Jeremy Scahill has a new piece on Blackwater that is fairly incendiary.

Among other things (I’ll have more to say later), he reveals that Blackwater provided Monsanto with security services in 2008-2009.

According to internal Total Intelligence communications, biotech giant Monsanto—the world’s largest supplier of genetically modified seeds—hired the firm in 2008–09. The relationship between the two companies appears to have been solidified in January 2008 when Total Intelligence chair Cofer Black traveled to Zurich to meet with Kevin Wilson, Monsanto’s security manager for global issues.

After the meeting in Zurich, Black sent an e-mail to other Blackwater executives, including to Prince and Prado at their Blackwater e-mail addresses. Black wrote that Wilson “understands that we can span collection from internet, to reach out, to boots on the ground on legit basis protecting the Monsanto [brand] name…. Ahead of the curve info and insight/heads up is what he is looking for.” Black added that Total Intelligence “would develop into acting as intel arm of Monsanto.” Black also noted that Monsanto was concerned about animal rights activists and that they discussed how Blackwater “could have our person(s) actually join [activist] group(s) legally.” Black wrote that initial payments to Total Intelligence would be paid out of Monsanto’s “generous protection budget” but would eventually become a line item in the company’s annual budget. He estimated the potential payments to Total Intelligence at between $100,000 and $500,000. According to documents, Monsanto paid Total Intelligence $127,000 in 2008 and $105,000 in 2009. [my emphasis]

Click through for the denial Monsanto’s Wilson gave to Scahill: basically, he denied that Monsanto used Blackwater to target animal rights activists, but did use them for “scanning the content of activist blogs and websites.” Not to mention work in Asia and Latin America.

It’s bad enough to have PA’s contractor developing intelligence reports on anti-drilling activists to send to lobbyists. It’s yet another thing when Blackwater’s thugs are tracking those activists.

ProPublica had an important story a few days ago reporting that the cases of a number of Colombian paramilitaries extradited to the US on drug–not terrorism–charges have been sealed and largely disappeared.

Since 2006, more than a dozen of Colombia’s most notorious paramilitary leaders have been extradited to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges in federal district court in Washington.

The extraditions stunned Colombians, who had hoped that testimony from the men, given as part of a national amnesty program, would help expose the truth about two decades of vicious murders, assaults and kidnappings. In videotaped confessions in Colombia, one had taken responsibility for more than 450 slayings.

But outrage over the extraditions reached a boiling point earlier this year, when U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton blocked public access to seven of the paramilitary leaders’ cases, erasing virtually every trace of their existence.

There is no way to know if the men have negotiated lenient sentences — or if they are even still in custody. An eighth defendant, accused in Colombia of murdering a judge, was released on his own recognizance, records show, after cousins in College Park, Md., vouched for him.

The story is important on its face–for what it reveals about judicial secrecy–but also because of our unique relationship with Colombia and its right wing terrorists.

If I’m not mistaken the accused in these cases are members of the AUC (the story says the accused in these cases are members of the Self-Defense Forces of Colombia; the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia–the AUC–is usually translated as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), a terrorist group that has been on the State Department’s list of official terrorist organizations since 2001. If that’s right, in addition to being alleged drug traffickers, these accused are also terrorists.

Yet the ProPublica story doesn’t use the word “terrorist” once.

It doesn’t consider whether, rather than being sealed to protect an ongoing investigation of drug trafficking, they might be sealed because of national security claims connected to the accused’s role as terrorists.

Most charitably, the cases might be sealed because these accused drug traffickers are helping the government find other terrorists. But I don’t buy that.

Consider, first, the alleged ties between supporters of Colombia’s right wing government–our close allies in Latin America–and right wing paramilitaries. The ties were first revealed as far back as 2007.

The comments came amid mounting evidence of collusion between many of Mr Uribe’s allies and paramilitaries, who committed some of the most gruesome massacres in Colombia’s recent history while trafficking tonnes of cocaine to Europe and the United States. They are listed by the US state department as terrorists.

Colombia’s supreme court has ordered the arrest of 14 members of congress on suspicion of collaboration, of whom 13 back Mr Uribe. The president’s former intelligence chief is also facing charges of passing information to the paramilitaries to help them target and kill opponents.

