Two Democratic state legislators in Alaska wrote to three major oil companies today asking whether they were involved in Veco's bribe-laden lobbying effort last year on an oil tax law.

Former Veco CEO Bill Allen pleaded guilty to bribing officials to get a reduction in the tax rate for oil companies, hoping it would encourage them to build a lucrative pipeline. During the trial of former state Rep. Pete Kott (R-AK) last week, the prosecution played a tape of Allen telling ConocoPhillips President Jim Bowles about the lobbying effort. On the tape, Allen is heard saying, "Hey Jim, I told you we would-between-with Pete Kott and Ben we wouldn't have a bill. I know you're probably talking to someone else, but remember what I told you. We got it done."

In their letter, the two state lawmakers asked for reassurance from the oil companies that they were not involved:

We do not know if anyone at Conoco Phillips, or any of the oil companies engaged in criminal conduct, and do not suggest such conduct occurred. But we have an obligation to the public to make sure we receive reliable assurances that nobody from your companies participated in the improper influence peddling attempts made in 2005 and 2006.

Ross Feinstein, spokesman for Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, e-mails this response to TPMmuckraker's reporting on McConnell's account of the emergency-warrant controversy for Iraqi insurgents who kidnapped U.S. troops in May.

The point you are missing is that a delay occurred. The Intelligence Community works in a real time environment; seconds do count here. Prior to August 5th, 2007 (the day when the Protect America Act was enacted), using this case, we had to go out and prove probable cause [72 Hour Provision]. We should not have to prove probable cause, and/or obtain a court order for foreign to foreign communications overseas.

In reference to the 72 Hour Provision, one still needs to have probable cause before getting the emergency authorization. Felony penalties can be imposed on those who do not prove probable cause.

The Protect America Act has alleviated this issue. As of August 5th, the Intelligence Community now does not need to go through such a process to conduct surveillance of Iraqi Insurgents, and other foreign to foreign communication overseas that may pass through the United States.

Many individuals have said this is a "common sense case," - that U.S. soldiers have been taken hostage, and we need to start conducting surveillance on these Iraqi Insurgents, in order to find our soldiers. We agree, it sounds like a "common sense case," but the law is the law.

But the "point" isn't that the delay occurred, since the delay isn't in dispute. The point is why -- whether it was because the FISA Court's ruling demanded it, or whether an elective Bush administration set of protocols forced it. To get at that issue, I posed a few further questions to Feinstein.

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I just got off the phone with Terry Heide, the congressional liaison for State Department Inspector General Howard "Cookie" Krongard. Earlier today, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote to Krongard alleging that Heide had threatened two IG investigators, Ron Militana and Brian Rubendall, after they agreed to go on the record to Waxman's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee with accounts of Krongard stifling corruption investigations. "I categorically deny any and all of it," Heide said. "I did not intimidate them or threaten retaliation. I don't have the power to fire people."

According to Waxman's letter, Heide allegedly told Militana and Rubendall that they should only cooperate with Republican staffers on the committee -- a charge she says isn't true. "I am a career civil servant," Heide said, not a partisan appointee.

The letter's account comes from Militana's notes of the September 25 conversation with Heide and a lawyer from the department counsel's office. Militana alleges that Heide told him and Rubendall that if they cooperated with the investigation, "“You have no protection against reprisal. You have no whistleblower protections. Howard could retaliate and you would have no recourse.” ... “Howard can fire you. It would affect your ability to get another job.”"

In response, Heide told me that "First and foremost, I told them to cooperate" with the investigation. When asked to explain how Militana could say that Heide had instructed them only to cooperate with the GOP staff, she replied "I can't." According to Heide, "there was a lot more said [at the September 25 meeting] that they did not include" to Waxman's committee, but she said she would not elaborate, since "these individuals have filed for whistleblower protection."

Before ending our conversation, Heide said that Waxman's office did not contact her for her side of the story before releasing today's letter accusing her of threatening Militana and Rubendall. "Waxman has hurt me personally and professionally," Heide said.

Waxman could not immediately be reached for comment.

Looks like Cookie isn't so sweet toward those who'd talk to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Earlier this month, committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote a scathing letter to State Department Inspector General Howard "Cookie" Krongard, accusing him of scuttling inquiries about corrupt contractors working on State's dime in Iraq and Afghanistan. The basis for Waxman's claims came from former employees John DeNona and Ralph McNamara, who resigned after Krongard slow-walked or obstructed their investigations. But Waxman was also assisted by current Krongard staffers who had a bad taste left in their mouths from Krongard's unorthodox approach to due diligence.

Those two staffers are Special Agent Ron Militana and Assistant Special Agent in Charge Brian Rubendall. Both are career federal investigators who agreed to go on the record with their accounts of Krongard's misconduct. And their boss held them in high esteem: Krongard called Militana "one of my best investigators." But after Waxman sent his letter to Krongard, his staff threatened their careers, according to a new letter to Cookie just released by Waxman's office.

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Despite a reported FBI investigation and the surrounding controversy, developers in Florida really want to hang on to their hard-earned $10 million Coconut Road earmark from Rep. Don Young (R-AK). And yet everything seems to come back to Young one way or the other.

Real estate developers, led by Daniel Aronoff, who raised $40,000 in campaign contributions for Young are pushing the Metropolitan Planning Organization in Lee County to overturn a recent vote to send the money back to Congress in hopes of having it reallocated for a more popular project. The MPO vote came after it learned that the earmark had been changed after Congress voted on the bill. A new vote could take place at an MPO meeting today.

Florida consultant Joe Mazurkiewicz, a Young campaign contributor and outspoken proponent of the Coconut Road project, emailed the MPO yesterday a memo drafted by a Washington lawyer named Jack Schenendorf. The memo plays down the significance of the Coconut Road earmark change, pointing to another section of the 1,200 page bill where "Jacksonville" was changed to "Jacksonville, FL." (As we've already reported, there were no edits of any of the other 6,000 earmarks in the bill that would have changed where money was directed, aside from Coconut Road.)

The email and memo leave the impression that Schenendorf is a disinterested observer:

Attached you will find a Bio and Statement by Jack Schenehdorf, an attorney with Covington and Burling covering the I 75 Coconut Road Interchange Project. This man’s experience and reputation is without equal regarding Federal transportation issues and funding.

