From TPM Reader JB …
In regards to the “controversy” of where to incarcerate Gitmo detainees, I can’t help but think that we and our representation are missing out on the bigger picture. Congress and pundits are up in arms about the relocation of Gitmo detainees using the “not in my backyard” argument. Of course the public safety concerns of this argument are ridiculous. SuperMax in Colorado is as secure as any prison in the country. Do people really think that detainees are going to plot the greatest prison escape in American history and then rampage through sparsely populated Colorado with their prison-made shivs? Unlikely. But, I think there is a bigger point to all of this. I think as a country, we’ve been desensitized by the keyword “9-11”. The Bush administration used this keyword for justification to every argument they made. Because of that, I think that the actual event of 9-11 has lost some significance. I can’t believe that our representatives are fighting to keep detainees out of their state instead of fighting to have detainees relocated TO their state. If all goes to plan, we will release unjustly detained Gitmo detainees (a separate can of worms) and try detainees with legitimate US legal cases against them. In this case, we are seeking to domestically incarcerate Gitmo detainees with just legal cases against them. These charges accuse them of direct involvement in the planning or execution of 9-11 or deadly acts against our soldiers abroad. I fail to see how a representative would refuse this responsibility for their state. In the weeks and months after 9-11, would any representative have refused to incarcerate someone linked to the perpetration of 9-11? I, as a Coloradan would be proud for my state to undertake such a responsibility. Additionally, beyond the patriotic obligation, our representatives should be clamoring for the political capital gained from volunteering their state to house Gitmo detainees. On one hand, a representative could claim that they are promoting their state’s commitment to the defense of the nation. On the other hand, a representative could claim that they are compromising to bring an end to Gitmo detention and mainstream the process for trying alleged terrorists. Appearing strong on defense while revitalizing the American commitment to the rule of law seems like a win-win situation for so many representatives facing re-election in a newly skewed political landscape.
Robert Reich: We’ve finally got industrial policy, but the worst kind.
It’s always seemed to me that prosecutors could have a field day looking at what executives at the big investment banks (and commercial banks) were doing as things started to fall apart in 2007 and 2008 — cashing out their own holdings and finding chumps to buy stuff that was plummeting in value, even if many folks didn’t realize it yet.
Seems like maybe Lehman is first up. From the Journal …
The Justice Department has questioned several former executives at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. as part of its criminal investigation into whether they sold supposedly safe, liquid securities to clients while knowing that the market for the securities was drying up.
Prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn and lawyers from the Securities and Exchange Commission in recent weeks interviewed several former executives who ran Lehman’s auction-rate-securities business, these people said.
…
The inquiry centers on whether Lehman employees defrauded customers as the market for these securities broke down in 2007. Authorities want to know if Lehman executives got these auction-rate securities off the firm’s books and into client accounts at a time in which the securities were becoming hard to sell, according to the people with knowledge of the matter.
Authorities also want to know if executives knew the market was in trouble and sold their own personal holdings of auction-rate securities, which could constitute insider trading, according to the people.
If you haven’t heard, four African-American Muslims were arrested this evening in New York City and charged with a plot to bomb a series of sites in city, including several synagogues. It appears that this is one of those cases where the group was under surveillance for a very long time and helped along in what turned out to be a bogus plot orchestrated by federal authorities.
To be clear, my phrasing isn’t meant to suggest they were entrapped, only that the authorities had them under close tabs and the various munitions they were buying were duds supplied by informants and undercover agents.
A reader told us this evening that he’d been contacted by his congregation’s rabbi and that their synagogue was apparently the first target of the group. According to this reader, the suspects had actually ‘planted’ four dummy bombs in front of the synagogue before being arrested. But I have not been able to confirm that last point.
Late Update: Here’s the update from the Times City Room.
Latter Update: Confirmed. Just out from the Daily News …
The FBI busted a homegrown terror cell late Wednesday night as the men sneaked around a Jewish temple in Riverdale planting what they thought was packages of C-4 explosives, sources told the Daily News.
Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) talks up the free colonoscopies at Gitmo as evidence of how good the detainees have it there.
We mentioned last week the case of Charlie Millard, the Bush appointee who briefly ran the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation — the government chartered company that insures many private pension plans. During his brief stint he put in place policies to move most of the Corporation’s assets out of relatively safe bonds into stock, real estate and hedge funds. Four senators have already asked for a criminal probe into Millard’s tenure. And today he took the fifth when called to testify.
