Like Susie, I think this is a really cool idea.

Paul E. Steiger, who was the top editor of The Wall Street Journalfor 16 years, and a pair of wealthy Californians are assembling a groupof investigative journalists who will give away their work to mediaoutlets.

The nonprofit group, called Pro Publica, will pitcheach project to a newspaper or magazine (and occasionally to othermedia) where the group hopes the work will make the strongestimpression. The plan is to do long-term projects, uncovering misdeedsin government, business and organizations.

But I’m just as interested by the dilemma it will present traditional media: how will they assess this content? Cue Bill Keller making a typically idiotic comment that demonstrates what I mean:

Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, said The Timeswould be open to using work from an outside source, “assuming we wereconfident of its quality,” but that “we’ll always have a preference forwork we can vouch for ourselves.”

How is it that an entire industry of people paid to write and think critically cannot imagine how they would go about assessing the quality of a text they didn’t write themselves? How is it that Bill Keller, with a lifetime career in journalism, couldn’t look at an investigative article and assess whether it was great or was crap? How is that Bill Keller, who presided over Judy Miller’s demise and has been saddled with Michael Gordon’s credulous reporting of late, puts so much stock in the NYT’s ability to vouch for themselves the quality of journalistic work.

There’s an amusing line in Jonathan Landay’s article on the Bush Administration’s discovery that Vladimir Putin has no soul.

Bush and his aides "grossly misjudged Putin," considering him "agood guy and one of us," said Michael McFaul of Stanford University’sHoover Institution.

The former KGB officer created that illusionpartly by appearing to share Bush’s political and religiousconvictions, standard tradecraft employed by intelligence officers torecruit spies, he said.

"Putin . . . is a brilliant caseofficer," said Carlos Pasqual, a former senior State Departmentofficial now at The Brookings Institution, a center-left policyorganization in Washington.

What many experts regard as the realPutin — a hard-line, derisive Russian nationalist — was on displayFriday as he greeted visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice andDefense Secretary Robert Gates ahead of talks that failed to break theimpasses over missile defense and other key security issues.

Afterkeeping the U.S. officials waiting for 40 minutes, Putin mocked theirmission in front of reporters and television cameras. [my emphasis]

The suggestion, of course, is that wily Vladimir fooled the poor unsuspecting Bush cronies by misrepresenting who he was.

It’s a nice excuse, I guess. But IMO there is nothing that Putin is currently doing that isn’t utterly consistent with who he was in 2001, when Bush looking into his soul. What has changed is not Putin’s willingness to display his real personality. What has changed is the power dynamic in the relationship. In 2001, oil was cheap and Russia was weak. In later 2001, Putin recognized that the war on terror offered a remarkable opportunity to legitimize his Chechnya campaign, at least in some corners of the Western world. But as the Bush Administration tried to morph the war on terror into the "war to sustain our hegemony by dominating the Middle East" (at the expense of Russian relations with Iraq and the potential expense of Russian cooperation agreements on various issues with Iran), Russia no longer had an interest in playing along. Oh, and did I mention that Bush’s Middle Eastern war contributed to record oil prices, which served as a springboard for Putin’s resurgent authoritarianism?

So it wasn’t so much that Putin hid his true nature. Rather, it’s that the Bushies saw what they wanted to see, without bothering to inquire what was lurking beyond the view immediately in front of their face.

I know you have all been worried at my seeming recovery from my obsession with Ed Gillespie. But worry not–the dearth of Gillespie posts was mostly explained by my travel schedule (which gets really bad again this week, then gets better), and not any disinterest in the guy who took over after they fired Bush’s brain.

And this, I guess, is the kind of logic you get from the Lobbyist-in-Chief with which they replaced Bush’s brain, from this NYT article chronicling how glum Republicans are at their diminishing (political) fortunes.

At the White House, administration officials urged CongressionalRepublicans to try to remain positive and ride out the current turmoil.Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Mr. Bush, told the visitors,according to multiple accounts, that had Republicans sided withDemocrats on the health program, they would have opened themselves towithering criticism from conservatives and been in a worse positionthan they are now.

Let’s see… "had Republicans sided with Democrats" on the S-CHIP vote. I wonder how Representatives Tom Davis, Heather Wilson, and Don Young feel about that assertion, since they were among the 45 Republicans in the House who voted for S-CHIP? Perhaps it’s no accident that Tom Davis is one of the Republicans quoted as complaining about the Republican stance on S-CHIP.

