Scandals
From Bwtm
| Revision as of 02:42, 14 October 2006 Beachblogger (Talk | contribs) Shays: Abu Ghraib abuses were sex ring ← Previous diff |
Revision as of 13:47, 14 October 2006 Beachblogger (Talk | contribs) Rebuilding Iraq Next diff → |
||
| Line 975: | Line 975: | ||
| ===Rebuilding Iraq=== | ===Rebuilding Iraq=== | ||
| + | |||
| + | ====Iraq reconstruction failures tied to contracting breakdowns==== | ||
| + | |||
| + | [[October 13, 2006]] Contracting problems have hamstrung reconstruction efforts in Iraq, raising questions about how the government can adapt its procurement system to effectively address unforeseen circumstances, according to a panel that examined the role procurement has played in the Iraq reconstruction effort. | ||
| + | |||
| + | T. Christian Miller, author of [http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Money-Wasted-Billions-Corporate/dp/0316166278 Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq], Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen and Katherine Schinasi, Government Accountability Office managing director for acquisition and sourcing management, spoke at a Friday event on the reconstruction effort. The panel was organized by the George Washington University Government Procurement Law Program. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Miller said he started his work in Iraq with an expectation for the story he would encounter there: the government procurement system meets the Wild West in Iraq, and the government procurement system wins. But he said he quickly realized that the reconstruction was not working. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The first U.S. government project Miller saw was a water treatment plant that, on the day of his visit, was out of chlorine and short on generator power because the machines had seized up for lack of antifreeze in the cold climate. Worse, when the plant eventually began to pump out clean water, what flowed from the taps of Iraqi homes was tainted with sewage and other contaminants because the old, leaky pipes between the facility and the homes had not been replaced. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Neither the engineers nor the project managers, Miller said, had considered the delivery aspect of the infrastructure project they had signed on to complete. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Miller described contracting staff shortages as central to the problems he encountered. He said David Nash, the first director of the Coalition Provisional Authority's Project Management Office, framed the issue as one of bodies and budgets: the Army Corps of Engineers had about 30,000 employees in the United States with a $13 billion budget for construction projects and contracts like the ones in Iraq, Nash told Miller. In Iraq, the Corps had 50 employees for the $18 billion budget it was allocated in late 2003. | ||
| + | |||
| + | "People were blowing cash around Iraq like they had leaf-blowers," Miller said. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Helping to manage that money and the projects it funded were layers and layers of contractors, Miller said. There sometimes were as many as nine tiers of contractors between the person ordering work done and a worker laying the bricks. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The CPA started out with only three contracting officers, Miller said. While the staff eventually grew, the office remained short-handed, sometimes having just one or two days to analyze and award large, complex contracts. | ||
| + | |||
| + | With government contracting officers working three-month tours of duty, contractors became the experts who had the knowledge needed to manage projects, Miller said, creating a situation vulnerable to manipulation. | ||
| + | |||
| + | "I really can't blame [the contractors] -- it's a business, that's how it's set up. They're supposed to make money. The person that's supposed to be the ... regulation on that is the U.S. government, and it was just never, never there." | ||
| + | |||
| + | GAO's Schinasi and IG Bowen echoed several of Miller's concerns with staffing and oversight levels, though in less certain tones, drawing on a recent [http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=35249&sid=5 GAO forum on procurement] and an IG [http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0806/080306m1.htm report on Iraq contracting]. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Procurement policy tries to strike a balance between the flexibility to allow agencies to respond quickly to circumstances, and the application of complex rules intended to minimize fraud, waste and abuse. But, Schinasi said, "The lesson so far is, what we have isn't good enough." | ||
| + | |||
| + | http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=35268&dcn=todaysnews | ||
| + | |||
| + | |||
| ====Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq==== | ====Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq==== | ||
Revision as of 13:47, 14 October 2006
The Bush Regime is beset by scandals.
Bush Whitehouse and Administration
Bush 'Faith-Based' Initiative Was Used For GOP Campaigns
Former White House Official Charges In New Book
October 12, 2006 White House Faith-Based Office Is 'Deplorable Sham' And Should Be Shut Down, Says AU's Lynn
A new book by a former staffer in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives details how the much-ballyhooed Bush “faith-based” initiative was cynically manipulated by Republican operatives to help GOP candidates locked in close races.
David Kuo’s forthcoming book, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, also asserts that applications for federal faith-based funds were sometimes rejected by reviewers because they came from non-Christian applicants, that civil rights rollbacks sought by the administration were unneeded and that Bush’s conservative Christian allies were derided behind their backs and bought off with White House cufflinks and other trinkets.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which has led opposition to President George W. Bush’s faith-based initiative, said the information is confirmation of critics’ long-standing complaints.
“This is proof that the faith-based initiative was a deplorable sham from day one,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. “This initiative was never about helping the poor; it was about shameless partisan politicking. It has undercut the constitutional separation of church and state, and it has been horrible public policy.
“The White House faith-based office ought to be shut down today, before more taxpayer money is misused,” Lynn said. “Kuo’s book confirms evidence that Americans United brought forward four years ago. The faith-based initiative is a travesty that has gone on far too long.”
Kuo alleges that White House strategist Karl Rove and other Republican leaders staged a series of supposedly non-partisan events around the faith-based initiative in states with tight House and Senate races.
According to Kuo, 20 events were held, and Republican candidates subsequently won 19 of those races. Discussing the book on MSNBC’s “Countdown” last night, Keith Olbermann remarked, “The [faith-based] office was literally a taxpayer-funded part of the Republican campaign machinery.”
While the White House was happy to take evangelicals’ votes, it had nothing but contempt for their leaders, Kuo asserts. He alleges that staffers in Rove’s office referred to Religious Right leaders as “nuts” and writes, “National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ridiculous, out of control and just plain goofy.”
http://www.au.org/site/News2?abbr=pr&page=NewsArticle&id=8621
White House, NSA staff said to be buyers from online diploma mill
October 12, 2006 SPOKANE, Wash. -- A White House staff member and National Security Agency employees were among 6,000 people who bought bogus online college degrees from a diploma mill, a federal judge has been told.
Others who paid thousands of dollars for phony diplomas in the operation, which used names such as St. Regis University, James Monroe University and Robertstown University, include a senior State Department employee in Kuwait and a Department of Justice employee in Spokane, defense lawyer Peter S. Schweda said Wednesday.
None of the federal officials was identified during the status conference for five defendants in U.S. District Court, nor would lawyers for either side provide any of their names outside the courtroom, The Spokesman-Review reported Thursday.
"We're not going to disclose who bought these degrees until after the trial is under way," U.S. Attorney James A. McDevitt told the newspaper.
Material provided to the defense by the Justice Department shows at least 135 government employees, also including some from the Department of Health and Human Services, bought college or university degrees to use in seeking promotions or pay raises, Schweda said.
The defense team also is seeking access to an Office of Personnel Management report which reportedly provides more detail on federal employees who are believed to have purchased the bogus degrees to enhance their portfolios.
The White House employee who reportedly bought a degree is the subject of a separate investigation, Schweda said.
The latest twist in the criminal case came Wednesday, a day after Kenneth Wade Pearson, 31, webmaster for the operation, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud and receipt of child pornography.
Pearson said he would provide evidence and testify against Dixie E. and Stephen K. Randock Sr. of Colbert, described by government investigators as the ringleaders, making him the third of eight defendants to reach plea agreements in the case.
Pearson, who likely faces three to five years in prison, remained free on a $10,000 bond he posted after being indicted in January. Judge Lonnie R. Suko postponed his sentencing until December 2007, two months after the Randocks and three others are scheduled to go on trial.
The Randocks also remain free on bail.
