Waste, Fraud and Abuse In Iraq, Oh My!

From Talking Points Memo:

We've all heard the expression "no good deed goes unpunished," but this is ridiculous.

One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted. Or worse.

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers — all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co. "It was a Wal-Mart for guns," he says. "It was all illegal and everyone knew it."

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn't know whom to trust in Iraq.

For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.

Why has waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption flourished over the last several years in Iraq? This might have something to do with it.

Of particular interest, the AP noted that whistleblowers are offered an avenue under the federal False Claims Act to file what's called a "qui tam" lawsuit, which allows private citizens to sue on the government's behalf. (The policy was developed under Lincoln to help root out corrupt contractors selling defective products to the Union Army.)

The Justice Department has the option of signing onto these lawsuits, 12 of which have been filed dealing with alleged Iraq reconstruction abuse since 2004. To date, how many qui tam suits have the Bush administration endorsed? Zero.

A little more on qui tam:

The full phrase qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso in hoc parte sequitur, means “he who sues for the king sues for himself."

More information can be found on qui tam lawsuits at Answers.com. Of particular note, there's this:

The False Claims Act provides incentive to relators by granting them between 15% and 30% of any award or settlement amount. In addition, the statute provides an award of the relator's attorney's fees, making qui tam actions a popular topic for the plaintiff's bar. Indeed, a private [natural] person may not be able to commence a qui tam action "pro se" -- that is, without representation by a lawyer -- since the private person is actually representing/filing the suit on behalf of the government and that may only be done by a lawyer.

Once a relator brings suit on behalf of the government, a U.S. Attorney for the district in which the suit was filed has the option to take over the case. If he or she does so, the government will usually notify the company or person being sued that a claim has been filed. Qui tam actions are filed under seal, which has to be partially lifted by the court to allow this type of disclosure. The seal prohibits the defendant from disclosing even the mere existence of the case to anyone, including its shareholders (a fact which may cause conflicts with the defendant's obligation under Securities & Exchange Commission or stock exchange regulations that require it to disclose lawsuits that could materially affect stock prices). The government may then, without disclosing the identity of the plaintiff or any of the facts, begin taking discovery from the defendant.

If the government does not decide to participate in a qui tam action, the relator may proceed on his or her own, though such cases classically have a much lower success rate. Conventional wisdom states that this is due in part to the fact that the government will get involved in what it believes are winning cases, but will avoid losing cases.

Or, I suppose, if you don't want even greater corruption exposed.

Modern Day Romans

A web page was sent to me via e-mail. I have thought for some time that we seem to have become modern Romans. The founding fathers of our country tried to set up a system of government that would prevent a repeat of history, but maybe some things just cannot be prevented. Maybe human nature is just too strong.

The web page is called How the Selfish Class Gains Power and Wealth. Here is a quote from that page:

The [Roman] Senators were so wealthy that there was little they could do to squander their wealth; there was also little they could do beyond enjoying it, getting even wealthier by the year, and holding public office. Of course public office also gave them the means and the information necessary to gain even more wealth and to avoid paying most taxes. There was one tax, specifically levied on the senatorial class, which they did not avoid, since it confirmed their class status, but it was insignificant. Public office also gave them the means to take advantage of any government spending when possible. In fact it was the best investment they could make.

Are our contemporary would-be "Senators" at all similar?

In the United States we have a founding myth of the "self-made" man, but social mobility is actually declining rapidly, especially at the highest levels of our society. The top one percent of income earners, and even more, the top one-tenth of one percent of income earners are gaining wealth at a rapid rate, while the bottom 90% of Americans are losing wealth in relative terms. The creation of a senatorial class, that is a wealthy class based on inheritance, connections and the power that goes with it, is progressing rapidly.

Does the existence of a dominant selfish class increase society's wealth? Free market apologists would have you think so, but if you look at the example of the Senators in the Fifth Century, the answer would have to be a resounding "No!"

The Senators couldn't help but be wealthy by the accidents of their births. Unless they were intentionally improvident they couldn’t help but become wealthier, and yet their wealth did subtract from the wealth of society as a whole. How did this work? Wasn't it true that if you did business with a Senator that you would gain wealth and that you in turn would create additional wealth when you did business with others? Wouldn't it also be true that since Senators had large amounts of wealth, their wealth would create little (or large) industries to service them? Didn't that add to total wealth? So goes economic doctrine, but it didn't work that way in the Fifth Century, and it probably doesn't work that way now.

The article is somewhat long, but it sets out the argument well. Here is the main page where you can find links to even more information.

