Bush has ignored over 750 laws he claims infringe on his power

By Charlie Savage, Boston Globe Staff | April 30, 2006

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

Former administration officials contend that just because Bush reserves the right to disobey a law does not mean he is not enforcing it: In many cases, he is simply asserting his belief that a certain requirement encroaches on presidential power.

But with the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, in which he ignored a law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the constitutional authority to override.

Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws -- many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive branch or the commander in chief of the military.

Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush's theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts.

Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University law professor who has studied the executive power claims Bush made during his first term, said Bush and his legal team have spent the past five years quietly working to concentrate ever more governmental power into the White House.

''There is no question that this administration has been involved in a very carefully thought-out, systematic process of expanding presidential power at the expense of the other branches of government," Cooper said. ''This is really big, very expansive, and very significant."

For the first five years of Bush's presidency, his legal claims attracted little attention in Congress or the media. Then, twice in recent months, Bush drew scrutiny after challenging new laws: a torture ban and a requirement that he give detailed reports to Congress about how he is using the Patriot Act.

Bush administration spokesmen declined to make White House or Justice Department attorneys available to discuss any of Bush's challenges to the laws he has signed.

Instead, they referred a Globe reporter to their response to questions about Bush's position that he could ignore provisions of the Patriot Act. They said at the time that Bush was following a practice that has ''been used for several administrations" and that ''the president will faithfully execute the law in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution."

But the words ''in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution" are the catch, legal scholars say, because Bush is according himself the ultimate interpretation of the Constitution. And he is quietly exercising that authority to a degree that is unprecedented in US history.

Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.

Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files ''signing statements" -- official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register.

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills -- sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed.

''He agrees to a compromise with members of Congress, and all of them are there for a public bill-signing ceremony, but then he takes back those compromises -- and more often than not, without the Congress or the press or the public knowing what has happened," said Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio political science professor who studies executive power.

Military link

Many of the laws Bush said he can bypass -- including the torture ban -- involve the military.

The Constitution grants Congress the power to create armies, to declare war, to make rules for captured enemies, and ''to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces." But, citing his role as commander in chief, Bush says he can ignore any act of Congress that seeks to regulate the military.

On at least four occasions while Bush has been president, Congress has passed laws forbidding US troops from engaging in combat in Colombia, where the US military is advising the government in its struggle against narcotics-funded Marxist rebels.

After signing each bill, Bush declared in his signing statement that he did not have to obey any of the Colombia restrictions because he is commander in chief.

Bush has also said he can bypass laws requiring him to tell Congress before diverting money from an authorized program in order to start a secret operation, such as the ''black sites" where suspected terrorists are secretly imprisoned.

Congress has also twice passed laws forbidding the military from using intelligence that was not ''lawfully collected," including any information on Americans that was gathered in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches.

Congress first passed this provision in August 2004, when Bush's warrantless domestic spying program was still a secret, and passed it again after the program's existence was disclosed in December 2005.

On both occasions, Bush declared in signing statements that only he, as commander in chief, could decide whether such intelligence can be used by the military.

In October 2004, five months after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq came to light, Congress passed a series of new rules and regulations for military prisons. Bush signed the provisions into law, then said he could ignore them all. One provision made clear that military lawyers can give their commanders independent advice on such issues as what would constitute torture. But Bush declared that military lawyers could not contradict his administration's lawyers.

Other provisions required the Pentagon to retrain military prison guards on the requirements for humane treatment of detainees under the Geneva Conventions, to perform background checks on civilian contractors in Iraq, and to ban such contractors from performing ''security, intelligence, law enforcement, and criminal justice functions." Bush reserved the right to ignore any of the requirements.

The new law also created the position of inspector general for Iraq. But Bush wrote in his signing statement that the inspector ''shall refrain" from investigating any intelligence or national security matter, or any crime the Pentagon says it prefers to investigate for itself.

Bush had placed similar limits on an inspector general position created by Congress in November 2003 for the initial stage of the US occupation of Iraq. The earlier law also empowered the inspector to notify Congress if a US official refused to cooperate. Bush said the inspector could not give any information to Congress without permission from the administration.

Oversight questioned

Many laws Bush has asserted he can bypass involve requirements to give information about government activity to congressional oversight committees.

In December 2004, Congress passed an intelligence bill requiring the Justice Department to tell them how often, and in what situations, the FBI was using special national security wiretaps on US soil. The law also required the Justice Department to give oversight committees copies of administration memos outlining any new interpretations of domestic-spying laws. And it contained 11 other requirements for reports about such issues as civil liberties, security clearances, border security, and counternarcotics efforts.

After signing the bill, Bush issued a signing statement saying he could withhold all the information sought by Congress.

Likewise, when Congress passed the law creating the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, it said oversight committees must be given information about vulnerabilities at chemical plants and the screening of checked bags at airports.

It also said Congress must be shown unaltered reports about problems with visa services prepared by a new immigration ombudsman. Bush asserted the right to withhold the information and alter the reports.

On several other occasions, Bush contended he could nullify laws creating ''whistle-blower" job protections for federal employees that would stop any attempt to fire them as punishment for telling a member of Congress about possible government wrongdoing.

When Congress passed a massive energy package in August, for example, it strengthened whistle-blower protections for employees at the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The provision was included because lawmakers feared that Bush appointees were intimidating nuclear specialists so they would not testify about safety issues related to a planned nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada -- a facility the administration supported, but both Republicans and Democrats from Nevada opposed.

When Bush signed the energy bill, he issued a signing statement declaring that the executive branch could ignore the whistle-blower protections.

Bush's statement did more than send a threatening message to federal energy specialists inclined to raise concerns with Congress; it also raised the possibility that Bush would not feel bound to obey similar whistle-blower laws that were on the books before he became president. His domestic spying program, for example, violated a surveillance law enacted 23 years before he took office.

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive-power issues, said Bush has cast a cloud over ''the whole idea that there is a rule of law," because no one can be certain of which laws Bush thinks are valid and which he thinks he can ignore.

''Where you have a president who is willing to declare vast quantities of the legislation that is passed during his term unconstitutional, it implies that he also thinks a very significant amount of the other laws that were already on the books before he became president are also unconstitutional," Golove said.

Defying Supreme Court

Bush has also challenged statutes in which Congress gave certain executive branch officials the power to act independently of the president. The Supreme Court has repeatedly endorsed the power of Congress to make such arrangements. For example, the court has upheld laws creating special prosecutors free of Justice Department oversight and insulating the board of the Federal Trade Commission from political interference.

Nonetheless, Bush has said in his signing statements that the Constitution lets him control any executive official, no matter what a statute passed by Congress might say.

In November 2002, for example, Congress, seeking to generate independent statistics about student performance, passed a law setting up an educational research institute to conduct studies and publish reports ''without the approval" of the Secretary of Education. Bush, however, decreed that the institute's director would be ''subject to the supervision and direction of the secretary of education."

Similarly, the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld affirmative-action programs, as long as they do not include quotas. Most recently, in 2003, the court upheld a race-conscious university admissions program over the strong objections of Bush, who argued that such programs should be struck down as unconstitutional.

Yet despite the court's rulings, Bush has taken exception at least nine times to provisions that seek to ensure that minorities are represented among recipients of government jobs, contracts, and grants. Each time, he singled out the provisions, declaring that he would construe them ''in a manner consistent with" the Constitution's guarantee of ''equal protection" to all -- which some legal scholars say amounts to an argument that the affirmative-action provisions represent reverse discrimination against whites.

Golove said that to the extent Bush is interpreting the Constitution in defiance of the Supreme Court's precedents, he threatens to ''overturn the existing structures of constitutional law."

A president who ignores the court, backed by a Congress that is unwilling to challenge him, Golove said, can make the Constitution simply ''disappear."

Common practice in '80s

Though Bush has gone further than any previous president, his actions are not unprecedented.

Since the early 19th century, American presidents have occasionally signed a large bill while declaring that they would not enforce a specific provision they believed was unconstitutional. On rare occasions, historians say, presidents also issued signing statements interpreting a law and explaining any concerns about it.

