1 Boring Old Man

Conrad, demanding Social Security commission, meeting with Obama tonight
Open Left
by: Chris Bowers
Nov 24, 2009

One of the stories we have been following on Open Left is a threat from roughly 15 Senate Democrats"national suicide pact." that I have termed a Here is the threat:

• These 15 Democratic Senators will refuse to raise the debt ceiling, thereby causing the United States to default on its debt by mid or late December.  Such a default will vastly increase the overall amount the federal government has to pay on its debt.

  UNLESS

• Speaker Nancy Pelosi turns over Congressional power on Social Security and Medicare to an unelected commission that will almost certainly propose significant cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits.  The recommendations of this commission will be sent back to Congress in the form of legislation that cannot be amended, which will be granted a vote, and which will pass with the support of 60% of both branches of Congress.

I have learned from a source that Kent Conrad is meeting with President Obama, tonight.  While the details of the meeting are unknown, Conrad is the ringleader of this group of Senate Democrats, and so it is highly likely that the meeting concerns the proposed independent commission for Medicare and Social Security.

We will only know what happens in the meeting based on future actions from Congress and the White House.  There are four basic options:

1. President Obama convinces Senator Conrad to drop the threat, and raise the debt ceiling with no strings attached.
2. President Obama convinces Senator Conrad to drop the threat in exchange for a token concession on other legislation, or on another summit discussing the problem   This happened at the start of the year.
3. President Obama agrees with Senator Conrad, but tells him he that he will handle it himself around next year’s budget (with an announcement likely in the State of the Union address).
4. President Obama gives Conrad the commission now.

Depending on which of these four scenarios unfolds, we will know what happens at the meeting. This is extremely high stakes – arguably the biggest policy meeting to take place in months.  And you heard about it here, on Open Left.

Hackers leak emails from University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit,

stoking climate debate
Associated Press
November 21st 2009

Computer hackers have broken into a server at a well-respected climate change research center in Britain and posted hundreds of private e-mails and documents online — stoking debate over whether some scientists have overstated the case for man-made climate change. The University of East Anglia, in eastern England, said in a statement Saturday that the hackers had entered the server and stolen data at its Climatic Research Unit, a leading global research center on climate change. The university said police are investigating the theft of the information, but could not confirm if all the materials posted online are genuine.

More than a decade of correspondence between leading British and U.S. scientists is included in about 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents posted on Web sites following the security breach last week. Some climate change skeptics and bloggers claim the information shows scientists have overstated the case for global warming, and allege the documents contain proof that some researchers have attempted to manipulate data.

The furor over the leaked data comes weeks before the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, when 192 nations will seek to reach a binding treaty to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases worldwide. Many officials — including U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon — regard the prospects of a pact being sealed at the meeting as bleak.

In one leaked e-mail, the research center’s director, Phil Jones, writes to colleagues about graphs showing climate statistics over the last millennium. He alludes to a technique used by a fellow scientist to "hide the decline" in recent global temperatures. Some evidence appears to show a halt in a rise of global temperatures from about 1960, but is contradicted by other evidence which appears to show a rise in temperatures is continuing.

Jones wrote that, in compiling new data, he had "just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline," according to a leaked e-mail, which the author confirmed was genuine. One of the colleague referred to by Jones — Michael Mann, a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University — did not immediately respond to requests for comment via telephone and e-mail. The use of the word "trick" by Jones has been seized on by skeptics — who say his e-mail offers proof of collusion between scientists to distort evidence to support their assertion that human activity is influencing climate change. "Words fail me," Stephen McIntyre — a blogger whose climateaudit.org Web site challenges popular thinking on climate change — wrote on the site following the leak of the messages.

However, Jones denied manipulating evidence and insisted his comment had been taken out of context. "The word ‘trick’ was used here colloquially, as in a clever thing to do. It is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward," he said in a statement Saturday. Jones did not indicate who "Keith" was in his e-mail…

The CIA Asked to Destroy Torture Tapes on Same Day They Claimed They Didn’t Torture
By: emptywheel
November 24, 2009

As William Ockham has noted, there is a new – very informative – Vaughn Index and Declaration out. I’ll have much more to say about these. But for now, look at what documents 3 and 4 from the Vaughn Index tell us about the timing of the torture tape destruction.

