As Spencer reports from Gitmo, the first interrogator to question Omar Khadr at Bagram told him a story suggesting that if he lied, he’d be sent to an American prison where he’d be likely to get raped.

“I told him a fictitious story we had invented when we were there,” Interrogator #1 said. It was something “three or four” interrogators at Bagram came up with after learning that Afghans were “terrified of getting raped and general homosexuality, things of that nature.” The story went like this:

Interrogator #1 would tell the detainee, “I know you’re lying about something.” And so, for an instruction about the consequences of lying, Khadr learned that lying “not so seriously” wouldn’t land him in a place like “Cuba” — meaning, presumably, Guantanamo Bay — but in an American prison instead. And this one time, a “poor little 20-year-old kid” sent from Afghanistan ended up in an American prison for lying to an American. “A bunch of big black guys and big Nazis noticed the little Afghan didn’t speak their language, and prayed five times a day — he’s Muslim,” Interrogator #1 said. Although the fictitious inmates were criminals, “they’re still patriotic,” and the guards “can’t be everywhere at once.”

“So this one unfortunate time, he’s in the shower by himself, and these four big black guys show up — and it’s terrible something would happen — but they caught him in the shower and raped him. And it’s terrible that these things happen, the kid got hurt and ended up dying,” Interrogator #1 said. “It’s all a fictitious story.”

It may have been a fictitious story, but it was an implicit threat, and a very plausible one when you consider it was told to a Canadian likely to be aware of America’s atrocious record of prison rape of both men and women.

The fate of Khadr–whose further interrogations all followed this implicit threat–is one issue. But the fate of American prisoners exposed to rape is equally timely. There are just four days left to a comment period on new standards that would mitigate many of the underlying problems that allow prison rape to happen.

The U.S. Attorney General is currently reviewing national standards aimed at preventing and addressing this type of abuse. Until May 10, these measures are open for public comments.If fully implemented, the national standards will spare countless Americans the horror of sexual abuse. But the standards are under threat. The reason: Prison officials claim that it will be too expensive to implement them – too expensive to prevent staff from raping detainees.

[snip]

In 2003, Congress recognized that the victimization of inmates constitutes a national crisis and so it unanimously passed the U.S. Prison Rape Elimination Act.

The national standards currently under review by Attorney General Eric Holder were developed by a bipartisan federal commission through extensive consultation with corrections officials, criminal justice experts, advocates and prisoner rape survivors. They are basic, common-sense measures, highlighting the need to train staff, identify likely rape victims and likely predators and ensure that prisons are subjected to independent audits.

By law, Attorney General Eric Holder has until June to review the standards and codify them as federal regulations, making them binding on detention facilities nationwide.

Sadly, it now looks like Holder will not meet his deadline. The delay is due, in large part, to a problematic cost projection study commissioned by the Justice Department in response to pressure from corrections leaders.

In addition, there’s a petition calling on Holder to implement the new measures quickly.

It’s really appalling they used such a threat to scare Khadr. But it’s equally appalling that the threat is so plausible because rape is so common in our prisons.

And we may be a lot closer to doing something about the latter than we seem to be able to do about the former.

The LAT reports that targeting for most of the drone strikes that have killed more than 500 people in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been based not on information about an individual’s ties to terrorism, but rather on “pattern of life” analysis that targets the actions of a person.

The CIA received secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including suspected militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of its campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s border region, according to current and former counter-terrorism officials.

The expanded authority, approved two years ago by the Bush administration and continued by President Obama, permits the agency to rely on what officials describe as “pattern of life” analysis, using evidence collected by surveillance cameras on the unmanned aircraft and from other sources about individuals and locations.

Think about that: we’re potentially killing people based not on what we know about an individual, but what we have observed solely through the camera of a drone. Or, if we’ve got particularized information from someone on the grounds, it’s as likely to be someone from Blackwater or an even more disreputable contractor posing as PsyOp warriors. And this includes strikes in Pakistan, a country with which we are not at war, supposedly. And among those targeted in such a manner may be associates of Faisal Shahzad.

Remember that old Bush ditty, that we were fighting them over here so we didn’t have to fight them here? Apparently that has now been turned on its head: we are targeting them from here which may make it more likely we’ll be fighting them here.

What a ridiculous piece of crap this A1 article by Anne Kornblut is, proclaiming that Eric Holder is having a good week.

It parrots conventional wisdom about what a bad time Eric Holder has had–pointing to turf battles he lost, rather than matters reflecting on the success or failure of DOJ itself. And then proclaims that the arrest of Faisal Shahzad makes all those political battles disappear, at least for this week. For Anne Kornblut, it’s more valuable for the Attorney General to win the approval of a bunch of demagoguing political enemies than to get one after another terrorist to plead guilty and cooperate with the government.

