Kristol On Meth

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

Well, he’s on something.  In attempting to defend the President’s NSA actions, Bill Kristol offers up this moronic sentence:

This is presumably one reason why President Bush decided that national security required that he not simply follow the strictures of the 1978 foreign intelligence act, and, indeed, it reveals why the issue of executive power and the law in our constitutional order is more complicated than the current debate would suggest. It is not easy to answer the question whether the president, acting in this gray area, is "breaking the law." It is not easy because the Founders intended the executive to have — believed the executive needed to have — some powers in the national security area that were extralegal but constitutional.

Ah.  How desparate are we, Bill?  We’ve had to invent a new concept and a new word here.  "Extralegal".   

Sadly, even the worst lawyer on Earth will tell you that the Constituiton is the Supreme Law of The Land.  In fact, the Constitution itself says that it is the Supreme Law of the Land.  The Founders (as conservatives once argued) wanted a limited federal government, and the Constitution was an expression of that limitation. 

But conservative Kristol is arguing, apparently with a straight face, that the Founders created a Constitution with the intent of having the President be able to ignore it.  Such a proposition is ridiculous.  But even if true, why didn’t the Founders just say that within the Constitution?  Why instead did they express that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land?

Hit & Run fisks Kristol further here.

About Echelon

Ken AshfordScience & Technology, War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

There is speculation (here and here, for example) that the NSA surveillance is the kind that doesn’t fit in with existing laws.

For example, Echelon.  Wikipedia describes Echelon as follows:

ECHELON is thought to be the largest signals intelligence and analysis network for intercepting electronic communications in history. Run by the UKUSA Community, ECHELON can capture radio and satellite communications, telephone calls, faxes and e-mails nearly anywhere in the world and includes computer automated analysis and sorting of intercepts. ECHELON is estimated to intercept up to 3 billion communications every day.

In other words, what the NSA is doing is not tapping a specific person or conversation, but essentially monitoring (electronically) billions of communications by computer simultaneously, hoping to "hear" (again, by computer) certain patterns of words or phone numbers.  Once a conversation is flagged, this begins the investigation process.  The rest of the intercepted communication essentially becomes "garbage out".

If this is indeed what is happening, then it is impossible to get an individual warrant. 

Moreover, one can only speculatae as to the extent to which the Echelon program is actually used.  If it does exist as I have described it, it certainly is a valuable tool, whose utility is (arguably) diminished once it becomes known.  Therefore (the argument goes), Bush was justified in using it, and not telling Congress about it before, and not telling the American people about it even now.

But I’m largely with Matt Yglesius on this.  Too bad.  We don’t skirt the Constitution simply because new technology enables us to:

I’m perfectly happy to believe that the decision to deploy illegal NSA wiretaps was driven by some novel technological development. I’m likewise happy to believe that the novel development in question may be a very useful tool in fighting terrorism. I’m even willing to believe that the new technology may somehow be such that public disclosure of its existence — by, for example, initiating a congressional debate about whether or not to deploy it — might have in some way compromised its utility. At that point, however, you have to say "so much the worse for new technology."

If something is invented that would be useful to deploy, but also illegal to deploy thanks to an outdated 1978-vintage statute, the thing to do is to change the statute. The view that the President just gets to do whatever is simply not going to pass muster. Presidents may well have good reason for wantng to do whatever, but you can’t run a country like that. Bill Clinton’s health plan was a good idea. In some sense, if he’d just overridden or ignored congress and put it in place, that would have been good for the country. In another, more important sense, it would have been disastrous.

As the saying goes, the constitution is not a suicide pact. But by the same token, not every risk that someone somwhere might get killed is license to kill the constitution. Laws are laws, and if they’re somehow found wanting, they ought to be amended or repealed not just wished away.

UPDATE:  The Echelon rationale doesn’t seem to hold a lot of water.  As noted here:
The Clinton administration program, code-named Echelon, complied with FISA. Before any conversations of U.S. persons were targeted, a FISA warrant was obtained. CIA director George Tenet testified to this before Congress on 4/12/00:

I’m here today to discuss specific issues about and allegations regarding Signals Intelligence activities and the so-called Echelon Program of the National Security Agency…

There is a rigorous regime of checks and balances which we, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the FBI scrupulously adhere to whenever conversations of U.S. persons are involved, whether directly or indirectly. We do not collect against U.S. persons unless they are agents of a foreign power as that term is defined in the law. We do not target their conversations for collection in the United States unless a FISA warrant has been obtained from the FISA court by the Justice Department.

