[See the update below]

I never did comment on the FISC order for more briefing on the question of whether it–the Court–should turn over to the ACLU the Court’s decisions ruling parts of the warrantless wiretap program illegal. 

While the order is signed by the Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, I had a deja vu of the request Judge Walton (who joined the FISC about mid-way into the events that the ACLU hopes to reveal with its motion to unseal these orders) made inviting the parties in the Scooter Libby trial to submit briefs about whether or not Libby’s sentence could be legally commuted if he had never served a day of jail time. It was as if, having seen the results of a lot of hard work disappeared instantaneously, Walton was hoping someone would find a way to negate that process.

The FISC is in a similar position. After two unfavorable rulings, the Administration has decided to take its toys and go home; the amendments to FISA basically turn the FISC into a rubber stamp for the Administration. So the Court’s call for more briefing seems like a hopeful attempt to restore the quaint separation of powers mandated by the Constitution.

At any rate, I’m wondering whether the FISC’s efforts to restore that balance will once again fall victim to the Administrations pre-emptive temporal jujitsu. The deadlines the Court set for briefs were:

Administration response: August 31, 2007

ACLU reply: September 14, 2007

Yet today’s WaPo reports that the Administration has a deadline, today, that they’re going to miss.

In a post on the $80,000 settlement BushCo had to pay for ejecting two people wearing an anti-Bush (that is, pro-America) t-shirt from a presidential rally, Pam Spaulding links to the Advance Manual used to prepare for such presidential rallies; the government turned over a very heavily redacted copy of the Manual during the suit. The Manual makes for intriguing reason for those who have gotten bored with Orwell, in particular the description of the "rally squads"–college/young Republicans,  local athletic teams, or sororities/fraternities–recruited to drown out the voices of anti-Bush attendees. I don’t mean to suggest Democrats don’t contest negative messages in the same way. But please. Call them something besides "rally squads." (I may be particularly sensitive because, after I consistently kept the ultimate team up very late on a tournament trip once, and after he learned that my mother’s maiden name resembles "rally," mr. emptywheel dubbed me the "rally captain" for the rest of that season.)

But I noticed something else interesting about the manual. As is normal for a document redacted by the government, each of the redactions is marked as such (though the government did not provide explanations for the redactions). Except in one case:

…Covering the story…

Not surprisingly, when David Gregory had Karl Rove on Meet the Press this morning, he never called Rove on any of Rove’s misrepresentations. That’s par for the course, on NBC. When Russert had Bob Novak on, he didn’t call him on any of the misrepresentations, either. (Though to NBC’s credit, they had Matt Cooper on to smack Karl around after Karl was gone.) Of course, both Russert (as Libby’s fictional source for Plame’s identity) and Gregory (as one of the people whom Ari Fleischer leaked Plame’s identity to) are key players in this story. They’re not exactly reporting from a position of comfort or clarity.

So it falls to me to do what Gregory ought to have done while he had Karl in front of him. Here’s the transcript, with my annotations:

MR. GREGORY:  Let me talk about the CIA leakcase, of which you were obviously a, a central part.  This is what thepresident said in 2003 after the identity of Valerie Plame was divulgedin a Robert Novak column.  Watch.

(Videotape, September 30, 2003)

PRES. GEORGE W.BUSH:  If there’s a leak out of my administration, I want to know whoit is.  And if the person has violated laws, that person will be takencare of.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: Robert Novak, who divulged Valerie Plame’s name in his column, appearedon this program with Tim Russert back in July, and Tim asked about hisbook.  Watch.

(Videotape, July 15, 2007)

MR. RUSSERT: Then you go on to say, in the book, “Senior White House adviser KarlRove returned my call late that afternoon [July 8^th, 2003],”the same day.  “I mentioned I had heard that Wilson’s wife worked atthe CIA in the counterproliferation section and that she had suggestedWilson be sent to Niger.  I distinctly remember Rove’s reply, ‘Oh, youknow that, too.’ Rove and I also discussed other aspects of Wilson’smission, but since he never has disclosed them publicly, neither haveI.” So you considered Rove’s comments, “Oh, you know that, too,” as aconfirmation?

MR. ROBERT NOVAK:  Yes.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY:  Were you a confirming source for Robert Novak?

Note, Gregory didn’t focus on the Administration’s earlier claims that Karl was not involved in the leak. Rather, he sets the bar higher, with Bush’s quote that he would "take care of" (and how–can you say commutation?) anyone who "violated laws."