Which sort of tells you about Kornblut’s judgment.

But it’s not Kornblut’s judgment that is most ridiculous in this article. It’s Rahm and David Axlerod’s:

Likewise, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel acknowledged that Holder had “a very good week,” comparing his ups and downs to those experienced by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner. “A year ago, people were saying Geithner isn’t what he’s supposed to be — and now he has his mojo back,” Emanuel said Wednesday. “The same with Eric.”

David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Obama, drew an identical comparison in a separate interview, saying: “Washington is a town of ups and downs, and there are other members of the administration — I think of Geithner, for example — who was in the barrel for a while. And it’s just the way this town works.”

So apparently Anne Kornblut felt her little theory that Eric Holder had a good week was important enough to ask the White House Chief of Staff about.

Really, Anne? That’s what you waste Rahm’s time with? Rather than, say, a question about the coordination between Janet Napolitano and John Brennan on terror strikes and oil spills, something that is not only part of the Chief of Staff’s job description but actually matters?

Apparently, though, both Rahm and Axe not only took her call to answer such an inane question, but they gave her … exactly the same answer. “Sure Anne, Holder has had a good week, but have you noticed what a good week Timmeh is having?” That is, both of them magically turned her inquiry about Holder’s mojo into a question to highlight what they claim to be Tim Geithner’s mojo.

Really, Rahm? Really, Axe?

Not only is it an absurd response, revealing not only that they’d rather not crow about Administration successes if it involves celebrating Holder, but also that they’re conducting a concerted effort to seed the conventional wisdom that people like Timmeh again.

Which is all the more absurd considering the Administration may face its biggest conflict with Congress if the amendment to audit the Fed passes. That is, the Administration may be placed in the very awkward position of vetoing a key oversight and transparency measure at least partly to protect Timmeh, whom those with a bit of knowledge suspect may be neck deep in the fraud that brought down our economy. Congress is attempting (and has widespread bipartisan support, even if it doesn’t pass the amendment) to target Timmeh and the culture of corrupt dealing he comes from, yet Rahm and Axe are telling journalists that Timmeh has gotten his groove back.

I guess they judged the relative skepticism of their audience well, though, cause Kornblut repeated it without guffawing or even snickering.

And all of this–Rahm and Axe’s juvenile popularity contest, their dubious claim that a guy involved in corrupt doings that are finally being exposed is somehow free from taint from those corrupt doings, and Kornblut’s incorporation of that dubious claim into a story measuring that popularity contest–got placed on the front page of the Washington Post.

Apparently, the ACLU (or rather, private investigators hired by the John Adams Project) are better spooks than the torturers. I say that because John Rizzo has now confirmed what had not been certain before: that when ACLU asked the PIs to figure out who had tortured the men it represented at Gitmo, the PIs actually got the right men–or at the least covert CIA people. (h/t MD)

“These were pictures of undercover people who were involved in the interrogations program given for identification purposes to the 9/11 [terrorists].”

[snip]

Mr. Rizzo said the photos “were pictures of agency people, some of which were captured paparazzi-style, clearly taken in a kind of surveillance mode.”

[snip]

“These were undercover people, the pictures taken surreptitiously found in the cell of one of the 9/11 suspects. I think they found it under the guy’s blanket,” he said.

[snip]

But he said that he could think of two types of crimes that may have been committed by the attorneys giving the photos to the detainees.

One possible crime would be the “disclosure of classified information, being the faces of these people, to an enemy foreign power,” Mr. Rizzo said.

Hey ACLU? You got the right people. John Rizzo–who was closely involved with the torturers–has now confirmed it for you in print.

All of which sort of highlights the problems with this witch hunt. To support it (in the Moonie Times before it goes under, I should note), Rizzo is arguing that faces are now classified. Not identities. Faces. Yet it didn’t have its torturers wandering around in burkas to hide those faces, which made them readily available for PIs to photograph. But the PIs presumably couldn’t be sure of the identities behind those faces until either the detainees at Gitmo confirmed them … or until someone like John Rizzo went and told a newspaper they were “undercover people who were involved in the interrogations program.”

And while we’re discussing John Rizzo, it’s rather important that Rizzo was the one who started this witch hunt in the first place, don’t you think?

John Rizzo, who was the agency’s top attorney until December, said in an interview that he initially requested the Justice Department and CIA investigation into the compromise of CIA interrogators’ identities after photographs of the officers were found in the cell of one al Qaeda terrorist in Cuba.

After all, if the full extent of individual torturers’ actions becomes public, it will be more likely they will be prosecuted for their actions. If that happens, it’s possible the torturers will expose the roles of those above them. And that would include John Rizzo, who almost certainly knew that the torturers were already exceeding the techniques approved by the Bybee Two memo as the memo was written. In other words, Rizzo has a very personal interest in hoping the names that belong with these faces don’t become named. Because if they do, the full extent of Rizzo’s complicity with torture might become exposed.

