March 28, 2024 / by 

 

Time to Talk to the Gang of Eight

Alberto Gonzales gave a closed-door briefing to the House Intelligence Committee recently and offered an excuse for barging into ICU to try to get Ashcroft to override Jim Comey. Silvestre Reyes, at least, seems satisfied with Gonzales’ explanation.

But Reyes said he was satisfied with Gonzales’ explanation and cautioned against drawing conclusions.

"When there are issues of national security at stake, I thinkcertainly one should not question the motivation of individuals," Reyestold reporters. "I’m willing to accept the rationale behind it."

Orrin Hatch, in today’s grilling of Gonzales, offered him the opportunity to give that explanation publicly. Gonzales said that the Gang of Eight–both parties’ leaders of both houses of Congress, and both parties’ leaders of the intelligence committees–advised BushCo to go forward with the domestic wiretap program, which is why, he explains, he thought a man in ICU should have the opportunity to override the judgment of the Acting Attorney General.

There was an interesting exchange, if I heard this correctly. I THOUGHT Hatch asked Gonzales whether Comey was at the meeting. But Gonzales didn’t answer that question. Instead, he said he wasn’t sure when Comey became Deputy Attorney General. Someone ought to ask Comey whether he remained at the meeting until its end–I’d be curious if he heard Congress approve the program. Or had an opportunity to fully explain the legal problems of the program.

But I’d be just as interested in hearing from the Gang of Eight. Best as I can remember, the Gang of Eight, on March 10, 2004 was:

  • Denny Hastert
  • Nancy Pelosi
  • Porter Goss
  • Jane Harman
  • Bill Frist
  • Tom Daschle
  • Pat Roberts
  • Jay Rockefeller

Now, I find the claim that these guys advised BushCo to keep the program dubious–but we’re going to have to ask them directly. Not least, that’s because only two of these people remain on the Gang of Eight–Pelosi and Rockefeller–and Harman, who at least remains in Congress, is no longer on the HPSCI so couldn’t correct Gonzales if he told HPSCI another false story. Rockefeller, for one, noted his concerns about the program in a letter to Cheney and has said Congress never had the opportunity to approve or disapprove of the program.


Crappy Product, Crappy Marketing Company

As many of you know, I used to do work for the auto industry. And I can assure you, the single most important thing Ford could do to turn itself around would be to fire its long-time ad company, J Walter Thompson. Everyone knows it, too, in all parts of the world. From local to regional to global, folks in the auto industry know that JWT keeps designing Ford crappy campaigns based on one generic consumer, even though not all of Ford’s vehicles (and none of the vehicles with any growth potential) are really targetted toward that one generic consumer. And just as awful, JWT does much of the consumer analysis that leads Ford to keep designing cars for non-existent consumers. Sad thing is, the JWT contract is the only one that seems to escape evaluation, even as all the auto companies strip one after another contractor of their contract. For some reason, Ford is committed to JWT, even if it means failure as a company.

I couldn’t help but think of Ford and JWT as I skimmed the RAND study on how to brand the Iraq War more effectively. I got the same sinking feeling as I have gotten about all of the American car companies–thinking to myself, "but they’re missing the key fact: product does matter." One of the reasons the Japanese are eating us for lunch is that their cars–even if they’re marketed to a generic consumer that even JWT could love–are good products. (Which is not to say the American car companies don’t have some good products, but you wouldn’t know it with the marketing they’ve got.) But by any measure, the Iraq War is a crappy product, and at times, the market really is able to discern crap from quality.

But then there’s the other question. If we’re so excited about the lessons Madison Avenue can offer us, then why did we give RAND $400,000 to do this study? Can anyone think of any huge marketing successes RAND has had? Um, no. Rather than spending that $400,000 on actual marketing experts, we spent it on some guy who apparently has no experience in marketing so he could go interview the authors of one book on branding (and some of these interviews are four years old–these guys were working very quickly) and read a bunch of WSJ columns on advertising. Best as I can tell, Todd Helmus didn’t even crack the trade publications of the branding industry. The result is a bunch of "oh boy!" suggestions taken from a generic, elementary understanding of branding, with no consideration of how they might work in real life.

For example, does it strike you as strange that they keep suggesting blogs are a way local influencers might spread the good word? Call me crazy, but I think a focus on what little civil society there is (which unfortunately is largely religious) rather than jumping immediately to the hippest thing here in the US might be appropriate. And besides–shouldn’t we first ascertain whether the power supply in Iraq is reliable enough to make blogs a valuable medium?

So right now we’ve got a military think tank and a Bush crony trying to brand our way out of a disastrous "product." I’m a big believer in the power of branding–but what makes anyone believe that choosing a crappy think tank marketing company to brand our crappy product is going to do any good?


