The Daily Muck

A top CIA official said the agency had “produced or made available for review” everything that the 9/11 Commission had requested regarding the interrogation of operatives of Al Qaeda, but the commission didn’t receive the video tapes of interrogations that were still in existence at the time. The CIA says the agency would have handed over the tapes if the commission members had specifically asked for interrogation videos — but, of course, the agency hadn’t told anyone outside the administration that the tapes existed. A judge last week ordered the administration to speak under oath about the destruction of the tapes. (New York Times, AP)

A newly-declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the FBI, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty. Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” Truman didn’t approve. (New York Times)

Firefighters on 9/11 were forced to use old radios that had malfunctioned eight years earlier, during the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Center. A New York City Council report on the fire department’s radio procurement process said the FDNY chose a radio that “representing an entirely new communications technology from Motorola rather than conduct a competitive review of products and prices.” Giuliani told George Stephanopoulos that it would have been “impossible” to give them working radios. (CNN, Think Progress)

Only two of six well-known evangelical ministries have provided information on how they spent donors’ money, six weeks after a request from the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA). One ministry has asked for more time; three other ministries have not been in recent contact with the committee or have said they will not cooperate. (New York Times)

A federal judge agreed to let the Bush administration keep secret the lists of visitors to the White House until an appeals court decides whether the documents are public records. The logs are being sought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and they relate to White House visits regarding nine conservative religious commentators, including James Dobson, Gary Bauer and the late Rev. Jerry Falwell. (AP)

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich boasted that he “could award contracts, legal work and investment banking” to encourage campaign fundraising, according to a new court document. Blagojevich, whom the document calls “Public Official A,” denies he made that statement. He is not being charged in the investigation, but the trial may implicate him in wrongdoing. (AP, TPMmuckraker)

The Bush administration is arguing that a lower court ruling that says the FBI was wrong to raid Democratic Rep. William Jefferson’s (D-LA) office will hinder corruption investigations of Congress. In an appeal filed last week, government lawyers said that only the Supreme Court can decide whether the 18-hour raid was an unconstitutional breach of congressional authority. The May 2006 raid which recovered $90,000 of pay-off money in Jefferson’s freezer, was part of a 16-month international bribery investigation. (AP)