One person with a unique vantage into the Hayden-Helgerson dispute is L. Britt Snider. Snider served as CIA inspector general from 1998 to 2001, when Helgerson was his chief deputy, and he retains a lot of admiration for his successor. "He's just first rate," Snider tells me. "He is extremely fair, balanced, competent, knowledgeable. He's not someone you'd regard as wild, extreme, or a loose cannon."

That contrasts sharply with Hayden's apparent belief that Helgerson has shaded into advocacy while investigating CIA interrogations, detentions and renditions. But Snider says he never considered Helgerson particularly opinionated while working with him on investigations: "He was always someone who would look at the facts to make some kind of judgment."

Snider cautions that he only knows about the friction between Hayden and Helgerson from what he read in the papers, and that friction is inevitable between the director and the inspector general. "Your job as IG is to render your opinion to management in order to improve the performance of the agency. It's an inherently tense situation set up by the law, but that's the plight of the IG," he says. But he's never encountered a situation where the director "would appoint a committee to quote-help-unquote the IG" -- he laughs. "That I've never heard of before."

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House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has issued a statement in in response to Paul Kiel's reporting earlier today on the unprecedented written public assurance that DOJ voting rights chief John Tanner gave to election officials in Ohio that the Justice Department had found no evidence of intentional African-American voter disenfranchisement in the 2004 election.

As Paul reported, Tanner wrote a June 2005 letter to election officials in Columbus, Ohio, offering a lengthy explanation for why the Department had not discovered sufficient evidence of discrimination, the effect of which was to "poison the well" for future litigation or investigation of the alleged election improprieties.

In his statement, Conyers says:

"I am concerned about the extreme lengths Mr. Tanner went to in order to justify the reasons African-Americans were not treated equally in the 2004 Ohio election. The committee needs to consider this matter. I am aware of no precedent for the Department acting in this capacity in the past.

Tanner has been asked to testify before Conyers' committee, though no date for his testimony has been set.

The full text of Conyers' statement appears below the fold:

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Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) beats Senate intelligence committee chairman John Rockefeller in the race to comment first on CIA Director Michael Hayden's investigation of Inspector General John Helgerson!

"I am troubled by the New York Times story indicating that the CIA's leadership may be interfering with the oversight work of its own inspector general. The story raises alarming new questions about this administration’s willingness to submit to critical oversight. During this administration, we’ve seen an illegal warrantless wiretapping program, demands for dangerous new surveillance powers, and a CIA detention and interrogation program that is legally dubious and morally indefensible. Independent oversight of the intelligence community has never been more important, and inspectors general must be able to conduct their important work without interference or politicization."

If CIA Director Michael Hayden wants to get rid of meddlesome Inspector General John Helgerson, he can't do it directly, since Helgerson is a presidential appointee. That's a first for Hayden: as POGO's Nick Schwellenbach and Beverly Lumpkin observe, when he was head of NSA from 1999 to 2005, the agency IG was under the general's thumb. But that's not to say that Hayden doesn't have options. The New York Times explains:

Under federal procedures, agency heads who are unhappy with the conduct of their inspectors general have at least two places to file complaints. One is the Integrity Committee of the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency, which oversees all the inspectors general. The aggrieved agency head can also go directly to the White House.

If serious accusations against an inspector general are sustained by evidence, the president can dismiss him.

Now, let's say that going directly to the White House isn't subtle enough for someone as savvy as Hayden. Not to worry! Going to the Council on Integrity and Efficiency is likely to provide the same outcome. The Integrity Committee is chaired by an FBI official named Kenneth Kaiser, who appears to be a perfectly competent individual. But his boss, the chairman of the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency, is George W. Bush's prep school buddy Clay Johnson III, a man whose name is practically synonymous with Bush administration cronyism.

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House intelligence committee chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) just released the following statement on CIA Director Mike Hayden's investigation of CIA Inspector General John Helgerson:

"The initiation of this investigation, if accurately reported, is troubling. By law, the CIA Inspector General is required 'to plan, conduct, supervise, and coordinate independently… relating to the programs and operations of the Agency to ensure they are conducted efficiently and in accordance with applicable law and regulations...'

"It is this independence that Congress established, and will very aggressively preserve.

"I have always supported General Hayden and the outstanding men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency, and I look forward to discussing this issue with them as soon as possible."

Notice no promise to investigate the investigation of the investigator.

Update: Reyes's spokeswoman, Kira Maas, says that the CIA has agreed to brief the House intelligence committee next week on the Helgerson investigation.

It didn't seem to make much sense when Blackwater announced it was withdrawing from the International Peace Operations Association, a lobbying and public-relations firm for private military companies. After all, the firm was under public scrutiny like never before after its guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians on September 16, igniting an international furor.