I wanted to call your attention to this excellent story from the Houston Chronicle describing some of the potential causes of the Deepwater Horizon spill. The short version appears to be that they were switching the drill chamber over from mud to water, which exposed what may be a potentially faulty concrete job, which brought gas to the surface. When that happened, and the blowout preventer was activated, the BOP failed, potentially because of leaky hydraulics.

As the Chron story explains, BP should not have been replacing the mud with water unless they were very sure of the cement job done the day before.

Experts say well-capping poses special hazards. One arose that day as crews were replacing the mud with seawater in pipes going from the ocean floor to the rig.

Deep gases exert astounding upward pressure on a well. “Drilling mud,” a heavy fluid used to lubricate the drill and bring up bits and pieces of rock, is used as the main line of defense against the upward pressure, or a disastrous eruption of gas.

The mud was being displaced so the riser could be detached from the rig and the wellhead, and the well could be capped with a final cement plug. But seawater is much lighter than mud. The pressure the riser was applying to the well would have lessened by as much as 38 percent, experts said.

That could prove significant.

Investigators likely will be considering whether the drill hole and the casing pipe were secured properly with cement a day earlier.

“The big question is how confident were they in the casing cementing job,” said Elmer “Bud” Danenberger, who recently retired as chief of offshore regulatory programs for the Minerals Management Service. “They shouldn’t have begun this (riser) operation until they were confident in that.”

Now, as the MMS recently found, problems with the cementing process have been one (but not necessarily the only) cause in a plurality of blowouts in recent years. Though most of those cementing-related blowouts occurred in far shallower waters than this well.

Cementing problems increased significantly during the current period as these problems were associated with 18 of the 39 blowouts, compared with 18 of the 70 blowouts with identified contributing factors during the previous study. During the current period, all but one of the blowouts associated with cementing problems occurred in wells with water depths less than 400 ft.

The Chron notes that HAL claimed it had tested its cement job in its “we worked to spec” statement from last week, but had not released the results of that test. A number of comments on oil boards suggest this is where a fight over liability between BP and HAL might break out–whether the tests showed the concrete was sufficient or not, and if there were doubts, whether the BP guy in charge should have called a halt to efforts to remove the rig.

In any case, for whatever reason, at the moment they were replacing the mud with seawater, gas and oil surged out of the hole, which is when the BOP should have–but failed to–prevent the blowout.

When the alarms go off “you shut it down,” said Daniel Becnel, an attorney from Reserve, La., who has filed lawsuits on behalf of fishermen, oystermen and other Louisiana residents claiming damages from the spill. “They’ve got panic switches all over the place.”

Those switches are supposed to activate a blowout preventer on the ocean floor, a huge and complex tower of valves and pipe crimpers designed to shut down a well in an emergency. It didn’t work.

Although it had been tested beforehand, BP now says robot submarines have discovered at least one problem with the blowout preventer, though it is unclear whether it caused the malfunction.

“We have found that there are some leaks on the hydraulic controls,” said Bob Fryar, senior vice president of BP’s exploration and production operations in Angola, in southwestern Africa.

Is anyone besides me wondering why BP’s Vice President in charge of exploration in Angola is the one discussing this malfunctioning blowout preventer off the coast of Louisiana? Because I am.

In any case, we’re back into an issue of testing again. A survivor from the rig describes how these tests would play into the decision to replace the mud with water (starting at about 0:30):

At that point, the BOP stack–the blowout preventer that [a previous caller] was talking about–was tested. Don’t know the results of that test. However, it must have passed because at that point, they elected to displace the riser–the marine riser–from the vessel to the sea floor. They displaced all the mud out of the riser preparing to unlatch from the well two days later. So they displaced it with seawater.

[snip]

The test should have been [sufficient] or they would never have opened it back up.

And we’re also back to the question of whether former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force fostered a climate in which a backup system–an acoustic regulator–was deemed too expensive to require.

The absence of an acoustical regulator — a remotely triggered dead man’s switch that might have closed off BP’s gushing pipe at its sea floor wellhead when the manual switch failed (the fire and explosion on the drilling platform may have prevented the dying workers from pushing the button) — was directly attributable to industry pandering by the Bush team. Acoustic switches are required by law for all offshore rigs off Brazil and in Norway’s North Sea operations. BP uses the devise voluntarily in Britain’s North Sea and elsewhere in the world as do other big players like Holland’s Shell and France’s Total. In 2000, the Minerals Management Service while weighing a comprehensive rulemaking for drilling safety, deemed the acoustic mechanism “essential” and proposed to mandate the mechanism on all gulf rigs.

