Senate Hearing on Waste, Fraud & Abuse in Iraq

"An Oversight Hearing on Waste, Fraud, and Abuse in U.S. Government Contracting in Iraq"
Monday, June 27, 2005

Last night, this hearing was broadcast on CSPAN. Basically, there was only one culprit named as committing "waste, fraud and abuse", and that was Halliburton KBR.

Previously undisclosed Defense Department audits reveal that Halliburton's overcharges in Iraq have skyrocketed. Under the company's two largest, multi-billion-dollar contracts - one to repair Iraq's oil infrastructure (RIO), the second to provide logistical support for American troops (LOGCAP) - Halliburton's overcharges now dwarf the amounts publicly disclosed by the Bush Administration. At this hearing, Senator Dorgan and Representative Waxman will release a report detailing these overcharges, and whistleblower witnesses will explain how Halliburton and the Bush Administration have overcharged the American taxpayer by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Witnesses
Bunnatine Greenhouse: Bunny Greenhouse is the top civilian contracting official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, responsible for reviewing all contracts worth more than $10 million. After objecting to special treatment for Halliburton on several occasions, Greenhouse was bypassed, ignored, and ultimately forced to resign or face demotion. Ms. Greenhouse will report on how Halliburton was awarded multi-billion-dollar contracts without competitive bidding.

Ms. Greenhouse is awesome. Read this VANITY FAIR expose on this story, which was published last year, at this LINK.
"...There's another way to look at KBR's work in Iraq. Without it, the company would be in truly bad shape. In fact, the Iraq work accounts for nearly all of KBR's growth at a time when it has staggered under $4.2 billion in asbestos claims—thanks in large part to Halliburton's former C.E.O. Dick Cheney. Back in 1998, Cheney decided to merge Halliburton with Dresser Industries, a Texas-based energy company. Unfortunately, he failed to do his homework on Dresser: a mountain of lawsuits over asbestos-contamination claims were about to be filed against it. KBR, formed from the merger, bore the brunt of those. By late 2003, Dresser was forced into bankruptcy and began organizing a court-ordered settlement plan. KBR incurred huge liabilities—handily offset by those contracts in Iraq. Now that painful ordeal is over: in December a federal judge approved Dresser's $4.2 billion asbestos settlement. That means the company can come out of bankruptcy, and analysts seem to agree on what will happen, as a result, in the next months. Halliburton will sell KBR."

Halliburton Iraq deals described as contract abuse

By Sue Pleming, Mon Jun 27

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top U.S. Army procurement official said on Monday Halliburton's deals in Iraq were the worst example of contract abuse she had seen as Pentagon auditors flagged over $1 billion of potential overcharges by the Texas-based firm. Bunny Greenhouse, the Army Corps of Engineers' top contracting official-turned whistle-blower, said in testimony at a hearing by Democrats on Capitol Hill that "every aspect" of Halliburton's oil contract in Iraq had been under the control of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

"I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR (Kellogg Brown and Root) represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career," said Greenhouse, a procurement veteran of more than 20 years.

Her blistering criticism came as the Democrats released a new report including Pentagon audits that identified more than $1.03 billion in "questioned" costs and $422 million in "unsupported" costs for Halliburton's work in Iraq. Halliburton's subsidiary KBR is the U.S. military's biggest contractor in Iraq and has been accused by Democrats of getting lucrative work there because of its ties to Vice President Dick Cheney who headed the company from 1995-2000.

Pressed by lawmakers whether she thought the Defense Secretary's office was involved in the handout and running of contracts to KBR, Greenhouse replied: "That is true."

"I observed, first hand, that essentially every aspect of the RIO (Restore Iraqi Oil) contract remained under the control of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. This troubled me and was wrong," said Greenhouse.

Both the Pentagon and the Army Corps of Engineers, which was in charge of a sole-source oil contract given to KBR in Iraq, have denied any special treatment for KBR. The Corps did not immediately respond to questions. Democrats called for an urgent hearing and an investigation into what they said were contracting abuses involving KBR.

"This testimony doesn't just call for Congressional oversight -- it screams for it," said Sen. Byron Dorgan (news, bio, voting record), a Democrat from North Dakota.

What concerned Greenhouse most was that the oil contract, which had a top value of $7 billion, was given to KBR without competitive bidding. She irked her bosses by handwriting her concerns in official documents for the oil deal but said these were overlooked, she said. In one instance, she said Army Corps officials bypassed getting her signature to grant a waiver for KBR to be relieved of its obligation to provide cost and pricing data for bringing fuel into Iraq. That waiver was granted after a draft Army audit said KBR may have overcharged the military by at least $61 million to bring in fuel to Iraq to ease a shortage of refined oil.

Whistleblower 2: From February 2004 through April 2004, this witness was employed by Halliburton subsidiary KBR as a Food Production Manager at Camp Anaconda in Iraq. While in Iraq, he witnessed firsthand KBR's practice of overcharging for dining hall services as well as efforts by KBR managers to avoid the scrutiny of government auditors. Because they suspected he would raise concerns with those auditors, KBR managers sent him to a more dangerous camp in Fallujah during the auditors' visit to Camp Anaconda. His convoy was attacked on the return from Fallujah.

This man is Rory Mayberry. Here is a transcript of his pre-recorded testimony:

My name is Rory Mayberry. I'm sorry I'm not able to be in person to testify to the committee, but I returned from Iraq on June 14th. I'm working as Medical Examiner and Medical Supervisor for a company called Emergent Services. I wanted to testify today about my experiences working with Halliburton in Iraq. I was hired by Halliburton subsidiary KBR in January 2004 as Food Production Manager for a dining hall in Camp Anaconda, Iraq. I worked under the Halliburton's logcap contract from Feb. 2004 until April 2004.

