Tag Archives: Politico

The Kiriakou Conundrum: To Plea Or Not To Plea

By:  Saturday October 20, 2012 1:26 pm

There are many symbols emblematic of the battle between the American citizenry and the government of the United States in the war of transparency. One of those involves John Kiriakou. Say what you will about John Kiriakou’s entrance into the public conscience on the issue of torture, he made a splash and did what all too few had, or have since, been willing to do. John Kiriakou is the antithesis of the preening torture monger apologist in sullen “big boy pants”, Jose Rodriquez.

And, so, people like Kiriakou must be punished. Not by the national security bullies of the Bush/Cheney regime who were castigated and repudiated by an electorate who spoke. No, the hunting is, instead, by the projected agent of “change”, Barack Obama. You expect there to be some difference between a man as candidate and a man governing; the shock comes when the man and message is the diametric opposite of that which he sold. And, in the sling of such politics, lies the life and fate of John Kiriakou.

Why is the story of John Kiriakou raised on this fine Saturday? Because as Charlie Savage described, Kiriakou has tread the “Path From Terrorist Hunter to Defendant”. Today it is a path far removed from the constant political trolling of the Benghazi incident, and constant sturm and drang of the electoral polling horserace. It is a critical path of precedent in the history of American jurisprudence, and is playing out with nary a recognition or discussion. A tree is falling in the forrest and the sound is not being heard.

You may have read about the negative ruling on the critical issue of “intent to harm” made in the federal prosecution of Kiriakou in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) last Tuesday. As Josh Gerstein described:

Prosecutors pursuing former CIA officer John Kiriakou for allegedly leaking the identities of two other CIA officers involved in interrogating terror suspects need not prove that Kiriakou intended to harm the United States or help a foreign nation, a federal judge ruled in an opinion made public Wednesday.

The ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema is a defeat for Kiriakou’s defense, which asked the judge to insist on the stronger level of proof — which most likely would have been very difficult for the government to muster.

In 2006, another federal judge in the same Northern Virginia courthouse, T.S. Ellis, imposed the higher requirement in a criminal case against two former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

However, Brinkema said that situation was not parallel to that of Kiriakou, since he is accused of relaying information he learned as a CIA officer and the AIPAC staffers were not in the government at the time they were alleged to have received and passed on classified information.

“Kiriakou was a government employee trained in the classification system who could appreciate the significance of the information he allegedly disclosed. Accordingly, there can be no question that Kiriakou was on clear notice of the illegality of his alleged communications.

Gerstein has summarized the hard news of the court ruling admirably, but there is a further story behind the sterile facts. By ruling the crucial issue of “intent” need not be proven by the accusing government, the court has literally removed a critical element of the charge and deemed it outside of the due process proof requirement, much less that of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

What does that mean? In a criminal prosecution, it means everything. It IS the ballgame.

And so it is here in the case of United States v. John Kiriakou. I am going to go a little further than Gerstein really could in his report, because I have the luxury of speculation. As Josh mentioned:

On Tuesday, Brinkema abruptly postponed a major motions hearing in the case set for Wednesday and a hearing set for Thursday on journalists’ motions to quash subpoenas from the defense. She gave no reason for canceling the hearings.

HELLO! That little tidbit is the everything of the story. I flat out guarantee the import of that is the court put the brakes on the entire case as a resultnof an off the record joint request of the parties to facilitate immediate plea negotiation. As in they are doing it as you read this.

There is simply no other reason for the court to suspend already docketed process and procedure in a significant case, much less do so without a formal motion to extend, whether by one party or jointly. That just does not happen. Well, it does not happen unless both parties talked to the court and avowed a plea was underway and they just needed the time to negotiate the details.

So, what does this mean for John Kiriakou? Nothing good, at best. Upon information and belief, Kiriakou was offered a plea to one count of false statements and no jail/prison time by the original specially designated lead prosecutor, Pat Fitzgerald. But the “word on the street” now is that, because the government’s sheriff has changed and, apparently, because Kiriakou made an effort to defend himself, the ante has been ridiculously upped.

What I hear is the current offer is plead to IIPA and two plus years prison. This for a man who has already been broken, and whose family has been crucified (Kiriakou’s wife also worked for the Agency, but has been terminated and had her security clearance revoked). Blood out of turnips is now what the “most transparent administration in history” demands.

It is a malicious and unnecessary demand. The man, his family, and existence are destroyed already. What the government really wants is definable precedent on the IIPA because, well, there is not squat for such historically, and the “most transparent administration in history” wants yet another, larger, bludgeon with which to beat the baby harp seals of whistleblowing. And so they act.

To date, there have been no reported cases interpreting the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), but it did result in one conviction in 1985 pursuant to a guilty plea. In that case, Sharon Scranage, a former CIA clerk, pleaded guilty for providing classified information regarding U.S. intelligence operations in Ghana, to a Ghanaian agent, with whom she was romantically involved. She was initially sentenced to five years in prison, but a federal judge subsequently reduced her sentence to two years. That. Is. It.