Mr Uribe has not been directly implicated but the revelations are an embarrassment for the US president, George Bush, who considers the Colombian conservative his best friend in a region dominated by leftwing governments. Democrats have threatened to block a trade deal with Colombia and to reduce the annual $700m (£350m) flow of mostly military aid to Bogota.

And arrests of those who collaborated with the right wing terrorists continue even today.

Colombian Sen. Javier Caceres, a former president of Congress, was arrested Tuesday for alleged links to right-wing paramilitary groups.The country’s Supreme Court of Justice issued the arrest warrant.

According to local reports, Caceres was allegedly involved with the paramilitary chief Uber Banquez, known as “Juancho Dique.”

Banquez claims that Caceres asked him for money to finance his campaign.

As the ProPublica story notes, extraditing these drug-trafficking terrorists means they will not give public testimony in Colombia that had been a key promise of the amnesty program that purportedly demobilized the AUC.

In Colombia, the secret U.S. prosecutions have darkened hopes of achieving redress for thousands of atrocities tied to a network of paramilitary groups known as the Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. The extradition of key leaders to the United States disrupted a historic amnesty program intended to demobilize units and deliver basic information, such as the location of bodies, to victims’ relatives.

Not only does this prevent victims’ families from learning what happen to their loved ones, but it limits further embarrassing revelations of ties between politicians and paramilitaries. Extraditing these men and then hiding their cases makes it very hard to show that the US government is working closely with those who–if they were Arab and Muslim–would be indefinitely detained in Gitmo or shot down with a drone.

And then there’s the unique approach DOJ has of prosecuting AUC-related crimes. Most notably, there’s the case of Chiquita, which knowingly paid off the AUC for years after the State Department made such payments a crime (and allegedly carried AUC’s coke on its freighters). But, with the assistance of now Attorney General Eric Holder (and former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh), the Republican Chiquita execs who had materially supported terrorism got off with no charges. Before DOJ let those executives off with no charges for their material support of terrorists, the highly connected Roderick Hills alleged that DOJ–specifically, Michael Chertoff–suggested DOJ might tolerate ongoing payments to AUC.

Mr. Hills’s advice was that the company should tell American officials about the payments. Over the years, several corporations had successfully used the strategy of self-disclosure to avoid punishment.

According to a criminal complaint filed by the Justice Department, Mr. Hills and another Chiquita official were told at the April 2003 meeting that the payments were illegal and could not continue. The complaint also noted that the company’s outside law firm had strongly recommended in February 2003 that the payments end immediately.

In the version offered by Chiquita officials, Mr. Chertoff was more equivocal at the meeting, a view contained in letters from defense lawyers to the Justice Department, according to the sources familiar with the court filings. Mr. Chertoff said he understood the sensitivity of the situation and would get back to the Chiquita officials, which he apparently did not do before going on to become a federal judge.

Mr. Chertoff, who has declined to comment, will almost certainly be called to testify if the matter goes to trial.

Defense lawyers said the company engaged in regular discussions with Justice Department officials about using the payments as an opportunity to provide intelligence to the government about the A.U.C. Those discussions, the lawyers contend, were crucial in convincing the company that the American government was prepared to tolerate the continuation of the payments. [my emphasis]

Click through for a reminder of the search warrants that didn’t get executed and the personnel changes that resulted in those soft-pedaling the investigation getting promotions.

The implication, at the time, was that Chiquita would help the government do–whatever–and not faces the same stiff prison sentences for materially supporting terrorism that brown people would. And voila! After that allegation surfaced publicly, our current Attorney General managed to help his clients avoid charges.

Now, as ProPublica notes, sealing cases like this must be signed off at the highest levels of DOJ.

An agreement involving secrecy would require authorization at the highest levels of the Justice Department. Prosecutors must obtain approval from the deputy attorney general before requesting, or agreeing to, the sealing of a criminal case.

You know–the DAG? The guy who reports directly to the guy who represented the Chiquita execs?

Perhaps I’m being overly paranoid here. But the wholesale sealing of cases relating to AUC–effectively burying the details of both the alleged drug crimes and the terrorism–sure seems like it has more to do with global politics than it does with prosecuting more drug lords.

