Discourse.net

Petition for a US Truth Commission

The Bush Truth Commission web site, sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy, invites you to sign their online petition.

Some background at Kos.

Post-Mortems of the Bush Administration

• Patrick Farley sums up the Bush Era: “All Circuses and No Bread”
• Vanity Fair, An Oral History of the Bush White House: Politics
• AFL-CIO NOW BLOG | BushWatch: The Final Frontier
• Daily Show, Moment of Zen - Credits for the Last Eight Years

Always Worse than Your Worst Expectations

Just when you think you might have plumbed the depths of the abyss that it the Bush Justice Department, no, the Bush Administration, comes this:

More Allegations of Misconduct in Alabama Governor Case.

I might have suspected that a recused official would remain deeply involved in a case, but I would never have suspected illicit communications with a jury.

If recent history is any guide, there must be many more skeletons in the White House closets. The Bush team has worked hard to cover its tracks — see for example it wholesale evasion of the rules requiring the archiving of email — but who knows what else is waiting to be revealed.

Less than 100 to Go

Less than 100 days to go before the inauguration, and in anticipation I’ve moved my countdown clock from the very bottom of the blog, where it has rested for years, up to the top so that it may enjoy a moment in the sun before its retirement.

Inaugurations are at 12 noon on January 20th of the year following the November election. If you are wondering why the clock shows what seems to be an extra hour, I think it is because this counter cleverly includes the extra hour for the move off Daylight Savings Time, the last Sunday in October, when we gain an hour (“Spring forward, Fall back”).

Friday McBush Bashing (Democratic Convention Edition)

Seems Democrats were busy with something or other the past few days.

• Kevin Hayden, Quote of the day from mild-mannered Clark Kent-ish guy:

  “There isn’t a Republican serving in the Senate that’s happy he’s the nominee. Now, they’re all supporting him, but I’ll tell you they have told me. I’ve had Republican senators tell me they don’t think they’ll vote for him,” Reid said.

• Juan Cole, Informed Comment, McCain: Iraq is a Peaceful, Stable Country
• TPM, Still Hope

  If you’re bummed about not getting a ticket to watch the Obama speech at the Invesco Center, you’ll be happy to know they’re still giving away tickets for John McCain’s veep announcement tomorrow at the aptly-named 12,000 seat Nutter Center.

• AFL-CIO, Welcome to Ohio, John McCain!
  
  
  
• Crooks & Liars, It’s Not Just McCain, It’s Republicanism
• US Magazine (!), Cindy McCain’s half sister: “I’m voting for Obama”
• Out of Sight, Out of Mind
• This: McCain’s solution to health care crisis: Redefine “uninsured” (via Crooks & Liars) … leads to this: Digby: “Another day, another McCain advisor thrown under the bus for accidentally telling the truth about his candidate’s indifference to the struggles of ordinary Americans.”
• McCain’s Million Dollar Parking Lot
  
  
• Fred Clark, 1989: A reminder
• Crooks & Liars, Richard Dreyfuss Calls Out Bush, McCain and their “Corrupt” Republican Party
• Brian Schweitzer’s evisceration of McCain at the DNC
  
  
  (He’s a pretty interesting guy, by the way. See Kos, Three Schweitzer stories)
• Batocchio at Hullabaloo, McCain POW Bingo
• Senator Clinton on the twins in the twin city
  
  
  
• kath25, Kos, John McCain : No Choice for Women
• Via Crooks & Liars, Daily Show: Howard Dean goes “inside John McCain’s brain”
• Also via Crooks & Liars, Sen Kerry Blasts McCain: “Let’s compare Senator McCain and Candidate McCain”
• Again, Crooks & Liars, John McCain’s Evolution on Abortion
• DeLong, Morning Coffee: Why McCain’s Health Reform Plans Frighten Me (August 25, 2008)
• TPM, Puffed-Up Hypocrite Watch
• smintheus at Kos, Stupid Republican VP tricks
• TPMTVMcCain on Houses Gaffe: I Was a POW (used to be that he said it was a subject he didn’t like t bring up…)
  
  
  
• Obama Campaign, “Don’t Know Much” TV Ad
  
  
  
• Via Needlnose, McCain’s Vice-President Announcement:
  
  
• McCain’s Respectful Campaign
  
  
  
• “Roger Ailes” writes,

  The McCain campaign keeps emphasizing that McCain was a prisoner in Vietnam, as proof of his qualification for the Presidency.
  
  Well, so was Gary Glitter, and I’m not voting for him either.

• Progressiveaccountability.org, Media Fact Check: McCain’s Houses. McCain — and some news outlets — say four. “CORRECT ANSWER: McCain Owns At Least Ten Properties Worth $13,823,269.”
• Jed Report, 007: GoldenMansion, starring John McCain:
  
  
  
• Lindsay Beyerstein, All the Pretty Houses (Part II): Lifestyles of the Rich & Befuddled
• Obama Ad, Out of Touch:
  
  
  

• Get Energy Smart! NOW!!!, Get Energy Smart! NOW!!! » Blog Archive » Calculating John’s Housing Carbon Footprint …

[More or less reverse chronological order this week — the newest thing first instead of last]

Jealous

How come Pakistan gets to force its President into a resignation under threat of impeachment?

Help Is On the Way

America’s Finest News Source, Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Presidency

Don’t miss the map.

Dark Doings at the Pentagon

Scott Horton, Jim Haynes’s Long Twilight Struggle.

I wish we had more journalism like this.

Bush Scandals: 300 and Counting

Hugh’s List of Bush Scandals — 300 strong.

And, a printout of Hugh’s list displayed in an mall

Enjoy the State of the Union tonight. I’m taking a pass on it - like much of the rest of the country I’m pretty tired of that voice and that face.

Lies, Lies, Lies

Lies abound.

• Lies, Damned Lies, a Searchable Database of Lies — links to and describes a new database of Bush administration lies about Iraq
• Computers piece together millions of shredded Stasi documents — unraveling Communist lies
• Why similar forensics may be needed here in the USA: Plame Investigation and Missing Emails: Analysis on Emails

Disgusting

Bush Admin. admits to destroying e-mails from start of Iraq War, Leak of Valerie Wilson’s name and DOJ investigation of leak

Gov 101: comply with Presidential Records Act.

Bush 101: Lie like a rug. CREW’s list of Previous White House Statements that Conflict with Yesterday’s Filing:

• January 23, 2006 Letter from Patrick Fitzgerald (pdf)
• Video of April 13, 2007 White House Press briefing with Dana Perino
• Transcript of April 13, 2007 White House Press Briefing with Dana Perino
• CNN story from April 13, 2007 on missing White House emails
• December 20, 2007 Letter from Rep. Henry Waxman to White House Counsel (pdf)

They Can't Even Wiretap Properly

Our wiretap-happy government didn’t pay its wiretap bill.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau’s repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI’s lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. Poor supervision of the program also allowed one agent to steal $25,000, the audit said.

In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation “was halted due to untimely payment,” the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the government’s most sensitive and secretive criminal investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.

Lots more where that came from.

Be Thankful

Even when it’s difficult.

Worst. President. Ever.

George W. Bush has set a new record of unpopularity:

Bush reached an unwelcome record. By 64%-31%, Americans disapprove of the job he is doing. For the first time in the history of the Gallup Poll, 50% say they “strongly disapprove” of the president. Richard Nixon had reached the previous high, 48%, just before an impeachment inquiry was launched in 1974.

This seems as good an occasion as any to re-open the debate started here almost two years ago. In Discourse.net: Worst President Ever? I asked if GWB was the worst President ever. Readers were pretty persuasive that he was only a runner-up to James Buchanan.

But a lot has happened in two years: torture, politicization of every office of government, beating drums of war with Iran, poor management of relations with Pakistan, the dollar collapse, the deficit, the increasing inequality, the vetoes, the quagmire in Iraq (and the stop-losses), the forgetting of Afghanistan and New Orleans, one could go on and on and on.

So now I am prepared to remove the question mark.

What say you all?

500 Days To Go

By my count, a new administration will be inaugurated in ‘just’ 500 days. I count differently from some of the popular countdown clocks, because I know that inaugurations happen at noon, not midnight.

Political Prosecutions & the US Attorney Mess

Scott Horton, in the conclusion to an article on the parts of the US Attorney mess that we don’t think enough about:

Biskupic, Canary and Martin, among the group of U.S. Attorneys who have sold their professional souls, need to be put in a jail cell for thirty days to read Robert H. Jackson’s “The Federal Prosecutor.” It’s still the best statement of the ethical and professional responsibilities of a prosecutor that we have, and this crew make plain from their conduct that they haven’t an inkling of what their obligations to the country are. At this point I don’t know how many rotten eggs are out there, but one thing’s for certain: it’s not the dozen cashiered prosecutors we need to be worried about, but the more than eighty who were retained.

IDoTears.com

“I do tears.” - President George W. Bush

Yes, it’s enough to make you cry.

Iraq Vets Ask Bush to Stop Blocking Tillman Investigation

A group of Iraq War veterans invites you to sign on to their letter asking Bush to stop blocking the investigation into the death of Cpl. Pat Tillman.

Full text of the letter below.

President George W. Bush The White House
Washington, DC

Mr. President, Sir:

On behalf of the veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, and those troops still in theater, we implore you to reconsider your decision to invoke claims of executive privilege in refusing to share vital documents regarding the death of Corporal Pat Tillman with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

As you know, this week the Associated Press obtained the medical examiner’s finding at the time of his death that Corporal Tillman’s fatal wounds seemed to indicate shots fired from ten yards away, or less. The doctors who examined Corporal Tillman urged a criminal investigation into his death be opened at that time, and were refused. Since that time, the Department of Defense has put forth two explanations for the death of Corporal Tillman, the first of which was proven false, and a second which now seems to have been proven to be a lie, as well. In both cases, the White House has actively pushed these false findings to the public.

Your administration has faithfully shared a number of documents with the committee, but has withheld a number of requested documents under the specious argument that sharing the documents would violate confidentiality among you and your staff. For instance, the Committee has requested a number of communications between senior administration officials and the Pentagon, which may offer important details into the death of Corporal Tillman, and if there was an attempt to cover them up, by some in the Executive Branch.

Respectfully, Sir, when it comes to outright lies conveyed to the public about the death of a soldier - especially one like Corporal Tillman whose service was used as a recruiting poster for the military - there is nothing which cannot be shared with the Legislative Branch or the people.

Confidence in the institution of the military from those within is at stake, the longer you withhold information. The longer questions remain about the death of Corporal Tillman and possible White House involvement in an ensuing cover-up, the more our troops will question whether this government will properly honor their sacrifice and let their families know the truth, if they are killed in action. It is simply impossible for the military to function, if those in its ranks do not have full faith in our leadership up the chain of command, all the way to Washington.

Additionally, by letting questions fester regarding the death of Corporal Tillman, you are placing an undue burden on our recruiters, at a time when our Army and Marine Corps can ill-afford more of a drop off in recruiting. Our military depends on being able to visit homes and gaining the trust of mothers and fathers to allow their 18-year old son or daughter to wear the uniform. What mother would allow her son or daughter to serve a nation she feels will not honor her child’s service?

Finally, as Commander in Chief, you owe the complete and total truth to Corporal Tillman’s mother, Mary Tillman. Those of us who served know that it is the duty of any officer to write to the families of those under us who were killed, and tell them the entire truth regarding their love one’s death. To lie about any details or withhold any information would not just cause unjust pain to the survivors, but is to dishonor the fallen. As our nation’s top commander, it is your duty to Pat Tillman and his family to release all materials related to his death.

For the good of our military, our troops, the Tillmans, and our nation, we respectfully call on you to comply with all past and future requests of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on the matter of the death of Corporal Tillman.

Respectfully,

Jon Soltz
Chairman, VoteVets.org
Iraq War Veteran, US Army
New York, NY

Michael Breen
Former US Army Ranger
Iraq and Afghanistan War Veteran
Seattle, WA

Brandon Friedman
Iraq and Afghanistan War Veteran, US Army
Dallas, TX

Elliot Anderson
Afghanistan War Veteran, US Marine Corps
Las Vegas, NV

Lt. Col. Andrew Horne (ret.)
Iraq War Veteran, US Marine Corps
Louisville, KY

Peter Granato
Iraq War Veteran, US Army
Washington, DC

John Bruhns
Iraq War Veteran, US Army
Philadelphia, PA

Joseph Kramer
Iraq War Veteran, US Army
Pittsburgh, PA

Lies - Gonzales Must Go

Anonymous Liberal makes The Case Against Gonzales — and it’s a pretty powerful account that very strongly indicates he lied to Congress. Some, maybe most, of the lies technically may not be perjury as they were statements made while Gonzales was not under oath, but even so, telling a Senate committee lies is illegal, immoral, and ample reason for Gonzales to go.

Try here if cartoon doesn’t appear properly.

Patrick Tillman Was Murdered?

Firedoglake — BREAKING: A Whole New Level of Horror describes evidence that might lead one to believe Patrick Tillman was murdered.

Just writing that makes me feel like some Vint Vince Foster conspiracy nut.

But it comes from the AP:

Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman’s forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player’s death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

“The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described,” a doctor who examined Tillman’s body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.

The doctors - whose names were blacked out - said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

Are we to believe the White House covered up the fragging of a soldier because he was a well-known sports star? I suppose after war crimes, nothing is unimaginable any more.

(Except cannibalism, right? We don’t eat people, right?)

A Brief Survey of Briefings

Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler) has done a fabulous bit of sleuthing, and posts the results at The Next Hurrah: The Briefing Dates.

The key point is that Congressional leaders were briefed about secret (and IMHO illegal) wiretap programs so long as the administration thought they were legal — but the briefings stopped when they started to have doubts:

For the first two years of the program, the Intelligence Committee leaders were briefed fairly regularly, at least every 6 months. (It was just the Intell leaders at that point, and not the party leaders, because BushCo went on a snit after Richard Shelby leaked the news that the NSA had had an intercept from Al Qaeda before 9/11, and cut back who it briefed even more than normal; finally, though, the leaders rebelled and they began to get briefed on the big secrets too.) And they seemed to be very diligent to make sure that everyone got equal briefing. For example, when Bob Graham missed the March 5, 2002 briefing, he got his own briefing not long thereafter.

The March 10 Meeting

But then, there was an unusually long gap between briefings, from July 17, 2003 to March 10, 2004, a gap of eight months rather than six. If they had followed the previous pattern, they would have done a briefing in January, 2004.

Note, this was right during the period when Jim Comey, Jack Goldsmith, and others, were recognizing that the program was illegal. So they didn’t brief Congress on the program when they discovered it was illegal, but rather let it go for two more months, until the day Comey refused to certify its legality, before they bothered to convene. Effectively, rather than warning Congress, they created a crisis, presumably creating more pressure on Congress to approve it.

Effectively, the March 10 meeting was Tom Dashcle’s only briefing on the program. Perhaps that’s why he forgets the meeting? Wouldn’t you think he’d remember it all the more?

Also note, Tom DeLay got his very own personal briefing on March 11, the day the program operated with no legal sanction. Oh to be a fly on the wall at that meeting…

Irregular Briefing

Things get a little sketchy after that. Congress did not receive a briefing after the crisis, so they presumably didn’t learn that the program operated illegally (well, maybe DeLay did, but he’s kind of fond of illegal activities). Just Pete Hoekstra got a briefing on September 24, 2004, and he presumably got that solely because he had just taken over as Chair of HPSCI after Porter Goss became DCI the day before. Harry Reid had to wait much longer—two months—before he was briefed on the program after becoming Minority Leader in the Senate in 2006. Effectively, though, the program went almost a full year (March 10, 2004 until February 3, 2005) before Congress was briefed on the program that had been found to be operating illegally.

All this has increased salience this week, because basket case Attorney General Gonzales testified that back when he was White House Counsel, he got an OK to proceed with a/the program from the Congressional leaders which led Gonzales and Card to ambush Ashcroft in intensive care.

There’s lots more in the original post. Sen. Rockefeller again emerges looking spineless on an intelligence issue. There is evidence for the proposition that Speaker Pelosi is smart as hell.

Lies, Lies, Lies

Firedoglake : Omerta

Here’s a tip for Bush Administration cronies:  if you are going to lie under oath, on the record, with a video camera in your face, don’t lie about something for which there is documentary evidence directly contradicting your statements.  It makes you look unprepared, panicked and sloppy.

Impeach Gonzales

• Daschle Calls Abu a Liar
• Depends On What The Definition Of Program Is
• Rep. Harman: White House Never Sought Approval For ‘Other Intelligence Activities’
• Contempt For Gonzales
• Alberto “Fredo” Gonzales — So What is Bush Saying?
• Impeach him, charge him with perjury, hold him in contempt … just do something
• Impeach Abu Already

It’s unanimous.

See also Andrew Cohen’s Rough Justice - The Case Against Alberto Gonzales: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV, plus Gonzo on the Hill: A Comedic Tragedy

More Dirt on Gonzales

Gonzales Knew About Violations, Officials Say

Two senior Justice Department officials said yesterday that they kept Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales apprised of FBI violations of civil liberties and privacy safeguards in recent years.

The two officials spoke in a telephone call arranged by press officials at the Justice Department after The Washington Post disclosed yesterday that the FBI sent reports to Gonzales of legal and procedural violations shortly before he told senators in April 2005: “There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse” after 2001.

