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July 3, 2008

McCain & Co. Find New Ways to Circumvent Campaign Finance Laws McCain Wrote

I said yesterday that running for president makes messes of good men (and women). And I meant it:

...a Republican Party fund aimed at electing governors has started marketing itself as a home for contributions of unlimited size to help Sen. McCain. His 2002 campaign law limits donations to presidential races to try to curtail the influence of wealth.

The Republican Governors Association isn't subject to those limits, and has long gathered up large donations from individuals and companies. Now it is telling donors it can use their contributions to benefit Sen. McCain in some key battleground states.

That makes the group "the best way to help McCain," says donor David Hanna, who gave $25,000 -- more than 10 times the legal cap of $2,300 for direct gifts to presidential candidates.

The campaign finance system isn't perfect, and a donor with deep pockets can find a way to funnel money into the system:

The $2,300 limit on contributions to presidential candidates, set by the so-called McCain-Feingold Act of 2002, is the best-known cap on political donations, but it doesn't apply to all types of fund raising. National parties can accept up to $28,500 and state parties can collect up to $10,000 to spend on federal campaigns. Altogether, individuals can give $108,000 to federal campaigns within each two-year election cycle.

Donors with deep pockets also can avoid limits completely by contributing to groups called 527 organizations, after a provision in the tax code. Those groups can collect uncapped donations from individuals -- and also collect from companies and unions, which have been prohibited from giving to parties or candidates since 2002.

The RGA's executive director, Nick Ayers, says, "We are the equalizer in this campaign." I smell a FEC complaint from the DNC. Another one, I mean.

Will Trouble in Afghanistan Become a Tough Campaign Issue for McCain?

For two days in a row, The Washington Post has front-paged bad news on Afghanistan. First, the paper reported,

June was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the war there began in late 2001, as resilient and emboldened insurgents have stepped up attacks in an effort to gain control of the embattled country.

Defense officials and Afghanistan experts said the toll of 28 U.S. combat deaths recorded last month demonstrates a new resurgence of the Taliban, the black-turbaned extremists who were driven from power by U.S. forces almost seven years ago. Taliban units and other insurgent fighters have reconstituted in the country's south and east, aided by easy passage from mountain redoubts in neighboring Pakistan's lawless tribal regions.

Then, it noted,

The nation's top military officer said yesterday that more U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan to tamp down an increasingly violent insurgency, but that the Pentagon does not have sufficient forces to send because they are committed to the war in Iraq.

It appears that the war in Afghanistan is going less well than the war in Iraq these days. And that is bad news in particular for John McCain.

Barack Obama, of course, has argued that invading Iraq was a profound error and distracted the U.S. government and military from finishing the job in Afghanistan. The above-referenced testimony from Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, supports that argument. With Mullen saying that the Iraq war has undermined the Afghanistan effort, how might McCain's respond to the charge that he and other supporters of the Iraq war undercut the mission in Afghanistan?

At issue--politically for McCain--is whether Afghanistan will become a topic of focus and debate during the general election. For years, Afghanistan has largely been the forgotten war. There has been not much opposition to it--and no contentious fights in Congress over funding for the military operations there. The situation on the ground has been on a low boil for years. Policy wonks and a small number of politicians have been warning of trouble in Afghanistan, but their naysaying has not drawn much media attention. And the broadcast and television networks devote little airtime to covering the fighting there. Within the punditry, there is far more talk of what the next president will do about Iraq than Afghanistan.

But if Afghanistan explodes--that is, enough to attract media coverage--will McCain find himself in the position of defending two messy wars? Obama will have to talk about his plans for Afghanistan, but if there is a campaign face-off over Afghanistan, he will possess the built-in, I-told-you-so advantage of having opposed the Iraq invasion. And trouble in Afghanistan will serve as a reminder to voters that George W. Bush screwed up this task, and that's not likely to enhance McCain's prospects.

U.S. troops have been fighting, killing and dying in Afghanistan for nearly seven years--a longer stretch than the time it took to fight the First World War, the Second World War or the Korean War. Yet the management of this war has not been no hot issue within the political-media world. Bush will leave office without having been held accountable for how he has handled (or mishandled) the war. Yet if developments in Afghanistan continue on the current course, that war might become one more piece of Bush baggage that McCain must carry.

MoJo Convo: Iran Panic? A Follow Up Question for the Experts

Earlier this week MoJo writer Laura Rozen asked an Israeli intel correspondent, an Iranian American activist, an arms expert, a former peace negotiator, and an anti-war intellectual:

How likely is a scenario in which the US or Israel strikes Iran before Bush leaves office? (Or is the Left falling for the hawks' propaganda?)

Read the original conversation here.

Now for a follow up question:

There have been hints of potentially momentous shifts on policy to Iran this past week. Final thoughts on what promises to be a long hot summer?

Daniel Levy, a former Middle East peace negotiator, is Director of the Prospects for Peace Initiative at The Century Foundation, and of the Middle East Initiative at the New America Foundation:

The first thing I would say would be to caution against expectations of a dramatic breakthrough in either direction—either imminent attacks or an imminent deal—when hearing the latest developments, which is good news in the case of the former, but not so much in the case of the latter. I would also be careful about drawing what some may see as an obvious causal relationship: Israel and American heightened the threat; Iran climbed down—longer and more complicated processes are at work.

If one were to be mischievous, one could even pose the opposite speculation: Namely, that in anticipation (or with advance information) of a greater Iranian willingness to demonstrate flexibility on the enrichment freeze, the threats were escalated in order to allow the claim that chest-thumping was working. If indeed we have inched closer towards negotiations, then the key thing will be to give those negotiations a chance to make progress and to demonstrate patience. Naturally, all sides would have to justify a change in approach to their respective domestic audiences.

