Silvestre Reyes to Reporters: How Many Ways Do I Have to Say No?

Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Tex., chairman of the House intelligence committee, did not respond today to questions from the Blotter on ABCNews.com about why he refuses to release a report on the abuses of power by former committee member Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

The one-time California Republican lawmaker took millions in bribes in exchange for awarding millions more in government contracts he wrote into law. He is now serving a lengthy prison term for his misdeeds.

"It's exactly the wrong thing to do," said Steven Aftergood of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists of Reyes' decision to withhold the report. "They should be setting an example of accountability and transparency."

  Raw Story

Let me think.....why would a Democrat hide that report? Hmmmm?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Duke Cunningham Investigating Committee Implicated

An internal investigation that the House Intelligence Committee has refused to make public portrays the panel as embarrassingly entangled in the Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery scandal.

The report, a declassified version of which was obtained by the Los Angeles Times, describes the committee as a dysfunctional entity that served as a crossroads for almost every major figure in the ongoing criminal probe by the Justice Department.

  LA Times

And you are soooooo surprised.

The Tangled Web

I want to pull out the comments from two posts back on the foiled alleged Fort Dix murder plot, in order to introduce another topic.

Here's Bob's comment to the Fort Dix post and my response (with capital letters restored):

bob said...

I haven't been paying much attention, but when I saw the story, I thought pretty much the same thing Josh said. And, if there's any truth to it--are "they" fighting us here so "they" don't have to fight us there? Do they prefer leading our troops home to waiting forever to follow them?

Plus, scour the news closely--the arrests, which apparently could have been made any time in the past 16 months, must have been announced now to cover up something.

m said...

When I was doing research in the IPM business, we made use of insect pheromones to interrupt mating cycles. One of the methods was to saturate the air with the particular insect's mating pheromone. In order to mate, males find their way to females by following a scent trail. If all the air is saturated, the trails are obscured. My guess is that this could be the Republican plan. Saturate the airWAVES with news of and leads to scandals until we can no longer find any one track leading anywhere.

Immediately after posting that reply, I read Cannonfire's blogging today in which Joe comments about a story he's been following for some time. I know it's a huge though relatively unreported story, but I just have the hardest time wrapping my head around all the particulars, precisely because it has so many damned leads and links to so many things. And I feel quite certain that most of the Republican scandals do indeed connect in one big net. Pull on a string here, you tap a point there. (With drug trafficking, arms dealing, and prostitution rings tightly interwoven and integral parts.)

So, while my reply to Bob's comment was something of a joke, I think there's a good measure of truth contained in it. And, even if it weren't an intentional ploy, it works.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Friday Document Dump

So, okay, it's Saturday. But here's what happened yesterday...

Josh Marshall posted a letter from one of his readers who astutely observes,

So. It's Friday, and the Pentagon leaks word that a top al-Qaeda operative has been captured. Or, actually, that he was captured last year, but that he's just been transferred from the custody of the CIA to DoD. Wait, that's not quite right. He was transferred earlier in the week. But still. It's important news. Right?

Only here's the thing. When you have a story like this, you don't release it on a Friday. There's nothing time-critical about it. There's no reason to squander the positive headlines on the slowest media day of the week.

Maybe you've already heard something. Or maybe we'll get the word in the next few hours. But I can't think of a surer sign that the administration will be releasing some information later today that it would rather we all ignored.

Who knows? It could be a post-Gonzales testimony DoJ document dump. It might be word of another probe into Rove. Maybe the RNC will be turning over some e-mails. But you can take it to the bank - something's coming down the pike.

Fast forward a bit to later in the day (you think the admin is getting a bit too predictable?)...

A big new bundle of documents just got dumped by the Department of Justice.

  TPM Muckraker post

...and a bit further...

Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias submitted his resignation Friday, one day after confirming to ABC News that he had been a customer of a Washington, D.C. escort service whose owner has been charged by federal prosecutors with running a prostitution operation.

[...]

On Thursday, Tobias told ABC News he had several times called the "Pamela Martin and Associates" escort service "to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage." Tobias, who is married, said there had been "no sex," and that recently he had been using another service "with Central Americans" to provide massages.

[...]

As the Bush administration's so-called "AIDS czar," Tobias was criticized for emphasizing faithfulness and abstinence over condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS.

  ABC News

Marshall has a quote that I can't source (other than Marshall, and I'm not sure he means it as a true quote, or a sarcastic paraphrasing): "I was using one service that sent Thai broads. Now I get 'em to send Central Americans."

Broads. At any rate, we do have the sourced quote calling them "gals". His attitude toward these women does seem a little pimpish, or at least quite casual. (Would you refer to a professional legitimate masseuse as a "gal"? Especially in an interview.)