Meanwhile, the position of the Bush administration is that they can bypass the FISA court and every other court, even when they are monitoring the communications of U.S. persons. It is the difference between following the law and breaking it.

Hindrocket On The NSA Surveillance

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/Idiocy, War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

Powerline was named Time Magazine’s Blog Of The Year for 2004.  Time Magazine is not having a "Blog Of The Year" this year.  I’m sure there’s a reason why.

Powerline’s John Hindrocket — who is a lawyer — wrote a moronic post on the NSA surveillance scandal, and threw in this piece of silliness today:

Many people seem not to understand that the executive branch is of equal authority with the legislative and judicial branches. The President has Constitutional powers upon which Congress cannot impinge. Thus, if the President has the authority to direct the armed forces to intercept phone calls received by telephones used by terrorists in Afghanistan, as I think he surely does, that authority cannot be taken away by Congressional action.

I have no idea what "equal authority" means, and neither (I suspect) does John.  But any 9th grader can tell you that our government consists of three branches which individually act as checks and balances of the others.  For example, the Constitution states that the President is the Commander-in-Chief, but it give the power to Congress to declare war.  The judiciary gets to interpret the Constitution, but the President (with the advice and consent of Congress) gets to select the judicary. 

And so it goes.  For every power afford one of the branches of government, there is a "check" on that power from another branch. 

The notion that one branch — in this case, the executive branch — can do whatever the hell it wants and the other branches have no oversight, is simply wrong.  Moreover, it’s ascribing totalitarian ideals to the Founding Fathers.

Wiretapping of Americans without court approval or Congressional statute defies the basic American notion of a government comprised of checks and balances.

And you would think that patriotic Americans, not to mention lawyers, would know this.

It’s also interesting how strict constructionists of the Constitution — like Hindrocket — suddenly are clinging to the argument that the Constitution gives "the authority to direct the armed forces to intercept phone calls received by telephones used by terrorists in Afghanistan".  I find no such language anywhere in the Constitution.  Not even close.

And these people criticize judges about "legislating from the bench"?  How about "legislating from the Oval Office", asshole?

Only Stupid People Go On Reality Shows

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

I’m convinced of this now more than ever:

Three contestants have spoken of their disbelief after being fooled into thinking they went into space for the UK reality show Space Cadets.

The three believed they had blasted off from a cosmonaut training camp in Russia, but were in fact in a fake spaceship in a warehouse in Suffolk.

They cheered up when told they had each won £25,000 ($44,300).

But one contestant, teaching assistant Keri Hasset from Birmingham, said she was "heartbroken" by the prank.

Ms Hasset, plasterer Paul French, 26 from Bristol, and footballer/recruitment consultant Billy Jackson, 25, from Kent, had suspicions they were being tricked when they had to hold a ceremony for a celebrity Russian dog called Mr Bimby on the spaceship.

"This is a spacecraft but it feels like a caravan," Paul told his fellow astronauts.

"And if we were going to space and they were weighing us for our health, they wouldn’t use scales like you get at home, would they?"

No, Sherlock.  They wouldn’t.

The fact that there was gravity might have tipped you off, too.

Bin Laden Hates Those Windmill Things

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

It’s stories like this that don’t give me much faith in out Department of Homeland Security:

San Jose officials are still wondering how a miniature golf course landed on a federal list of the most attractive terrorist targets.

Local officials said Thursday they were shocked to learn that Emerald Hills Golfland, a three-acre theme park with two miniature golf courses, had been placed on a Homeland Security watch list.

"The moment we realized it was on the list, it was taken off," said San Jose police officer Rubens Dalaison, who handles "critical infrastructure assessment" for the department. "I myself took it off."

But the list remains secret, and even San Jose Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, who is the ranking minority member of a House subcommittee on terrorism risk assessment, said she did not know whether it is still listed.