But as much as Blackwater might have wanted some PR help, it appears what it wanted more was for IPOA to mind its own business.

This morning, the lobby group released its first statement on Blackwater's departure. On Monday, it opened a "review" into whether Blackwater was following the code of conduct for IPOA members. That code emphasizes "human rights, corporate ethics, International Humanitarian Law, transparency, accountability, and responsibility and professionalism in relationships with employees, clients, and partner companies." Two days later, Blackwater quit the group.

Here's the statement in full:

We have received notification from Blackwater USA that they are formally withdrawing from the membership of the International Peace Operations Association, effective October 10, 2007.

Blackwater USA joined IPOA in August 2004 and was a member in good standing.

In recent weeks, IPOA was actively engaged with senior management at Blackwater USA, both through our Standards Committee and our Executive Committee, to ensure that they were fully compliant with the IPOA Code of Conduct. On October 8, 2007 the IPOA Executive Committee authorized the Standards Committee to initiate an independent review process of Blackwater USA to ascertain whether Blackwater USA's processes and procedures were fully sufficient to ensure compliance with the IPOA Code of Conduct.

All IPOA member companies are required to follow the IPOA Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct is a set of ethical and professional guidelines for companies in the peace and stability operations industry. The Code stresses human rights, corporate ethics, International Humanitarian Law, transparency, accountability, and responsibility and professionalism in relationships with employees, clients, and partner companies.

It's not just Henry Waxman anymore. The Democratic chairmen of the House armed services, international relations and appropriations committees have joined the oversight committee chair in demanding that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stop suppressing internal State Department assessments of corruption in Iraq.

Iraq's former top anti-corruption judge testified to Waxman's committee last week that corruption had "stopped" reconstruction outright, and claimed that political figures close to the Maliki government (including the PM's own brother) are robbing the country blind. In response, the State Department sent a representative to the committee to say . . . he couldn't talk about it in open session.

That's not good enough for Waxman or his new allies, Ike Skelton (D-MO), Tom Lantos (D-CA) and David Obey (D-WI). Keeping corruption information classified, they write in a letter today to Rice, "will undermine our ability to work together to find solutions to this significant problem."

Full text after the jump.

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Ever since 9/11, the biggest epithet an outsider can hurl at the CIA is that it's "risk-averse." Nothing, but nothing, rankles agency officials and operatives more than hearing that they're not willing to do whatever it takes to defend the country. So when agency officials start throwing knives at one another, it's the charge that someone has contributed to risk-aversion, real or perceived, that cuts the deepest. Looking back, that's exactly what Mike Hayden did when he released Inspector General John Helgerson's report into the CIA and 9/11 in August.

Helgerson found compounding layers of incompetence and fault among senior agency officials, especially then-Director George Tenet, in a Congressionally-mandated review he completed in 2005. The report was only released to the public after Congress placed a provision mandating disclosure in this year's bill compelling the implementation of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations. In releasing the report, Hayden blasted Helgerson for unfairly maligning the agency, and suggested that excessive criticism like Helgerson's would have a "chilling effect" on energetic CIA action against terrorism:

I thought the release of this report would distract officers serving their country on the frontlines of a global conflict. It will, at a minimum, consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed. I also remain deeply concerned about the chilling effect that may follow publication of the previously classified work, findings, and recommendations of the Office of Inspector General.

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In June of 2005, John Tanner, the chief of the voting rights section, wrote Columbus, Ohio's election officials to publicly assure them that the Justice Department had found no evidence of intentional African-American voter disenfranchisement in the 2004 election.

Not only was that an unprecedented move, former Department lawyers say, but the letter is another, and particularly galling, example of Tanner using the force of the Department to further Republican aims -- in this case, to hamper future lawsuits or investigations concerning the problems in Columbus.

"It really looked like the Civil Rights Division was used to run interference for Republican election officials in Ohio," former voting rights section deputy chief Bob Kengle told me.

At issue was the experience of thousands of voters in Franklin County, Ohio, in the 2004 election. Voters in mostly African-American precincts were forced to wait hours in long lines to vote. An investigation by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) found that voters often waited as many as four to five hours, some as many as seven, deep into the night. The Washington Post reported that "bipartisan estimates say that 5,000 to 15,000 frustrated voters turned away without casting ballots." The culprit, of course, was a scarcity of voting machines in those districts, one that seemed to follow a suspicious trend: "27 of the 30 wards with the most machines per registered voter showed majorities for Bush" and "six of the seven wards with the fewest machines delivered large margins for Kerry."

