Democrats force delay on US high court nominee vote Reuters
Democrats on Monday forced a one-week delay on a vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, but the 55-year-old conservative was still expected to be confirmed by the full Republican-led Senate. Still, the Democratic action ended hopes by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, to have President George W. Bush's nominee confirmed by the end of this week for a seat on the nation's highest court. "The Democrats' decision to delay ... is unjustified and desperate partisan obstructionism," Frist said in a statement. "Despite these tactics, Judge Alito remains on track to be confirmed as Justice Alito," Frist said. "A Justice delayed will not be a Justice denied." Bush has nominated Alito to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has often been the swing vote on the nine-member Supreme Court on abortion and other social issues. If confirmed, Alito could move the high court to the right. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter wanted his panel, which held a confirmation hearing on Alito last week, to vote on Tuesday on whether to urge the full Senate to confirm Alito, a federal appeals judge the past 15 years. But aides to the Pennsylvania Republican announced in a brief statement that Democrats said they would invoke their right to require a one-week delay if the committee met on Tuesday on Alito. So the committee will vote instead on Jan. 24, with the Senate beginning debate on the nominee by the next day, according to the statement. In a separate statement, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the panel's top Democrat, said: "This arrangement accommodates Republicans and Democrats." Most of the 44 Senate Democrats and one independent are expected to vote against Alito. But no Democrat has threatened a filibuster, largely because they do not appear to have the 41 votes that would be needed in the 100-member Senate to sustain such a procedural roadblock. Alito responded to more than 700 questions during 18 hours of questioning at his confirmation hearing, and afterward some senators gave him additional questions in writing. Postponement will give Alito more time to respond to written questions and senators more time to consider his answers.
For Senate Democrats, a last stand on Alito Christian Science Monitor
Senate Panel's Vote on Alito Delayed Until Next Week Washington Post
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Appeals Run Out for Ailing Inmate Los Angeles Times
California prison officials were set to execute 76-year-old murderer Clarence Ray Allen at the state prison here early Tuesday, after his final appeal was turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Allen, who turned 76 on Monday, would be by far the oldest of the 13 convicts executed in the state since California restored the death penalty in 1977 and the second-oldest in the nation.

Execution of Clarence Ray Allen
That status, however, might be short-lived. California has the nation's most populous death row -- 646 inmates -- but executes a relatively small number. As a result, the ranks of the condemned grow steadily more elderly and now include five older than 70, and 34 in their 60s. Lawyers for Allen argued that his lengthy time on death row, his age and his ill health should pre-empt his execution: he recently had a heart attack, suffers from diabetes, is legally blind and confined to a wheelchair. But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a series of courts rejected those pleas over the last several days. On Sunday evening, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted that Allen was already 50 and imprisoned at Folsom for another killing when he orchestrated the triple murders for which he received the death penalty in 1982. Evidence at that trial showed he had paid another inmate $25,000 to kill three potential witnesses against him. "His age and experience only sharpened his ability to coldly calculate the execution of the crime," wrote Wardlaw, an appointee of President Clinton. "Nothing about his current ailments reduces his culpability." The execution would be the second in a month's time, which is rare for California. Last month, the state executed Stanley "Tookie" Williams, the former leader of the Crips gang. Later this week, a Ventura County Superior Court judge is expected to set an execution date for Michael Morales, stemming from a 1983 murder in San Joaquin County. State officials also have said it is possible that execution dates could be scheduled later this year for two other long-time condemned inmates, Stevie Lamar Fields. Mitchell Sims. Allen's last significant court challenge failed Monday afternoon when the Supreme Court denied his request for a stay of execution. As it often does in death cases, the court acted without a written opinion. Justice Stephen G. Breyer issued the only dissent, a brief statement noting Allen's age, ill health and the fact that he "has been on death row for 23 years." "I believe that in the circumstances, he raises a significant question as to whether his execution would constitute `cruel and unusual punishment,"' Breyer wrote. Since California reinstated the death penalty, the inmates who have been executed have had an average stay on death row of nearly 16 years, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabiliatation. The cases take a long time for several reasons, but chief among them is that the state takes considerable care in reviewing death sentences. Allen's case has not drawn nearly as much media attention as that of Williams, who was executed in December following a massive campaign urging the governor to grant clemency. Allen has continued to maintain his innocence, despite what Judge Wardlaw, in an earlier decision she wrote on the case, had called "overwhelming" evidence of his guilt. The case involved the murders of Bryon Schletewitz, 27, Douglas White, 18, and Josephine Rocha, 17. Prosecutors told a jury in Fresno that Allen had organized the murder and paid a fellow inmate, Billy Ray Hamilton, to carry it out. At the time, Allen was in prison, convicted of the murder in 1974 of Mary Sue Kitts. California did not have a death penalty statute at that time. Kitts, the girlfriend of Allen's son, Kenneth, was found strangled to death after telling the owners of a market in Fresno that Allen's gang had burglarized their store. Schletewitz was the son of those store owners, and he had testified against Allen in the Kitts case. According to prosecutors, Allen, who was seeking a retrial in the Kitts case, paid Hamilton to kill Schletewitz and others potential witnesses. According to testimony, Hamilton went to the store, Fran's Market, with a sawed-off shotgun, ordered Schletewitz and three other store employees to lie on the floor and then shot all four. One employee, Joe Rios, was shot in the face but survived and testified at the trial. Hamilton was arrested during a liquor store robbery a week after the murders. When he was captured, police found that he had the names and addresses of seven others Allen wanted killed. Hamilton also was sentenced to death. Kenneth Allen, who provided the shotgun to Hamilton, received a life term for his role in the crime, as did his girlfriend Connie Barbo. After the Supreme Court turned Allen down, Deputy Attorney General Ward Campbell, who prosecuted him, noted that "every court has now rejected all of Allen's claims." Anti-death-penalty activists on Monday distributed excerpts from an interview that Michael Kroll, a founding director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., had done with Allen in which he asked if the condemned man was willing to express remorse for the killings. According to Kroll, Allen responded that he was "terribly sorry for all that happened. But I can never express remorse for this crime because I didn't do it." "I hope to meet the victims in the afterlife and explain to them I never plotted to harm them, and I never wanted them to be harmed," he added. Outside the prison, San Quentin spokesman, Lt. Vernell Crittendon, told reporters that Allen had been "surprisingly upbeat." "He is at peace with this process that's about to unfold in the next few hours," Crittendon said Monday evening. Crittendon said that Allen would be allowed to carry several American Indian religious artifacts with him at the time of his death, including a headband and a neck piece known as a "stairway to heaven." Allen, whose mother is part Choctaw and father is part Cherokee, has "professed to be a Native American since about 1988," Crittendon said. Kroll said that Allen had told him that when the time comes for execution, "The last words I'll speak is an old Indian saying, Hok-Ah-Ei -- it's a good day to die."'
Elderly US killer faces execution BBC News
Septuagenarian Plea for Clemency Rejected ABC News
San Francisco Chronicle - USA Today - Scotsman - Chicago Tribune - all 646 related »

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2006, Issue No. 6
January 17, 2006


** DOD ISSUES DIRECTIVE ON SPECIAL ACCESS PROGRAMS
** WAXMAN CHALLENGES MINE INSPECTION SECRECY
** DEFENDING AGAINST CLANDESTINE NUCLEAR ATTACK
** THE 9/11 COMMISSION RECOMMENDATIONS: A POST-MORTEM


DOD ISSUES DIRECTIVE ON SPECIAL ACCESS PROGRAMS

The Department of Defense has issued an updated directive governing
the conduct of Special Access Programs, or SAPs.

SAPs are highly classified programs involving heightened security
measures -- such as access control lists, special non-disclosure
agreements, polygraph tests, etc. -- that go beyond those of ordinary
("collateral") programs that involve classified information.

Within the Department of Defense, there are Acquisition SAPs for
classified military procurement, Intelligence SAPs dealing with
particularly sensitive intelligence collection activities, and
Operations and Support SAPs that cover sensitive military operations.

SAPs range in sensitivity from "acknowledged SAPs," the existence of
which may be publicly admitted, to "unacknowledged SAPs," whose very
existence is classified, to "waived SAPs," a subset of unacknowledged
SAPs for which normal congressional reporting requirements are limited
to eight senior members of Congress.

Almost by definition, assigning SAP status to a program impedes
independent and congressional oversight. In the wake of the collapse
of several large DoD acquisition SAPs in the early 1990s, internal
DoD controls on SAPs were increased.

It is possible that the recently disclosed NSA domestic surveillance
operation was a "waived SAP," but this has not been confirmed.

See DoD Directive 5205.07, "Special Access Program (SAP) Policy,"
January 5, 2006:

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/d5205_07.pdf

In 2001, Congress prohibited the creation of new SAPs except where 30
day prior notice was given to the congressional defense committees.

But in an early display of its controversial use of presidential
signing statements to undercut legislative action, the Bush White
House issued a statement reserving the right to defy this
notification requirement (Secrecy News, 01/11/02):

http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2002/01/gwb011002b.html

Meanwhile, Pentagon program managers have devised a way to impose
"SAP-like" security measures without even the limited oversight
involved in an actual SAP, observed Washington Post blogger William
Arkin last week.

ACCMs, or "Alternative or Compensatory Control Measures," are
quasi-SAPs that are "easier to establish [than SAPs] and the program
doesn't have to be reported to Congress!" wrote Arkin, who notes that
hundreds of ACCMs have been initiated since 9/11.

See "More Compartmented Programs," Early Warning, January 13, 2006:

http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/


WAXMAN CHALLENGES MINE INSPECTION SECRECY

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) asked the Department of Labor last week to
reverse the policy of withholding reports of mine safety inspections
from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

"This unwarranted secrecy may protect the mining industry from
embarrassing disclosures, but it undermines accountability and mine
safety," Rep. Waxman wrote.

"Prior to 2004, [the Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health
Administration (MSHA)] publicly disclosed both the results of mine
safety inspections and the reports and notes filed by inspectors that
provided the documentation of any violations found," he recalled.

"The inspectors' reports and notes were particularly important. Not
only were they used by mine safety organizations, mine workers, and
the public to identify dangerous mines and practices, they were also
useful to mine operators implementing needed improvements in mine
safety."

"In 2004, MSHA reversed its interpretation of the Freedom of
Information Act, deciding that the inspectors' reports and notes did
not need to be disclosed under FOIA."

"It would be impossible to draw a direct connection between the new
FOIA policy and the recent fatal disaster at the Sago mine. But the
agency's secrecy policy certainly limited public disclosure about the
mine's violations."

See "Labor Department Policy Suppressing Mine Inspection Reports
Impedes Reform," January 11:

http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/story.asp?ID=989


DEFENDING AGAINST CLANDESTINE NUCLEAR ATTACK

"Since the 1950s, there has been sporadic concern about the threat of
clandestine nuclear attack" -- involving nuclear weapons delivered by
means other than missile or aircraft -- "but little has been done,"
the Defense Science Board observed in a June 2004 study on the topic.

A series of National Intelligence Estimates dating back to 1951 on the
subject of clandestine WMD attacks against the U.S. has been compiled
from declassified CIA records along with the 2004 DSB report and may
be found here (thanks to Allen Thomson):

http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/wmd.htm#clan


THE 9/11 COMMISSION RECOMMENDATIONS: A POST-MORTEM

The 9/11 Commission could hardly have delivered a more forceful
presentation to a more receptive public audience than it did in its
best-selling 2004 report.

Yet 17 of its 41 recommendations have been largely or completely
ignored by the government. Why?

The reasons "fall into six categories," according to an assessment in
the latest National Journal: "a Congress resistant to institutional
change; a bureaucracy that bucks new ideas; lack of money; lack of
leadership; special interests that have the ear of Congress or the
White House; and, finally, an inability to accurately see how the
United States is perceived abroad."

See "Miles to Go," by Shane Harris and Greta Wodele, National Journal,
January 14, reprinted here as "Bureaucracy hinders 9/11 commission
recommendations":

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0106/011306nj1.htm




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

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 17, 2006
Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends
By LOWELL BERGMAN, ERIC LICHTBLAU, SCOTT SHANE and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.

As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said.

President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program as a "vital tool" against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved "thousands of lives."

But the results of the program look very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.

"We'd chase a number, find it's a schoolteacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism - case closed," said one former F.B.I. official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration."

Intelligence officials disagree with any characterization of the program's results as modest, said Judith A. Emmel, a spokeswoman for the office of the director of national intelligence. Ms. Emmel cited a statement at a briefing last month by Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the country's second-ranking intelligence official and the director of the N.S.A. when the program was started.

"I can say unequivocally that we have gotten information through this program that would not otherwise have been available," General Hayden said. The White House and the F.B.I. declined to comment on the program or its results.

The differing views of the value of the N.S.A.'s foray into intelligence-gathering in the United States may reflect both bureaucratic rivalry and a culture clash. The N.S.A., an intelligence agency, routinely collects huge amounts of data from across the globe that may yield only tiny nuggets of useful information; the F.B.I., while charged with fighting terrorism, retains the traditions of a law enforcement agency more focused on solving crimes.

"It isn't at all surprising to me that people not accustomed to doing this would say, 'Boy, this is an awful lot of work to get a tiny bit of information,' " said Adm. Bobby R. Inman, a former N.S.A. director. "But the rejoinder to that is, Have you got anything better?"

Several of the law enforcement officials acknowledged that they might not know of arrests or intelligence activities overseas that grew out of the domestic spying program. And because the program was a closely guarded secret, its role in specific cases may have been disguised or hidden even from key investigators.

Still, the comments on the N.S.A. program from the law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, many of them high level, are the first indication that the program was viewed with skepticism by key figures at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the agency responsible for disrupting plots and investigating terrorism on American soil.

All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. It is coming under scrutiny next month in hearings on Capitol Hill, which were planned after members of Congress raised questions about the legality of the eavesdropping. The program was disclosed in December by The New York Times.

The law enforcement and counterterrorism officials said the program had uncovered no active Qaeda networks inside the United States planning attacks. "There were no imminent plots - not inside the United States," the former F.B.I. official said.

Some of the officials said the eavesdropping program might have helped uncover people with ties to Al Qaeda in Albany; Portland, Ore.; and Minneapolis. Some of the activities involved recruitment, training or fund-raising.

But, along with several British counterterrorism officials, some of the officials questioned assertions by the Bush administration that the program was the key to uncovering a plot to detonate fertilizer bombs in London in 2004. The F.B.I. and other law enforcement officials also expressed doubts about the importance of the program's role in another case named by administration officials as a success in the fight against terrorism, an aborted scheme to topple the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch.

Some officials said that in both cases, they had already learned of the plans through interrogation of prisoners or other means.

Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration pressed the nation's intelligence agencies and the F.B.I. to move urgently to thwart any more plots. The N.S.A., whose mission is to spy overseas, began monitoring the international e-mail messages and phone calls of people inside the United States who were linked, even indirectly, to suspected Qaeda figures.

Under a presidential order, the agency conducted the domestic eavesdropping without seeking the warrants ordinarily required from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which handles national security matters. The administration has defended the legality of the program, pointing to what it says is the president's inherent constitutional power to defend the country and to legislation passed by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Administration officials told Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director, of the eavesdropping program, and his agency was enlisted to run down leads from it, several current and former officials said.

While he and some bureau officials discussed the fact that the program bypassed the intelligence surveillance court, Mr. Mueller expressed no concerns about that to them, those officials said. But another government official said Mr. Mueller had questioned the administration about the legal authority for the program.

Officials who were briefed on the N.S.A. program said the agency collected much of the data passed on to the F.B.I. as tips by tracing phone numbers in the United States called by suspects overseas, and then by following the domestic numbers to other numbers called. In other cases, lists of phone numbers appeared to result from the agency's computerized scanning of communications coming into and going out of the country for names and keywords that might be of interest. The deliberate blurring of the source of the tips caused some frustration among those who had to follow up.

F.B.I. field agents, who were not told of the domestic surveillance programs, complained that they often were given no information about why names or numbers had come under suspicion. A former senior prosecutor who was familiar with the eavesdropping programs said intelligence officials turning over the tips "would always say that we had information whose source we can't share, but it indicates that this person has been communicating with a suspected Qaeda operative." He said, "I would always wonder, what does 'suspected' mean?"

"The information was so thin," he said, "and the connections were so remote, that they never led to anything, and I never heard any follow-up."

In response to the F.B.I. complaints, the N.S.A. eventually began ranking its tips on a three-point scale, with 3 being the highest priority and 1 the lowest, the officials said. Some tips were considered so hot that they were carried by hand to top F.B.I. officials. But in bureau field offices, the N.S.A. material continued to be viewed as unproductive, prompting agents to joke that a new bunch of tips meant more "calls to Pizza Hut," one official, who supervised field agents, said.

The views of some bureau officials about the value of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance offers a revealing glimpse of the difficulties law enforcement and intelligence agencies have had cooperating since Sept. 11.

The N.S.A., criticized by the national Sept. 11 commission for its "avoidance of anything domestic" before the attacks, moved aggressively into the domestic realm after them. But the legal debate over its warrantless eavesdropping has embroiled the agency in just the kind of controversy its secretive managers abhor. The F.B.I., meanwhile, has struggled over the last four years to expand its traditional mission of criminal investigation to meet the larger menace of terrorism.

Admiral Inman, the former N.S.A. director and deputy director of C.I.A., said the F.B.I. complaints about thousands of dead-end leads revealed a chasm between very different disciplines. Signals intelligence, the technical term for N.S.A.'s communications intercepts, rarely produces "the complete information you're going to get from a document or a witness" in a traditional F.B.I. investigation, he said.

Some F.B.I. officials said they were uncomfortable with the expanded domestic role played by the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies, saying most intelligence officers lacked the training needed to safeguard Americans' privacy and civil rights. They said some protections had to be waived temporarily in the months after Sept. 11 to detect a feared second wave of attacks, but they questioned whether emergency procedures like the eavesdropping should become permanent.