It is a sign of how dysfunctional our government is that this man is still in office. ( Not to mention that the same questions must be asked about Gonzales’s boss.) The question presented is whether these are truly exceptional times, or whether the current crisis — the public’s complete loss of trust in the government, the government’s complete lack of interest in whether the public trusts it — is a sign of some deeper structural failing in our form of government.

Will Libby Escape Probation Too? Maybe Not

Meanwhile, Judge Walton asks if Libby is even eligible for probation when his sentence was commuted before he served it (the statute assumes that supervised release follows incarceration). He’s asked for briefs by Monday (Judge Walton’s order and further discussion at Scotus Blog, Sentencing Law and Policy, Big Tent Democrat and Firedoglake).

The good folks at Talkleft, however, think they have two plausible answers to this: (1) the day Scooter got booked counts as one day of incarceration for time-served credit, so that satisfies the statutory pre-requisite; (2) the statute doesn’t matter, because the commutation power is plenary, and the president can transmutate prison time into something less harsh (people can refuse pardons, so there is no risk that something harsher would be substituted). As a result, the statute prerequisite isn’t relevant here. Details at Suggestions for Judge Walton on Libby’s Supervised Release.

Daily Kos: Libby's "Pardon on the Installment Plan" == Sabotage of Investigation

Daily Kos: A Pardon on the Installment Plan

It should be noted, for future record, that the President of the United States has just used his power of clemency to sabotage an active criminal investigation into the office of his own Vice President. In some parallel universes, I have heard tell that such a thing was once itself considered corruption, or obstruction. It seems at minimum useful to put a footnote in the history books, somewhere, that such a remarkable thing could happen and still receive not merely praise, but unsheepish celebration among people who pretend nightly to be serious about such things.

I think almost everyone involved sees this as what it almost certainly is: Scooter Libby, loyal to the last, is getting his pardon on the installment plan. There is little advantage — and distinct disadvantage — for Bush to pardon the charges entirely, at the moment, but Bush indeed came through with an impeccably timed effort to ensure Libby faced no actual material consequences from his actions. Facing immediate jail time? Then kill the jail time. All of it, from day one onward. If Libby was in any actual danger of having to pay his $250,000 fine, there seems little doubt he would have seen that part of his sentence commuted as well.

But now Libby is in no imminent danger: problem solved. Bush has neatly and in one action removed any impetus for Libby — or anyone else — to cooperate with government investigators. There is no leverage a prosecutor can use against Libby, in order to gain a plea deal in exchange for information that he has so far refused to provide. Conservative backers have contributed more than five million dollars in a slush fund for Libby’s defense, and are eager to help him in his hour of need.

Still Steaming

Paris Hilton went to jail; Scooter walks (scoots?). He can thank the ‘Scooter commuter’. Or perhaps the mysterious inhabitant of the fourth branch.

Readings looking for irony may find it chez Atrios (“Inevitably, the subject of Marc Rich comes up every time presidential pardons come up. Without going into all of the issues, can we just remind the world that… Marc Rich’s lawyer was Scooter Libby.”) and also at Is That Legal?, which tells the instructive tale of Wilbert Lawrence.

Myself, I’m not looking for irony. Democratic spines would be nice.

The Framers Were Smart

Via a report written and released by the Judiciary Committee in 1974 in the aftermath of the Watergate crisis:

Comments in the state ratifying conventions also suggest that those who adopted the Constitution viewed impeachment as a remedy for usurpation or abuse of power or serious breach of trust. Thus, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina stated that the impeachment power of the House reaches “those who behave amiss, or betray their public trust.”⁶⁰ … In the same convention George Mason argued that the President might use his pardoning power to “pardon crimes which were advised by himself” or, before indictment or conviction, “to stop inquiry and prevent detection.” James Madison responded:

[I]f the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty…⁶³

But will they?

When You Have No Shame, There Is No Limit On How Low You Can Go

The administration still hasn’t lost its capacity to amaze or to communicate in Newspeak.

It seems that the GW Bush “respects the jury’s decision” in the Libby case, but has decided to overturn it — by commuting Libby’s jail sentence.

So the good soldier, who took one for team by lying to the Justice Department, walks. His $250,000 fine will undoubtedly be paid by well-wishers or through speaker fees, so the net effect of the sentence is two years of probation and transfer to the talk show circuit.

I admit that when I first saw the headline, I thought it was a joke. But it’s real. Statement by the President On Executive Clemency for Lewis Libby (full text after the jump). No matter how low they go, they show they can go lower.

“Only a president clinically incapable of understanding that mistakes have consequences could take the action he did today. President Bush has just sent exactly the wrong signal to the country and the world. In George Bush’s America, it is apparently okay to misuse intelligence for political gain, mislead prosecutors and lie to the FBI. George Bush and his cronies think they are above the law and the rest of us live with the consequences. The cause of equal justice in America took a serious blow today.”

“The President’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence does not serve justice, condones criminal conduct, and is a betrayal of trust of the American people.

“The President said he would hold accountable anyone involved in the Valerie Plame leak case. By his action today, the President shows his word is not to be believed. He has abandoned all sense of fairness when it comes to justice, he has failed to uphold the rule of law, and he has failed to hold his Administration accountable.”

“The President’s decision to commute Mr. Libby’s sentence is disgraceful. Libby’s conviction was the one faint glimmer of accountability for White House efforts to manipulate intelligence and silence critics of the Iraq War. Now, even that small bit of justice has been undone. Judge Walton correctly determined that Libby deserved to be imprisoned for lying about a matter of national security. The Constitution gives President Bush the power to commute sentences, but history will judge him harshly for using that power to benefit his own Vice President’s Chief of Staff who was convicted of such a serious violation of law.”

Note that Libby’s sentence was not excessive. It was within the (now non-binding) sentencing guidelines — and that Libby didn’t take responsibility for his crime. Which gives him a great deal in common with his bosses.

Note also that by commuting but not pardoning Bush (1) ensures that Libby won’t talk to prosecutors in the hopes of getting a lighter sentence; and (2) ensures that Libby retains the right to take the 5th is questioned by prosecutors or by Congress (modulo immunity…)

I don’t believe my role [as governor] is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own, unless there are new facts or evidence of which a jury was unaware, or evidence that the trial was somehow unfair.

[UPDATE: an astute commentator (‘The Editors’) corrects me regarding Bush’s Texas record: then-Gov. Bush did commute one death sentence but for which the execution total would have been 153. I didn’t know that and I am grateful for the correction.]

As Howard Dean said,

“Once again President Bush and the GOP have undermined a core American value: equal justice under the law for every American. By commuting this sentence, President Bush is sending a clear message that the rules don’t apply to the Bush White House or loyal Republican cronies. After promising that anyone who violated the law would be ‘taken care of,’ President Bush instead handed Scooter Libby a get out of jail free card. Though Libby was convicted by a jury of lying about a matter of national security, President Bush is sparing him the consequences ordinary Americans would face. This conviction was the first moment of justice in a Bush Administration void of accountability. It’s a sad day for America when the President once again puts protecting his friends ahead of equal justice under the law.”

Full text of Statement by the President On Executive Clemency for Lewis Libby:

I have said throughout this process that it would not be appropriate to comment or intervene in this case until Mr. Libby’s appeals have been exhausted. But with the denial of bail being upheld and incarceration imminent, I believe it is now important to react to that decision.

From the very beginning of the investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name, I made it clear to the White House staff and anyone serving in my administration that I expected full cooperation with the Justice Department. Dozens of White House staff and administration officials dutifully cooperated.

After the investigation was under way, the Justice Department appointed United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald as a Special Counsel in charge of the case. Mr. Fitzgerald is a highly qualified, professional prosecutor who carried out his responsibilities as charged.

This case has generated significant commentary and debate. Critics of the investigation have argued that a special counsel should not have been appointed, nor should the investigation have been pursued after the Justice Department learned who leaked Ms. Plame’s name to columnist Robert Novak. Furthermore, the critics point out that neither Mr. Libby nor anyone else has been charged with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act, which were the original subjects of the investigation. Finally, critics say the punishment does not fit the crime: Mr. Libby was a first-time offender with years of exceptional public service and was handed a harsh sentence based in part on allegations never presented to the jury.

Others point out that a jury of citizens weighed all the evidence and listened to all the testimony and found Mr. Libby guilty of perjury and obstructing justice. They argue, correctly, that our entire system of justice relies on people telling the truth. And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable. They say that had Mr. Libby only told the truth, he would have never been indicted in the first place.

Both critics and defenders of this investigation have made important points. I have made my own evaluation. In preparing for the decision I am announcing today, I have carefully weighed these arguments and the circumstances surrounding this case.

Mr. Libby was sentenced to thirty months of prison, two years of probation, and a $250,000 fine. In making the sentencing decision, the district court rejected the advice of the probation office, which recommended a lesser sentence and the consideration of factors that could have led to a sentence of home confinement or probation.

I respect the jury’s verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.

My decision to commute his prison sentence leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby. The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged. His wife and young children have also suffered immensely. He will remain on probation. The significant fines imposed by the judge will remain in effect. The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting.

The Constitution gives the President the power of clemency to be used when he deems it to be warranted. It is my judgment that a commutation of the prison term in Mr. Libby’s case is an appropriate exercise of this power.

Truth, the Final Frontier

I haven’t been posting about the various GWB insanities regarding the Veep, Gonzales, the Prosecutors, etc. etc. because, well:

• I’m busy
• It’s all too depressing
• TPM & The Carpetbagger Report have been doing such a great job of it

Here’s part of an especially good one from Thecarpetbaggerreport, The truth is apparently out of the question:

The White House “offer” to the Senate Judiciary Committee was fairly straightforward: if members wanted to talk to WH staffers about the prosecutor purge, the discussions had to be a) private; b) not under oath; and c) without transcripts. It’s that last one that never made any sense.

Indeed, the Bush gang never even tried to rationalize it. That is, until today.

The White House organized a conference call this morning with an official who certainly appeared to be Counsel Fred Fielding, who finally shed some light on why the president would make staffers available for private interviews, but only if there was no transcript of their remarks.

“Obviously, there has been a lot of discussion back and forth in that regard. The position that the president took and conveyed to the committees and the offer of compromise did not include transcripts. The accommodation was designed to provide information, not to appear to be having testimony without having testimony. One of the concomitants of testimony, of course, is transcripts.

“As far as the debate goes, often cited is that a transcript is not wanted because otherwise there would be a perjury trap. And, candidly, as everyone has discussed, misleading Congress is misleading Congress, whether it’s under oath or not. And so a transcript may be convenient, but there’s no intention to try to avoid telling the truth.” (emphasis added)

Got that? As Fielding sees it, if there’s a written record of what Bush’s aides say, senators might have proof if they lie. It’s preferable, then, to have no record and simply assume that White House staffers are being honest. And if you disagree with any of this, you prefer “confrontation” to cooperation.

He did not appear to be kidding.

571 more long days until it’s over.

Did I Miss Nothing?

I’m back, I’m almost over jet lag, and almost caught up with the news, but not with all the things that piled up while I was away. Fortunately, Patrick has agreed to do a few more guest posts as and when the Supreme Court issues its final decisions of the regular term.

• The war continues, and the Congress continues to enable it.
• Alberto Gonzales is still Attorney General… although most of the senior people working for him are quitting either in disgust or (in the case of henchpeople) in fear.
• There are near-daily revelations about US misdeeds regarding legal or physical treatment of prisoners in Iraq, or in Guantanamo or in secret CIA prisons, or regarding the coverup of same.
• The Republican primary field appears as hapless as ever.

Gone-zales? Not yet.

Stuart Taylor Jr. isn’t pulling his punches. OPENING ARGUMENT: Another Gonzales Horror Story :

Every day that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is allowed to remain in office is corrosive to constitutional governance and an invitation to further politicization of the Justice Department.

And “X-Judge” H. Lee Sarokin asks What Do Alberto Gonzalez And A Chicago Divorce Lawyer Have In Common?, and answers as follows:

They both have demeaned the legal profession. A huge billboard in Chicago’s nightclub district proclaims: “Life’s short. Get a divorce” It features photographs of “a sexy, scantily clad woman on one side and a buff, bare-chested man on the other”. (NYTimes 5/13/07) No matter what the message or the motive of the messenger, no one can dispute the right of the lawyer to offer her wares in this fashion. It has met with considerable success. As with the Attorney General, apparently all things are to be judged by whether or not they are working, not whether they are right or wrong. Illegal wiretapping, secret prisons, torture, unlawful detentions, political firings of U.S. attorneys, suspension of habeas corpus, rejection of the Geneva Convention, and undoubtedly a host of other conduct yet to be revealed (such as a coercive hospital visit to the previous Attorney General seeking approval of an illegal wiretapping scheme) are all justified on the basis that no further attacks have occured since 9/11. Ergo, these tactics, like the billboard poster, are working, The only difference being that encouraging divorce is not illegal or unconstitutional, although in this administration it might be one day.

As to the firings of the U.S. attorneys, nothing infuriates me more than the party line that these are political appointments, and the President, as did President Clinton, can replace them all. Yes, these appointments are political as are those to the courts, but once appointed, U.S. Attorneys, Judges and Justices cease to be political agents. To do otherwise violates their oath of office. Prosecutors should not be dismissed for pursuing criminal conduct by members of the party in power or failing to pursue actions for the sole purpose of embarrassing the opposition and affecting the outcome of elections. Justice is not meant to be used as a political weapon.

So look for a billboard with that infamous picture of the hooded prisoner at Abu Ghraib on one side and a smiling picture of the Attorney General on the other saying: “Stop Terror. Torture Works”, because there is little that the current Attorney General does not have in common with the sleazy divorce lawyer.

But, GWB “stands by” Gonzales. And you can see why Bush stands by his man: it will be hard to find anyone to take the job, and the confirmation hearing for any but a top-drawer replacement will be … searching.

Cheap Laughs

This is sort of a cheap laugh, but the last line is really funny. YouTube - Godfather IV

ImpeachGonzales.org

See the video by ImpeachGonzales.org.

Another Horrible Story about Alberto Gonzales

I’m in Nashville for a couple of days of intensive meetings, so I don’t have the energy to blog about this important development in the Gonzales scandal: thanks to James Comey’s testimony before Congress, it seems that top officials in the White House, including then-counsel Gonzales were so anxious to keep on with a secret, illegal wiretapping program (whose details remain unknown) that the entire Justice Dept. opposed they tried to get Ashcroft to sign off on it while he was in intensive care. To his credit, Ashcroft, like Comey, refused.

The Comey video is at Talking Points Memo and some good discussions are in my brother’s column, and at Hullabaloo, Glenn Greenwald and FireDogLake.

It is now is impossible to dismiss the suspicion is that for more than two years — before the Justice Dept got around to complaining about it — there were illegal domestic wiretaps aimed at the Bush regime’s domestic opponents.

Previous post about James Comey: An Honest Man.

Waldmann's Rules

Robert’s Stochastic thoughts:

He who knows and knows that he knows is a Teacher. Learn from him.
He who knows not and knows that he knows not is a student. Teach him.
He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a menace. Avoid him.
He who knows and knows not that he knows is our Attorney General. Impeach him.

Impeach Gonzales

This sort of complete incompetence — or dissembling under oath — ought surely to be impeachable.

Think Progress » Gonzales: “I Haven’t Really Thought About” Habeas Corpus:

At today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales whether any U.S. citizens are “being held today, for over a month, who have been denied habeas corpus or access to an attorney.” Instead of giving an answer, Gonzales replied, “[Y]ou’re asking me a question I hadn’t really thought about.”

Sherman then followed up and asked whether there any “U.S. citizens being held now by foreign governments or foreign organizations, without access to attorneys, as a result of rendition.” Gonzales again said, “It’s just — quite frankly, I hadn’t thought about this.”

Watch the clip.

Too True

This ‘Goofus & Gallant: A DOJ Human Resources Primer’ by Jesus’ General is much too true.

It seems there’s lots more rot to root out of DoJ. Don’t miss the newscast that Ann Bartow linked to in a comment yesterday: DoJ’s civil rights division isn’t hiring (m)any minorities for its criminal division. Only two black lawyers out of 50. A number lower than any time since 1978. Although the broadcast doesn’t say so in so many words, one gathers the overall number for the civil rights division including the civil side is better — or at least, the best in DOJ (whatever that means). But it’s hard to escape the suspicion that there’s a connection between the whiteness of the criminal division and this:

One Justice Department chart revealed that over a six-year period the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had referred 3,200 individual complaints of discrimination to the civil rights division for action. They have resulted in only six lawsuits for race discrimination.

It never ends…

"Gonzales" Is Now a Trope

NO QUARTER: Letter to George Tenet from “a group of former intelligence officers” including Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson.

It now turns out that you were the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community—a grotesque mixture of incompetence and sycophancy shielded by a genial personality.

What does it mean when your name has become a way to invoke “a grotesque mixture of incompetence and sycophancy” — and why is Gonzales still the Attorney General?

I know, I know, for the same reason the US Army is still in Iraq.

Perverting the Course of Justice

I have no idea who “looseheadprop” is, but he or she writes one heck of a great essay over at Firedoglake on The Federal Prosecutor. You should read the whole thing, but in case you’re lazy, here’s the conclusion:

In short, [then-Attorney General and later Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson saw] the Hatch [Act] as a good excuse for USAs and AUSAs to be able to fend off attempts by politicos to co-opt the awesome power of their office to achieve political ends.

For over a generation, it was these principals that were inculcated into DOJ lawyers serving in the USAOs. Young lawyers like Jim Comey cut their teeth on these ideals. And for my entire professional life, I have seen no other standard, nor ever guessed that any other standard might ever be applied.

