What a Crock of Shit

Or...

Just Another Day Under the New Amerikan Sun

Steven Hatfill has settled for close to $6 mil against the "US Government" for having been publicly targeted in the anthrax poisoning cases shortly after 9/11. Cases which, by the way, have never been solved.

The crock of shit is that the "US Government" that has to pay the multi-million-dollar settlement is the American taxpayers. Why are we punished when it was Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Bush Administration who "leaked" information with the intent and consequence of destroying Hatfill's reputation? How is the award going to prevent future such incidents? Is it designed to make us choose our future presidents more carefully, knowing they could be careless about responsibility, costing us millions in taxes to settle lawsuits? If that's the idea, he didn't get nearly a big enough settlement. The trillions we're forking over to occupy Iraq doesn't seem to be clearly making us think about our ballots.

Specific people need to be held responsible, and those specific people need to be individuals in the Bush Administration that made the decision to target Hatfill in the way they did, not a collection of US taxpayers who had no part in the affair.

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

Unprincipled Principals

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

[...]

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies.

[...]

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

  

Yeah, they probably should have met at Cheney’s undisclosed location.

Then-National Security Advisor Rice, sources said, was decisive. Despite growing policy concerns -- shared by Powell -- that the program was harming the image of the United States abroad, sources say she did not back down, telling the CIA: "This is your baby. Go do it."

It isn’t hard to see why she wants to be VP. These people criminals have a lot to try to keep the lid on.

Justice

”Longstanding principles of law hold that an American corporation is entitled to rely on assurances of legality from officials responsible for government activities. The public officials in question might be right or wrong about the advisability or legality of what they are doing, but it is their responsibility, not the company’s, to deal with the consequences if they are wrong.”

  NY Times

That’s from John Ashcroft. So, I am sure that when in the final course of determining that waterboarding is indeed torture by legal definition, Misters Ashcroft, Gonzales and Mukasey (et al.), being the responsible parties who told CIA agents and soldiers that waterboarding is legal, will be dealt with accordingly. Right?

Small problem: [Ashcroft is] wrong on the law. Companies that deal with the government in fact are not entitled to rely on promises made by government officials, and it is common for companies to lose major legal cases despite the fact that they relied on what they believed to be valid advice from government officials.

What Ashcroft wrote probably sounds like a reasonable rule to the average person: it’s not fair for a company to be penalized for doing something the government told it to do. The real rule, at least as reasonable as Ashcroft’s, is exactly the opposite.

[...]

A mistaken or corrupt government official does not have the power to make an illegal act legal.

[...]

[It] is very common for the citizen who relies on an erroneous representation by a government official to get to get the shaft, high and hard.

  Bad Attitudes

D’oh! Oh, yeah, John…I think it’s something like: “ignorance of the law is no defense.” And therefore, jail time all round – torturers and toture pushers alike.

[A]ctions aren’t made lawful by the president’s saying they are lawful; actions are lawful if they are within the law.

Somebody should tell George.

One corollary to this legal rule: anyone who is shafted by relying on the mistaken legal interpretation of a government official usually cannot sue the government for relief because the sovereign is immune from suit, but such an injured citizen may have a legal recourse: a suit against the personal assets of the government official who made the mistake.

And by the way, this not only applies to the waterboarding question, it applies as well to the telecom immunity B.S.

We need to change that sovereign immunity rule.

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

John Ashcroft Is Alive and Well and (Still) Living in Loonyville

Last night, former Attorney General John Ashcroft delivered an address on national security at the University of Colorado. The event was marked by heated protests. About 20 student protesters wearing “shirts with ’shame’ written on the backs and wearing American flags over their faces, welcomed Ashcroft to the stage by standing up and turning their backs to him.”

During the speech, Ashcroft caused an uproar when he declared Guantanamo Bay was a “good place” for detainees. In addition, he defended the torture tactic of waterboarding:

Ashcroft also responded to questions from the audience. The first question came from a woman who asked if Ashcroft would be willing to be subjected to waterboarding.

“The things that I can survive, if it were necessary to do them to me, I would do,” he said.

  Think Progress

What did he say?

I'm thinking maybe it's necessary.

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

The Terror Presidency

No one was surprised when [Jack Goldsmith] was hired in October 2003 to head the Office of Legal Counsel, the division of the Justice Department that advises the president on the limits of executive power. Immediately, the job put him at the center of critical debates within the Bush administration about its continuing response to 9/11 — debates about coercive interrogation, secret surveillance and the detention and trial of enemy combatants.

