Back in June, the Bush Administration invited one of AT&T’s key lobbyists, Ed Gillespie, to serve as White House counselor. A few weeks after that, BushCo expanded AT&T’s resident lobbyist’s role to include most of Karl Rove’s portfolio. Just days after Gillespie took over that role, the DOJ made an unusual intervention into the FCC’s request for comments on Net Neutrality, weighing against Net Neutrality.

Well today, one of AT&T’s former key attorneys, Peter Keisler, just took over the Department of Justice.

In the late 1990s, Keisler represented AT&T before SCOTUS in a case divvying up authority over how the 1996 Telecom Act would be implemented. He represented AT&T and other telecom companies fighting local ordinances limiting the acts of telecommuncation companies.

In early 2001, Keisler helped AT&T win the dismissal of a lawsuit that charged AT&T had illegally shared private information (a customer’s unlisted phone number) with AT&T’s credit division.The Second Circuit ruled that transfer of such personal information does not incur damages, and therefore private citizens cannot sue.

In June 2006, Keisler was one of a number of government lawyers arguing that New Jersey had no legal authority to subpoena documents relating to AT&T’s and other telecomm companies’ participation in the warrantless wiretapping program. Also in June 2006, Keisler invoked state secrets in Hepting v. AT&T, an attempt to scuttle the citizen lawsuits on the warrantless wiretap program.

In other words, both in and out of government, Keisler has represented AT&T’s interests masterfully.

Well, faced with losing his job, Michael Drake found a way to un-un-hire Erwin Chemerinsky.

UC Irvine Chancellor Michael V. Drake and Erwin Chemerinsky havereached an agreement that will return the liberal legal scholar to thedean’s post at the university’s new law school, the universityannounced this morning.

With the deal, they hope to end the controversy that erupted whenChemerinsky was dropped as the first dean of the Donald Bren School ofLaw.

Drake traveled over the weekend to Durham, N.C., where Chemerinskyis a professor at Duke University, and the two reached an agreementabout midnight Sunday, sources told The Times.

And Donald Bren narrowly avoided having the UCI law school named the Donald Bren Is an Intolerant Wingnut Law School.

Note to self–those crazy Republicans in Orange County respond quite well to public pressure and embarrassment.

That five star hotel that Tommy K was staying in in Greece? You and I are paying for it, it looks like.

A federal judge allowed a New York man who has admitted bribingformer North County U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham to remain free onbond, after an Assistant U.S. Attorney said at a hearing this morningthat the man’s recent trip to Greece was at the direction of federalagents.

U.S. District Judge Larry Alan Burns had called thehearing to learn whether the man, Thomas Kontogiannis, had traveledoverseas without permission. Any such trip requires prior approvalbecause Kontogiannis pleaded guilty earlier this year on a moneylaundering charge.

At today’s hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Forge said the trip was made at the government’s behest.

                  

Â

                  

"Myunderstanding is that everything Mr. Kontogiannis did was not just’with permission,’ but at the direction of agents and otherrepresentatives of the government," Forge said.

Or maybe the FBI is forcing Tommy K to use his ill-gotten gains on such luxury.

TPMM also notes that Judge Burns is going to give John Michael a peek at what his uncle gave the government in exchange for the plea deal.

Wildarseguess here. But I have a hypothesis for why Bush pulled his Clement-Keisler headfake this morning.

Recall that, just last week, BushCo made an unusual intervention into the FCC’s deliberations over Net Neutrality.

Well, a lot of people have noted that Keisler’s most notable achievement at DOJ was his role in spiking the tobacco settlement. Now, combine what that says about Keisler’s personality: that he’s willing to abuse the legal process to help out big corporate donors, with this case that he argued for AT&T back when he worked for Sidley & Austin, where Keisler worked in Telecom law.

The Second Circuit recently held in AT&T v. Conboy that transfers of personal information collected by a company do notnecessarily cause injury or give rise to cognizable damages. PeterKeisler of Sidley & Austin argued the case on behalf of AT&T.The decision was announced on February 26, 2001.