That discomfort may explain why some F.B.I. officials may seek to minimize the benefits of the N.S.A. program or distance themselves from the agency. "This wasn't our program," an F.B.I. official said. "It's not our mess, and we're not going to clean it up."

The N.S.A.'s legal authority for collecting the information it passed to the F.B.I. is uncertain. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires a warrant for the use of so-called pen register equipment that records American phone numbers, even if the contents of the calls are not intercepted. But officials with knowledge of the program said no warrants were sought to collect the numbers, and it is unclear whether the secret executive order signed by Mr. President Bush in 2002 to authorize eavesdropping without warrants also covered the collection of phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Aside from the director, F.B.I. officials did not question the legal status of the tips, assuming that N.S.A. lawyers had approved. They were more concerned about the quality and quantity of the material, which produced "mountains of paperwork" often more like raw data than conventional investigative leads.

"It affected the F.B.I. in the sense that they had to devote so many resources to tracking every single one of these leads, and, in my experience, they were all dry leads," the former senior prosecutor said. "A trained investigator never would have devoted the resources to take those leads to the next level, but after 9/11, you had to."

By the administration's account, the N.S.A. eavesdropping helped lead investigators to Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver and friend of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Faris spoke of toppling the Brooklyn Bridge by taking a torch to its suspension cables, but concluded that it would not work. He is now serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison.

But as in the London fertilizer bomb case, some officials with direct knowledge of the Faris case dispute that the N.S.A. information played a significant role.

By contrast, different officials agree that the N.S.A.'s domestic operations played a role in the arrest of an imam and another man in Albany in August 2004 as part of an F.B.I. counterterrorism sting investigation. The men, Yassin Aref, 35, and Mohammed Hossain, 49, are awaiting trial on charges that they attempted to engineer the sale of missile launchers to an F.B.I. undercover informant.

In addition, government officials said the N.S.A. eavesdropping program might have assisted in the investigations of people with suspected Qaeda ties in Portland and Minneapolis. In the Minneapolis case, charges of supporting terrorism were filed in 2004 against Mohammed Abdullah Warsame, a Canadian citizen. Six people in the Portland case were convicted of crimes that included money laundering and conspiracy to wage war against the United States.

Even senior administration officials with access to classified operations suggest that drawing a clear link between a particular source and the unmasking of a potential terrorist is not always possible.

When Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, was asked last week on "The Charlie Rose Show" whether the N.S.A. wiretapping program was important in deterring terrorism, he said, "I don't know that it's ever possible to attribute one strand of intelligence from a particular program."

But Mr. Chertoff added, "I can tell you in general the process of doing whatever you can do technologically to find out what is being said by a known terrorist to other people, and who that person is communicating with, that is without a doubt one of the critical tools we've used time and again."

William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting from New York for this article.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 17, 2006
SEC Moves for More Exec Pay Disclosure
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:33 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal securities regulators moved Tuesday to require companies to provide far greater detail about their executives' pay packages and perks in an effort to shed more light on an area that has provoked investor and public anger.

The five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission voted unanimously at a public meeting to propose the plan, which would make the biggest changes in rules governing disclosure of executives' compensation since 1992. The proposal will be opened to a 60-day public comment period and could be formally adopted by the SEC sometime afterward, possibly in time to take effect for the spring annual-meeting season next year.

Companies for the first time would be required to furnish tables in annual filings showing the total yearly compensation for their chairman, chief financial officer and the next three highest-paid executives. The true costs to the bottom line of their pay packages, including stock options, would have to be spelled out.

''This information is information that shareholders have a right to know,'' Commissioner Cynthia Glassman said before the vote.

Also under the SEC proposal:

--The level at which total executive perks must be detailed would be reduced from $50,000 to $10,000.

--New disclosure tables for executives' retirement benefits and the compensation of company directors would be required.

--Companies would be required to explain the objectives behind their executives' compensation. Companies' annual filings would have to include sections written in plain English on executive pay.

Recent academic studies have shown dizzying leaps in top executives' salaries, bonuses and stock benefits in recent years, as well as big increases in executive compensation as a percentage of company earnings -- money that otherwise would go to shareholders. At the same time, critics of corporate conduct underline what they see as a disconnect between company officials' pay and performance.

''It has been a very long time since the (SEC) has revised these rules,'' agency chairman Christopher Cox told reporters last week. The tighter rules are needed ''to eliminate the surprise of hidden payments'' to executives and to ensure that shareholders are fully informed, he said.

Still, some critics of corporate conduct don't believe fuller disclosure of compensation goes far enough because it won't rein in runaway pay and may even create competitive pressure among companies that will push it up.

Even after the corporate scandals of 2002, as some companies continued to lavish on their executives extravagant pay packages with scant justification -- and often tied to short-term leaps in stock prices -- the SEC began in 2004 to consider tightened disclosure requirements for compensation.

In one high-profile case, the SEC said in September 2004 that General Electric Co. violated the law by failing to fully disclose to investors the millions of dollars in perks enjoyed by its retired chief executive Jack Welch, one of Wall Street's most admired CEOs. They included unlimited personal use of GE's planes, exclusive use of an $11 million apartment in New York City, a chauffeured limousine, a leased Mercedes, office space, financial services, bodyguard security and security systems for Welch's homes.

The SEC did not fine GE in the settlement but won a promise from the company to fully disclose such benefits in the future. The agency also has brought cases involving disclosure of compensation against Tyson Foods Inc. and The Walt Disney Co.

------

On the Net:

Securities and Exchange Commission: http://www.sec.gov



Copyright 2006 The Associated Press Home

White House Accuses Gore of Hypocrisy By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

The White House accused former Vice President Al Gore of hypocrisy Tuesday for his assertion that President Bush broke the law by eavesdropping on Americans without court approval.

"If Al Gore is going to be the voice of the Democrats on national security matters, we welcome it," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said in a swipe at the Democrat, who lost the 2000 election to Bush.

Gore, in a speech Monday, called for an independent investigation of the administration program that he says broke the law by listening in — without warrants — on Americans suspected of talking with terrorists abroad.

Gore called the program, authorized by President Bush, "a threat to the very structure of our government" and charged that the administration acted without congressional authority and made a "direct assault" on a federal court set up to authorize requests to eavesdrop on Americans.

Meanwhile, two civil liberties groups — the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights — filed federal lawsuits Tuesday seeking to block the eavesdropping program, which they called unconstitutional electronic surveillance of American citizens.

McClellan said the Clinton-Gore administration had engaged in warrantless physical searches, and he cited an FBI search of the home of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames without permission from a judge. He said Clinton's deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, had testified before Congress that the president had the inherent authority to engage in physical searches without warrants.

"I think his hypocrisy knows no bounds," McClellan said of Gore.

But at the time that of the Ames search in 1993 and when Gorelick testified a year later, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act required warrants for electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes, but did not cover physical searches. The law was changed to cover physical searches in 1995 under legislation that Clinton supported and signed.

Gore said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should name a special counsel to investigate the program, saying Gonzales had an "obvious conflict of interest" as a member of the Bush Cabinet as well as the nation's top law enforcement officer.

Gonzales, who has agreed to testify publicly at a Senate hearing on the program, defended the surveillance on cable news talk shows Monday night.

"This program has been reviewed carefully by lawyers at the Department of Justice and other agencies," Gonzales said on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes." "We firmly believe that this program is perfectly lawful. The president has the legal authority to authorize these kinds of programs."

On CNN's "Larry King Live," Gonzales said Gore's comments were inconsistent with Clinton administration policy.

"It's my understanding that during the Clinton administration there was activity regarding physical searches without warrants," Gonzales said. "I can also say it's my understanding that the deputy attorney general testified before Congress that the president does have the inherent authority under the Constitution to engage in physical searches without a warrant. And so, those would certainly seem to be inconsistent with what the former vice president was saying today."

Gore said there is still much to learn about the domestic surveillance program, but that he already has drawn a conclusion about its legality.

"What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently," he said.

Bush has pointed to a congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that authorized him to use force in the fight against terrorism as allowing him to order the program.

Gore, however, contended that Bush failed to convince Congress to support a domestic spying program, so he "secretly assumed that power anyway, as if congressional authorization was a useless bother."

He said the spying program must be considered along with other administration actions as a constitutional power grab by the president. Gore cited imprisoning American citizens without charges in terrorism cases, mistreatment of prisoners — including torture — and seizure of individuals in foreign countries and delivering them to autocratic regimes "infamous for the cruelty of their techniques."



Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Supreme Court Upholds Oregon Assisted Suicide Law New York Times
The Supreme Court upheld Oregon's assisted-suicide law today, declaring that the Bush administration had exceeded its authority in trying to undo the statute by punishing doctors who help people end their lives. In a 6-to-3 decision, which would apply to other states if their people chose to follow Oregon's lead, the court held that former Attorney General John Ashcroft went well beyond his authority and expertise when he ruled in 2001 that doctors would lose their federal prescription privileges if they prescribed lethal doses of medications for patients.
Oregon Assisted-Suicide Law Backed by US High Court Bloomberg
Assisted suicide ruling upheld by US court MSNBC
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Lott's fourth term bid fuels leadership speculationMSNBC
Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican and former majority leader in the US Senate, said on Tuesday he would seek a fourth term in November, quickly igniting speculation that he might try to return to the Republican leadership. "This is no time for me, or any of us, to think about quitting," Mr Lott told supporters in Mississippi, underscoring the role he hopes to play as his state continues its struggle to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.
Sen. Lott says he will seek re-election ABC News
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Former President Ford Said Doing Well Forbes
Former President Gerald R. Ford was responding well to treatment for pneumonia that put him in the hospital over the weekend, his chief of staff said Tuesday. Ford, 92, was admitted Saturday to Eisenhower Medical Center near his home in Rancho Mirage in Southern California, the same facility where he was briefly hospitalized a month ago. "He is responding to treatment and doing well," chief of staff Penny Circle said in a brief statement. Ford was expected to be released Thursday if his condition continues to improve, Circle said. In mid-December, Ford underwent routine tests at Eisenhower and was hospitalized overnight because of what Circle called "a horrible cold." It wasn't clear if the cold led to the bout with pneumonia, she said.
Stricken Ford 'doing well' Advertiser Adelaide
US ex-President Ford in hospital BBC News
The Desert Sun - FOX News - Reuters - CNN - all 470 related »

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http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-...y?track=tothtml

From the Los Angeles Times
War's stunning price tag
By Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz

January 17, 2006

LAST WEEK, at the annual meeting of the American Economic Assn., we presented a new estimate for the likely cost of the war in Iraq. We suggested that the final bill will be much higher than previously reckoned — between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, depending primarily on how much longer our troops stay. Putting that into perspective, the highest-grossing movie of all time, "Titanic," earned $1.8 billion worldwide — about half the cost the U.S. incurs in Iraq every week.

Like the iceberg that hit the Titanic, the full costs of the war are still largely hidden below the surface. Our calculations include not just the money for combat operations but also the costs the government will have to pay for years to come. These include lifetime healthcare and disability benefits for returning veterans and special round-the-clock medical attention for many of the 16,300 Americans who already have been seriously wounded. We also count the increased cost of replacing military hardware because the war is using up equipment at three to five times the peacetime rate. In addition, the military must pay large reenlistment bonuses and offer higher benefits to reenlist reluctant soldiers. On top of this, because we finance the war by borrowing more money (mostly from abroad), there is a rising interest cost on the extra debt.

Our study also goes beyond the budget of the federal government to estimate the war's cost to the economy and our society. It includes, for instance, the true economic costs of injury and death. For example, if an individual is killed in an auto or work-related accident, his family will typically receive compensation for lost earnings. Standard government estimates of the lifetime economic cost of a death are about $6 million. But the military pays out far less — about $500,000. Another cost to the economy comes from the fact that 40% of our troops are taken from the National Guard and Reserve units. These troops often earn lower wages than in their civilian jobs. Finally, there are macro-economic costs such as the effect of higher oil prices — partly a result of the instability in Iraq.

We conclude that the economy would have been much stronger if we had invested the money in the United States instead of in Iraq.

Spending up to $2 trillion should make us ask some questions. First, these figures are far higher than what the administration predicted before the war. At that time, White House economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey was effectively fired for suggesting that the war might cost up to $200 billion, rather than the $60 billion claimed by the president's budget office. Why were the costs so vastly underestimated? Elsewhere in the government, it is standard practice to engage in an elaborate cost-benefit analysis for major projects. The war in Iraq was a war of choice, an immense "project," and yet it now appears that there was virtually no analysis of the likely costs of a prolonged occupation.

Could we have fought the war in ways that would have protected our troops better and cost the country less? A Pentagon study apparently concludes that better body armor would have prevented many deaths and injuries. Penny-pinching in such matters during the rush to war has led to steep long-run costs for the nation and, tragically, for the individuals involved.

Even more fundamentally, there is the question of whether we needed to spend the money at all. Thinking back to the months before the war, there were few reasons to invade quickly, and many to go slow. The Bush policy of threatened force had pressured Iraq into allowing the U.N. inspectors back into the country. The inspectors said they required a few months to complete their work. Several of our closest allies, including France and Germany, were urging the U.S. to await the outcome of the inspections. There were, as we now know, conflicting intelligence reports.

Had we waited, the value of the information we would have learned from the inspectors would arguably have saved the nation at least $1 trillion — enough money to fix Social Security for the next 75 years twice over.




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LINDA BILMES, a former assistant secretary of Commerce, teaches public finance at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. JOSEPH STIGLITZ is a professor at Columbia University. He won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001.

Enabling Danger:

The press has recently been reporting on the issue of surveillance pertaining to four "key" 9/11 hijackers. Specifically, Congressman Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) has gone public with accusations that the Pentagon had four of the 9/11 hijackers under its surveillance in December of 2000.
http://tinyurl.com/9n8x2

January 18, 2006
Senator Clinton Makes Her Run While Tiptoeing Around 2008
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 - When Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton recently headlined a fund-raiser for the governor of New Hampshire, her aides sought to ensure that the event was held not within that state, but rather in nearby Boston, where a visit would not set off frenzied speculation about her political plans.

The fund-raiser earned her crucial good will with the leading elected official in an important presidential primary state within range of the Boston media market. Yet it also reflected how Mrs. Clinton delicately goes about building a political network around the country while running for re-election in New York, steering clear of presidential stomping grounds like New Hampshire and Iowa.

In the last few months, as her political opposition in New York has crumbled, Mrs. Clinton has traveled the country, trolling for money to stuff into her already stuffed campaign war chest, visiting hurricane-stricken New Orleans and supporting candidates who can, in turn, be helpful to any national ambitions she may have. And she has sharpened the tone of her attacks on Republicans, saying on Monday, for example, that the Republican-led House of Representatives was run like a "plantation," a comment that drew a rebuke from the White House the next day.

While such behavior is to be expected for anyone preparing to seek the presidency in 2008, Mrs. Clinton is in an altogether different situation from other prominent Democrats who have been openly gearing up for national campaigns by establishing exploratory committees and visiting crucial primary states. With her New York election just 10 months away, neither she nor her political advisers want to do anything that might suggest that she has ambitions beyond the state, where Republicans once pilloried her as a carpetbagger intent on using the state as a stepping stone for national office.

The October fund-raiser for the re-election campaign of Gov. John Lynch of New Hampshire was held in Boston after Mrs. Clinton's advisers suggested that locale. (Other prospective presidential candidates, like former Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, have already visited New Hampshire and Iowa, states that provide early tests of presidential viability.)

In fact, Mrs. Clinton and her advisers appear to have figured out a narrow strategy of how to run for president without actually running for president - though the Clinton camp insists that her sole concern at the moment is winning re-election in New York, and points out that she has been traveling the country helping Democrats for years.

Don Fowler of South Carolina, a former Democratic National Committee chairman, suggested that Mrs. Clinton has been able to pull off this delicate balancing act - "peeling that onion perfectly," as he put it - largely because New York Republicans have yet to find a strong candidate to run against her in the Senate race. The one candidate that New York Republicans had pinned their hopes on, Jeanine F. Pirro, the Westchester district attorney, dropped out of the race last month after her campaign was beset by her public gaffes and lackluster fund-raising.

Mr. Fowler said he doubted that Mrs. Clinton would have been willing to embark on such a busy travel schedule outside New York if Republicans had actually recruited a strong candidate to run against her. "In simple terms, she is not as tied down in New York as she would be if she had a grade-A candidate running against her," he said.

Mrs. Clinton, who had more than $13.8 million in her war chest by the end of September, is still touching her bases in New York, where she earned a reputation as a tireless campaigner in her successful 2000 Senate campaign. In the last two months, she has made at least 21 public appearances around the state - from New York City and its suburbs to Glens Falls, Syracuse, Schenectady and the Finger Lakes region - and has spent much of the rest of her time at work in Washington.

All the while, she has not ruled out the possibility of running for president in 2008.

Paul Begala, a political adviser to former President Clinton, said Mrs. Clinton has handled questions about a presidential run in the same way George W. Bush dealt with them when he ran for re-election as governor of Texas in 1998: He told voters he did not know whether he would run for president in 2000.

"It's very much analogous," Mr. Begala said. "He left his options open and honestly had not made up his mind. And I am just as certain that Hillary has not made up her mind, because any smart politician is going to wait and take a look at the lay of the land."

New York Republicans still hope to use the issue of her possible national aspirations against her in the 2006 Senate campaign, arguing that New Yorkers are being shortchanged by a senator they say is not genuinely committed to the state.

"From Day 1, it's been clear that Senator Clinton's focus has been on running for president, not focusing on New York," said Ryan Moses, the executive director of the New York State Republican Party.

Only about a year ago, in the wake of Senator John F. Kerry's loss to President Bush, Democrats close to Mrs. Clinton argued in private that she should not seek re-election in New York, saying that a 2006 Senate campaign would almost certainly complicate any 2008 presidential bid.

