Friday, November 23, 2007

Don't Expect Truth From McClellan

We won't be shelling out bucks for bullshit.

That's for sure. Maybe Cheney can buy several million of this BS book. He can afford them. But from what we understand, the little dough boy and Darth don't get along all that well.


Even little press secs. have an ego.

If the Democrats can't bring themselves to act on Bush and Cheney, all is lost for America.

Were I not already dying, I would be making plans to leave.

November 21, 2007

A Final Plea To Congress To Out This Accountability-Denying, National Security-Breaching, Justice-Obstructing Administration

Former Press Secretary Scott McClellan remains the master of Orwellian obfuscation, only these days for fun and profit.

The Bushies -- who now include a long and growing list of former acolytes, such as McClellan -- as well those constitutionally charged with overseeing their misdeeds, can't even do scandal in a traditional way. You'll recall during the Nixon administration there was a thing called the smoking gun -- guns, actually. We had real investigative committees grilling thoroughly corrupt insiders and getting to the actual truth. The guns blasted and smoked almost daily. Mistakes were made, indeed, but we got to the criminal bottom of each and every one, and before the chief perp left office.

(As much as we love you P.M., we simply must add a correction. If there is anything the last 40 years have taught us it should be that we didn't get anywhere near the unholy bottom of Nixon's crimes, nor will we now, get to the bottom of the Bush crimes, all of them, I and II. What's more; Nixon should not have been allowed to resign, thus avoiding trial by the Senate. How can the U.S. ever be trusted when we allow our criminals in high office to walk away?)

In a way, those were the days. As dark and squalid as they were, we nevertheless pulled ourselves out of the muck by exposing it to the clean light of day. And we did it by the book, which is to say, the U.S. Constitution.

Today? We see medals donned on the criminally incompetent. We witness internal promotions in repayment for the most despicable of on-the-job screw ups. We watch neocon nincompoops escape accountability and settle into cushy think-tank jobs. We get Congressional excuses and foot-dragging and table-offing.

And, we get memoirs -- those telling-all while saying-nothing memoirs, guaranteed to rake in the cash for the criminals, incompetents and nincompoops.

In April, we'll get Scott McClellan's: "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and What’s Wrong With Washington."

Mr. McClellan probably does know much of what actually happened, but if you think he's about to tell us, think again. His publisher, PublicAffairs, will release 400 pages of little more than fog and shadows. That's what "Scottie" excels at generating; and that, of course, is the principal if not only reason he was Bush's spokesman. Clarity is the enemy of national betrayal.

His story on the Plame affair, no doubt, will stop where his publisher's teaser leaves off: "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so."

What the hell does that mean? Of course they "were involved" -- an inconsequential passive usage that fails to compete with even the just as inconsequential but at least more rhetorically ominous, "mistakes were made."

Note what he didn't write: "five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were directly and knowingly responsible for my doing so."

The latter may well be the case, but we won't read or hear it from Scottie. Indeed, he's already gone as far as he'll publicly go, without penalty of perjury. On the day Scooter Libby was convicted of just that, McClellan, who had long since left his White House podium, "made no suggestion" to CNN's Larry King "that Bush knew either Libby or Rove was involved in the leak. McClellan said his statements to reporters were what he and the president 'believed to be true at the time based on assurances that we were both given.'"

What's more, "In recent conversations and in his many public speaking engagements, McClellan has made it clear he retains great affection for the president." So don't count on anything more appearing in print, come April.

So when it does come to getting at the truth, what's missing? Think back to the Nixon days, and the missing piece looms large.

An aggressive Congress; one willing to take on a sitting president, to let the subpoenas fly and the investigators delve -- one willing to demand answers that travel beyond the obfuscating fog and arrive at the liberating truth. McClellan's "teaser" may in fact say little of authentic substance, but it does profoundly add to Congress' already plentiful cause for investigating obstruction of justice at the highest level.

I realize there are Democratic swing districts that might be endangered by an aggressive Congress, and that upholding the rule of law and enforcing constitutional imperatives pale in comparison to such electoral exigencies. But millions who retain some affection for the Constitution are beggin ya: Give it a go, anyway. You might be surprised at the public's reception -- a public that has had enough of this accountability-denying, national security-breaching, justice-obstructing administration.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

They're Gonna Steal It Again

No one can solve a problem until they admit there is one. When will the Democrats speak out about stolen elections? How much evidence do they need?

The Department of Homeland Security failed to prepare for a massive influx of applications for U.S. citizenship and other immigration benefits this summer, prompting complaints from Hispanic leaders and voter-mobilization groups that several hundred thousand people may not be granted citizenship in time to cast ballots in the 2008 presidential election.

Bush administration officials said yesterday that they had anticipated applicants would rush to file their paperwork to beat a widely publicized fee increase that took effect July 30, but did not expect the scale of the response. The backlog comes just months after U.S. officials failed to prepare for tougher border security requirements that triggered months-long delays for millions of Americans seeking passports.

Before the fee hike, citizenship cases typically took about seven months to complete. Now, immigration officials can take five months or more just to acknowledge receipt of applications from parts of the country and will take 16 to 18 months on average to process applications filed after June 1, according to officials from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of DHS. Such a timeline would push many prospective citizens well past voter-registration deadlines for the 2008 primaries and the general elections.


We expected [the fee increase] might stimulate demand from some folks to file who wouldn't have otherwise, and some from folks to file earlier than they would have," said Michael Aytes, associate director of USCIS, "but we never anticipated" the extent of the growth. "It went off the charts," he said.

Other factors include legal immigrants' anxiety at an increasingly harsh tenor of the political debate over illegal immigration, and heightened interest in the 2008 presidential election, officials said.


Double the workload

The immigration agency's workload has nearly doubled, Aytes said, with 1.4 million naturalization applications arriving from October 2006 to September 2007, compared with 731,000 applications the year before. Between July and September of this year alone, USCIS received 560,000 applications, he said.

The number of green-card-related applications surged to 876,000 in fiscal 2007, from 497,000 in fiscal 2006, he said. At one point this summer, USCIS had 1 million applications and checks waiting to be opened and acknowledged, Aytes said, a backlog that now stands at 235,000. Overall, USCIS received 7.7 million applications for all types of immigration benefits, up from 6.3 million.

"I really want to target the elections," USCIS Director Emilio T. Gonzalez told the Associated Press in an interview published Tuesday. "I really want to get as many people out there to vote as possible."