Judy Finally Gets Her Wingnut Welfare!!

A reader sent me the full text of this Judy Miller interview of Shimon Peres in Murdoch’s newest plaything. The interview itself is nothing exciting. After all acting a stenographer of other people’s thoughts is what Judy does best, which means her stenography is only ever as interesting as Judy’s source. The most interesting bit, IMO, is where Peres lists global warming as the second greatest threat to Israel after terrorism.

Was he worried about an Iranian atomic bomb, I asked the man who led Israel’s successful, once-secret effort to acquire nuclear weapons?

"Terrorism and the warming of the earth are the two great threats to Israel," he began.

Global warming?

Yes, he insisted, the warming of the "earth’s refrigerator" ranks second only to terrorism in terms of threat. One day, Israeli homes, factories and cars will run on solar energy. "Better to depend on the sun than the Saudis," he said. [my emphasis]

Let’s hope Peres spends some more time with US leaders and shares this insight.

But the most interesting part of the article is that it reported Judy’s new gig, revealing that she is finally a full-fledged recipient of wingnut welfare.

Ms. Miller, a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, is a writer based in New York.

The Manhattan Institute is dedicated to hawking free market solutions to all our problems. It is funded by wingnut sugar daddy foundations Koch Family Foundations, the John M. OlinFoundation, Inc., the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the ScaifeFoundations, and the Smith Richardson Foundation, and corporate largesse from Bristol-MyersSquibb, Exxon Mobil, Chase Manhattan, Cigna, Sprint, Reliant Energy,Lincoln Financial Group Foundation, and Merill Lynch.

Don’t get me wrong. I certainly assume that Judy has been sucking at the wingnut teat for some time, particularly when she was a speaker for Benador Associates. But now she should, presumably, have to list wingnut welfare as her primary employment. A pity, then, that Chris Matthews doesn’t appear to have listed that affiliation when he called Judy a hero [though I could be wrong–I’m working from the extensive clips I’ve seen, but I haven’t seen the entire appearance]. The oversight is all the more troubling however, since Judy appears to have been hawking one of Manhattan Institute’s pet projects, Policing Terrorism, and the entire Matthews appearance was basically a reiteration of an article Judy had done for a Manhattan Institute publication.

Judy’s finally an explicit recipient of wingnut welfare. Doesn’t Chris Matthews think such affiliations are worth mention?


Globalization and Terror and More Obstruction at DOJ

Kudos to Congressman Bill Delahunt. He seems to be on a lonely crusade to get the US Government to treat all kinds of terrorism the same. He has been criticizing DOJ for its sloppy treatment of the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles; DOJ botched its case of immigration violations and Posada effectively went free. And now Delahunt’s leading a small group of Congressman pressuring DOJ to crack down on US corporate support of Columbian terrorist groups. The LAT provides two articles today on the reasons for concern. The first article outlines DOJ’s obstruction and conflicts of interest on the Chiquita case; the second describes the other US companies alleged to be supporting terror in Columbia.

Chiquita and DOJ

Given all the stories about the conflicts of interest in the Bush DOJ, the Chiquita story is real cause for concern. Chiquita just settled with DOJ, agreeing to pay a $25 million fine over five years–not exactly a punishment that will dent its profits. Yet Chiquita first admitted paying off terrorists in 2000, and DOJ prosecutors were trying to bring charges in 2004. So how did Chiquita get off with a fine three years later? Well, political appointee David Nahmias (who is now the USA in Atlanta–though he was approved via the quaint Senate approval channel) intervened:


A Tale of Two NIEs

One good thing about the spectacular abuse of intelligence to get us into the Iraq war: the intelligence community is acquiring a habit of releasing key judgments from its NIEs (I understand we’ll get an Iraq NIE in time for September’s moving of the goal posts). And when I read the claim yesterday that half the content of last week’s NIE on terrorism came from detainee interrogations …

According to one senior intelligence official, nearly half of thesource material used in the recent National Intelligence Estimate onthe terrorism threat to the United States came from C.I.A.interrogations of detainees.

