Tag Archives: Justice Department

CA-36: Reads Like A Really Bad Spy Movie

I’m sitting here in Jane Harman’s Congressional district right now.  I could probably go out on the street and informally poll a dozen people about AIPAC, and I’m pretty certain nobody would know what I’m talking about.  But inside the Beltway, AIPAC is sacrosanct and Israel practically the 51st state.  So this blockbuster story is a perfect depiction of, as Attaturk says, the way Washington works.  He simplifies it so I don’t have to:

1. Congressman Jane Harman (D – CA) told a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby.

2. This was known because of an NSA Wiretap.

3. The suspected Israeli agent then promised to lobby Nancy Pelosi to make Harman chair of the House Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections (she wasn’t).

4. There were some reports of this influence peddling in 2006, but it was dropped for a “lack of evidence” by Alberto R. Gonzales, who intervened to stop the investigation.

5. Gonzales intervened because he wanted Harman to defend the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about break in The New York Times.

6. And she promptly went out and defended it.

This looks just terrible for Jane Harman.  There’s a trail of reporting on this going back to 2006, but the new material concerns Abu Gonzales stepping in to squash the investigation so Harman could parrot the Bush Administration line on warrantless wiretapping.  And there’s an even larger trail of reporting on Harman’s fronting for Bush.  The point is that the pieces all fit together.

Indeed, as I’ve noted many times, Jane Harman, in the wake of the NSA scandal, became probably the most crucial defender of the Bush warrantless eavesdropping program, using her status as “the ranking Democratic on the House intelligence committee” to repeatedly praise the NSA program as “essential to U.S. national security” and “both necessary and legal.”  She even went on Meet the Press to defend the program along with GOP Sen. Pat Roberts and Rep. Pete Hoekstra, and she even strongly suggested that the whistleblowers who exposed the lawbreaking and perhaps even the New York Times (but not Bush officials) should be criminally investigated, saying she “deplored the leak,” that “it is tragic that a lot of our capability is now across the pages of the newspapers,” and that the whistleblowers were “despicable.”  And Eric Lichtblau himself described how Harman, in 2004, attempted very aggressively to convince him not to write about the NSA program.

It’s a classic espionage story, right down to the part where Harman hangs up the phone with the Israeli agent after saying “This conversation doesn’t exist.”  For her part, Harman is denying the story, but Stein has several sources who read the transcripts from the NSA wiretaps (apparently gathered legally, but who the hell knows).  And he’s right, at the end, about the utter futility of this exercise, on all counts:

Ironically, however, nothing much was gained by it.

The Justice Department did not back away from charging Rosen and fellow AIPAC official Keith Weissman with espionage (for allegedly giving classified Pentagon documents to Israeli officials).

Gonzales was engulfed by the NSA warrantless wiretapping scandal. (and the US Attorneys probe -ed.)

And Jane Harman was relegated to chairing a House Homeland Security subcommittee.

Josh Marshall asks a lot of the key questions, including whether Harman was being blackmailed by the Bush Administration to be their front person on wiretapping, having been wiretapped herself.  And Ron Kampeas has a somewhat different take, suggesting that this is only coming out because the case against AIPAC officials Rosen and Weissman is faltering.  There’s one way to know for sure: a full-blown investigation, which Harman ought to welcome to clear her name.

CA-46: Rohrabacher With Another Case Of Foot-In-Mouth Disease

Dana Rohrabacher’s been saying stuff like this for years, only now he has an opponent who’s going to call him on it.