PA’s Department of Homeland Security has employed an entity called the Institute for Terrorism Research and Response to monitor the web traffic of anti-drilling activists in that state. The effort was purportedly started to fulfill national requirements to protect critical infrastructure.

As more attention was focused on this yesterday, Governor Rendell said he was embarrassed by the news and fired the company engaging in the spying; but he didn’t fire the guy who had hired the company.

Rendell, who claimed he’d just learned about the practice, said Tuesday that the information was useless to law enforcement agencies and that distributing it was tantamount to trampling on constitutional rights. In recent weeks, several acts of vandalism at drilling sites spurred the inclusion of events likely to be attended by environmentalists and the bulletins began going to representatives of Pennsylvania’s booming natural gas industry.

[snip]

“I am deeply embarrassed and I apologize to any of the groups who had this information disseminated on their right to peacefully protest,” Rendell said at an evening Capitol news conference.

Rendell called the practice “ludicrous” and said the fact that the state was paying for such rudimentary information was “stunning.”

Still, Rendell said he was not firing his homeland security director, James Powers, but he ordered an end to the $125,000 contract with the Philadelphia-based organization, the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response, that supplied the information. [my emphasis]

But the first response from the Governor’s office–for the paper that first broke this story–was initially support for the program.

Gary Tuma, Gov. Ed Rendell’s spokesman, said, “It is part of Homeland Security’s responsibility to alert local law enforcement, local officials and potential victims” to any potential problems.

He said the inclusion of anti-drilling activity in intelligence bulletins “by no means brands groups that speak publicly on one side or the other of an issue as troublemakers.” The information has been included “because there have been acts of vandalism.”

Powers added that a lot of times anti-drilling activists show up without obtaining a permit to protest, “and that in itself is a violation of the law.”

When it was noted that citizens do not need a permit to attend public meetings and express dissenting opinions, Powers said, “You’re looking at it out of context. I get to see everything over time.”

Powers said that when anti-drilling activists attend public meetings, “their presence may spark something else.” He said he didn’t want to see public meetings “escalate to physical criminal acts.” [my emphasis]

Now, perhaps Rendell was ignorant about this effort. Perhaps his opposition to it is–as stated–that the information collected was not useful for law enforcement.

But I am rather curious by this detail: when the emails revealing the extent of the surveillance got sent to activists, James Powers–the guy Rendell didn’t fire–sent an email to (among others) the drilling industry’s lobbyist, saying he didn’t want this information to inflame anti-drilling activists.

He added, “We want to continue providing this support to the Marcellus Shale Formation natural gas stakeholders, while not feeding those groups fomenting dissent against those same companies.”Powers sent copies of his e-mail to the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response as well as to Pam Witmer, a lobbyist with the Bravo Group, which lobbies for the gas industry.

Which sure makes it seem like Powers was about monitoring political activities–those “fomenting dissent”–rather than potential terrorists.

Among the others included in this surveillance?  Anarchists, “black power” groups, animal rights activists protesting a rodeo.

Because we all know rodeos are critical infrastructure.

TPM captures the current state of play of the rumors that the White House will appoint Elizabeth Warren as interim head of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau:

Reports coming in that President Obama will name Elizabeth Warren as interim director of the consumer protection bureau created by the new financial regulatory law.

Late Update: Maybe not so fast. Fox was one of the outlets originally reporting this and has now retracted that report, saying they may have “misheard” White House spokesperson Bill Burton on board Air Force One. Reuters says Burton simply confirmed that Warren is “obviously in the mix.”

Later Update: The pool report from Air Force One reads as follows:

on Warren:no announcements but soon. no confirmation of interim appointment. essentially, nothing new

The Boy Who Cried Wolf Update: White House releases statement knocking down the reports:

Elizabeth Warren has been a stalwart voice for American consumers and families and she was the architect of the idea that became the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The President will have more to say about the agency and its mission soon.

Kicking Dead Horse Update: White House pool reporter sends supplement to pool report: “For emphasis: Burton did not say anything new about Warren.”

Now, when Obama was asked whether he was going to appoint Warren last week, in addition to talking about what a close friend Warren is of his, he also asserted that it has “only been a couple of months” since the CFPB was created (starting at 22:15).

