The Daily Muck

The NSA will investigate reports that intelligence operators recorded calls from American journalists, military personnel, and humanitarian workers based in the Middle East, the agency said yesterday. The whistleblowers have said they confided their worries to superiors, but Mike McConnell, the director of National Intelligence, said yesterday that the NSA did not know about the problems until an ABC News investigation was published last week. Among the claims are allegations that NSA operators listened in on phone sex and then passed around the details. (ABC News)

A U.S. Court of appeals yesterday ruled 2-1 against the immediate release of 17 Uighur Muslims who are being held in Guantanamo despite being declared good for release more than three years ago. A U.S. court had ordered their immediate release earlier this month, despite objections by the Justice Department that the men posed a security threat to the U.S. but could not be returned to China, their home, because they might be tortured. The judges’ decisions broke down along party lines, with two Bush appointees siding with the Justice Department. (AP)

American International Group, the insurance firm that has received more than $122 billion in federal funds this fall, announced yesterday that it will halt its lobbying activities. The move is the latest effort to appease critics, who have faulted the company for its lavish retreats and held it up as an example of Wall Street greed and corruption. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that AIG was spending millions of dollars to prevent tougher regulation of the mortgage market. (Wall Street Journal)

Arguments opened yesterday in the case of five men accused of planning an attack on Fort Dix, a domestic Army base. The men, all foreign-born Muslims in their twenties, deny the charges, which include attempted murder, and say that the government is taking their activities out of context. “I guess the government can say that pingpong helps your hand-eye coordination” for an attack, said one of the defense lawyers. “That’s what they’re doing in this case. They’re taking these innocent things and turning them into something they’re not.” (AP)

A new report from the Government Accountability Office suggests that the enforcement of environmental protections has been even more lax under the Bush Administration than previously imagined. The confusion arises from accounting practices which document the fines levied by the Environmental Protection Agency, not how much money the regulators collect. Even so, in 2007 the worth of fines levied was more than $100 million less than in 1998, down to $137.7 million from $240.6 million. (AP)

Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, who is under FBI investigation over claims that he helped a friend win defense contracts, asked the agency to close the probe. The allegations against the governor and Warren Trepp, who owns eTreppid Technologies, arose during the legal tussle between Trepp and former employee Dennis Montgomery over ownership of anti-terrorist software. The two men settled their lawsuit last month. (AP)

Jury deliberations began yesterday in the trial of Gwendolyn Moyo, who is accused of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. Three Louisiana politicians, including Rep. William Jefferson (D) and his sister Betty, a local official, have been named as unindicted co-conspirators. Moyo, who has been convicted twice before in fraud trials, represented herself. She offered no evidence after prosecutors closed their arguments, but told jurors: “The bottom line is that they’re after William and Betty Jefferson. I just got caught in the middle.” (New Orleans Times Picayune)

Before vacating office in January, officials from the president on down must perform one final task — sitting for a portrait, an increasingly anachronistic custom in an age of ballooning deficits and digital photography. Among the leaders who will be commemorated is former Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld, who already counts a Pentagon portrait among his accomplishments. The second painting, set to be unveiled in February, will cost $46,790. (Washington Post)

U.S. interrogators used an Ethiopian prison to hold detainees in the war on terror, according to a report by the National, the new English-language newspaper in Dubai. The paper dubbed the jail the “African Gitmo.”