But it was not until the mid-1980s, midway through the tenure of President Reagan, that it became common for the president to issue signing statements. The change came about after then-Attorney General Edwin Meese decided that signing statements could be used to increase the power of the president.

When interpreting an ambiguous law, courts often look at the statute's legislative history, debate and testimony, to see what Congress intended it to mean. Meese realized that recording what the president thought the law meant in a signing statement might increase a president's influence over future court rulings.

Under Meese's direction in 1986, a young Justice Department lawyer named Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote a strategy memo about signing statements. It came to light in late 2005, after Bush named Alito to the Supreme Court.

In the memo, Alito predicted that Congress would resent the president's attempt to grab some of its power by seizing ''the last word on questions of interpretation." He suggested that Reagan's legal team should ''concentrate on points of true ambiguity, rather than issuing interpretations that may seem to conflict with those of Congress."

Reagan's successors continued this practice. George H.W. Bush challenged 232 statutes over four years in office, and Bill Clinton objected to 140 laws over his eight years, according to Kelley, the Miami University of Ohio professor.

Many of the challenges involved longstanding legal ambiguities and points of conflict between the president and Congress.

Throughout the past two decades, for example, each president -- including the current one -- has objected to provisions requiring him to get permission from a congressional committee before taking action. The Supreme Court made clear in 1983 that only the full Congress can direct the executive branch to do things, but lawmakers have continued writing laws giving congressional committees such a role.

Still, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton used the presidential veto instead of the signing statement if they had a serious problem with a bill, giving Congress a chance to override their decisions.

But the current President Bush has abandoned the veto entirely, as well as any semblance of the political caution that Alito counseled back in 1986. In just five years, Bush has challenged more than 750 new laws, by far a record for any president, while becoming the first president since Thomas Jefferson to stay so long in office without issuing a veto.

''What we haven't seen until this administration is the sheer number of objections that are being raised on every bill passed through the White House," said Kelley, who has studied presidential signing statements through history. ''That is what is staggering. The numbers are well out of the norm from any previous administration."

Exaggerated fears?

Some administration defenders say that concerns about Bush's signing statements are overblown. Bush's signing statements, they say, should be seen as little more than political chest-thumping by administration lawyers who are dedicated to protecting presidential prerogatives.

Defenders say the fact that Bush is reserving the right to disobey the laws does not necessarily mean he has gone on to disobey them.

Indeed, in some cases, the administration has ended up following laws that Bush said he could bypass. For example, citing his power to ''withhold information" in September 2002, Bush declared that he could ignore a law requiring the State Department to list the number of overseas deaths of US citizens in foreign countries. Nevertheless, the department has still put the list on its website.

Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who until last year oversaw the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for the administration, said the statements do not change the law; they just let people know how the president is interpreting it.

''Nobody reads them," said Goldsmith. ''They have no significance. Nothing in the world changes by the publication of a signing statement. The statements merely serve as public notice about how the administration is interpreting the law. Criticism of this practice is surprising, since the usual complaint is that the administration is too secretive in its legal interpretations."

But Cooper, the Portland State University professor who has studied Bush's first-term signing statements, said the documents are being read closely by one key group of people: the bureaucrats who are charged with implementing new laws.

Lower-level officials will follow the president's instructions even when his understanding of a law conflicts with the clear intent of Congress, crafting policies that may endure long after Bush leaves office, Cooper said.

''Years down the road, people will not understand why the policy doesn't look like the legislation," he said.

And in many cases, critics contend, there is no way to know whether the administration is violating laws -- or merely preserving the right to do so.

Many of the laws Bush has challenged involve national security, where it is almost impossible to verify what the government is doing. And since the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, many people have expressed alarm about his sweeping claims of the authority to violate laws.

In January, after the Globe first wrote about Bush's contention that he could disobey the torture ban, three Republicans who were the bill's principal sponsors in the Senate -- John McCain of Arizona, John W. Warner of Virginia, and Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina -- all publicly rebuked the president.

''We believe the president understands Congress's intent in passing, by very large majorities, legislation governing the treatment of detainees," McCain and Warner said in a joint statement. ''The Congress declined when asked by administration officials to include a presidential waiver of the restrictions included in our legislation."

Added Graham: ''I do not believe that any political figure in the country has the ability to set aside any . . . law of armed conflict that we have adopted or treaties that we have ratified."

And in March, when the Globe first wrote about Bush's contention that he could ignore the oversight provisions of the Patriot Act, several Democrats lodged complaints.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, accused Bush of trying to ''cherry-pick the laws he decides he wants to follow."

And Representatives Jane Harman of California and John Conyers Jr. of Michigan -- the ranking Democrats on the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees, respectively -- sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales demanding that Bush rescind his claim and abide by the law.

''Many members who supported the final law did so based upon the guarantee of additional reporting and oversight," they wrote. ''The administration cannot, after the fact, unilaterally repeal provisions of the law implementing such oversight. . . . Once the president signs a bill, he and all of us are bound by it."

Lack of court review

Such political fallout from Congress is likely to be the only check on Bush's claims, legal specialists said.

The courts have little chance of reviewing Bush's assertions, especially in the secret realm of national security matters.

''There can't be judicial review if nobody knows about it," said Neil Kinkopf, a Georgia State law professor who was a Justice Department official in the Clinton administration. ''And if they avoid judicial review, they avoid having their constitutional theories rebuked."

Without court involvement, only Congress can check a president who goes too far. But Bush's fellow Republicans control both chambers, and they have shown limited interest in launching the kind of oversight that could damage their party.

''The president is daring Congress to act against his positions, and they're not taking action because they don't want to appear to be too critical of the president, given that their own fortunes are tied to his because they are all Republicans," said Jack Beermann, a Boston University law professor. ''Oversight gets much reduced in a situation where the president and Congress are controlled by the same party."

Said Golove, the New York University law professor: ''Bush has essentially said that 'We're the executive branch and we're going to carry this law out as we please, and if Congress wants to impeach us, go ahead and try it.' "

Bruce Fein, a deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, said the American system of government relies upon the leaders of each branch ''to exercise some self-restraint." But Bush has declared himself the sole judge of his own powers, he said, and then ruled for himself every time.

''This is an attempt by the president to have the final word on his own constitutional powers, which eliminates the checks and balances that keep the country a democracy," Fein said. ''There is no way for an independent judiciary to check his assertions of power, and Congress isn't doing it, either. So this is moving us toward an unlimited executive power."

Colbert Lampoons Bush at White House Correspondents Dinner-- President Does Not Seem Amused

By E&P Staff

Published: April 29, 2006 11:40 PM ET
WASHINGTON A blistering comedy “tribute” to President Bush by Comedy Central’s faux talk show host Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent Dinner Saturday night left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close.

Earlier, the president had delivered his talk to the 2700 attendees, including many celebrities and top officials, with the help of a Bush impersonator.

Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged the Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, “and reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. “This administration is soaring, not sinking,” he said. “They are re-arranging the deck chairs--on the Hindenburg.”

Colbert told Bush he could end the problem of protests by retired generals by refusing to let them retire. He compared Bush to Rocky Balboa in the “Rocky” movies, always getting punched in the face—“and Apollo Creed is everything else in the world.”

Turning to the war, he declared, "I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq."

He noted former Ambassador Joseph Wilson in the crowd, as well as " Valerie Plame." Then, pretending to be worried that he had named her, he corrected himself, as Bush aides might do, "Uh, I mean... Joseph Wilson's wife." He asserted that it might be okay, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was probably not there.

Colbert also made biting cracks about missing WMDs, “photo ops” on aircraft carriers and at hurricane disasters, and Vice President Cheney shooting people in the face.
Observing that Bush sticks to his principles, he said, "When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday - no matter what happened Tuesday."

Also lampooning the press, Colbert complained that he was “surrounded by the liberal media who are destroying this country, except for Fox News. Fox believes in presenting both sides—the president’s side and the vice president’s side." He also reflected on the good old days, when the media was still swallowing the WMD story.

