Add this to our list of legislators who knew about the CIA's recording of interrogations of al-Qaeda detainees: in September 2002 and again in 2003, the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees were briefed on what goes on in those interrogations. That means ex-Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), and ex-Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL) knew about waterboarding prisoners like Abu Zubaydah, leader of al-Qaeda's military committee. Publicly, The Washington Post reports, they said nothing, because privately, they didn't object -- until waterboarding became public knowledge, and some of the lawmakers expressed outrage. But some are disputing that account, though they're not giving specifics. From the Post:

Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

Congressional officials say the groups' ability to challenge the practices was hampered by strict rules of secrecy that prohibited them from being able to take notes or consult legal experts or members of their own staffs. And while various officials have described the briefings as detailed and graphic, it is unclear precisely what members were told about waterboarding and how it is conducted. Several officials familiar with the briefings also recalled that the meetings were marked by an atmosphere of deep concern about the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack.

"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.' "

That U.S. official is clearly engaging in pushback. The revelation that the CIA videotaped interrogations in 2002 and then destroyed their recordings in 2005 threatens to lead to the agency's nightmare scenario: prosecution for potential war crimes. On Saturday, the Justice Department, along with the CIA's inspector general, opened an investigation into the destruction. The agency wants to make clear that it thought it had legal cover from the White House and Justice Department in 2002 to torture detainees -- and political cover from the relevant leaders of the intelligence committees in Congress. On the former point, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and then-Justice Department official John Yoo made sure of it. And on that latter point, it's clear from the Washington Post story that Congress did indeed sign on. As the investigations proceed, the agency will argue that they were not in this alone.

Bob Graham, who left the Senate in 2005, has said he has no recollection of the briefings. So that's one denial. Porter Goss, who became CIA Director in 2004, says all involved knew about the interrogations. Jay Rockefeller's story is complicated -- he began public objection to waterboarding in 2005 -- and is liable to change. Jane Harman says she won't discuss anything classified: a cynic might say that at least she's consistent. Pat Roberts didn't return my Friday phone call.

So what did Pelosi know? From the Post:

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Usually, what nails you in Washington malfeasance is the cover-up, not the crime. With the revelation that the CIA in 2005 destroyed videotapes of interrogations of senior al-Qaeda detainees, it'll be both.

Start with the facts as they're currently understood. In 2002, the CIA videotaped interrogations of Abu Zubaydah, the chief of al-Qaeda's military committee, and an as-yet-unknown colleague. (My guess is that Detainee #2 is Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who, following his capture that September in Pakistan, was the second most important detainee then in custody.) During that time, the tapes remained a closely-held secret, despite requests for information on interrogations from the 9/11 Commission, a 2002 joint Congressional inquiry into 9/11, and Judge Leonie Brinkema, who presided over the Zacharias Moussaoui trial. In 2005, then operations chief Jose Rodriguez ordered the tapes destroyed, without disclosing their existence to anyone who didn't already know. This week, The New York Times prepared a story about the tapes. To get out in front of it, Director Michael Hayden released a statement about both the tapes and their destruction.

Hayden makes not a single plausible claim about the tapes and why they were destroyed. He said in an internal message to CIA employees that the release of the tapes -- whether to the judge or to the inquiries or to, ultimately, the press -- would have allowed al-Qaeda to identify CIA interrogators and then target them for retribution. The appropriate response to that is: LOL. The CIA has the capacity to move its operatives around the world, including to places where there aren't any al-Qaeda "assassins" -- like, say, northern Virginia. To say otherwise, as Hayden does, is to tacitly concede that CIA is too incompetent to protect its people.

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We've been down this road before, first with the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act and then with this summer's executive order on interrogations. And, like water seeking its own level, each time the Bush administration faces some kind of legal obstacle to torturing terrorism detainees, it finds a way to circumvent it. Even so, Congress is prepared to pass yet another ban on CIA torture techniques, the AP reports.

House and Senate negotiators working on an intelligence bill have agreed to limit CIA interrogators to techniques approved by the military, which would effectively bar them from using such harsh methods as waterboarding, congressional aides said Wednesday.

Members of the House and Senate intelligence committees decided to include the ban while working out differences in their respective bills authorizing 2008 spending for intelligence programs, according to the aides, who spoke anonymously because the negotiations were private. Details of the bill are to be made public Thursday.

That will set the stage for another veto fight with President Bush, who last summer issued an executive ordered allowing the CIA to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" that go beyond what's allowed in the 2006 Army Field Manual.

The Army field manual is compliant with the Geneva Conventions, the Constitution, and the laws of the United States of America. Waterboarding and the other potentially-banned tortures are not. Three guesses on which the Bush administration will choose.

From a not-yet-online piece from Congressional Quarterly, the White House proclaims that torture, and only torture, can keep your children safe:

And White House spokesman Tony Fratto issued a statement saying, "if that provision is in the bill, it would make a bad bill worse. We had a veto message on a similar provision in the House's supplemental funding bill. The CIA program has provided valuable, actionable intelligence that has allowed us to find and capture terrorists and prevent attacks. Efforts to weaken this program are dangerous and misguided."