The Libby Commutation: Comparing Apples To Apples

From Andrew Sullivan's blog:

Bush: Worse Than Clinton

05 Jul 2007 05:06 pm

A reader writes:

A question for the people who think Libby should have either been pardoned or think it is ok to have his sentence commuted: was Clinton wrong for not commuting Susan McDougal's sentence? She went to jail to protect the Clintons in a "witch hunt" in which no underlying crime was found. Will these supporters criticize Clinton for not commuting Susan McDougal's sentence?

Comparing Clinton's pardons to the Libby issue is disingenuous. But the McDougal case is a direct comparison. The Republican party should be ashamed of itself that it can't raise itself to a moral standard higher than Clinton.

Former US Attorneys McKay and Iglesias: "There Will Be Criminal Charges."

From the Seattle Times:

Two former U.S. attorneys said today they believe ongoing investigations into the dismissals last year of eight federal prosecutors could result in criminal charges against senior Justice Department officials.

John McKay, the former U.S. attorney for Western Washington, and David Iglesias, the former U.S. attorney for New Mexico, also said they believe White House political operative Karl Rove and his aides instigated the dismissals and ultimately decided who among the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys should be fired. But the White House on Wednesday flatly denied the firings were instigated by the White House.

...

"I think there will be a criminal case that will come out of this," McKay said during his meeting with Times journalists. "This is going to get worse, not better."

McKay cited ongoing investigations into the dismissals by the Senate and House Judiciary committees, and inquiries now under way by the Justice Department's inspector general and its Office of Professional Responsibility.

McKay said he believes obstruction-of-justice charges will be filed if investigators conclude that the dismissal of any of the eight prosecutors was motivated by an attempt to influence ongoing public-corruption or voter-fraud investigations.

McKay said he believes the strongest evidence of obstruction is related to the dismissals of Iglesias and Carol Lam, the former U.S. Attorney in San Diego.

Circling the Wagons

The White House has so far refused to turn over e-mails related to the firings, and has said it may no longer have access to millions of e-mails sent through Republican National Committee servers. Consequently, Iglesias said, "it's hard for us to know who in the White House said what, on what date."

"The people that would have a voice in this would be Karl Rove, [Rove aide] Scott Jennings, [former White House counsel] Harriet Miers, probably, yes," he said. "But it's hard for me to say 'yes,' [without] looking at those e-mails and memos that are probably out there and missing that this is what they said on this date about John and me and my colleagues.

"But that would explain why the wagons are so tightly circled," Iglesias added.

"You Work for the White House"

So much for the independence of the judicial branch of government:

McKay said he began to have concerns about politics entering the Justice Department in early 2005, when Gonzales addressed all of the country's U.S. attorneys in Scottsdale, Ariz., shortly after he took over as attorney general.

"His first speech to us was a 'you work for the White House' speech," McKay recalled. " 'I work for the White House, you work for the White House.'"

McKay said he thought at the time, "He couldn't have meant that speech," given the traditional independence of U.S. Attorneys. "It turns out he did."

He looked around the meeting room and caught the eyes of his colleagues, who gave him looks of surprise at Gonzales' remarks. "We were stunned at what he was saying."

DOJ Priorities: Voter Fraud Over Murder Cases

A prosecutor in Washington state sent an email to Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo:

I've read TPM for years, and appreciate your work. I email you because I read something today about the firing of John McKay that finally put me over the edge.

Apparently during Comey's testimony today he said that one of the reasons McKay got himself in hot water with the DOJ heavyweights was because he was pushing for additional resources to investigate the murder of Tom Wales, who was an Assistant US Attorney in Seattle. Tom Wales was shot and killed in 2001. What nobody has talked about, and what you may not be aware of, is the fact that Tom Wales was extremely active in attempting to get tighter gun control laws passed here in Washington.

Think about that for a second. A pro-gun control federal prosecutor was shot and killed. John McKay was agitating for more resources to bring his killer to justice. That pissed off DOJ, who apparently thought that McKay should spend his time going after bogus voter fraud prosecutions rather than solve the murder of a guy who was in favor of gun control. If you don't think the fact that Tom Wales' political views weren't taken into consideration by the higher ups at DOJ when they decided to punish McKay for fighting to find his killer, you haven't been paying attention to the way these guys have operated for the last 6 years. Every single thing they do is about politics, and the political views of those they help or hurt.

The bottom line of this whole McKay firing could be summed up in this way: try to catch killers, you get fired. File BS charges of voter fraud, you keep your job.

It's a slap in the face to every prosecutor in the country. It's our job to seek justice for those that aren't able to seek it for themselves. None of us should give a damn what the political views are of the victims we try to protect. It's beyond reprehensible for them to punish McKay for doing this. But for this administration, it's par for the course.

You can follow more of this story (with more links) at TPM

***Update***

Here is a video made my Josh Marshall of McKay's appearance on public television:

Did the Justice Department Slow Prosecutions of Republicans?

