More Questions Over White House E-Mail

The Associated Press reports:

An ethics advocacy group asked a federal judge Thursday to order the White House to preserve tapes used to back up its e-mail system.

Asserting that the White House may not have kept copies of e-mails that are at the heart of a dispute over the Bush administration's record-keeping, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a motion asking for a court order to preserve computer backup tapes.

"The White House is refusing to confirm that they have maintained e-mail going back to the beginning of the administration as they are required by law to do," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics.

The group placed on the public record two Justice Department letters stating that the White House is maintaining all backup tapes that were in the possession of the White House Office of Administration as of Sept. 25, 2007, the date CREW sued the Executive Office of the President in the e-mail controversy.

The private group asked the Justice Department for information about what backup tapes were in the White House's possession, but the Justice Department has not provided an explanation.

The possibility that backup tapes may not contain copies of all White House e-mail is a new dimension to the controversy, which first arose in early 2006. CREW alleges that millions of White House e-mails are missing, and that the backup tapes contained the lone remaining copies.

"At present the missing e-mail records exist only on backup tapes and other mediums, if at all," CREW said in its court filing. "Thus, those backup tapes contain the only copies of important historical evidence of this presidency."

CREW is entitled to a temporary restraining order to prevent any further document destruction, the group said in its filing with U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy, an appointee of President Clinton.

In the past, the White House has said it is aware that some e-mails may not have been automatically archived on a computer server for the Executive Office of the President and that the e-mails may have been preserved on backup tapes.

In response to the latest court filing, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said that because the matter is in court, he is referring to previous White Houses comments on the issue.

The White House has said that its Office of Administration is looking into whether there are e-mails that were not automatically archived and that if there is a problem, the necessary steps will be taken to address it.

The first indication of a problem came in nearly two years ago when special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald raised the possibility that records sought in the CIA leak investigation involving the outing of Valerie Plame could be missing because of an e-mail archiving problem at the White House.

The issue arose again this year amid the controversy over the firing of U.S. attorneys. Aides to Bush improperly used Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts for official business and an undetermined number of e-mails were lost.

This is one more indication that Democrats in Washington have cut a deal with the Bush administration that they will not do any serious investigation or oversight into the last 7 years. Not now (where it would most likely necessitate impeachment), nor after January 20, 2009 (when Bush leaves office, and should Democrats remain the majority party in Congress). Democrats, for whatever reason, are willing to take the heat (as well as risk the wrath of their own constituents) for letting Bush's and Cheney's crimes slide.

Pat Leahy, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, let the hearings into the firings of the U.S. attorneys end when members of Bush's administration refused to appear (can you imagine?) and the administration refused to comply with subpoenas for documents. Not only aren't Democrats Leahy, John Conyers and Henry Waxman not flexing their inherent contempt muscles, they're not the ones trying to secure the documentation of this administration's crimes for future investigations. And no one, not even CREW, is doing a thing to secure the RNC's servers and the electronic records of the secret accounts that the GOP provided for White House personnel to circumvent the Presidential Records Act.

Sara Taylor, Confused As To Whom/What She Swore An Oath To

The Washington Post's profile of Sara Taylor and her journey to the White House:

On a snowy evening in December 1998, Sara M. Taylor, the daughter of a former pipe fitter at a John Deere plant in Iowa, came to a meeting at the Capital Hilton. Washington had grown dark and quiet, and the hotel restaurant was empty, save two people: Omaha financial guru Warren Buffett, and the man she was there to meet -- Karl Rove. Rove had just helped reelect George W. Bush as governor of Texas, and now Rove and Bush had begun the slow process of building a presidential run.

Over the course of an hour Rove quizzed her on the politics of her home state. Her dad, before she was born, had done a stint in the Iowa legislature, and two years earlier she'd taken a year off from her studies at Drake University to work on the presidential campaign of Texas senator Phil Gramm. They spoke about the coalitions needed to win -- social conservatives and the agriculture constituency -- and about the need to meet people personally. Suddenly, Bush himself walked in, plopped down beside her and Rove and drilled her about what he needed to know to win Iowa. In a matter of months, Taylor moved back to Iowa, helping to set up Bush's 2000 win. She was 24.

That was the beginning of Taylor's relationship with the two men. The end is proving more difficult to resolve.

After eight years working with Bush and Rove through two presidential campaigns and two turbulent administrations, Taylor, now 32, finds herself unable to exit gracefully. After leaving her post as White House political director in May out of what she says was a search for normalcy, she now finds herself part of the unending congressional probe into the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys.

Yesterday, after the White House invoked executive privilege regarding any meetings, conversations and deliberations she had in the matter, Taylor became the latest high-level political appointee to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. These constraints led to a torturous session, and both sides expressed frustration over what she could and couldn't say. Under questioning yesterday, she refused to answer several questions and testified that she never spoke or met with President Bush about plans to fire the U.S. attorneys last year.

Said friend and former White House communications director Nicolle Wallace: "I just feel like it's incredibly unfair that she's being caught in what's really a struggle between Congress and the White House."

Taylor's been in tough fights before. Following her service for Bush in Iowa, she moved on to South Carolina, Washington state and Michigan. After the cliffhanger election, she was dispatched to Florida to help with recount efforts. Often pulling volunteers from Texas off the floor for not paying attention to their tasks, she eventually developed a pinpoint tracking system that literally traced each recounted ballot.

"It's methodical," Taylor said one evening last week over dinner on Capitol Hill. "You create a system to check every ballot and then you have a spreadsheet in place to tell you where you are. We always knew if we lost one vote or picked one up."

Described by her former colleagues as a tireless worker, Taylor's stature only grew after Bush took control of the White House in 2001. First charged with overseeing the Midwest in the political office led by Ken Mehlman, she joined the 2004 reelection campaign as a top strategist. Taylor was involved in everything from media planning and travel schedules to polling and research.

Asked about her rapid rise, Taylor, who was a finance major in college, said, "I would argue a lot of it had to do with my analytical ability. I think a lot of political operatives have good people skills and great social skills and work really hard, but everyone's not really good at math."