Addressing the reporters, he said, "You should spend more time with your families, write that novel you've always wanted to write. You know, the one about the fearless reporter who stands up to the administration. You know-- fiction."

He claimed that the Secret Service name for Bush's new press secretary is "Snow Job." Colbert closed his routine with a video fantasy where he gets to be White House Press Secretary, complete with a special “Gannon” button on his podium. By the end, he had to run from Helen Thomas and her questions about why the U.S. really invaded Iraq and killed all those people.

As Colbert walked from the podium, when it was over, the president and First Lady gave him quick nods, unsmiling, and left immediately.

E&P's Joe Strupp, in the crowd, observed that quite a few sitting near him looked a little uncomfortable at times, perhaps feeling the material was a little too biting--or too much speaking "truthiness" to power.

Asked by E&P after it was over if he thought he'd been too harsh, Colbert said, "Not at all." Was he trying to make a point politically or just get laughs? "Just for laughs," he said. He said he did not pull any material for being too strong, just for time reasons.

Helen Thomas told Strupp her segment with Colbert was "just for fun."

The president had talked to the crowd with a Bush impersonator alongside, with the faux-Bush speaking precisely and the real Bush deliberately mispronouncing words, such as the inevitable "nuclear." At the close, Bush called the imposter "a fine talent. In fact, he did all my debates with Senator Kerry."

Among attendees at the black tie event: Morgan Fairchild, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, Justice Antonin Scalia, George Clooney, and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter of the Doobie Brothers--in a kilt.

More on Darfur...

1. What has happened in Darfur?
2. Reuters Darfur Crisis Profile
3. Darfur Food Rations Cut in Half
4. NATO Ready for Small Scale Darfur Presence
5. Refugees from Darfur Rally for Action to Stop Death, Violence
6. US Congress Members Arrested at Sudan Embassy Protest
7. US Options on Darfur Are Running Out
8. Frontline: The Quick and the Terrible
   
9. Take Action to End the Killing in Darfur
10. One more thing you can do...
    

I know it is kinda late notice... but there's also a rally tomorrow in DC.

Arms still pouring into Sudan's Darfur -UN experts

UNITED NATIONS,
April 27 (Reuters)

Arms are still pouring into Sudan's embattled Darfur region in violation of a U.N. arms ban, U.N. experts said on Thursday. The arms come from neighboring countries as well as nations outside the African continent, the panel of four experts said. They urged the Security Council to strengthen the embargo and better enforce it. Their latest report mentioned by name only Chad as an arms source, but earlier reports have also cited Eritrea and Libya. The council imposed an arms embargo on all non-government forces in Darfur in July 2004, to help end a civil war that has raged in the region since February 2003. The conflict has pitted Sudanese rebels against government forces and allied militias, who have killed tens of thousands and driven 2 million people from their homes into miserable camps in Sudan and neighboring Chad. The region has been further inflamed by a wave of cross-border attacks by Darfur-based Chadian rebels trying to topple Chadian President Idriss Deby ahead of a May 3 presidential election. The experts said Sudan's government in Khartoum has failed to live up to its responsibility to ensure that weapons it buys from legitimate suppliers do not end up in the hands of non-government forces in Darfur. Instead, it transfers equipment and weapons into Darfur from other parts of the country to supply the mostly Arab militia groups that act as its proxy fighters. It also provides support to militia groups in their attacks on Darfur villages and rebel groups, the report said. The Sudanese insist they have transferred weapons and additional troops to Darfur since 2005 "to address the conflict between Sudan and Chad." African Union forces in the region are looking into allegations Khartoum helped sponsor an April 13 attack by Chadian insurgents on Chad's capital N'Djamena. The experts' accused Sudanese government forces of working hand-in-hand with militias in "perpetrating attacks on villages and to engage in armed conflict with rebel groups." The panel recommended that the council extend the arms embargo to all of Sudan, with the exception of the south, where a joint government-rebel coalition now governs as part of a peace agreement ending a separate civil war in that area. It also called for a stronger mechanism to monitor compliance with the embargo, and said all U.N. member-nations should do their part to stem the flow of illicit weapons. It said the council also should consider imposing unspecified sanctions on the government and rebel Sudan Liberation Army "as collective entities rather than on individuals for their actions that impede the peace process." The council this week slapped asset and travel freezes on four individuals it accused of impeding the peace process or violating international human rights law in Darfur but has not authorized such measures against "collective entities."

Limbaugh BUSTED!

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/rushsearch1.html

Prostitution Alleged In Cunningham Case

Investigators Focus on Limo Company

By Jo Becker and Charles R. Babcock
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 29, 2006; A01

Federal authorities are investigating allegations that a California defense contractor arranged for a Washington area limousine company to provide prostitutes to convicted former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.) and possibly other lawmakers, sources familiar with the probe said yesterday.

In recent weeks, investigators have focused on possible dealings between Christopher D. Baker, president of Shirlington Limousine and Transportation Inc., and Brent R. Wilkes, a San Diego businessman who is under investigation for bribing Cunningham in return for millions of dollars in federal contracts, said one source, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Baker has a criminal record and has experienced financial difficulties, public records show. Last fall, his company was awarded a $21 million contract with the Department of Homeland Security to provide transportation, including limo service for senior officials. Baker and his lawyer declined to comment yesterday.

The Cunningham investigation's latest twist came after Mitchell J. Wade, a defense contractor who has admitted bribing the former congressman, told prosecutors that Wilkes had an arrangement with Shirlington Limousine, which in turn had an arrangement with at least one escort service, one source said. Wade said limos would pick up Cunningham and a prostitute and bring them to suites Wilkes maintained at the Watergate Hotel and the Westin Grand in Washington, the source said.

Cunningham resigned from Congress after pleading guilty last November to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from four co-conspirators, including Wilkes and Wade. The former lawmaker was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison. Wade pleaded guilty to his part in the scheme in February and is cooperating with investigators. Wilkes has not been charged.

The allegations about prostitutes were reported this week by the Wall Street Journal. Asked yesterday about the allegations, Wilkes's attorney, Michael Lipman of San Diego, said: "My client denies any involvement in that conduct." Cunningham's lawyer, K. Lee Blalack II, declined to comment.

The San Diego Union-Tribune yesterday cited a letter from Baker's lawyer, Bobby Stafford, saying that Baker "provided limousine services for Mr. Wilkes for whatever entertainment he had in the Watergate" from the company's founding in 1990 through the early 2000s. The letter also stated that Baker was "never in attendance in any party where any women were being used for prostitution purposes." Reached by telephone yesterday, Stafford would not comment on the letter.

Before starting Shirlington Limousine, public records show, Baker compiled a lengthy criminal record. Between 1979 and 1989, he was convicted on several misdemeanor charges, including drug possession and attempted petty larceny, as well as two felony charges for attempted robbery and car theft, according to D.C. Superior Court records.

The Internal Revenue Service filed a tax lien against Baker in 1996. He lost his house in 1998, and he filed for personal bankruptcy protection in 1998 and again in 1999.

Although Baker's company began receiving small federal contracts in 1998, it also fell into debt, records show. In early 2002, Arlington County Circuit Court ordered Shirlington Limousine to pay American Express Travel Related Services Co. $55,292.

That summer, Howard University terminated a contract with Shirlington Limousine to supply shuttle bus service, citing poor service and other problems.

In 2003 and again in 2004, the company received eviction notices for an office it maintained in a luxury D.C. apartment building. And in September 2004, the company was sued in D.C. Superior Court for $1.8 million, for failing to make payments on buses it bought for the Howard contract. The case was settled last month, with Shirlington Limousine agreeing to pay $300,000.

During these financial troubles, Baker's company won a contract worth $3.8 million with the Department of Homeland Security in April 2004. It appears from federal records that Shirlington Limousine was the only bidder. The contract was awarded under a program that limited competition to businesses in poor neighborhoods.

Baker was able to close his bankruptcy case last April after he made nearly $125,000 in payments to creditors, according to court records.

The Homeland Security Department said it awarded Shirlington Limousine, one of three bidders, another one-year contract for $21.2 million in October.