The challenge will be to do this in a way that does not undermine the process itself. So keep any clucking and "they blinked first rhetoric" to a minimum. My own sense is that one of the significant factors in play here is that Iran, similar to other regional powers, is already looking beyond the Bush administration and beginning to choreograph it signals and messaging with the next administration in mind. Syria’s resumption of negotiations with Israel probably comes from a similar place.

Hard diplomatic bargaining is not only the best option, but also the option most likely to address legitimate concerns on all sides in ways that the other parties can live with (limitations and transparency of any enrichment/civil nuclear energy program, Iranian regime security, cessations of Iranian provision of material assistance to groups deploying violence against Israeli civilians, etc.); and the new Trita Parsi-Shlomo Ben-Ami op-ed is well worth reading on this. But note—negotiations entail brinksmanship and moments of crisis that require very skillful management, which makes me worry given the current actors on the scene.

There have been some posts and questions on this thread regarding the relationship between the Israeli-Palestinian issue and the Iranian issue. In shorthand, I would say the following:

If one removes the grievance and injustice understandably felt in the Arab and Muslim world regarding the Palestinian issue (by ending the occupation, getting to two-states, etc.) then Iran's ability to use that issue and waive that flag is dramatically undercut. And in fact, in many ways, Israel is likely to be less a focus of Iranian attention—certainly in its propaganda and declarations. Framing the peace process as a way of further isolating Iran, as was done with Annapolis, is not smart and it only incentivizes further Iranian pushback. Finally, if one is negotiating with Iran, then acceptance of Israel and an Israel-Palestinian peace process should be on the table, which in itself creates new opportunities for progress on Israel-Palestine that should be exploited (i.e. if you remove a major spoiler, take advantage of it).

I thought I'd end on a lighter note—with a long weekend coming up and everything—with this piece from the Onion. It's not their best (and the language gets a bit offensive in parts), but it contains this precious line while President Bush is joining world leaders in a spoof roasting of President Ahmadinejad:

"What the hell is with that last name, anyway? Ahmadinejad? Ahmendinifragelisticexpialidocious? I can't even pronounce it, let alone write it on a top-secret Black Ops memo."

And for a more intellectual and poignant, but equally witty attempt to answer our initial question of will there be an attack on Iran, I highly recommend my friend Tony Karon's blog, Rootless Cosmopolitan, and his post 'Biggie Smalls Says Israel Won’t Bomb Iran.'

Yossi Melman is national security correspondent for Israeli daily Haaretz and co-author of Every Spy a Prince, and The Nuclear Sphinx of Iran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran:

Recent leaks to the US media (New York Times and ABC News) have sent a false message that an Israeli attack on Iran is imminent. That is far from true. No decision to attack Iran has been made in Israel. Certainly no date has been fixed.

Israel will decide to disrupt Iran's nuclear program only as a last resort if and after international diplomacy fails, and more importantly only after serious consultation with the American administration. Coordination with America is the key factor in all Israeli crucial decisions. This has been the Israeli practice since 1967. Israel launched its combat campaigns since then only after realizing or understanding that the US either sanctions the military operation or has no objection to it or will turn a blind eye. These were the cases in June 1967, in June 1982, and in July 2006. In two other cases, Israel didn't respond as it had wished fearing that the US would be against it. In October 1973 Israel decided against a premptive strike against Egypt and Syria and in January 1991 for the same reason it didn't respond to the launching of 40 Scud missiles against its urban centers. If the US doesn't approve of an Israeli operation, Israel will not attack Iran. Full stop.

True, the recent leaks may serve Israeli interests to increase pressure on the international community to act against Iran. But above all they reflect confusion and a power struggle within the US administration in the twilight months of a weak administration. We are still far away—a matter of at least one year—before Israel would realize that it has no other option than to attack Iran's nuclear sites.

Trita Parsi is the author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the US and president of the National Iranian American Council:

Reading the excellent comments on this forum, I cannot help to notice that our analysis of how the Iranians are reading this debate and the latest talk of a US or Israeli is somewhat lacking. We see how the bravado of the Bush administration is replicated in Tehran and Tel Aviv, fueling fears that even if no decision to go to war is made, the three countries could still end up in a confrontation due to a mistake.

(That is the asymmetric situation between war and peace: While nations may accidentally end up in war, they never accidentally achieve peace.)

Farideh Farhi of Hawaii University, one of America's sharpest analysts of Iranian affairs, wrote an excellent analysis of the Iranian reaction to the war talk for the
National Iranian American Council. She shows that beneath the bravado, the
Iranians are carefully planning for a potential US or Israeli attack.

(Likewise, the Israelis are officially describing Iran as a irrational actor against whom deterrence won't work, yet behind the scenes Tel Aviv is preparing for a potential Iranian nuclear bomb by boosting their second strike capabilities—that is, relying on deterrence.)

Jacqueline Shire is a senior analyst at the Institute for Science and International Security, and served previously as a foreign affairs officer in the Department of State's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs:

Recent statements by former Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati and current foreign minister Manoucher Mottaki indicating that Iran might accept what has come to be known as a freeze-for-freeze arrangement (where the UN Security Council freezes sanctions and Iran freezes at least centrifuge installation if not actual enrichment) for six or so weeks would be a giant step in the current climate (ABC News reports that Israel may be getting serious about a strike before 2009, etc.). It would really take the air out the tension hanging over the issue and provide a context in which a longer-term strategy could be cobbled together.

So my hopes are high. I try not to remind myself that we have also been down this road before, though not in a long time; nor do I dwell on a nagging suspicion that it might prove awfully difficult to actually get the cascades at Natanz to fall silent, or that the White House may reject the installation-freeze as inadequate, or that Iran won't want to be seen as caving to Israeli saber rattling (though Velayati seemed to address this when he referred to the "traps" that Iran's enemies want it to fall into). So I'm very glass-is-half full right now.