When I was assigned to the dining facility, KBR managers informed me that there were KBR practices that were to be followed every day. These practices led to major overcharges.
--First, KBR was supposed to feed 600 Turkish and Filipino workers meals according to their custom. Although KBR charged the government for this service, they didn't prepare the meals; instead, these workers were given leftover food in boxes and garbage bags after the troops ate. Sometimes there were no leftovers to give them.
--Second, KBR charged the government for meals it never served to the troops until late 2003. Anaconda was transition site for Army personnel. Because there could be large numbers of extra personnel passing thru every date at KBR, KBR would charge surge capacity of 5,000 troops per meal; however, KBR continued to charge for the extra head count even after Anaconda was no longer the transition site. When I questioned these practices, the managers told us that this is needed, and because KBR lost money in prior months when the government suspended some of their dining hall payments to the company. The managers said that they were adjusting the numbers to make up for what was suspended in the payments. I would prepare food orders each week in order to get the food we needed at the camp in the coming week. KBR managers would triple the order every week to bring in as much food as we needed. They did this because they were charging an extra 5,000 troops and weren't actually feeding. Most of the food went to waste dump.
--Third, KBR paid too much for the food itself. Initially, a company called Tamimi Catering was KBR's subcontractor for the food. Tamimi paid local prices for the food in the towns and the cities around the base in addition to the orders sent to the main office. Tamimi's pricing was fair for the conditions of the country. Then KBR switched to a new supplier, PWC. PWC's prices were almost triple from what Tamimi's were. For example, tomatoes cost $5.00 a box locally, but PWC prices was $13-$15 per box. The local price of a 15-lb box of bacon was $12, compared to PWC's price of $80 per box. PWC charged a lot for transportation because they brought the food from Philadelphia. KBR switched from Tamimi to PWC because Tamimi complained about KBR's poor treatment of its staff. They were living in tents with sand floors and no beds.
--There were other problems that were not related to KBR costs. Food items were being brought into the base that were outdated or expired as much as a year. We were told by KBR food service managers to use these items anyway. This food was fed to the troops. A lot of these frozen foods, chicken, beef, fish and ice cream. The trucks that were hit by convoys firing and bombings, we were told to go into the trucks and remove the food items and use them after removing the bullets and any shrapnel from the bad food. We were told to remove the bullets and turn them over to the managers for souvenirs. When I had the military check some of the food shipments, they returned the food items away, but there wasn't any marking on the record, so KBR just sent the food to another base for use. The problem with expired food was actually worsened with the switch of PWC because it took longer for the food items to get to the base, as they were shipped from the U.S. to a warehouse in Kuwait.
--KBR also paid for spoiled food. When Tamimi dropped off food, there was often no place to put it in the freezers or refridgeration. Food would stay in the freezer or refridgeration trucks until they ran out of fuel. KBR wouldn't re-fuel the trucks so the food would spoil. This happened quite a bit. In addition, KBR would cater events for KBR employees, like management parties and barbeques. This happened about three times a week. As a result, there were shortages of certain food items, such as beef, chicken, pork, salads, dressings, and sodas for the troops.
--The food service personnel were given sanitation rules from the military, preventive medicine information programs, and rules to follow by the Armed Forces. But KBR managers informed us that the information was not to be followed, and they knew best, to keep following their instructions; so our employees weren't following sanitation rules as set forth.
--Also, the Iraq subcontractor drivers of food convoys that arrived in the base were not fed. They were given MRE's, or Meals Ready to Eat with pork, which they couldn't eat because of religious reasons. As a result, the drivers would raid the trucks for food.
==Government Auditors would have caught and fixed many of the problems, but KBR managers told us not to speak with the auditors. The managers themselves would leave the base or hide from the auditors when they were on the base, and not answer the radios when they were called for them. We were told to follow instructions or get off of the base. The threat of being sent to a camp under fire was their way of keeping us quiet. The employees that talked to the auditors were moved to other bases that were under fire and more fire than Anaconda. If they refused to move, they were fired and sent home. I personally was sent to Falluja for three weeks. The manager told me I was being sent away until the auditors were gone because I had opened my mouth to the auditors. When I returned from Falluja, the convoy was attacked. I was put under danger because the KBR management didn't want me to talk to the US auditors. When KBR wanted me to go to Tikrit, I headed home on rotation. I wasn't officially fired, and I didn't formally quit. I am happy to answer any questions the committee may have for me.
QUESTION: First question--are you saying that Halliburton deliberately falsified the number of meals they prepared and then submitted false claims for reimbursement and that they did this to make up for past amounts auditors had disallowed?
RM: Yes.
QUESTION: So when they couldn't get re-imbursed legitimately, they committed fraud by submitting these false bills?
RM: Yes.
QUESTION: How many meals were served at the dining hall each day?
RM: 2,500 meals per meal, times 4, there was 4 meals, breakfast, lunch dinner, and a midnight meal.
QUESTION: So every day, Halliburton was charging for 20,000 meals it never served?
RM: Correct. They were charging for 20,000 meals and they were only serving 10,000 meals.
QUESTION: Was it rare for expired food to be served to the troops?
RM: No, it was an everyday occurence, sometimes every meal.
QUESTION: You've described routine overcharging and unsanitary practices by Halliburton as well as shortages of food for troops because of private Halliburton parties. Halliburton managers were not only aware of these practices, they ordered them, is that correct?
RM: Correct.
QUESTION: How senior were these managers?
RM: The managers, the main manager was manager of all of Iraq, assigned by KBR.
QUESTION: So these practices may have been ordered at other dining halls as well?
RM: Most likely, yes.
QUESTION: When government auditors arrived, these senior managers deliberately avoided them?
RM: Yes.
QUESTION: And these senior managers ordered you and other employees not to discuss your concerns with
the auditors?
RM: Yes, we were informed if we talked we would be rotated out to other camps that were under fire.
QUESTION: Is it fair to say that the managers used the threat of transfer to a more dangerous base to intimidate employees to be quiet?
RM: Yes.
QUESTION: When employees did talk to auditors, what happened?
RM: All the employees that did talk to the auditors were switched out to other camps or fired because they refused to go to the other camps.
QUESTION: Is there anything else that you would like us to know?
RM: Not at this time, no.

Witness 3: This witness is an executive with a security and operations management firm that has contracts to monitor and secure the loading and delivery of Kuwaiti fuels into Iraq for use and sale by Iraq's state oil company. He is expected to testify that Halliburton's overcharges for the transport of fuel are even greater than previously known and that, despite its claims, KBR has not completed key fuel distribution infrastructure work.

These two witnesses, Gary Butters and Larry Owen, Chairman and CEO, respectively, of Lloyd-Owen International (a Minnesota-registered contracting firm), hired by the Iraq government to supply oil and gas from Kuwait to the people or Iraq. Mr Butters testified that Geo-Tech (a Kuwaiti firm that Lloyd-Owen is employed by to transport fuel and provide security for the transportation) get paid 18 cents per gallon for delivering fuel. Halliburton made $1.30 per gallon to do the same job. They have been transporting 100 tankers of fuel into Iraq daily. They have been harrassed by Halliburton personnel when trying to cross from Kuwait to Iraq using the "military crossing" location operated by KBR, denied access to the crossing on the grounds that they did not have a contract with the US. On another occasion they were not warned of danger when providing services to Halliburton facilities and fired on by insurgents, resulting in injuries and casualties to LOI personnel, and then when they arrived at the Halliburton facilities, LOI personnel were told by Halliburton employees that they had been instructed not provide assistance to Lloyd-Owen employees. The Lloyd-Owen employees were instead assisted by military personnel. They also found inadequate oil and gas related hardware at facilities that Halliburton claimed to have outfitted for use, that was inoperable, out of date, or unusable.