Nine months later, in June 2004, Goldsmith resigned.

[...]

By the end of his tenure, he was worn out. “I was disgusted with the whole process and fed up and exhausted.”

[...]

Now Goldsmith is speaking out. In a new book, “The Terror Presidency,” which will be published later this month, and in a series of conversations [with NY Times reporter Jeffrey Rosen] Goldsmith has recounted how, from his first weeks on the job, he fought vigorously against an expansive view of executive power.

[...]

Goldsmith was asked, four years ago, to head the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department [...] The Office of Legal Counsel interprets all laws that bear on the powers of the executive branch. The opinions of the head of the office are binding, except on the rare occasions when they are reversed by the attorney general or the president.

[...]

In the Bush administration, however, the most important legal-policy decisions in the war on terror before Goldsmith’s arrival were made not by the Office of Legal Counsel but by a self-styled “war council.” This group met periodically in Gonzales’s office at the White House or Haynes’s office at the Pentagon. The members included Gonzales, Addington, Haynes and Yoo.

[...]

Several hours after Goldsmith was sworn in, on Oct. 6, 2003, he recalls that he received a phone call from Gonzales: the White House needed to know as soon as possible whether the Fourth Geneva Convention, which describes protections that explicitly cover civilians in war zones like Iraq, also covered insurgents and terrorists. After several days of study, Goldsmith agreed with lawyers in several other federal agencies, who had concluded that the convention applied to all Iraqi civilians, including terrorists and insurgents.

[...]

When Goldsmith presented his analysis of the Geneva Conventions at the White House, Addington, according to Goldsmith, became livid. “The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections,” Addington replied angrily, according to Goldsmith. “You cannot question his decision.”

[...]

[...]

Goldsmith also witnessed perhaps the most well-known confrontation over the administration’s aggressive tactics: the scene at Ashcroft’s hospital bed on March 10, 2004, when Gonzales and Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff, visited the hospital to demand that the ailing Ashcroft approve, over Goldsmith and Comey’s objections, a secret program that was about to expire. (Goldsmith refuses to identify the program, but Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, has publicly indicated it was the terrorist surveillance program.) As he recalled it to me, Goldsmith received a call in the evening from his deputy, Philbin, telling him to go to the George Washington University Hospital immediately, since Gonzales and Card were on the way there. Goldsmith raced to the hospital, double-parked outside and walked into a dark room. Ashcroft lay with a bright light shining on him and tubes and wires coming out of his body.

Suddenly, Gonzales and Card came in the room and announced that they were there in connection with the classified program. “Ashcroft, who looked like he was near death, sort of puffed up his chest,” Goldsmith recalls. “All of a sudden, energy and color came into his face, and he said that he didn’t appreciate them coming to visit him under those circumstances, that he had concerns about the matter they were asking about and that, in any event, he wasn’t the attorney general at the moment; Jim Comey was. He actually gave a two-minute speech, and I was sure at the end of it he was going to die. It was the most amazing scene I’ve ever witnessed.”

After a bit of silence, Goldsmith told me, Gonzales thanked Ashcroft, and he and Card walked out of the room.

[...]

Goldsmith, Comey, Mueller and other Justice Department officials were prepared to resign en masse if the White House implemented the program over their objections. Two days later, Comey had a conversation at the White House with Bush in which the president told him to do whatever was necessary to make the program legal. And in the end, the entire controversy was arguably unnecessary since the program was eventually approved by Congress and brought, at least partially, under the supervision of the FISA Court, as it could have been from the beginning. “I was sure the government was going to melt down,” Goldsmith told me. “No one anticipated they were going to reverse themselves.”

  NY Times

So, again, I ask you: What good is Congress? In the end they always give this constitution-trashing administration what they want.

I suggest you read the whole article. It's very interesting and gives a lot more information about the people involved and the questions facing the Office of Legal Counsel under Mr. Bush, including the infamous "torture memos".

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

Mueller's Notes

FBI Director Robert Mueller took notes on the night that Andrew Card and Alberto Gonzales tried to pressure a very sick John Ashcroft into signing off on the warrantless wiretaps. John Conyers is now asking for an unredacted version of those notes which include the information that one of the reasons John Ashcroft refused to sign anything was that he wasn't allowed to see all the pertinent information about the program! TPM Muckraker has details.