See this post at TPM. From Josh Marshall's post:

That said, there's been such an avalanche of developments in recent days and weeks, that I think it's now quite reasonable to conclude that the turnaround is related to the fact that Gonzales and his crew are flat on their backs and aren't able to block them any more. This is the sort of question or charge people only make sheepishly and with some embarrassment. I've been reluctant to come to this conclusion as well. But now I think there are solid reasons to believe this is true.

It may seem like a leap. But there's more circumstantial evidence for it than you might think.

We already know, for instance, that Main Justice made Carol Lam wait months for permission to issue indictments against the crooks and bribers in the Cunningham investigation. Today we learned that DOJ sources are coming forward to say that Main Justice was playing a very similar game in Arizona with the Renzi investigation. And remember, that US Attorney, Paul Charlton, got canned just like Lam.

We now have some good evidence of a pattern of 'soft' obstruction of Republican corruption investigations by officials at Main Justice -- in the Cunningham-Lewis-Wilkes-Foggo investigation and the Renzi probe. If that's their MO, it shouldn't surprise us to learn they've done the same in the Abramoff probe. Nor should it surprise us that Gonzales's slow-motion fall -- along with the resignations of Sampson, Goodling and others -- is opening up the flood gates.

Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire For Rove?

From TPM Muckraker:

You know it's bad news for the White House when agencies you'd never even heard of start launching investigations into the administration.

This time, it's the Office of Special Counsel, a federal investigative unit that's charged with monitoring federal employees, not to be confused with a special counsel or special prosecutor such as Patrick Fitzgerald. The OSC is charged with policing Hatch Act violations and protecting whistleblowers, among other duties. It's a permanent federal agency, and it's prosecutions are not criminal prosecutions.

But the OSC does have teeth. If it successfully prosecutes a federal employee before the Merit Systems Protection Board (which acts as its judge), then that employee can be terminated. That employee, in this instance, is Karl Rove.

For the complete article, click on the title.

For another view, see this:

In addition to charges of “unnecessarily reorganizing the OSC to try to run off internal critics,” [Scott] Bloch was also accused of “failing to enforce a long-standing policy against bias in the federal workplace based on sexual orientation” and “arbitrarily dismissing some personnel complaints and whistle-blower disclosures in an effort to claim reductions in backlogs.” At the time, it was quite evident that Bloch had turned the OSC into just another political arm of the Bush White House-and while they claimed to be supportive of the long-standing policy against discriminating against gays, and supportive of whistleblower statutes, Bloch was busily cooking up excuses for not adhering to the nondiscrimination policy and wantonly dismissing complaints.

So, it’s possible that Bloch’s OSC-led investigation of Rove is evidence of Rove’s waning influence—but it’s also quite possible that it’s evidence of his continued influence, with this ostensibly-independent investigation fated to find no wrongdoing.

Suffice it to say, I’m going to take a wait-and-see approach about whether this investigation is designed to put heat on the White House, or take it off. Wouldn’t it be just spectacularly Rovian for Rove, after resisting like his very life depended on it testifying under oath in front of Congress, chose to “fully cooperate” with a non-criminal investigation covertly designed to exonerate him?

Appeals Court In Wisconsin Prosection of Georgia Thompson: "Preposterous"

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. GEORGIA L. THOMPSON case excoriated the prosecutor calling his theory of the case "preposterous." Near the end of the decision, the Court said this:

The idea that it is a federal crime for any official in state or local government to take account of political considerations when deciding how to spend public money is preposterous.

Here's more of the reasoning:

Adelman Travel was the low bidder, but a low price for lousy service is no bargain. Wisconsin’s rules give price only a 25% weight (300 of 1200 points) in the selection process. About 58% (700 points) goes to service, which a working group evaluates subjectively based on written presentations. Adelman had the second-best score for service; Omega World Travel came in third. The combined price-and-service rating had Adelman in the lead. (Fox World Travel received the best service score but had a noncompetitive price.) The final 17% of the score (200points) depends on the working group’s assessment of oral presentations. These presentations (often dubbed “beauty contests” or “dog-and-pony shows” that may reward the flashiest PowerPoint slides) need not be related to either price or the pitchman’s probable quality of service; why the state gives them any weight, independent of price or quality, is a mystery, but not one we need unravel.

Adelman Travel must have made a bad presentation, for six of the seven members of the working group gave it poor marks (from a low of 120 points to a high of 165), while awarding Omega scores between 155 and 200. Thompson alone gave Adelman a higher score (185 for Adelman, 160 for Omega). Adelman Travel’s disastrous oral presentation left Omega World Travel with the highest total score.

The prosecution’s theory is that Omega should have received the contract on the spot but that for political reasons Thompson ordered a delay. Thompson told her colleagues that a decision for Omega, which is based on the East Coast, would not go over well with her boss, Pat Farley. A jury also could conclude that Thompson said something to the effect that for “political reasons” Adelman Travel had to get this contract. (Witnesses related different versions of what Thompson said, but in each account“politics” or “political” played some role.)

