It's clear that the world has its share of corrupt politicians. What's not clear, however, is whether or not Ed Jew, a San Francisco supervisor, can be counted as one.

That is not to say that Jew is not corrupt. Jew is accused of extorting $40,000 in cash from a local tapioca shop that he promised to help with permit problems. In actuality, the $40,000 came from the FBI, after the tapioca store owners reported the situation. That led to an FBI raid of his properties, an arrest warrant and an indictment.

Still, Ed Jew might not be a corrupt politician, because he might technically not be a politician. Yes, Jew ran for office in the fourth district of San Francisco. And yes, he is scheduled to serve until November (despite his legal troubles, Jew is keeping his seat). But Jew has never actually lived in the fourth district. In fact, Jew doesn’t even live in San Francisco.

Read more »

Yesterday, prosecutors made their case against Steven Griles, the former #2 at the Department of Interior who pled guilty in March to lying to Senate investigators about his relationship with Jack Abramoff. Prosecutors want a ten month sentence for Griles, split between prison and home detention.

Their sentencing memo extensively detailed how Griles was Abramoff's man in Interior, providing a constant stream of confidential information valuable to Abramoff's tribal clients. In return, Abramoff helped Griles' many lady friends: channelling $500,000 into Italia Federici's right-wing group, the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, and interviewing two others for possible jobs with Abramoff's lobbying firm (Griles, as we've noted before, is quite the lady's man). Abramoff also came close to hiring Griles himself. You can read The Washington Post's rundown of the sentencing memo here.

But my favorite part from the memo was this:

On September 24, 2003, Touchstone Pictures/Declaration Productions, Inc. was filming the 2004 motion picture "National Treasure" on the grounds of the United States Navy Memorial located in Washington, D.C. The Navy Memorial, built on Federal land and under the jurisdiction of the DOT National Park Service, was steps away from the entrance to Signatures. Abramoff was upset that the film crew and its trailers and equipment were blocking the valet parking area abutting his restaurant. Because the film crew had a valid permit, they ignored Abramoff's demands to move away from his restaurant.

Knowing that the Navy Memorial was built on Federal land, Abramoff telephoned defendant Griles. The defendant, in turn, contacted the Special Assistant to the Director of the National Park Service and asked the Government official to investigate Abramoff' s complaint. The National Park Service official went to the restaurant, spoke with both the manager of Signatures and a representative of the film crew, and directed the film crew to move their equipment away from the restaurant's valet parking area.

So who wins in a power showdown between Abramoff and Nick Cage (who starred in National Treasure)? In D.C., Abramoff would have won that battle every time.

Nothing like a Friday afternoon resignation to end the week.

From the AP:

A senior Justice Department official who helped carry out the firings of eight U.S. attorneys said Friday he is resigning.

Mike Elston, chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, is the fifth Justice official to leave after being linked to the dismissals of the prosecutors.

The firings have led to congressional investigations, an internal Justice Department inquiry and calls on Capitol Hill for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Elston's resignation is effective at the end of next week. Reached Friday afternoon, he confirmed his plans to leave but would not say why....

Other aides who have resigned in the wake of the firings include former Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson and White House liaison Monica M. Goodling. A fifth official, Mike Battle, who ran the Justice office that oversees the U.S. attorneys, left in March.

Update: Some highlights from Elston's tenure at DoJ:

-- He allegedly called three of the fired U.S. attorneys and made an implicit threat that the Justice Department would detail the reasons for their firings if they didn't stay quiet.

-- He allegedly rejected a large number of applicants to Justice Department positions because they were Democrats.

-- When Carol Lam, the former U.S. attorney for San Diego, asked to stay on the job longer in order to deal with some outstanding prosecutions (the expanding Duke Cunningham case among them), Elston told her not to think about her cases, that she should be gone in "weeks, not months" and said "these instructions were 'coming from the very highest levels of the government.'"

-- He called around to the U.S. attorneys whom he had placed on one of the draft firing lists to apologize when he discovered that his list would be turned over to Congress.

Not only is the FBI abusing its ability to obtain communications and financial records without a court order, the bureau is also expanding its abilities to enter a home or office without letting its occupant know. TPMmuckraker alumnus Justin Rood at ABC has obtained FBI records documenting the rise of so-called "surreptitious entry" operations:

"The refocusing of FBI operational priorities and the new emphasis placed on intelligence-based activities. . . has resulted in a dramatic increase" in the demand for so-called 'black bag" jobs, in which teams of highly-trained specialists covertly enter a home or office, search its contents and leave without indicating they had been there, states the budget document. It does not detail how many of the secret searches it carries out, and the FBI did not respond to comment.

The bureau is asking Congress for an additional $5 million to pay for the operations, and over a dozen new specialized personnel.

Read more »

The more subpoenas the merrier. From The New York Times:

A Republican senator blocked a vote in the Judiciary Committee on whether to authorize subpoenas to the Justice Department to obtain secret legal opinions and other documents related to the National Security Agency’s program of domestic eavesdropping. The action by Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona will block the vote for a week.

During a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Bradley Schlozman, the controversial former senior political appointee in the Civil Rights Division, was battered with questions about his efforts to politicize the division.

