That’s not exactly what this article says–but it’s close. The NSA–our nation’s most effective spy agency–is going to adopt major new duties in policing our public internets.

In a major shift, the National Security Agency is drawing up plans fora new domestic assignment: helping protect government and privatecommunications networks from cyberattacks and infiltration byterrorists and hackers, according to current and former intelligenceofficials.

[snip]

The plan calls for the NSA to work with the Department of HomelandSecurity and other federal agencies to monitor such networks to preventunauthorized intrusion, according to those with knowledge of what isknown internally as the "Cyber Initiative." [my emphasis]

Note the sources and level of classification and the implications of this move.

Details of the project arehighly classified.

[snip]

Current and former intelligence officials, including several NSAveterans, warned that the agency’s venture into domestic computer andcommunications networks — even if limited to protecting them — couldraise new privacy concerns.

[snip]

"If you’re going to do cybersecurity, you have to spy on Americans tosecure Americans," said a former government official familiar with NSAoperations. "It would be a very major step."

[snip]

A former senior NSA official said the difference between monitoringnetworks in order to defend them and monitoring them to collectintelligence is very small.

The former officials spoke on condition of anonymity to protect relationships with intelligence agencies. [my emphasis]

I’m guessing George Bush is going to be at least as pissed about this story getting out as he was pissed about the hospital confrontation story getting out. They’re planning to spy on Americans, this is a big new deal, and they’re not actually telling us about it.

Every time I see mention of the Jena 6, I can’t help but think of Clarence Thomas’ single most positive contribution of his tenure on SCOTUS, as brought to you by Dahlia Lithwick.

Out of nowhere booms the great, surprising "Luke-I-am-your-father"voice of He Who Never Speaks. Justice Clarence Thomas suddenly asks aquestion and everyone’s head pops up and starts looking madly around,like the Muppets on Veterinarian Hospital. "Aren’tyou understating the effects … of 100 years of lynching?" he booms."This was a reign of terror, and the cross was a sign of that. … Itis unlike any symbol in our society. It was intended to cause fear,terrorize." [my emphasis]

I presume Justice Thomas might say the same thing about three nooses.

Kudos to Spencer Ackerman for FOIAing the rationale behind General Petraeus’ Magic September numbers out of the military. Generally, Ackerman explains that the numbers for sectarian violence don’t count attacks on same sect people or on the Iraqi government.

Interestingly, attacks against "same-sect civilians," U.S. forces, theIraqi government or Iraqi security forces "are excluded and not definedas sectarian attacks." So even though Sunni insurgent groups loathe theShiite-controlled government, insurgent attacks on it aren’t consideredsectarian violence.

And he notes that the kind of violence that is quickly homogenizing Baghdad’s neighborhoods–executions, murders, and kidnapping–may not count either, if the Shiite officials doing the counting don’t want it to count.

For executions, murders and kidnappings — situations in whichsectarianism may be difficult to determine — MNF-I says it uses "hostnation" reporting in addition to its own. Many media andnon-governmental organizations consider information on casualtiesreleased by the Iraqi ministries to be self-serving, misleading orcontradictory.

Some important kinds of violence aren’t included in this total: as Ackerman points out, Sunni attacks on Shiite policemen wouldn’t count, organized Shiite violence that the government likes to pretend is policing doesn’t count, and Shiite-Shiite violence, which is increasing in the South, doesn’t count.

That’s part of the gimmick of calling this ethno-sectarian violence, I guess, rather than just labeling it a civil war.

Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright have the most comprehensive story, to date, on the mysterious bombing run Israel did in Syria on September 6. They confirm the story that had been floating around–that Israel’s target was a suspected nuclear site, supplied by North Korea. The story is interesting mostly for the exchange of intelligence it portrays. The Israelis first came with intelligence, yet Bush was chill to the attack.

Israel’s decision to attack Syria on Sept. 6, bombing a suspected nuclear site set up in apparent collaboration with North Korea, came after Israel shared intelligence with President Bush this summer indicating that North Korean nuclear personnel were in Syria, U.S. government sources said.

