Senate braces for fight over gun lawsuits
After stinging defeats, manufacturers poised to get liability shield
By Shailagh Murray

Updated: 1:26 a.m. ET July 29, 2005
WASHINGTON - The nation's gun lobby is close to realizing a long-sought goal of protecting firearms manufacturers and dealers from being held legally responsible for violent crimes committed with their handguns and automatic weapons.

Supporters believe they have the votes in the Senate to pass as early as today a bill making it virtually impossible for victims of gun violence to file civil suits against the industry -- a testimony to the political clout of gun manufacturers, which have become increasingly vulnerable to civil lawsuits in the District and several states. Twelve Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), are joining with the Republicans to support the legislation.

Congress has fought bitterly over the issue for the past four years, with the House eager to grant liability protection to the industry but with the Senate highly resistant. A similar bill failed in the Senate last year after opponents loaded it up with amendments that were anathema to the NRA and other gun enthusiasts.

Broad liability shield nears passage
But this year, the Senate appears on the verge of approving a bill that is far broader than most of the 33 immunity-related state laws on the books and that would even halt pending cases, including those brought under the District's Assault Weapon Manufacturing Strict Liability Act, a 1991 law designed to hold manufacturers accountable for selling military-style guns.

The District of Columbia Court of Appeals in April upheld the act as constitutional, allowing victims of crimes involving semiautomatic weapons to bring claims under it.

If the Senate approves the measure, the House is likely to approve a companion measure -- probably after the August recess -- and to send it on to President Bush for his signature, according to gun lobbyists and some lawmakers.

Vincent Morris, a spokesman for D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams, said: "It's disappointing but not surprising that this Congress wants to accommodate gun makers at the expense of victims."

D.C. case in the crosshairs
The firearms industry is particularly nervous about the D.C. law because plaintiffs are not required to show fault or prove that a gun used in the commission of a crime was defective. Lawrence G. Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents the gun industry, said every injury involving a semiautomatic weapon within the District's borders "could potentially give rise to a lawsuit."

"We feel very vulnerable," Keane said.

Keane's group recently retained Theodore B. Olson, a former solicitor general for President Bush, to file a Supreme Court petition challenging the D.C. law.

But critics say the Senate bill goes overboard in its attempt to block frivolous suits. "It completely eliminates the right to sue in the vast majority of cases," said Dennis Henigan, legal director of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which has participated in most legal actions against the gun industry. "It goes right to the heart of our civil liability system."

Henigan said his group will challenge the constitutionality of the federal liability exemption, should it be signed into law.

National security becomes a talking point
Democratic opponents characterize the bill as a flagrant political favor to the gun lobby and ridicule Republicans for playing the national security card.

Supporters of the bill contend that the lawsuits could bankrupt firearm manufacturers such as Beretta USA Corp., which provides the standard side arm to the U.S. armed forces, potentially compromising the safety of American troops.

"The Department of Defense faces the very real prospect of outsourcing side arms for our soldiers to foreign manufacturers," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).

Opponents note that Beretta USA is a subsidiary of the Italian company Fabbrica D'Armi Pietro Beretta S.P.A., the world's oldest gunsmith.

"This bill has one motivation -- payback by the Bush administration and the Republican leadership of the Congress to the powerful special interests of the National Rifle Association," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said yesterday. "The unholy alliance and control of the legislative process against the safety of our citizens is immoral, and it's a disgrace."

Democrats also criticized Frist for pulling a defense authorization bill from the floor this week to ensure that the gun bill would be considered before the summer recess, which is scheduled to begin this weekend.

Key Democrat supports measure
But Democratic opponents are in an awkward spot because Reid, their leader, is supporting the bill. Even as Reid lambasted Frist for shelving the defense bill, he and 11 other Democrats voted with the Republicans on Tuesday to shift action to the gun bill.

Reid said he views the bill as a way of protecting the right of law-abiding citizens to bear arms. "The rights of responsible gun owners should not be compromised by individuals who use firearms to commit violent crimes," Reid said.

Democratic supporters also appear ready to help block amendments that would weaken the legislation -- the strategy that killed last year's Senate bill. The 12 Democrats helped block an amendment yesterday that would have carved out an exception for lawsuits involving gross negligence.

Keane, the industry representative, attributed Reid's solidarity in part to the gun lobby's success in defeating former Senate minority leader Thomas A. Daschle in last year's elections. Although he publicly expressed support for last year's bill, the South Dakota Democrat was blamed for helping to sink it, by allowing the killer-amendment strategy to proceed. Keane's group helped to organize grass-roots efforts against Daschle, and pro-gun activists also ran ads against the veteran lawmaker.

"We believe it cost him his Senate seat," Keane said. He added that at least four new pro-gun senators were elected in 2004.

Gun industry on the brink?
Acknowledging that none of the gun lawsuits has resulted in jury awards so far, Keane noted that some pending cases are seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages -- an insurmountable sum for most gun manufacturers, who collectively barely rank in the top 1,000 U.S. companies. "These companies are so small they couldn't even post the bond to appeal a verdict like that," Keane said.

The Brady Center has brought about 50 of the 57 gun-related lawsuits known to have been filed nationwide, including two filed yesterday. A federal liability exemption, Henigan said, would remove the best deterrent against irresponsible acts by dealers and manufacturers -- the threat of a huge judgment.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Frist Breaks With Bush on Senate Stem Cell Debate Bloomberg
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, in a split from President George W. Bush, said he supports expanding US funding to study embryonic stem cells as potential treatments for disease. Bush in 2001 limited federal support for such research to existing cell lines, citing moral concerns because embryos must be destroyed to harvest the stem cells. Critics say there aren't nearly enough available for federal research and note that many leftover embryos go to waste in fertility clinics each year. ``The limitations put in place in 2001 will, over time, slow our ability to bring potential new treatments for certain diseases,'' Frist, a heart and lung surgeon, said in a speech on the Senate floor. "Therefore, I believe the president's policy should be modified.'' Frist, 53, a Tennessee Republican, said today that he supports expanded federal funds for research on stems cells taken from embryos that would otherwise be discarded, as long as there is informed consent of the donors. Frist's stance may build the momentum for Senate legislation to increase U.S. stem-cell funding, setting up a possible clash with Bush. The White House threatened a presidential veto of a stem-cell measure the House approved in May.

`Vote Your Conscience'
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said today the president and Frist are both "committed to exploring the promise of stem cells.'' After talking to Frist last night, "the president said you've got to vote your conscience,'' McClellan said. Frist said earlier this month that the Senate may consider up to six different measures on medical research when it takes up the stem-cell legislation. He didn't indicate today when the Senate will begin debate, saying only that there will be a vote in this session of Congress. Frist said he will press for changes to the measure passed by the House to increase oversight of stem-cell experiments funded by the National Institutes of Health. Representative Mike Castle, a Delaware Republican and a sponsor of the House measure, said in an interview that it will be tough to get legislation to Bush unless the Senate simply takes up the House-passed bill and makes no changes that the House would have to approve. "Getting anything back through the House of Representatives is going to be retty tough,'' Castle said. Stem cells act as the building blocks for the body and can potentially grow into any specialized type of cell or tissue. Researchers say they may one day lead to treatments for conditions such as spinal cord injuries or Parkinson's disease.

2008 Presidential Race
Frist, a possible presidential candidate in 2008, had previously declined to say how he will vote on the Senate legislation to expand federal funding when it comes up for a vote. Social conservative groups say they will be closely watching how Frist handles the stem-cell debate as they evaluate presidential candidates for the 2008 elections. Frist's position drew praise on the floor from supporters of the Senate legislation to expand funding to new stem-cell lines, including Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and lead sponsor of the legislation. Specter, who is undergoing chemotherapy for Hodgkin's lymphoma, said Frist's position would have an "enormous impact'' on the momentum for his measure to expand funding. Reid said Frist's statement "will bring hope to millions of Americans who face these terrible diseases.''

`Healing Power'
Senator Ted Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, in a statement, said Frist "honors his Hippocratic Oath today by recognizing the unique healing power of embryonic stem cells. The Bush administration may threaten to veto the bill, but they can't veto hope,'' Kennedy said. Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican who opposes the stem-cell legislation, said the government should preserve embryos. "There's a very basic principle that's involved here, and that is whether or not the young human embryo is a life or a piece of property,'' Brownback said.

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Kennedy and Edwards criticize Roberts' record USA Today
Former Democratic senator and vice presidential candidate John Edwards harshly criticized Supreme Court nominee John Roberts Friday, calling him "a partisan for conservative causes." Roberts, finishing his second week of visits with senators in search of confirmation votes, was being criticized from the sidelines in a speech that Edwards prepared for the American Constitution Society. This came a day after Sen. Edward Kennedy accused Roberts, 50, of having a questionable commitment to civil rights. Although the complaints aired Friday were among the toughest yet since Bush picked Roberts for the high court, there still were differences of opinion within the Senate Democratic caucus. And there remained no hint of a filibuster. In fact, some other Democrats have called Roberts "outstanding" and have said they'd been assured he wouldn't be a conservative activist on the court. But a review of paperwork that Roberts drafted while he worked in the Reagan administration shows a "very different young lawyer at work, a partisan for conservative causes," said Edwards. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, voted to confirm Roberts' earlier nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia when he was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee two years ago. "Someone who opposed efforts to remedy discrimination on the basis of sex and race," Edwards said in his prepared remarks. "Someone who opposed measures to protect voting rights ... The question now is, who is the real Judge Roberts?" The same documents "certainly raise some questions in my mind about his commitment" to civil rights in general, Kennedy told reporters Thursday. Some of Kennedy's Democratic colleagues are praising Roberts' academic and legal credentials. They expect little negative material to turn up before the start of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for the 50-year-old federal appeals court judge. "I was so pleased to meet such an outstanding nominee," said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. Added Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb.: "I don't see anything that's going to be disturbing" in his record. Nelson, who is leaning toward approving Roberts' nomination, said Roberts assured him on Thursday that he would not bring an activist philosophy to the court if he is confirmed to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. "He said he would not be an activist judge," Nelson said. Roberts turned aside questions from reporters as he continued get-acquainted meetings with senators of both parties. "I don't think it's appropriate for me to answer questions outside of the Judiciary Committee," he said. Kennedy is likely to put civil rights questions to Roberts at the committee hearings. The senator was asked whether documents released by the White House showed Roberts was not as committed to civil rights as Kennedy would like. "I didn't reach that conclusion yet. But it does certainly raise some questions in my mind about his commitment," Kennedy said. In one document, Roberts, then working in the White House, wrote that legislation designed to overturn a different Supreme Court ruling would "radically expand the civil rights laws to areas never before considered covered." He recommended against it. In another, he wrote that the administration could "go slowly on housing legislation" without fearing political damage. Democrats are demanding other paperwork from Roberts' time as principal deputy solicitor general during the administration of the first President Bush. But the White House plans to deny access to those papers, citing the need "to preserve the attorney-client privilege for this administration" and in the future, according to presidential spokesman Scott McClellan. The White House has released documents from Roberts' time as a special assistant at the Justice Department early in the Reagan administration. Officials have pledged to expedite release of records while Roberts was working in the White House counsel's office from 1983 to 1986. Democrats are trying to come up with a limited request on the blocked documents. Kennedy said they would request documents "limited and targeted on cases related to the Constitution." Officials also are in the final stages of negotiating a timetable and a format for Roberts' confirmation hearing. The White House and Senate Republicans are demanding a final confirmation vote before the Supreme Court convenes for its new term on Oct. 3. Senators seemed to be heading toward starting the hearings on Sept. 6, even though the committee chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter, has indicated he could begin by Aug. 29. Waiting until September would preserve the full August vacation lawmakers have planned. It also would pressure Democrats to allow a final vote by Sept. 29, the last business day before the court convenes. "The recent release of documents from the Reagan Administration shows a very different young lawyer at work, a partisan for conservative causes," said former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina
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NO ONE is going to win any badges for organising America’s National Scout Jamboree. The quadrennial gathering of 32,000 boy scouts now under way at an army base in Virginia has been struck by a series of misfortunes that have cost four lives and made hundreds ill. First, four scout leaders from Alaska were electrocuted when a tent pole hit an overhead power line on the opening day.Then, 300 scouts fell ill with symptoms of dehydration and fatigue as they waited for hours in the blistering heat for a visit by President Bush. Eventually, severe thunderstorms and high winds forced Mr Bush to reschedule his trip. The run of bad luck adds to the woes of the Boy Scouts of America, which is already embroiled in scandals about alleged child molesters in its ranks and inflated membership figures. Hanging over the ten-day event is the threat that the giant jamboree may not take place again again a recent court ruling that the Pentagon’s $8 million contribution is unconstitutional because the organisation requires its members to affirm a belief in God. On Monday four scout leaders from Alaska were erecting a dining tent on the 7,000-acre base. According to witnesses, the men were trying to raise the tall central pole after it got stuck. From inside the white tent they could not see the power line above. “These men, when they were electrocuted, they were thrown to the ground,” Paula Call, whose son Kendell had been trying to get the pole in place, told the Anchorage Daily News. Her husband, Larry, was injured in the accident. Gregg Shields, the organisation’s spokesman, said that the men appeared to have forgotten their scout training. “Boy Scouts are taught not to put their tents under trees or under power lines. I don’t know what happened in that case,” he said. On Wednesday, tens of thousands of scouts waited for Mr Bush for three hours in an open field in their dress uniforms. Although the scouts were given exceptional permission to remove their uniform shirts, as long as they were wearing undershirts, many were overcome by the sun and high humidity and temperatures approaching 100F. “This is hot for me,” said Chad McDowell, 16, from Warrenton, Oregon. “Where I’m from if it’s 75, we think that it’s a heatwave.” About 300 people were treated for symptoms of excessive heat as soldiers ferried scouts to the medical post on the base. The day ended with the announcement that Mr Bush was calling off his trip because of bad weather — just as he had done four years ago. Mr Bush had been scheduled to make another attempt to address the scouts last night. But yesterday the organisers changed their plans once more, pushing Mr Bush’s trip back until Sunday. “We feel that our scouts and leaders will benefit most from an opportunity to review and emphasise our safety procedures and to replenish our resources,” Fran Olmstead, the jamboree chairman, said. “We want all participants to safely enjoy the many activities and programmes at the jamboree. Also, the drop in temperature is a welcome change which should provide an opportunity to refresh.”
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washingtonpost.com
State Dept. Now Says Bolton Interviewed

By MARK SHERMAN
The Associated Press
Friday, July 29, 2005; 3:23 AM

WASHINGTON -- John Bolton, President Bush's nominee for U.N. ambassador, neglected to tell Congress he been interviewed in a government investigation into faulty prewar intelligence that Iraq was seeking nuclear materials in Africa, the State Department said.