Contrary to the gobbletygook, clapptrap, distortions and apparently outright lies being slung around these days; this is not a question of a change in style from a previous administration to the current one.

This is a wholesale departure from long established traditions and well settled fully functioning and successful policies that have served this nation well under both Republican and Democratic administrations since at least our grandparent’s day.

I don’t know what Jim Comey is going to say today. But I know that he was “brought up” as a lawyer in the same traditions that all federal prosecutors of my generation learned. I also know that I have long admired his integrity and courage and have long feared his wrath (not that it has ever been directed at me, but it is terrifying to witness).

As a side note, I was at the Law Day dinner at the Waldorf on May 1st. All the talk that night was on two topics: 1)The USA firing scandal/raping and pillaging of DOJ, and 2) an online petition that was circulated that day calling for the restoration of habeas corpus.

I am happy to report that lawyers, judges, and other public servants known to me to be registered republicans where amoung the most outraged with respect to the former, and amoung the ardent supporters of the latter.

This is not about political party any more. This is about the rule of law. It is also about whether we are a civilized country striving to reach our best aspirations or whether we have sunk into barbarism where might makes right and where the term “serves at the pleasure of the president” is twisted from a courtly expression used by one who would resign in protest if he could not in good conscience carry out a directive from the President which the appointee felt to be wrong, into an excuse, a coverup for nefarious meddling into the charging decisions made at the District level.

As Lord Moulton once famously observed

“The measure of a civilization is the degree of its obedience to the unenforceable.”

As opposed to the current administrations view “if is it is not a clear violation of an often used criminal statute, then it’s perfect;ly OK.” And even then they have some carve out exceptions for “quaint” crimes involving violations of the Geneva conventions.

I will leave you with one last, chilling thought form the eloquent Lord Moulton

“Tyranny is yielding to the lust of the governing.”

If you are a law professor, lawyer, or law student, please consider signing the online petition to Congress requesting that it restore habeas corpus.

Daily Show Genius

In light of the previous post, we have to say that the folks at the Daily Show are the best political scientists around.

Gonzales & the 8: Much Worse Than We Think?

If this latest Murray Waas story, NATIONAL JOURNAL: Secret Order By Gonzales Delegated Extraordinary Powers To Aides, has any truth, then the perversion of the course of justice at the DOJ was not just a quiet conspiracy but an open and notorious hijacking of the legal order.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides — who have since resigned because of their central roles in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys — extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department. A copy of the order and other Justice Department records related to the conception and implementation of the order were provided to National Journal.

In the order, Gonzales delegated to his then-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, and his White House liaison “the authority, with the approval of the Attorney General, to take final action in matters pertaining to the appointment, employment, pay, separation, and general administration” of virtually all non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department, including all of the department’s political appointees who do not require Senate confirmation. Monica Goodling became White House liaison in April 2006, the month after Gonzales signed the order.

The existence of the order suggests that a broad effort was under way by the White House to place politically and ideologically loyal appointees throughout the Justice Department, not just at the U.S.-attorney level. Department records show that the personnel authority was delegated to the two aides at about the same time they were working with the White House in planning the firings of a dozen U.S. attorneys, eight of whom were, in fact, later dismissed.

And, of course, this:

The senior administration official who had firsthand knowledge of the plan said that Gonzales and other Justice officials had a “clear obligation” to disclose the plan’s existence to the House and Senate Judiciary committees — but the official said that, as far as he knew, they had not done so.

I ought to be inured, but both parts of this — the order, and the cover-up, are so raw that I actually find it hard to believe.

Although it sure ties up a lot of loose ends…

Read the whole thing. Weep. Then get even.

What's Doing (Reptiles Dept.)

I just want to thank all the people who have kept the comments lively at The Buck Doesn’t Even Stop By For Visits while I’ve been somewhat distracted by work.

If I know what’s good for me, blogging will be light for the next few days — I have to write an exam and do major surgery to a paper.

The world certainly is doing its best, however, to be very distracting.

For one thing, there’s a good-sized scaly toothed reptile back in the campus lake. I saw about seven eights of it, but not the snout which it had lodged under something at the bank of the lake, so I don’t know if it’s a gator or a croc, but I’d guess gator. The whatever-it-was had beached the front of its face, nose first, only 100 feet or so from the Rathskeller where students were happily boozing it up on a Friday afternoon, but there was a campus cop keeping the passing students from getting too close. He didn’t seem to be enjoying the job, and gave a rather grim smile when I observed that the gator had a police escort.

Previous posts on our toothy friends include Crocodile Reminder, Crocodile Coincidence, What? A Croc?, Croc II !, Cold Front Flushes Out UM Croc, Fair Warning (Alligator Dept.), Who Gets Custody of the Alligator ? and of course Exam Question: Is an Alligator a Deadly Weapon?. It’s not an obsession, really, just a fact of life.

Speaking of reptiles, the DoJ has done another Friday evening document dump.

Speaking of sinking your teeth into things, or maybe it’s man-bites-dog, don’t miss Army Officer Accuses Generals of ‘Intellectual and Moral Failures’ an amazing article about a Lt. Col. attacking his superiors (generically, not by name) in a prestigious army journal for incompetence and dishonesty in their prosecution of the Iraq war and for misleading Congress about it.

“After going into Iraq with too few troops and no coherent plan for postwar stabilization, America’s general officer corps did not accurately portray the intensity of the insurgency to the American public,” he writes. “For reasons that are not yet clear, America’s general officer corps underestimated the strength of the enemy, overestimated the capabilities of Iraq’s government and security forces and failed to provide Congress with an accurate assessment of security conditions in Iraq.”

Yingling said he decided to write the article after attending Purple Heart and deployment ceremonies for Army soldiers. “I find it hard to look them in the eye,” he said in an interview. “Our generals are not worthy of their soldiers.”

Next to last, but not least, the Bush administration war on the rule of law continues apace with its latest attempt to make it impossible for lawyers to provide meaningful or effective representation for Guantanamo detainees. I would write about this but words fail me to describe the petty viciousness of this idea and the manifest hostility to the very due process that I would have thought was one of the great achievements of our civilization. The NYT has an editorial which says part of what needs saying; some more of it is found in this Conversation with Gitmo Lawyer on Proposed DOJ Rules. Don’t look to the Supreme Court to do anything fast — in tangentially related cases, it’s not rushing the process, which is Shakespearian in its delay:

“For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,”

Meanwhile, only the willful blindness of one or two men (Bush, Chaney, take your pick), ensures that the US Army will continue to bleed itself dry in Iraq, to no visible benefit to anyone outside the White House. I understand that our departure could lead to horrors — and think we have a duty to mitigate them, especially be admitting a very large number of refugees here in order to protect all the people who have helped us. If there were a plausible scenario by which staying on would allow us to enact the ‘Pottery Barn rule’ (you broke it, you pay for it), I could support that. But the occupation is as big a failure as the initial military campaign was a success. No one arguing for staying on has a winning strategy that they can articulate other than “retreat is not an option”.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.

The Buck Doesn't Even Stop By For Visits

I know that GW Bush says all kinds of strange stuff, but is this the strangest (I don’t mean most mendacious, that’s different) remark of his current term in office?

Bush said sympathetic to Tillman family. President Bush hopes someone is held responsible for the U.S. military’s mishandling of information about the death of former football star Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, the White House said Wednesday.

That sound you hear is brains leaking out all over America. See, the Tillman case involves many high-ranking people in the Army — Colonels and Generals and perhaps even high-ranking civilian officials — engaged in a knowing and willful conspiracy to cover up and then lie to the public about the circumstances of Pat Tillman’s death. There is a chain of command here, and someone is a the top of it, either someone in a uniform or someone in a Pentagon. And either way, they report to one GW Bush.

So if this GW Bush who so vaguely and generally “hopes” that “someone” is held responsible also hopes that the “someone” held responsible is the person who is in fact responsible, all that GW Bush would have to do is pick up the phone and make one — one! — phone call to the current Secretary of Defense, asking for the appropriate head on a plate.

• GW Bush doesn’t understand that he can give the Pentagon orders
• GW Bush thinks we don’t understand he is the titular and (should he choose to exercise the role) actual head of government in this country as well as the Commander-in-Chief
• GW Bush hopes very much that someone is scapegoated for the ongoing Tillman PR disaster, but doesn’t want to pick up the phone and order that the actual ringleader who ordered up this unnecessary and destructive piece of propaganda be unmasked because the truth (Rumsfeld? Cheney?) is too embarrassing.
• The words “someone” and “responsible” should not be used in the same paragraph as “GW Bush”.

DOJ: Democrats Need Not Apply

We knew that Justice Dept. higher-ups, yes under Ashcroft too, were giving ridiculous preferences to right-wingers for the Honors Program (the entry-level way into great jobs at the Justice Dept.). That was pretty bad.

But I at least had no idea as to just how bad things were at DoJ until I read this account of the overt, systematic, and successful effort to blackball all Democrats from the top entry-level civil service jobs at DoJ. (Text of the whistle-blowing letter to Congress, via the Politico of all places.)

Rots From the Head?

Talking Points Memo has an important point about the US Attorney firing scandal (“the Gonzales 8”): the White House has never denied that G.W. Bush participated in the decision.

And there’s mounting evidence that he did.

Isn’t it amazing that the press took a non-denial denial about Bush’s direct involvement in the firing decision (“Anything’s possible … but I don’t think so.” — Tony Snow) and just let the matter drop? Shouldn’t they be asking about this at every gaggle and press conference until they get a straight answer?

Lapdogs.

Fred Fielding Tries to Save His Reputation?

Heard an interesting snippet on NPR yesterday, and I found the transcriplt at NPR : Documents Show Justice Ranking U.S. Attorneys. Here’s the key quote:

In a letter Thursday, White House Counsel Fred Fielding told Congress he won’t budge from his original offer — to let Congress interview White House staffers privately, with no oath or transcript.

Sources tell NPR that Fielding actually wants to negotiate with Congress about how the interviews will take place. But Fielding has not been able to persuade President Bush to go along.

Assuming this is accurate, the most likely back story to this leak is that Fred Fielding is trying to save his reputation. And that means there’s some really bad stuff lurking behind the stonewall. It also fits the public image of Bush as stonewaller-in-chief. (Shorter GW Bush: ‘Congress, read my lips, no Iraq withdrawal. But come on by for a chat and I’ll be happy to harangue you as long as you listen quietly.’)

An alternate explanation for this story is that someone, perhaps Fielding perhaps someone else, is trying to put pressure on Gonzales or the White House to see reason. But I think that’s less likely here. In previous administrations, leaks like this used to be salvos fired in internecine wars among the palace guard. That’s been remarkably not the case in this administration due to a combination of exemplary message discipline and know-nothing disinterest in both reportage and reality. Then again, Fielding earned his chops in two of those earlier administrations…

Rove, the Plame Case & the Missing Emails

One stop shopppig for your informed Rove-Plame-email speculation: Firedoglake - The Case of Patrick Fitzgerald and the Missing Emails:

Did Fitzgerald know about the emails? I think he did, having learned about the emails from Adam Levine, though I think the 250 missing email pages came from the deleted WH emails. So does the discussion of the missing emails impact Fitzgerald’s case in any way? I don’t know. It seems that, at the very least, this confusion offers Waxman (or Conyers) an opportunity to renew his request to talk to Fitzgerald, at least about the limited scope of the email evidence turned over. And possibly, if Fitzgerald didn’t get to do the full forensic analysis of the GWB43 servers he might have liked to do in December 2005, this would offer a great opportunity to do so. After all, Fred Fielding can’t very well claim executive privilege prevents Fitzgerald from investigating the RNC servers, since BushCo has already turned over the crown jewels, the morning Vice Presidential Daily Briefings, so as to appear to be cooperating with Fitzgerald’s investigation. So by having Fitzgerald seize the RNC servers, rather than Waxman do it, you do it under the aegis of an ongoing criminal investigation.

Rove Knows How to Cover His Tracks

Kevin Drum points to a fascinating update on the email trail at The Washington Monthly,

MISSING EMAILS UPDATE….Remember all those missing emails the White House told us about yesterday? Turns out the RNC does have copies on its servers. Whew. Apparently, back in 2004, as part of the Valerie Plame investigation, Patrick Fitzgerald told them to stop deleting emails.

So they did. Except, it turns out, for Karl Rove’s emails, many of which are still missing. Now that’s just plain peculiar, isn’t it?

Fuller story at TMP Muckraker. It’s really worth reading.

I can say that I am very confident, very confident that … orders from Pat Fitzgerald were the reason for the change in White House policy in 2004. So the change in policy was tied to yet another criminal investigation of the White House. And the White House and the key employees in question — namely Karl Rove and people working for him at the White House political office — were specifically on notice not to destroy the emails they sent through the RNC servers. And yet they took affirmative steps to continuing destroying them, even after all of this had happened.

CREW Says White House "Lost" 5 Million Emails

CREW says,

Through two confidential sources, CREW learned that the Executive Office of the President (EOP) has lost over FIVE MILLION emails generated between March 2003 and October 2005. The White House counsel’s office was advised of these problems in 2005 and CREW has been told that the White House was given a plan of action to recover these emails, but to date nothing has been done to rectify this significant loss of records.

Full report on the legal background online too.

5,000,000 in 30 months. That’s 166,666/month. Or about 5,500 per day. How many people is that?

Update: Some relevant data on that question.

History Repeats Itself

SO, those RNC emails that Karl Rove et all were sending each other about official business while staying off the radar of the official archives…. It seems that a bunch of them were accidentally deleted.

The White House said Wednesday it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mails concerning official White House business.

…

[WH spokesman Scott] Stanzel said he could not speak to whether anyone was intentionally trying to avoid White House archiving because he had not spoken to all those involved.

Stanzel said some e-mails have been lost because the White House lacked clear policies on complying with Presidential Records Act requirements.

Before 2004, for instance, e-mails to and from the accounts were typically automatically deleted every 30 days along with all other RNC e-mails. Even though that was changed in 2004, so that the White House staffers with those accounts were excluded from the RNC’s automatic deletion policy, some of their e-mails were lost anyway when individual aides deleted their own files, Stanzel said.

He could not say what had been lost, and said the White House is working to recover as many as they can. The White House has now shut off employees’ ability to delete e-mails on the separate accounts, and is briefing staffers on how to better make determinations about when — and when not — to use them, Stanzel said.

Watergate anyone?

History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

I take it this is the first time?

More Fallout From Gonzales 8 Scandal

The Gonzales 8 scandal has two sides: the improper firings and the improper hirings. So far, most of the heat and light has been on the firings. That may change in light of what we are learning about the people parachuted in to US Attorney jobs without Senate confirmation — and about the people retained.

There have been reports that Little Rock’s interim U.S. Attorney J. Timothy Griffin may have seriously exaggerated his prosecutorial experience,

The 38-year-old Griffin claims on his official Web site that he prosecuted 40 criminal cases while at Ft. Campbell, where he was stationed from September 2005 to May 2006. But Army authorities say Ft. Campbell’s records show Griffin only serving as assistant trial counsel on three cases, none of which went to trial.

Griffin didn’t agree to be interviewed about his claim of 40 criminal prosecutions versus the Army’s confirmation of three cases, all of which were settled as plea bargains. But Cherith Beck, a Griffin spokeswoman, suggested that Griffin’s higher number might refer to all cases he worked on in any capacity.

“Just wanted to clarify, make sure you had an understanding that prosecuted means it’s a case he handled while he was there; it doesn’t mean that it went to trial necessarily,” Beck said. “Prosecuted means he handled those cases in one form or another.”

Sorry, but few if any lawyers would equate touching the case file with the claim that someone “prosecuted” a case.

[updated] And now we learn this about the interim recently-confirmed, leading to a controversial swearing-in US Attorney in Minneapolis, via Firedoglake (collecting sources from around the net),

four top assistants to U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose have stepped down from their [administrative] positions.

…. First Assistant Attorney John Marti, Criminal Division Chief Jim Lakner, Civil Division Chief Erika Monzangue, and Administrative Officer Tim Anderson all left their posts Thursday.

Political insiders have criticized Paulose’s rise to the U.S. Attorney’s position as a political favor to the Bush Administration. She is just 34-years old and has worked directly for the same justice department officials who are currently under fire as part of the national U.S. Attorney’s office scandal.

…

Paulose was a special assistant to Alberto Gonzales and apparently big buds with none other than 5th amendment invoker Monica Goodling.

Meanwhile, Gonzales is stonewalling on the release of the less sanitized documents.

This week also saw the very rare, even stunning, action by the 7th circuit ruling from the bench to free a defendant from what many claim was fallout from a political prosecution against a prominent Democrat based on very scant evidence. Rather than try to quote you all the details, read about it at Figure in Travelgate ordered released by end of business today: Fed Appeals Court Unimpressed by Biskupic’s Politically Motivated Prosecution. Note that the US Attorney in this case, Steven M. Biskupic, was not. as far as we know, on the DOJ/Rove short list for removal — a “loyal Bushie” perhaps?

Poetic Justice

This piece of poetic justice regarding the Justice Department’s difficulties caused by attempts to come up with something to justify the firing of a US Attorney deserves to appear on Google as a definition of the phrase Hoist by their own petard.

Yet Another DoJ Document Dump

A third batch of documents dumped by DoJ in the Gonzales 8 scandal.

On review, it appears that certain statements in the February 23 letter are contradicted by Department documents included in our production in connection with the Committees’ review of the resignations of U.S. Attorneys. We sincerely regret any inaccuracy.