Then, between January and March of 2001, incoming Vice President Dick Cheney conducted secret meetings with over 100 oil industry officials allowing them to draft a wish list of industry demands to be implemented by the oil friendly administration. Cheney also used that time to re-staff the Minerals Management Service with oil industry toadies including a cabal of his Wyoming carbon cronies. In 2003, newly reconstituted Minerals Management Service genuflected to the oil cartel by recommending the removal of the proposed requirement for acoustic switches. The Minerals Management Service’s 2003 study concluded that “acoustic systems are not recommended because they tend to be very costly.”

Finally, there’s one more question about this–why they switched from mud to seawater in the first place. Apparently, that’s done because it makes it easier to come back and reopen the well in the future–it’s a cost saving measure. Though it appears that not switching over from mud to water might just have postponed the ultimate failure a few days.

All of which is an elaborate way of saying we don’t know. It’s possible outright negligence played into this spill. It’s possible that the standard requirements for such drilling have been (ahem) watered down because of laughable concerns about cost, or that the parties involved cut corners on this well in particular because of time pressures (which are ultimately money pressures too). And it’s possible that none of these safeguards would have made drilling at these depths safe.

But I sure am curious whether we’ll ever see those test results.

As bmaz reported last night, the Obama Administration has refused to accept Vaughn Walker’s ruling in al-Haramain–in fairly spectacular fashion (and yes, bmaz, Mary, MadDog and others did tell me this was going to happen).

Meanwhile, across the pond, the folks from whom we got our legal system are refusing the very concept that the government could avoid its legal liability by claiming its crimes were all a secret. The British Court of Appeals refused the British government’s attempt to respond to a suit from Binyam Mohamed and other former Gitmo detainees by claiming only the government and the judge could see the evidence–effectively the stance the Obama Administration has now doubled down on.

British residents held at Guantánamo Bay could be offered millions of pounds in compensation for wrongful imprisonment and abuse after the court of appeal today dismissed an attempt by MI5 and MI6 to suppress evidence of alleged complicity in torture.

The judges ruled that the unprecedented legal move by Britain’s security and intelligence agencies – which the attorney general and senior Whitehall officials backed – to suppress evidence in a civil trial undermined the principles of common law and open justice.

[snip]

In the appeal court ruling, Lord Neuberger, master of the rolls, Lord Justice Maurice Kay and Lord Justice Sullivan said that accepting the argument of the security and intelligence agencies would amount to “undermining one of [the common law’s] most fundamental principles”. One of those principles was that “trials should be conducted in public, and the judgments should be given in public”.

The judges gave the attorney general, MI5 and MI6 28 days to appeal to the supreme court. But government officials have told the Guardian that the former detainees are now likely to be offered compensation of millions of pounds in out-of-court settlements as that would be preferable to having embarrassing evidence of the security and intelligence agencies’ complicity in abuse being exposed.

In other words, if the government refuses to share evidence of its own involvement in the torture of British residents and citizens, then they are going to have to settle with those men, rather than just dismissing the suit altogether by saying the plaintiffs can’t see the most crucial evidence in question. Had the government accepted Walker’s judgment in al-Haramain, they would have paid millions, but would have managed to keep evidence of their precious illegal wiretap program (a program both Obama and Holder have said was illegal) secret. (The Times has more, including some excellent quotes from the plaintiffs’ lawyer.)

How quaint the old country looks from this distance!

Yes, I know, it was hard to see this coming. As Condi Rice would say, “who could have expected”? Nevertheless, here it is. As you may recall, back at the end of March, Judge Vaughn Walker entered his somewhat earth shattering order granting summary judgment to Plaintiffs al-Haramain (see: here and here) and on April 16 Plaintiffs lodged their proposed form of judgment (see also: here).

Well, last Friday the government, by and through their ubiquitous attorneys the Department of Justice, filed their response to Plaintiffs’ proposed judgment. To put it mildly, the government is not consenting to the entry of judgment and is not going quietly into the night. The government did not just object to Plaintiffs’ judgment, they have lobbed another giant thumb in your eye belligerent pile of repetitive argument on Judge Walker:

Although the Court has made a finding of liability as to plaintiffs’ FISA claim (with which the Defendants respectfully disagrees), plaintiffs cannot merely rely on that determination at this stage. Rather, the entry of damages and other equitable relief is a separate matter, and plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that there is any basis for the Court to award them the amount of liquidated damages they seek, punitive damages, or the other forms of relief set forth in plaintiffs’ proposed judgment.

For those not familiar with reading between the double spaced lines of legal pleading, the government is continuing to object to everything up to, and including, the Plaintiffs’ right to exist as plaintiffs in the first place. They will not consent to judgment; they will not agree to pay. They are not going to stop at go; they are not going to pay $200.