The Bush administration has not commented on the Israeli raid or theunderlying intelligence. Although the administration was deeplytroubled by Israel’s assertion that North Korea was assisting thenuclear ambitions of a country closely linked with Iran, sources said, the White Houseopted against an immediate response because of concerns it wouldundermine long-running negotiations aimed at persuading North Korea toabandon its nuclear program.

But then the US corroborated the Israeli intelligence, and the attack went forward.

Ultimately, however, the United States is believed to have providedIsrael with some corroboration of the original intelligence beforeIsrael proceeded with the raid, which hit the Syrian facility in thedead of night to minimize possible casualties, the sources said.

The article raises doubts about the quality of the Israeli intelligence (and who knows whether our intelligence–supposedly used to corroborate the Israeli intelligence–has gotten any better since the Iraq debacle).

The quality of the Israeli intelligence, the extent of North Koreanassistance and the seriousness of the Syrian effort are uncertain,raising the possibility that North Korea was merely unloading items itno longer needed.

Something’s still stinky about this raid. The creepy silence on all parts suggests there was some there there–but perhaps not what Israel claimed it was. I’m actually wondering whether it doesn’t involve a fifth player–perhaps China–that no one is talking about.

 

I joked earlier that the Administration had requested FISA be expanded so that Monica Goodling could make FISA certifications.

I’ll come back to his summary of the extra goodies the Administrationis requesting (the short version: they want to make it impossible forany case relating to wiretapping to go through normal courts, and theywant to expand the universe of people who can make FISA certificationsto include Monica Goodling non-Senate approved people the President designates).

That was based on this language from Wainstein’s testimony.

Section 404 also would increase the number of individuals who can make FISA certifications. Currently, FISA requires that such certifications be made only by senior Executive Branch national security officials who have been confirmed by the Senate. The new provision would allow certifications to be made by individuals specifically designated by the President and would remove the restriction that such individuals be Senate-confirmed. As this committee is aware, many intelligence agencies have an exceedingly small number of Senate confirmed officials (sometimes only one, or even none), and the Administration’s proposal would allow intelligence agencies to more expeditiously obtain certifications.

I thought I was being pretty funny. Until I read this, from Spencer Ackerman.

Hey! Howie Kurtz has decided to do some reporting!!

He has two pieces on the Dan Rather lawsuit today. In a piece based on an interview of Rather, he notes that Moonves and Heyward demanded Rather resign the day after Bush was re-[s]elected.

Rather insisted to reporters on Nov. 23, 2004, that his decision tostep down as anchor the following spring was entirely voluntary. Butyesterday he said Heyward and Moonves, the CBS chairman, had called hisagent 20 days earlier — the morning after Bush’s reelection — andsaid that he had to relinquish the chair immediately. Rather wound upstaying until March 2005, which he says is close to the time he hadplanned to step down anyway.

So apparently, now we’re making continued employment for journalists based on who is President?

In an earlier piece, Kurtz reveals why Rather decided to sue. Rather investigated the PI who was purportedly hired to complete the investigation of Bush’s record. And he discovered that the PI was actually out investigating him and Mapes–and had determined the documents to be authentic.

Asked why Rather would sue more than a year after leaving CBS, Goldsaid the former anchor was "a bit appalled" at new information he saidhad emerged involving a private investigator, Erik Rigler, who washired by the network during the 2004 controversy. Rigler, a former FBI agent, "was trying to dig up dirt on Dan and Mary Mapes," Gold said, declining to elaborate.

When CBS came under fire over the story, Gold said, Rather told Heywardhe wanted to hire an investigator at his own expense, but Heywardresponded that CBS would retain such a person. Gold said, again withoutproviding evidence, that Rigler concluded that the Guard memos wereauthentic and the story accurate. He was interviewed by theThornburgh-Boccardi panel, which accused Rather and CBS of a "myopiczeal" to rush the story to air five days after obtaining the disputedpapers.

Reached by phone, Rigler declined to comment last night.

And in Kurtz’ later piece, Rather explains a little more about Rigler.