Today, the House Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight held a hearing on detainee treatment at Guantanamo Bay, focusing on a recent FBI inspector general (IG) report documenting abusive practices at the facility. The report describes, among other things, a “war crimes file” created by FBI agents concerned about the interrogation tactics they witnessed at Guantanamo.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), however, sees nothing wrong with the accounts of abuse. While questioning IG Glenn Fine today, Rohrabacher insisted the report documented nothing more than “fraternity boy pranks and hazing pranks,” and hardly constituted torture:

ROHRABACHER: They seem like more like pranks, hazing pranks from some fraternity than some well-thought-out policy of how do you torture someone and get information from them. […]

I will have to tell you, when most people hear the word “torture,” which has been bandied around here, I don’t believe that they think of it as holding a growling dog near somebody but not the growling dog – you know, it’s one thing to have the growling dog eating someone’s leg or arm versus – which is absolute torture. It’s another thing to have a growling dog around, or putting panties on someone’s head, or discussing – telling him he had repressed homosexual tendencies in his presence. I mean, I’m sorry, these are acts of humiliation.

He apparently used the phrase “panties on someone’s head” 13 times in 8 minutes.

I could go on and on about how interrogation practices at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo violate Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which ban “outrages upon personal dignity,” or the UN Convention Against Torture, or sundry torture statutes in this country, and how (as DoJ Inspector Glenn Fine said today) such tactics are not only criminal but incredibly ineffective in gathering intelligence, and how as the world’s most powerful nation we have an obligation to uphold the highest standards of human rights lest the world sink to our level, but fortunately, I don’t have to say all that this year, because Democratic nominee Debbie Cook is on the case.  Here’s the statement her campaign emailed me:

“At a time when we need a serious discussion and thorough review of the allegations of torture coming out of Guantanamo Bay, Congressman Rohrabacher has used his position of trust to make jokes and liken the interrogations to nothing more than a frat party.  

We need a representative in Congress who will approach the serious issues facing our country with decorum and common sense, instead of cracking jokes. Torture is not to be taken lightly especially when the prestige and moral authority of the United States government is at stake.  

The voters of the 46th district deserve a Member of Congress who works hard, has a good grasp of the issues before them and who is taken seriously by their colleagues. That’s how you get things done in Congress.”

Rohrabacher is an embarrassment, and Debbie Cook is going to give the people of the 46th District a real alternative this year.

Justice Department Holding DNA Testing Program Hostage

By Kirk Bloodsworth of The Justice Project

The day President Bush signed the Innocence Protection Act into law was one of the proudest days of my life. The law, part of the Justice for All Act of 2004, included a new program named after me: the Kirk Bloodsworth Post-Conviction DNA Testing Program.

The program provides federal grants to states to conduct DNA testing that can exonerate the innocent and help identify the truly guilty. At the time, the program’s creation seemed a fitting end to a terrible chapter in my life, my 20-year struggle to prove my innocence after being convicted and sentenced to die for the brutal rape and murder of Dawn Hamilton, a 9-year-old girl I had never met.

Given my life experience, however, I should have known that the struggle for justice never ends. Without adequate funding and the proper implementation, a law on the books is just words on paper, even if the words come from Congress. And that’s how this Administration and its Department of Justice are treating the Bloodsworth Post-Conviction DNA program.

To date, Congress has appropriated nearly $14 million for the Bloodsworth program. Yet DoJ has yet to approve a single grant application or send the first dollar to states requesting the funding.

Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Today I’ll be at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing where Justice Department officials will try to explain away their failure to carry out this critical program. Based on the history of the IPA, however, it’s clear that DoJ’s failure is no accident. The department has been against this program from the beginning. They opposed it when the House passed the legislation by the resounding vote of 393 to 14. They opposed it when it passed the Senate. And they opposed it when it was signed into law.

Unable to stop the law from being enacted, DoJ is now holding the program’s funding hostage and denying people with claims of innocence the chance to prove it.

It’s simply inexcusable.

Post-conviction DNA testing is a powerful means for ensuring public safety. It has not only led to the exoneration of over 200 wrongfully convicted individuals, it has also confirmed many a suspect’s guilt. When states are denied funding for post-conviction DNA testing, they are being denied the truth.

My life is proof of the injustice that can happen when our criminal justice system makes mistakes and the power of DNA testing to enable those mistakes to be corrected. After my arrest and conviction in 1984, I waited 8 years, 11 months and 19 days in prison, including two years on Maryland’s death row, before DNA testing proved my innocence. Then I waited another 10 years for the prosecution to run the DNA profile of the perpetrator in state and federal databases to find out that the real rapist and murderer was a man on my cell block who was in prison for another assault.