• November 1, 2005: Bill Frist briefed on torture.
• November 1, 2005: Dana Priest reveals the use of black sites in Europe. In response, CIA starts moving detainees from the countries in question.
• November 3, 2005: Leonie Brinkema inquires whether govt has video or audio tapes of interrogations. CIA IG Report on Manadel al-Janabi’s death completed.
• November 4, 2005: Member of Congress writes four page letter to CIA IG.
• November 8, 2005: CIA requests permission to destroy torture tapes. CIA reaffirms March 2005 statement that all interrogation methods are lawful. Duncan Hunter briefed on torture. Pete Hoekstra briefed on torture.
• November 9, 2005: CIA confirms destruction of torture tapes.  Doug Jehl article on spring 2004 CIA IG report on interrogation methods appears.
• November 14, 2005: Govt tells Brinkema it has no audio or video tapes.

That is, the CIA requested to destroy the torture tapes in email on November 8, 2005. They confirmed the destruction on November 9. Not surprisingly, after Leonie Brinkema had asked about videotapes. But also right in the middle of debates about McCain’s Detainee Treatment Act. And note that briefing for Crazy Pete Hoekstra – but not the other Dems in Intelligence Committee leadership – on the same day that CIA started asking to destroy the torture tapes.

CIA Met with White House about How to Respond to Jane Harman’s Torture Warnings
By: emptywheel
November 24, 2009

After being briefed on February 5, 2003 that the CIA had used waterboarding and intended to destroy tapes depicting that torture, Jane Harman wrote CIA General Counsel Scott Muller a letter raising concerns. Harman warned CIA they should not destroy the torture tapes, whether or not they constituted an official record.

You discussed the fact that there is videotape of Abu Zubaydah following his capture that will be destroyed after the Inspector General finishes his inquiry. I would urge the Agency to reconsider that plan. Even if the videotape does not constitute an official record that must be preserved under the law, the videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the future. The fact of destruction would reflect badly on the Agency.

And she asked directly whether President Bush had bought off on torture as a policy.

I would like to know what kind of policy review took place and what questions were examined. In particular, I would like to know whether the most senior levels of the White House have determined that these practices are consistent with the principles and policies of the United States. Have enhanced techniques been authorized and approved by the President?

In his response to her, Muller basically ignored her warning about the torture tapes. And he gave her a very indirect answer to the question that–under the National Security Act–she should have been able to get a direct answer on, whether or not Bush had signed off on the torture.

While I do not think it appropriate for me to comment on issues that are a matter of policy, much less the nature and extent of Executive Branch policy deliberations, I think it would be fair to assume that policy as well as legal matters have been addressed within the Executive Branch.

As it turns out, Scott Muller was not acting alone when he largely blew off Harman’s concern. Document 28 of the CIA’s Vaughn Index on the torture tape destruction reveals that CIA met with the White House about its response to Harman. [There’s also a one-page draft of the letter to Harman dated February 19.] The Vaughn Index describes the second email, which has the subject “Harmon Letter,” this way:

This is a one-page email, discussing a meeting between CIA and the White House regarding the CIA’s response to a congressional inquiry. The document also includes the draft text of a letter to Congress. This document contains information relating to the sources and methods of the CIA. The document also contains predecisional, deliberative information, CIA attorney work-product, and information provided by a CIA attorney to his client in connection with the provision of legal advice.

Thus, even though Harman’s letter and Muller’s response have been declassified, the CIA is claiming that we can’t know what Muller advised [himself? Bush? Tenet? Precisely who is the CIA General Counsel’s client, here?] about how to respond to Harman’s inquiry. So we know that the White House weighed in on how to respond to Harman. We’re just not allowed to know how they weighed in.

