The Daily Muck

The Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency’s internal watchdog began a joint effort on Saturday to determine whether a full inquiry into the destruction of hundreds of hours of videotaped interrogations of top al-Qaeda operatives is needed. White House and Justice Department officials, along with senior members of Congress, advised the CIA in 2003 against destroying tapes of interrogations of two al-Qaeda operatives, government officials said Friday. (New York Times)

Rudy Giuliani stuck to his guns, affirming on Sunday that the client list of his old security company, in which he still holds a financial stake, will be kept secret. Giuliani also defended the work of his company in Qatar, where al-Qaeda sympathizers in the Qatar government in 1996 helped the man who would be the orchestrator of the 9/11 terrorist attacks escape U.S. arrest. (Washington Post, Wall Street Journal)

What happens when one is released from Guantanamo Bay after being held for five years? The Saudi citizen Jumah al-Dossari has returned home where he has been treated like a VIP with a monthly stipend, a job, and food and lodging. The government’s “reintegration program” will also help him find a wife. (Washington Post)

Pork-barrel politics are part of Senator Clinton’s “Destiny.” The senator is a strong supporter of Destiny USA, a Syracuse mall replete with an indoor river, a Tuscan village, and as much as $1 billion in government-backed financing. To pursue this “Destiny,” Clinton teamed up with other N.Y. lawmakers to secure some impressive federal earmarks for the project. This project is only part of the $2.3 billion that the junior senator has earmarked for projects in the empire state. (LA Times)

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer has both joined others in fighting pork and “tucked away” $96 million in pork-barrel spending this year. Hoyer has earned the distinction of being one of the top ten earmarkers in the House. Among his 2008 earmarks is a present for InTune, which in 2005 received an “earmark for nearly $500,000 to develop lesson plans on funk music and Nobel Peace laureates.” (Washington Post)

Kansas’ attorney general Paul Morrison admits he had an extramarital affair with a former staffer who now accuses him of sexual harassment and attempting to influence a federal lawsuit involving his longtime political opponent and subject of last week’s All Muck Is Local, former Kansas AG Phill Kline. Morrison’s former director of administration accuses him of pressuring her to support eight former employees who were dismissed by Kline and seeking sensitive information about Kline’s activities as district attorney. (Boston Globe)

The truth is out there, or maybe in there. NASA has begun a probe of itself after a federal ruling required it to turn over files related to an “incident” in a small southwestern Pennsylvania town in 1965. Though some believe that an alien ship or Russian space probe crashed to earth – witnesses recall dozens of Army soldiers taking away an object in the night on a flatbed truck – the government believes that a meteor may have passed by the area. (Chicago Tribune)