Homeland Security spokesman Larry Orluskie said the department does not routinely conduct background checks on its contractors. Instead, it relies on a list the government keeps of vendors who have had serious problems with federal contracts, he said.

In Shirlington Limousine's case, only the drivers were subject to criminal background checks, he said.

Past performance is one key factor the government weighs in awarding a contract, Orluskie said. But he said he did not know whether contract officers checked with Howard University before awarding Shirlington Limousine its first contract.

He stressed that Shirlington Limousine has performed well, saying: "We have not had any problems with this service -- we don't question whether they can deliver because they are delivering."

Steven L. Schooner, an associate professor and contracting expert at George Washington University Law School, said that although there is no explicit prohibition against giving contracts to felons or people with poor business histories, the government is obligated to ensure that potential vendors have a satisfactory record of business ethics and integrity, and that they have the financial resources to meet contractual obligations.

"There's a fundamental government responsibility to investigate," he said.

Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.

FBI Investigated 3,501 People Without Warrants

WASHINGTON - The FBI secretly sought information last year on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents from their banks and credit card, telephone and Internet companies without a court's approval, the Justice Department said Friday.

Friday's disclosure was mandated as part of the renewal of the Patriot Act, the administration's sweeping anti-terror law.

The FBI delivered a total of 9,254 NSLs relating to 3,501 people in 2005, according to a report submitted late Friday to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate. In some cases, the bureau demanded information about one person from several companies.

The numbers from previous years remain classified, officials said.

The department also reported it received a secret court's approval for 155 warrants to examine business records last year under a Patriot Act provision that includes library records. However, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said the department has never used the provision to ask for library records.

The number was a significant jump over past use of the warrant for business records. A year ago, Gonzales told Congress there had been 35 warrants approved between November 2003 and April 2005.

The spike is expected to be temporary, however, because the Patriot Act renewal that President Bush signed in March made it easier for authorities to obtain subscriber information on telephone numbers captured through certain wiretaps.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the same panel that signs off on applications for business records warrants, also approved 2,072 special warrants last year for secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies. The record number is more than twice as many as were issued in 2000, the last full year before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The FBI security letters have been the subject of legal battles in two federal courts because, until the Patriot Act changes, recipients were barred from telling anyone about them.

Ann Beeson, the associate legal counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the report to Congress "confirms our fear all along that National Security Letters are being used to get the records of thousands of innocent Americans without court approval."

The number disclosed Friday excludes requests for subscriber information, an exception written into the law. It was unclear how many FBI letters were not counted for that reason.

© Copyright 2006 Associated Press

###

I'm totally slacking off lately... This needs formatting...

Intel pros say Bush is lying about foiling 2002 terror attack
Outraged intelligence professionals say President George W. Bush is "cheapening" and "politicizing" their work with claims the United States foiled a planned terrorist attack against Los Angeles in 2002.
"The President has cheapened the entire intelligence community by dragging us into his fantasy world," says a longtime field operative of the Central Intelligence Agency. "He is basing this absurd claim on the same discredited informant who told us Al Qaeda would attack selected financial institutions in New York and Washington."
Within hours of the President’s speech Thursday claiming his administration had prevented a major attack, sources who said they were current and retired intelligence pros from the CIA, NSA, FBI and military contacted Capitol Hill Blue with angry comments disputing the President’s remarks.
“He’s full of shit,” said one sharply-worded email.
Although none were willing to allow use of their names, saying doing so would place them in legal jeopardy, we were able to confirm that at least four of the 23 who contacted us currently work, or had worked, within the U.S. intelligence community.
But Los Angeles Mayor Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is willing to go on the record, claiming Bush blind-sided his city with the claims.
"I'm amazed that the president would make this (announcement) on national TV and not inform us of these details through the appropriate channels," the mayor says. "I don't expect a call from the president — but somebody." Villaraigosa also said he has twice requested meetings with Bush to discuss security issues for Los Angeles and was turned down both times.
Intelligence pros say much of the information used by Bush in an attempt to justify his increased spying on Americans by the National Security Agency, trampling of civil rights under the USA Patriot Act, and massive buildup of the Department of Homeland Security, now the nation’s largest federal bureaucracy, was “worthless intel that was discarded long ago.”
“A lot of buzz circulated in the months following the September 11, 2001, attacks,” says an NSA operative. “Snippets here and there were true but most were just random information that could never be confirmed. One thing we do know about al Qaeda is that they seldom use the same technique twice. They tried a car bomb to bring down the World Trade Center and it failed. Then they went to planes. The next time will be something different because we’ve geared up to prevent hijacking planes and using them as flying bombs.”
In August 2004, just as the Presidential campaign was about to heat up, the Bush White House raised the terror alert, claiming attacks were imminent on major financial institutions. The alert, apparently timed to steal thunder from Democrat John Kerry’s nomination for President, was withdrawn after administration officials admitted it was based on old information from a discredited informant.
The discredited information dated back to the same period when intelligence agencies began receiving reports of a planned attack against Los Angeles.
Counterterrorism officials say they are surprised that Bush claimed the plot was "set in motion."
"There was no definitive plot. It never materialized or got past the thought stage," says a senior counterterrorism official, who has worked at the CIA and the FBI, who talked to Capitol Hill Blue and the New York Daily News.
FBI Deputy Director John Pistole refused to characterize it as an advanced plot when discussing it in June 2004.
Former DHS secretary Tom Ridge admits the U.S. raised terror alerts for the wrong reasons and now says he often disagreed with the timing of such alerts but was overruled by the White House.
"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge says. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on alert, There were times when the White House was really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?' We often lost the argument."
Ridge left DHS in February 2005 and Bush replaced him with Michael Chertoff who agrees with the “cry wolf” strategy of the White House.
“Chertoff is a lackey,” says Kevin Riley, a retired New York City Detective who knew Chertoff during his days as a U.S. Attorney in New York. “He’ll do whatever Bush tells him to do.”
Intelligence pros at established Washington agencies laugh at DHS operatives, calling them “Keystone Kops” and “overpaid rent-a-cops,” saying they lack any real expertise in dealing with terrorism.
“DHS is a political police force,” says a retired CIA agent. “They exist to enforce the political propaganda program of George W. Bush. That’s all they’re good for and they’re not very good at that
© Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue

OOPS! Latest Bush administration leak comes from ... Bush
CAMBRIDGE, Md. The source of the latest leak from the Bush administration is: President Bush himself.Thanks to an error by a White House technician, the sound of what were supposed to be private remarks to G-O-P House members was relayed to the White House press corps.
Bush made a brief public speech to lawmakers at their retreat on Maryland's Eastern Shore. He then shooed out reporters and photographers, saying, "I support the free press, let's just get 'em out of the room."
Once they were gone, Bush -- not realizing he was still audible -- said, "I expect this conversation we're about to have to stay in the room." He added, "I know that's impossible in Washington."
Bush then spoke for roughly two minutes on the war on terror and his warrantless eavesdropping program before the outside feed was switched off. On the surveillance, he repeated earlier assertions he'd cleared the program with top government lawyers.





Thursday, February 09, 2006
Hunger strikers, forced feeding, restraint chairs & Gitmo

http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engamr510312002




Seton Hall Report: Only 8% of Gitmo detainees characterized by Pentagon as Al Qaeda fighters

http://law.shu.edu/news/guantanamo_report_final_2_08_06.pdf

Based on defense department data, shows a majority of prisoners at Guantanamo have not been determined to have committed hostile acts against the US -- only 8% characterized by the Pentagon as Al Qaeda fighters.





Rove counting heads on the Senate Judiciary Committee

The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the administration's unauthorized wiretapping.

Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.

"It's hardball all the way," a senior GOP congressional aide said.

The sources said the administration has been alarmed over the damage that could result from the Senate hearings, which began on Monday, Feb. 6. They said the defection of even a handful of Republican committee members could result in a determination that the president violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Such a determination could lead to impeachment proceedings.