The hearing comes just as we learn that Halliburton has received another contract, this one to support U.S. troops in the Balkans, worth up to $1 billion. Do you remember what happened the last time the Army gave Halliburton a contract in the Balkans? Think Progress does: The General Accounting Office found in 1997 Halliburton "billed the Army for questionable expenses for work in the Balkans, including charges of $85.98 per sheet of plywood that cost $14.06. A year 2000 follow-up report on the Balkans work that found inflated costs, including charges for cleaning some offices up to four times a day." In all, the GAO said KBR's cost-overruns in the Balkans "inflated the original contract price by 32 percent." Nothing like rewarding good behavior.

Elite Deviance

<>Read the entire article here


June 21, 2005 -Venice, FL.
by Daniel Hopsicker

<>How did Jack Abramoff get lucky enough to be the guy passing out all that long green? Where did Jack Abramoff get his ‘juice?’Short answer: Not everyone is savvy to opportunities presented by riders in obscure legislation. Not so the connected, the covert, the—dare we say “blessed?”

“Elite deviance” is a sociological term for a condition in a society in which the elite in the society come to believe that the rules no longer apply to them.

Casino boats turned out to be a elite deviant’s dream.

One time-honored way to get rich is to marry money. Another is to kill someone that has it… In Abramoff’s case, it appears that Gus Boulis, the owner of the lion’s share of the casino boats in Florida, had to die first.

Three men formed an ownership group that apparently made Boulis the proverbial offer he couldn’t refuse. They bought SunCruz from him, even though it wasn't for sale.

When Greek tycoon Gus Boulis was gunned down in his BMW on February 6, 2001 Fort Lauderdale police investigators immediately began scrutinizing SunCruz Casinos. Suspicion focused on the recent sale of the fleet. Boulis and one of the three men had been carrying on a very public feud.

“We certainly aren't lacking in suspects,” said a homicide detective drolly.

Less than two months later, Sun Cruz announced plans to move a 150-foot, $10-million floating casino to the Northern Marianas.

Almost every article we'd read cites Abramoff & Delay's interest in the Marianas being sweat-shop related. Meaning they're in favor of them. Their primary focus wasn't sweatshops. It was gambling.

Here's an excerpt from my post of May 13, 2005 about DeLay, Abramoff & the Marianas:

Moved by the sworn testimony of U.S. officials and human-rights advocates that the 91 percent of the workforce who were immigrants -- from China, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh -- were being paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage and were forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks minus plumbing, work 12 hours a day, often seven days a week, without any of the legal protections U.S. workers are guaranteed, Murkowski wrote a bill to extend the protection of U.S. labor and minimum-wage laws to the workers in the U.S. territory of the Northern Marianas.

So compelling was the case for change the Alaska Republican marshaled that in early 2000, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Murkowski worker reform bill. But one man primarily stopped the U.S. House from even considering that worker-reform bill: then-House Republican Whip Tom DeLay. According to law firm records recently made public, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, paid millions to stop reform and keep the status quo, met personally at least two dozen times with DeLay on the subject in one two-year period. The DeLay staff was often in daily contact with Abramoff. DeLay traveled with his family and staff over New Year's of 1997 on an Abramoff scholarship endowed by his client, the government of the territory, to the Marianas, where golf and snorkeling were enjoyed.

DeLay fully approved of the working and living conditions. The Texan's salute to the owners and Abramoff's government clients was recorded by ABC-TV News: "You are a shining light for what is happening to the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America and leading the world in the free-market system." Later, DeLay would tell The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin that the low-wage, anti-union conditions of the Marianas constituted "a perfect petri dish of capitalism. It's like my Galapagos Island." (I guess for some people, "capitalism" and "slavery" are synonyms?)

Now it's all beginning to make sense.....

Bill Moyers and Jack Abramoff

Bill Moyers, one of the most articulate and intelligent spokespersons for ethics in media (and sanity), was the guest on last night's Democracy Now program. Go HERE to read the entire interview.

AMY GOODMAN: The magazine, Mother Jones, in their – I think it was the May-June issue, had this issue devoted to looking to the corporate sponsors of conservatives, so-called conservative think tanks; ExxonMobil giving something like $8 million to scores of so-called think tanks, like the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Do you think that when a network, Public Broadcasting or commercial, interviews someone from one of these organizations like Competitive Enterprise Institute that they should have to also say if, for example, they're talking about global warming, that ExxonMobil, which has poured money into raising questions about global warming, is funding the so-called independent think tank, the person they're interviewing?

BILL MOYERS: Absolutely. I was so dumfounded and depressed after the election last year when Congress came back to act on several pieces of legislation. One important piece of legislation was a $35 billion tax bill. And buried in that $35 billion tax bill was a huge giveaway to corporations to go offshore, I mean, actually subsidized these corporations for going offshore, which we all know is a -- hurts American workers and American economy. And that night, on our premiere broadcast on Public Broadcasting, the only person who was called on that show to talk about what was in that bill was a representative of the American Enterprise Institute, which is corporate-supported. And not one word was said about the entrails of that bill, about what was really in it. Yet he was not identified -- he was identified as representing the American Enterprise Institute, but nobody said the American Enterprise Institute is paid for by many of the corporations that are benefiting from this legislation.

Also yesterday was a Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing into the defrauding and betrayal perpetrated upon the Mississippi Choctaw Indians by Jack Abramoff, who used some of the money he got from them to fund a Jewish boys school and a sniper workshop in Israel. I've got to say that I haven't felt as much disgust watching a Senate hearing since the Iran/Contra appearance of Oliver North and John Poindexter. We can only hope that the corrupt practices of people like Scanlon and Abramoff will lead to new legislation applying to lobbyists across the board.

Abramoff Defrauded Indians, U.S. Senate Witnesses Say
by Mike Forsythe

June 22 (Bloomberg) -- Jack Abramoff, a former lobbyist who is the subject of a federal investigation, diverted funds from Indian tribes into projects ranging from an Orthodox Jewish academy to an Israeli sniper school, new documents show. Abramoff and partner Michael Scanlon inflated expenses and divided the profits from $15 million in payments from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, according to testimony and e- mails released at a Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing. The two men told the Indians they used the money for a lobbying campaign to prevent rival casinos from opening, said witnesses, including Donald Kilgore, the tribe's attorney general.

