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 . '/' . substr('9781590171295',-6,3) . '/' . '9781590171295' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Orville Schell, Michael Massing
$9.95
 . '/' . substr('9780811220316',-6,3) . '/' . '9780811220316' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti
$22.95
$13
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...weren’t the liberals it attacked but the conservatives who believed it,” writes Nicholas Kristof at the N.Y. Times. “Be very wary of Mr. Bush’s effort to tame the press. Watchdogs can be mean, dumb and obnoxious, but it would be even more dangerous to trade them in for lap dogs.”
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AP / J. Scott Applewhite
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The president told federal investigators that he ordered Vice President Cheney to personally lead an effort to counter the allegations made by former Ambassador Joe Wilson that the White House had misrepresented intelligence to make the case to go to war with Iraq, according to people familiar with Bush’s statement, as quoted by Murray Waas of the National Journal.
If this story is correct, this not only links Bush with the CIA leak case, it puts him squarely at its helm.
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Specifically, today’s Supreme Court ruling held that the president overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.
But more important, Think Progress interprets the ruling to mean that “the Authorization for the Use of Military Force—issued by Congress in the days after 9/11—is not a blank check for the administration.”
Also, SCOTUSblog says the ruling means that the Geneva Convention does apply to the conflict with Al Qaeda, and consequently “this almost certainly means that the CIA’s interrogation tactics of waterboarding and hypothermia (and others) violate the War Crimes Act.”
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From PBS
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The CIA’s former top man in the Middle East and South Asia says in a PBS interview that Americans shouldn’t be persuaded by official reports that prewar intelligence on Iraq wasn’t politicized; twisting the arms of analysts may not have been official policy but it happened nonetheless.
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That’s the word from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and Rove’s lawyer. This comes after months of behind-the-scenes negotiations between the two sides. Bush called Fitzgerald’s conduct throughout the proceeding “dignified.”
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History will surely boggle at this one: The architect of the NSA’s domestic spying program has been made the head of the CIA. And the vote was 78-15.
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alt-f4.org
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Muckraking journalist extraordinaire Murray Waas reports that investigators suspect that columnist Robert Novak called Karl Rove to concoct a cover story that would protect Rove in the Valerie Plame leak investigation.
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It’s the blackest of all comedy: The man who engineered the NSA’s domestic wiretapping program appears to be sailing toward confirmation as the nation’s next CIA chief.
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It was the worst intelligence failure since Pearl Harbor, but all we get is a measly “no sir, I wasn’t comfortable” from the would-be CIA chief about the White House’s trumping up of intelligence to sell the Iraq war.
Yeah, that ought to about heal all our nation’s wounds….
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AP / Gerald Herbert
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That’s what Gen. Hayden said about the prewar Iraq intelligence failures. But there was no contrition for the domestic wiretapping activities he oversaw at the NSA. In contrast, he strongly defended the programs.
Well, now that he’s taken responsibility, at least we know what we’re in for if he gets confirmed.
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Gen. Michael Hayden bemoaned the “endless picking apart” of CIA operations in the news media during today’s confirmation hearing on his nomination to head the intelligence agency.
If the architect of the NSA domestic wiretapping program gets this promotion, it will be like a Jon Stewart joke gone horribly wrong.
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From talkingpointsmemo.com
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Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has disclosed handwritten notes by the vice president that ask whether former Ambassador Joe Wilson was sent to Niger on a “junket” by his wife. The notes appear on a copy of Wilson’s N.Y. Times Op-Ed piece that kicked off the controversy. (via Huff Po)
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From USA Today
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Top Bush aide Karl Rove has told the president that he will be indicted in the CIA leak case and will resign upon the public announcement of the charges, according to Truthout.
Rove may be charged with perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators.
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Federal agents raided the home of the CIA’s outgoing No. 3 official in connection with a corruption investigation that has already sent Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham to prison.
Posted on May 12, 2006
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From NSA.gov
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By Robert Scheer — UPDATE: Michael V. Hayden, nominated by President Bush to head the CIA, is the man responsible for the most extensive attack ever on the privacy of U.S. citizens.
While head of the NSA, he oversaw the program that recorded the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans.
Want to take action? Check out StopHayden.org (includes video proof that Hayden is smugly incorrect about the privacy foundation of the Fourth Amendment).
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“The Daily Show” host points out that Bush had the Exact. Same. Thing. to say about the outgoing CIA chief and the current nominee.
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From nsa.gov
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Gen. Michael Hayden, whom Bush has tapped to lead the CIA, contracted the services of a company at the center of the Cunningham bribery scandal, reports TPM Muckraker.
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The spy agency’s executive director, Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, is under investigation in connection with a scandal involving the Watergate hotel, hookers and poker parties.
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By Molly Ivins — “If you expect me to pass up a scandal involving poker, hookers and the Watergate building with crooked defense contractors and the No. 3 guy at the CIA ... you expect too much.”