Aides, however, contradicted him. "We are going to process these cases as responsibly and as quickly as we can, but we're not focused on any of the election cycle," Aytes said. USCIS spokesman Bill Wright emphasized that political calculations played no role in agency decisions. "Any implication of that is ludicrous," he said.

In June, poor planning and coordination between DHS and the State Department forced the Bush administration to temporarily suspend a new security requirement that Americans present passports when flying to and from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda. Processing times for passport applications ballooned from three weeks to three or four months, jeopardizing summer travel plans for millions of Americans. Wait times returned to normal after the State Department allocated more resources and staff.

CONTINUED

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Cheney Outed Bush For Treason long before Scotty Tries To Cash In On His W.H. Years

Good "reminder article" by Mark at Buzzflash.

It also gives us another opportunity to put forth our hypothesis regarding the Plame outing:

Not long after it became apparent that the Scoot-man was going to take the hit for outing Plame and that Fitzgerald was going to allow it, at least for the foreseeable future, it dawned on me that the outing of Plame wasn't done just to "get" Joe Wilson.

If the whole treasonous affair had been allowed to go on, without any investigation of any kind, how would the story Novak wrote have discredited Joe Wilson? Even if Valerie had sent Joe to Niger, or suggested him to her superiors or whatever, how in the world does that discredit Wilson's report? Does anyone really buy the BS about nepotism and/or the "castrating" effects of having one's wife get one a junket to Niger, of all places. We're aren't talking about Paris or a Club Med..

Was the White House trying to suggest that Valerie and Joe Wilson are the Rosenbergs of the 21st century, a couple of traitors to the U.S., willing to plant false stories in the chain of intelligence regarding Saddam and uranium yellowcake? (We would be remiss, if we did not point out that many people today, and a few back then, do not believe that the Rosenbergs did betray the U.S., but at the time there was so much hysteria about communism, our government could have re-crucified Jesus, himself, with the approval of the people, if he was accused of giving or selling atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.). If that is what they were attempting to suggest to the American people, or at least to their own political base, the Wilson's should have been arrested and the accusation made from behind the White House podium, as that would be a very serious accusation, not merely an attempt to discredit someone.

Nevertheless, according to the news media, even now, that is all CIA leak was about. It was only intended to discredit Joe Wilson. Now, we all know how seemingly incompetent the Bushites are when it comes to....well...almost everything. But this particular leak was incredibly stupid, even given the Bushite, imperial hubris with which we have all become so familiar since election 2000.

So how in hell does this story make any sense at all?

Certainly Cheney would have gone ballistic for the simple reason that the trail of all of the nuclear lies could be followed directly to his office door, and we all know that it was that particular pack of lies that won the support of the people for the illegal, unjust war in Iraq. But to out a CIA NOC in order to plant a story that made no sense, as far as discrediting her husband? Libby is a lawyer. He has to know that disclosing the identity of a CIA agent is serious business, especially in a time of war. Red flags should have gone up everywhere in the upper echelons of the W.H. inner circles. Was it worth it, just to "get Joe?"

But what if, in Cheney's investigation of Joe Wilson, and we know that there was one...quite intensive, actually, old Darth saw another big problem and another opportunity for a preemptive strike on another possible "enemy." That enemy, in his paranoid, psycho-mind would be Valerie Plame Wilson, herself. Cheney would have found out that Plame-Wilson was not just any old NOC, but one whose specialty was non-proliferation of WMD. Her focus was Iraq and Iran. She knew a lot about those two countries in particular. Those two countries also happen to be in Bush's axis of evil and were known targets of the Neoconservatives in their plan for a New American Century. Outing Plame-Wilson didn't do much to discredit Joe Wilson, but it had to have created a blind spot the size of Texas when it comes to Intel. on Iran, and it has now come to that as Cheney knew that it would, sooner or later.

As Joe Wilson noted, Plame-Wilson's outing also sent a message in neon lights to any other Intel. Agent from any agency about messing with Cheney and/or the neocon plan for the middle-east by telling the truth.

So far, all is working out very well for Bush and Cheney, but mostly for Cheney. The man is a multi-millionaire by now and we can change that to billionaire when we strike Iran and oil jumps to 300 - 500 a barrel over night; $13.00 a gallon.

Cheney will still be driving. Will You?

Where in hell is Congress?


Scott McClellan Didn't Out Bush for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Cheney Did.

The BuzzFlash Editor's Blog.

Mark Karlin, Editor and Publisher, BuzzFlash.com

November 23, 2007

As we’ve noted before, BuzzFlash feels personally invested in the exposing of the White House treason surrounding the outing of Valerie Plame, which resulted in impairing our national security when it comes to tracking weapons of mass destruction. Following up on a David Corn commentary shortly after the infamous Bob "The Traitor" Novak column, BuzzFlash helped Corn raise the alarm about the dangerous and illegal significance of the identification of Plame as a CIA operative.

So it is with astonishment that we have watched the mainstream media ignore or dismiss the revelation by once White House loyalist Scott McClellan that Cheney and Bush were likely involved in the outing and knowingly sent him out to lie to the press about the role of the two key messengers: Libby and Rove.

You’ve no doubt heard by now that the McClellan admission was made in a first person excerpt from a book being printed early next year by Public Affairs Press (affiliated with the Perseus Group).

While the first person confirmation of what anyone with a pea for a brain knew all along caromed across the Internet, the Washington Post and the New York Times gave it the cold shoulder, among other mainstream media outlets.

In the meantime, we suspect that the White House hit men gave McClellan
and his publisher the same treatment that they have given other "made men" that ratted on them: the brass knuckles and warnings to back off if they cared about their families.

As one blogger noted: "John Dillulio calls them "machiavellian mayberries" and suggests that they politicize everything--yet a week later he backs down completely. Paul O'Neill says that they planned on invading Iraq from the beginning, he is savaged by the machine."

So the publisher, within a day backed off the first person quote by McClellan, with a rather bizarre claim that the book wasn’t finished yet, even though it was the publisher that posted the quotation on its website. McClellan was in seclusion, of course, no doubt being waterboarded by some of Cheney’s crew.

In an all too fitting and tragic irony, the mainstream media only took notice of the damning revelation of criminal behavior – certainly in the high crimes and misdemeanors category, as Valerie and Joe Wilson charge
– on cue from the White House once the publisher recalled the first person quotation, which is indeed quite a remarkable feat, since clearly it would only be done under pressure, since it is hard for a publisher to post a first person quote and then claim that it was premature. What kind of credibility does that leave you with? But it was probably preferable than running a publishing house with two broken arms and a pencil rammed through your ear.