It turns out that Agripartners, a company owned by the same Daniel Aronoff, hired Schenendorf to write the memo, which Agripartners acknowledged in a statement issued last night. Schenendorf is a former chief of staff of the House Transportation Committee which Young is now a member and once chaired and has contributed to Young's campaign fun (albeit only $1,500).

Update: The MPO just voted to reject the Young earmark again.

It only took, oh, seven years and up to $6 billion in potentially-criminal contracting fraud, but Congress is finally set to create an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last night, the Senate unanimously approved an amendment to the defense authorization bill (not the appropriations bill, as I mistakenly wrote earlier this week) drafted by freshman Democratic Senators Jim Webb and Claire McCaskill that creates an eight-member commission studying a plethora of contractor-related issues. Waste, fraud and abuse is only the start. The commission will also look at how the federal government contracts for "security and intelligence functions" in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some defense experts believe that the overreliance on contract security is counterproductive to U.S. counterinsurgency efforts.

The commission will deliver a report after the 2008 election -- on January 15, 2009 -- containing "specific recommendations" for improvements to the contracting process. It will seek to determine which functions contracted out are "inherently governmental" -- a key concern for critics of outsourced security and intelligence priorities. While the primary product from the commission will be its report, it has the authority to refer potential criminal charges resulting from its inquiry to the Attorney General for prosecution.

However, the commission no longer has direct subpoena power, which was provided in an earlier version of the amendment, and which had drawn concern from Sen. John Warner (R-VA). In the final version, if the commission has difficulty acquiring information from any federal agency, it's to report that difficulty to Congress, and rely on Congressional subpoena power to resolve any deadlock. However, the bill essentially makes the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) into the commission's staff on the ground in Iraq, and a similar body will do the same in Afghanistan. SIGIR has subpoena power for both federal agencies and contractors. The bill's authors considered the subpoena-power change, made to satisfy some GOP concerns, to be reasonable.

President Bush is likely to sign the defense authorization into law, but concerns have been raised over the inclusion of a hate-crimes amendment, which might attract the president's veto.

Update: This post has been corrected.

What were administration lawyers debating for four hours after the NSA said it had sufficient basis for an emergency FISA warrant in the Iraqi insurgent-kidnapping case?

The three soldiers were reported missing on May 12, 20007. According to the timeline that Adm. Mike McConnell provided to the House intelligence committee, on May 14, the day before the emergency-surveillance controversy, intelligence officials approached the FISA Court for an amendment to a "then-current order" that had "some bearing" on the kidnapping crisis. The court apparently granted the amendment "that day." That, at least, suggests that even if the FISA Court had expanded, generically, FISA's protections to foreigners' communications passing through the U.S., the court was willing to work with the intelligence community to ensure that necessary surveillance could take place.

But presumably the NSA still didn't have enough material to satisfy probable cause on the insurgent communications on May 14, hard as that is to believe. The next morning, May 15, administration officials met to discuss surveillance, and by 12:53 a.m., the NSA's chief lawyer established that there was sufficient evidence for an emergency FISA warrant "for the remaining collection inside the U.S." By that, the lawyer means that the NSA needs a warrant to capture whatever insurgent communications pass through U.S. communication switches, and by about 1 pm, believed there was sufficient probable cause to justify an emergency warrant. It's likely that whatever other information the NSA had collected, it had done so through monitoring Iraq-to-Iraq communications that didn't pass through the U.S. or had gotten a measure of coverage through the aforementioned FISA Court amendment.

Yet according to the timeline, for the next four hours, administration officials "discussed legal and operational issues" about the surveillance. That's the critical delay, in all likelihood. Once NSA considers that probable cause for an emergency warrant has been met, why didn't the NSA contact the Justice Department's FISA office, the Office of Intelligence and Policy Review, and get an emergency warrant through to the Attorney General for his signature? McConnell told Congress that even with the emergency warrant in place, it still takes time to acquire sufficient material to meet an after-the-fact probable cause determination. But in a real emergency -- and the kidnapping of U.S troops in Iraq would seem to count as one -- it's hard to imagine why that review couldn't have occurred parallel to the surveillance, especially when the NSA says the lion's share of the probable cause is there.

OIPR got the NSA material at 5:15. It took another two hours to locate the Attorney General, who was in Texas to give a speech to U.S. attorneys. By then, however, it appears the crucial delay had already occurred.

Brent Wilkes has a court date today where we'll find out if his trial will proceed next week as scheduled, in the wake of the blitz of subpoenas his lawyer served to 12 members of Congress and had issued for some senators and high-ranking administration officials, The Hill reports. It looks unlikely that the trial will forge on, on time.

A hearing is scheduled for Monday on the House's motion to quash the subpoenas to the congressmen.

The House general counsel’s motion rejected the subpoenas for “a host of reasons,” primarily because the information sought is protected under the Speech and Debate Clause, which bars members of Congress from being investigated for work related to legislative activity.

The motion notes that in Hunter’s and Lewis’s cases, the subpoenas sought documents related to appropriations, authorizations and earmark requests in three categories: a) those pertaining to programs of interest to Cunningham and Wilkes, b) documents related to Wilkes’s bribery of Cunningham, Hunter or Lewis, and c) documents “evidencing bribes ‘offered to you or accepted by you.’”

Hunter and Lewis have no documents responsive to categories B or C, the motion said, although Hunter “may have” some documents responsive to category A.

We've obtained Adm. Mike McConnell's timeline for the delay in surveillance on Iraqi insurgents who had kidnapped U.S. troops. You can read it here in our Document Collection.

56. Blackwater has been involved in 56 shootings this year while guarding American diplomats. Because so little information has been released on this subject, it is hard to comment on the significance of this number. For a comparison of apples and oranges, DynCorp International reported only 10 shootings in 1,500 convoy runs last year. (NY Times)

Childrens are a difficult word, and you cannot fault the President for each and every grammatical errors. But when the administration who support him try to cover up his failings, they make for good entertainment. Checks it out here. (WSJ's Washington Wire)

Last week President Bush said he had been unaware of the oil deal between Hunt Oil and the Kurdistan Regional Government and needed to look into the matter before he would comment. Now, a senior state department official in Baghdad has spoken (off the record) about the fact that the deal "needlessly elevated tensions" and undermines U.S. efforts to unify Iraq and strengthen its central government. The official added that Hunt Oil (whose CEO is a close Bush friend) was warned in advance, that the deal is "legally uncertain." (NYT, AFP)

Stevens' Bridge to Nowhere has finally been scrapped. But don't worry about those poor Alaskan islanders. Stevens has now requested that the Navy build a high speed ferry to shuttle people back and forth at the bargain price of $85 million. Never mind that the Navy had originally estimated costs of half of that, or that the original ferry was scrapped because it was a low priority. (USA TODAY)

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It's not just the State Department that maintains a cozy relationship with Blackwater despite the September 16 Nisour Square shooting. Yesterday the U.S. military's Transportation Command awarded a Blackwater affiliate a $92 million contract for aviation-related services for U.S. military flights between the archipelago of bases we're using in South Asia.