So, little wonder, “the most transparent administration in history” wants to establish a better beachhead in its fight against transparency and truth. John Kiriakou is the whipping post. And he is caught in the whipsaw….prosecuted by a maliciously relentless government, with unlimited federal resources, and reliant on private defense counsel he likely long ago could no longer afford.

It is a heinous position Kiriakou, and his attorneys Plato Cacheris et. al, are in. There are moral, and there are exigent financial, realities. On the government’s end, as embodied by the once, and now seemingly distant, Constitutional Scholar President, and his supposedly duly mindful and aware Attorney General, Eric Holder, the same moralities and fairness are also at issue. Those of us in the outside citizenry of the equation can only hope principles overcome dollars and political hubris.

Eric Holder, attorney general under President Barack Obama, has prosecuted more government officials for alleged leaks under the World War I-era Espionage Act than all his predecessors combined, including law-and-order Republicans John Mitchell, Edwin Meese and John Ashcroft.
….
“There’s a problem with prosecutions that don’t distinguish between bad people — people who spy for other governments, people who sell secrets for money — and people who are accused of having conversations and discussions,” said Abbe Lowell, attorney for Stephen J. Kim, an intelligence analyst charged under the Act.

The once and previous criticisms of John Kiriakou, and others trying to expose a nation off its founding tracks, may be valid in an intellectual discussion on the fulcrum of classified information protection; but beyond malignant in a sanctioned governmental prosecution such as has been propounded against a civilian servant like John Kiriakou who sought, with specificity, to address wrongs within his direct knowledge. This is precisely where, thanks to the oppressive secrecy ethos of the Obama Administration, we are today.

Far, perhaps, from the “hope and change” the country prayed and voted for in repudiating (via Barack Obama) the festering abscess of the Bush/Cheney regime, we exist here in the reality of an exacerbated continuation of that which was sought to be excised in 2008. Kiriakou, the human, lies in the whipsaw balance. Does John Kiriakou plead out? Or does he hold out?

One thing is certain, John Kiriakou is a man, with a family in the lurch. His values are not necessarily those of those of us on the outside imprinting ourselves on him.

If the government would stop the harp seal beating of Mr. Kiriakou, and at least let the man stay with his family instead of needlessly consuming expensive prison space, that would be one thing. But the senseless hammer being posited by the out for blood successor to Patrick Fitzgerald – Neil MacBride, and his deputy William N. Hammerstrom, Jr. – is scurrilous.

Rest assured, far from the hue and cry on the nets and Twitters, this IS playing out on a very personal and human scale for John Kiriakou while we eat, drink and watch baseball and football this weekend.


The Coordinated Leaky Drips In The White House

By:  Friday October 28, 2011 5:04 pm

As I’ve noted previously, there has been a hue and cry against the critical and untenable use, and abuse, of secrecy by the United States government. There has always been some abuse of the government’s classified evidence for political gain by various administrations operating the Executive Branch, but the antics of the Obama administration have taken the disingenuous ploy to a new art form.

Today, via Politico’s old fawning Washington DC gluehorse, Roger Simon, comes an unadulterated (sometimes x-rated) and stunningly tin eared and arrogant admission of what the Obama White House is all about, straight from the lips of Obama consigliere Bill Daley:

Rahm was famous for calling reporters, do you call reporters? I ask.

“I call; I’m not as aggressive leaking and stroking,” Daley says. “I’m not reflecting on Rahm, but I’m not angling for something else, you know? Rahm is a lot younger [Emmanuel is 51], and he knew he was going to be doing something else in two years or four years or eight years, and I’m in a different stage. I’m not going to become the leaker in chief.”

You’ve got others for that, I say.

“Yeah, and hopefully in some organized leaking fashion,” Daley says, laughing. “I’m all for leaking when it’s organized.”

Oh, ha ha ha, isn’t that just hilarious? Bill Daley, and the White House he runs, are all for leaking, history bears out even the most highly classified government secrets, and doing so in an organized pre-planned fashion, when it serves their little self-centric petty political interests. But god help an honest citizen like Thomas Drake who, after exhausting all other avenues of pursuit within the government, leaks only the bare minimum information necessary to expose giant government waste, fraud and illegality because he feels it his duty as a citizen.

For citizens like Tom Drake, the “most transparent administration in history” will come down on his head like a ton of nuclear bricks even when they embarrass themselves in so doing. But they are more than willing to exploit and leak to self serve their own interests. What is good for the king is not appropriate for the commoner.