As the AP notes, CIA director Mike Hayden has (euphemistically) defended torturing detainees. Attorney General Michael Mukasey has pleaded ignorance on whether waterboarding is torture. In an interview with TPMmuckraker on Monday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) pledged to press Mukasey on the legality of waterboarding every time Mukasey testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee. With the White House spending more energy defending its God-given right to torture than it spends, say, finding Osama bin Laden, prepare to see this sorry spectacle again and again over the next fourteen months.

They're hard to keep straight, the various and sundry friends and business associates of Rudy Giuliani with legal problems. But here's one worth keeping an eye on: Hank Asher. ABC reports that Asher, a former drug-runner, as well as a business partner and "close friend" of Giuliani's, makes an appearance in the recent indictment of Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona on bribery charges.

Carona himself was once a rising star in the GOP, often mentioned as a potential candidate for lieutenant governor of California. Dubbed "America's Sheriff" by Larry King for how he handled the 2002 hunt for 5-year-old Samantha Runnion's kidnapper, he naturally endorsed America's Mayor Rudy Giuliani for president. According to news accounts, he's met Giuliani at least twice. He's also chums with Bernie Kerik.

The indictment alleges that Carona and five associates, including his wife (Deborah) and mistress (named Debra), accepted bribes and generally did what they could to get rich off Carona's position ($700,000 in bribes and kickbacks). Among the dozens of illicit gifts enumerated in the indictment is this one:

On or about December 19, 2002, defendant Deborah Carona and co-conspirator Jaramillo's wife [that's Carona's assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo] accepted as gifts from H.A., a businessman who owned a data mining software company, yellow gold and diamond Ladies Cartier Watches worth approximately $15,000 each.

"H.A.", according to ABC, is Hank Asher, who did indeed own a data mining software company called Seisint at the time (more about that later). Asher himself is worth "north of $700 million," based mostly on his success selling his data mining product, which is called Matrix (he's since sold it to LexisNexis). And yes, he did smuggle cocaine from Colombia to Florida aboard his private jet for eight months in 1980 and 1981. But he says he paid his dues by cooperating with federal agents to stop other runners.

But it sounds like Asher still likes to live large. During that same dinner meeting with the two wives at Carmine's here in New York, he apparently got a bit rambunctious:

When Hank Asher reached into the bag and pulled out the two $15,000 gold Cartier watches, the holiday crowd at Carmine's restaurant on 44th Street in Manhattan noticed, patrons recalled....

During the Carmine's dinner, when Asher's voice began to boom across the room, patrons recall him handing his black American Express card to the restaurant to pay for any inconvenience his boisterous party caused the other guests. He told the staff to buy everyone's dinners and drinks and then peeled off a few $100 bills to tip strolling carolers in the restaurant.

As ABC notes, Asher isn't named as a co-conspirator in the case, and "there is no allegation in the document that he attempted to influence any purchases or other decisions by the county." Maybe it was just a nice Christmas gift. But the timing is enough to raise eyebrows. Because that's when Asher was making a big push for law enforcement agencies to buy his product. Carona, famous as he was for tracking down child predators, would have been an asset to Asher, who was hawking a product designed to help authorities identify suspects by searching billions of public records. Carona and Asher would later serve together on the Board of Directors for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Certainly Asher had a broad strategy for selling his system. To help him sell to the federal government, his secret weapon was Rudy Giuliani, whom he'd hired for a staggering sum of money -- under a contract that the two of them kept secret for years. More about that in a bit.

Score another one for Wikileaks. This morning -- thanks to a source known only as "Peryton" -- the open-source website for whistleblower documents published the 2004 manual for U.S. military detention operations at Guantanamo Bay. You can read it, with commentary, here.

Last month, Wikileaks published the 2003 edition of the manual. Among other controversial provisions, the manual instructed officials to hide certain detainees from the International Committee of the Red Cross, a practice that the military repeatedly denied was in existence at Guantanamo. Spokespeople for the U.S. military's Southern Command, which oversees Guantanamo Bay, said the manual was outdated and assured that some instructions that violated the Geneva Conventions were no longer in effect.

It's unclear so far what portions of the 2004 manual remain in place. (Maybe Peryton will enlighten us in the future.) The Washington Post's Josh White quotes Guantanamo Bay spokesman as saying that "things have changed dramatically" at the camp since 2004. But Wikileaks finds that, in key areas, the 2004 manual didn't change so much from 2003:

Systematic denial of Red Cross access to prisoners remains. The use of dogs remains. Segregation and isolation are still used routinely and systematically – including an initial period of at least 4 weeks "to enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee", only terminated at the behest of interrogators. Both manuals assert that detainees will be treated in accordance with the "spirit" of the Geneva conventions "to the degree consistent with military needs", but never assert that the conventions are actually being followed at Guantanamo. Put into practice, neither manual complies with the Geneva conventions.

So is the past prologue? We'll find out. For now, though, dig into the 2004 manual and let us know in comments what you think is most significant.

It's easy to get distracted in our workaday lives and lose sight of the big picture.