Here Rather wades deep into the weeds, talking about how a privateinvestigator he hired dug up information on a "mystery man" — an ex-FBI agentretained by CBS to look into the story once it came under fire. Rathersaid the network ignored this consultant’s allegedly supportivefindings and more recently, accused the former anchor of "harassing"the man.

In the aftermath of the 2004 segment, Rather said, he wanted to keepinvestigating the Guard story himself, but CBS executives "shut itdown." CBS, for its part, was trying to obtain an independentassessment at a time when Rather’s reporting was under attack.

For Howie Kurtz, "deep in the weeds" generally means "Howie doesn’t understand."

So here’s what appears to have happened: Rather told CBS he was going to pay for an investigation himself. Instead, CBS paid this guy Rigler to do so. Since then, Rather has hired his own PI (PI squared, as it were),

He said he hired "a team of people," with "money out of my own pocket,"to investigate CBS’s handling of the story that led to his downfall asanchor.

…Who discovered certain things about Rigler: that he basically found the documents to be authentic, that he told the committee investigating the story as much, but that somehow that never made the report. Oh–and just as important–that Rigler was investigating Rather and Mapes.

Elsewhere, Rather talks about doing this to get people under oath. I’m wondering whether he’s thinking of Rigler … or Moonves.

Anonymous Liberal found the Wainstein testimony I said I was going to go look for. I’ll come back to his summary of the extra goodies the Administration is requesting (the short version: they want to make it impossible for any case relating to wiretapping to go through normal courts, and they want to expand the universe of people who can make FISA certifications to include Monica Goodling non-Senate approved people the President designates).

But for the moment, I wanted to point to how downright welcoming of oversight the Administration has gotten–now that they want something from Congress.

Because we appreciate the need for regular and comprehensive reporting during the debate of renewal of this authority, we are committing to substantial reporting beyond that required by the statute. As we explained in our September 5, 2007, letter, we will provide the following reports and briefings to Congress over the course of the six-month renewal period:

• we will make ourselves available to brief you and your staffs on the results of our first compliance review and after each subsequent review;
• we will make available to you copies of the written reports of those reviews, with redactions as necessary to protect critical intelligence sources and methods;
• we will give you update briefings every month on the results of further compliance reviews and generally on our use of the authority under section 105B; and,
• because of the exceptional importance of making the new authority permanent and of enacting the remainder of the Administration’s proposal to modernize FISA, the Department will make appropriately redacted documents (accommodating the Intelligence Community’s need to protect critical intelligence sources and methods) concerning implementation of this new authority available, not only to the Intelligence committees, but also to members of the Judiciary committees and to their staff with the necessary clearances.

As I stated above, we already have completed the first compliance review and are prepared to brief you on that review whenever it is convenient for you. [my emphasis]

In other words, all that stuff that the Administration swears Congress can’t have going back to when the warrantless wiretap program was implemented? Well, going forward, Congress can have those things! Not a problem! In fact, we’ll do it at Congress’ convenience.

If it’s so fucking easy to brief Congress, I say we make precisely these reviews part of the ongoing process. About the ongoing program–and about the past.

Argentine meltdown, here we come. The Saudis are showing signs of disinterest in going down the economic tubes with their friend George.

Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the USFederal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulfkingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move thatrisks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.

"This is a very dangerous situation for the dollar," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas.

"SaudiArabia has $800bn (£400bn) in their future generation fund, and theentire region has $3,500bn under management. They face an inflationarythreat and do not want to import an interest rate policy set for therecessionary conditions in the United States," he said.

TheSaudi central bank said today that it would take "appropriate measures"to halt huge capital inflows into the country, but analysts say thispolicy is unsustainable and will inevitably lead to the collapse of thedollar peg.

As a close ally of the US, Riyadh has so far tried to stick to the peg, but the link is now destabilising its own economy. [my emphasis]

As Susie points out, one of the goals of the Iraq invasion was to punish Iraq for pegging its currency to the Euro, which made Saddam a pretty penny until BushCo came and took his country away. Iran had been threatening to switch its oil trade to its own currency exchange. The idea was that if we came in and 1) scared the shit out of anyone considering a Euro or non-dollar peg and 2) sat on some of the biggest undeveloped reserves, we would be able to sustain the dollar peg past the time when the world needed it for stability. Guess that didn’t work out so well.

