FBI Chief Confirms Misuse of Subpoenas
By Dan Eggen
The Washington Post
Thursday 06 March 2008

Security letters used to get personal data.
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told senators yesterday that agents improperly used a type of administrative subpoena to obtain personal data about Americans until internal reforms were enacted last year.
Mueller said a forthcoming report from the Justice Department's inspector general will find that abuses recurred in the agency's use of national security letters in 2006, echoing similar problems to those identified in earlier audits.
Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reported a year ago that the FBI used such letters - which are not subject to a court's review - to improperly obtain telephone logs, banking records and other personal records of thousands of Americans from 2003 to 2005. An internal FBI audit also found that the bureau potentially violated laws or agency rules more than 1,000 times in such cases.
Mueller testified that a follow-up report from Fine's office, due to be released this month, will "identify issues similar to those in the report issued last March." But Mueller emphasized that the time frame in the report "predates the reforms we now have in place" to avoid further abuses.
"We are committed to ensuring that we not only get this right, but maintain the vital trust of the American people," Mueller said.
At yesterday's hearing, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) condemned the FBI's "widespread illegal and improper use of national security letters," and urged Mueller to be more attentive to the problem.
"Everybody wants to stop terrorists," Leahy said. "But we also, though, as Americans, we believe in our privacy rights and we want those protected."
A year ago, lawmakers of both parties called for limits on the FBI's use of the security letters, which demand consumer information from banks, credit card companies and other institutions without a warrant as part of investigations into suspected terrorism and espionage. Congress has not followed through with legislation, however, and Mueller sought to assure lawmakers that internal changes will solve the problems. He said new FBI procedures will "minimize the chance of future lapses," including the creation of a compliance office tasked with monitoring the use of security letters.
But Michael German, a former FBI agent who is national security policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement that "it's becoming more and more obvious that outside oversight is essential since the Bureau's learning curve is sadly unimpressive."
"Instituting judicial oversight would guarantee that someone would be looking over the shoulder of agents using a tool as invasive as an NSL," German said. The ACLU and other civil liberties groups say the government's use of security letters should be significantly narrowed or brought under court supervision.
Under questioning from Leahy about the Bush administration's controversial use of harsh techniques for interrogating suspected terrorists, Mueller defended the FBI's practice of using "noncoercive" techniques on criminal and terrorism suspects, saying they are "effective and sufficient and appropriate."
Mueller said the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit has found that building trust with prisoners is "particularly effective." He pointed to the FBI's interrogation of Saddam Hussein, which yielded crucial details about the former Iraqi government's actions and motivations.
"Our techniques and the experts that we have . . . believe that our techniques are effective, and are sufficient and appropriate to our mission," Mueller said. "And those techniques are founded on a desire to develop a rapport and a relationship."
President Bush is expected to veto a bill this week that would bar the CIA from using harsh techniques, including waterboarding, a type of simulated drowning.
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The Other Side of the McCain Lobbyist Scandal
By Jerold M. Starr
The Nation
Tuesday 04 March 2008