Quite simply, had it not been for DNA testing, I would have died an innocent man in prison.

Mistakes in the criminal justice system are not new. The organization I work for, The Justice Project, has been studying the leading factors of wrongful convictions and advocating for meaningful reform to prevent further miscarriages of justice. Post-conviction DNA testing offers the unique opportunity to correct the mistakes of our criminal justice system while helping it to become more fair and reliable. With states being denied access to the appropriated millions for DNA testing, errors will likely go uncorrected and further mistakes are certain.

I don’t have all the answers to the problems facing our criminal justice system, but I do know that there are other cases like mine out there. I feel a personal responsibility to each state that has been denied this grant money for post-conviction DNA testing. As this program bears my name, I feel it is my obligation to ensure that it is funded and implemented as it was meant to be. No one should have to wait 20 years for justice.

The Department of Justice has the money and the guidance from Congress needed to make the Bloodsworth DNA testing program work. The time for excuses is over.

Kirk Noble Bloodsworth is the first person sentenced to death row in the United States to be exonerated by DNA evidence. He is the program officer of The Justice Project, a nonpartisan organization that works to address unfairness and inaccuracy in the criminal justice system, with a focus on the capital punishment system.

CA-04: Run John Run!

John Doolittle is in it to win it.

Despite having multiple primary challengers, plus the recent leak of a Republican poll showing him losing to his 2006 Democratic opponent, scandal-tarred Congressman John Doolittle (R-CA) has made it clear he’s not backing down from his 2008 re-election fight.

“I will not step aside,” Doolittle told reporters in a conference call today. “I am running again. Period.”

This is terrible news.  I mean, if he runs in a Republican primary with so many other contenders, surely he can pull the 30-35% needed to win.  And then he’ll face our challenger Charlie Brown in a rematch of last year, when he carried a whopping 49% of the vote!  I mean, how can we defeat an incumbent who’s being harrassed by Bush’s Justice Department and has a bunch of battle-tested staffers and aides who’ve stared down the glare of a federal grand jury?  This is terrible!!

Please don’t throw me in the briar patch…

CA-04: Out Come The Subpoenas

Maybe this is the reason that every registered Republican is jumping into the Republican primary for John Doolittle’s seat:

GOP Rep. John Doolittle’s two top aides have been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury investigating ties between Doolittle, his wife and jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The grand jury subpoenas from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia were issued to Chief of Staff Ron Rogers and Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Blankenburg. They were announced on the House floor as Congress returned from its August recess Tuesday after the aides informed the House speaker about the subpoenas, as required under House rules.

Doolittle, R-Calif., said in a statement that the aides would testify before the grand jury this week “with hopes of putting the matter to an end.”

Yes, that’s exactly what will happen.  The matter will end, maybe with somebody being brought to jail and booked, but it certainly will end.  Doolittle is still trying to blame this on his wife’s payments from Abramoff in exchange for maybe/maybe-not “work,” but of course there are dozens of connections between Doolittle himself and Abramoff.  It’s unlikely that this is just about Mrs. Doolittle (who may have to spend some time in the slammer IN ADDITION to her husband).

UPDATE: Via DWT, Doollittle would lose to Charlie Brown, according to a SacBee poll, by TWENTY POINTS.

In a one-on-one match up, if the election were held today, Democrat Charlie Brown gets 51% of the vote to Congressman Doolittle’s 31%.

Those surveyed were also asked if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Doolittle. Respondents came back with 28% favorable and 56% unfavorable.

In the survey, GOP primary voters were asked whether Congressman Doolittle should run for another term. 33% of those asked said he should. A staggering 50% said that the Congressman should either resign or should not run again.

Even More Doolittle/Mitchell Wade/Brent Wilkes/US Attorney News

Josh Marshall delivers some knowledge about Mitchell Wade, a defense contractor and Duke Cunningham briber whose first contract in government was to screen the President’s mail for anthrax, despite having no real expertise in that arena.