Presidential Airways, Inc., an aviation Worldwide Services company (d/b/a Blackwater Aviation), Moyock, N.C., is being awarded an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) type contract for $92,000,000.00. The contractor is to provide all fixed-wing aircraft, personnel, equipment, tools, material, maintenance and supervision necessary to perform passenger, cargo and combi Short Take-Off and Landing air transportation services between locations in the Area of Responsibility of Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. This contract was competitively procured and two timely offers were received. The performance period is from 1 October 2007 to 30 September 2011. The United States Transportation Command Acquisition Directorate, Scott Air Force Base, Ill., is the contracting activity (HTC7 11 -08-D-0010).

(Thx to reader BG.)

Over the past week, we've been reporting that U.S. government sources have disputed Mike McConnell's account to Congress that FISA Court rulings unreasonably delayed surveillance on Iraqi insurgents who kidnapped U.S. troops this spring. The sources blamed cumbersome bureaucratic hurdles for the delay, not the court, and questioned why obtaining an emergency surveillance order -- good for 72 hours before approval by a judge -- should have taken so long to acquire.

Late yesterday, under pressure from House intelligence committee chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), McConnell's office released a timeline of events that seems to vindicate our reporting. According to Pamela Hess of the Associated Press:

The timeline, obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, showed that the Bush administration held "internal deliberations" on the "novel and complicated issues" presented by the emergency FISA request for more than four hours after the National Security Agency's top lawyer had approved it.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, last week blamed the delay on unnecessary bureaucracy within the Justice Department. Justice Department and U.S. intelligence officials dispute that, and say the NSA decision alone was not legally sufficient to authorize an emergency request.

"It's not a done deal at that point," Dean Boyd, a spokesman for Justice Department, said Thursday. "We believed we needed additional information and needed to resolve novel legal questions before we were satisfied we could take this to the attorney general."

Another two hours passed when Justice Department officials had trouble tracking down Alberto Gonzales, then the attorney general. He was speaking at a conference of U.S. attorneys in Texas.

Justice Department officials had to make several phone calls to Gonzales' staff before they were able to speak directly with him to get his authorization for the surveillance, according to the timeline.

The delay resulted in the death of one of the kidnapped soldiers.

The State Department's "first blush" investigation into the September 16 shootings at Baghdad's Nisour Square, which left 11 Iraqi civilians dead at the hands of Blackwater security contractors, largely absolves Blackwater of blame for the incident.

According to the initial account by the Baghdad office of State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, a car bomb detonated 25 yards away from a Blackwater detail accompanying a U.S. diplomatic convoy leaving a "financial compound" and heading for the Green Zone. Two other teams were dispatched from the Green Zone to assist in the diplomat's extraction. As the third team approached Nisour Square, it came under fire from between eight to ten assailants, who "fired from multiple nearby locations, with some aggressors dressed in civilian apparel and others in Iraqi police uniforms," the report states, as provided to The Washington Post.

The chaos did not stop there.

Separately, a U.S. official familiar with the investigation said that participants in the shooting have reported that at least one of the Blackwater guards drew a weapon on his colleagues and screamed for them to "stop shooting." This account suggested that there was some effort to curb the shooting, with at least one Blackwater guard believing it had spiraled out of control. "Stop shooting -- those are the words that we're hearing were used," the official said.

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Prosecutors subpoenaed Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) for 11 years-worth of records as part of the ongoing Abramoff investigation, the AP reports:

Prosecutors recently demanded documents from Doolittle and five staffers, the congressman said. The subpoenas seek "virtually every record including legislative records" for the past 11 years, Doolittle's attorney David Barger said in a news release issued Thursday by the congressman's office.

"These efforts raise serious constitutional issues going to the very core of our separation of powers created by the Founding Fathers," Barger said.

The Constitution prohibits the executive branch from using its law enforcement powers to interfere with legislative business. Barger said he and Doolittle would "be vigilant" to ensure Congress' independence is "vigorously protected." Any court challenge would go before a federal judge, but the documents would be sealed.

The standoff could lead to a court battle like the William Jefferson (R-LA) case over the speech and debate clause. When a federal court called the FBI's decision to take legislative documents out of Jefferson's office unconstitutional, watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Melanie Sloan said it was a great day for corrupt lawmakers.

The Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act is a bill that you wouldn't think anyone could possibly be against. And yet, the Republican leadership in the Senate has gone to considerable lengths to stop it -- recently by brazenly insisting on an amendment that would effectively discourage groups from filing ethics complaints against senators. Without that amendment, which Democrats reasonably call a poison pill designed to sink the bill, Republicans say it's not going anywhere.

Here's what the bill would do. Candidates for the Senate file paper versions of their campaign disclosure reports. The bill would require those reports to be filed electronically. That's it.

The House moved to that system six years ago -- which is why it's called the campaign disclosure "parity" act. The bill has forty co-sponsors, among them conservative Republicans, such as Sens. Thad Cochran (R-MS) and John Cornyn (R-TX). A cynic might say that the only rational reason for opposing the bill would be if you wanted to make it harder for people to discover who's been giving to your campaign.

When the bill came to the floor this spring, it was blocked twice by an anonymous Republican senator, using what's called a "secret hold." (Here's our hunt last summer for those behind secret holders on another bill.) But that tactic was forbidden by the Democrats' recent ethics bill, and so when the bill came up again earlier this week, the senator who came forward to block it identified himself. It was Sen. John Ensign (R-NV).

Only Ensign didn't say that he was blocking it. In fact he said that he has "no objection" to the bill. But he insisted on offering an amendment. His bill would require all non-profits that file ethics complaints against senators to disclose all donors who gave $5,000 or more. His bill, he said on the floor, was designed to "protect individual Senators from purely politically motivated ethics complaints that come against us that sometimes we will have to run up legal bills and all kinds of other things." Without any evident irony he added: "transparency is the best way to do it."