"This investigation has taken twists and turns we had not anticipated,'' said Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat who is vice chairman of the committee. "It has uncovered deceptions and greed that even by Washington standards are breathtaking.''

Some of the fees were funneled though a nonprofit tax-exempt organization, and much of the money went into Abramoff's own bank account -- unknown to the tribes or the nonprofit group. It was part of what Abramoff labeled his "gimme five'' program, according to the e-mails and testimony. The use of nonprofit groups to fund lobbying campaigns and congressional travel has come under increased scrutiny since March. That's when the Washington Post reported that the National Center for Public Policy Research, a Washington-based group that witnesses today said Abramoff used to funnel at least $1 million in Choctaw money, sponsored a 2000 congressional golf trip to Scotland, which included House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Abramoff. According to a study by the Center for Public Integrity, non- profit groups with lobbyists on their boards paid for at least 850 congressional trips worth more than $4 million between January 2000 and mid-2004. Neither Abramoff nor Scanlon, a former aide to DeLay, were at today's hearings. A spokesman for Abramoff said the lobbyist deserved the fees he was paid by the Indian tribes.

"Any fair reading of Mr. Abramoff's career would show that his clients benefited immensely from the hard work he and his team did on their behalf,'' spokesman Andrew Blum said in a statement. "Mr. Abramoff hopes that those who are quick to judge him now will remember that there are two sides to every event and that the media can condemn someone before he ever has a chance to right the record.'' Blum said Abramoff can't respond to specific allegations because he's under investigation by the Justice Department.

Abramoff and Scanlon took in more than $66 million in fees from 2001 to 2004 from tribal clients, said Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican who's chairman of the committee. They directed some of those funds to congressional campaigns in a bid to win influence, according to e-mails released by the committee in two hearings held last year. A Bloomberg News analysis of Federal Election Commission and Internal Revenue Service records shows that at least 171 lawmakers got $1.4 million in campaign donations from Abramoff, Scanlon and six Indian tribe clients between 2001 and 2004.

"There are two possibilities: that Abramoff and colleagues are the sickening exception to the usual DC lobbyist rule, or that they are all too typical,'' said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "If it's the latter, Katie, bar the door.''

Dorgan, McCain, representatives from the Mississippi tribe and the head of the nonprofit National Center for Public Policy Research alleged that Abramoff may have committed fraud. In a Nov. 4, 2002, e-mail, Abramoff told Scanlon to tell Mississippi Choctaw legislative liaison Nell Rogers that the two were losing money representing the tribe. They actually spent only $1.2 million of the $7.7 million they charged the tribe for projects in 2001, according to McCain.

''I think you should call her and tell her that we have turned the corner but you are pouring it on to make sure we win,'' Abramoff wrote. "Tell her as of now you are finally willing to say that we will win this, but laughingly say `I don't know how I am going to get back all the money I had to dump into this.''

Kilgore told the committee that was "a blatant, calculated scheme to defraud a client.''

In 2002, the National Center for Public Policy Research received $1 million from the Choctaws -- the largest amount of money the group had ever received, according to Amy Ridenour, the center's president. Ridenour said today that she was told by Abramoff -- a friend of almost 22 years -- that the money was to be for a campaign to educate the public on Indian gaming. She said he asked her to send $500,000 to Capitol Campaign Strategies, Scanlon's public-affairs firm which she was told was doing the work for the campaign. Another $450,000 was to go to Abramoff's charity, the Capital Athletic Foundation, and $50,000 to the Washington lobbying firm Nurnberger & Associates, who she was told was coordinating the campaign, she testified. Instead, Abramoff was paying off a personal debt owed to Ralph Nurnberger, a partner in the lobbying firm, McCain said, citing testimony to the committee by Nurnberger. Abramoff told his executive assistant to ``make up invoices'' from the Capital Athletic Foundation and Nurnberger & Associates to ``give his activities the veneer of legitimacy,'' McCain said.

Ridenour said that another $1.25 million the center received from Abramoff's lobbying firm in 2003 was directed to the foundation and to Kaygold LLC, which she assumed was another public-affairs firm conducting the campaign. Instead, according to testimony by Gail Halpern, Abramoff's accountant, it was a corporation solely owned by Abramoff.

"Frankly, I'm appalled,'' Ridenour said. ``It seemed perfectly consistent with our mission, and it seemed like good, legitimate work.''

The foundation used money from the Choctaws and other donors to fund a variety of pet interests of Abramoff's, McCain said. Almost 80 percent of the group's funds went to the all-boys Eshkol Academy that Abramoff set up in Maryland. The foundation also sent payments to a friend of Abramoff's who ran sniper workshops for the Israeli Defense Force.

One e-mail released by the committee today details costs for equipment needed by the sniper workshops. Abramoff's friend once suggested that he could write a letter with the workshop's logo as an "educational entity'' when Abramoff was trying to figure out how to match the payments with the foundation's mission, McCain said, citing Abramoff's secretary.

"No, don't do that,'' Abramoff replied in the e-mail. "I don't want sniper letterhead.''

Gee, why not, Jack? It seems rather appropriate!

By the way, I first heard about the Abramoff/Scanlon/DeLay corruption charges on Bill Moyers' NOW program last fall. Proof of why the right wants to do away with PBS, and why we so desperately need to keep it going!!!

Careers Pulled Out of Hats: 3 Vaudevillians Who Could

NEW YORK TIMES
June 20, 2005

By ANNE MIDGETTE

Did you hear the one about the three actresses who decided to write themselves a play?

The punch line of this one is called "Big Times," a sweet, slender homage to the glory days of vaudeville, which opened Saturday at Walkerspace in SoHo.

The story is about three actresses and how they got on the stage. Mia Barron, Maggie Lacey and Danielle Skraastad came together in the graduate acting program of New York University in 1999 to begin work on the piece that became "Big Times." No, wait, that's the story of the play. The play itself, in vaudeville style, is about three young women - a ditsy dreamer (Ms. Lacey), a gutsy orphan (Ms. Barron) and a stripper who's seen it all (Ms. Skraastad). They make their way to the Big City and finally break into big-time vaudeville.

Sound clichéd? Cliché is the whole point. "Big Times" is the kind of play that can actually get a laugh out of "Why did the chicken cross the road?" It would be mean to give away too many of the other goofy jokes, since they're part of the piece's substance, along with slapstick, rapid-fire dialogue and quick costume changes as each actress takes on a host of minor roles. You can bring your 8-year-old to this one, and you both will probably enjoy it.