This is a known briber receiving a sweetheart contract from the Executive Office of the President.  And who’s in the middle of it?  John Doolittle and his wife.  Mitchell Wade and Brent Wilkes worked closely together to bribe or otherwise give recompense to Duke Cunningham in exchange for contracts.  They appear to have done something similar with Doolittle.

flip it…

Julie Doolittle was working at (Ed) Buckham’s offices in 2002 when Buckham introduced Brent Wilkes to her husband. Federal contracts for his flagship company, ADCS Inc., were drying up, partly because the Pentagon had been telling Congress it had little need for the company’s document-scanning technology. So Wilkes was trying to get funding for two new businesses.

One was tied to the 2002 anthrax scare, when tainted letters were sent to Capitol Hill. Wilkes’ idea was to have all Capitol Hill mail rerouted to a site in the Midwest, where ADCS employees wearing protective suits would scan it into computers and then e-mail it back to Washington.

He called his proposed solution MailSafe – similar to the names of several anti-anthrax companies launched at that time – and began vying for federal contracts, even though the company had little to its name other than a rudimentary Web site.

The House Administration Committee, on which Doolittle sat, oversees the congressional mail system. Doolittle told his colleagues about MailSafe and introduced them to Wilkes, but the project never got off the ground.

The project failed in the House Administration Committee but succeeded in the White House.  The question is, did Doolittle have a role in introducing executive staffers to Wade and Wilkes?  Did he receive any financial reward?

And the larger question, of course, is the fact that there are documented instances of Doolittle receiving money in contributions from Brent Wilkes, if not Wade.  When Carol Lam opened her investigation into Wilkes and Dusty Foggo in May 2006, Doolittle was clearly likely to be implicated in that chain if the matter was investigated closely enough.  And right at that time, the Justice Department made a deal to deny Lam resources and keep her on “a short leash.”  While she was able to indict Wilkes and Foggo, the investigation never went any further, and Lam was fired.

Two weeks after then-U.S. Attorney Carol Lam ordered a raid on the home and offices of a former CIA official last year – a search prompted by her investigation of now-imprisoned former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham – higher-ups at the Justice Department privately questioned whether they should give her more money and manpower.

“There are good reasons not to provide extensive resources to (Lam),” Bill Mercer, acting associate attorney general, wrote to Kyle Sampson, who was chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales until he resigned a couple of weeks ago […]

The day after this Mercer missive, Sampson directed Mercer in an e-mail to have a “heart-to-heart” with Lam about “the urgent need to improve immigration enforcement in San Diego.”

“Put her on a very short leash,” Sampson wrote. “If she balks – or otherwise does not perform in a measurable way by July 15, remove her.”

A month later, Justice Department higher-ups were referring to Lam derisively, saying she “can’t meet a deadline” that her production was “hideous” and that she was “sad.”

Five months later, Lam was told she was being fired.

There’s good reason to believe that the resources were withheld somewhat deliberately, to make a plausible case that Lam couldn’t handle her immigration workload.  This is nonsense, and Paul Kiel does an excellent job of calling it nonsense.  The truth is that immigration was a red herring; Lam was fired because of her investigations, which (if unchecked) would lead not only into the FBI but into the Executive Office of the President himself, and which would have picked up a lot of Congressional flotsam along the way.

And one of the chief pieces of flotsam was John Doolittle.  He has disqualified himself for any future holding of public office.  We need to continue to drain this swamp of corrupt sleazebags who view government as their own personal feedbag.  Charlie Brown is a man of extreme integrity who would restore honor to that seat in Congress.  He deserves our support.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jerry McNerney (CA-11) $
Charlie Brown (CA-04) $
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The US Attorney Scandal, Jack Abramoff, and John Doolittle

(I fixed the ActBlue form and added the YouTube video. You’ll also see buttons to set up monthly contributions to the Calitics ActBlue recipients. Let me know if you have any questions. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

The US Attorney scandal has gobbled up a lot of the headlines recently, but its origin can be traced back five years, well before the firing of 8 federal prosecutors for suspicious reasons in December 2006. 