Democratic senators said the admission should forestall Bush from using his authority to give Bolton a temporary appointment to the U.N. post, without Senate confirmation, when the Senate goes on vacation in August.

Bolton was interviewed by the State Department inspector general in 2003 as part of a joint investigation with the CIA into prewar Iraqi attempts to buy nuclear materials from Niger, State Department spokesman Noel Clay said Thursday.

His statement came hours after another State Department official said Bolton had correctly answered a Senate questionnaire when he wrote that he had not testified to a grand jury or been interviewed by investigators in any inquiry over the past five years.

Clay said Bolton "didn't recall being interviewed by the State Department's inspector general" when he filled out the form. "Therefore, his form, as submitted, was inaccurate," Clay said. "He will correct it."

Bolton, former undersecretary for arms control and international security, had no role in a separate criminal investigation into the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity, Clay said.

The reversal followed persistent Democratic attempts, led by Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., to question Bolton's veracity just days before Bush could make Bolton's a recess appointment, meaning he could occupy the U.N. post until the end of next year when the current Congress ends.

"It seems unusual that Mr. Bolton would not remember his involvement in such a serious matter," said Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "In my mind, this raises more questions that need to be answered. I hope President Bush will not make the mistake of recess appointing Mr. Bolton."

Another Democrat, California Sen. Barbara Boxer, said a recess appointment would send "a horrible message" and called on Bush to withdraw the nomination.

For months, Democrats have prevented the Senate from confirming Bolton to the post, while demanding more information from the Bush administration on Bolton's tenure as the State Department's arms control chief. Some critics also have said Bolton is temperamentally unsuited to the diplomatic post.

Bush has said that Bolton would be ideally suited to lead an effort to overhaul the world body's bureaucracy and make it more accountable.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other officials Thursday refused to rule out a recess appointment for Bolton. "What we can't be is without leadership at the United Nations," Rice said on the PBS' "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" program.

The new information does not change the Bush administration's commitment to Bolton's nomination, said a senior State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the subject.

While the State Department and criminal investigations are independent, they spring from the same source _ intelligence that Iraq was trying to buy materials in Africa to produce nuclear weapons.

In the criminal probe, a federal grand jury is investigating who leaked the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the news media. Biden had earlier asked Rice about a report that Bolton was among State undersecretaries who "gave testimony" about a classified memo that has become an important piece of evidence in the leak investigation.

Plame is the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was sent by the CIA in 2002 to check out the intelligence about Iraqi nuclear intentions. Wilson could not verify it and his public criticism of Bush's Iraq policy in July 2003 set in motion a chain of events that led to an ongoing criminal investigation and the jailing of a New York Times reporter who refused to cooperate with it.

Syndicated columnist Robert Novak, citing unidentified Bush administration officials, was the first to disclose in July 2003 that Plame worked for the CIA and suggested her husband for the Niger trip. Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper wrote a subsequent story and included her name.

It can be illegal to reveal the identity of an undercover CIA officer. Wilson has accused the White House of trying to discredit him because he accused the White House of twisting intelligence to justify an Iraq invasion.

Bush political aide Karl Rove and vice presidential chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby were among Cooper's sources, he reported following his grand jury appearance. They are among several high-ranking administration officials who have given grand jury testimony.

While Rove has not disputed that he told Cooper that Wilson's wife worked for the agency, he has insisted through his lawyer that he did not mention her by name.

Among the many mysteries in this case is that there was apparently at least one other government official who disclosed to a reporter that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Walter Pincus, a Washington Post reporter, wrote in the summer edition of the Nieman Foundation publication Nieman Reports that the official talked to him two days before Novak's column appeared.

Pincus did not disclose his source. But he said he has cooperated with prosecutors and that his source also has been interviewed.

___

Associated Press writers Anne Gearan, George Gedda and Liz Sidoti contributed to this report.

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W.House gives strong signal on Bolton appointment
By Steve Holland


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House gave its strongest signal yet on Friday that President Bush will soon bypass the Senate and appoint John Bolton to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Senate Democrats have stalled the nomination of Bolton, a favorite of conservatives, over accusations he tried to manipulate intelligence and intimidated intelligence analysts to support his hawkish views while the top U.S. diplomat for arms control.

Bush can bypass the Senate and give Bolton a "recess appointment" when the Senate begins its August recess this weekend. Bolton would be able to serve until January 2007, when a new Congress is sworn in.

Asked about the possibility of a recess appointment for Bolton, White House spokesman Scott McClellan argued that the job needed to be filled relatively quickly.

"We need our permanent representative in place at the United Nations at this critical time. There is an effort under way to move forward on comprehensive reform. We have outlined the comprehensive reforms that we want to see put in place to make sure that the United Nations is an effective multilateral organization," he said.

"And it's a critical time to be moving forward on this. The United Nations will be having their General Assembly meeting in September, and it's important that we get our permanent representative in place," he said.

He said Bolton has enjoyed majority support from the Senate, "but unfortunately Senate Democrats have taken the path of playing politics."

A recess appointment would risk the wrath of the Senate at a time when Bush is pressing senators to support his nominee for Supreme Court justice, John Roberts. His confirmation hearings begin on Sept. 6.

"A recess appointment is not in the interest of the country. Mr. Bolton does not have the full confidence of the Senate. Sending him to the U.N. without the Senate's approval would send a mixed message to friend and foe alike," said Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record), a Delaware Democrat and a sharp critic of Bolton.

A STATE DEPARTMENT REVERSAL

Questions about Bolton surfaced anew on Thursday when the State Department reversed itself and acknowledged that Bolton had given Congress inaccurate information when he wrote that he had not been questioned or provided information to jury or government investigations in the past five years.

At first, the State Department had insisted Bolton's answer was truthful.

But it later acknowledged that Bolton had failed to tell lawmakers that he had been interviewed as part of a State Department- CIA joint investigation on intelligence lapses that led to the Bush administration's claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger.

"When Mr. Bolton completed his form during the Senate confirmation process he did not recall being interviewed by the State Department inspector general. Therefore his form as submitted was inaccurate in this regard and he will correct the form," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

McClellan said the White House was not concerned by the episode.

Officials have said Bolton was not interviewed in special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

The White House has argued that Bolton should be given an up-or-down vote in the Senate but Democrats have blocked such a move.

In procedural votes in May and June, Democrats denied Republicans the 60 votes needed from the 100-member Senate to close debate on Bolton and move to a confirmation vote, which would require a simple majority.

(Additional reporting by Saul Hudson and Vicki Allen)

Police nab suspected cop killer San Mateo County Times
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Ex-congressman to run for governor Houston Chronicle
Chris Bell, the former one-term Democratic congressman best known for filing an ethics complaint against US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, will seek the Democratic nomination for governor next year, he announced in an e-mail to supporters Thursday. "I'm in," Bell said in the e-mail and on his Web site. "Over the past half year, I have traveled all over Texas, literally exploring the race for governor. You have indulged me in this process as I sought the answers to some important questions. ... Can a Texas Democrat win? Are Texas Democrats ready to try something different? Do people see what is happening in Texas the same way that I do?" Bell says he has his answers, although he doesn't share them all in the letter. "My sense, in traveling around the state for the past several months, is that Democrats are ready for the fight in 2006 and they are ready for a new voice and some new vision," Bell told the Houston Chronicle. Bell has been exploring a run for governor for six months. He plans to launch his campaign officially Aug. 14 in Austin. Bell lost his U.S. House seat in the 2004 Democratic primary after his district was redrawn in a congressional redistricting engineered by DeLay to increase the number of Republicans in the state's U.S. House delegation. The best-known legacy of Bell's single term was the ethics complaint he filed against DeLay, who later was admonished by the House Ethics Committee. Bell, a lawyer, also served as a Houston city councilman. In 2001 he ran an unsuccessful race for mayor. One of the factors weighing on his decision to run for governor was his wife's, Alison's, battle with breast cancer. "I am happy to tell you that the prognosis after chemotherapy is as good as it can get," he said in Thursday's announcement. "Ali has been my rock ever since we've been together, and there's no way I would embark on something as challenging as a race for governor without her feeling up to it. As everyone knows, she's every bit the fighter I am, and she feels strong enough to join me in this battle." Felix Alvarado, a middle school assistant principal from Fort Worth who ran for Congress in 2002 and 2004, has also said he'll run for governor as a Democrat. Party insiders are speculating that former state Comptroller John Sharp, who lost races for lieutenant governor in 1998 and 2002, might seek the 2006 Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Bell says people have questioned his sanity as he explored running for statewide office as a Democrat. No Democrat has won statewide since 1994 and conventional wisdom says Gov. Rick Perry has more to fear from the GOP primary than from any Democratic candidate. Perry has $8.8 million in his war chest. Republican Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, who has announced her candidacy, has $7 million. Independent candidate Kinky Friedman, a musician and author, raised $300,000. Bell raised $153,000 during the reporting period that ended June 30, according to campaign finance reports. Bell said he did not focus on raising money during his exploratory phase. "Going forward, fundraising becomes a primary focus," Bell said. "During an exploratory effort, people will wait on the sidelines before they make any financial commitment."
kristen.mack@chron.com
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Base closing commissioner to visit Michigan Detroit Free Press
A key member of the federal base closing commission will take a firsthand look at military facilities in Battle Creek and the Detroit area, a move that state officials hope will strengthen their position in an ongoing review of installations. Samuel Skinner, a former U.S. Transportation secretary, planned to visit the Detroit Arsenal in Warren and the W.K. Kellogg Airport Air Guard Station in Battle Creek on Friday. A Pentagon blueprint on base closings and realignments would enhance the Detroit Arsenal with nearly 650 more jobs, making it the military's top center for automotive and ground vehicle research and development. But the plan would close the Battle Creek Air National Guard base and the U.S. Army Garrison at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Macomb County. Skinner will inspect the arsenal in the morning and then travel to Battle Creek, where he is expected to be greeted by about 1,000 supporters during a rally at Western Michigan University College of Aviation. He will be briefed by military officers and elected officials at the base. Some Michigan officials have criticized the proposal to shift the 110th Fighter Wing at Battle Creek to Selfridge, arguing it would not be cost-effective and would splinter the Guard. The visit is the culmination of months of lobbying. Jan Burland, who has helped lead the Battle Creek effort, said Skinner's trip was of "immense importance" to the community and the 110th Fighter Wing. She said it would allow Skinner to see the base's value to the military and the importance of the A-10 aircraft at the base. The Pentagon proposal would transfer A-10 aircraft stationed in Battle Creek to Selfridge. Selfridge would add refueling tankers from California but would lose aging C130 and F16 aircraft. Rep. Joe Schwarz, R-Battle Creek, has stressed that the base is modern and has benefited from $50 million in upgrades during the past decade. He also contends the shifting of the aircraft would require three years of retraining of pilots and have a harmful effect on the state's Air National Guard. "We think we have a great case to make and we're going to make it," Schwarz said. Gov. Jennifer Granholm wrote Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week, saying she would not consent to the proposed changes to the Air National Guard. She said the recommendations were based on a "seriously flawed process." Granholm, who is on a trade mission to Japan, will be represented in Battle Creek by her husband, Dan Mulhern. Skinner, who served as White House chief of staff under former President George H.W. Bush, is one of nine commissioners reviewing the Pentagon plan. The commission will make recommendations to President Bush by September.
National Guard leaders challenge US base cutbacks Reuters
Del. ready to join fight against Air Guard closure The News Journal
The Common Voice - Iowa Channel.com - WWMT - Duluth News Tribune - all 48 related »

Bill would restrict eminent domain Newsday
Suffolk County would be barred from wielding the power affirmed by the US Supreme Court to seize private property for commercial development under a bill proposed by a county lawmaker.
Taking your home away CNN
Eminent domain case draws JPs’ objection Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (subscription)
Scripps Howard News Service - TheDay (subscription) - Human Events - San Antonio Express (subscription) - all 30 related »

T H E H U F F I N G T O N P O S T

Judy Miller: Do We Want To Know Everything or Don't We?
Posted July 27, 2005 at 8:17 p.m. EDT

Not everyone in the Times building is on the same page when it comes to Judy Miller. The official story the paper is sticking to is that Miller is a heroic martyr, sacrificing her freedom in the name of journalistic integrity.