A number of those questions from senators centered on Schlozman's efforts to purge the appellate section of the Civil Rights Division -- the small, but important section that handles civil rights cases in the court of appeals. What were they getting at? An anonymous complaint against Schlozman sent to the Justice Department's inspector general in December of 2005 spelled out the allegations. The complaint, obtained by TPMmuckraker, was filed by a former Department lawyer. You can read it here.

"Bradley J. Schlozman is systematically attempting to purge all Civil Rights appellate attorneys hired under Democratic administrations," the lawyer wrote, saying that he appeared to be "targeting minority women lawyers" in the section and was replacing them with "white, invariably Christian men." The lawyer also alleged that "Schlozman told one recently hired attorney that it was his intention to drive these attorneys out of the Appellate Section so that he could replace them with 'good Americans.'"

Read more »

One of the hanging threads of the Duke Cunningham case has been the fate of Thomas Kontogiannis, the Greek businessman implicated in Cunningham's plea for bribing the congressman. Today, The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that Kontogiannis actually pled guilty back in February, but that the documents had been under seal until now:

A New York financier has admitted playing a key role in the scandal that brought down former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, according to a guilty plea unsealed this week.

Thomas Kontogiannis said he helped finance the purchase of Cunningham's $2.5 million house in Rancho Santa Fe, in a deal that evolved from two military contractors' alleged plans to bribe the congressman....

Kontogiannis, in a guilty plea that was rendered under seal in February but made public in San Diego federal court this week, admitted providing $1.1 million in mortgages for the Rancho Santa Fe house even though he believed the home purchase involved “the proceeds of illegal activity.”

Beyond the home deal, Kontogiannis also said he financed the purchase of Cunningham's condominium in Arlington, Va., and bought Cunningham's yacht – even though he had no interest in owning the boat and knew that he was overpaying.

Kontogiannis, who had sought Cunningham's help when fighting bribery charges in New York, said he agreed to the transactions “because he wanted to maintain his relationship with Cunningham, a powerful public official who could assist him in many ways,” according the plea.

Kontogiannis' guilty plea was signed on February 9th (you can read it here), just days before Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney who led the Cunningham investigation, but who was fired along with seven other U.S. attorneys last year, stepped down. The deal carries a maximum sentence of ten years, but Kontogiannis' plea likely means he'll get less. There is nothing in the plea agreement to indicate that Kontogiannis is actively cooperating with prosecutors to implicate others. Kontogiannis is scheduled to be sentenced November 26th.

It's long been somewhat of a mystery what Kontogiannis was getting in exchange for his bribes. The prosecutors seem to be subscribing to the theory floated in a Copley news piece last year, that Kontogiannis, a businessman, used Cunningham to meet world leaders, who included President Bush and the Saudi crown prince.

Sen. Ted Stevens is following in the footsteps of Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-CA) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who are both under federal investigation, by asking for a review of his financial records from last year, allowing him to put off filing his official disclosure forms.

The forms were due to the Senate Ethics Committee by May 15, but Stevens' were not among them . The Washington Post and McClatchy report that the request for a review could be a sign that Stevens is in trouble with the law. From McClatchy:

Ethics reviews of lawmakers' financial reports are unusual unless they are under a legal cloud. A source close to Stevens' office said he has requested such reviews before, although this is the first time it has delayed the report's release.

Last week Stevens admitted that the FBI has asked him to hold on to documents they may want to review as part of its ongoing probe into a corruption scandal in the state. His son, former Alaska State Senate President Ben Stevens has already been snared by the investigation. The head of a local oil services company, Veco Corp., pled guilty to conspiracy and bribery charges, implicating the younger Stevens in receiving some $240,000 in illegitimate consulting fees.

Read more »

Josh Meyer at the Los Angeles Times makes it official: the Department of Justice has opened an investigation into whether BAE Systems, the British defense corporation accused of bribing ex-Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, has violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The Act is meant to prevent companies engaged in bribery from doing business in the United States. Bandar's alleged payoffs are only one element in the inquiry, as the British government's Serious Fraud Office has linked BAE to fraud cases in Tanzania, South Africa, Chile, the Czech Republic, Qatar and Romania.

The Justice Department is investigating whether British defense giant BAE Systems, which supplies Bradley fighting vehicles to the U.S. military and is becoming a major player in the U.S. defense industry, paid bribes to win contracts in Saudi Arabia, Chile and elsewhere, federal officials confirmed Thursday.

The Justice Department's fraud section, with the FBI's help, has begun a preliminary investigation to review allegations that the company conducted an ambitious campaign of payoffs to key officials to win contracts to sell fighter jets and other major weapons systems, according to several federal law enforcement officials familiar with the case. The key officials included Prince Bandar bin Sultan, former Saudi ambassador to the United States and a close Bush administration ally.