And now our closest "allies" look to be the ones who will precipitate the move away from the dollar peg for the oil market. That’s going to give the rest of the world a whole lot less incentive to keep their reserves in dollars, which is going to mean we’re no longer going to be able to float George Bush’s debt with 2 billion dollars a day in loans from Asia.

The whole American economy is a gigantic house of cards at this point, and it may take nothing more than one slight breeze to bring it all down. Bernanke’s interest cut may have been that breeze.

I criticize Mikey Isikoff a lot, but I’m very grateful for this story, via Laura Rozen. Isikoff and Hoseball reveal that the telecom industry is launching a full court press to get Congress to give telecoms immunity for having broken the law in helping Bush spy on Americans.

The nation’s biggest telecommunications companies, working closely withthe White House, have mounted a secretive lobbying campaign to getCongress to quickly approve a measure wiping out all private lawsuitsagainst them for assisting the U.S. intelligence community’swarrantless surveillance programs.

Though Isikoff and Hosenball don’t mention that our government has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of AT&T, they do provide a list of some of the people who are participating in this campaign.

Among those coordinating the industry’s effort are two well-connectedcapital players who both worked for President George H.W. Bush: Verizongeneral counsel William Barr, who served as attorney general under 41,and AT&T senior executive vice president James Cicconi, who was theelder Bush’s deputy chief of staff.

[snip]

Working with them are a battery of major D.C. lobbyists and lawyers whoare providing "strategic advice" to the companies on the issue,according to sources familiar with the campaign who asked not to beidentified talking about it. Among the players, these sources said:powerhouse Republican lobbyists Charlie Black and Wayne Berman (whorepresent AT&T and Verizon, respectively), former GOP senator andU.S. ambassador to Germany Dan Coats (a lawyer at King & Spauldingwho is representing Sprint), former Democratic Party strategist andone-time assistant secretary of State Tom Donilon (who representsVerizon), former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick (whose law firmalso represents Verizon) and Brad Berenson, a former assistant WhiteHouse counsel under President George W. Bush who now representsAT&T.

Let me add to the list. Inside the oval office, we have former top lobbyist for AT&T, Ed Gillespie. In DOJ, we now have AT&T lawyer, Peter Keisler. At Director of National Intelligence, we’ve got former Director of Defense Programs at Booz Allen. The telecoms and other contractors have almost as much representation in this Administration as the oil companies do.

Isikoff and Hosenball reveal one more detail that I think might explain the real reason for the panic, assuming bmaz’ arguments are correct.

Wainstein also said that a telecom company’s overseas assets could bethreatened if its collaboration in U.S. espionage efforts wereconfirmed in a court case.

I’m going to try to look for Wainstein’s comments–but it makes sense. In the 1990s, as the world was moving from analog to digital, the United States conveniently rewired backbones to go through the United States. Which, from the perspective of every other country in the world, is a tremendous security risk–it basically just gives the US direct access to the communications of that country (not that we weren’t taking it anyway, but this makes things a lot comfier for US’ snoops, who can sit in the spy room in San Francisco with a Peet’s Coffee while they read email in French). I’m sure every other country is aware of this, now (and probably was before). But publicity about the exposure of other countries to US government snoops is going to make it a lot harder for US telecoms to do business in other countries.

Atrios points out that the Euro has just pushed past $1.40.

Let’s see. In the last two days, the Fed has cut interest rates by half a point, making what is probably a futile attempt to staunch the subprime crisis. And yesterday, Henry Paulson asked Congress to raise the debt limit before we once again hit our debt limit on October 1–which will make the fifth time Bush has had to ask his creditors to increase his credit card balance.

Is anyone surprised the dollar is at record lows? Good thing my brother-in-law’s wife is having a baby in South Carolina, which means the Irish in-laws will visit the states more frequently. Because Europe is going to be much too expensive for people from banana republics like the Bush-era USA.

Update: Oh jeebus. As Lurcher points out, the Canadian dollar is hovering around parity with the US dollar.