But a very different scenario is being floated in the halls. Here it is: It's July 6, 2003, and Joe Wilson's now famous op-ed piece appears in the Times, raising the idea that the Bush administration has "manipulate[d]" and "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Miller, who has been pushing this manipulated, twisted, and exaggerated intel in the Times for months, goes ballistic. Someone is using the pages of her own paper to call into question the justification for the war -- and, indirectly, much of her reporting. The idea that intelligence was being fixed goes to the heart of Miller's credibility. So she calls her friends in the intelligence community and asks, Who is this guy? She finds out he's married to a CIA agent. She then passes on the info about Mrs. Wilson to Scooter Libby (Newsday has identified a meeting Miller had on July 8 in Washington with an "unnamed government official"). Maybe Miller tells Rove too -- or Libby does. The White House hatchet men turn around and tell Novak and Cooper. The story gets out.

This is why Miller doesn't want to reveal her "source" at the White House -- because she was the source. Sure, she first got the info from someone else, and the odds are she wasn't the only one who clued in Libby and/or Rove (the State Dept. memo likely played a role too)... but, in this scenario, Miller certainly wasn't an innocent writer caught up in the whirl of history. She had a starring role in it. This also explains why Miller never wrote a story about Plame, because her goal wasn't to write a story, but to get out the story that cast doubts on Wilson's motives. Which Novak did.

This version of events has divided the Times into two camps: those who want to learn everything about this story, and those who want to learn everything as long as it doesn't downgrade the heroic status of their "colleague" Judy Miller. And then there are the schizophrenics. Frank Rich is spending his summer in the second camp, while at the same time writing some of the most powerful and brilliant stuff about the scandal: "This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit...is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped up grounds... That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war."

But this unmasking -- if it is to be complete -- has to include Judy Miller and the part she played in the mess in Iraq. Of course, the division over Miller is nothing new... it predates her transformation into media martyr by many months. For an early look at this rift, check out Howard Kurtz' May 2003 reporting on the way Miller ferociously fought to keep Ahmad Chalabi, her top source on WMD, to herself and the anger it caused at the paper. And also the paper's extraordinary mea culpa from May 2004, in which its editors admitted that the Times' reporting on Iraq "was not as rigorous as it should have been" -- yet steadfastly refused to even mention the less-than-rigorous reporter whose byline appeared on 4 of the 6 stories the editors singled out as being particularly egregious. "It looks," the Times' public admission concluded, "as if we, along with the administration, were taken in." And yet just two months earlier, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller called Miller, who was one of the main reporters "taken in," a "smart, well-sourced, industrious and fearless reporter." Nothing about her less than "rigorous" reporting. Nothing about her reliance on Chalabi being less than "well-sourced."

Any discussion of Miller's actions in the Plame-Rove-Libby-Gonzalez-Card scandal must not leave out the key role she played in cheerleading for the invasion of Iraq and in hyping the WMD threat. Re-reading some of her pre-war reporting today, it's hard not to be disgusted by how inaccurate and pumped up it turned out to be. For chapter and verse, check out Slate's Jack Shafer . For the money quote on her mindset, look to her April 2003 appearance on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, where, following up on her blockbuster front page story about an Iraqi scientist and his claims that Iraq had destroyed all its WMD just before the war started, Miller said the scientist was more than a "smoking gun," he was the "silver bullet" in the hunt for WMD. The "silver bullet" later turned out to be another blank -- and the scientist turned out to be a military intelligence official.

Amazingly, however, even as her reporting has been debunked -- and her sources discredited -- Miller has steadfastly refused to apologize for her role in misleading the public in the lead up to the war. Indeed, in an interview with the author of Bush's Brain , James Moore, she, in the words of Moore, "remained righteously indignant, unwilling to accept that she had goofed in the grandest of fashions," telling him: "I was proved "expletive deleted"ing right."

As recently as March 2005, in an appearance at Berkeley, she stubbornly refused to express regret. Indeed, she showed that she shares a key attitude with the Bush administration: an unwillingness to admit mistakes when faced with new realities. She even compared herself to the president, saying that she was getting the same information he was getting... and suggested that since he hadn't apologized, why should she? Maybe she's angling for the Tenet treatment: promote faulty intel, get a Medal of Freedom. Miller also echoed the words of Don Rumsfeld ("You go to war with the Army you have") when she justified her flawed reporting on WMD by saying "You go with what you've got." Really? Wouldn't it be better to wait until what you've got is right?

It's nice that Bill Keller is visiting Judy in jail giving updates about how hard this is for her, having to be away from her family and friends. But it would be even nicer if we'd had some acknowledgement from Miller of her complicity in sending 138,000 American soldiers away from their family and friends. And, unlike Miller, they won't be returning home in October. Indeed, as of today, 1,785 of them won't be returning home at all.

This story gets deeper with every twist and revelation, including the reminder (via Podhoretz) that Fitzgerald had a previous run in with Miller over her actions in a national security case, and the speculation (via Jeralyn at TalkLeft) that Fitzgerald is considering seeking to put Miller under criminal contempt, rather than the civil contempt she's now under.

But one thing is inescapable: Miller -- intentionally or unintentionally -- worked hand in glove in helping the White House propaganda machine (for a prime example, check out this Newsweek story on how the aluminum tubes tall tale went from a government source to Miller to page one of the New York Times to Cheney and Rice going on the Sunday shows to confirm the story to Bush pushing that same story at the UN).

So, once again, the question arises (and you can't have it both ways, Frank): when it comes to this scandal, do you want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth or do you want the truth -- except for what Judy Miller wants to keep to herself?

Judy Miller: How Deep Do Her Connections Run?
Posted July 28, 2005 at 10:39 p.m. EDT

The more I'm reading about Judy Miller and her actions leading up to and during the early days of the war, and then through the unfolding Plame-Rove-Libby-Gonzalez-Card scandal, the more I'm struck by the special access and relationships she enjoyed with many of the key players in the Iraq debacle (which, at the end of the day, is really what Plamegate is all about).

For starters, of course, we have her still unfolding involvement in the Plame leak. Earlier this month, Howard Kurtz reported that Miller and Libby spoke a few days before Novak outed Plame -- and I'm hearing that the Libby/Miller conversation occurred over breakfast in Washington. Did Valerie Plame come up -- and, if so, who brought her up? There is no question that Miller was angry at Joe Wilson… and continues to be. A social acquaintance of Miller told me that, once, when she spoke of Wilson, it was with "a passionate and heated disgust that went beyond the political and included an irrelevant bit of deeply personal innuendo about him, her mouth twisting in hatred."

Miller's special relationships go much further than Scooter Libby, Richard Perle and the rest of the neocon establishment. Take her involvement as an embedded reporter during the war with the Pentagon's Mobile Exploitation Team (MET) Alpha -- the unit charged with hunting down Saddam's WMD. As extensively reported by both Kurtz and New York Magazine's Franklin Foer, Miller's time with the unit was highly unusual.

First, there was the fact that she landed the plum assignment in the first place. It would give her first dibs on the biggest story of the war... the hoped-for reveal of Saddam's much-touted WMD (with much of the touting done by Miller herself and her special sources). Was this the reward for her pro-administration prewar reporting?

Foer cites military and New York Times sources as saying that Miller's assignment was so sensitive that Don Rumsfeld himself signed off on it. Once embedded, Miller acted as much more than a reporter. Kurtz quotes one military officer as saying that the MET Alpha unit became a "Judith Miller team." Another officer said that Miller "came in with a plan. She was leading them... She ended up almost hijacking the mission." A third officer, a senior staffer of the 75th Exploitation Task Force, of which MET Alpha was a part, put it this way: "It's impossible to exaggerate the impact she had on the mission of this unit, and not for the better."

What did Miller do to create such an impression? According to Kurtz, she wasn't afraid to throw her weight around, threatening to write critical stories and complain to her friends in very high places if things didn't go her way. "Judith," said an Army officer, "was always issuing threats of either going to the New York Times or to the secretary of defense. There was nothing veiled about that threat."

In one specific instance, she used her friendship with Major General David Petraeus to force a lower ranking officer to reverse an order she was unhappy about. (Can we stop for a moment and take the full measure of how unbelievable this whole thing is?)

Miller also had a special, ten-year relationship with Ahmed Chalabi, which led to the MET Alpha unit, which had no special training in interrogation or intelligence, being given custody of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Sultan. Miller was even allowed to sit in on the initial questioning of Sultan -- a turn of events that didn't go down well with some Pentagon officials.

Miller apparently ended up developing an especially close relationship with Chief Warrant Officer Richard Gonzalez, the leader of the MET Alpha unit. Along with puffing him up in some of her dispatches -- once describing his "meeting tonight with Mr. Chalabi to discuss nonproliferation issues" -- Miller took the unusual step of taking part in the ceremony where Gonzalez was promoted, actually pinning his new rank to his uniform (has the bizarreness of all this hit you yet?).

Later, when Miller's reporting came under serious fire, Gonzalez was only too happy to return the favor, writing an impassioned response to the Times' Iraq reporting mea culpa. "We have been deeply disturbed," Gonzalez wrote in a letter to the Times that was co-signed by a pair of his colleagues, "by the mischaracterizations of the operation and of [Miller's] reporting... We were particularly disturbed by the recent New York Times editor's note apologizing for having been 'taken in' by WMD 'misinformation' and citing one article she wrote while embedded with our unit... We strongly disagree with that assertion and remain firmly supportive of the accuracy of her accounts of the events she described, as well as other articles she wrote while embedded with our unit." Wow. I'm kinda surprised he didn't sign it "JM + MET Alpha, N.A.F (Now and Forever)".

But Gonzalez and his pals seem to be the only ones standing behind the accuracy of Miller's reporting. Even the administration is no longer barking up that tree, with top weapons hunter Charles Duelfer closing his investigation this spring saying that the search for WMD "has been exhausted" without finding any -- while at the same time dismissing the Miller-touted claim that WMD had been shipped to Syria just before the U.S. invaded.

So the WMD investigation has ended. But the investigation into Judy Miller's role -- both in the WMD fiasco and the Plame scandal -- is just beginning.


© 2005 TheHuffingtonPost.com, LLC

Time to end nuclear defence policy:

By Tony Benn

The most immediate danger may well be US — or even Israeli — air strikes against Iran, justified on the grounds that Tehran is in breach of the non-proliferation treaty, while protecting, and arming, Israel which is the most fully equipped nuclear power in the Middle East.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9602.htm

http://snipurl.com/glf6

White House Redefines The Meaning Of "Torture"

By Chris Floyd

Congress may rubber-stamp the gulag ("a buy-in to Guantanamo"); that's allowed. And Congress may approve funding for the gulag. But the people's representatives must have no say whatsoever in the gulag's operations. To give way on this point would reintroduce the rule of law and genuine democracy to U.S. government. And the Bush militarists have gone too far, waded through too much blood, to return to such "quaint" notions now.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9608.htm

http://snipurl.com/glf7

Ray McGovern: Iraq-Niger: Cheney and the Forgery

I believe this helps to explain the highly unusual role Vice President Dick Cheney played regarding the forged “intelligence” about Iraq seeking to acquire uranium from Niger—the source of that particular lie.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/1026

http://snipurl.com/glft



Bob Herbert : Oil and Blood :

The whole point of this war, it seems, was to establish a long-term military presence in Iraq to ensure American domination of the Middle East and its precious oil reserves, which have been described, the author Daniel Yergin tells us, as "the greatest single prize in all history."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9607.htm

http://snipurl.com/glfv



Army Mechanic Acquitted of Desertion:

Sgt. Kevin Benderman, an Army mechanic who refused to go to Iraq while he sought conscientious objector status was acquitted of desertion Thursday but found guilty of a lesser charge and sentenced to 15 months behind bars.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../w120404D70.DTL

http://snipurl.com/glfx



State Dept. Now Says Bolton Interviewed :

John Bolton, President Bush's nominee for U.N. ambassador, neglected to tell Congress he had been interviewed in a government investigation into faulty prewar intelligence that Iraq was seeking nuclear materials in Africa, the State Department said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0...5175547,00.html

http://snipurl.com/glfy



W.House gives strong signal on Bolton appointment:

President Bush will soon bypass the Senate and appoint John Bolton to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
http://snipurl.com/glfz

This is a must listen interview.

In case you missed it:

"In Case of Emergency: Nuke Iran."

Philip Giraldi is a former military intelligence and CIA counter-terrorism official. He is the co-publisher of Intelligence Brief and writes Deep Backround for the American Conservative.
http://weekendinterviewshow.com/InterviewDisplay.aspx?i=118

http://snipurl.com/glgc



This is a must read.

What Is the Plan If There's Another 9/11?:

The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons.
http://www.justinlogan.com/justinlogancom/...is_the_pla.html

http://snipurl.com/gh5p

CAFTA Voting Irregularities:

After Congress passes CAFTA by one vote in a midnight count, questions are being raised about the process. We speak with the Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch about the GOP leaders' round-up of House votes to approve trade agreement.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/29/1420251

http://snipurl.com/glgo



Jonathan Tasini: Spanking The CAFTA 15:

Enough is enough. The 15 so-called Democrats who voted for the Central American Free Trade Agreement must pay a heavy price for turning their backs on labor: None of them should receive a dime from labor unions and each one should face a labor-backed primary challenger next year.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9606.htm

http://snipurl.com/glgp



FBI wants more subpoena power:

Director says bureau shouldn't have to seek court approval
http://snipurl.com/glgq

Capacity crowds at Downing Street forums call for impeachment

by David Swanson


Congresswoman Barbara Lee talked with reporters Saturday after a cheering capacity crowd at her Downing Street minutes forum in the Grand Lake Theater called for Bush’s impeachment.
Hundreds of people were turned away today as capacity crowds packed public forums in U.S. cities to discuss the Downing Street Memo and related evidence that President Bush lied about the reasons for war. Halls were filled to capacity and beyond in LA, Oakland, Seattle, Detroit, Northampton, New York and elsewhere for events led by Congress members Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Jim McDermott, John Conyers and Maurice Hinchey.