More than 10,000 sexually explicit images of children were found in four computers used by the Spokane-based operation, government lawyers said, but only Pearson was named in pornography charges.
The defendants are charged with conspiring to commit wire and mail fraud and laundering almost $2 million in diploma mill receipts in 2002-05.
As webmaster, Pearson set up and maintained as many as 125 Web sites for sales of fraudulent college and high school degrees worldwide, investigators wrote in court filings.
Investigators also have asserted that more than $43,000 in bribes were paid to three Liberian diplomats who also have not been identified, including one handoff that was videotaped by Secret Service agents at a hotel in Washington, D.C. Government lawyers have said diplomatic immunity precludes charges against the diplomats.
The Liberian "Board of Education" offered accreditation for the online diploma mills in exchange for the bribes, according to court filings.
About 40 percent of the estimated 6,000 phony college degrees that were sold with that accreditation went to foreign residents seeking entry into the United States, investigators wrote in court filings.
A task force of state and federal agents served search warrants in August 2005 after investigators found many of the phony degrees were sold in Saudi Arabia, raising national security concerns.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420AP_WA_Diploma_Mill.html
Information from: The Spokesman-Review, http://www.spokesmanreview.com
Alberto Gonzales
Thirty-one Senate Democrats on Thursday asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to remove himself from the investigation into the Jack Abramoff scandal, saying the lobbyist's dealings with President Bush and others in the administration should compel Gonzales to step aside.
“FBI officials have said the Abramoff investigation 'involves systemic corruption within the highest levels of government,' “ the Democrats wrote in a letter to Gonzales. “In light of your previous service as White House Counsel and your close connection to many Administration officials, the appearance of conflict looms large.”
New questions have arisen about Abramoff's ties to the White House since a photo emerged over the weekend showing Abramoff with Bush. The White House would not release the photo or any others that Bush had taken with Abramoff.
Bush has said that he, like all presidents, is frequently photographed with people at various events and that Abramoff is not a personal friend.
Also surfacing were the contents of an e-mail from Abramoff to Washingtonian magazine claiming he had met briefly with the president nearly a dozen times and that Bush knew him well enough to make joking references to Abramoff's family.
Three former associates of Abramoff told The Associated Press this week that the lobbyist frequently told them he had strong ties to the White House through presidential confidant Karl Rove.
David H. Safavian, Bush's former top procurement officer, is under indictment on five counts of obstructing investigations into whether he aided Abramoff in efforts to acquire property around the nation's capital controlled by the General Services Administration.
Karl Rove
Mr. Rove has known Mr. Abramoff for about two decades, according to White House spokesman Scott McClellan. Both are former top officials of the College Republicans, many of whose alumni have gone on to national prominence within the party.
Susan Ralston
White House reels as aide quits over links to disgraced lobbyist
October 08, 2006 Republicans have been dealt a fresh blow in their increasingly frantic struggle to cling to power in next month's mid-term elections by the resignation of a key White House aide over links to a disgraced lobbyist.
Already reeling from a Capitol Hill sex scandal, the White House was bracing itself yesterday for further fallout over a widening financial scandal that precipitated the departure of Susan Ralston, executive assistant to Karl Rove, Mr Bush's chief political strategist.
She stepped down after congressional investigators documented her extensive dealings with Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist who has pleaded guilty to multimillion-dollar bribery charges involving Republican members of Congress and government officials. Her departure was announced late on Friday as the unrelated scandal surrounding the alleged cover-up of sexual approaches made by Congressman Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, intensified.
The resignation of Miss Ralston, officially a "special adviser" to President George W. Bush, will remind voters of the row that previously engulfed the Republicans over Abramoff, to whom she had been an aide before she joined the White House in 2001. She was reportedly found to have been involved in more than half of her former boss's 66 recorded contacts with her colleagues and superiors on President Bush's staff. Records showed that Abramoff's lobbying colleagues contacted her 69 times.
Congressional investigatorsindicated Miss Ralston had accepted tickets from Abramoff to nine events, including professional basketball, hockey and baseball games and an operatic recital. E-mails and memos uncovered by investigators suggest she served as a conduit for requests for favours by Abramoff, and at one point discussed the "significant amount of money" it would take to lure her away from the White House to work for him.
There was no suggestion that Miss Ralston acted illegally and it is not known whether she declared her dealings with Abramoff, or paid for the tickets he gave her. "She recognised that a protracted discussion of these matters would be a distraction to the White House and she's chosen to step down," said a White House spokesman.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/08/wrepubs08.xml
Irwin Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Plame suit makes political waves
t is an extraordinary development: the vice-president of the United States and a dozen other administration officials accused, in court, of deliberately leaking the identity of a classified CIA operative.
In their lawsuit Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, accuse Dick Cheney and others of endangering the lives of themselves and their children by revealing her status.
And, they allege, it was all done for revenge.
This on-going saga began in 2002, when former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson was despatched from Washington to Niger - the White House apparently hoping that he could gather detailed intelligence on reports that Saddam Hussein was attempting to buy uranium from the African country in an attempt to build a nuclear bomb.
Ambassador Wilson's investigation found that those allegations were untrue.
His findings were at odds with the administration's expectations and went largely ignored: President Bush and others continued to claim that Saddam Hussein was attempting to acquire uranium from Niger.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5182232.stm
Irwin Lewis "Scooter" Libby indicted
The White House has tried to move beyond ethics controversies after the indictment late last year of former vice-presidential aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby in connection with the Central Intelligence Agency leak case. Mr. Rove hasn't yet been cleared in the investigation by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
Cheney authorized leaks
Indicted former top White House aide Irwin Lewis "Scooter" Libby will argue that Vice President Dick Cheney authorized him to leak classified information in 2003 to bolster the case for the US-led war against Iraq, US news media reports.
Libby, who has been charged in a federal investigation into the outing of a CIA agent, will in part base his defense on the claim that Cheney had encouraged him to share classified information with reporters, NBC television news said, citing sources familiar with the case.
Libby's lawyer Theodore Wells discussed Cheney's authorization with federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and the judge handling the case in a recent teleconference call, NBC News reported.
The online edition of the magazine National Journal reported that Libby had testified to a federal grand jury that Cheney and other White House "superiors" had "authorized" him in mid-2003 to leak classified information to defend the administration's prewar intelligence assertions in making the case to go to war with Iraq.
The magazine quoted attorneys familiar with the matter and court records as sources.
Libby also argued that Cheney authorized him to release details of the classified National Intelligence Estimate, the magazine reported, citing sources with firsthand knowledge.
Senator Edward Kennedy of the opposition Democrats called the new revelations, if true, "a new low" in the "sordid case".
Cheney Says He Has Power to Declassify Info
When Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald revealed Libby's assertions to a grand jury that he had been authorized by his superiors to spread sensitive information, the prosecutor did not specify which superiors.
But in an interview on Fox News Channel, Cheney said there is an executive order that gives the vice president, along with the president, the authority to declassify information.
"I have certainly advocated declassification. I have participated in declassification decisions," Cheney said. Asked for details, he said, "I don't want to get into that. There's an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously it focuses first and foremost on the president, but also includes the vice president."
Cheney added a ringing endorsement of Libby.
"Scooter is entitled to the presumption of innocence," said Cheney. "He is a great guy. I worked with him for a long time. I have tremendous regard for him. I may well be called as a witness at some point in the case, and it is therefore inappropriate for me to comment on any facet of the case."
George C. Deutsch
George C. Deutsch, the young presidential appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday, agency officials said.
Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.
Officials at NASA headquarters declined to discuss the reason for the resignation.
Such complaints came to the fore starting in late January, when James E. Hansen, the climate scientist, and several midlevel public affairs officers told The Times that political appointees, including Mr. Deutsch, were pressing to limit Dr. Hansen's speaking and interviews on the threats posed by global warming.