“We need to be on offense,” said Representative Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican considering a Senate run.

Likewise, I wonder how Senators like Orrin Hatch and Kit Bond–and the 16 other Republicans who voted for S-CHIP–feel about Gillespie’s suggestion that Republicans didn’t side with Democrats on this bill. Last I checked, no one doubted that Orrin Hatch was a Republican, but I guess the Lobbyist-in-Chief knows better?

I’m also curious what Gillespie, who is himself Catholic, thinks about the campaign run by Catholics United, which is targeting 10 purportedly pro-life Representatives (including three in my heavily Catholic state!!) for their votes against S-CHIP. It seems to me that these 10 Representatives have "opened themselves to withering criticism from conservatives." But I guess that’s not the kind of conservative that the Lobbyist-in-Chief had in mind?

In short, Gillespie’s public accounting of the benefit that opposition to S-CHIP will have for the Republican party rings pretty hollow, if not outright false.

But I guess that’s why Carl Hulse received "multiple accounts" of Gillespie’s ridiculous comments?

That’s a way to make you feel good about blogging, huh? To be attacked by both Dick DeVos and KayBee Hutchison?

DeVos is suing 30 anonymous bloggers and YouTube users because he believes they are among a group for former distributors who sued Amway and were put under a gag order by the judge in the suit.

In the lawsuit filed this past week in Ottawa County Circuit Court,Quixtar seeks an injunction and damages of more than $25,000 againstthe posters, identified only as John Does.

[snip]

Quixtar believes the videos and other postings are part of anorganized effort by former distributors who unsuccessfully sued Alticorand are under court order not to disparage the company or discloseproprietary information, according to the lawsuit.

Quixtar plans to ask for permission to subpoena various onlinecompanies to figure out who posted the materials, spokesman Rob Zeigersaid.

According to the Grand Rapids Press, an Alticor representative saidthe court action was merely to identify anyone who might be associatingwith those under court order, rather than expressing their own personalopinions.

Zeiger told the paper that his company was not interested inpursuing people not associated with the former employees, and wouldeven reimburse their legal fees if there was no connection. "Anindividual who is expressing their own opinion, we don’t have a problemwith that," he said. "They’re not doing anything wrong."

I thought at first this might be an attempt to neutralize the power of anti-DeVos blogs, which had been really effective against him in the last governor’s election in MI. I need to see the complaint here, because I’m not sure the allegations made in the YouTubes actually relate to the failed lawsuit against Amway. So DeVos risks amplifying the blog material which appears like it may be factually correct: that is, that Amway’s online division Quixtar, sucks. (Full disclosure, I have a family member who was a Quixtar believer before he became a Southern Baptist.) That’d be nice, huh? If in pursuit of a bunch of people who tried to bust the pyramid scheme, DeVos actually informed more people that Amway is a big hoax?

KayBee Hutchison, for her part, is complaining about bloggersbecause–wait for it–they don’t follow the esteemed principles ofjournalistic ethics.

I did my big timeline yesterday to try to pin down how much of what we suspect to be the warrantless wiretap program started in early 2001, rather than post-9/11 as Bush has always claimed. As I pointed out in my timeline, it’s clear that Nacchio walked into the February 27 meeting expecting to talk about Groundbreaker. He remained willing to do Groundbreaker. But he was also asked to do something which he was unwilling to do.

My big question is: when did the access to the switches happen, when did the data mining of purportedly international data being, and when did the data mining of domestic data happen?

Let’s start with this comment from William Ockham, who knows a lot more about the telecom side of this than I.

First, I think Nacchio and Qwest objected to at least two differentovertures from NSA. In early 2001, I think the NSA asked them to dowhat AT&T did in San Francisco, set up a tap in to their fiberoptic backbone. In a sense, emptywheel is correct in saying that thisactivity was part of Groundbreaker. I think it would be more accurateto say that Groundbreaker was a cover for this activity. Qwest wouldhave objected on the grounds that FISA prohibited wire communicationinterception inside the USA, even if the communication was "foreign toforeign". Qwest was dumped from the Eagle Alliance (Groundbreakerconsortium) because it wouldn’t play ball.

After 9/11, the NSA came back and asked for "metadata" about theircustomers and Qwest refused based on the 1996 Telecommunications Act.This may have been the trigger for Nacchio’s prosecution (if oneassumes it was a selective prosecution).

Both of these illegal activities were precursors to the so-calledTSP. The fiber optic taps provided the means for interceptingcommunications world-wide and the customer activity data mining wasprovided the means for identifying the supposedly suspicions needles inthe haystack.