MR. ROVE:  No. And I, I remember it slightly differently.  I remember saying, “I’veheard that, too.” Let, let me say this.  There is a civil lawsuit filedby Mr. Wilson and Ms. Plame.  It has been tossed out at the districtcourt level.  They’ve announced their intention to appeal.  I think itis better that I not add anything beyond what is already in the publicrecord until that suit is resolved.  But, as I’m—my recollection isthat I said, “I heard that, too.” We—I would point you to…

MR. GREGORY:  Where, where had you heard that?

Ah, the ongoing legal proceedings dodge. You’d think, at a minimum, Gregory would have pushed Rove for a commitment to come clean after the dismissal is held up on appeal.

But the more important question would be, "Karl, that line, ‘I’ve heard that too,’ exactly parallels the line that Scooter Libby claims to have used with journalists, that he had simply ‘heard this news from journalists.’ Is it just a freakish coincidence that your story about your involvement in this leak so perfectly resembles Libby’s story–a story that a jury has already determined to be a deliberate lie?"

MR. ROVE:  You’ll have to wait.

MR. GREGORY:  Butthat’s an important distinction, because the—you—“I heard that, too,”suggests that you heard it from somebody else rather than knowing ityourself.

MR. ROVE:  That’s correct.

MR. GREGORY:  But he, he took those notes down just as you said them.

Notes? Novak has notes? In spite of the fact he has in the past Novak said he didn’t have notes?

MR. ROVE:  Well,but I—my recollection is, “I’ve heard that, too.” So—but the point is,if, if, if a journalist had said to me, “I’d like you to confirm this,”my answer would have been, “I can’t.  I don’t know.  I’ve heard that,too.”

Again, the appropriate follow-up would be, "There you are again, Karl, a story that perfectly mirrors Libby’s felonious perjury." And this–not later, after Karl has safely hidden in his dark little world–would be the appropriate time to raise the fact that Rove leaked this information to Cooper with no caveats.

Pow wow linked to this Jonathan Alter article that provides invaluable background to selise’s diary describing how the FISA amendment vote went down in the House. Here’s how selise chronicles the events of August 3:

Friday, Aug 3, 2007 (floor summary)

At 1:19 PM the House took up H.Res. 600 and it was passed (228-196) at 5:14 PMafter heated debate. In the midst of that debate, it finally emergedthat the FISA bill to be considered if made in order by passage ofH.Res. 600, would be H.R. 3356. (see congressional record pages H09663-H09675)

At 5:11 PM, Spencer Ackerman of TPM reports, "Bush Nixed Dem-DNI FISA Deal"

At 7:20 PM, John Conyers moved “to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3356).” After debate, H.R.3356 failed at 8:58 PM by a vote of 218 in favor, and 207 opposed after debate. (see congressional record pages H09685-H09695)

During the debate, Nancy Pelosi stated that:

Without any reference to the current Attorney General, and therewill be some who might question his judgment, I don’t want AlbertoGonzales to have this much power, but in a Democratic administration, Iwould not want that Attorney General to have this much power. It shouldbe a different branch of government.
So we have seen them come up with these pieces of legislation thatsubstitute the Attorney General for the FISA courts. It is just totallyunacceptable.

At 8:05 PM the House Rules Committee posted a Notice of Action which included H.Res.613 Rules Committee Report #110-298 and H.Res.614 Rules Committee Report #110-299.

H.Res.613, would have, like the previous H.Res.600, allowed theSpeaker to entertain motions that the House suspend the rules for anunspecified FISA amendment. Passage of a FISA amendment via thisresolution would require a 2/3 vote.

H.Res.614, on the other hand, would allow a simple majority vote forconsideration of an unspecified FISA amendment on Saturday, Sunday orMonday (August 4th through the 6th). Neither of these resolutions wouldbe used.

And here’s the background Alter offers:

By far the most interesting thing (to me at least) in today’s WaPo story on how Karl Rove mobilized Administration resources to commit massive Hatch Act violations is this:

"He didn’t do these things half-baked. It was total commitment," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III(Va.), who in 2002 ran the House Republicans’ successful reelectioncampaign in close coordination with Rove. "We knew history was againstus, and he helped coordinate all of the accoutrements of the executivebranch to help with the campaign, within the legal limits."

Tom Davis … Tom Davis. Gosh, isn’t he the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform? By golly he is!

That’s awfully curious, because this article relies on materials before that Committee: it relies on details about the briefings that have already been released through the Committee, as well as emails and briefing invitations that would fit under Henry Waxman’s requests for information of government agencies.

An invitation to a March 12, 2001, political briefing for federalofficials — one of the Rove team’s earliest — framed the mission thisway: "How we can work together."