Yesterday, Dr. Hansen said that the questions about Mr. Deutsch's credentials were important, but were a distraction from the broader issue of political control of scientific information.
"He's only a bit player," Dr. Hansen said of Mr. Deutsch. " The problem is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies. That's what I'm really concerned about."
"On climate, the public has been misinformed and not informed," he said. "The foundation of a democracy is an informed public, which obviously means an honestly informed public. That's the big issue here."
Tom Noe coin dealer and prominent GOP fundraiser
Trial of coin dealer comes at a bad time for Ohio GOP
October 08, 2006 TOLEDO, Ohio – Just a month before Election Day, a former Republican fundraising star is set to go on trial on charges that he stole millions of dollars from a state investment in rare coins.
The timing couldn't be worse for the GOP. Democrats, who haven't won a statewide executive office in Ohio since 1990, are poised to take back the governor's office and are in position to win a majority of the five statewide races, according to recent polls.
National Democratic leaders also are watching closely because Ohio again is widely expected to play a key role in picking the next president. The party believes that if it can capture Ohio's governor's office, it will have a better shot at winning the state in 2008. The trial of Tom Noe will shine a spotlight on Republican Party problems even though its leaders have worked to distance themselves from the former coin dealer who managed the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation's $50 million rare coin investment.
“You couldn't think of much worse to happen to a state party during a critical election,” said William Binning, a political scientist at Youngstown State University who has worked on past GOP campaigns.
The scandal has become a dominant issue in Ohio over the past 18 months along with the state's sluggish economy. Investigations into Noe's coin investments led to separate ethics charges against Gov. Bob Taft, who pleaded no contest last year to failing to report golf outings and other gifts.
Noe has pleaded not guilty to state charges of theft, money laundering, forgery and a corrupt activity charge that includes accusations he stole more than $2 million. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted on the corrupt activity charge.
Ohio started its rare coin investments in 1998, giving Noe $25 million, followed by another $25 million in 2001.
Democrats charge that the deal demonstrates a culture of corruption that has set in while Republicans have been in charge.
Investigators began looking into the coin investment after The Toledo Blade wrote about the fund in April 2005.
State officials initially defended the investment, saying it earned more than $15 million. Then Noe's attorney told investigators the fund had a shortfall of at least $10 million.
A state lawsuit later accused Noe of improperly taking more than $4 million from the funds to pay himself and his coin-collection business.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061008/news_1n8ohio.html
Noe indicted in coin scandal
February 13, 2006 TOLEDO, Ohio -- A coin dealer and prominent GOP fundraiser was charged Monday with stealing at least $1 million from a controversial state investment in rare coins that has embroiled Republicans in scandal during an election year.
The 53 charges against Tom Noe conclude a 10-month investigation by state and federal prosecutors into the $50 million rare coin investment Noe managed for the state insurance fund for injured workers.
He's accused of stealing from the investment by writing checks, sometimes for hundreds of thousands of dollars each, knowing the money was not his to use.
Noe's attorney has acknowledged a shortfall of up to $13 million of the money Noe invested for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation.
Abramoff
former White House aide David Safavian, who is charged with lying in connection with a golf trip Mr. Jack Abramoff arranged. Justice Department officials haven't closed their review of actions by former Interior Department official J. Steven Griles, who disputes claims that he favored Abramoff clients, such as Native American tribes involved in casinos. Calls for the White House to release photos of Mr. Abramoff with the president -- and details of his contacts with presidential aides including Karl Rove -- haven't abated.
Mr. Abramoff was an early backer of the president, having been listed as a co-chairman pledged to raise $25,000 for Mr. Bush at a 1999 Washington reception. He gave money to the president's recount committee in 2000 and was in the elite tier of fund-raisers for the president's 2004 re-election committee. An Abramoff aide, Susan Ralston, later went to work as Mr. Rove's executive assistant at the White House.
Mr. Abramoff bragged of his "contact" with Mr. Rove when Tyco International Ltd. sought action on tax legislation in 2002, according to Senate testimony by Tim Flanigan, a former Tyco official. "At some point after he joined the engagement team, Mr. Abramoff told me that he intended to contact Mr. Rove directly or indirectly to communicate Tyco's position" on the tax issue, said Mr. Flanigan, who also once worked as Mr. Bush's deputy White House counsel.
Richard Pombo (R-Tracy), and John T. Doolittle (R-Roseville)
Pombo (R-Tracy), 45, and John T. Doolittle (R-Roseville), 55, have come under attack for their ethics as a corruption scandal threatens the GOP lock on Washington.
Ethics watchdogs have questioned their ties to Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist who pleaded guilty to defrauding Indian tribes of more than $20 million. The watchdogs have also criticized the candidates for using public money for personal expenses and for making large payments to their wives and family from campaign funds.
Pombo also faces opposition from well-financed environmental groups.
Lobbyist donated cash to Doolittle
Congressman received $14,000, helped Abramoff win contract.
Rep. John Doolittle helped Jack Abramoff secure a lucrative lobbying contract with the commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in 1999 and then assisted the now-disgraced lobbyist's efforts to route federal money to the islands and defend its garment industry, newly obtained documents show.
Doolittle accepted $14,000 in contributions from Abramoff -- $4,000 to his congressional re-election committee and $10,000 to his California political action committee.
The first contribution came just a few weeks before Doolittle endorsed the election of a key commonwealth politician crucial to Abramoff winning the contract. The last Abramoff contribution came just as the Mariana Islands' lobbying contract was expiring in December 2001.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/14288629p-15112022c.html
Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio)
In Ney's homestate, Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett called Ney "a cancer in the Congress."
Ney pleads guilty, says he'll resign
Ney pleads guilty, says he'll resign
October 13, 2006 WASHINGTON - Rep. Bob Ney (news, bio, voting record) pleaded guilty Friday in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling investigation, the first lawmaker to confess to crimes in an election-year scandal that has stained the Republican-controlled Congress and the Bush administration.
Beleaguered GOP leaders said Ney will be expelled from the House if he doesn't quit by the time they return to Washington after the Nov. 7 elections.
Appearing before Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle on charges of conspiracy and making false statements, Ney acknowledged taking trips, tickets, meals and campaign donations from Abramoff in return for official actions on behalf of his clients.
Ney, an Ohio Republican, faces up to 10 years in prison. The Justice Department recommended 27 months behind bars. Ney's lawyers plan to recommend him for a Bureau of Prisons alcohol treatment program, which could cut dramatically the time he serves behind bars.
Huvelle set sentencing for Jan. 19.
Although Ney's lawyer and the congressman promised he would resign in the next few weeks, it was not soon enough for House Republican leaders who are on the defensive because of fresh scandals in the final weeks before the midterm elections.
Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and other Republican House leaders, along with their top aides, are under investigation by the House ethics committee in a possible cover-up of former Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record)'s sexually charged messages to teenage males who served as House pages.
Hastert has called on Ney to resign, as did White House spokesman Tony Snow, who said Ney's criminal activity "is not a reflection of the Republican Party." House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said he will introduce a resolution to kick Ney out of the House as soon as Congress returns to Washington.
In Ney's homestate, Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett called Ney "a cancer in the Congress."
Ney confessed his criminal acts during a half-hour session at a federal courthouse a few blocks from the Capitol, where until recently he wielded a gavel as chairman of the House Administration Committee.
Responding to each of 25 questions Huvelle asked, Ney agreed he had conspired to deprive the government of his "honest services," a fraud-related charge often used in public corruption cases.
Ney also acknowledged making false statements on his financial disclosure forms by concealing that Abramoff and a foreign businessman were the true source of gifts Ney received.