"I was the media director and her title was deputy strategist," said Mark McKinnon. "But functionally she basically did 80 percent of the work for me and [chief campaign strategist] Matthew Dowd. She knows polling, she knows media, she knows the field. For someone her age she has more knowledge than someone with a lifetime of campaigning."

Taylor's reward? A spot as the White House political director after the departure of Matthew Schlapp. From a mid-level staffer, Taylor came back to the White House to advise the senior staff and the president on domestic political issues and played an important role in anything involved with Bush's domestic agenda. Her new role meant constant contact with Rove, whose relationship with Taylor evolved from first "a teacher and leader to almost more of a partner," said Wallace.

"He makes you a better person because he's so methodical and is so smart and never misses anything and is demanding in a good way," Taylor said of her former boss. "He just doesn't have time for error. You can't put a value on the training process."

Another lesson learned?

"Even when you think an e-mail is private, it never is," she said, in reference to a disparaging e-mail involving the firing of Bud Cummins, the U.S. attorney in Little Rock.

By last December, after the Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate, Taylor had had enough. By her own account, she could never separate her personal and professional lives and found herself exhausted, ready to start a new life away from the White House. In May, she left.

A clean break it wasn't. After taking time off for the first time in years, she traveled to Europe and returned home to a subpoena.

She wasn't terribly surprised. Last year Taylor signed up for professional liability insurance after noting comments made by some Democrats on the 2006 campaign trail about wanting to investigate the White House.

But now she's on several hooks. This week she found out the insurance will not cover her legal costs. Moreover, she's restrained from fully telling her side of things, from moving on.

"It's a very difficult position to be in," she said. "The president has exerted executive privilege and I have great respect for the president. The problem for you as an individual is that this comes at a huge personal cost financially.

"But this is a bigger issue than me. I understand the president is doing what he believes is right."

Ms. Taylor is bound by no law which prevents her from testifying in full to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Bush's claim of executive privilege is just that, a statement that carries no force of law. If Ms. Taylor decided to talk to the committee, Bush would have to go to court to get a restraining order preventing it.

So now, everybody waits.

For what? Nobody will actually say, but, like children lining up for the latest Harry Potter book or movie, everyone waits wishing for some kind of magical break. Absent Bush and Cheney having a "come to Jesus"-moment and confessing outright to six years of criminal acts, it doesn't look as if any break is on the horizon or anytime beyond that. Bush and Cheney have artfully, if not illegally, covered their tracks, and the Democratic Congress is afraid (or so they say) to challenge those tactics in the courts for fear that the last twenty-five years of conservative-stacking of the courts will settle these issues for all time in Bush's ("Unitary Executive") favor.

If that is the case, the sooner Americans learn that truth the better. We've been like the proverbial frog in the pot of water being brought to a boil on the stove. Democratic inaction has enabled Bush, Cheney and Republicans to rob and murder, both at home and abroad, in all of our names. If the people are ever to get our nation back, Democrats are going to have to be bold and stand up to every one of Bush's moves.

And citing Sara Taylor for contempt of Congress is a good place to start. Either way (her talking or not after being cited for contempt) works for Democrats. Americans would see a second woman (the first was Judith Miller) doing jail time so that these cowardly men can walk free. These are not sympathetic characters, any of them.

A contempt of Congress citation just might be the best thing to happen to Ms. Taylor. If she continues to believe that the oath she took was to Bush and not to the Constitution, perhaps some time in jail might help to clear her mind of neocon programming. Another secret defense fund, such as the one that neocons set up for Scooter Libby, would undoubtedly be established, and Ms. Taylor could wind up a very rich young woman. However this shakes out, I think it's a safe guess that Ms. Taylor's silence guarantees her a highly lucrative future.



Call Senator Leahy's office (202 224-4242) and urge him to ratchet up the heat.

Bush to Congress: "Since You Won't Agree To Let My Aides Lie To Your Oversight Committees, I'm Claiming Executive Privilege"

Bush goes from letting his aides (Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, Sara Taylor, et al) talk with the various oversight committees of Congress, "as long as they are not under oath, there is no transcript, audio- or videotape of the proceedings, and it's behind closed doors where the public can't watch/listen," to refusing to let them testify by claiming executive privilege.

In the parallel universe where the Constitution reigns supreme, Republicans are coalescing with Democrats behind an impeachment inquiry.

But we don't live there anymore.

The International Herald Tribune reports:

President George W. Bush, invoking executive privilege for the second time in his clash with lawmakers over the firing of federal prosecutors, said Monday that he would refuse to comply with congressional subpoenas for testimony from two top former aides.

In a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, Bush's counsel, Fred Fielding, declared that the legislative and executive branches of government were at an impasse. Fielding wrote that Bush was directing the two aides - Sara Taylor, former White House political director, and Harriet Miers, former White House counsel - not to testify.

"The assertion of executive privilege here is intended to protect a fundamental interest of the presidency: the necessity that a president receive candid advice from his advisers and that those advisers be able to communicate freely and openly with the president," Fielding wrote.

He added that in the case of the firing of federal prosecutors, "the institutional interest of the executive branch is very strong."

The move was not unexpected.

Bush said last month that he had no intention of letting Miers or Taylor testify.

Bush offered at that time to allow the two women, as well as other top aides - including Karl Rove, his chief political strategist - to be interviewed by lawmakers if the interviews were not under oath and were not transcribed. Though Democratic leaders in Congress rejected that offer as insufficient, Bush renewed it Monday.

The latest refusal to comply with the subpoenas raises tensions in an already tense legislative-executive clash and heightens the likelihood that the two sides will wind up in court. Congressional Democrats are trying to determine who sought the firings of nine federal prosecutors, and why. They want to know whether White House officials, including Rove, interfered with hiring and firing decisions at the Justice Department for political reasons, or perhaps to thwart certain investigations.

Bush said in June that he would not comply with subpoenas for documents in the case. At that time, the committee chairmen - Representative John Conyers and Senator Patrick Leahy - wrote to Fielding to complain that Bush was not acting in good faith.

