The Duke Cunningham case has always been to most interesting to me because it’s the one with the most money changing hands. And I don’t mean hooker and blow money, I mean Congressional appropriations. An optimist would think professional DoJ prosecutors are dragging these investigation on purpose to try and push the big decisions into January 2009 so they can bring them on a somewhat level playing field post-Gonzo. A pessimist would think a few old men do a bit of time, keep their mouths shut, and everyone continues to think the scandal is about a free boat.

PS: EW, I saw a photo of you from YKos on Spazeboy’s blog and you are in some interesting company in his post, George Lakoff and Joe Lieberman. I hope you feel better.

http://www.spazeboy.net/2007/0…..g-authors/

I wonder if those â€gut feelings†about another attack was part of the setup for pushing this crap through. As much as I am loath to admit it; I don’t think the Dems had much choice. If they had said no, I am convinced that an attack WOULD occur.

Pardon me, I am getting a transmission from that Major League Baseball satellite.

Through the eye slits in my tin foil helmet, I am seeing the Big Dick threatening to trigger a bomb in a Repug district with a â€made in Iran†sticker on it if he wasn’t allowed to keep spying on whomever he wants to. (If it was in a Democratic district, the 28per-centers wouldn’t care, Democratic voters will care as long as it’s PEOPLE being hurt).

Geeze, I can see the alarms going off in Crystal City from THAT comment.

Ooops! Big apologies..that comment was for another thread. Too many windows open.

The Chambers Pasadena 9th Circuit Courthouse is a wonderful old building and is often used for special cases and hearings, especially in the summer months. It is a favorite getaway rotation assignment for senior judges and judges spending most of the year in San Francisco.

Whatever it’s about there must be political embarrassment written all over it if they went to this much trouble to ’classify’ it.

EW, whether or not your theory pans out, Ludlum’s probably already lifted it for the plot of the next Bourne novel.

Feel better soon and send Ludlum a bill. He can afford to cut you in.

bmaz

Please let Rayne and I know on it. Now I’m intrigued.

EW and Rayne – Here is url for the public information from AZAG. There are several formal press releases, as I said the most recent is August of last year, and also the civil complaint filed to interplead the money. Combined, it gives a decent take on what happened here and why an Arizona state court is involved.

http://www.azag.gov/victims_ri…..index.html

If I can find anything else of note out, I will advise. I know Terry Goddard a bit, but now is not a good time of year to find him…

I think the only slightly germane but contemporary investigation of the embarrassing purge of US attorneys is unrelated to this thread, but there is somewhere an echo of commentary in a question Sen. Feinstein put to Atty Generl Gonzales toward the conclusion of the hearing in April Senate Judiciary trying to identify a linkage between mass firings and ongoing civil corruption investigations, link tucked away fifteen pages into WaPo’s copy of the CQ transcript, there. That degree of obliquity is about all DiFi would supply in a public venue like that. Search on ’civil corruption’; ew has covered that exchange in a prior thread. Yet, yesterday, as I read again of DiFi’s independent stand against the Judiciary Committee caucus of her own party, in voting to send the Southwick nomination to the full senate, I was reminded of her affonting Gonzales early in the US attorney scandal, specifically for the civil corruption aspect of the compromises Gonzales must have had to have made to allow the political purges to take place during his watch at DeptOfJustice. The money laundering business is a separate topic, one hopes; I wonder why anyone would bring Gonzales into the information loop if Dept of Justice were providing cover for money laundering; it seems incongruous, somehow, that Gonzales would have to know. I was thinking a few posts ago about the characterization in one of the threads there of compartmentalization of knowledge at Dept. of Justice during Ashcroft’s tenure, with respect to inspector general and security clearances denials. Well, perhaps, it is merely that unique and brash form of tinfoilery for which Chicago is known in an earthy way, which seems to create a linkage where there might be nothing. One could even ponder convention-goers enroute to the airport the morning after the conference ended, hearing only silence on their car radios yesterday; this is only a test.

BCCI anyone?

This is an old thread, so I’m taking my chances here, but I didn’t want to go O/T on the Doan thread upstairs. I just saw this question over at TPM posed by the 9th Circuit judges…

â€At the end of the hearing, the judges said they wanted more arguments from the newspaper and the government on a key question: Can members of the executive branch of government – such as federal prosecutors – declare records generated by the judicial branch as “classifiedâ€?â€

My question for our resident lawyers is this… Federal prosecutors are in the executive branch, yet their work carries over into the judicial branch (by being involved in the court proceedings). At what point does a document cross over from being executive (from the prosecutors) to judicial (from the court)? For example, lets say I write an incriminating letter that the prosecutors gather as evidence (at this point, is it an executive document?) but later that letter appears as evidence in the court proceedings (so is it now a judicial document?). Where exactly is the dividing line? This is a distinction I hadn’t considered before, but now my curiosity is piqued..

What other types of records might there be that prosecutors would be trying to classify in a court setting — I assume it must be evidence, but could there be other types of documents that would be relevant to this discussion as well?