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After giving the press "no comments" since the FBI raided his home in August, Sen Ted Stevens (R-AK) finally spoke yesterday. And what did he have to say? Stevens told a Fairbanks Daily News Miner reporter that he's on "frosty" terms with Gov. Sarah Palin (R), and she should think carefully about how she spends Alaska's federal bridge to nowhere money.

Short about $329 million to build the bridge that would have connected an island of 50 people to a more densely populated, neighboring island, Palin told transportation officials to direct the $200 million to an alternative project like an upgraded ferry system.

Stevens worries the federal government might want the money back, even though the language that targeted the money to the project was stripped from the bill after it became a scandal. Alaska got the money just the same, however, and Stevens has never admitted defeat.

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Also in Waxman's report on the 2004 lynching of Blackwater contractors in Fallujah is an expletive-laden internal assessment of the quality of the company's Baghdad shop at the time.

One Blackwater employee described it as "flat out a sloppy f**king operation" and further stated:

The caliber of most of the people here is not what it needs to be. More training, more discipline, and a more selective screening process are needed. ... Some of these lazy f**ks care about one thing, money. I suggest if you continue to employ that kind of trash, that you develop a way to use "their money" as a way to get them to do some f**king work. This "I'm not in the military any more, I can do as I please/ I know I can't afford to loose [sic] more guys" bulls**t is a non-starter.

Waxman is holding hearings next week on Blackwater and Iraq contracting corruption issues. It'll be interesting to hear Blackwater explain how its standards have improved from 2004 to 2007. After all, they've gotten more State Department work than any other contractor, so they must be getting better -- right?

Right on the heels of a Brookings Institution report detailing the problems private military companies create for counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has released a study finding that Blackwater improperly prepared its contractors for traveling through Fallujah in March 2004 -- a trip that proved to be fatal.

Internal Blackwater reviews and eyewitness accounts obtained by Waxman's oversight committee conclude that the company sent its four employees to Fallujah in what one disgusted Blackwater colleague called "unarmored, underpowered vehicles." The day before the ambush, Blackwater's Baghdad operations manager complained to the company's North Carolina headquarters that he was in dire need of weapons, ammunition, communications equipment and "hard cars." Yet Waxman's report (pdf) cites another employee who says Blackwater opted to go with "soft skin" -- that is, unarmored vehicles -- "due to the cost."

But it wasn't just the cost. Blackwater's reliance on unarmored vehicles was part of a scheme to undercut a competitor, the Kuwaiti company Regency Hotel & Hospital, in order to gain control of a contract Regency held with ESS Support Services Worldwide, which in turn had valuable contracts with Kellogg, Brown & Root and Fluor.

Several reports by Blackwater personnel in Baghdad and Kuwait indicate that Blackwater never intended to armor its vehicles, which included Honda Pilot SUVs, but instead force Regency into purchasing new vehicles or risk losing its role on the ESS contract. ... A second Blackwater employee reported that he was told to "string these guys along and run this Honda thing into the ground" because "if we stalled long enough they (Regency) would have no choice but to buy armored cars, or to default on the contract, and ESS might go directly to Blackwater for security."

As if serving subpoenas on twelve members of the House wasn't enough, Brent Wilkes' lawyers apparently issued subpoenas to a number of senators and administration figures as well, it was disclosed today. At least two of those subpoenas, however, have not been served yet.

In a filing today by the House's lawyers seeking to quash the twelve subpoenas, the House's general counsel reveals that he'd been advised by an investigator for Wilkes' lawyer Mark Geragos earlier this month that subpoenas had also been issued to:

-- Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID)
-- Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
-- Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI)
-- Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
-- White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten
-- Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
-- Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England.

A spokesperson for Sen. Levin said that he had not been served with a subpoena, and a spokesman for Sen. Rockefeller said the same, adding that the Senate legal counsel had told him that they hadn't received anything. So it may be that Geragos has decided to hold off serving those additional subpoenas, at least for now. (Update: Sen. Craig's spokesman also said that he had not been served. Later Update: Ditto for Sen. Inouye.)

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During a time of significant military overstretch, private security companies hired by the Defense Department have been actively recruiting U.S. troops. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate Appropriations Committee that he's considering no-recruit clauses for future contracts in order to ensure retention doesn't suffer.

"My personal concern about some of these security contracts is that I worry that sometimes the salaries they are able to pay in fact lures some of our soldiers out of the service to go to work for them," he said.

Gates said he was seeking legal advice on whether a "non-compete" clause could be put into security contracts that limits this problem.

Hard data measuring the direct effect contractor recruitment has on military retention is difficult, since retention rates don't factor in reasons for leaving. However, says contractor expert P.W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, there's a flurry of anecdotal evidence that contractor recruitment is intense. "Military folks talk about getting business cards handed to them while in Iraq," he says. Additionally, the impact of contractor recruitment can be seen in the recently-raised retention bonuses that the Defense Department has offered re-upping troops: "There are competing offers out there now."

The problem is particularly acute in specialty disciplines, like Special Operations and explosive ordnance disposal, which contractors consider particularly lucrative. (Blackwater is staffed by many veterans of the Special Operations community, and its founder, Erik Prince, is an ex-Navy SEAL.) A recent study Singer directed at Brookings on military readiness, titled "Bent But Not Broken," found that elite military units have had greater difficulty than the general services in meeting their enlisted-personnel goals. Clearly, not all of that can be attributed to contractor influence, but "it's a factor among other reasons," he says.

As expected, the House of Representatives' general counsel filed a motion yesterday arguing that none of the 12 lawmakers subpoenaed by Brent Wilkes should have to show.

Wilkes, remember, is on the hook for allegedly bribing Duke Cunningham. When pressed by the House's lawyers, his lawyer refused to reveal the method behind the madness, only insisting that all 12 lawmakers show up to testify at Wilkes' trial.

The House's lawyers argued that the information sought by Wilkes is "absolutely privileged" under the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution.

To add one thing to what the Boss observed about Blackwater being involved in the most shooting incidents of any State Department contractor, consider these two excerpts from The New York Times' piece today. First:

The State Department keeps reports on each case in which weapons were fired by security personnel guarding American diplomats in Iraq. Officials familiar with the internal State Department reports would not provide the actual statistics, but they indicated that the records showed that Blackwater personnel were involved in dozens of episodes in which they had resorted to force.

The officials said that Blackwater’s incident rate was at least twice that recorded by employees of DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, the two other United States-based security firms that have been contracted by the State Department to provide security for diplomats and other senior civilians in Iraq.