Thompson tried to engage in logrolling, offering to change her scores for bidders on other travel contracts if members of the working group would change their scores on this contract. Horse-trading proved to be unacceptable to the selection group, but a member other than Thompson suggested that the contract be rebid on a best-and-final basis, as state law permitted. Wis. Stat. §16.72(2m)(e), (g).

Adelman Travel reduced its price, which — keeping all other elements of the score constant — left Adelman and Omega with 1027 points apiece. The tie depended on rounding to the nearest whole number. Adelman Travel’s score was 1026.6, while Omega World Travel’s score was 1027.3. After Thompson (with her supervisors’ consent) deemed the contest a draw — sensibly, as the difference was trivial compared to the amount of subjectivity and variance in the committee members’ evaluations — Thompson employed a tie-breaking procedure, specified by state law, that gave weight to items not previously figured into the price comparison and declared Adelman Travel to be the winner.

...

Perhaps, however, Farley favored Adelman Travel because it was cheaper. This would be a political position in the best sense of that term. Many a person runs for office on a platform of cutting the cost of government. Bureaucrats may call a preference for low price over high levels of service a form of “political interference” with their operations (especially when it is state employees who may suffer inconvenience in order to save the taxpayers’ money), but no party has a monopoly on opposing gold-plated wastebaskets and other excesses. Low prices may advance the public interest even if they discomfit public employees, and recognition that driving down the cost of government is good politics for incumbents does not transgress any federal statute of which we are aware.

Still another possibility is that Farley (and thus Thompson) sought to favor a local firm over one from another state. The Supreme Court has held that states, as market participants, may buy preferentially from their own citizens. See, e.g., White v. Massachusetts Council of Construction Employers, Inc., 460 U.S. 204 (1983); Reeves, Inc. v. Stake, 447 U.S. 429 (1980). A preference for in-state suppliers who can vote, over competitors who can’t, maybe smart politics. Again no federal statute regulates such behavior, let alone declares it to be a felony. Wisconsin law specifies a preference for domestic bidders, though only when the out-of-state bidder hales from a jurisdiction that favors its own citizens in procurement decisions. Wis. Stat. §16.75(1)(a) 2.

The evidence of record would not permit a jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt which of these three “political” reasons was Farley’s, let alone whether Farley’s reason also was Thompson’s — for Thompson may have been trying to be a faithful subordinate without questioning her boss’s bona fides. Nor was the jury asked to determine Thompson’s motive. The United States maintains that Thompson’s objective is irrelevant. It is enough, the prosecutor insists, that Thompson deflected the decision from the one that should have been made under the administrative process. When coupled with a personal benefit (the raise), such a deflection is criminal under federal law, the United States insists. In other words, the prosecutor’s argument is that any public employee’s knowing deviation from state procurement rules is a federal felony, no matter why the employee chose to bend the rules, as long as the employee gains in the process. (Instating the argument this way, we are assuming that the jury could and did find beyond a reasonable doubt that Thompson knew that the state’s procurement rules entitled Omega World Travel to the contract, given her fellow employees’ favorable view of Omega’s oral presentation.)

...

The United States has not cited, and we have not found, any appellate decision holding that an increase in official salary, or a psychic benefit such as basking in a superior’s approbation (and thinking one’s job more secure), is the sort of “private gain” that makes an act criminal under §1341 and §1346. The United States does rely on a few decisions of district courts, e.g., United States v. Sorich, 427 F. Supp. 2d 820, 829 (N.D. Ill. 2006); United States v. Munson, 2004 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14274 *3 (N.D. Ill. July27, 2004), but we do not find them persuasive. We now hold that neither an increase in salary for doing what one’s superiors deem a good job, nor an addition to one’s peace of mind, is a “private benefit” for the purpose of §1346.

The Court finished with this:

Courts can curtail some effects of statutory ambiguity but cannot deal with the source. This prosecution, which led to the conviction and imprisonment of a civil servant for conduct that, as far as this record shows, was designed to pursue the public interest as the employee understood it, may well induce Congress to take another look at the wisdom of enacting ambulatory criminal prohibitions.

In layman's language, they were saying Congress did a horrible job in writing this law and it needs to be fixed.

You can read the entire opinion here.

No Heart To Heart Talk For Carol Lam

From ABC News:

April 16, 2007 — - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' assertion that he was not involved in identifying the eight U.S. attorneys who were asked to resign last year is at odds with a recently released internal Department of Justice e-mail, ABC News has learned.

That e-mail said that Gonzales supported firing one federal prosecutor six months before she was asked to leave.

Gonzales was scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, but his testimony was postponed until Thursday because of the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech University.