Update: Here’s why the new documents matter.

Still waiting for the White House documents…

Update: It seems the really good documents may be hiding at gwb43.com.

Gonzales Tries the 'Pure Heart Empty Head' Defense

The law as a rule frowns on the ‘pure heart, empty head’ defense, which is how we lawyers refer to claims that “I meant well; I didn’t know it was wrong to borrow from the pension fund.”

Yet, amazingly, our Attorney General is now asserting a defense for the firings which is no more than that.

Gonzales: Firings were not improper Gonzales: What I can say is this: I know the reasons why I asked you — these United States attorneys to leave. And it — it was not for improper reasons. It was not to interfere with the public corruption case. It was not for partisan reasons.

…

[NBC’s Brian Pete] Williams: To put this question another way — if you didn’t review their performance during this process, then how can you be certain that they were fired for performance reasons?

Gonzales: I — I’ve given — I’ve given the answer to the question, Pete. I know — I know the reasons why I made the decision. Again, there’s nothing in the documents to support the allegation that there was anything improper here. And there is an internal — department review to answer that question, to reassure the — the American people that there was nothing improper that happened here.

Got that? I had no role in the decision, I just signed off on it. I don’t know how they came up with that list, but since I could never possibly have meant anything bad or partisan, and because I never had the brains to make any connection between the names on that list and high-profile Republican prosecutions, the public should give me credit for my pure heart regardless of whether there was anything in my brain.

Come on America. Leaving aside the rather dubious credibility of the claim that Gonzales is this clueless and dumb, can we afford an AG whose defense against charges of unethical and probably criminal activity is … blithering ignorance?

The Brits have a name for what Gonzales is claiming — “Nelsonian Knowledge,” based on the famous incident in which Admiral Nelson put a telescope to his blind eye so that he could say, “I see no ships signals”:

It is dishonest for a man deliberately to shut his eyes to facts which he would prefer not to know. If he does so, he is taken to have actual knowledge of the facts to which he shut his eyes. Such knowledge has been described as “Nelsonian knowledge”, meaning knowledge which is attributed to a person as a consequence of his “wilful blindness” or (as American lawyers describe it) “contrived ignorance”.
—Twinsectra Limited v Yardley and Others, [2002] UKHL 12, at para. 112.

All this aside, given Gonzales’s personal history as GWB’s legal valet, it’s hard to believe he lacked genuine, rather than merely Nelsonian, knowledge of what he was signing and why. Either way he doesn’t deserve to stay in office; I suppose, though, the difference might matter to a grand jury.

Another WH Document Dump

Late Friday? After the networks and the newspapers’ deadlines? Must be time for another White House document dump.

McClatchy kindly puts some pdf’s online:

• PDF | Documents released 3-23-07 (1)
• PDF | Documents released 3-23-07 (2)
• PDF | Documents released 3-23-07 (3)
• PDF | Documents released 3-23-07 (4)
• PDF | Documents released 3-23-07 (5)
• PDF | Documents released 3-23-07 (6)
• PDF | Documents released 3-23-07 (7)
• PDF | Documents released 3-23-07 (8)
• PDF | Documents released 3-23-07 (9)
• PDF | Documents released 3-23-07 (10)
• PDF | Documents released 3-23-07 (11)

McClatchy also has a first take on their significance, Documents highlight Gonzales’ role in the firings. Among them,

The latest documents also raise new questions about how involved White House political operatives were in the decision to fire the prosecutors.

In a Dec. 3, 2006, e-mail released Friday night, Scott Jennings, one of presidential adviser Karl Rove’s aides, asked Sampson if he had a list of “all vacant, or about-to-be vacant, US Attorney slots.” Jennings’ request came on a Sunday, so Sampson offered to send it to him the next day.

Jennings, a political operative, had earlier passed along complaints from Republican Party activists about U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, who was fired from his job in New Mexico. Some Republicans were angry that Iglesias hadn’t been more aggressive in investigating Democrats.

The e-mails also show that administration officials struggled to find a way to justify the firings and considered citing immigration enforcement simply because three of the fired prosecutors were stationed near the border with Mexico. While the e-mails don’t provide evidence of partisan motives for the firings, they seem to undercut the administration’s explanation that the prosecutors were dismissed for poor performance.

Gonzales Red-Handed

On March 13. I rashly predicted Gonzales wouldn’t last two weeks. Then Bush had his petulant press conference, made his crazy proposal for the Senate to invite Rove and Miers to lie to them, and gave Gonzales a new lease on life.

But leases on life may have a short half-life. Although I’m starting to suspect I was a little optimistic, you have to wonder how Gonzales can survive revalations that contrary to his earlier statements Gonzales was in fact much more involved in discussions about firing the US Attorneys than he admitted:

Documents Show Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Approved Firings of Several U.S. Attorneys

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales approved plans to fire several U.S. attorneys in a November meeting, according to documents released Friday that contradict earlier claims that he was not closely involved in the dismissals.

The Nov. 27 meeting, in which the attorney general and at least five top Justice Department officials participated, focused on a five-step plan for carrying out the firings of the prosecutors, Justice Department officials said late Friday.

There, Gonzales signed off on the plan, which was crafted by his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. Sampson resigned last week amid a political firestorm surrounding the firings.

The documents indicated that the hour-long morning discussion, held in the attorney general’s conference room, was the only time Gonzales met with top aides who decided which prosecutors to fire and how to do it.

Justice spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said it was not immediately clear whether Gonzales gave his final approval to begin the firings at that meeting. Scolinos also said Gonzales was not involved in the process of selecting which prosecutors would be asked to resign.

On March 13, in explaining the firings, Gonzales told reporters he was aware that some of the dismissals were being discussed but was not involved in them.

Even if the Attorney General lacked the requisite intent to in fact be guilty of a criminal act when he approved the results of a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, he has by his series of prevarications achieved negative credibility with Congress, with the press, and now with the nation.

Alberto Gonzales must go. Swiftly.

Ron Zeigler Was Nothing

I think this response by Tony Snow during yesterday’s TV interview with Harry Smith on CBS deserves to be considered a classic bit of obfuscation and non-denial denial.

Smith: “Karl Rove wasn’t involved? Harriet Miers wasn’t involved? C’mon!”

Snow: “This is where what you’re trying to do is create a narrative that I’m not so sure the facts are going to justify. This is why what we’re trying to do is get everybody to figure out what’s the deal.”

Snow here is all but bragging that he doesn’t know the facts. And guessing about them. But he’s not saying he’s going to find them out either. The White House Press Secretary surely has some way of finding out the answer to this rather obvious question. Couldn’t he ask Rove and Miers and then tell us? You would think.

Then again, maybe couldn’t. After all, Rove and Miers would not be under oath when they speak to Snow.

Meanwhile, CREW asks, New e-mails prompt the question: Did Bush make the decision to fire the U.S. Attorneys?

And, one account of what Tony Snow has in common with a pet albino hedgehog.

More On Scandal One-Liners

“Even in Guantanamo, when they have secret hearings they keep a transcript.”

Update: Robert Waldman writes, “If only the rule of law were respected in the USA the way it is respected here in Italy. And no I never expected to write that ever.”

One-liners About Latest Scandal

“What is it about ‘So Help Me God’ that Rove and Bush find so offensive?”

And, from TPM: “Bush: We were concerned about the lack of prosecutions of bogus voter fraud claims.”

The Cocktail Party Strategy

The White House’s offer to the Senate that it would make Rove and Miers available only for a secret off-the-record no-oath “chat” — something with the legal value of cocktail party chatter — is risible. And even if the Crawford gang hasn’t figured out that others are wise to their game, surely Fred Fielding understands that. So they can’t seriously believe that the Senate will take such an insulting offer.

Which raises the question of why the White House is proffering such a silly idea. What have they been drinking? I can only think of three possible justifications for this strange move:

1. This could be a pure, cynical PR ploy to attempt to look reasonable. Given how CNN swallowed it hook line and sinker (“unprecedented access to Justice Department documents” — missing the point that the offer, which is far from unprecedented, doesn’t include access to the key White House documents) this has to count as the most generous explanation.

2. The staff gets it, but the boy in the bubble doesn’t get it, and he overruled the staff.

3. The truth is so awful, that Rove can’t be allowed near a Bible. If nothing else, he’d be taking the Fifth over and over again.

I’ve heard a fourth explanation, but it’s so crazy, that only someone who thought that the administration was hell-bent on creating disasters would believe it:

4. The administration wants to create a Constitutional crisis. It thinks it will win any votes in the Senate as it only needs a third plus one, and also win the in court of public opinion just like Clinton did (see “bubble” at (2) above). And the hardliners (Cheney) think that the precedents set by previous administrations of recognizing that senior appointees can be required to testify was mistaken; what’s more they think that their hand is strong enough to allow them to rectify this. In short, they see Congress much as they saw Iraq.

Say it ain’t so.

White House Offers to Have Rove, Miers Lie to Congress in Secret Session

Congress is getting ready to subpoena Rove and Miers, which likely will trigger a claim of executive privilege and at least a messy court action if not a political showdown. So the White House comes out with its counter-offer: they’ll testify in secret session, so long as there is no transcript and they’re not under oath.

Translation: we want to be able to lie to Congress in a way that creates neither liability nor evidence — so we can lie about our lying after the fact and no one can prove us wrong.

This is beyond chutzpah!

Document Dump - First Impressions

Haven’t read them all yet, but so far this White House document dump is mostly multiple copies of dull things. You have to wonder why they couldn’t have dumped these on Friday as originally planned … were they busy arguing over which of the good ones to take out?

Anyway, the Left Coaster has a nice summary of the only interesting items I’ve noticed so far, an extended correspondence with and about Margaret Chiara from the Western District of Michigan. Basically, main Justice was willing to trash her reputation behind her back, but not to her face. And indeed, they were willing to appoint her as a trainer of other prosecutors, so either they didn’t think she was that bad or they were happy to pay hush money as long as she avoided the press. See US Attorney Purgegate - Margaret Chiara for the details. No one comes out looking particularly good.

Get Your Data Dump Here

The House Judiciary Committee is putting .pdf files of the latest White House documents online at the committee’s homepage.

Here’s what they’ve got so far; I assume there’s lots more coming:

3-19-2007 DOJ-Released Documents 1-1

3-19-2007 DOJ-Released Documents 1-2

3-19-2007 DOJ-Released Documents 1-3

3-19-2007 DOJ-Released Documents 1-4

3-19-2007 DOJ-Released Documents 1-5

3-19-2007 DOJ-Released Documents 1-6

Gonzales Countdown In Progress

Gonzales (political) death watch now underway.

Meanwhile, the White House has emitted a mega document dump (several days behind schedule — it had been planned for the Friday after 5pm news graveyard). Letting it all hang out in an attempt to cauterize the wounds or more selective disclosure?

Not that anything short of Rove quitting is going to stop Senators from serving subpoenas. Which, if they reach Rove will be resisted and will create some interesting lawsuits.

With Gonzales all but gone, it’s open season on speculation for replacements. Former Solicitor General Olson (the most confirmable)? DHS Sec Chertoff (that could be a fun hearing)?

Gonzales Flops

Alberto Gonzales solidified his reputation as an incompetent with a breathtakingly unsuccessful press conference this afternoon, but it remains to be seen if he ends up looking more like a terminal naif, a shifty crook or, most likely, a political tool.

The great folks at Crooks and Liars have the video of Gonzales’s brief press conference — and sudden lunge to escape from tough questions.

It didn’t take long for the blogs to take advantage of this target-rich environment. Start with this Daily Kos diarist’s refresher as to what’s going on as A Gloved Alberto Gonzales Plans Search To Find Real Killer — pithly summarized by Josh Marshall at TPM as “Gonzales: I’m going to get to the bottom of what Harriet and I did.” And, one might add, why I sent off my aides to lie to Congress. Oh, and said some things myself in Congressional testimony that now seem past their sell-by date.

If you want the collected snark, a lot of it is at Needlenose.

And your latest update of the furious developments today in this widening scandal at The Carpetbagger Report, The dirge of the purge.

Next up, one hopes: what were the US Attorneys who were not fired willing to do to keep their jobs?

Meanwhile, it’s hard to believe Gonzales can last two weeks if this is the best he can do. Ominously for his future, the NYT reports that a White House spokesperson said he’s doing a heck of a job,

The White House took the unusual step of having [Presidential Counselor to the President Dan] Bartlett conduct a hurried briefing with reporters in Mérida, Mexico. He said the president had “all the confidence in the world” in Mr. Gonzales

Then again, the Veep is less popular than torture and he’s not going anywhere, is he?

Hunches

If there’s a blog out there that I most tend to agree with, it’s probably The Carpetbagger Report.

Call it a hunch, but if Rove is called to testify, and he hires counsel to help him through his testimony, his lawyer will strongly urge Rove to tell the truth. If he’s unclear about that, Rove can always call his buddy Scooter about the consequences.

My hunch is that his lawyer tells him to take the Fifth.

Latest 'Gonzales 8' Developments

In the course of an excellent roundup of the latest in the Gonzales 8 scandal, Talking Points Memo has this useful bit of perspective:

As has happened so many times in the last six years, the maximal version of this story — which seemed logical six weeks ago but which I couldn’t get myself to believe — turns out to be true. Indeed, it’s worse. We now know that Gonzales, McNulty and Moschella each lied to Congress. We know that the purge was a plan that began at the White House — and it was overseen by two of President Bush’s closest lieutenants in Washington — Miers and Gonzales. Sampson is the second resignation. There will certainly be more.

And remember this key point: The ‘document dump’ is meant to get bad news out of the way fast. But it’s always a hedge. It never includes the really bad stuff. And if you’re not in deep crisis mode, ya’ never do it on a Monday.

The aide in charge of the dismissals — [Gonzales’s] chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson — resigned yesterday, officials said, after acknowledging that he did not tell key Justice officials about the extent of his communications with the White House, leading them to provide incomplete information to Congress.

So did the guy actually lie to his colleagues? Stay silent in meetings, sending them off to lie to Congress (with what he may have thought was deniability)? Or is he just the fall guy?

Not that it really matters. Offering up a mid-ranking sacrifice at this stage is little more than throwing a baby off the sleigh to briefly placate the pursing wolves. The key point remains that any of these scenarios is completely incompatible with the idea of a Justice Department with a minimal sense of ethics. And we know who to blame for that.

Another Moniker

Thanks to the New York Times editorial board, we've got a name for the fired prosecutors scandal: The Gonzales Eight.

Accountability, What a Concept

Advertisement seen on Washington DC Metro:

Some 'Uniter'

The Post is good at stenography, so I guess he really said it.

Bush Says 'America Loses' Under Democrats: "However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses," Bush told a raucous crowd of about 5,000 GOP partisans packed in an arena at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, one of his stops Monday. "That's what's at stake in this election. The Democrat goal is to get out of Iraq. The Republican goal is to win in Iraq."

Seven more days until the election, and the polls are still trending against the GOP in most (but not all races), so in all likelihood they haven't hit the bottom of their barrel yet.

What a thought.

Thoughts on the Libby Bombshell

This is a time when no amount of cynicism is too much. This is a time for Informed Comment.

The admnistration's current line of defense is when the President does it, it's not illegal.

Atrios has the perfect rejoinder:

It's probably reasonable that the president can declassify whatever he wants, or at least I haven't really seen an especially strong argument to the contrary, but that doesn't mean that the president can declassify stuff, show it to Judy Miller, and then turn around claim the stuff is still classified. That's where this argument falls apart.

The Carpetbagger Report: All of a sudden it's a scandal again shows how completely the administration's latest spin conflicts with the previous spin.

I wonder how long before the defense becomes, 'Cheney said Bush authorized the leak, but in fact he was mistaken on that point.' Nixon threw Agnew to the wolves. But it didn't work.

(Here's the full text of the Special Prosecutor's filing)

Bonus: David Neiwert challenges the media.

Libby Fingers Bush, Cheney as Ordering Plame Leak

Why do I have to read news like this in my brother's blog rather than major media? Read today's column -- scroll down to "Fitzgerald lets loose".

[The NY Sun's Josh] Gerstein writes that according to [special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's latest] filing, Libby "testified to a grand jury that he gave information from a closely-guarded 'National Intelligence Estimate' on Iraq to a New York Times reporter in 2003 with the specific permission of President Bush."

...

That reporter, of course, was Judith Miller.

Here's an excerpt from Fitzgerald's filing: "Defendant testified that he was specifically authorized in advance of the meeting to disclose the key judgments of the classified NIE to Miller on that occasion because it was thought that the NIE was 'pretty definitive' against what Ambassador Wilson had said and that the vice president thought that it was 'very important' for the key judgments of the NIE to come out."

Gerstein writes: "Mr. Libby is said to have testified that 'at first' he rebuffed Mr. Cheney's suggestion to release the information because the estimate was classified. However, according to the vice presidential aide, Mr. Cheney subsequently said he got permission for the release directly from Mr. Bush. 'Defendant testified that the vice president later advised him that the president had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE,' the prosecution filing said."

That is, as my brother says "a shocker".

Yet, he writes, "In fact, as of this writing, none of the major news outlets has published a word on the subject."

(Although, I see that since he wrote that, at 12:35 the Associate Press has moved the story.)

OPIC and the Mafia???

At best, really lousy managmeent of federal assets by the GOP. At best. The Globe and Mail: Agency funding raises ‘red flag’

A government agency that helps U.S. businesses investing in developing countries has approved millions of dollars of loans to companies whose owners did business with Mafia figures and rebels in a bloody African conflict, records show.