And then this:

Last year, the State Department gave Blackwater the lead role in diplomatic security in Iraq, reducing the roles of DynCorp and Triple Canopy.

Blackwater workers in Iraq outnumber those for the other two contractors by more than 2 to 1.

However aggressively Blackwater operates, the State Department clearly approves. No wonder experts consider pointing a finger exclusively at the company to be misleading.

State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard isn't just in trouble at work. Yesterday, Krongard's son sought a restraining order against his father. The two are currently engaged in a lawsuit over a defaulted home loan, and the inspector general has been sending threatening and "unprofessional" emails to his son. (Washington Post)

A district court has ruled that the FISA Act, as extended under the Patriot Act is unconstitutional, as it allows the government to collect information in violation of the 4th Amendment. Key line from the judge: "For over 200 years, this Nation has adhered to the rule of law - with unparalleled success. A shift to a Nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised." (Boston Globe)

Strike three and you're out? Yesterday, the House oversight committee held its third hearing on Walter Reed, and the GAO issued a report on the same topic. Witnesses for the DOD informed Congress that it will take at least eight months to complete major improvements in the mental health care of soldiers and the GAO report shows that disability payments are delayed on average of 177 days. The Army's own stats show that the level of mental health care in the war zone is the lowest since 2004. (USA Today, Politico)

A Texas court upheld its own decision to dismiss conspiracy charges against former Rep. Tom "The Hammer" Delay (R-TX). Delay still faces charges of money laundering. (AP)

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Four years into the occupation, it's time to set some ground rules. Increased oversight of Pentagon contractors in Iraq is on the way, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday.

A fact-finding team Gates sent to Iraq over the weekend found that U.S. military commanders aren't clear about what their authority is over contractors suspected of wrongdoing, a Pentagon official told The Los Angeles Times. As a result, orders issued by Gates' deputy, Gordon England, specify that military officials can "disarm, apprehend and detain DoD contractors suspected of having committed a felony offense."

Several in the private-security industry nevertheless bridled at the prospect of being on the business end of a U.S.-issued M4 rifle. Reports Sharon Behn of The Washington Times:

Gary Myers, an Austin, Texas, lawyer who has defended both contractors and U.S. military personnel — including Sgt. Evan Vela, the soldier accused in a recent sniper-baiting case — disagreed. "Attempting to impose the military justice system on civilians is foolhardy, he said. "It raises more questions than it answers, and is probably constitutionally deficient with respect to civilians."

Such prosecution would subject civilians to trial before a jury of uniformed personnel, not their peers, for actions not usually considered crimes, such as disobedience of an order.

"These men and women [would] now become recognized as a stealth army, and that is an admission that this nation does not need," he said.

Gates' moves don't apply to State Department contractors like Blackwater, which is under pressure after the September 16 Nisour Square incident that left 11 Iraqi civilians dead. And the contrast between State and Defense's approach to security contractors is increasingly on display. In a statement yesterday, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte defended both Blackwater and his agency's oversight of the company, which Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has questioned:

He said the agency provided "close in-country supervision" of the firm.

"I personally was grateful for the presence of my Blackwater security detail, largely comprised of ex-Special Forces and other military, when I served as ambassador to Iraq," he said.

Hopefully we're about to get closer to learning how Rep. Don Young's (R-AK) $10 million Coconut Road earmark made its famous post-vote change. A Washington watchdog group filed a complaint today with the House ethics committee asking for an investigation into the drastic edit, calling it "an extraordinary case of the House of Representatives’ integrity being undermined."

You can read the complaint here.

Ryan Alexander, executive director for the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense, said her group filed the request for an investigation because in reviewing thousands of earmarks, they have never come across one that was altered after a Congressional vote.

"We don't have any information that this has ever happened before," Alexander said. "We thought this was extraordinary enough that it was worth asking someone to get to the bottom of it. The ethics committee is in the position to do that, to get the relevant information from committee staff and members of Congress."

Initially, Congress approved a bill that would have given Florida $10 million for a highway widening project, but as we've explained before, during a 13-day window between the bill passing Congress and the President signing it into law, the earmark changed. It was the only such change among 6,000 earmarks in a pork-filled bill. The new Coconut Road wording redirected the money to a project that would be a boon to a real estate developer and major campaign contributor of Young's.

The timing of the change could mean that the earmark or the transportation bill itself may not have the effect of law, the watchdog group alleges in its complaint:

The actions taken by Rep. Young’s staff to change an earmark after final Congressional approval is an apparent violation of Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution, that provides, “Every Bill shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate,” before it becomes a law.

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Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) on news that von Spakovsky will be heading to the full Senate for confirmation:

“I strongly oppose the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky to serve a full term at the Federal Election Commission. His record of poor management, divisiveness, and inappropriate partisanship makes him an unacceptable nominee to the FEC. I am particularly concerned with his efforts to undermine voting rights at the Civil Rights Division during his tenure at the Department of Justice. The FEC needs strong, impartial leadership that will promote integrity in our election system. Hans von Spakovsky is not the right person for the job, and I call on President Bush to send Congress a new nominee.”

Another triumph for the State Department!

You'll recall that yesterday, Rep. Henry Waxman wrote to Condoleezza Rice to complain, among other things, that her department promptly classified internal assessments of corruption in the Iraqi government when it learned that his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sought them out. Among those documents: an 80-page U.S. Embassy-Baghdad report on pervasive Iraqi corruption leaked to The Nation's David Corn.

As it turns out, Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists obtained a copy of the document last week -- before State had it classified -- and posted it on the FAS webpage. Click here to read the document that State doesn't want Waxman -- or, for that matter, you -- to read.

Here's a characteristic excerpt:

In his letter yesterday, Waxman called State's newfound realization that the document's release will jeopardize national security "absurd."

It's a pretty belated idea -- what with $6 billion worth of Pentagon contracts under criminal investigation -- but today, freshman Democratic Sens. Jim Webb and Claire McCaskill are introducing an amendment to the defense appropriations bill creating an independent, bipartisan commission to study the contracting process for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The eight-member commission would be staffed by appointees of the Congressional leadership, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense. From a joint press release release:

The Commission will study and investigate the extent and impact of this growing reliance on civilian contractors to perform wartime functions. Its focus will encompass the policies, procedures, processes, and performance associated with wartime contracting and contracts. It also will assess the extent of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement, and the extent to which those responsible have been held financially and legally accountable. The appropriateness of agencies’ structure, policies, and processes for wartime and contingency contracts also will be assessed.