"We had a subcommittee hearing with department officials before Thanksgiving and I asked, `What’s going on with the list?’ and they couldn’t answer," she said. "I do not know if Golfland is on the list today or not. It’s so embarrassing."

Another Bush Lie Exposed

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

With the discovery of secret wiretaps without court order comes the discovery that Bush, again, lied.  From a Bush speech given on April 20, 2004, (from Whitehouse.gov) [UPDATE:  Screw the website — Think Progress has the video of Bush saying this]:

Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so. It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

Bush ordered the now-controversial wiretaps within weeks after 9/11.  So he was clearly lying when he spoke these words.

UPDATE: Shakespeare’s Sister searches the White House website for the words "wire tap", and finds more admissions from the White House that a court order is required.

Of special note is this "Ask The White House" page at the White House website, a Q&A with U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.  At one point, McNulty writes:

The framers of the Constitution established the ground rules for law enforcement more than 200 years ago and the USA PATRIOT Act must and does abide by those rules. For example, the actions you mention can only happen if a federal judge is satisfied that the government has met the appropriate standard. For searches and seizures, the standard is probable cause to believe that the place to be searched has evidence of, for example, a terrorist plot. The lesson from the horrors of 9-11 should be clear. We must do all we can within the Constitution to prevent the death of Americans at the hands of terrorists.

The emphasis (underline) is his, not mine.

Later on, hre writes:

Since its enactment in 2001, there have been zero verified civil liberties violations regarding the use of the PATRIOT Act.

The PATRIOT Act was crafted with built-in civil liberties safeguards, such as judicial review and Congressional oversight, to preserve Americans’ civil liberties while giving law enforcement the much-needed tools to address the terrorist threat

In addition, the PATRIOT Act updates the law to account for 21st Century technology. Terrorists are smart enough to use the most advanced technological devices. By maintaining judicial checks and balances, the PATRIOT Act enables investigators to keep up with the way terrorists communicate in the 21st Century.

Emphasis mine.  And still later:

The USA PATRIOT Act authorizes the monitoring of communications only with the approval of a federal judge. The approval is periodically reviewed by the judge, and a report of all approvals is made to Congress. FBI agents can’t just monitor your phone calls and e-mail messages because they think it might be interesting. I agree with you that the tools provided by the USA Act do work and are critical to our efforts to identify terrorists and prevent terrorism in this country.

Emphasis mine again.

I wonder what Paul is thinking today.

George Will On The NSA Surveillance

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

Bush doesn’t have George Will on his side.  Not that’s bad. 

Will makes the argument that the presidential power play exhibited here is — wait for it — unconservative.

Particularly in time of war or the threat of it, government needs concentrated decisiveness — a capacity for swift and nimble action that legislatures normally cannot manage. But the inescapable corollary of this need is the danger of arbitrary power.

Modern American conservatism grew in reaction against the New Deal’s creation of the regulatory state, and the enlargement of the executive branch power that such a state entails. The intellectual vigor of conservatism was quickened by reaction against the Great Society and the aggrandizement of the modern presidency by Lyndon Johnson, whose aspiration was to complete the project begun by Franklin Roosevelt.

Because of what Alexander Hamilton praised as "energy in the executive," which often drives the growth of government, for years many conservatives were advocates of congressional supremacy. There were, they said, reasons why the Founders, having waged a revolutionary war against overbearing executive power, gave the legislative branch pride of place in Article I of the Constitution.

One reason was that Congress’s cumbersomeness, which is a function of its fractiousness, is a virtue because it makes the government slow and difficult to move. But conservatives’ wholesome wariness of presidential power has been a casualty of conservative presidents winning seven of the past 10 elections.

On the assumption that Congress or a court would have been cooperative in September 2001, and that the cooperation could have kept necessary actions clearly lawful without conferring any benefit on the nation’s enemies, the president’s decision to authorize the NSA’s surveillance without the complicity of a court or Congress was a mistake. Perhaps one caused by this administration’s almost metabolic urge to keep Congress unnecessarily distant and hence disgruntled.

…In peace and in war, but especially in the latter, presidents have pressed their institutional advantages to expand their powers to act without Congress. This president might look for occasions to stop pressing.