For instance, Mike Allen of the Politico reports that the White House recently passed "an unusual landmark": the administration has produced 1 million documents to Congress since January. The mind can scarcely comprehend the horrors of such unbridled oversight.

The details of this "unusual landmark" are unclear. Characteristic of a White House that has successfully stonewalled a number of key Congressional investigations while still managing to complain about responding to inquiries, the provenance of that "1 million" number is unstated. (A Waxman aide "scoffed" at the number, Allen reports.) Presumably if you were to press for information as to where it had come from, it would prove an additional unreasonable burden. And as to whether that landmark (if it has been reached) is, in fact, "unusual," who knows? Certainly to a White House that suffered no oversight during its first six years, it is unusual.

Having staggered the mind with the "1 million" number, Allen quotes a "senior administration official" to drive home the real costs:

“There are a number of dry holes that got drilled,” a senior administration official said. “People don’t care about it. The public is saying: Gas is at $3 a gallon. Is there any energy bill? No.”

The official even made sport of the Democrats’ approach, calling it “purely reflexive.”

“People are having concerns with their mortgages,” the official said. “Is there a mortgage bill? No. We have a government to fund. Is there any appropriations bill? No.

“But, I’ve got a new subpoena for you today — and we’re going to hold somebody in contempt. Doesn’t that help you?”

The main effect, the official said, was a distraction for the staff and countless hours of work for the White House counsel’s office.

Accepting the undeniable logic of every new subpoena meaning one less sweeping piece of legislation, it staggers the mind to think of what the Democratic Congress could have accomplished these past 11 months if it had spent its time passing the administration's legislation instead of investigating it. Not only that, but there wouldn't have been the additional burden of having to replace officials forced to resign as the result of those investigations. Think how much more could get done!

Now, if only the press would lay off too, then they could really get some things accomplished.

Courtesy of the Rudy Giuliani camp's efforts to spin the shag fund story, this is another installment in Great Moments in Damage Control! (from The New York Daily News):

Joe Lhota, a deputy mayor in Giuliani's City Hall, told the Daily News Wednesday night that the administration's practice of allocating security expenses to small city offices that had nothing to do with mayoral protection has "gone on for years" and "predates Giuliani."

When told budget officials from the administrations of Ed Koch and David Dinkins said they did no such thing, Lhota caved Thursday, "I'm going to reverse myself on that. I'm just going to talk about the Giuliani era," Lhota said. "I should only talk about what I know about."...

"I don't understand when it started. I don't understand why it started," Lhota said. "But I do know one thing: It was consistently done ... in no way shape or form did it imply a coverup."

The "no explanation" explanation seems to be the best spin the Giuliani camp has available.

Other than that, there's 1) the irrelevant focus on whether the NYPD reimbursed the backwater city agencies which originally were billed for the tryst costs -- a response that has only served to highlight that Giuliani is dodging the main issue, or 2) the fact that, in order to keep the mayor's budget artificially low, there seems to have been a policy of misallocation in his administration, of which the trips to Judith Nathan's Southampton condo were only a small part (though for some reason we haven't seen them try this line yet).

So "I don't understand when it started, I don't understand why it started" it is!

It's been an eventful week for the Lott clan. On Monday, Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) announced that he'd be retiring late this year. The next day, FBI agents raided the law office of his brother-in-law, Richard "Dickie" Scruggs. Yesterday, Scruggs, his son, and three associates were indicted for bribery.

Scruggs is a hotshot plaintiff's lawyer who famously cleaned up from lawsuits against big tobacco. His recent business has focused on Katrina-related litigation, especially against State Farm Insurance.

He'd better have a great criminal defense lawyer, because the indictment from the U.S. attorney for Mississippi's Northern District is devastating (you can read it here).

Here's the basic scheme: after Scruggs led a $80 million settlement between State Farm and hundreds of clients, an attorney who had formerly worked with Scruggs disputed the $26.5 million chunk of that settlement to Scruggs' law group. Scruggs wanted his money, and he and his associates decided that the best way to get it was to bribe the county judge presiding over the case, Henry Lackey. But Lackey went to the feds as soon as Scruggs' associates made the overture. He wore a wire. And things went downhill from there. For instance, here's what a lawyer working for Scruggs said to the judge, according to the indictment:

"...[M]my relationship with Dick [Scruggs] is such that he and I can talk very private [sic] about these kinds of matters and I have the fullest confidence that if the court, you know, is inclined to rule... in favor... everything will be good.... The only person in the world outside of me and you that has discussed this is me and Dick [Scruggs].... We, uh, like I say, it ain't but three people in the world that know anything about this...and two of them are sitting here and the other one...the other one, uh, being Scruggs...he and I, um, how shall I say, for over the last five or six years there, there are bodies buried that, that you know, that he and I know where...where are, and, and, my, my trust in his, mine in him and his in mine, in me, I am sure are the same."

The indictment is replete with similarly, um, problematic quotations. There are plenty of mentions of the "package" and the "order" among Scruggs' associates (apparently conversations on tapped phones). In October and November of this year, Scruggs, through his associates, paid the judge $40,000 (and intended to pay $10,000 more). And when it came time for the order to be prepared, the indictment quotes one of Scruggs' associates as saying to two others (one of them Scruggs' son), "we paid for this ruling; let's be sure it says what we want it to say."

