why the Justice Department has had to admit to giving Congress "inaccurate information" about Karl Rove's role in the removals. - Some prosecutors accuse Gonzales's subordinates of operating as if the prosecutors were an obstacle to be side-stepped instead of a resource to be tapped in developing departmental policy. One prosecutor complains that US attorneys have been excluded from deliberations that led to a change in policy on prosecuting corporate crime. That policy change happened in December 2006, when Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty countermanded back a requirement that corporate defendants waive the confidentiality of their discussions with lawyers to obtain leniency.
- Gonzales's responses are similar to the ones he has provided Congress and the media, claiming he knows nothing of their specific complaints, even the McNulty memorandum.
- The host of the Chicago meeting was Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor who recently successfully prosecuted Lewis Libby, the former White House official, on perjury charges. Neither Fitzgerald nor other prosecutors involved in the meeting would publicly discuss the meeting; the New York Times report is based on anonymous sources. Other prosecutors involved in the meeting include Steven Biskupic and Erik Peterson of Wisconsin; Joseph Van Bokkelen of Indiana; Craig Morford of Tennessee; and James McDevitt of Washington state.
- This is not the first meeting where Gonzales has faced criticism from his prosecutors. At a meeting in Denver, attended by about a dozen mainly Western prosecutors, Gonzales was told that the dismissals had cast a cloud over all the United States attorneys’ offices, not only over the prosecutors who were removed. In recent weeks, Gonzales has tried, with little success, to shift the blame for the firings on McNulty and his former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson.
- "I can’t imagine a department being more demoralized with what’s going on there," says Senator Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. Specter says that Gonzales needed to demonstrate his candor about the dismissals and assure people about his competence to retain his post. "The Justice Department is too important to the country to have it hanging on the edge of a cliff," he adds. (New York Times)
- March 28: The White House withdraws the ambassadorial nomination of Republican financier Sam Fox (less than an hour before the Senate was to vote on his nomination) after Democrats attack Fox for giving $50,000 to the 527 attack organization Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which attempted to derail the 2004 presidential candidacy of Senator John Kerry by lies and smear tactics.
Partisan Bush appointees
Kerry was part of the Senate committee that held hearings on Fox's nomination. "Sam Fox had every opportunity to disavow the politics of personal destruction and to embrace the truth," Kerry says. "He chose not to. The White House made the right decision to withdraw the nomination. I hope this signals a new day in political discourse." Kerry's hopefulness is premature; Bush will sneak Fox in as ambassador to Belgium under a recess appointment in the following weeks. - White House spokeswoman Dana Perino says Bush believes Fox is qualified to serve as ambassador but withdrew the nomination "because of politics," saying, "Some members of the Senate would have voted against his nomination, which would have prevented him for serving in this important position. So we are disappointed that they made their decision based on partisan politics instead of his leadership abilities." Fox is spectacularly unqualified to serve as an ambassador to Belgium or anywhere else; his qualifications are entirely due to the huge amounts of money he has raised for Bush and other Republicans.
- Eleven of Kerry's Vietnam crewmates sent a letter to the Senate committee voting on Fox's nomination urging Senators not to approve Fox. "In our judgment, those who finance smears and lies of combat veterans don't deserve to represent America on the world stage," says the letter.
- Three Democratic presidential hopefuls -- Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd -- sit on the committee, and none planned to vote for Fox. "I had serious concerns about Mr. Fox's candor, judgment and qualifications for this important post, and I am pleased that the Bush administration acknowledged that it would not be able to muster the votes to confirm his nomination," says Obama. Dodd, the second ranking member of the committee, had pledged to oppose the nomination a day before the vote because Fox "refused to apologize for his behavior" during his confirmation hearing last month. "His unwillingness to denounce the reprehensible activities of the Swift Boat organization and express regret for providing $50,000 to bankroll the organization convinced me that he would not be an acceptable candidate to represent the United States abroad."