… I decided it would be useful to compare this most recent NIE with the NIE on terror produced in April 2006 and released in late September 2006. After all, the NIEs have been produced in fairly quick succession. But the NIEs were produced under different Directors of National Intelligence (Death Squads Negroponte for the last one, and Mike McConnell for this one) and under different majority parties. The previous NIE, unlike this most recent one, may have relied on intelligence gathered using torture. And the previous one was only declassified after it was leaked that the NIE contradicted public statements from the Administration; whereas this one was developed with the understanding an unclassified version would be released


Bush’s Cheney’s Signing Statement on the Geneva Convention

It’s really tough sorting out the new Executive Order on torture. But after a whole day of pondering the details, I think I’m finally getting it. It’s yet another Bush signing statement, this time to record his own personal interpretation of the Geneva Convention. After all–that’s where this new EO came from: after SCOTUS, in Hamdan, told Bush that all detainees were covered by the Geneva Convention, after Congress, with the Military Commissions Act, told Bush he could shred concepts like habeas corpus but only if he had documentation for doing so, he was forced to write this new EO.

Charlie Savage provides a good overview:

Bush’s executive order laid out broad guidelines for how the CIAmust treat detainees in its secret overseas prisons, where theadministration has held some suspects without giving them access to theRed Cross. The document prohibits a range of abuses, including"intentionally causing serious bodily injury" and "forcing theindividual to perform sexual acts," as well as mistreating the Koran.

Theorder also said the CIA director must personally approve the use ofextraordinary interrogation practices against any specific detainee.Detainees must also receive "adequate food and water, shelter from theelements, necessary clothing, protection from extremes of heat andcold, and essential medical care," it said.

But most of thepresident’s executive order is written in generalities, leavingunanswered whether the CIA will be free to subject prisoners to a rangeof specific techniques it has reportedly used in the past, includinglong-term sleep disruption, prolonged shackling in painful stresspositions, or "waterboarding," a technique that produces the sensationof drowning.

That is, some of the most obvious abuses–using sex and religion–are now forbidden. But the key information, what remains permitted, is in a separate, classified list that we don’t get to see. And three other key details: the Executive Order explicitly denies any legal responsibilities associated with the EO, so even if some overzealous torturer ignores it, he’s not going to jail. The Red Cross remains unable to monitor prisoners in this newfangled "enhanced interrogation" program. And Congress still doesn’t have a copy of the DOJ opinion on the program. For that matter, Karen DeYoung reports that the Administration hasn’t responded to Congress’ other questions, either.

They said the administration has not responded to the questions theyasked during a recent briefing on the new order and the detaineeprogram.

Mind you, this is the DOJ review that Congress mandated as part of the Military Commissions Act. But I guess that’s classified too.


Eric Edelman, Leaker Extraordinaire

I’ve been waiting to see if Pat Lang weighed in on the Hillary letter controversy because he’s the blogosphere’s expert (indeed, an expert in any venue) on the hazards of supply lines and withdrawal. And his response is as good as I expected, starting with his citation of the constitutional basis for Hillary’s inquiry. But I wanted to make explicit one of the criticisms that Lang makes only implicitly. He says:

Senator Clinton had every right to ask if there were seriouscontingency plans being made about HOW we would withdraw from Iraq.  Acivil and constitutionally correct response to her question would nothave required a public and unclassified answer.  So far as I know, shedoes not have a record of unauthorized disclosure of classifiedinformation.  Others do, (and not all of them in the Congress), but shedoes not.

[snip]

As Senator Clinton has observed, "You don’t snap your fingers, andbegin to withdraw."  In fact, a prudent program of withdrawal wouldrequire many months.  Such contingency plans would rightly be keptsecret for the reasons that Edelman mentions.  Secrets can be kept. Edelman knows that.  It is not true that everything "leaks" to themedia. [my emphasis]

Lang is talking about the suggestion in Edelman’s letter

As you know, it is long-standing departmental policy that operational plans, including contingency plans, are not released outside of the Department.

… that Hillary can’t know about DOD’s imaginary contingency plans because they’re secret.

Lang is suggesting–though he doesn’t say it–that it’s not Hillary you have to worry about leaking stuff to the press. And he’s right. As I pointed out the other day, Eric Edelman was the guy who first came up with the brilliant idea of leaking information to the press to rebut Joe Wilson. His immediate supervisor from that era, Scooter Libby, did end up leaking to the press–including Valerie Wilson’s identity. And by all appearances, the guy Edelman is currently stooging for by writing such nasty letters to Hillary–Dick Cheney–is the guy who ordered that leak.

So to be fair to Edelman, maybe he really doesn’t know that Hillary can keep a secret. But that’s only because leaking classified information to the press is such a common habit for his cabal that he can’t imagine people who respect our national security sufficiently to keep secrets, secret.


Did Eric Edelman Steal Robert Gates’ Mail?

I’ve been following the little squabble between Cheney hack Eric Edelman and Hillary. There was his nasty letter and Hillary’s excellent response. Now Gates has entered the fray, embracing oversight and (backhandedly) slapping down the nasty Edelman.