I don't know whether Senator John McCain had sex with lobbyist Vickie Iseman, but I do know, first hand, that he broke the rules while doing the bidding of media mogul Lowell "Bud" Paxson, a major contributor to McCain's 2000 presidential campaign. McCain's staff lied it about it then and they are inventing new lies even now.
I was the leader of the campaign opposing the transfer of Pittsburgh's second public television station (Channel 16), along with $17.5 million, to a conservative televangelist ministry so that Paxson could expand his network into the Pittsburgh market. In fact, I wrote a well-reviewed book in 2000 about the entire case, Air Wars: The Fight to Reclaim Public Broadcasting.
Since this man could well be the next President of the United States, his character should be of concern to all people of this country.
In 1994, local media revealed that Pittsburgh's public station WQED had piled up millions of dollars of debt due to obvious malfeasance and, according to our informants, possible embezzlement. By 1996, new CEO George Miles's solution to this problem was to commercialize and sell off Channel 16. Along with activist Linda Wambaugh, I organized the Save Pittsburgh Public Television campaign to advocate a solution that would have both addressed the debt and saved the station.
In July 1996, the FCC denied WQED's petition on the grounds that a noncommercial license had never been removed from a community without being replaced by another. Around April 1997, WQED proposed "Plan B"-a swap with Cornerstone Broadcasting, bankrolled by Paxson Communications, with Cornerstone taking over our public station and Paxson taking over Cornerstone's commercial frequency.
As reported originally in the New York Times, McCain wrote two letters late in 1999 to each of the five FCC commissioners demanding that they advise him by December 15 whether they had voted for or against Paxson's petition. McCain continues to insist that his letter's disclaimer that he was not calling for a particular outcome exonerates him of charges of interference. However, Steve Labaton of the New York Times plowed through 2,000 pages of McCain office correspondence and found that almost all of his letters included this "boilerplate" disclaimer. Moreover, in "the vast majority of these regulatory cases where McCain himself sent the letter, the interested parties had contributed to his presidential campaigns."
As our attorney, Georgetown's Angela Campbell, advised ABC News: "The timing of the letters was clearly in Paxson's interest." Paxson's contract with all parties was due to expire December 31 and there were clear indications that Cornerstone would withdraw from the deal. The Commission still was undecided and had the option to refer the case for public hearing so that community sentiment could be measured. Short of outright denial, this was our wish. Miles acknowledged to the press at the time that had this happened, the deal would have been "dead in the water."
Back then, after extensive interviews with DC lobbyists and FCC staff, the Boston Globe, New York Times, Washington Post and others concluded that McCain's letters were "highly unusual," "crossed a line" and "were widely interpreted to favor the complicated transfers."
At the time, McCain's staff said to the press that his intervention was appropriate because "there was no formal opposition." Our opposition had been formal for years. Our board of directors included such community leaders as the president of the Pittsburgh City Council, a monsignor in the Pittsburgh Catholic Archdiocese and a state legislator (who sat on WQED's board but could not abide the sellout). Our supporters included scores of unions with up to 150,000 members, more than forty public interest groups, hundreds of educators, clergy and other professionals and, thanks to Working Assets, up to 40,000 letters urging the FCC to deny the transfer of Pittsburgh's public station to Cornerstone.
The major reason the case took so long is the well-documented presentation by our campaign that Cornerstone was not qualified to run our educational broadcasting station. In a highly unusual move in March 1998, Barbara Kreisman, a high-ranking FCC official, wrote to Cornerstone to advise that it amend their application to demonstrate eligibility. Kreisman called Cornerstone's five-member board "self perpetuating" and "not...broadly representative of the Pittsburgh community."
Kreisman noted further that Cornerstone's "goal still appears to be primarily religious" and "it's not clear to what extent" Cornerstone would pursue its claimed educational purposes. Still another problem was that, given all the commercials on Cornerstone (some programs being little more than infomercials), the FCC needed to know what steps the station "will take to comply with the Commission's rules regarding advertising and fund-raising on noncommercial educational stations."
(One show peddled screensavers with messages such as "Somewhere a homo teacher is molesting a child." Since Cornerstone leaders were active followers of Pat Robertson, gays were not the only groups who got hammered on the air. So did the United Nations, teachers unions, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Buddhists and Unitarians, among others.)
Cornerstone's response to the FCC's concerns was to add two associates to their five-member board and to submit a reformatted schedule with the same programs, even those in which commercials were integral to their content. Cornerstone then accused the FCC of religious bias and refused to make any more changes.
In January 1999, the FCC invited all attorneys to a meeting. When our attorney asked the FCC's Joyce Bernstein whether the meeting was for "negotiation," Bernstein replied, "No, there is a standard for reserved licenses." The FCC then called to advise that Cornerstone refused to attend and the meeting canceled.
Now McCain's camp has issued a 1,500-page document of "facts" the recent New York Times exposé did not include, such as that "No representative of Paxson or Alcade and Fay asked McCain to send a letter to the FCC regarding this proceeding." However, within days, Paxson himself advised the Washington Post that both Iseman and he had met with McCain about the matter.
At the time, according to well-documented reports, Paxson's family, company and law firm were contributing tens of thousands of dollars to McCain's campaign while McCain flew around on Paxson's private jet to rallies and to fundraisers on Paxson's yacht.
Eight months later, the FCC did, indeed, determine that McCain had broken the rules. First, the comment period was over so the case was bound by ex parte rules-no outside attempts to influence the commissioners. Commissioner Tristani recently explained, "It's like going to a court and saying, 'Tell us before it is final how you voted.'" At the time, Chair Kennard wrote to McCain that such inquiries could have "substantive impacts on the Commission's deliberation" and "the due process rights of the parties."
As chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, McCain had control of the FCC's budget. To a colleague of mine at a meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters, Paxson boasted he had the commission "in his pocket." One commissioner, Democrat Susan Ness, had her application for another term at the FCC on McCain's desk. Ness broke ranks with her Democratic colleagues to approve the transfer, and then switched back to warn Cornerstone the FCC would be watching to see that they conformed to the rules governing non-commercial educational stations.
Apparently, wishing to recast McCain as peacemaker rather than influence peddler, his campaign has resorted to more lies, claiming his staff "met with public broadcasting activists from the Pittsburgh area about the transfer" and we "expressed frustration that the proceeding had been before the FCC for over two years." Allegedly, we asked McCain's staff "to contact the FCC regarding this proceeding." We had no idea of McCain's sudden and urgent interest in our local matter until the FCC advised that the commissioners already had voted 3-2 to approve the transfer, at which time McCain's letters were dropped on us.
In the end, Cornerstone miraculously withdrew, stating it could not risk compromising its religious ministry. Subsequently, Republicans in Congress moved a bill stripping educational programming as a requirement for holding an educational license. It actually passed the House, but stalled in the Senate.
As I said, McCain's private life is not my concern. But I care deeply, as a veteran of Pittsburgh's struggle to save public television, that he sought to dictate the solution to our community dispute on behalf of some Florida-based media mogul.