- The 77-year old Fox is the national chairman of the Jewish Republican Coalition, and has donated well over $1 million to Republican candidates and causes since the 1990s, according to Federal Election Commission records. He was deemed a "Ranger" by Bush's campaign for helping to raise at least $200,000. One of Fox's Senate backers, Kit Bond, calls the Democrats' opposition to Fox a "political vendetta." (AP/Guardian)
- March 28: Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to disgraced Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, may not have as much to worry about in his upcoming testimony before Congress as some may think.
US Attorney firings
Sampson has a close relationship with several of the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, including his former boss, Orrin Hatch, who warned his colleagues against trying "to hurt the man" last week. Sampson, scheduled to testify on March 29, served as Hatch's counsel from 1999-2001. Sampson has also made donations to Hatch's campaign treasury, and to the Commonwealth Political Action Committee, which also supports two other GOP senators on the committee, Jon Kyl and Lindsey Graham, and to the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. Last week he told his fellow committee members, "I personally feel badly for young Kyle Sampson. He worked on this committee. He's a very honest, decent, honorable person. And he had the unenviable job of handling these matters." In a not-very-veiled threat, Hatch added, "And, frankly, I will resent anybody who tries to hurt the man." - Other Justice Department employees implicated in the firing of eight US Attorneys have given generously to Republican politicians. Monica Goodling, the Justice Department Public Affairs Director who is now on a leave of absence and invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, gave $750 to the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign in 2004. Tasia Scolinos, who works in the DOJ's Public Affairs office, gave $2000 in 2004 to the Bush-Cheney campaign. And Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, gave $750 to the Republican National Committee in 2001 and $2000 to the Bush/Cheney campaign in 2003 and 2004. (Raw Story)
- March 28: Columnist Richard Fricker documents the rise of the prototypical "loyal Bushie," 38-year old US attorney Tim Griffin.
US Attorney firings
Griffin is the now-famous protege of Karl Rove who was slipped past the Senate into the position of federal prosecutor for Arkansas, and is now at the center of the controversy over whether the Bush administration has sought to politicize federal prosecutions. Griffin has, since college, followed the career path laid out for loyalist Republicans who want to rise in the legal and political ranks to a position of power and influence in the Bush-led government. - Griffin has all the "stations of the cross" needed for his rise to power: membership in the Federalist Society, work for a Clinton-era special prosecutor, a role in the Florida 2000 recount battle, Republican National Committee opposition research and "voter security" in the 2004 campaign, a brief stint as a military lawyer in Iraq, and a position at Karl Rove's elbow in the White House. But, Fricker writes, "now this carefully groomed Republican operative stands out as Exhibit A for Democrats as they contend that the Bush administration imposed political litmus tests on federal prosecutors who wield enormous power over the lives of those they investigate. A US attorney not only has wide discretion over normal prosecutions but can tip a political race by either shutting down or starting up a criminal probe. Beyond being the personification of proof that Bush put political loyalty over legal competence, Griffin has become the test case for the use of new emergency powers in the Patriot Act to circumvent Senate confirmation for US attorneys."
- Former DOJ chief of staff Kyle Sampson illuminated the gamble the administration took on Griffin when he wrote in an e-mail, "[T]here is some risk that we'll lose the [Patriot Act] authority, but if we don't ever exercise it then what's the point of having it?" Sampson added, "I'm not 100 percent sure that Tim was the guy on which to test drive this authority, but know that getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc." references to White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and then-White House counsel Harriet Miers. Sampson also laid out in unusually plain language just how any Congressional objections to Griffin's appointment would be derailed: "We should gum this to death," he wrote. "Ask 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." Good faith being, of course, a smokescreen for their real intentions.