AT&Tprevailed over plaintiffs who claimed AT&T had improperly distributed theircustomer proprietary network information (�CPNI�) to AT&T�s former creditcard branch, Universal Card Service (�UCS�), in order to assist in credit-carddebt collection. The Conboys accusedAT&T of obtaining the information through its role as their long-distanceservice provider. The informationallegedly disclosed consisted of their names, unlisted telephone number,billing address, and details of their long-distance calls.

Gosh. I wonder if DOJ is going to be dealing with anything similar in the near future? You think maybe Bush was trying to get a good friend of Telecom in the AG seat as he attempts to ram through further amendments to FISA, most notably immunity for the Telecoms for … providing customer pen data to people who shouldn’t have had it?

Isikoff and Hosenball tell us what we already know–McConnell is a liar (only the crack headline artists at Newsweek call this "an error"). But here’s an odd detail in their story about McConnell’s petulant confession.

After questions about his testimony were raised, McConnell calledLieberman to clarify his statements to the Senate Committee on HomelandSecurity and Governmental Affairs, an official said. (A spokeswoman forLieberman confirmed that McConnell called the senator Tuesday but couldnot immediately confirm what they spoke about.)

Usually, when someone lies to Congress and "realizes" it, the process for clarifying testimony is simple. You write a written clarification. But that’s not what McConnell did. He talked to Lieberman personally, on the phone, leaving no public record of their conversation.

Now here’s the original exchange:

MCCONNELL: [The new FISA law] was passed, as you well know, andwe’re very pleased with that. And we’re better prepared now to continueour mission; specifically Germany, significant contributions. Itallowed us to see and understand all the connections with –

LIEBERMAN: The newly adopted law facilitated that during August?

MCCONNELL: Yes, sir, it did.

Maybe I just have lost all trust in Lieberman, but the original exchange sure seems like a set-up to me. "Hey Joey," McConnell says, "Why don’t you throw me a softball on the FISA program?" And then later, "Um, Joey, that softball your threw me? Well, I hit a foul ball. How do you want to handle it? I don’t want to lose the benefit of the erroneous claim. But what cab I do to protect myself, legally?"

That may not be a mature sentiment, wanting to see Conyers and Pelosi in a spat. But after reading that Pelosi knee-capped Conyers on his subpoena of Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten, I have marginal hopes that this will piss off Conyers and escalate things in HJC, rather than bury them as Pelosi seems content to do.

House Democratic leaders have decided to postpone a vote on a criminalcontempt resolution against White House chief of staff Joshua Boltenand former White House counsel Harriet Miers for several weeks, andpossibly longer, according to top lawmakers and aides.

[snip]

But the slowdown, approved by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) andher top lieutenants, is also stirring objections among Democrats.House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) saidhe is uncomfortable with the delay and worries the House will be seenas toothless unless it moves quickly to hold top officials in contemptfor failing to provide documents and testimony in congressional probes.

[snip]

Conyers said it was critical for Congress to enforce its subpoenasagainst executive branch officials, including senior White House aides.

“Otherwise, we just become a [social] club,” Conyers said, adding that he would be reviewing the issue with Pelosi soon.

You see, after a long history of noting the importance of impeaching George Bush, John Conyers quickly adopted the Pelosi party line when he assumed leadership of the House Judiciary Committee this year. Progress on the US Attorney investigation in HJC has been inexorable, perhaps too slow for my taste, but largely palatable to the jellyfishes in charge of Democratic strategy in DC.

John Conyers has the ability to change that, if he has the will and energy to do so. One way to do so immediately–and to ratchet up pressure on Pelosi and to garner a huge amount of press–would be to formally move into an impeachment investigation, something Conyers has the ability to do without the approval of Pelosi.

Mike McConnell or General Petraeus?

Petraeus has become Fox’s latest pundit, while McConnell is claiming the amended FISA is responsible for those German terror arrests last week.

The government’s ability to eavesdrop on terrorism suspects overseasallowed the United States to obtain information that helped lead to thearrests last week of three Islamic militants accused of planning bombattacks in Germany, Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, told senators on Monday.       