Several hundred people had to be turned away from Rep. Barbara Lee’s town hall at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, where the crowd was bursting with enthusiasm. The forum was broadcast on KPOO 89.5 FM.

“Dozens of people spoke Saturday,” the Argus reported, “many using the opportunity to voice their opposition to the Iraq War and the USA PATRIOT Act — a second version of which just passed the House of Representatives — and to vent still-simmering frustrations about the outcome of the 2000 presidential election and how many feel mainstream Democratic lawmakers have abandoned them and their causes.”

Today we saw crowds of people in red and blue states chant, “Impeach Bush!” at events with leaders not yet ready to use the I word. I spoke at an event in Montgomery County, Maryland. The questions I got from the crowd were along the lines of “Why is it so hard to get a Democrat from a solidly Democratic district to introduce articles of impeachment? What are they waiting for?”

It’s a hell of a question. They know that a Zogby poll in the end of June – the ONLY poll done on impeachment of Bush – found that 42 percent of Americans (meaning a strong majority of Democrats) favor impeachment if the president lied about the reasons for war. They know that 52 percent believe he did in fact so lie, according to ABC/Washington Post.

What are they waiting for?

If they’re waiting for a show of public pressure, they got a good glimpse of it today. The blog entries and photos and audio clips that flowed into the www.AfterDowningStreet.org site all day were full of energy, excitement, enthusiasm and righteous anger.

At an event in Detroit with Congressman Conyers, constitutional law professor Bob Sedler asked the crowd if Bush had committed impeachable offenses, and the whole room shouted “Yes!”

The scene in New York was similar. Quoting our blogger: “It is incredible to be in this hot hall and to feel the energy of the overflow crowd. The will of the people is remarkably clear here.”

Every event discussed the evidence of the Downing Street documents. Most events made plans to generate co-sponsors for H.Res. 375, a Resolution of Inquiry introduced by Congresswoman Barbara Lee on Thursday that would require the White House and the State Department to turn over all documentation of communications with officials of the UK between January and October 2002.

In Oakland, Daniel Ellsberg, known for having released the Pentagon Papers, said that the intelligence committees in Congress have the right to hold minority hearings with subpoena power and argued for pressuring the Democrats to do that rather than pressuring the Republicans to act like they care about their country.

A “mainstream” radio station in one city called me to get in touch with someone at a local event. “It would be impolitic,” the producer said, with no sign of intending irony, to simply cover what’s in the Downing Street Memo. But, he said, he COULD cover a rally.

C-Span, meanwhile, chose not to cover any of the events, not because the lineup of speakers was not impressive, but – according to their reply to one activist – because they choose not to cover events if too many people ask them to do so.

At least we can be satisfied that on this day we became the media and did our own reporting. The results are at www.AfterDowningStreet.org

My favorite of the various short entries I posted today is this one: “I just got off the phone with Bill Moyer of the Backbone Campaign in Seattle. They, like the organizers today in New York, Oakland, Los Angeles and Northampton, had to turn people away because the space was filled beyond capacity.

Action needed on Rep. Lee’s resolution

Congresswoman Barbara Lee and 29 co-sponsors are backing a Resolution of Inquiry which, if passed, will require the White House and the State Department to “transmit all information relating to communication with officials of the United Kingdom between January 1, 2002, and October 16, 2002, relating to the policy of the United States with respect to Iraq.”

If the Downing Street documents are not accurate, this is the White House’s opportunity to prove it.

We need you to ask your Congress member to co-sponsor. Many, even possibly some Republicans, will co-sponsor this, but they have to be asked.

Contact your congress member by email (http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/50) or by phone or fax (http://www.usalone.com/get_instantcongress.htm).

Also, phone your congress member’s district office nearest you and ask for a short meeting. Bring them a flier and the text of the resolution, and ask them to co-sponsor it. They’re out of Washington and in their home districts the whole month of August, so they ought to have time for you. And if they do not, you can put together a protest!

Find more information and fliers about the resolution at http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/902.

David Swanson is a co-founder of After Downing Street, a writer and activist. He was press secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign and communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Email him at david@davidswanson.org.


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editor@sfbayview.com

Bolton Not Truthful, 36 Senators Charge in Opposing Appointment

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
Published: July 30, 2005
WASHINGTON, July 29 - Charging that John R. Bolton was "not truthful" in answering questions about his record, 36 senators urged President Bush on Friday not to make a recess appointment of Mr. Bolton as United Nations ambassador after the Senate's failure to confirm him for that job.

But one Republican official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the president has not announced his decision, said Mr. Bush would probably appoint Mr. Bolton next week.

In a letter to Mr. Bush, the senators cited the disclosure on Thursday that Mr. Bolton had been interviewed by the State Department's inspector general in an investigation of intelligence failures related to Iraq, even though he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March that he had not been involved in any such inquiry.

Mr. Bolton "did not recall this interview" when he assured the committee that he had not been questioned by any investigators, according to a letter sent Friday from the State Department to Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the ranking Democrat on the foreign relations panel.

The letter from the senators, all Democrats except for the Senate's sole independent, who usually votes with them, was the latest escalation of the battle over Mr. Bolton.

He has run into heavy opposition in the Senate because of his history of criticizing the United Nations and over charges that he tried to influence intelligence assessments to conform with his own views.

Mr. Bolton's nomination has the support of the majority of senators, but fewer than the 60 needed to head off a filibuster that Democrats say they would mount until specific questions about Mr. Bolton's activities were answered, particularly his use of classified intelligence about conversations involving administration colleagues.

The State Department has admitted that, as Mr. Biden charged, Mr. Bolton had been interviewed in a previous inquiry into one particular intelligence failure on Iraq, the finding that Iraq had tried to buy raw uranium from Niger for a nuclear arms program. That finding turned out to be based on forged documents.

Administration officials appeared shaken by the disclosure, and some worried openly that it might hurt Mr. Bolton's chances of a recess appointment, a tactic that a president is permitted use once Congress is in recess in August. The appointment would expire at the end of next year, however.

In a final gesture of opposition, Democratic senators indicated that they would use a parliamentary maneuver to formally send Mr. Bolton's name back to the White House once the Senate adjourns, rather than have it remain pending at the Senate.

That move was seen as symbolic, but one reflecting the growing bitterness of Democrats and their hopes that by standing firm they would make it more politically awkward for Mr. Bush to give Mr. Bolton the interim appointment.

Republicans, on the other hand, said Mr. Bush would likely go ahead and make the appointment as early as next week.

Officials: Bush Plans to Install Bolton
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON -- President Bush intends to announce next week that he is going around Congress to install embattled nominee John Bolton as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, senior administration officials said Friday.

Bush has the power to fill vacancies without Senate approval while Congress is in recess. Under the Constitution, a recess appointment during the lawmakers' August break would last until the next session of Congress, which begins in January 2007.

An end run around the Senate confirmation process would certainly annoy senators -- particularly Democrats -- at a time when Bush's nomination of John Roberts to serve on the Supreme Court hangs in the balance. It also could hamper Bolton at the United Nations, by sending him there as a short-timer without the Senate's backing.

"There's just too much unanswered about Bolton and I think the president would make a truly serious mistake if he makes a recess appointment," Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview.

Two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the president had not made the announcement and Congress wasn't yet in recess, said Bush planned to exercise that authority before he leaves Washington on Tuesday for his ranch. The House recessed on Thursday and the Senate's break was scheduled to begin later Friday.

Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Scott McClellan gave the strongest indication yet that Bush planned to do so, noting that the U.N. General Assembly has its annual meeting in mid-September.

"It's important that we get our permanent representative in place," he said. "This is a critical time and it's important to continue moving forward on comprehensive reform."

Bush counselor Dan Bartlett said the president had not made a decision on whether to make a recess appointment.

"He retains that right to do, but he will continue to work with the Senate as long as he can," Barlett said. "But he has not made a decision."

Bolton's nomination, announced in March by the president, was controversial from the start and has been stalled in the Senate by Democrats.

Critics say Bolton, who has been accused of mistreating subordinates and has been openly skeptical about the United Nations, would be ill-suited to the sensitive diplomatic task at the world body. The White House says the former undersecretary of state for arms control, who has long been one of Bush's most conservative foreign policy advisers, is exactly the man to whip the United Nations into shape.

This week, critics raised a fresh concern, saying Bolton had neglected to tell Congress he had been interviewed in a government investigation into faulty prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The State Department said Thursday that Bolton was interviewed in 2003 by the department inspector general. The office was conducting a joint investigation with the CIA into allegations that Iraq attempted to buy nuclear materials from Niger. Bolton had earlier submitted a questionnaire to the Senate in which he had said he had not testified to a grand jury or been interviewed by investigators in any inquiry over the past five years.

Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he would vote against Bolton -- if given the chance -- and would oppose a recess appointment if it is accurate that Bolton's form was originally incorrect. "Any intimidation of the facts, or suppression of information getting to the public which led us to the war, absolutely should preclude him from a recess appointment," said Chafee, of Rhode Island.

Also Friday, 35 Democratic senators and one independent, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont, sent a letter to Bush urging against a recess appointment. "Sending someone to the United Nations who has not been confirmed by the United States Senate and now who has admitted to not being truthful on a document so important that it requires a sworn affidavit is going to set our efforts back in many ways," the letter said.

* __

Associated Press writers Ron Fournier and Anne Gearan contributed to this report.

Divided Front
How Media Split
Under Pressure
In the Leak Probe

Ms. Miller of the Times Had
A Separate Dispute
With Special Prosecutor
Mr. Abrams Loses a Client
By LAURIE P. COHEN, JOE HAGAN and ANNE MARIE SQUEO
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 29, 2005; Page A1

In May, 500 members of the media elite rose to their feet to applaud a First Amendment award the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press gave to lawyer Floyd Abrams.

Jointly presenting the award at a gala dinner in Manhattan were Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of the New York Times. For a year, Mr. Abrams had worked to fend off a special prosecutor seeking testimony about the two reporters' confidential sources, as a federal grand jury probed who had leaked a Central Intelligence Agency operative's name.

But the appearance of unity among a lawyer and his media clients was illusory. More than a month before the dinner, Time Inc. had dismissed Mr. Abrams as its lead counsel in the leak probe, believing it needed a new strategy to face the U.S. Supreme Court.


Mr. Cooper had long before selected his own criminal attorney, concerned that Mr. Abrams couldn't adequately represent both Ms. Miller and him. In Mr. Cooper's view, there were too many differences in their circumstances. Ms. Miller had publicly criticized seeking waivers from government officials that would allow reporters to testify about confidential conversations. Mr. Cooper had obtained just such a waiver.

Mr. Cooper also worried about Ms. Miller being at odds with the same prosecutor in an entirely different investigation -- one he feared could taint him by association.

Earlier this month, Time decided to comply with a federal court order requiring it to turn over Mr. Cooper's notes. The Times endorsed Ms. Miller's refusal to reveal any confidential sources. As a result, she is now in jail in Alexandria, Va.

For the news business, this case presents the biggest test of confidential sources in decades. It has led to the worst split in memory between two media giants in an area where news organizations usually present a united front grounded in the First Amendment.

The controversy has done little good for the media's image. Some see arrogance in Ms. Miller's defiance, while others have criticized what they consider to be Time Inc.'s caving to authority.


Meanwhile, two years after the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame was leaked to the press, it remains to be seen whether prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald will conclude that anyone violated the federal law prohibiting the intentional disclosure of a covert agent's name or whether he will file perjury or obstruction of justice charges.

His investigation remains a potential source of political trouble for the Bush administration. Mr. Cooper has now written that top White House aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby talked with him about Ms. Plame, the wife of a former diplomat who is a critic of the administration, and her CIA affiliation. Neither referred to her by name or mentioned her covert status. Earlier, the White House said that it had no evidence that the officials were involved with the case. Mr. Rove is the president's top political strategist, and Mr. Libby is Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.

The chain of events that led to the controversy began with President Bush's Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address. In the speech, he said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

A year before, in February 2002, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV went to Niger to investigate whether Iraq was buying uranium ore there. He had been asked to do so by officials at the CIA, where his wife was a covert operative. He concluded that there wasn't clear evidence of uranium purchases. On July 6, 2003, about three months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Mr. Wilson wrote an opinion article for the New York Times, alleging that the Bush administration had manipulated intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs "to justify an invasion of Iraq."

Five days later, on July 11, 2003, Mr. Cooper called Mr. Rove to ask about the ex-diplomat's claims. The 42-year-old reporter had been on the White House beat for only two weeks after a stint as deputy chief of Time's Washington bureau. An amateur stand-up comedian, Mr. Cooper is the husband of Mandy Grunwald, a prominent Democratic strategist and a daughter of the late Henry Grunwald, the former editor in chief of Time Inc.

According to a first-person account Mr. Cooper published in Time magazine last week, Mr. Rove warned him, "Don't get too far out on Wilson." Mr. Rove also said that the ex-ambassador's wife, whom he didn't refer to by name, worked at the CIA on efforts to curb weapons of mass destruction, Mr. Cooper wrote.