Part of the concern was that Republicans would use the Senate race as an opportunity to batter Mrs. Clinton, who remains a polarizing figure to many, forcing her to spend money and demanding that she promise to serve out her entire second term if re-elected.

There was also concern that the political calendar would be far too tight, even for a politician of Mrs. Clinton's considerable abilities. The Iowa caucuses, for example, are held just 14 months after Election Day 2006, meaning she would have to turn around and start running for president soon after being sworn in for another Senate term.

But with New York Republicans still scrambling to find a candidate to run against her, those concerns seem to have abated. The two considered most likely Republican contenders to Mrs. Clinton this year are the former mayor of Yonkers, John Spencer, and Edward F. Cox, a lawyer and son-in-law of President Nixon.

Now, as Mrs. Clinton travels the country, Democrats say that she is in the position to collect favors that may, in turn, benefit her down the road. Democrats around the country regard her as their party's top fund-raising attraction and most articulate representative in this period of Republican dominance.

In December, for example, Mrs. Clinton attended an event in Michigan that helped raise $500,000 for Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat who is up for re-election there, with several Republicans seeking the nomination to run for that seat. Then she headlined a fund-raising event in Louisville, Ky., that brought in $600,000 for the state Democrats and drew 2,000 people, who packed a downtown convention center.

In the coming weeks, Mrs. Clinton plans to travel to Washington State to attend a fund-raiser that is expected to bring in about $300,000 for another Senate colleague, Maria Cantwell, who is up for re-election this year. Mrs. Clinton is also expected to participate in a similar event for Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who is facing a challenge from Representative Katherine Harris, best known for her role as Florida's secretary of state during the 2000 presidential vote recount.

By and large, Mrs. Clinton's visits around the country have drawn the kind of reaction one would expect with a person of her immense celebrity and political stature. Recently, for example, Mrs. Clinton made a trip to hurricane-battered sections of New Orleans, where she was trailed by a clutch of national reporters as she met with scores of displaced residents, many of whom spoke openly about their hope that the celebrity senator's visit would help refocus the nation's attention on their plight.

But for all the enthusiasm she stirs in her travels, there are plenty of signs that she remains a divisive figure in much of the country. During her trip to Kentucky, for example, local Republicans sought to cause a political ruckus, portraying her as a New York liberal and saying that she would be a political liability for Democrats in a red state like Kentucky.

Still, several Democratic strategists argue that the good will Mrs. Clinton is building in her travels with rank-and-file Democrats, as well as Democratic leaders, will only make her even tougher to beat in 2008, at least in the race for the presidential nomination. Mr. Fowler, the former Democratic National Committee chairman, said that "if she continues doing favors for everyone as magnanimously as she has, it's possible that she will shut out options for any practical opposition."



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

January 18, 2006
News Analysis
Fraught Issue, but Narrow Ruling in Oregon Suicide Case
By TIMOTHY EGAN
and ADAM LIPTAK
PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 17 - Just 30 terminally ill people exercise a right each year that is unique in America to the state of Oregon, hastening their deaths with a lethal dose of drugs prescribed by doctors.

The Supreme Court decision on Tuesday rejecting the Justice Department's effort to block the state's Death With Dignity Act will allow such suicides to continue, but it may not have the broad impact people on both sides of the debate are predicting.

There is no reason to think that the pace of physician-assisted suicides will quicken in Oregon. And the decision lends little support, one way or the other, to the efforts to enact similar laws around the country that have stalled since the Oregon law was enacted in 1994.

The Supreme Court's ruling was, in fact, notably focused and technical. It did not address whether there is a constitutional right to die. It did not say that Congress was powerless to override state laws that allow doctors to help their patients end their lives.

It said only that a particular federal law, the Controlled Substances Act, which is mainly concerned with drug abuse and illegal drug trafficking, had not given John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, the authority to punish Oregon doctors who complied with requests under the state's law. The law allows mentally competent, terminally ill patients to ask their doctors for lethal drugs.

"What the court decision means is simply that you won't have federal agents trying to put an end to this in the state of Oregon," said Dr. Timothy E. Quill, a professor of medicine and psychiatry at the University of Rochester, who is a prominent supporter of physician-assisted suicide. "We were very fearful of what might have happened had the ruling gone the other way."

Here in Oregon, the issue was initially contentious, passed by a bare margin in 1994. But the more that people outside the state criticized the law, the more support it gained here. When it came up for a second referendum in 1997, it was upheld 60 to 40.

"I would not expect to see an increase in doctor-assisted suicides here," said Mary Williams, Oregon's solicitor general. "But I do expect more states will at least have discussion now."

But states have been free to enact such laws, and they have not followed Oregon's example. Mr. Ashcroft did not issue his interpretation of the Controlled Substances Act until 2001, and it was soon enjoined. The federal government lost in the courts every step of the way.

One question now is whether the debate will move from the court to Congress. Peg Sandeen, executive director of the Death With Dignity National Center in Portland, said her group would move to push legislation or voter initiatives in several states.

But Ms. Sandeen said the organization was concerned that "a Congress that would intervene in the death of Terri Schiavo" might be galvanized into action by this decision.

Still, Tuesday's decision may prompt lawmakers in some states to give the matter a fresh look.

"This decision gives the green light to the rest of the nation to move forward with assisted-suicide laws," said Mathew D. Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, which filed a brief supporting the federal government in the Oregon case. "This particular case was either going to close the door or to open it, and it opened it."

In the handful of states where a similar measure has been under consideration, supporters said they hoped the decision would help.

"This will be a tremendous momentum builder for Vermont and other states who want to bring compassionate care to end-of-life issues," said Dr. David Babbott, a board member of Death With Dignity Vermont.

Opponents of assisted suicide said Tuesday's decision was a narrow and technical one that did not endorse any particular approach to these issues.

"I don't think its impact will be great," Dr. Robert D. Orr, the president of the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare, said of the decision. "Some have misunderstood the Oregon case as a challenge to the Oregon statute itself."

The Oregon law was initially held up by an injunction, and not fully put into effect until 1998. Since then, through 2004, a total of 208 people have taken their lives by lethal injection with a physician-prescribed drug, usually a barbiturate.

Critics had said Oregon would become a suicide center, with people flying in to end their lives. They also predicted that the law would be unfairly used against uneducated people or those without health insurance or adequate medical choices.

In the seven full years since the law has been in effect and records have been kept, more than 60 percent of those who have killed themselves have had some college education, the state reported.

Nora Miller, whose husband, Rick, took his life here in Portland in 1999 after he was given less than six months to live with a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer, said the Oregon law allowed for a peaceful and relatively pain-free end to his life.

"He was worried about being unconscious and completely out of it," said Ms. Miller, whose husband was 52. "But it was as good a death as he could have hoped for."

She praised the court decision as a backing of individual liberty.

"This country was founded on the idea that you should be able to make these kinds of decisions without government interference," Ms. Miller said.

But the leader of a group of Oregon physicians who have long opposed the measure, Dr. Kenneth Stevens, said the medical community had long had ways to help people deal with pain at the end of their lives.

"I've been taking care of cancer patients for more than 30 years," Dr. Stevens said, "and I feel helping people kill themselves is not something doctors should be doing."

Gov. Theodore R. Kulongoski of Oregon said one effect of the decision would be to allow innovative states like Oregon to continue to be laboratories for new ideas.

"The U.S. Supreme Court recognized the delicate balance between our federal system and the right of the states to be the crucibles for new ideas and new ways to meet the changing needs of their citizens," Mr. Kulongoski said.

Timothy Egan reported from Portland for this article, and Adam Liptak from New York.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

January 18, 2006
2002 Memo Doubted Uranium Sale Claim
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 - A high-level intelligence assessment by the Bush administration concluded in early 2002 that the sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq was "unlikely" because of a host of economic, diplomatic and logistical obstacles, according to a secret memo that was recently declassified by the State Department.

Among other problems that made such a sale improbable, the assessment by the State Department's intelligence analysts concluded, was that it would have required Niger to send "25 hard-to-conceal 10-ton tractor-trailers" filled with uranium across 1,000 miles and at least one international border.

The analysts' doubts were registered nearly a year before President Bush, in what became known as the infamous "16 words" in his 2003 State of the Union address, said that Saddam Hussein had sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

The White House later acknowledged that the charge, which played a part in the decision to invade Iraq in the belief that Baghdad was reconstituting its nuclear program, relied on faulty intelligence and should not have been included in the speech. Two months ago, Italian intelligence officials concluded that a set of documents at the center of the supposed Iraq-Niger link had been forged by an occasional Italian spy.

A handful of news reports, along with the Robb-Silberman report last year on intelligence failures in Iraq, have previously made reference to the early doubts expressed by the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research in 2002 concerning the reliability of the Iraq-Niger uranium link.

But the intelligence assessment itself - including the analysts' full arguments in raising wide-ranging doubts about the credence of the uranium claim - was only recently declassified as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group that has sought access to government documents on terrorism and intelligence matters. The group, which received a copy of the 2002 memo among several hundred pages of other documents, provided a copy of the memo to The New York Times.

The White House declined to discuss details of the declassified memo, saying the Niger question had already been explored at length since the president's State of the Union address.

"This matter was examined fully by the bipartisan Silberman-Robb commission, and the president acted on their broad recommendations to reform our intelligence apparatus," said Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

The public release of the State Department assessment, with some sections blacked out, adds another level of detail to an episode that was central not only to the debate over the invasion of Iraq, but also in the perjury indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

In early 2002, the Central Intelligence Agency sent the former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV to Niger to investigate possible attempts to sell uranium to Iraq. The next year, after Mr. Wilson became a vocal critic of the Bush administration's Iraqi intelligence, the identity of his wife, Valerie Wilson, a C.I.A. officer who suggested him for the Niger trip, was made public. The investigation into the leak led to criminal charges in October against Mr. Libby, who is accused of misleading investigators and a grand jury.

The review by the State Department's intelligence bureau was one of a number of reviews undertaken in early 2002 at the State Department in response to secret intelligence pointing to the possibility that Iraq was seeking to buy yellowcake, a processed uranium ore, from Niger to reconstitute its nuclear program.

A four-star general, Carlton W. Fulford Jr., was also sent to Niger to investigate the claims of a uranium purchase. He, too, came away with doubts about the reliability of the report and believed Niger's yellowcake supply to be secure. But the State Department's review, which looked at the political, economic and logistical factors in such a purchase, seems to have produced wider-ranging doubts than other reviews about the likelihood that Niger would try to sell uranium to Baghdad.

The review concluded that Niger was "probably not planning to sell uranium to Iraq," in part because France controlled the uranium industry in the country and could block such a sale. It also cast doubt on an intelligence report indicating that Niger's president, Mamadou Tandja, might have negotiated a sales agreement with Iraq in 2000. Mr. Tandja and his government were reluctant to do anything to endanger their foreign aid from the United States and other allies, the review concluded. The State Department review also cast doubt on the logistics of Niger being able to deliver 500 tons of uranium even if the sale were attempted. "Moving such a quantity secretly over such a distance would be very difficult, particularly because the French would be indisposed to approve or cloak this arrangement," the review said.

Chris Farrell, the director of investigations at Judicial Watch and a former military intelligence officer, said he found the State Department's analysis to be "a very strong, well-thought-out argument that looks at the whole playing field in Niger, and it makes a compelling case for why the uranium sale was so unlikely."

The memo, dated March 4, 2002, was distributed at senior levels by the office of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

A Bush administration official, who requested anonymity because the issue involved partly classified documents, would not say whether President Bush had seen the State Department's memo before his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2003.

But the official added: "The White House is not an intelligence-gathering operation. The president based his remarks in the State of the Union address on the intelligence that was presented to him by the intelligence community and cleared by the intelligence community. The president has said the intelligence was wrong, and we have reorganized our intelligence agencies so we can do better in the future."

Mr. Wilson said in an interview that he did not remember ever seeing the memo but that its analysis should raise further questions about why the White House remained convinced for so long that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa.

"All the people understood that there was documentary evidence" suggesting that the intelligence about the sale was faulty, he said.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

January 18, 2006
Justices Reject U.S. Bid to Block Assisted Suicide
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 - The Supreme Court removed an obstacle on Tuesday to state efforts to authorize physician-assisted suicide, ruling 6 to 3 that John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, acted without legal authority when he threw the federal government's weight against the Death With Dignity Act in Oregon five years ago.

With the new chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., in dissent in the most high-profile case since he joined the court, the decision lifted a major barrier to state initiatives like the one in Oregon, which has the only assisted-suicide law in the country.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's majority opinion did not say that Congress could not act to block such laws, only that it had not given Mr. Ashcroft the "extraordinary authority" that he claimed when he threatened Oregon doctors who followed the state law with losing their federal prescription-writing privileges.

While the court's decision was based on standard principles of administrative law, and not on the Constitution, it was clearly influenced by the majority's view that the regulation of medical practice belonged, as a general matter, to the states. Mr. Ashcroft acted contrary to "the background principles of our federal system," Justice Kennedy said in his 28-page opinion.

The decision on Tuesday upheld rulings by two lower federal courts. Mr. Ashcroft, while attorney general, appealed to the Supreme Court in November 2004. His successor, Alberto R. Gonzales, embraced his position and pursued the appeal after the justices agreed last February to hear the case.

Chief Justice Roberts did not write a dissenting opinion, instead signing a dissent written by Justice Antonin Scalia. For those eager for any hint about the new chief justice's predilections, his silent joining of this strongly worded opinion was intriguing. When the case was argued on Oct. 5, his second day on the bench, Chief Justice Roberts was an active participant but did not tip his hand.

At his confirmation hearing, he had declined to answer questions about his personal views on issues like assisted suicide, saying a judge's views and values should play no role in his judicial decisions.

Justice Clarence Thomas did write a dissenting opinion, saying it was "perplexing to say the least" to find the court interpreting federal drug law narrowly in this instance when only months ago, it upheld broad federal authority to prevent states from authorizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

Oregon voters approved the Death With Dignity Act in 1994 and affirmed it 1997. The law says that doctors who follow specific procedures may prescribe lethal doses of federally regulated medications to help their mentally competent, terminally ill patients end their lives. Through 2004, 325 people had obtained the lethal prescriptions, and 208 had used them.

When the Oregon measure took effect, Mr. Ashcroft was a senator from Missouri. Along with other members of Congress, he asked the Clinton administration to take steps to block the law. Attorney General Janet Reno refused, writing to Congress in June 1998 to say she had no authority to act because there was no evidence that Congress "intended to displace the states as the primary regulators of the medical profession." Mr. Ashcroft then co-sponsored a bill to give the government this authority, but it did not pass.

As attorney general, Mr. Ashcroft announced in November 2001 that doctors who prescribed lethal doses of drugs for the purpose of assisting a suicide risked losing their federal licenses to prescribe all "controlled substances." Without such licenses, doctors would find it difficult to practice medicine because controlled substances include many prescription pain relievers and other commonly used medications.

Oregon sued to block the new rule, joined by a doctor, a pharmacist and several terminally ill patients.

As authority for his action, Mr. Ashcroft invoked the Controlled Substances Act, a 1970 law that established the framework for federal drug policy, as well as a regulation issued by the Justice Department the following year that put the law into effect. The regulation requires that every prescription for a controlled substance "be issued for a legitimate medical purpose." Assisted suicide is "not a legitimate medical purpose," Mr. Ashcroft said.

In his opinion on Tuesday, Gonzales v. Oregon, No. 04-623, Justice Kennedy emphasized, with evident disapproval, the unilateral nature of Mr. Ashcroft's action, taken "without consulting Oregon or apparently anyone outside his department." The attorney general's rule was not entitled to the deference the court usually gave to interpretations of governing statutes by executive branch officials, he said, because Congress had not given the attorney general the authority he was invoking.

"The authority claimed by the attorney general is both beyond his expertise and incongruous with the statutory purposes and design," Justice Kennedy said.

Justice Scalia, in his dissenting opinion, took issue with the argument that Congress could not have intended to delegate medical judgments of this sort to the attorney general. The legitimacy of physician-assisted suicide "ultimately rests, not on 'science' or 'medicine,' but on a naked value judgment," he said, adding, "It no more depends upon a 'quintessentially medical judgment' than does the legitimacy of polygamy or eugenic infanticide."

Justice Scalia said Mr. Ashcroft's action was "the most reasonable interpretation" of the statute because "virtually every relevant source of authoritative meaning confirms that the phrase 'legitimate medical purpose' does not include intentionally assisting suicide."

In the few months since the case was argued on Oct. 5, the question of how skeptically the Supreme Court will be willing to examine the exercise of power by the executive branch has become considerably more prominent. This issue also seemed to mark a divide between the majority and the dissent.

In his opinion, Justice Kennedy said that Mr. Ashcroft was claiming the "extraordinary authority" to declare as criminal actions that Congress had not designated as crimes, and that he was seeking "a radical shift of authority from the states to the federal government to define general standards of medical practice in every locality."

But Congress had no such intent in passing the Controlled Substances Act, Justice Kennedy said. "The structure and operation of the C.S.A. presume and rely upon a functioning medical profession regulated under the states' police powers," he said, adding that "Oregon's regime is an example of the state regulation of medical practice that the C.S.A. presupposes."

Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer signed the majority opinion.

The court was clearly aware that it was venturing into "an earnest and profound debate," as Justice Kennedy noted, quoting from the court's 1997 opinion in an assisted-suicide case. In that case, Washington v. Glucksberg, the court said that the Constitution did not convey a right to assistance in dying, but that states were free to experiment with the issue. "The dispute before us," Justice Kennedy said, "is in part a product of this political and moral debate."

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said at his briefing on Tuesday, "We are disappointed at the decision." Mr. McClellan added, "The president remains fully committed to building a culture of life, a culture of life that is built on valuing life at all stages."



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

January 18, 2006
Despite Hints, Lott Will Seek Fourth Term in the Senate
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 - Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi announced Tuesday that he would seek a fourth term in office, presenting a setback to Democratic hopes of winning control of the Senate in November and a threat of upheaval in the Senate Republican leadership next year.