The government is fighting how long the surveillance occurred:

While the $100 per day of violation is an alternative amount of liquidated damages under Section 1810, that alternative turns on the fact issue of how many days the purported violation occurred. Thus, the total amount sought for daily damages must be supported not merely by a finding that plaintiffs had been intercepted, but on how many days that any violation of FISA Section 1809 occurred.

The government does not admit that plaintiffs were illegally surveilled, but argues if they were they were not illegally surveilled for the number of days claimed by plaintiffs. Gosh, if you didn’t know better, you might think the government is suddenly arguing the merits. But, of course, they will not admit to that either.

The government is fighting on even the availability of punitive damages:

In addition, even if punitive damages were available against the United States under Section 1810(b), plaintiffs’ proposed judgment fails to establish any factual basis for such an award. See Molzoff v. United States, 502 U.S. 301, 309 (1992) (punitive damages “embodies an element of the defendants’s conduct that must be proved before such damages are awarded”).

The government is fighting over whether the illegal fruits of their illegal surveillance can be suppressed and/or scrubbed:

As a threshold matter, the equitable relief plaintiffs seek as to alleged documents and information is not authorized by the cause of action at issue here.
….
Nor does § 1806(g) authorize the expungement remedy that plaintiffs seek. That subsection only provides for suppression of evidence unlawfully acquired by electronic surveillance of an aggrieved person with standing in an ongoing proceeding.
….
Plaintiffs have not alleged or shown that they are facing any threat of irreparable harm, let alone a real and immediate threat of irreparable harm, from the alleged existence of the allegedly unlawful electronic surveillance in the Government’s files and records. As noted above, plaintiffs’ request is not made in the context of any ongoing proceeding against them, nor have they made any showing of any anticipated action against them. Finally, balancing the relevant interests would again require disclosure of whether or not plaintiffs were in fact subject to electronic surveillance, whether any information derived from such surveillance exists and what it may indicate information that the Ninth Circuit found is protected by the state secrets privilege.

Hell, the government is even fighting and denying that Judge Walker even has the power to decalre their conduct illegal:

Paragraph six (6) of plaintiffs’ proposed judgment also seeks the “equitable relief” of a declaratory judgment that the “defendants’ warrantless surveillance of plaintiffs was unlawful as a violation of FISA.” See Dkts. 723/117 at 3. The Court lacks jurisdiction to enter such relief. Section 1810 does not authorize the entry of any equitable declaratory or injunctive relief.

Oh, and the government does not think plaintiffs are entitled to attorney fees either and certainly not at this point. The bad faith joke of a judgment the government is willing to have Vaughn Walker sign is attached to the tail of their extended whining. Read it and laugh. Funny thing is, if you didn’t know better, you would say the government is actually fighting on the merits right now.

So, in sum, the government is not remotely close to conceding judgment, paying and walking away. And they are still determined to spit in Judge Walker’s eye at every possible opportunity; and sure have done so here. To me, based on my experience with courts and advocacy, the DOJ’s attitude is so malignant and unsophisticated that the only explanation is that they are desperately trying to get Judge Walker to lash out at them in order to contaminate the record. It is either that or Coppolino, Hertz, Letter et. al are such crappy lawyers they simply do not know better and, as craptastic as some of their work has been in this case, I do not buy that they are that poorly skilled.

And so we move on with the further litigation of al-Haramain v. Obama. The next activity expected in the case is this Friday, May 7 when the court has set Plaintiffs’ brief in support of punitive damages as being due. After reading this tripe by the government, I have a feeling the Plaintiffs may have more than a few things to say.

As oil continues to gush into the Gulf, I’ve been haunted by the statement Halliburton put out about the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Here’s the statement, dated April 30, in its entirety.

Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) confirmed today its continued support of, and cooperation with, the ongoing investigations into the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig incident in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this month. Halliburton extends its heartfelt sympathy to the families, friends and our industry colleagues of the 11 people lost and those injured in the tragedy.

As one of several service providers on the rig, Halliburton can confirm the following:

• Halliburton performed a variety of services on the rig, including cementing, and had four employees stationed on the rig at the time of the accident. Halliburton’s employees returned to shore safely, due, in part, to the brave rescue efforts by the U.S. Coast Guard and other organizations.
• Halliburton had completed the cementing of the final production casing string in accordance with the well design approximately 20 hours prior to the incident. The cement slurry design was consistent with that utilized in other similar applications.
• In accordance with accepted industry practice approved by our customers, tests demonstrating the integrity of the production casing string were completed.
• At the time of the incident, well operations had not yet reached the point requiring the placement of the final cement plug which would enable the planned temporary abandonment of the well, consistent with normal oilfield practice.
• We are assisting with planning and engineering support for a wide range of options designed to secure the well, including a potential relief well.

Halliburton continues to assist in efforts to identify the factors that may have lead up to the disaster, but it is premature and irresponsible to speculate on any specific causal issues.