Angry Boeing Supporters Target McCain
By Matthew Daly
The Associated Press
Saturday 08 March 2008

Angry Boeing supporters are vowing revenge against Republican presidential candidate John McCain over Chicago-based Boeing's loss of a $35 billion Air Force tanker contract to the parent company of European plane maker Airbus.
There are other targets for their ire - the Air Force, the defense secretary and even the entire Bush administration.
But Boeing supporters in Congress are directing their wrath at McCain, the Arizona senator and nominee in waiting, for scuttling an earlier deal that would have let Boeing build the next generation of Air Force refueling tankers. Boeing now will miss out on a deal that it says would have supported 44,000 new and existing jobs at the company and suppliers in 40 states.
"I hope the voters of this state remember what John McCain has done to them and their jobs," said Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., whose state would have been home to the tanker program and gained about 9,000 jobs.
"Having made sure that Iraq gets new schools, roads, bridges and dams that we deny America, now we are making sure that France gets the jobs that Americans used to have," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill. "We are sending the jobs overseas, all because John McCain demanded it."
The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. and its U.S. partner, Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman, won a competition with Boeing Feb. 29 to build the refueling planes in one of the biggest Pentagon contracts in decades. The unexpected decision has sparked outrage from union halls to the halls of Congress over the impact on U.S. jobs, prestige and national security. EADS and Northrop say about 60 percent of their tanker will be built in the U.S.
McCain said he is keeping an open mind on the contract, but in the past he has boasted about his role in blocking an earlier version of the tanker deal that gave the contract to Boeing. The deal was killed in 2004 after a former Boeing executive improperly recruited an Air Force official while she was still overseeing contracts involving prospective Boeing deals. The former Air Force official, Darleen Druyun, and a top Boeing executive both served time in prison, and the scandal led to the departure of Boeing's chief executive and several top Air Force officials.
McCain has run ads touting his role in fighting "pork" such as the tanker project and cited the deal in a recent GOP debate.
"I saved the taxpayers $6 billion in a bogus tanker deal," he said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., echoing the thoughts of many congressional Democrats, sees McCain's role in a less positive light. She said the earlier tanker deal was "on course for Boeing" before McCain started railing against it.
"I mean, the thought was that it would be a domestic supplier for it," Pelosi told reporters. "Senator McCain intervened, and now we have a situation where the contract may be - this work may be outsourced."
Even Boeing's Republican supporters are critical of McCain.
"John McCain will be the nominee and I will support him, but if John McCain believes that Airbus or EADS is the company for our Air Force tanker program he's flat-out wrong - and I'll tell him that to his face," said Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash.
Rep. Todd Tiahrt, a Kansas Republican whose district includes a Boeing plant that could have gained hundreds of new jobs from the tanker program, said McCain's role in killing the earlier deal is likely to become an election issue. Both of the leading Democratic candidates for president, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have criticized the Air Force decision.
"I think we absolutely will hear more about it," Tiahrt said. "We'll hear it mostly from the Democrats and they have every right to be concerned."
McCain called such criticism off base.
"In all due respect to the Washington delegation, they vigorously defended the process before - which turned out to be corrupt - which would have cost the taxpayers more than $6 billion and ended up with people in federal prison," he said. "I'm the one that fought against that ... for years and brought down a corrupt contract."
Keith Ashdown, with the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Boeing executives who broke the law were to blame for the demise of the tanker contract - not McCain.
"This was theirs from day one," he said. "This idea that any lawmaker is to blame is a joke."
Still, Todd Donovan, a political science professor at Western Washington University, said McCain's opposition to Boeing could hurt him with voters in Washington and other states affected by the tanker program. Boeing would have performed much of the work in Everett, Wash., and Wichita, Kan., and used Pratt & Whitney engines built in Connecticut. Significant work also was slated for Texas.
"If he can be painted as somehow being associated with job losses ... it could hurt him on the margins," Donovan said.
McCain's role in the tanker deal did not bother Alabama politicians, including Republican Gov. Bob Riley, who endorsed McCain three days after the Air Force contract was announced. The EADS-Northrop tanker, based on the Airbus A330, will be built in Mobile, Ala., where it will produce 2,000 new jobs, and support 25,000 jobs at suppliers nationwide.
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Associated Press writers Libby Quaid and Sam Hananel contributed to this story.