Now, the idea for this agency was Elizabeth Warren’s.  She’s a dear friend of mine.  She’s somebody I’ve known since I was in law school.  And I have been in conversations with her.  She is a tremendous advocate for this idea.  It’s only been a couple of months, and this is a big task standing up this entire agency, so I’ll have an announcement soon about how we’re going to move forward. And I think what’s fair to say is, is that I have had conversations with Elizabeth over the course of these — over these last couple of months. But I’m not going to make an official announcement until it’s ready. [my emphasis]

That suggests the Administration feels little urgency about getting someone at Treasury who will speak for the needs of consumers as the rest of the agency caters to the needs of the banksters.

I wonder whether the roughly 525,000 homeowners who have lost their homes to foreclosure since the Financial Reform bill was signed think that there’s no urgency to having a consumer advocate at Treasury?

Back in January, Dana Priest first revealed that Anwar al-Awlaki was on a JSOC kill list and was being considered for a CIA kill list. Now, eight months later, DOJ is considering charging him.

The Obama administration is considering filing the first criminal charges against radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in case the CIA fails to kill him and he’s is captured alive in Yemen.

[snip]

Such charges, however, would come with political and intelligence-gathering risks. Counterterrorism officials regard al-Awlaki as a terrorist operative, not just a preacher, but they have revealed few specifics. Charging al-Awlaki with having direct involvement in terrorism could require the U.S. to reveal evidence gleaned from foreign wiretaps or confidential informants.

Now, it appears DOJ sources are throwing some baloney in with this news. For example, the claim that criminal charges might require the US to reveal evidence collected using wiretaps doesn’t sound all that awful, given that the contents of some of the wiretaps of al-Awlaki’s communications with Nidal Hasan have already been published. The government didn’t seem to have a problem leaking these intercepts earlier this year…

And the claim that they’re charging al-Awlaki just in case they happen to capture him alive rather than dead (opps!)? I’d suggest it probably has a lot more to do with the suit CCR and ACLU have taken against the government. I’m guessing that following shortly on formal charges, DOJ will tell the courts they can’t litigate the al-Awlaki suit because it pertains to an ongoing criminal investigation. Voila! No discovery in the lawsuit!!

Particularly given this detail:

If the Justice Department decides to charge al-Awlaki, it’s likely he would not be indicted. Rather, charges are more likely to take the form of an FBI complaint. That’s because an indicted suspect automatically gets the right to an attorney if he is captured, making it harder for authorities to question him.

In other words, this doesn’t appear to be an effort to finally use due process before targeting an American citizen with assassination. Rather, it seems to be more about closing off legal options to that American citizen.

Update: Here’s the joint ACLU/CCR statement on this:

Our organizations have long stated that if the government has evidence that Anwar Al-Aulaqi is involved in terrorist activity, it should present that evidence to a court – not authorize his execution without charge or trial. Now, months after the government announced its intent to kill Al-Aulaqi, it may finally bring charges against him. This would be a step in the right direction. The constitutional guarantee of due process relies on the critical distinction between allegations and evidence. If the reports that charges may be brought against Al-Aulaqi are true, the fact that it has taken the government this long – months after having announced his death sentence – suggests that, in this case, the government’s allegations were far ahead of its evidence.

While bringing charges against Al-Aulaqi based on credible evidence would be a step in the right direction, it would not mean that he could now be targeted for killing without trial. It is well established that the government cannot use extrajudicial killing to punish people for past acts, but only to prevent grave and imminent threats. A criminal charge for past crimes does not provide a license to kill.

We continue to believe that the courts must play a role in establishing legal standards for when the government can take the life of one of its own citizens without charge or trial. For that reason, we will continue with our litigation.”

Mark Hosenball first reported this back in July, then linked back to that report last week. But given yesterday’s post on our what we’ve accomplished in Iraq, I thought it worth noting that the most inflammatory material in the next big Wikileaks dump–which appears to be the Iraq war log Bradley Manning leaked–reportedly pertains to Iraqi abuse of detainees.

According to one of the sources, the Iraq material portrays U.S. forces being involved in a “bloodbath,” but some of the most disturbing material relates to the abusive treatment of detainees not by Americans but by Iraqi security forces, the source says.