This current gang of Republicans give new meaning to the name Grand Old Party.

By the way, the limousine service that shuttled girls to and from Duke Cunningham's "parties" is suing the Department of Homeland Security for the loss of their contract.

But, back to the matter at hand of the Friday news they'd just as soon you didn't notice (and indeed most people won't - Friday after lunch is the beginning of our weekend of All American fun)...

A senior Justice Department official has resigned after coming under scrutiny in the department's expanding investigation of convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to federal law enforcement officials with knowledge of the case.

Making the situation more awkward for the embattled Justice Department, Robert E. Coughlin II was deputy chief of staff for the criminal division, which is overseeing the department's probe of Abramoff.

  McClatchy article

In fact, he resigned April 6, although you won't find the news of it until yesterday. He said he was simply resigning because he was relocating to Texas. (Where crooks are more welcome than many other places.)

That was yesterday.

This is today:

A federal task force investigating the activities of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff has in recent weeks been looking into whether one of Abramoff's colleagues improperly traded favors with a Justice Department lawyer.

[...]

[Robert E.] Coughlin had worked in the criminal division since 2005 but was recused from the Abramoff inquiry because of a longtime personal friendship with Kevin A. Ring, one of Abramoff's lobbying colleagues whose actions are under investigation

[...]

Coughlin and Ring were friends on Capitol Hill in the 1990s when both worked as staffers to then-Sen. John D. Ashcroft (R-Mo.), who became attorney general in 2001.

[...]

Ring took Coughlin to sporting events with tickets provided by his lobbying firm, according to sources familiar with the inquiry.

The task force has tracked millions of dollars in meals, trips, tickets, gifts and campaign contributions that the Abramoff lobbying team lavished on lawmakers and staffers. The investigation has so far resulted in 11 convictions and guilty pleas from lobbyists, staffers, two administration officials and a congressman.

[...]

Coughlin is the second Justice Department official whose name has surfaced in the wide-ranging Abramoff investigation. Earlier this year, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, deputy assistant attorney general for environment and natural resources, abruptly resigned when her boyfriend -- now her husband -- was notified that he was a criminal target. J. Steven Griles, former deputy secretary of the Interior Department, has since pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about Abramoff.

[...]

Coughlin's resignation and the surfacing of his name in the Abramoff investigation were first reported yesterday by McClatchy Newspapers.

  WaPo article

In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that. --Mark Twain

If you watched the Bill Moyers documentary Buying the War, you will know that McClatchy Newspapers now has working for them the two most prominent major media journalists (maybe the only two) actually digging into the run-up to Operation Iraqi Liberation and reporting the administration's lies and deceits: Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel. At the time, they worked for Knight-Ridder papers. And at the time, no major media inside Washington picked up their stories or cared to do any investigating themselves.

So, you might want to get your news from McClatchy.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel
McClatchy photo

Purge

We may see Monica on the stand yet. Conyers (MI) and Sanchez (CA) responded to Goodling's attorney:

[T]he Fifth Amendment privilege, under long-standing Supreme Court precedents, does not provide a reason to fail to appear to testify; the privilege must be invoked by the witness on a question-by-question basis.

As we thought, Monica was jumping the gun a bit by taking the Fifth before she even took the stand.

Game on.

Gonzo Woes

Ooooh. Unfair.

The Senators have sent another demand.

The committee wants all the relevant documents, all the lists, all the rankings of U.S. attorneys, every scrap of paper.

[...]

In particular, the committee members asked for Gonzales' cheat sheets on the firings.

  TPM Muckraker article

They're asking for the little notes he's writing to himself while he's preparing for his testimony. That's just not right. It should make it all the harder for him, since he doesn't appear to be the kind of guy who can wing it. But I'm having a hard time working up any sympathy for Gonzo.

The Committee wasn't too happy with the document dump they received from their last request, either. Now they want...

...the full text of all documents that had been partially or completely blacked out in the Justice Department's initial release of more than 3,000 pages last month. [... and] an unredacted list ranking the performance and standing of each of the 93 U.S. attorneys.

By the way, Kyle Sampson's replacement as Chief of Staff for Gonzo is Kevin J. O'Connor No, not that Kevin J. O'Connor. This one.

gwb43

The side issue to the Attorney purge - or I should say a side issue - is the use of "unofficial" email services to avoid required scrutiny.

A White House spokesman defended the use of outside e-mail accounts as an appropriate method of separating official business from political campaign work.

But the use of those accounts by officials discussing the firings -- and one from now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- have led a liberal watchdog group to accuse administration of trying to skirt the law governing preservation of presidential records.