Read more »

The good news? The White House has found a large collection of Republican National Committee emails that had been declared lost. (Leahy didn’t believe them). The bad news? Even though the White House found the emails, they aren’t handing them over. (Think Progress)

Pennsylvania U.S. Attorney Mary Buchanan is set to testify today about her role in the firing scandal. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Bush has finally signed the Preserving the United States Attorney Independence Act, thus nullifying last year’s revision to the Patriot Act. Before he did, however, the Justice Department made sure to appoint one last interim attorney who will function legally under the old provision. (Think Progress)

Read more »

We know what the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department hasn't been doing under the Bush administration: protecting African-American voters from discrimination. And much of our coverage at TPM has tended to focus on the division's voting rights section, and the voter suppression efforts of two figures in particular, Bradley Schlozman and Hans von Spakovsky.

Add that to charges of racial discrimination by employees of the section, the section's failure to bring only a couple suits on behalf of African-American voters over the past several years (while bringing the first ever Voting Rights Act suit alleging discrimination against white voters), and Schlozman's and von Spakovsky's efforts to intimidate career employees who didn't toe the line, and you've painted a pretty dim view of the Civil Rights Division.

But as The New York Times detailed yesterday, where the political appointees defanged the division's efforts on behalf of African-Americans, it shifted resources to causes near and dear to conservatives, like religious discrimination and human trafficking cases. They are the sorts of cases, the Times reports, that the new hires in the Civil Rights Division -- generally very conservative lawyers who were dubbed by some career lawyers as "holy hires" -- prosecuted with zeal.

Here's the Times' blow-by-blow rundown of the shift, which began under John Ashcroft's tenure, but accelerated under Gonzales:

The changes are evident in a variety of actions:

¶Intervening in federal court cases on behalf of religion-based groups like the Salvation Army that assert they have the right to discriminate in hiring in favor of people who share their beliefs even though they are running charitable programs with federal money.

¶Supporting groups that want to send home religious literature with schoolchildren; in one case, the government helped win the right of a group in Massachusetts to distribute candy canes as part of a religious message that the red stripes represented the blood of Christ.

¶Vigorously enforcing a law enacted by Congress in 2000 that allows churches and other places of worship to be free of some local zoning restrictions. The division has brought more than two dozen lawsuits on behalf of churches, synagogues and mosques.

¶Taking on far fewer hate crimes and cases in which local law enforcement officers may have violated someone’s civil rights. The resources for these traditional cases have instead been used to investigate trafficking cases, typically involving foreign women used in the sex trade, a favored issue of the religious right.

¶Sharply reducing the complex lawsuits that challenge voting plans that might dilute the strength of black voters. The department initiated only one such case through the early part of this year, compared with eight in a comparable period in the Clinton administration.

About that "candy cane" case:

In the candy cane case, for example, school officials in Westfield, Mass., had suspended students for handing out candy canes with religious messages, saying it was disruptive and lurid. The students said that the “J” shape represented Jesus and the red stripes his blood, the white his purity.

Your friends in the administration try to set you up as a U.S. attorney for a couple years, even plotting to lie to senators who might make trouble for you, but then it all blows up and goes wrong and you have to step down. Can you blame Tim Griffin for souring on public service?

From the AP:

Former interim U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin tearily announced Thursday that public service is, "not worth it."

Griffin was named to replace Bud Cummins after Cummins was fired by the Bush administration along with seven other U.S. Attorneys.

Griffin addressed a lunchtime audience at the Clinton School of Public service Thursday, sometimes crying as he said he had no plans to return to politics.

Via ThinkProgress.

The Department of Transportation said in a letter earlier this week that anti-lobbying measures do not apply to its officers who contact members of Congress on behalf of the auto industry.

DOT announced this stance in a letter from the agency’s acting general counsel responding to the head of the House Committee on Oversight and Government’s request for information. The committee wants to hear more about an alleged plan to pressure members of Congress into persuading the Environmental Protection Agency to deny California a waiver allowing it to raise carbon emission standards.

DOT’s head lawyer Rosalind Knapp argued in her response that anti-lobbying law only applies when agencies call on private citizens to lobby Congress on their behalf. She also said that she advised several officials that it would not violate anti-lobbying provisions if they contacted members of Congress directly:

DOTs actions in no way violated anti-lobbying restrictions, as those provisions apply to and prohibit “grass roots” lobbying intended to encourage third parties, members of special interest groups, or the general public to contact members of Congreess or State legislatures in support of or opposition to a legistlative matter.

Read more »

The 101st Airborne surely meant well in 2003 when it published a guidebook for soldiers on Arab culture. U.S. troops could hardly be expected to know going into Iraq that, for instance, it's a sign of disrespect to show someone the sole of your foot, and it's better to avoid giving offense in the first place than potentially disrupt an emerging U.S.-Iraqi relationship. But the advice offered in the guidebook, it turns out, runs the gamut from respectful to hokey to offensive:

* There is little virtue in a frank exchange. Getting down to business may always occur at a later meeting or a more informal setting such as dinner.
* Arabs, by American standards, are reluctant to accept responsibility... if responsibility is accepted and something goes wrong, the Arab is dishonored.
* Arabs operate by personal relations more than by time constraints.
* Arabs do not believe in upward mobility or social status; they gain status by being born in the right family.
* Arabs do not shake hands firmly. If an Arab does not touch you, it usually means that he does not like you.
* It is said that the Arab likes to feel your breath in their face. As you back away, the Arab will continue to shuffle forward. This is known as the "diplomatic shuffle."
* An Arab sees friendships with anyone outside the family as meaning, "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours."