[snip]

Most of the political briefings, officials said, were held at theWhite House or Old Executive Office Building for the liaisons or theagency chiefs of staff. But once or twice a year, Rove’s team sought tospread the message beyond this core team. Attendees were presented aslide show with the latest polling data, election talking points andmaps identifying competitive media markets, congressional races andpresidential battleground states.

The subjects for such meetings– which involved at least 18 agencies — ranged from "a politicalupdate" and "mid-term election trends" to "outreach" and "coalitionactivities/organization," according to invitations gathered bycongressional investigators.

DeBerry requested one such meeting at the Agriculture Department about five months before the 2004 election.

"Wewould like to hold a briefing for our political appointees on thestrategy we should focus on over the next several months," he wrote onJune 15, 2004, to Barry Jackson, the White House chief of strategicinitiatives. "The briefing you gave the Asset Deployment team about ayear ago would be perfect."

DeBerry’s e-mail captures what administration officials said was theessence of Rove’s approach: making sure that political appointees atevery level of government pushed a uniform agenda in key media marketsand on behalf of White House-backed candidates.

[snip]

Some briefings targeted political appointees because of their race orethnicity. On Aug. 11, 2006, for instance, Hispanic politicalappointees were summoned to a meeting with Rove’s team to discuss theadministration’s accomplishments for Hispanic Americans.

Mind you, I’m not accusing Davis of leaking this information or of any impropriety with his quote. Indeed, Committee Chair Henry Waxman is quoted as well, in the money quote of the entire article.

There have been a flurry of stories depicting the degree to which the Bush Administration has politicized … everything. McClatchy described how Treasury and Commerce were making decisions based on the political value for the Republican party. And today, the WaPo describes how Interior and Labor were doing the same. And based on interviews and documents, the WaPo describes the whole process as more systematic than anything before.

But Rove, who announced last week that he is resigning from the WhiteHouse at the end of August, pursued the goal far more systematicallythan his predecessors, according to interviews and documents reviewedby The Washington Post,enlisting political appointees at every level of government in apermanent campaign that was an integral part of his strategy toestablish Republican electoral dominance.

[snip]

Investigators, however, said the scale of Rove’s effort is far broaderthan previously revealed; they say that Rove’s team gave more than 100such briefings during the seven years of the Bush administration. Thepolitical sessions touched nearly all of the Cabinet departments and ahandful of smaller agencies that often had major roles in providinggrants, such as the White House office of drug policy and the StateDepartment’s Agency for International Development.

Well, so what? What are you going to do about it?

See, for the most part, we’re talking about civil Hatch Act violations. And the punishment for civil Hatch Act violations? To be fired from your job. Shall we review the names of those most involved in leading this process?

• Karl Rove
• Sara Taylor
• Scott Jennings
• Barry Jackson
• Ken Mehlman
• Susan Ralston

Rove, Taylor, Mehlman, and Ralston are gone, and Jackson is rumored to be leaving. Add in Monica Goodling, who only admitted to her massive Hatch Act violations after she resigned. So how are you going to hold the White House responsible for its massive Hatch Act violations, if the people involved have already mooted the only punishment available?

FWIW, with the David Iglesias firing and cover-up, the Administration has strayed into criminal Hatch Act violations, which carry a criminal penalty (if we can find anyone who would actually charge them for it). And there may be more examples where you could make the case. But most of what the recent flurry of reporting talks about? By resigning, Rove basically made the Administration immune from any punishment for it.

James Risen and Eric Lichtblau have a report today supporting what many around these parts have suggested–that one effect of the amendments to FISA is to expand the kinds of surveillance the Administration can do.

Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month couldallow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go wellbeyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain typesof physical searches of American citizens and the collection of theirbusiness records, Democratic Congressional officials and other expertssaid.

[snip]

“This may give the administration even more authority than peoplethought,” said David Kris, a former senior Justice Department lawyer inthe Bush and Clinton administrations and a co-author of “NationalSecurity Investigation and Prosecutions,” a new book on surveillancelaw.

Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaningof “electronic surveillance,” the new law narrows the types ofcommunications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to useintelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previouslyrequired court approval if conducted inside the United States.

Thesenew powers include the collection of business records, physicalsearches and so-called “trap and trace” operations, analyzing specificcalling patterns.

Note that David Kris is pretty smart about these issues, so if thinks this is possible, then it probably is.

I’m also struck by the inclusion of trap and trace operations in this list. Somewhere, I expect us to be discussing data-mining again, and with trap and trace we’re getting closer to data-mining.