It's like I said: it doesn't look good for Scruggs. As for Lott, there's no indication that he had anything to do with the scheme. Whether the impending indictment, which seems to have caught Scruggs very much by surprise, had anything to do with his sudden retirement, remains (like the many other competing theories) unclear.

It's just not enough that a number of administration officials have been investigated for malfeasance; the Bush Administration takes it the extra mile. The man who's charged with investigating some of that malfeasance is himself under investigation. And he's clearly no slouch at malfeasance.

Scott Bloch heads the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), an odd little agency that was set up to police federal employees of infractions that do not rise to the criminal level. The OSC's main brief is enforcing the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from using government resources for political ends (so Bloch should be a busy man). He's also supposed to make sure whistleblowers do not suffer retaliation. The OSC reports to the White House.

Bloch himself has been under investigation since 2005 for a variety of infractions, including retaliating against employees who took issue with internal policies and discriminating against those who were gay or members of religious minorities. At the direction of the White House, the Office of Personnel Management's inspector general has been pressing on with an investigation of Bloch.

Which makes this all the more curious. From The Wall Street Journal:

Recently, investigators learned that Mr. Bloch erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year. They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said.

Bypassing his agency's computer technicians, Mr. Bloch phoned 1-800-905-GEEKS for Geeks on Call, the mobile PC-help service. It dispatched a technician in one of its signature PT Cruiser wagons. In an interview, [Bloch] confirmed that he contacted Geeks on Call but said he was trying to eradicate a virus that had seized control of his computer....

Mr. Bloch had his computer's hard disk completely cleansed using a "seven-level" wipe: a thorough scrubbing that conforms to Defense Department data-security standards. The process makes it nearly impossible for forensics experts to restore the data later. He also directed Geeks on Call to erase laptop computers that had been used by his two top political deputies, who had recently left the agency....

Geeks on Call visited Mr. Bloch's government office in a nondescript office building on M Street in Washington twice, on Dec. 18 and Dec. 21, 2006, according to a receipt reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The total charge was $1,149, paid with an agency credit card, the receipt shows. The receipt says a seven-level wipe was performed but doesn't mention any computer virus.

Jeff Phelps, who runs Washington's Geeks on Call franchise, declined to talk about specific clients, but said calls placed directly by government officials are unusual. He also said erasing a drive is an unusual virus treatment. "We don't do a seven-level wipe for a virus," he said.

The punchline to all this is that even if Bloch were a paragon of integrity, his investigations of administration wrongdoing would be nearly pointless. For instance, Bloch launched an investigation of General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan after she asked her fellow employees "How can we help our candidates?" The comments had come after a political briefing by Karl Rove's aide. Bloch's investigation concluded that Doan should be fired. But that was in June. Bloch made his recommendation to the White House, which has done nothing since. And as for Bloch's wide-ranging probe of Karl Rove's political briefings to federal officials throughout the government? Don't count on any results. It's enough to make a man cynical.

Saved! That's one less trial Bernie Kerik -- and Rudy Giuliani -- have to worry about.

Granted, Kerik still faces trial on a sixteen-count criminal indictment for accepting bribes, cheating on taxes, and lying to the federal government. But no doubt it's good news for the Giuliani camp. Every little bit counts!

Yesterday, Eric DeRavin, a former New York City Correction Department officer, settled his discrimination lawsuit against the city. He'd charged that Kerik, when he led the department back in the 90's, had passed him over for promotions because he was African-American -- and because DeRavin made the mistake of crossing Kerik's mistress, Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero (one of Kerik's two mistresses who later visited Kerik at his 9/11 love nest). The court dismissed the claims about Pinero, but the city settled on the race discrimination claim for $125,000. The trial was due to begin soon, and Kerik was sure to testify. "I'm going to accept $125,000 and go away," DeRavin said, but added: "I hope Mr. Kerik gets his just desserts."

So Giuliani is spared the spectacle of Kerik testifying about why he'd passed over an African-American officer six times for promotion, the renewed focus on Kerik's romantic liaisons, and questions about why he hadn't been concerned about the fact that two different correction officers had sued the city, alleging that Kerik had retaliated against them because they'd crossed his mistress.

Because this wasn't the only suit, and it isn't the first time that the city has settled. Another correction officer, Herbert Reed, sued the city, claiming that Kerik and his underlings filed bogus disciplinary and sexual harassment actions against him after he wrote up a friend of Pinero's for insubordination. The city settled that one for $250,000 in 2003.

These were both longstanding suits (DeRavin filed in 2000, Reed in 2001), filed long before Giuliani was forced to break with Kerik in the wake of his disastrous nomination to be Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security in December, 2004. But Giuliani would probably say that we should file it away as just another aspect (click here for all the aspects) of Giuliani's admitted "mistake" in supporting Kerik for the nomination (after first appointing him commisioner of corrections, then the NYPD, then making him his business partner). Everybody makes mistakes, right?