Over the last few weeks, Mr. Rove has been calling in virtually every Republican on the Senate committee as well as the leadership in Congress. The sources said Mr. Rove's message has been that a vote against Mr. Bush would destroy GOP prospects in congressional elections.

"He's [Rove] lining them up one by one," another congressional source said.

Mr. Rove is leading the White House campaign to help the GOP in November’s congressional elections. The sources said the White House has offered to help loyalists with money and free publicity, such as appearances and photo-ops with the president.

Those deemed disloyal to Mr. Rove would appear on his blacklist. The sources said dozens of GOP members in the House and Senate are on that list.

So far, only a handful of GOP senators have questioned Mr. Rove's tactics.

Some have raised doubts about Mr. Rove's strategy of painting the Democrats, who have opposed unwarranted surveillance, as being dismissive of the threat posed by al Qaeda terrorists.

"Well, I didn't like what Mr. Rove said, because it frames terrorism and the issue of terrorism and everything that goes with it, whether it's the renewal of the Patriot Act or the NSA wiretapping, in a political context," said Sen. Chuck Hagel, Nebraska Republican.

http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/Rove2.htm





Cheney Spearheaded Effort to Discredit Wilson

Thursday 09 February 2006
Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley led a campaign beginning in March 2003 to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson for publicly criticizing the Bush administration's intelligence on Iraq, according to current and former administration officials.

The officials work or had worked in the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council in a senior capacity and had direct knowledge of the Vice President's campaign to discredit Wilson.

In interviews over the course of two days this week, these officials were urged to speak on the record for this story. But they resisted, saying they had already testified before a grand jury investigating the leak of Wilson's wife, covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, and added that speaking out against the administration and specifically Vice President Cheney would cause them to lose their jobs and subject their families to vitriolic attacks by the White House.

The officials said they decided to speak out now because they have become disillusioned with the Bush administration's policies regarding Iraq and the flawed intelligence that led to the war.

They said their roles, along with several others at the CIA and State Department, included digging up or "inventing" embarrassing information on the former Ambassador that could be used against him, preparing memos and classified material on Wilson for Cheney and the National Security Council, and attending meetings in Cheney's office to discuss with Cheney, Hadley, and others the efforts that would be taken to discredit Wilson.

A former CIA official who has worked in the counter-proliferation division, and is familiar with the undercover work Wilson's wife did for the agency, said Cheney and Hadley visited CIA headquarters a day or two after Joseph Wilson was interviewed on CNN.

These were the first public comments Wilson had made about Iraq. He said the administration was more interested in redrawing the map of the Middle East to pursue its own foreign policy objectives than in dealing with the so-called terrorist threat.

"The underlying objective, as I see it, the more I look at this, is less and less disarmament, and it really has little to do with terrorism, because everybody knows that a war to invade and conquer and occupy Iraq is going to spawn a new generation of terrorists," Wilson said in a March 2, 2003, interview with CNN.

"So you look at what's underpinning this, and you go back and you take a look at who's been influencing the process. And it's been those who really believe that our objective must be far grander, and that is to redraw the political map of the Middle East," Wilson added.

This was the first time that Wilson had spoken out publicly against the administration's policies. It was two and a half weeks before the start of the Iraq war.

But it wasn't Wilson who Cheney was so upset about when he visited the CIA in March 2003.

During the same CNN segment in which Wilson was interviewed, former United Nations weapons inspector David Albright made similar comments about the rationale for the Iraq war and added that he believed UN weapons inspectors should be given more time to search the country for weapons of mass destruction.

The National Security Council and CIA officials said Cheney had visited CIA headquarters and asked several CIA officials to dig up dirt on Albright, and to put together a dossier that would discredit his work that could be distributed to the media.

"Vice President Cheney was more concerned with Mr. Albright," the CIA official said. "The international community had been saying that inspectors should have more time, that the US should not set a deadline. The Vice President felt Mr. Albright's remarks would fuel the debate."
The officials said a "binder" was sent to the Vice President's office that contained material that could be used by the White House to discredit Albright if he continued to comment on the administration's war plans. However, it's unclear whether Cheney or other White House officials used the information against Albright.
A week later, Wilson was interviewed on CNN again. This was the first time Wilson ridiculed the Bush administration's intelligence that claimed Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger.
"Well, this particular case is outrageous. We know a lot about the uranium business in Niger, and for something like this to go unchallenged by US - the US government - is just simply stupid. It would have taken a couple of phone calls. We have had an embassy there since the early '60s. All this stuff is open. It's a restricted market of buyers and sellers," Wilson said in the March 8, 2003, CNN interview. "For this to have gotten to the IAEA is on the face of it dumb, but more to the point, it taints the whole rest of the case that the government is trying to build against Iraq."
What Wilson wasn't at liberty to disclose during that interview, because the information was still classified, was that he had personally traveled to Niger a year earlier on behalf of the CIA to investigate whether Iraq had in fact tried to purchase uranium from the African country. Cheney had asked the CIA in 2002 to look into the allegation, which turned out to be based on forged documents, but was included in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address nonetheless.
Wilson's comments enraged Cheney, all of the officials said, because they were seen as a personal attack against the Vice President, who was instrumental in getting the intelligence community to cite the Niger claims in government reports to build a case for war against Iraq.
The former Ambassador's stinging rebuke also caught the attention of Stephen Hadley, who played an even bigger role in the Niger controversy, having been responsible for allowing President Bush to cite the allegations in his State of the Union address.
At this time, the international community, various media outlets, and the International Atomic Energy Association had called into question the veracity of the Niger documents. Mohammed ElBaradei, head of IAEA, told the UN Security Council on March 7, 2003, that the Niger documents were forgeries and could not be used to prove Iraq was a nuclear threat.
Wilson's comments in addition to ElBaradei's UN report were seen as a threat to the administration's attack plans against Iraq, the officials said, which would take place 11 days later.
Hadley had avoided making public comments about the veracity of the Niger documents, going as far as ignoring a written request by IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei to share the intelligence with his agency so his inspectors could verify the claims. Hadley is said to have known the Niger documents were crude forgeries, but pushed the administration to cite it as evidence that Iraq was a nuclear threat, according to the State Department officials, who said they personally told Hadley in a written report that the documents were bogus.
The CIA and State Department officials said that a day after Wilson's March 8, 2003, CNN appearance, they attended a meeting at the Vice President's office chaired by Cheney, and it was there that a decision was made to discredit Wilson. Those who attended the meeting included I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff who was indicted in October for lying to investigators, perjury and obstruction of justice related to his role in the Plame Wilson leak, Hadley, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and John Hannah, Cheney's deputy national security adviser, the officials said.
"The way I remember it," the CIA official said about that first meeting he attended in Cheney's office, "is that the vice president was obsessed with Wilson. He called him an 'asshole,' a son-of-a-bitch. He took his comments very personally. He wanted us to do everything in our power to destroy his reputation and he wanted to be kept up to date about the progress."
A spokeswoman for Cheney would not comment for this story, saying the investigation into the leak is ongoing. The spokeswoman refused to give her name. Additional calls made to Cheney's office were not returned.
The CIA, State Department and National Security Council officials said that early on they had passed on information about Wilson to Cheney and Libby that purportedly showed Wilson as being a "womanizer" and that he had dabbled in drugs during his youth, allegations that are apparently false, they said.
The officials said that during the meeting, Hadley said he would respond to Wilson's comments by writing an editorial about the Iraqi threat, which it was hoped would be a first step in overshadowing Wilson's CNN appearance.
A column written by Hadley that appeared in the Chicago Tribune on February 16, 2003, was redistributed to newspaper editors by the State Department on March 10, 2003, two days after Wilson was interviewed on CNN. The column, "Two Potent Iraqi Weapons: Denial and Deception" once again raised the issue that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger.
Cheney appeared on Meet the Press on March 16, 2003, to respond to ElBaradei's assertion that the Niger documents were forgeries.
"I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong," Cheney said during the interview. "[The IAEA] has consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don't have any reason to believe they're any more valid this time than they've been in the past."
Cheney knew the State Department had prepared a report saying the Niger claims were false, but he thought the report had no merit, the two State Department officials said. Meanwhile, the CIA was preparing information for the vice president and his senior aides on Wilson should the former ambassador decide to speak out against the administration again.
Behind the scenes, Wilson had been speaking to various members of Congress about the administration's use of the Niger documents and had said the intelligence the White House relied upon was flawed, said one of the State Department officials who had a conversation with Wilson. Wilson's criticism of the administration's intelligence eventually leaked out to reporters, but with the Iraq war just a week away, the story was never covered.
It's unclear whether anyone disseminated information on Wilson in March 2003, following the meeting in Cheney's office. Although the officials said they helped prepare negative information on Wilson about his personal and professional life and had given it to Libby and Cheney, Wilson seemed to drop off the radar once the Iraq war started on March 19, 2003.
With no sign of weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq, news accounts started to call into question the credibility of the administration's pre-war intelligence. In May 2003, Wilson re-emerged at a political conference in Washington sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. There he told the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff that he had been the special envoy who traveled to Niger in February 2002 to check out allegations that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from the country. He told Kristoff he briefed a CIA analyst that the claims were untrue. Wilson said he believed the administration had ignored his report and were dishonest with Congress and the American people.
When Kristoff's column was published in the Times, the CIA official said, "a request came in from Cheney that was passed to me that said 'the vice president wants to know whether Joe Wilson went to Niger.' I'm paraphrasing. But that's more or less what I was asked to find out."
In his column, Kristoff Had accused Cheney of allowing the truth about the Niger documents the administration used to build a case for war to go "missing in action." The failure of US armed forces to find any WMDs in Iraq in two months following the start of the war had been blamed on Cheney.
What in the previous months had been a request to gather information that could be used to discredit Wilson now turned into a full-scale effort involving the Office of the Vice President, the National Security Council, and the State Department to find out how Wilson came to be chosen to investigate the Niger uranium allegations.
"Cheney and Libby made it clear that Wilson had to be shut down," the CIA official said. "This wasn't just about protecting the credibility of the White House. For the vice president, going after Wilson was purely personal, in my opinion."
Cheney was personally involved in this aspect of the information gathering process as well, visiting CIA headquarters to inquire about Wilson, the CIA official said. Hadley had also raised questions about Wilson during this month with the State Department officials and asked that information regarding Wilson's trip to Niger be sent to his attention at the National Security Council.
That's when Valerie Plame Wilson's name popped up showing that she was a covert CIA operative. The former CIA official who works in the counter-proliferation division said another meeting about Wilson took place in Cheney's office, attended by the same individuals who were there in March. But Cheney didn't take part in it, the officials said.
"Libby led the meeting," one of the State Department officials said. "But he was just as upset about Wilson as Cheney was."
The officials said that as of late May 2003 the only correspondence they had had was with Libby and Hadley. They said they were unaware who had made the decision to unmask Plame Wilson's undercover CIA status to a handful of reporters.
George Tenet, the former director of the CIA, took responsibility for allowing what is widely referred to as the infamous "sixteen words" to be included in Bush's State of the Union address. Tenet's mea culpa came one day after Wilson penned an op-ed for the New York Times in which he accused the administration of "twisting" intelligence on Iraq. In the column, Wilson revealed that he was the special envoy who traveled to Niger to investigate the uranium claims.
Tenet is working on a book titled At the Center of the Storm with former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, which it is expected will be published later this year. Tenet will reportedly come clean on how the "sixteen words made it into the President's State of the Union speech, according to publishersmarketplace.com, an industry newsletter.
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has been investigating the Plame Wilson leak for more than two years, questioned Cheney about his role in the leak in 2004. Cheney did not testify under oath, and it's unknown what he told the special prosecutor.
On September 14, 2003, during an interview with Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press," Cheney maintained that he didn't know Wilson or have any knowledge about his Niger trip or who was responsible for leaking his wife's name to the media.
"I don't know Joe Wilson," Cheney said, in response to Russert, who quoted Wilson as saying there was no truth to the Niger uranium claims. "I've never met Joe Wilson. And Joe Wilson - I don't who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back ... I don't know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn't judge him. I have no idea who hired him."
3:31 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove







FREAKIN' WIMPS! GAH!
As liberal Democrat calls for special prosecutor on Iraq, Democrats duck
02/08/2006 @ 12:42 pm

Filed by John Byrne - http://rawstory.com/admin/dbscripts/printstory.php?story=1857

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the feisty septuagenarian congressman who serves as the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee will issue yet another missive to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales later this week calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate possible criminal misconduct with regard to the Bush Administration's march to war in Iraq.
Just three other Democrats have signed Conyers’ letter: Reps. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and Susan Davis (D-CA).
Conyers' move comes on the heels of yet another British memorandum showing that President Bush had conspired with Prime Minister Tony Blair to set a fixed date for war before even bringing Iraq to the United Nations. The memo also asserts that Bush had proposed a plan to paint a U.S. spyplane with UN markings and use it to attempt to lure Saddam Hussein into war.
What's striking isn't that Conyers is calling on Gonzales to appoint a special prosecutor. He's done it before, and he'd likely do it again. But his decision to take public action to seek a Justice Department investigation of pre-war policy and manipulation of the press has met resounding silence among his Democratic Party.
While a handful of House members sign on to Conyers' proposals each time, the leading voices in the party are dark when it comes to formal legal action on Iraq. In other words, Democrats are quick to criticize the Administration, but are loath to make legal attempts to bring them to account. Democratic senators have called for a special prosecutor to investigate both the fallen conservative lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the National Security Administration's domestic surveillance program. But they have yet to seek a criminal inquiry into how the United States got into a war that has cost taxpayers $300 billion dollars and is burning the nation's reserves at the rate of $100,000 a minute.
Conyers says the body of evidence showing that Bush misled Congress into war deserves a special counsel’s investigation.
“We write to request that the U.S. Department of Justice appoint an outside special counsel to investigate and prosecute any and all criminal acts committed by members of the Bush Administration in connection with misinformation concerning the decision to go to war in Iraq and other misconduct associated with the war,” the Michigan Democrat writes. “We are aware that there may be other legal and congressional avenues being pursued on these matters; however, due to the severe constitutional crisis that they pose, it is imperative that a special counsel undertake a comprehensive and objective criminal investigation.”
Democrats won’t sign onto Conyers letter – and have ignored his moves on Iraq in the past. Aides tell RAW STORY that Abramoff and the NSA wiretaps are better issues because they feel they have more political resonance, and because their caucus is divided on the handling of Iraq policy. None would be identified by name, and most declined to be quoted – even anonymously.
“The [push] to go after Abramoff is because a lot of Republicans are tied into it,” one aide remarked. “The NSA thing splits the Republican base.”
With regard to Iraq, the aide added, “Certainly more vulnerable Democratic members that don’t like that kind of stuff.”
One aide noted that the issues surrounding the lead-up to the Iraq war are a hard issue for Democrats because many believed – and said – they thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. President Clinton also took a hard line, saying in 1998, "We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
So did House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process,” Pelosi said in 1998.
“Was Clinton lying to the people, was he falsifying that stuff?” one aide asked. “I honestly think [Bush] thought that there were weapons over there. Everybody thought there were weapons over there.”
Democrats have pressed for investigations into pre-war intelligence, but not as vociferously as they have for a fuller inquiry into Abramoff and domestic eavesdropping.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (D-NV) stunned the nation when he forced the Senate into secret session, angry that a report on pre-war intelligence had not been completed. The report, called Phase II, remains in limbo in the Senate Intelligence Committee because the Pentagon has not finished an internal probe into Douglas Feith, one of the architects of the Iraq war. Senate Democratic aides say they are waiting on that report and have not yet decided on further action.
Democrats are not alone in their silence on the memo. Neither the Washington Post nor the New York Times have published articles about the latest British U-2 document. Both papers also declined to publish any articles about the Downing Street minutes until six months after they were printed in Britain. The earlier minutes recorded a meeting between Bush Administration officials and the Blair government at which the director of British intelligence said that intelligence was being “fixed” around a policy for war.
Democratic aides acknowledge, however, that Conyers has been instrumental in orchestrating a fury over the lead-up to war in Iraq.
“You’ve got to remember that Conyers and a few others early on were speaking about the war in Iraq and how wrong it was and that number has grown tremendously,” one aide said. "Sometimes it takes someone like him to get the fire up and ignited.”
Conyers' latest letter follows.
#
Re: Request for the Appointment of Outside Special Counsel for the Investigation and Prosecution of Violations, and Conspiracy to Violate, Criminal Laws in Misconduct Associated with the Iraq War
Dear Attorney General Gonzales:
We write to request that the U.S. Department of Justice appoint an outside special counsel to investigate and prosecute any and all criminal acts committed by members of the Bush Administration in connection with misinformation concerning the decision to go to war in Iraq and other misconduct associated with the war. We are aware that there may be other legal and congressional avenues being pursued on these matters; however, due to the severe constitutional crisis that they pose, it is imperative that a special counsel undertake a comprehensive and objective criminal investigation.
There have been recent, startling media and other reports detailing how members of the Administration misled Congress and the American people concerning the decision to go to war. Notably, late last week, a new book by Professor Philipe Sands described minutes of a White House meeting between President Bush and Prime Minister Blair on January 31, 2003 in which President Bush made it clear that he would invade Iraq regardless of whether UN inspectors found evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons program and that "the diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning."1 President Bush reportedly stated that he was so concerned by the failure to find WMD that he proposed that the US "fly[] U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours." President Bush added: "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]"2 Neither the Blair nor the Bush Administrations have challenged the accuracy of this new document.
This new disclosure is part of an overwhelming record of evidence of misconduct by the Administration in its war effort that includes misleading Congress and the American public concerning the decision to go to war. As detailed in a report my staff recently released titled, "The Constitution in Crisis," the actions taken by the President, Vice President and other members of the Bush Administration potentially violate a number of federal laws, including Committing a Fraud Against the United States (18 U.S.C. § 371); Making False Statements to Congress (18 U.S.C. § 1001); and numerous other statutory prohibitions as more fully detailed therein.3
As you are aware, under Department of Justice regulations, the Attorney General must appoint a special counsel when (1) a "criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted," (2) "the investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney's Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department," and (3) "it would be in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter."4 Significantly, your obligation under this regulation is mandatory, not discretionary. In the present case, all three factors have been met.
(1) A Criminal Investigation is Warranted
President Bush and members of his Administration made numerous public statements to the effect that a decision had not been made to invade Iraq, when in fact the record indicates that such a decision had been made. As detailed in my staff report, and confirmed even more clearly by Prof. Sands' recent disclosure, there is substantial evidence that these individuals have Conspired to Defraud the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. §371. 5
Among other things, we have found: Before Mr. Bush was elected President, he stated that he saw Saddam Hussein as "the guy who tried to kill my dad," and numerous key members of his Administration had called for a military invasion of Iraq. Immediately after the September 11 attacks, President Bush and members of his Administration displayed an immediate inclination to blame Iraq - the President asked Richard Clarke to determine if Hussein is "linked in any way;" White House officials instructed Wesley Clarke to state that the attack is "connected to Saddam Hussein;" and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith proposed that the U.S. select "a non al-Qaeda target like Iraq." The Downing Street Minutes provide unrebutted documentary evidence that in the spring and summer of 2002 it was understood by the Blair government that the Bush Administration had irrevocably decided to invade Iraq. These documents reveal that President Bush had told Prime Minster Blair "when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq" (Fall, 2001); "Condi's enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed" (March 14, 2002); the U.S. has "assumed regime change as a means of eliminating Iraq's WMD threat" (March 25, 2002); and "Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD" (July 23, 2002).6
Among other things, my staff report also details the following: The "marketing" campaign for the war which included the creation of the so-called "White House Iraq Group;" the "rollout of speeches and documents;" the release of a white paper inaccurately describing a "grave and gathering danger" of Iraq's allegedly "reconstituted" nuclear weapons program; and the deliberate downplaying of the risks of occupation. The plan by which the Bush and Blair Administration sought to use the UN to "wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors and the UN SCRs [Security Council Resolutions]" in the winter of 2002 and spring of 2003, constitutes further evidence that the decision to invade Iraq had been made; this is reflected by the fact that Defense Policy Board Member, Richard Perle admitted the U.S. "would attack Iraq even if UN inspectors fail to find weapons;" Vice President Cheney reportedly admitted to Hans Blix that the U.S. was "ready to discredit inspectors in favor of disarmament;" and President Bush was "infuriated" by reports of Iraq's cooperating with UN inspectors.7