Actually, we have to go back to the island nation of Guam, a well-connected DC lobbyist who’s now sitting in a jail cell, and a certain Congressman from Roseville.

Jerry McNerney (CA-11) $
Charlie Brown (CA-04) $



Jack Abramoff made a cool seven million dollars from contracts with the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands.  His duties were essentially to shield the American protectorate from all US labor laws, while retaining the ability to place a “Made in the USA” label on any of their products.  This successful lobbying effort allowed the CNMI to create sweatshops where sexual slavery, child labor and forced abortions were part of the landscape.  And the greatest ally to Jack Abramoff in Congress on this issue was John Doolitte (CA-04), called a “hero for the CNMI” in internal emails between Abramoff and the CNMI government.

Abramoff’s success in stopping all efforts to reform the labor situation in the CNMI caught the notice of other Pacific island protectorates.  He soon got a job lobbying for Guam, and sought to lobby against a court reform bill which would weaken the authority of the Guam Superior Court.  The Superior Court hired Abramoff, unusual in itself, and paid him in a series of laundered $9,000 checks funneled through a Laguna Beach lawyer.  Abramoff was trying to hide his involvement lobbying for the Superior Court while seeking to torpedo the bill that would impact them.

Now, Guam had a federal prosecutor, named Fred Black, and he saw this business and opened a grand jury investigation.  At precisely that time, he was fired.

A US grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff more than two years ago, but President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor, and the probe ended soon after […]

(Abramoff’s financial) transactions were the target of a grand jury subpoena issued Nov. 18, 2002, according to the subpoena. It demanded that Anthony Sanchez, administrative director of the Guam Superior Court, turn over all records involving the lobbying contract, including bills and payments.

A day later, the chief prosecutor, US Attorney Frederick A. Black, who had launched the investigation, was demoted. A White House news release announced that Bush was replacing Black.
The timing caught some by surprise. Despite his officially temporary status as the acting US attorney, Black had held the assignment for more than a decade.

Black was looking into other official corruption on the island as well, so it was sensible that Abramoff would want him out of the picture.

This connection to the current scandal, a clear case of firing a federal prosecutor to shield Republicans from corruption investigations, has caught the notice of the Congress. 

Two House committee chairmen yesterday asked that the congressional probe into the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys be widened to include the case of acting U.S. Attorney Fred Black who was replaced in 2002 after he began investigating the now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his dealings with Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

California Congressman George Miller, the Education and Labor Committee chairman, and West Virginia Congressman Nick Rahall, the Natural Resources Committee chairman, have repeatedly pressed for a full investigation of Abramoff’s dealings with the CNMI and its sweatshop industry and of the replacement of Fred Black, the then-acting U.S. Attorney for Guam and the CNMI.

Nobody in the Congress today was closer to Jack Abramoff when all of this was going on than John Doolittle.  He received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Abramoff.  He knew exactly what Abramoff was doing in the various Pacific protectorates, and in fact he supported it with his votes.  He enabled the kind of politicization of the cause of justice that we see today.

Fortunately, we have a choice in Congress.  Charlie Brown needs your support at the end of the first quarter.  Please consider making a contribution.

P.S. Yeah, and Jerry McNerney too.  He just announced through email that he WON John Kerry’s “March Madness” competition, and will receive funding from the Senator.

Prosecutor Purge – Feinstein Catches the DoJ in a Lie

The hearings on the fired US Attorneys today were riveting, and our own Senator Feinstein has been instrumental in beinging it about.  Today, she brought out some ammo in making her case that these prosecutors were fired for expressly political reasons.

The Justice Department’s alibi (today, at least) was that US Attorneys like Carol Lam were fired for performance-based issues, particularly their inability to speedily prosecute immigration and border cases as per Administration policy.  But Feinstein had an ace in the hole: a letter from the Justice Department, claiming that nto only was Carol Lam an exceptional prosecutor, but that she was FULLY implementing Administration policy of prosecuting immigration cases.  Feinstein’s statement is on the flip.