In his letter, Fielding complained about the tone and language the Democrats used, telling them he wanted to convey "a note of concern over your letter's apparent direction in dealing with a situation of this gravity."

Leahy was dismissive of Fielding's letter, saying in a statement: "This is more stonewalling from a White House that believes it can unilaterally control the other co-equal branches of government. What is the White House trying to hide by refusing to turn over evidence it was willing to provide months ago, as long as that information was shared in secret with no opportunity for Congress to pursue the matter further?"

Sara Taylor has been subpoenaed to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 11, 2007, and Harriet Miers has been subpoenaed for the following day. Sara Taylor has said that she wants to testify, and both are required to appear, no matter what Bush claims. It will be up to Taylor and Miers as to whether they will honor Bush's claim of executive privilege. And it will be up to Bush to go to court and get a restraining order prohibiting them from speaking to the committee.

Stay tuned.

Gonzales Uses U.S. Attorney Appointment Power That Congress Banned . . . .

. . . . . And Democrats are about to blow another opportunity.

Raw Story reports:

In a Senate Judiciary Committee business meeting Thursday morning, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) revealed that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales once again used an interim appointment authority at the heart of the US Attorneys controversy that Congress banned in a bill sent to the President for signature on June 4.

"Senator Feinstein’s U.S. Attorney bill....repeals that portion of the Patriot Act Reauthorization that had allowed the Attorney General to circumvent advice and consent with respect to U.S. Attorneys. That bill, the Preserving United States Attorney Independence Act of 2007, has been on the President’s desk since June 4. It seems he just cannot bring himself to sign it. Instead, we were informed yesterday through the Justice Department that the Attorney General has used the power that we have voted to repeal, again," said Senator Leahy, the committee's chairman.

Tracy Schmaler, a spokeswoman for Senator Leahy, clarified the situation in an e-mail to RAW STORY.

"It just so happens the committee got notice yesterday, that on June 16, George Cardona's 210 days as Acting U.S. Attorney in the Central District of California will have run out and the Attorney General will appoint him as an interim U.S. Attorney at that time. (i.e. still using the end-run authority because Bush has slow-walked signing the bill)," she wrote.

RAW STORY could not reach the Justice Department for comment at press time.

On June 4, the Congress sent S. 214, the Preserving United States Attorney Independence Act of 2007, to President George W. Bush. The bill overturned a measure stealthily passed by the Republican-led Congress in 2006 that allowed the Attorney General to indefinitely appoint US Attorneys on an interim basis. Critics said the provision was intended to do an end-run around the standard Senate confirmation process for US Attorneys.

The bill passed the Senate by a 94-2 margin on March 20, and also cleared the House of Representatives by a 306-114 vote on May 22. The President has yet to sign or veto the bill.

Pocket veto.

Once legislation reaches the president's desk, he (or she) must sign it or veto it within ten days (not including Sundays) while Congress is in session, or it automatically becomes law. The one exception (if Congress adjourns before the ten days are up) does not apply here because Congress has been in session since it passed this legislation.

So if Bush doesn't act, exactly when does this bill become law? Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution:

"...If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law."

It hit Bush’s desk on Monday, June 4, and there has been one Sunday (June 10). The tenth day is tomorrow, Friday, June 15. After 10 days without a signature or veto, it becomes law. That means it becomes law on Saturday, June 16.

According to all news reports at the time this little known provision in the Patriot Act came to light, Bush’s and Gonzales’ statements have been that the administration never intended to use the little known slip-in to the Patriot Act to avoid Senate confirmation, and would, of course, cooperate with Congress in removing the provision.

If Raw Story’s report is accurate, what pisses me off about the Democrats is how low-key they are in exposing the lies and corruption of the Bush administration. If Leahy is right and Gonzales intends to use the provision to get around Senate confirmation (and what other reason could there be for Bush not having signed this legislation by now?), Democrats ought to be taking to microphones all over the Capitol and hold this up as “Just one more example….”

It’s because of Democrats’ failure to play hardball with Republicans, by making use of the many examples of Bush-Cheney corruption that come to light that the Rush Limbaughs and Hannitys can lie to audiences, and why we are forever playing defense, trying to convince that 29% who still love Bush and vote Republican that it’s us who are the good guys.

Makes You Want To Go, "Have You No Sense Of Decency, Sir?"

In the NYT, Adam Cohen writes:

Opponents of Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin spent $4 million on ads last year trying to link the Democratic incumbent to a state employee who was sent to jail on corruption charges. The effort failed, and Mr. Doyle was re-elected — and now the state employee has been found to have been wrongly convicted. The entire affair is raising serious questions about why a United States attorney put an innocent woman in jail.

The conviction of Georgia Thompson has become part of the furor over the firing of eight United States attorneys in what seems like a political purge. While the main focus of that scandal is on why the attorneys were fired, the Thompson case raises questions about why other prosecutors kept their jobs.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which heard Ms. Thompson’s case this month, did not discuss whether her prosecution was political — but it did make clear that it was wrong. And in an extraordinary move, it ordered her released immediately, without waiting to write a decision. “Your evidence is beyond thin,” Judge Diane Wood told the prosecutor. “I’m not sure what your actual theory in this case is.”

A couple of weeks ago, the Senate Judiciary Committee decided to make this case their business, although not swiftly enough to have kept Thompson out of prison in the first place:

The Senate Judiciary Committee asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to provide documents related to the prosecution of a former state worker in Wisconsin whose bid-rigging conviction was overturned last week by a federal appeals court.

In a letter sent Tuesday, committee chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and five other Democratic senators said they were "concerned whether or not politics may have played a role" in the case against Georgia Thompson.

She was accused of favoring a company with ties to Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, and her conviction became an issue last year in his campaign for re-election when his opponents used it to slam him in television ads.

Wisconsin Democrats have long questioned whether the decision by U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic to prosecute Thompson was an attempt to go after Doyle, who faced a tough run against then-U.S. Rep. Republican Mark Green. Biskupic was appointed by President Bush.

A message left by The Associated Press for Biskupic's spokeswoman was not immediately returned Tuesday.