Butanother government official said Mr. McConnell might have misspoken.Mr. McConnell said the information had been obtained under a newlyupdated and highly contentious wiretapping law, the ForeignIntelligence Surveillance Act. But the official, who has been briefedon the eavesdropping laws and the information given to the Germans,said that those intercepts were recovered last year under the old law.The official asked for anonymity because the information is classified.

It’d be nice if we actually started holding government officials accountable for the lies they tell during oversight hearings, huh?

When Jim Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he refused to say the warrantless wiretap program was illegal.

SPECTER: Well, you don’t have to.

If the certification by theDepartment of Justice as to legality is required as a matter of law,and that is not done, and the program goes forward, it’s illegal. Howcan you — how can you contest that, Mr. Comey?

COMEY: Thereason I hesitate is I don’t know that the Department of Justice’scertification was required by statute — in fact, it was not, as far asI know — or by regulation, but that it was the practice in thisparticular program, when it was renewed, that the attorney general signoff as to its legality.

There was a signature line for that.And that was the signature line on which was adopted for me, as theacting attorney general, and that I would not sign.

So itwasn’t going forward in violation of any — so far as I know –statutory requirement that I sign off. But it was going forward eventhough I had communicated, "I cannot approve this as to its legality."

Jack Goldsmith doesn’t say so directly, either. But in this excerpt from his book, he makes it very clear that Alberto Gonzales should have no authority to investigate leaks about FISA–and particularly shouldn’t subpoena Goldsmith–since Gonzales had had to be get bailed out of an illegal program in the first place.

This Eric Lichtblau article provides a lot of dots that have been, heretofore, missing in our picture of the surveillance they’ve got us under. It’s no surprise the government has been using data mining on not just suspects themselves, but also on their friends and associates–a virtual "Friends and Families" plan of surveillance.

The documents indicate that the Federal Bureau of Investigation usedsecret demands for records to obtain data not only on individuals itsaw as targets but also details on their “community of interest” — thenetwork of people that the target in turn was in contact with.

But given the description, it’s more clear now why the Administration refused all meaningful oversight of the minimization they’re doing on their warrantless wiretapping. You can’t really collect a "community of interest" and at the same time be claiming you’re eliminating all data on those not directly targeted.

Further, the article explains why Alberto Gonzales got all squirmyearly this year when SJC asked him for information on National SecurityLetters. They were still trying to hide these communities of interest,so Gonzales didn’t want to provide much information on the program. Andmeanwhile, they were trying to bury the program.

The government official who spoke on condition of anonymity said theF.B.I. recently stopped asking the telecommunications companies for thecommunity of interest data. The exact time of and reason for thesuspension is unclear, but it appears to have been set off in part bythe questions raised earlier this year by the inspector general’sinitial review into abuses in the use of national security letters.

WTF is the Administration doing, claiming it has briefed members of Congress on the warrantless wiretap program when it hasn’t?

After the domestic surveillance program was revealed in 2005, formerSenate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham (D-FL) said thatWhite House briefings that he attended in the Vice President’s office failed to disclose that the administration was spying on Americans:

There was no reference made to the fact that we weregoing to…begin unwarranted, illegal — and I think unconstitutional —eavesdropping on American citizens.

Shortly thereafter, Cheney fired back at Graham, arguing, “Well that’s not true. [Graham] knew.” The White House accused him of “misremembering the briefings.”

In a recent interview with ThinkProgress, Sen. Graham told us that,after the controversy erupted in late 2005, the White House providedhim with dates when they alleged Graham had been briefed. Graham saidhe consulted his famous spiral bound notebooks and determined he had not been briefed on these dates:

I mean, I’m not surprised they didn’t brief members of Congress fully (or at least, the Democratic MOCs). But why claim you had when you hadn’t? Particularly when one of them (as TP points out) is a notoriously anal note-taker?

Most interesting is the Administration’s claim that Graham was briefed on April 10, 2002, which his spiral notebooks also disprove. That’s because it was purportedly a meeting with just Graham, and no no one else, after they had briefed Pelosi (in her role as ranking member of HPSCI), Goss, and Shelby.

I’d be inclined to get Pelosi on the record to find out how many of these early briefings she attended. Because I find it curious that the current Speaker may have been the only Dem briefed on key aspects of this program in its early days.