Halliburton originated oilfield cementing and leads the world in effective, efficient delivery of zonal isolation and engineering for the life of the well, conducting thousands of successful well cementing jobs each year. The company views safety as critical to its success and is committed to continuously improve performance. [my emphasis]

HAL’s first concern, in its statement, was to invoke “its cooperation” in the investigation. Only after that did it mention the casualties from the explosion. Then, it described (sort of) its role on the rig, stating that their work was:

• Consistent with that utilized in other similar applications
• In accordance with accepted industry practice approved by our customers
• Consistent with normal oilfield practice

You get the feeling that HAL wants to cement (heh) the impression that everything it was doing on the rig was all standard practice? You get the feeling that HAL wants you to know that everything they were doing on the rig had been approved by BP?

And it took them a full week to come up with that statement.

All of which leads me to wonder whether–though mind you, I’m just wondering–HAL (which did, after all, originate oilfield cementing) did something that may well have met BP’s specifications, but which HAL, with its expert knowledge of what it should do in conditions like those at the Deepwater Horizon site, might be rethinking. That is, the tone and content of their statement suggests HAL is preparing a defense that it met spec, regardless of whether that spec was appropriate to the conditions involved.

The economic and environmental damage resulting from the exploding fireball compromise of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform may be unprecedented, with the potential to emit the equivalent of up to four Exxon Valdez breakups per week with no good plan to stop it. There will be plenty of finger pointing among BP, Transocean and Halliburton, while it appears the bought and paid for corporatist Congress put the screws to the individual citizens and small businesses by drastically limiting their potential for economic recovery; all in the course of insuring big oil producers like BP have effectively no damage liability for such losses.

How did this happen? There are, of course, a lot of pertinent factors but, by far, the one constant theme underlying all is the mendacious corporate servitude of the Republican party, their leaders and policies. The arrogance and recklessness of BP and its oily partners gestated wildly under the Bush/Cheney administration.

Until the turn of the decade, BP had a relatively decent safety and environmental record compared to others similarly situated. Then BP merged with American oil giant Amoco and started plying the soft regulated underbelly of Republican rule in the US under oil men George Bush and Dick Cheney. Here from the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is an excellent list of BP misconduct, almost all occurring and/or whitewashed under the Bush/Cheney Administration. If you open the door, foxes eat the chickens.

But it is not just regulatory policy behind the open and notorious recklessness of BP and its ilk, it is intentional policy at the Department of Justice as well. Here is how the former Special Agent In Charge for the EPA Criminal Investigative Division, Scott West, described the DOJ coddling of BP under the Bush/Cheney Administration:

In March 2006, a major pipeline leak went undetected for days, spilling a quarter-million gallons of oil on the Alaskan tundra. The spill occurred because the pipeline operator, British Petroleum (BP), ignored its own workers warnings by neglecting critical maintenance to cut costs. The spill sparked congressional hearings and a large federal-state investigation. Despite the outcry, in a settlement announced in late October 2007, BP agreed to one misdemeanor charge carrying three-year probation and a total of only $20 million in penalties (a $12 million fine with $8 million in restitution and compensatory payments).

The settlement resulted from a sudden U.S. Justice Department August 2007 decision to wrap up the case, according to West. That precipitous shutdown meant

Felony charges would not be pursued and the agreement foreclosed any future prosecutions. No BP executive faced any criminal liability for a spill second in size only to the Exxon Valdez;

The fines proposed by Justice (to which BP immediately agreed) were only a fraction of what was legally required under the Alternative Fines Act. EPA had calculated the appropriate fine levels as several times what Justice offered BP – ranging from $58 million to $672 million, depending upon the economic assumptions; and

The BP Alaska settlement is part of a pattern of “lowball” corporate public safety and pollution settlements engineered by the Bush Justice Department. In that October 2007 settlement package, Justice asked for only $50 million in fines for the BP Texas refinery explosion in which 15 people died – penalties not carrying strong deterrent value for a big multi-national corporation

The above is verbatim from a formal complaint filed with the Inspector General of the DOJ, Glen Fine, by West and a group known as Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The complaint went on to quote West as follows:

Never …have I had a significant environmental criminal case shut down by the political arm of the Department of Justice, nor have I had a case declined by the Department of Justice before I had been fully able to investigate the case. This is unprecedented in my experience.

When a chief agency criminal investigator cannot get traction for the prosecution of crimes, and considers the internal DOJ policy to be complicit, you might have a problem. It appears, however, the complaint went nowhere, which is not IG Glen Fine’s fault as, once again, DOJ accountability has been prevented by the fact that, unique to executive agencies, the DOJ IG has no jurisdiction over the conduct of the attorneys in the DOJ and goodness knows neither OPR nor David Margolis would countenance such an investigation.