That's not all.

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As I reported yesterday, the Senate Rules Committee met this morning about the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky to the Federal Elections Commission.

This morning's result: faced with the defection of a Democrat on the committee, later revealed to be Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) chose to agree to send all four nominees, two Democrats and two Republicans, to the floor without recommendation. In other words, the committee did not vote to approve von Spakovsky, but he got through nonetheless.

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A forthcoming study by private-military contractor expert P.W. Singer obtained by TPMmuckraker finds that Blackwater and other private security firms in Iraq are detrimental to U.S. counterinsurgency efforts.

Singer, author of the landmark book Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, goes beyond the current Blackwater imbroglio to criticize the entire system for security contracting in Iraq. He finds that even though private military firms represent a hindrance to counterinsurgency objectives, the privatization boom beginning in the 1980s has left the U.S. military functionally dependent on the companies for numerous combat operations and logistics tasks. Private military companies have become "the ultimate enabler" for military commitments, Singer writes in "Can't Win With 'Em, Can't Go To War Without 'Em: Private Military Contractors and Counter-Insurgency," allowing a politically cost-free way for the U.S. to go to war in Iraq without a massive call-up of reserve forces.

What the contracting industry diminishes in political cost it compounds in actual cost to counterinsurgency. Iraqis view private companies like Blackwater as lawless, and they have no reason to distinguish between private contractors and U.S. troops -- thereby compounding the danger to U.S. forces from infuriated Iraqis.

A real world example illustrates how this process plays out. An Iraqi is driving in Baghdad, on his way to work. A convoy of black-tinted SUVs comes down the highway at him, driving in his lane, but in the wrong direction. They are honking their horns at the oncoming traffic and firing machine gun bursts into the road and in front of any vehicle that gets too close. He veers to the side of the road. As the SUVs drive by, Western-looking men in sunglasses point machine guns at him.

Over the course of the day, that Iraqi civilian might tell X people about how "The Americans almost killed me today, and all I was doing was trying to get to work." Y is the number of other people that convoy ran off the road on its run that day. Z is the number of convoys in Iraq that day. Multiply X times Y times Z times 365 and you have a mathematical equation for how to lose a counterinsurgency in a year. (And that assumes he doesn't tell his mom or wife about the incident, upon which they are likely to tell the entire neighborhood about how the Americans almost killed their boy/husband, multiplying the equation further.)

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Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International has listed Iraq as the third-most corrupt nation on the planet. Somehow, Haiti, winner of the 2006 Corruption World Cup (Iraq won the bronze that year, too) is no longer as corrupt as Baghdad.

The ranking comes as the State Department has barred its anti-corruption officials from publicly testifying to the House oversight committee about how bad the corruption situation is in Iraq. Maybe that goes a ways toward explaining why Transparency International considers 19 countries less corrupt than the United States.

Via Kevin Whitelaw of U.S. News.

From the AP:

John Rizzo, the president's choice to become the CIA's general counsel, asked President Bush to withdraw his name, saying it would be in his best interest and that of the agency where he has worked for 32 years....

Rizzo, currently serving as the CIA's interim general counsel, told a Senate panel in June that he did not object to a 2002 memo authorizing interrogation techniques that stop just short of inflicting pain equal to that accompanying organ failure or even death.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who led the opposition to Rizzo, called him the wrong man for the job.

"I hope that the administration's next nominee for the position demonstrates greater respect for the rule of law and a firmer commitment to making sure that our nation's counterterrorism programs have the strong legal foundation that they deserve," Wyden said.

Yesterday a jury found former Alaska state Rep. Pete Kott (R) guilty of taking bribes from former Veco CEO Bill Allen, who testified during the trial that he also paid for some of Sen. Ted Stevens' (R-AK) home remodeling, AP reports.

In exchange for helping to get a petroleum state tax law passed that would entice oil companies to build a pipeline lucrative for Veco, Allen gave Kott cash and promised him a job at the company. Kott's sentencing hearing is scheduled for December 7.

Federal prosecutors say the seven-term former lawmaker from Eagle River, north of Anchorage, accepted nearly $9,000, including a $7,993 check that he used to pay his son to work as his campaign manager. The company also paid for a poll at a cost of a $2,750, prosecutors said.

Also, prosecutors said, VECO promised Kott a job after he left office in exchange for his support of their political agenda.

The jury conviction signals danger for Stevens, who is under investigation for his dealings with Allen.

Under the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, the government was able to bar intellectuals such as Gabriel García Márquez and Graham Greene from entering the U.S. Now, according to a group of civil rights organizations, the government is putting new teeth in the enforcement of this law by using secret information obtained under new antiterrorism laws to prevent critics of the U.S. from entering. One ACLU lawyer noted, it "seem[s] that what the government has done is taken the communist-era playbook and replaced every instance of the word communist with terrorist." (NY Times)

Lane Hudson (the blogger of Mark Foley fame) is claiming that Rudy Giuliani, who has made MoveOn's recent ad a key talking point against Democrats, received the same preferential treatment by the New York Times when he placed a full page ad denouncing Moveon. Hudson has filed an FEC complaint against the Giuliani office for purchasing campaign materials at a discounted rate. (Politico)

Unisys Corp., which has been richly rewarded with fat government contracts, is now under investigation by the FBI for its work for the Department of Homeland Securitry. The House Homeland Security Committee has also asked its Inspector General to begin its own investigation. Unisys allegedly failed to detect cyber break-ins to Department of Homeland Security computers that led to information being posted to a Chinese-language Web site. Unisys also allegedly covered up its deficiencies but apparently they had trouble shielding this information as well. (Washington Post)

Independent judge, horrible boss. That's the verdict on AG-to-be Mike Mukasey, based on employee grievances filed by U.S. Marshals signed to protect him. According to the grievances, Mukasey forced his guards to empty his trash, carry his golf clubs and groceries, and buy him and his wife upgrades to first class on long flights. According to one complaint, marshals on the night duty weren't even allowed to flush the toilet. (Boston Globe)

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"It may be worse than Abu Ghraib."

That's a senior U.S. military official explaining to The Washington Post how strongly Iraqis are reacting to Blackwater's September 16th shooting of civilians in Baghdad. By contrast, here's a State Department official: "The bottom line of this is that we recognize that there's an issue here."