July 2, 2008

Blogger Brian Beutler Shot, Expected to Make Full Recovery

Sad news, folks. Brian Beutler, the Washington correspondent for the Media Consortium and a frequent contributer to this site and this blog, was shot three times yesterday in a failed mugging in Northwest Washington DC. Brian is in the hospital and is expected to make a full recovery. Brian's editor, Adele Stan, wrote this after visiting Brian in the hospital:

Funny thing about being a journalist: your job is to write about people and mayhem and trauma, but let any of those touch you directly, and it becomes a different game. With that caveat, allow me to recount my brief visit today with my colleague, Brian Beutler, whose sign-off is a familiar one on this site, and has come to define the reporting of The Media Consortium's syndicated reporting project.

I was just about to leave the house this morning to meet with Brian when I got word this morning, through a mutual colleague of ours, that he had been shot last night in Washington, D.C., in an aborted mugging.

I found him at Washington Hospital Center, where his good friend, Matt Franklin, sat vigil through the night, as Brian underwent major surgery. By the time I got there, Brian was in recovery, and Matt and I were shown to his bedside.

Perhaps foremost among the topics about which Brian writes in his coverage of national security and civil liberties issues is FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the Bush administration's circumvention of the original 1978 legislation, and subsequent legislative attempts to widen the powers of the executive branch to spy on U.S. citizens. The entity of choice for such spying by the Bush administration has been the National Security Agency.

This morning, Brian and I had planned to go over the story he had just delivered about efforts by Sen. Russell Feingold to stop the latest version of FISA legislation from getting through the Senate. As his editor, I had promised our members that we would deliver the piece today.

When I stepped up to Brian's hospital bed, he smiled through the clear, plastic mask covering his mouth, and said in a quite, hoarse voice, "Sorry. I left you high and dry."

What could I do but laugh?

After some housekeeping conversation about his level of comfort (not great, as you might imagine), he piped up, "I have a theory about the shooting." He smiled, impishly.

"Oh, yeah?" I said.

"It was the NSA," he said, with a deadpan look.

(Actually, it was two teenage boys who thought they wanted Brian's phone.)

Matt laughed.

The good word is that Brian is expected to make a full recovery. Please be patient as we await his return to his beat. Nobody covers FISA and the rest of his beat quite like Brian Beutler. I know that his passion for his work will bring him back to the Hill in good time.

--Adele M. Stan

Brian and Adele work in the same office as the members of Mother Jones' DC bureau, so it was a somber day around here after we got news of Brian's incident. David Corn, our bureau chief, and Dan Schulman, our associate editor, visited Brian in the hospital this afternoon. He was in high enough spirits to joke that his shooting was a result of undercover reporting on the DC hand gun ban.

Nick Baumann, assistant editor, and I want to know when Brian's rap album is dropping.

Video: DNC Hammers McCain on Economic Double Talk

He basically asked them to make this video...

Background.

McCain Denies Ever Saying He Lacks Expertise on Economy

John McCain is a honest dude. Sure, he flip-flops on stuff (see the bottom of this post), but he utters truths that a lot of other politicians wouldn't. A perfect example is his statement from December 2007: "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should." He's said similar things as well.

Problem is, uttering truths doesn't help you run for president. (Shocker, right? Is it a sign of a fundamental idealism or innocence that writing that statement genuinely upset me?) So now McCain is not just insisting that he does have economic expertise, he's actually denying that he said the statement in question. Think Progress has the depressing, not-very-honest details. Running for president makes messes of good men.

Report: Interrogation Instructors at Gitmo Taught Communist Tactics from 1950s

Really? When the military was copying old communist torture tactics verbatim, no one thought, Hey, this doesn't seem like a very American way of doing things?

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of "coercive management techniques" for possible use on prisoners, including "sleep deprivation," "prolonged constraint," and "exposure."

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency....

The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War" and written by Alfred D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.

So this is what happened: In the 1950s, the Air Force took note of Chinese torture tactics used on Americans during the Korean War. A few years back, in search of torture tactics, which were missing from military manuals because until the Bush era the United States did not torture, the military found the Air Force's (presumably disapproving) study of communist tactics and copied those tactics down, and started teaching them to interrogators at Gitmo. According to the NYT, "The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title."

Other than the fact this should have obviously given someone pause, I think the relevant point is made by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) in the Times piece: "What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions. People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence."

We didn't just copy communist tactics. We copied communist tactics specifically intended to elicit fabulous tales.

One More Clinton Campaign Post-Mortem: No Hierarchy, No Trust, No Comity

There's a new Vanity Fair article on the squabblings of Hillary Clinton's key campaign advisers. As you would expect, it feels about two months out of date, but it's still well-reported. The dysfunction described — some of the folks at the top of the Clinton campaign really couldn't stand each other — really makes you wonder how the campaign ran at all. Here's an excerpt, for short-term nostalgia's sake:

It was impossible to find anyone who could lay out the hierarchy of Hillary’s campaign. Almost everybody had veto power, but no one could initiate. The group was about as effective as the U.N. Security Council. After Super Tuesday and Obama’s remarkable run of February victories, it was clear their arrogantly defended strategies had failed. They became consumed with trading personal invective, hurling expletives, and trashing one another in print.

[Mark] Penn and [Harold] Ickes especially hated each other. Penn was a protégé of the most poisonous character in the Clinton White House, pollster Dick Morris. Leon Panetta, who had battled against Morris’s morally empty advice in the ’96 campaign, compared Penn to Karl Rove and saw Hillary’s dependence on Penn as an ominous sign. "Morris had no lines between right and wrong," says Panetta. "There are moments when [the Clintons] want to hear from the dark side because that may be the only way to win.… Losing is not part of their vocabulary. They know no limits when it comes to the energy and tactics they will use—no matter how distasteful."

Everyone takes digs at everyone in the piece. It's an ugly scene, and it undercuts the claims of greater executive management skills — "Think about the [election] as a hiring decision!" HRC used to say — that Clinton made when running against Obama.