The gifts ranged from a trip to Scotland bankrolled by Abramoff's clients to thousands of dollars in gambling chips Ney got on two overseas junkets from foreign businessman Fouad al-Zayat, a Syrian-born aviation company owner in Cyprus.
"I allowed myself to get too comfortable with the way things have been done in Washington, D.C., for too long," Ney said in a written statement after his court appearance.
Ney said, "I never acted to enrich myself or to get things I shouldn't." Details of conspiracy suggested otherwise.
The congressman admitted he gave $5,000 from one gambling trip to a staff member to carry across the border so Ney could report a lower dollar amount to U.S. Customs officials.
Ney agreed to push legislation helpful to Abramoff clients including Indian tribes and a foreign beverage distiller. Ney agreed to help Al-Zayat get a visa to enter the United States and a legislative exemption to laws barring the sale of U.S.-made airplanes and parts to a foreign country.
Regarding Abramoff, Ney acknowledged accepting all-expense-paid and reduced-price trips to play golf in Scotland in August 2002, to gamble and vacation in New Orleans in May 2003 and to vacation in New York in August 2003. The total cost of all the trips — in which others, including some aides, participated — exceeded $170,000, prosecutors said. The congressman also admitted accepting meals and sports and concert tickets for himself and his staff.
Ney admits guilt in lobby scandal
16 September, 2006 Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio admitted Friday that he had effectively put his office up for sale to corrupt Washington lobbyists and a foreign businessman in exchange for illegal gifts that included lavish overseas trips, the use of skyboxes at sports arenas in the Washington area and thousands of dollars worth of gambling chips from London casinos.
In a plea agreement announced by the Justice Department, Ney, a six-term Republican who once seemed poised to rise far in the House leadership, admitted to a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy and to making false statements about the gifts.
With the agreement, Ney became the first member of Congress to acknowledge criminal acts in the investigation of the former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, an inquiry that threatens to ensnare other Republican lawmakers and dim the party's hopes in the November elections.
Although Ney could face up to 10 years in prison, federal prosecutors said they would recommend a 27-month sentence for the lawmaker, who announced last month that he was abandoning his campaign for another term. He could also face up to $500,000 in fines.
Abramoff, once a leading fundraiser for the Republican Party, pleaded guilty in January to conspiring to corrupt public officials, including Ney.
In a statement released by his lawyers, Ney, 52, suggested that his criminal acts had been related to alcoholism.
"I have come to recognize that a dependence on alcohol has been a problem for me," said Ney, who friends say entered an alcohol-treatment facility this week. "I am not making any excuses, and I take full responsibility for my actions."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/285351_lobby16.html
Rep. Ney faces more than 2 years in prison
16 September, 2006 Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), who has been at the center of an ongoing Justice Department investigation of former GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, could face up to 27 months in federal prison after agreeing to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of making false statements.
In the plea deal announced Friday, Ney admitted to influencing legislation on behalf of Abramoff clients in exchange for meals, campaign contributions, tickets and trips, including the now infamous golf trip to Scotland in 2002.
The Ohio Republican will appear before a federal judge on Oct. 13 for sentencing. The combined charges usually result in a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail and a $500,000 fine, but federal prosecutors have agreed to recommend the 27-month sentence.
http://hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/091406/ney2.html
Effect of Ney's guilt could weigh heavily
16 September, 2006 WASHINGTON – Rep. Bob Ney's admission of guilt comes at a terrible time for Republicans, both in Ohio and nationally.
For the first time in months, GOP strategists had been enjoying a spate of good news and were starting to believe that the upcoming congressional elections may not be the disaster they were all dreading. But now, Ney bursts back into the news with sordid tales of taking thousands of dollars in poker chips from a Syrian businessman while accepting untold free trips, fancy meals and golf junkets from corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Just when they need it most, Democrats – courtesy of Ney – have been given a great opportunity to change the subject from national security back to Republican corruption.
Rep. Bob Ney Will Not Seek Reelection
07 August, 2006 Rep. Robert W. Ney, the six-term Republican congressman from central Ohio implicated in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal, announced this morning that that he will not seek re-election.
"After much consideration and thought I have decided today to no longer seek re-election in Ohio's 18th Congressional District," Ney said in a statement posted on his campaign Website. "I am extremely proud of my 25 years serving the people of Ohio. We've accomplished many things to make this state better and I will always be grateful for the trust my constituents put in me.
Ney has been identified as the accused but so far unindicted "Congressman A" in Abramoff's plea agreement. He has denied wrongdoing.
Ney has been under investigation by federal authorities in Florida and the District for actions that helped Abramoff and two partners buy a Fort Lauderdale-based casino cruise line. The deal that Ney promoted in the Congressional Record hinged on the Abramoff group's creation of a counterfeit $23 million wire transfer.
A Ney senior aide, who left Congress to join Jack Abramoff's lobbying team, has pleaded guilty to conspiring to corruptly influence Ney's official actions by showering him with gifts and trips.
Neil G. Volz, 35, a Ney confidant who spent seven years on the congressman's staff, joined Abramoff and three of his other former associates in agreeing to cooperate with the government and testify against Ney in the unfolding public corruption scandal on Capitol Hill.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/07/AR2006080700078.html
Guilty plea sharpens focus on Ney
09, May, 2006 A former top aide to Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy yesterday for his efforts to influence public officials to benefit clients of former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The development brings the lawmaker a step closer to being engulfed in the widening scandal.
Neil Volz, a former chief of staff to Ney, admitted to defrauding the public of the “honest services” of public officials by corruptly accepting and offering things of value in return for official actions, according to court documents. He also admitted to violating the one-year lobbying ban for former congressional staffers.
Volz served as communications director and chief of staff to Ney for more than seven years and so far is the closest person to Ney to make a plea deal with prosecutors. Two other former Abramoff associates, Michael Scanlon and Tony Rudy, along with Abramoff made plea agreements in the same government investigation last fall and earlier this year.
As in previous plea agreements, Ney is mentioned only as “Representative #1,” but the actions described have long been tied to the lawmaker. While Volz was working with Abramoff at law firm Greenberg Traurig, he, Abramoff and others offered Ney an all-expenses-paid trip to Scotland, frequent meals at Abramoff’s restaurants and tickets to events at Abramoff’s skyboxes in return for Ney’s taking actions that would benefit Abramoff’s clients.
“The purpose of the conspiracy was for [Volz] and his co-conspirators to unjustly enrich themselves by corruptly receiving, while public officials, and providing, while lobbyists, a stream of things of value with the intent to influence and reward official acts and attempting to influence Members of Congress in violation of the law,” the document said.
http://hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/050906/news3.html
Senate Questions Nonprofits' Tax Status
October 12,2006 WASHINGTON -- Five nonprofit groups, including one of President Bush's biggest supporters, may have broken tax laws and put their tax-exempt status at risk by helping convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a Senate Finance Committee report concludes.
The 600-page report issued Thursday was prepared by the committee's Democratic staff. Majority Republicans, however, had agreed to its release and joined with Democrats in issuing subpoenas for documents and e-mails cited in the report.
Among the groups named as possibly taking money from Abramoff clients and funneling it into his lobbying efforts on their behalf were Americans for Tax Reform, Citizens Against Government Waste and the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy.
Tax-exempt groups are barred by law from being paid to lobby or do public relations.
Americans for Tax Reform is headed by Grover Norquist, a key ally of Bush and a longtime associate of Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser.
The report said Norquist's group accepted $1.5 million from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, one of Abramoff's clients. More than two-thirds of that money was then passed to Christian Coalition founder Ralph Reed as part of Abramoff's lobbying efforts to block a rival tribe's proposed casino in Alabama.
Nell Rogers, a planner for the Choctaws, told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee that the arrangement was never intended as a contribution to support ATR's general anti-tax work. She quoted Abramoff as saying Norquist's had instead agreed to be a conduit for getting money to Reed, provided that ATR got a fee.
Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, the Senate Finance Committee's senior Democrat, said his staff turned up evidence showing the groups "may have improved a lobbyist's power and profits" by unlawfully exploiting their tax-exempt status, possibly even lobbying the White House.
Abramoff pleaded guilty in January to tax evasion and wire fraud. While awaiting sentencing, he is cooperating in a federal bribery investigation that has resulted in convictions against a congressman and the administration's top procurement officer.
Norquist's group and a second organization cited in the report denied any wrongdoing. They also questioned the timing of the report's release so close to Nov. 7 elections in which Republicans are trying to return their control of Congress.
"This is political nonsense put out by the Democrats in an inappropriate attempt to influence the election," said John Kartch, communications director for Americans for Tax Reform.
David Williams, a vice president of Citizens Against Government Waste, said it was "kind of suspicious that three weeks before an election, this comes out." The group named Baucus its monthly "porker" in October 2004 for adding drought relief to a domestic security bill.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061013/ap_on_go_co/abramoff_nonprofits_2
http://finance.senate.gov/press/Bpress/2005press/prb101206.pdf
Abramoff's use and misuse of nonprofits
There was the time he laundered money through a religious group's accounts to try to bribe a congressional aide. He diverted funds from a youth athletic foundation to bankroll a golf junket for a congressman and to bolster the bank account of his Washington restaurant. He used two other nonprofits to line his own pockets with millions of dollars defrauded from clients.
Charities are supposed to advance the public interest, which is why they aren't taxed. But Abramoff, by his own admission, used them to evade taxes, enrich himself and bribe public officials, according to a plea agreement he signed with federal prosecutors in January.
"One of the most disturbing elements of this whole sordid story is the blatant misuse of charities in a scheme to peddle political influence," said Mark Everson, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.
Sen. Conrad Burns
Jack Bolender, a retiree who voted for three-term Sen. Conrad Burns because the Republican delivered mounds of federal aid to Montana, said he was deserting the incumbent in the state's November election. Allegations that Burns was cozy with Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist central to a wide-ranging corruption scandal in Washington, have Bolender steamed.
"I appreciate what [Burns] brought to the state, but at what cost?" Bolender said one cold afternoon outside Murdoch's. "We seem to be selling out to the special interests."
Voters such as Bolender are at the center of a political storm that threatens to roil this year's midterm elections. Democrats are trying to use the Abramoff scandal to tarnish Republicans. And there are few places where the effort is more intense than in Montana.
J. Steven Griles
Mr. Griles is waging a vigorous effort to avoid being charged in the Abramoff investigation. He has offered to meet with prosecutors, though so far they have declined. In emails that surfaced in a Senate inquiry, Mr. Abramoff referred to Mr. Griles as his "man" in the department that oversees Native American issues. Another Interior Department official last year told the Indian Affairs Committee that Mr. Griles showed unusual interest in such issues while serving as the department's chief of staff.
Barry M. Hartman is Mr. Griles's attorney.
David Safavian
Messrs. Abramoff and Rove shared a connection to Mr. Safavian. Mr. Safavian lobbied alongside Mr. Abramoff before applying for a job with the General Services Administration. On his GSA job application, Mr. Safavian listed Mr. Rove as a reference who could confirm he brought a group of Arab-Americans to a Bush 2000 outreach program in Austin, Texas.
Prosecutors have accused Mr. Safavian of giving Mr. Abramoff inside information from the GSA at a time when the lobbyist was seeking government leases for a client. They have also accused him of misleading ethics officers and investigators by saying Mr. Abramoff wasn't doing business with the GSA when the two men went to Scotland on a 2002 golfing trip.
Barbara Van Gelder is Mr. Safavian's attorney.
E-Mail Said to Link Abramoff, Safavian
A batch of 278 e-mails between lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a Bush administration official show a highly inappropriate relationship where gifts and business interests mixed freely and frequently, federal prosecutors said Friday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060415/ap_on_go_ot/lobbyist_probe
One message from Abramoff, sent July 23, 2002, asks Safavian, "golf Friday? golf Sunday? golf Monday? golf, golf, golf!!"
At the same time, Abramoff is peppering Safavian with questions and requests for his help on a variety of projects, including obtaining parcels of federal land that were managed by GSA for Abramoff's charitable groups.
"The e-mails demonstrate that Mr. Safavian's relationship with Mr. Abramoff was highly inappropriate," prosecutors wrote in a court filing accompanying the e-mails.
3 more lawmakers tied to Abramoff
Three members of Congress have been linked to efforts by lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a former General Services Administration official to secure leases of government property for Abramoff's clients, according to court filings by federal prosecutors on Friday.
The filings in U.S. District Court do not allege any wrongdoing by the elected officials but list them in documents portraying David Safavian, a former GSA chief of staff, as an active adviser to Abramoff, giving the lobbyist tips on how to use members of Congress to navigate the agency's bureaucracy.
Safavian is charged with lying to a GSA ethics officer when he said Abramoff was not seeking business with the agency at the time the lobbyist paid for Safavian and several others to go on a golf outing to Scotland in August 2002.
At the time of the trip, prosecutors said, Abramoff was trying to get GSA approval for leases of the Old Post Office Pavilion in Washington for an Indian tribe to develop and for federal property in Silver Spring, Md., for use by a Jewish school.
Two of the elected officials referred to in Friday's filings have been identified in published reports as Reps. Steven LaTourette, R-Ohio, and Don Young, R-Alaska. According to Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, the two representatives wrote to the GSA in September 2002, urging the agency to give preferential treatment to groups such as Indian tribes when evaluating development proposals for the Old Post Office.
Friday's filings by prosecutors refer to a third member of Congress, Rep. Shelly Moore Capito, R-W.Va. Her name appears in e-mails that suggest she was trying to help Abramoff secure a GSA lease for land in Silver Spring for a religious school.
3 more lawmakers tied to Abramoff
House of Representatives
Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter
Specter: FBI investigating senate aide
October 12, 2006 WASHINGTON -- Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter has acknowledged the FBI is looking into allegations that one of his aides illegally helped her lobbyist husband get federal dollars for his clients.
The Republican lawmaker on Wednesday provided The Associated Press a copy of a letter sent by the FBI in August to his office that said staff member Vicki Siegel Herson is under investigation in connection with allegations reported earlier this year.
USA Today first reported in February that Specter helped direct $48.7 million in Pentagon spending over the past five years to clients of the staff member's lobbyist husband, Michael Herson. Specter has said the institutions that ultimately got the money were represented by people not associated with Herson. He added that he was never lobbied by Herson or his firm.
Siegel Herson was Specter's legislative assistant for appropriations at the time.
Specter said the FBI asked for and received the findings of an internal investigation of the matter conducted by his former chief of staff.
Specter, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has denied violating any Senate ethics rules.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_BRF_Specter_Lobbyist.html
Specter Says Staffer Didn't Steer Funds To Husband
February 17, 2006 Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) yesterday denied a published report that suggested that one of his staffers may have helped her lobbyist husband get federal appropriations for his company's clients.
Responding to a story in USA Today, Specter conducted a telephone news conference to defend the actions of his office and of his former appropriations aide, Vicki Siegel Herson. He added, however, that his chief of staff would ask further questions about the situation and that he would refer the issue to the Senate ethics committee.
The newspaper reported that Specter claimed credit for securing 13 narrowly focused allocations, called earmarks, worth $48.7 million over the past four years for six clients represented by Michael Herson and the firm he co-founded, American Defense International.
Herson's wife, Vicki Siegel Herson, had been an appropriations aide to Specter, but six months ago took a one-day-a-week job in Specter's office dealing with issues related to Israel.