- So why, Fricker asks, did the White House and the DOJ take such risks in installing Griffin in the Arkansas prosecutor's office? One reason well may be that Griffin's predecessor, Bud Cummins, was too straight and "by the book" for the White House. Though Cummins is a Republican, he won the admiration of both Democrats and Republicans for, in the words of one Democratic defense lawyer, "deal[ing] from the top of the deck." Apparently a straight arrow isn't what Rove and the DOJ wanted in the Arkansas prosecutor's office. Griffin, who has little prosecutorial experience but a long, gleaming resume as a Bush loyalist, obviously suits them much better. Why? Is it to further Rove's dream for a permanent Republican majority in the government? Rove cited 11 key states "pivotal" to the 2008 election, including Arkansas. Nine of those states had their US attorneys replaced with loyalists like Griffin. Democratic senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas faces a tough re-election fight in 2008; his loss could help tip control of the Senate to the GOP. Fricker notes, "Arkansas also has a large African-American population, and Griffin has had experience in 'voter fraud' investigations that have targeted the registrations of black voters." Perhaps more importantly, Griffin is in a uniquely powerful position to dig up dirt on Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Or perhaps Griffin is being positioned to run for governor of Arkansas -- US attorneys often make excellent political candidates. For Rove to have a protege in the Arkansas state house would be quite beneficial to Republicans throughout the country.
- Griffin's entire career, and the powerful contacts he has cultivated, shows how much he has been groomed for political office. While at Tulane Law School, he joined the university's chapter of the Federalist Society, which Fricker describes as "a powerful conservative legal organization and the chief training ground for right-wing lawyers dedicated to rolling back the liberal gains of the Warren Court and supportive of unrestrained presidential powers." He used his Federalist connections to land a cushy job at a New Orleans law firm, who boasted two of its members on the local board of the Federalist society. After spending a year in harness, in 1995 he joined the lawyers serving David Barrett, a conservative lawyer chosen to investigate Clinton's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Henry Cisneros. The same conservative three-judge panel who chose Kenneth Starr to investigate Clinton also picked Barrett to go after Cisneros. After a ten-year, $21 million investigation into whether Cisneros had paid off a mistress, Barrett succeeded in getting Cisneros to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of lying to the FBI about the payments, effectively destroying the promising Democrat's political career.
- Griffin left Barrett's staff to become the senior investigative counsel to the then-Republican-controlled House Committee on Government Reform, which was looking into other alleged offenses by Democrats, including improper campaign contributions. He had little success there, and went home to Arkansas to manage the attorney general campaign of Betty Dickey, a Republican who lost to Democrat Mark Pryor, the future senator. He rejoined the House committee and stayed until September 1999, when he joined the Bush-Cheney campaign as deputy research director working for the Republican National Committee, what's known in the Washington political world as "oppo" or opposition research. His own resume calls his job "the primary research resource for Bush-Cheney 2000 (BC00), with over 30 staff." He was a legal advisor during the 2000 recount battle in Florida's Volusia and Brevard counties. Bush rewarded him in March 2001 with the job of special assistant to Michael Chertoff, assistant attorney general at the criminal division. In late 2001, he moved to Little Rock to become a special assistant to the US Attorney's office under Bud Cummins. He joined the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign for further "oppo" work, digging up dirt on Democrats. He also became heavily involved in creating illegal "caging" lists in Florida, sending letters to newly registered voters in envelopes barring any forwarding, so they would be returned if a voter wasn't at that address. Those voters were then challenged when they went to vote. Up to 70,000 African-American, presumably Democratic, voters were prevented from voting due to Griffin's efforts, though they were legitimate voters. Investigative reporter Greg Palast calls Griffin "was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election. Key voters on Griffin's hit list: Black soldiers and homeless men and women." Though what Griffin did is a felony, he has never been investigated for his crime.
- Instead of doing a perp walk, he joined Karl Rove's staff, where, according to his resume, in April 2005 he "advised President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney on political matters, organized and coordinated political support for the President's agenda, including the nomination of Judge John Roberts to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court." It was about that time that the White House began contemplating firing less-than-loyal US attorneys who, in Sampson's words, "chafed against administration initiatives" and who weren't "loyal Bushies." After a brief stint in the Green Zone as a military attorney in Baghdad, he came home with the understanding that he would become the new US attorney in Little Rock.