I like CNN’s headline: OPIC: Offers it should’ve refused?

PTI 961 Mystery Solved

Remember the AWOL Project’s focus on the mysterious separation code “PTI 961” in Lt. Bush’s records? Well, Paul Lukasiak writes to say that PTI 961 has been decoded … but all it means is “Loss to USAFR – Discharged due to change in residence.” Or, as Emily Litella used to say, “Never Mind”.

Boom Goes the Last Shred of Bush's Reputation as a Terrorism-Fighter

The New York Times has more details about this stunning piece of incompetence in the keystone kops war on terror.

The explosives could also be used to trigger a nuclear weapon, which was why international nuclear inspectors had kept a watch on the material, and even sealed and locked some of it. But the other components of an atom bomb - the design and the radioactive fuel - are more difficult to obtain. “This is a high explosives risk, but not necessarily a proliferation risk,” one senior Bush administration official said.

“not necessarily” — that means “might or might not be depending on whether they have plutonium” — I feel so much better now given what one hears about the plutonium bazaar in the southern parts of the former Soviet Union….

The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.

This translates as “they screwed up bigtime”.

… One senior official noted that the Qaqaa complex where the explosives HMX and RDX were stored was listed as a “medium priority” site on the Central Intelligence Agency’s list of more than 500 sites that needed to be searched and secured during the invasion. In the chaos that followed the invasion, many of those sites, even some considered a higher priority, were never secured.

“Should we have gone there? Definitely,” said one senior administration official. “But there are a lot of things we should have done, and didn’t.”

And what were the “high priority” sites, pray tell?

The remaining stockpile was no secret. Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the I.A.E.A., frequently talked about it publicly as he investigated, in late 2002 and early 2003, the Bush administration’s claims that Iraq was secretly renewing its pursuit of nuclear arms. He ordered his weapons inspectors to conduct an inventory, and publicly reported their findings to the Security Council on Jan. 9, 2003.

So there really is no excuse here.

Is This The Smoking Gun on Bush National Guard Record? And Why You Should Care

[Amended at 22:05]
Forget your highpowered TV networks, with their big staffs that fall for phoney documents. Enter Paul Lukasiak, a lone researcher—not even a trendy blogger—just a guy with some web pages. A guy who has been doing detailed archival work reconstructing GW Bush’s service records. A guy who may have found something, and who’s put it up on the web.

And what a set of web pages. I’ve linked to the AWOL Project often in the past, because it’s meaty and detailed and explains its reasoning. So far as I’m aware, Mr. Lukasiak’s conclusions have held up well. Admittedly, much of the Project, especially in its early days, was written in a detailed, quirky style that isn’t all that media-friendly. Which is why, I think, the press has only lately begun to appreciate the AWOL project for what it is.

Today the AWOL Project unveils what may be its biggest blockbuster. [Regrettably, the site works much better in IE than in Firefox — in IE you can see excerpts of all the key documents, but in Firefox you cannot.]

Back in February I started blogging about the mystery of GW Bush’s missing separation codes (also known as SPN codes). In the saga of the Bush National Guard career, the absence of any mention on any of the documents of the separation codes that normally give the reasons for a military discharge have always struck me as the biggest and strangest hole in the story, especially because during the period in which Bush served, Army SPN codes were remarkably detailed and chatty—and often very derogatory. Were the same or similar codes used in the National Guard? It seemed at least possible.

Now it seems as if Lukasiak has found and partly decoded Lt. Bush’s separation code. The records released to date include Bush’s NGB-22 (.pdf), his “Report of Separation and Record of Service in the Air National Guard of Texas and as a Reserve of the Air Force.” That document has a section called “Reason and Authority for Discharge” (section 31, near the bottom). And therein is found a mysterious code, PTI 961.

Mr. Lukasiak theorizes that PTI 961 was a code which

indicates that he was being thrown out of the Air National Guard for failing “to possess the required military qualifications for his grade or specialty, or does not meet the mental, moral, professional or physical standards of the Air Force.” In other words, despite the fact that Bush had an unfulfilled six year Military Service Obligation, he was discharged from the Air National Guard not because he moved to Boston, but because he failed to meet his obligation to maintain his qualifications as an F102 pilot.

Getting to that conclusion takes a little bit of work.

For starters,

“PTI” stands for “Personnel Transaction Identifier”, a code which “identifies the controlled personnel management action being accomplished the personnel data system.” And although the particular meaning of “PTI 961” remains unknown, all “900” series PTIs mean that someone is no longer considered part of “Air Force strength.”

…when an “action is reported by the 9xx PTIs” it represents a “loss to the Air Force strength.” In other words, despite the fact that Bush had almost eight months left on his six year Military Service Obligation at the time, Texas Air National Guard officers were signaling that Bush was essentially worthless to the Air Force, and should not even be retained in the “Ready Reserves” for call up in the event of a national emergency.

…This interpretation is fully consistent with the fact that Bush was placed in an “Inactive Status” retroactively, effective September 15, 1973. “Inactive Status” meant that Bush was no longer eligible to accrue time served toward “gratuitous” membership points.

In fact, under Air Force regulations, someone like Bush, who had an outstanding Military Service Obligation, could only be placed in an “Inactive Status” if he was being “completely severed from military status.”

This “complete severance” was an extraordinary event. … The fact that Bush was discharged from the Texas Air National Guard under a Personnel Transaction Identifier used to denote a reduction in total Air Force strength means Bush was considered not merely “useless” under present circumstances, but of no possible use to the Air Force at any point in the future. PTI 961 meant that Bush was unfit for service in the United States Armed Forces, and that there was no point in keeping him around in case of a national emergency.

This can be established through examining the relevant regulations. ANGR 36-05, which was the “authority” cited in Bush’s discharge papers, has a limited number of “separation criteria” that are consistent with a “900 series” Personnel Transaction Identifier, all of which could only be the result of Bush being thrown out because he wasn’t doing his job. (see Appendix 2). The most likely of these criteria is that Bush was discharged for “standby screening”, and an examination of the rules under which discharges could be accomplished (see Appendix 3) in this fashion lead to only one conclusion—-that Bush was thrown out of the Air National Guard because he was “unfit to serve.”

If this analysis is correct, it follows that ex-Lt. Bush’s current claim that he did everything he was asked to do has some serious problems.

That leaves us with two big questions: First, is Mr. Lukasiak right about what PTI 961 means. Someone, somewhere must know. Second, even if he is right, now that the public has been partially innoculated against the Bush National Guard issue by the CBS scandal, will anyone care.

For my money, the important issue isn’t so much what either candidate did 30 years ago. No, the big issue is how the candidates deal with reality. As I’ve said about the National Guard service questions previously,

This incident demonstrates the major reason why the issue of 30-year-ago National Guard service is relevant today. Not because someone pulled strings in order to put some poor person’s kid at risk in Vietnam instead of Jr. Not because Bush gamed the system to get out of flying just when his unit was going to a genuine mission to patrol US airspace. Not because the ill-minded of the world speculate that substance abuse lead to his being grounded, and meant he would have flunked the physical. Not because someone falsified the official records to record credits that were never actually earned. Nor even because the records were later sanitized to remove the critical separation codes that would tell us something about what really happened.

No. The reason this incident matters most is because GWB still can’t come clean about it. And that sort of stubborn denial of facts is digging us deeper into holes in Iraq and at home.

To those of us left in the “reality based community,” the modern reception of the National Guard story is a trope for much larger, pressing—even disastrous—contemporary problems.

Just recently, Bush was quoted as saying,

that after flying more than 570 hours in the Guard, he asked permission to work on a political campaign. “I was granted permission by my superiors,” he said. “I did everything they asked me to do and met my requirements and was honorably discharged. I’m proud of my service in the Guard.

We already knew that was a false claim, since Bush failed to take his physical as he was asked or ordered to do. PTI 961 suggests that this failure had a knock-on effect, and that the Guard discharge was not a matter of administrative kindness, but rather an administrative device to dump out a useless former pilot, a shirker.

In other words, if Lukasiak is right, we’ve been lied to in matters small, just as we’ve been lied to in matters big. Sounds like a consistent M.O. to me, one that has worked remarkably well for the perpetrator, if not so well for us, the victims.

Pentagon Loves Fridays

It’s well-known that Saturday newspapers (and Friday night TV news) reach the fewest people, so the best time to release bad news is not-first-thing on a Friday. (Extra credit for after 4pm, which may be too late for many papers.)

What an incredible coincidence: every time — and there are lots of times — that the Pentagon has released Bush military service documents since the date he said they were already all released…it’s been on a Friday!

Bush Sinks to New Low

The Yin Blog: How not to Win a War--During last week's debate, Bush opined:

I don't see how you can lead this country in a time of war, in a time of uncertainty, if you change your mind because of politics.

Bush's target, of course, was Kerry's alleged "flip-flops" on Iraq. But he might as well have been talking about himself, as this article from the Los Angeles Times indicates:

The Bush administration plans to delay major assaults on rebel-held cities in Iraq until after U.S. elections in November, say administration officials, mindful that large-scale military offensives could affect the U.S. presidential race.

Although American commanders in Iraq have been buoyed by recent successes in insurgent-held towns such as Samarra and Tall Afar, administration and Pentagon officials say they will not try to retake cities such as Fallouja and Ramadi -- where the insurgents' grip is strongest and U.S. military casualties could be the highest -- until after Americans vote in what is likely to be an extremely close election.

"When this election's over, you'll see us move very vigorously," said one senior administration official involved in strategic planning, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Once you're past the election, it changes the political ramifications" of a large-scale offensive, the official said. "We're not on hold right now. We're just not as aggressive."

Any delay in pacifying Iraq's most troublesome cities, however, could alter the dynamics of a different election -- the one in January, when Iraqis are to elect members of a national assembly.

If there was ever any doubt that political expediency is Bush's most sacred value, this should put those doubts to rest once and for all.

Think about what this means. Think hard. Think very hard.

The generals say we should move now. Moving now gives us the greatest chance of victory at the lowest likely cost. Moving later gives us a lesser chance of victory at a higher cost in terms of our soldiers' lives. But moving later is helpful to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Impeach them now.

More from the 'Buck Stops WHERE?' Dept

Newsweek has an informative article about the apostasy of L. Paul Bremer III and the White House attempt to put the lid back on. But it buries the lead lede, and misses the real point in an interesting and sadly predictable way.

MSNBC - Inner Circle No More? At the heart of the controversy is a still-unresolved dispute over who was mainly responsible for one of the biggest mistakes of Bremer’s 15-month tenure in Iraq, one that is commonly ascribed to him. This was the decision in May 2003 to reverse the efforts of Bremer’s predecessor, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, to put the ragged elements of the Iraqi Army to work. After Bremer formally disbanded the army, some disaffected soldiers were believed to have joined the insurgency, which still rages.

Administration officials said today that this decision was made on the ground in Iraq, rather than in Washington. Before the war, the plan was to get rid of Iraqi Army officers but use regular troops for security and reconstruction after Saddam’s ouster. But Bremer “flipped that around,” said a White House official. He added that Bremer and his deputy, Walt Slocombe, made the decision by themselves.

But Bremer and Garner have previously indicated the decision was made in Washington. According to one official who attended a meeting that Bremer had with his staff upon his arrival in Baghdad in mid-May of 2003, Bremer was warned he would cause chaos by demobilizing the army. The CIA station chief told him, “That’s another 350,000 Iraqis you’re pissing off, and they’ve got guns.” According to one source who was at the meeting, Garner then asked if they could discuss the matter further in a smaller meeting. Garner then said: “Before you announce this thing let’s do all the pros and cons of this, because we are going to have a hell of a lot of problems with it. There are a hell of a lot more cons than there are pros. Let’s line them all up then get on the phone to [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld.” Bremer replied: “I don’t have any choice. I have to do this.” Garner then protested further, but Bremer cut him off. “The president told me that de-Baathification comes before the immediate needs of the Iraqi people.”

That Bush himself is directly and personally responsible for one of the major boneheaded judgments of the post-invasion period explains a lot. It should have been the lead lede of the story, not that poor Mr. Bremer can expect a horse’s head in his bed Real Soon Now.

But lurking behind the story is yet another example of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Somehow, GW Bush is only potentially responsible for errors he personally orders? He has no responsibility for how his team screws up? Even when he keeps them around?

Talk about teflon!

Nice Work if You Can Get It

Via the would be funny if it didn’t hurt The Poor Man: It’s Hard Work!, we learn about GW Bush work ethic. [Warning: contains rudeness.]

'The Horse that Won't Die': The CBS Memo Scandal

I’d rather be thinking about other things, but the CBS memo scandal won’t die. Or was it a scandal?

Consider Paul Lukasiak’s latest, WAS THE ‘KILLIAN MEMO SCANDAL’ A SET UP. Lukasiak argues,

Newly released documents from George W. Bush’s personnel files lead new weight to the theory that the White House engineered the recent scandal regarding CBS’s use of the “Killian memos”. Acting under a court order, on Friday, September 24, the Department of Defense released 10 new pages of documents, including an official Texas Air National Guard memo which conclusively refutes the technological questions that were raised about the “Killian memos.”

And it can now be shown that these “new documents” were deliberately withheld by the White House when it released “absolutely everything” on February 13, 2004.

The document in question is a memo written to “First Lieutenant George W. Bush” notifying him of his promotion to First Lieutenant. The memo is dated Febrary 19, 1971, more than a year before the date on the first of the Killian memos. And, like the Killian memos, this document uses a “proportionately spaced font”, and has all the characteristics of a document produced on a modern day computer using “Microsoft Word”.

When the White House released “all the documents” in February, they were arranged in three groups; “Personnel File from Texas ANG”, Personnel File from NPRC in 2000”, and Personnel File from NPRC in 2004”¹. (“ANG” is “Air National Guard”, “NPRC” is the National Personnel Records Center”, which holds the “master files” of all former military personnel.)

The proportionately spaced “promotion memo” in question was among those documents released under FOIA to at least two researchers in 2000, including a reporter from a major media organization, and Marty Heldt, an independent researcher from Iowa. In other words, this memo was provided to the White House as part of the “Personnel File from NPRC in 2000”, but was withheld by the White House when it released “all the documents” in February.

The Department of Defense, under orders from the Bush administration, fought a lawsuit filed by the Associated Press in July to have the original microfiche records examined to determine if documents were withheld by the White House. And even though the DoD released Bush’s flight records on September 10th, just when the “Killian memo” controversy was gaining steam, and released 200 additional pages of records on September 17th, it did not release the “proportionately spaced” memo at either point.

It was not until the date on which a Federal court order required all documents to be released, September 24th, that the Department of Defense finally released the “proportionately spaced” document, even though this document was in the “2000 NRPC files.” And it was not until the next week that the document was made available to the general public on the DoD website…

I don’t know what to make of all this. It feels a bit like beating a dead horse, but as the author of the meticulously researched AWOL project, Lukasiak has earned our attention even if he has something outlandish to say. (Thus, ‘the horse that won’t die’.) I just wish there were some way to dump this in the inbox of the people CBS has appointed to head its self-investigation.

Lying With Impunity

Repetition and a docile media are all it takes to get away with telling a little lie or a big one these days. Here’s yet another sample of how little GW Bush cares about the truth, brought to you by Orcinus. …and how reporters don’t fact check even the obvious whoppers.

If I may repeat myself, the biggest reason that we should care about Lt. Bush’s National Guard service is that 30 years later he still can’t own up to the truth — the same tenuous relationship to reality that is the cause of so many recent US casualties in WMD-free Iraq.

Frit

I have no idea if this story that Lt. GW Bush was grounded for cowardice is true. I have no idea how you would tell.

The story, unlike the one by Swift Boat Vets for Lies, has the merit of being consistent with much of the documentary evidence. (I would have expected to see something about this in the medical section of his file? Is this why he didn’t report for they physical, because they planned psychological tests?) It may also explain why GW Bush has never produced his separation codes.

But there’s no way to tell now, I’d wager.

One thing is for sure: even though it is more plausible than the Swift Vets’ tall tale, this story will never get one one-hundreth of the media play.

Bush Caught in Blatant Lie. No One Cares?

Someone please explain this to me. Usually GW Bush speeches are artfully concocted creations that sound like they say one thing (e.g. Saddam was in bed with Al Qaeda), but in fact when you parse them carefully don’t actually lie as such. (Disclaimer: does not apply to uses of economic statistics, where the M.O. is to accurately quote transparently concocted statistics.)

But yesterday GW Bush said something quite plainly false. Look at this article in the Manchester Union Leader, referenced in Dan’s latest column:

The President said, as he has in the past, that after flying more than 570 hours in the Guard, he asked permission to work on a political campaign. “I was granted permission by my superiors,” he said. “I did everything they asked me to do and met my requirements and was honorably discharged. I’m proud of my service in the Guard.

We all know that the claim that “I did everything they asked me to do” is false. “They” asked Lt. Bush to take a physical. In fact, if the Guard followed its routine, they almost certainly ordered him to. And he didn’t.

This incident demonstrates the major reason why the issue of 30-year-ago National Guard service is relevant today. Not because someone pulled strings in order to put some poor person’s kid at risk in Vietnam instead of Jr. Not because Bush gamed the system to get out of flying just when his unit was going to a genuine mission to patrol US airspace. Not because the ill-minded of the world speculate that substance abuse lead to his being grounded, and meant he would have flunked the physical. Not because someone falsified the official records to record credits that were never actually earned. Nor even because the records were later sanitized to remove the critical separation codes that would tell us something about what really happened.

