There’s a lot of speculation now about what might have spooked the White House about Carol Lam’s expanded Cunningham investigation, if indeed that is why she was sacked. There’s good reason to look at what she was investigating on Capitol Hill and also at the CIA. Indeed, some have even suggested that the White House might itself have been brought into the mix. The Hill and the CIA certainly. But there’s another part of the equation others are missing: the Pentagon.

Remember, part of the brilliance of Cunningham’s and Wilkes’ scam (if that word can ever be associated with the disgraced Duke) was hiding their crooked deals deep in the black parts of the Pentagon budget, where thick layers of classification protected their schemes from virtually all scrutiny.

My reporting on the Duke Cunningham story from last year suggested that top political appointees at the Pentagon were aware of what Duke and other members of Congress were up to but looked the other way in return for help and/or non-interference with various Pentagon programs of dubious constitutionality, like domestic spying operations and monitoring.

Next up, whatever happened to Tommy Kontogiannis? He’s one of the four bribers of Duke Cunningham, according to Duke plea agreement (coconspirator #3). Whatever else you can say about Cunningham, Wade and Wilkes, they each had clean records before they got busted in the Duke scandal. Not Kontogiannis. He pled out in a 2002 bid-rigging scheme that had to do with computers contracts for the Queens, New York school district. And back in 1994 he pled guilty in a visa fraud case after he and an employee of the US Embassy in Athens were arrested for taking bribes to provide phony US visas.

Out of the four named coconspirators in the case (one of whom is Kontogiannis’s nephew, John T. Michael), Kontogiannis is the only one who hasn’t been indicted. Nor, according to my reporting, does any plea deal or indictment appear to be in the works. What’s that about?

Another hearing to look forward to. Dems want to hear from Karl Rove’s (and Jack Abramoff’s) former aide, Susan Ralston.

Howard Dean proving he can win over major Democratic contributors once intensely skeptical of his tenure as DNC chair.

In an interview, James Carville responds to the liberal blogosphere’s case that he should be identified as a Hillary supporter when he criticizes Barack Obama on CNN.

As I wrote a few days ago, Cunningham briber Mitchell Wade often bragged about his juice with Vice President Dick Cheney. Now Laura Rozen has more on the Wade-Cheney connection.

WaPo:

Federal prosecutors have told Bernard B. Kerik, whose nomination as homeland security secretary in 2004 ended in scandal, that he is likely to be charged with several felonies, including tax evasion and conspiracy to commit wiretapping.

Kerik’s indictment could set the stage for a courtroom battle that would draw attention to Kerik’s extensive business and political dealings with former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who personally recommended him to President Bush for the Cabinet. Giuliani, the front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination according to most polls, later called the recommendation a mistake.

Mistakes were made.

The case of Gitmo detainee David Hicks of Australia is a travesty on so many levels, but consider the following terms of his plea bargain:

The deal included a statement by Mr. Hicks that he “has never been illegally treated” while a captive, despite claims of beatings he had made in the past. It also included a promise not to pursue suits over the treatment he received while in detention and “not to communicate in any way with the media” for a year.

Critics said those requirements were a continuation of what they say has been a pattern of illegal detention policies. “It is a modern cutting out of his tongue,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group, based in New York, that is coordinating the representation of detainees in many suits challenging Guantánamo detention.

What we have here is a plea bargain in which the government leverages its vast control over the life, liberty, and body of the defendant to obtain for itself a release from potential liability for its own conduct and a one-year protection from bad PR. Truth, justice, and the Gitmo way.

David Broder, September 4th, 2005, six days after Katrina’s landfall …

It took almost no time for President Bush to put his stamp on the national response to the tragedy that has befallen New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, a reminder that modern communications have reshaped the constitutional division of powers in our government in ways that the Founding Fathers never could have imagined.

Because the commander in chief is also the communicator in chief, when a crisis emerges the nation’s eyes turn to him as to no other official. We cannot yet calculate the political fallout from Hurricane Katrina and its devastating human and economic consequences, but one thing seems certain: It makes the previous signs of political weakness for Bush, measured in record-low job approval ratings, instantly irrelevant and opens new opportunities for him to regain his standing with the public.

We have seen this before. Bill Clinton was foundering in his third year in office when the destruction of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City shocked the nation and set the stage for his flawless performance of the symbolic rites of healing and comfort for the victims.

Bud Cummins:

You only get one chance to hold on to your credibility. My team, which holds temporary custody of the Department of Justice, has blown it in this case. The Department of Justice will be paying for it for some time to come. Lots of sound investigations and convictions are now going to be questioned. That is a crying shame, because most of the 110,000 employees to whom the attorney general referred in a recent news conference, are neutral, nonpartisan public servants and do incredible work. A lot of President Bush’s political appointees have done a lot of great work, too. Sadly, because of the damage done by this protracted scandal, which the administration has handled poorly at every turn, none of that good work is currently being recognized. And more ominously, the credibility of the Department of Justice may no longer be, either.

The Bush Administration is ratcheting up the pressure on Syria:

The State Department in recent weeks has issued a series of rhetorical broadsides against Syria, using language harsher than that usually reserved for U.S. adversaries. On Friday, the administration criticized a planned visit there by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

“It’s the new Cuba – no language is too tough,” said one of the officials, who like others insisted on anonymity to discuss internal government planning.

The campaign appears to fly in the face of the recommendations last December of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which urged President Bush to engage diplomatically with Syria to stabilize Iraq and address the Arab-Israeli conflict. The White House largely ignored that recommendation, agreeing only to talk with Syria about Iraqi refugees and to attend a Baghdad conference where envoys from Iran and Syria were present.

Some officials who are aware of the campaign say they fear its real aim is to weaken or even overthrow Assad and to ensure that he can’t thwart the creation of an international tribunal to investigate the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. A U.N. report has implicated Syrian and Lebanese officials in the murder.

The officials say the campaign bears the imprint of Elliott Abrams, a conservative White House aide in charge of pushing Bush’s global democracy agenda.

Elliott Abrams–with the way Republicans rehabilitate their own, Kyle Sampson will be attorney general in 20 years.