July 1, 2008

How to Think about Immunity

As has been widely reported, the House's new FISA bill probably won't be up for a vote in the Senate until after the July 4th holiday. But the bill continues to be subjected to a great deal of criticism on the left for its telecom immunity and surveillance provisions.

And for good reason! The bill allows for bulk collection of data on American citizens without warrants or oversight of almost any kind, and, for all intents and purposes, it requires civil lawsuits against the telecommunications companies that participated in President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program to be thrown out of court. This, many would like us to believe, is some sort of compromise.

But there's still the matter of the Inspector General reviews. The bill, as it stands right now, requires the IGs of all agencies involved in the wiretapping program to conduct reviews of a number of important things including:

(A) all of the facts necessary to describe the establishment, implementation, product, and use of the product of the Program;

(B) access to legal reviews of the Program and access to information about the Program;

(C) communications with, and participation of, individuals and entities in the private sector related to the Program;

(D) interaction with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and transition to court orders related to the Program; and

(E) any other matters identified by any such Inspector General that would enable that Inspector General to complete a review of the Program, with respect to such Department or element.

The way the law is written, the inspectors general of all the relevant agencies will convene shortly after the law is signed and name a Senate-confirmed designee to head the review process. (Senate-confirmed inspectors general are, at least in theory, more independent than politically appointed inspectors.) Over the course of the next year, each individual inspector general will examine his own agency's role in the warrantless wiretapping program. At the end that term, the reviews will be turned into a comprehensive report and submitted to the relevant congressional committees in both classified and unclassified forms. Though the law lists no penalties for non-compliance (and so it's hard to say why the administration wouldn't just ignore these provisions) it does require the administration to expedite the process, and refrain from obstructing it (by, for example, dragging their feet on providing investigators with security clearances) in its own ways.

Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that All Will Be Revealed to the public. But it's not nothing, either. People often scoff at the notion of the administration investigating itself and tend to regard calls for inspector general reports as inherently corrupt... until, of course, some inspector general releases some damning report detailing yet more corruption in the White House. A number of those reports have been written by Glenn Fine—who heads the IG office at the Department of Justice—and, if the bill passes, he will be one of the officials looking into the wiretapping program, and perhaps be in the lead.

This isn't to carry water for congressional Democrats. But it is useful to look at what this provision and the immunity provision, taken together, mean as the bill's written right now. For instance:

If the fight over immunity is important to you because you want the telecommunications companies to pay for their crimes, or because you worry about the precedent the government is setting by providing amnesty to corporate criminals, then you're basically out of luck.

If the fight over immunity is important to you because you want the ins and outs of the illegal wiretapping program to be revealed in as much detail as possible, though, then all is not lost.

Obviously, it would be foolish to assume that Bush administration officials plan to cooperate with the inspectors general full stop. (You may have already noticed, but they have this tendency is to lie and obfuscate and stall when confronted with any sort of oversight, even oversight from within.) But in this instance they're up against a deadline—and therefore some unusual incentives. If the FISA bill passes, say, a week from now, the White House will have about six months left in office, after which all of these agencies will undergo huge staff changes—particularly huge if Obama wins: no more Michael Mukasey, no more Robert Gates.

And it's precisely for this reason that Bush et al may want to be a bit less intransigent with the inspectors general than they'd normally be, and get the reports out of the way while they're still in office. Because if they do what they normally do and stand athwart the investigation, then a new administration will come in and the whole game changes, potentially drastically. One can imagine John McCain taking a page from Gerald Ford and continuing the obfuscation. But if Barack Obama wins the presidency (obviously still a big if) one can imagine a pretty thoroughgoing investigation and report. So in that sense, the administration might be inclined to be more helpful to the inspectors general than it normally is.

Some Capitol Hill Democrats are a bit more optimistic still. They think that no matter what approach Bush takes with the IG requirements, the reviews will take so long that they'll bleed into a new (hopefully Democratic) administration no matter what.

But many still worry about a white wash. Or that the administration will provide the IGs with juuust enough information that the report will be completed quickly, but with the bare-minimum of disclosure. Possible, and unfortunate. But they might be at least somewhat chastened by the introduction of a new amendment from Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) If it passes (yet another big, big "if") it will delay the provision of immunity until 90 days after the IG reports are submitted to Congress.

There are a couple ideas here. The first is that by making telecom immunity contingent upon the submission of the IG reports, Bingaman's basically offering a guarantee that the IG reviews will be complete, and (at least in some cases) reported with some measure of credibility. The comprehensive report might not be a white wash after all. And if it's extremely damning, the (new, more Democratic) Congress could—but probably wouldn't—act in the intervening 90 days to amend the law and strip it of its immunity provision. Likewise, if the IG report does turn out to be weak, Congress could press for more.

Clearly, there are ifs, built on top of ifs, built on top of top of maybes here. But consider an alternative. If both the IG provisions and the immunity provision were to be removed from the FISA legislation in the Senate, and the lawsuits allowed to proceed during the Bush administration, it would set a better legal precedent, but there'd remain the risk that a great deal of information about the illegal wiretapping program would never make it out of the court house. No great victory for those interested in the discovery process. If, on the other hand, the IG and immunity provisions remain, and the Bingaman amendment fails (the most likely scenario), it's a loss for the rule of law, but there's still some chance that at least some of the details of the wiretapping program will be unearthed and made public.

Obviously, the ideal bill would allow the lawsuits to proceed and would require an IG report and would respect the Constitution, but our representatives—both Republicans and Democrats—foreclosed on that option.

Several months ago, the immunity battle was an both an important moral fight and an effective way to derail a different extremely bad bill—one that lacked an IG provision altogether. At this point, with a different bad bill on its way to passage, immunity is pretty clearly not the grounds on which this bill is going to be stopped—if those grounds exist at all. In other words it might be time to learn to stop worrying about immunity and start pressuring Congress not to settle for a bleached IG process. And then to start thinking about how to undo all the other odious aspects of this legislation down the line.