- Rove and the White House didn't count on the Democrats winning a landslide midterm election, and most importantly for politicizing the US attorney populace, winning control of the Senate. The Senate must, under the law, confirm anyone appointed as US attorney, and a political animal such as Griffin stood little chance of being confirmed by a Democrat-controlled Senate. But that legal provision had been scotched by a late-night codicil sneaked into the USA Patriot Act reauthorization bill; now the Attorney General could make "emergency" US attorney appointments on an indefinite basis, without Senate approval. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales promised that all such appointees would be given a Senate hearing; none, including Griffin, have been allowed near the Senate. Gonzales has steadfastly denied that he wasn't involved in "any discussions" about the firings of Cummins and the other attorneys, though that denial has now been proven a lie. Congress is now in the process of reversing the USA Patriot Act loophole. And Griffin has said that if he has to face Senate hearings, he will resign rather than go through the process, calling such hearings a "partisan circus."
- Fricker concludes, "So, it may never be fully known what Karl Rove had in mind for his political protege if the 'loyal Bushie' plan had succeeded. Nor is it clear what else the White House may have had to hide that would explain why it concocted the scheme in the first place. (Consortium News)
- March 29: Former military intelligence officer Tony Lagouranis recalls torturing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib for no reason whatsoever.
US torture allegations
Lagouranis, now a bar bouncer in Chicago, recently spoke at a panel discussion, "24: Torture Televised," sponsored by the Center on Law and Security of the New York University School of Law. He served in the prison from January through December 2004. - Lagouranis, at the discussion and in a following interview, says that torture -- coercive techniques -- including the use of dogs, waterboarding and prolonged stress positions, were employed on the detainees. Prisoners held at Al Asad Airfield, about 110 miles northwest of Baghdad, were shackled and hung from an upright bed frame welded to the wall in a room in an airplane hanger. When he was having problems getting information from a detainee, he recalls, other interrogators said, "Chain him up on the bed frame and then he'll talk to you." Lagouranis denies directly participating in hangings from the frames. The effects, he says, were devastating for the prisoners. "You take a healthy guy and you turn him into a cripple, at least for a period of time," he says. "I don't care what Alberto Gonzales says. That's torture."
- Lagouranis was on the NYU panel to talk about torture and its role in the award-winning Fox television show 24. That show routinely portrays American agents such as its hero, Jack Bauer (played by Kiefer Sutherland) ruthlessly torturing suspects to extract crucial information. Lagouranis told the show's creative team that the intelligence officials in Iraq had used several ideas from the program to augment their own torture tactics, including forcing a prisoner to listen to the sounds of men being tortured in a nearby cell.
- Unlike many of his former colleagues, Lagouranis reported the detainee abuses that he witnessed in Iraq and is not a suspect in detainee-related abuses. He says he followed military guidelines during interrogations. "The things I participated in were technically legal," he says. Yet he suffers from stress-related disorders, including panic attacks, and is currently under the care of a military psychiatrist. He received an honorable discharge from the army in July 2005.
- Lagouranis, a scholar of ancient Greek at St. John's College in New Mexico and fluent in Arabic due to military training at the Defense Language Institute, says that while he and other soldiers talked about their adherence to the Geneva Conventions during training at Fort Gordon, Georgia, once he was deployed to Iraq, it quickly became clear that he and his fellow interrogators were not always expected to abide by them. He says some of the interrogators had been influenced by Mark Bowden's October 2003 article in the Atlantic Monthly, "The Dark Art of Interrogation," which described techniques that, in the author's words, are "excruciating for the victim" yet "leave no permanent marks and do no lasting physical harm." Lagouranis says, "It seems to me Bowden was advocating what he calls 'torture lite.' That made an impression on a lot of people. The feeling was that what we had been taught about the Geneva Conventions was not going to be followed anymore."
- He says he quickly became disillusioned in Iraq. "I started realizing that most of the prisoners were innocent,"he says. "We were torturing people for no reason. I started getting really angry and really remorseful and by the time I got back I completely broke down." At the NYU event, he told the panel, "I'm from New York City. I'm college-educated. But you put me in Iraq and told me to torture, and I did it and I regretted it later." In his forthcoming book, Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator's Dark Journey through Iraq, he writes, "I didn't know I would discover and indulge in my own evil. And now that it has surfaced, I fear that it will be my constant companion for the rest of my life." (International Herald Tribune/CommonDreams)