But Tanner, who's due to appear in a Congressional hearing, launched an investigation (more on that below) and found that "Franklin County assigned voting machines in a non-discriminatory manner," as he wrote in a detailed 4-page letter to a local official. But if the distribution of the machines was non-discriminatory, why then were polling places in predominantly African-American areas forced to remain open for hours after the normal 7:30 PM closing time in order to accommodate the long lines?

Tanner explained that African-Americans simply vote later in the day:

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In a motion filed this week, Rep. William "Cold Cash" Jefferson (D-LA) wants the bulk of his bribery charges thrown out, saying it was unconstitutional for the FBI to speak with his aides about legislative matters, the Crypt reports.

In August, a DC Circuit court called the FBI's raid of his Congressional office a violation of the Speech and Debate Clause. The day should have sparked a celebration for corrupt politicians, one watchdog said at the time.

No doubt Sen. Ted Stevens' (R-AK) lawyers are watching this case closely, since news broke that the FBI listened in on phone calls between the senator and Veco CEO Bill Allen. Some legal experts say the earlier Jefferson decision might be interpreted to mean it is illegal to tap Congressional phones. Stay tuned.

The environmental community is riding high on global concern for energy policy, with no less than a Nobel Peace Prize for Al Gore to keep alive the conversation. No doubt they are well aware of the pro-energy lobbying power of Bracewell & Patterson, a firm that has played a big part in this administration's anti-environment energy policy. It turns out, Bracwell has also provided Rudy Giuliani with powerful professional, political and economic ties to the oil-rich Texas community. (The Nation)

American troops have weighed in on the Blackwater shooting incident, and the story continues to get worse. According to soldiers on the scene, there was no evidence that Iraqis fired their weapons. Worse, these soldiers have reported that Blackwater personnel continued to fire on Iraqi vehicles, even after those vehicles had turned around and were fleeing the scene. (Washington Post)

There was a time when it looked like Jerry Lewis was going to escape from the Duke Cunningham scandal unscathed. But these days, it looks like he's back in the sights of investigators; yesterday, another of his aides was subpoenaed. (AP)

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Since taking over as director of national intelligence in February, Mike McConnell has prided himself on being more open to the public than most intelligence chiefs. His release in July of thousands of documents of controversial; Cold War-era CIA activities, known as the "Family Jewels" was the biggest declassification in the agency's history.

But no dice getting his reaction to a more recent scandal: CIA Director Michael Hayden's investigation of his agency's own inspector general, John Helgerson. McConnell spokesman Ross Feinstein simply said the director had "no comment" and referred any press inquiries to the CIA. Given the internal agency dispute, it might be helpful to know whether Hayden's boss considers the move appropriate or necessary, but it appears that for now McConnell is keeping his opinion private.

That's one way to placate the National Clandestine Service. CIA Director Michael Hayden is going after the agency's independent watchdog, Inspector General John Helgerson. Hayden wonders if Helgerson -- who is not appointed by the CIA director -- hasn't gone too far in investigating how the agency conducts detentions and interrogations.

Helgerson has for years been perceived as overly aggressive in reviewing CIA techniques in the war on terrorism. In 2004, he produced an internal report that seemed to say that Department of Justice-approved interrogation techniques employed by the CIA amounted to torture. That report was part of a series of internal administration moves contributing to uncertainty among interrogators and senior officials about what was legally permissible. Some in the NCS -- the agency's undercover operatives -- have purchased legal insurance to guard against the possibility that they will one day face criminal charges for putting administration-approved practices into place. In short, many in the CIA think Helgerson is out to get them.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the investigation has grown out of an effort by Hayden months ago to explore a "friction" that had emerged between Helgerson's office and that of the CIA general counsel, which also has lent its legal imprimatur to CIA interrogations and detentions, after the general counsel's office believed Helgerson was improperly second-guessing its advice. But the investigation, headed by Hayden confidante Robert L. Deitz, is now a full-fledged exploration of how Helgerson conducts his work. It comes as Helgerson is "nearing completion" on several reports into interrogations, renditions, and detentions, reports The New York Times.

In investigating Helgerson, Hayden is probably taking steps to assuage what by all accounts is an NCS plagued with legal confusion. Both the LAT and the NYT describe the investigation as "unusual" if not "unprecedented." Hayden's spokesman told both papers that the director is simply out to "help this office, like any office at the agency, do its vital work even better."

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The ACLU watched in horror and impotence this summer as the Protect America Act vastly expanded the NSA's warrantless surveillance authority. With House Democrats pushing a PAA fix that still gives civil libertarians shpilkis, the ACLU is determined not to watch history repeat itself, especially as the Senate prepares a companion bill that worries the organization even more. So the ACLU is taking an aggressive approach: passing on what it freely concedes are rumors concerning what's in the bill in order to pressure Senators against violating civil-libertarian red-lines. What follows is an example.