When Gonzales appears before the committee, a central focus will be the extent of his involvement in the firings.

Gonzales has insisted he left those decisions to his staff, but ABC News has learned he was so concerned about U.S. attorney Carol Lam's lackluster record on immigration enforcement in San Diego that he supported firing her months before she was dismissed, according to a newly released e-mail from his former chief of staff.

The e-mail, which came from Gonzales aide Kyle Sampson, appeared to contradict the prepared written testimony Gonzales submitted to Congress over the weekend in advance of his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday. In his prepared testimony, Gonzales said that during the months that his senior staff was evaluating U.S. attorneys, including Lam, "I did not make the decisions about who should or should not be asked to resign."

But the recently released e-mail from Sampson, dated June 1, 2006, indicated that Gonzales was actively involved in discussions about Lam and had decided to fire her if she did not improve. In the e-mail to other top Justice Department officials, Sampson outlined several steps that Gonzales suggested, culminating in Lam's replacement if she failed to bolster immigration enforcement.

"AG [Attorney General] has given additional thought to the San Diego situation and now believes that we should adopt a plan" that would lead to her removal if she "balks" at immigration reform, Sampson wrote.

The e-mail laid out other possible ways to deal with Lam short of dismissal. Gonzales supported the idea of first having "a heart to heart with Lam about the urgent need to improve immigration enforcement" and of working with her "to develop a plan for addressing the problem." Sampson said another alternative would be to "put her on a very short leash."

"If she balks on any of the foregoing or otherwise does not perform in a measurable way … remove her," Sampson wrote of Gonzales' suggested plan. "AG then appoints new U.S. [attorney] from outside the office."

The Lam situation gets to the heart of the U.S. attorney controversy and the focus of the upcoming Gonzales hearing. Senators want to know why the eight prosecutors were fired. Were they fired for cause? Was their performance at issue? Or were their political motives?

Well, as Josh Marshall points out, there was no heart to heart talk with Carol Lam. From Josh Marshall's post:

But here's the problem, here's what gets left unsaid. Should the AG have a 'heart to heart' or 'put her on a short leash' or what if she resists, etc. etc. etc. But do you remember that they never spoke to Lam? No leash or heart to heart. They never even mentioned any of it to her.

This is the part of the equation that just won't add up no matter how hard they try to push the numbers together.

Consider the scene. May 2006. Lam has already sent one congressman to prison. News has just broken that her investigation now threatens to bring down the House Appropriations Committee Chairman. And she'd just brought her probe to the heart of the Bush CIA.

While this is going on top Justice Department officials are having an entirely separate conversation about how to deal with Lam's record on immigration enforcement. Talk it out with her? Give her one last chance? Keep her on a short leash?

All these possibilities. But no one ever gets around to telling Lam anything about it.

Does that sound right to you?

...

The fact that the immigration issue was never raised with Lam by the Department of Justice points strongly to the conclusion that it was not the reason for her firing but the pretext for it.

It couldn't possibly have something to do with the fact that Carol Lam's investigation was starting to reach the White House itself. Surely not.

Information On Why Jeffrey Taylor Was Appointed US Attorney In DC

From War and Piece:

From a DC lawyer reader:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez appointed Jeffrey Taylor to be the US Attorney for the District of Columbia in late September 2006 under the now-infamous provision of the Patriot Act allowing the Attorney General to appoint interim US Attorneys:

US Department of Justice site

At that point, it was evident that the Democrats would retake control of the House of Representatives and that Henry Waxman (D-CA) would be the next chairman of House [Oversight and Government Reform] Committee, with its vast oversight jurisdiction. In fact, numerous stories like ths one had appeared in major newspapers indicating that Waxman would wage a war of oversight on the White House:

LA Times report

It seems apparent that Taylor was placed in to his position to specifically frustrate any Congressional oversight effort.

So how is it that the US Attorney for the District of Columbia spot so conveniently became open at such a critical time? ...

Ken Wainstein was the US Attorney for the District of Columbia prior to Jeffrey Taylor. ...

He was in office only six months before being kicked upstairs to become the first Assistant Attorney General for the new National Security Division at the Justice Department.

(Hat Tip to Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, naturally)

More Background On US Attorney Iglesias' Firing

Thanks to Josh Marshall for another link to another story on the developing US Attorney firings. He and his reporters have been all over this and they are providing excellent analysis the gives a lot of background that you wouldn't necessarily know just by reading the story. Here is a new story from the Albuquerque Journal. From the story:

At some point after the election last Nov. 6, Domenici called Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and told him he wanted Iglesias out and asked Rove to take his request directly to the president.

Domenici and Bush subsequently had a telephone conversation about the issue.

The conversation between Bush and Domenici occurred sometime after the election but before the firings of Iglesias and six other U.S. attorneys were announced on Dec. 7.