The guidebook was prepared 101st Airborne Division in 2003, which at the time was commanded by then-Major General David Petraeus. You'd think someone who emphasizes the importance of understanding a host country's culture wouldn't have signed off on a guidebook quite this crude.

Via Sharon Weinberger and Noah Shachtman at Danger Room.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is under investigation by his own department's inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility. From The Washington Post:

The Justice Department is investigating whether Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales sought to influence the testimony of a departing senior aide during a March meeting in Gonzales's office, according to correspondence released today.

In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the two officials who are leading an internal Justice Department investigation of the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys last year said their inquiry includes the Gonzales meeting, which was revealed during testimony last month from former Gonzales aide Monica M. Goodling.

You can read a copy of the letter here.

Here, to refresh your memory, is Goodling's testimony about the meeting last month. Goodling said that in this private discussion with Gonzales, she asked for a transfer out of her current position because of the scandal. Gonzales said he'd have to think about that, but then started telling Goodling what he remembered about the firing process. He then asked her if she had "any reaction" to his memory. "I didn't know that it was maybe appropriate for us to talk about that," she said, adding that it made her "uncomfortable." When Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) asked if she thought the attorney general had been trying to shape her recollection of the firings, she said no, but then did say again that the conversation had made her feel uncomfortable.

The Post reports, "The disclosure could represent a serious legal threat to the embattled attorney general. [Inspector General Glenn] Fine's office is empowered to refer matters for criminal prosecution if warranted."

Update: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy's (D-VT) response was to the point:

"The last time an internal investigation at the Department of Justice got too close for comfort the White House shut it down. I hope this investigation will not suffer the same fate as the OPR inquiry into the warrantlesss wiretapping program. This internal investigation is an important step in getting to the truth behind this matter, and they should be allowed to do their jobs without interference from this Administration."

From the AP:

A federal judge said Thursday he will not delay a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a ruling that could send the former White House aide to prison within weeks.

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton's decision will send Libby's attorneys rushing to an appeals court to block the sentence and could force President Bush to consider calls from Libby's supporters to pardon the former aide.

In the interest of absolute precision, here's The Economist's resident stickler on Lurita Doan's invocation of the "hortatory subjunctive."

It's amazing what happens when a former Justice Department official sits behind a microphone.

Earlier this week, six veterans of the Civil Rights Division's voting rights section wrote the Senate Rules Committee to urge that they reject Hans von Spakovsky's nomination as a commissioner at the Federal Election Commission. The reason, they wrote, was that von Spakovsky had been "the point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division's mandate to protect voting rights" when he worked at the Justice Department.

Von Spakovsky, they wrote, had been instrumental in overruling career attorneys who objected to voter ID laws -- such as the infamous case of Georgia's 2005 law, which was ultimately blocked by a federal appeals court, likened by the judge to a Jim Crow-era poll tax.

But in his testimony before the panel yesterday, von Spakovsky said they had it all wrong. He was merely one counsel among many there, and when he was asked his opinion, he gave it; he was not "a decision maker." He nevertheless defended the division's stances, even though, he argued, they weren't his decisions to make. Here is under questioning by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) about the Georgia voter ID law:

Joe Rich, the former chief of the voting rights section, and one of the former section employees who wrote the committee about von Spakovsky, told me that von Spakovsky's minimization of his own role was laughable: "He was the de facto chief of the section."

One example in particular drove this home, Rich said.

Read more »

From The Guardian:

The US department of justice is preparing to open a corruption investigation into the arms company BAE, the Guardian has learned. It would cover the alleged £1bn arms deal payments to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia.

Washington sources familiar with the thinking of senior officials at the justice department said yesterday it was "99% certain" that a criminal inquiry would be opened under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Such an investigation would have potentially seismic consequences for BAE, which is trying to take over US arms companies and make the Pentagon its biggest customer.

Those "seismic consequences" would be sure to extend to the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. After all, Tony Blair scotched a British investigation of the payments for just that reason. One wonders if the Bush administration might do the same.

Here's Spencer's piece from earlier this week on the alleged payments to Bandar.

General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, is the man everyone's watching. Petraeus has a deserved reputation for clarity and honesty, something I've observed firsthand on two occasions I've had to interview him. His status assessment on the surge, slated to be delivered to congress in September, will be a political milestone for how Washington views the war, and so there's no shortage of speculation about what message Petraeus will deliver. If it's anything like his interviewwith USA Today, though, expect his briefing to accentuate the positive.

On a day when the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra threatened to reignite sectarian chaos, Petraeus gave a curious description of Baghdad to the paper:

If you drive around Baghdad, you'll find astonishing signs of normalcy in perhaps half to two-thirds of the city. … In fact, the car bomb numbers have come down fairly steadily as well until just a couple of days ago, and we'll see if we can get those coming down again. …

There's a real vibrancy in certain parts of Iraq, and in others obviously there is continued fighting and a sectarian cycle of violence underway. Obviously, there is damage, a need to … help them stitch back the fabric of society that was torn during the height of the sectarian violence.