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From nsa.gov
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Michael Hayden, who will probably replace outgoing CIA chief Porter Goss, told Congress in 2002 that all domestic surveillance was consistent with the FISA law—knowing full well of Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program.
The Fraud and False Statements statute (18 U.S.C. 1001) makes Hayden?s misleading statements to Congress illegal, according to a Clinton-era national security official.
See a Time article on Hayden’s impending appointment.
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From prisonplanet.com
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Truthdig salutes Ray McGovern, the 27-year CIA veteran who articulated the outrage of a nation by publicly and heroically challenging Donald Rumsfeld’s lies about Iraqi WMD.
Click here for the full report.
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AP
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Resigning unexpectedly 19 months after taking the job, Porter Goss leaves the spy agency in a “free fall,” according to earlier comments by one congresswoman. The CIA has been plagued with personnel losses and criticism by former officers.
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While almost all media organizations reported that CIA veteran Ray McGovern publicly clashed with Rumsfeld, most labeled him a “heckler” or a “hostile war critic.” Few bothered to mention that McGovern was indisputably correct: Rumsfeld’s 2003 comments on Iraqi WMD were flat-out false.
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From crooksandliars.com
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Ray McGovern, a retired 27-year veteran of the CIA, leaves Donald Rumsfeld sputtering as he pulls apart the secretary of defense’s flawed rationale for the Iraq war—on live television.
Video
Bio of McGovern
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The No. 3 man in the spy agency is being probed for his connections to two defense contractors accused of bribing a member of Congress and Pentagon officials, reports ABC News.
Posted on May 2, 2006
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Remember Valerie Plame Wilson? Well, she was apparently working on Iran when she was outed as a CIA agent by Robert Novak, and the outing allegedly damaged America’s ability to track Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
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By Joe Conason — Determining which leaks are bad and which are good can be a murky process.
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By Molly Ivins — It’s nice to know that the investigative reporter Jack Anderson is still under investigation, although seriously dead.
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From CBS News
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The CIA’s former top covert official in Europe tells “60 Minutes” the White House turned a blind eye to evidence that Saddam Hussein did not have WMDs: “The idea of going after Iraq was U.S. policy. It was going to happen one way or the other.” Watch it.
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The CIA officer reportedly fired for leaking classified intelligence information is Mary O. McCarthy, who until 2001 was senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council.
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From CBS
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The former highest-ranking CIA officer in Europe tells Ed Bradley that the White House ignored intelligence that said there were no WMDs or an active weapons program in Iraq. The interview airs on CBS Sunday, April 23.
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From crooksandliars.com
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The CIA has fired an agent who allegedly leaked information about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe to The Washington Post, reports MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. Fox News has more.
Posted on Apr 21, 2006
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Rove: politicalnews.org / Fitzgerald: bareknucklepolitics.com
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It’s the first time this year that Fitzgerald has told jurors that he would soon present them with a list of criminal charges he intends to file against the White House operative, according to Truthout’s Jason Leopold.
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We know: “Duh!” right? Well, here’s what’s new: The author of this article, using newly surfaced Libby testimony, all but accuses Cheney of outing Valerie Plame as a CIA agent—which has been widely suspected but never confirmed. The National Journal’s Murray Waas (the country’s leading news-breaker on this story) has the scoop.
Posted on Apr 14, 2006
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By Robert Scheer — Colin Powell told me that he and his department’s top experts never believed that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, but that the president followed the misleading advice of Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA in making the claim.
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Patrick Fitzgerald writes in a legal briefing, “It is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to ‘punish Wilson.’ ”
Also, Bush formally admits to declassifying the intelligence later leaked by Libby to reporters.
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In 1977, Nixon said, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”?
Well, Bush’s lawyers allegedly said this about the leak of classified intelligence: “Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to declassification of the document.”
Got it? When the president leaks it, that means it is not illegal.
UPDATE: the White House tries to quell the furor over the leak.
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Congress convened this bipartisan group of 10 prominent Americans—which includes former Secretary of State James Baker and former CIA Director William Casey—to assess Bush’s policies in Iraq.
We can’t decide whether adults are finally being brought in to clean up the president’s mess or this is a way of ignoring an issue by appointing a blue-ribbon panel to study it. Thoughts, anyone?
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The MSNBC host lays bare the White House’s attack on press freedoms and whistle-blowers.
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The former CIA official who coordinated America’s intelligence in the Middle East accused the Bush administration of misusing prewar intelligence to hype the Iraq threat. | story
This is a big deal: it’s the same unnerving story we heard firsthand from Richard Clarke when he left the White House.
Posted on Feb 11, 2006
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America’s former top spy for the Middle East accuses the White House of “cherry-picking information” to justify a decision it had already made to go to war. | story
Who wants to bet on how long it will take the CIA to start swift-boating this guy?
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The departure “comes at a time when the agency is bleeding top talent, robbing the CIA of institutional memory and damaging morale among case officers and analysts.” | story
Posted on Feb 7, 2006
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Truthdigger of the Week: Sen. Angus King
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