Will Fredo Go Fishing?

Congressman Jay Inslee is instigating impeachment proceedings against Gonzo.

Was it really Cheney who sent Gonzo and Andrew Card to Ashcroft's hospital bedside? As I posted earlier, I assumed he was simply admitting that he did when he answered Larry King's question by saying he couldn't remember if it was him. Well, of course that's utter bullshit. That's not something one would forget.

But, there's this article from Dan Froomkin asking another question...Why on earth would Cheney be sending two of the president's staff (Gonzo was counsel a the time) anywhere? They don't work for the V.P. They work for the president.

I think that's a good question. And the answer must be that either Dick really is running things, and even the president's staff answers to Dick, or Dick is covering for Bush by leading people to think that maybe he (Dick) did send them, because if he denies it, that leaves only Bush to have sent them. Which is more likely? I think the first, and I think that Dick probably tells Bush what he's going to do without having to worry that Bush will disagree with whatever he says. I could be wrong. But the relationship really strikes me as one of the evil vizier and the easily-led king who's not quite smart enough and too self-absorbed to mind what's being done around him.

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

Shameless

Last week, Gonzales told a House panel that the visit to Ashcroft's bedside did not deal with the "Terrorist Surveillance Program," which involved warrantless wiretaps of people suspected of terrorist activities.

[...]

President Bush's spy chief seemed to offer a new explanation Tuesday of why Attorney General Alberto Gonzales didn't lie to Congress when he denied an administration dispute in 2004 was about the "Terrorist Surveillance Program."

"I understand that the phrase 'Terrorist Surveillance Program' was not used prior to 2006," Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, said in a letter to Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter.

  USA Today

Department of Justice my ass.

When a senate hearing becomes a game of words and they actually attempt to justify a trick like this, and we're supposed to say, "Guess you got me there," what's left to work with? They have no rules. They have no shame.

The FBI responds.

As Good As An Admission

Oh ho! Dick Cheney tells Larry King he doesn't recall if he sent Gonzales and Card to Ashcroft's bedside. No, no, folks. There may be a lot of things Mr. Cheney really doesn't recall, but that is not something one would forget. Even Larry King called him on it.

Of course, what will anyone do about it? I think we know.

Sputter.

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

Mueller Backs Comey

FBI Director Robert Mueller testified today that then acting Attorney General James Comey's story about the night raid on John Ashcroft's hospital room by current AG Alberto Gonzales was true. (Surely there's nobody reading this that needs me to reference that incident yet another time.) He said he took notes.

Behind Closed Doors

Alberto Gonzales testified before the House Intel Committee about his middle-of-the-night pressure visit to John Ashcroft's hospital bedside yesterday, but we're not allowed to know what he said, because the issue of why he was there is classified. At any rate, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) was satisfied with Gonzo's answers.

"When there are issues of national security at stake, I think certainly one should not question the motivation of individuals," Reyes told reporters. "I'm willing to accept the rationale behind it."

Not question motives when national security is at stake? That's a GOP talking point, isn't it? Senator [ooops] Congressman Reyes is a Democrat. You remember Senator [ooops] Congressman Reyes, don't you?

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

Comey's Testimony

Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker offers a synopsis of how it came about that James Comey tripped up the warrantless wiretaps program:

The warantless wiretap surveillance program stank. For two and a half years, Ashcroft signed off on the program every forty-five days without any real knowledge of what it entailed. In his defense, the advisors who were supposed to review such things on his behalf were denied access; to his everlasting shame, he did not press hard enough to have that corrected.

When Comey came on board, he insisted on being granted access, and had Goldsmith review the program. What they found was so repugnant to any notion of constitutional liberties that even Ashcroft, once briefed, was willing to resign rather than sign off again.

[...]

There’s hope we’ll find out what was really going on. I’d highlight this portion of Specter’s remarks from the hearing: “Mr. Comey, it's my hope that we will have a closed session with you to pursue the substance of this matter further. Because your standing up to them is very important, but it's also very important what you found on the legal issue on this unnamed subject, which I infer was the terrorist surveillance program. And you're not going to comment about it. I think you could. I think you could even tell us what the legalisms were. Doesn't involve a matter of your advice or what the president told you, et cetera. But I'm going to discuss it with Senator Leahy later and see about pursuing that question to try to find out about it.”