When I was in Baghdad in March, I saw normalcy myself, but I also saw a police force infiltrated with Shiite militias and a city teeming with tension. His interview came right as Baghdad instituted a total vehicular curfew, a number of Sunni mosques were bombedin retaliation for Samarra, and Iraq waits to see how bad the fallout from the attack will be. If that wasn't enough, the Pentagon's latest quarterly report on Iraq shows no decrease in violence, despite the arrival of Petraeus as commander and a 30,000-troop reinforcement. Suggesting that the "vibrancy" of certain parts of Iraq is as significant as this larger picture risks diminishing Petraeus's hard-won credibility for the first time in his career.

Someone is trying to scrub voter fraud kingpin Thor Hearne's wikipedia entry of mentions of the American Center for Voting Rights, the organziation he used to push the cause over the past two years. (Slate, The Brad Blog)

Scooter Libby heads to court today to try to forestall his 2 1/2-year prison term in the Plame case. Patrick Fitzgerald wants him put in jail immediately. (AP)

The FBI has let its agents know that they should review all personal data collected from Americans in terrorism investigations before it is uploaded into FBI databases. So you can sleep easy now. (AP)

Read more »

Stop the presses: enhanced powers given to the FBI to obtain communications or financial data in national security investigations without judicial approval... has been repeatedly abused!

In March, the Justice Department's inspector general, Glenn Fine, disclosed 22 cases of misconduct in agents' use of National Security Letters, a power given under the Patriot Act allowing the FBI to in effect subpoena e-mail, telephone and financial records from third parties -- like internet service providers -- entirely in secret. NSL's, as they're known, are only supposed to be used in terrorism cases, and only when agents are able to provide "specific and articulable" reasons tying the subject of the data to a terrorism investigation.

Fine discovered the FBI had been using NSL's to circumvent the more cumbersome process of obtaining warrants, relying on NSLs in non-terrorism cases or under circumstances where they didn't meet the "specific and articulable" threshold. That, however, was on a relatively limited scale -- 22 cases out of a sample of 293 -- although Fine noted that between 2002 and 2006, the FBI issued a staggering 19,000 NSL's. Today, the Washington Post finds that the March report only scratches the surface:

An internal FBI audit has found that the bureau potentially violated the law or agency rules more than 1,000 times while collecting data about domestic phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions in recent years, far more than was documented in a Justice Department report in March that ignited bipartisan congressional criticism.

The new audit covers just 10 percent of the bureau's national security investigations since 2002, and so the mistakes in the FBI's domestic surveillance efforts probably number several thousand, bureau officials said in interviews. The earlier report found 22 violations in a much smaller sampling.

When the story broke in March, embattled FBI Director Robert Mueller promised the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was acting expeditiously to fix the problem.

According to the Post, the audit has so far turned up no evidence of intentional wrongdoing. Instead, its found that the FBI has been less than rigorous in ensuring that agents understand that NSLs are supposed to be used only in terrorism-related emergencies, and carry with them a strict limit on how long collected information may be retained. Once again, the FBI is promising that it'll put enhanced safeguards into place, and now has a "clear plan" to do so:

Of the more than 1,000 violations uncovered by the new audit, about 700 involved telephone companies and other communications firms providing information that exceeded what the FBI's national security letters had sought. But rather than destroying the unsolicited data, agents in some instances issued new National Security Letters to ensure that they could keep the mistakenly provided information. Officials cited as an example the retention of an extra month's phone records, beyond the period specified by the agents.

Case agents are now told that they must identify mistakenly produced information and isolate it from investigative files. "Human errors will inevitably occur with third parties, but we now have a clear plan with clear lines of responsibility to ensure errant information that is mistakenly produced will be caught as it is produced and before it is added to any FBI database," (FBI General Counsel Valerie) Caproni said.

The FBI should conclude its audit in the next few weeks. That should give Mueller enough time to prepare for his next round of hat-in-hand testimony.

Here's Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Arlen Specter (R-PA) on the floor of the Senate today making an offer to the White House for a compromise:

The standing offer from the White House is that congressional investigators interview White House aides about the U.S. attorney firings behind closed doors, with no oath or no transcript. Democrats have rejected that, and today the chairmen of the House and Senate judiciary committees issued subpoenas for former White House counsel Harriet Miers and Karl Rove's former top aide Sara Taylor.

Specter said that he'd spoken to the current White House counsel Fred Fielding today about the subpoenas for Taylor and Miers. Specter went on to muse about a possible compromise. He'd prefer that there be a public hearing and that the hearing be under oath, but said that's not necessary, given that it's a crime to lie to investigators, even if it's not under oath. But Specter said there needs to be a transcript -- otherwise it would be much more difficult to hold an aide to account for lying.

So if the White House offers to hand over Taylor and Miers for private interviews with a transcript (but no oath), Specter would agree. And given that a court battle between Congress and the White House is likely to drag on for months upon months, you can bet that Democrats would give such a deal serious consideration.