—Brian Beutler is the Washington correspondent for the Media Consortium, a network of progressive media organizations, including Mother Jones.

The Yoo-Sands Controversy

Yesterday, I reported on former deputy Attorney General (and torture memoranda author) John Yoo's none-too-subtle attempt to discredit critic and author Philippe Sands by suggesting he'd lied to a House subcommittee. As an attempt to clear the air, Sands has written a letter to John Yoo, which he's also submitted for the congressional record, and I've obtained a copy. The text appears below.

Over hundreds of hours I conversed or debated with many of those most deeply involved in that memo's life. They included, for example, the combatant commander and his lawyer at Guantanamo, Major General Dunlavey and Lieutenant Colonel Beaver, the commander of United States Southern Command in Miami, General Hill, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Myers, the undersecretary of Defense, Mr. Feith, the general counsel of the Navy, Mr. Moorer, and the deputy assistant attorney general at DOJ, Mr. Yoo.

I believe that is an accurate statement. It does not indicate that I interviewed you for the book, and there is no other point in my testimony in which I so indicated. For the avoidance of doubt, in my book Torture Team (which I appreciate you have not read), I refer to our debate in conversation at pages 184-5.

I hope you will forgive me for having troubled you with this point. I would not have done so but for the fact that Representative King appears to have concluded that I made “a false statement” to the Committee , and your exchange with him has caused me to receive a number of enquiries by email, raising issues of integrity or veracity.

I am perfectly happy to proceed on the basis that any statement you made (and any error it might have contained) was in good faith, and would be grateful if you could perhaps so communicate to Representative King and the Chairmen of the Committee and the Sub-Committee, and thereby clear up the misperception.

With best wishes,

Philippe Sands

cc. Representative John Conyers, Chairman, Judiciary Committee Representative Jerrold Nadler, Chairman, Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Sub-Committee
Representative Steve King, Member, Chairman, Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Sub-Committee

—Brian Beutler is the Washington correspondent for the Media Consortium, a network of progressive media organizations, including Mother Jones.

Iran to Suspend Uranium Enrichment for Six Weeks?

An Iranian American academic writes that an Iranian news site is reporting that Iran has decided to suspend uranium enrichment, "as a goodwill gesture," for a period of six weeks. "This action will be taken in return for no further sanctions, and resumption of negotiations with the 5+1 group during this period based on the latest proposed package." (Here's the source of the report, he says).

If true that Iran has accepted the West's "suspension for suspension" proposal, as former US Iran envoy Nick Burns has called it, it would conceivably make way for the US to join international talks with Iran over its nuclear program. Secretary of State Condolezza Rice has said repeatedly that Washington would be willing to talk directly with Iran if Iran agreed to suspend its enrichment program. It's a position that the State Department reiterated as recently as yesterday.

I am trying to confirm whether the Iranian report is accurate.

Iranian and American sources warn that more information is needed.

More details if they become available.

Update: More hints Iran is considering trying to get to negotiations.

Thursday Update: A more detailed suggestion of the anticipated potential Iranian response to the latest P5+1/Javier Solana offer is available here:

The 5+1 proposal to Iran proposes a "pre-negotiation" phase at which stage there would be a "freeze for freeze", i.e. Iran would not add any new centrifuges and the 5+1 would not introduce any new sanctions. In this phase, Iran would negotiate with 5+1 minus the US to prepare the grounds for full-fledged negotiations which would then include the US. In this phase, Iran can also comment on the agenda of the negotiations and introduce new topics (eg. Tehran could insist that the issue of an uranium enrichment consortium on Iranian soil be discussed with high priority). Iran can also focus on the "commonalities of the two proposals" as Dr. Mottaki has underlined a few times. Once the two sides agree to enter full-fledged negotiations including the US at the table, then Iran will have to suspend enrichment and the 5+1 will lift the existing UN sanctions.

All signs are that Iran will accept the 5+1 package with 1 important change, i.e. Iran will insist that the deadline for the pre-negotiation phase (i.e. 6 weeks) be adjusted. The important element for Tehran is that negotiations can start without suspension being their prerequisite.

Link.

Justice Scalia Wants You to Have Every Opportunity to Off Yourself

Michelle Cottle notes some statistics on gun deaths that I am genuinely surprised by. This probably isn't what the Supreme Court had in mind when it struck down DC's handgun ban:

Suicides accounted for 55 percent of the nation's nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There was nothing unique about that year — gun-related suicides have outnumbered firearm homicides and accidents for 20 of the last 25 years. In 2005, homicides accounted for 40 percent of gun deaths. Accidents accounted for 3 percent. The remaining 2 percent included legal killings, such as when police do the shooting, and cases that involve undetermined intent.

Public-health researchers have concluded that in homes where guns are present, the likelihood that someone in the home will die from suicide or homicide is much greater.

Update: Some further thinking and research on this. Scalia argued in the ruling overturning the DC handgun ban that individuals essentially have a right to keep a gun by their beds, which they can use to scare away assailants in the middle of the night. As Arthur Kellermann wrote in the Post over the weekend, "Statistically speaking, these rare success stories are dwarfed by tragedies." Kellermann pointed to a study that found guns in the home were 12 times as likely to be involved in the death or injury of a member of the household than in the fending off of a masked intruder.

And one need only consult the Brady Campaign to find further horrifying statistics. The risk of homicide in the home is three times greater in households with guns. Due to firearm suicides, there are more than twice as many suicide victims in states with high household firearm ownership. See more here.

Where's the Beef on Obama's New Faith-Based Initiative Plan?

Barack Obama is unveiling a plan to reform and invigorate President Bush's program of faith-based initiatives. In a speech today dedicated to the topic, Obama is expected to point to his own religious background as motivation for the new policy:

"I came to see faith as being both a personal commitment to Christ and a commitment to my community; that while I could sit in church and pray all I want, I wouldn't be fulfilling God's will unless I went out and did the Lord's work."