Meanwhile, a key prosecution witness at the trial said Tuesday he's glad the woman has been acquitted and freed, saying "she's not a crook."

Frank Kooistra, an associate dean at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Thompson served on a committee that evaluated proposals from companies seeking a contract to book travel for state employees.

Kooistra and other committee members testified last summer at Thompson's trial on charges she steered the contract worth up to $750,000 to Adelman Travel Group because it had developed a close relationship with Gov. Jim Doyle's administration.

A jury found her guilty of fraud charges, and she was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. But a federal appeals court said last week that prosecutors lacked evidence. It ruled that Thompson was innocent and ordered her immediate release after four months behind bars.

"I'm really happy for Georgia," Kooistra said. "I don't think the punishment that was dished out was fair and so I'm happy that this has happened and I hope she gets her life back to order."

He added: "She is really a nice person. She's not a crook or a criminal."

The prosecution has sparked calls from some Democrats, including Rep. Tammy Baldwin, for Congress to look into whether it was intended to tarnish Doyle's re-election campaign last year. Biskupic's spokeswoman has denied that.

Biskupic's case was built on the testimony of committee members as well as e-mails and other documents in which he tried to show Adelman had a tight relationship with Doyle's administration. The ties included $10,000 in campaign donations from Adelman's chief executive before and after winning the contract and contacts the company had with Doyle and his aides.

Kooistra testified that he and all other committee members but Thompson wanted to give the contract to Omega World Travel after the company edged out Adelman by 21 points on a 1,200 point scale after an initial evaluation.

Kooistra testified he was angry when Thompson asked them if they wanted to inflate their scores for Adelman. When they refused, he was also furious that Thompson considered the close scores a tie and initiated a tiebreaker called a best-and-final offer.

Adelman ended up winning after its final bid was lower.

Kooistra testified Thompson cited political reasons in wanting to favor the Wisconsin-based company over its Virginia rival. He interpreted that to mean she was under pressure to favor an in-state company even though that was not supposed to be considered.

To this day, Kooistra said he's not sure what motivated Thompson's behavior.

Thompson testified she was simply trying to get the best deal for the state and other evaluators had put too much emphasis on the style, not substance, of the proposals. She denied that her bosses wanted Adelman to win.

Thompson, through her lawyer, told the state Monday she's interested in returning to work in the coming days. The state also will give her $68,000 in back pay and may help her pay legal fees.

Where does she go to get her good name back, not to mention her home and possessions? Why should the taxpayers of Wisconsin be on the hook for Georgia Thompson's legal fees? Why isn't the federal government reimbursing her legal fees, and then going after the Republican party?

This is the Kafka-esque nightmare of every liberal since Bush and Cheney came into office: Americans' guaranteed rights and protections lost through Republicans' methodical deconstruction of the Constitution. The congressional oversight that was written into the Constitution by the founders didn't anticipate the tactics of Bush, Cheney, Rove, Republicans and their cronies.

The wheels of justice move very slowly. Unfortunately, with Democrats (who are also professional politicians) heading the effort, it's unlikely to be as thorough an investigation as necessary to sweep and deter these corrupt practices from our system of government.

It's a Wonderful Day In The Neighborhood

While I was taking a spin around the blogosphere earlier, from Washington Monthly, Kevin Drum writes:

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?

Luckily, I'm sure the RNC has backup tapes. Right? Everyone keeps backup tapes, don't they?

I'm curious as to why the prosecutor in Abramoff (and Abramoff's associate, Neil Volz, convicted of public corruption) didn't uncover this backdoor communications system through the RNC after email between Abramoff and the White House (and Volz and the White House) surfaced on some of these extra-legal accounts. Why weren't all the records on all of the laptops subpoenaed then?

Let's hope that this puts to rest one line from the Republicans' list of talking points ("There's not one shred of evidence of any wrongdoing, that any laws were broken, of any crimes committed") whenever Democrats in Congress perform their Constitutionally-required job of oversight, by holding public hearings, looking at the books, etc.

I think Orrin Hatch broke his own 'personal best' record (and every other Republican's who hit the air waves in the last few weeks) of not answering the questions put to him on the April 1, 2007 MTP, but instead filibustering with the RNC's list of talking points:

SEN. HATCH: Pat (Leahy), I didn’t interrupt you. Now, let me just tell you something. There is not one shred of evidence here that any of these appointments were made to, to use Senator Specter’s words, to, to, to interfere with an ongoing investigation or case. Not one shred of evidence. This is a tempest in a teapot..."

[...]

SEN. HATCH:"I think the problem is that they’ve tried to make a big tempest out of a tea—tempest in a coffee cup here over some mistakes that were made at the Justice Department when the administration, I think, is cooperating and they’re unwilling to take, take any of the information from the people at the White House in the way that Fred Fielding said he would do it. I was surprised Fielding went that far with people that high in the White House."

[...]

SEN. HATCH: You have not a shred, not a shred of evidence.

[...]

SEN. HATCH: He (Pat Leahy) keeps bringing up the Griffin situation, which is the only, the only time that that Patriot Act provision was used, and, and, and Kyle Sampson said he regretted it. If they—if the administration was really misusing that section, they would have appointed a whole raft of other interim U.S. attorneys. They did not do that. So that’s just a pure run-up of the wrong road, like all of this.

The Griffin situation was the first time that the Patriot Act provision was used. Had the White House and Gonzales' DOJ not been called on it, or if they'd gotten away with it (which surely would have been the case had Republicans retained control over both houses of Congress after the midterm elections last November), there's no telling what they would have done with this spanking, brand new provision in the Patriot Act.

But I digressed:

SEN. HATCH: Let me tell you, are we going to spend our time where there’s not a shred of evidence that impropriety has gone on here in interfering with an ongoing investigation or an ongoing case, are we going to spend our time on this political exercise? Is this what the Senate’s going to do, with all of the problems that we have, where they can’t show any evidence that there’s been any impropriety here other than a bunch of mistakes that the, the Justice Department readily admits, the White House readily admits, but I think can be easily straightened out in—if we all work together and, and did it.

[...]