All along, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald noted in his investigation that a cloud of suspicion hung over Dick Cheney, and he all but said that Cheney was the key culprit. In fact, Scooter Libby’s crime – the one he was convicted for – was integrally related to an obstruction of justice essentially revolving around the reality that he was covering up for Cheney.

Long forgotten – and barely noticed during the trial – was a document introduced during the case that directly implicates Bush. And the notes on the document that point at Bush as being a co-conspirator were written by Dick Cheney.

Truthout.org covered this crucial link to Bush, including a copy of the handwritten note:

Copies of handwritten notes by Vice President Dick Cheney, introduced at trial by attorneys prosecuting former White House staffer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, would appear to implicate George W. Bush in the Plame CIA Leak case.

Bush has long maintained that he was unaware of attacks by any member of his administration against [former ambassador Joseph] Wilson. The ex-envoy's stinging rebukes of the administration's use of pre-war Iraq intelligence led Libby and other White House officials to leak Wilson's wife's covert CIA status to reporters in July 2003 in an act of retaliation.

But Cheney's notes, which were introduced into evidence Tuesday during Libby's perjury and obstruction-of-justice trial, call into question the truthfulness of President Bush's vehement denials about his prior knowledge of the attacks against Wilson.

The revelation that Bush may have known all along that there was an effort by members of his office to discredit the former ambassador raises the question: Was the president also aware that senior members of his administration compromised Valerie Plame's undercover role with the CIA?

Further, the highly explicit nature of Cheney's comments not only hints at a rift between Cheney and Bush over what Cheney felt was the scapegoating of Libby, but also raises serious questions about potentially criminal actions by Bush. If Bush did indeed play an active role in encouraging Libby to take the fall to protect Karl Rove, as Libby's lawyers articulated in their opening statements, then that could be viewed as criminal involvement by Bush.

Last week, Libby's attorney Theodore Wells made a stunning pronouncement during opening statements of Libby's trial. He claimed that the White House had made Libby a scapegoat for the leak to protect Karl Rove - Bush's political adviser and "right-hand man."

"Mr. Libby, you will learn, went to the vice president of the United States and met with the vice president in private. Mr. Libby said to the vice president, 'I think the White House ... is trying to set me up. People in the White House want me to be a scapegoat,'" said Wells.

Cheney's notes seem to help bolster Wells's defense strategy. Libby's defense team first discussed the notes - written by Cheney in September 2003 for White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan - during opening statements last week. Wells said Cheney had written "not going to protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of incompetence of others": a reference to Libby being asked to deal with the media and vociferously rebut Wilson's allegations that the Bush administration knowingly "twisted" intelligence to win support for the war in Iraq.

However, when Cheney wrote the notes, he had originally written "this Pres." instead of "that was."

In another story on Truthout at the time of the Libby trial, it details other documents that indicate Cheney had claimed authorization from Bush to disclose classified information from a National Intelligence Estimate in order to try and discredit Joe Wilson.

It should also be remembered that Bush retained a private attorney in regards to the Libby case, a highly curious move for an innocent president. Furthermore, Bush promised to get to the bottom of the leak himself and fire anyone involved after the CIA formally requested a Justice Department investigation into Valerie Plame’s outing, because of the potential harm it had done to national security. As we now know, Bush, if he kept his word, would have ended up firing Dick Cheney and himself.

*( Bush could not fire Cheney even if Cheney murdered a small child in the Rose Garden in full view of every news camera in Washington D.C. because Cheney is an elected official, or so the story goes. Of course most of us don't believe that neither Bush nor Cheney has ever won a national election, but since Bush and Cheney are being allowed to play president and vice president on TeeVee, Cheney cannot be fired by Bush, even if Bush wanted to, for legal reasons, the same reasons that the Senate cannot fire Larry Craig. He was elected by the people, therefore impeachment or failing to re-elect are the only ways of getting rid of an elected, evil, scumbag. In this case, it is Congress , more particularly the House of Representatives that are not doing their jobs.)

It is a testament to the persistent tacit alliance of the corporate media with the Republican Party (to ensure favorable big media regulations, tax cuts, and anti-trust favors) that damage done to the national security of the United States -- authorized in all likelihood by the President of the United States and most certainly orchestrated by the Vice-President of the United States -- is either roundly ignored or dismissed as insignificant.

(Actually, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann have been throwing nightly fits about this latest development and, to many of us, this does sound like old news because it is, thanks to the bloggers who sat through the trial and reported every detail, at the time of the trial. However, thanks to the corporate corn-pone news media, especially cabal news, this comes as quite a revelation to many Americans. McClellan's book, when published in April, will not carry such a strong accusation against Bush. It will be watered down quite a bit. Wanna Bet?


Does anyone else wonder about the timing of this publisher's excerpt? Certainly seems odd to us.)

Scott McClellan did not pen a rogue statement in his forthcoming book. What he said is entirely consistent with the information disclosed at the Libby trial, and even – ironically – with the defensive strategy of Libby’s own legal team, which was to position "Scooter" as a fall guy for the White House.

That may have, indeed, been the sole true assertion made on behalf of Mr. Libby.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Iran and Oil Prices

We're just one bomb away from catastrophe and Bush and Cheney are too damned insane to care.

Take into consideration that it matters not a whit whether a strike comes from Israel or the U.S.; results the same.

Dave Lindorff: Iran Attack Gains Credence



As someone who has been writing about this crazed administration's plans to launch an attack on Iran now for over a year, I have always noted that the real sign that it might happen would be when oil industry analysts started to worry about it.


That's because the oil industry is probably more plugged into the inner sanctum of the Bush Administration than any other entity. If the analysts, who have their fingers on the pulse of the oil industry, start worrying that an attack could happen -- with the resulting shutdown of oil shipments through the Persian Gulf, from which the world gets roughly a third of its oil -- then we need to take the threat very seriously.

While we haven't seen the kind of spike in oil futures prices that we would expect should that mad war begin -- which would see oil soaring well above $200 a barrel -- we are seeing oil rise to a record high of around $100 a barrel.

Now comes word from the respected newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor, that analysts are starting to factor a U.S. attack on Iran into their thinking. As the newspaper put it in an article published today reporting on the recently concluded meeting of the leaders of OPEC nations:

"The 13-nation cartel once controlled prices often by just talking about pumping more or less oil. But now its leaders say booming world demand -- largely from India and China -- and concern over a possible U.S. attack on Iran are driving prices."

The article also quotes oil industry analyst Mustafa Alani of the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, UAE, who says, "...there's very little they [the OPEC leaders] can do if there's an attack on Iran or something of that nature. In that case, prices will double, perhaps go to $300 a barrel."