But before any of that happens, the White House has to give ground -- something they haven't done since Congress started knocking on the door in March. Will the subpoenas change that?

In Lurita Doan's defense, she has trouble with tense sometimes. That's why members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform think she planned to punish her employees at the General Services Administration for cooperating with investigators, not because she actually planned to sanction anyone.

Lurita Doan explained her grammatical shortfalls in her testimony today. But Democrats on the committee had a hard time buying it. Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) took her to task on her tense mincing over a statement Doan made about GSA employees that had cooperated with the Office of Special Council in its investigation into her conduct. When pushed, Doan claimed she meant to invoke the "hortatory subjuctive" when she said:

Until extensive rehabilitation of their performance occurs, they will not be getting promoted and will not be getting bonuses or special awards or anything of that nature.

Son of a Latin teacher, Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD) disagreed. He called her statement the common "future" tense. He also spotted a connection between her grammatical defense and an accusation that she encouraged her employees to help out Republican Congressional races. At a presentation given by Karl Roves' deputy she asked her GSA employess: "How can we help our candidates?"

Here's the video of Yarmuth, Sarbanes and the hortatory subjunctive:

Update: For those at home who aren't ace grammarians, the hortatory subjunctive of Doan's phrase would read:

Until extensive rehabilitation of their performance occurs, let's not promote and not give them bonuses or special awards or anything of that nature.

Update: Here's much more from Doan's testimony today.

Late Update: TPM Reader lampwick weighs in below in the comments:

As the son of the mother of a Latin teacher, I feel bound to point out that the subjunctive is a mood, not a tense. The subjunctive is used for hypotheticals and certain types of commands. The most commonly used mood is the indicative, used for statements of fact. Thus 'will' is the future indicative; 'let us do what Rove says' would be the subjunctive; present subjunctive, in fact.

Today the head of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) told Lurita Doan, chief of the government's procurement agency, that she ought to step down.

Doan was back in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform today where Democrats wanted to know why she gave the Office of Special Counsel information that seemed to contradict what she first told the committee under oath in March.

The Office of Special Counsel questioned Doan over a possible violation of the Hatch Act about a month after she faced the House Oversight Committee. In a letter to the president released yesterday, Special Counsel Scott Bloch said his findings show that Doan should be punished to the fullest extent possible, which would mean being fired.

The Hatch Act violation stems from a comment she made to her employees about helping Republican congressional candidates. Doan made the comment, according to General Services Administration employees present, at a January 26 meeting at the GSA where Karl Rove's deputy Scott Jennings put on a slideshow showing key House and Senate races coming up in the 2008 election cycle.

In March, Doan had little memory of the meeting, but when she spoke with the Office of Special Counsel she recalled many more details. She also made disparaging comments about GSA employees who cooperated in the investigation, calling them poor performers. She also implied that she'd be sure they would not receive promotions or bonuses in the future.

The fight between Congress and the White House over testimony from White House aides over the U.S. attorney firings has officially entered its second stage. The first stage, a stalemate punctuated by threats of subpoenas, lasted three months. The second stage is likely to last much longer.

We noted the subpoenas to Karl Rove's former aide Sara Taylor and former White House counsel Harriet Miers earlier today. You can see the subpoena for Miers here.

Also among the subpoenas issued this morning were subpoenas from the House and Senate judiciary committees to the White House for "all documents in the possession, custody or control of the White House" that relate to the U.S. attorney firings. You can see the two letters to White House counsel Fred Fielding from the committee chairmen today below.

As CNN reports, the subpoenas are likely to lead to a long fight:

Two Democratic congressional sources say they decided not to subpoena Rove because they are building their case by talking to and gathering information from lower level witnesses and officials, before they get to the more senior, more important witnesses.

"We want to build up and get documents to have basis to ask questions of Rove," one of the sources said. "It's the way you do it in any investigation."

Having said that, the source said the reality is that this will end up in a constitutional showdown and they will never get a chance to talk to any of the White House witnesses.

The documents aren't likely to be any easier to obtain. In both of their letters to White House counsel Fred Fielding today (see below), the chairmen excoriate the White House for stonewalling their investigations for three months. Fiedling has not wavered from his initial offer of interviews with Karl Rove and other aides only in private with no oath or transcript, an offer that also included an offer to turn over external emails -- emails between White House staffers and others outside the White House.

Both chairmen remind Fielding of that earlier offer, but Fielding has said before that the White House won't turn over anything unless it is part of a package deal, which would include Congress agreeing to the closed door, no transcript interviews -- something the chairmen refuse to do.

Update: Here's Laura's post from last month on the murky aftermath when a subpoena is contested.

Later Update: From the AP:

Technically, if the showdown between the White House and Congress is not resolved, the matter could end up with House and Senate contempt citations and a session in federal court.

Congressional officials knowledgeable about the probe painted a dark picture of what the Democratic-led committees might do if the White House refuses to comply.

One option, these officials said, are votes in committee and on the House and Senate floors on contempt citations against any subjects of the subpoenas who don't comply. Another, according to one aide, is a subpoena for White House Counsel Fred Fielding, compelling him to testify publicly about the Bush administration's reasons if the subpoenas are ignored. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the White House, Miers and Taylor had not yet responded to the subpoenas.