On July 14, 2003, conservative syndicated columnist Robert Novak identified Ms. Plame in his column, which runs in the Washington Post and other newspapers. He cited "senior administration officials" as his sources.

A few days later, Mr. Cooper wrote an online article for Time that also identified Ms. Plame. The Time reporter wrote in his recent first-person account that he couldn't recall whether he first learned her name by reading Mr. Novak's column or from doing research on the Google Web site.

The Justice Department opened an investigation of the leak. In a move that would prove awkward when its own reporter got caught up in the probe, the Times argued in an editorial on Oct. 2, 2003, that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft ought to bring in an outside prosecutor to pursue the probe vigorously. Journalists rely heavily on "the willingness of government officials to defy their bosses and give the public vital information," the editorial said, which is why the Times opposed leak investigations "in principle." However, the editorial added, "that does not mean there can never be a circumstance in which leaks are wrong."

By December, the White House had picked James Comey, then the Manhattan U.S. attorney, to be the No. 2 official at the Justice Department. Three weeks later, he turned to Mr. Fitzgerald, a close friend and career prosecutor, to be special counsel in charge of the leak investigation. The two men had worked together in the 1990s in the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan. The Times heralded the appointment, saying in a Dec. 31, 2003, editorial that Mr. Fitzgerald needed "true operational independence."

Mr. Fitzgerald focused heavily on seeking information from reporters. It isn't publicly known what interaction he had with Mr. Novak. But in the spring of 2004, he sought notes and testimony from Mr. Cooper. That prompted Time and Mr. Cooper in April to hire Mr. Abrams.

Mr. Abrams, 69, was an obvious choice for any news organization facing a legal challenge. In 1971, he helped persuade the Supreme Court that the federal government lacked sufficient justification to stop the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a classified history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Since then, Mr. Abrams, a partner with the New York-based firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel, had taken the lead in numerous legal fights over the First Amendment, including many cases involving the Times and Time Inc. publications.

Murky Connection

Mr. Fitzgerald also turned his attention to Ms. Miller. She had written for the Times about Iraqi efforts to obtain biological and other weapons. Some of these articles supported the Bush administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. In an unusual move, the Times later acknowledged that some of Ms. Miller's reporting had been too credulous.

Ms. Miller, 57, never wrote about Ms. Plame. White House phone records and Mr. Fitzgerald's questioning of government officials may have piqued his interest in her.

Four months after Mr. Abrams agreed to represent Time Inc. and Mr. Cooper, the attorney was hired by the Times to represent Ms. Miller. Their common goal: bar Mr. Fitzgerald from gaining access to the reporters' notes and sources. Journalists sometimes promise confidentiality to protect sources who otherwise wouldn't provide newsworthy information. To maintain credibility, journalists consider it important to uphold confidentiality agreements, even under government pressure.


Mr. Cooper, however, quickly grew concerned that his interests might differ from Ms. Miller's, according to his criminal lawyer, Richard A. Sauber. In August 2004, Mr. Cooper gave a limited deposition to Mr. Fitzgerald about a conversation he had with Mr. Libby, the vice president's chief of staff. Mr. Cooper did so only after Mr. Libby had signed a document, drafted by Mr. Abrams, that waived Mr. Cooper's confidentiality pledge to the White House official.

Six weeks later, on Oct. 8, 2004, Ms. Miller went on NBC's "Today" show and strongly criticized such waivers as coercive. She argued that government officials who decline to sign them could risk losing their jobs, although there is no evidence that happened in this case. Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., the chairman and publisher of the Times, joined Ms. Miller on the show and strongly backed her position.

The Times deferred to its reporter's choices, Mr. Abrams says. "The view at the Times is that the reporter has the right to decide," he explains. "From Judy's perspective, the first thing she wanted to know was what to do to protect her confidential sources, rather than what to do to stay out of jail."

But Ms. Miller's nationally publicized views "tended to undercut Matt's position," since he had sought a waiver from Mr. Libby, says Mr. Sauber, the Cooper lawyer. "He was concerned there would be other points where his interests" and Ms. Miller's "might diverge, and he wanted a lawyer whose only client would be him," Mr. Sauber adds.

When Mr. Cooper gave his limited testimony to Mr. Fitzgerald, he was following the same path as NBC's "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert and Washington Post reporters Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler. Mr. Libby had given those reporters permission to discuss with the prosecutor whether or not they had talked about Ms. Plame.


Mr. Fitzgerald apparently had enough evidence from those reporters to satisfy him because they were never threatened with jail. When Time Inc.'s editor in chief, Norman Pearlstine, saw the others receiving waivers to talk, he says he hoped Mr. Cooper's cooperation would do the same for him. "I looked at what Russert and Pincus did and said, 'How do we get one of those?' " Mr. Pearlstine says. But apparently unlike the others, Mr. Cooper had more information about another source, who turned out to be Mr. Rove.

Mr. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, has said his client "has done nothing wrong." Mr. Libby's attorney, Joseph Tate, hasn't returned phone calls seeking comment.

In addition to the clashing views on waivers, Mr. Cooper soon learned of something else that distinguished him from Ms. Miller: She was in Mr. Fitzgerald's cross hairs in an unrelated case.

In his capacity as U.S. attorney in Chicago, Mr. Fitzgerald had subpoenaed Ms. Miller in July of 2004, seeking several weeks of her phone records from the fall of 2001. He was trying to determine the identity of confidential sources she had used for an article about two Islamic charities under investigation for possible financing of terrorism.

Mr. Fitzgerald said in court papers that reporting by Ms. Miller and another Times staffer inadvertently tipped off the charities about planned federal raids, giving the targets a chance to destroy documents and records. The federal government has frozen the assets of both charities.

Mr. Abrams began representing Ms. Miller and the Times in connection with the Islamic charities matter in July 2004.

"I was concerned as to how" that second probe involving Ms. Miller "would affect Matt's position," says Mr. Sauber, a partner at Fried Frank Harris Shriver & Jacobson, a New York-based firm. Mr. Sauber says Mr. Cooper learned of the Islamic charities probe only after the Times went to court to block the subpoena of Ms. Miller's phone records in October 2004.

Mr. Sauber says he and his client worried that Mr. Fitzgerald might feel particularly antagonistic toward Ms. Miller because of the compromising of the raids on the Islamic charities. Some of that animus might rub off on Mr. Cooper if the two journalists mounted a joint defense in the Plame investigation and used the same lawyer. There was also the danger that judges who reviewed the leak investigation might look at Ms. Miller and the Times more skeptically because of the separate charities case.

Some lawyers and legal-ethics experts say that Mr. Abrams's decision to represent both reporters, despite their different situations, wasn't unethical, but it may have been unwise. "Prudence dictated in this case that the reporters had different interests and would have been well served by having two different legal perspectives in their civil case," says Harvey Silverglate, a civil-liberties attorney in Boston who has taught at Harvard Law School.

Mr. Abrams disagrees. "I didn't think Judy's relationship with Fitzgerald would have anything to do with the prosecutor's relationship with Matt," he says. The overriding interest in responding to the leak probe was to present a unified position based on the First Amendment, he adds.

Time Inc. was aware of the Islamic-charities matter when Mr. Abrams agreed in August 2004 to represent Ms. Miller in the Plame case, the lawyer points out. "As a legal matter, I thought both parties benefited from single representation," he adds. "Though it is true that at the end of the affair, there were differences of approach by Time Inc. and the New York Times."

Mr. Abrams expected Mr. Cooper's limited deposition in August 2004 to be the only time the reporter would have to submit to questioning. "The agreement was Pat [Fitzgerald] could come back for more, but the understanding was he was unlikely to do so," Mr. Abrams says.

Second Subpoena

But the deposition, held in the Washington office of Mr. Abrams's law firm, only whetted Mr. Fitzgerald's appetite. "Matt's testimony about Libby led Pat Fitzgerald to decide he wanted more information about others," Mr. Abrams explains. Specifically, the prosecutor wanted Mr. Cooper to confirm that Mr. Rove was a source of information about Ms. Plame. Within weeks, Mr. Cooper had a second subpoena in hand.

Mr. Fitzgerald subpoenaed Ms. Miller as well, but she wasn't willing to cooperate. Mr. Fitzgerald "wanted things we were unprepared to give," Mr. Abrams says, declining to elaborate. "The fact that Fitzgerald served a new subpoena on Matt was something Judy took into account." Seeing what happened to Mr. Cooper, the Times reporter feared that if she agreed to talk once, that would only open the door to more demands from the prosecutor.

Mr. Abrams fought the subpoenas in the Plame probe up to the appellate federal court in Washington. His argument before a three-judge panel last December faltered when he seemed to have trouble explaining why the current case was different from Branzburg v. Hayes, a 1972 Supreme Court ruling in which the justices said that a reporter who had witnessed a crime had no right to keep his sources confidential.

Jim Kelly, Time magazine's managing editor was in the courtroom in December and briefed his boss, Mr. Pearlstine, the next day. Things went "very badly," Mr. Kelly recalls saying.

Until then, Mr. Pearlstine says he viewed the leak investigation as "a speck on the horizon, at best." Now he realized that "there were institutional issues that weren't being addressed," he says. Asked to elaborate, he would say only that he came to appreciate the legal differences between defending an individual and defending a corporation. Time Inc. technically owned an electronic file that contained Mr. Cooper's notes, he says. As a result, the parent company could potentially be held in contempt of court and forced to pay large fines if its magazine and reporter didn't cooperate.

Ms. Miller, by contrast, apparently kept personal possession of her notes, and the Times's view is that it never had them.

In February, the appeals court ruled 3-0 against Mr. Abrams in the Plame case. Based on Mr. Fitzgerald's secret representations to the court, the judges said that national security overrode any First Amendment concerns.

By the time the court ruled against Mr. Cooper and Ms. Miller, Time Inc. had lined up former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, a well-connected Republican, to represent it and Mr. Cooper.

Mr. Abrams continued to represent Ms. Miller. In February, he scored a victory over Mr. Fitzgerald in the Islamic-charities case, when a federal judge in Manhattan invoked the First Amendment to block the prosecutor from obtaining Ms. Miller's 2001 phone records.

With Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper potentially facing civil-contempt findings and jail in the Plame investigation, Mr. Pearlstine spoke with Mr. Sulzberger, the chairman and publisher of the Times. Mr. Pearlstine says that Mr. Sulzberger suggested they offer buttons to employees of their organizations declaring, "Free Judy, Free Matt, Free Speech." Mr. Pearlstine demurred.

On June 29, the Supreme Court declined to step into the Plame case.

Mr. Cooper testified before the grand jury after Mr. Rove agreed to waive their confidentiality agreement. As a result, the Time reporter avoided jail. Ms. Miller now could remain in jail in northern Virginia until the Plame grand jury's term expires in October -- or possibly longer, if the grand jury is extended.

Write to Laurie P. Cohen at laurie.cohen@wsj.com, Joe Hagan at joe.hagan@wsj.com and Anne Marie Squeo at annemarie.squeo@wsj.com

White House Memos Offer Opinions on Supreme Court

By JOHN M. BRODER and CAROLYN MARSHALL
Published: July 30, 2005
LOS ANGELES, July 29 - For those seeking clues to the judicial philosophy of John G. Roberts, documents from his years as a lawyer in the White House counsel's office during the Reagan administration provide revealing evidence.

After Dispute, Judge's Confirmation Hearings Set to Start Sept. 6 (July 30, 2005)

Forum: Issues Before the Supreme Court
In early 1983, Mr. Roberts was asked to analyze a proposal pushed by Warren E. Burger, then the chief justice, to create a new, national-level federal appeals court to relieve some of the Supreme Court's workload.

Mr. Roberts wrote in a memorandum to his boss, Fred F. Fielding, the White House counsel, that he thought creation of the new court, known as the intercircuit tribunal, was a "terrible idea." Mr. Roberts, who is President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, said the court had only itself to blame for its burden of cases.

"If the justices truly think they are overworked, the cure lies close at hand," Mr. Roberts wrote. "The fault lies with the justices themselves, who unnecessarily take too many cases and issue opinions so confusing that they often do not even resolve the question presented."

He wrote that if the court took fewer death penalty and prisoner-rights cases, the docket would be cut by at least a half-dozen cases a year. He added a comment that may signal his view of the Supreme Court's proper role.

"So long as the court views itself as ultimately responsible for governing all aspects of our society, it will, understandably, be overworked," Mr. Roberts wrote. "A new court will not solve this problem."

Mr. Roberts worked in the Reagan White House counsel's office from 1982 to 1986. The files were among papers the Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library has released over the years in response to requests for material from the Reagan White House about administration of the courts.

Mr. Roberts's views on the intrusiveness of the Supreme Court appear to be a product of his consistently conservative beliefs and in part a reflection of his service as a clerk to Justice William H. Rehnquist, who succeeded Justice Burger as chief in 1986. Chief Justice Rehnquist has presided over a significant reduction in the number of cases the court hears each term, to roughly 80 a year compared with 150 a year under Chief Justice Burger.

Mr. Roberts, in a second memorandum on the proposed new appellate court, wrote somewhat tartly that he was glad that the Supreme Court did not take more cases.

"The generally accepted notion that the court can only hear roughly 150 cases each term gives the same sense of reassurance as the adjournment of the court in July, when we know that the Constitution is safe for the summer," he wrote.

Elsewhere in the memorandum, he noted that the main reason cited for a new appeals court was to relieve the high court's workload.

"While some of the tales of woe emanating from the court are enough to bring tears to the eyes," he wrote, "it is true that only Supreme Court justices and schoolchildren are expected to and do take the entire summer off."