It may be that Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his generals, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and the leaders of many of America's Fortune 500 companies are opposed to an attack on Iran, knowing that it will be a military disaster and that it would cause a global economic collapse, but the U.S. today is being led by two insane and desperate men who may not care what any of those people think. With their domestic and international policies in ruins and their legacy a disaster, they may have decided to double up on their bet and just throw everything in with an air assault on Iran.

Keep watching those oil prices. If they start really bumping up from their current level, hold on to your Constitution -- and get the hell out of dollars -- because they're both going down.

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Powell Says There Are No Plans For War With Iran

Has Powell forgotten why the NeoCons are called the "effing crazies?"

While he sounds perfectly reasonable, they have not changed their plans one iota, nor are they reasonable about their plan for "A New American Century." Bush/Cheney have no plans to leave office before striking Iran and setting off chaos the the world over and they will carry out their plans to do so unless there is an all out military mutiny.

Powell: Iran Far From Nuclear Weapon

Powell: Iran a Long Way From Having Nuclear Weapon, U.S. Military Strike Unlikely

By DIANA ELIAS

The Associated Press

KUWAIT CITY

Iran is far from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and despite U.S. fears about its atomic intentions, an American military strike against the Islamic Republic is unlikely, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday.

Tehran rejects claims by the United States and some European Union countries that its nuclear program is aimed at secretly producing weapons, insisting it is for peaceful purposes only.

"I think Iran is a long way from having anything that could be anything like a nuclear weapon," said Powell, who was invited by the National Bank of Kuwait to speak on economic opportunity and crisis in the Middle East.

A recent report by the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog found Iran has been generally truthful in the information it has provided the agency about aspects of its past nuclear activities.

But the International Atomic Energy Agency said it could not rule out that Iran had a secret weapons program because of restrictions Tehran placed on its inspectors two years ago.

Asked if he sees a U.S. war on Iran coming, the retired U.S. general said although no American official will say the option was "off the table," he did not see prospects of a military conflict.

There is no base of support among Americans for such an action, Powell said, adding that the U.S. military already has enough on its hands in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Not now there isn't any support, but there would be after a terrifying attack on American soil or one of our ships was attacked and thousands of our sailors were left in a watery grave in the Persian Gulf.)

Powell was the secretary of state under President Bush from 2001 to 2005. In September 2004, Powell said Iran's nuclear program was a growing threat and he called for international sanctions.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Scotty Spills he Beans On Plame Outing

The outing of Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA NOC, especially when done intentionally for reasons of political vengeance, is clearly treason; treason during a time of war, which is punishable by death. Scott McClellan plans to publish a book implicating George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Andy Card (pres. chief of staff) in the cover-up of that traitorous act, making them all three guilty of conspiracy to cover up treason.

When will someone...anyone do something about these traitors and war criminals?

According to George W Bush's own father, outing an under-cover CIA agent, official or not, is the worst kind of crime against one's own country.

Will appropriate officials do what has to be done about this crime, or will that too be left to the people? Does anyone ever wonder why we have a government, why laws are enforced anywhere if not in the White House?

McClellan implicates Bush, Cheney in Plame lie

On Oct. 10, 2003, White House press secretary Scott McClellan stood before the cameras and proclaimed Karl Rove and Scooter Libby innocent of any involvement in the outing of Valerie Plame. "Those individuals -- I talked -- I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this. And that's where it stands."

And that's where it stood, until -- well after George W. Bush was reelected --- it became clear that both Libby and Rove were very much involved in outing Plame. McClellan has since acknowledged, albeit implicitly, that Libby and Rove had lied to him. Now he seems ready to go much further. In "What Happened," a chronicle of his years in the White House to be published this spring, McClellan will apparently implicate George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card in the false exoneration of Libby and Rove.

From an excerpt posted on McClellan's publisher's Web site and discovered by Editor and Publisher:

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

"There was one problem. It was not true.

"I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff, and the president himself."

Update: We'd like to tell you how Dana Perino responded to questions about McClellan's charge at today's White House press briefing. And we would, if only anyone in the White House press corps had asked her any.



(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Bogus FBI Forensic Tool Sends Hundreds Of Innocents To Prison

FBI's Forensic Test Full of Holes
By John Solomon
The Washington Post

Sunday 18 November 2007

Lee Wayne Hunt is one of hundreds of defendants whose convictions are in question now that FBI forensic evidence has been discredited.

Hundreds of defendants sitting in prisons nationwide have been convicted with the help of an FBI forensic tool that was discarded more than two years ago. But the FBI lab has yet to take steps to alert the affected defendants or courts, even as the window for appealing convictions is closing, a joint investigation by The Washington Post and "60 Minutes" has found.

The science, known as comparative bullet-lead analysis, was first used after President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963. The technique used chemistry to link crime-scene bullets to ones possessed by suspects on the theory that each batch of lead had a unique elemental makeup.

In 2004, however, the nation's most prestigious scientific body concluded that variations in the manufacturing process rendered the FBI's testimony about the science "unreliable and potentially misleading." Specifically, the National Academy of Sciences said that decades of FBI statements to jurors linking a particular bullet to those found in a suspect's gun or cartridge box were so overstated that such testimony should be considered "misleading under federal rules of evidence."

A year later, the bureau abandoned the analysis.

But the FBI lab has never gone back to determine how many times its scientists misled jurors. Internal memos show that the bureau's managers were aware by 2004 that testimony had been overstated in a large number of trials. In a smaller number of cases, the experts had made false matches based on a faulty statistical analysis of the elements contained in different lead samples, documents show.

"We cannot afford to be misleading to a jury," the lab director wrote to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III in late summer 2005 in a memo outlining why the bureau was abandoning the science. "We plan to discourage prosecutors from using our previous results in future prosecutions."

Despite those private concerns, the bureau told defense lawyers in a general letter dated Sept. 1, 2005, that although it was ending the technique, it "still firmly supports the scientific foundation of bullet lead analysis." And in at least two cases, the bureau has tried to help state prosecutors defend past convictions by using court filings that experts say are still misleading. The government has fought releasing the list of the estimated 2,500 cases over three decades in which it performed the analysis.

For the majority of affected prisoners, the typical two-to-four-year window to appeal their convictions based on new scientific evidence is closing.

Dwight E. Adams, the now-retired FBI lab director who ended the technique, said the government has an obligation to release all the case files, to independently review the expert testimony and to alert courts to any errors that could have affected a conviction.