SEN. HATCH: ...if we’re fair, we’ll give the man a chance. But boy, I’ll tell you, I think there ought to at least be some evidence that something was really wrong here, and, and to imply that there was criminal activity. And in the Monica Goodling case, let’s be honest about it...

After I posted my (rhetorical) question at Washington Monthly, RobW replied:

That is a DAMNED good question. Let's see...R. Robert Acosta was Bush's appointee to AAG Civil Rights Division, the first and most heavily politicized branch of Justice; he helped put them over in 2004. His first act there? Approval of Texas redistricting in 2003. He then resigned there and was appointed interim US Attorney for Southern Florida in June 2005.

His first big case there? SunCruz, and the Abramoff scandal.

And wouldn't you know it? His time in S. FL as USA when he was investigating Abramoff (mid-'05 til Mar. '06) coincides with the period in which Rove's mail was being specially archived by the RNC (as noted by daCascadian at 6:24 PM - see italicized entry below) AND Abramoff himself was in regular contact with the White House through Rove's executive assistant, Susan Ralston, who was herself in constant contact with... Ken Mehlman at the RNC:

"...Mr. Kelner's briefing raised particular concems about Karl Rove, who according to press reports used his RNC account for 95% of his communications. According to Mr. Kelner, although the hold started in August 2004, the RNC does not have any e-mails prior to 2005 for Mr. Rove. Mr. Kelner did not give any explanation for the e-mails missing from Mr. Rove's account, but he did acknowledge that one possible explanation is that Mr. Rove personally deleted his e-mails from the RNC server.

Mr. Kelner also explained that starting in 2005, the RNC began to treat Mr. Rove's emails in a special fashion. At some point in 2005, the RNC commenced an automatic archive policy for Mr. Rove, but not for any other White House officials. According to Mr. Kelner, this archive policy removed Mr. Rove's ability to personally delete his e-mails from the RNC server. Mr. Kelner did not provide many details about why this special policy was adopted for Mr. Rove. But he did indicate that one factor was the presence of investigative or discovery requests or other legal concerns..." from TPM Muck division

(Remember: the Abramoff investigation was NOT initiated by the Justice department or the White House -duh-, but by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which put pressure on Justice... right around the time Acosta was given his interim appointment.)

This is all WAY too cozy. I knew from the beginning that the USAs who were fired were nowhere near as big a deal as the ones who kept their jobs or got promoted.

Thanks, RobW (and daCascadian).

The things you learn when you ask the right questions.

Now why aren't the media asking them? (And why aren't the Democrats in Congress asking them, faster?)

_{"....it's a tempest in a coffee cup."}

White House says, "The E-Mail On Those RNC Laptops May Be Missing"

May be missing?



Wouldn't they already know? Haven't they talked with their employees, checked to see if it's still there? Or was this the White House's way of obstructing justice, signaling all those who have RNC laptops to go back and be sure that when they deleted their email, they did it with a 'secure' delete (which overwrites the email so it can't be recovered)?

The LATimes reports:

The White House said Wednesday that it may have lost what could amount to thousands of messages sent through a private e-mail system used by political guru Karl Rove and at least 50 other top officials, an admission that stirred anger and dismay among congressional investigators.

The e-mails were considered potentially crucial evidence in congressional inquiries launched by Democrats into the role partisan politics may have played in such policy decisions as the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

This potentially affects the Abramoff case, too. From Mother Jones:

Not only did White House officials think better of using their official emails, they also instructed the lobbyists who did business with them to avoid the White House system. "...It is better to not put this stuff in writing in their email system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc.," one lobbyist to wrote to Jack Abramoff in August 2003 after Abramoff accidentally pinged former Karl Rove aide Susan Ralston on her White House address. "Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her rnc [Republican National Committee] pager and was not supposed to go into the WH system," Abramoff replied.

In 2004, U.S. News & World Report reported that White House staffers were using Web-based email accounts specifically to keep their emails from entering the public record ("I don't want my E-mail made public," one White House "insider" told the magazine). With the Hatch Act, "want" doesn't enter into it.

The White House said an effort was underway to see whether the messages could be recovered from the computer system, which was operated and paid for by the Republican National Committee as part of an avowed effort to separate political communications from those dealing with official business.

"The White House has not done a good enough job overseeing staff using political e-mail accounts to assure compliance with the Presidential Records Act," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said in an unusual late-afternoon teleconference with reporters.

As a result, Stanzel said, "we may not have preserved all e-mails that deal with White House business."

He refused to estimate how many e-mails may have been lost, but the system was used by dozens of officials for more than six years.

"This is a remarkable admission that raises serious legal and security issues," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is investigating the role of electoral politics in administration policymaking. "The White House has an obligation to disclose all the information it has."

The missing e-mails not only add to the growing legal and public relations woes for the White House and Rove's political operation, but also to the problems of Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales. Gonzales, who is under fire for the handling of the U.S. attorney dismissals, was serving as White House counsel at the time the Republican National Committee's parallel communications system was set up.

His office had at least partial responsibility for establishing ground rules for using the private system.

The White House briefing Wednesday occurred a few hours after the staff of Waxman's committee and staff of the House Judiciary Committee met with White House officials to discuss the e-mails.

The White House has informed congressional investigators that it will not be able to meet the committee's deadline of Friday to turn over the communications.

The House aides are expected to meet with the Republican National Committee's legal staff today. A committee spokesman said the GOP hopes to cooperate as much as possible but provided no further details.

The e-mails were sent through a communications system created in conjunction with the RNC early in the Bush administration. Rove and others were given special laptop computers and other communications devices to use instead of the government communications system when dealing with political matters.

The parallel system was designed to avoid running afoul of the Hatch Act, which prohibits using government resources for partisan purposes, White House officials have said.

But evidence has emerged that system users sometimes failed to maintain such separation and used the private system when communicating about government business.

For example, before the U.S. attorneys were fired, a Rove deputy used an account maintained by the Republican National Committee in discussions with Justice Department officials about replacing some of the regional prosecutors. One e-mail requested a meeting between top officials at the Justice Department and a member of President Bush's campaign team to discuss one U.S. attorney who was among those to be fired.