In the gap between those two assessments lies the acrimony between the Pentagon and the State Department over the shooting. The State Department hired Blackwater to protect its dignitaries in Iraq, and so it has to balance its relationship with the Iraqi government with its need to protect Blackwater from reprisal. But the military sees Blackwater's relaxed rules of engagement -- issued by the State Department -- as hurtful to its efforts to turn Iraqis against the Sunni insurgency and the Shiite militias. (More on this later today.)

"They are immature shooters and have very quick trigger fingers. Their tendency is shoot first and ask questions later," said an Army lieutenant colonel serving in Iraq. Referring to the Sept. 16 shootings, the officer added, "None of us believe they were engaged, but we are all carrying their black eyes."

"Many of my peers think Blackwater is oftentimes out of control," said a senior U.S. commander serving in Iraq. "They often act like cowboys over here . . . not seeming to play by the same rules everyone else tries to play by."

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Now this augurs well for a thorough inquiry into Blackwater's recent behavior in Iraq. Just three days after Rep. Henry Waxman announced his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee would hold hearings into the deaths of 11 Iraqi civilians, a State Department contracting official wrote to Blackwater with a simple message: you don't say anything we don't tell you to.

We've added the letter to our Document Collection. You can read it here.

The State Department official, Kiazan Moneypenny, wrote Blackwater VP Fred Roitz to "advise" him of Blackwater's obligations under the terms of State's contract. Among them: "all documents and records (including photographs) generated during the performance of work under this contract shall be for the sole use of and become the exclusive property of the U.S. government." These obligations, according to the contract, exist in perpetuity -- not just until the contract expires. As a result, Moneypenny told Roitz to make "no disclosure of documents or information generated under [the contract] unless such disclosure has been authorized in writing by the Contract Officer."

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A new letter from House oversight committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice charges that State Department officials have refused to answer Congressional investigators' questions about corruption in the Iraqi government unless the committee agrees not to disclose their answers.

That's not all. In the letter, Waxman charges that State has instructed Blackwater not to cooperate with the committee's inquiry into its operations in Iraq (more on that soon), and that Condoleezza Rice herself has refused to testify about either corruption within the Maliki government or any aspect of the Blackwater controversy.

Oversight investigators identified two State Department watchdogs, Vincent Faulk and Christopher Griffith, whom they sought to interview about corruption in the Maliki government. (David Corn recently unearthed some evidence for that contention.) A State Congressional liaison informed Waxman that the department had no objection -- provided that their answers not be released to the public.

In an e-mail yesterday, State's Joel Starr said that in the interests of retaining positive ties with the Maliki government, there were just a few things that couldn't be aired publicly:

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Finally, the time has come. The Senate Rules Committee will vote tomorrow on whether Hans von Spakovsky, the former Justice Department official who former employees say was key to the politicization of voting rights section, will get a term on the Federal Elections Commission. Von Spakovsky is also a veteran of Republican efforts to target voter fraud.

It's not immediately clear what will happen tomorrow. Howard Gantman, staff director for the committee, said that Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wants a vote on each nominee separately (as opposed to considering all four nominees, Democratic and Republican, in one vote) and that she continues to have serious concerns about Von Spakovsky. He also said that no deal had been struck.

Former employees of the voting section mounted serious opposition to von Spakovsky's nomination, with a group writing in a letter to the committee that he'd been "the point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division's mandate to protect voting rights." Von Spakovsky, however, portrayed himself during his confirmation hearing as just a lawyer in the section who gave advice when it was asked. It was a portrayal with real problems -- as von Spakovsky himself tacitly acknowledged when he modified his testimony in later written answers to the committee.

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In his first big interview after coming under suspicion for bribing Duke Cunningham, Brent Wilkes told The New York Times last year that he'd been a victim of the system. "I played by their rules," he said, "and I played to win." If Brent Wilkes is under investigation, he was saying, everyone should be under investigation. It was a system of "transactional lobbying," where lawmakers shook down those who were seeking government contracts.

Not so fast, say prosecutors. In a 13-page filing today, they make a variety of arguments for why Wilkes should not be able to argue at trial that he was coerced into bribing Cunningham. At base, however, is their common sense assertion that nobody put a gun to Wilkes' head -- not back in the 90's when he started bribing Cunningham, not in 2005 when he gave Duke his last bribe, and certainly not in 2003, when the two were relaxing in a hot tub in Hawaii with two prostitutes:

The overt acts in the Superseding Indictment... include a plethora of bribes that defendant Wilkes provided Cunningham over about a decade, including over $100,000 in 2000, and over $500,000 in 2004. The two remained friendly enough throughout this period that they shared numerous vacations, including a vacation in Hawaii in August 2003, during which Wilkes and Cunningham relaxed in a hot tub with prostitutes hired by Wilkes. No reasonable juror could believe that during that long period, despite outward appearances, Wilkes was secretly operating under a imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death, or some other harm sufficient to justify bribery, and could never find a way to inform law enforcement of such threats.

Yet another stop in the tour of all-around muck that is the Duke Cunningham case.

In a filing today, prosecutors allege that John Michael, who's been indicted for laundering Cunningham's bribes and lying to investigators, hid incriminating documents by keeping them with what prosecutors call "a stash of personal entertainment materials and paraphernalia." You can read the filing here.

The prosecutors don't identify exactly what those items are, but note that "Michael has expressed extreme embarrassment" over them and that "their nature objectively supports his perspective" (read: he has good reason to be embarrassed). They say that they'll identify the materials at a court hearing if need be.

Prosecutors want to introduce evidence of Michael's embarrassing "stash," in order to prove that he knew the Cunningham documents were, in their own way, as embarrassing. That he kept documentation of Cunningham's sketchy mortgage details in a place where he also stored "materials he did not want to anyone else to learn about" proves, they write, that he knew he was up to no good.

Part of the indictment against Michael, the nephew to Greek man of mystery Thomas Kontogiannis -- prosecutors call Michael and Kontogiannis "professional money launderers" -- is that he obstructed justice by forging record of the Cunningham mortgages and hiding others.

Michael is scheduled to go on trial along with Brent Wilkes in October, but a later trial date is expected to be set.

So far, in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, McConnell hasn't been asked about his account that FISA Court-created restrictions prevented the NSA for 12 hours from spying on Iraqi insurgents who had kidnapped U.S. troops. But McConnell did say something that touches on the issue.