TPM Reader RW has some questions on that terror plot in New York …
Reading about the plot to blow up NYC synagogues I’m struck by the similarity of the case to several others where misguided individuals decide to commit terrorist acts based on their interactions with FBI informants. Here, the informant provided the group with dummy ‘bombs’ which they dutifly planted, no doubt recorded on multiple FBI cameras. The whole terrorist ‘act’ is carried out simply for the benefit of prosecutors who would love to play an edited version in front of a jury.
The NYT’s story quoted Bureau sources describing the plot as ‘aspirational,’ a word we’ve heard before with these cases. It is a trend I find troubling.
Setting aside the potential entrapment angle, is this what law enforcement is doing to protect us? Don’t we have deep cover guys taking down plots from the terrorist’s A-team? Is there a terrorist A-team? These are super-villians, no?
I’ll reserve judgment on this one until we hear more. On the face of it this seems different than the notorious and frankly comical Liberty Six story. These were the goofballs who hung out in an abandoned warehouse down in Liberty City and, as Justin Rood then memorably put it, looked to their cult leader “for religious leadership, karate instruction and contracting work.” As I, I think, somewhat memorably noted at the time, they were in such an early stage in their jihad that they hadn’t even gotten around to converting to Islam.
At the time, the Liberty Six case was termed ‘aspirational’. And frankly that was generous. They basically found these numskulls and perhaps because they offered to give them some clothes and shoes or whatever got them into a conversation about blowing up the Sears Tower. (By the way, these guys were recently convicted and sentenced to hard time.)
But this case in New York, at least based on initial reports, sounds very different. They had the suspects under surveillance. And FBI informants or agents sold them inoperative bombs. But the initial reports suggest that the suspects were arrested while actually planting bombs at a Synagogue. That sounds much more operational than aspirational to me.
Presumably, the defense will try to make an argument for entrapment. And it’ll depend how disciplined the FBI was in running the case whether they have any luck with that. As to whether or not this is a good use of law enforcement time, it certainly seems like a pretty good idea to have these guys off the streets. And presumably it has some deterrent effect on other terrorist ragamuffins who might get pulled into one of these relatively half-baked but potentially plenty deadly plots.
As for whether law enforcement should be focusing on the A Team, as RW puts it, I’d like to think they can do both at the same time. Of course, if a significant amount of time is being spent ginning up impressionable but otherwise harmless people into buying fake bombs so they can be bagged in high-profile sting operations, that’d be a pretty questionable use of time. But I think we need to see more facts before we jump to that conclusion.
Late Update: Here’s the criminal complaint in the case. It gives a very rough sense of the evidence the government has. These folks were, it seems, not big fans of Jews.
Vice President Cheney’s crew is putting out advances this morning on today’s speech at AEI, offering ‘praise’ for Obama when
he deserves an answer when he leads the country in the wrong direction. Clearly there’s going to be a lot of mano a mano razzmatazz that the media tries to gin up around this. But for those who want to remain among the lucid, let’s not forget who the former vice president is.
This is someone who not only organized and seemingly directed a policy of state-sponsored torture. He did it in large part to get people to admit to crankish conspiracy theories he got taken in by by a crew of think-tank jockeys in DC whose theories most even half way sensible people treated as punch lines of jokes. So it’s Torquemada or 1984 but only after getting rescripted by Mel Brooks.
This is an extremely gullible man who has just come off being the driving ideological force in an administration that most people can already see produced more fiascos and titanic, self-inflicted goofs than possibly any in our entire history. By any standard the guy is a monumental failure — and not one whose mistakes stem in some Lyndon Johnson fashion from tragic overreach, but just a fool who damaged his country through his own gullibility, paranoia and bad judgment. Whatever else you can say about the Cheney story it ain’t Shakespearean.
So as we see the big reporters trying to put him on some sort of equal footing with President Obama today, let’s remember that the great majority of Americans see Dick Cheney, accurately, as a clown. And mockery isn’t just the most effective but also the most morally apt response to the man.
Cheney still ain’t popular but he’s doing better than he was, a new CNN poll shows. Winning back Republicans? That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.