In this regard, I wish to amplify point that Glenn Greenwald has previously made about the pernicious affect of this duplicitous use of classified information. Glenn said:

But the problem is much worse than mere execssive secrecy. Anyone who purports concern over the harmful leaking of classified information should look first to the Obama administration, which uses secrecy powers as a manipulative tool to propagandize the citizenry: trumpeting information that makes the leader and his government look good while  suppressing anything with the force of criminal law that does the opposite. Using secrecy powers to propagandize the citizenry this way is infinitely more harmful than any of the leaks the Obama administration has so aggressively prosecuted.

That is exactly right. It is not just that the government keeps unnecessary secrets from the public on information that is critical to their duties and responsibilities as citizens, it is that the self-serving selective leaking creates an intentionally fraudulent paradigm for the citizenry. It is not only manipulative, is fundamentally dishonest and duplicitous.

When the leaking is so selective and self-serving it is not just the people who are deceived, is the press they rely on as a neutral information conduit from which to make their opinions and determinations. The press then becomes little more than a hollow funnel for opportunistic and dishonest spin. We saw the effects of this in the case of Anwar Awlaki’s extrajudicial assassination, and have seen it again in the Scary Iranian Terrorist Murder ruse.

The last bastions against this pernicious practice are the press and courts. Until both start admitting how they are relentlessly gamed and played by the White House, there is little hope for change. And make no mistake, the press ratifies this pernicious conduct by lazily accepting such leaks and reporting without properly noting just how malignant the process is. It is all a joke to Bill Daley and Barack Obama, and the joke is on us.

PS: For a little more on the joy that is White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, see Digby today. And a fine dissertation of why Daley should be fired on the spot by Joan Walsh in Salon. I would only note that it is not just Rahm and Daley, it is the man who consistently brings this Chicago style heavy handed belligerence to the White House. Mr. Obama’s two Chiefs of Staff do not operate apart from him, they ARE him and his Presidency. The buck for this stops at the top.


Executive Nominations, Judicial Emergencies and Change in WH Counsel’s Office

By:  Thursday June 2, 2011 1:09 pm

Abby Philip and Josh Gerstein at Politico have an excellent piece up on the state of Executive Branch nominations in the Obama Administration.

It’s crunch time for the White House to get key executive branch jobs filled before the end of President Barack Obama’s first term.

Dozens of top posts in both the executive branch and the judiciary remain vacant, while some of those who started near the beginning of the administration are bailing out.

Nominees who aren’t confirmed by the Senate by the end of this year likely will become tangled in election-year politics, given Republican hopes of taking the White House, the Senate or both. If Obama wants a good shot at getting his nominees through this year, Hill veterans say, names need to reach the Senate by the summer recess.

Adding to the heightened urgency for action: Many of the unfilled posts deal with Obama’s major policy priorities, including financial regulatory reform, immigration and health care. Not coincidentally, those positions also are some of the most likely to become ensnared in partisan disputes.

Go read their full article, it is a good across the board discussion on nominees and where we stand in various areas of interest.

There are two areas of the Politico piece I want to draw attention to. The first is the critical importance of work and support by the White House for their nominees and the nomination process.

But one former official said much of the blame for the slow pace lies with the White House.

“A lot of fingers have been pointed at the Senate,” said Chase Untermeyer, who served as director of presidential personnel for President George H.W. Bush. “I always say that two-thirds of the job is on the executive side.”

Exactly. For one thing, it is hard for an administration to get a confirmation if it does not make nominations. Take federal judges for instance, for most of the past two years there have been around a hundred vacancies on the Circuit and District courts; Mr. Obama has rarely had nominees for more than half of them. This is simply federal administrative incompetence, and it takes a heavy toll Continue reading →


Will Issa’s Fired Spokesperson Expose How Politico “Wins the Morning”?

By:  Wednesday March 2, 2011 8:48 am

When news broke yesterday that Darrell Issa had fired his spokesperson, Kurt Bardella, for sharing emails with NYT reporter Mark Leibovich, I suggested,

I suspect Issa just fired his spokesperson because Issa cares more about staying in the good graces of Politico than NYT. #WinTheMorning

It was John Harris’ complaint that his reporters’ emails had been forwarded, after all, that pressured Issa to launch the investigation in the first place.

Yet, given the ferocity of this report on Bardella’s firing–with even Republicans predicting lasting damage to Issa’s work as Chair of the Oversight Committee–the pissing match between the NYT and Politico seems to be ongoing.

Some Republicans worry about the damage the affair could cause Issa’s work on the committee.

“Yes it could,” said one Republican staffer who has long known Bardella, when asked if this could affect the committee’s work. “Issa actually has a job to do. He needs the press and the public to trust him to be able to do that job effectively. He needs to hire someone the press trusts and can work with. If they don’t trust him, and in turn can’t reach the public and do his job effectively, well.”

Speaker John Boehner did not get directly involved in the situation, but his staff did contact Issa’s office on Monday night after the story broke.