It is important to note that the phrase "defraud the United States" in 18 U.S.C § 371 is broadly applicable, and there is ample precedent for applying the law to false and misleading statements by high government officials. In Hammerschmidt v. United States, 265 U.S. 182 (1924) the Supreme Court held that the law applies to those who "interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful governmental functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest. It is not necessary that the Government shall be subjected to property or pecuniary loss by the fraud, but only that its legitimate official action and purpose shall be defeated by misrepresentation, chicanery or the overreaching of those charged with carrying out the governmental intention." This statute has been used in the prosecution of numerous Administration and military officials in the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandal, with Judge Walsh writing in his final report on Iran-Contra that "[f]raud is criminal even when those who engage in the fraud are Government officials pursuing presidential policy."8
2) A Conflict of Interest Exists in this Case
Because the allegations of misconduct involve the President, Vice President, and other high ranking members of the Bush Administration, there is little doubt that the Justice Department would have an unavoidable conflict of interest in fully investigating and prosecuting possible violations. This is in fact a textbook case of a conflict of interest. You were directly appointed by the President, previously served as White House Counsel and have close connections to President Bush dating back decades. For a Justice Department inquiry to be credible, an outside special counsel with no ties to the Justice Department and no close ties to the President, Vice President or other high ranking Bush Administration officials is essential.
3) The Public Interest Demands the Appointment of an Outside Special Counsel
The public interest demands that this prima facie case of criminal activity be referred to a special counsel who has the independence to investigate the violation of these criminal laws. For example, there can be no doubt that the public interest is served by a full and unbiased investigation into the decision to go to war. In fact, on June 16, 2005, I delivered to the White House more than 560,000 citizen petitions from Americans who, along with 122 Members of Congress, requested information from the President on these issues. To date, no response has been received.
Moreover, the public interest is heightened on this issue because no entity has ever considered whether the Administration misled Americans about the decision to go to war, and the Senate Intelligence Committee has not yet conducted a review of pre-war intelligence information, while the Silberman-Robb report specifically cautioned, that intelligence manipulation "was not part of our inquiry." There has also not been any independent inquiry concerning torture and other legal violations in Iraq; nor has there been an independent review of the pattern of cover-ups and political retribution by the Bush Administration against its critics, other than the very narrow and still ongoing inquiry of Special Counsel Fitzgerald.
As a general matter, the violation of criminal laws is to be investigated by prosecutors and tried by independent federal courts. Regardless of whether Congress chooses to vigorously exercise its oversight powers and try to repair this breach of trust with the American people, the matters at issue are also serious criminal matters.
It is important to note that despite widespread allegations of misconduct by numerous members of the Bush Administration, neither you nor your predecessor, John Ashcroft, have chosen to appoint a single special prosecutor under the applicable regulation. We believe it is no longer tolerable that high ranking members of the Bush Administration avoid the independent legal scrutiny called for by our nation's laws.
We await your response to this important matter. Please reply through the House Judiciary Committee Democratic office, 2142 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC, 20515. Or, you may reply by telephone: (202) 225-6504; or, fax: (202) 226-4423.
Sincerely,
Rep. John Conyers
cc: Hon. F. James Sensenbrenner Chairman, House Judiciary Committee
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Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Reporter hits McClellan on taps: 'You know what happened to Nixon when he broke the law'
Filed by RAW STORY
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan (aka: Chummy McSharkbait & Puffy McMoonface) got in a heated row with a White House correspondent at Monday's press briefing over President Bush's warrantless domestic spying program, RAW STORY has learned.
The questioner, outspoken columnist Helen Thomas, has been covering the White House since President John F. Kennedy, asks McClellan if Bush should obey the law.
The relevant part of transcript follows. RAW STORY has confirmed the questioner was Helen Thomas. Crooks and Liars has the video.
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Q: Does the president think he should obey the law? He put his hand on the Bible twice to uphold the Constitution. Wiretapping is not legal under the circumstances without a warrant.
MR. MCCLELLAN: Well, I guess you didn't pay attention to the attorney general's hearing earlier today, because he walked through very clearly the rationale behind this program.
Q There is no rationale --
MR. MCCLELLAN: And Helen, I think you have to ask --
Q -- (inaudible) -- the law.
MR. MCCLELLAN: I think you have ask are we -- well, he's not -- are we a nation at war.
Q That's not the question.
MR. MCCLELLAN: No, that is the issue here.
Q The question is, the point is, there are means for him to go to -- get a warrant to spy on people.
MR. MCCLELLAN: Enemy surveillance is critical to waging and winning war. It's one of the traditional tools of war.
Q But he says he doesn't have running room --
MR. MCCLELLAN: The attorney general outlined very clearly today how previous administrations have used the same authority --
Q That doesn't make it legal.
MR. MCCLELLAN: -- and cited the same -- and cited the very same authority.
Q (Inaudible) -- they broke the law, that's too bad.
MR. MCCLELLAN: And we're going to continue doing everything we can --
Q You know what happened to Nixon when he broke the law.
MR. MCCLELLAN: -- within our power to protect the American people.
This is a very different circumstance, and you know that.
Q No, I don't.
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news you don't want to lose...
Rachel Maddow on AirAmerica Mornings: http://shows.airamericaradio.com/maddow/
Stephanie Miller Show: http://www.stephaniemiller.com/
Randi Rhodes Show: http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/
Majority Report: http://www.majorityreportradio.com/weblog/index.php
Rawstory: http://www.rawstory.com/
Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/
MotherJones: http://www.motherjones.com/
The Nation: http://www.thenation.com/
8:02 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove
Same argument & same idiots making it - let's hope they lose this one too...
Snooping Docs During Ford's Administration Released
Washington - An intense debate erupted during former U.S. president Gerald Ford's administration over the president's powers to eavesdrop without warrants to gather foreign intelligence, newly disclosed government documents revealed.
Former president George Bush, current Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney are cited in the documents. The roughly 200 pages of historic records reflect a remarkably similar dispute between the White House and Congress fully three decades before President George W. Bush's acknowledgment he authorized wiretaps without warrants of some Americans in terrorism investigations.
"Yogi Berra was right: it's deja vu all over again," said Tom Blanton, executive director for the U.S. National Security Archives, a private research group that compiles collections of sensitive government documents.
"It's the same debate."
Senate judiciary committee hearings are scheduled to begin Monday on the question of Bush's authority to approve such wiretaps by the ultra-secretive National Security Agency without a judge's approval. A focus of the hearings is to determine whether the Bush administration's eavesdropping program violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a 1978 law with origins during Ford's presidency.
"We strongly believe it is unwise for the president to concede any lack of constitutional power to authorize electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes," wrote Robert Ingersoll, then deputy secretary of state, in a 1976 memorandum to Ford about the proposed bill on electronic surveillance.
Former president Bush, then director of the CIA, wanted to ensure "no unnecessary diminution of collection of important foreign intelligence" under the proposal to require judges to approve terror wiretaps, said a March 1976 memorandum he wrote to the Justice Department. Bush also complained some major communications companies were unwilling to install government wiretaps without a judge's approval. Such a refusal "seriously affects the capabilities of the intelligence community," Bush wrote.
In another document, Jack Marsh, a White House adviser, outlined options for Ford over the wiretap legislation. Marsh alerted Ford to objections by Bush as CIA director and Rumsfeld, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft over the scope of a provision to require judicial oversight of wiretaps. At the time, Rumsfeld was defence secretary, Kissinger was secretary of state and Scowcroft was the White House national security adviser.
Some experts weren't surprised the cast of characters in this national debate remained largely unchanged over 30 years.
"People don't change their stripes," said Kenneth Bass a former senior Justice Department lawyer who oversaw such wiretap requests during former president Jimmy Carter's administration.
Lisa Graves, senior counsel for legislative strategy at the American Civil Liberties Union, said comparing the Ford-era debate to the current controversy is "misleading because no matter what Mr. Cheney or Mr. Rumsfeld may have argued back in 1976, the fact is they lost. When Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978, Congress decisively resolved this debate.
"Unlike the current administration, the Ford administration never claimed the right to violate a law requiring judicial oversight of wiretaps in foreign intelligence investigations if Congress were to pass such a law."
The National Security Archives separately obtained many of the same documents and intended to publish them on its website Saturday.
The documents include one startling similarity to Washington's current atmosphere over disclosures of classified information by the news media. Notes from a 1975 meeting between Cheney, then White House chief of staff, then Attorney General Edward Levi and others cite the "problem" of a New York Times newspaper article by Seymour Hersh about U.S. submarines spying in Soviet waters. Participants considered a formal FBI investigation of Hersh and the Times and searching Hersh's apartment "to go after (his) papers," the document said.
"I was surprised," Hersh said in a telephone interview Friday.
"I was surprised that they didn't know I had a house and a mortgage."
One option outlined at the 1975 meeting was to "ignore the Hersh story and hope it doesn't happen again."
Participants worried about "will we get hit with violating the First Amendment to the Constitution?"
CIA Director Porter Goss told legislators this week recent disclosures about sensitive programs were severely damaging, and he urged prosecutors to impanel a grand jury to determine "who is leaking this information."
The National Security Agency earlier asked the Justice Department to open a formal leaks investigation over news reports of its terrorism wiretaps.
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Bush Drunk