Iglesias' name first showed up on a Nov. 15 list of federal prosecutors who would be asked to resign. It was not on a similar list prepared in October.

The Journal confirmed the sequence of events through a variety of sources familiar with the firing of Iglesias, including sources close to Domenici. The senator's office declined comment.

...

In September 2005, Iglesias announced the arrests of state Treasurer Robert Vigil and his predecessor, Michael Montoya, on extortion charges. Both are Democrats in a state where Democrats control the Legislature and most statewide offices.

Republicans who had complained about political corruption in the state for years saw an opportunity to do more than complain. And this was an issue with political traction.

The point man would be Iglesias.

During one of his few news conferences while U.S. attorney, Iglesias called political corruption "endemic" in New Mexico.

The FBI also put a high priority on public corruption, naming it its top priority behind terrorism.

According to Justice Department memos turned over to congressional investigators, Domenici approached Iglesias in late 2005 and asked if he needed additional prosecutors for corruption cases.

Iglesias, according to the memo, told Domenici he didn't need white-collar crime prosecutors. He needed prosecutors for immigration cases.

Domenici was disappointed in the response. After that conversation, Domenici decided he would try to get Iglesias help, whether Iglesias wanted it or not.

In 2006, Domenici asked Gonzales if he could find additional experienced white-collar crime prosecutors to send to New Mexico. Gonzales had a number of prosecutors who were finishing the ENRON prosecutions and were quite experienced at complex white-collar crime cases.

None [were] sent [to New Mexico].

Now, on its face, you would think that "white collar crime" meant simply Enron-type corporate crime. But that is not the case. According to Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker:

The Journal story refers to Domenici's concern over Iglesias' performance prosecuting "white-collar crime." Was Domenici overwrought about corporate malfeasance? No -- it's a way of referring to public corruption cases, specifically two high-profile corruption cases Iglesias handled against New Mexico Democrats.

After Iglesias didn't jump fast enough with regard to the first case, an investigation into the Democratic state treasurer that dated back to 2005, Domenici's patience was apparently far too thin for the slow pace of the second investigation -- a kickback probe into New Mexico Democrat Manny Aragon.

Then this sequence of events happened (From the Albuquerque Journal story):

At some point after the election last Nov. 6, Domenici called Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and told him he wanted Iglesias out and asked Rove to take his request directly to the president.

Domenici and Bush subsequently had a telephone conversation about the issue.

The conversation between Bush and Domenici occurred sometime after the election but before the firings of Iglesias and six other U.S. attorneys were announced on Dec. 7.

Iglesias' name first showed up on a Nov. 15 list of federal prosecutors who would be asked to resign. It was not on a similar list prepared in October.

The Journal confirmed the sequence of events through a variety of sources familiar with the firing of Iglesias, including sources close to Domenici. The senator's office declined comment.

The Paul Kiel goes back to a previous entry he wrote at TPM Muckraker:

Now, there's another level to this. According to earlier statements from the White House and Kyle Sampson's testimony, Bush and Rove had already complained to Gonzales about Iglesias when Domenici called in November. Those complaints had to do with Iglesias' insufficiently aggressive pursuit of (Democratic) voter fraud, and they were made -- by President Bush and Karl Rove -- in mid-October.

So we have two different streams of complaints from the White House -- the first in October about voter fraud and then another in November, stemming from Domenici's concern at Iglesias' failure to move certain cases. Of course, both of them at their base were about Iglesias' failure to prosecute enough Democrats.

A motif is definitely developing here regarding the use of the Justice Department to prosecute Democratic candidates as a way to undermine their ability to run an effective campaign. It is a form of ad hominem attack. Now, such methods would always have been effective. There is a reason why political science, philosophy and law students study such arguments based on "fallacies of weak induction." They work.

It is even more true now. As our country grows in population, and political districts become more populous, and political campaigns become more about marketing a Cult of Personality around a single person rather than a set of ideas, these kinds of personal attacks will become more effective.

Look, I am all for honest government, and wrongdoers need to be punished; but the rules have to applied equally to those in both political parties, regardless of who is in power. Justice requires it. But the Bush Administration's actions are clearly revealing a disdain for career professionals who are trying to enforce rules based on the facts and law in a fair and impartial manner. We used to call what the Bush Administration increasingly appears to have done an "Abuse of Power." I don't know what they call it now -- "Smart Politics?"

Whatever it is, it needs to stop. And it needs to be more than just the Democrats in Congress that tells the President, his Administration and anyone else who enabled this perversion of justice to stop. What the Bush Administration has done with the Justice Department in this regard is an outrage. All Americans should be against the use of federal prosecutors to advance one political party's candidate's chance of winning.

There are certain innate and constant criteria that should transcend changes in policies and politics. The administration of justice should be one of them.