In addition to reiterating some of the concerns that have been raised here and in other blogs covering this, Risen and Lichtblau give sketchy details of two meetings that have occurred since the passage of the bill, one I didn’t know about…

These new powers are considered overly broad and troubling by someCongressional Democrats who raised their concerns with administrationofficials in private meetings this week.

[snip]

The senior intelligence official acknowledged that Congressional staffmembers had raised concerns about the law in the meetings this week,and that ambiguities in the bill’s wording may have led to someconfusion. “I’m sure there will be discussions about how and whether itshould be fixed,” the official said.

Wow. Brent Wilkes co-conspirator John Michael is going after Tommy Kontogiannis hard. And they’ve got a very interesting way to do it (hat tip to CC for the alert).

As you’ll recall, John Michael is the least famous of the thugs indicted in the larger Duke Cunningham scandal–Michael was involved in the mortgage company money laundering side of things. Originally, Michael was indicted seemingly almost as an afterthought (except that he allegedly lied in interviews with investigators). But a superseding indictment almost certainly prepared with the cooperation of Kontogiannis added three charges to his indictment. It’s clear there’s something funky about Kontogiannis–he has been in trouble with the law before, but every time–and this time–the government seems to let him off easy. The government’s attempts to seal trial materials relating to Kontogiannis’ plea after the fact seemed to most hurt Michael, since Michael’s indictments must be tied to Kontogiannis’ cooperation.

In a new filing, Michael’s lawyer is basically arguing that Kontogiannis got special treatment from the government. And he’s alleging that he got that special treatment, among other reasons, because Kontogiannis and his daughter had ties to the late uncle of one of the AUSAs prosecuting the case, Phillip Halpern.

Pachacutec sent this in an email:

During the briefings at Treasury and Commerce, then-Bushadministration political director Ken Mehlman and other White Houseaides detailed competitive congressional districts, battlegroundelection states and key media markets and outlined GOP strategy forgetting out the vote.

Commerce and Treasury political appointeeslater made numerous public appearances and grant announcements thatoften correlated with GOP interests, according to a review of theevents by McClatchy Newspapers. The pattern raises the possibility thatthe events were arranged with the White House’s political guidance inmind.

What I find most, um, curious, is that the same Republican thugs are always at the center of each new scandal:

In the months leading up to the 2002 election, then-CommerceSecretary Don Evans, Bush’s former campaign finance chairman, madeeight appearances or announcements with Republican incumbents indistricts deemed by White House aides either as competitive districtsor battleground presidential states.

During the stops, he doledout millions of dollars in grants, including in two publicannouncements with Rep. Heather Wilson, a New Mexico Republican in acompetitive district.

Republicans ultimately regained control ofthe Senate and expanded their majority in the House of Representativesin the 2002 elections.

In 2004, Evans and his aides significantlyscaled back appearances with candidates, but an assistant treasurysecretary returned to New Mexico to announce with Republicans Sen. PeteDomenici and Rep. Steve Pierce the release of $2.5 million in economicdevelopment funds.

[snip]

In 2006, Evans’ successor, Carlos Gutierrez, and his aides also madepublic announcements with several Republican congressional incumbents,including in the battleground states of Missouri, Pennsylvania and NewMexico. Weeks before the 2006 election, Gutierrez and CongresswomanWilson announced $3.45 million in grants for Albuquerque organizations.[my emphasis]

And Heather Wilson wants to run for Senate?!?!?!

Or maybe the cover-up of Iglesias’ firing and these Hatch Act violations will just merge into one giant megascandal.

Warning: I’ve just started to read Stephen Hayes’ book on Cheney (thanks to the short line for the book at Ann Arbor’s Public Library, I didn’t have to pay Hayes a cent), so this blog will be a little propaganda-busting focused in the next few days. I haven’t even gotten beyond the intro without a post!

When I sat down to start this book, I was grumbling to myself that the traditional media had pretty much accepted Hayes was a shameless propagandist–and started treating him as such. I remember how, after I called into Diane Rehm’s show and pointed out that Hayes’ shameless pimping of Cheney’s Iraq and Al Qaeda myths made him a worse propagandist than even Judy Miller, Rehm stopped having him on anymore, until just the other day, so he could pimp his Cheney book. It disturbs me that the media will accept a book about the Vice President by an unabashed propagandist and treat it seriously, only because Cheney (who picked said propagandist to write the book) was the subject.

Well, the intro is basically Hayes’ attempt to get people to treat his book seriously (which says something about his credibility). And wouldn’t you know it–his defense of his shilliness relies on the NYT’s Bill Keller.