About Those Emails? The Contractor Did It

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emptywheel
I guess if you make sure your contractors can't reveal what they've done in your name, it becomes harder for others to discover what it is that you, personally, have done. But not impossible. The IT companies for the White House are denying that their the company that missed 5 million missing emails in their daily audits. When Congress asked about 5 million executive branch e-mails that wentmissing, a White House lawyer

A Game of Telephone

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emptywheel
So AT&T says they'll cut off your broadband if you say anything mean about them. But they say they don't really mean that. However, an AT&T spokesperson tells Ars Technica that thecompany has no interest in engaging in censorship but stopped short ofsaying that AT&T could not in fact exercise its ability to do so.

In Govt We Do Not Trust

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emptywheel
I'm still following up on the question of the way in which the Rather complaint invokes the debate on Hamdi. I wanted to draw extended attention to this article. In it, Tim Grieve susses out precisely what seems to be the reason Rather included the Abu Ghraib details in his complaint. Did Clement know he was misleading the justices, or was he kept out ofthe loop so that he could avoid revealing

Abu Ghraib, Hamdi, and Rather

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emptywheel
I've been meaning to go back to compare the chronology laid out by Dan Rather in his complaint as it pertains to Abu Ghraib with the chronology of the Taguba investigation and the Hamdi case. Two things stick out. First, Myers pretended to be ignorant of the details of the abuse on May 6, several weeks after he called Dan Rather personally to spike--or delay--the story.

How to Spend $57 Million on Cocktail Weenies

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emptywheel
Larry Johnson does the math, so I don't have to. Fitzgerald's total costs to investigate the deliberate outing of a CIA spy, through March 31, amount to $2,396,283. Ken Starr's total costs, to investigate a failed land deal and a blow job, amount to $59,463,703. I guess all those cocktail weenies Starr bought for the press really add up, huh? Now that Larry pulled all these numbers together, though, I'd like to

Wilkes Is On His Own

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emptywheel
Via chrisc, Judge Burns has severed the trials of Brent Wilkes and John Michael, on account of the health problems of the latter. Ajudge Monday severed the trials of ex-defense contractor Brent Wilkesand banker John Michael, who are charged in connection with thecorruption scandal that sent former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham toprison. U.S.District Judge Larry Burns postponed Michael's trial indefinitely afterattorney Raymond Granger said his client had been diagnosed with viralmeningitis.Pretrialmotions are scheduled

One Small Victory for Oversight

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emptywheel
One lingering suspicion that they're just moving this off the books: After several requests from the Homeland Security Committee callingfor a moratorium on the controversial use of spy satellite imagery fordomestic purposes, the Department has heeded the call and delayed itsplanned October 1st launch of its new National Applications Office(NAO). The Department has cited the need to address unanswered privacyand civil liberties questions from Congress – as addressed in theCommittee’s September 6th

What Secrets Is Wilkes Planning to Spring?

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emptywheel
Paul Kiel reported this morning that Brent Wilkes doesn't want the government to mention the prostitutes that Wilkes engaged as part of his bribe scheme to influence Duke Cunningham (here's the filing). And if the Court doesn't exclude the testimony about prostitutes, Geragos threatens, he's going to haul the prostitute whose calendar has been submitted as a business record into court so he can delve into her record-keeping practices.

One Texas Oilman Pleads Guilty

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emptywheel
It may not be the Texas oilmen we'd like to plead guilty, but it is going to make others think twice before they bribe dictators to do their oil deals. Texas oilman Oscar Wyatt Jr. pleaded guilty Monday to charges that hepaid millions of dollars to Iraqi officials to illegally win contractsconnected to the United Nations oil-for-food program. [snip] During the trial, prosecutors demonstrated that Wyatt had such a closerelationship with Iraq that he
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The Cost of Doing Business