Now look at this statement Nacchio’s lawyer, Hebert Stern, issued after last year’s USA Today story; the statement exactly supports WO’s speculation.

In light of pending litigation, I have been reluctant toissue any public statements. However, because of apparent confusionconcerning Joe Nacchio and his role in refusing to make privatetelephone records of Qwest customers available to the NSA immediatelyfollowing the Patriot Act, and in order to negate misguided attempts torelate Mr. Nacchio’s conduct to present litigation, the following arethe facts.

In the Fall of 2001, at a time when there was noinvestigation of Qwest or Mr. Nacchio by the Department of Justice orthe Securities and Exchange Commission, and while Mr. Nacchio wasChairman and CEO of Qwest and was serving pursuant to the President’sappointment as the Chairman of the National Security TelecommunicationsAdvisory Committee, Qwest was approached to permit the Governmentaccess to the private telephone records of Qwest customers.

Mr.Nacchio made inquiry as to whether a warrant or other legal process hadbeen secured in support of that request. When he learned that no suchauthority had been granted and that there was a disinclination on thepart of the authorities to use any legal process, including the SpecialCourt which had been established to handle such matters, Mr. Nacchioconcluded that these requests violated the privacy requirements of theTelecommunications Act.

Accordingly, Mr. Nacchio issuedinstructions to refuse to comply with these requests. These requestscontinued throughout Mr. Nacchio’s tenure and until his departure inJune of 2002. [my emphasis]

In other words, the Administration made a request in fall 2001 for "access to the private phone records of Qwest customers." If Stern means "fall" at all literally, then this request came after 9/11–and it could well match the October 2001 time frame described for the start date of the warrantless wiretap program. Stern’s reference to the Telecommunications Act makes it clear that this data relates to domestic customers. Now, Stern is responding directly to the USA Today article that exposed the domestic aspect of this program, and which made the following specific comment about Qwest.

As the NYT broke the other day, General Michael Hayden is conducting an investigation of the CIA’s Inspector General, John Helgerson. Their first report on the story intimated the reason why Hayden was conducting such an unusual investigation.

A report by Mr. Helgerson’s office completed in the spring of 2004warned that some C.I.A.-approved interrogation procedures appeared toconstitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as defined by theinternational Convention Against Torture.

Some of the inspectorgeneral’s work on detention issues was conducted by Mary O. McCarthy,who was fired from the agency last year after being accused of leakingclassified information. Officials said Mr. Helgerson’s office wasnearing completion on a number of inquiries into C.I.A. detention,interrogation, and “renditions” — the practice of seizing suspects anddelivering them to the authorities in other nations.

Last year’s coverage of McCarthy’s firing strongly suggest her firing was related to her opposition to the CIA’s torture policies.

What a surprise! An attorney representing a Gitmo detainee and someone in Afghanistan has found "crossed lines" in his telephone connection (h/t scout prime).

A law firm that represents clients atGuantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan is warning its Vermont clientsthat it believes the federal government has been monitoring its phonesand computer system.

[snip]

A Verizon Vermont technician who investigatedproblems with Gensburg’s phone last month found crossed lines, butdidn’t explain what caused the problem, Sleigh said. A forensicexamination of Gensburg’s computer found an application that disabledall security software and would have given someone access to allinformation on the computer, Sleigh said.

“We’ve been told byour expert that nothing on their machines are confidential,” Sleighsaid. “We are continuing to see who, what, when and how this infectionwas installed on my client’s computer.”

Sleigh said it could be a routine infection introduced into the machine by e-mail.

“Giventhe phone situation, a number of another anomalies we’ve observed overtime… we think we have legitimate cause for concern,” Sleigh said.

Okay. I was joking. I’m not surprised, not in the least. But you think maybe those Senators thinking of giving the telecoms immunity for doing stuff like this might consider what they’re doing to the principle of attorney-client privilege?

Amanda marks the expiration of the PATRIOT Act appointees as USA.

These 11 prosecutors now “find themselves at the mercy of the same U.S. district courts that the Justice Department saw fit to cut out of the U.S. Attorney appointmentprocess last year.” The courts today will decide whether to reappointthese prosecutors who were handpicked by Gonzales and the White House.

Many judges and former U.S. attorneys believe that the federal courts today will be “less inclined than they have been in the past to rubber-stamping the attorney general’s interim picks.”