In the month before invading Iraq, the Administration was still pretty cocky. They just blew off Jane Harman‘s attempts to find out about the Torture Program and the President’s involvement – having learned of the program as a member of the Congressional Oversight Committee. But they got increasingly wary and secretive as time passed. In April 2004, we learned about Abu Ghraib, then gradually learned that these were not isolated events, but spillover from official Torture Programs used from early on in the War on Terror. So by the time of Zacarias Moussaoui‘s trial at the end of 2005, the C.I.A. was running scared. There was proposed legislation in Congress about Torture; Judge Brinkems was asking about video/audio records, so the C.I.A. destroyed the evidence – before publicly acknowledging that it existed. It’s been six years since we invaded Iraq, and the information is still only dribbling out for bird-dogging bloggers to pore over to extract the truth.

Medical personnel involved in interrogations not only forgot the then-existing ethics codes, but they also seemed to have forgotten about the Geneva Conventions, although 94% reported being familiar with their proscriptions against torture. Or, perhaps, they were mindful that the Commander in Chief had concluded that the Conventions were inapplicable to their conduct. If so, then they might have known that his decision also eliminated the protections of Protocol 1: “Under no circumstances shall any person be punished for carrying out medical activities compatible with medical ethics, regardless of the person benefiting therefrom.”

Perhaps this last point is the crux. Health care professionals were in a position to stop what the Administration and its lawyers had promoted, but the promoted position threatened not only the dignity of the detainees, but also the independent professionalism of health care providers.

As the investigation announced by current Attorney General Eric Holder proceeds, maybe we in the legal and health care professions can find reason to hope that the past 8 years will provide incentive for our professional organizations to work together in support of both medical ethics and international human rights laws.

Iraq inquiry:

British officials heard ‘drum beats’ of war from US before 9/11
Daily Telegraph
By James Kirkup and Gordon Rayner
24 Nov 2009

British officials heard the "drum beats" of war with Iraq emanating from the US government more than two years before the 2003 invasion and several months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq inquiry has heard. But the UK in 2001 refused to back a policy of regime change because the British view was that toppling Saddam Hussein would have been illegal.

The British policy on Iraq was put under formal review at the start of 2001, when George W Bush arrived in the White House as US president. Sir William Patey, then head of Middle East policy at Foreign Office said that in February 2001, the UK knew that some in the new US administration wanted to topple Saddam. He said: "We were aware of the drum beats from Washington.” However, he said that Britain was not then willing to engage in regime change in Baghdad. “Our policy was to stay away from that."

Sir Peter Ricketts, then the political director at the FCO, recalled that in the summer of 2000, Condoleeza Rice, Mr Bush’s national security adviser, had written an academic article suggesting Saddam should be removed. But the inquiry heard that in 2001, the settled view of the UK government was that attacking Iraq would have been illegal under international law. Sir Peter said: "We quite clearly distanced our self from regime change. It was clear that was something there would not be any legal base for."

In 2001, Britain and the US were committed to a policy of containing Saddam, through economic sanctions, restricting his oil sales through the oil-for-food programme, and the imposition of no-fly zones in southern and northern Iraq. The two diplomats told the inquiry that the containment policy was failing in 2001, but that it could have been been viable if the United Nations had agreed a new "smart sanctions" regime in July 2001. The new sanctions regime would also have thwarted those in the US who were arguing for a more confrontational policy towards Iraq. The new sanctions regime “would have certainly satisfied us”, Sir William said. “It would have been arguable even against the hawks in Washington.”

But Russia refused to back the new sanctions, because of its commercial interests in Iraq. “The Russians were being given lots of contracts. It was virtually impossible to change the Russian view,” Sir William said. Sir Peter also revealed that there was a disagreement between Britain and the US about whether it was worth trying to get UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq. “There was a dominant feeling in the US that a weapons inspection regime was risky,” he said. Some Americans felt Saddam would “pull the wool over the inspectors eyes” about his military programmes. Sir Peter said: “We had more confidence in the weapons inspectors. It was an area where we probably disagreed with many on the American side.”

From the Downing Street Memo

July 23, 2002

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action…

The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

I didn’t say everything I was thinking in sailing over a cardboard sea…. I guess I was still a bit stunned with the magnitude of our foreign debt. But it adds to something I’ve long thought about the Bush Administration and DECEIT. There’s so much to say, but I’ll only hit the high points.