By the way, since I have not seen anybody else mention it, much less the Obama/Holder DOJ appear to care, it should be pointed out that BP, despite the bend over sweetheart comprehensive deal the Bush DOJ worked out for them, is still on at least two different criminal probations for their malevolent reckless and intentional conduct. One case was for the Alaska spill and BP was placed on criminal probation for three years starting in December 2007. The other case was a felony plea resulting from the Texas City Refinery explosion. Here is the plea agreement from the Texas City Refinery case and here is the concurrent statement of facts in support thereof.

As special Agent Scott West complained, they were indeed sweetheart deals cut in a comprehensive settlement swath by the Bush DOJ; nevertheless there are still multiple criminal probations BP is still operating under. Where is the DOJ on this now? Contemplating a third strike, repeat offender takedown of BP? No, there has been nary a peep in this regard from the Obama/Holder DOJ. In fact, the only lawyers DOJ has indicated they are assigning the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe are Civil Division and Natural Resource Division talking heads Tony West and Ignacia Moreno. Nope, par for the course, the DOJ is sending managers to smooth the waters, not prosecutors and investigators to bring accountability.

The DOJ under the politicized Republican rule of Bush and Cheney instituted a preference for coddling corporate malfeasants like BP and Exxon with lax civil measures instead of punitive criminal prosecutions and, in the process, created a get rich windfall program for their friends to serve as “monitors” for the civil settlements. The policy was begun when Bush first took office and was formally instituted as DOJ policy by Bush/Cheney water carrier Paul McNulty in 2006. From an April 2008 New York Times article by Eric Lichtblau:

In a major shift of policy, the Justice Department, once known for taking down giant corporations, including the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, has put off prosecuting more than 50 companies suspected of wrongdoing over the last three years.

Instead, many companies, from boutique outfits to immense corporations like American Express, have avoided the cost and stigma of defending themselves against criminal charges with a so-called deferred prosecution agreement, which allows the government to collect fines and appoint an outside monitor to impose internal reforms without going through a trial. In many cases, the name of the monitor and the details of the agreement are kept secret.
…..
But critics of the agreements question that assertion. Charles Intriago, a former federal prosecutor in Miami who specializes in money-laundering issues, said that huge penalties, like the $65 million fine for American Express Bank International in 2007, were “peanuts” compared with the damage posed by a criminal conviction.

Neutering the criminal deterrent of the DOJ criminal process for big business and corporate interests, and gutting of regulatory agencies, is the Republican ethos. It is what they live for, and what gets us where we are with catastrophes like the Gulf oil slick. A guest poster at Digby, Debcoop, hit the nail on the head:

The fault lies with the ideology and mores of the Republican party and its theory of government. Their solution to this country’s energy’s future is to drill anywhere and everywhere. In their theory of government, government has no right to control who, what, where and how the natural resources of this country or this planet are exploited or not exploited, resources that are needed by us all and are needed to protect us all. Like my friend Jim Gilliam said in a private email, government is supposed regulate corporate behavior not just be their willing partner/follower. This is a lesson that we all need to keep in mind and that includes the president.

In the Republican theory of government, government regulation is inherently evil or at least counterproductive. So under George Bush et al, the only regulation in the Gulf has been self regulation. This oil spill is the fault of Republican ideology.

It is who the Republicans are, and what they do. And when they cannot accomplish their goals by legislating in service to corporate masters, they pack the Supreme Court with corporatist ideologues like Roberts, Alito and Thomas. The result is directly displayed by the 2008 decision in Exxon Shipping Co. v. Baker:

…a nakedly activist decision that pulls its standard for limiting damages out of thin air, demonstrates hostility to the role of Congress, and continues a pattern of ignoring the Framers’ views on the importance of civil juries. Progressives would do well to treat this decision with resounding scorn, and highlight it as a textbook example of why the Supreme Court matters.

The case arose from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, wherein Exxon allowed Joseph Hazelwood, a relapsed alcoholic, drunk at the time, to the helm of a massive oil tanker navigating the treacherous waters of Alaska’s Prince William Sound at night. The ship ran into a reef, ruptured and spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil, devastating the Sound’s fragile and pristine ecosystem. Grant Baker is one of 32,000 commercial fishermen and Alaska Natives that sued Exxon for their economic losses and for punitive damages against Exxon.

More than 6,000 of these victims have died during the course of this litigation, which Exxon has tenaciously prolonged for 16 years with appeal after appeal. In 2006, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals cut what was originally a $5 billion jury verdict down to $2.5 billion. Today, the Court cut this again for Exxon to a maximum of $500 million.