W drunk at a wedding...

Former U.S. Official Pleads Guilty in Iraq Reconstruction Fraud

Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- A former U.S. government official pleaded guilty to charges including bribery and money laundering in an investigation of bid-rigging in Iraq reconstruction contracts.
Robert J. Stein, 50, a former comptroller for the disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority, entered the plea today before U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington. He also pleaded guilty to conspiracy, unlawful possession of a machine gun, and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Stein, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, admitted that for a year starting in December 2003, he and other public officials conspired to rig bids on contracts to rebuild Iraq. Stein, who remains in custody, faces a maximum of 30 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. A sentencing date was not set.

``I know exactly what I am doing, your honor,'' Stein, wearing orange prison overalls, told Kollar-Kotelly.

Stein and others received bribes of cars, jewelry and other items worth more than $1 million to steer contracts to a co- conspirator, the Justice Department said. He also admitted helping steal more than $2 million designated for the reconstruction of Iraq, smuggling some of it into the U.S on commercial aircraft, the government said.

According to a plea agreement filed in court, the total value of the contracts awarded to his co-conspirator in Al Hillah, Iraq, exceeded $8 million.

Bowen Probe
The plea is the first conviction in an investigation by Special Inspector General Stuart Bowen, whose office oversees almost $30 billion in federal funds. Bowen is investigating the financial management of the provisional authority, which he said last year lacked proper accounting for about $8.8 billion in Iraqi revenue.

Others arrested and charged include Philip Bloom, a U.S. citizen living in Romania who owns construction companies doing business in Iraq. Bloom was arrested Nov. 13 on charges of conspiring to commit money laundering and wire fraud.

Michael Wheeler of Amherst Junction, Wisconsin, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, was arrested Nov. 30 on charges of conspiring to commit bribery, money laundering, possession of automatic weapons, theft, and wire fraud, the Department of Justice said.
Debra Harrison of Trenton, New Jersey, also a lieutenant colonel in the reserves, was arrested Dec. 15 on charges of conspiracy, bribery, interstate transportation of stolen property and money laundering.

The case is U.S. v. Stein, 06-16, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.