The plan centers around an office Obama would establish called the President's Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. According to a factsheet provided by the campaign, the primary goals of the council are relatively simple:

Obama’s President's Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will launch a program to "Train the Trainers" by empowering hundreds of intermediary nonprofits and larger faith-based organizations to train thousands of local faith-based and community-based organizations on best practices, grant-making procedures, service delivery and limitations. The Office will host regular training sessions for selected community training partners. These partners... would be supported to travel to Washington and learn how to train local faith-based and community organizations on accessing federal service delivery dollars, remaining in compliance, avoiding proselytizing, understanding hiring rules, and reporting outcomes.

There is no mention of the goals of the faith-based organizations who receive federal grants through the council, except for a stated desire to close the summer learning gap between poor, minority students and rich, white students. Outside of that, presumably, faith-based groups will be able to set their own agendas. Perhaps more importantly, there is no mention of money — neither Obama's speech nor the campaign's factsheet discuss what sort of funds the council will have to work with, both to run itself and to administer in the form of federal grants to faith-based groups. We don't know if Obama will give more or less than Bush currently does.

The plan is already winning plaudits, despite its lack of details. David Kuo, a conservative Christian who was deputy director of Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives early in the Administration but left and wrote a book slamming Bush's commitment to the cause, calls Obama's plan a "massive deal."

John DiIulio, who was the director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in 2001 and is most famous for the phrase "Mayberry Machiavellis," says, "Senator Barack Obama has offered a principled, prudent, and problem-solving vision for the future of community-serving partnerships involving religious nonprofit organizations."

Obama's plan will have safeguards. From his speech:

Now, make no mistake, as someone who used to teach constitutional law, I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don’t believe this partnership will endanger that idea — so long as we follow a few basic principles. First, if you get a federal grant, you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can't discriminate against them — or against the people you hire — on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs. And we’ll also ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work.

There's no reason to suspect that Obama's outreach to evangelicals is insincere, but that doesn't mean I can't point out that it's also politically advantageous. (Translation: This isn't necessarily a pander, but it has the effects of one.) Christian evangelicals went 80-20 for Bush over Kerry. The political scuttlebutt says Obama could get one-third to 40 percent, an increase that is made more likely by today's moves. And as Noam Scheiber points out at TNR, there's a ricochet effect here: by proving that he is comfortable working with Christian churches, Obama allays the fears of white, working class voters who may not be evangelicals themselves. And it helps dampen those crypto-Muslim rumors that never seem to go away.

Wesley Clark Clarifies

Or, as he puts it, reiterates. Here's his statement responding to the controversy created by his comments over the weekend.

I have made comments in the past about John McCain's service and I want to reiterate them in order be crystal clear. As I have said before I honor John McCain's service as a prisoner of war and a Vietnam Veteran. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. I would never dishonor the service of someone who chose to wear the uniform for our nation.

John McCain is running his campaign on his experience and how his experience would benefit him and our nation as President. That experience shows courage and commitment to our country — but it doesn't include executive experience wrestling with national policy or go-to-war decisions. And in this area his judgment has been flawed — he not only supported going into a war we didn't have to fight in Iraq, but has time and again undervalued other, non-military elements of national power that must be used effectively to protect America. But as an American and former military officer I will not back down if I believe someone doesn't have sound judgment when it comes to our nation's most critical issues.

In short, he's not shutting up. I know I was critical of Clark yesterday, but I'll admit, it is a pleasant (and obviously foreign) experience to watch a Democrat not backing down on national security.

June 30, 2008

FBI's Anthrax Investigation Gone Completely Cold?

It's been seven years since the anthrax attacks. The FBI has dropped "hundreds of thousands of agent-hours on the case," says its website. Nine thousand interviews have been conducted; 6,000 grand jury subpoenas have been issued; and 67 searches completed. The result? On Friday afternoon, the Justice Department settled with biological weapons scientist Steven Hatfill—the FBI's longtime lead suspect in the case, famously declared a "person of interest" in 2002 by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft—for $5.82 million. The move, skillfully buried in weekend news coverage, amounts to a public confession from the FBI that its anthrax investigation has gone cold.

The Justice Department, far from admitting the colossal nature of its screw-up, refused to admit legal liability for dragging Hatfill's name through the mud, but, according to a spokesman, settled the case "in the best interest of the United States." Hatfill continues to press libel cases against the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times, and columnist Nicholas Kristof. He has already reached private settlements with Vanity Fair and Reader's Digest for their coverage of the case.

The Los Angeles Times and ABC News have both published post-mortems of the FBI investigation in recent days, trying to answer the question of what went wrong. The latter, written by Brad Garrett, a former FBI investigator on the anthrax case, points to inexperienced supervising agents interfering in the case, widespread leaks of confidential information (which sometimes enabled news crews to arrive at the scene before the feds), and the mistake of naming a suspect in the investigation prematurely. "If later the 'person of interest' is cleared of wrongdoing, it is unlikely that they can ever fully reclaim their reputation," writes Garrett. "That only serves to damage the reputation of the FBI." Remember supposed Olympic Park bomber Richard Jewel? The money he and Hatfill received in recompense from the FBI does not even begin to repair the damage done their names.

With Hatfill in the clear, where do things stand? The Wall Street Journal editorial page takes the FBI to task for focusing on a domestic, "lone-wolf" suspect. "The FBI's mad scientist theory also fit the agenda of the political left, which didn't want the trail of evidence to prove state-sponsorship of terror—particularly in Iraq," says the Journal. So, are we to believe that Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks, à la the conspiracy rantings of Laurie Mylroie, writer of note among the neocon set? "The possibility of a foreign source should never have been discounted," according to the editorial.