"It troubles me that anyone would be in prison for any reason that wasn't justified. And that's why these reviews should be done in order to determine whether or not our testimony led to the conviction of a wrongly accused individual," Adams said in an interview. "I don't believe there's anything that we should be hiding."

The Post and "60 Minutes" identified at least 250 cases nationwide in which bullet-lead analysis was introduced, including more than a dozen in which courts have either reversed convictions or now face questions about whether innocent people were sent to prison. The cases include a North Carolina drug dealer who has developed significant new evidence to bolster his claim of innocence and a Maryland man who was recently granted a new murder trial.

Documents show that the FBI's concerns about the science dated to 1991 and came to light only because a former FBI lab scientist began challenging it.

In response to the information uncovered by The Post and "60 Minutes," the FBI late last week said it would initiate corrective actions including a nationwide review of all bullet-lead testimonies and notification to prosecutors so that the courts and defendants can be alerted. The FBI lab also plans to create a system to monitor the accuracy of its scientific testimony.

The Post-"60 Minutes" investigation "has brought some serious concerns to our attention," said John Miller, assistant director of public affairs. "The FBI is committed to addressing these concerns. It's the right thing to do."

The past inaction on bullet-lead contrasts with the last time the FBI's science was called into question, in the mid-1990s, when 13 lab employees were accused of shoddy work and of giving overstated testimony involving several disciplines, including explosives as well as hair and fiber analysis. Back then, the Justice Department reviewed hundreds of cases in which FBI experts testified, and it notified prisoners about problems that affected their convictions. The government did so because prosecutors have a legal obligation to turn over evidence that could help defendants prove their innocence.

Current FBI managers said that they originally believed that the public release of the 2004 National Academy of Sciences report and the subsequent ending of the analysis generated enough publicity to give defense attorneys and their clients plenty of opportunities to appeal. The bureau also pointed out that it sent form letters to police agencies and umbrella groups for local prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers.

Even the harshest critics concede that the FBI correctly measured the chemical elements of lead bullets. But the science academy found that the lab used faulty statistical calculations to declare that bullets matched even when the measurements differed slightly. FBI witnesses also overstated the significance of the matches.

The FBI's umbrella letters, however, glossed over those problems and did little to alert prosecutors or defense lawyers that erroneous testimony could have helped convict defendants, one of the recipients said.

"Frankly, the letters that they sent them, you know, were minimizing the significance of the error in the first place," said defense lawyer Barry Scheck, whose nonprofit Innocence Project has helped free more than 200 wrongly convicted people. The letters said that "our science wasn't really inaccurate. Our interpretation was wrong. But the interpretation is everything."

The FBI said last week that the 2005 letters "should have been clearer." Scheck has now been asked to assist the FBI's review.

Since 2005, the nonpartisan Forensic Justice Project, run by former FBI lab whistle-blower Frederic Whitehurst, has tried to force the bureau to release a list of bullet-lead cases under the Freedom of Information Act. The Post joined the request, citing the public value of the information. But the government has stalled, among other things seeking $70,000 to search for the documents.

"By stonewalling and delaying the release, Justice has ensured that wrongfully convicted citizens are deprived of their right to appeal or seek post-conviction relief because the statute of limitations in many states has expired," said David Colapinto, the lawyer for the group.

As part of its review, the FBI will release all bullet-lead case files involving convictions.

The Scope of the Cases

Most of the estimated 2,500 instances in which the FBI performed bullet-lead exams involved homicide cases that were prosecuted at the state and local levels, where FBI examiners often were summoned as expert witnesses for the prosecution.

To compile an independent list, The Post and "60 Minutes" conducted a nationwide review, interviewing dozens of defense lawyers, prosecutors and scientific experts. The effort also included a sweep of electronic court filings conducted by four summer associates at the New York law firm Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom.

In many of the cases that raise the most compelling questions, the inmates might have a hard time winning the public's sympathy. Some had criminal backgrounds and most were convicted with at least some additional circumstantial evidence linking them to gruesome crime scenes. But the common thread is that removing the flawed bullet-lead evidence has created reasonable doubt about guilt in the minds of legal experts, the courts and at least one juror.

In North Carolina, Lee Wayne Hunt, 48, remains in prison after being convicted 21 years ago of a double murder. Hunt was an admitted marijuana dealer, but has steadfastly denied involvement in the killings. The FBI testified that its bullet-lead analysis linked fragments from the victims to a box of bullets connected to Hunt's co-defendant. That was the sole forensic evidence against Hunt. State prosecutors recently conceded that the analysis should not be considered "scientifically supported and relied upon."

In addition, the attorney for Hunt's co-defendant, who committed suicide in prison, has since declared that his client carried out the murders alone.

Despite both developments, Hunt has been denied a new trial.

"What they're relying on here is technicalities to keep an innocent man in prison," said Richard Rosen, Hunt's attorney.

Another North Carolina case highlights the impact that FBI bullet-lead testimony had on local jurors. James Donald King faces execution after being convicted of killing his two wives. He admitted to killing his first wife, spent time in prison, was released on parole, remarried and then was convicted of murdering his second wife.

The court is considering whether to grant a new trial.

"If the state had not introduced evidence linking a bullet in Mr. King's car to the bullet fragments in the victim, there would have been reasonable doubt in my mind as to Mr. King's guilt," juror Michelle Lynn Adamson said in an affidavit supporting his appeal.

Other defendants have had mixed results:

In Maryland, the Court of Appeals last year reversed the murder conviction of Gemar Clemons and ordered a new trial, concluding that the FBI's bullet-lead conclusions "are not generally accepted within the scientific community and thus are not admissible."

In New Jersey, courts have reversed and reinstated convictions in cases involving bullet lead. The conviction of one defendant, Michael Behn, was reversed, but he recently was re-convicted on other evidence.

Shane Ragland's conviction in the 1994 killing of a University of Kentucky football player was reversed after Kathleen Lundy, an FBI bullet-lead examiner, pleaded guilty to giving false testimony in his case about bullet-lead manufacturing. A few weeks ago, Ragland pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and is now free.

Ernest Roger Peele, a retired FBI agent who testified about bullet matching in 130 cases, stands by his testimony but said that sometimes the nuances of science get "lost in the adversarial nature of the courtroom." He said he would no longer tell jurors that bullets can be linked to specific boxes because of the science academy's findings.

Peele, who said he was frustrated that he was never contacted by the academy, added that his bullet matches were meant to be "a part of a puzzle" and never the only forensic evidence. "Is it possible there are innocent people in jail? Yes. Is it possible that bullet lead was part of that process? Yes."