We’ll see whether that material has the kind of impact that the Abu Ghraib revelations had.

But that also suggests that we’re prosecuting Bradley Manning–among other things–for leaking information on the torture our client state in Iraq conducts.

As we discuss whether to abandon rule of law in Afghanistan under General Petraeus, we’d do well to consider how the war Petraeus “won” in Iraq turned out:

On a dull December day in 2009, Rabiha al Qassab, a 63-year-old Iraqi refugee living in a quiet residential area of north London, received a telephone call that marked the beginning of a new nightmare for a family already torn apart by Iraq’s political upheavals.

Her 68-year-old husband, Ramze Shihab Ahmed, had been arrested while on a visit to Iraq, and no-one knew where he was being held or what, if anything, he had been charged with.

Nine months later, Ramze is still languishing in legal limbo in a Baghdad prison. His story lays bare the horrific abuses and lack of legal process that characterise post-Saddam Iraq’s detention system, which human rights groups say has scarcely improved since the darkest days of the dictator’s rule.

[snip]

“They beat him. They put a plastic bag on his head until he lost consciousness, and then they woke him with electric shocks. They told him that if he didn’t confess, they would make his son rape him. They put a wooden stick into his anus,” she says. “They have abused him in every way.”

After days of torture, Ramze signed a confession admitting to being a member of al- Qaeda in Iraq, a claim Rabiha says is absurd. “He would see the bombings on television and say ‘what sort of Islam is this?’” she says. “He was very sorry for all the people who died.”

Human rights experts say that Ramze’s story is far from unique. In a new report on mistreatment in the Iraqi prison system, entitled New Order, Same Abuses, Amnesty International estimates that around 30,000 people are currently being held without charge or trial in Iraq. Many are being tortured with impunity, the group says.

I’m sure our decision to put aside rule of law in favor of “the principal goal” in Iraq has nothing to do with Iraq’s embrace of the same kind of torture that we used–after the WMD rationale was exposed as a lie–to justify our invasion of Iraq.

Here’s the Amnesty report.

I’ve been tracking the debate within the Administration over whether we should tolerate corruption in Afghanistan in the name of sustaining a war against someone–anyone–in Afghanistan or not for some weeks. Underlying the entire debate is the fact that our goals in Afghanistan–which started as a pursuit of those who struck us on 9/11 and now, having achieved that in Afghanistan, appears to be “not lose”–are totally unclear and apparently divorced from national interest. The debate pits those who believe corruption discredits the Karzai regime and creates support for the Taliban against those who rely on corrupt members of the Karzai regime who claim cracking down on corruption (which is, effectively, the removal of our aid money to private bank accounts in Dubai) will hurt the goal, which they’ve redefined, without Congressional buy-off, as defeating the Taliban.

Here’s how today’s installment, from  By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, captures the debate:

The debate turns largely on how various administration officials view the connection between corruption and the insurgency.

Some officials, principally at the staff level, contend that government venality and incompetence is the principal reason Afghans are joining, supporting or tolerating the Taliban. Other administration and military officials, particularly those at senior levels, maintain that graft is just one of many factors – along with sanctuaries in Pakistan, historical tribal grievances and anger at the presence of foreign forces on Afghan soil – that fuel the conflict.

Compounding the challenge is that many Afghan officials who are regarded as corrupt also provide valuable assistance to U.S. forces, including sensitive intelligence. Some, including the palace aide, are on the CIA’s payroll – a fact not initially known to investigators working on the case.

And while this debate seems to be still raging among those in Afghanistan, Chandrasekaran reports that top officials in the Obama Administration have decided to set aside the law enforcement approach for back room deals.

President Obama’s top national security advisers, who will meet with him this week to discuss the problem, do not yet agree on the contours of a new approach, according to U.S. civilian and military officials involved in Afghanistan policy. But the officials said there is a growing consensus that key corruption cases against people in Karzai’s government should be resolved with face-saving compromises behind closed doors instead of public prosecutions.

Once again, the anonymous official embracing corruption does so in the name of our “principal goals.”