I have long been a staunch advocate of Congressional oversight, firstat the CIA and now at the Defense Department. I have said on severaloccasions in recent months that I believe that congressional debate onIraq has been constructive and appropriate. I had not seen SenatorClinton’s reply to Ambassador Edelman’s letter until today. I amlooking into the issues she raised and will respond to them early nextweek. [my emphasis]

Now, I’m a little confused by that bolded line, explaining that Gates hadn’t seen Hillary’s letter. From the context, he appears to be referring to Hillary’s July 19 letter, the nasty-gram telling on Edelman. But that doesn’t entirely make sense. Of course he hadn’t seen Hillary’s letter until today (meaning yesterday). She only wrote it the day before.

Anne Kornblut reads that sentence differently.

In a statement, Gates said that he had not seen Clinton’s originalletter, but he added that he welcomes congressional involvement.

Now, again, the plain English reading of the sentence says Kornblut is wrong and Gates is just weird–that he must be referring to Thursday’s letter. But what if he’s not? That is, what if he never saw her May 22 letter?

After all, if there’s one M.O. that Cheney delights in, it’s in controlling the flow of information so he can impose his will even on his bureaucratic enemies. He had a spy in the White House (probably named Hadley) so he could know about everything that went to Condi. He had Bolton in State so he knew most of what went on in Powell’s camp. And as the recent WaPo series revealed, he was constantly hiding his tracks. So it would be pretty predictable for Edelman, the Cheney plant at DOD, to intercept a letter calling for a policy that Cheney opposed. Perhaps Edelman sat on it for two months–what is the explanation for the two months lapse in response, anyway? And then when he finally had to respond, Edelman responded with nasty accusations.

So is Gates trying to say that he never received Hillary’s original letter? As I said, plain English calls for a different explanation. But in Cheney-speak, another reading is quite possible.


Let the Sunshine In

I’m with David Kurtz. In addition to offering good reason to begin impeachment procedures, Bush’s dangerous claims to executive and deliberative privilege really ought to invite us to reconsider the notion that Presidents need to hide their deliberations.

As long as we’re going to be discussing the parameters of executiveprivilege in the weeks and months ahead, can we start by revisiting thenow commonly accepted notion that the President can only get free andunfettered advice if those giving the advice know it will remainconfidential?

Every talking head starts the discussion of executive privilege witha solemn nod to this totem. Heck, even Kevin Drum conceded this pointin a post back in March: 

The president and his immediate staff really do have astrong interest in their ability to receive candid, provocative advice,and that interest is threatened if advisors are worried that the ideasthey toss around in private are likely to become public. This is animportant principle regardless of who occupies the White House.

Is that really true though? Literally, Kevin is right. Presidents dohave a strong interest in this principle. But the President’s interest,in this instance, is not in line with the public interest. In fact,executive privilege offers the President and his advisers a perversedisincentive to look after the public interest. Isn’t the prospect ofpublic exposure of hare-brained ideas, controversial proposals, andmalfeasance and misdeeds the very sort of incentive the public wantslooming over the President and his advisers, a dagger of accountability?

Let’s consider the kinds of things–or advisors–that Bush and Cheney have been hiding with their invocation of privilege:

  • The degree to which Republican operatives can dial up the firing of a US Attorney they don’t like
  • The degree to which the oil companies own our energy policy (and therefore our security)
  • The degree to which Bush helped Enron by postponing a sane response to the California Energy crisis
  • The centrality of AEI hacks and other Neocons in building the case for the last war–and the next one
  • The open access Bandar Bush bin Sultan had to the President and Vice President’s office
  • The degree to which big donors dictate our policies

Explain again why we, as citizens, aren’t demanding these details?


The Jurisdiction of DOJ’s Inspector General

This is a follow-up on my post on the loophole in the jurisdiction of DOJ’s Inspector General, which appears to be preventing DOJ’s IG from investigating the role of any lawyer in the USA Purge–which is, after all, just about everyone involved. Here’s how Senator Leahy laid out the problem:

Other Inspectors General can investigate misconduct throughout their agencies.  Apparently, the Department of Justice Inspector General suffers under a limitation that restricts his ability to investigation misconduct by you, the Deputy Attorney General, and other senior Department lawyers.  Will you agree to the removal of this limitation on the Department of Justice Inspector General so that the Inspector General may investigate misconduct by you, other senior Department of Justice officials, lawyers, and law enforcement agents?

DOJ’s Inspector General, Glenn Fine, explained the problem at a recent appearance before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security (I know, shocker, Holy Joe held a hearing! I bet he regrets it now).

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Originally Posted @ https://www.emptywheel.net/author/emptywheel/page/1173/