Women's Expressive Theater has turned Walkerspace into a tiny vaudeville stage, complete with red velvet curtains, little round tables and popcorn handed out at the door. Providing original and adapted music are the Moonlighters, a great ukulele-steel-guitar close-harmony band that specializes in 1940's-style Hawaiian music and grabs the flavor of the era with classics like "Frankfurter Sandwiches" ("Instead of me billing and cooing/ All I keep doing is chewing/ Frankfurter sandwiches/ Frankfurter sandwiches/ All night long").

The three actresses are not particularly singers or dancers, though Ms. Skraastad has the hoofer's body and mien, but they sing and dance anyway in a couple of numbers, and manage to be adorable doing it. They have also managed to create a tight piece that sets itself realistic goals and for the most part meets them. There are a couple of hitches: the very end, in particular, is a wistful coda searching for a punch line. But for the most part, dumb punch lines fly thick and fast and dare you not to like them. It may be unkind to freight this small piece with too-great expectations, but it would take a true curmudgeon to withstand its charms altogether.

The show runs through July 9 at Walkerspace, 46 Walker Street, near Broadway, SoHo; (212) 868-4444.

Distorting the facts--who profits?

Pro-climate change propagandist Philip Cooney, who distorted wording in scientific memos about global warming in ways that suggested it was a mere possibility & not a fact, has been rewarded by the nice guys over at Exxon Mobil with a cushy new job:

Ex-White House Official to Join Fuel Company
The Associated Press
Wednesday 14 June 2005
Washington - A former White House official and one-time oil industry lobbyist whose editing of government reports on climate change prompted criticism from environmentalists will join Exxon Mobil Corp., the oil company said Tuesday. The White House announced over the weekend that Philip Cooney, chief of staff of its Council on Environmental Quality, had resigned, calling it a long-planned departure. He had been head of the climate program at the American Petroleum Institute, the trade group for large oil companies. Cooney will join Exxon Mobile in the fall, company spokesman Russ Roberts told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from its Dallas headquarters. He declined to described Cooney's job. Cooney could not be reached through the White House for comment.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Cooney's departure was "completely unrelated" to the disclosure two days earlier that he had made changes in several government climate change reports that were issued in 2002 and 2003

Last week, the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that helps whistleblowers, made available documents showing that Cooney was closely involved in final editing of two administration climate reports. He made changes that critics said consistently played down the certainty of the science surrounding climate change. After Cooney's involvement in editing the climate reports was first reported by The New York Times, the White House defended the changes, saying they were part of the normal, wide-ranging review process and did not violate an administration pledge to rely on sound science.
A whistleblower, Rick Piltz, who resigned in March from the government office that coordinates federal climate change programs, made the documents - showing handwritten edits by Cooney - available to the Project on Government Accountability and, in turn, to news media.

Strategy of Lies: How the White House Fed the Public a Steady Diet of Falsehoods
By Gar Smith / The-Edge

Colonel Sam Gardiner (USAF, Ret.) has identified 50 false news stories created and leaked by a secretive White House propaganda apparatus. In mid-October, the former ambassador began passing copies of an embarrassing internal report to reporters across the US. The-Edge has received copies of this document.
The 56-page investigation was assembled by USAF Colonel (Ret.) Sam Gardiner. "Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II" identifies more than 50 stories about the Iraq war that were faked by government propaganda artists in a covert campaign to "market" the military invasion of Iraq. Gardiner's research lead him to conclude that the US and Britain had conspired at the highest levels to plant "stories of strategic influence" that were known to be false.
The Times of London described the $200-million-plus US operation as a "meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress, and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein." The multimillion-dollar propaganda campaign run out of the White House and Defense Department was, in Gardiner's final assessment "irresponsible in parts" and "might have been illegal."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced plans to create an Office of Strategic Influence early in 2002. At the same time British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Strategy Director Alastair Campbell was setting up an identical operation in London. As soon as Pvt. Jessica Lynch was airlifted from her hospital bed, the first call from her "rescue team" went, not to military officials but to Jim Wilkinson, the White House's top propaganda official stationed in Iraq.
White House critics were quick to recognize that "strategic influence" was a euphemism for disinformation. Rumsfeld had proposed establishing the country's first Ministry of Propaganda. The criticism was so severe that the White House backed away from the plan. But on November 18, several months after the furor had died down, Rumsfeld arrogantly announced that he had not been deterred. "If you want to savage this thing, fine: I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done -- and I have."

Gardiner's dogged research identified a long list of stories that passed through Rumsfeld's propaganda mill. According to Gardiner, "there were over 50 stories manufactured or at least engineered that distorted the picture of Gulf II for the American and British people." Those stories include:

• The link between terrorism, Iraq and 9/11

• Iraqi agents meeting with 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta
  

• Iraq's possession of chemical and biological weapons.
  

• Iraq's purchase of nuclear materials from Niger.
  

• Saddam Hussein's development of nuclear weapons.
  

• Aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons
  

• The existence of Iraqi drones, WMD cluster bombs and Scud missiles.
  

• Iraq's threat to target the US with cyber warfare attacks.
  

• The rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch.
  

• The surrender of a 5,000-man Iraqi brigade.
  

• Iraq executing Coalition POWs.
  

• Iraqi soldiers dressing in US and UK uniforms to commit atrocities.
  

• The exact location of WMD facilities
  

• WMDs moved to Syria.

Every one of these stories received extensive publicity and helped form indelible public impressions of the "enemy" and the progress of the invasion. Every one of these stories was false.

"I know what I am suggesting is serious. I did not come to these conclusions lightly," Gardiner admits. "I'm not going to address why they did it. That's something I don't understand even after all the research." But the fact remained that "very bright and even well-intentioned officials found how to control the process of governance in ways never before possible."

A Battle between Good and Evil
Gardiner notes that cocked-up stories about Saddam's WMDs "was only a very small part of the strategic influence, information operations and marketing campaign conducted on both sides of the Atlantic."
The "major thrust" of the campaign, Gardiner explains, was "to make a conflict with Iraq seem part of a struggle between good and evil. Terrorism is evil... we are the good guys. The second thrust is what propaganda theorists would call the 'big lie.' The plan was to connect Iraq with the 9/11 attacks. Make the American people believe that Saddam Hussein was behind those attacks."
The means for pushing the message involved: saturating the media with stories, 24/7; staying on message; staying ahead of the news cycle; managing expectations; and finally, being prepared to "use information to attack and punish critics."