Read more »

Well, that didn't take long. Hours after Nick Burns told CNN that the administration has "irrefutable evidence" that Iran is arming the Taliban, Defense Secretary Bob Gates revised his June 4 remarks that the provenance of the Iranian weaponry is unclear. Here's Gates then:

There have been indications over the past few months of weapons coming in from Iran. We do not have any information about whether the government of Iran is supporting this, is behind it, or whether it's smuggling or exactly what's behind this, but there clearly is evidence that some weapons are coming into Afghanistan destined for the Taliban, but perhaps also for criminal elements involved in the drug trafficking coming from Iran.

“It’s pretty clear there is a fairly substantial flow of weapons (into Afghanistan),” he said. “I haven’t seen intelligence specifically to this effect, but I would say given the qualities we’re seeing, it’s difficult to believe it is associated with smuggling or the drug business or that it is taking place without the knowledge of the Iranian government.”

So it's now "difficult to believe" that Tehran might not be involved in the weapons shipments, despite the absence of any particular intelligence on the question. Gates has been the most prominent dissonant voice on Iran -- and the Middle East more broadly -- in the Bush administration, yet here he is, inching closer toward the line that Burns unveiled to CNN. How long before he cites his own "irrefutable evidence?"

In a statement echoing February's claims that the Iranian government was arming Iraqi terrorist groups, Nicholas Burns, the State Department's influential undersecretary for political affairs, told CNN today that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is arming the Taliban as well:

"There's irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this and it's a pattern of activity," U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told CNN.

"If you see the Iranians arming Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank and, of course, arming Shia militants inside Iraq itself [sic]. It's very violent and very unproductive activity by the Iranian government."

And one that puts Tehran contrary to the U.N. Security Council, Burns said.

Burns's comments come a little more than a week after Defense Secretary Bob Gates said that it wasn't yet certain whether the presence of Iranian weaponry in Afghanistan indicated a concerted strategy on the part of the Iranian government. Now, apparently, the evidence has become "irrefutable."

If Iran is in fact aiding the Taliban, it's aiding an old enemy. In 2001, according to a presidential rival to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Revolutionary Guard helped U.S.-backed Afghan fighters overthrow the Taliban. (U.S. intelligence officials have called the claim somewhat overblown.) The theory goes that now, Iran feels so threatened by U.S. forces on its borders in Iraq and Afghanistan that it will cast its lot in with whomever fights the Americans, despite old antipathies. It's known as "managed chaos." Muhammed Tahir, writing for the Jamestown Foundation, contends, "Iran has been increasing its operations in Afghanistan in an effort to gain influence with the contending insurgent factions and to hasten the departure of U.S. troops from the country."

It's a plausible enough theory, given that Iran remains surrounded by U.S. forces led by a bellicose administration, but it remains unclear what Burns's "irrefutable evidence" of Iranian strategy is, and how it represents an improvement over the evidence Gates possesses. Determining the ultimate provenance of Iranian weaponry is tricky. Last year, the Guardian reported that Iranian operatives were offering military support to Taliban-held areas in Afghanistan -- but most likely, those Iranians were Baluch seperatists fighting Tehran, rather than Iranian government agents. That's not to say that the Iranians aren't supplying the Taliban -- only that "irrefutable" evidence of who's arming who in Afghanistan is often more refutable than it might initially appear.

To add a bit more to this morning's post on increasing the end-strength of the Iraqi security forces: according to Major General Benjamin Mixon, commander of U.S. troops in the Iraqi north, members of those same security forces collaborated in the attack on the al-Askari shrine in Samarra. Mixon says he's going to reinforce Samarra -- with another Iraqi Army brigade.

The House and Senate judiciary committees will issue subpoenas to former Karl Rove aide Sara Taylor and former White House counsel Harriet Miers this morning, the AP is reporting.

The subpoenas follow fast on Justice Department emails turned over to Congress last night that fattened the already substantial case that the White House was intimately involved in installing Timothy Griffin, a former aide to Karl Rove as the U.S. attorney in Little Rock.

The Justice Department, in a letter vetted by the White House, wrote Congress back in February that Karl Rove didn't play "any role" in Griffin's nomination -- a statement the Department has since admitted was false. And how: emails have shown that Rove's aides worked closely with Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson at the Justice Department to get Griffin in the spot, and that Sampson, working with Rove's aides, plotted to keep Griffin in place despite objections from Arkansas' senators, stringing them along with the promise that another nomination would be made if Sens. Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) objected. A little-noticed provision in the USA PATRIOT Act enabled the attorney general to appoint U.S. attorneys for indefinite terms without Senate confirmation.

Sampson testified to congressional investigators that Taylor, formerly Rove's top aide (she resigned last month), was "upset" when Alberto Gonzales finally decided not to follow Sampson's plan in January. From a January 25th email, it appears that Taylor was still committed to Sampson's plan of stringing the senator's along at that late date. Reacting to a draft of a Justice Department letter to Sen. Pryor, Taylor wrote "I'm concerned we imply that we'll pull down Griffin's nomination should Pryor object."