Also, the fact that none of the so-called "Christian" lawyers that the Bush Administration hired spoke out against such a plan is an outrage. I wish I could ask them: "What Would Jesus Do?"

The question "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" comes to my mind as I think what they have done to the Justice Department and the fact that it appears like no one spoke up and said "You can't do that."

I don't know if this same sentiment resonates throughout the rest of the voting public. I hope it does. On one level, I know that such outrage is one that is kind of an academic one for lawyers and political activists. But I wish I could make Joe Six Pack understand that the unequal application of justice in political cases will have an effect eventually on his ability to get a fair trial if he or anyone in his family ever gets charged with a crime. Even his personal injury case or his ability to dispute a debt that he is sued on can be affected.

We cannot allow any Administration to put their finger down on the Scales of Justice. Our whole system is based on equality before the law. To allow any Administration to get away with tilting those Scales threatens the very foundation and Constitution that this country is based on.

More Student Loan Abuses By Lenders Alleged

From Today's Washington Post:

Lenders Misusing Student Database

Improper Searches Raise Privacy Fears

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 15, 2007; A01

Some lending companies with access to a national database that contains confidential information on tens of millions of student borrowers have repeatedly searched it in ways that violate federal rules, raising alarms about data mining and abuse of privacy, government and university officials said.

The improper searching has grown so pervasive that officials said the Education Department is considering a temporary shutdown of the government-run database to review access policies and tighten security. Some worry that businesses are trolling for marketing data they can use to bombard students with mass mailings or other solicitations.

Students' Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and sensitive financial information such as loan balances are in the database, which contains 60 million student records and is covered by federal privacy laws. "We are just in shock that student data could be compromised like this," said Nancy Hoover, director of financial aid at Denison University in Ohio.

Education Department spokeswoman Katherine McLane said the agency has spent more than $650,000 since 2003 to safeguard the database. The department has blocked thousands of users that it deemed unqualified for access after security reviews, McLane said, and it has blocked 246 users from the student loan industry for inappropriately accessing the data.

In general, the department allows lenders to search records in the database only if they have a student's permission or a financial relationship with the student.

The department has been "vigilant in its monitoring for unauthorized uses" of the database, McLane said.

Concerns about possible abuses of the database are emerging as the student loan industry is under investigation by congressional Democrats and the New York attorney general. Critics say the $85 billion-a-year industry has cozied up to government and university officials who are in a position to help lenders.

For the complete story, click the link.

TPM: The Puzzlement of the Paulose Appointment As US Attorney

New Mexico Senator Domenici: Ignore Iglesias

Talking Points Memo has received an email where Karl Rove's deputy Scott Jennings alerts Rove, White House Counsel Fred Fielding, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino and Kyle Sampson that former US Attorney David Iglesias is about to break the story about how he was pressured to bring charges against Democrats before the 2006 election. The email says that Pete Domenici (R-NM) suggested that they not respond so that it will "hopefully make this a one day story."

So much for that plan.

Congressional Investigators Now Have Proof Wisconsin US Attorney Was On Chopping Block

From McClatchy Washington Bureau's story E-mails contradict testimony in U.S. attorneys scandal:

Congressional investigators looking into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys saw Wisconsin prosecutor Steven M. Biskupic's name on a list of lawyers targeted for removal when they were inspecting a Justice Department document not yet made public, according to an attorney for a lawmaker involved in the investigation. The attorney asked for anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the investigation.

It wasn't clear when Biskupic was added to a Justice Department hit list of prosecutors, or when he was taken off, or whether those developments were connected to the just-overturned corruption case.

Nevertheless, the disclosure aroused investigators' suspicion that Biskupic might have been retained in his job because he agreed to prosecute Democrats, though the evidence was slight. Such politicization of the administration of justice is at the heart of congressional Democrats' concerns over the Bush administration's firings of the U.S. attorneys.

And this find:

In other developments Friday, new e-mails released by the Justice Department revealed that contrary to his testimony before Congress last month, the former top aide to Gonzales recommended candidates to replace ousted U.S. attorneys.

Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Gonzales, listed the names of possible replacements in a January 2006 e-mail he sent to then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers.

The disclosure offers more evidence that Justice Department officials may have misled Congress about attempting to transform the ranks of the nation's top federal prosecutors by firing some - perhaps for refusing to follow political direction, some evidence suggests - and replacing them with conservative loyalists from the Bush administration's inner circle.

Oops. It looks like the proverbial bowel movement may be about to hit the centrifugal wind device.

NPR Reports New Information in US Attorney Firings

The new information can be found here.

From the report:

NPR now has new information about that plan. According to someone who's had conversations with White House officials, the plan to fire all 93 U.S. attorneys originated with political adviser Karl Rove. It was seen as a way to get political cover for firing the small number of U.S. attorneys the White House actually wanted to get rid of. Documents show the plan was eventually dismissed as impractical.