No. The reason this incident matters most is because GWB still can’t come clean about it. And that sort of stubborn denial of facts is digging us deeper into holes in Iraq and at home.

But you know all this. Everyone knows all this. So the question I want explained to me is this: Why is it that when Dan Rather unwittingly albeit negligently tells a lie, everyone gets excited. But when the GOP candidate for President tells a lie knowingly and with malice aforethought…no one calls him on it?

I Hate It When She's Right (II)

Dowd scores again. Op-Ed Columnist: No Stars, Just Cuffs shows that the Bushies have no class and no decency.

While I don’t oppose a draft in all circumstances, I do not want my sons drafted if they are going to be sent to fight Bush’s wars of choice rather than fights of real necessity. And there are credible rumors that Syria or Iran are next.

Let's Beat a Dead Horse (fun for the whole family)

More CBS documents links, because they are there.

Lquilter.net has a nice roundup of typography links.

Robert has a nice summary of what real documents show (and don’t show) about orders disobeyed.

Eschaton points up the dog that didn’t bark: the White House sure thought the documents were real.

Fake Memos, True Facts?

That’s what the secretary who (would have) typed the memos says.

CBS Documents - Worst Case Hypothesis

There I was thinking that the worst case was the documents were forged. No, silly me. The worst case is that the documents are real and the ‘forgery’ story is the GOP slime machine in action.

Robert's Thoughts Are Not Random At All

Robert Waldman — who deserves more readers! — has a nice post on The CBS Memos.

Robert’s random thoughts: The debate about whether the alleged Killian memos are forgeries has its delights. Every geek dreams of the day in which fonts, superscripts, proportional spacing and kerning make the front page of the New York Times and the Washington Post. Well not quite every geek. I consider myself a geek and I just learned what kerning is. Also the thought of total humiliation of George W Bush, Dan Rather or (most likely) both, must delight all right thinking people.

…

the alleged memos are not the first documents which suggest that Bush disobeyed a direct order. Back on St Valentime’s day, Mark Kleiman noted that The Democratic Veteran linked to the order grounding Bush and James R Bath (you know Bush’s link to the Bin Laden family) as posted by Martin at coldfeet@cis.net who I believe is a hero farmer in Iowa.

This order from the General Francis Greenlief (chief natinal guard bureau) grounds Bush and orders “Off will comply with para 2-10 AFM, 35-13.” This is an order from a major general. It is written in militareese. What exactly does para 2-10 AFM, 35-13 require ? The most reasonable guess is that it is an order to take a flight physical. This would mean that there is uncontested proof that Bush disobeyed a direct order. However, no one has replied to Kleiman’s request for a 1972 Air Force Manual, so we don’t know. The manual must be an archived document, so it seems to me that it would make more sense to look it up than to argue about kerns and superscripts.

Are CBS's Documents Real?

Questions, credible ones, swirl about the authenticity and provenance of the Lt. Col. Jerry Killian documents revealed by CBS.

There are very odd things about these papers. Yet, the case for forgery is lessened, I think, by the White House’s failure to claim the documents are not real. That said, I have no faith at all in arguments that claim ‘if this were a forgery they surely would have done a better job’—carelessness is rampant in the world.

• Powerline jumps all over them
• CBS stands by its documents, and a former colleague of Col. Killian’s thinks they are real. Col. Killian’s son, however, doubts they are real.
• Warblogging.com looks at the technical issues, the possible motivations for forgery
• The Washington Post interviews experts dubious about the documents
• At “The Blogging of the President: 2004”, Stirling Newberry summarizes the ways in which the documents look too modern and then offers and evaluates various hypotheses as to how they came to be that way. Most plausible:

  Any expert worth his salt would look at the signatures we see, and the difficulties in producing the documents contemporaneously, and scratch his head. However, if there are hard originals - that is typed or hand written originals - and these are the readable typed or “fair” copies, then the problem vanishes. CBS saw the real things, can’t release them (off the record), but can release documents which, while not originals, are copies which have the same content in them, prepared by Killian (his signature on them). They are on solid ground, with provenence, and the holders of the originals - whoever they are - are not bothered by nagging questions of how they got those originals. CBS protects confidentiality, and if need be, can prove that yes, these things are legitimate.

Update2: First Draft, Now I’m a ‘Document Expert’, Too finds superscripts in old National Guard documents

Also CBS News has reiterated its full confidence in the authenticity of the documents. Dan Rather said, “The story is true” and “no retraction has been discussed, nor should it be.”

What Has Been Written With a Pen Cannot Be Erased With an Axe

• May 4, 1972
• May 19, 1972
  
• August 1, 1972
• August 18, 1973

Item: When Bush skylarked off to Alabama, what he missed was not the pointless desultory flying of geriatric airplanes, as his campaign had been suggesting, but rather a sudden increase in alertness, a ‘24-hour active alert mission to safeguard against surprise attack’ in the southern United States beginning on Oct. 6, 1972 (although it beats me against what they might have been defending—the Viet Cong? Castro?).

Of course, if you want excruciating detail on all this, the place to go remains The AWOL Project

A Simple Question from 'Texans for Truth'

We know that nobody ever came forward to claim the $10,000 reward offered “If you personally witnessed George W. Bush reporting for drills at Dannelly Air National Guard Base between the months of May and November of 1972”. But how come no one has ever asked GW himself if he can name one person he trained with? That’s what Texans for Truth wants to know. And they have a slick ad featuring Robert Mintz, who served in Alabama’s 187th Air National Guard during the period that Lt. Bush perfected the art of invisibility.

I can name people I worked with in summer jobs 20 years ago (30 years ago I was in high school — I can probably name just about everyone in my 100 person class, but that’s hardly a fair comparison)—can’t GW name just one or two he trained with?

Bush Payroll Records Are Damning Evidence

Although, as many bloggers noted, the AP tried to whitewash the sudden Hilary-Clinton-like rediscovery of Bush’s military pay records by saying that they “shed no new light on the future president’s activities during that summer” it’s obvious to anyone with half a brain that in fact they do shed light on a dark corner. Like the curious case of the dog in the nighttime, the pay records speak volumes for what they do NOT say: they lack any indication that Lt. Bush met his service obligation.

That’s simple. How Lt. Bush got away with an honorable discharge anyway is much more complex. The fullest descriptions of the whole paper trail are provided by Paul Lukasiak and can be found at his AWOL Project. Mr. Lukasiak has now released part III of this saga, ‘Fraud: The Secrets of Bush’s Payroll Records Revealed. It’s pretty powerful stuff, but it’s also complicated and set out in an over-wrought style.

The combination of complexity and pushy style mean that the major media will probably ignore it. If a story is a little technical and can’t be explained in a sound bite, even most print reporters these days are reluctant to cover it, and doubly so if the person offering the data isn’t either a known member of the pundit class or sounds very calm and sober. No one wants to be thought shrill, after all.

Here’s Lukasiak’s summary of his argument—but there’s lots more where this came from.

An examination of George W. Bush’s payroll records lead to the conclusion that Bush consciously and deliberately defrauded the United States government for pay and “points” to which he was not entitled. The White House probably doesn’t even know that the payroll records include the data necessary to prove fraud—-the proof is found in the “incomprehensible” lines of data at the bottom of the payroll records.

Lieutenant Bush was required to attend scheduled monthly training with his Texas Air National Guard unit., or perform “substitute training” instead. However, under Air Force policy, advance authorization was required for “substitute training”, and this training could be done no more than 15 days before his unit met for the scheduled mandatory training. The payroll records show that, during his last year as a member of the Texas Air National Guard, fraud was involved in over 40% of the pay Bush received that was credited toward mandatory monthly training. Bush was paid for, and received “point credit” for “substitute training” more than 15 days before the corresponding scheduled training for five separate weekends of mandatory training.

Moreover, Without advance authorization, Bush could not be paid or credited with any “training” he claims to have performed in Alabama.

Yet The payroll records are completely inconsistent with Bush having received advance authorization for the “substitute training” supposedly done in Alabama. If training had been authorized, paychecks would have been issued no more than five weeks after the training had been done. Instead, it took an average of seven weeks (and as much as nine weeks) for pay to be processed.

Other documents in the Bush files provide additional evidence that the training that Bush was paid for in Alabama was never properly authorized. And the statements made by officers of the Alabama Air National Guard also confirm that Bush did not get the authorization necessary from Alabama for him to be paid and credited with training.

Finally, the White House has never released any of the paperwork that could show that this training was approved in advance, or that the training was actually accomplished. Additional circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that none of the training done in Alabama was properly authorized. When the evidence is considered as a whole, the obvious conclusion is that this paperwork never existed, and that Bush was paid for training that he never performed.

Lucky Accident! Bush Military Records Are Gone!

I would be prepared to believe that an unfortunate accident with aging microfilm just happened to destroy Lt. Bush’s personnel records for the three key months of his career so long as it could be shown that the same thing happened to many others, and so long as someone would come forward and say they were involved in the failed “restoration” project. Routinized military incompetence is something I can accept.

But it’s darned odd that the Bush folks, who presumably knew about this destruction for several years never mentioned it.

And it’s even odder that Bush — who promised he’d release all his military records — has nevertheless consistently refused to sign the waiver that would in fact make good on this promise. (In which context it is just short of amazing that the New York times buried this story deep in the paper rather than running it on the front page. SCLM indeed.)

Given that people have been doing a serious analysis of the Bush military records and have found many peculiar anomalies, things that are at least consistent with a pattern of cronyism and illegality, and given that the current administration lies about everything out of habit, well, excuse me if I need a little more reassurance that Occam’s Razor doesn’t lead you straight to skullduggery.

Corruption, Bloody Corruption

The story has been bouncing around the web for months, but the New Republic has now brought it out into the mainstream. It seems that after two plus years of passivity in the hunt for Bin Laden, and chasing after mirages in the Iraqi sands, the Bush administration has been telling the government of Pakistan repeatedly and in strong terms that it would like a July Surprise—a capture of one or more major Al Qaeda figures, ideally timed to take all the air out of the Democratic convention.

Yes, it’s nice that the administration is finally getting serious about catching the real villains, although it’s rather late. And yes, it is rage-inducing that nothing, simply nothing, is too significant, or a matter of national honor, to be twisted and sullied by Rovian manipulation.

If the US has indeed pressured a foreign government in the hopes that their capture of a major national enemy should be delayed, or timed, so that this administration could milk it for domestic political gain, I am prepared to discuss whether we should amend the Constitution to reinstate the punishment of corruption of blood so we can apply it to the Bush clan.

AP Sues for Access To GWB Military Records (What Took You So Long?)

AP suing the Pentagon to get 100% of GW Bush’s service records. It has always seemed odd to me that (1) Bush did not in fact ever make all his records available, and indeed reneged on his pledge to do so; (2) requests for the records now go through the White House; (3) there are things missing that have no right to be missing, notably the discharge papers with their separation codes; (4) no one in the press seemed to care about the loose ends in the story.

Is it a coincidence that this law suit comes just after Bush starts falling in the polls? I would hate to think the press corps was so craven that they only dare ask hard questions when they smell blood. But how else to explain the timing?

Shorter Harvard Federalist Society

Shorter Eric Soskin, Harvard Federalist Society, writing in Ex Parte:

Given that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, Bush’s official statement to Congress (a certification required by law as a precondition for force), that invading Iraq was “consistent with” a resolution that authorized force against “international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001” wasn’t “unambiguously false” but just legalistic and misleading—so why is everyone getting so worked up about it?

I think the guy has a future in the OLC if Bush is re-elected.

[Update (6/22): A read writes to complaint about the "re-". Point taken.]

All About the WMD Commission

Here’s a useful service, provided by WashingtonPost.com (Dan Froomkin dept.): All About the WMD Commission.

New Traction for Bush Records Story

Finally. The Bush records story is getting new traction, probably because Kerry himself is making an issue of it. Helpfully, Salon has published a child’s guide (suitable for busy reporters) to some (only some) of the major gaps in the record. And the thoughtful and much-read Joshua Micah Marshall has endorsed this as an issue, going so far as to say that, aw shucks, he doesn’t quite follow all the complicated details, but, it sounds important:

I just don’t know the details of all this well enough any more to make a judgment about these various claims and accusations.

But why exactly can’t the president just release his records the way McCain did?

And, is that story about [Maj. Gen. Danny] James[, commander of the Air National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Va.] getting a chance to go over these files true? If it is, I’d say some scribblers in town got suckered.

Big time, as the vice president would say.

So maybe the issue is not dead yet. When will a reporter stand up the press gaggle with a release from and ask if the President will sign it? Or, how about at a press conference if there ever is another one?

Why Did the Media Suddenly Drop the Bush Military Records Issue? No One Knows.

Long ago I asked why on earth no one seemed to care any more about the missing Bush Military records. Now comes CJR Campaign Desk: Spin Buster to ask that question again.

Campaign Desk has been curious for a while now about what happened to the story of President Bush’s Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard. After the White House’s February 13 Friday night data dump of all assembled records, there was little press follow-up. We never read anything that sorted through the details of the over 300 documents released to figure out what, exactly, happened back then; all we ever got was a few pieces noting that little of the information was new, and listing still-unanswered questions.

Why, exactly, did the media drop the matter?

Campaign Desk thinks it has part of the answer,

In part, no doubt, it’s because some of the details seem to come down to personal memories. But that doesn’t strike us as an excuse for throwing in the towel and failing to clarify a controversial story that the press had resuscitated itself (largely courtesy of Bush’s “Meet the Press” interview on February 8).

In other words, Campaign Desk is mystified.

I’m not mystified. Stupefied. Incredulous. But not mystified. See, there’s no Democrat banging the gong on this (and if there were s/he’d be attacked by the press for being shrill). And the press is just not up to doing the hard work itself. Haven’t been since they became ‘professionals’ instead of working stiffs.

Plus, who’s got the story for the agenda-setting New York Times? Why none other than Katherine Seeyle.

NYT Covers Archivist Flap

The New York Times has an article today, Bush Nominee for Archivist Is Criticized for His Secrecy, on the controversy over the Bush administration’s attempt to replace the Archivist of the US before he is willing to go.

The NYT item has lots about the prospective nominee, some positive, some not so positive. What it lacks is discussion of the timing issues that might motivate an administration to want to have its tame Archivist in office quickly. For those, please see last Saturday’s blog item, Politicizing the Archives.

Mark Kleiman Points To the Best Stuff in the Woodward Book

Another nice thing about the Internet is all the smart people who kindly act as filters for us.

Mark A. R. Kleiman: Woodward so far: Two dynamite political issues and one impeachable offense

1. The President told the Saudi Ambassador about our war plans two days before he told his Secretary of State.

2. The Saudi Ambassador promised to knock down oil prices in time to help the President get re-elected.

3. Money appropriated for Afghan reconstruction was instead used, without Congressional approval, for preparations for the war in Iraq.

Well, it’s a start.

Politicizing the Archives

Politics as usual? Or just another minor perversion of democracy — keeping facts from the people not because they need to be secret, but because their release might embarrass Republicans? It’s unclear, but it doesn’t look good.

National Coalition for History Washington Update Concern is growing within the archival and historical communities regarding the Bush administration’s hoped for “fast-track” process to replace Archivist of the United States John Carlin with one of its own choosing — historian Allen Weinstein. According to informed sources, the administration hopes to short-circuit the normal confirmation process and see Weinstein confirmed through an “expedited” process. Their goal — place Weinstein in the position prior to the November election.

According to Hill insiders, the effort to replace Carlin is coming from the highest levels of the White House. Reportedly, Karl Rove who is widely viewed as one of the president’s chief political advisors, if not his political mastermind and, Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, want their own archivist in place for two overarching reasons: first, because of the sensitive nature of certain presidential and executive department records likely to be opened in the near future, and second, because there is genuine concern in the White House that the president may not be re-elected.

Indeed, the Society of American Archivists says it’s concerned:

We are concerned about the sudden announcement on April 8, 2004, that the White House has nominated Allen Weinstein to become the next Archivist of the United States. Prior to the announcement, there was no consultation with professional organizations of archivists or historians. This is the first time since the National Archives and Records Administration was established as an independent agency that the process of nominating an Archivist of the United States has not been open for public discussion and input. We believe that Professor Weinstein must—through appropriate and public discussions and hearings—demonstrate his ability to meet the criteria that will qualify him to serve as Archivist of the United States.

When former President Ronald Reagan signed the National Archives and Records Administration Act of 1984 (Public Law 98-497), he said that, “the materials that the Archives safeguards are precious and irreplaceable national treasures and the agency that looks after the historical records of the Federal Government should be accorded a status that is commensurate with its important responsibilities.” Earlier in 1984, when the National Archives Act was being discussed, Senate Report 98-373 cautioned that if the Archivist was appointed “arbitrarily, or motivated by political considerations, the historical records could be impoverished [or] even distorted.”

OK, this may be small beer compared to secretly taking money from appropriations to help the Afghanistani people and spending it to do planning for the Iraq campaign. But it looks ugly none the less.

For an example of what is at stake, see this item about the Nixon documents [link fixed to remove superfluous “.”]

More from the article at the National Coalition for History

Though it is not widely known, in January 2005, the first batch of records (the mandatory 12 years of closure having passed) relating to the president’s father’s administration will be subject to the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and could be opened. Another area of concern to presidential officials relates to the 9-11 Commission records. Because there is no mandatory 30-year closure rule (except for highly classified White House and Executive Department records and documents), all materials relating to the commission are scheduled to be transferred to the National Archives upon termination of the Commission later this year. These records could be made available to researchers and journalists as soon as they are processed by NARA.