When last we left the Bush administration's so-called benchmarks for strategic progress in Iraq -- that is, the political progress that military success allows -- they weren't being met, and the White House didn't care. Now that the year's almost over and the administration is beginning to bring the "surge" troops home, it's worth asking: what happened to the benchmarks? The New York Times reports that the administration has quietly given up on them, preferring nebulous goals for which it's easier to claim success.

With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.

Instead, administration officials say they are focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that progress is being made toward the political breakthroughs that the military campaign of the past 10 months was supposed to promote.

The short-term American targets include passage of a $48 billion Iraqi budget, something the Iraqis say they are on their way to doing anyway; renewing the United Nations mandate that authorizes an American presence in the country, which the Iraqis have done repeatedly before; and passing legislation to allow thousands of Baath Party members from Saddam Hussein’s era to rejoin the government. A senior Bush administration official described that goal as largely symbolic since rehirings have been quietly taking place already.

In January, the entire point of the surge, according to President Bush, was to achieve sectarian reconciliation. The surge has had quite a few tactical successes, as would be expected with an infusion of 30,000 troops and a smarter, population-centric approach. But that's an unfortunate footnote to a four-plus-year war -- and one susceptible to reversal -- without political progress, as any half-awake counterinsurgency expert can attest. And, once again, the Bush administration has substituted at least some tangible definition of success for what amounts to a PR strategy. Remember this when Bush and the 2008 GOP presidential candidates praise the surge to high heaven and castigate liberals for opposing its manifest, shining wisdom.

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It's not just foreign-to-domestic calls involving suspected terrorists. Nor library, business and medical records of American citizens in (mostly) terrorism-related cases. The list of circumstances under which law enforcement can jettison probable cause as a standard for obtaining information is expanding to include... carrying a cellphone.

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.

In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.

Basically, as carriers increasingly offer subscribers the ability to stay informed of where their associates are at all times, law enforcement gets an investigative tool. In one recent case, a DEA agent sought a drug-trafficking suspect's Nextel tracking information from a judge simply by asserting that the suspect was trafficking drugs, thereby turning probable cause on its head. The agent didn't get away with it in this case, but in several other recent cases, courts issued warrants based on a determination that the location information provides "specific and articulable facts" relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.

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Why can't people just trust Rudy Giuliani?

As today's piece in The Chicago Tribune points out, Giuliani is a deviation from the mold of the successful businessman turned politician. Instead, Giuliani went from politics into business, and the success of that business relied in large part on Giuliani's continued prestige and the promise that he would eventually return to politics.

Giuliani Partners (not to be confused with Bracewell & Giuliani, the law firm he joined in 2005), which has been steadily growing since it's formation in 2002, is a consultancy. Which is a fancy way of saying that it does whatever its clients need it to do. Mostly, that seems to have been some form of security consulting -- but it's been nearly impossible to find out, because Giuliani won't say who the firm's clients are or were.

Today's Tribune takes a look at one of those clients:

Nine days after registering his presidential exploratory committee last November, Rudolph Giuliani appeared in Singapore to help a Las Vegas developer make a pitch for a $3.5 billion casino resort....

Giuliani's public involvement in the gaming bid began at a September 2006 news conference in Singapore hosted by Mark Advent, CEO of Eighth Wonder LLC, a Las Vegas development company heading one of three consortia competing to build the Sentosa Integrated Resort.

Giuliani Security & Safety LLC, a division of Giuliani Partners, was to provide security on a celebrity-studded, multibillion-dollar project featuring participation by soccer legend Pele, chef Alain Ducasse, New Age guru Deepak Chopra and designer Vera Wang, according to Advent.

Advent estimated that he spent more than $30 million to assemble and present his plans to Singaporean authorities.

He declined to disclose the fees paid to Giuliani, but described them as "fair and priceless."

Besides the obvious potential conflicts of interest this creates for a future president, there's the more pressing concern of not knowing who Giuliani has chosen to do business with. You might say his track record of business associates doesn't quell suspicion.

The piece goes on to tug on one thread. Giuliani Partners was working for Eighth Wonder, one of the companies making the resort bid -- and Eighth Wonder partnered with another company (called Melco) to make that bid. It turns out that the former CEO of that company, Stanley Ho, is "a controversial Hong Kong billionaire who has ties to the regime of North Korea's Kim Jong Il and has been linked to international organized crime by the U.S. government." A mobbed-up casino mogul is the shorter version of that description. The company is currently run by his son.

Now, Giuliani didn't work directly for Ho, and the spokeswoman for his firm called the link between Stanley Ho and the Eighth Wonder partnership "a stretch." And surely, if his business ties become an issue in the campaign, there will be other relationships that will prove more troublesome. But it just goes to show what little people know about how he's made his money for the past five years.

Remember that recently-impaneled grand jury looking at Blackwater's Nisour Square shootings? Turns out it's not just about Blackwater.
Four years into the occupation, prosecutors are attempting to build the first criminal case against private security companies -- who up until now worked in a system rigged to ensure unaccountability.