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emptywheel
Walter Pincus analyzes one of the contracts that Henry Waxman is looking at to determine how much more Blackwater's mercenaries are costing us than a law-abiding US soldier. Pincus notes that Petraeus makes roughly $493 a day. This doesn't appear to include benefits; figuring benes make up 1/3 of someone's compensation--which in the private sector is often about right, but in the military is probably too small--then Petraeus might cost us,
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AT&T's Latest Censorship

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emptywheel
It's a good think I chose Comcast's oligopoly service for broadband internet service and not AT&T (my two easy choices for real broadband). That's because I tend to point out that our government is becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T. And AT&T just changed its acceptable use policy to prevent you from using AT&T's Toobz to tell others about the bad things AT&T is doing (via boing boing). Failure to observe
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Counterproliferationinsurgency

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emptywheel
I've got two small points to make about Sy Hersh's latest, which has been covered generally just about everywhere. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism. The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, thePresident and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign toconvince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threathas failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that

Duke Conference: Judges Panel (Reggie Live)

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emptywheel
Gary Hengstler, Director Reynolds Center for the Courts and Media. Importance of having a judicial strategy for the media. Who makes editorial decisions now? previously, you'd give everyone access. BC of conglomeration, editorial decisions are not being made by journalists, they're being made by commercial interests. Justice is in the entertainment and media field becoming a commodity.

Duke Conference: Role of the Public

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emptywheel
This panel matches Communications scholar Kim Gross with Scott Bullock with the Institute of Justice and Steve Shapiro of ACLU. Gross talked a lot about framing, particularly the coverage of race and crime. Bullock is talking a lot about working with the media, particularly reaching out to opinion leaders. Bullock is also talking about putting a client's story up front in their narrative.

Duke Conference Update

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emptywheel
On the comparative access panel, we got the European and Canadian perspective on media access, with a really interesting panel from Gavin Phillipson arguing that in the US the claims of the First Amendment are actually serving commercial interests. He argued that the British system, which made people responsible for leaks, was better. Lucy Dalglish argued that we don't have as much access as the others made out.

Prosecutor Panel

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emptywheel
Thomas Metzloff poses a question: In re: Nifong: We had a case in Durham, we had a prosecutor who was saying lots of things on TV, everyone remembers the quotable quotes. What is the message that's learned from Nifong? Michael Cassidy More lessons not learned than lessons learned. Brady and lying to court, he was going to be disbarred anyway.

Defense Attorneys Panel

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emptywheel
As expected, Mark Geragos is in CA trying to keep Brent Wilkes out of jail. And perhaps to subpoena a bunch of corrupt Congressmen. Laurie Levenson Makes a joke about Geragos being in trial or on TV or both. Talks about loading up your pleadings--"they're more likely to get it right." You can comment on public records, so put stuff in your pleadings so you can refer back to it. Discussion of cameras

Has Dick Cheney Outlasted Bill Leonard?

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emptywheel
Bill Leonard is resigning at the end of the year. It is with deeply mixed emotions that I inform you I have decided to leave government service at the end of the calendar year. [snip] I will miss all the great public servants at the National Archives as I move on to the next phase of my professional life.
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Checking In

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emptywheel
Things I'm going to get in trouble for saying publicly at Duke:That 80% of what is out in the blogosphere is crap. Hodding Carter had said half was. But I wasn't thinking about anyone in this corner of the blogosphere.That we bloggers were parasites on the legal teams of the mainstream media, who pay lawyers a lot of money to make sure things like the Libby grand jury recording gets released
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Afri ... um EuroAfriCom

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emptywheel
Scout prime has been tracking something I've been watching, too. The new AfriCom military command? Well, the entire continent of Africa has told us, "no, thanks." The Pentagon's plan to create a US military command based in Africahave hit a wall of hostility from governments in the region reluctantto associate themselves with the Bush administration's "war on terror"and fearful of American intervention. A US delegation led by RyanHenry, principal deputy under-secretary of defence
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