Audition in Afghanistan
The techniques that proved so successful in Operation Iraqi Freedom were first tried out during the campaign to build public support for the US attack on Afghanistan. Rumsfeld hired Rendon Associates, a private PR firm that had been deeply involved in the first Gulf War. Founder John Rendon (who calls himself an "information warrior") proudly boasts that he was the one responsible for providing thousands of US flags for the Kuwaiti people to wave at TV cameras after their "liberation" from Iraqi troops in 1991.

The White House Coalition Information Center was set up by Karen Hughes in November 2001. (In January 2003, the CIC was renamed the Office for Global Communications.) The CIC hit on a cynical plan to curry favor for its attack on Afghanistan by highlighting "the plight of women in Afghanistan." CIC's Jim Wilkinson later called the Afghan women campaign "the best thing we've done." Gardiner is quick with a correction. The campaign "was not about something they did. It was about a story they created... It was not a program with specific steps or funding to improve the conditions of women." The coordination between the propaganda engines of Washington and London even involved the respective First Wives. On November 17, 2001, Laura Bush issued a shocking statement: "Only the terrorists and the Taliban threaten to pull out women's fingernails for wearing nail polish." Three days later, a horrified Cherie Blaire told the London media, "In Afghanistan, if you wear nail polish, you could have your nails torn out."

Misleading via Innuendo
Time and again, US reporters accepted the CIC news leaks without question. Among the many examples that Gardiner documented was the use of the "anthrax scare" to promote the administration's pre-existing plan to attack Iraq. In both the US and the UK, "intelligence sources" provided a steady diet of unsourced allegations to the media to suggest that Iraq and Al Qaeda terrorists were behind the deadly mailing of anthrax-laden letters.

It wasn't until December 18, that the White House confessed that it was "increasingly looking like" the anthrax came from a US military installation. The news was released as a White House "paper" instead of as a more prominent White House "announcement." As a result, the idea that Iraq or Al Qaeda were behind the anthrax plot continued to persist. Gardiner believes this was an intentional part of the propaganda campaign. "If a story supports policy, even if incorrect, let it stay around."
In a successful propaganda campaign, Gardiner wrote, "We would have expected to see the creation [of] stories to sell the policy; we would have expected to see the same stories used on both sides of the Atlantic. We saw both. The number of engineered or false stories from US and UK stories is long."

The US and Britain: The Axis of Disinformation

Before the coalition invasion began on March 20, 2003, Washington and London agreed to call their illegal pre-emptive military aggression an "armed conflict" and to always reference the Iraqi government as the "regime." Strategic communications managers in both capitols issued lists of "guidance" terms to be used in all official statements. London's 15 Psychological Operations Group paralleled Washington's Office of Global Communications. In a departure from long military tradition, the perception managers even took over the naming of the war. Military code names were originally chosen for reasons of security. In modern US warfare, however, military code names have become "part of the marketing." There was Operation Nobel Eagle, Operation Valiant Strike, Operation Provide Comfort, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Uphold Democracy and, finally, Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The "Rescue" of Jessica Lynch
The Pentagon's control over the news surrounding the capture and rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch receives a good deal of attention in Gardiner's report. "From the very beginning it was called an 'ambush'," Gardiner noted. But, he pointed out, "If you drive a convoy into enemy lines, turn around and drive back, it's not an ambush. Military officers who are very careful about how they talk about operations would normally not be sloppy about describing this kind of event," Gardiner complained. "This un-military kind of talk is one of the reasons I began doing this research." One of the things that struck Gardiner as revealing was the fact that, as Newsweek reported: "as soon as Lynch was in the air, [the Joint Operations Center] phoned Jim Wilkinson, the top civilian communications aide to CENTCOM Gen. Tommy Franks." It struck Gardiner as inexplicable that the first call after Lynch's rescue would go to the Director of Strategic Communications, the White House's top representative on the ground.
On the morning of April 3, the Pentagon began leaking information on Lynch's rescue that sought to establish Lynch as "America's new Rambo." The Washington Post repeated the story it received from the Pentagon: that Lynch "sustained multiple gunshot wounds" and fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldier... firing her weapon until she ran out of ammunition." Lynch's family confused the issue by telling the press that their daughter had not sustained any bullet wounds. Lynch's parents subsequently refused to talk to the press, explaining that they had been "told not to talk about it." (Weeks later, the truth emerged. Lynch was neither stabbed nor shot. She was apparently injured while falling from her vehicle.) Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers let the story stand during an April 3 press conference although both had been fully briefed on Lynch's true condition.
"Again, we see the pattern," Gardiner observed. "When the story on the street supports the message, it will be left there by a non-answer. The message is more important than the truth. Even Central Command kept the story alive by not giving out details."
Gardiner saw another break with procedure. The information on the rescue that was released to the Post "would have been very highly classified" and should have been closely guarded. Instead, it was used as a tool to market the war. "This was a major pattern from the beginning of the marketing campaign throughout the war," Gardiner wrote. "It was okay to release classified information if it supported the message."

Bush Plays Politics with Guantánamo "Gulag"
"Absurd!" George Bush exclaimed.
"Reprehensible!" Donald Rumsfeld charged.
"Ridiculous!" stated Scott McClellan.
"I'm offended!" declared Dick Cheney.

What are they all so upset about? Is it the stripping and shackling of Guantanámo prisoners low to the ground, the forcible squeezing of their genitals, the smearing of menstrual blood on Muslim detainees, the shooting of rubber bullets at inmates, the forcing of prisoners to stand cruciform in the sun until they collapse, the desecration of the Koran, or the psychological torture documented at Gitmo by Physicians for Human Rights? Are they concerned about the treatment of Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was force-fed liquids through an IV and then forbidden from urinating, and who evidenced "behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma," according to Time Magazine? No, it's Team Bush engaging in damage control after Amnesty International labeled the United States prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, "the gulag of our time." Strong language indeed from one of the premier human rights organizations. This is the same Amnesty International whose accusations about Saddam Hussein's atrocities were eagerly gobbled up and regurgitated by the Bush administration when they dovetailed nicely with Bush's predetermined plan to oust Hussein to make Iraq safe for 14 permanent US military bases. The International Committee of the Red Cross, in a rare public rebuke, observed a "worrying deterioration in the psychological health of a large number" of the Gitmo inmates in late 2003. Until the Supreme Court instructed Bush to give the prisoners access to US courts, the Red Cross called Guantánamo "a legal black hole." Bush & Co., which characteristically goes after anyone or any organization that challenges its policies, is now gunning for the venerable Red Cross. A new report being circulated among Republican congressional staff this week charges that the Red Cross, which receives major funding from the United States, has lost its impartiality. Why? Because it is advocating positions at odds with American policy. (Well, they voted to cut funding by $100 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the same reason)
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CONGRESS: (n) A body of men to meet to repeal laws.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

"Imagine that you are an idiot. Now imagine that you are a member of Congress. Wait -- I repeated myself."
-- Mark Twain

A Broken Body

Under DeLay's leadership, the work of the House has become trivial, and corruption cannot be investigated, much less rebuked.