Blog Comments sent to me today. I post for your information. -GFS
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From: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2008/03/both-clinton-and-obama-foolish.php
Both Clinton and Obama foolishly play politics with the KC-x Tanker deal

By - March 4, 2008, 11:26AM
I found the following statements in this LA Times article disturbing:
Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois said Monday that it was hard for him to
believe "that having an American company that has been a traditional
source of aeronautic excellence would not have done this job."

Sen.
Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York said she was "deeply concerned about
the Bush administration's decision to outsource the production of
refueling tankers for the American military."
I would be supremely disappointed in both candidates, one of which I strongly support, if they turn to one of the oldest plays in the Republican handbook and start demonizing foreign entities and their products in a "protectionism" shtick.

Both of them are only undercutting their own integrity and their future battle against John McCain. McCain spearheaded an investigation in the early years of the KC-x Boeing program which revealed serious fraud and problems with the next generation tanker, so much so that one person ended up behind bars and the contract was recompeted.

It's not outsourcing when the government choses the superior product for it's soldiers. That is yet another point that McCain will absolutely slam the Democratic nominee for, and it's on an issue where he is both expertly knowledgeable and intimately familiar with. If BO or HC make this "buy the lower-quality American product for the soldiers" argument, not only will they be wrong and look naive (and illustrate their total lack of knowledge of the tanker deal), but McCain will use it as one more shot in a full broadside on the National Security issue.

I understand the economy needs help, but providing that help at the expense of the military is not the answer. By all accounts (such as the referenced 'defense policy analyst' identified at the end of the LA Times article) the Northrop Grumman/EADS product was far superior and cheaper. 20% of the Boeing plane was going to be assembled overseas as well and the net American job difference was vastly overstated by Boeing for exactly this reason.

The Democratic nominee will undoubtedly be strongly tempted to attack McCain on his issue, given the juicy combination of his unique involvement with the deal and an economy on the downslope. But as long as the award process was conducted properly and fairly, this issue is an absolute landmine for the Democratic nominee.

The only way to approach this issue would be to find some serious dirt on the amount of sway the congressional lobbyist groups had. They certainly hugely influenced the deal, as they always have. But doing so would be gray area for the Dem nominee, as they'd be walking into territory where McCain is an established expert.
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From http://www.myopenforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27795
US anger over loss of $40bn air force order to Europe

Andrew Clark and Richard Wray
The Guardian,

The US military's decision to award a $40bn (£20bn) contract to build in-flight refuelling aircraft to the European defence company EADS, instead of the current supplier Boeing, has prompted protectionist outrage in the US, with lawmakers accusing the Pentagon of selling out local jobs.

The contract, with EADS and its US partner Northrop Grumman, for a fleet of up to 179 planes based on the Airbus A330, will safeguard 7,400 jobs at Airbus's factory in Flintshire, north Wales, where the tanker's wings will be made.

Following news of its success over the weekend, bosses at the plant in Broughton said more jobs could be created. The deal also helps Airbus's other UK site at Filton, near Bristol.

American politicians are furious at the US air force's decision to award the contract to EADS instead of Boeing, until now the US military's sole supplier of tankers. The US firm had been front-runner, despite a $23.5bn deal it won in 2002 for 100 planes collapsing amid allegations of fraud that resulted in prison terms for an ex-air force weapons buyer and Boeing's former chief financial officer.

Sam Brownback, a Republican senator and former presidential candidate, said: "It's stunning to me that we would outsource the production of these planes to Europe instead of building them in America. I'll be calling on the Pentagon for a full debriefing and expect that there will be a protest of the award by Boeing."

Politicians on Boeing's home ground in Seattle were particularly vociferous. Washington state congressional delegates said: "This is a blow to the American aerospace industry, American workers, and America's men and women in uniform."

Boeing is expected to decide whether to appeal against the decision after it has received a "debriefing" from the US military on why its planes were rejected. Boeing's design was based on its 767 aircraft.