“The current approach is not tenable,” said an administration official who, like others interviewed, agreed to discuss internal deliberations only on the condition of anonymity. “What will we get out of it? We’ll arrest a few mid-level Afghans, but we’ll lose our ability to operate there and achieve our principal goals.”

I’m beginning to believe “our ability to operate there” is our “principal goal.”

All of which discussion sets up this quote from an official in Kabul who has concluded we need to abandon a law enforcement approach.

There is a growing view at the U.S. and NATO headquarters in Kabul that “the law enforcement approach to corruption mucks up our strategic interests,” said the U.S. official there.

Of course, this comment pertains solely to rooting out corruption in Afghanistan. Not detention of captives. Not corruption of American contractors. Not targeting terrorists.

But it sure reveals, in stark fashion, how far we’ve come from our “principal goal” of governance, which is at least partly to support and defend the Constitution, otherwise known as a law enforcement approach.

Here’s where Jack Goldsmith’s op-ed, purporting to offer a solution to the Gitmo problem, breaks down (see Spencer’s take on it here).

Civilian trials for terrorists have also proven difficult. They gathered disfavor when Attorney General Eric Holder said he would prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other alleged Sept. 11 plotters in civilian court in Manhattan. Disfavor grew when the failed Christmas Day plotter, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and the Times Square suspect, Faisal Shahzad, were placed in the civilian criminal system and read Miranda rights rather than detained and interrogated in the military system. The Bush administration prosecuted scores of terrorists in civilian court with little controversy. But the charge that the Obama administration is insufficiently tough on terrorists has made it harder for this administration to try terrorists in civilian court.

Difficulties with trials have left the Obama administration, like its predecessor, relying primarily on military detention without trial to hold terrorists.

Granted, Goldsmith uses the lawyerly trick of hiding the agency in his statement–substituting “disfavor grew” for “Republicans drummed up disfavor because it polled well”–to hide his faulty logic. But what he’s basically saying is that: (1) there’s no big deal with civilian courts, as the Bush experience shows, (2) nevertheless a bunch of fearmongerers who just happen to come from Goldsmith’s own party have been bad-mouthing civilian trials for crass political reasons, and therefore (3) civilian trials are just too difficult to pull off.

The rest of Goldsmith’s op-ed follows from this artificially created difficulty.

The correct response, for someone in Goldsmith’s position, would be to say, “stop being such cynical assholes, Republicans, this is about law, not your political stunts!” But instead, he wrings his hand and invents a new legal system to work around the difficulty created by his colleagues in the Republican party.

Which offers him the ability to make this move, which addresses an issue that has nothing to do with closing Gitmo:

Courts have given their general blessing to military detention as a legitimate form of terrorist incapacitation. But military detention still raises hard legal questions, about which Congress has said practically nothing. As a result, unaccountable judges are making fateful detention decisions, demanding release of some whom the administration thinks are dangerous terrorists.

[snip]

Second, acknowledge that military detention will remain the primary basis for holding terrorists, and strengthen the system. The president will eventually need Congress’s help, not only to put Guantanamo detentions on firmer footing but also to support the growing global fight against terrorists beyond traditional battlefields. The main legal foundation for targeting and detention in places such as Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen is the September 2001 congressional authorization to deal with the Sept. 11 attacks. But as dangerous terrorists have ever-dimmer connections to Sept. 11, the government is bumping up against the limits of what this authorization permits.

Again, Goldsmith hides his logic here. But what he’s actually saying is, “those mean judges on whom our entire legal system relies have pointed out that we’ve illegally been holding people who have nothing to do with 9/11” (and in fact have been doing so since the Bush Administration collected a lot of people who they called terrorists but weren’t tied to al Qaeda), “so we need to invent some means to hold them and more like them even though we have no legal basis to do so.” Sure, he, like John Bellinger, notes that the Obama Administration is pushing the legal limits of what the AUMF for Afghanistan legally authorized. But what he’s really calling for is some new legal authorization to just pick up anyone anywhere in the world and hold them indefinitely and maybe give them a civilian trial if we feel like it.

In the process he ignores the larger logical problem with this argument. Yes, the international community recognizes military detention as legal during times of war.

But what Goldsmith is advocating for is that Congress create some legal justification for military detention of those we are not at war with.

