The Daily MuckPresident Bush has issued an executive order weakening the Intelligence Oversight Board, which was created by the Ford administration following a Congressional investigation into abuses by intelligence agencies. Among the changes: the order “deleted the board’s authority to refer matters to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation” and “terminated the board’s authority to oversee each intelligence agency’s general counsel and inspector general.” (Boston Globe)
The goal posts have been moved so many times that it’s worth recalling that when President Bush called for a “surge” of troops in Iraq, the stated goal was to create the stability required for the Iraqi government to function effectively and begin the process of reconciliation. By that standard, General Petraeus conceded yesterday that the “surge” has failed. Petraeus informed the press that “no one” in the U.S. and Iraqi governments “feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation,” or in the government’s ability to provide basic public services. (Washington Post)
A recently released Justice Department report revealed the FBI’s abuse of intelligence-gathering privileges through the use of “national security letters,” and yesterday two government audits of this abuse revealed that the agency obtained records that the FISA court had deemed protected by the First Amendment.” Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department’s Inspector General discovered that the FBI attempted to skirt the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court after it twice rejected an FBI records request because “the ‘facts’ were too thin” and the “request implicated the target’s First Amendment rights.” (Washington Post)
Germany’s Foreign Minister testified before a parliamentary committee that Germany did not have “advance knowledge of a 2001 U.S. operation to seize a German citizen in Morocco and transfer him to Syria where he was allegedly tortured.” The committee is investigating Germany’s “cooperation with the U.S. ‘war on terror,’ particularly its knowledge of secret CIA transfers of terror suspects known as ‘renditions.'” (Reuters)
A “new review of evidence” in the case of Don Siegelman suggests that Rob Riley, the son of the Alabama Governor, sought to profit from the case. “According to court documents and official testimony, months before Siegelman was charged,” Riley “expressed confidence that an indictment would occur and that Siegelman’s political financier, Richard Scrushy, would be drawn into case.” At around the same time, Riley was appointed “lead local counsel” on a civil suit against Scrushy’s company HealthSouth. (Huffington Post)
A defense attorney for Omar Khadr, a Canadian accused of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, alleged Thursday that “a U.S. military commander altered a report on a firefight in Afghanistan” to implicate his client. The official report from the day after the incident indicated that “the assailant who threw the grenade was killed” but the report was later revised “to say a U.S. fighter had only ‘engaged’ the assailant.” (AP)
The swift resignation of Governor Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) is turning up the heat on Detroit mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick. The mayor’s critics, including Michigan’s attorney general, have argued that “lying under oath” is a “more serious a crime than hiring a prostitute” (though Spitzer’s case may be more complicated than that). Kilpatrick has insisted for weeks that he he will not resign, despite the clear evidence that he and his former chief of staff lied under oath. (New York Times)
Yesterday, by a vote of 71-29, the Senate rejected a proposed one year moratorium on earmarks. The proposed moratorium was supported by the three remaining presidential candidates and a number of Republicans who believe that the explosion in earmarks – from 1,439 in 1995 to nearly 14,000 in 2005 – under GOP control of Congress contributed to losses in the 2006 election. (LA Times)
Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has disclosed the $500 million in earmarks that he sought in his first two years in the Senate. Obama has already published his 2007 requests and he has now challenged Hillary Clinton to divulge the same. A few of Obama’s requests have attracted attention: one request was for a defense contractor with ties to a campaign finance chair and another was for the University of Chicago Medical Center, where his wife works. (Washington Post, New York Times)