Early this morning, ACLU spokeswoman Liz Rose heard from Senate sources that an unreleased draft of the bill contains provisions granting amnesty to telecommunications companies that turned over communications of subscribers to the NSA without warrants between 2001 and 2007. The Bush administration badly wants retroactive immunity for telecoms to become law, and was frustrated when this matter of "basic fairness" (in the words of Assistant Attorney General Ken Wainstein to reporters yesterday) wasn't part of either the PAA or the House Democratic RESTORE Act. Rose feared that the Senate Democrats were preparing to cave: after all, even civil-libertarian bete noire Steny Hoyer (D-MD) conditioned retroactive immunity on thorough administration disclosure over what the telecoms had done to require it.

So she sent out an email to a list of concerned bloggers warning them of what she heard. She gave permission to one of them, Christy Hardin Smith of Fire Dog Lake, to publish a version of her email. Hardin Smith wrote a post earlier today quoting Rose's email as follows:

…the Senate bill (Committee draft) does contain immunity/amnesty for the telecom companies…Including retroactive immunity for anything they’ve done wrong in cooperating in illegal domestic spying for the past six years.

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Fresh off his candid appearance at a California panel on minority voter disenfranchisement last week, Voting Rights Section chief John Tanner will get to air his views to Congress.

After initially rebuffing a request for Tanner to appear, the Justice Department has agreed to send him along for a hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. A date for the hearing hasn't yet been set.

There will be plenty to ask Tanner about, and not only his view that voter ID laws don't significantly hurt minorities because "they die first." The focus of the hearing is likely to be his role in forcing through an approval of a controversial, and ultimately halted, Georgia ID law in 2005 over the objections of the career lawyers and analysts on his staff.

“I’m pleased that the administration has finally reversed course and agreed to allow Mr. Tanner to testify,” said the subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). “I hope that he will be as willing to provide lawmakers with the same candid views he has been providing at various public venues.... This hearing will also offer lawmakers the ability to address the serious concerns about the many controversial positions the Voting Rights Section has taken in the last few years.”

Families of Nisour Square victims, along with one survivor, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit this morning against Blackwater in federal district court. The suit represents one of the first times any Iraqi has taken legal action against a private military company working under contract from a U.S. government agency.

It's unclear whether Judge Reggie Walton (yup, the Scooter Libby judge) will allow the lawsuit to proceed. Families of U.S. troops who died in a 2004 Blackwater plane crash in Afghanistan filed a negligence suit. But it's rare for Iraqis to sue private-military companies in U.S. courts. One of the only precedents is a lawsuit filed by the same lawyers in the Blackwater case: a suit against contractors CACI and Titan for their role in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. And that case, filed in 2004, is still snarled up in legal challenges over whether the Iraqi victims have standing to sue.

Attorneys with the Philadelphia firm Burke O'Neill and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed the suit (pdf) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It claims Blackwater is responsible for "the extrajudicial killing of Oday Ismail Ibraheem, Himoud Saed Atban, and Usama Fadhil Abbas," and for mental and physical damages suffered by Talib Mutlaq Deewan, who survived the shooting. Deewan and the families are seeking compensatory and punitive damages, but no monetary amount is specified in the suit. The case has "great implications for the application of the rule of law and the rebuilding of the U.S.'s reputation abroad," says Vincent Warren, CCR's executive director and an attorney on the case. Contacts of CCR and Burke O'Neill on the ground in Iraq from the Abu Ghraib lawsuit reached out to the September 16 victims' families to offer legal assistance.

The plaintiffs rely on the Alien Tort Statute for their suit, part of a 1789 law passed to give foreigners standing to sue U.S. persons or organizations if they can't seek legal action in their own country. Thanks to a Coalition Provisional Authority edict known as Order 17, Blackwater is effectively outside Iraqi law.

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Republican lawyer Dana Jill Simpson's affidavit implicating Karl Rove in the decision to prosecute Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL) has taken center stage so far in the ongoing story. But now it looks like it might get some competition.

Son of Gov. Bob Riley (R-AL), Rob Riley, told the Times Daily he plans to sign his own sworn affidavit, countering Simpson's claims.

According to Simpson's sworn statement, Rob Riley participated in a 2002 campaign call where a local Republican operative, Bill Canary, said Rove had been in touch with the Justice Department about a Siegelman investigation. Simpson recently told House investigators that three years later Riley told her Rove had gone directly to DOJ's Public Integrity Section, presumably in 2004, in an effort to stymie Siegelman's 2005 campaign.