Now, Cap’n Jack isn’t really a big fan of international law binding US actions, which may be why he introduces this idea with so little thought, the same way he dismisses the symbolic value of closing Gitmo.

But if Congress were to pass a law granting the Executive the authority to unilaterally declare organizations terrorist groups, and on that basis, to indefinitely detain those alleged to be members without even the guise of war as a time-limiting factor, my guess is the international community would look none too fondly on it. It would be a new stain on our international reputation, added to the still-oozing sore of Gitmo.

And Jack Goldsmith, whose entire op-ed is premised on allowing his party to do anything it wants for political gain, doesn’t see where this kind of unilateral Executive power might lead.

Remember that Vanity Fair tell all in which Erik Prince offered new details about Blackwater ops? Though Michael Hayden has suggested Prince made up some of the details, it seemed to be a form of graymail targeted at those who approved Blackwater ops now under criminal investigation. Apparently, there’s a long form version.

Erik Prince, chairman of the private security firm once known as Blackwater, is writing a memoir that says Democratic officials in two administrations approved of his most sensitive and controversial operations, sources close to the company, now known as XE Services, said. [snip] But two sources, speaking independently, said that Prince will name Democratic officials in both the Clinton and Obama administrations who allegedly approved of clandestine intelligence operations carried out by Blackwater on behalf of the CIA and other government agencies. “He’s going to drop the names of people who, before, were saying, ‘Yeah, go kill Osama Bin Laden’ and stuff like that, but went sideways on him when the investigations began,” said one of the sources, who spoke only on condition of anonymity in order to maintain relations with the company.

Now, I’m all in favor of Erik Prince, safe in his haven in UAE, telling the details of what he’s been doing in our name. I’d sure like to know about them. But Prince is nuts to think that anything he’ll reveal by the election will affect the success or failures of the Democrats.

“They think this will destroy the Democratic Party in the elections,” he said of Prince and his friends.

Even supposing Prince provides proof that people in the Obama Administration signed off on assassination … the response to Obama’s targeting of an American citizen for assassination has been a giant, collective yawn. And if Prince were to reveal that Clinton asked Blackwater to assassinate Osama bin Laden before 9/11? Wouldn’t that suggest, first of all, that Blackwater failed to accomplish the task? And wouldn’t it suggest, secondly, that Clinton was more of a bad ass about bin Laden than the Bushies up until the time when it was too late? Furthermore, we know that the Obama Administration continues to employ Blackwater.

Sure, learning that Obama employed Blackwater for tasks that should be limited to government employees would piss someone like me off. But the rest of the country would go back to watching Koran burnings and football.

The Spy Talk article on Prince’s memoir offers one more curious detail: that Parsons is the leading bidder to buy the company formerly known as Blackwater. Parsons is notable because it was almost certainly the most corrupt, incompetent construction contractor wasting reconstruction dollars in Iraq. Not only that, but it had ties every bit as close as Halliburton did to top members of the Administration.

I’d like to connect that news with another of yesterday’s big stories, the news that the Police Academy Parsons built in Iraq has shit raining from the ceiling.

The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country’s security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed “the rain forest.”

They’re related, you see, because Parsons also had extraordinary access to Karl Rove. When Parsons signed this contract in 2004, its lobbyist was a woman named Karen Johnson. And in addition to being the business partner of Dick Cheney’s hunting buddy, Katharine Armstrong, Karen Johnson is known to be close to Karl Rove. So close, in fact, that it is rumored they’re lovers. At one point, Karen Johnson was not entirely forthcoming about her ties to the White House. When she first filled out her lobbying disclosure forms for 2004, the year in which she helped Parsons get a contract to build a shit shower instead of a police academy, Johnson forgot that she had been, um, lobbying the White House.

If Parsons were to take over the company formerly known as Blackwater, it would single source all the worst in contracting: cowboys with guns immune from the law, contractors who do shitty (literally) work for inflated amounts of taxpayer dollars, and influence peddling. What a perfect next chapter for Blackwater!

Update: Jeremy Scahill suggests there are Democrats worried about this. I guess this may be more about embarrassing those Democrats–like those currently or formerly on the intelligence committees, presumably–who signed off on Blackwater activities.