Note that as these records are coming on stream this year, the line quoted above about how this is a contingency plan for losing the election is probably wrong. If the article’s basic hypothesis is correct, then the administration needs its archivist in place sooner than the next inauguration.

In what appears to be a calculated move by administration officials, Rove and Gonzales have advanced the nomination of Weinstein fully aware that according to the “National Archives and Records Administration Act of 1984 (P.L. 98-497) the Archivist of the United States position is to be an appointment based “without regard to political affiliations and solely on the basis of the professional qualifications required to perform the duties and responsibilities of the office of the Archivist.” If Weinstein is confirmed and if President Bush is not elected, then President Kerry could be accused of “politicizing” the position should he try to replace Weinstein. In fact, though, the president’s strategy in seeking to replace Carlin at this time rather than later injects an element of partisanship that could give John Kerry, should he be elected president in November, ample justification to replace Weinstein in the same manner that the White House is seeking to replace Carlin.

Carlin has made it widely known that he anticipated stepping down from the Archivist position in July 2005, upon his 65th birthday, upon the tenth anniversary of his appointment to the position, and upon the completion of his ten-year strategic plan for NARA. His intention not to step down until then has been stated in several public interviews including (reportedly), in a recent interview with CNN’s Brian Lamb (26 November 2003 broadcast of “National Journal”). Months back, recognizing that Carlin intended to step down next year, archival organizations had begun to pull together qualification statements and a “highly qualified” list of names for the White House to consider in finding Carlin’s replacement. What appeared to be an orderly procedure to pass power from Carlin to a new archivist in summer 2005 has now been short-circuited.

There are two basic ways for the Archivist of the United States to be replaced — resignation or replacement by the President. In his letter to NARA employees last week (see “Historian Allen Weinstein Slotted by Bush Administration to be Next Archivist of the United States” in NCH WASHINGTON UPDATE, Vol 10, #15 8 April 2004) Carlin stated that he was not resigning and he would not submit his resignation until a new archivist is appointed. There is no indication that the White House has any cause-related reason to replace Carlin and no reason was communicated to Congress when Weinstein’s nomination was advanced formally last week. Some observers speculate that by refusing to resign until a new archivist is in place, Carlin is tacitly protesting what Hill insiders consider his “premature” removal.

If Carlin (a Democrat appointed by Bill Clinton) had resigned outright, the decks would have been cleared for the White House to promptly replace him. However, that did not happen. It appears that the White House does not want any adverse publicity that would be generated by officially coming up with a “reason” for communicating to Congress its desire to replace Carlin as required by law (“the President shall communicate the reasons for any such removal to each House of the Congress”). Hence, by advancing Weinstein’s nomination (which was received by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on 8 April) and by securing Weinstein’s confirmation, the White House can then quietly force Carlin’s resignation.

Owing to the controversy surrounding the anticipated resignation of Carlin, historians and archivists are calling for these and other issues to be addressed in Weinstein’s confirmation hearing. To that end, some historical and archival organizations believe that John Carlin should also be invited to testify under oath regarding the pressure he is under and what he knows about his “premature” resignation. Governmental Affairs Committee staff, however, report that such a move would almost be unprecedented in a confirmation hearing.

On 14 April 2004, archival, historical, and other governmental watchdog organizations concerned both the politicization of the appointment process and the qualifications of the nominee, issued a “statement” calling for the Senate to conduct a confirmation hearing consistent with other positions of importance requiring Senate confirmation. The statement drafted by the Society of American Archivists and issued on behalf of several archival and historical organizations (see http://www.archivists.org/statements/weinstein.asp ) raises a concern about “the sudden announcement on April 8, 2004, that the White House has nominated Allen Weinstein to become the next Archivist of the United States.”

According to the statement that has the endorsement of the Society of American Archivists, the Association of Research Libraries, Council of State Historical Records Coordinators, Northwest Archivists, Inc., the Association of Documentary Editors, Midwest Archives Conference, the American Association for State and Local History, and the Organization of American Historians: “Prior to the announcement, there was no consultation with professional organizations of archivists or historians. This is the first time since 1985 that the process of nominating an Archivist of the United States has not been open for public discussion and input. We believe that Professor Weinstein must — through appropriate and public discussions and hearings — demonstrate his ability to meet the criteria that will qualify him to serve as Archivist of the United States….the decision to appoint a new Archivist should be considered in accordance with both the letter and the spirit of the 1984 law.”

The statement also calls on the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs “to schedule open hearings on this nomination in order to explore more fully 1) the reasons why the Archivist is being replaced, and 2) Professor Weinstein’s qualifications to become Archivist of the United States.”

It Only Hurts When I Don't Laugh, and I'm Not Laughing

ROEMER: OK. I’m just confused. You see him on August 6th with the PDB. TENET: No, I do not, sir. I’m not there.
ROEMER: OK. You’re not — when do you see him in August?
TENET: I don’t believe I do.
ROEMER: You don’t see the president of the United States once in the month of August?
TENET: He’s in Texas.

OK, we’re starting to get a picture of just how bad the technological lag was at the intelligence agencies… Imagine poor Tenet, desperately wanting to tell the president about this threat to national security: But no! The president is in Texas! Texas! “I just wish I had a way to speak to someone without actually being present in the room… some device that might transmit sound or text over wires… maybe even through the air!

Cover-Up Mode

Orcinus summarizes recent developments on other briefings to GW Bush besides the infamous smoking memo. Most interesting to me is the stuff at the end, discussing how the administration is abusing the classification procedures. The national interest certainly may be damaged by the release of sensitive information about the content of a briefing. But once the info is out, how is the national (as opposed to political) interest hurt by releasing the names of the recipients of a memo?

Smoking Gun? No. Smoking Cannon.

The New York Times has the devastating report..

It begins:

President Bush was told more than a month before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that supporters of Osama bin Laden planned an attack within the United States with explosives and wanted to hijack airplanes, a government official said Friday.

The Smoking Gun on 9/11

So know we know about the smoking gun: GW Bush got a memo entitled BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO ATTACK INSIDE UNITED STATES.

And they did nothing.

And that’s why the administration made such a fight about releasing the PDB’s to the 9/11 Commission.

When the 9/11 commission was created, I think no one who hadn’t seen this memo could have imagined it would exist. I don’t care how much Dr. Rice and the others spin the memo as “historical” or failing to spell out what should be done to the last detail. Short of capturing a memo stating the date, place and time of an attack, what more do you want? Do Presidents get memos like this every day? I rather doubt it.

In a normal world we might actually be having a serious conversation about impeachment at this point. Sleeping at the switch is serious. But we’ll have to content ourselves with an election. Let’s hope they count the votes this time. And remember that sometimes — sometimes — even the conspiracy theories are not damning enough.

Update: Billmon and others were struck by this also. Billmon, however, says that the title of the August 6, 2001 presidential briefing was mentioned in a news article by Bob Woodward published May, 2002. I missed it, and so it seems did he.

Which I suppose proves my point that no quanity of evidence of negligence matters here, except to the election. In that context having the telegenic Dr. Rice say this title on camera — and then beat around the bush to denigrate its significance — is much more important than having it on the Common Dreams web page. But it certainly disproves my point above that no one could have imagined such a damning memo. (New question, why didn’t any of the articles over the legalistic fights over the PDB’s mention this title?)

Meanwhile I’ve acquired the Clarke book…

Justice Dept Spokesman Offers Up a Whopper

In a front-page NYT story today by Philip Shenon, a Justice Dept. spokesman named Mark Corallo offers up a brazen lie.

Again on Monday, a Justice Department spokesman, Mark Corallo, said, “I don’t think anyone can argue with the fact that this president and this attorney general have made preventing terrorist attacks their No. 1 priority, and that was true before Sept. 11, 2001, and it is true today.”

In fact, as we all know, the evidence is overwhelming that before 9/11 preventing terrorist attacks was in no way the “No. 1 priority” — cutting taxes, a missile defense shield, and attacking Iraq were among the many things with much higher priority.

Although the Times allows this remark to go unchallenged on the front, it does carry a delayed rebuttal on the jump:

Commission officials said their evidence showed that Mr. Ashcroft had taken little interest in counterterrorism before Sept. 11 and, days before the attacks, had rejected pleas from senior F.B.I. officials for more money for counterterrorism even as intelligence agencies warned of an imminent, possibly catastrophic, terrorist attack.

The article’s focus is the FBI and Justice, but even so I don’t think that excuses leaving the lie about GW Bush unrebutted.

Isn’t it sad that the Justice Department’s spokesman feels no obligation to avoid lying in this fashion? Shouldn’t that department be held to a higher standard than this? (And if he’s going to lie, couldn’t he find a more convincing one?)

Plame Investigation Metastasises

Prosecutors Are Said to Have Expanded Inquiry Into Leak of C.I.A. Officer’s Name. Seems the prosecutor thinks someone might have been lying to him.

I love the smell of justice in the morning.

Abuse of Process

$170 million in the bank and they have to steal workers from the public? Kautilyan: Treasury Used to Attack Kerry.

AP Suggests Bush is a Flip-Flopper

AP moved a story this afternoon that suggests GW Bush is a flip-flopper. Of course, they don’t come right out and say so, and the story carries no byline (someone feeling endangered?), but it just begs to be in the papers as a little sidebar with the right headline.

President Bush’s decision Tuesday to allow his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to testify publicly before the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks reversed earlier White House insistence that she would only appear privately.

Some previous Bush reversals in the face of criticism:

_He argued a federal Department of Homeland Security wasn’t needed, then devised a plan to create one.

_He resisted a commission to investigate Iraq (news - web sites) intelligence failures, but then relented.

_He also initially opposed the creation of the independent commission to examine if the 2001 attacks could have been prevented, before getting behind the idea under pressure from victims’ families.

_He opposed, and then supported, a two-month extension of the commission’s work, after the panel said protracted disputes over access to White House documents left too little time.

_He at first said any access to the president by the commission would be limited to just one hour but relaxed the limit earlier this month.

Richard Clarke Is Not A Lone Gunman

There is a sleeper (waking?) witness on Bush & 9/11: Sibel Edmonds, a translator who alleges that she was bougt off witgh a promotion to keep silent about the adminstration ignoring evidence that suggested an attack was being planned. (I first blogged Ms. Edmonds in January. She’s interesting.)

Salon has an article quoting Edmonds as saying,

Referring to the Homeland Security Department’s color-coded warnings instituted in the wake of 9/11, the former translator, Sibel Edmonds, told Salon, “We should have had orange or red-type of alert in June or July of 2001. There was that much information available.” Edmonds is offended by the Bush White House claim that it lacked foreknowledge of the kind of attacks made by al-Qaida on 9/11. “Especially after reading National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice [Washington Post Op-Ed on March 22] where she said, we had no specific information whatsoever of domestic threat or that they might use airplanes. That’s an outrageous lie. And documents can prove it’s a lie.”

$1.2 Billion is a Large Shortfall

Misplacing $1.2 billion is quite an achievement for a government agency other than the Pentagon. Yet, that’s what Homeland Security and/or its predecessors did. (Spotted via Talk Left)

But I don’t suppose MS-NBC, which seems obsessed with “is Clarke a liar” (a White House spin point directed by GW Bush personally) will care very much.

Sauce for the Gander

Here’s a really smart question: Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: March 21, 2004 - March 27, 2004 Archives—if the administration is willing to waive the “background” status of comments made by Richard Clarke in August 2002, presumably without his consent, why won’t it do the same thing for the person(s) who outed Ms. Plame to Robert Novak?

Wouldn’t it be nice if someone asked this question at a white house press conference?

Brad DeLong Translates Richard Clarke For Us

Brad DeLong explains what Richard Clarke is too diplomatic to say straight out:

If there is one thing clear from reading Against All Enemies, it is that Clarke is f***ing apeshit. I’ve never seen anyone so apeshit. Clarke had thought he was leading a successful counterterrorism effort against al Qaeda, and then at the start of 2001 these idiot neocon Cold Warriors came in and messed everything up with bureaucratic bull****. Because the Bush administration blocked his plans, September 11, 2001 happens and 3,000 Americans die. And then the White House takes 911 as a poiltical football and runs with it. And then it uses 911 as a phony excuse to launch a war on Iraq that—in Clarke’s estimation—greatly strengthens al Qaeda.

And I had thought that Paul O’Neill was mad at and disgusted with the George W. Bush administration…

Actually, by all accounts, Clarke just uses nicer words to say it.

Our Dime-Store Machiavellians

Via Dan’s Washpost column, a link to a valuable but depressing compilation from the Center for American Progress: White House Intimidation, a list of folks the Bush team has tried to silence or punish for speaking. Proving they at least understand that it’s better to be feared than loved.

Bill Clinton’s greatest failing as a President may be that he never really understood that lesson and tried to reward his enemies too often, emboldening congress and others to walk right over him. (No need to mention his second greatest failing, although it may be related to the first.) This is the other extreme.

Clarke, Day 3

Daily Kos on Clarke — it’s not that he’s new so much that he’s credible and impossible to ignore. And, oh yes, the administration appears to have no substantive response in its arsenal. None. None.

By their own right, the Clarke stuff is not that significant. Or at the very least, not too original. He has said little that we didn’t already know around these parts.

But what Clarke has done is simply add fuel to charges alredy floating around — from Paul O’Neil, from David Kay, from others. One person making charges might be spun as the rantings of a disgruntled former employee, or the machinations of a political enemy. But as more of these former officials come out, the damage they wreak on the administration rises exponentially.

We are seeing confirmation upon confirmation upon confirmation. The numbers of whistleblowers are too many to easily dismiss. The news media is no longer doing so, and the administration is reduced to calling in Rush Limbaugh to plead their case (Cheney: Our top counter-terrorism official was “out of the loop” on terrorism matters. And that’s their defense!)

If there is no substantive response in the arsenal, that leaves the politics of personal destruction. But how many skeletons can there be in the closet of a guy who held all the highest clearances we have for 20+ years?

Clarke Ripples

So far the best comment on the Clarke fallout I’ve seen is Billmon’s, who points out how bad it looks for Dr. Rice to refuse to testify to the 9/11 commission. Even if there is a valid separation of powers argument, isn’t it the case the “9/11 changes everything”? Or so we’ve been told… [A commentator on the Billmon site says that not only did the NYT assign Judith Miller to the story, a very weird choice indeed, but it apparently buried the story on page 17! Surely not? The Post, at least, front-paged it.]

Apparently there’s also a great 9/11 article in the Wall St. Journal, showing all the inconsistencies in the administration’s story about what it did on 9/11, but that’s subscription only online so I’ll have to chase up a hardcopy…

And, White House Reels From Insider Expose.

And, today’s event, the Center for American Progress website publishes newly revealed internal FBI and Justice Department documents that it says substantiate several of Clarke’s charges of Bush administration inattention to terrorism in the face of “repeated warnings”.

Want to Know What's Wrong With US Intelligence?

Here’s a little item deep inside Barton Gellman’s story on Richard Clarke that encapsulates so much of what’s wrong with the Bush administration:

On the same broadcast, deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley said, “We cannot find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clarke and the president ever occurred.” In interviews for this story, two people who were present confirmed Clarke’s account. They said national security adviser Condoleezza Rice witnessed the exchange.

So either unless Clarke and two other anonymous witnesses are lying, the folks in charge of our intelligence and national security apparatus are either (A) completely incompetent, or (B) complete liars. Does it really matter which?

Richard Clarke Goes for the Bush Jugular

Richard Clarke is going to get his 15 minutes, and more, before he either falls into the Memory Hole, or holes the Bush Administration below the waterline.

In reading him, and about him, please keep a few things in mind:

1. Clarke’s a Scoop Jackson Democrcat — that is, the right-wing kind;
2. He’s served both Deomcratic and Republican Presidents, and very ably by all accounts
3. He’s a smart man, and a patriot, and widely considered one of the best nuts and bolts guys around on national security.

That doesn’t make what he says true, but it ought to buy him a respectful hearing.

Correction: According to this Washington Post article by Barton Gellman, Clarke says he was registered as a Republican in 2000. Relevant only to Republican claims that he’s ‘auditioning for the Kerry campaign’.

Intelligence Panel is in No Hurry

Subversion of the Democratic Process

Yes, it’s really that bad. KR Washington Bureau: “The government’s top expert on Medicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a series of Bush administration cost estimates that could have torpedoed congressional passage of the White House-backed Medicare prescription-drug plan.”

I am in awe of the genius of the Framers, who correctly warned us of the dangers of “faction” — the creation of party systems to which loyalty is greater than to the commonweal.

I am rueful of the fallibility of the Framers, who designed a system that:

1. tends so strongly to “faction” that there is no chance at all the either party would make executive branch heads roll even for a fraud of this magnitude;
2. hasn’t scaled as well as it needed to — the imbalances in representation we have now in both voter/Senator and electoral votes/voter are much greater than they ever contemplated;
3. has too few antibodies generally against a morally corrupt bankrupt regime in the White House.

Of course, the Framers worked on assumptions about the nature of social relations, the economy, (small-R) republicanism, virtue, natural aristocracy and many other things that makes their world view at least different from mine if not downright archaic. Which is why stories like this one make me wonder if the ‘great experiment’ is going as well as it should…

(Other fulminations at TPM & BD’s SDJ)

Scandal Fatigue?