Breaking News: From The War On Evolution Front Lines

Ken AshfordBreaking News, Education, GodstuffLeave a Comment

CNN and MSNBC have "breaking news" that the federal judge in the Dover, PA "intelligent design" case has issued an opinion.

Details are coming, but it appears to be a victory: "intelligent design" cannot be taught in Pennsylvania schools.

Frankly, I’m not celebrating.  I’m still too embarassed as an American that this is even an issue.

UPDATE:  MSNBC has the 139 page opinion available in PDF format.  From my quick perusal, it appears that the federal judge hits all the right notes.

He notes that the "official position" of the Intelligent Design Movement is that the "intelligent designer" is not necessarily a christian God.  But he easily penetrates that veil, noting that a reasonable objective person knows that ID adherents are religious people pushing a religious agenda.  Indeed, the pre-eminent text for ID — "Of Pandas and People" — is simply an edited version of a creationist textbook.  (The Supreme Court has forbid the teaching of creationism in public schools as a violation of the Establishment Clause).  In many cases, the words "creationism" was simply replaced with "intelligent design".

The judge also relied on the Wedge Document, which I wrote about and reprinted back here.  The Wedge Document was authored by members of the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. The Discovery Institute is a think tank based in Seattle, Washington, and is the most visible arm of the Intelligent Design movement.  The document specifically says that the aim of the Intelligent Design movement is to replace science with theism. 

Can’t get any more obvious than that.

Ah, there it is . . . on page 43 of the opinion:

The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory.

Later, the Court wades deep into the question of whether IS a science at all and writes:

After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, ID is not science.  We find that ID fails on three different levels: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science back in the 1980’s; and (3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community.

As to the first argument, the Court makes a good point.  ID proponents, by their own admission, are challenging the ground rules of what science is.  In doing so, they are tacitly admitting that ID is not science, at least under the historical and present meaning of the word.  So essentially, everybody agrees that ID is not science!  ID becomes "science" only if you change the definition of "science".

Later on, the Court focused on the members of the Dover PA school board to determine whether they had the intent to insert religion into the classroom.  In other words, if the school board has a secular purpose for bringing in ID, then it might pass constitutional muster.

On this topic, the opinion gets brutal here.  It is quite clear that some members of the schools clearly lied in order to convince the Court that the introduction of ID merely had a secular purpose.  For example, two board members — Buckingham and Bonsell — repeatedly denied, in their respective despositions (under oath), knowledge of the source of funds to purchase ID textbooks.  But as it turned out, they knew full well: they solicitied donations at church.  And the Court had the testimony and cancelled checks to prove it. 

Those two also attacked their critics (teachers, other school board members, etc.) as "atheists" and "un-christian".  Kind of an odd slam if your intent is (supposedly) secular.

But when it comes to the bottom line on the issue of the school board’s intent, the Court minces no words:

Any asserted secular purposes by the Board are a sham and merely secondary to a religious objective. …Defendants’ previously mentioned flagrant and insulting falsehoods to the Court provide sufficient and compelling evidence for us to deduce that any alleged secular purposes that have been offered in support of the ID Policy are equally insincere.

Hmmm.  Lying to the court and trying to hide your religious objectives.  Nice going, religious zealous.  By the way, isn’t there a commandment somewhere about "bearing false witness"?

And the Court opinion concludes as follows:

Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock false assumption which is utterly false.  Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general.  Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a devine creator.

Abso-fuckin-lutely.  Just like saying "Happy Holidays" doesn’t mean pissing on Jesus.  Well said, your Honor!

To be sure, Darwin’s theory is imperfect.  However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific principles.

Yup.

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy.  It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

Hey!  That’s what I said!

Now comes the part where the Court addresses Pat Robertson (and his ilk), anticipating the criticism to come from today’s opinion.  This is gold.

Those who disagree with this holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge.  If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court.  Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on the school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case for ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and unconstitutional policy.  The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial.  The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

Zing!

Latest On Snoopgate

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

(1) First of all, it’s being called "Snoopgate".  Ugh.  Watergate left this country with many legacies, and I think the "-gate" suffix is one of the worst.