He estimated that the new court could potentially relieve the Supreme Court of 40 cases a year. But he suggested that the justices would respond by taking 40 new cases.

The idea of a new appeals court just below the Supreme Court was kicked around in Congress and the judiciary for several more years after the Burger proposal, but was never adopted.

Later in 1983, Mr. Roberts addressed a proposed constitutional amendment setting a 10-year term of office for federal judges. The Justice Department opposed the measure on the ground that life tenure was critical to judicial independence. Mr. Roberts did not disagree, but noted that the framers had adopted life tenure at a time when life expectancy was significantly shorter. He then made an argument in favor of limited terms.

"Setting a term of, say, 15 years would ensure that federal judges would not lose all touch with reality through decades of ivory tower existence," Mr. Roberts wrote. "It would also provide a more regular and greater degree of turnover among the judges."

He went on to argue that lifetime tenure was more defensible when judges limited themselves to strict application of the Constitution. When judges strayed into social policy-making, he said, they made a case for limited terms. "The federal judiciary today benefits from an insulation from political pressure even as it usurps the roles of the political branches," he said.

On another issue involving court administration, Mr. Roberts reviewed a proposal by Chief Justice Burger for a new administrative officer at the Supreme Court called the court chancellor.

"Title VII, perhaps the silliest of the provisions of the bill, would create a new office with the Anglomaniacal title of 'Chancellor of the United States,' " Mr. Roberts wrote in 1983. "The proposal is another of the chief justice's pet projects, so it is not surprising that the new American chancellor would be appointed by and serve at the pleasure of the chief, and have the duty of assisting the chief in the performance of his nonjudicial functions."

Chief Justice Burger did establish an administrative office to handle nonjudicial matters, but the officer does not carry the title of chancellor.

Senate Makes Permanent Nearly All Provisions of Patriot Act, With a Few Restrictions

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: July 30, 2005
WASHINGTON, July 29 - The Senate voted unanimously on Friday to make permanent virtually all the main provisions of the law known as the USA Patriot Act, after Republican leaders agreed to include additional civil rights safeguards and to forestall any expansion of the government's counterterrorism powers.

The House passed a bill of its own last week that would also extend the law's surveillance and law enforcement powers, which the Bush administration considers critical to combating terrorism. While the House and Senate bills are not identical, the differences are modest enough that Congressional officials said they were confident that they could work out a compromise.

The Patriot Act has become a target of criticism since it was passed in the weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with more than 300 communities voicing formal concerns about what they see as its chilling effect on civil liberties. But many opponents of the law, as well as many supporters, said the Senate bill was an acceptable compromise after months of heated debate over the scope of the government's authority to track and eavesdrop on terror suspects.

Senate Republican leaders had been eager to win approval of their measure before leaving Washington for a monthlong recess. They rushed the bill to the Senate floor Friday evening after persuading Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who leads the Intelligence Committee, to sign on to the plan, Congressional officials said. The action came by unanimous consent as the Senate wrapped up its business.

Mr. Roberts had been pushing for changes that would have expanded the Patriot Act to allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation to demand records in terror investigations through administrative subpoenas, without a judge's order, and to have sole discretion in deciding whether to monitor the mail of terror suspects. He had argued that the changes would strengthen the F.B.I.'s ability to deter terrorist attacks.

The Bush administration had pressed for the expanded subpoena powers as well. But Congressional officials said that after several days of private discussions among Senate leaders, Senator Roberts agreed not to pursue the administrative subpoenas or other measures endorsed by the Intelligence Committee in order to ensure quick reauthorization of the Patriot Act in some form.

Senator Roberts "had a desire to move the bill, no matter how defective he thought it might be," said a senior Republican aide in the Senate who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the negotiations. But Republican officials said that the senator still planned to seek the expanded subpoena power for the F.B.I. through separate legislation, and that he had received assurances in this week's discussions that Republican leaders would back those efforts if and when he decided to revisit the issue.

The bill approved Friday by the Senate makes permanent 14 of the 16 antiterrorism provisions of the Patriot Act that were set to expire at the end of the year. The two remaining sections - particularly controversial provisions that allow the government to conduct roving wiretaps and to demand records from institutions like libraries - are to expire in four years unless Congress acts to reauthorize them.

The legislation also puts in place several new restrictions on the government's powers, including a higher standard of proof for the government in demanding library and business records, greater judicial oversight and increased reporting to Congress on antiterrorism operations, time restrictions on the use of secret searches, and limits on roving wiretaps. Civil rights advocates saw the new limits as welcome steps.

Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said: "We think this is a positive step and puts in place significant restrictions over the current law. It doesn't fully safeguard constitutional freedoms, but it's a significant improvement."

President Bush had pushed repeatedly for the quick reauthorization of the Patriot Act, and Congressional officials said Republican leaders wanted to get the bill approved before the recess to avoid a drawn-out debate in the fall that might have pitted the Judiciary Committee bill against Mr. Roberts's version.

"I don't think anyone wanted to be responsible for missing our deadline on an issue this critical," said a senior Republican aide on the Judiciary Committee who spoke on condition of anonymity because this week's negotiations were conducted in private.

While Mr. Roberts and others had pushed for greater F.B.I. power, the aide said, "I think they realized that it might not be worth the fight if you're probably not going to win anyway, and people much preferred a safe reauthorization now to a risky one later on."

Meanwhile, in a federal court decision released Friday involving the Patriot Act, a judge in Los Angeles ruled that portions of the law regarding the definition of "material support" to terrorism were too vague and thus unconstitutional.

Congress had tried to fix the problem by amending the language as part of last year's intelligence reform bill, after the same district judge, Audrey Collins, ruled twice that the wording raised constitutional problems. Judge Collins said in her latest ruling that the changes by Congress adequately clarified what constituted providing "personnel" to banned terrorist groups, but that the wording on providing "training" and other support remained "impermissibly vague."

David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University who had argued the case on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the decision was an affirmation of Americans' right to support lawful, nonviolent causes associated with even those groups that the United States has banned. "This law is so sweeping that it makes it a crime for our clients to provide medical services to tsunami survivors in Sri Lanka and to provide assistance in human rights advocacy to the Kurds in Turkey," Professor Cole said.

The Justice Department said it was pleased that the judge had ruled in its favor in four of the five claims over the material support law. The department said in a statement that "the judge's ruling affects only one small aspect of the Patriot Act" and that the law remains critical to fighting terrorism.

On Capitol Hill, A Flurry of GOP Victories

By Charles Babington and Justin Blum

After years of partisan impasses and legislative failures, Congress in a matter of hours passes or advances three far-reaching bills that will allocate billions of dollars and set new policies for guns, roads and energy.

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

Bolton Is Likely to Receive Recess Appointment to U.N. Post

By Peter Baker

The White House signaled yesterday that President Bush is likely to circumvent the Senate and install John R. Bolton as U.N. ambassador without a confirmation vote, provoking anger among Democratic lawmakers even as they consider the president's Supreme Court nominee.

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

Senator now opposes Bush on stem cells Globe and Mail
In a rebuff to US President George W. Bush and the Christian right, Bill Frist, a leading Senate Republican and potential presidential candidate, announced he would back legislation to increase financing for embryonic stem-cell research. Dr. Frist, a transplant surgeon as well as the Senate Majority Leader, said the issue is "not just a matter of faith; it's a matter of science. "In all forms of stem-cell research, I see today . . . great promise to heal," Dr. Frist told the Senate. "Whether it's diabetes, Parkinson's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease or spinal-cord injuries, stem cells offer hope for treatment that other lines of research cannot offer." Dr. Frist's decision to break with the White House on the issue resulted in sharp criticism from the Christian right, which sees embryonic stem-cell research as the equivalent of abortion. Dr. Frist, who is firmly opposed to abortion, had earlier said he did not support expanding funding for stem-cell research. "Senator Frist should not expect support and endorsement from the pro-life community if he votes for embryonic-research funding," warned Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition. Some fellow Republicans also lashed out at Dr. Frist. Tom DeLay, the Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, said Dr. Frist remains a good man. "He's simply advocating bad policy." But the change of heart won praise from backers of expanded embryonic stem-cell research, including Nancy Reagan, the widow of former president Ronald Reagan, who died of Alzheimer's disease. She said in a statement that the research has "the potential to alleviate so much suffering." Mary Hendrix, president and scientific director of Children's Memorial Research Center at Northwestern University in Chicago, said in an interview that she was impressed with how Dr. Frist was willing to take a stand on the issue after originally backing away. "I see this as an attempt to get back to basics," she said. Dr. Frist is believed to be seriously considering a run for the Republican nomination for president in 2008, and his break with the evangelical right on this issue could hurt him. Yet by distancing himself from their views, he may be situating himself much closer to the U.S. mainstream. Opinion polls consistently show that Americans favour expansion of embryonic stem-cell research, considered as providing hope for treatment for a range of debilitating ailments. A CBS News Poll conducted two weeks ago showed that 56 per cent of respondents approved of embryonic stem-cell research and 30 per cent disapproved. Even among Republicans, 46 per cent backed the research compared with 42 per cent against. "All of the polls we have done have found high support for public funding of stem-cell research," said Mark Schulman, president of Schulman, Ronca & Bucuvalas, an opinion-research firm. "This is another case where the Bush administration and the Republican congressional leadership seem to be out of step" with the public. Other issues where Mr. Bush has pushed right-wing views that were at odds with public opinion include refusing to extend the ban on assault weapons or to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo, the brain-dead Florida woman who died after a court-authorized removal of her feeding tube. At issue is a bill moving through Congress that would expand financial support for embryonic stem-cell research, which has been held up in the Senate. Mr. Bush has threatened to veto the bill on moral grounds. The White House made an effort yesterday to minimize the significance of Dr. Frist's split with the President. The two men appeared together at the White House shortly after Dr. Frist's speech to mark the passage of another health-related bill and were seen joking together. Mr. Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan said when Mr. Frist advised Mr. Bush he would be changing his mind on stem-cell research, the President responded that the senator should "vote your conscience when it comes to this legislation." But there were no signs Mr. Bush would back down from his veto threat. "The President is someone who believes he shouldn't be creating life for the sole purpose of destroying it." The split with Dr. Frist is occurring at a time of increasing political woes for Mr. Bush. The continuing insurgency and growing death toll in Iraq along with domestic political problems over reform to social security have helped drag down the President's popularity ratings. A Gallup poll made public yesterday, showed 44 per cent of Americans approve of Mr. Bush, the lowest rating of his presidency. Fifty-one per cent of Americans disapprove of the job he is doing as President. Dr. Frist embarrassed himself during the Schiavo controversy by declaring after watching videos of the ailing woman that she was "not somebody in a persistent vegetative state." That diagnosis proved wildly off the mark after a subsequent autopsy report showed she had suffered severe and irreversible brain damage. He later denied ever making such a diagnosis.
Defection Bares Stem Cell Rifts Los Angeles Times
Frist supports funding for stem cell study Financial Times
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S free-trade pact with Central America draws mixed reactions Xinhua
The ratification of the US-Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) by the US Congress Thursday drew different reactions among governments and opposition forces of the countries participating in the commercial pact. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have already ratified the treaty, with Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Dominican Republic yet to do so. In Managua, Nicaraguan Industry Minister Azucena Castillo said the National Assembly now has to ratify CAFTA-DR, adding that representatives of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party promised they will sign a majority statement to ratify it before next Monday. According to the official, a recent opinion poll in Nicaragua showed that 62 percent of Nicaraguans support the agreement with the United States. But the opposition Sandinista Front of National Liberation said it will block the legislative approval of CAFTA-DR. Meanwhile, in San Salvador, Salvadorean President Elias AntonioSaca expressed his satisfaction about the ratification, saying Central America and Dominican Republic have entered "into the major leagues of international trade." Saca termed the trade agreement, which may come into effect on Jan. 1, 2006, in the four countries that have ratified it, as a "historic step." Nevertheless, Representative Hugo Martinez, of the opposition party Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, said El Salvador "is not prepared for such a treaty because the development of agriculture and economy is no match for that in the North Americancountry." The ratification of the commercial pact was also celebrated by the Guatemalan government, as "it grants legal certainty" to foreign investors. "It is excellent news the document was approved," Economy Minister Marcio Cuevas said in Washington. "Now there is legal certainty." The United States is Guatemala's main trade partner. In contrast, different trade unions of Guatemala are preparing a protest on Friday against the ratification of CAFTA-DR. In Santo Domingo, Kevin Manning, president of Dominican Republic's Chamber of Commerce, said the free trade agreement "is a matter of great interests for Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, the United States and the region in general." Leonardo Valverde, a spokesman for some 15 organizations in north Dominican Republic, said they will start a series of protests against the agreement to ask legislators and the government to "clearly" explain the consequences of CAFTA-DR. US ambassador to Dominican Republic Hans Hertell said Wednesdaythat "a delay in the ratification by Dominican Congress would jeopardize foreign investments." CAFTA-DR was inked on May 24, 2004, by the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and the United States, and in August of that year Dominican Republic also signed the agreement.
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Officials: Bush Plans to Install Bolton Guardian Unlimited
Administration officials say President Bush is preparing to use constitutional powers rarely employed for major appointments to bypass the Senate and install - if only temporarily - Jo hn Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Bush intends to use a recess appointment to put the controversial conservative in the post before leaving Washington on Tuesday to spend August at his Texas ranch, said two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because Bush has not made the announcement. Recess appointments, allowed only while Congress is on breaks, let presidents get around the required Senate confirmation of nominees. The House and Senate recessed on Friday until Sept. 6. Under the Constitution, a recess appointment during the lawmakers' August break would last until the next Congress, which begins in January 2007. In Bolton's case, a recess appointment would culminate a bitter, five-month battle between the White House and Democrats that had left his nomination stalled in the Republican-run Senate. Among the most contentious nominations Bush has made as president, Bolton was criticized for bad-mouthing the very world body where he would be the nation's chief diplomat. Democrats also accused him of mistreating subordinates and intimidating intelligence analysts who didn't support his hawkish ideology. Investigations ended with no proof of improper actions. The White House argued that Bolton, the former undersecretary of state for arms control and long one of Bush's most conservative foreign policy advisers, is exactly the man to whip into shape a United Nations badly in need of reform. Democrats objected strenuously to the president's plans. "It's the wrong thing to do. John Bolton is the wrong person for the job,'' said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., a member of Foreign Relations Committee. "The president is entitled to take that action, but I don't think it will serve American foreign policy well.'' Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said a recess appointment of this "badly flawed, ill-suited candidate'' would be an abuse of power. Bush counselor Dan Bartlett said the president had not made a final decision on whether to make a recess appointment. He retains that right to do, but he will continue to work with the Senate as long as he can,'' Bartlett said. "But he has not made a decision.'' Earlier Friday, though, White House press secretary Scott McClellan gave the strongest indication yet that Bush planned to make a recess appointment of Bolton, saying the vacancy needs to be filled before the U.N. General Assembly's annual meeting in mid-September. Former Sen. John Danforth left the post in January. "It's important that we get our permanent representative in place,'' McClellan said. "This is a critical time and it's important to continue moving forward on comprehensive reform.'' A recess appointment would risk annoying Democrats at a time when his nomination of John Roberts to serve on the Supreme Court is under Senate consideration. And it could hamper Bolton at the United Nations, sending him there as a short-timer without the Senate's backing. In the face of objections from most Democrats and at least one Republican, Bush has steadfastly refused to withdraw Bolton's nomination - even after the Foreign Relations Committee sent it to the full Senate without the customary recommendation to approve it. Though the debate over Bolton had largely faded from the headlines, critics raised fresh concerns this week when it surfaced that Bolton had neglected to tell Congress that he had been interviewed in 2003 in a government investigation into faulty prewar intelligence on Iraq. Thirty-five Democratic senators and one independent, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont, urged Bush against a recess appointment in a letter released Friday. "There's just too much unanswered about Bolton, and I think the president would make a truly serious mistake if he makes a recess appointment,'' Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview.
Report: Bush to Appoint Bolton Next Week FOX News
Bolton to get recess appointment, source says Seattle Times
CBS News - Los Angeles Times - Bloomberg - Reuters - all 873 related »