They lied to get us into the War with Iraq: Cheney’s Energy Conference, the Niger Forgeries, the Aluminum Tubes, the "sixteen words," the OSP reports of Iraq/al Qaeda ties. But there were other things. They wanted to invade Iraq with 50,000 troops when the Army estimated 400,000. Why? They knew we couldn’t afford the War. The result was an inadequate assault that bred the "insurgency." They outed Valerie Plame to discredit her husband exposing their duplicity. They pretended to go to the U.N. when they knew we were invading no matter what. They used the National Guard rather than raise an Army with the draft. They kept the war costs out of the Budget. They borrowed money from foreign governments instead of taxing us to pay for the war. They kept everything secret – domestic surveillance, Torture. They didn’t allow photographs of the returning caskets. They didn’t want us to feel their war. We might object [if we felt the cost or saw our middle class children drafted and killed]. It was conscious DECEIT from beginning to end. Conscious DECEIT.

Alberto Gonzales Won’t Be Charged Over Eavesdropping Testimony
New York Magazine
By Murray Waas
11/23/09

Alberto Gonzales, pilloried for allegedly misleading Congress about the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping program, has been exonerated — sort of. According to public records and interviews with federal law-enforcement officials, the Justice Department has concluded that there’s insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against the former attorney general. His critics might groan, but they have some solace: The Justice Department’s inspector general, who conducted the investigation, concluded that his testimony before Congress about the eavesdropping program was “confusing,” “incomplete,” and had the “effect of misleading” both Congress and the public…

Gonzales also remains under investigation by the Justice Department for matters connected to the wiretaps and the firings, thought to be politically motivated, of nine U.S. attorneys — scandal aplenty. But it’s been allegations about his eavesdropping testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee that put him in the greatest legal jeopardy by far. A major reason he escaped criminal charges, according to people close to the investigation, was that he finally admitted what he never would have before, when he seemed the most loyal of George W. Bush’s servants: that many of his most controversial decisions [first as White House counsel, and later, as attorney general] in authorizing, overseeing, and concealing the eavesdropping program were done at the specific direction of the former president. In other instances, Gonzales and his attorneys argued that his actions were done in furtherance of the Bush administration’s policies — meaning, for what it’s worth, that he did not act with personal intent to do wrong.

“He was willing to be a lightning rod in the past for the president,” said one legal source close to the investigation. “He has done that during the entire course of his career. But it was pressed upon him that that was not going to work in this instance — and he did what he had to do”…

Bush’s “nightmare scenario” apparently averted, Gonzales remains under investigation by the Justice Department he once led for two matters: the firings of those nine U. S. attorneys, and — this should sound familiar — whether Gonzales and other government attorneys acted properly in authorizing and overseeing the eavesdropping program [The latter case is being brought by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility]. Little could be learned about those investigations, but it has long been widely believed that Gonzales’s most serious legal charges were the ones he now seems to have dodged. Give the guy credit — he’s a lawyer, after all.

Alberto Gonzales came to the White House with President Bush as the President’s Counsel in 2001. At the beginning of Bush’s second term, he was appointed to be the Attorney General, of the United States, replacing John Ashcroft. This particular investigation involved his second job, Attorney General. Did he mislead Congress? I watched that hearing. No question about it – he did mislead Congress. Waas says, "… Gonzales and his attorneys argued that his actions were done in furtherance of the Bush administration’s policies — meaning, for what it’s worth, that he did not act with personal intent to do wrong." It seems to me that the Attorney General  of the Department of Justice isn’t in the policy arm of the government. In fact, it’s part of the oversight mechanism designed to look into the legality of that policy. Maybe, as the President’s General Counsel, the fact that he was acting in "… furtherance of the Bush administration’s policies," is legit. But not as Attorney General. Neither Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General, nor Jay Bybee and John Yoo as DOJ Office of Legal Counsel officials, had any business talking about furthering the policy of the Bush Administration or evading the questions of the Congressional Investigators. I don’t know if they were vulnerable to criminal charges, but what they did was sure not part of the offices they were appointed to serve.