The Washington Post:

The Washington grand jury has issued subpoenas to several private security firms, including Blackwater, a legal source briefed on the probe said yesterday. Authorities are seeking company "after-action" reports and other documents that may shed light on specific incidents, he said.

The source, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, declined to say which incidents have been targeted, but he said the investigation ranges well beyond Blackwater. Private security companies in Iraq "have been shooting a lot of people," he said.

That's an understatement.

There's no word from the piece about which non-Blackwater firms are in the grand jury's crosshairs, nor which incidents are potentially criminal. As the paper reports, the Iraqi government claims it knows more than 20 potential criminal incidents involving private security companies -- most of which it lays at the feet of Blackwater -- but whether that list has anything to do with the grand jury's focus is unknown.

Also unknown is the specific law which the security firms could be accused of breaking:

But the U.S. government's ability to prosecute remains hampered by the lack of clarity over what laws may apply. For instance, contractors were immunized from Iraqi laws under a June 2004 order signed by the U.S. occupation authority. That ruling remains in effect.

In addition, investigations are complicated by questions about evidence, jurisdiction and the availability of witnesses. "If they're going to try to indict, they've got a lot to overcome," said Patricia A. Smith, an Alexandria lawyer who represents two former employees of Triple Canopy, a private security firm based in Herndon, in a civil lawsuit. The former employees say they were wrongfully terminated after reporting that their Triple Canopy team leader fired shots into the windshield of a taxi for amusement last year on Baghdad's airport road.

State Department Inspector General Howard "Cookie" Krongard's new strategy to get out of a possible perjury investigation? Begging.

It turns out Krongard has retained a criminal defense lawyer named Barbara van Gelder. (Maybe for the perjury fight, maybe because of the FBI's recent parley with Cookie's subordinates.) Van Gelder wrote to Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) on Saturday to ask the House oversight committee chairman to cancel an upcoming hearing on whether Krongard lied to the committee about what he knew of his brother's (since-renounced) position on Blackwater's advisory board. According to van Gelder, the committee would be doing little more than interfering in an unseemly family feud: "There is no legitimate purpose to be gained by publicly pitting two brothers against each other."

And yet she makes it so tempting. Van Gelder provided what she describes as Krongard's notes of his crucial phone conversation with his brother Buzzy on Halloween. Buzzy says he told Cookie he was joining the Blackwater board during that conversation. Van Gelder says that's not so, and Cookie has evidence to prove it. Take it away, Justin:

A page van Gelder purports to be Howard's contemporaneous notes on the conversation appear to indicate Buzzy Krongard said he had no financial ties to Blackwater and would not take the board position he had been offered.

"No financial interest whatsoever," the alleged notes read. The word "no" is underlined. "Was on short list for Advisory Board but is not taking it," the document states.

But, she argues, Waxman shouldn't seek to resolve the contradiction between the two accounts -- one of which was administered under oath, and the other of which was formally reported to Congressional investigators. Van Gelder is surely worth every penny.

Oh, and if that name sounds familiar: Barbara van Gelder, an ex-federal prosecutor, was last seen representing former OMB procurement official David Safavian.

Hear that? Those are the hosannas of civil libertarians.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, by a single vote, passed a surveillance bill yesterday. And it doesn't include retroactive legal immunity for telecommunications companies that complied with the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance programs. Since the Senate intelligence committee's version of the FISA Amendments Act of 2007 does have the immunity provision, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), the majority leader, has the discretion to choose which bill to bring to the Senate floor for a vote.

It's more than clear by now that the White House wants the immunity provision badly. AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein says that the reason isn't to spare the telecoms financial indemnity, or a matter of "fairness," as administration officials claim. Rather, it's to stop some 40 class-action suits against the companies from revealing how massive, how domestic and how illegal warrantless surveillance was between 2001 and 2007. Revelations from those suits could even, hypothetically at least, lead to criminal charges against administration officials and telecom companies. So needless to say, the White House is none too pleased with the Senate Judiciary Committee right now. And it won't be pleased with Reid if he brings the judiciary committee's bill to the floor.

The New York Times reports that an immunity compromise pushed by Rep. Arlen Specter (R-PA) has some support:

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the ranking Republican on the panel, is pushing a plan that would substitute the federal government as the defendant in the lawsuits against the telecommunications companies. That would mean that the government, not the companies, would pay damages in successful lawsuits.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, said in an interview after the vote Thursday that he would support a compromise along the lines of the Specter proposal.

Mr. Whitehouse was one of two Democrats who voted against an amendment proposed by Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, that would have banned immunity for the companies. “I think there is a good solution somewhere in the middle,” Mr. Whitehouse said.

Perhaps, but that assumes the White House wants a compromise. In another headache for President Bush, the House passed its companion surveillance bill, the Restore Act, yesterday, and that doesn't include telecom immunity either. We'll see who blinks first.

There are rare moments when you, the citizen, can feel like you've really made a difference.

Not since Scooter Libby has a devoted, loyal public servant been in such need of your help. Alberto Gonzales was set upon by hordes of journalists and Democrats and finally stepped down for the good of his beloved Justice Department. But his ordeal is not over. Because his enemies misrepresented certain carefully-chosen phrasings as lies, he is being investigated by that same department. "But what can I do?" you ask?