Mr. Lott had dropped hints that he was considering leaving office, causing Democrats to look to Mississippi as a state where they would have a shot at victory without Mr. Lott's name on the ballot. Accordingly, Republicans pressed Mr. Lott not to abandon his political career.

Mr. Lott, who was forced out as majority leader three years ago after making remarks criticized as racially insensitive, has held open the door to running for a leadership position in the Senate assuming he wins re-election, perhaps even for majority leader again. It would not be easy: although the current majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, is not running again, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is viewed as having broad support to win the post.

Mr. Lott's spokesman, Susan Irby, declined to discuss whether Mr. Lott would try to re-enter the leadership, saying: "One step at a time. He doesn't know what the future is going to bring."

Democrats need to pick up six seats to win control of the Senate. Right now, they have their eyes on Republican-controlled seats in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Ohio, Missouri, Montana, Tennessee and Arizona. At the same time, they are facing spirited Republican challenges to seats held by Democrats in Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey and potentially West Virginia.

Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign, said he was not discouraged by Mr. Lott's announcement. "Oh gosh - no," he said. "Absolutely not. We've been winning campaign 2006 so far."



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

January 18, 2006
White House Strikes Back on 'Plantation' Remark
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 - The White House said on Tuesday that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was "out of bounds" when she compared the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to a plantation and harshly criticized the Bush administration.

Mrs. Clinton, speaking at a ceremony in Harlem honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, said that Republicans had run the House "like a plantation" in which dissent or ideas from the minority party were not tolerated.

Republicans responded within hours, accusing her of trying to score political points with divisive and racially charged language. But several prominent black leaders quickly came to her defense, saying they agreed with her.

On Tuesday, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, expressed dismay when asked about Mrs. Clinton's characterization of the Republican-led House, as well as about another comment she made at the ceremony, that the Bush administration "will go down in history as one of the worst" to run the nation.

"I think they were way out of line," Mr. McClellan said of Mrs. Clinton's comments.

But Mrs. Clinton's advisers fired back at the White House. "What's out of line is a White House that defends Tom DeLay's innocence and the corruption in the Republican House of Representatives," said Howard Wolfson, a Clinton spokesman.

Senator Trent Lott, a Republican from Mississippi, was also critical on Tuesday of Mrs. Clinton's speech and style.

During an interview with Chris Matthews for Tuesday night's "Hardball" program on MSNBC, Mr. Lott said of the New York senator: "When she speaks to the Senate, she uses very moderate terms and very low modulation and is very good. When she goes to events like this one and starts hollering and using this sort of, just vicious kind of language, I think it really is a ... you know, you wind up having to apologize for it."



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Senior Prisoner on California's Death Row Is Executed at Age 76 Washington Post
With the help of four prison guards, Clarence Ray Allen shuffled from his wheelchair to a gurney inside San Quentin's death chamber early Tuesday, a day after his 76th birthday. Although legally blind, Allen raised his head to search among witnesses for relatives he had invited. " Hoka hey , it's a good day to die," Allen said in a nod to his Choctaw Indian heritage. "Thank you very much, I love you all. Goodbye." Having suffered a heart attack in September, Allen had asked prison authorities to let him die if he went into cardiac arrest before his execution, a request prison officials said they would not honor.
California Executes Death Row Inmate, 76 Los Angeles Times
Extra chemicals needed to kill Calif.'s oldest condemned inmate San Diego Union Tribune
San Francisco Chronicle - New York Times - CNN - Independent - all 1,057 related »

Reaction Mixed to Assisted-Suicide Ruling Los Angeles Times
Cancer patient Charlene Andrews, 68, was on her morning walk in a shopping mall Tuesday when she heard news that the nation's highest court upheld Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law. She offered two words, spoken with relief: "We won." Andrews, one of four patient plaintiffs in the case, joined a chorus hailing the U.S. Supreme Court ruling as a moral victory for the terminally ill and legal vindication for Oregon voters. Twice they approved the state's pioneering Death With Dignity Act, first passed in 1994.
Oregon assisted-suicide law upheld Minneapolis Star Tribune (subscription)
Ruling begins a battle USA Today
KHON2 - News24 - ABC News - Houston Chronicle - all 920 related »

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 18, 2006
Supreme Court Steers Clear of First Abortion Case in 5 Years
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 - The Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that the lower courts were wrong to declare a New Hampshire abortion law unconstitutional in its entirety. Instead, the justices said, the lower courts should look for a less drastic way to repair the statute's flaws.

Abortion-rights advocates have attacked the New Hampshire law, which demands that parents be notified before a teenager ends her pregnancy, because in their view it fails to provide adequately for exceptions to protect the health of the mother in medical emergencies that are not life-threatening.

In sending the case back to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, the justices avoided a sweeping decision.

"We do not revisit our abortion precedents today, but rather address a question of remedy," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote at the outset, in what could be her last opinion.

Justice O'Connor said the circuit court and a federal district court "chose the most blunt remedy" by invalidating the law entirely. "They need not have done so," Justice O'Connor wrote.

The decision has been eagerly awaited by people on all sides of the abortion debate and by officials in the many other states that impose some restrictions on teenagers seeking abortions.

Justice O'Connor, who has announced her intention to retire and will step down if Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. is confirmed as her successor, as expected, is widely regarded as a swing voter on the court, bridging its liberal and conservative wings.

When the New Hampshire case was argued before the justices on Nov. 30, Justice O'Connor practically forecast how she would decide.

"Is there any objection by you to remanding this thing to let it be more narrowly focused?" she asked a lawyer for the abortion clinics that have challenged the New Hampshire law. Other justices also signaled a desire not to dismantle the law.

Today's measured ruling was a victory for New Hampshire's attorney general, Kelly A. Ayotte, who had appealed the lower court's ruling. It was also a victory for the Bush administration, which had argued on Ms. Ayotte's behalf that the statute should not be totally undone.

But Jennifer Dalven, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who had argued on behalf of the abortion clinics, said today's ruling was also good for her side. "It tells politicians that they must include protections for women's health and safety when they pass abortion laws," Ms. Dalven told The Associated Press.

Of the 43 states that require parental involvement in a teenager's decision about abortion, New Hampshire is one of five not to include an explicit health exception in the statute. All the laws make exceptions for medical emergencies that are life-threatening.

In the Nov. 30 arguments, the justices indicated by their questions that they thought New Hampshire's law did not make sufficient allowance for medical emergencies. The statute, which has never taken effect because of the lower court rulings against it, requires notice to at least one parent and a 48-hour waiting period, although judges can issue emergency orders if parents are not available.

Today's unanimous opinion contained language that will probably please President Bush, given his frequent complaints about "judges who legislate from the bench."

"First," Justice O'Connor wrote, "We try not to nullify more of a legislature's work than is necessary." To strike down a law as unconstitutional, she wrote, "frustrates the intent of the elected representatives of the people."



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

http://www.observer.com/20060123/20060123_...e_offtherec.asp

Risen Gave Times A Non-Disclosure on Wiretap Book
New York Observer

U.S. nuclear forces, 2006:

As of January 2006, the U.S. stockpile contains almost 10,000 nuclear warheads. This includes 5,735 active or operational warheads: 5,235 strategic and 500 nonstrategic warheads. Approximately 4,225 additional warheads are held in the reserve or inactive stockpiles
http://www.thebulletin.org/article_nn.php?art_ofn=jf06norris

Corruption?

Congressman made personal loan to bank president shortly before bank extended him $250,000-plus loan
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Utah_congres...an_to_0118.html

===
Democrats and Other False Friends:

"George Bush would be in severe political trouble if there were an opposition political party in the country.
http://www.counterpunch.org/damato01182006.html

===
Paul Craig Roberts: Gore Is Right:

Former vice president Al Gore gave what I believe to be the most important political speech in my lifetime, and the New York Times, "the newspaper of record," did not report it. Not even excerpts.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts141.html

===
Gore responds to White House 'hypocrisy' comments:

"There are two problems with the Attorney General's effort to focus attention on the past instead of the present Administration's behavior."
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=59370

===
Senate candidate unapologetic for saying GOP hijacked by fanatics:

Ohio's Republican leader wants Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Paul Hackett to apologize for calling some conservative Republicans religious fanatics and comparing them to terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.
http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjournal/news...te/13646787.htm

===
Newspapers Across the Country Oppose Alito Nomination:

Urge Senate to Stop his Nomination to the Supreme Court
http://tinyurl.com/cs84n

===
Buffett: U.S. Trade Deficit Is a Threat:

The U.S. trade deficit is a bigger threat to the domestic economy than either the federal budget deficit or consumer debt and could lead to "political turmoil," billionaire investor Warren Buffett warned.
http://tinyurl.com/9wdps

===
Supreme Court backs Oregon assisted suicide law:

In a 6-3 vote, justices ruled that a federal drug law could not be used to prosecute Oregon doctors who prescribed overdoses intended to facilitate the deaths of terminally ill patients.
http://khon.com/khon/display.cfm?storyID=1...§ionID=1153

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 19, 2006
Inquiry on Clinton Official Ends With Accusations of Cover-Up
By DAVID JOHNSTON and NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 - After the longest independent counsel investigation in history, the prosecutor in the case of former Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros is finally closing his operation with a scathing report accusing Clinton administration officials of thwarting an inquiry into whether Mr. Cisneros evaded paying income taxes.

The legal inquiry by the prosecutor, David M. Barrett, lasted more than a decade, consumed some $21 million and came to be a symbol of the flawed effort to prosecute high-level corruption through the use of independent prosecutors.

Mr. Barrett began his investigation with the narrower issue of whether Mr. Cisneros lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation when he was being considered for the cabinet position. He ended his inquiry accusing the Clinton administration of a possible cover-up.

His report says Justice Department officials refused to grant him the broad jurisdiction he wanted; for example, Attorney General Janet Reno said he could look at only one tax year. And after Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington took a Cisneros investigation out of the hands of district-level officials in Texas, the agency deemed the evidence too weak to merit a criminal inquiry, a conclusion strongly disputed by one Texas investigator.

Former officials of the Justice Department and the I.R.S. dismissed Mr. Barrett's conclusions in appendices attached to the report, saying the findings were the product of an inquiry that was incompetently managed from the start.

After being indicted on 18 felony counts, Mr. Cisneros pleaded guilty in 1999 to a misdemeanor charge of lying to investigators. He was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Barrett kept his office open more than six years after the law that created the independent counsel system was allowed to die. Lawmakers in both parties had wearied of the many inquiries that had failed to achieve the goal of removing political influence from criminal investigations of administration officials.

Some Republicans long contended that efforts to close down Mr. Barrett's operation were motivated by an effort to suppress information about the Cisneros investigation that could reflect badly on Mr. Clinton and his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But to Democrats and other critics of independent counsels, Mr. Barrett's inquiry has stood as a prime example what went wrong with an important post-Watergate law. That legislation allowed prosecutors, outside the Justice Department's traditional criminal justice bureaucracy, and armed with virtually unlimited time and money, to pursue their subjects into areas few federal prosecutors were likely to venture.

The final report, scheduled to be made public on Thursday, discusses in detail why the office remained in operation for so long: an intense behind-the-scenes clash between senior Justice Department officials and Mr. Barrett, who was trying to explore possible obstruction of justice within the Justice Department and the I.R.S.

A copy of the report was obtained by The New York Times from someone sympathetic to the Barrett investigation who wanted his criticism of the Clinton administration to be known. On Wednesday, Mr. Barrett declined to discuss the report, saying he would not talk about it until it was officially made public.

The report reveals little new about the accusations that led to Mr. Barrett's appointment - that Mr. Cisneros misled investigators about payments to a former mistress. Those issues were the subject of news accounts during the 1990's.

But it was not widely known that Mr. Barrett believed that Mr. Cisneros's handling of the payments to the former mistress might have violated tax laws or that he suspected Justice Department and I.R.S. officials of criminal obstruction to help Mr. Cisneros avoid scrutiny. The New York Daily News reported on Wednesday that Mr. Barrett would issue a report alleging a Clinton administration cover-up of Mr. Cisneros's tax problems.

The report included statements, in appendices, from former Justice Department and I.R.S. officials sharply disputing Mr. Barrett's assertions. In addition, Barry S. Simon, a lawyer for Mr. Cisneros, said in a letter dated Nov. 8, 2005, and included in the report, "Materials that are now being publicly released are simply an effort to 'try' the case that" Mr. Barrett's office could not win in court.

Mr. Barrett's 746-page report said that the tax and obstruction phase of the inquiry ended without a definitive conclusion, but it declared: "These agencies' treatment of possible charges against Cisneros was at best questionable and at worst represented serious wrongdoing. There seems to be no question that Cisneros was given special consideration and more limited scrutiny because of who he was - an important political appointee."

Justice Department officials who disputed Mr. Barrett's findings portrayed his investigation as deeply misguided and said the tax case against Mr. Cisneros had little merit. They suggested that the prosecutor had turned his disappointment in his inability to prove the obstruction allegations into unprovable theories.

Robert S. Litt, one of the Justice Department officials involved, wrote in a comment letter on May 31, 2005, that he was allowed to read only edited parts of the report but that he concluded that the report was "a fitting conclusion to one of the most embarrassingly incompetent and wasteful episodes in the history of American law enforcement."

Mr. Litt defended his evaluation of Mr. Cisneros's tax case, asserting that every Justice Department lawyer who had reviewed the case agreed with the conclusion. He said in his letter that Mr. Barrett's accusations of obstruction were "a scurrilous falsehood."

In his effort to explain his time-consuming inquiry, Mr. Barrett asserted that he was slowed by reluctant witnesses and impeded by Justice Department officials. He suggested that those officials had grown resistant to referring issues to outside prosecutors because of the number of cabinet officers already being investigated by special prosecutors at the request of Ms. Reno.

In the case of Mr. Cisneros, Ms. Reno agreed to expand the scope of Mr. Barrett's inquiry to possible tax violations but limited the investigation to a single tax-reporting year, a move that the report suggests effectively killed the investigation.

Mr. Barrett concluded that "in the end enough high-ranking officials with enough power were able to blunt any effort to bring about a full and independent examination of Cisneros' possible tax offenses in the face of what seemed to many to be obvious grounds for such an inquiry."

Mr. Barrett said I.R.S. officials in Washington took over a district-level inquiry in Texas into Mr. Cisneros's taxes and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to go ahead with a criminal investigation. But in a 1997 memorandum protesting the decision, an I.R.S. investigator in Texas said there was evidence that Mr. Cisneros had diverted substantial parts of his speaking fees in the early 1990's to the former mistress, without the knowledge of co-workers.

But other I.R.S. and Justice Department officials said that a fairly complete listing of Mr. Cisneros's income from various sources was available to his accountants, whom he relied on to prepare his tax returns. That would have made it impossible to sustain a prosecution, they said.

The prolonged investigation and the Barrett report have been the subjects of intense partisan battles. Democrats have asserted that the investigation was kept alive in hopes of developing and propagating accusations about the Clinton administration, while Republicans have said that supporters of Mr. Clinton and Senator Clinton were eager to suppress Mr. Barrett's inquiries. Mrs. Clinton, a potential presidential contender in 2008, is up for re-election this year.

Initially, the panel of three judges that oversees the lingering issues involving the independent counsel law agreed in October to the public release of Mr. Barrett's report but said the section with accusations about Clinton officials must be deleted.

But after Congressional Republicans attached a rider to a Department of Housing and Urban Development spending bill requiring publication of the full report, the judicial panel in November ordered a full disclosure.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top

January 19, 2006
Report Questions Legality of Briefings on Surveillance
By SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 - A legal analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concludes that the Bush administration's limited briefings for Congress on the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping without warrants are "inconsistent with the law."

The analysis was requested by Representative Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who said in a Jan. 4 letter to President Bush that she believed the briefings should be open to all the members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

Instead, the briefings have been limited to the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate and of the Intelligence Committees, the so-called Gang of Eight.

Since 2002, the security agency has intercepted the international phone calls and e-mail messages of some Americans and others in the United States who the agency believes are linked to Al Qaeda. The eavesdropping was authorized by an executive order signed by President Bush but without the court warrants usually required.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday scheduled an open hearing on the eavesdropping program for Feb. 6. The hearing, titled "Wartime executive power and the N.S.A.'s surveillance authority," is expected to include testimony from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

In an interview on Wednesday, Ms. Harman, of California, said she had been invited to another briefing on the program at the White House on Friday and had urged senior administration officials to open the session to the full committees.

She declined to name the officials, but a Congressional staff member said they were Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff; and David S. Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Mr. Cheney's office oversees the briefings on the surveillance program.

Of the Congressional Research Service analysis, Ms. Harman said, "It's a solid piece of work, and it confirms a view I've held for a long time."

A White House spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity because the program was classified, said, "We continue to brief the appropriate members of Congress as we have been for the last several years."

A spokesman for Representative Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Mr. Hoekstra was traveling and had not seen the report.

The spokesman, Jamal D. Ware, said that Mr. Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican, believed the briefings had been adequate for Congressional oversight but that he was open to expanding them.

"The chairman is taking it under consideration and does support some expansion of the number of Intelligence Committee members who are briefed," Mr. Ware said.

The Congressional Research Service memorandum, sent to the Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, explores the requirement in the National Security Act of 1947 that the committees be kept "fully and currently informed" of intelligence activities. It notes that the law specifically allows notification of "covert actions" to the Gang of Eight, but says the security agency's program does not appear to be a covert action program.

As a result, the memorandum says, limiting the briefings to just eight members of Congress "would appear to be inconsistent with the law."

The memorandum, written by Alfred Cumming, a national security specialist at the research service, does lay out several possible defenses for the administration's position. "The executive branch may assert that the mere discussion of the N.S.A. program generally could expose certain intelligence sources and methods to disclosure," it says.