“When he got here, Issa had an ego as big as California,” said another GOP lawmaker, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Then he got better for a while. Now, his ego has returned with a vengeance.”

For some reason, Politico is still pissed at Issa, even though he moved quickly to fire Bardella.

Ryan Lizza might have some answers as to what that reason might be. He reveals that Bardella was very open within the office–including Issa’s Chief of Staff–that he was sharing this information.

“Do the other folks in the office know?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Bardella said, and he gave me an example of the type of stuff he shares: “Here’s this inquiry I got from a reporter. Here’s what I said to my staff about it, here’s the story, here’s the e-mail I just got from so-and-so, another reporter who’s upset that I gave his story to [someone else].”

But the most important aspect of what Bardella might be sharing with the NYT, Lizza says, is the background to a Bardella quote he included in his profile on Issa’s publicity seeking.

[R]eporters e-mail me saying, “Hey, I’m writing this story on this thing. Do you think you guys might want to investigate it? If so, if you get some documents, can you give them to me?” I’m, like, “You guys are going to write that we’re the ones wanting to do all the investigating, but you guys are literally the ones trying to egg us on to do that!”

To me that last quote was one of the most important things Bardella told me. The rest of it—that offices clash over how to leak info and that bookers and reporters are competitive—is interesting but relatively well known, and not very relevant to a piece about Darrell Issa. But that Bardella accused reporters of offering to collaborate with Issa as he launches what will inevitably be partisan investigations of the Obama Administration seemed jaw-dropping.

Lizza suggests (though he doesn’t voice this explicitly) that Bardella may have shared evidence of this kind of collaboration between Politico and Issa’s staff with Leibovich.

So go back to this widely cited article on the massive investigations Issa purportedly wanted to do, and look at Mike Allen’s pitching of it in the video.

Issa won’t have a shortage of targets. He’s been hammering for better tracking of the stimulus and has a growing list of other investigative targets, including the housing meltdown and the bank bailout.

[snip]

Issa also is looking to dig into procurement and government contracting, and he seems sure to return to the Countrywide VIP program — which has subpoenaed records en route to the Capitol. He’s also got inquiries into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s role in the financial collapse. And with earmarks all but gone from the Capitol, Issa will turn his fire toward the White House and the far larger sums of cash controlled by the executive branch at a time of huge deficits.

“We really want to study presidential earmarks and the grant-making process: How do we take all this discretionary money and see what is necessary,” Issa said. “The debate on how to shrink the federal government is at the core of our problem of government not doing its job.”

And consider the possibility that all these investigations Jake Sherman (one of the bylined reporters of the story) and Allen “reported” Issa wanted to do were actually investigations that Politico was pushing Issa to do. (Allen’s and Sherman’s emails were the ones that John Harris complained about.) That is, consider the possibility–and this is just speculation, mind you–that all these investigations were suggested by Politico?

If Leibovich’s book were to show that Issa’s investigations were the product of collaboration with Politico, it would not just doom Issa’s hopes of being Obama’s nemesis, but it would expose Politico as the Republican operation it is.

Update: John Harris and Jake Sherman’s names fixed. And more coffee consumed.


The Politico Villagers Go Deer Hunting!

By:  Wednesday November 25, 2009 3:36 pm

elmer-fuddWell, this is exciting! Yesterday on Morning Joe on MSNBC, Mike Allen of Politico proudly announced that he, the managing editor at Politico, John Harris, and Politico executive editor Jim VanderHei all went on their first deer hunt Monday. And, according to Allen, they ALL bagged a large mammal from the Cervidae family.

In plain English, all three of these first time rookie deer hunters managed to take time off from chasing unnamed sources, get dressed, get out of town, track their prey, shoot and kill a real live deer. These are clearly some awesome American Sportsmen!

This would also mean they are such studs that they tracked and finalized the kill on each of the three deer, field cleaned their prey and transported the large carcasses out of the wilds, back to their vehicles, loaded and secured the bodies and drove out of the hunting fields. And they were all back safe and sound at home in time to get a night’s sleep and be in a studio at the crack of dawn to do Morning Joe! Astounding!

All it took was a few hours apparently. These guys must be damn good, because when I was younger, I used to deer hunt with three older men that were knock down dead eye pros, we went for 3-4 days at a time to open the season, and never had the kind of success that beginners Allen, VanderHei and Harris did in seemingly just a few short hours. My coonskin hat is off to all three of them; this is a truly impressive feat.

I am kind of shocked they didn’t run into Dick Cheney, kind of sounds like his type of “hunting” expedition. But, as Allen’s face did not have buckshot oozing from it, I guess not they did not encounter Deadeye Dick. I tried emailing and phoning the three intrepid hunters for more details of their safari, but they failed to return contact.

Fortunately, in an Emptywheel exclusive, we were able to obtain video of the grand hunt!