Contribute to the Alberto R. Gonzales Legal Expense Trust:

David G. Leitch, a Gonzales friend and general counsel at the Ford Motor Co., wrote in an e-mail solicitation to potential contributors last month that Gonzales is "innocent of any wrongdoing" but does not have the means to pay for his legal defense after a career spent mostly in public service.

"In the hyper-politicized atmosphere that has descended on Washington, an innocent man cannot simply trust that the truth will out," Leitch wrote. "He must engage highly competent legal counsel to represent him. That costs money, money that Al Gonzales doesn't have."

Leitch also wrote that Gonzales's attorney, George J. Terwilliger III of White & Case in Washington, "has substantially reduced his fees to represent Al Gonzales, but the costs will likely be high nonetheless." A contribution form asking for donations to the Alberto R. Gonzales Legal Expense Trust suggests amounts from $500 to $5,000.

Sure, the business elite, former administration officials and ambassadors (and then finally the President) came through for Scooter Libby. But Gonzales is still exposed to the forces of injustice. Won't you do your part?

You might never have a similar chance again. The Washington Post notes that "legal defense funds are common in Washington, but not for attorneys general." So act now!

It's looking grim for Blackwater. Although the FBI hasn't finished its investigation into the September 16 shootings at Nisour Square -- in which 17 Iraqi civilians were killed -- The New York Times reports that the company's guards at the square, by and large, opened fire without provocation:

Federal agents investigating the Sept. 16 episode in which Blackwater security personnel shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians have found that at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq, according to civilian and military officials briefed on the case....

Investigators have concluded that as many as five of the company’s guards opened fire during the shootings, at least some with automatic weapons. Investigators have focused on one guard, identified as “turret gunner No. 3,” who fired a large number of rounds and was responsible for several fatalities.

Investigators found no evidence to support assertions by Blackwater employees that they were fired upon by Iraqi civilians. That finding sharply contradicts initial assertions by Blackwater officials, who said that company employees fired in self-defense and that three company vehicles were damaged by gunfire.

About the only bright spot for Blackwater: bureau officials appear inclined to give the guards the benefit of the doubt about the first round of shootings, in which Blackwater guards fired upon a white Kia sedan that didn't heed a traffic officer's order to stop at the square.

But so far, the FBI's account of the shooting is mostly in line with that of the Iraqi government and the U.S. military. In front of Congress and in a recent PR blitz, Blackwater owner and CEO Erik Prince has insisted that Blackwater guards were under attack. "There was definitely incoming small arms fire from insurgents," Prince told Wolf Blitzer last month. Blackwater has also consistently urged Congress, the press and the public to await the outcome of the FBI's investigation before passing judgment on the company.

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Get beyond the surge. Go further than the talk about population protection being the new basis for U.S. efforts in Iraq. The Joint Campaign Plan is the comprehensive strategy for Iraq employed by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. It's a fairly important document. And Congress can't see it, reports Rachel Van Dongen for Roll Call. (sub. req.)

In television interviews and press conferences, Gen. David Petraeus has described the Joint Campaign Plan as the key military and diplomatic strategy to stabilize Iraq.

Developed by the “big brains” on the ground, Petraeus points to a “unified” effort with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker to achieve political and military security in Iraq by 2009.

Yet despite repeat efforts at the highest levels and Pentagon promises, Congress has been unable to get a current copy of the plan.

After persistent requests from House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the issue has moved up the Congressional chain of command to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). According to an aide, Pelosi asked President Bush for the document several months ago in a White House meeting. Since then, Pelosi’s staff has “repeatedly” requested a copy, her aide said, but has not yet received one.

A spokeswoman for the House Armed Services Committee generously declined to attribute the stonewalling to partisan politics. Yet the committee's request for the plan has been outstanding since the Pentagon missed a March 30 deadline for it. What's more, even though Congress hasn't seen the document, the head of a Government Accountability Office unit mentioned in October 30 testimony that his team saw the plan on a recent trip to Iraq.

Nor is Congress the only one left in the dark about why it can't see the plan. Van Dongen called the White House for an explanation, and it sent her to the Iraq command, known as Multinational Force-Iraq. An MNFI spokesperson told her, "I do not know why the White House would refer you to us regarding these questions." The Pentagon didn't reply, either. Three cheers for openness in government!

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Your typical wartime logistics operation: from supplier to vendor to transport to customer... oh, and corrupt warehouser who'll sell your weaponry to the insurgency while U.S. military officers look the other way.

Welcome to the operation to get guns to the Iraqi security services, circa 2004-2005. According to Government Accountability Office investigations -- and at least one criminal investigation -- over 190,000 weapons sent to Iraq for the Iraqi security forces disappeared almost as soon as they got off the C-17s. General Petraeus, who was in charge of the effort at the time, commented recently that he thought expeditious delivery of weapons was more important than proper bookkeeping. The New York Times details that his men truly internalized that message -- even to the point of opting not to notice when Iraqi warehousers would turn contractor-run armories into a private, for-profit arms dealership.