The Justice Department documents released today include a spreadsheet ranking all 93 prosecutors. The chart ranks them on whether they have Hill experience, campaign experience, and — in the last column — whether they're members of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.

Details of the the Wisconsin US Attorney Scandal

From the Shepherd Express on the Georgia Thompson case:

The case was curious from the beginning. As Thompson’s attorney, Stephen Hurley, noted, the state worker was a civil servant hired during Republican Gov. Scott McCallum’s tenure, making Thompson’s supposed bias toward Doyle seem improbable; she didn’t profit from the contract; no one else was named in connection with her supposed fraud; she didn’t name names or plead to a lesser charge to save herself; and the contract did, indeed, go to the lowest bidder, as is required. So where’s the crime?

But other factors bothered us. Why was Thompson charged with federal crimes? As we noted in a news article last summer, Thompson’s attorney argued that “at best, the evidence demonstrates a violation of the applicable sections of the Wisconsin Administrative Code.”

It also seemed curious that Thompson was tried in the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Wisconsin, in Milwaukee. She lived and worked in Madison and was a state employee, and the fact that Adelman Travel’s headquarters is located in Milwaukee has nothing to do with the case. Even though then-Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager and Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard helped to investigate the case, they declined to bring charges. But Biskupic, a Bush appointee, did, even though it really didn’t have anything to do with his jurisdiction. At the time of the trial, we wondered whether Biskupic truly believed he had a strong case, which would cause one to question his competence, or whether he knew that there really wasn’t a case but succumbed to Republican political pressure.

But now, after weeks of news about Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department, we may have an answer to our questions. Feeling the political pressure, Biskupic first tried to find the massive voter fraud that the Republican Party and the Journal Sentinel, along with their talk-radio friends, screamed was rampant in the city of Milwaukee. They even provided hundreds of names of “illegal voters” that Biskupic attempted to track down. After spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars, he found that there was no rampant voter fraud.

So Biskupic, in an attempt to satisfy his bosses, then went after Georgia Thompson. To destroy an innocent woman’s life was no problem for Biskupic if it could be used to help defeat Gov. Doyle. Once Georgia Thompson was charged, the Republican Party, the Journal Sentinel and the right-wing talk-show hosts used this indictment to try to make Doyle look corrupt.

Now Biskupic is at it again. He has indicted Dennis Troha for illegally channeling donations to Doyle. Once again, the political target of Biskupic is being tried in the press, on the front pages of the Journal Sentinel, which has already decided that Doyle is corrupt and just needs the right case—or perhaps the right prosecutor—to prove it.

The real question is why Biskupic hasn’t investigated Troha family contributions of tens of thousands of dollars to U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan and President Bush. Rep. Ryan received more than $50,000 in campaign contributions from the Troha family. The only difference is that Paul Ryan actually introduced special-interest legislation for Troha, signed by Bush, that substantially increased the value of Troha’s business. Ryan provided a clear quid pro quo and he should be investigated and perhaps indicted. Ryan, of course, denied he knew this was happening; however, when a congressman introduces special-interest legislation for a major contributor, what is he thinking about? If Biskupic is really trying to ferret out corruption, why isn’t he investigating Ryan, where there is actually a smoking gun of corruption? But, wait a second, isn’t Paul Ryan a Republican?

How Many Emails Are Missing? "Millions"

CREW: Millions More Missing White House Emails

Did the White House Pressure the Wisconsin US Attorney?

Here is a video report from Josh Marshall concerning some muck that his reporters are uncovering.

Whereas the US Attorney from New Mexico was fired, the US Attorney in Wisconsin kept his job. The hypothesis is that Wisconsin US Attorney Steven Biskupic may have kept his job because he helped the Republicans by prosecuting Democrats in a tight election race. Furthermore, it is also thought that he was one of the attorneys whose name was redacted on the list that the White House gave to Congress.

Click the link to be taken to the video report for the rest of the story.

Honey, We Lost the Emails

I can't say it any better than Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

Gosh, accidents do happen, don't they?

Just off the AP wire ...

The White House said Wednesday it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mails concerning official White House business.

Congressional investigators looking into the administration's firing of eight federal prosecutors already had the nongovernmental e-mail accounts in their sights because some White House aides used them to help plan the U.S. attorneys' ouster. Democrats were questioning whether the use of the GOP-provided e-mail accounts was proof that the firings were political.

I guess we'll just never know since the emails accidentally disappeared. Darn.

Yeah, somehow they "accidently" securely destroyed all the evidence in a way that they can't be recovered. Kinda reminds me of the time that some documents I had requested in discovery somehow got burned up in a lawyers office. They just happened to be sitting on the floor right next to where the fire started. It was an "accident" of course.