In a related action, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington, said it would file suit against the Justice Department for failing to release documents on the eavesdropping program that it had requested under the Freedom of Information Act. A department spokesman said the department gave an initial response to the center's request within three days of its receipt on Dec. 16, saying it had approved expedited handling for the request.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Congressional Agency Questions Legality of Wiretaps

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 19, 2006; A05



The Bush administration appears to have violated the National Security Act by limiting its briefings about a warrantless domestic eavesdropping program to congressional leaders, according to a memo from Congress's research arm released yesterday.

The Congressional Research Service opinion said that the amended 1947 law requires President Bush to keep all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees "fully and currently informed" of such intelligence activities as the domestic surveillance effort.

The memo from national security specialist Alfred Cumming is the second report this month from CRS to question the legality of aspects of Bush's domestic spying program. A Jan. 6 report concluded that the administration's justifications for the program conflicted with current law.

Yesterday's analysis was requested by Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, who wrote in a letter to Bush earlier this month that limiting information about the eavesdropping program violated the law and provided for poor oversight.

The White House has said it informed congressional leaders about the NSA program in more than a dozen briefings, but has refused to provide further details. At a minimum, the briefings included the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees and the two ranking Democrats, known collectively as the "Gang of Four," according to various sources.

"We believe that Congress was appropriately briefed," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in a statement last night.

Bush has publicly acknowledged issuing an order after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that allowed the National Security Agency to intercept telephone and e-mail exchanges between the United States and overseas without court authorization. The cases were limited to people suspected of al Qaeda ties, Bush and his aides said.

Cumming's analysis found that both intelligence committees should have been briefed because the program involved intelligence collection activities.

The only exception in the law applies to covert actions, Cumming found, and those programs must be reported to the "Gang of Eight," which includes House and Senate leaders in addition to heads of the intelligence panels. The administration can also withhold some operational details in rare circumstances, but that does not apply to the existence of entire programs, he wrote.

Unless the White House contends the program is a covert action, the memo said, "limiting congressional notification of the NSA program to the Gang of Eight . . . would appear to be inconsistent with the law."

Also yesterday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center said it would file a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit today demanding information about the NSA spying. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed separate lawsuits Tuesday asserting that Bush exceeded his authority and violated Fourth Amendment guarantees in authorizing the NSA surveillance.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Justice O'Connor, a 'sensible' jurist CNN
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was viewed as the "swing justice" of the court, a characterization she rejects. Sandra Day O'Connor is a woman, a Westerner, a conservative, a grandmother, and a retiring Supreme Court justice. They all inform her unique and undoubtedly powerful presence in American law and society. The 75-year-old jurist likely participated in her final oral argument Wednesday and after nearly a quarter-century of high-profile service, her time on the bench is drawing to a close. Her life will soon be spent largely taking care of her husband, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease. She'll also continue to write, give speeches, teach, and participate in legal seminars.
Supreme Court Kicks Back Contested Abortion Law for Minors FOX News
Life-and-Death Decisions Washington Post
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Divided Democrats Aren't Capitalizing on Republican Scandals Bloomberg
Congressional Democrats, divided over changes to lobbying and ethics rules, have been slow to take advantage of the corruption scandals that have engulfed Republicans. Representative David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, said many members of his party oppose tightening lobbying rules at a time when Democrats have a chance to regain a majority in Congress in the November elections. ``I've had a number of people who said, `Geez, you really want to do this, after the way Republicans have treated us?''' Obey said. "Why would we guarantee them this stuff if we take control?'' Democrats risk squandering an opportunity to use the ethics issue for political advantage, said Marshall Wittmann, who heads the Democratic Leadership Council, a party organization, and who previously advised Republicans. "The leadership needs to get in and rattle some members and say, unless we take the initiative with bold and far-reaching proposals, the Republicans will steal this issue from us,'' he said. Responding to lobbyist Jack Abramoff's Jan. 3 guilty plea in a federal corruption probe, Republicans on Jan. 17 announced plans to overhaul lobbying, including a ban on lawmakers accepting privately funded trips, free meals or valuable gifts. The Democrats followed yesterday with a set of proposals from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid that include an end to the Republican practice of pressuring corporations and trade groups to hire employees based on party affiliation.

`Culture of Corruption'
Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat, said he saw little need to change the rules because Republicans, not lax regulations, were to blame for the ethics scandals. "It is not the rules that are the issue, it's the character of the players that is the issue here,'' Hoyer said in an interview. "That is what I want to focus on, the culture of corruption.'' Reported spending on federal lobbying has almost doubled in the last five years to $2.14 billion in 2004 from $1.47 billion in 1999, according to Political Moneyline, a Washington-based company that tracks political donations and lobbying. There are now more than 30,000 registered lobbyists in Washington. "The real problem is the town is drowning in big money,'' Wittmann said. The Abramoff investigation has ensnared former top aides to ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who is under indictment in Texas for alleged campaign-finance violations in a separate case. Representative Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican, said Jan. 16 he would step aside as chairman of the House Administration Committee because of allegations he received gifts from Abramoff.

Republicans' Margin
Republicans control the House by a margin of 231-202, with one independent, meaning Democrats need to gain a minimum of 15 of the chamber's 435 seats in this year's midterm elections to take control. The prospect of a return to power -- and the political advantages that go with it -- may be a factor in the Democrats' divisions over a lobbying overhaul. As the Republicans showed when they took back the House in 1994, the majority party has a distinct advantage in fundraising from political action committees, said Kent Cooper, co-founder of Political Moneyline. "Beginning immediately after Election Day 1994 going through Election Day 1996, business PACs gave $2 of every $3 to Republicans,'' Cooper said.

`Part of the System'
Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch, an advocacy group in Washington, said the Democrats may be counting on exploiting this funding source in the future. "Democrats have been part of the system that has grown up in Washington over the last few decades,'' he said. "They have yet to show they significantly want to change it.'' Republicans also are split over lobbying. Hastert acknowledged Jan. 17 that many of Republican lawmakers on a 90- minute conference call that day indicated that they weren't prepared to support their party's package. Representative John Shadegg, an Arizona Republican who is one of three candidates to succeed DeLay as majority leader, said in a statement that a ban on privately funded travel is an "overreaction that doesn't get to the root of the problem.'' Former Representative Charlie Stenholm, a Texas Democrat, said Democrats lost control of the House in 1994 in circumstances similar to those now facing the Republicans. Stenholm said Democrats need to find a consensus on lobbying overhaul and then work with Republicans to pass legislation. "We're divided,'' Stenholm said. "If we are going to get back into the majority, we're going to have to find unity.''
Legislative Loose Ends WNBC
Democrats Claim a Better Idea on Controlling Lobbying New York Times
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Human Rights Watch Says US Policy Undermines Global Human Rights Voice of America
A leading human rights organization has accused the Bush administration of using torture and inhuman treatment of detainees as a deliberate strategy in its war on terror. Human Rights Watch charges in a new report that the treatment of detainees has undermined the United States' ability to champion human rights around the world. Human Rights Watch says policy decisions from senior Bush administration officials have created an atmosphere tolerant of abuse. The organization's executive director, Kenneth Roth, says it became clear this past year that torture and inhuman treatment are not simply the unintentional byproducts of these policy decisions.

"It's not simply a matter of neglect, or command failure," he said. "Rather the use of torture and inhuman treatment was the Bush policy. It was reflective of a deliberate decision by the most senior Bush administration officials to fight terrorism without regard to one of the most basic prohibitions there is in international human rights law." The White House dismissed the report's criticism, saying the United States does not torture terror suspects. Spokesman Scott McClellan said Human Rights Watch's findings appear to be based on a political agenda rather than facts, and that the United States does more than any other country to advance human rights and freedom. "I think when a group like this makes some of these assertions, it diminishes the effectiveness of that organization," he said. "The United States is a leader when it comes to advancing freedom and promoting democracy, and we will continue to be. We are the leader." Human Rights Watch based much of its criticism of the Bush administration on public comments from senior US officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, who argued for excluding the Central Intelligence Agency from legislation outlawing "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" of detainees. The rights group is calling for the administration to appoint a special prosecutor to examine these alleged abuses, and for Congress to establish an independent, bipartisan panel to investigate. More than 70 countries were surveyed in the report. U.S. allies Britain and Canada also came in for criticism in their efforts to combat terrorism. Britain came under fire for trying to send terror suspects to governments likely to torture, while Canada was criticized for trying to dilute a new treaty outlawing enforced disappearances. Beyond the global war on terror, the European Union's lack of action in Africa was cited as a negative development. "The EU largely ignored human rights abuses by its friends in Africa," said Kenneth Roth. "It was very good about speaking out against the pariah Zimbabwe. But when it came to Angola, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, there was little if anything said." Elsewhere, the government of Uzbekistan was criticized for the killing of hundreds of demonstrators last May in Andijan, and Sudan's government was cited for atrocities in the Darfur region. Burma, North Korea, Turkmenistan and the Chinese regions of Tibet and Xinjiang were cited as areas of "severe repression." While "persistent atrocities" were reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chechnya. On a positive note, India was highlighted for suspending most military aid to neighboring Nepal and for playing a "constructive role in opposing" the Nepalese king's seizure of absolute power last year. Also, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations won praise for forcing Burma to give up its chairmanship this year because of its poor human rights record.
Rights group blasts US terror interrogations Newsweek
Human rights report attacks US, Europe and China International Herald Tribune
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Fuel prices widen losses for American Miami Herald
Southwest Airlines continues to profit from its low-priced fuel contracts as other airlines suffer huge losses. American Airlines parent AMR on Wednesday said its fourth-quarter loss widened, as the nation's biggest airline company wrestled with high fuel costs and competition with low-cost rivals. The same day, Southwest Airlines reported a 54 percent jump in fourth-quarter profit, as the bets it made on fuel prices allowed it to dodge for a little longer the spiraling costs that hit American. Revenue increased at both airlines, with planes more crowded and average fares higher. And airline stocks rallied, led by AMR Corp., which rose 47 cents, or 2.5 percent, to close at $19.33 in trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Ray Neidl, an analyst with Calyon Securities, said the stocks were lifted by a decline in oil prices, but that AMR also may have been rewarded for the strength of American's route network and a slightly smaller-than-expected loss.
Cost of Fuel Hurts AMR Los Angeles Times
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NASA ecstatic over condition of particles Sydney Morning Herald
A technician unbolts a canister containing comet dust from the Stardust capsule at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. The seven-year project collected particles from a comet. NASA today was "ecstatic" and surprised over the condition and visibility of comet particles contained inside the tightly sealed canister that returned from a far-flung corner of the solar system on Sunday. The Stardust capsule was opened late on Tuesday at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston after a top security transport from the Dugway Proving Grounds in western Utah, where it ended its seven-year four-billion-kilometre journey to the comet Wild 2. Bill Jeffs, a spokesman for NASA, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur that some of the particles were so large they could be seen by the naked eye. He said NASA officials were "ecstatic" and "surprised" by the condition of the particles.
Astronomer thrilled with comet-dust catch Seattle Times
Stardust Canister Opened: “A Huge Success” Space.com
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Energy prices boost inflation Houston Chronicle
Surging energy prices pushed consumer inflation to a five-year high in 2005, outpacing average wage gains for most American workers, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The department's consumer price index, a widely followed inflation gauge, rose 3.4 percent last year, the fastest rate since 2000, largely reflecting climbing prices for fuel oil, gasoline, natural gas and electricity, the department said. However, workers' average pay rose more slowly. Average hourly wages fell 0.5 percent and average weekly earnings declined 0.4 percent, after adjusting for inflation, in the 12 months that ended in December, the department said in a separate report. Last year was the third year in a row in which real weekly wages fell, according to department data for the nation's 92 million private production and nonmanagerial service workers, who account for more than 80 percent of the work force.
Energy led boost in living costs Seattle Post Intelligencer
Consumer Prices Declined in December New York Times
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Golden Globes: Chinese connection Hindustan Times
There is a whole world of difference between the overall value of the general run of Indian films and that of the cinema that emerges from China. That truism was driven home for the umpteenth time at the 63rd Golden Globe Awards on Monday night. While China registered its presence in no uncertain manner in several categories, India, as always, was conspicuous by its absence. Let’s begin right at the top of the heap. The evening belonged to the Taiwanese-born and raised Ang Lee and his newest Hollywood film, Brokeback Mountain, which won in four categories, including best dramatic film, best director and best screenplay. Lee is today a global force although he is still best known the world over for the sweeping martial arts epic Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, which, in 2000, redefined the world’s engagement with the colour and the flourish of Chinese fantasy.
Globes go to 'Brokeback,' 'Walk the Line' International Herald Tribune
The globes, Minute by minute Kansas City Star
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Gore, Nader, Aniston at Sundance ABC News
Al Gore, Ralph Nader and Jennifer Aniston and MPAA Line Up As Stars at Sundance. Actors are directing. Singers are acting. Drama directors are making concert films. Former presidential rivals Al Gore and Ralph Nader are hitting the big screen.

This undated publicity photo provided by Sony Pictures Classics shows actors from left, Joan Cusack, Catherine Keener, Jennifer Aniston and Frances McDormand in a scene from writer-director Nicole Holofcener's "Friends With Money." The film opens the Sundance film festival Thursday night, Jan. 19, 2006, in Park City, Ut. (AP Photo/Sony Pictures Classics, Mark Lipson)
And Hollywood's much-maligned system of rating movies stars in its own film. The Sundance Film Festival, the country's foremost showcase for independent cinema, gets under way Thursday with an intriguing mix of role reversals among its cast. Gore and Nader lead what's shaping up as a powerhouse year for documentaries, always a strong suit at Sundance. Director Davis Guggenheim's "An Inconvenient Truth" chronicles former Vice President Gore's dogged campaign to convince a reluctant society of fossil-fuel profiteers and consumers about the dangers of global warming. Nader, viewed by critics as the spoiler whose campaign kept Gore out of the White House in the 2000 election, is the subject of Henriette Mantel and Stephen Skrovan's "An Unreasonable Man," a portrait of the crusader for consumer rights and safety. Sundance opens with writer-director Nicole Holofcener's "Friends With Money," starring Jennifer Aniston as a woman in limbo about her future after quitting her job and taking up temporary work as a housecleaner. The film centers on her relationship with three affluent friends (Frances McDormand, Catherine Keener and Joan Cusack). It's a return engagement for Holofcener, who premiered her feature-film debut "Walking and Talking" at Sundance in 1996 after developing the story in the Sundance Institute's writing and directing labs. Back then, Holofcener was an unknown who made a splash at Sundance. How does she feel about kicking off the festival with a star-driven flick? "Thrilled and petrified. Equal measures of both," Holofcener said. "Thrilled because I have a history with Sundance, which made this feel special and like a real honor. Petrified, I guess, because I think it's never good to go into a film with really high expectations. That can't be in my favor. That's not to say it won't meet them, but what if it doesn't? I hope people will have goodwill toward it." Holofcener shouldn't worry. Sundance audiences, especially on opening night, are a receptive bunch, fired up by the prospect of 11 straight days of indie film. This year's festival presents 120 feature-length films and dozens of shorts. Actress Joey Lauren Adams ("Chasing Amy") directs Ashley Judd in "Come Early Morning," a drama about a Southern woman struggling to turn around her self-demeaning life. Comic Bob Goldthwait directs "Stay," a romantic comedy about a relationship strained to the breaking point by a pact of absolute honesty. Jonathan Demme, the Academy Award-winning director of "The Silence of the Lambs," is showing "Neil Young: Heart of Gold," which captures the rocker in concert accompanied by Emmylou Harris in Nashville last year. Singer Justin Timberlake joins Emile Hirsch, Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone in Nick Cassavetes' "Alpha Dog," a tragic tale of rivalry and violence among young drug peddlers. Musician Tom Waits is among the cast of "Wristcutters: A Love Story," Goran Dukic's offbeat film about a dreary afterlife reserved for people who have killed themselves. An institution of the movie industry takes its knocks in Kirby Dick's "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," a study of the Motion Picture Association of America's system for rating films. The ratings board has come under frequent fire as overly prudish on sex and permissive on violence, with some critics and filmmakers likening it to a censorship panel. "After watching what happened for 20 years with the ratings board and all the criticism from critics, filmmakers, even people around the country, and nothing changing at all, I felt it was really time to set out to make a film," said Dick, a 2004 Oscar nominee for his documentary "Twist of Faith." "The most unfortunate thing about the system is the secrecy of the board. That was one of the things I wanted to break through with my film." Among other Sundance highlights: Finn Taylor's "The Darwin Awards," with Winona Ryder and Joseph Fiennes in a twisted comedy about people accidentally killed in idiotic ways; Dito Montiel's "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints," starring Robert Downey Jr. and Rosario Dawson in a mean-streets drama set in 1980s Queens; Laurie Collyer's "Sherrybaby," featuring Maggie Gyllenhaal as a prison parolee trying to rebuild her life; and Isabel Coixet's "The Secret Life of Words," with Tim Robbins and Sarah Polley in the story of a nurse tending a temporarily blinded man on an oil rig in the Irish Sea. As Sundance has grown from its roots as Robert Redford's little place of discovery and nurturing for new talent, celebrity hoopla and corporate marketing gimmicks often have overshadowed the films. Critics say Sundance has gone commercial, yet defenders insist such trappings are outside festival organizers' control. "There's a bunch of, for lack of a better description, carpetbaggers attending the festival," said Kevin Smith, who established himself with "Clerks" at Sundance in 1994. "This parasitic community that kind of attaches itself to the festival but has nothing to do with the festival. But the festival takes the knocks for it. … "I've always had an incredibly warm feeling about the place," said Smith, who returns to Sundance as executive producer of buddy Malcolm Ingram's documentary "small town gay bar," about oases that homosexuals find in the Deep South. "I went there as a dude with a job at a convenient store and left there as a dude with a film career. That place changed my life in a matter of about four days.
On the Net: http://festival.sundance.org/2006
Sundance Mixed With Stars, Politicians Washington Post
Documentaries To Reign At Sundance CBS News
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Red stickers, 30-day notices loom for New Orleans homeowners Houston Chronicle
Patricia Lucas knows that her home in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward is going to be demolished. "It moved across the street," said Lucas, 52, who now lives in a Dallas suburb. The pillars of her house are still in place, she said, but aside from that, "I can't salvage nothing. It's totally gone." Lucas has not been contacted by any city officials about the impending demolition, but the red sticker that inspectors placed on her house is enough to let her know its fate. A federal judge's ruling this week clears the way for New Orleans officials to begin demolishing parts of the city badly ravaged by Hurricane Katrina — but it also forces the city to notify property owners in advance. The settlement, which was approved on Tuesday, was in response to a lawsuit filed in late December by a group representing residents and other advocacy groups to stop the city from proceeding with its plans to tear down within weeks 2,500 buildings that posed an imminent threat to the public. Homeowners were outraged last month when a top official made the announcement. "We already knew (the city) was going to be doing this at some point" and were waiting for the opportunity to contest this, said Ishmael Muhammad, a lawyer working with the People's Hurricane Relief Fund legal group, which represented residents and other grassroots advocacy organizations in the case. "You can't just go and start demolishing people's homes without giving them notifications." Under the agreement, homeowners of about 120 properties that were seriously damaged or pose an immediate threat to the public will be given seven to 10 days notice. A 30-day notice will be given to the owners of about 1,900 other houses slated for demolition. Residents can challenge the demolitions. Albert Thibodeaux, a lawyer for New Orleans, said the decision "was give-and-take on both sides, but we are satisfied with the consent." The city will post in the Times-Picayune the addresses listed for demolition. The information also will be available on the city's Web site, and residents will be notified by mail. Muhammad said his group believes the city must establish a culture in which officials are connecting with the community about their decisions on demolition and reconstruction plans. They are concerned that the city will not do that. "The only thing we're confident about is the city is going to do what the order makes it do," Muhammad said. "Anything that the city cannot do it's not going to do. And we don't think it's in the city's interest to make sure people are notified because it means people may fight." Stephen Bradberry, head organizer for New Orleans Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, said he is not confident the steps taken to notify families is adequate. "How is someone in Utah supposed to get information?" he asked. "There is no system for people to adequately find out about what is going on in the city of New Orleans" besides the national news media or Internet, he said. There are many small but important issues — issues essential for residents to know as they try to decide their future — that don't make the national news, he said. "We're not getting any kind of communication from New Orleans," said Dorothy Stukes, spokeswoman for the ACORN Katrina Survivors Association now living in Houston. "We need to know what's going on. Some people haven't even had a chance to survey their property."
New Orleans to notify homeowners before razings Boston Globe
New Orleans Agrees to Give Demolition Notices Los Angeles Times
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US to shift diplomats from Europe to Asia EUobserver.com
Washington is planning to move hundreds of its diplomats from Europe to the Middle East and the Asian superpowers, such as China or India. "America must begin to reposition our diplomatic forces around the world," the US secretary of state Condoleeza Rice said in a speech to students at Georgetown University on Wednesday (18 January), the BBC reported. She pointed out that it is not normal to have as many diplomats in Germany, with 82 million people, as in India with 1 billion people. Adding that there are still almost 200 world cities of over a million inhabitants without any US presence - despite its 7,440-strong diplomatic corps abroad - Ms Rice indicated "This is where the action is today, and this is where we must be." The first shift will amount to around 100 diplomats from Europe and Washington to be sent immediately to expanded embassies in countries such as India, China and Lebanon. Many of these diplomats had been scheduled to rotate into coveted posts in European capitals this summer, and the sudden change in assignment has caused some distress to the diplomats concerned, according to the Washington Post. The US foreign minister explained the move as part of the administration's plan to build up a "transformational diplomacy," which attempts "to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." Ms Rice added that US deployment of diplomatic staff should respond to changes in international politics after the end of the Cold War, with new threats emerging "more within states than between them." "The fundamental character of regimes now matters more than the international distribution of power," concluded Ms Rice.
US plans to shift diplomats to developing countries Boston Globe
Rice to shift diplomats' posts Indianapolis Star
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FDA Revises Prescription Drug Information Inserts Los Angeles Times
The change seeks to make them easier to read, but some states see weakened liability laws. The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that it was overhauling the inserts packaged with prescription drugs to make the information easier to understand. Officials hope that the new emphasis on "highlights" about a drug's risks and benefits, along with simpler language and clearer graphics, will decrease confusion that can lead to errors in prescribing and administering medication. Such mistakes result in about 300,000 instances of preventable death and injury in hospitals each year, according to the FDA.
FDA Tries to Limit Drug Suits in State Courts Washington Post
FDA requires easier-to-read drug labels Miami Herald
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We are now in the season of new budgets for the Pentagon with the FY 07 budget due to be released early next month. To assist the process of understanding the numbers and getting a grasp on the true size of the budget, the Center for Defense Information will be releasing a number of "tutorials." The first of these, ppears below.
January 18, 2006


