Archive for category: emptywheel

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

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

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

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

Is that really true though? Literally, Kevin is right. Presidents dohave a strong interest in this principle. But the President’s interest,in this instance, is not in line with the public interest. In fact,executive privilege offers the President and his advisers a perversedisincentive to Read more →

I’ve been referring to Brigadier Bergner as Baghdad Bergner since he first started giving press conferences. There was the press conference where he blamed Iran for the woes in Iraq, based on the interrogation of one Shiite. There’s this press conference where he blamed all the woes in Iraq on Al Qaeda in Iraq. The man clearly has no shame at telling the most transparent lies–from a podium not far from where his predecessor Baghdad Bob used to do the same.

But I gotta say, as someone whose credentials for analyzing all things postmodern are impeccable, this makes me dizzy.

In March, he was declared captured. In May, he was declared killed, andhis purported corpse was displayed on state-run TV. But on Wednesday,Abu Omar Baghdadi, the supposed leader of an Al Qaeda-affiliated groupin Iraq, was declared nonexistent by U.S. military officials, who saidhe was a fictional character created to give an Iraqi face to aforeign-run terrorist organization.

An Iraqi actor has been usedto read statements attributed to Baghdadi, who since October has beenidentified as the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq group, said U.S.Army Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner.

Bergner said the new information came from a man captured July 4,described as the highest-ranking Iraqi within the Islamic State of Iraq.

Hesaid the detainee, identified as Khalid Abdul Fatah Daud MahmoudMashadani, has served as a propaganda chief in the organization, aSunni Muslim insurgent group that swears allegiance to Osama binLaden’s Al Qaeda.

Here’s our shameless propaganda chief, claiming that their shameless propaganda chief invented a bogeyman that we could then say we had captured. Because it’s not like we’ve invented such bogeymans for our own use, nuh uh, not us. And conveniently, this little hall of mirrors ends up right back where BushCo would like to have us, with the claim that Al Qaeda in Iraq is Al Qaeda is the War on Terror is the never-ending war is the big bogeyman no one seems to care about anymore.

Now, to her credit, reporter Tina Susman provides two caveats presumably designed to suggest she can tell bullshit when she sees it:

I’m still reading the November 2005 affidavit on Cunningham’s bribery. It has a previously unknown level of detail on the CIFA-related pork Cunningham made possible. I think some of those details provide new insight into why the Director and Deputy Director of CIFA resigned (speaking of "trepidation") in August 2006, when the Cunningham investigation was focusing closely on CIFA.

The affidavit provides details of the involvement of the top management of CIFA in Cunningham’s deals for MZM. In particular, Deputy Director Hefferon intervened directly to make sure MZM still got its contracts.

A letter signed by Cunningham on or before February 24,2004, congratulates the Director of
CIFA regarding the Collaboration Center, stating in full as follows (emphasis added):I wish to take this opportunity to thank your staff for supporting the recent execution of the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) Collaboration Center Program. Additionally, I wish to endorse and support MZM, Idc.’s work, under your Statement of Work, DTD 20Feb04. As the Collaboration Center is completed, I hope to help you inaugurate the center as I did
at the inception of CIFA. According to Wade, MZM actually authored this letter on Cunningham’s congressional stationary.

[snip]

That same day, at approximately 12:26 p.m., Wiatrak objects: "Because we are being Read more →

The DOJ’s refusal to let John Tanner testify before the House Judiciary Committee reeks of desperation. After all, Brad Schlozman and Hans Von Spakovsky have already testified before Congress. Alberto Gonzales has testified repeatedly. What possible excuse can DOJ make not to allow Tanner to testify, ostensibly a career employee?

The absence of any good reason to refuse the request for his testimony suggests DOJ–and the Administration–is particularly worried about what he would say under oath. He would have to admit to:

• Overruling other DOJ lawyers to permit Georgia to enact a voter ID law later rejected by courts
• Overruling DOJ lawyers who found the Texas redistricting illegally diluted the voting power of African-American and Latino voters
• Approving the distribution of voting machines in OH that resulted in significantly longer wait times for Democratic voters
• Eliminating any paper trail of objections to such actions

There may be one more thing DOJ and the Bush Adminsitration are trying to prevent Tanner from admitting under oath. This ePluribusMedia article suggests that Tanner’s single-minded interest in becoming Vote Section chief seems to be stronger than his racism and Republican partisanship. Which raises the possibility he adopted such racist policies in exchange for the job he has wanted for over Read more →

Reuters reports that the EU report on secret prisons got much of its information from anonymous US intelligence officers.

Dissident U.S. intelligence officers angry at former DefenseSecretary Donald Rumsfeld helped a European probe uncover details ofsecret CIA prisons in Europe, the top investigator said on Tuesday.  

SwissSenator Dick Marty, author of a Council of Europe report on the jails,said senior CIA officials disapproved of Rumsfeld’s methods in huntingdown terrorist suspects, and had agreed to talk to him on condition ofanonymity.

 

"There were huge conflicts between the CIA andRumsfeld. Many leading figures in the CIA did not accept these methodsat all," Marty told European Parliament committees, defending his workagainst complaints it was based on unnamed sources.

Which makes me wonder where Mary McCarthy is now. You remember–she was the CIA’s Deputy Inspector General fired last year for allegedly leaking classified information, including details on the secret prisons in Poland and Romania.

But another CIA officer — the agency’s deputy inspector general,who for the previous year had been probing allegations of criminalmistreatment by the CIA and its contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan –was startled to hear what she considered an outright falsehood,according to people familiar with her account. It came during thediscussion of legislation Read more →