The contract is part of the US air force's plans to replace its fleet of more than 500 KC-135 in-flight refuelling aircraft, which date from the 1950s and are used to extend the range of its planes. The first of the new KC-45 planes produced by EADS are due to go into service in 2013. In total, analysts estimate the USAF's replacement of its old tankers could be worth $100bn. Including maintenance and other follow-on orders the whole programme could become the second largest US military aircraft procurement exercise after the F-35 fighter.

EADS won the first of an expected three in-flight refuelling aircraft orders with Northrop Grumman, the Pentagon's third-largest supplier after Lockheed Martin and Boeing. In an attempt to calm American fears about the possible impact on the US defence industry of a European company becoming involved, the two companies plan an assembly plant in Mobile, Alabama. The parts themselves will, however, be produced in Europe.

Richard Shelby, an Alabama senator, described the European offering as "by far the most superior platform in design, fuel efficiency and overall capability".

Despite its success in winning the order, Airbus will continue its cost-cutting plans, Thomas Enders, chief executive, said in an interview with the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel published today. The company, which is battling a weak dollar, launched a savings programme called Power8 a year ago which involves 10,000 job cuts by 2010. Some jobs are expected to go at the Airbus site near Bristol.

Four years ago Congress killed plans to spend $23.5bn on 100 Boeing tankers after an investigation by the Republican senator John McCain, now the front-running nominee for the US presidential race. Darleen Druyun was jailed for negotiating a position with Boeing while still working as an air force procurement officer. The man who gave her the job, Boeing's finance chief Michael Sears, was also jailed.

ATF Whistleblower Alleges Backlash

By Dan Eggen

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Edgar A. Domenech says he thought Justice Department officials would welcome information about mismanagement at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Instead, the 23-year ATF veteran says, Justice officials ignored his complaints and later retaliated against him by demoting him, denying him a bonus and attempting to give him a poor job review.

"I realized I was committing career suicide at the time, but I felt I had a moral obligation as the deputy director to protect the agency and the men and women of the agency," Domenech said in an interview yesterday. "In retrospect, I was naive to believe that the department would welcome my honesty."

Domenech filed a 13-page complaint yesterday with the Office of Special Counsel, saying that ATF and the Justice Department punished him for raising questions about the performance of former ATF director Carl J. Truscott, who resigned in August 2006 while under investigation for alleged financial mismanagement.

Domenech, who was second-in-command at ATF for four years, said his complaints about Truscott beginning in late 2005 were ignored or played down by aides to then-Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales because Truscott had ties to the White House.

Truscott headed President Bush's Secret Service detail before taking over ATF.

Spokesmen for ATF and the Justice Department declined to comment on Domenech's allegations. The ATF spokesmen said they had not seen the complaint and could not discuss personnel issues.

An October 2006 report by the Justice Department's inspector general largely confirmed complaints by Domenech and other ATF senior executives. It determined that Truscott had engaged in a wide-ranging pattern of questionable expenditures on a new ATF headquarters, personal security and other items. The report also said that Truscott improperly forced employees to help his nephew prepare a high school video project and required female employees to serve lunch to guests.

In the complaint, Domenech's Washington attorney, Debra S. Katz, outlined actions by the Justice Department and ATF that she alleged are violations of the Whistleblower Protection Act.

Domenech said ATF's acting director, Michael J. Sullivan, and other officials have taken actions meant to punish him for raising questions about Truscott. The moves include transferring him out of headquarters and excluding him from meetings and duties that usually would be his responsibility.

He also alleged that, after years of outstanding job reviews and bonuses, he was given an average review in 2007, which was changed only after he complained. Because of the earlier review, however, he was denied a customary bonus, he said.

Domenech, who now heads ATF's Washington field office, drew comparisons between his case and the firings of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006. The federal prosecutors were told that they were being removed only to make room for new people. Sullivan gave Domenech a similar explanation when he demoted him, Domenech said.

Justice officials repeatedly played down Truscott's problems as head of ATF, and Sullivan even invited the former director to take part in ATF's annual award ceremony in August 2007, Domenech said.

Domenech first raised complaints about Truscott's performance in December 2005 with William Mercer, then principal associate deputy attorney general, who later would be a pivotal figure in the controversy over the dismissal of the federal prosecutors.

Mercer and another official said Truscott "appeared to be in over his head, but since his name came directly from the White House, there was little that could be done about the situation," according to the complaint. Several months later, Domenech said, Mercer dismissed complaints about Truscott as coming from "disgruntled career staff."

After Truscott left, Domenech reversed a decision by Truscott to include an engraved quotation from Bush at the entrance to the new ATF headquarters in Washington.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/03/AR2008030302684.html?nav=rss_politics