Two more challengers have signed on to campaign against Rep. Don Young (R-AK), making it a field of four vying for his seat, the Anchorage Daily News reports.

Former Alaska state Rep. Ethan Berkowitz (D) and former state Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux (R) both said on Wednesday they are entering next year's U.S. House race. Neither openly attacked Young, who another opponent, former Alaska Democratic Party Chair Jake Metcalfe, called a "wounded bear."

Wounded? Maybe. But here's what Young had to say about that in August:

Q. Do you think you’re vulnerable?

A. No. I think it’s going to be a different race....

Q. How?

A. It’s different in the sense that it may be, we’re no different from any other group of animals. You know, they look at me and they see me, I’m 74 years old, and they figure he’s a little old, he’s been wounded, he’s been nicked by the media, and this is going to be interesting when this thing is all over, because then I want to see what people say, you know? ... Well, have at it. They have never been in a race until they’ve been in a race with me. ...

Q. Any idea what we’re going to see differently?

A. Well, I think the standard thing will be raising all these cloudy questions. That’s fine just remember; those that cast stones better damn well better not live in a glass house.

Q. You know stuff?

A. Let’s put it this way, I’m not just going to sit and let everybody beat me up. It’ll make for an exciting campaign.

Blackwater's Nisour Square shootings and the more recent killing of two Iraqi women by contractors for the Australian-run Unity Resources Group has raised the ire of the United Nations. AFP:

The UN called Thursday for rogue security guards in Iraq to face prosecution as the Australian-run firm involved in the latest civilian shooting insisted its staff stuck by clear rules of engagement.

"We would like the US government and other governments that have contractors in Iraq... to apply rules of engagement on them and to prosecute them in their own countries," UN spokesman Said Arikat told a press conference in Baghdad.

In the harshest criticism yet of private military companies in Iraq by any government or international body, UN human rights official Ivana Vaco said there needed to be an investigation into "whether crimes against humanity or war crimes have been committed." She didn't say who should spearhead such an inquiry.

For a contractor, what's the best kind of congressman? The dumb and powerful variety.

The San Diego Union-Tribune on yesterday's proceedings in Brent Wilkes' trial for bribing Duke Cunningham:

Randal Kerley, a former Wilkes employee in the early days of ADCS, testified Wednesday morning that Wilkes was pleased when Cunningham was appointed to the appropriations committee.

“He thought it would be beneficial to us,” Kerley said about Wilkes.

When he asked why, Kerley said Wilkes responded, “He's not the brightest congressman up there. We can work with him.”

Robert Fromm, former Defense Department official and employee of Michael Wade's infamous contracting company MZM, has pleaded guilty to one count of violating a lifetime employment ban. Fromm has expressed his willingness to talk with officials about ongoing investigations. He is scheduled for sentencing in January. (Charlottesville Daily Progress)

Earning reports for Washington lobbying firms were very strong in the first half of 2007. According to CQ.com, a half-dozen midsize firms “at least double[d] their average six-month take during the 109th Congress.” Jim Turner, a former Democratic representative from Texas (top Democrat on Homeland Security Committee) had to sit out last season because of revolving door rules, but this year he is credited with tripling; the income of Arnold & Porter. (CQ)

The Justice Department has spent $214 million gathering DNA samples from convicted criminals and updating their DNA testing labs. And yet, over the same time period, the Department hasn't spent a dime of the $8 million allocated by Congress for using DNA evidence to potentially exonerate convicts. (USA TODAY)

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Blackwater and the State Department say one thing -- namely, that Blackwater guards were under attack by Iraqi insurgents at Nisour Square on September 16. The Iraqi government and the U.S. military say another: Blackwater didn't come under fire on that fateful day, and instead used deadly force against a misperceived threat. So as a joint U.S.-Iraqi investigation gets underway, maybe it shouldn't come as a surprise that the Iraqis and the U.S. military feel shunted aside by a hard-charging State Department and its FBI allies.

The New York Times reports that the joint inquiry, with the predominant U.S. component coming from the military, hasn't had access to initial State Department reports (at least one of which was written by Blackwater), nor has it had access to a separate investigation into the incident that State asked the FBI to lead. Furthermore, the military has neither been allowed to interview the four Blackwater guards at Nisour Square, nor been allowed to inspect the vehicle that they drove. That last point is crucial: examining the vehicle would easily determine whether any ballistic damage to it resulted from the kinds of weapons Iraqis typically fire or the sort that Blackwater is issued, which probably aren't the same. (There was another Blackwater convoy on the opposite end of the square.)

There's been a fair amount of friction over the past year between the Iraqi government and the U.S. military. But when it comes to the Blackwater investigation, they appear united in frustration.