The Department has used the fact that I wrote a letter on June 15 to the Attorney General concerning the San Diego region, and in that I asked some questions: What are the guidelines for the U.S. Attorney Southern District of California? How do these guidelines differ from other border sections nationwide? I asked about immigration cases.

Here is the response that I got under cover of August 23, in a letter signed by Will Moschella. And I ask that both these letters be added to the record.

“That office [referring to Mrs. Lam’s office], is presently committing fully half of its Assistant U.S. Attorneys to prosecute criminal immigration cases. Prosecutions for alien smuggling in the Southern District under USC sections 1234 are rising sharply in Fiscal Year 2006. As of March 2006, the halfway point in the fiscal year, there were 342 alien smuggling cases filed in that jurisdiction. This compares favorable with the 484 alien smuggling prosecutions brought there during the entirety of Fiscal Year 2005.”

The letter goes on to essentially say that Mrs. Lam is cooperating; that they have reviewed it and the Department is satisfied.

This is a big deal, as it pretty much invalidates the Justice Department’s story.  And it’s refreshing to see Sen. Feinstein stick her neck out and wade into a controversial story.  The information that came out of today’s House and Senate hearings will be fodder for months, and Feinstein has been at the forefront of ensuring that this criminal enterprise being run out of the White House and the Justice Department is held accountable.

Feinstein: Charging Ahead on the Case of the Purged Prosecutors

Dianne Feinstein isn’t the top choice of most progressives or of the online community.  But she’s making a considerable effort on an issue that needs attention, this Justice Department purge of able US Attorneys for what appear to be political reasons.  Feinstein should be applauded for bringing so much attention on Capitol Hill to this attempt to stop the Bush Admnistration from firing capable prosecutors and installing their own political hacks, whether to shield themselves and their allies from future prosecution or to place Republican operatives in the US Attorney positions (a good place from which to begin future political campaigns).

Give her a call if you can and thank her for her attention to this issue.  It’s always positive to reward good behavior; that way we can expect more of it.

On the flip is Feinstein’s letter to the Majority and Minority Leaders of the Senate, urging them to take action on closing the loophole in the Patriot Act that allowed the Justice Department to hire and fire at will without seeking Senate confirmation.  She has now seen the evaluations for most of the fired prosecutors, and has seen that there was no cause for their sackings.

February 26, 2007
Majority Leader Harry Reid

Republican Leader Mitch McConnell:

This weekend, the Department of Justice finally released six of the Evaluation and Review Staff (EARS) reports of the fired U.S. Attorneys which are attached for your review. EARS reports are thorough and scheduled reviews that are done on a periodic basis to evaluate U.S. Attorneys and determine how they are doing in their jobs, where there is need for improvement, and where there are successes.

Reports were provided for:

· Carol Lam, San Diego
· John McKay, Western District of Washington
· Bud Cummins, Eastern District of Arkansas
· David Iglesias, District of New Mexico
· Paul Charlton, District of Arizona
· Daniel Bogden, District of Nevada

All were favorable and, in fact, all are quite positive reviews of their performances. Indeed, contrary to the Department’s rationalizations to explain their dismissals, in every case the fired U.S. Attorney was judged to have a strategic plan and appropriate priorities to meet the needs of the Department and their districts.

These reports confirm my speculation that the rash of firings that occurred in December was not based on misconduct or poor performances. Instead, these reports only serve to fuel my concerns that the Department of Justice based its decisions to fire competent and successful U.S. Attorneys because of a desire to put young politically-connected lawyers from the outside into these offices.

I continue to believe that it is imperative that we change the law back to the way it had been, and require the Department of Justice to go through regular order and secure Senate confirmation of U.S. Attorneys. I urge you both to find a time to bring S. 214, Preserving United States Attorney Independence Act of 2007, to the floor of the Senate and schedule an up or down vote on the floor.