The senator said the appropriations went to Pennsylvania institutions, including $11 million for bioterrorism research at Philadelphia's Drexel University. He added that neither Herson nor his firm had lobbied his office, but rather that other firms had done the lobbying. In addition, he said that as far as he knew, Vicki Siegel Herson had not been involved in recommending that the senator push for the earmarks.
In addition, Specter said he was not lobbied personally by Herson. "I don't know that I would recognize him if he was in a crowded room," Specter said.
But given the controversy now swirling on Capitol Hill over earmarked appropriations, Specter said he intended to ask more questions. He said he is making an inquiry to see what information his staff had on the appropriations, what the competitive factors were and why the recommendations were made.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/16/AR2006021602043.html
Sex
The Redder They Are, The Harder They Fall
Republicans More Damaged by Scandals
October 03, 2006 Sex scandals involving politicians are as old as Thomas Jefferson, but the outcome seems to depend on which party you represent. In recent years, for the most part, Democrats have been able to survive their sordid escapades while Republicans have paid with their political lives.
The latest example: Mark Foley, a Republican congressman from Florida, who abruptly became an ex-congressman from Florida last week amid revelations that he had sent sexually explicit e-mails to teenage boys who were serving as House pages.
Foley's creepy behavior might have done him in even if he'd been the most liberal of Democrats. But that's not assured. With a Republican at the center of the seamy scandal, however, it was almost a slam-dunk that Foley would have to quit.
That's how it usually turns out for members of the conservative, traditional-family-values party. Just ask Bob Livingston, Jack Ryan, Bob Packwood, Dan Crane or others in the GOP who've watched their careers go pffft! with salacious disclosures. Or ask Bill Clinton, Gerry Studds, Barney Frank and other Democrats who've withstood embarrassing revelations to govern another day.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/02/AR2006100201302.html
List of political sex scandals
http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?nav=display&tsn=15&tid=21102&webtag=ab-usconservatv
Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.)
Lawmaker Saw Foley Messages In 2000=
Page Notified GOP Rep. Kolbe
October 09, 2006 A Republican congressman knew of disgraced former representative Mark Foley's inappropriate Internet exchanges as far back as 2000 and personally confronted Foley about his communications.
A spokeswoman for Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) confirmed yesterday that a former page showed the congressman Internet messages that had made the youth feel uncomfortable with the direction Foley (R-Fla.) was taking their e-mail relationship. Last week, when the Foley matter erupted, a Kolbe staff member suggested to the former page that he take the matter to the clerk of the House, Karen Haas, said Kolbe's press secretary, Korenna Cline.
The revelation pushes back by at least five years the date when a member of Congress has acknowledged learning of Foley's behavior with former pages. A timeline issued by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) suggested that the first lawmakers to know, Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.), the chairman of the House Page Board, and Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.), became aware of "over-friendly" e-mails only last fall. It also expands the universe of players in the drama beyond members, either in leadership or on the page board.
A source with direct knowledge of Kolbe's involvement said the messages shared with Kolbe were sexually explicit, and he read the contents to The Washington Post under the condition that they not be reprinted. But Cline denied the source's characterization, saying only that the messages had made the former page feel uncomfortable. Nevertheless, she said, "corrective action" was taken. Cline said she has not yet determined whether that action went beyond Kolbe's confrontation with Foley.
In interviews with The Post last week, multiple pages identified Kolbe as a close friend and personal confidante who was one of the only members of Congress to take any interest in them. A former page himself, Kolbe offered to mentor pages and kept in touch with some of them after they left the program, according to the interviews.
Kolbe once invited four former pages to make use of his Washington home while he was out of town, according to an instant message between Foley and another former page, Jordan Edmund, in January 2002. The pages planned to attend a first-year reunion of their page class. But because of a snowstorm, they did not take Kolbe up on his offer, according to one of the four pages.
Kolbe, the only openly gay Republican in Congress, is retiring at the end of the year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/08/AR2006100800855.html
Mark Foley claims being molested as teen
Roth, who spoke for Foley while the congressman is in rehab for alcohol abuse and mental illness, said Foley denied having inappropriate sexual contact with minors and said he was under the influence of alcohol when he wrote the notes.
The lurid communications were first reported last week by ABC News, which released more instant messages Tuesday that indicate Foley allegedly interrupted a vote on the House floor to chat online with a teen.
"I miss you," Foley said in one message, according to ABC.
"ya me too," the teen replied.
"we are still voting," Foley responded.
Roth said Foley was never under the influence of alcohol while conducting business on Capitol Hill. He could not explain his previous comments that Foley was intoxicated at the time he sent all the messages.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1153AP_Congressman_E_Mails.html
Foley Saga No Shock to Some
The Florida Republican was known to have an interest in younger men, Capitol Hill workers say.
October 03, 2006 WASHINGTON — Years before sexually explicit electronic messages sent by Rep. Mark Foley to teenage House pages became public last week, some on Capitol Hill say, the Florida Republican was known to have a special interest in younger men.
In interviews with the Los Angeles Times, several current and former congressional employees and others said they recalled Foley approaching young male pages, aides and interns at parties and other venues.
"Almost the first day I got there I was warned," said Mark Beck-Heyman, a San Diego native who served as a page in the House of Representatives in the summer of 1995. "It was no secret that Foley had a special interest in male pages," said Beck-Heyman, adding that Foley, who is now 52, on several occasions asked him out for ice cream.
Another former congressional staff member said he too had been the object of Foley's advances. "It was so well known around the House. Pages passed it along from class to class," said the former aide, adding that when he was 18 a few years ago and working as an intern, Foley approached him at a bar near the Capitol and asked for his e-mail address.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-foley3oct03,0,7011268.story?track=mostviewed-homepage
Foley's Exchange With Underage Page
e-mail http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Congressman_accused_of_sending_sick_emails_0928.html
im http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/BrianRoss/story?id=2509586&page=1
Hastert's staff first knew of Foley emails in 2005
October 01, 2006 House Speaker Dennis Hastert’s (R-Ill.) staff was first informed of Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-Fla.) unusual email exchange with a 16-year old page in the fall of 2005, according to a timeline released by the Speaker’s office Saturday afternoon.
Hastert’s chief of staff Scott Palmer and outside counsel Randy Evans initiated an internal investigation Friday shortly after Foley announced his resignation. The timeline is based on their preliminary report, according to the release.
The release of the timeline comes on the heels of a statement by National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.) on Saturday that the campaign chief first told the Speaker about the email exchange earlier this year, shortly after the race to succeed former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
The Speaker’s office does not dispute that conversation in its own release.
"While the Speaker does not explicitly recall this conversation, he has no reason to dispute Congressman Reynolds’ recollection that he reported to him on the problem and its resolution," states the release.
The Washington Post reported Saturday that Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) learned of some "contact" this spring between Foley and the page. The paper quoted Boehner as saying he told Hastert and that the Speaker assured him "we’re taking care of it."
http://hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/092806/foley2.html
Amid growing scandal, Rep. Foley resigns
September 29, 2006 Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) announced Friday that he has resigned from Congress amid allegations that he exchanged sexually explicit e-mails and instant messages with a former 16-year-old page.
"Today I have delivered a letter to the Speaker of the House informing him of my decision to resign from the U.S. House of Representatives, effective today," Foley said in a statement issued by his congressional office. "I thank the people of Florida's 16th Congressional District for giving me the opportunity to serve them for the last twelve years; it has been an honor. I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent."
Foley, who served on the Ways and Means Committee, also chaired the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus. Earlier this year, he sponsored legislation overhauling sex offender and notification laws that passed Congress and was signed into law.
http://hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/092806/foley.html
ABC News reported Friday that Foley also engaged in a series of sexually explicit instant messages with current and former teenage male pages. In one message, ABC said, Foley wrote to one page: "Do I make you a little horny?"
