Entries by emptywheel

Ensuring Quality

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

Share this entry

A Brilliant Case Officer

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 .

Share this entry

Lobbyist Logic

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

Share this entry

Dick DeVos and KayBee Hutchison Go After Bloggers

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

Share this entry

Did the NSA Ask for Data Mining Before or After 9/11?

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.

Share this entry

Some Context on Hayden’s Witchhunt of Helgerson

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.

Share this entry

Atttorney-Client “Crossed Lines”

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,

Share this entry

The NewOld USAs

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.

Share this entry

The Dread Dinners!

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

Share this entry

What Nacchio Tells Us about the NSA

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.

Share this entry