The Origins of the Science

The FBI's bullet-lead analysis was created more than four decades ago to link suspects to crimes in cases in which bullets had fragmented to the point where traditional firearms tracing - based on gun-barrel groove markings - would not work.

So FBI scientists used chemistry to try to find matches. Their assumption was that bullets made from the same batch of lead would have the same chemical composition. U.S. bullet-makers recycle lead from car batteries and melt it down in huge amounts, and it was believed that each batch would produce bullets sharing the same trace elements.

The FBI first used the technique after Kennedy's assassination, hoping to determine whether various bullet fragments came from the same gun. In July 1964, then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote to the commission investigating the assassination that the bureau's findings were "not considered sufficient" to make any matches.

By the early 1980s, the bureau was the only practitioner of the science and routinely used it to help state and local police link crime-scene bullets to those in a gun or a box owned by a suspect. There are few federal murder statutes, but the FBI routinely helps local law enforcement by providing forensic expertise in homicide cases.

In the mid-1990s, Lundy used the science to help prove that Clinton White House lawyer Vincent W. Foster committed suicide, internal FBI documents show.

In the early days, bullet fragments were subjected to neutron beams that would allow scientists to measure the presence and amounts of at least three chemical elements: antimony, arsenic and copper. If two bullets had similar measurements of those three elements - the FBI allowed for a small margin of error - they were declared a match.

In 1996, the bureau switched to a new method called "inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy," in which scientists identified and measured seven trace elements in the bullets, adding the elements bismuth, cadmium, tin and silver. The goal was to increase the precision of the tests. But at the same time that it was measuring more elements, the FBI doubled the margin of error for declaring matches.

"Not enough suspects were being caught in the new net using seven elements, so they chose to use a bigger net," said Clifford Spiegelman, a statistician at Texas A&M University who reviewed the FBI's statistical methods for the science academy.

The bureau conducted a study in 1991 that called bullet-lead analysis a "useful forensic tool" that produced "accurate" and "reproducible" matches.

The study, however, raised two concerns.

First, it found that bullets packaged 15 months apart - a span that assumed separate batches of lead - had the exact composition, potentially undercutting the theory that each batch was unique.

Second, it found that bullets in a single box often had several different lead compositions. That finding, it cautioned, should have "significant impact on interpretation of results in forensic cases."

Peele, the retired bullet-lead examiner, was the primary author of that study. He said he still felt comfortable having told jurors in the past that bullets from the same box could be expected to match, as long as his remarks were carefully qualified.

In the Hunt case, he testified that his match of the crime-scene bullets to those in the suspects' box was "typical of everything we examined coming from the same box or the next closest possibility would be the same type, same manufacturer, packaged on or about the same day."

Peele said that he always tried to tell jurors that some bullets in the same box might not match. Still, he said it was reasonable for jurors to conclude that matching bullets could have come from the same box. "I don't think it's misleading as long as it's fully explained," he said.

Some of Peele's colleagues went further. FBI examiner John Riley told a Florida jury: "It is my opinion that all of those bullets came from the same box of ammunition." A New Jersey prosecutor suggested that the bullets matched by the FBI were as unique as a "snowflake or fingerprint."

Today, the FBI regards all such testimony as inaccurate. "The science does not and has never supported the testimony that one bullet can be identified as coming from a particular box of bullets," said Adams, the retired FBI lab director.

A Challenge From Within

The FBI's about-face was prompted by a challenge from within its ranks.

William Tobin, an FBI lab metallurgist for a quarter-century, won accolades working on cases such as the crash of TWA Flight 800, in which he helped prove that the plane was downed by an accidental fuel-tank explosion, not terrorism. Shortly before he retired, Tobin was approached by a woman who believed that the bullet-lead science used against her brother, a New Jersey murder defendant, was flawed. Still employed by the bureau, Tobin was not permitted to help.

But when he retired in 1998, he decided to look further. Bullet matching had always been done by the lab's chemists, and as a metallurgist, Tobin wondered about their assumptions. Soon he joined with Erik Randich, a metallurgist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

By 2001, the two had finished a study that challenged the key assumptions that the FBI had been making about bullet lead. They found that bullets made from the same batch did not always match, because subtle chemical changes occurred throughout the manufacturing process. Tobin bought bullets at several stores in Alaska and found that a large number of bullets with the same composition and manufacturing date were often sold in the same community, suggesting that it was wrong to assume that a bullet match could be narrowed to one suspect.

"It hadn't been based at all on science but, rather, had been based on subjective belief," Tobin said in an interview. "Courts, and even practitioners, had been seduced by the sophistication of the analytical instrumentation for over three decades."

Soon, Tobin began appearing as a witness for defendants challenging FBI bullet-lead matches. Courts began to take notice, too, and the FBI suddenly faced a barrage of questions about a science that had gone unchallenged for three decades.

Adams asked the National Academy of Sciences in 2002 to examine the FBI's work, temporarily halting new bullet-lead matches. Two years later, the academy's findings stunned the bureau.

The panel concluded that although the FBI had been taking accurate bullet-lead measurements in its lab, the statistical methods and its expert testimonies were flawed.

The science "does not ... have the unique specificity of techniques such as DNA," and "available data does not support any statement that a crime bullet came from a particular box of ammunition," the panel concluded. All the FBI could say going forward was that bullets made from the same batch "are more likely" to match in chemical makeup than those made from different batches. Adams soon declared that such testimony was so general that it had no value to jurors, and he ended the technique.

The FBI Response

The FBI went on the offensive to portray its decision in the best light.

In a news release dated Sept. 1, 2005, the bureau declared that it "still firmly supports the scientific foundation of bullet lead analysis" but that it was ending the technique because of the questions about its "relative probative value," the "costs of maintaining the equipment" and the "resources necessary to do the examinations."

The bureau also sent form letters to the more than 300 police agencies it had assisted with the science and to the umbrella groups representing local prosecutors and local criminal defense lawyers so they could "take whatever steps they deem appropriate."

The letters cited the academy's report but did not call attention to the magnitude of the FBI's internal concerns.

For instance, the letters stated that the impact of the academy's findings "on previously issued examination reports remains unaddressed." In fact, the FBI had conducted its own review to determine how often bad statistics led to mistaken matches.

In March 2005, the chief of the FBI chemistry unit that oversaw the analysis wrote in an e-mail that he applied one of the new statistical methods recommended by the National Academy of Sciences to 436 cases dating to 1996 and found that at least seven would "have a different result today." Marc A. LeBeau estimated that at least 1.4 percent of prior matches would change.