It is not just the Republicans however, Democrats have become the same kind of servile lackeys for big corporate interests as the Republicans. The Obama DOJ has continued the Bush/Cheney/McNulty policy of coddling corporate criminals with civil treatment as opposed to hard criminal prosecution and conviction of both corporations and their leaders. And if Barack Obama follows through with his impostrous determination to appoint a “moderate consensus builder” like Elena Kagan to replace John Paul Stevens, you can expect even more corporatist decisions from the Supreme Court.

Business/government symbiotic corporatism is becoming the defining characteristic of our government; the United States is on the road to neo-feudalism in a land run by the New Robber Barons. The oil slick in the Gulf can either be a wake up call, or grease for a further slide down the current slope.

UPDATE: Jason Leopold has a new article up at Truthout that meshes perfectly with this post. As I noted above, BP was on criminal probation for the Texas City Refinery fire; Jason follows up with the literally dirty details of just how repetitively and badly BP has wantonly violated said probation:

“It was the most comprehensive and detailed investigation the CSB has ever done,” Bresland said March 24, marking the fifth anniversary of the refinery explosion. “Our investigation team turned up extensive evidence showing a catastrophe waiting to happen. That cost-cutting had affected safety programs and critical maintenance; production pressures resulted in costly mistakes made by workers likely fatigued by working long hours; internal audits and safety studies brought problems to the attention of BP’s board in London, but they were not sufficiently acted upon. Yet the company was proud of its record on personnel safety.” According to OSHA, BP has not only failed to comply with the terms of its settlement agreement, it has knowingly committed hundreds of new violations that continue to endanger the lives of its refinery workers. ….. Still, as highlighted in a January 2007 report issued by a panel chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker III, systemic issues related to process safety were not limited to the firm’s Texas City refinery. In fact, they were widespread.

Leopold’s article is a good read and gives a good bead on the reckless operating philosophy of BP which gestated under the lax regulatory and prosecutorial Republican regime of Bush/Cheney as discussed in the body of this post above.

Jeremy Scahill reports on a recording that was liberated from a recent Erik Prince talk in which Prince talks about all the great roles he thinks Blackwater should play in protecting Big Oil. Mind you, he didn’t call it Big Oil. But he proposed sending Blackwater to a number of countries to (seemingly) counteract Iran’s challenge of Saudi hegemony in the Middle East.

Prince painted a global picture in which Iran is “at the absolute dead center… of badness.” The Iranians, he said, “want that nuke so that it is again a Persian Gulf and they very much have an attitude of when Darius ran most of the Middle East back in 1000 BC. That’s very much what the Iranians are after.” [NOTE: Darius of Persia actually ruled from 522 BC–486 BC]. Iran, Prince charged, has a “master plan to stir up and organize a Shia revolt through the whole region.” Prince proposed that armed private soldiers from companies like Blackwater be deployed in countries throughout the region to target Iranian influence, specifically in Yemen, Somalia and Saudi Arabia. “The Iranians have a very sinister hand in these places,” Prince said. “You’re not going to solve it by putting a lot of uniformed soldiers in all these countries. It’s way too politically sensitive. The private sector can operate there with a very, very small, very light footprint.” In addition to concerns of political expediency, Prince suggested that using private contractors to conduct such operations would be cost-effective. “The overall defense budget is going to have to be cut and they’re going to look for ways, they’re going to have to have ways to become more efficient,” he said. “And there’s a lot of ways that the private sector can operate with a much smaller, much lighter footprint.”

In addition to his plot to use Blackwater to counter Iranian power, Prince also called to send Blackwater to Nigeria, in what would amount to propping up a corrupt (but US-friendly) government to beat back the indigenous opposition to the abuse, environmental degradation, and corruption related with the oil industry in that country.

Prince also proposed using private armed contractors in the oil-rich African nation of Nigeria. Prince said that guerilla groups in the country are dramatically slowing oil production and extraction and stealing oil. “There’s more than a half million barrels a day stolen there, which is stolen and organized by very large criminal syndicates. There’s even some evidence it’s going to fund terrorist organizations,” Prince alleged. “These guerilla groups attack the pipeline, attack the pump house to knock it offline, which makes the pressure of the pipeline go soft. they cut that pipeline and they weld in their own patch with their own valves and they back a barge up into it. Ten thousand barrels at a time, take that oil, drive that 10,000 barrels out to sea and at $80 a barrel, that’s $800,000. That’s not a bad take for organized crime.” Prince made no mention of the nonviolent indigenous opposition to oil extraction and pollution, nor did he mention the notorious human rights abuses connected to multinational oil corporations in Nigeria that have sparked much of the resistance.

Scahill doesn’t say it explicitly (nor did Prince), but this amounts to a plan to use mercenaries to shore up the hegemonic system the US build on big oil.

Scahill describes a lot more of Prince’s braggadocio in his post. But I, for one, am particularly intrigued by Prince’s naked aspirations to become Big Oil’s privatized enforcer.