The Daily Muck

A House panel has begun looking into a former Halliburton/KBR employee’s allegations of rape and forced detention. In a “hearing next Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee will hear testimony relating to allegations made by Jamie Leigh Jones that in 2005, a group of Halliburton/KBR employees in Baghdad drugged her and gang-raped her less than a week into her time in the country.” Meanwhile, the head of KBR, Bill Utt, has sent a memo to employees stating that press reports have mischaracterized the sexual assault and his company’s response. Utt will certainly have time to defend his company in front of Congress or in federal court, as Congress has also begun “asking questions about another ex-employee of government contracting firm KBR who claims she was raped in Iraq.” (ABC’s, “The Blotter”)

Newsweek (via Think Progress) reports that the interrogation techniques used on Abu Zubaydah “sparked an internal battle within the U.S. intelligence community” to such an extent that one agent, so offended by the methods, “threatened to arrest
the CIA interrogators.” (Newsweek)

Salon has new testimony from witnesses and victims of Blackwater’s September 16th shootings that “provides the most in-depth, harrowing account to date of the U.S. security firm’s deadly rampage in Iraq.” One man describes how he “identified his son from what was left of his shoes. His forehead and brains were missing and his skin completely burned. He identified his wife of 20 years by a dental bridge.” (Salon)

A U.N. human rights expert said Wednesday that the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay is not meeting international justice standards, during a presentation to the 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council as part of a wider review of U.S. practices in the fight against terrorism. Martin Scheinin, the U.N.’s independent investigator on human rights in the fight against terrorism, raised questions about the legal framework used to prosecute detainees there after visiting the prison camp last week. (AP)

A Florida contractor received $32 million for an Iraqi base that it never built. The project was canceled when the Iraqi government could not secure land rights, yet the Defense Department still paid Ellis Environmental Group. (USA Today)

A South Florida imam asserts that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement prosecutor threatened that if he did not leave the country he would face arrest for ”support of terrorist groups.” Three years ago, the FBI attempted to recruit the imam to be an informant and he refused. (Miami Herald)

Among the 15 detainees recently released from Guantanamo Bay was a Sudanese hospital worker whose lawyers recruited the West Wing president (Martin Sheen) to make a YouTube Video on his behalf. The Portland public defender’s office made this case a “global cause célèbre by posting what it called the first-ever ”video habeas corpus petition” in a video called Guantánamo Unclassified. (Miami Herald)

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has racked up more than $110,000 in legal fees this year to respond to a “Securities Exchange Commission investigation of possible insider trading at student lender Sallie Mae.” The “investigation unearthed a lobbying strategy document from Sallie Mae suggesting that company lobbyists would try to ask Boehner and Rep. Buck McKeon (CA), ranking Republican on the education panel, to plead the lender’s case to the White House budget office during the week of Dec. 11-15, 20.” (The Hill)

The director of Help Hospitalized Veterans, a national charity that raised more than $98 million last year, defied a Congressional subpoena yesterday and is in hiding. Henry Waxman’s (D-CA) committee is investigating Roger Chapin for his organization’s expenditures after national figures such as Bob Dole brought attention to the waste and fraud of many veteran’s charities. (ABC’s “The Blotter”)