If the FBI employed other statistical methods the number of non-matches would be "a lot more," LeBeau wrote. In fact, when the bureau tested one method recommended by the academy on a sample of 100 bullets, the results changed in the "large majority of the cases," he wrote.

Despite the concerns, the FBI provided affidavits in at least two cases seeking to help prosecutors sustain convictions that were based on bullet-lead matches.

In one such affidavit introduced in Maryland, the FBI cited the academy's report but did not mention it faulted the bureau's statistical methods.

That omission concerns the chairman of the academy panel.

The affidavit "does not discuss the statistical bullet-matching technique, which is key and probably the most significant scientific flaw found by the committee," said Kenneth MacFadden, a private chemistry expert.

MacFadden and Spiegelman said they also believed the affidavit was misleading, because it estimates that the maximum number of .22-caliber bullets in a batch of lead was 1.3 million. The academy said the number could be as high as 35 million.

In a May 12, 2005, e-mail, the deputy lab director told LeBeau, "I don't believe that we can testify about how many bullets may have come from the same melt and our estimate may be totally misleading."

FBI officials said Friday they will stop using the affidavit.

"They said the FBI agents who went after Al Capone were the untouchables, and I say the FBI experts who gave this bullet-lead testimony were the unbelievables," Spiegelman said.


"60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft and producers Ira Rosen and Sumi Aggarwal, Washington Post research editor Alice Crites and staff researcher Madonna Lebling, and freelance researcher Jilly Badanes contributed to this report.

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(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

What That Regan Woman Knows...


About Rudy G.


By Frank Rich
The New York Times

Sunday 18 November 2007

New Yorkers who remember Rudy Giuliani as the bullying New York mayor, not as the terminally cheerful "America's Mayor" cooing to babies in New Hampshire, have always banked on one certainty: his presidential candidacy was so preposterous it would implode before he got anywhere near the White House.

Surely, we reassured ourselves, the all-powerful Republican values enforcers were so highly principled that they would excommunicate him because of his liberal social views, three wives and estranged children. Or a firewall would be erected by the firefighters who are enraged by his self-aggrandizing rewrite of 9/11 history. Or Judith Giuliani, with her long-hidden first marriage and Louis Vuitton 'tude, would send red-state voters screaming into the night.

Wrong, wrong and wrong. But how quickly and stupidly we forgot about the other Judith in the Rudy orbit. That would be Judith Regan, who disappeared last December after she was unceremoniously fired from Rupert Murdoch's publishing house, HarperCollins. Last week Ms. Regan came roaring back into the fray, a silver bullet aimed squarely at the heart of the Giuliani campaign.

Ms. Regan filed a $100 million lawsuit against her former employer, claiming she was unjustly made a scapegoat for the O. J. Simpson "If I Did It" fiasco that (briefly) embarrassed Mr. Murdoch and his News Corporation. But for those of us not caught up in the Simpson circus, what's most riveting about the suit are two at best tangential sentences in its 70 pages: "In fact, a senior executive in the News Corporation organization told Regan that he believed she had information about Kerik that, if disclosed, would harm Giuliani's presidential campaign. This executive advised Regan to lie to, and to withhold information from, investigators concerning Kerik."

Kerik, of course, is Bernard Kerik, the former Giuliani chauffeur and police commissioner, as well as the candidate he pushed to be President Bush's short-lived nominee to run the Department of Homeland Security. Having pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors last year, Mr. Kerik was indicted on 16 other counts by a federal grand jury 10 days ago, just before Ms. Regan let loose with her lawsuit. Whether Ms. Regan's charge about that unnamed Murdoch "senior executive" is true or not - her lawyers have yet to reveal the evidence - her overall message is plain. She knows a lot about Mr. Kerik, Mr. Giuliani and the Murdoch empire. And she could talk.

Boy, could she! As New Yorkers who have crossed her path or followed her in the tabloids know, Ms. Regan has an epic temper. My first encounter with her came more than a decade ago when she left me a record-breaking (in vitriol and decibel level) voice mail message about a column I'd written on one of her authors. It was a relief to encounter a more mellow Regan at a Midtown restaurant some years later. She cordially introduced me to her dinner companion, Mr. Kerik, whose post-9/11 autobiography, "The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice," was under contract at her HarperCollins imprint, ReganBooks.

What I didn't know then was that this married author and single editor were in pursuit of not just justice, but sex, too. Their love nest, we'd later learn, was an apartment adjacent to ground zero that had been initially set aside for rescue workers. Mr. Kerik believed his lover had every moral right to be there. As he tenderly explained in his acknowledgments in "The Lost Son" - published before the revelation of their relationship - there was "one hero who is missing" from his book's tribute to "courage and honor" and "her name is Judith Regan."

Few know more about Rudy than his perennial boon companion, Mr. Kerik. Perhaps during his romance with Ms. Regan he talked only of the finer points of memoir writing or about his theories of crime prevention or about his ideas for training the police in the Muslim world (an assignment he later received in Iraq and botched). But it is also plausible that this couple discussed everything Mr. Kerik witnessed at Mr. Giuliani's side before, during and after 9/11. Perhaps he even explained to her why the mayor insisted, disastrously, that his city's $61 million emergency command center be located in the World Trade Center despite the terrorist attack on the towers in 1993.

Perhaps, too, they talked about the business ventures the mayor established after leaving office. Mr. Kerik worked at Giuliani Partners and used its address as a mail drop for some $75,000 that turns up in the tax-fraud charges in his federal indictment. That money was Mr. Kerik's pay for an 11-sentence introduction to another Regan-published book about 9/11, "In the Line of Duty." Though that project's profits were otherwise donated to the families of dead rescue workers, Mr. Kerik's royalties were mailed to Giuliani Partners in the name of a corporate entity Mr. Kerik set up in Delaware. He would later claim that he made comparable donations to charity, but the federal indictment charges that $80,000 he took in charitable deductions were bogus.

Amazingly, given that he seeks the highest office in the land, Mr. Giuliani will not reveal the clients of Giuliani Partners. Perhaps he has trouble remembering them all. He testified in court last year that he has no memory of a mayoral briefing in which he was told of Mr. Kerik's association with a company suspected of ties to organized crime.

Ms. Regan's knowledge of Mr. Giuliani isn't limited to whatever she learned from Mr. Kerik. She used to work for another longtime Giuliani pal, Roger Ailes, the media consultant for the first Giuliani campaign in 1989 and the impresario who created Fox News for Mr. Murdoch in 1996. A full-service mayor to his cronies, Mr. Giuliani lobbied hard to get the Fox News Channel on the city's cable boxes and presided over Mr. Ailes's wedding. Enter Ms. Regan, who was given her own program on Fox's early lineup. Mr. Ailes came up with its rather inspired first title, "That Regan Woman."