Two Army majors, John Isgrigg III and Timmy W. Cox, assigned to the equipping mission told the Times about racing against other military units to claim palletized guns off the planes delivering them. They and their colleagues are open about how they didn't care about keeping proper records of their cargo, claiming that fastidiousness in a complex procurement operation is a hindrance to the mission:

“We had folks getting killed because equipment wasn’t moving,” said Col. Randy Hinton, the majors’ superior officer. “Were there times when all the right forms were not signed? Probably. But we had a mission to do, and we were going to do it the best way we could at that time.”

An interesting approach to following the law. The trouble is that their negligence, in part, led to an atmosphere of tolerance for weapons smuggling.

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Bernie Kerik indicted!

Wait a minute, you say. Is this about the thing with his nanny? No. The thing where he conspired with Jeanine Pirro, Hillary Clinton's one-time Republican opponent for the Senate, to illegally spy on her own husband to catch him cheating? No again. So it's about the dozens of illegal gifts Kerik accepted from his friend, Lawrence Ray, while head of the New York Police Department and the city's Department of Corrections. Sort of.

Granted, it's hard to keep it all straight. But the indictment, expected to be unsealed today, reportedly concentrates on just two of Bernie Kerik's bad choices.

The first was to let Interstate Industrial Corporation, a construction company with alleged ties to the Gambino crime family, pay $165,000 to renovate his apartment. At the time, 1999, Kerik was New York City's corrections commissioner. Interstate also had Kerik's brother and the aforementioned Lawrence Ray, who was best man at Kerik's wedding, on the payroll. And coincidentally, Interstate was vying for business with the city. Although Interstate didn't end up getting that contract, Kerik did manage to vouch for the company to city investigators, telling them that Interstate was clean of mob ties. He failed to mention, however, that the company was paying for his apartment job.

The second bad decision was to accept $200,000 in rent from one of the city's biggest real estate developers, Steve Witkoff (who, by the way, owns my favorite NYC building, the Woolworth). Kerik let Witkoff pay the $9,000 in monthly rent for his Upper East Side digs around the time he left city government, but kept the whole thing off the books. (The feds apparently will not accuse Witkoff of wrongdoing.)

The rest of the charges in the indictment you can call fallout from those bad choices. He did not report either substantial sums of money when it came time to pay taxes. And he for some reason neglected to mention them on his 2004 application to run the Department of Homeland Security.

We'll get a copy of the indictment itself when it's available. For now, contemplate just how bad of a decision it was for Rudy Guiliani to recommend Kerik for the jobs of NYC's top cop, and then head of DHS.

Update/Correction: Actually, the nanny does appear to have made her way into the indictment.

"It's really surprising that Blackwater is still out there killing people."

That's a quote from the director of Iraq's state-run television network, looking back in anger to an February shooting that prefigured the Nisour Square incident in September. In February, Blackwater guards on the roof of the Justice Ministry building in Baghdad's Salihiya neighborhood shot and killed three security guards at the nearby Iraqiya TV compound. There was no recompense to the victims' families. A cursory State Department investigation cleared Blackwater in full. And an Iraqi judge, citing CPA Order 17 --which gave U.S. contractors immunity from Iraqi prosecution -- rejected a court petition filed by the network.

The details remain subject to debate. Blackwater claims it was under attack, and the State Department backs up the company. Iraqis at the TV station and the Interior Ministry say the Blackwater guards opened fire without provocation. The story was first reported by Leila Fadel of McClatchy in September, and today Steve Fainaru of The Washington Post has an in-depth look at the incident.

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Cliche as it may be to say: Mr. Klein goes to Washington.

Tomorrow the Senate Judiciary Committee will get its hands on the surveillance bill passed by the intelligence committee last month. The bill blesses warrantless surveillance of foreign-domestic communications related to gathering foreign intelligence, but its most infamous provision is the legal immunity it seeks to grant telecommunications companies that complied with the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program from 2001 until this January. Civil libertarians are enraged at the provision, which will invalidate a number of class-action lawsuits against the telecoms currently pending. Now they have a new lobbying ally: Mark Klein.

Klein is the retired AT&T technician who disclosed in late 2005 how his former employer had allowed the NSA to use Room 641A of 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco as a vacuum cleaner to capture untold millions of phone and e-mail communications. (You can read his first-hand account here, in a pdf.) His revelations formed the basis for a lawsuit, Hepting v. AT&T, currently before a federal court. Now he's trying to convince Senators not to preempt the case, reports The Washington Post.

The plain-spoken, bespectacled Klein, 62, said he may be the only person in the country in a position to discuss firsthand knowledge of an important aspect of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program. He is retired, so he isn't worried about losing his job. He did not have security clearance, and the documents in his possession were not classified, he said. He has no qualms about "turning in," as he put it, the company where he worked for 22 years until he retired in 2004.

"If they've done something massively illegal and unconstitutional -- well, they should suffer the consequences," Klein said. "It's not my place to feel bad for them. They made their bed, they have to lie in it. The ones who did [anything wrong], you can be sure, are high up in the company. Not the average Joes, who I enjoyed working with."

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