Jiminy Phred, I can’t answer that question very satisfactorily. There are to many variables that either would, or at a minimum could, affect the consideration. Who/what was the originator of the document/evidence? What setting was it originated in? What chain of custody exists to confirm authenticity? How did law enforcement or the prosecutors come into possession of it? What was the format and forum it was presented to the court in? Was it ever not secret, or has that status been consistent? What is the relative harm from it being part of the public record? I could go on…

In response more pertinent to the Kontogiannis matter, it is my understanding that the transcripts were part of the court record and were either made public, or were about to be made public, without particular objection and then there was a sudden objection at the last minute. In my simple mind, it is, in this case, at this point, a court determination. The govt. through the US atty can argue their position for sealing/secrecy, but it is a judicial determination that carries the day. I would need to read all the pleadings etc to give a decent answer; but that is my wild shot from the hip take. My guess is that cboldt is a little more up to speed than i am, and I would be interested in his take

Pleadings can be classified too – where the facts used to support the arguments can’t effectively be separated from the argument.

Affidavits making specific allegation of a connection between disclosing a (specific) fact and harm to national security are invariably sealed.

I’ve been digging around a bit on the possibility of the NYT having violated a leak publication statute (18 USC 798(a)(3)), and have run into a number of cases where various government agencies, usually in FOIA context, argue specifically why certain information is being withheld.

The most interesting cases presently cooking are the detainee and NSA data-mining (collection of 100% of call records – having access to 100% of transmission contents) cases. Those tend to bottom out on state secret.

Courts are supposed to be impartial by nature, but they have to respect the right of the executive to maintain classified information.

How that plays in practice is extremely variable. I think trying to view â€judicial†as equivalent to â€public†doesn’t work very well, except that in order to preserve the impression of impartiality, the court are biased toward disclosure.

In some cases, where the government chooses to keep evidence out of a case for secrecy reasons, the court will find the omission to work in the favor of the defendant. See Halkin v. Helms, 690 F.2d 977 (D.C. Cir. 1982)

So, given the fact that recently a court (I forget which one) threw out a complaint against the government regarding spying because the complainants could not prove they had standing, this suggests if the tables were turned and the government was prosecuting based on information obtained without a warrant, the defense could build their case on the assumption that spying had occurred, whether or not the government fessed up to having done so. Very interesting indeed!

– if the tables were turned and the government was prosecuting based on information obtained without a warrant, the defense could build their case on the assumption that spying had occurred –

That scenario, government as prosecutor (unlike Halkin, government as defendant), has potential resolution in several directions. The detainee cases are a great window into this.

In one direction, the evidence is just not admitted or used by the prosecution. See Padilla, no dirty bomber charge, no dirty bomber evidence.

In the most common direction, the evidence is admitted via CIPA. The Moussaui case is the most prolific example of this.

Whether or not evidence will be precluded on fourth amendment (search not reasonable) or, if warrantless, an â€it wasn’t obtained where foreign intelligence was a purpose of the surveillance†argument, will be totally fact-specific inquiries. The courts tend to let in enough information so the judge or jury has sufficient basis to reach a conclusion – usually â€guilty.†That is, the precluded evidence is surplussage, useful perhaps, but not necessary to find for the prosecution.

I read a recent law review on the defendant being excluded from hearing evidence against him. That’s pretty extreme, but not a â€never happened†scenario.

And in yet another direction, the case is taken to a military court, where the rules and presumptions are shifted to favor the prosecution … â€guilty until proven innocent,†basically, but can be played out on individual elements of evidence.

And to take it one step further, in a traditional criminal setting, if i was sure there was secret evidence that the prosecution refused to use (as opposed to having been precluded for some reason by the court), and I thought it could be played to my client’s favor, I would make vague hints in opening argument, ask a couple of spurious questions here or there during examination for seeding purposes, and then scream holy murder about it in closing argument. And yes, I have actually done it on several occasions. It is a fine line because if you play such a hand to heavy to early, the court will shut your effort down, either on the governments(prosecutor’s) motion, or on the court’s own motion.

I suspect (along with others here that)all of this secrecy surrounding the Kontogiannis hearing has to do with protecting something quite huge.

Maybe it’s the key to the whole unraveling…

In 1993, (Mitchell)Wade, then 40 years old, moved to form his own defense contracting firm, MZM, Inc. But it wasn’t until 2002 that MZM would get its first federal government contract: a peculiar one-month, $140,000 contract from the White House, later revealed to be for providing computers, office furniture, and specialized computer programming services to the Office of the Vice President.(bold emphasis mine).link.

Now what do you suppose those ’special computer programming services’ consisted of? Spying perhaps? Most news reports list the services MZM provided the VP’s office as ’furniture and computers’. not really the same thing at all.

Has the administration/Cheney been doling out the NSA spying/wiretapping contract work to private cronies? Wouldn’t put it past them.

I’ve always suspected that the DOJ attorney firing scandal was not only about the politicization aspect (Rove’s work), but also the less-publicized, stuff about the Lam investigation; that part sure did drop out of the spotlight…and Jerry Lewis (chairman of Appropriations Committee)still holds that post, does he not?

Carol Lam was targeting Rep Jerry Lewis in addition to Duke Cunningham. Anyone know what’s up with the Lewis investigation since Lam’s ouster?
Debra Yang is now carefully tucked away as a partner in the law firm defending Lewis…so what happened to Lam’s unfinished investigation?

I’m not expressing myself as succincly as most of you here do, so I’ll not ramble further.
There just aren’t enough hours in the day…

You speak of Kontogiannis and Kontiagiannis. Which is it?