Defense Budget Tutorial #1: What is the Actual Size of the 2006 Defense Budget?


On Dec. 21, 2005, Congress passed a defense appropriations bill, which according to the press releases of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, and many news articles subsequently written, funded “defense spending” for the United States for the current fiscal year, 2006. The impression made by the press releases and the news articles was that the $453 billion advertised in the bill, H.R. 2863, constitutes America’s defense budget for 2006.[1] That would be quite incorrect. In fact, the total amount to be spent for the Department of Defense in 2006 is $13 billion to $63 billion more, the latter figure assuming full funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you also count, non-DOD “national defense” costs, add another $21 billion, and, if you count defense related security costs, such as homeland security, the congressional press release numbers are more than $200 billion wrong.

Having observed, and in past years participated in, the obscuration of just how much the United States actually spends for defense, this author believes it would assist the debate over the defense budget in this country by identifying its actual size.

The “defense spending” bill enacted in December had the title, “Making appropriations to the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2006 and for other purposes.” It was a little heavy on those “other purposes” [2] and it did not comprise all the money the Defense Department received and will receive for 2006.

To peer through the opaqueness of congressional defense appropriations, it is necessary to run through the numbers; all the numbers.

The first step is to understand the “defense spending” bill, H.R. 2863, as enacted:

• Division A of the bill appropriated $453.3 billion, but not all of it for DOD. $522 million went to the CIA for unclassified “intelligence community management” and to the Coast Guard. This makes the DOD total in Division A $452.8 billion.[3]

• Division B, Title I, Chapter 1 of the bill adds to DOD $4.4 billion for its expenses to rescue and relieve civilians and to undo damage to DOD contractors from Hurricane Katrina.

• Chapter 7 of Division B adds another $1.4 billion to rebuild DOD facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

• Division B, Title II, Chapter 2 adds $130 million for DOD work for protection from the threat of the Avian Flu pandemic.

• Division B, Title III, Chapter 2 cuts the DOD budget by $80 million in rescissions (cancelled spending). More importantly, Chapter 8 in this title cuts DOD, and all other federal spending, except the Department of Veterans Affairs and “emergency” spending, by one percent “across the board.” The cut is mandated to occur in every single program of the affected accounts, nothing is exempted. The reduction to DOD is $4.0 billion.

The actual total for DOD in the bill is $454.8 billion, over a billion more than what the appropriations committees implied.

But that’s not all for the Defense Department’s budget. Add $12.2 billion for military construction.

For reasons of politics and jurisdiction, Congress appropriates money for the Defense Department in two separate bills: the Department of Defense Appropriations bill and the Military Construction Appropriations bill -- which these days is also wrapped in with other spending, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs. The “MilCon” bill funds military bases in the states and districts of almost every member of Congress. A major Capitol Hill activity is writing press releases for local newspapers about the goodies the senators and representatives add for their military facilities back home. They also write press releases about the goodies they add in the DOD appropriations bill. (Having two bills to write press releases about is better than one.)

So, that gets DOD spending for 2006 to $466.7 billion. That’s all, right?

Nope. Add about another $50 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is already $50 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan in the $466.7 billion appropriated in H.R. 2863. However, war spending in 2005 was over $100 billion, and most expect 2006 to cost at least as much. Nonetheless, Congress decided to provide just $50 billion for ongoing military operations, about enough money for the first six months of the fiscal year. It will run out in about March 2006. Before then, Congress and the president will need to add more, up to another $50 billion. It is that amount that Pentagon and congressional officials privately say they anticipate will be added in a “supplemental” appropriations request in early 2006.[4]

OK, that gets the total to $516.7 billion. Done now, right?

Nope. There are other defense activities in the Department of Energy to keep America’s nuclear arsenal reliable and effective and to develop new nuclear weapons. Add another $16.4 billion.

There are also defense related costs in the Selective Service, the National Defense Stockpile, parts of the General Services Administration, and other miscellany. Add still another $4.7 billion.

That gets the total to $537.8 billion. This figure constitutes the “National Defense” budget function (known to budget geeks as budget function “050”) in presidential budget requests and congressional budget resolutions.

You may also want to count even more spending, such as the costs of the Department of Homeland Security, which is certainly national defense in a generic sense. Add about $41 billion. [5] You might also want to consider some of the human consequences of current and previous wars; add about $68 billion for Veterans Affairs. Also, consider adding the costs of reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan which counts in the State Department’s budget, plus all the other costs for international security, diplomacy, and foreign aid, as administered by Condoleezza Rice; add about $23 billion.

If you count all these costs, the total is $669.8 billion.

This amount easily outdoes the rest of the world. In fact, if you count just the costs of the National Defense budget function, the approximate $538 billion we spend is $29 billion more than the $509 billion the entire rest of the world spends. [6]

Pick the number you believe to be most appropriate for “defense spending” in 2006. Presumably, you will not be using the $453 billion widely advertised by Congress and the press. Now, there can be an accurate debate on whether this budget is too large or too small. Please proceed.

Confused by this welter of numbers? Not surprising; below are the important parts in table form.

U.S. Defense and Security Spending
Fiscal Year 2006

Funding Source
$Billions
Purpose


H.R. 2863

454.5
Grand total for the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, but not all Congress has appropriated to DOD

H.R. 2528
12.2
Military Construction Appropriations

DOD and MilCon Appropriations bills
466.7
Total appropriated to date to DOD

Likely 2006 Supplemental
50.0
Possible amount to complete Iraq/Afghanistan war costs for 2006

Likely Total for DOD for 2006
516.7
Includes probable $50 billion in 2006 Supplemental for Iraq/Afghanistan

Department of Energy/Defense Activities Appropriations

16.4

Funds nuclear weapons activities

Other non-DOD defense activities
4.7
Funds Selective Service, National Defense Stockpile, etc.

Total for “National Defense”
537.8
Constitutes the National Defense Budget Function (Budget Function 050) in presidential budgets

Homeland Security
41-
Approximate amount for non-DOD Homeland Security costs

Veterans Affairs
68-
Approximate amount for VA costs

International Security
23-
Approximate amount for reconstruction aid, foreign arms sales, development assistance, etc.

Total for non-defense but security related costs
132-


Grand Total
669.8
Total for all international security and defense costs


# # #

[1] See Dec. 17, 2005, U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, “Conferees Approve FY 2006 Defense Spending Bill.” See first sentence in addition to the press release’s title.

[2] The bill was passed by Congress on Dec. 21, 2005, and it was signed into law by the president on Dec. 30, 2005. It is now Public Law 109-148.

[3] To be entirely correct, significant amounts of the funds ostensibly appropriated to DOD are actually for the various U.S. intelligence agencies, some of them outside DOD. Last year, a defense official accidentally told the press the classified intelligence budget amounted to about $40 billion. The appropriations for intelligence agencies are buried in various parts of the DOD bill. For example, the account, “Other Research and Development,” for the Air Force might have a few billion for CIA or NSA programs. The details of these intelligence appropriations are available only to members of Congress and a very small number of staffers. The paperwork resides in a secure vault in the Capitol building for those cleared members and staff to read; very few do.

[4] As this is written, the press is reporting DOD and OMB to be considering a supplemental of not $50 billion to finish out war funding in 2005 but $80 billion to $100 billion. Insiders report that the press has this wrong; it is more likely that DOD and OMB will ask for about $50 billion more for 2006 and a “down payment” for 2007 war costs of $40 billion to $50 billion.

[5] This number and those below for the VA and international security are not from congressional budget data but from “The Military Balance 2005-2006,” International Institute for Strategic Studies, Routledge, 2005, p. 42 . The final actuals for these agencies in 2006, including not just appropriations but also “mandatory” or “entitlement” spending, is not available and likely will not be for a few weeks, as of this date.

[6] “SIPRI Yearbook 2005; Armaments, Disarmament and International Security,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 310.

Winslow T. Wheeler

Director
Straus Military Reform Project
Center for Defense Information

winslowwheeler@comcast.net

Leading Conservatives Call for Extensive Hearings on NSA Surveillance; Checks on Invasive Federal Powers Essential

1/17/2006 6:36:00 PM


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To: National Desk

Contact: Laura Brinker, 202-715-1540, for Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, laura.brinker@dittus.com

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB) today called upon Congress to hold open, substantive oversight hearings examining the President's authorization of the National Security Agency (NSA) to violate domestic surveillance requirements outlined in the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, chairman of PRCB, was joined by fellow conservatives Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR); David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation and Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, in urging lawmakers to use NSA hearings to establish a solid foundation for restoring much needed constitutional checks and balances to intelligence law.

"When the Patriot Act was passed shortly after 9-11, the federal government was granted expanded access to Americans' private information," said Barr. "However, federal law still clearly states that intelligence agents must have a court order to conduct electronic surveillance of Americans on these shores. Yet the federal government overstepped the protections of the Constitution and the plain language of FISA to eavesdrop on Americans' private communication without any judicial checks and without proof that they are involved in terrorism."

The following can be attributed to PRCB members:

"I believe that our executive branch cannot continue to operate without the checks of the other branches. However, I stand behind the President in encouraging Congress to operate cautiously during the hearings so that sensitive government intelligence is not given to our enemies." -- Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO, Free Congress Foundation

"Public hearings on this issue are essential to addressing the serious concerns raised by alarming revelations of NSA electronic eavesdropping." -- Grover Norquist, president, Americans for Tax Reform

"The need to reform surveillance laws and practices adopted since 9/11 is more apparent now than ever. No one would deny the government the power it needs to protect us all, but when that power poses a threat to the basic rights that make our nation unique, its exercise must be carefully monitored by Congress and the courts. This is not a partisan issue; it is an issue of safeguarding the fundamental freedoms of all Americans so that future administrations do not interpret our laws in ways that pose constitutional concerns." -- David Keene, chairman, American Conservative Union

"If the law is not reformed, ordinary Americans' personal information could be swept into all-encompassing federal databases encroaching upon every aspect of their private lives. This is of particular concern to gun owners, whose rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment are currently being infringed upon under the Patriot Act's controversial record search provisions." -- Alan Gottlieb, founder, Second Amendment Foundation

Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances is an organization dedicated to protecting Americans' fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment and ensuring that all provisions of the Patriot Act are in line with the Constitution. For more information, visit the Web site at http://www.checksbalances.org.

http://www.usnewswire.com/

LEGAL SCHOLARS SPLIT ON WIRETAPS
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
-----------------------------------------------------------
Washington has been in a furor over the National Security Agency's wiretapping, particularly President Bush's assertion that he has the executive authority to order the program, but scholars disagree over whether he is on solid legal ground.

The president claims authority for the covert program by citing Article II of the Constitution, which states, "The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America," who alone "shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States."

Mr. Bush also cites a 2001 congressional resolution, which gave the president the authority to use "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the September 11 attacks.

These arguments will be tested in court, because of yesterday's lawsuits from the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups seeking to block the National Security Agency program.

Opponents -- including many Democrats, some Republicans and several constitutional scholars -- decry the administration's move as an abuse of executive power and argue that the covert program is illegal.

They say that the "checks and balances" framework of the Constitution requires the president to seek and win congressional approval before conducting such an operation.

"This is one of the most serious constitutional crises that we've ever faced in the country," said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor.

Mr. Turley said the president's claim of executive authority based on Article II "would put our system on a slippery slope."

"There's no limiting principle to that theory. The president inevitably ends up a maximum leader in a system of limited powers," he said.

Since the program was revealed a month ago, critics have cited a 1978 law that requires a president to obtain warrants for domestic spying in wartime, noting especially that the law says it is "the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance ... may be conducted."

"It is a crime to engage in domestic surveillance without a warrant. It's an express provision in a federal law," Mr. Turley said. "The White House is ... not disagreeing with that provision, they're just saying that [Mr. Bush] trumps it with some inherent authority."

But John C. Eastman, a law professor at Chapman University in California and director of the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, said the covert program does not violate federal law.

"Even if Congress didn't authorize wiretapping, and even if Congress specifically prohibited it, the fact that this is the exercising of the commander in chief's executive power to thwart an attack on the United States makes it not just within the president's constitutional authority, but ... his constitutional responsibility," he said.

Opponents of the president's program argue that the 2001 congressional resolution does not grant the president power to conduct wiretapping within the United States, even if, as under Mr. Bush's program, the calls are from overseas and include at least one person "with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations," as he said last month.

"The president's use of the war resolution borders on absurdity," Mr. Turley said. "To have the attorney general putting forward an interpretation that he cannot possibly believe is true -- because he's not a moron -- is deeply disturbing."

But Abraham D. Sofaer, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, said, "It's not at all moronic. If you are told you can fight a war, you certainly can collect intelligence to use force. ... It's a new battlefield.

"If he is following the attackers and reaches people in the U.S. through that route," Mr. Sofaer said, "I think that collection of intelligence would be defensible. I think the president is doing the right thing and on solid ground."

Mr. Hamilton argued that even if Mr. Bush does not have the authority under the congressional resolution, he "has clear authority under Article II to do this."

"If he wasn't doing this and we got hit, and then we found out that we had the ability to learn of the next attack and we didn't do it, the president should be impeached," he said.

The whole matter must now be sorted out by Congress and the courts, but Bruce Fein, a deputy attorney general under President Reagan, said Mr. Bush could easily bypass the debate.