Perhaps not, but still, the odds remain in favor of a domestic source. Aside from lingering belief in Saddam's invisible hand in the attacks, a more plausible theory takes the classic crime-solving approach: who had the most to gain from the attacks? Answer: scientists in the U.S. governments weapons labs who, thanks to the resulting hysteria, were flooded with research grants. This is the sort of thinking that drew the FBI to Hatfill, of course, but his innocence does not necessarily vindicate his colleagues.

Indeed, according to one of the most recent bits of information to escape the FBI, the investigation is now centered on four remaining suspects. Three of them are associated with the Army's bioweapons labortatory at Fort Detrick, Maryland—Hatfill's old stomping ground. From FOX News:

Among the pool of suspects are three scientists — a former deputy commander, a leading anthrax scientist and a microbiologist — linked to the research facility, known as USAMRIID.

The FBI has collected writing samples from the three scientists in an effort to match them to the writer of anthrax-laced letters that were mailed to two U.S. senators and at least two news outlets in the fall of 2001, a law enforcement source confirmed...

... in an e-mail obtained by FOX News, scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed how the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues.

There's been no word of progress on the investigations of any of the four remaining suspects. The FBI's troubled investigation, which a spokesman characterized as "the largest and most complex" in the agency's history, slogs on, largely out of public view. But this may change, if Congress has anything to do with it. Rep. Rush Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, told the International Herald Tribune that he plans to press FBI Director Robert Mueller for information about the investigation. "As today's settlement announcement confirms, this case was botched from the very beginning," Holt said on Friday. "The FBI did a poor job collecting evidence, and then inappropriately focused on one individual as a suspect for too long, developing an erroneous theory of the case that has led to this very expensive dead end."

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Special Agent Oliver.J.B.

One More Problem With Romney as VP

John McCain is considering picking Mitt Romney as his VP because of Romney's ability to raise beaucoup bucks from the business and Mormon communities. But if Romney goes to major donors in the business community and picks up $2,300 checks by the bushel, he'll just bolster the image of Obama as the people-powered candidate in the race. The ads are easy: John McCain gets big checks from Mitt Romney's fat cat friends. Barack Obama is funded by people like you. Please give $20 today.

John Yoo's Attempt to Discredit a Critic

Last week's House Judiciary subcommittee hearing, which featured special guests John Yoo and David Addington, drew a lot of attention for its rhetorical bombshells (Chairman Conyers: Could the president order a suspect buried alive?) and the tense back and forth between the witnesses and Democrats on the bench. But Addington and Yoo are both long-time lawyers--lawyers for politicians, no less--and as such their testimony revealed much, much less about the Bush administration's torture regime than many hoped it would.

However, there was this peculiar exchange between Yoo and Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), on the subject of author Philippe Sands' new book, Torture Team which contains a number of startling revelations about the administration's abandonment of the eighth amendment.

Yoo: Sir, I haven't read the book. I did read Mr. Sands' testimony before this committee, and I noticed in the testimony he said that he had interviewed me for the book. And I can say that he did not interview me for the book. He asked me for an interview and I declined. So I didn't quite understand why he would tell the committee that he had actually interviewed me.

King: And with that answer, Professor Yoo then, I'm going to interpret that to mean that at least with regard to that statement that he had interviewed you, you find that to be a false statement, and that would perhaps reflect on the veracity of the balance of the book.

Yoo: I can't tell what else is in the book, but I don't understand why he would say that he interviewed me for the book. I can tell the committee that he contacted me once. He wanted to interview me for the book and I said I don't want to talk to you. I wrote my own book, you can look at my own book. Everything I have to say is in my book. And then he told the committee that he'd interviewed me.

The idea, of course, is that someone who hates America so much that he's willing to fabricate all sorts of untrue allegations about Yoo (and, perhaps, other administration veterans) is not to be believed. When I heard this interchange, though, I emailed Sands and asked him to clear the air. He was fairly unambiguous: "I never claimed to have interviewed him! As set out in my book: we debated. " So who's telling the truth?

Well, Yoo's right about approximately one thing: Sands did testify before the very same House panel, on May 6 of this year. But that's about the extent of it. In his prepared remarks, Sands submits that, "[o]ver hundreds of hours I conversed or debated with many of those most deeply involved. They included... the Deputy Assistant Attorney General at DoJ (Mr Yoo)." [Emphasis mine.]

You can read, as Yoo did, for yourself. Or you watch, starting about 2 min 45 sec in to the video below:

And, indeed, Yoo and Sands did debate each other in October 2005. You can listen to that debate in full if you follow this link.

One hesitates to throw the word perjury around (maybe Yoo... misread... Sands' testimony). But it is safe to say that the goal here was to discredit a critic who's brought to light a great deal of damning information about the Bush administration and its allies.

—Brian Beutler is the Washington correspondent for the Media Consortium, a network of progressive media organizations, including Mother Jones.

In a Speech on Patriotism, Obama Tries To Get Past the '60s

Can Barack Obama walk a political/cultural tightrope to success on Election Day?

On Monday, he gave a well-written speech on patriotism. He noted that "at certain times over the last sixteen months, I have found, for the first time, my patriotism challenged--at times as a result of my own carelessness, more often as a result of the desire by some to score political points and raise fears about who I am and what I stand for." And unlike Democrats of the past--Michael Dukakis comes to mind--Obama is not going to give an inch in any battle over who is really a patriot. In the speech, he described the wellsprings of his own patriotism:

One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my grandfather's shoulders and watching the astronauts come to shore in Hawaii. I remember the cheers and small flags that people waved, and my grandfather explaining how we Americans could do anything we set our minds to do. That's my idea of America.

I remember listening to my grandmother telling stories about her work on a bomber assembly-line during World War II. I remember my grandfather handing me his dog-tags from his time in Patton's Army, and understanding that his defense of this country marked one of his greatest sources of pride. That's my idea of America.

I remember, when living for four years in Indonesia as a child, listening to my mother reading me the first lines of the Declaration of Independence--"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." I remember her explaining how this declaration applied to every American, black and white and brown alike; how those words, and words of the United States Constitution, protected us from the injustices that we witnessed other people suffering during those years abroad. That's my idea of America.

Obama declared, "I will never question the patriotism of others in this campaign." Which is not such a big promise to make. (He's going to call McCain unpatriotic?) And he defined patriotism to include dissent (such as the whistleblowing of the soldier who first revealed the abuses at Abu Ghraib) and sacrifice. But what was intriguing was how Obama blended a championship of dissent with a belief in American exceptionalism. In fact, he noted that in order for the former to be legitimate if must be cloaked with the latter:

I believe those who attack America's flaws without acknowledging the singular greatness of our ideals, and their proven capacity to inspire a better world, do not truly understand America.

Is this a slam of the old U.S.-is-evil, flag-burning left? Whether or not it is, in that sentence there is something for everyone. America is No. 1, and America has flaws that must be exposed, no matter how difficult, by its patriotic citizens.

Certainly, no one is likely to be elected president in the United States without embracing its ideals and without paying tribute to the national mythology. Obama, it seems, can do this well:

it may be this quality that best describes patriotism in my mind – not just a love of America in the abstract, but a very particular love for, and faith in, the American people. That is why our heart swells with pride at the sight of our flag; why we shed a tear as the lonely notes of Taps sound. For we know that the greatness of this country – its victories in war, its enormous wealth, its scientific and cultural achievements – all result from the energy and imagination of the American people; their toil, drive, struggle, restlessness, humor and quiet heroism.

Obama celebrates the myth and calls for dissent--but dissent predicated on an understanding that the United States is in essence a good and special nation. Politically, this may be an effective way out of the still-resonating battles of the 1960s, a time when some citizens defined patriotism as loving your country right or wrong and others viewed disastrous governmental policies and unjust laws as reflections of fundamental American malevolence. Obama, its been said, is a post-racial candidate. (Election Day will show if that's true or not.) But he may also be America's first post-60s candidate.

Photo by flickr user Barack Obama used under a Creative Commons license.

What Advantages Come With Vice President Romney?

So Mitt Romney is apparently at the top of McCain's VP list. Reasons, according to Republican insiders who spoke to the Politico:

(1) Romney's ability to raise money from former business associates and the Mormon community. McCain's camp apparently believes Romney can raise $50 million in 60 days.

(2) He's been vetted.

(3) He is an established campaigner who can be trusted to stay on message.

(4) His roots in Michigan, where his father was a governor, may help deliver a crucial swing state.

Okay, basically this comes down to money. Reasons 2 through 4 are silly. He was vetted, yes, and the media found nothing but flip-flops and inconsistencies. He is a experienced campaigner, but he wasn't very good in the role. I saw Romney speak a bunch of times, and his speaking skills and small-group skills don't match his presidential looks. There's a reason why he only won a handful of states.

And speaking of winning states, it isn't very likely that Michigan, a state that prefers Obama by seven points, is going to vote for McCain just because his VP's dad was governor 40 years ago.

So like I said, this is all about money. Here's the tricky thing. McCain is committed to the public financing system — he was hammering Obama for opting out, remember? What that means is that McCain has 84 million government-supplied dollars to spend from the convention until election day. He can only use the money Romney would raise before the convention. So if he chooses Romney in early August, which would be relatively standard, he would have just 30 days or so to take advantage of Romney's fundraising abilities. Is that an opportunity so great it could sway McCain's choice? I'm doubtful.

Alternatively, McCain could choose Romney and then, with a sigh, say that Obama's decision to opt out of the public financing system has broken the system forever and that now, he too will have to opt out. No amount of sighing is going to keep that from being a PR disaster.

Here's another complication: According to the Politico, McCain intends to pick his VP right after Obama makes his selection, in what is being called a "bounce-mitigation strategy." If the Obama campaign wants to negate Romney's fundraising power, it can just wait until the convention to make its pick.

Or — and this would be super crafty — if it thinks Romney is a terrible pick that will help Obama win the election, it can name Obama's pick early, adding incentive for McCain to go ahead and give Romney the nod. Democrats haven't really been convinced of Romney's seriousness as a national candidate.

Listen, if you made it through this much horse race speculation, I hope you at least took a moment to check out our debate on the future of America's Iran policy.

Update: David found me in meatspace and pointed out that because McCain has a joint fundraising operation set up with the Republican National Committee, the RNC has what is essentially a giant slush fund that Romney can direct money into. That money would then be used by the RNC on the presidential race and on congressional races. So McCain can remain within the public financing system while indirectly taking advantage of Romney's fundraising prowess.

Hey, Wes Clark...

...let's think about your comments over the weekend, shall we?

"I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president..."

"[McCain] has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn't held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded — that wasn't a wartime squadron."

This echoes a statement Clark made several weeks back: "The truth is that, in national security terms, [McCain is] largely untested and untried. He's never been responsible for policy formulation. He's never had leadership in crisis, or in anything larger than his own element on an aircraft carrier or [in managing] his own congressional staff."

Clark, when pressed on whether the candidate he supports, Barack Obama, is "tested" or "tried" on national security, says that it isn't relevant because Obama isn't basing his campaign on national security expertise the way McCain is. Here's video.

This is right out of the Karl Rove school of political strategy: attack your opponent's strengths. But Clark's actions create two serious problems for Obama.

First, while Wes Clark can make these attacks, Obama definitely can't. Clark served, commanded troops, and was injured in Vietnam. He spent over 30 years in the military. He successfully commanded NATO forces in the Kosovo War as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award the United States can bestow. So when Clark slams anybody on national security, he has the moral authority and professional standing to do so. But every time he takes advantage of that ability, he causes reporters to rush to the Obama campaign for response, which inevitably forces Obama or a spokesman to say something like, We honor John McCain's heroic service and would never t