And then Leahy, in response: “We will have a closed-door hearing on this. Senator Specter and I are about to have a briefing on aspects of this.” Can’t wait to hear what leaks out of that.

The Ashcroft Moment

Bush was asked about the call placed to the hospital trying to take advantage of a very ill John Ashcroft. Josh Marshall has some video of it, and this comment:

The funny thing about this dodge is that the president is saying not only that the nature of the program is highly classified and must be kept secret, which may be true, but that his apparent order for Gonzales and Card to go squeeze the semi-concsious John Ashcroft is also highly classified and must be kept secret. Somehow I just don't get that one. The president's refusal to answer tells the tale. The president gave the order and even placed the call, as James Comey all but told us yesterday.

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

Comey's Testimony

Josh Marshall has video of the testimony regarding the made for movie moment at John Ashcroft's hospital bedside. It's even more shocking than anything I've yet passed along to you. Marshall has two cut versions, one shorter one for those of you who don't have time, but I recommend the longer version (it's about 15 minutes) if you can manage.

Further on Comey's Testimony

I heard some of Comey's testimony on NPR. It was very damning of Gonzales and Andrew Card. Very. After the incident with the two sleezebags at Ashcroft's bedside, and their attempt to ride roughshod over the law and the Department of Justice, Comey considered resigning.

Comey said that on March 10, 2004, he got a call from Ashcroft's staff reporting that Gonzales and Card were on their way to see the attorney general at the hospital. Comey said he "rushed" to the hospital and called Mueller to go there too.

Gonzales and Card entered Ashcroft's hospital room, "And then Mr. Gonzales began to discuss why they were there -- to seek his approval for a matter, and explained what the matter was," Comey said.

Ashcroft "in very strong terms expressed himself" on the program, Comey said, and added, "But that doesn't matter, because I'm not the attorney general," alluding to Comey acting in his place.

Gonzales and Card left without acknowledging Comey, the former deputy attorney general said.

The program was reauthorized without the Justice Department's approval the following day, and Comey said he drafted a resignation letter.

"Mr. Ashcroft's chief of staff asked me something that meant a great deal to him, and that is that I not resign until Mr. Ashcroft was well enough to resign with me," Comey said.

  Bloomberg

In addition to Ashcroft saying he wasn't the AG, he pointed to Comey and said, "There's the Attorney General."

Comey also said that as soon as Card got back to the White House he phoned Comey and demanded his presence. Comey responded that after the behavior he had just witnessed he wouldn't come unless there was a witness present. He said Card said, in effect, "What behavior? We were just there wishing him well."

Goodfellas. Common thugs.

The White House is feeling a little snippy about Comey's testimony.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the president has "full confidence in Alberto Gonzales," and he refused to discuss what he termed "old conversations."

"You've got somebody who's got splashy testimony on Capitol Hill, good for him," Snow said.

  Bloomberg

We'll see how long that full confidence lasts. Unless Gonzo has something on him.

Those last two photos I snagged from W3IAI.

Has anybody else been struck by how much Comey looks like Ashcroft?

John Ashcroft

By the way, I read somewhere that it was Monica Goodling who covered the breasts of Lady Justice when Ashcroft was AG. ??

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

The Rest of the Story

Remember when James Comey testified regarding the attorney firings? He's testifying again. This time he's talking about the secret program to spy on U.S. citizens. Remember that he refused to give the okay on it when Ashcroft was in the hospital (prompting Bush to start referring to him as 'Cuomey')? And remember that Andrew Card and Torture Gonzales went to Ashcroft's bedside at the hospital to try to override Comey?

Well, it was a far, far better story than that. Read it here at TPM Muckraker.

And I'll give John Ashcroft (whom I've blasted in the past) his props on this one. He stood with Comey, prepared to resign over it if necessary.

Back in Missouri

Some of you know that I recently moved to Texas from Missouri, a state distinguished by many things, but none so entertaining as the fact that John Ashcroft was appointed to Bush's DoJ as Attorney General after having lost his race for US Senator from Missouri to a dead man. This is true. The dead man who beat him was Mel Carnahan, killed in a plane crash just before the elections.

What I didn't know is how the lost election was characterized by Mo. Senator and ex-Governor Kit Bond.

Missouri is one of the states figuring in the attorney purge story. McClatchy gives an accounting here, in which Bond's participation is noted thusly:

Joining the push to contain "voter fraud" were Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., who charged that votes by dogs and dead people had defeated Ashcroft...