"I think the public would be inclined, if the president made the case and went to Congress and said, 'Here, I want you to ratify what I did retroactively, maybe I acted too hastily, and I want prospectively this authority to do that,' I think Congress would approve it," Mr. Fein said.

This article was mailed from The Washington Times (http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060117-101314-5569r.htm)
Copyright © 2006 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 19, 2006
Release of Figure in '95 Bombing Rekindles Fears
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
For a long time, the people of Oklahoma City knew it was coming: the day that Michael J. Fortier would get out of prison after serving time for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Federal Building that killed 168 people and injured more than 400.

But as Mr. Fortier's release on Friday approaches, the deal cut to secure his testimony against Timothy J. McVeigh and Terry L. Nichols is again gnawing at some of the survivors and relatives of the victims. They worry about a possible future threat posed by Mr. Fortier, 37, and the undisclosed terms of his release, in particular whether he will gain federal witness protection.

"It makes me nervous, it angers me, it frustrates me," said Dot Hill, who was working for the General Services Administration in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, and credits her survival to leaving her desk for coffee just as the bomb exploded outside.

"It's an agreement we have to stand by," Ms. Hill said in a telephone interview, "but it puts us on high alert again."

A lawyer for Mr. Fortier said "the government is concerned" about the release as well.

"I am not able to answer questions on that," the lawyer, Mike McGuire, said of Mr. Fortier's possible inclusion in a witness protection program.

But, he added, "there's a real fear that some of these victims are still angry. That's why the government is concerned."

Mr. McGuire was appointed by a court and said he left Oklahoma City for Tulsa in 1996 after repeated harassment for taking the case.

The federal Bureau of Prisons sent a brief notification to survivors and victims' families this week that Mr. Fortier would be released on Friday after serving 10½ years of his 12-year sentence. A spokesman for the bureau declined to provide particulars of the release, respond to questions or even confirm that the letters went out. The United States Marshals Service and Justice Department also refused to comment.

Mr. McGuire would not say where Mr. Fortier had been incarcerated or where he and his wife, Lori, who also testified and has been living in Arizona with their two children, would go now. He described Mr. Fortier as "tremendously thrilled with the prospect of finally being released" and "excited about his future."

"He's going to put all his resources into providing for his family," Mr. McGuire said.

He said the Fortiers would not speak to reporters. Reached by phone, Mr. Fortier's mother, Irene, in Kingman, Ariz., said she had nothing to say and hung up.

Mr. Fortier and his wife had advance knowledge of the plot by Mr. McVeigh and Mr. Nichols to bomb the Federal Building in retaliation for the federal siege of the Branch Davidian complex near Waco, Tex., in 1993, the Fortiers' testimony later showed.

As far back as the summer of 1994, some nine months before the truck bombing, Mr. Fortier testified, Mr. McVeigh, an old Army buddy, "told me they were planning on bombing a building."

A few months later, Lori Fortier testified, Mr. McVeigh sat in their trailer home and diagrammed the bombing and on a later occasion even set up 12 soup cans to show how he would rig the barrels of explosives.

Mr. Fortier also testified to transporting stolen weapons that helped finance the scheme.

With his wife, he initially lied to F.B.I. agents about their involvement. But after negotiations in the face of charges that could have sent him to prison for 23 years, he agreed to plead guilty to four counts involving transporting stolen weapons and concealing the conspiracy and become the star witness in the trials of Mr. McVeigh and Mr. Nichols.

Mr. McVeigh was convicted in the bombing and executed in 2001. Mr. Nichols is serving life without parole.

While unease over Mr. Fortier's release had been on the minds of survivors and relatives of victims for months, the Bureau of Prisons notification that reached many families on Tuesday caught them by surprise.

"I knew it was coming up, but I didn't know it would be the day before my birthday," said John Cole, who lost two godsons in the blast.

Mr. Cole said he considered Mr. Fortier and his wife culpable for not exposing the scheme. As a result, he said, "they should be right up there with Terry Nichols."

Ms. Hill, the survivor who took the coffee break, said she "was fine" with Mr. Fortier's plea bargain at the time it was reached, "but now that I know he's wandering around, I'm wondering, are they monitoring him because of his past and beliefs?"

"We don't know if any of that stuff has changed," she said.

Ken Thompson, external affairs director of the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, the organization in Oklahoma City formed to commemorate the victims, said he understood the consternation but did not fully share it.

"Most people understand that if it wasn't for him as a witness we might not have had these verdicts," said Mr. Thompson, whose mother was killed in the bombing.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2006, Issue No. 7
January 19, 2006


** GUIDELINES FOR ACCESS TO CLASSIFIED INFO REVISED
** CRS ON CONGRESSIONAL NOTIFICATION OF INTEL ACTIVITIES
** LIBYAN NUCLEAR BIBLIOGRAPHY
** A TALLY OF UNPUBLISHED CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS
** ARMY UPDATES REGULATION ON MILITARY EXECUTIONS


GUIDELINES FOR ACCESS TO CLASSIFIED INFO REVISED

Last month President Bush approved a revision of U.S. Government
standards for granting security clearances and permitting access
to classified information.

The revised standards address all of the previous considerations
for approving access to classified information -- allegiance to
the United States, foreign influence, drug and alcohol abuse,
criminal behavior, psychological instability, and so forth.

But in each case the criteria have been elaborated, both in terms
of the actions that could raise security concerns and the factors
that could mitigate such concerns.

The many acts that could disqualify a person from access to
classified information include "training to commit, or advocacy
of... terrorism," as well as "disclosure of classified or other
protected information... to the media."

At some points, the guidelines seem to offer officials wide
latitude for withholding or revoking a security clearance by
citing, for example, "inappropriate behavior in the workplace."
At other points, they show a surprising understanding of human
weakness and they admit the possibility of personal change.

The December 29 transmittal memo from National Security Adviser
Stephen J. Hadley to Information Security Oversight Office
director William Leonard states the new guidelines are "for
immediate implementation."

But "an internal dispute has arisen among the various national
security agencies as to whether implementation requires a notice
and comment period, which could lead to a delay as long as 18
months," said Mark S. Zaid, a Washington, D.C. attorney who
regularly handles security clearance cases.

Mr. Zaid added that there is an unresolved question regarding
whether the revised guidelines would apply to pending security
clearance cases.

See "Adjudicative Guidelines for Determining Eligibility for Access
to Classified Information," December 29, 2005:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/isoo/guidelines.html

For purposes of comparison, the prior set of Adjudicative
Guidelines adopted by the Clinton Administration in March 1997 may
be found here:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/spb/class.htm

The White House Office of Management and Budget last month issued a
related memorandum to executive branch agencies on "Reciprocal
Recognition of Existing Personnel Security Clearances," which
addresses the often violated requirement that agencies recognize
each other's security clearances. A copy of the memo, first
published on the ISOO web site, is posted here:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/reciprocal.pdf


CRS ON CONGRESSIONAL NOTIFICATION OF INTEL ACTIVITIES

A new memorandum report from the Congressional Research Service
examines the legal requirements that the congressional
intelligence committees be "fully and currently informed" of U.S.
intelligence activities.

The CRS memo notes the exceptional status of covert actions, which
must be disclosed only to the Gang of Eight, i.e, the leaders of
the two intelligence committees as well as the leaders of the
House and Senate.

The limited congressional notification of the recently disclosed
NSA domestic surveillance operation more closely resembled that of
a covert action than the normal disclosure of an authorized
intelligence activity, the CRS explained.

As such, it "would appear to be inconsistent with the law, which
requires that the 'congressional intelligence committees be kept
fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities,'
other than those involving covert actions."

The CRS memorandum was requested by Rep. Jane Harman, ranking
member of the House Intelligence Committee, and authored by CRS
intelligence specialist Alfred Cumming. A copy was obtained by
Secrecy News.

See "Statutory Procedures Under Which Congress Is To Be Informed of
U.S. Intelligence Activities, Including Covert Actions," January
18, 2006:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/m011806.pdf


LIBYAN NUCLEAR BIBLIOGRAPHY

Scientific publications by Libyan scientists on nuclear physics,
nuclear engineering and related topics were compiled in an open
literature bibliography by independent researcher Mark Gurwitz.

The Libya bibliography is part of an ongoing, informal
investigation by Mr. Gurwitz into the worldwide propagation of
nuclear science and technology.

See "Libyan Nuclear Bibliography: Open Literature Citations" by
Mark Gorwitz, January 2006:

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/libya/gorwitz.pdf


A TALLY OF UNPUBLISHED CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS

Almost every day that Congress is in session, multiple committees
hold hearings. But not every hearing, not even every important
hearing, finds it way into print.

The U.S. Congressional Bibliographies project at North Carolina
State University has tallied the numbers of hearings held by each
Senate committee from 1993-2001, and reported the percentage of
hearings that have been published by the Government Printing
Office.

Thus, only 38% of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings
in 2001, many of which involved confirmation hearings of Bush
appointees, have been published.

Unpublished hearings also addressed topics such as anthrax exposure
(Appropriations), aviation competition (Commerce), "club" drugs
(Narcotics), E-911 compliance (Commerce), internet privacy
(Commerce), unsolicited commercial e-mail (Commerce), and veterans
programs (VA), observed NCSU Social Science Reference Librarian
John A. McGeachy.

See Statistical Reports of Printed Hearings on this page:

http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/congbibs/senate/


ARMY UPDATES REGULATION ON MILITARY EXECUTIONS

The U.S. Army this week issued a newly updated regulation on
military executions. The move may portend a resumption of capital
punishment in the military after a hiatus of more than 40 years.

"Only the President of the United States can approve and order the
execution of a death sentence," the regulation states. Death is
by lethal injection.

A copy of the new regulation was obtained by Secrecy News.

See U.S. Army Regulation 190-55, "U.S. Army Corrections System:
Procedures for Military Executions," January 17, 2006:

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/r190_55.pdf

The last time that the Army performed a military execution was in
April 1961. It involved an Army Private who was convicted of rape
and attempted murder.

135 people have been executed by the Army since 1916, according to
the Death Penalty Information Center (www.deathpenaltyinfo.org).

Half a dozen military inmates are on death row at Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas, and by last May two of them had nearly exhausted their
final appeals, according to the Houston Chronicle ("U.S. Military
Executions Draw Closer" by Andrew Tilghman, May 1, 2005).



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

January 19, 2006
C.I.A. Confirms Voice on Tape Was Al Qaeda's Leader
By HASSAN FATTAH
and CHRISTINE HAUSER
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Jan. 19 - The Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera broadcast an audiotape today that it attributed to Osama bin Laden, in which he said that more attacks against the United States were being prepared, while offering the possibility of a truce under unspecified conditions.

It was not immediately clear when the tape was made, but it was the first tape believed to be directly from the leader of Al Qaeda to be released in about a year, and its release came after the United States launched an airstrike in a Pakistani village aimed at Mr. bin Laden's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Mr. Zawahiri was not at the site, Pakistani officials later said, but the American attack on Jan. 13 killed 18 civilians and four or five foreign militants in the village of Damadola.

The voice sounded short-winded on the tape and lacked the charismatic tone typical of Mr. bin Laden's past recordings. Al Jazeera carried excerpts from the audiotape on its Web site, www.aljazeera.net. According to the tape, Mr. bin Laden threatened the United States with attacks inside the country, saying preparations for them were under way. He also offered a conditional "long-term truce."

The last time that Mr. bin Laden was heard from in a taped message was in December 2004, in which he called for Iraqis to boycott the elections in January 2005. After that tape was broadcast, President Bush took the unusual step of responding to one of the Al Qaeda leader's messages, declaring that the call by Mr. bin Laden made the stakes in the Iraqi elections clear.

Mr. Bush's comments at the time were unusual because, after having declared soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that he wanted Mr. bin Laden "dead or alive," the president has usually avoided mentioning him. Mr. Bush's aides have said it would be a strategic error to respond to every one of Mr. bin Laden's threats or to seem to elevate his status by putting him in a long-distance debate with the president.

But Mr. Bush has previously used the Al Qaeda leader's remarks to make the case that the world is still a dangerous place and that Mr. bin Laden should continue to be pursued.

On Wednesday, Pakistan's prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, said that nobody knows where the top two leaders of Al Qaeda are.

"The simple answer is that nobody has a clue," he said in an interview in New York City.

Mr. bin Laden has also previously turned his attention to his Saudi homeland, accusing the ruling al-Saud dynasty of being the "agents of infidels" in a tape in December 2004 and applauding an attack last week against the United States Consulate in Jidda.

Hassan Fattah reported from Dubai for this article, and Christine Hauserfrom New York



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 19, 2006
Leahy Says He'll Vote Against Alito
By MARIA NEWMAN
In an indication of how Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. may fare when the Senate Judiciary Committee votes on his confirmation next Tuesday, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont today became the first Democrat on the committee to declare his intention to vote against him.

Mr. Leahy told an audience at the Georgetown Law School that he did not believe Judge Alito would provide the necessary checks and balances to an executive branch that might exceed its powers.

"I cannot vote for this nomination," Mr. Leahy said. "I will not vote for this nomination."

Mr. Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said he was disturbed by Judge Alito's responses during the committee hearings last week on the issues of privacy and conflicts between government and individuals. He also said he believed Judge Alito, who has spent his entire legal career working for the government, would be too deferential to what the senator called his "patrons."

"At a time when the president is seizing unprecedented power, the Supreme Court needs to be a check and balance," he said. "I have no confidence that Judge Alito will provide that check and balance."

Judge Alito is expected to win the vote of the Judiciary Committee, with its 10 Republicans and 8 Democrats. But Democratic leaders seemed to be laying out a strategy, beginning with Mr. Leahy's speech today, to put forth the arguments for their opposition in order to make a campaign issue of his decisions on the court if he is confirmed, as expected.

In a closed door meeting of the Democratic caucus on Wednesday, Mr. Leahy and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, made their case against Judge Alito.

If he is confirmed by the committee, the full Senate will debate his nomination beginning Jan. 25.

In Georgetown today, Mr. Leahy talked about the issue that was a major topic during the hearings, Judge Alito's views on the White House's effort to expand the definition of executive power.

The senator said he was disturbed by President Bush's recent acknowledgment that since 2002 he has repeatedly authorized the National Security Agency to conduct electronic surveillance without warrants.

Mr. Leahy said he was also concerned that on Dec. 30, after Mr. Bush signed an amendment introduced by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, to ban cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees, the president issued a "signing statement" asserting the administration's ability to interpret the law as it saw fit.

Along with his signature authorizing the amendment, Mr. Bush added a statement saying that the executive branch would construe the measure "in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president to supervise the unitary executive branch and as commander in chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power."

"This is an extraordinary era of governmental intrusion into the lives of ordinary, average Americans," Mr. Leahy said. "It's been left to the Supreme Court to restore a balance."

Mr. Leahy said he voted in favor of the nominations of every member on the current court, including Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who was nominated by President Bush last year. But he would oppose Judge Alito, he said, because he seems to support, in his previous writings and statements, what many see as the Bush administration's drive to expand the powers of the president.

"It's difficult to have confidence in a nominee who will not serve as an effective check on his patron or on the government he has spent his legal practice representing," he said.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

http://rawstory.com/other/justicerawstory.pdf

Legal Authorities Supporting the Activities of the National Security Agency Described by the President.

Justice Department to declare warrantless wiretaps legal
RAW STORY
Published: January 19, 2006

In a detailed 40-page legal memorandum set for release this evening the Bush Justice Department will defend the President's warrantless wiretap program as legal. A copy of the document was leaked to RAW STORY.

"The NSA activities are supported by the President’s well-recognized inherent constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and sole organ for the Nation in foreign affairs to conduct warrantless surveillance of enemy forces for intelligence purposes to detect and disrupt armed attacks on the United States," Justice Department lawyers write, referring to the President's order to wiretap Americans' calls overseas.

It adds, "The President has the chief responsibility under the Constitution to protect America from attack, and the Constitution gives the President the authority necessary to fulfill that solemn responsibility."

The first two pages are shown below, with a pdf link to the full document beneath that. Democrats plan unofficial hearings on the legality of the wiretaps Friday (Article here. No formal congressional hearing has been scheduled by the Republican congressional leadership to examine the taps, despite widespread concern among civil liberty advocates and constitutional scholars.


Copyright © 2004-06 Raw Story Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | Site map |Privacy policy

Durbin says he'll oppose Alito Chicago Tribune
Raising questions about Judge Samuel Alito's stances on issues from executive power to abortion, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Thursday said he would not support Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court. Durbin's announcement, made to a near-packed hall at Northwestern University's School of Law in Chicago, coincided with similar statements from Democratic Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Ken Salazar of Colorado. Both Leahy and Salazar supported Chief Justice John Roberts' nomination in September, though Durbin did not.
Top Democrat Leahy to vote against Alito CNN International
Ranking Democrat on Judiciary Committee Opposes Alito Bloomberg
Forbes - Seattle Times - Voice of America - Miami Herald - all 786 related »

Homeland Security opening private mail MSNBC
Retired professor confused, angered when letter from abroad is opened
By Brock N. Meeks, Chief Washington correspondent - MSNBC
WASHINGTON - In the 50 years that Grant Goodman has known and corresponded with a colleague in the Philippines he never had any reason to suspect that their friendship was anything but spectacularly ordinary. But now he believes that the relationship has somehow sparked the interest of the Department of Homeland Security and led the agency to place him under surveillance. Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words “by Border Protection” and carrying the official Homeland Security seal. “I had no idea (Homeland Security) would open personal letters,” Goodman told MSNBC.com in a phone interview. “That’s why I alerted the media. I thought it should be known publicly that this is going on,” he said. Goodman originally showed the letter to his own local newspaper, the Kansas-based Lawrence Journal-World. “I was shocked and there was a certain degree of disbelief in the beginning,” Goodman said when he noticed the letter had been tampered with, adding that he felt his privacy had been invaded. “I think I must be under some kind of surveillance.” Goodman is no stranger to mail snooping; as an officer during World War II he was responsible for reading all outgoing mail of the men in his command and censoring any passages that might provide clues as to his unit’s position. “But we didn’t do it as clumsily as they’ve done it, I can tell you that,” Goodman noted, with no small amount of irony in his voice. “Isn’t it funny that this doesn’t appear to be any kind of surreptitious effort here,” he said. The letter comes from a retired Filipino history professor; Goodman declined to identify her. And although the Philippines is on the U.S. government’s radar screen as a potential spawning ground for Muslim-related terrorism, Goodman said his friend is a devout Catholic and not given to supporting such causes. A spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection division said he couldn’t speak directly to Goodman’s case but acknowledged that the agency can, will and does open mail coming to U.S. citizens that originates from a foreign country whenever it’s deemed necessary. “All mail originating outside the United States Customs territory that is to be delivered inside the U.S. Customs territory is subject to Customs examination,” says the CBP Web site. That includes personal correspondence. “All mail means ‘all mail,’” said John Mohan, a CBP spokesman, emphasizing the point. “This process isn’t something we’re trying to hide,” Mohan said, noting the wording on the agency’s Web site. “We’ve had this authority since before the Department of Homeland Security was created,” Mohan said. However, Mohan declined to outline what criteria are used to determine when a piece of personal correspondence should be opened, but said, “obviously it’s a security-related criteria.” Mohan also declined to say how often or in what volume CBP might be opening mail. “All I can really say is that Customs and Border Protection does undertake [opening mail] when it is determined to be necessary,” he said.