In another message, Foley wrote, "You in your boxers, too? … Well, strip down and get naked."
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2510058&page=2
The first e-mail messages to one male page, sexually suggestive but not explicit, were reported by ABC News on Thursday. Mr. Foley, a member of the House Republican leadership, dismissed them as “overly friendly” but not inappropriate.
But by Friday, other pages had come forward with more blatant instant messages. “What ya wearing?” Mr. Foley wrote to one, according to the network. “Tshirt and shorts,” the teenager responded. “Love to slip them off of you,” Mr. Foley replied.
The 20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released its second annual report on the most corrupt members of Congress.
California's `Big 6': Masters of the New Lobbying Game
Welcome to the new world of congressional committee chairs, their aides, friends and lobbyists.
It is a cozy world where personal relationships count for millions of dollars and a latter-day "Triangle Trade" has developed among powerful committee chieftains (who are expected to raise vast sums in campaign contributions), business and other interests (which seek favorable treatment), and lobbyists (who can make a fortune bringing the two parties together).
It is also a world dominated by a few California Republicans.
Despite the state's predilection for voting Democratic, six of its 20 Republican Congress members are chairmen of major committees. Their rise has brought millions of federal dollars and other benefits to parts of the state. Thomas snagged about $755 million for his district in last year's highway bill. Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, tucked $4.25 million for his district into one recent spending bill — more than the individual allocations for 11 states.
Some congressional leaders, however, have grown so close to well-connected lobbyists and have been so aggressive in channeling tax dollars to favored interests that their activities have sparked scrutiny and calls for reform. One California chairman, Lewis, is the subject of a federal grand jury investigation.
The November elections will decide whether five of California's "Big Six" chairmen — Thomas is retiring at the end of the year — continue to hold their powerful positions. The others are: Lewis; Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon) of Armed Services; Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) of Education and the Workforce; Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas) of Rules; and Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy) of Resources.
Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands
House ethics panel okays Shockey buyout
September 23, 2006 The House ethics committee has ruled that Jeffrey Shockey, the deputy chief of staff of the House Appropriations Committee, did not violate the law or House rules by accepting a $1.96 million severance package from his former employer, the lobbying firm Copeland, Lowery, Jacquez, Denton & White. But it also warned him to avoid the appearance of impropriety.
The firm has since broken up into two groups under the pressure of allegations that it had improper ties to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.). The U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles is reportedly examining the relationship between Lewis and the firm, which specializes in winning federal spending earmarks for clients.
Shockey made headlines earlier this year when he revealed in a financial disclosure report the size of his compensation package he agreed to in January of 2005 as he was preparing to work on the Hill.
http://hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/092106/ethics.html
A close-knit circle of money, power. Contractor adds layer to Rep. Lewis' sphere
When defense contractor Nicholas Karangelen launched a political action committee directed by the stepdaughter of the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, he added another dimension to a tight circle of Capitol Hill relationships that is under federal investigation.
The relationships revolve around Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, who leads the Appropriations Committee and has extraordinarily close ties to lobbyists Letitia White and Bill Lowery.
White worked for Lewis for 21 years before joining Lowery's lobbying firm in 2003. Lowery, a former San Diego congressman who sat on the Appropriations Committee, is one of Lewis' closest friends and his principal fundraiser. Companies that hire the two lobbyists, including Karangelen's Virginia-based Trident Systems Inc., follow a pattern that has become common Capitol Hill practice in recent years.
They make substantial investments in lobbying fees and campaign contributions to key legislators, then wait for their projects to be tucked into bills in line-items known as earmarks. Trident's projects involve software programs that Karangelen's engineers develop for military use.
In Karangelen's case, the contractor-lobbyist-legislator connection has taken on several more layers of financial ties and political connections.
White became Trident's lobbyist in February 2003, a month after she left Lewis' office, where she had helped Lewis shape the earmarking of the Pentagon's budget.
In April, $8.4 million in earmarks for a Trident project were inserted into an emergency spending bill to fund the war in Iraq. The project used digital maps and laptop computers to improve troops' ability to monitor changing battlefield conditions.
Just eight months later, Karangelen and White bought a $1 million Capitol Hill townhouse together. The house eventually became the address for a political action committee they launched to encourage congressional support for small businesses like Trident that seek Pentagon contracts.
They chose Lewis' stepdaughter, former Las Vegas wedding planner Julia Willis-Leon, to be director of the Small Biz Tech Pac. The PAC has paid Willis-Leon $42,000 of the $115,000 it has raised. Meanwhile, it has directed just $15,600 to political campaigns.
The PAC's biggest contributors have been Letitia White and her husband, who also lobbies on behalf of defense contractors. They contributed $15,000, while Karangelen kicked in $10,000, and other White clients added $11,500.
According to Trident's former chief financial officer, Karangelen has yet another financial tie with White: He has arranged to pay her a bonus based on the company's profitability. The former executive spoke on the condition that her name not be used, saying publicity would complicate her job search given the controversy swirling around the company.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060624/news_1n24cozy.html
FBI widens Lewis probe
Former defense contractor Tom Casey, who accused Rep. Jerry Lewis this week of trying to trade his influence for favors and stock options, is either a subject of the same federal investigation or should be, a former employee said Thursday. Meanwhile, the FBI has widened its probe of Lewis' ties to lobbyists Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White to include Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona.
http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_3916048
In San Diego, an engineer who used to work for Casey at Audre Recognition Systems Inc., said Casey violated campaign contribution law in his efforts 13 years ago to gain favor with Lewis and the House appropriations panel.
"If I was the federal government, I'd be investigating him," Dirk Holland said of Casey. "I worked with him six years. He used to encourage employees to make campaign contributions, and the company refunded them. That's illegal ...
"It was always suspicious why a small company like ours, 60 people at most, got so much attention from congressmen. (Randy "Duke") Cunningham, Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine), Jerry Lewis, even Pete Wilson, the governor at the time. They all came to visit."
Casey also landed a $3 million contract through Hunter and General Dynamics that was unusually profitable, Holland said.
"He got the money, but he never delivered any software," Holland said. "There was never an investigation."
Holland worked with Casey in the 1990s when another defense contractor, Brent Wilkes, came to Audre Inc. Wilkes has ties to former Rep. Cunningham, R-San Diego, who was sentenced to eight years in prison in March after he pleaded guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes.
While federal investigators attempt to go quietly about their business in a criminal probe of D.C.-based California lawmakers and deep-pocket lobbyists, elected leaders and influence peddlers are still openly proclaiming mutual admiration for each other.
The 2006 executive committee for California State Society, a social organization that gives parties in the nation's capital, includes representatives for several lawmakers and lobbyists who have gained unwanted attention in recent months.
Among those maintaining a presence on the executive committee are:
- Lewis, whose ties to a lobbying firm are a focus of an investigation that grew out of the probe that eventually sent Cunningham to prison.
- Copeland Lowery, the influential K Street (Washington) lobbying firm, whose founder, Lowery, is close friends with Lewis.
- Calvert, whose finances are under investigation in the same federal probe examining ties between Lewis and Copeland Lowery.
- Platinum Advisors, a Sacramento lobbying firm contracted by San Bernardino County. Last year, an independent investigator found Platinum Advisors lobbyist Brett Granlund involved himself in negotiations for the county's $28 million purchase of a privately-owned jail facility. Granlund represented both the buyer of the jail -- the county -- and the seller of the jail -- Terry Moreland of Bakersfield.
Also on the society's executive committee are representatives for:
- Rep. David Dreier, R-Glendora, a leader of California's 53-member Republican delegation in Congress.
- Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, one of the Democratic Party's most outspoken critics of the Bush administration.