The Justice Department turned over those e-mails at the request of several congressional committees.

Waxman said some of the documents suggest White House personnel may have used the political email accounts "to avoid creating a record of the communications."

Loss of the e-mail files would create a potential legal problem for the Bush White House: compliance with the Presidential Records Act, which was passed in 1978 in response to the Watergate scandal that enveloped Richard M. Nixon's presidency. The law was designed to ensure that presidential papers were preserved for historical and investigative purposes.

Rove's operation appears to have gone much further. Today, 22 staffers have e-mail accounts issued by the Republican National Committee, Stanzel said, noting that it is a tiny percentage of the 1,000 political appointees in the executive office.

Since 2001, about 50 staffers e-mailed using the system, he said. One former White House staffer told National Journal recently that Rove uses his RNC e-mail account for 95% of his e-mail communications.

One former White House official, Assistant Press Secretary Adam Levine, told The Times that he was issued a private laptop computer but he found the dual system so cumbersome that he decided to use only his official White House computer.

However, Levine recalled seeing White House staff members moving fluidly between their official computers and the laptops provided by the RNC.

Stanzel said that the law has gray areas defining what sort of activity is permitted using government resources, and that some employees may have opted for the RNC system to avoid any suggestion of a Hatch Act breach or because the private equipment was easier to use.

But, he added, "I can say that historically the White House didn't give enough guidance to staff on how to avoid violating the Hatch Act while following the Records Act. We didn't do a good enough job."

Some former employees recall receiving briefings on the Hatch Act. At the time of the 2004 Republican convention, newspaper accounts described emphatic warnings to White House staffers not to use government-issued cellphones for politically related calls.

Now, Stanzel said, the White House has begun a formal review that will include new training material for staff members on maintaining records with special attention to those with RNC accounts.

In addition, the White House will begin the forensic process of trying to reconstruct any lost records. That will probably be hampered by an RNC policy of automatically erasing most e-mail after 30 days. Since 2004, White House records have been exempt, Stanzel said, though individuals might have been able to kill out e-mail messages.

The White House will also explore whether the hard drives of laptop computers might have preserved a record of e-mailed communications.

How about getting these laptops (and all other communications' gadgets that the RNC provided to these government employees) impounded? Before there's a reprise of the early days in the Department of Justice's Plame-leak investigation, when (then White House counsel and now) Attorney General Alberto Gonzales waited twelve hours before ordering the White House staff to preserve documents and electronic files. That's an open invitation to shred, delete, and "talk among yourselves and get your stories straight," i.e., obstruct justice.

Why aren't Democrats in Congress pressing for the appointment of a special master to take possession of these laptops? If not for their own investigations, then for the Abramoff case.

A U.S. Attorney Was Fired So That This Rove-Aide Could Get The Job??!?

The BBC's Greg Palast uncovers just who Karl Rove's aide, Tim Griffin ("the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election") is, why eliminating Senate confirmation of U.S. attorneys was slipped into the Patriot Act Reauthorization Bill, and why Griffin has said that if Congress rescinds the portion of the Patriot Act requiring Senate confirmation he will withdraw his name from consideration.

But first, learn about the scheme:

Our 'Do Nothing'- Democrats in Control of Congress

As senators are only now learning, the Bush administration slipped legislation into the bill to reauthorize the Patriot Act that lets Bush appoint U.S. attorneys without having to have them confirmed by the Senate. Senators would have discovered this before they voted on the reauthorization last year had they been doing their jobs and read the damned thing!

How many other time bombs have Republicans planted in six years of legislation, with the Democrats asleep at the wheel?

How many times do Democrats have to be told, "Yes, Republicans really, really are not your friends, they have to be watched every minute, and it's YOUR job to do it!"?

Did you catch Barney Frank on Bill Maher?

Barney Frank didn't vote yes on going to war with Iraq or on any bills to fund it. He knew that this was a lying administration and he didn't believe anything coming out of it. He doesn't have any sympathy for his colleagues in Congress who say they were taken in by the Bush administration; if he knew what Bush-Cheney were about, and the Democratic party's base knew what Bush-Cheney were about, why didn't they?

It's a great question. An even better question is, "What keeps Democrats in Congress from doing the right thing now?"

In Bob Woodward's book, "State of Denial," all of the classified intelligence that was available to Bush was made available to all members of Congress. All they had to do was go to a guarded room at the Capitol to see the files. Very few did.

I've been trying to find out for months who did and who didn't, with no success.

The old days of collegial fraternity in Congress are over. Forever. This is not an anomaly. These are not just the usual political dirty tricks, Donald Seghretti-style rat-fucking, "all's fair" kind of tactics.

Out of Watergate came a group of very angry and cunning young men who were willing to go beyond the line of ethical limits. And they were also willing to wait, to spend a couple of decades, if need be, preparing for a revolution that would keep them in power for generations. Once a Lee Atwater arrives in politics, there are a dozen others who will (and did) study at his knee, and build upon what they learned. If Karl Rove were to disappear tomorrow, his spawn would just pick up where he left off. As a matter of fact, a Rove aide (Tim Griffin) was given the job of one of the fired U.S. attorneys.

That is the problem with memes: Once they are launched, they're out of your control and you can never tell how they will permutate a system.

Unfortunately, the Democrats in office today just don't understand that. They stand around looking stupefied as Bush-Cheney ignore them. If it's not Bush's signing statements, it's the Democrats rendering themselves irrelevant (Pelosi assuring Bush that there will be no impeachment inquiry, a non-binding resolution on the war in Iraq).

I can envision Bush-Cheney, after the vote on the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, laughing themselves silly over the fact that the Democrats rendered themselves irrelevant by voting yes. "We can replace any U.S. attorney and they can't stop it. All we had to do was challenge their patriotism in the media to bully them into voting yes. They're scared to death to vote no - we could slip in an authorization to attack Iran, N. Korea, France, and they wouldn't even know it because they don't read the bills! There's no law that requires us to disclose what's in the bill: Caveat emptor!" Talk about your dilletantes.