The House of Representatives of the 109th Congress suffers the classic symptoms of a decadent ancien régime. It seems an eon ago that the Republicans swept into power in 1994, after 40 years in the wilderness, on a "Contract With America" whose preamble promised: "To restore accountability to Congress. To end its cycle of scandal and disgrace." Day by day, week by week, spectacles unfold in its august chambers revealing new incidents of corruption, unaccountability and chaos. The Republican clamor for "democratic deliberation" faded long ago, even as a distant echo, as the screws of centralized power constantly tightened. The Democrats have been prevented from debating legislation, attaching amendments and participating in conferences. Any gesture at dissent is gaveled out of order. Republican members too have been relegated to the sidelines, rubber-stamping what the leadership dictates.

"Gutless chicken shit," Tom DeLay shouted seven years ago at questions about his ethics violations. Today, the Republican majority leader frantically maneuvers to quash any investigation by the House ethics committee into three foreign trips paid for by his close friend, lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is himself under a Department of Justice probe for fleecing Indian tribes of tens of millions of dollars. (It is illegal for members of Congress to accept foreign trips from lobbyists.) Since the House has been in session this year, the ethics committee has met for exactly one day. On that day, in May, it decided under intense public pressure to reverse its fail-safe scheme to thwart any investigation of DeLay. The committee had announced rules by which a deadlock would lead to dismissal of any charge. Because the committee is the only one equally divided between majority and minority members, a deadlock was guaranteed, and so therefore was DeLay's escape.

But last week DeLay designed a new device to frustrate an investigation. The rules of the committee stipulate that its staff must be nonpartisan. However, another rule allows the chairman and the ranking minority member to each appoint a staff member without the other's approval. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., the chairman, seized upon that rule to name his longtime chief of staff as director of the committee. With that he succeeded in throwing a monkey wrench into the works. Predictably, the Democrats protested, the process ground to a halt, and unless it is somehow unstuck, the investigation of DeLay has been stalled indefinitely.

Although it is DeLay's tactics that have paralyzed the ethics committee, he blames the Democrats for the consequences of his own actions. "They don't want an ethics committee," DeLay complained. "They would like to drag this out and have me and others before the ethics committee in an election year." Hastings, for his part, has been exposed as having his own web of relationships with Abramoff, who boasted to a client that his ties to Hastings were "excellent."

So long as the ethics committee is in effect defunct, it cannot investigate any new cases, such as that involving Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., which emerged in the last week. Cunningham, an influential member of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, has helped a certain defense contractor named Mitchell Wade and his company, MZM Inc., win tens of millions of dollars in contracts. In 2003, Wade paid Cunningham $2.55 million for his house in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. Wade resold it for a price that was $700,000 less than he paid Cunningham. The discrepancy suggested a neat and deliberate overpayment, having the appearance of a bribe. The real estate agent, however, stated that $2.55 million was a fair price. But then it developed that she and two of her family members had made 18 financial contributions to Cunningham's campaigns, totaling $11,500 since 1997. Under usual circumstances in the past, Cunningham's gamey situation would have been taken up by the ethics committee. But for all intents and purposes there is no ethics committee. Corruption cannot be acknowledged, much less investigated and rebuked.

While DeLay was orchestrating the latest plot turn in the ethics committee, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., continued his chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee as circus act. On June 10, he presided over a morning's hearing on the PATRIOT Act of witnesses invited by the Democratic minority. It was the one occasion the Democrats were allowed under the rules to give critics an official forum on the bill up for renewal. Sensenbrenner, whose routine demeanor is peeved and bilious, was on a hair trigger. He did not permit the ranking Democrat, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., to finish his opening statement. He refused to recognize Democrats on their points of order. Finally, he declared the hearings over. "Much of what has been stated is not irrelevant," he announced. "Point of order," said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas. "No, I will not yield," said Sensenbrenner. He cut off the microphones of Democrats as their words hung in the air: "Will the gentleman yield?" and "Point of order, Mr. Chairman." Sensenbrenner stormed out the door.

Sensenbrenner's highhandedness was hardly exceptional. This spring he barred Democrats from consultation on legislation that made drivers' licenses national identification cards -- in effect backdoor immigration legislation that could lead to sweeps against illegal immigrants with licenses. Indeed, no hearings whatsoever were held before the bill's passage. At the same time, in April, Sensenbrenner rammed through a bill called the Child Interstate Notification Act, which applies federal criminal penalties to adults aiding and abetting minors who leave a state that imposes parental notification laws to get an abortion in another state. When Democrats on the Judiciary Committee submitted amendments, Sensenbrenner and his staff rewrote their captions in the official record without informing them. In every case, Sensenbrenner's language presented Democrats as defending "sexual predators." One caption of an amendment by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., for example, read: "Mr. Nadler offered an amendment that would have exempted sexual predators from prosecution under the bill if they were grandparents or adult siblings of a minor." Right-wing Republicans like to posture as middle-class populists who are only reacting to the intrusions on individual liberty by liberal elites. But Sensenbrenner, poster child for Republican arrogance, is the pampered heir to the Kotex fortune,(that's somehow appropriate) whose sense of entitlement is exceeded only by his rancor.

>DeLay's system of centralization has Washington in its grip. Republican House members are factotums of the leadership group he dominates. The regular operation of House committees has been overthrown. Decisions are handed down by DeLay and his lieutenants. Lobbyists are convened in private to write legislation. What's more, lobbying firms are ordered to kick in campaign contributions and are under threat of losing preference if they hire Democrats. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, DeLay's sock puppet, opened the 109th Congress by declaring that legislation had to meet the approval of "the majority of the majority" -- DeLay's rule for right-wing control.