Two knowledgeable sources have told me that McConnell's account is inaccurate. One of them said that the real reason for the surveillance delay in the kidnapping case is attributable to cumbersome -- and elective -- Bush administration procedures for executing an emergency wiretap, and not court-created restrictions.

Today McConnell specified that no matter what, even in an emergency case -- whereby surveillance can proceed for 72 hours before acquiring a FISA warrant -- he's still not going to hurry, as long as the probable cause standard holds. Referring to himself, the attorney general and the NSA director, he said, "We're not going to go fast until we have the facts in front of us, because it ultimately has to withstand the scrutiny of the court." The "facts" McConnell refers to here is the justification that the target of surveillance is the agent of a foreign power. In the case of the insurgent kidnappers, one of my sources said such a determination would take "approximately five seconds."

We'll see if anyone holds McConnell's feet to the fire on this case. Leahy, early in the hearing, excoriated McConnell for misstatements the intelligence chief has made in recent testimony.

So much for Leahy's admonition. In response to a question from Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), McConnell reaffirmed that discussing the administration's surveillance program in open session will endanger American lives.

Specter added, apparently assuming that McConnell was concerned about the disclosure of sensitive surveillance methods and not having the debate at all, “Well, if we get into that territory, Director McConnell, tell us, and we will desist on a public session, and then take it into private session, to find out what we need to know.”

Even before Adm. Mike McConnell delivered his opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) laid into the director of national intelligence. Leahy pointed to a line in McConnell's prepared statement suggesting that "some" do not appreciate the threat posed by al-Qaeda, and, visibly angry, warned him against accusing "any Senator on this panel" of playing fast and loose with national security.

And he called on McConnell to end his "irresponsible" repeated comments that debating changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will mean that "some Americans are going to die."

In papers filed Monday, the prosecuting attorney in the Larry Craig toe-tapping case insists that Craig's plea was "accurate, voluntary and intelligent.” The "real basis for the defendant's motion,” he added, is politics. As Greg over at EC notes, Craig even penned a thank you note to the prosecutor in his case. (Politico)

D Dock: it's like a floating Tammany Hall. This marina, part of the D.C.'s Capital Yacht Club has recently been home to Duke Cunningham, Ted Stevens, and Larry Craig (who acted as Stevens' reference to get into the club). Says one clubmember of his political peers: "We used to think they were great. They could lobby on our behalf. Now it’s spinning the opposite way." (New Yorker)

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) has said he will be sure to inquire into the case of U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose, who has come under serious scrutiny for her job performance twice in the few months since her coronation. (AP)

Meanwhile, The Legal Times notes that Alberto Gonzales' fiddling with interim U.S. attorneys faces a major backlash next month; the terms of 11 of the 15 interim USAs will simultaneously expire, and their fate is back in the hands of those judges who the AG sought to cut out of the nomination process. (Is this a good time to point out that most of the U.S. attorneys who were summarily fired have not found permanent replacements?) (Legal Times)

Shirlington Limo's back, and this time, they're getting support from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who helped lead the charge against them in the first place. You may recall Shirlington as the transportation service that shuttled around Duke Cunningham, allegedly drove prostitutes to Brent Wilkes's pokers parties, was given an inside look at a $21 million Homeland Security bid despite not meeting the standards in the contract. Thompson claims that despite the cloud hanging over the company, DHS acted illegally when it terminated the contract. (The Hill)

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The long-story-short on measuring sectarian violence in Iraq? Don't expect consistent data across U.S. agencies.

The Washington Post's Karen DeYoung gets an in-depth explanation of how the U.S. military's Iraq command, known as MNF-I, tallies sectarian statistics, and notes the discrepancies between how the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence characterize the same data. On Friday, we published MNF-I's explanation of what it does -- and doesn't -- consider sectarian violence.

The analyst in charge of MNF-I's sectarianism database is a chief warrant officer named Dan Macomber, and he freely concedes that there's room for debate over whether or not his methodology is proper or consistent.

In recent months, most of the military's indicators have pointed in a favorable direction. As with all statistics, however, their meaning depends on how they are gathered and analyzed. "Everybody has their own way of doing it," Macomber said of his sectarian analyses. "If you and I . . . pulled from the same database, and I pulled one day and you pulled the next, we would have totally different numbers."

Apparent contradictions are relatively easy to find in the flood of bar charts and trend lines the military produces. Civilian casualty numbers in the Pentagon's latest quarterly report on Iraq last week, for example, differ significantly from those presented by the top commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his recent congressional testimony. Petraeus's chart was limited to numbers of dead, while the Pentagon combined the numbers of dead and wounded -- a figure that should be greater. Yet Petraeus's numbers were higher than the Pentagon's for the months preceding this year's increase of U.S. troops to Iraq, and lower since U.S. operations escalated this summer.

That's not to say the Pentagon quarterly report's tabulation is consistent, either. As we've noted, the report's tabulation of sectarian killing has fluctuated between editions. In the September edition, for instance, the Pentagon suddenly decided to include vehicle- and suicide-bombings in its sectarian total. According to Macomber, whenever MNF-I sent the Pentagon its sectarian-incident numbers, it always included car bombs and suicide bombs in the count, but the Pentagon, for unexplained reasons, plucked those incidents out. Why the change? "We regularly review our metrics to determine the most informative way to report what is happening in Iraq," a DOD spokesman e-mailed DeYoung.

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The Senate is certainly a kinder place to mucked-up pols than the House.

Despite testimony last week from former Veco CEO Bill Allen that he bribed Sen. Ted Sevens (R-AK) and news that the FBI taped two of their phone conversations, Senate leaders haven't commented on the legal woes plaguing the longest-serving Republican senator.

That's in stark contrast to how the House leadership has reacted to news of investigations. House Republicans apparently put the squeeze on Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) to remove him from his committee spots. Democrats gave Rep. William Jefferson (D-CA) the same treatment. Senate Republicans did react aggressively to news of Sen. Larry Craig's (R-WY) guilty plea, but apparently this is a much different case.

Roll Call asked Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) if Stevens should be removed from his committee assignments in the wake of the scandal. McConnell referred back to a July 31 statement, in which he referred to Stevens' "four decades of service" in the Senate and said he didn't have "any announcements today."

On the other side of the aisle, Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) was similarly tight-lipped:

"I didn’t comment on [Sen.] Larry Craig [R-Idaho]. I’m not going to comment on this. ... I’m not going to get into that.”