David Kay, the man who headed the Iraq Survey Group and the Bush administration charged with finding WMD in Iraq after the U.S. invasion, believes that the U.S. intelligence efforts were the biggest âfiasco of my lifetime.â In an interview, Kay asserts that the CIA never spoke to âCurveballâ (the Iraqi source who told the Germans that the Iraqis were constructing mobile weapon labs) and the Germans never provided the Americans with âCurveballâsâ real name. (Speigel Online International and War & Peace)
Roger Stone, the political operative who has been involved in dirty tricks since the Nixon administration and who was fired from Bob Doleâs campaign when The National Enquirer reported that Stone and his wife were advertising for threesomes (Stone denied it), sent a letter to the FBI four months ago alleging that Eliot Spitzer âused the services of high-priced call girls” in Florida. Stone, who told the FBI – through his lawyer – that âGov. Spitzer did not remove his mid-calf length black socks during the sex act,â made these claims several months after he was accused of leaving a âthreatening phone message at the office of Bernard Spitzer, the ex-governor’s father, regarding ”phony” campaign loans involving his son’s unsuccessful 1994 bid for attorney general.â We are not sure where this sordid set of alleged facts fits in our Spitzer timeline. (Miami Herald)
Chileâs ambassador to the U.N. alleges in his new book, A Solitary War: A Diplomat’s Chronicle of the Iraq War and Its Lessons, that the Bush administrationâs efforts to corral support for the Iraq war engendered enduring âbitternessâ and âdeep mistrustâ among allies in Europe and Latin America. Bush allegedly threatened economic retaliation against nations that withheld support, âspied on allies, and pressed for the recall of U.N. envoys that resisted U.S pressure to endorse the war.â (Washington Post)
Prominent Miami defense lawyer Ben Kuehne is facing an indictment on money-laundering and obstruction of justice charges for legal advice he offered to another attorney regarding a drug cartel smuggling case. Some in the legal community fear actions taken against Kuehne may cause future reluctance of attorneys to accept cases involving financially unstable defendants. (Herald Tribune)
Following the breach into the passport records of three presidential candidates, the State Department has announced the focus of their investigation will be on one contract employee who worked for The Analysis Corporation. The two other contract employees implicated in the case have since been fired. (Washington Times)
The Senate, in a rare moment of bi-partisanship, has called upon the Department of Justice to investigate State Department employee unauthorized searches of the confidential passport files of Senators McCain (R-AZ), Clinton (D-NY), and Obama (D-IL). Though Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice apologized to the presidential candidates last week, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) notes that “the Government Accountability Office has been warning about this problem for a decade. And it seems to me in this administration, there’s been pretty much a culture of disregard for privacy, and that’s part of the problem.â (AP)
âFollow the moneyâ has been a central strategy of the Bush administrationâs âwar on terror,â but efforts to track and cut off terrorist financing are increasingly faltering âthe farther we get from 9/11.â Current and former officials, as well as independent experts in anti-terrorism, point to increasing failures in international cooperation that have allowed terrorists to find new ways to raise, transfer, and hide money. (LA Times)
Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, the former No. 3 CIA official who is already facing charges in relation to the Randy “Duke” Cunningham bribery scandal, may be facing more charges in the future, potentially including “conflict-of-interest charges and allegations of having made false statements.” Foggo’s trial, which was moved from California to Virginia, is now set for November 3. (San Diego Union-Tribune)
The White House told a federal court on Friday that its old hard drives are normally destroyed and that “some, but not necessarily all, of the data on old hard drives is moved to new computer hard drives.” The disclosure came as part of “an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed.” (AP)
Internal documents show that the Bush administration has made it significantly more difficult to add additional domestic species to the endangered species list. During Bush’s term in office, only 59 domestic species have been placed on the list, while “Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton added an average of 58 and 62 species to the list each year, respectively” (Washington Post)
Like father, like son. Zach Scruggs, the son of the famous trial lawyer Richard “Dickie” Scruggs has also pleaded guilty to a felony charge. Last week âDickieâ pleaded guilty to bribing a Mississippi judge. Zach is guilty of one charge of misprision â âessentially that he knew about the commission of a felony (his fatherâs) but concealed it and failed to report it.â (Wall Street Journal)