Terrorisim fatwa denounced as ‘bogus’ Daily Times
WASHINGTON: The fatwa against terrorism issued here on Thursday by the Fiqh Council of North America has been denounced as “bogus. According to Steven A Emerson, executive director of the Washington-based Investigative Project on Terrorism, the fatwa is “bogus” since it does not renounce nor even acknowledge the existence of an Islamic jihadist culture that has permeated mosques and young Muslims around the world. It does not renounce Jihad let alone admit that it has been used to justify Islamic terrorist acts. It does not condemn by name any Islamic group or leader. “In short, it is a fake fatwa designed merely to deceive the American public into believing that these groups are moderate,” he added. He said the Fiqh Council and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the two bodies behind the production of the fatwa, have been directly linked to and associated with Islamic terrorist groups and Islamic extremist organisations. One of them is an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a current terrorist case, another previous a financier to Al Qaeda. He quotes Judea Pearl, father of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, as maintaining that the fatwa is a “vacuous because it does not name the perpetrators of Islamic terrorist theologies and leaders of Islamic movements.” Emerson said officials of both groups have been linked to various terrorist organisations: The Chairman of the Fiqh Council, Taha Jaber Al-Alwani, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against Sami al-Arian, the alleged North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, whose trial began in June 2005 in Tampa, Florida. Alwani has been named in court documents as an official of several entities in northern Virginia suspected of being connected to terrorist financing. Documents released in the Al Arian trial show that Alwani funded the Islamic Jihad front groups in Tampa. Another past trustee of the Fiqh Council, Abdurrahman Alamoudi, he pointed out, is serving a 23-year prison sentence for illegal financial dealings with Libya and immigration fraud, who has admitted to his part in a plot to assassinate the Saudi Crown Prince. In 1998, Fiqh Council member Sheikh Muhammad al-Hanooti, Emerson alleged, gave a speech calling for jihad against the United States and the United Kingdom, saying that “Allah will curse the Americans and British” and “Allah, the curse of Allah will become true on the infidel Jews and on the tyrannical Americans.” Additionally, Hanooti is strongly linked to Hamas, Fiqh Council chairman Muzammil Siddiqui,, Emerson continued, told a rally in Washington on 28 October 2000, "America has to learn - if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of God will come.” Emerson also attacked CAIR, charging that in the past four years, several CAIR officials have been convicted of or charged with various terrorism-related offenses. CAIR, he added, had also championed and defended officials of Islamic terrorist groups as well as attacked the prosecutions of Islamic terrorists arrested and/or convicted since 9-11. It had and attacked the government’s freezing of Islamic terrorist fronts as part of a “war against Islam” by the United States. Emerson alleged that another signatory, the Muslim American Society, is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, whose publications have repeatedly supported suicide bombings.
Ruling condemns violence Rocky Mountain News
Muslim scholars decry terror NorthJersey.com
Staten Island Advance - Chicago Tribune - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty - Newsday - all 249 related »

Lightning kills Scout leader; boy brain-dead Boston Globe
Lightning struck a group of Boy Scouts taking shelter from a storm, killing the troop leader and leaving a 13-year-old boy brain-dead in the latest tragedy to befall the organization this week, authorities said. Six others were injured when the lightning bolt made a direct strike on a tarp the Scouts had set up in a meadow in Sequoia National Park on Thursday. Ryan Collins, 13, was being kept on a ventilator so that his organs could be donated, the boy's grandfather said yesterday. Collins was listed in critical condition at University Medical Center in Fresno, but his family said they had given up hope.
Three Killed, 7 Hurt by Lightning FOX News
Scout leader killed by lightning strike San Francisco Chronicle
San Jose Mercury News - Houston Chronicle - New York Times - Los Angeles Times - all 391 related »

US Astronomers Say They Have Found a 10th Planet Beyond Pluto

http://enews.voanews.com/t?ctl=E64BF5:2F72C9D

Planet is far beyond Pluto in the outlying region of the solar system

Artist's concept of 10th planetSeventy-five years after the discovery
of the planet Pluto, U.S. astronomers say they have discovered a tenth
planet far beyond Pluto in the outlying region of the solar system.
The object is so distant that the scientists have not yet been able to
determine its precise size and mass.

California Institute of Technology astronomer Michael Brown and
colleagues first saw this planet in January with a telescope at the
Palomar Observatory near San Diego. They had planned to withhold an
announcement until they could figure out its exact diameter and mass.
But they rushed the news out prematurely Friday when they discovered
that someone had broken into their internet website and learned of the
finding, possibly with the intent of breaking the information.

Mr. Brown estimates the new planet to be about 1 1/2 times Pluto's
size, but nearly twice as far from the Sun at the most distant point
in its oval orbit. That makes it 97 times further from the Sun than
Earth is. It is so far away that it takes 280 years to go around the
Sun and is the farthest solar system object ever found.

"It's a very cold, very distant place. If you were standing on the
surface and you held a pin at arm's length, you could cover the Sun
with the head of the pin. It's not a place you'd really want to go for
a summer vacation," he said.

The light emitted from the body indicates that its surface is covered
mostly with methane ice, as Pluto is. Also like Pluto, it is in the
same group of celestial objects known as the Kuiper Belt, a region
beyond Neptune where icy bodies are abundant. Kuiper Belt objects such
as Pluto and the new planet are also much higher than the plane of the
first eight planets.

Because of the location and because it is smaller than the other
seven, some scientists have wanted to demote Pluto from planetary
status and call it an asteroid. Many may not recognize the new object
as a planet, either. Mr. Brown says he once held the same opinion of
Pluto. But he finally changed his mind and therefore sees the new body
as a planet, too.

"Pluto has been called a planet for so long that I think we're never
going to not call Pluto a planet. If Pluto is going to be called a
planet, then anything larger than Pluto is a planet. Things that are
smaller I think we just call them typical members of the Kuiper Belt
and they don't join this very special class of things that are
planets," he said.

Mr. Brown says the new planet is bright enough for amateur astronomers
to see it now that the location is known. He notes that it remained
undiscovered until now simply because it is so high above the plane of
the solar system.

"This object is almost at a 45 degree angle outside of this plane.
Nobody looks that high up in the sky for these sorts of objects. The
only reason we have been looking that high is because we have looked
everywhere else so far and that is where were looking next," he said.

The scientists have submitted the information and a suggested name to
the International Astronomical Union, a professional organization in
Paris that foster cooperation among astronomers in member national
academies. They are not revealing the name until it is approved.

Top Senate Republican Breaks with White House to Endorse Stem Cell
Research

http://enews.voanews.com/t?ctl=E64BF7:2F72C9D

Majority Leader Bill Frist says stem cells offer hope for treatment
that other lines of research simply cannot offer

Bill FristSenate Majority Leader Bill Frist Friday expressed his
support for legislation to expand federal funding of embryonic stem
cell research. The position puts him at odds with President Bush and
religious conservatives, whose support he may need if he makes a run
for the White House in 2008.

In a speech on the Senate floor, Senator Frist signaled his support
for House-passed legislation that would allow research on frozen human
embryos left over from fertility treatments. The measure would lift
restrictions imposed by President Bush in 2001.

The Tennessee Republican, who is also a heart and lung surgeon, said
loosening the limitations imposed by the President could bring
potential new treatments for certain diseases. "Stem cells offer hope
for treatment that other lines of research simply cannot offer," he
said.

Supporters of the bill say such research could offer treatment of
incurable conditions, including some forms of cancer and Alzheimer's
disease.

The announcement was welcomed by Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania
Republican, who is sponsoring stem cell legislation and who is also a
cancer patient. "I believe that the speech he has just made on the
Senate floor is the most important speech made this year," said
Senator Specter.

The top Democrat in the Senate, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, echoed
the comments. "It was a moral decision made by the Majority Leader of
the United States Senate," he said, "a decision that will bring hope
to millions of Americans."

Opponents of expanding stem cell research, who believe life begins at
conception, say the procedure is wrong because it involves the
destruction of an embryo. Among those opponents is President Bush, who
is standing by his decision to veto the legislation. "Taxpayer money
should not be used to create life for the sole purpose of destroying
it," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

Senator Frist is seen as a likely candidate for president in 2008, and
his announcement could have an impact on his support among religious
conservatives, who helped elect President Bush in 2000 and again in
2004. In making his announcement, Mr. Frist said his position is
anchored in his religious faith, saying he remains pro-life. But he
said the issue to him is not just a matter of faith, it is a matter of
science.

Immediately after the speech, the Christian Defense Coalition issued a
statement saying Senator Frist should not expect support and
endorsement from the pro-life community if he votes for embryonic
research funding. Although Mr. Frist's announcement could alienate
many anti-abortion conservatives, it could also attract support from
moderate voters.

The Senate, where the legislation had stalled before the Senate
Majority Leader's comments, could take up the measure after it returns
from its August recess.

Weekend Video

The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism.

Beyond Downing Street Town Hall Meeting

Featuring Nafeez M. Ahmed
This presentation by eminent researcher Ahmed was recorded at the American University during the Washington, D.C. Emergency Truth Convergence Saturday, July 23 Real Video.


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9626.htm

http://snipurl.com/gmkz

Exclusive: Secret Memo—Send to Be Tortured

By Michael Isikoff

This memo appears to be the first that directly questions the legal premises of the Bush administration policy of "extraordinary rendition"—a secret program under which terror suspects are transferred to foreign countries that have been widely criticized for practicing torture.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9620.htm

http://snipurl.com/gml1

Terror attacks are response to military actions

Terrorism is actually a response to military interventions perpetrated by western governments.