Dogs and dead people voting for a dead man.

Beat that.

Purge

A week or so back, I posted comments from the Black Agenda Report claiming the US Attorney purge was to suppress black votes.

Paul Keil, in an April 6 Muckraker article, offered a similar conclusion:

The U.S. attorney firings scandal has laid bare the administration's -- and particularly Karl Rove's -- preoccupation with prosecuting voter fraud. But there's a flip side to this coin. The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has virtually abandoned its traditional role, undertaken since the 1965 Voting Rights Act, of actively protecting African American voters from discrimination.

[...]

During the first five years of the Bush administration, the Justice Department's voting section only filed a single case alleging voting discrimination on behalf of African American voters. That's despite the fact that the section, part of the Civil Rights Division, was created mainly to protect African American voters from discrimination.

But during that same time period, the section managed to file the first ever "reverse" discrimination case under the Voting Rights Act.

[...]

A similar shift has occurred in the division's employment litigation section, which is tasked with preventing discrimination in employment. That section has managed to file two "reverse" discrimination cases alleging discrimination against whites under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, while filing only one alleging discrimination against African Americans in the past six years.

  TPM Muckraker article

An article in the Boston Globe last year points out the beginning move in Bush's dismantling of the DoJ's Civil Rights Division.

In an acknowledgment of the department's special need to be politically neutral, hiring for career jobs in the Civil Rights Division under all recent administrations, Democratic and Republican, had been handled by civil servants -- not political appointees.

But in the fall of 2002, then-attorney general John Ashcroft changed the procedures. The Civil Rights Division disbanded the hiring committees made up of veteran career lawyers.

[...]

[D]ocuments show that only 42 percent of the lawyers hired since 2003, after the administration changed the rules to give political appointees more influence in the hiring process, have civil rights experience. In the two years before the change, 77 percent of those who were hired had civil rights backgrounds.

This is the Bush Administration's Civil Rights Division.

And, by the way...that single case filed on behalf of Black voters was initiated during the previous administration.

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

Whatever Happened To...

Someone using the same computer at the Department of Justice who was searching blog entries about Monica Goodling, was today doing a Google search for Susan Richmond Johnson, and amazingly enough ended up back at YWA.

I didn't even remember having written anything about Ms. Johnson, so I had to do a little digging myself.

Ms. Johnson is the friend of Ms. Goodling who vouched for her faithfulness. A little Googling also reveals that Ms. Johnson is listed on the Ashcroft Group Team as a Senior Advisor. Hey! I'd actually forgotten about Mr. Ashcroft. Like Rumsfeld, when he fell out of the White House, he may as well have fallen out of existence.

So, just what is the Ashcroft Group?

Well, its website tab "Services" gives us this info:

Building on their experience leading the Department of Justice’s prosecution of highly publicized corporate scandals, the Ashcroft team has proven strategies to identify and execute solutions to major corporate issues. We work closely with top corporate integrity professionals to craft, implement and review the best practices in the following corporate disciplines:

Does that mean they'll show corporations how to stay under the scandal radar since they know where the prosecutorial traps lie?

Former U.S. attorney general John D. Ashcroft, whose tenure saw the creation of a burgeoning homeland security industry, has emerged as the highest-ranking former Bush administration official to lobby for and invest in companies in that field.

Not ashamed of passing through the revolving door, is he?

During his tenure, Ashcroft championed expanded federal powers to conduct surveillance in counterterrorism investigations. Now, he said, he wants the intelligence and law enforcement agencies to be aided by the tech world's "best of breed."

I just don't have anything to say about that.

If you need the Group's services, you can contact them from the website, but I don't know if they're still up and running. The last date I see, on the news page, is from last year: Washingtonian, Nov. 2006, Ashcroft Unleashes His Inner Speed Demon.

And I don't have anything to say about that, either.

But I do wonder what that person at the DoJ is looking for. Just running a complete check on Monica Goodling, including all her friends, to see where the hidden traps lie? Lining up character witnesses?

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

AssKKKroft back on the hook

Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) and Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) will be issuing a formal request for an immediate investigation with the US Inspector General's office into John Ashcroft - former US Attorney General, Raw Story has learned.

The request - released to Raw Story - cites conflict of interest on the part of Ashcroft in his failure to promptly recuse himself during the initial investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Wilson. Ashcroft was US Attorney General at the time.

  Raw Story article

It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.