Remember how GW Bush promised to release all his military records? And then remember how that promise was inoperative the very next day? We still have not seen Bush’s discharge papers. All it would take to put this to rest is a signed release by the ex-National Guardsman himself. But he hasn’t done that…and people seem to have stopped demanding it. Why is that?

Lest we forget: Bush To Make Up Missed National Guard Service This Weekend

Don't Believe the Headline: 9/11 Commission Still Spineless

Oh, it’s a nice headline in the New York Times: 9/11 Panel Rejects White House Limits on Interviews. Sure sounds like the commission found its spine at last, and won’t accept the absurd one-hour limit (and chairs only, no members present, please) that Bush-Cheney invented to neuter the commission’s investigation.

But read past the headline and the truth emerges. First, no Republicans are quoted; as the commission is split 50/50, that means that there isn’t yet a majority to do anything forceful.

Plus, on background, the Republicans as signalling that they plan to cave in:

Commission officials said that if the White House continued to insist on limitations on the interviews with Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, there might be little that the panel could do to force the issue and that the commission might have to accept the White House’s terms.

And they said that despite internal conversation about the possibility of issuing a subpoena for Ms. Rice’s public testimony, that move was unlikely.

Some spine, eh?

With a Name Like 'Uggabugga' It's Got to Be Good

Uggabugga is to me about the oddest name for a blog. But whoever s/he is, s/he has a way with charts. This week’s winner is a chart showing how the single hour that GW Bush says is all he can spare to speak to the 9/11 commission compares to his pre-9/11 vacation time.

I suppose it’s sort of a cheap shot in that the better comparison would probably post-9/11 vacations (although there have also been plenty of those), but it’s effective.

The Fascade Begins to Crack

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, the White House could peddle any sort of unrealistic political garbage, and the press mostly ate it up. The National Guard issue, falling poll numbers, and not least pressure from big-time bloggers, has changed all that.

So today the Republicans caved on the insult-to-the-intelligence story that Speaker Hastert was refusing the White House request to extend the life of the 9/11 commission.

The reason for the cave-in is that the mainstream press got the bit between its teeth, and the White House realized that having to brag about an inability to controll the House — which may soon be the truth on spending and maybe even taxation — would not advance its electoral prospects, and if believed would only embolden the would-be House rebels.

(NPR’s corrective of its earlier unquestioning acceptance of a falsehood peddled by RNC Chair Racicot is also a sign of the same phenomenon. The ice is melting….)

Stonewalling the 9/11 Commission

The stonewalling of the 9/11 Commission continues.

Bush to Limit Testimony Before 9/11 Panel: President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have placed strict limits on the private interviews they will grant to the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, saying that they will meet only with the panel’s top two officials and that Mr. Bush will submit to only a single hour of questioning, commission members said Wednesday.

I have no idea what they think they gain by this. Is it easier to intimidate two people? Is it easier to stonewall without more live witnesses? Is there some other member of the commission who’s being particularly agressive whom they want to keep out? Or is it just reflexive antagonism — fight about the shape of the table to distract from the substance?

Dingbat Kabuki

Josua Marsahll has a way not just with ideas but with words. What better phrase than “dingbat kabuki” to describe the bizarre and transparently fraudulent claim that House Republicans are rebelling against GW Bush’s earnest and assertive request to extend the life of the 9/11 commission?

The White House’s suggestion that Andrew Card’s personal appeal to Speaker Hastert to make good on Bush’s pledge to deliver an extra 60 days for the commission fell on deaf ears would be funny if the issues — the extent to which 9/11 was preventable, and what we can learn from the failure to prevent it — were not so serious.

So now I have two questions. First, which one of these three scenarios is at work:

1. Karl Rove and Dick Cheney never planned to extend the 9/11 Commission’s mandate past May, and Bush’s pledge was a lie when uttered.
2. Rove & Cheney did plan to extend the 9/11 Commission, but then backed off due to declining poll numbers, figuring it was better to take a hit now, from a disorganized limited and rushed report than later, closer to the election from a slicker, fuller report. [This seems to be Josh Marshall’s assumption.]
3. They did plan to extend, but the committee got frisky or got near something, and they decided to pull the plug.

My second question is whether, after being continually shafted by non-cooperation from the White House (refusal to testify, refusal to provide documents, bait and switch on the terms by which Commission members could see documents), and now by this latest promise reneged upon, even the Republican members of the committee — or at least one of them — won’t develop enough patriotism to denounce the White House’s sabotage of their efforts.

Loose Ends in the National Guard Story

Four notes culled from the latest spate of Bush-records and did-he-serve stories.

1. Thursday we get one limited data dump from the White House, including the spoiled brat traffic record, drawn from some Secret Stash from which they drew the famous dental records. But that dump has no other medical stuff, leading me to wonder what the White House held back.
2. Friday, the White House dumps what appears to be a different set of documents, fresh from the Pentagon’s records dept. They’re in such a hurry to dump them that they send them out late Friday, at a time when the positive PR value is the least it could be. No word on how these documents compare or relate the Secret Stash — but we know that they are different documents because the White House tells us that they released them almost as soon as they got them. The documents do include what seem to be medical records, but don’t include the separation code.
3. The White House press secretary is being mighty testy to that nice lady, Helen Thomas.
4. What seemed to be the killer pro-Bush testimony has been pretty convincingly discredited.

Modified Limited Hangout Continues

At first glance it is very difficult to accept that two very minor traffic accidents and two speeding tickets (as a teenage driver) is all that the Bush folks could have been hiding. Even if it demonstrates that he was illegally or improperly admitted to the guard. (We knew that.) They gotta be smarter than that?

Bush’s driving records disclosed: The White House disclosed information in documents Thursday showing that President Bush had been arrested once for a college prank and was cited for two automobile accidents and two speeding tickets before he enlisted in the National Guard.

The accidents and tickets were disclosed for the first time in response to questions about a portion of Bush’s military record that had been blacked out when the file was made public during the 2000 presidential campaign.

The traffic violations are significant in the context of Bush’s military career. At the time Bush enlisted in the Texas National Guard, the Air Force typically would have had to issue a waiver for an applicant who had multiple arrests or driving violations.

An officer who served at the same time as the president, former Texas Air National Guard pilot Dean Roome, was required by the Air Force to get a waiver for a $25 speeding ticket when he enlisted in the Air National Guard in 1967.

There is no record of an enlistment waiver in Bush’s military file.

Critics have charged that Bush received favorable treatment to get into the National Guard and avoid serving overseas at the height of the Vietnam War. His father was in Congress at the time.

…

White House press secretary Scott McClellan showed a small group of reporters a copy of Bush’s application to be an officer, with nothing blacked out, after USA TODAY published a picture of the blacked-out document Thursday. The accompanying report said that Guard officials in Texas had been concerned about embarrassing information in Bush’s military records before the files were released to the public beginning in 1999, according to two former Guard officials. Bush aides denied there was any effort to suppress any potentially embarrassing information.

One of the Guard officials told the newspaper that senior officers in Texas were especially concerned about a question on the form asking about arrests.

The White House denied there was any effort to cleanse Bush’s record. “I’m just amazed by the kinds of conspiracy theories that some have chosen to pursue,” McClellan said Thursday. “The facts are very clear. But there are some that are simply not interested in the facts.”

The White House described the four traffic incidents as two “negligent collisions” in July and August 1962 and two speeding tickets in July and August 1964. Bush was a teenager at the time.

McClellan did not indicate any cause of the accidents. He said Bush paid a $10 fine for the speeding tickets and a $25 fine for the collisions. It was not immediately clear whether the amounts were for each incident or combined.

Maybe it’s the medical records? Either that or they are even more arrogant that smart over in the White House PR office… Update: And, let’s not forget we have not yet seen Bush’s separation codes.

Calpundit Interviews Bill Burkett on "Cleansed" Bush Files

In today’s must-read, Calpundit: An Interview With Bill Burkett elevates the “cleansed” Bush service files story from the tinfoil hat level to the ohmyg*dthiscantbetruecanit level. I still hope it’s not true, for all our sakes, and because I’d like Bush to lose the election on principle, not lack of character. Also, I worry about smear accusations; if the press decides they are false, they rebound badly (actually, the rule doesn’t seem to apply to wingnuts, but it sure applies to Democrats).

But true or false, it’s in play now.

Into the Valley of the Weird

Talking Points memo links to an AP story with this amazing graph about the White House’s release of a GW Bush dental record, vintage 1973, which it says places him at Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Alabama at least on the day he went in for free treatment:

“The White House obtained the dental record, along with other medical records it did not release, from the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, Colo., McClellan said. The record was accompanied by a statement from Dr. Richard J. Tubb, the president’s current physician, who stated that he read Bush’s records, which covered a period from 1968 to 1973, and concurred with the doctors’ assertion that Bush was “fit” for service. “The records reflect no disqualifying medical information,” Tubb said.

OK. Let’s take this slowly.

1. Bush promises on TV to release everything.
2. They try to take it back.
3. They release a clean and whole version of the “torn document”.
4. The press gets feral.
5. Which brings us up to today: the modified limited hangout stage of ineffective damage control.
6. Next we will get vicious speculation and more vicious jokes about what medical condition Bush is hiding which is both embarrassing enough to be worth the flack yet not so serious that a physician would say it didn’t “disqualify” him from…what exactly? Not flying?
7. The final step in these dramas is either the White House caves, or they manage to deflect attention to an opponent’s “gaffe,” or — Look! An international crisis!

The mind boggles at what could be on these medical records which is worth the grief that is going to flow to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in the next few days. Low IQ scores? Plastic surgery? Detox? Syphilis? Gonorrhea? (I’m not alleging any of this—just trying to imagine what would be worth the effort to cover up.)

Meanwhile, this looks like a job for Jay Leno.

Surprise! Bush Won't Release More Records

The bigtime bloggers are out in force on GW Bush’s attempt to weasel out of his promise to release all the records that might substantiate or disprove his claims about his military service so I won’t bother piling on.

• Kevin Drum (Calpundit), Releasing the Bush Records
• Mark A. R. Kleiman, More evidence that the President’s word isn’t worth the spit behind it who kindly cites to
  • Bush’s press secretary’s sidestepping it all
  • An LA Times story on what records must exist and how one would get them

Irrelevant bonus feature: The madeup poll everyone believed.

More on "Torn Document"

Calpudit has new theories on the “Torn Document” at the heart of the did-GW-show-up mystery. Some of the commentators in that thread are sceptical, and I’m just confused.

Meanwhile, one has to wonder, if he did show up somewhere during the missing months, why isn’t there a single witness to the event willing to come forward?

Bush Promises To Release All His Military Records...Then Says He 'Did So in 2000'!

Bush with Russert. First it’s an unequivocal promise to release everything. Then he seemingly takes it back by saying “We did so in 2000”.

MSNBC - Transcript for Feb. 8th. Russert: When allegations were made about John McCain or Wesley Clark on their military records, they opened up their entire files. Would you agree to do that?

President Bush: Yeah. Listen, these files I mean, people have been looking for these files for a long period of time, trust me, and starting in the 1994 campaign for governor. And I can assure you in the year 2000 people were looking for those files as well. Probably you were. And absolutely. I mean, I

Russert: But would you allow pay stubs, tax records, anything to show that you were serving during that period?

President Bush: Yeah. If we still have them, but I you know, the records are kept in Colorado, as I understand, and they scoured the records.

And I’m just telling you, I did my duty, and it’s politics, you know, to kind of ascribe all kinds of motives to me. But I have been through it before. I’m used to it. What I don’t like is when people say serving in the Guard is is may not be a true service.

Russert: Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?

President Bush: Yes, absolutely.

We did so in 2000, by the way.

Does this mean the missing stuff gets released, or that we’re in for a week more of Press Secretary stonewalling (“As the President said, we realeased all that in 2000”)? Or are the files well and truly ‘sanitized’?

Is GW Bush Hiding His SPN Code?

One of the more mysterious aspects of the GW Bush National Guard dust up is that presumably the ex-1st Lieutenant could clear it up any time by releasing his service records. And as Bush supporters are fond of saying, he did get an ‘honorable discharge’ didn’t he? So how bad could it be? By not releasing the information, Mr. Bush makes the speculation all but inevitable—might there be something ugly tucked in there somewhere?

The problem, of course, is given what has been released (and leaving aside the known scandal to which we are all desensitized of how Bush got into the Guard), the only visible problem is gaps, and the issue of how they got papered over. The public portions of the military record show no signs of anything discreditable except Not Showing Up when obligated to do so. (Various inferences about why are of course possible — lack of caring, fear of drug tests, inebriation, etc., but again these are old news and long ago and not likely to be that damaging politically.) So what could it possibly be?

I got to thinking of an old footnote in an old article of mine on the Clipper Chip:

In the 1970s the Pentagon admitted that the Army was stamping discharge papers with 530 different “SPN” code numbers that gave savvy employers derogatory information about servicemen, including some with honorable discharges. The codes did not appear on discharge papers issued to servicemen but were available to employers who asked for more detailed records. Classifications included “drug abuse,” “disloyal or subversive security program,” “homosexual tendency,” “unsuitability—apathy, defective attitudes and inability to expend effort constructively,” and “unsuitability—enuresis [bed wetting].” See Dana A. Schmidt, Pentagon Using Drug-Abuse Code, N.Y. Times, Mar. 1, 1972, at 11. Receipt of antiwar literature sufficed to be classified as disloyal or subversive. See Peter Kihss, Use of Personal- Characterization Coding on Military Discharges Is Assailed, N.Y. Times, Sept. 30, 1973, at 46. In response to public pressure, the Pentagon abandoned the program and reissued discharge papers without the codes. See Pentagon Abolishes Code on Discharges of Military Misfits, N.Y. Times, Mar. 23, 1974, at 64; Uncoded Discharge Papers Are Offered to Veterans, N.Y. Times, April 28, 1974, at 33.

From this, it looks like the Pentagon stopped using these codes in early 1974, at least for the Army. Phil Carter reports that the National Guard used an equivalent, but slightly different, set of discharge forms from the Army’s. I wonder if, like the Army, the National Guard also had derogatory codes attached even to “honorable” discharges, and if so, what they were, and when they stopped using them?

GW Bush’s discharge date on his NGB 22 (the Guard’s equivalent of the Army’s DD 214) is Oct ‘73 — even before the Army stopped using its codes. Could this be what all the secrecy is about?

They Get You for the Coverup

Below, in an update, I linked to Phil Carter’s explanation of what records should exist of GW Bush’s military service.

Now comes a respectable reporter and blogger with tales that suggest that these exact records may not exist, or might have been “sanitized.” It sounds like a tinfoil hat kind of suggestion…until you read the various evidence and hearsay assembled by David Neiwert at Orcinus. Then you may be seized by considerable doubt.

Hiding evidence is one thing. Shredding it and falsifying it is another. And in our recent history, we tend to get politicians for the cover up more often than the underlying offense.

This does not make me feel good at all. I actually find myself hoping it is not true, because I think it could tear the country apart. And I can certainly understand why reporters may be reluctant to look into this and set off the avalanche. Breaking Presidents gets to be too much of a habit after a while, and next thing you know you are living in an unstable society akin to a bannana republic.

Yet, these questions will not go away. And if any of this stuff is true then the country deserves to know it. In fact, if none of it is true, we’ll all be better off for knowing that beyond a doubt.

The Bush administration has shown this week that when scared it bends to pressure. Not only are they setting up a commission to report back after the election on the Iraqi intelligence (and many other) issues, but today they announced that the 9/11 commission will be extended 60 days.

What sort of pressure will it take to get them to release whatever military records exist?

Must-Read Daily Howler Today on the "Torn Document"

Today’s Daily Howler is a must-read. Just don’t be distracted by title, Ritter was right about WMD. Result? He’s been dumped from the airwaves, which refers to the less interesting of the two items discussed.

The more interesting item—how hard it is to get facts about the GW Bush military record—actually comes first. There are two related issues. First, how and why the major papers in this country are badly bungling the task of informing us as to what the facts are, and when there are areas of uncertainty what the cause of that uncertainty might be.

The Howler compares the accounts in major newspapers and notes that they don’t coincide at all. So not only are there divergences with what appears to be the record, but the reporters themselves appear to have very different views as to what the basic facts are.

Which leads to the even more interesting question of why that might be.

The Howler suggests that the key question is the extent to which a particular torn document proffered by the Bush people can be trusted. The purveyors of this document purport it to be part of the Bush service record. Yet the document is lacking key identifying marks such as his name. Is it or is it not an accurate and contemporaneous record of Bush’s service? That seems like a pretty central question indeed…

If the “torn document” turns out to be fake, this story becomes much more serious. Indeed, if the “torn document” turns out to be bogus, this story becomes quite an A-bomb. This may be why papers are tiptoe-ing hard, as we’ll discuss later on.

…

How serious was Bush’s attendance problem? It all turns on that crucial “torn document.” And the Post and the Times have created confusion by careless handling of the torn document. We’re told that experts are going to publish further work about the torn doc. Until then, this story will be hard to judge. The Post, Times and Globe have divergent accounts. It’s quite hard to know which is accurate.

(For more on the “torn document” see the last paragraphs of this earlier Howler.)

Update: Via Calpundit, a link to a very, very useful blog entry by Phil Carter on Intel Dump explaining just exactly what records reporters should be asking for—and GWB providing—if the objective is to get to the truth of the matter.

…if I were a reporter sitting in the White House press room, asking questions of Scott McClellan, I’d start asking about his pay records, retirement records, and tax records from 1972. Maybe the attendance records are gone — but there are still plenty of ways to document the President’s service.