January 20, 2006
Bin Laden Warns of More Attacks; Proposes Truce
By HASSAN M. FATTAH
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Jan. 19 - Breaking more than a year's silence, Osama bin Laden warned Americans in an audiotape released on Thursday that Al Qaeda was planning more attacks on the United States, but he offered a "long truce" on undefined terms.

It was unclear when the recording, broadcast by the Arab satellite television station Al Jazeera, was made, but the Central Intelligence Agency verified its authenticity and said the station was probably right in saying that it dated from early December.

American officials said the release might have been timed to assure his followers that Mr. bin Laden was alive and well days after an American bombing of a house in a Pakistani village where senior Qaeda officials were said to have been killed.

In the tape, Mr. bin Laden addressed the American people directly, saying of his supporters, "Our situation is getting better while yours is getting worse."

"My message to you is about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how to end them," he began. "Bush said, 'It is better to fight them on their land than their fighting us on our land.' I can reply to these errors by saying that war in Iraq is raging with no letup, and operations in Afghanistan are escalating in our favor."

He said the lack of Qaeda attacks in the United States since Sept. 11 was not related to improved security, and he pointed to terrorist attacks in Europe as evidence that his fighters could penetrate all such barriers.

As to what attacks Americans can expect, he said, "The operations are under preparation and you will see them in your homes the minute they are through, with God's permission."

Vice President Dick Cheney, asked by Fox News about the tape, said it now seemed likely that Mr. bin Laden, whom some had believed dead, was alive. But, the vice president said, Mr. bin Laden has clearly had trouble getting his message out and added, "We don't negotiate with terrorists."

"I think you have to destroy them," he said. "It's the only way to deal with them."

Mr. bin Laden offered the American people a vague truce, saying "both sides can enjoy security and stability under this truce so we can build Iraq and Afghanistan." Later in the statement he quotes from a book which calls for an end to what he termed "American interference in the nations of the world."

The statement noted that American opinion polls had shown the nation's desire to withdraw its troops from Iraq and its feeling that it is better that Americans "don't fight Muslims on their lands and that they don't fight us on ours."

Regarding an American withdrawal, he said, "There is no shame in this solution which prevents the wasting of billions of dollars that have gone to those with influence and merchants of war in America who have supported Bush's election campaign."

Nearly all of the video and audiotapes attributed to Mr. bin Laden in the past have turned out to be authentic. His voice, this time, sounded somewhat more labored, lacking the energetic quality typical of earlier recordings. There was also a pronounced echo as if he had been inside a room, in contrast to previous recordings that seemed to have been made outdoors or in large spaces.

Like some of his other recordings, this one made reference to recent events, including in this case to a report in a British newspaper in November that President Bush wanted to bomb the headquarters of Al Jazeera in Qatar, a claim dismissed by both the American and British governments.

The bin Laden broadcast comes just days after the United States launched airstrikes on a Pakistani village aimed at Mr. bin Laden's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Mr. Zawahiri was not at the site, but two senior members of Al Qaeda and the son-in-law of Mr. Zawahiri were among those killed in the strikes in remote northeastern Pakistan, Pakistani officials said.

The attacks caused anger across Pakistan, particularly in the autonomous tribal regions, and led the government to condemn the intrusion.

Some analysts saw the message as a triumph for the leader of Al Qaeda. "The fact that he was able to record the message, deliver it and broadcast is in itself a victory for him," said Muhammad Salah, Cairo bureau chief for the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat and an expert on Islamist groups.

Mr. bin Laden typically chooses his timing and messages carefully to prove a point, Mr. Salah said. "He is playing on the American people's desire to get out of Iraq and the Islamic fundamentalist swamp," he said. "And he is telling Bush that 'I am winning and I am still there.' "

The White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, told reporters that President Bush had been told about the tape on Thursday morning after an appearance in Virginia. Mr. McClellan said American intelligence agencies were trying to determine whether the tape provided clues about Al Qaeda's operations.

"If there is any actionable intelligence, we will act on it," Mr. McClellan said.

"We are winning," he said. "Clearly Al Qaeda and the terrorists are on the run, and that is why it is important that we do not let up, and do not stop, until the job is done."

Mr. McClellan added: "We continue to act on all fronts to win the war on terrorism, and we will. The president is fully committed to do everything within his power to prevent attacks, and to defeat the terrorists. We are taking the fight to the enemy, we are working to advance freedom and democracy, to defeat their evil ideology."

Mr. bin Laden's message said his followers were not afraid of further American attacks because "a swimmer in the ocean does not fear the rain," but he promised the same treatment for Americans as they had given others.

"This says the man is still very much in action," said Riad Kahwaji, founder of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, a security research firm in Dubai. "He's saying the war is still on, and he's talking about ongoing plans for operations and strikes elsewhere. He's also mentioning recent events to give authenticity to the recording that it is recent and he is keeping up to date with developments."

Mr. bin Laden was last heard from in an audio recording in December 2004, in which he called for Iraqis to boycott the elections in January 2005. That broadcast prompted President Bush to take the unusual step of responding to the message, declaring that the call by Mr. bin Laden made the stakes in the Iraqi elections clear.

Abeer Allam contributed reporting from Cairo for this article, and DouglasJehl from Washington.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 20, 2006
U.S. Is Pressing Google for Data on Searches
By KATIE HAFNER
and MATT RICHTEL
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 19 - The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to compel Google, the Internet search giant, to turn over records on millions of its users' search queries as part of the government's effort to uphold an online pornography law.

Google has been refusing the request since a subpoena was first issued last August, even as three of its competitors agreed to provide information, according to court documents made public this week. Google asserts that the request is unnecessary, overly broad, would be onerous to comply with, would jeopardize its trade secrets and could expose identifying information about its users.

The dispute with Google comes as the government is moving aggressively on several fronts to obtain data on Internet activity to achieve its law enforcement goals, from domestic security to the prosecution of online crime. Under the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, for example, the Justice Department has demanded records on library patrons' Internet use.

Those efforts have encountered resistance on privacy grounds.

The government's move in the Google case, however, is different in its aims. Rather than seeking data on individuals, it says it is trying to establish a profile of Internet use that will help it defend the Child Online Protection Act, a 1998 law that would impose tough criminal penalties on individuals whose Web sites carried material deemed harmful to minors.

The law has faced repeated legal challenges. Two years ago, the Supreme Court upheld an injunction blocking its enforcement, returning the case to a district court for further examination of Internet-filtering technology that might be an alternative in achieving the law's aims.

The government's motion to compel Google's compliance was filed on Wednesday in Federal District Court in San Jose, Calif., near Google's headquarters in Mountain View. The subpoena and the government's motion were reported on Thursday by The San Jose Mercury News.

In addition to records of a week of search queries, which could amount to billions of search terms, the Google subpoena seeks a random list of a million Web addresses in its index.

Charles Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said on Thursday that three Google competitors in Internet search technology - America Online, Yahoo and MSN, Microsoft's online service - had complied with subpoenas in the case.

Mr. Miller declined to say exactly how the data would be used, but according to the government's filings, it would help estimate the prevalence of material that could be deemed harmful to minors and the effectiveness of filtering software. Opponents of the pornography law contend that filtering software could protect minors effectively enough to make the law unnecessary.

The government's motion calls for Google to surrender the information within 21 days of court approval.

Although the government has modified its demands since last year, Google said Thursday that it would continue to fight. "Google is not a party to this lawsuit, and their demand for information overreaches," said Nicole Wong, Google's associate general counsel, referring to government lawyers. "We intend to resist their motion vigorously."

Philip B. Stark, a statistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who was hired by the Justice Department to analyze search engine data in the case, said in legal documents that search engine data provided crucial insight into information on the Internet.

"Google is one of the most popular search engines," he wrote in a court document related to the case. Thus, he said, Google's databases of Web addresses and user searches "are directly relevant."

But Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch, an online industry newsletter, questioned the need for a subpoena. "Is this really something the government needs Google to help them with?" he said.

As for Google's rivals, MSN declined to speak directly to the case but released a statement saying it generally "works closely with law enforcement officials."

Mary Osako, a Yahoo spokeswoman, said the company complied with the subpoena "on a limited basis." And Andrew Weinstein, a spokesman for AOL, said that company gave the Justice Department a generic list of anonymous search terms from a one-day period.

Susan P. Crawford, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York, said she could understand why the companies complied. "There's this real perception that if you're not with us you're against us," she said. "So the major companies will cooperate with enormously burdensome requests just to avoid future vengeance being wreaked on them" by the Justice Department.

In its brief history, Google has made "Don't be evil" an operating principle, even as it has come to endure scrutiny and criticism over its increasing inroads into a variety of businesses beyond Web searches, from advertising to mapping.

And Google and its rivals have been criticized for their business practices in China, where Google and MSN have filtered keywords like "human rights" and "democracy" out of their search-engine results. Last fall, it was revealed that Yahoo had cooperated with authorities seeking the identity of a Chinese e-mail subscriber who had distributed a government warning about protests; he is now serving a 10-year prison term.

While its court filings against the Justice Department subpoena have emphasized the burden of compliance and threat to its trade secrets, Google also pointed to a chilling effect on its customers.

"Google's acceding to the request would suggest that it is willing to reveal information about those who use its services," it said in an October letter to the Justice Department. "This is not a perception Google can accept. And one can envision scenarios where queries alone could reveal identifying information about a specific Google user, which is another outcome that Google cannot accept."

For its part, the Justice Department said the data received from Google's rivals showed that the search query information did not contain "any additional personal identifying information" and that trade secrets would be protected under procedures at the trial court.

"Google thus should have no difficulty in complying in the same way as its competitors have," the government's motion said.

Critics of the effort to subpoena Google say the immediate issue is not pornography or privacy, but whether the government has established its need for the information.

"The government's attitude, apparently, is that it's entitled to information without justification," said Aden Fine, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has led the fight against the 1998 pornography law. "Like everyone else in litigation, they need to justify their request for information."

Even as the government has yet to put the 1998 law into effect, the pornography industry has faced a legal offensive on other fronts. Congress in recent years has increased the resources and sharpened the laws available to the Justice Department to go after makers of hard-core videos and other content.

At the same time, though, the industry is booming, recording $12.6 billion in revenue in 2005 from distribution of sexually explicit content, and from other forms of entertainment, like strip clubs. A big reason for the growth is technology, with sales from Internet distribution hitting $2.5 billion in 2005, according to testimony given to the Senate on Thursday.

American Web sites that show explicit content get as many as 60 million visitors a day, according to testimony given to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation by Paul Cambria, general counsel for the Adult Freedom Foundation, an organization that represents the interests of the pornography industry.

In fighting the 1998 law, the civil liberties union has argued that whether or not pornography is available on the Internet, the law is unconstitutional because it will limit the distribution of acceptable forms of free speech. Under the law, Web site operators face criminal charges for publishing sexually explicit material unless they have a way of verifying that viewers are over 17.

Whatever the courts ultimately decide on the pornography law at issue, however, Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, said the Google case pointed to a larger struggle for the identity of the Internet.

"Search engines are at the center of that battle, both here and in other countries," said Professor Wu. "By asserting its power over search engines, using threats of force, the government can directly affect what the Internet experience is. For while Google is fighting the subpoena, it's clear that if they lose, they will comply."



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

January 20, 2006
U.S. Officials Cite Legal Rationale on Spying Effort
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 - The Bush administration offered its fullest defense to date Thursday of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, saying that authorization from Congress to deter terrorist attacks "places the president at the zenith of his powers in authorizing the N.S.A. activities."

In a 42-page legal analysis, the Justice Department cited the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the writings of presidents both Republican and Democratic, and dozens of scholarly papers and court cases in justifying President Bush's power to order the N.S.A. surveillance program.

With the legality of the program under public attack since its disclosure last month, officials said Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales ordered up the analysis partly in response to what administration lawyers felt were unfair conclusions in a Jan. 6 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The Congressional report challenged virtually all the main legal justifications the administration had cited for the program.

Vice President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, once again defended the N.S.A. eavesdropping operation in a speech Thursday as "critical to the national security of the United States," even as House Democrats prepared to hold an unofficial hearing on Friday into a program that they charge is illegal and unconstitutional. Mr. Cheney is also scheduled to meet with Congressional leaders on Friday at a separate, closed-door briefing on the program.

When the Senate Judiciary Committee conducts an open hearing on the eavesdropping on Feb. 6, Attorney General Gonzales is expected to testify. The session organized for Friday by Democrats is intended to spotlight critics of the program; administration officials will not use that forum to offer a defense. The White House has invited some members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to attend a briefing on Friday, according to Rep. Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

The analysis released Thursday by the Justice Department, with comments from lawyers throughout the department, expanded on the legal arguments made in two still-classified legal opinions as well as in a slimmer letter that the department sent to Congress last month.

The basic thrust of the legal justification was the same - that the president has inherent authority as commander in chief to order wiretaps without warrants and that the N.S.A. operation does not violate either a 1978 law governing intelligence wiretaps or the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches.

This month's Congressional Research Service report was particularly critical of the administration's claim that the N.S.A. program was justified by a resolution passed by Congress three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, authorizing the use of "all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible for the terrorist acts.

The research service report found there was no indication that Congress intended to authorize warrantless wiretaps when it gave President Bush the authority to fight Al Qaeda and invade Afghanistan. But the Justice Department did not back away from its position in Thursday's report, saying the type of "signals intelligence" used in the N.S.A. operation clearly falls under the Congressional use-of-force authorization.

"The president has made clear that he will exercise all authority available to him, consistent with the Constitution, to protect the people of the United States," the report said.

The Congressional authorization on the use of force, it added, "places the president at the zenith of his powers in authorizing the N.S.A. activities."

But many critics of the program, which allows the agency to eavesdrop on international phone calls and e-mail messages to and from American citizens and others within the United States, said that they remained unconvinced.

"The administration's latest justification for circumventing the law to spy on Americans falls far short of answering the many questions Congress and the American people have about this activity," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. "That is why there have been bipartisan calls for administration officials to come to Congress to answer these questions and ensure that the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees can thoroughly investigate the administration's actions."

Attorney General Gonzales sent Thursday's document to Mr. Reid and to Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader. While the report did not go into many operational details of the program, it sought to bolster the case for the president to retain inherent power to order warrantless searches in the United States as part of the seeking of information on foreign agents.

That authority, the Justice Department analysis said, is consistent with a three-part test established by the Supreme Court in a 1952 case, Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer, which struck down President Harry S. Truman's authority to seize the nation's steel mills in the name of national security.

Nor does the N.S.A. program conflict, the Justice Department said, with what many legal analysts had regarded as the exclusive authority for intelligence wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed by Congress in 1978 in response to Watergate-era political abuses. Some presidential powers, particularly in the area of national security, are simply "beyond Congress' ability to regulate," it said.

Vice President Cheney, who was actively involved in the creation of the N.S.A. program and has been a vigorous advocate for expanded presidential power, echoed that in a speech on Thursday before the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in New York.

While some current and former officials have challenged the value of the N.S.A. program in deterring an attack on American soil, the vice president said: "The activities conducted under this authorization have helped us to detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks against the American people. As such, this program is critical to the national security of the United States."

President Bush and Mr. Cheney have been critical of the public disclosure of the program in The New York Times, and the Justice Department has opened an investigation into the disclosure. Mr. Cheney acknowledged in his speech that "a spirited debate is now under way, and our message to the American people is clear and straightforward: These actions are within the president's authority and responsibility under the Constitution and laws, and these actions are vital to our security."

But Robert Reinstein, dean of the law school at Temple University, said in an interview that he considered the eavesdropping program "a pretty straightforward case where the president is acting illegally," and he said there appeared to be a broad consensus among legal scholars and national security experts that the administration's legal arguments were weak.

The foreign intelligence law passed by Congress in 1978 represents the Bush administration's biggest legal hurdle, he said. "When Congress speaks on questions that are domestic in nature, I really can't think of a situation where the president has successfully asserted a constitutional power to supersede that," he said.

Two leading civil rights groups brought lawsuits this week aimed at ending the N.S.A. program, and several lawyers representing defendants in terrorism cases are also seeking to challenge the program on the grounds that it may have been improperly used in criminal prosecutions.

Mr. Reinstein predicted that the court would ultimately declare the program unconstitutional. "This is domestic surveillance over American citizens for whom there is no evidence or proof that they are involved in any illegal activity, and it is in contravention of a statute of Congress specifically designed to prevent this," he said.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company