We've got bigger troubles than Bush-Cheney and Republicans - We've got a lot of dead wood in office, Democrats, who need clearing out.

As Democratic Senators make noise about rescinding only that portion of the Patriot Act which allows the Executive branch to replace U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation, the NYT reminds us of what else the Democratically-controlled Congress needs to rescind:

The Bush administration’s assault on some of the founding principles of American democracy marches onward despite the Democratic victory in the 2006 elections. The new Democratic majorities in Congress can block the sort of noxious measures that the Republican majority rubber-stamped. But preventing new assaults on civil liberties is not nearly enough.

Five years of presidential overreaching and Congressional collaboration continue to exact a high toll in human lives, America’s global reputation and the architecture of democracy. Brutality toward prisoners, and the denial of their human rights, have been institutionalized; unlawful spying on Americans continues; and the courts are being closed to legal challenges of these practices.

It will require forceful steps by this Congress to undo the damage. A few lawmakers are offering bills intended to do just that, but they are only a start. Taking on this task is a moral imperative that will show the world the United States can be tough on terrorism without sacrificing its humanity and the rule of law.

Today we’re offering a list — which, sadly, is hardly exhaustive — of things that need to be done to reverse the unwise and lawless policies of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Many will require a rewrite of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, an atrocious measure pushed through Congress with the help of three Republican senators, Arlen Specter, Lindsey Graham and John McCain; Senator McCain lent his moral authority to improving one part of the bill and thus obscured its many other problems.

Our list starts with three fundamental tasks:

Restore Habeas Corpus

One of the new act’s most indecent provisions denies anyone Mr. Bush labels an “illegal enemy combatant” the ancient right to challenge his imprisonment in court. The arguments for doing this were specious. Habeas corpus is nothing remotely like a get-out-of-jail-free card for terrorists, as supporters would have you believe. It is a way to sort out those justly detained from those unjustly detained. It will not “clog the courts,” as Senator Graham claims. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has a worthy bill that would restore habeas corpus. It is essential to bringing integrity to the detention system and reviving the United States’ credibility.

Stop Illegal Spying

Mr. Bush’s program of intercepting Americans’ international calls and e-mail messages without a warrant has not ceased. The agreement announced recently — under which a secret court supposedly gave its blessing to the program — did nothing to restore judicial process or ensure that Americans’ rights are preserved. Congress needs to pass a measure, like one proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein, to force Mr. Bush to obey the law that requires warrants for electronic surveillance.

Ban Torture, Really

The provisions in the Military Commissions Act that Senator McCain trumpeted as a ban on torture are hardly that. It is still largely up to the president to decide what constitutes torture and abuse for the purpose of prosecuting anyone who breaks the rules. This amounts to rewriting the Geneva Conventions and puts every American soldier at far greater risk if captured. It allows the president to decide in secret what kinds of treatment he will permit at the Central Intelligence Agency’s prisons. The law absolves American intelligence agents and their bosses of any acts of torture and abuse they have already committed.

Many of the tasks facing Congress involve the way the United States takes prisoners, and how it treats them. There are two sets of prisons in the war on terror. The military runs one set in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. The other is even more shadowy, run by the C.I.A. at secret places.

Close the C.I.A. Prisons

When the Military Commissions Act passed, Mr. Bush triumphantly announced that he now had the power to keep the secret prisons open. He cast this as a great victory for national security. It was a defeat for America’s image around the world. The prisons should be closed.

Account for ‘Ghost Prisoners’

The United States has to come clean on all of the “ghost prisoners” it has in the secret camps. Holding prisoners without any accounting violates human rights norms. Human Rights Watch says it has identified nearly 40 men and women who have disappeared into secret American-run prisons.

Ban Extraordinary Rendition

This is the odious practice of abducting foreign citizens and secretly flying them to countries where everyone knows they will be tortured. It is already illegal to send a prisoner to a country if there is reason to believe he will be tortured. The administration’s claim that it got “diplomatic assurances” that prisoners would not be abused is laughable.

A bill by Representative Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, would require the executive branch to list countries known to abuse and torture prisoners. No prisoner could be sent to any of them unless the secretary of state certified that the country’s government no longer abused its prisoners or offered a way to verify that a prisoner will not be mistreated. It says “diplomatic assurances” are not sufficient.


Congress needs to completely overhaul the military prisons for terrorist suspects, starting with the way prisoners are classified. Shortly after 9/11, Mr. Bush declared all members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban to be “illegal enemy combatants” not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions or American justice. Over time, the designation was applied to anyone the administration chose, including some United States citizens and the entire detainee population of Gitmo.

To address this mess, the government must:

Tighten the Definition of Combatant

“Illegal enemy combatant” is assigned a dangerously broad definition in the Military Commissions Act. It allows Mr. Bush — or for that matter anyone he chooses to designate to do the job — to apply this label to virtually any foreigner anywhere, including those living legally in the United States.

Screen Prisoners Fairly and Effectively

When the administration began taking prisoners in Afghanistan, it did not much bother to screen them. Hundreds of innocent men were sent to Gitmo, where far too many remain to this day. The vast majority will never even be brought before tribunals and still face indefinite detention without charges.

Under legal pressure, Mr. Bush created “combatant status review tribunals,” but they are a mockery of any civilized legal proceeding. They take place thousands of miles from the point of capture, and often years later. Evidence obtained by coercion and torture is permitted. The inmates do not get to challenge this evidence. They usually do not see it.

The Bush administration uses the hoary “fog of war” dodge to justify the failure to screen prisoners, saying it is not practical to do that on the battlefield. That’s nonsense. It did not happen in Afghanistan, and often in Iraq, because Mr. Bush decided just to ship the prisoners off to Gitmo.

Prisoners designated as illegal combatants are subject to trial rules out of the Red Queen’s playbook. The administration refuses to allow lawyers access to 14 terrorism suspects transferred in September from C.I.A. prisons to Guantánamo. It says that if they had a lawyer, they might say that they were tortured or abused at the C.I.A. prisons, and anything that happened at those prisons is secret.