On about 80 percent of the bills before the House, amendments are prohibited as a result of what are called "closed rules." By manipulation of so-called suspension bills -- for example, those that name federal buildings and praise civic groups -- the business of the House has become a playpen of trivialities. Instead of substantive debate, two-thirds of all the time on the House floor is devoted to these meaningless measures. By this means, the leadership concentrates power and frustrates the House from acting as deliberative body. The schedule of the House has been reduced to something like that of a small state legislature of the 19th century, with many of its lollygagging members turning up for work on Tuesday and leaving on Thursday.

The efforts to suppress the proper workings of the House on inquiries of corruption and to quell uneasy questions about legislation from Democrats are only increasing the public pressure on the Republican leadership. Ever more rigid control is producing sharper and deeper fissures in its façade. The desperation for order fosters greater disorder. Such is the state of democracy in America that the rest of the world is encouraged to emulate.

Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of The Clinton Wars, is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.

Will wonders never cease?

House Votes to Limit Patriot Act Rules

Washington - In a slap at President Bush, lawmakers voted Wednesday to block the Justice Department and the FBI from using the Patriot Act to peek at library records and bookstore sales slips. The House voted 238-187 despite a veto threat from Bush to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that allows the government to investigate the reading habits of terror suspects.
The vote reversed a narrow loss last year by lawmakers concerned about the potential invasion of privacy of innocent library users. They narrowed the proposal this year to permit the government to continue to seek out records of Internet use at libraries. The vote came as the House debated a $57.5 billion bill covering the departments of Commerce, Justice and State. The Senate has yet to act on the measure, and GOP leaders often drop provisions offensive to Bush during final negotiations.
"This is a tremendous victory that restores important constitutional rights to the American people," said Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., the sponsor of the measure. He said the vote would help "rein in an administration intent on chipping away at the very civil liberties that define us as a nation." Congress is preparing to extend the Patriot Act, which was passed quickly in the emotional aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Then, Congress included a sunset provision under which 15 of the law's provisions are to expire at the end of this year. Supporters of rolling back the library and bookstore provision said that the law gives the FBI too much leeway to go on fishing expeditions on people's reading habits and that innocent people could get tagged as potential terrorists based on what they check out from a library.
"If the government suspects someone is looking up how to make atom bombs, go to a court and get a search warrant," said Jerold Nadler, D-N.Y. Supporters of the Patriot Act countered that the rules on reading records are a potentially useful tool in finding terrorists and argued that the House was voting to make libraries safe havens for them.
"If there are terrorists in libraries studying how to fly planes, how to put together biological weapons, how to put together chemical weapons, nuclear weapons ... we have to have an avenue through the federal court system so that we can stop the attack before it occurs," said Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla. Last year, a similar provision was derailed by a 210-210 tie after several Republicans were pressured to switch votes.
In the meantime, a number of libraries have begun disposing of patrons' records quickly so they won't be available if sought under the law. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told Congress in April that the government has never used the provision to obtain library, bookstore, medical or gun sale records. But when asked whether the administration would agree to exclude library and medical records from the law, Gonzales demurred. "It should not be held against us that we have exercised restraint," he said. Authorities have gained access to records through voluntary cooperation from librarians, Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller said.

Where's the new Deep Throat?

Which corporations is the White House protecting? Maybe a new "Deep Throat" will decide to leak the information...

From the LEFT COASTER Blog
by Steve Soto
Tuesday :: May 31, 2005
What's Really Behind The White House Stonewall Over Bolton Documents?

Perhaps we know now why the White House is fighting so furiously to prevent the Senate Intelligence Committee from getting all of the documents wanted by committee Democrats to evaluate the fitness of John Bolton to be our UN ambassador. According to Wednesday’s New York Times previewed in the International Herald Tribune, it has been leaked by administration sources that what the White House is refusing to release to the committee are reports that Bolton obtained from the NSA by way of a special request. And what is in those reports?

The names of American individuals and companies that may have violated export restriction bans on the shipment of dangerous weapons material to China, Libya, and even Iran. And is it too big of a leap to assume that some or all of these firms may prove to be very damaging to the White House, as campaign contributors?

Some of the information that the White House has refused to provide to Congress for its review of the nomination of John Bolton includes the names of American companies mentioned in intelligence reports on commerce with China and other countries covered by export restrictions, say government officials who have been briefed on the documents.

The fact that the documents also included the names of American companies, and that the subject had to do with possible violations of American export restrictions, provides a new clue as to why the White House might be rebuffing the congressional requests.

The names of the Americans and the companies remain highly classified, but they were provided to Bolton by the National Security Agency in response to special requests he made as under secretary of state for arms control.

The administration has allowed the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee to review copies of the 10 intelligence reports, based on conversations intercepted by the National Security Agency, about which Bolton requested the additional information. But the names of American people and companies had been deleted from those reports, and the administration has refused to provide Senate leaders with the names, even though they were obtained by Bolton.

The government officials who described the intelligence reports declined to speak for the record, citing the classified nature of the documents and the extraordinary political sensitivity surrounding them. They would not say what countries other than China might have been the subject of the reports, but noted that Bolton's responsibilities also included monitoring efforts to prevent Iran, Libya and other countries from acquiring dangerous weapons.

The officials included both proponents and critics of Bolton's nomination, who said they wanted to provide the public with a clearer picture of the nature of the dispute between Congress and the White House. The officials did not know or would not say which American companies might have been mentioned in the documents.

The senators, Pat Roberts of Kansas, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, and John Rockefeller of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the panel, both said that they had concluded that Bolton had acted properly in requesting the information from the agency. Both senators said they did not need to know the names obtained by Bolton to reach that conclusion.

But Rockefeller questioned whether Bolton might have improperly shared the names with others. Senator Joseph Biden, the top Democrat of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, cited the administration's refusal to provide the names to Congress in persuading 39 other Democrats and one independent to block until at least next week any vote on Bolton's nomination.

So which companies are Bush and Dick (Mr. Halliburton Doing Business with Saddam) Cheney trying to protect here, and how many of them are major Bush/Cheney campaign contributors? Do you remember the stink that GOP congressman Christopher Cox raised with the allegations that Clinton sold our secrets to the Chinese for campaign contributions? What happens to Bush and the GOP if it turns out that major GOP contributors violated the export ban to China, Iran, Libya, and other countries? And what happens to Bolton if it is found out that he acquired this information and told others about it, possibly even the companies involved, in violation of national security protocols?

Update: The NYT website doesn't even have this story on its front page for Wednesday. I guess they and the Post had to make room for all those nostalgic "Deep Throat" pieces as a testament to a time when we really had an investigative media that paid more attention to important contemporary stories than they did to ones from 8 years ago about sex in the White House.

What I want to know is this: was this story leaked to the Times before or after the Deep Throat story hit the wires today?