“We haven’t received any information from the Americans about their own two investigations,” [a] senior Iraqi investigator said. “F.B.I. investigators have asked us to help them and share our information, as they have started a third investigation.”

[A] senior American military officer said the State Department had also refused to provide details of its investigation. “We have asked questions,” the official said. “They have not responded back on those.” Both the Iraqi investigator and the American military officer spoke on condition of anonymity because neither was authorized to discuss the investigations publicly.

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In a conference call with reporters this afternoon, Kenneth Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security, raised "serious concerns" about numerous provisions contained within the new FISA bill, which the House judiciary and intelligence committees approved today.

But let me focus on the question I brought up this morning: Although the new bill authorizes surveillance of foreign-to-foreign communications, how does the intelligence community know ahead of time whether a surveillance target abroad calls into the United States?

After a FISA Court ruling in the spring that foreign-to-foreign communications passing through U.S. switches or email servers were subject to FISA, both Democrats and Republicans agreed the law needed to be fixed. The Protect America Act signed into law in August did just that. Surveillance targeted at a person reasonably believed to be overseas and in possession of foreign intelligence information would be outside the purview of the FISA Court.

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It's official: the confirmation hearings for Michael Mukasey to replace Alberto Gonzales as attorney general will begin next Wednesday, October 17. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) set the date today.

Leahy laid out the questions he'll have for Mukasey in a letter last week, in which he also indicated that Mukasey's confirmation will be considered separate from the administration's refusal so far to turn over documents concerning its warrantless surveillance program. When Mukasey's name was first announced by the president, Leahy said that his focus was on "securing the relevant information we need so we can proceed to schedule fair and thorough hearings." Now those hearings will apparently go forward without that information. Or as Leahy put it last week to Mukasey, "they have left you to answer the unanswered questions." We'll see how that goes.

You never can be too careful, particularly when you're being investigated for lying to Congress. From Newsweek:

No sooner did Alberto Gonzales resign as attorney general last month than he retained a high-powered Washington criminal-defense lawyer to represent him in continuing inquiries by Congress and the Justice Department.

Gonzales’s choice of counsel, George Terwilliger—a partner at White & Case—is ironic if not surprising. A former deputy attorney general under the first President Bush, who later helped oversee GOP lawyers in the epic Florida recount battle of 2000, Terwilliger had been a White House finalist to replace Gonzales—only to be aced out at the last minute by retired federal judge Michael Mukasey.

The top concern for Gonzales, and now Terwilliger, is the expanding investigation by Glenn Fine, the Justice Department’s fiercely independent inspector general, according to three legal sources familiar with the matter who declined to speak publicly about ongoing investigations.

Fine is not only investigating whether Gonzales made false statements to Congress (see the top six here), but also whether Gonzales might have improperly coached his aide Monica Goodling on her recollection of the U.S. attorney firings. That's in addition, of course, to Fine's sprawling investigation of the politicization of the Department under Gonzales' leadership. But apparently Gonzales is most worried that his statements to Congress are the most likely to lead to a criminal investigation.

Dana Jill Simpson wasn't just worried about Rove's involvement in Gov. Don Siegelman's (D-AL) case. She also testified that she heard about a behind-the-scenes arrangement to ensure which judge would get the case -- a judge sure to "hang" Siegelman.

Simpson said that Gov. Bob Riley's (R) son, Rob Riley, told her in a 2005 conversation -- one where Riley also said that Rove was pushing to have the Justice Department investigate Siegelman -- that Judge Mark Fuller would get the case because Fuller, an active Republican, had a beef with Siegelman over an audit.

We've posted the portion of the interview where Simpson discusses Fuller here.

Q And did he talk to you about Mark Fuller's politics or political work?

[Simpson] He did.

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In an interview she gave under oath to House investigators, Republican lawyer Dana Jill Simpson expanded on her previous statement about Karl Rove's role in the prosecution of Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL), implicating Rove in using the Justice Deparment to stymie Siegelman's campaigns in 2002 and again in 2005.

In the interview, first obtained by Time and released today by the committee, Simpson explains the context in which she knew what Alabama Republican operative William Canary meant on a campaign conference call in 2002 when he said "Karl" had gotten the Justice Department on Siegelman. Simpson told House investigators that the son of Gov. Bob Riley (R), Rob Riley, had told her about the conversations between Rove and Canary. From the transcript:

But I knew from conversations that I had had with Rob that Bill Canary was very connected to Karl Rove. Additionally, there was some talk -- and that's not in my affidavit -- about Karl had -- about Washington; that Karl had it taken care of in Washington.

Simpson also told investigators that three years later, during Bob Riley's 2005 campaign, Rob Riley told her that Rove had intervened again, this time going directly to the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice. The intervention came after the US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama "messed up" a case against Siegelman to keep him from running, Simpson told investigators. According to the interview transcript, Simpson said Rove made sure all the bases were covered to properly prosecute Siegelman:

Q: Okay. And did Rob give you the name of the person at -- I'm just going to call it Public Integrity -- that he thought he understood Karl Rove had spoken to?

[Simpson]: No, he said it was the head guy there and he said that that guy had agreed to allocate whatever resources, so evidently the guy had the power to allocate resources, you know.

Q: To the Siegelman prosecution?

[Simpson] Yes. And that he'd allocate all resources necessary.

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At the mark-up of today's RESTORE bill, House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI) defended the surveillance measure, which he's co-sponsoring, against criticism from both left and right:

To those who would claim that this bill is weak on terrorism, I would say that protecting the civil rights and liberties of Americans does not show our weakness, but our strength. What the terrorists fear most is our constitution and our values, and that is what this bill protects.

To those who say that the bill is too weak on civil liberties, I say that if you trust an independent court and have faith in congressional oversight, those liberties will not be jeopardized. That is the premise our democracy was founded on, and that is exactly what this bill does.

Admiral McConnell isn't the only administration figure lukewarm on the Democrats' RESTORE bill. President Bush just issued his first statement on the bill -- sort of.

Unlike McConnell, though, Bush didn't actually mention anything about RESTORE. Instead, he repeatedly praised the Protect America Act, August's FISA revision that RESTORE somewhat scales back. The PAA "strengthened our ability to collect intelligence on terrorists overseas" and "closed a dangerous gap in our intelligence," Bush said. "Keeping this authority is essential to keeping America safe." While he didn't actually criticize RESTORE, the strong implication is that the bill is too restrictive for him, even though its provisions for authorizing surveillance on foreign targets are remarkably similar to those within the PAA.

Could, maybe, politics have something to do with the tepid response the bill is getting from the administration? Here's how a GOP aide outlined the party's strategy to the Baltimore Sun's Siobhan Gorman:

The GOP strategy is to "run out the clock," he said, adding that Republican Senate leaders and the White House are "100 percent on board" with that plan.

Republicans, the aide said, "don't mind having this fight." He added, "this is Democrat-on-Democrat violence. The [American Civil Liberties Union] hates it. Most of the members hate it, but they also realize that if they don't do it, they can be blamed in the future" for a terrorist attack.

The ACLU has its differences, you might say, with Admiral Mike McConnell. Its website, for instance, features a page with the sub-headline, "McConnell Tries to Scare America in to [sic] Giving Up Fourth Amendment." But they do share one thing in common: neither much likes the Democratic RESTORE Act.

To be clear, the ACLU's opposition is intense, and centered around the so-called "umbrella warrants," whereby the director of national intelligence and the attorney general submit an annual explanation to the FISA Court outlining why their surveillance methods target non-U.S. persons "reasonably believed to be outside the United States... for the purpose of collecting foreign intelligence information." McConnell's concerns, it's safe to say, don't center around whether umbrella authorizations violate the Fourth Amendment. Rather, he's concerned about the bill not providing retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies who cooperated with warrantless surveillance requests from 2001 to 2007. He's also more tentative than the ACLU, leaving himself room to negotiate with Congressional Democrats.

From McConnell spokesman Ross Feinstein:

"Our intelligence professionals will need to review the actual text of the bill. However, clearly on a couple of the points, this legislation fails to meet some of the requirements the DNI has stated he must have in any FISA Modernization Legislation. One important point is the retroactive liability protection for the private sector, which is missing from this bill."

Yesterday, as Paul wrote, chief RESTORE advocate Steny Hoyer (D-MD) conditioned retroactive liability on the administration disclosing what exactly telecommunications did when asked to allow the NSA to eavesdrop on domestic-to-foreign communications.

We're still waiting to hear what the other points of contention are from McConnell's perspective. But so far, it doesn't sound like the bill has McConnell's support. Finally: common ground between McConnell and the ACLU.

The bill (pdf) introduced by House Democrats yesterday to scale back the Protect America Act represents an effort to reconcile the surveillance powers that Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell has told Democrats he needs with civil liberties protections for U.S. citizens and residents. But to some degree, the bill is also an attempt to legislate in the dark. That's because a lot still remains unknown about the extent of surveillance between people inside the U.S. and people overseas.

Most obviously, the administration has refused to turn over documentation of what eavesdropping within the U.S. has occurred outside of the boundaries of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and based on what legal reasoning. Before August's overhaul of FISA, critics contended that understanding the need for a revision was the only responsible basis for new legislation. That clearly failed. As a result, the Protect America Act changed the definition of electronic surveillance, allowing for largely warrant-free interception of communications simply where intelligence officials had reason to believe that one party to the conversation was outside the U.S. and possessed foreign-intelligence information.

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The Texas-based private security firm, U.S. Protections and Investigations (USPI) is under investigation itself. USPI, which receives millions of dollars to secure U.S.-funded road projects in Afghanistan and train Iraqi security forces, has had its files, safe, and computers seized from its Kabul office because of alleged fraud. (ABC’s The Blotter)

Giuliani claims that the U.S. has disrupted 23 domestic terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001. President Bush has taken credit for foiling only about a dozen attacks and a check of homeland security experts reveled their consternation about “23.” Maybe Rudy was thinking of the 29 hours that he spent at “ground zero” between September 17 and December 16, 2001. (National Journal’s The Hotline)

MotherJones published a Blackwater timeline that brings more clarity to the murky operations of the private military contractor. September 24, 2006: "Blackwater convoy driving down the wrong side of the road ('counter flowing') in al-Hillah strikes an oncoming car, propelling it into a telephone pole. The Iraqi car bursts into flames. Blackwater contractors leave the scene without offering help to the victim, who dies in the fire." (Mother Jones)

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The $525,000 payment on Duke Cunningham's mortgage, the Sea-Doo Speedsters, the thousands of dollars of meals, the prostitutes, $12,000 worth of furniture... there's an "innocent explanation" for all of this, Brent Wilkes' lawyer Mark Geragos told a jury in his opening statement yesterday. Or as he put it himself: "Every single one of these transactions they're alleging is a bribe has an innocent explanation they don't want you to hear." By our count, that would be at least a couple dozen innocent explanations. And, boy, do we want to hear.

So it seems that Geragos is really going for the gold. Wilkes was just another defense contractor trying to make a living, he'll argue, and prosecutors have arbitrarily focused on him. Why? As Geragos argued: "You're going to find that everyone's got a little ax to grind here, not least the government, who seem to want to make this a referendum on how Washington works." More than $700,000 worth of gifts and payments in, $90 million in defense contracts out. That's how Washington works. And Geragos aims to prove it. Don't forget that he's already issued subpoenas to a dozen members of Congress, with special focus on five sitting lawmakers in particular.

From the opening statement, it's evident that another strategy of Geragos' will be to cast Mitchell Wade as the real bad guy here, relying, it seems, on Cunningham's semi-literate letter from prison to Marcus Stern, the reporter who broke the story. In that letter, other than complaining that Stern always focused on the bribery and not on the good things that Cunningham had achieved in his career (like "Library Man of the Year"), Cunningham announced that "truth will come out and you will find out how liablist [sic] you have & will be." It was a stirring example of denial. And the root for how it all went wrong, Cunningham argued, was that "absolute devil" Mitch Wade.

Of course, Cunningham's anger might have had a lot to do with the fact that Wade had been the first to go to the feds. And in a subsequent interview with the FBI, Cunningham gave a different story, detailing how he and Wilkes had hid various bribes in order not to arouse suspicion.

But that's Wilkes' story, and he's sticking to it. And he says that if prosecutors don't haul Cunningham out of jail to testify, then he's going to do it himself.

Let the show begin.

The Birmingham News has some new murky allegations about the lead up to the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D).

Two Birmingham News reporters reviewed a transcript of a recent House Judiciary panel interview of the Republican lawyer, Dana Jill Simpson, who implicated Karl Rove in the prosecution of Siegelman. According to the document, Simpson recounted how the current Alabama governor's son told her about a plan to threaten Siegelman with a prosecution if he didn't back down from contesting the 2001 gubernatorial election.

Simpson also told investigators that her concerns about the impartiality of the judge assigned to Siegelman's case prompted her to write the affidavit implicating Rove.

The article paints Simpson's testimony as contradictory in light of her previous statements, but without reading the entire transcript of the interview, that is unclear. Simpson and Siegelman's lawyers were not quoted in the story. We'll update when we hear from them.

From the AP:

A top Democratic leader opened the door Tuesday to granting U.S. telecommunications companies retroactive legal immunity for helping the government conduct electronic surveillance without court orders, but said the Bush administration must first detail what those companies did.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said providing the immunity will likely be the price of getting President Bush to sign into law new legislation extending the government's surveillance authority. About 40 pending lawsuits name telecommunications companies for alleged violations of wiretapping laws. Democrats introduced a draft version of the new law Tuesday _ without the immunity language.

"We have not received documentation as to what in fact was done, for which we've been asked to give immunity," Hoyer said.

Last time, this was not a deal the administration was willing to make.