At first, Mr. Bush provided no system of trial at the Guantánamo camp. Then he invented his own military tribunals, which were rightly overturned by the Supreme Court. Congress then passed the Military Commissions Act, which did not fix the problem. Some tasks now for Congress:

Ban Tainted Evidence

The Military Commissions Act and the regulations drawn up by the Pentagon to put it into action, are far too permissive on evidence obtained through physical abuse or coercion. This evidence is unreliable. The method of obtaining it is an affront.

Ban Secret Evidence

Under the Pentagon’s new rules for military tribunals, judges are allowed to keep evidence secret from a prisoner’s lawyer if the government persuades the judge it is classified. The information that may be withheld can include interrogation methods, which would make it hard, if not impossible, to prove torture or abuse.

Better Define ‘Classified’ Evidence

The military commission rules define this sort of secret evidence as “any information or material that has been determined by the United States government pursuant to statute, executive order or regulation to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national security.” This is too broad, even if a president can be trusted to exercise the power fairly and carefully. Mr. Bush has shown he cannot be trusted to do that.

Respect the Right to Counsel

Soon after 9/11, the Bush administration allowed the government to listen to conversations and intercept mail between some prisoners and their lawyers. This had the effect of suspending their right to effective legal representation. Since then, the administration has been unceasingly hostile to any lawyers who defend detainees. The right to legal counsel does not exist to coddle serial terrorists or snarl legal proceedings. It exists to protect innocent people from illegal imprisonment.

Beyond all these huge tasks, Congress should halt the federal government’s race to classify documents to avoid public scrutiny — 15.6 million in 2005, nearly double the 2001 number. It should also reverse the grievous harm this administration has done to the Freedom of Information Act by encouraging agencies to reject requests for documents whenever possible. Congress should curtail F.B.I. spying on nonviolent antiwar groups and revisit parts of the Patriot Act that allow this practice.

The United States should apologize to a Canadian citizen and a German citizen, both innocent, who were kidnapped and tortured by American agents.

Oh yes, and it is time to close the Guantánamo camp. It is a despicable symbol of the abuses committed by this administration (with Congress’s complicity) in the name of fighting terrorism.

,

Democrats, Distracted Again, By The Firing of U.S. Attorneys

Begging for dollars (Washington Monthly's annual subscription drive is on) Kevin Drum writes:

THE PURGE....Why did the Justice Department fire a bunch of U.S. Attorneys recently? Because they were too zealous in prosecuting Republican politicians? Maybe. Because the Bush administration wanted to reward one of Karl Rove's ex-aides? Definitely. Because they were insufficiently gung-ho about indicting Democrats before last year's midterm elections? That's what one of them said today:

David Iglesias said two members of Congress separately called in mid October to inquire about the timing of an ongoing probe of a kickback scheme and appeared eager for an indictment to be issued on the eve of the elections in order to benefit the Republicans. He refused to name the members of Congress because he said he feared retaliation.

....Iglesias, who received a positive performance review before he was fired, said he suspected he was forced out because of his refusal to be pressured to hand down an indictment in the ongoing probe.

"I believe that because I didn't play ball, so to speak, I was asked to resign," said Iglesias, who officially stepped down Wednesday.

This scandal started out slowly, but it's really been picking up steam as time goes by. Expect hearings soon.

We'd better hope not.

With all that there is to investigate about this administration, to waste time and the public's goodwill holding hearings on the firing of U.S. attorneys makes Democrats no better than Republicans; it's political, and to Americans who are expecting Democrats to be serious protectors of the Constitution and the nation, it's insulting.

Of course the firing of those U.S. attorneys was politically motivated. But it wasn't illegal.

U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. They can be fired at any time and for any reason. And no, Republicans shouldn't be bad-mouthing the performances of these attorneys. They don't need to. They don't need to justify the firing. The fact that they are reaffirms for me that they hope Democrats do take a swing at them; it's good for wasting more time and space in the media instead of working on issues of relevance to Americans. Until Joe Lieberman crosses the aisle and joins the Republican Caucus, Bush's playbook for his last two years in office is more delay, stonewall and obfiscate.

I know this because the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. This is what Bush does when he's playing defense.

Bush has hired Fred Fielding to replace Harriet Miers and word has it that Fielding is there to frustrate all attempts to access paper from the Executive branch. And elsewhere, loyalists (like Gonzales) will ignite logs and roll them into Democrats (see Spartacus). The firing of U.S. attorneys is one such burning, rolling log - something perfectly legal. Political, sure, but so what?

For Chuck Schumer or any Democrat to take a swing at it tells me that Schumer is just another hack politician, worse than the Republicans because he's useless at taking them out and working on behalf of the American people.

It is two years until the next election and all we got out of Democrats from the last election in November 06 was 100 hours (less than two weeks of work in January), of the House passing bills that are unlikely to ever get signed into law. The House is already back on a 3-day work week, the Senate has held all the hearings they're going to have on Iraq and nobody is bringing the troops out. We're in full Presidential election mode two years out. How insane is that?

I hold both Hillary and Obama responsible.

They had no right hijacking the process this early, by not letting the Democratic House and Senate victories remain above the fold after the midterm elections. With their newfound majorities, Senate and House business should have superceded all Washington political news for at least a couple of months. But Obama started this even before the midterm elections. He wasn't even running for re-election, but there he was, everywhere in the media, sucking all of the oxygen out of the elections. Neither Hillary nor Obama are the answer. And I don't see anyone who is on the horizon.

A leader is going to have to emerge, naturally, who is able to effect a plan for the Al Qaeda problem. Not just the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the whole of the region, solving our energy and economic problems in a way that doesn't require war and one in which all Democrats (at the least, and including some Republicans) can rally around.

If Hillary and Obama, and any others in the race, got out of the coffee klatches in Iowa and New Hampshire, and went back to work in Washington, started doing their jobs and working towards this, I'd be interested. The nation is waiting for someone with the vision and the presence to bring Americans through what are going to be very rough times, and together with people all around the world.

But it begins with us. Americans need to reclaim the democracy, and it's going to have to come at the local level, at the grassroots, with citizens pulling together and drafting new candidates for all seats in both houses of Congress.