Pat Roberts' "10 Reasons Right Off" Not to Exercise Oversight Over Torture
Practically the first thing Pat Roberts did after he became Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee was to back down off nascent efforts Bob Graham had made as SSCI Chair to exercise real oversight over the torture program. That's one of…
Michael Hayden Lied to SSCI on April 12, 2007
The latest Ghost Detainee FOIA materials [long pdf] (for a general overview see this post) prove that Michael Hayden lied to the Senate on April 12, 2007.
One of the things included in this packet is a heavily redacted transcript of Hayden's…
Ghost Detainee FOIA Release
In the midst of all the excitement over the OPR release, there's an equally revealing FOIA release in CCR and Amnesty International's Ghost Detainee FOIA. I will do very detailed posts on each of the Memoranda for the Record included in this…
Toyota's "Wins for Toyota-Safety": $100 Million by Avoiding Finding the Acceleration Problem
The Toyota hearings this week--particularly Wednedsay's hearing featuring Akio Toyoda--are looking more and more devastating. The Detroit News reports that the House Oversight Committee has an internal Toyota presentation from last July boasting…
The Inherent Conflict Of Interest With DOJ's OPR And David Margolis
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bmazThe first, and most obvious, issue of conflict with OPR is that it places evaluation and resolution of ethical complaints against DOJ attorneys in the hands of the DOJ. The power to determine whether there is any impropriety is solely within the hands of those supervising and/or ultimately responsible for the impropriety. It is a process ripe with conflict and cronyism that protects DOJ malfeasants at the expense of the public interest and well being.
The Emails the Bush Lawyers Were So Worried About
As I noted yesterday (though I got the details slightly wrong), the OPR report revealed that a number of John Yoo and Patrick Philbin's emails had been deleted (and that Goldsmith's had been deleted but were subsequently recovered).
OLC initially…
OPR Working Thread Two
Happy Saturday.
Memorandum for the Attorney General
OPR Final Report (a searchable copy, courtesy of burnt, is here)
OPR 1st Draft Report (a searchable copy, courtesy of burnt, is here)
OPR 2nd Draft Report
Yoo Response to…
OPR Report Working Thread
A great way to spend a Friday night--reading this with all my friends!
Memorandum for the Attorney General
OPR Final Report
OPR 1st Draft Report
OPR 2nd Draft Report
Yoo Response to OPR 2nd Draft
Yoo Response to OPR…
DOJ Anthrax Report Working Thread
DOJ has posted its Anthrax Report and related documents.
The Justice Department, FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service today announced that the investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, which killed five individuals and sickened 17 others,…
Unsolved Anthrax Case to be Closed Today
Though DOJ will presumably insist that Ivins did it.
The FBI is expected to issue a final report today on its six-year investigation of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, according to the attorney representing former Frederick resident Bruce…
Toyota Pays Whitewash Firm to Produce UNBELIEVABLY Bad Whitewash
To get an idea of just how ridiculously bad the Toyota-funded study of its "sticky accelerator" problem is, you need only compare the 6 vehicles the contractor in question purchased to study, with the years and makes of vehicles Toyota has recalled.
Here…
Will Akio Toyoda Testify on Brakes?
As you may know, there are a slew of hearings scheduled next week to try to understand the Toyota brake problems. The head of Toyota (and grandson of the company founder) caused a bit of a stir yesterday when he tried to correct the mistaken…
UK Relations with Israel "in the Deep Freeze" over Dubai Assassination
Those JSOC guys doing America's assassinating better make sure they don't get caught using British passports. Because if the Brits' claimed anger at Israel for giving its Mossad killers UK passports is any indication, it would not help relations.
Britain…
Happy Stimulus Day to Susan Collins, Who Killed Billions in School Funding
ThinkProgress has an absolutely devastating report on 111 Republican members of Congress who have attacked last year's stimulus bill, but who have since taken credit for it. Click through for details on Republican hypocrisy close to you, but…
The FOUR OLC Opinions Retroactively Justifying Telecom Data Collection
Alright. I lied. I'm not going to post on why I think FBI went to the trouble of getting an OLC opinion that, apparently, opens a huge loophole in privacy protections from data collection until I first lay out all four OLC opinions that we know…
WaPo Retracts Report that Anwar al-Awlaki on CIA Kill List
As Steven Aftergood reports, the WaPo has issued a correction to Dana Priest's article claiming that Anwar al-Awlaki was added to the CIA's assassination list.
The article referred incorrectly to the presence of U.S. citizens on a CIA list…
Did Evan Bayh Quit Because Reid Refused to Give Paris Hilton a Tax Break?
In his statement explaining why he was quitting, Evan Bayh named the Harry Reid's decision not to let MaxTax Baucus and Chuck Grassley hold the jobs bill hostage as one of the reasons he does not like Congress.
Just last week, a major piece…
Big Brother Kidnapping Your Babies' DNA?
Because I was diagnosed with breast cancer at a really young age, doctors routinely ask if I want to undergo genetic testing. I've always responded that I'd be happy to give researchers DNA material, and even to arrange for other family members…
Why Did FBI Need the Exigent Letters OLC Memo? (Background Post)
Yesterday, I did a post on what the DOJ IG Report on "Exigent Letters" revealed about the January 8, 2010 OLC opinion exploiting some kind of huge loophole in the Stored Communications Act. Today, I'm going to look at why--three and a half years…
Why Did the FBI Need the Exigent Letters OLC Memo
Note: April 12, 2016: I accessed this today and because of some technical issues am not sure whether I published it back in 2010 or not. I'm republishing it dated to the day I wrote it in its apparently incomplete form.
I've been working…