The emails released last night show how worked up Taylor was about Griffin's nomination.

Read more »

Ali Mohammed Nasser Mohammed was approved for released from Guantanamo Bay in May 2006. Because of confusion over his nationality, Mohammed is still being held in Cuba over a year later. (Washington Post)

The FBI's terrorist watch list now contains over half a million names, raising the worry that the list is too large to be useful. (ABC's The Blotter)

After nine unsuccessful requests that the Justice Department voluntarily turn over documents about domestic surveillance, the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to authorize subpoenas for the information. (Think Progress)

Better late than never. The State Department has decided to start a center whose aim will be to counter the message of terrorists. (McClatchy Newspapers)

Read more »

As Donald Rumsfeld famously wrote in a different context, "the harder we work, the behinder we get." That could sum up the message given by the general formerly in charge of training Iraqi security forces to a House Armed Services Committee panel yesterday.

According to General Martin Dempsey, Iraq needs at least 50,000 more soldiers and policemen than the U.S. had previously estimated. Reports the Washington Post:

"Iraqi security forces will require growth in scope and scale similar to what we accomplished in 2007 in order to ensure sufficient force to protect the population throughout Iraq," Dempsey said, referring to this year's planned increase of more than 50,000 Iraqi soldiers and police. Otherwise, he said, U.S. forces will be locked into "tactical" jobs such as providing neighborhood security, and Iraqi security forces will face substantially higher risks when U.S. forces draw down.

One immediate goal, set this month by (General David) Petraeus, is to add 20,000 soldiers to the Iraqi army alone, so that each combat battalion will be filled to 120 percent of its official manpower. That number does not include tens of thousands more Iraqi soldiers who will be required to fill vacant slots in the country's army, which has an annual attrition rate of 15 to 18 percent.

Over the past four years, U.S. officials have repeatedly upped their assessments of needed Iraqi security forces. The Brookings Institution's Iraq Index notes that the desired end-strength of the Iraqi Army and Police by December 2006 was 325,000. (pdf) Iraqi forces currently stand at 348,000 -- a figure that includes a whole lot of no-shows:

He pointed out that when units showed up in Baghdad at 50 percent strength for their 90-day rotations, the American officers were upset, but "senior military leaders of the Iraqi government were kind of pleased that they had gotten 50 percent to come." ...

Similar problems, including "ghost" personnel, afflict the police, Dempsey said. Of the 32,000 Iraqi police lost from the U.S.-and-foreign-trained force of 188,000 in the 18 months before January, more than 14,000 were killed or severely wounded, 5,000 deserted, and the rest are "unaccounted for," he said.

One obvious reason for the increased estimate in needed forces is that the security situation isn't a fixed picture. Building an army and a police force takes time. But as Iraqi forces get closer to meeting their U.S.-mandated goals, Iraq's myriad political-security picture deteriorates. Just today, for instance, terrorists again attacked the al-Askari shrine in Samarra. Given that an attack on the Shiite shrine in 2006 has been cited by President Bush as the catalyst for Iraq's current sectarian war, it can be expected that the new attack -- and those like it in the future -- will yield reprisal attacks on Sunnis, increased political acrimony and a further decrease in general public safety. To date, the answer given by U.S. officials to the problem is -- you guessed it -- a needed increase in the size of Iraq's security forces. And the cycle repeats itself.

UPDATE: This post originally stated that the al-Askari shrine was attacked yesterday; I regret the error.

Accusations continue to swarm about a British defense corporation's alleged kickbacks over 20 years to Prince Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States.

Last week, the BBC and the Guardian reported that BAE Systems, the world's fourth-largest defense company, paid approximately $2 billion to an Saudi account in the now-defunct Riggs Bank controlled by Bandar as part of Britain's largest-ever defense deal. That purchase, known as al-Yamamah, brought Britain over $80 billion in Saudi money in return for BAE-manufactured aircrat in 1985, and has been a fruitful target for UK scandal-watchers ever since. Tony Blair personally scotched an investigation by his government's Serious Fraud Office into the alleged kickbacks in December, and he reaffirmed that decision last week when the Bandar allegations broke, saying, "I don't believe the investigation would have led to anywhere except to the complete wreckage of a vital interest to our country."

Both Bandar and BAE strongly maintain their innocence. BAE claims that paying the money into the Saudis' Riggs accounts was an above-board investment in "local advice, capabilities and guidance" in order to ensure the purchase went smoothly. Bandar's lawyers released a statement saying that the prince was an "authorized signatory" to the accounts, which were controlled by the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Defense and Aviation (MODA), and any withdrawals were used "exclusively for purposes approved by MODA." Bandar's father, Prince Sultan, is the Saudi defense minister.

Following lengthy investigations by the Treasury Department and the Senate, in 2005, Riggs Bank, once one of the most prestigious banks in the U.S., admitted its guilt in numerous money laundering schemes involving, among others the Saudi Embassy to Washington (which Bandar helmed), former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and the government of Equitorial Guinea. According to this week's Newsweek, Riggs's documentation of its Saudi accounts may contain clues about what Banda