By Linda McQuaig

In the official, mainstream view of terrorism — the view trumpeted by western governments, think tanks and media commentators — terrorists are freedom-loathing zealots with an irrational hatred of our western lifestyle and culture.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9623.htm

http://snipurl.com/gml2

Carter: Guantanamo's an embarrassment, war unjust:

I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false.
http://www.sltrib.com/nationworld/ci_2903077

http://snipurl.com/gmlm



Operation: Enduring Presence:

The issue of permanent bases cuts to the heart of not only how long we intend to stay in Iraq, but why we got there in the first place.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/23755/



Cheney's boundless Iraq profiteering:

Things are going well in Iraq for the invaders. Well, at least for some people, such as US Vice-President Richard Cheney. He is receiving more than $US1 million ($A1.3 million) a year from Halliburton, the company of which he was CEO from 1995 to 2000, in "deferred remuneration" while he is VP. He is worth every penny.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9614.htm

http://snipurl.com/gmln



5,000 US Troops Have Gone AWOL:

Getting Out of Iraq...One Way or Another
http://www.counterpunch.com/patrick07302005.html

http://snipurl.com/gmlo



David Antoon : The Reality Of War:

When the Bush twins are drafted, along with the children of Senators, Congressmen, corporate "fat cats", neocons, and the "media cheerleaders" for this war, perhaps then, and only then, will the cost of war be borne by all.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9616.htm

http://snipurl.com/gmlp



U.S. territories hotbed for Army recruits:

High school graduates from places like Micronesia and the Philippines are signing up in droves, looking for a good paycheck.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopN...territories.xml

http://snipurl.com/gmlq

David Ray Griffin : 9/11 and the Mainstream Press :

You might assume that the 9/11 Commission would have played the role of an impartial jury, simply evaluating the evidence for the competing conspiracy theories and deciding which one was more strongly supported.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9617.htm

http://snipurl.com/gmlz



Flawed Assumptions: 9/11 in Historical Perspective:

Deep Politics: Drugs, Oil, Covert Operations and Terrorism. A briefing for Congressional staff
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9619.htm

http://snipurl.com/gmm0



Roberts' radicalism needs media scrutiny:

Roberts argued to the Supreme Court that Roe vs. Wade should be "overruled." • He won a case blocking doctors in many cases from even discussing reproductive options with their patients. • He has ruled in favor of sweeping powers for the president in this state of perpetual war -- with frightening implications for our civil liberties.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9621.htm

http://snipurl.com/gmm1



Roberts Had Larger 2000 Recount Role :

The role of US Supreme Court nominee John Roberts in the 2000 election aftermath in Florida was larger than has been reported. Roberts helped prepare the Supreme Court case.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9618.htm

http://snipurl.com/gmm2



Dodd: Bolton Lacks Support for U.N. Post :

`He's damaged goods. This is a person who lacks credibility,'' said Sen. Christopher Dodd, a senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0...5179832,00.html

http://snipurl.com/gmm3

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...1088709,00.html


MARK WILSON / GETTYRove is in the hot seat along with Powell
From the Magazine | Notebook
When They Knew

By MASSIMO CALABRESI

Posted Sunday, Jul. 31, 2005
As the investigation tightens into the leak of the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, sources tell TIME some White House officials may have learned she was married to former ambassador Joseph Wilson weeks before his July 6, 2003, Op-Ed piece criticizing the Administration. That prospect increases the chances that White House official Karl Rove and others learned about Plame from within the Administration rather than from media contacts. Rove has told investigators he believes he learned of her directly or indirectly from reporters, according to his lawyer.

The previously undisclosed fact gathering began in the first week of June 2003 at the CIA, when its public-affairs office received an inquiry about Wilson's trip to Africa from veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus. That office then contacted Plame's unit, which had sent Wilson to Niger, but stopped short of drafting an internal report. The same week, Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman asked for and received a memo on the Wilson trip from Carl Ford, head of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Sources familiar with the memo, which disclosed Plame's relationship to Wilson, say Secretary of State Colin Powell read it in mid-June. Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage may have received a copy then too.

When Pincus' article ran on June 12, the circle of senior officials who knew about the identity of Wilson's wife expanded. "After Pincus," a former intelligence officer says, "there was general discussion with the National Security Council and the White House and State Department and others" about Wilson's trip and its origins. A source familiar with the memo says neither Powell nor Armitage spoke to the White House about it until after July 6. John McLaughlin, then deputy head of the CIA, confirms that the White House asked about the Wilson trip, but can't remember exactly when. One thing he's sure of, says McLaughlin, who has been interviewed by prosecutors, is that "we looked into it and found the facts of it, and passed it on." --By Massimo Calabresi. With reporting by Timothy J. Burger, Michael Duffy and Viveca Novak

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/01/politics...yv+CSUr5t+LWZbA

Spy's Notes on Iraqi Aims Were Shelved, Suit Says

By JAMES RISEN
Published: August 1, 2005
WASHINGTON, July 31 - The Central Intelligence Agency was told by an informant in the spring of 2001 that Iraq had abandoned a major element of its nuclear weapons program, but the agency did not share the information with other agencies or with senior policy makers, a former C.I.A. officer has charged.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court here in December, the former C.I.A. officer, whose name remains secret, said that the informant told him that Iraq's uranium enrichment program had ended years earlier and that centrifuge components from the scuttled program were available for examination and even purchase.

The officer, an employee at the agency for more than 20 years, including several years in a clandestine unit assigned to gather intelligence related to illicit weapons, was fired in 2004.

In his lawsuit, he says his dismissal was punishment for his reports questioning the agency's assumptions on a series of weapons-related matters. Among other things, he charged that he had been the target of retaliation for his refusal to go along with the agency's intelligence conclusions.

Michelle Neff, a C.I.A. spokeswoman, said the agency would not comment on the lawsuit.

It was not possible to verify independently the former officer's allegations concerning his reporting on illicit weapons.

His information on the Iraqi nuclear program, described as coming from a significant source, would have arrived at a time when the C.I.A. was starting to reconsider whether Iraq had revived its efforts to develop nuclear weapons. The agency's conclusion that this was happening, eventually made public by the Bush administration in 2002 as part of its rationale for war, has since been found to be incorrect.

While the existence of the lawsuit has previously been reported, details of the case have not been made public because the documents in his suit have been heavily censored by the government and the substance of the claims are classified. The officer's name remains secret, in part because disclosing it might jeopardize the agency's sources or operations.

Several people with detailed knowledge of the case provided information to The New York Times about his allegations, but insisted on anonymity because the matter is classified.

The former officer's lawyer, Roy W. Krieger, said he could not discuss his client's claims. He likened his client's situation to that of Valerie Wilson, also known as Valerie Plame, the clandestine C.I.A. officer whose role was leaked to the press after her husband publicly challenged some administration conclusions about Iraq's nuclear ambitions. (The former officer and Ms. Wilson worked in the same unit of the agency.)

"In both cases, officials brought unwelcome information on W.M.D. in the period prior to the Iraq invasion, and retribution followed," said Mr. Krieger, referring to weapons of mass destruction.

In court documents, the former officer says that he learned in 2003 that he was the subject of a counterintelligence investigation and accused of having sex with a female contact, a charge he denies. Eight months after learning of the investigation, he said in the court documents, the agency's inspector general's office informed him that he was under investigation for diverting to his own use money earmarked for payments to informants. He denies that, too.

The former officer's claims concerning his reporting on the Iraqi nuclear weapons program were not addressed in a report issued in March by the presidential commission that examined intelligence regarding such weapons in Iraq. He did not testify before the commission, Mr. Krieger said.

A former senior staff member of the commission said the panel was not aware of the officer's allegations. The claims were also not included in the 2004 report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on prewar intelligence. He and his lawyer met with staff members of that Senate committee in a closed-door session last December, months after the report was issued.

In his lawsuit, the former officer said that in the spring of 2001, he met with a valuable informant who had examined and purchased parts of Iraqi centrifuges. Centrifuges are used to turn uranium into fuel for nuclear weapons. The informant reported that the Iraqi government had long since canceled its uranium enrichment program and that the C.I.A. could buy centrifuge components if it wanted to.

The officer filed his reports with the Counter Proliferation Division in the agency's clandestine espionage arm. The reports were never disseminated to other American intelligence agencies or to policy makers, as is typically done, he charged.

According to his suit, he was told that the agency already had detailed information about continuing Iraqi nuclear weapons efforts, and that his informant should focus on other countries.

He said his reports about Iraq came just as the agency was fundamentally shifting its view of Iraq's nuclear ambitions.

Throughout much of the 1990's, the C.I.A. and other United States intelligence agencies believed that Iraq had largely abandoned its nuclear weapons program. In December 2000, the intelligence agencies issued a classified assessment stating that Iraq did not appear to have taken significant steps toward the reconstitution of the program, according to the presidential commission report concerning illicit weapons.

But that assessment changed in early 2001 - a critical period in the intelligence community's handling of the Iraqi nuclear issue, the commission concluded. In March 2001, intelligence indicating that Iraq was seeking high-strength aluminum tubes from China greatly influenced the agency's thinking. Analysts soon came to believe that the only possible explanation for Iraq's purchase of the tubes was to develop high-tech centrifuges for a new uranium enrichment program.

By the following year, the agency's view had hardened, despite differing interpretations of the tubes' purposes by other intelligence experts. In October 2002, the National Intelligence Estimate, produced by the intelligence community under pressure from Congress, stated that most of the nation's intelligence agencies believed that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, based in large part on the aluminum tubes.

The commission concluded that intelligence failures on the Iraqi nuclear issue were as serious and damaging as any other during the prelude to the Iraqi war. The nation's intelligence community was wrong "on what many would view as the single most important judgment it made" before the Iraq invasion in March 2003, the commission report said.

Mr. Krieger said he had asked the court handling the case to declassify his client's suit, but the C.I.A. had moved to classify most of his motion seeking declassification. He added that he recently sent a letter to the director of the F.B.I. requesting an investigation of his client's complaints, but that the C.I.A. had classified that letter, as well.

Most of the details of the case, he said, "were classified by the C.I.A., not to protect national security but to conceal politically embarrassing facts from public scrutiny."

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2005, Issue No. 72
August 1, 2005


** FORMER DDCI LOBBIED FOR CLASSIFIED FUNDS
** SSCI THREAT HEARING OMITS QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD
** HOUSE HEARING ON OVERCLASSIFICATION
** CORRECTING THE CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE
** CORRECTING SECRECY NEWS
** CORRECTING SECRECY NEWS (2)


FORMER DDCI LOBBIED FOR CLASSIFIED FUNDS

A former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence lobbied Congress
and the CIA last year seeking "funding for [a] classified program"
on behalf of Lockheed Martin Corporation.

John N. McMahon, who served as DDCI from 1982 to 1986, spent and
earned an unspecified amount less than $10,000 in lobbying for the
otherwise unidentified classified program, according to a report
that he filed this year with the Senate Office of Public Records.

The intelligence appropriations process, which allocates billions of
dollars each year to the aerospace industry, is rife with mostly
invisible lobbying activity from which the general public is
excluded.

While Mr. McMahon and Lockheed Martin have as much right as anyone
else to advocate their interests, they do not have more of a right.
The fact that they are permitted to pursue their agenda under the
shield of national security classification tends to skew the
appropriations process towards industry and may help explain the
troubled acquisition policies of U.S. intelligence agencies.

A copy of Mr. McMahon's 2004 lobbying report, spotted by writer Tim
Shorrock, is posted here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2005/08/mcmahon.html

A summary of Mr. McMahon's CIA career is available here:

http://www.odci.gov/csi/books/dddcia/mcmahon.html


SSCI THREAT HEARING OMITS QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD

The hearing record for the February 2005 Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence (SSCI) annual threat briefing has just been published.
But for the second year in a row, it does not include the
Questions for the Record (QFRs) that were normally included in the
past.

The QFRs were typically the most valuable part of the hearing
record. Senators would do their best to pose penetrating,
sometimes provocative questions, and as often as not the
intelligence agencies would respond with concise factual replies
that added valuable new information to the public record. (See,
e.g., Secrecy News, 10/31/03).

The Senate Committee did not respond to a request for an explanation
as to why this material was omitted.

But without the QFRs, the utility of the hearing record -- and of
the Senate Intelligence Committee itself -- is diminished.

See "Current and Projected National Security Threats to the United
States," Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, February 16,
2005:

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2005_hr/shrg109-61.html


HOUSE HEARING ON OVERCLASSIFICATION

The record of a lively and interesting March 2005 hearing held by a
House Government Reform Subcommittee on "Overclassification and
Pseudo-Classification" has also just been published. See:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2005/030205overclass.html


CORRECTING THE CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE

In a recent report on Japan-U.S. Relations, the Congressional
Research Service stated that "Japan contributes almost 20% of the
U.N. budget, significantly more than any country except the United
States."

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IB97004.pdf

But reader S., writing from Japan, disputed that assertion.

Japan, he noted, contributed $346 million to the United Nations
budget this year, while the U.S. contributed only $73 million, less
than five other nations.

"Does 'contribute' have another meaning in Congress?" he wrote.

According to the Global Policy Forum, Japan has paid its $346
million U.N. budget assessment in full, while the U.S. is in
arrears for current and past years in the amount of $608 million.
See:

http://www.globalpolicy.org/finance/tables...get/large05.htm


CORRECTING SECRECY NEWS

Secrecy News (07/28/05) mistakenly said that Sen. Edward Kennedy was
wrong to assert that the 15.6 million classification actions
performed in the last year represented a "record" high. Sen.
Kennedy had it right.

The Information Security Oversight Office did report a higher number
-- 22,322,895 classification actions -- in its 1985 report to the
President.

But following the adoption of a revised sampling method in 1986,
ISOO went back and recalculated the values previously reported.
The 1985 figure was revised downward to 15 million. Therefore the
15.6 million classification actions reported in 2004 and cited by
Sen. Kennedy were a "record" high.

Thanks to Rick Blum of OpenTheGovernment.org and Pete Weitzel of the
Coalition of Journalists for Open Government (www.cjog.net) for
noting the error.


CORRECTING SECRECY NEWS (2)

Writing in the Washington Times, the "other" John Roberts took
Secrecy News to task today for linking Supreme Court nominee John
G. Roberts Jr. with the Iran-Contra scandal (SN, 07/20/05).

"Someone should have called to ask whether Judge Roberts and I were,
or weren't, the same person," suggested John B. Roberts II, the
individual who was named in passing in the Independent Counsel
report on Iran-Contra. "Instead, Secrecy News rushed to publish."

Secrecy News did confirm that "John Roberts" was employed at the
White House at the time, but admittedly failed to consider the
possibility that there were two or more individuals with the same
name.

The error was corrected within an hour, however, not "a day after."

See "The Scandal That Wasn't" by John B. Roberts II, Washington
Times, August 1:

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20050731-093600-1301r.htm



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Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.