  CNN article

And, speaking of Jack Abramoff, a commenter on Josh Marshall's blog reminds us that there was another instance of an attorney being removed, albeit in a different manner, who was directly connected to the Abramoff case, back in 2005.

[...] Bush "promoted" the head of the Public Integrity Section, Noel Hillman, to a federal judgeship in New Jersey. Hillman had been running the section’s investigation into the lobbying activities of Jack Abramoff. Three weeks prior to his nomination, Abramoff announced his guilty plea and agreed to testify against others, including members of Congress and White House staff.

Obviously, Hillman had to go.

Bush also removed another attorney who was investigating Abramoff back in 2003.

Carol Lam, one of the attorneys purged, was of course, prosecuting the Duke Cunningham case (as you know, Cunningham is the convicted, receiving half of the Abramoff bribery case), and it's speculated that she might have been after other powerful targets.

That Jack Abramoff bribery case just won't go away, will it? It's a deep, deep rabbit hole. (It may even circle round and connect to Insane McCain, but who knows where all those tunnels lead?)

Waxman's committee released another chain of e-mails it said illustrated the type of exchange taking place on the account. The e-mails began with a February 2003 message from Abramoff to Susan Ralston, the former executive assistant to President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove.

[...]

When an associate notified him that his e-mail had been forwarded to another White House aide, Abramoff replied, "Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her RNC pager and was not supposed to go into the WH (White House) system."

[..]

Ralston resigned in October out of concern that her ties to Abramoff would be "a distraction," the White House said.

A distraction. Making it hard to focus on keeping Karl out of jail.

And speaking of those email services the GOP has been using for rabbit tunnels around the law, a blog called Neomeme has a list of other domains the Republicans have registered for various purposes. The names are kind of fun to run through, but the ones they've registered to avoid having them used by opponents are even better...

Yup, that’s right. georgewbushsucks.net, officially registered by the Republican National Committee.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Surge and Purge

Troop Surge

A few weeks ago, [Mark] Benjamin wrote a piece exposing how a group of soldiers from the 3rd Brigade-3rd Infantry at Ft. Benning, GA had their medical statuses summarily downgraded in February so they could be re-deployed to Iraq.

This week, Benjamin examines how some of those soldiers, plus many others, were recently sent to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, CA for "training," despite being physically unable to perform most usual exercises.

The injured soldiers were not forced to train, but were simply housed in tents on site--their physical presence apparently being good enough to count them among the numbers cited as "trained" for the surge.

  Iraq Slogger post - links embedded

Attorney Purge

Warned to shut up.

...[FBI] bureau chief for San Diego Dan Dzwilewski had complained to the press about Carol Lam's firing, said that he "guaranteed" politics was involved, and that without her, a number of ongoing investigations might be jeopardized. Specter didn't want to hear that from the press -- he wanted to hear that sort of thing from [Bureau Chief Robert] Mueller.

Mueller responded that Dzwilewski hadn't passed such complaints up the chain, and that "my understanding is that our chief out there believes he was misquoted, but that our investigations were continuing, without any diminishment."

Misquoted? Sen. Dianne Feinstein followed up:

FEINSTEIN: Well, we followed up and I had my chief counsel call them to verify what they said. And they said, yes, they said it. But they also said they'd been warned to say no more. Are you aware that they had been warned to say no more?

MUELLER: Yes, I am.

  TPM Muckraker article

Carol Lam's dismissal is (okay, "allegedly") connected to the Duke Cunningham bribery case, the fallout of which is ongoing.

[Congressman Henry] Waxman has asked for all MZM contracts related to the White House and other materials...

[...]

It could be that MZM in the summer of 2002 managed to snag a small White House contract in legitimate fashion, even as Wade was plotting a quick, bribery-greased rise to the top. But given that the Cunningham/MZM tale is one of sleaze and crime--I haven't even mentioned the prostitutes Cunningham received as bribes--Wade's first contract with the Bush administration deserves scrutiny. Republican legislators--no surprise--expressed no interest in this when they ran Congress. And, coincidentally or not, the US attorney in charge of the Cunningham case, Carol Lam, is one of the prosecutors who was fired by the Bush administration. But here comes Waxman, and the Case of MZM's First Contract is alive and open.

  David Corn post

Gettin' a little hot in the kitchen for Gonzo.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales dashed out of a Chicago news conference this afternoon in just two and a half minutes, ducking questions about how his office gave U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald a subpar rating.

Gonzales, who increasingly faces calls for his resignation, was here to promote a new ad campaign and had planned a 15-minute press availability. He left after taking just three questions over a firing scandal consuming his administration.

Before leaving, Gonzales said he wanted to "reassure the American people that nothing improper happened here."

  Chicago Sun Times article

Rich.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.