(2) Jonathan Alter reveals that Bush summoned the New York Times editor and publisher to the Oval Office, urging the paper not to go public with the NSA wiretapping story.  Alter suggests that Bush did so because he knew it would reveal him (Bush, not Alter) to be a lawbreaker.  Read the short piece here.

In Defense Of Canada

Ken AshfordForeign Affairs1 Comment

I’ve never quite understood why so-called patriotic conservative bloggers and pundits take swipes at Canada all the time:

Canada has been described lately by a conservative U.S. television host as "a stalker" and a "retarded cousin."

Another pundit recently asked if Canadians weren’t getting "a little too big for their britches."

There’s been a spate of Canada-bashing by right-wing media commentators in the United States ever since Prime Minister Paul Martin’s complaints about lumber penalties and U.S. policy on climate change. His remarks prompted an unusual rebuke last week from the American ambassador.

The attacks on Canada have had web bloggers typing overtime and a non-profit group that’s monitoring the trend, Media Matters for America, says it’s disturbing.

***

Last week, MSNBC host Tucker Carlson, a well-known conservative pundit, let loose with a string of anti-Canada rants.

"Anybody with any ambition at all, or intelligence, has left Canada and is now living in New York," he said.

"Canada is a sweet country. It is like your retarded cousin you see at Thanksgiving and sort of pat him on the head. You know, he’s nice but you don’t take him seriously. That’s Canada."

Carlson also said it’s pointless to tell Canada to stop criticizing the United States.

"It only eggs them on. Canada is essentially a stalker, stalking the United States, right? Canada has little pictures of us in its bedroom, right?"

What is this?  The "Bad Neighbor" policy?

Let’s remember what Canada did on September 11, 2001.  Thousands of planes had to be landed immediately.  Our airports were overflowing, and the capacity to land planes was strained.  Flights were diverted to Canada.  Tens of thousands of commuters were stranded, and couldn’t return to the United States since all flights were grounded.

What did Canadians do?  They opened the doors to their houses.  Their generosity was legion, inspiring — among other things — tribute websites.  And it wasn’t the first time Canada provided assistance in America’s time of crisis.

Sure, they gave us Celine Dion and Ann Murray, but for the most part, they’ve been a good and friendly neighbor to the North.   When conservative pundits criticize Canadians simply because Canada doesn’t kiss American ass 24/7, it speaks ill of this country, not theirs.  And I wish they would shut up.

What Was The Most Looked-Up Word In The Dictionary In 2005?

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

"Integrity"

No kidding.  "Integrity" was the word most looked-up on Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, as reported here. 

Speaks highly of us as a culture, don’t it?

Then again, maybe people were looking up the spelling, not the definition. 

Here’s the top ten list:

Top 10 most looked-up words of 2005

1. integrity n. firm adherence to a code, especially moral or artistic values; incorruptibility.

2. refugee n. one that flees; especially a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution.

3. contempt n. willful disobedience to or open disrespect of a court, judge or legislative body.

4. filibuster n. the use of extreme dilatory tactics in an attempt to delay or prevent action, especially in a legislative assembly.

5. insipid adj. lacking in qualities that interest, stimulate or challenge; dull, flat.

6. tsunami n. a great sea wave produced especially by submarine earth movement or volcanic eruption.

7. pandemic n. occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population.

8. conclave n. a private meeting or secret assembly, especially a meeting of Roman Catholic cardinals secluded continuously while choosing a pope.

9. levee n. an embankment for preventing flooding; a continuous dike or ridge (as of earth) for confining the irrigation areas of land to be flooded.

10: inept n. generally incompetent; bungling.

Source: www.m-w.com

By the way, isn’t "inept" an adjective?

Sleep Tight

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

Yikes:

About 150 pounds of commercial plastic explosives has disappeared from a private storage site, along with 2,500 blasting caps and 20,000 feet of explosive detonation cord, authorities said Monday.

"In the hands of the wrong person, this material can be very, very destructive," Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White said at a news conference.

Wayne Dixie, an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said the missing material was enough to level a building. Two containers, both stored inside two bunkers southwest of Albuquerque, were burglarized sometime between Dec. 13 and Sunday, authorities said.

More yikes:

Venezuela has declared a state of emergency and launched a nationwide hunt for a stolen truck carrying a capsule of the highly radioactive Iridium-192.

Angel Diaz, director of nuclear affairs at Venezuela’s Energy Ministry, made a plea to the thieves and the people of Venezuela that the truck, missing since Sunday night, be returned safely. "We call on those who stole it, probably because of the truck, to say that they can suffer very serious consequences that can lead to death."

The capsule in question sits in a container about the size of a lunch box. Diaz could not rule out the theft being motivated by "malicious purposes," but was hoping it was a simple matter of truck theft. This is the third capsule of its kind to go missing in the country since March.

Taking The Fun Out Of Sudoku

Ken AshfordPopular Culture1 Comment

SudokuHow many Sudoku problems are there?  If you visit your local bookstore, where Sudoku puzzle books abound, you would think there are millions.  The Sudoku craze is boffo box office (so to speak).

And it looks like there are plenty of puzzles to be had.  Actually, for a typical 9 x 9 Sudoku grid, there are 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 possible arrangments where every number from 1 through 9 appears in every row and column (and no numeral appears twice in any row or column).

That’s a lot of Sudoku puzzles.

Actually, it’s not that high.  For example, if you have a valid Sudoku arrangement, and turn it 90 degrees, that counts as a different arrangement.  Also, if you have a valid Sudoku arrangment, and (for example) switch all the 6’s and 7’s, that counts as a different arrangement.  So the 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 number is a little exaggerated.

Therefore, the number of Sudoku patterns is substantially less.  In a 9 x 9 grid, there are only 3,546,146,300,288 distinct patterns.  I say "only", but really, it is still enough to keep you busy for a while.

For more Sudoku trivia, history, strategy and mathematrical geekdom, read here at The American Scientist.

Rove In The Crosshairs

Ken AshfordPlamegateLeave a Comment

I haven’t been following the minutae of Plamegate lately, but if this is true, it doesn’t bode well for Karl Rove:

In late January 2004, the grand jury investigating whether top officials in the Bush administration knowingly leaked Valerie Plame Wilson’s name and covert CIA status to reporters subpoenaed the White House for records of administration contacts with more than two-dozen journalists going back two years, to determine if any officials talked about Plame with the media.

According to people close to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s probe, one such document was not turned over to the grand jury by the Feb. 6, 2004 deadline: an email White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove had sent in July 2003 to then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. In the email, Rove told Hadley that he spoke to Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper about Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the administration’s prewar Iraq intelligence.

Rove testified before the grand jury for the first time in February 2004. At the time, he didn’t disclose that he had been one of the anonymous sources for Cooper and conservative columnist Robert Novak. The two filed the first stories on Plame, identifying her as a CIA operative.

The grand jury subpoenaed the White House for any information concerning contacts with the 25 reporters on Jan. 22, 2004. It was the second time a directive was issued ordering White House officials to turn over records to determine if officials had spoken about Plame, her husband, and the administration’s claims that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium-the key component for a nuclear bomb-from Niger with journalists.

Three months earlier, in late 2003, then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales enjoined all White House staff to turn over any communication about Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband. Gonzales’ request came 12 hours after senior White House officials had been told of the pending investigation. The email Rove sent to Hadley never turned up in that request either, people close to the investigation said.

Rove’s alleged failure to disclose his conversations with Cooper and Novak and the fact that he didn’t turn over the Hadley email on two separate occasions is the reason he’s been in Fitzgerald’s crosshairs and may end up being indicted, people close to the investigation said.

The “Oddfather” Is Dead

Ken AshfordCrimeLeave a Comment

Newsday:

Mob boss Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, the powerful Mafioso who avoided jail for decades by wandering the streets in a ratty bathrobe and slippers, feigning mental illness, died Monday in prison. He was 77.

The head of the Genovese crime family, who had suffered from heart disease, died at the federal prison in Springfield, Mo., said prison spokesman Al Quintero. It was the same place where rival mob boss John Gotti died of cancer in 2002 at age 61.

I once worked for the law firm that represented this guy.  Of all the New York mobsters in the latter half of the 20th century, Vinnie was my favorite.  I didn’t know him, but I just liked his M.O. — strutting around Little Italy in a bathrobe.