Who at the News Corporation supposedly asked Ms. Regan to lie to protect Rudy's secrets? Her complaint does not say. But thanks to the political journal The Hotline, we do know that as of the summer Mr. Giuliani had received more air time from Fox News than any other G.O.P. candidate, much of it on the high-rated "Hannity & Colmes." That show's co-host, Sean Hannity, appeared at a Giuliani campaign fund-raiser this year.

Fox News coverage of Ms. Regan's lawsuit last week was minimal. After all, Mr. Giuliani dismissed the whole episode as "a gossip column story," and we know Fox would never stoop so low as to trade in gossip. The coverage was scarcely more intense at The Wall Street Journal, whose print edition included no mention of the suit's reference to that "senior executive" at the News Corporation. (After bloggers noticed, the article was amended online.) The Journal is not quite yet a Murdoch property, but its editorial board has had its own show on Fox News since 2006.

During the 1990s, the Journal editorial board published so much dirt about the Clintons that it put the paper's brand on an encyclopedic six-volume anthology titled "A Journal Briefing - Whitewater." You'd think the controversies surrounding "America's Mayor" are at least as sexy as the carnal scandals and alleged drug deals The Journal investigated back then. This month a Journal reporter not on its editorial board added the government of Qatar to the small list of known Giuliani Partners clients, among them the manufacturer of OxyContin. We'll see if such journalism flourishes in the paper's Murdoch era.

But beyond New York's dailies and The Village Voice, the national news media, conspicuously the big three television networks, have rarely covered Mr. Giuliani much more aggressively than Mr. Murdoch's Fox News has. They are more likely to focus on Mr. Giuliani's checkered family history than the questions raised by his record in government and business. It's astounding how many are willing to look the other way while recycling those old 9/11 videos.

One exception is The Chicago Tribune, which last month on its front page revisited the story of how, after Mr. Giuliani left office, his mayoral papers were temporarily transferred to a private, tax-exempt foundation run by his supporters and financed with $1.5 million from mostly undisclosed donors. The foundation, which shares the same address as Giuliani Partners, copied and archived the records before sending them back to New York's municipal archives. Historians told The Tribune there's no way to verify that the papers were returned to government custody intact. Mayor Bloomberg has since signed a law that will prevent this unprecedented deal from being repeated.

Journalists, like generals, love to refight the last war, so the unavailability of millions of Hillary Clinton's papers has received all the coverage the Giuliani campaign has been spared. But while the release of those first lady records should indeed be accelerated, it's hard to imagine many more scandals will turn up after six volumes of "Whitewater," an impeachment trial and the avalanche of other investigative reportage on the Clintons then and now.

The Giuliani story, by contrast, is relatively virgin territory. And with the filing of a lawsuit by a vengeful eyewitness who was fired from her job, it may just have gained its own reincarnation of Linda Tripp.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Rudy G Hangs With Some Questionable Company

...and doesn't seem to care in the least what anyone thinks about it. He acts like a man who doesn't seem to think it possible he can lose.

Is he right about that? Have Americans become so accepting of their elected officials lying to the point of perjury, committing fraud, brushing elbows with the criminal element, etc. that Rudy G doesn't have to worry about such trivia.

And while we're on the subject, does anyone really believe that it is a good thing to have people, who are so out-of-touch with how the rest of us have to live, travel and go about our work-a-day lives, running the country?

When the collapse comes, as it surely will, does anyone believe that any member of Congress will be on the street with the rest of us? O.K., maybe Kucinich.

Rudy Giuliani jets to campaign stops using casino kingpin's plane

Sunday, November 18th 2007, 4:00 AM

Sheinwald/Bloomberg

Gulf Stream G-IV, like the one provided by Sands casino executive for Rudy Giuliani's use.

The Republican presidential hopeful anted up more than $122,000 last summer alone for jets traceable to casino kingpin Sheldon Adelson, whose Las Vegas Sands empire has made him the third-richest American, a Daily News review of campaign records shows.

Last quarter, The Sands' innocuously named Interface Operations LLC was the top provider of corporate jets to the frequently flying Giuliani, who was whisked around the country on the casino's plush Gulfstream G-IV in late August and early September, records show.

"You have to follow the money and ask, 'Why is Sheldon Adelson partnering with Rudy Giuliani?'" asked Stacey Cargill, an anti-gambling and Republican Party activist in Iowa, where the nation's first presidential caucus is set for Jan. 3.

Cargill, who views even legal gambling as a magnet for crime and vice, said, "If Rudy Giuliani wants to be the crime-fighting candidate, why is he partnering with a large and growing gambling empire?"

Until eight weeks ago, candidates could hop aboard private corporate jets at a fraction of their actual cost, reimbursing benefactors only for the price of a first-class commercial ticket between the same two points.

Critics long viewed the formula as a back-door way for corporations to donate to campaigns. Congress agreed, and on Sept. 14, the Federal Election Commission changed the rules to require presidential campaigns to pay fair-market prices for corporate planes.

Giuliani certainly took advantage of the bargain rates before they went away, as did some of his competitors. Fellow Republicans Mitt Romney and John McCain use corporate aircraft to varying degrees, as does Democrat John Edwards, records show.

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama accept no corporate aircraft, choosing instead to rent planes at full market cost to avoid the appearance of a conflict.

Some even rub elbows with the common folk: Democrats Christopher Dodd and Dennis Kucinich were spotted flying commercial to last week's Las Vegas debate.

In addition to the Las Vegas Sands, Giuliani's fleet of corporate connections includes more than a dozen big-moneyed interests, among them:

  • Hedge fund owner Paul Singer, a top Giuliani fund-raiser whose Elliott Asset Management provided some $90,000 in air support to the former mayor from July 1 through Sept. 30 - on top of the $176,000 it provided the previous quarter.
  • Zuffa LLC, a company whose creations include "Ultimate Fighting Championship," a particularly brutal hybrid of boxing and martial arts that critics have dubbed "human cockfighting."
  • Two New York real estate developers - Donald Trump and Stephen Ross of Related, the company Giuliani picked to develop the lucrative Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle when he was mayor.
  • Alticor Inc., the parent company of Michigan-based Amway, a major multilevel marketing corporation with deep ties to the GOP whose vice president for public policy, Richard Holwill, is a top Giuliani fund-raiser.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.