She’s following some of the same USAs as I am:

Jeff Taylor, DC. It’d be awfully nice to ensure that the USA overseeing DC would be willing to take a criminal referral from Congress or the DOJ IG. You know–just in case someone was held in contempt by Congress? But I’m not sure Taylor would do that. Unfortunately, the DC judges seem to like him anyway.

Early next month, a committee of active judges at the U.S. DistrictCourt for the District of Columbia will meet to discuss Taylor’sappointment, according to a spokesman for Chief Judge Thomas Hogan. Thelast time the judges convened for a U.S. Attorney appointment was inSeptember 2004, when they extended Kenneth Wainstein’s stay. Wainsteinmoved to the Justice Department’s National Security Division inSeptember 2006, and Taylor was appointed to replace him. He, too, isexpected to win the court’s OK, though Taylor’s nomination haslanguished in Congress for months.

"Mr. Taylor’s leadership has rendered a very positive effect onmorale," U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina says. "He has a reputationfor being fair-minded and progressive."

So we’re apt to be stuck with Taylor, who has little legitimacy, IMO.

Nelson Cohen, AK. Here’s where Amanda and I differ. Cohen was appointed to the detriment of Ted Stevens’ and Lisa Murkowski’s picks. You know, Ted Stevens, who is waiting patiently as the FBI investigates his every move? Personally, I’m surprised and relieved that AGAG’s DOJ appointed someone who would actually allow this investigation to proceed. But that appears to be what happened. The question is, can Stevens get to his home state judges to try to change this?

For me, that leaves two more USAs of interest. Matt Dummermuth, and George Cardona. You see, if there is a remaining USA who was fired we don’t know about it, it was in IA. Which would mean Dummermuth was more palatable than his predecessors.

And George Cardona? He’s the guy that AGAG spent a last minute appointment on–in the district that would prosecute Jerry Lewis, if things ever came to that. [Update from dday: Very cool–Cardona is gone. I hadn’t realized that when Lewis’ staffer got subpoenaed the other day.] Those are, IMO, the two fishiest of the USAs appointed under PATRIOT. I’m curious to see what becomes of them…

Hey. Remember when Duke Cunningham was a hero? Well, once you’re useless to the up-and-comers, that hero reputation dies a quick death (h/t chrisc).

Wade said the now-imprisoned congressman was so critical to securingmillions of dollars in federal contracts that defense contractors werewilling to act like they were his friends.

"We would dread having dinner with (Cunningham) and having to listen tohim repeat the same jokes," Wade told jurors in the same courtroomwhere Cunningham pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2006 to more thaneight years in prison for taking bribes.

I wonder if Wade is going to tell the jurors that Cunningham’s hot tub was filled with Potomac water, or that Cunningham used it, during parties, naked?

Of course, that only tangentially pertains to Wade’s task at hand, to incriminate Brent Wilkes sufficiently so his own sentence is lessened.

But I do hope Wade’s testimony might serve as a lesson to those other Congressmen Representative Flake hopes will be indicted for their earmarking ways. I think it’s this kind of humiliation, as much as anything else, that might serve as a deterrent for these people.

The documents made available by the RMN yesterday provide more details about what the NSA and other government agencies have been doing with fiber optic networks–but it’s still not exactly clear what those documents show. As a preliminary, I’m going to try to put the contents of this CIPA filing into a coherent chronology, to clarify some of the issues. The filing is what Nacchio submitted when the judge said his previous CIPA filing was not detailed enough, and it has a timeline going back to the late 1990s.

From reading the filing, I think (though I think others will disagree) that what Nacchio describes as Groundbreaker is at least the physical tap into switches that we know AT&T to have accomplished. That’s important, because Nacchio walked out of his meeting on February 27, 2001 willing to doGroundbreaker (at least the hardware side of it), but unwilling to do something else NSA requested at thatmeeting. Which means the telecom involvement goes beyond simply tappinginto the switches, and the switch-related aspect is not the troubling side of it.

The rest of this chronology just describes how Qwest has built several fiber optics networks for our intelligence agencies–potentially global in scale–that they claim are "impervious to attack." While it’s not clear whether these networks are connected up with public networks or not (GovNet, the proposed network for the government that got scotched with 9/11, was supposed to be private), it does raise the question of how much of these global networks are for communicating (that is, secure communication within an intelligence agency) and how much are for eavesdropping.

And boy, if I were the rest of the world, I’d be less than thrilled to know Qwest had build a redundant fiber optics network for US intelligence agencies throughout my country.

Here’s the timeline: