Used To Be Big News

US Special Forces raided a house in Somalia and killed an Al Qaeda leader purportedly linked to the African Embassy bombings in 1998.

Helicopter-borne US special forces carried out a revenge raid in Somalia that killed a top al-Qaida commander high on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list, US officials in Washington said last night.

Saleh Ali Nabhan, 28, a leader of al-Shabab, a group closely linked to al-Qaida, was alleged to have been involved in the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 that killed 229 people. He is also accused of involvement in attacks in 2002 on a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, popular with Israelis, in which 15 people died, and a botched missile attack on a plane carrying tourists from Mombasa to Israel.

A US official said two men travelling in a car in Somalia were killed when helicopters opened fire yesterday, and two others were wounded and captured. Another official said it was most likely that Nabhan, who had been on the FBI wanted list for several years, had been killed.

Also yesterday, the FBI rolled up a terror cell in New York City with swift action, obtaining an emergency warrant and briefing the relevant committees in Congress while arresting members of the cell.

I seem to remember a breathless day of news reports every time the Bush Administration captured or killed the #3 in Al Qaeda, which they claimed to do with regularity. Also, the media would get alerted about some major terrorist event thwarted, which would quickly fall apart upon scrutiny (they were trying to blow up the Sears Tower! I mean, talking about it. I mean, they couldn't afford to get from Miami to Chicago. I mean, never mind).

Doesn't seem that the Obama Administration uses these arrests or raids for political purposes, just to carry out orders. There may be issues with their methods, but they aren't being exploitative. I don't think the 9-12ers will be satisfied that the Administration is doing what pretty much everyone wanted to do on 9-12; that is, capture suspected terrorists and stop attacks before they happen.

FBI Comes In To Investigate The Tiller Murder

The FBI has taken on an investigation into the murder of Dr. George Tiller.

A federal investigation has been launched in connection with the fatal shooting of George Tiller, the U.S. Department of Justice announced today.

The department's Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney's Office for Kansas are investigating the case [...]

"The federal probe will consist of a thorough review of the evidence and an assessment of any potential violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act) or other federal statutes," according to a news release issued today by the Justice Department.

The FACE Act was enacted by Congress in 1994 to establish federal criminal penalties and civil remedies for violent, obstructionist or damaging conduct affecting reproductive health care providers and recipients.

Making this a federal crime just ups the ante, and increases the penalties, I believe. Plus it's a good symbolic show of support for the FACE Act. Maybe they can investigate incitement as part of that damaging conduct affecting reproductive health. Those who would put forward false equivalences need to understand the words of Mary Alice Carr:

O'Reilly is being incredibly disingenuous when he claims that he bears no responsibility for others' actions in the killing of Dr. George Tiller on Sunday. When you tell an audience of millions over and over again that someone is an executioner, you cannot feign surprise when someone executes that person.

You cannot claim to hold no responsibility for what other people do when you call for people to besiege Tiller's clinic, as O'Reilly did in January 2008. And this was after Tiller had been shot in both arms and after his clinic had been bombed.

O'Reilly knew that people wanted Tiller dead, and he knew full well that many of those people were avid viewers of his show. Still, he fanned the flames. Every time I appeared on his show, I received vitriolic and hate-filled e-mails. And if I received those messages directly, I can only imagine what type of feedback O'Reilly receives. He knows that his words incite violence.

That is why I made a personal pledge to no longer sit across from him after he called for people to converge on Tiller's clinic. I realized that appearing on the show with him would only legitimize his speech and that no good would come of my efforts.

And I'm glad that, in the wake of this tragedy, people are coming out with stories of how Dr. Tiller helped them. A sample.

To the Tiller family;
When I was 6, my mom was pregnant with a child she really wanted. The doctors told her, abut 4 or 5 months in, that if she carried the child to term, she had a 90 percent chance of not surviving. She of course, got an abortion, and I got my mom for an extra 14 years. Mom died when I was 20, and I have such gratitude for doctors like your husband who gave me my mom for those 14 extra, precious years. My heart goes out to you. May you find healing and may his memory live on in those that he loved and those that he saved.

And:

In 2002 I found out I was carrying triplets. My husband did not want me to have them. The day of my appointment I was scared and not sure this was the right decision. They took me back and did an ultrasound. I asked if they all had heartbeats and the nurse said yes. I asked if I would have the chance to talk to the doctor and right away she went and got Dr Tiller. He came in and looked at my babies on the screen. Then he looked at me and said “God gave you these babies, it’s not my job to take them away.” He asked if I agreed and I immediately said yes. He told the nurse to take me to the counter and have them give me my money. You know that day was a turning point for me. I ended up having a great pregnancy and three healthy baby girls. I can never thank Dr. Tiller enough for sending me away that day.

Late-term abortions are 1% of all abortions total. But the examples here, the personal stories, build a picture of what those medical actions are all about. They're about medical necessity.

Leaving A Trail

It is difficult in a free society to stop a pre-meditated crime. But I think the FBI missed Scott Roeder, when a lot of warning signs were there:

It looks like Scott Roeder, the suspect on the murder of George Tiller, was targeting other abortion providers in the days before Tiller's slaying Sunday.

A worker at a clinic in Kansas City, Kansas at which Roeder regularly demonstrated told CNN that early Saturday morning, he "actually chased after" Roeder after catching him trying to pour epoxy into the facility's locks two weekends in a row.

In other words, it sounds like Roeder was planning to break in to the clinic at a later time.

But could the Feds have used Saturday's incident to try to stop Sunday's? Another worker told CNN he managed to catch the would-be vandal's license plate, and reported it to federal authorities, who told him nothing could be done with the information until a federal grand jury convened. When Roeder was arrested Sunday after allegedly killing Tiller, he was driving a car with that same license number.

And today we learn that an Operation Rescue advisor helped track Tiller for Roeder.

We have criminal justice laws that have served us well for many years. But this guy was practically screaming that he was about to do something violent. And law enforcement failed to pick up on the signs, even when it had the clues. Obviously hindsight is 20/20. And the FBI has a lot on its plate, but abortion provider violence is growing, especially with a pro-choice President in office, and they need to prioritize.

Where Was The FBI?

Scott Roeder, the suspect in the murder of George Tiller, overtly supported killing abortion providers.

"I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. "I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn."

Why did Regina Dinwiddie keep silent as this man espoused a belief in killing doctors providing legal practices? If someone had prior knowledge of a serial killer's intent and said nothing, I mean, isn't there something close to an accessory statute here? We already had knowledge of Roeder's involvement in the "Freemen" movement, which "claimed sovereignty from government jurisdiction and operated under their own legal system." We didn't have perfect knowledge on this guy, but seemingly enough to put together a conspiracy charge. Roeder openly affiliated with two organizations cited in the DHS rightwing extremism report, for example. Presumably DHS didn't write that report simply as an after-the-violence reference guide.

Now, scumbags like Tucker Carlson prefer to continue to demonize the late Tiller and compare him to a Nazi or a member of Al Qaeda. But I'm looking at the demonstrable reality of anti-abortion movement violence over close to 20 years, and seeing these players in that movement, and wondering why law enforcement personnel cannot protect citizens providing legal services.

I guess they were too busy spying on vegans.

...I'm going to back off of this slightly. I recognize that in a free society, we have to walk a fine line and cannot use the instruments of the law in a punitive way to take anyone's civil liberties. I reject preventive detention or prosecuting thought crimes. We don't want a totalitarian police state. I think that these right-wing movements with a history of violence bear monitoring, but there is a limit to what we can do.

Answer The Question, Norm

Todd Beeton reports that Norm Coleman continues to talk about soldiering on in the Minnesota Senate recount, which is to be expected at this point. He has every right to appeal the decision of the three-judge panel when it's brought down next week to the Minnesota Supreme Court. After that, however, all bets are off. And it would be nice, if he's seeking out all this attention, if he would answer some other questions on the record.

There have been reports that the FBI had opened an investigation into allegations in the Texas lawsuit and a similar one in Delaware. Asked if the FBI had contacted him, Coleman smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

“I can’t say anything,” he said. “We want this matter to be fully reviewed and fully investigated because nothing happened and we are looking forward to that taking place.”

And on that note, we arrived at Coleman’s car and he ended the conversation by turning and putting his hands on my shoulders.

“Too many questions,” he said, laughing.

Then, he hopped into the passenger seat and was driven away with a wave and another broad smile.

I have no problem with Coleman taking interviews and pleading his case as long as he answers whether or not the FBI has an ongoing investigation into his corruption practices. DSCC Communications Director Eric Schultz agrees:

"If Norm Coleman is going to continue his farfetched legal appeal, the least he can do is answer if the FBI is investigating him," said DSCC Communications Director Eric Schultz. "It is a yes or no question that Minnesotans deserve an answer to. There are now two executives who have gone under oath - under penalty of perjury - affirming the criminal conspiracy to funnel $100,000 to a sitting U.S. Senator from one of his top donors. Norm dodged the question before the election - but he ought to fess up now."

Shouldn't be too hard, he's on Fox News every 30 minutes.

...Incidentally, election law expert Rick Hasen says Coleman has no shot at a case before the federal courts if the Minnesota Supremes don't decide in his favor.

You Don't Want Your Leader Cooperating With The FBI

I don't think it's ever good for a political party when the chairman you just elected last week is in the papers saying he will cooperate with the FBI. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele said Sunday that he would provide records from his 2006 U.S. Senate campaign to the FBI in an effort to speed an apparent investigation into allegations of improper campaign spending.

Steele confirmed that his sister was recently contacted by FBI agents looking into allegations that his campaign paid a company she owned more than $37,000 in 2007 for campaign work that was never performed. The allegations were made by Steele's former campaign finance chairman in an attempt to gain a more lenient prison sentence after he was convicted of fraud in an unrelated case [...]

"I want to clear up my good name. This is not the way I intend to run the RNC, with this over my head. We're going to dispense with it immediately," he said.

I seem to remember a lot of stories when Howard Dean first won the DNC chair about how he was going to be a wreck for the party (as opposed to soundly winning two election cycles and growing the party in every state), especially because he would make some unfortunate statements and get in the newspapers sullying the image of the party all the time.

Has anyone written that story yet about Steele?

Getting ACORN's Back

ACORN has gone in a mere three weeks from a community organization to the most demonized group in America, yielding death threats and vandalism from the most deranged on the far right. We know that calling ACORN a threat to "the fabric of our democracy" is absolutely absurd; this is really about the longstanding GOP tactic of voter suppression. But with the conservative noise machine ramped up and this small community group left to defend themselves, the winds were blowing in a really bad direction. Until the Obama campaign stepped up.

Charging that the FBI probe of ACORN represents an “unholy alliance” between Republican operatives and potentially illegal conduct by law enforcement targeting voter fraud, the Obama campaign demanded Friday that the U.S. special prosecutor looking into the U.S. attorneys scandal investigate the matter.

General counsel Bob Bauer sent a letter to Atty. Gen. Michael Mukasey charging that coordinated “misconduct” by McCain campaign representatives and GOP officials were relevant to the special prosecutor’s work, because the activities may relate to the dismissal of seven U.S. attorneys in late 2006.

The letter requests that the special prosecutor’s inquiry “include a review of any involvement by Justice Dept. and White House officials in supporting the McCain-Palin campaign [and RNC's] systematic development and dissemination of unsupported, spurious allegations of vote fraud.”

The FBI investigation was really the last straw. And the campaign is absolutely correct to connect this to the US Attorneys scandal - it's precisely because certain prosecutors wouldn't indict anyone on bogus voter fraud cases that they were fired. This is all the same kind of politicization. As the former head of the Justice Department's Voting Rights division said yesterday, this is "a continuation of injecting DOJ into what has clearly become a political issue... That's really not the proper role for the DOJ, and why their policies counsel otherwise." You can read the Obama campaign's letter here.

Moreover, it's important for this to have happened. The Obama campaign coming to the aid of a cog in the progressive movement is very heartening. We have to stick together.

Vote Suppression Now Aided Directly By Federal Gov't

This is outrageous.

The FBI is investigating whether the community activist group ACORN helped foster voter registration fraud around the nation before the presidential election.

A senior law enforcement official confirmed the investigation to The Associated Press. A second senior law enforcement official says the FBI was looking at results of recent raids on ACORN offices in several states for any evidence of a coordinated national scam.

This is a federally-backed effort to suppress the legal votes of minorities and the lower class. Bottom line.

I hate to keep making the argument over and over, but it's necessary. The FBI is taking an organization with a 97% accuracy record in turning in registration forms, certainly better than the paid signature gatherers of any right-wing ballot initiative out here in California, and subjecting them to investigations and scrutiny that is wholly unwarranted. When a paid worker for ACORN falsifies a registration form, they are not scamming the voting system, they are scamming ACORN. They are trying to get paid extra for illegal work. ACORN flags every single suspicious form and turns all of them in to election officials BY LAW in most states. If they didn't, the right wing would be screaming about how ACORN holds back forms that Republicans fill out. And then, of course, the flagged registrations are noticed by election boards (if they weren't you wouldn't be hearing so much about this). And even if they weren't, Mickey Mouse and Hugh Jass and Ivanna Tinkle aren't showing up at your friendly neighborhood polling place. Not one honest person in this country seriously thinks that individual voter registration fraud is part of a coordinated effort to tip the election. Grabbing at straws, I hear wingers claim that ACORN "dumps voter registration forms on elections officials at the last minute" to overwhelm the system. See, when there's a deadline typically a lot of whatever is requested by that date comes in at the end. Another ridiculous claim.

If you want to solve the problem of inaccurate voting registrations, there are a million ways to do it. Automatically register everyone with a Social Security number or a driver's license or a pay stub. End the practice of paying people to gather forms or signatures. And on and on. But of course, the right doesn't want to fix the problem. They want a scapegoat to point their fingers at and blame for their own electoral and governing failures. That's why they're claiming vote fraud in states where ACORN didn't even run voter drives this year.

But the real outrage here is the involvement of the FBI in the investigation. The US Attorneys scandal was almost entirely predicated on compelling federal prosecutors to pursue investigations of bogus voter fraud cases and charges against Democrats. Those who didn't got fired, and we know the consequences of those attorneys who did what they were told. See Don Siegelman in Alabama, Georgia Thompson in Wisconsin, even ACORN in Missouri. This was wholesale politicization of the Justice Department, using prosecutions as an extension of the RNC. That's exactly what this FBI investigation reveals.

The Justice Department is using its law enforcement arm to stir up doubt about a legitimate community organization as a means to delegitimize this election. This is designed to sap voter confidence in the process. It's also designed to harass and intimidate low-income and minority voters. The 1.3 million people who registered through ACORN and Project Vote this year are now seeing the law come down on that organization. They're seeing their registrations questioned. They're being accused of stealing the election. Do you think they're going to risk going to the polls? It's an open question.

There should be outrage at this maneuver, a federal attempt to step into the election process and a complete waste of taxpayer dollars. This is dirty and Congress needs to assert its voice.

Series of Tubes Saved?

The Ted Stevens trial hit a snag yesterday. Star witness Bill Allen has been pummeling Stevens' credibility by admitting that he gave Stevens thousands of dollars in gifts that were never paid for or disclosed. Allen's testimony really makes this a simple case. But prosecutors failed to turn over the FBI reports in a timely manner, angering the judge and leading the defense to call for a mistrial. They're claiming that the prosecution is withholding evidence.

The judge sent the jury home and is hearing arguments from both sides. I don't think the case will be dismissed, but there is that possibility, I suppose.

Tales Of The War On Terror

So Congress isn't buying the neat little bow that the FBI tried to put on the anthrax case.

WASHINGTON — A month after the F.B.I. declared that an Army scientist was the anthrax killer, leading members of Congress are demanding more information about the seven-year investigation, saying they do not think the bureau has proved its case.

In a letter sent Friday to Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Democratic leaders of the House Judiciary Committee said that “important and lingering questions remain that are crucial for you to address, especially since there will never be a trial to examine the facts of the case.”

The scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, committed suicide in July, and Mr. Mueller is likely to face demands for additional answers about the anthrax case when he appears before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees on Sept. 16 and 17.

“My conclusion at this point is that it’s very much an open matter,” Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the Senate committee, said of the strength of the case against Dr. Ivins, a microbiologist at the Army’s biodefense laboratory who worked on anthrax vaccines. “There are some very serious questions that have yet to be answered and need to be made public.”

I'm looking forward to that hearing.

In addition to letting potential domestic terror suspects go free, you'll be pleased to know that the Bush Administration, an equal opportunity bungler, has done the same with foreign terror suspects:

A lengthy trial centering on what Scotland Yard called a plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners ended Monday when the jury convicted three of eight defendants of conspiracy to commit murder.

But the jury failed to reach verdicts on the more serious charge of a conspiracy to have suicide bombers detonate soft-drink bottles filled with liquid explosives aboard seven airliners headed for the United States and Canada.

The failure to obtain convictions on the plane-bombing charge was a blow to counterterrorism officials in London and Washington, who had described the scheme as potentially the most devastating act of terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks seven years ago this week. British and American experts had said that the plot had all the signs of an operation by Al Qaeda, and that it was conceived and organized in Pakistan.

In a case of a buried lede, the Times story later gets around to mentioning that the Bush Administration's jumping of the gun, authorizing arrests in Pakistan of people connected to the plot for nakedly political reasons prior to the 2006 midterm elections, cut short the investigation and put Scotland Yard in a situation where they didn't have enough evidence to convict. London had to roll up the plotters before they were ready to present full evidence.

George Bush - politicizing terror, making sure nobody is held responsible since 2001!

Time for a change.

FBI: Federal Botching of the Ivins case

Anyone who was paying attention knew it was going this way:

Federal investigators probing the deadly 2001 anthrax attacks recovered samples of human hair from a mailbox in Princeton, N.J., but the strands did not match the lead suspect in the case, according to sources briefed on the probe.

FBI agents and U.S. Postal Service inspectors analyzed the data in an effort to place Fort Detrick, Md., scientist Bruce E. Ivins at the mailbox from which bacteria-laden letters were sent to Senate offices and media organizations, the sources said.

First of all, this gaping hole in the case, the lack of any physical evidence putting Ivins at the crime scene, has been obvious from the moment the FBI closed the case. In fact, they're STILL looking for additional evidence, which should tell you something about how secure they are in their determination that Ivins acted alone. They're basing the entire case on the remote belief that Ivins checked out of his lab with just enough time to spare to drive 4 hours to Princeton for pretty much no reason and mail the letters. Except the postmark on the letters reflects the day after it would according to the FBI's own timeline. (The FBI doesn't even talk about the other letters mailed; presumably they have no evidence tying Ivins to those locations, either). And now this - the hair samples don't match. That's really only one of the many questions remaining in the case. The FBI has checked Ivins's car, his house, his locker, and his safety deposit box and found no traces of anthrax spores. The evidence of the particular strain of anthrax could have been in the hands of up to 100 people, and anyway the DNA testing does not point to any individual. There is just nothing in what the FBI has presented that is in any way conclusive - in fact, more pieces point AWAY from Ivins than toward him. Meryl Nass has the definitive rundown of the Swiss cheese-sized holes in the case.

Congress is holding preliminary hearings, which is a start.

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced it will call FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to appear at an oversight hearing Sept. 17, when he is likely to be asked about the strength of the government's case against Ivins. A spokeswoman for Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a vocal FBI critic, said he would demand more information about how authorities narrowed their search.

The House Judiciary panel, meanwhile, is negotiating to hold a separate oversight hearing in September with bureau officials, in a session that could mark the first public occasion in which Mueller faces questions about the FBI's handling of the anthrax case.

But it's not enough. The scope of any investigation must be broadened and it would be best if it occurred in the hands of an independent body with subpoena power charged with digging down to the truth. It must be said - if the FBI is not outright lying, they're certainly trying to cover up their years of mistakes and increasingly intimidating and bullying behavior as they sought a suspect on which to pin the attacks. This is what has become of accountability in Washington, and so a stand must be taken right here. It is unacceptable to let this pass. People died, others were sickened, and the tragedy was turned around and used to sow fear in the public and set us on a course toward unnecessary war. The attacks had a specific political and media target. It's not good enough for the puzzle to end without a full accounting.

This is especially unnerving because the FBI, the same entity that has consistently screwed up this case for half a dozen years, is about to get a whole bunch of new powers.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey confirmed plans Wednesday to loosen post-Watergate restrictions on the FBI's national security and criminal investigations, saying the changes were necessary to improve the bureau's ability to detect terrorists.

Mukasey said he expected criticism of the new rules because "they expressly authorize the FBI to engage in intelligence collection inside the United States." However, he said the criticism would be misplaced because the bureau has long had authority to do so [...]

In addition, agents assigned to national security investigations will be given more latitude to conduct surveillance based on a tip. Also, agents will be permitted to search more databases than allowed previously in criminal cases. As it stands now, agents who get a tip about a possible organized crime figure cannot use certain databases that they are allowed to access in national security cases, such as those containing information about state-issued drivers' licenses [...]

Michael German, a former veteran FBI agent who is now policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said if Mukasey moves ahead with the new rules as he describes them, he'll be weakening restrictions originally put in place after the Watergate scandal to rein in the FBI's domestic Counter Intelligence Program, or COINTELPRO. At the time, the FBI spied on American political leaders and organizations deemed to be subversive throughout the late 1950s and into the 1960s.

If this anthrax case is a test case for how the FBI handles a sensitive domestic terrorism investigation, their powers shouldn't be increased, they should be removed, and the J. Edgar Hoover Building shuttered. Only a full investigation will lead to the proper and necessary rollback. This agency as it's currently constructed cannot be trusted to even keep a minimal standard of competency, let alone be trusted with any role in handling national security cases.

No Physical Evidence

One suspects that the traditional media is pretty much done with the anthrax case, having wrung all it can from the lurid tales of Bruce Ivins' obsessions with sororities and emails depicting a dark side and mental instability. But two aspects of the case stick out like sore thumbs - 1) nobody can place Ivins at the scene of the crime, and 2) the scientific evidence is woefully lacking.

The FBI is hanging its case on the fact that Ivins took an administrative leave on September 17, 2001, at which time they believe he drove to Princeton and mailed the first batch of letters. But it's very unclear whether that narrow window was enough for the 3 1/2 hour ride.

Ivins normally got to work early--around 7:30 AM. Assuming his brief stay was half an hour (are they suggesting he went in and picked up the anthrax? and if so, did anyone ask why he'd do so during daytime hours?), he would have had eight hours to drive to Princeton and back. That's certainly doable--Google says the drive takes 3 hours and 25 minutes. Who knows whether Ivins sped much in his 1993 Honda Civic (in 2001, he also had a 1996 Dodge van; he did not yet have his 2002 Saturn). But even if he went faster than Google says he should have (he would have been driving on I-95, after all, which pretty much requires speeding), he almost certainly would have hit rush hour traffic at least once in his drive, if not twice.

In other words, Ivins could have made the drive, but just barely.

And why Princeton, of course; the Kappa Kappa Gamma connection is extremely weak, and no witnesses placing him at the scene have come forward (in fact, the FBI never even bothered to ask). In addition, if Ivins did mail the letters in that window, the postmarks would have been for the wrong day.

If the Post's reporting about Ivins' September 17 activities is accurate -- that he "return[ed to Fort Detrick] for an appointment in the early evening, about 4 or 5 p.m." -- then that would constitute an alibi, not, as the Post breathlessly described it, "a key clue into how he could have pulled off an elaborate crime," since any letter he mailed that way would have a September 17 -- not a September 18 -- postmark. Just compare the FBI's own definition of "window of opportunity" to its September 17 timeline for Ivins to see how glaring that contradiction is.

And the scientific evidence is even more sketchy. In fact, the FBI provided almost no scientific testing evidence despite dumping hundreds of pages of documents about the case. They banked on the press foregrounding the lurid details and not the hard facts.

Meanwhile, virtually nobody with a science background in microbiology has stepped forward in support of the FBI's conclusion that Ivins was likely the one and only person involved in the 2001 attacks, said Gigi Gronvall, a senior associate with the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

"[Federal officials] came out and said they'd made the case, but they didn't actually present that science. So it really can't be evaluated," Gronvall said in an interview. "They talked about the genetic signature but they didn't elaborate on what that was. We want to know how they were able to determine that that one flask contained the parent train of what was sent out."

Dr. Meryl Nass' entire blog is worth reading to dissect the numerous holes in this case, but in particular you can check this post about the lack of conclusive evidence. It's damning. Go read it.

This investigation is maddening and I guess we're all going to have to keep screaming about it until key questions are answered.

... I think this aspect of the investigation merits a read, too. Almost everyone who has been suspected as the anthrax killer has ended up eroding under the pressure, because the FBI has hounded these people to the breaking point. They've ruined lives to cover their own asses and now they're pinning the whole thing on a dead man. It's a history of shameful conduct.

Case Closed... And Then Open A Little

I think the FBI's "open and shut" case on Bruce Ivins is landing with a thud. Their claims keep getting contradicted by material evidence. They said that the envelopes purchased to mail the letters could only have been bought at the post office where Ivins had a PO Box, but that turns out to be inaccurate. They said that there is evidence in the documents released about searches of Ivins' car and home, but there isn't. There's no evidence matching Ivins' handwriting to the writing on the letters. The strain of anthrax used in the killings, considered rare and only available to 10 people, turns out to be more prevalent and available in up to 15 government labs. And most damning, the government is still looking for evidence in the anthrax case.

The government is still searching for evidence that Bruce Ivins was solely responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks despite declaring the case solved.

Search warrants and other documents filed Thursday in federal court in Washington show the FBI wants to look through computers Ivins used at his local library before he killed himself last week.

Gee, I thought the case was closed.

As details continue to leak out, including an assertion that Ivins took an administrative leave for several hours on the day the letters may have been sent - a detail left completely out of the DoJ's document dump - it's no wonder that lawmakers on Capitol Hill are starting to ask questions.

Last night, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) sent a three-page letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey and FBI Director Robert Mueller III, asking them to respond to 18 questions about virtually every aspect of the probe.

In the House, Rep. Rush Holt, a Democrat who represents the New Jersey district where the anthrax-laced letters were mailed, says he's talking to other House members about a combined inquiry involving the judiciary, intelligence, science and technology, and government oversight committees.

That's exactly what we need. Meryl Nass has a lot more.

Evidence, Remixed

So that's it then. The FBI has laid out what they've got, and they say Bruce Ivins was the anthrax killer, hand down. No question about it. It was him. Definitely. Case closed. You can read the documents yourself!

Except there's the whole massive amounts of holes in the evidence thing. Other than that, rock solid.

1. Ivins had just been immunized against anthrax. He was required to have yearly immunizations, and some anthrax scientists have chosen to be vaccinated every six months for safety, since the vaccine's efficacy is weak--and Ivins had proven its weakness in several animal models. In his career he had probably received about 33 separate anthrax vaccinations.

2. Earlier, we heard the envelopes came from the specific post office he frequented. Today the affidavit states it is "reasonable to conclude" they were purchased in Maryland or Virginia.

3. Choosing a strain that would direct suspicion at Ivins. The perpetrator(s) were tremendously careful to leave no clues vis a vis the envelopes. For example, block lettering was used, which is the hardest to identify with handwriting analysis. Second, stamped envelopes were chosen to avoid using saliva. Third, there were no fingerprints on anything.

Why would the person(s) who took such care select an anthrax strain that would focus suspicion on himself? In 2001, strain analysis was possible. It had been discussed many times as a forensic tool for biowarfare, including in a paper I wrote in 1992, which Ivins had read, and in which I thanked him for his contributions.

4. Ivins was the "sole custodian" of the strain. But the strain was grown in 1997, and many people had access to it over that four year period. Having received a sample, or obtained it surreptitiously, they would be "custodians" of it too.

And most important, being at the actual scene of the crime:

13. The anthrax attacker MUST be able to be placed at the scene of the mailboxes, at the times the letters were mailed. Surely the FBI sought information on these dates and places from everyone with anthrax access in the US and probably abroad, shortly after the letter attacks. Either Ivins had an alibi or he didn't. Put up or shut up: this is the most critical evidence in this case. If Ivins cannot be placed in New Jersey on those dates, he is not the attacker, or he did not act alone.

Furthermore, there were other letters. Some contained other powders. Some were said to contain some anthrax in contemporaneous news reports. Some were warnings. These were mailed from other places, on other dates. The FBI has sat on this collateral evidence. If these envelopes, ink or block print were the same, the attacker would have to be placed at the scene when those letters were mailed. What happened to this evidence? Pony up.

You can give me all the lurid tales to paint this guy as a wacko as you want. Until you place him at the scene, without the sleight of hand of saying "the mailbox was near a storage closet that housed materials from a sorority that he was obsessed with 30 years ago," the case is noticeably weak. You can pull out all the acquaintances of Ivins (which conflict with those who actually knew him well), but all they do is prove Ivins was a creep (which is believable), not necessarily a bioterrorist.

The evidence we do have is middling.

While what I've seen of their case so far makes a pretty compelling argument that Ivins was involved in creating the anthrax, they've got nothing that explains how it walked out of Ft. Detrick, got into envelopes, and got sent to a bunch of media figures and senators. Importantly, their "motive" for the selection of Leahy and Daschle is piss poor.

And, as I've said twice already, if they take their "motive" seriously: a desire to make sure anthrax vaccines were continued, a desire to pass the PATRIOT Act, and a reason to dislike Daschle and Leahy, Scooter Libby (who also lived in an area where he could have gotten those envelopes) and Dick Cheney had much stronger motives for sending the anthrax.

But don't worry, the FBI says. We've got Ivins 200 miles away and no real motive and no real evidence tying him to the emptying the flask, but since we used some really cool science to place Ivins with the flask, that should be good enough for you.

The science is thin; the circumstantial evidence (he hated the ACLU! An NBC reporter was on his case at one point! He wrote a variation of "death to America" in an email in September 2001!) is voluminous and not particularly compelling. I'm seeing the FBI link the anthrax to a particular flask, but Ivins had no residue on him, in his car, in his house, in his lab, or really anywhere he had access to. And Greenwald makes an important point:

It is critical to keep in mind that all they released is their own claims and summary about the evidence they have. The evidence itself continues to remain concealed, in their exclusive possession, examined by nobody.

What happened today with this selective document release is akin to a criminal trial where only the Prosecutor is allowed to see the relevant evidence, only the Prosecutor is allowed to select which evidence is presented, and only the Prosecutor speaks. Such a distorted, one-sided process doesn't even happen at Guantanamo, which should, by itself, indicate how much skepticism is warranted here until the FBI makes the actual evidence available so that its claims can be subjected to critical scrutiny.

Plus, even if you agree with the FBI's conclusions, you have to consider them criminally liable for allowing Ivins to continue to work inside a government lab years after they pinpointed the flask that contained the deadly anthrax and linked it to him. That's insane.

Even the victims and their families and friends, who you would think would be most willing to have closure on this, aren't all convinced.

Dena Briscoe, president of the American Postal Workers Union local for Washington and Southern Maryland, slipped into the news conference at the Justice Department to ask when postal employees would be informed about the investigation. "There are still too many unanswered questions. I still can't say that one person did all of this," Briscoe told a reporter just before an official asked her to leave the room [...]

Leroy Richmond, 64, who nearly died after contracting anthrax at Brentwood, was asked later about the briefing. "I'm okay with it," he said, holding aloft a ream of documents. He referred questions to his attorney, Gregory Lattimer, who said the Stafford resident is still considering a lawsuit.

"A plausible case could be made in terms of Mr. Ivins's guilt, but on the other hand, a case could be made that none of this constitutes a smoking gun," Lattimer said.

This demands a full investigation and a full release of all the data that the FBI is using to convict Ivins in the media. In addition, we need to know who leaked to Brian Ross of ABC News the disclosure that the anthrax contained bentonite, linking it to Iraq. TV Newser has a long interview with Ross where he insists that his sources, all government scientists involved in the initial analysis, were not intentionally lying to him but simply mistaken. The sources themselves need to answer those questions.

The Continuing Saga of the Anthrax Case

Glenn Greenwald beat me to today's update on the anthrax case, showing pretty conclusively that the FBI's case, which is being dribbled out slowly, just doesn't add up to much. One thing I learned from Greenwald is that yesterday's revelation about Ivins' obsession with a sorority being the reason he mailed the letters near their house at Princeton, which already sounded ridiculous (they don't have sororities at the several dozen other campuses closer to his Frederick, MD home?), was also completely factually wrong.

The mailbox just off the campus of Princeton University where the letters were mailed sits about 100 yards away from where the college's Kappa Kappa Gamma chapter stores its rush materials, initiation robes and other property. Sorority members do not live there, and the Kappa chapter at Princeton does not provide a house for the women.

I know that most sexual deviants often hide out and use mailboxes near where sororities house their rush materials - it's as axiomatic as breathing oxygen and emitting carbon dioxide - but color me skeptical.

In fact, color the New York Times skeptical as well, particularly of the FBI's investigation methods.

They had even intensively questioned his adopted children, Andrew and Amanda, now both 24, with the authorities telling his son that he might be able to collect the $2.5 million reward for solving the case and buy a sports car, and showing his daughter gruesome photographs of victims of the anthrax letters and telling her, “Your father did this,” according to the account Dr. Ivins gave a close friend.

As the investigation wore on, some colleagues thought the F.B.I.’s methods were increasingly coercive, as the agency tried to turn Army scientists against one another and reinterviewed family members.

One former colleague, Dr. W. Russell Byrne, said the agents pressed Dr. Ivins’s daughter repeatedly to acknowledge that her father was involved in the attacks.

“It was not an interview,” Dr. Byrne said. “It was a frank attempt at intimidation.”

Dr. Byrne said he believed Dr. Ivins was singled out partly because of his personal weaknesses. “They figured he was the weakest link,” Dr. Byrne said. “If they had real evidence on him, why did they not just arrest him?”

The picture being painted of Ivins as some kind of creepy, sexually depraved deviant may be true - the obsession with Kappa Kappa Gamma (which according to the NYT ended in 1981), holding a private mailbox to receive porn - but it has literally nothing to do with sending poisoned letters to media and political figures and making them crudely look like they were coming from Islamic terrorists. The fact that Ivins voted in several Democratic primaries makes it curious that he would have sent these letters out exclusively to Democratic leaders, particularly those who were holding up negotiations on the Patriot Act (Leahy, Daschle).

There's apparently going to be a wealth of scientific information coming out tomorrow, but for now, the biggest leak concerns Ivins' use of freeze-drying equipment that could be used to convert wet anthrax spores into powder.

Ivins's possession of the drying device, known as a lyopholizer, could help investigators explain how he might have been able to send letters containing deadly anthrax spores to U.S. senators and news organizations.

The device was not commonly used by researchers at the Army's sprawling biodefense complex at Fort Detrick, Md., where Ivins worked as a scientist, employees at the base said. Instead, sources said, Ivins had to go through a formal process to check out the lyopholizer, creating a record on which authorities are now relying. He did at least one project for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that would have given him reason to use the drying equipment, according to a former colleague in his lab.

I'll go over to Greenwald for this one.

But that appears to be completely false. Here is the abstract of a 1995 research report, for which Ivins was the lead scientist, reporting on discoveries made as part of their research into anthrax vaccines (h/t substantial). This is the method they described using:

The efficacy of several human anthrax vaccine candidates comprised of different adjuvants together with Bacillus anthracis protective antigen (PA) was evaluated in guinea pigs challenged by an aerosol of virulent B. anthracis spores. The most efficacious vaccines tested were formulated with PA plus monophosphoryl lipid A (MPL) in a squalenel lecithin/Tween 80 emulsion (SLT) and PA plus the saponin QS-21. The PA+MPL in SLT vaccine, which was lyophilized and then reconstituted before use, demonstrated strong protective immunogenicity, even after storage for 2 years at 4°C. The MPL component was required for maximum efficacy of the vaccine. Eliminating lyophilization of the vaccine did not diminish its protective efficacy. No significant alteration in efficacy was observed when PA was dialyzed against different buffers before preparation of vaccine. PA+MPL in SLT proved superior in efficacy to the licensed United States human anthrax vaccine in the guinea pig model.

Clearly, Ivins' legitimate work researching anthrax vaccines entailed the use of a lyopholizer. As the commenter notes, "If you google 'lyophilize' and 'anthrax', most of the pages returned are about anthrax vaccines, which is what Dr. Ivins was working on at Ft. Detrick."

You're going to hear about some fantastic new technique - some radical DNA technology that the FBI hopes to use as a tool to convince a CSI-loving public about the dead accuracy of their claims. But as Dr. Meryl Nass notes, the most sophisticated technology can link the powder to a lab, but not an individual. This is an effort to close a case that should not be closed. Rep. Rush Holt, who represents the district from where the anthrax was mailed, wants an investigation.

Having watched how [the FBI] collected evidence, I don't have a lot of confidence, and I think the burden is on them to satisfy me, and other members of Congress, that they've done this right. . . . The case seems to me at this point to be circumstantial, and again, without briefings from the FBI, it would be presumptuous of me to say. And it would be presumptuous of people in Central New Jersey to breathe a sigh of relief and say: "They got the murderer. He is no longer at-large." The people deserve better re-assurances than what they've been given.

Finally, there's this op-ed from Richard Spertzel, the head of the biological-weapons section of Unscom from 1994-99 and a member of the Iraq Survey Group. He is completely unconvinced by the claims leaking out of the FBI, but his claims should be met with absolute skepticism.

Let's start with the anthrax in the letters to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. The spores could not have been produced at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, where Ivins worked, without many other people being aware of it. Furthermore, the equipment to make such a product does not exist at the institute [...]

In short, the potential lethality of anthrax in this case far exceeds that of any powdered product found in the now extinct U.S. Biological Warfare Program. In meetings held on the cleanup of the anthrax spores in Washington, the product was described by an official at the Department of Homeland Security as "according to the Russian recipes" -- apparently referring to the use of the weak electric charge [...]

Furthermore, the anthrax in this case, the "Ames strain," is one of the most common strains in the world. Early in the investigations, the FBI said it was similar to strains found in Haiti and Sri Lanka. The strain at the institute was isolated originally from an animal in west Texas and can be found from Texas to Montana following the old cattle trails. Samples of the strain were also supplied to at least eight laboratories including three foreign laboratories. Four French government laboratories reported on studies with the Ames strain, citing the Pasteur Institute in Paris as the source of the strain they used. Organism DNA is not a very reliable way to make a case against a scientist.

I don't know what Spertzel is getting at with the "Russian recipes," but he's actually contradicting himself with this editorial. In 2002 he claimed that he could make this stuff. He's been pushing the state-sponsored terrorism angle for years, as well. In this situation, your friends may be your enemies and it's hard to piece together where the truth lies. Whatever the case, there needs to be a coordinated, sustained effort to get a full-scale investigation rather than having Ivins tried in the media.

This timeline from Marcy Wheeler is also helpful.

...an update here (h/t Steinn Sigurdsson) - if you look at Ivins' patent for the anthrax vaccine in 2002, he very clearly used a lyopholizer in the course of the research.

The concentrated sample was desalted again using the same buffer, frozen and finally lyophilized using a Speed-Vac. The dried samples were dissolved in 25 μl of the TRIS buffer described above and diluted 1:1 with a 2×SDS solubilization buffer consisting of 50 mM Na 2 CO 3 , 4% (w/v) SDS, 12% (v/v) glycerol, 2% (v/v) 2-mercaptoethanol and 0.01% (w/v) Bromphenol Blue prior to heating at 95° C. for 5 min.

The Sorority Made Him Do It

Was he trying to get the attention of someone who looked like Jodie Foster?

The top suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks was obsessed with a sorority that sat less than 100 yards away from a New Jersey mailbox where the toxin-laced letters were sent, authorities said Monday. Multiple U.S. officials told The Associated Press that former Army scientist Bruce Ivins was long obsessed with the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma, going back as far as his own college days at the University of Cincinnati.

The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

The bizarre link to the sorority may indirectly explain one of the biggest mysteries in the case: why the anthrax was mailed from Princeton, N.J., 195 miles from the Army biological weapons lab the anthrax is believed to have been smuggled out of.

This is some major bullshit right here. Why would Ivins' obsession with some random sorority have anything to do with mailing letters made to look like they came from Muslim extremists to Patrick Leahy, Tom Daschle, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings? This "he was a woman-hater" narrative has nothing to do with the crime committed. And as usual for this case, contradictory information shows up later in the article - nobody can place Ivins at the mailbox or even in New Jersey at the time of the mailings.

Meanwhile the feds are dying to close this probe and wash their hands of it. And yet all the leaks coming out are from unnamed government scientist sources (just like the unnamed sources that led ABC News astray with the bentonite story in late 2001).

This case stinks on ice, and it always has. Somebody tried to frame Dr. Ayaad Assaad before anybody was even killed:

On Oct. 2, Ayaad Assaad, a U.S. government scientist and former biowarfare researcher, received a call from an FBI agent asking him to come in for a talk. It was well before anthrax panic gripped the nation -- in fact, it was the same day that photo editor Robert Stevens, 63, was admitted to a Florida hospital. It wasn't until the next day that Stevens was diagnosed with inhalation anthrax, and another two days later, on Oct. 5, when he would become the first of five eventual fatalities caused by the apparent bioterrorist attack.

The day after hearing from the FBI, Assaad met with special agents J. Gregory Lelyegian and Mark Buie in the FBI's Washington field office, along with Assaad's attorney, Rosemary McDermott. They showed Assaad a detailed, unsigned, computer-typed letter with a startling accusation: that the 53-year-old Assaad, an Environmental Protection Agency scientist who filed an age discrimination suit against the U.S. Army for dismissing him from a biowarfare lab, might be a bioterrorist.

"Dr. Assaad is a potential biological terrorist," the letter stated, according to Assaad and McDermott. The letter was received by the FBI in Quantico, Va., but Assaad did not learn from the FBI where it had been mailed from. "I have worked with Dr. Assaad," the letter continued, "and I heard him say that he has a vendetta against the U.S. government and that if anything happens to him, he told his sons to carry on."

According to Assaad, "The letter-writer clearly knew my entire background, my training in both chemical and biological agents, my security clearance, what floor where I work now, that I have two sons, what train I take to work, and where I live.

What the hell is going on here?

Anthrax Case Twists And Turns

There is a very coordinated push to leak details about the late Bruce Ivins to certify that he is the "lone nut" anthrax killer which don't entirely hold up upon scrutiny. There's definitely a desire on the part of the government to make this an open and shut case seven years after the fact, but it doesn't completely hold together. The LA Times is claiming that Ivins stood to make money off of an anthrax panic, because he invented some bioterror vaccines, but inside the article it's made clear that we're talking about $10,000 rather than $1 million. We're hearing that a social worker who worked as a therapist with Ivins was scared to death of him and claimed that he tried to poison people in the past, but the social worker, Jean Duley, has her own checkered past, with a long rap sheet, and apparently knew about the grand jury investigation, as it's in her restraining order against Ivins:

client has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, actions, plans, threats & actions toward theripist. Dr. David Irwin his psychiatrist called him homicidal, sociopathic with clear intentions will testify with other details FBI involved, currently under investigation & will be charged with 5 capital murders. I have been subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury August 1, 2008 in Washington, D.C.

How would she know that before testifying? Why does she have intimate knowledge of the case? Why is she the recipient of FBI information?

The FBI is leaking to the LA Times that DNA evidence proves Ivins' guilt, after a fresh look at the genetic evidence, and that after these tests it was clear that only Ivins could have been the killer. But the New York Times Scott Shane calls the evidence circumstantial and that the grand jury was planning to continue to meet for weeks.

While genetic analysis had linked the anthrax letters to a supply of the deadly bacterium in Dr. Ivins’s laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., at least 10 people had access to the flask containing that anthrax, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation also have no evidence proving that Dr. Ivins visited New Jersey on the dates in September and October 2001 when investigators believe the letters were sent from a Princeton mailbox, the source said.

The source acknowledged that there might be some elements of the evidence of which he was unaware. And while he characterized what he did know about as “damning,” he said that instead of irrefutable proof, investigators had an array of indirect evidence that they argue strongly implicates Dr. Ivins in the attacks, which killed 5 people and sickened 17 others.

And Ivins had security clearance as recently as last month and was only barred from the Ft. Detrick site after counselors warned of his "deteriorating mental condition."

This could be a guilty man knowing the walls are closing in, or a marked man who was harassed into suicide because many in government wanted to close the case. The point is that there are a lot of questions, and until the evidence is revealed there's no reason to accept the official story. It is called "unlikely" that Ivins even knew how to produce weaponized, dry anthrax and didn't have access to it. (The site Anthrax Vaccine is going to be indispensable going forward; Dr. Meryl Nass, the author, and Glenn Greenwald appeared on Democracy Now this morning.)

Meanwhile, regarding the false ABC report linking the anthrax attacks to Iraq (which was not the first, by the way, there was a lot of misinformation or disinformation out there at the time), Glenn Greenwald writes:

Relating to ABC, a reader exchanged emails with Brian Ross this weekend, and Ross wrote this (the email was sent from Ross' ABC address; yesterday, I emailed both him and ABC's Jeffrey Schneider to request confirmation of its authenticity, and they didn't reply):

As we reported more than six years ago our information came from current and former government scientists. The report was discointed [sic] and denied by the White House which we reported. I believe now the scientists got it wrong although they insisted they were correct long after.

Actually, this is the first time, to my knowledge, that Ross has ever acknowledged that his sources for the bentonite story were "current and former government scientists." Given that he previously described his sources as being "well-placed," that means, presumably, that they were scientists with extremely close proximity to Fort Detrick (where the anthrax tests were being conducted) if not Fort Detrick scientists themselves. That would mean, if the FBI's accusation against Ivins is true, that the same Government lab where the attacks originated was the source for falsely telling Ross that tests revealed evidence linking the attacks to Iraq. In light of that, how can Ross possibly continue to conceal which Government scientists disseminated this false story?

It is also worth noting that Ross, who was a key witness in the Steven Hatfill litigation (since he had published numerous incriminating leaks from the DOJ) badgered at least one of his government sources, FBI spokesman Edwin Cogswell, to provide Ross with a release authorizing Ross to disclose the source's identity (allowing Ross to avoid being held in contempt by the court). Has Ross sought a similar release from his bentonite sources? Clearly, at least in some instances, Ross is able to convince his sources to allow him to disclose their identity when he is properly motivated to do so. For the reasons Professors Rosen and Gillmor point out, no release should be necessary, since these sources fed him deliberate falsehoods, but one wonders if Ross has even tried to persuade them to give permission for Ross to disclose who they are.

There are far more questions than answers at this point. ABC and any other journalist who got tips about this case need to burn their sources if they believe that the sources have lied. Tom Daschle, who received one of the anthrax-laced letters, wants full disclosure on the botched investigation as well.

There's clearly going to be a sustained effort to close this case, finger Ivins as the killer, and turn away from any of the lingering questions. That would be a huge mistake.

Nobody To Root For

So what's going on with this FBI raid of the head of the Office of Special Counsel, Scott Bloch? He was looking into investigations over violations of the Hatch Act by executive branch figures, including Karl Rove (although the punishment for violating the Hatch Act is to lose your executive branch job, so I'm not sure why he's investigating) and Condi Rice. However, his hands aren't exactly clean either, having erased all the files on his computer with the help of Geeks on Call instead of the White House email technicians, and has been accused of improper retaliation against employees who disagreed with his policies. I agree with looseheadprop that this feels like a Mafia turf war, but for my money bmaz had the best take.

Bloch appears to be a bit of a nondescript, but deeply religious, party level toady that they pulled out of the mid-west, to serve as Associate Director and then Deputy Director and Counsel to the Task Force for Faith-based and Community Initiatives at the U.S. Department of Justice. (Why exactly is there even such an office in the DOJ at all???). The Bushies then wanted to plug a Regent like theobot toady into the OSC, and decided Bloch fit the bill. Bloch then went about doing his job, which was effectively to do nothing and fill up the ranks with incompetent theobot types, just like they were doing all over the government and, as we know so well, especially the DOJ. But Bloch got a little ham fisted in his efforts to weed his office of teh gay in the process, which caused an amount of scrutiny and heat.

About that time, Bloch's office started being forced into relevance because of all the Hatch Act violations and other things that the Bushies have done to create whistleblowers that are supposed to fall under Bloch's office's parameters. This created a confluence of events for Bloch; he morally/religiously really believes in his purge of teh gay and, just maybe, he actually has some moral convictions on the impropriety of much of the Bushco creed. So, he starts actually doing his job on the Bushco ills, just a little, both because he knew there were ills and to push back and protect himself for what he had done. Picture a John DiIulio and/or David Kuo that, instead of just leaving, stayed and fought.

Because of the Rove, Doan, and then the USA Purgegate scandals, this little internecine battle erupted into the public consciousness, and neither side backed off. Bloch was preparing some stinging reports that would really be a poke in the eye to the Bushies, and they wanted to squelch those. The Bushies determined that it would be necessary to take out Bloch, but they didn't want it to be alleged that they did it to cover and protect Lurita "Cookies" Doan and wanted it to look like they did it for cause against Bloch. So they cooked Doan (she was a pain in the ass anyway by then, so no loss to them) as a preemptory strike in preparation for going after Bloch. Then, they went after Bloch to put the kabosh, as much as they can, on his reports on Bushco. And that is where we are at now.

Read the whole thing. Sometimes really juicy information comes out of turf wars and hurt feelings like this, so while nobody in this mess is praiseworthy there might be a good yield, so it's worth keeping an eye on.

You Sank My Battleship... Or Maybe Not

If you were reading blogs back in August 2006, you may remember that Joe Lieberman's campaign threw a big Hissy Fit, claiming that Ned Lamont's team (and in particular those dirty fuckin' hippie bloggers) hacked their website and brought it down. It was clear within about 10 minutes that the "joe2006.com" site was strained because they paid something like $100 for server space and couldn't deal with the expected traffic for a hotly contested primary. Since Lieberman and his staff probably think "the Internet" is something you catch butterflies with, they didn't understand such things, and simply decided that those Lamont nerds must have put a "net-worm" or "hack-moose" on their CyberPages and ruined everything.

Well, it took the FBI a bit longer, but they eventually came around to what everyone in the blogosphere already knew:

A federal investigation has concluded that U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman's 2006 re-election campaign was to blame for the crash of its Web site the day before Connecticut's heated Aug. 8 Democratic primary.

The FBI office in New Haven found no evidence supporting the Lieberman campaign's allegations that supporters of primary challenger Ned Lamont of Greenwich were to blame for the Web site crash.

Lieberman, who was fighting for his political life against the anti-Iraq war candidate Lamont, implied that joe2006.com was hacked by Lamont supporters.

"The server that hosted the joe2006.com Web site failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured. There was no evidence of (an) attack," according to the e-mail.

A program that could have detected a legitimate attack was improperly configured, the e-mail states.

"New Haven will be administratively closing this investigation," it concluded.

The point of the Hissy Fit was to get the media to report on those mean, dirty bloggers, not to necessarily gain an advantage in the particular primary election but to set the narrative for the 2006 general election. So it worked.

One of these days the media isn't going to get punked so easily... Scratch that, they'll keep getting punked.

Conflicting Statements On FISA

There's considerable evidence that House and Senate negotiators are deadlocked on whether to give Bush everything he wants, including immunity for his lawbreaking, on FISA.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said Wednesday the House will not take up an electronic surveillance measure this week, further delaying any decisions on the controversial measure.

Hoyer said in his weekly press conference that he hoped to wrap up work on an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; “towards the end of this week or the beginning of next week.”

However, the majority leader acknowledged that there were “still disagreements” within the Democratic caucus over the issue of granting immunity to telecom companies who aided the government in the wiretapping program [...]

Although Democratic leaders insist they are working feverishly to iron out their differences, one House member—speaking on the condition of anonymity—suggested it could be a long time, if ever, before the bill was brought for a vote.

“A lot of people think the politics of doing nothing on this issue are very good for both sides of the political spectrum,” they said.

Behind the scenes, it appears that there are internal differences between Democrats over the immunity issue. However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pointed to exclusivity as the real issue.

In a conference call with bloggers today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) made it clear that her highest priority for a surveillance bill was that it contain a so-called "exclusivity" provision -- a measure that would explicitly state that the bill would be the "exclusive means" by which the government would conduct surveillance, or in other words, the president does not have the power to ignore the law if he/she so pleases.

"Exclusivity is the issue," she said.

Of course, the original FISA bill had "exclusivity" in it. Bush broke the law. Making FISA the exclusive means for intelligence gathering and surveillance is nice, but it just says you can't break the law. Amnesty says that breaking the law doesn't matter.

I think what's causing this new-found concern against amnesty within the Democratic caucus are the stories about major privacy violations as a result of national security letters, which allowed the FBI to illegally obtain personal information of Americans, and this new question about emails, which puts the fight over FISA into an entirely new context:

The fight in Congress and the big push for expanded wiretapping powers has nothing to do with intercepting foreign-to-foreign phone calls inside the United States without a court order. In fact, it turns out that the nation's secret wiretapping court is fine with that.

That extraordinary admission came from Assistant Attorney General for National Security Kenneth Wainstein at a breakfast on Monday, according to the Washington Post.

"At the breakfast yesterday, Wainstein highlighted a different problem with the current FISA law than other administration officials have emphasized. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, for example, has repeatedly said FISA should be changed so no warrant is needed to tap a communication that took place entirely outside the United States but happened to pass through the United States.

But in response to a question at the meeting by David Kris, a former federal prosecutor and a FISA expert, Wainstein said FISA's current strictures did not cover strictly foreign wire and radio communications, even if acquired in the United States. The real concern, he said, is primarily e-mail, because "essentially you don't know where the recipient is going to be" and so you would not know in advance whether the communication is entirely outside the United States."

That would make sense since email doesn't go directly to a device in most cases, it goes to a server that holds the email until the recipient(s) come to pick up the email -- which could be and often is from different parts of the world -- think of any business traveler.

DNI Michael McConnell, the serial exaggerator who claims to be a non-political straight shooter, himself kept saying the NSA lost 70 percent of its capabilities after the ruling.

If that's the case, that means that 70 percent of what the NSA does is collect emails inside United States telecom infrastructure and service providers.

Really? If that's what tens of billions of dollars are going to the NSA for annually, we don't need to give them more power to read emails, we need to get them to learn to do real intelligence collection.

I think that Democrats took a look at the loss of privacy on all these other fronts and decided that they want to actually know the breadth of it with regard to telecom surveillance. You cannot give cover to the executive to gather intelligence at his discretion without oversight or judicial review and expect there to be no abuses. This is all devastating evidence in favor of stopping any talk of immunity. DFA is fighting very hard against those who would give the President and his corporate buddies full carte blanche to break the law. We need to fight for justice on this one. No amnesty.