House Majority Leader John Boehner
A White House aide who was once chief of staff to House Majority Leader John Boehner helped plan a 1996 trip to the Northern Mariana Islands that was organized by fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff, billing records from Abramoff’s firm show.
Barry Jackson, now chief deputy to White House adviser Karl Rove, accepted an invitation to travel to the island of Saipan in April 1996 but later decided not to go, White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said Tuesday.
Boehner spokesman Don Seymour said Tuesday that Boehner now does recall meeting Abramoff once, in “a brief, incidental conversation at a widely attended event that he estimates was about five years ago.”
In an e-mail to the AP, Seymour also said Boehner did not intentionally downplay Jackson’s role on his staff.
Boehner has declined to give up more than $30,000 he got from Abramoff’s Indian tribe clients, saying his own work on tribal issues justifies the contributions. He did not receive any money from the tribes until Abramoff represented them.
Rep. William Jefferson
In January, former Jefferson aide Brett Pfeffer pleaded guilty to bribery-related charges, saying Jefferson demanded money in exchange for help in brokering two African telecommunications deals.
Vernon Jackson, chief executive of iGate Inc., a Louisville, Ky., telecommunications firm, subsequently pleaded guilty to bribery, admitting he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Jefferson and his family members in exchange for the congressman's help obtaining business deals in Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon.
The House Ethics Committee has opened an inquiry into the case.
http://www.louisianaweekly.com/weekly/news/articlegate.pl?20060522v
Kenneth Starr
White Water Tax Scam
Monica Lewinsky affair
Bogus letters sent to governor asking to spare client's life
Lawyers for a death row inmate, including former Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr, sent fake letters from jurors asking California's governor to spare the man's life, prosecutors said Friday.
The jurors denied they thought Michael Morales deserved clemency because some of the testimony at his trial may have been fabricated, said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
Kenneth Starr is best known as the special prosecutor in the Monica Lewinsky affair during President Bill Clinton's administration.
"We showed each person the declaration on their behalf and they all said they didn't say that," Barankin said.
San Joaquin County prosecutor Charles Schultz also said the letters sent to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week were "untrue" and "pure fiction."
Religious related
also see Mt. Soledad Cross
Pat Robertson
The Christian Coalition founder and former GOP presidential candidate has said American agents should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine retribution for pulling Israel out of the Gaza Strip.
Robertson started out as a Southern Baptist, but today he is a charismatic evangelical and believes that God is involved in guiding world events, said Barry Hankins, professor of history and church-state studies at Baylor University. He tries to interpret contemporary events as "being part of the drama of God's activity in the world."
"He puts the most fantastic spin on things to have a gripping quality about them to keep the ground troops alert," Hankins said.
On the other hand, Brian Britt, director of the Religious Studies Program at Virginia Tech, said Robertson's remarks aren't just "off-the-wall, crazy uncle stuff" but part of a strategy that earns him headlines.
When people attack Robertson, he wins sympathy for appearing to be an underdog, Britt said.
"It reinforces an image of Christianity as a persecuted religion, a religion that is being hounded by the secularists out of the public square, rather than a dominant and hegemonic force," Britt said.
Brent Wilkes
Contractor tells how he learned to lobby
Wilkes had set up meetings with the lawmakers hoping to win a government contract, and he planned to punctuate each pitch with a campaign donation. But his hometown congressman, Rep. Bill Lowery, R-San Diego, told him that presenting the checks during the sessions was not how things were done, Wilkes recalled.
Instead, Wilkes said, Lowery taught him the right way to do it: Hand over the envelope in the hallway outside the suite, at least a few feet away.
That was the beginning of a career built on what Wilkes calls “transactional lobbying,” which made him rich but also landed him in the middle of a criminal investigation.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060806/news_1n6wilkes.html
Duncan Hunter
“John Karpovich, who helped run the document conversion program at the Defense Department before his retirement, said Wilkes infuriated Pentagon staff by claiming that the document conversion money belonged to him,” reported the Washington Post.
"Brent came in and said, 'That's our money,"' Karpovich recalled. "He said, 'The congressmen put the money in there for us."'
Karpovich was reluctant to talk with us, but conceded he’d watched the deal being put together by Bent Wilkes, House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter, and the just-deposed No. 3 man at the CIA, Dusty Foggo.
“Brent called me said he heard the product was great, and asked me to meet him in Washington. He had a suite at the Watergate. We met there and went to dinner with Dusty Foggo. He seemed like a sharp guy, at least he knew the inside of the government pretty well. We went to dinner with Dusty, and he and Brent talked about old times.”
Karpovich had been castigated by Hunter, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, he told us, for trying to sell the software to the Pentagon too cheaply.
“In the meeting Duncan Hunter pointed to me and said to Wilkes, 'Your boy doesn’t know how to play the game,'" said Karpovich.
“They took a $6000 product, gave it another name, and sold it to the defense department for $32000 a pop. Later on we began to get calls from military bases around the country," Karpovich stated. "They were saying, hey, we just got this expensive software. What are we supposed to do with it?"
The deal now worked for everyone… except maybe U.S. taxpayers, and dead U.S. servicemen in Iraq whose Humvee’s didn’t get armor plating until it was too late because there wasn’t enough money for it in the Pentagon budget.
http://www.madcowprod.com/05112006.html
Cozying Up to Power
Brent Wilkes' businesses grew along with his political ties. He is 'co-conspirator No. 1' in the Cunningham case, his lawyer says. He has not been charged.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wilkes8may08,0,6220306,full.story?coll=la-home-business
Committee chairman comments on new allegations in Cunningham case
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Thursday he's not surprised by allegations of prostitution in the corruption case involving former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a former committee member.
Chairman Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., said he has discussed the matter with authorities and expected to raise the issue with an independent investigator he has hired to review Cunningham's committee work.
"If I'm trying to connect dots, this is not a surprising outcome," Hoekstra said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"It's unsavory, it is pathetic, it is sickening, but not surprising."
FBI agents are investigating whether defense contractor Brent Wilkes provided prostitutes, limousines and hotel suites to Cunningham, federal officials told The Associated Press last week. Cunningham, a California Republican, is serving a prison term of eight years and four months after pleading guilty in November to taking $2.4 million in homes, yachts and other bribes mostly from defense contractors in exchange for steering government contracts.
Wilkes' attorney, Michael Lipman, didn't immediately return a call for comment Thursday. In an interview earlier this week, he said Wilkes denied the allegations of prostitution, which were raised by a second defense contractor who has pleaded guilty in the case.
Hoekstra declined to elaborate on his suspicions or discuss reports that CIA Executive Director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, a longtime friend of Wilkes, attended poker parties at the hotel rooms.
http://www.pe.com/ap_news/California2/CA_Congressman_Bribery_235914CA.shtml
Mr. Cunningham periodically phoned him to request a prostitute
Mr. Wilkes, of Poway, Calif., founded a series of companies that obtained federal contracts, including ADCS Inc., which won contracts to convert paper military records to computer images.
Mr. Wade in February pleaded guilty to giving bribes of more than $1 million to Mr. Cunningham, including cash, antiques and payment for yachts. Mr. Wade, who hasn't been sentenced yet, is cooperating with prosecutors. According to people with knowledge of the investigation, Mr. Wade told investigators that Mr. Cunningham periodically phoned him to request a prostitute, and that Mr. Wade then helped to arrange for one. A limousine driver then picked up the prostitute as well as Mr. Cunningham, and drove them to one of the hotel suites, originally at the Watergate Hotel, and subsequently at the Westin Grand.
Mr. Wade told investigators that all the arrangements for these services had been made by Mr. Wilkes and two employees of Mr. Wilkes's company, according to people with knowledge of his debriefing. He said Mr. Wilkes had rented the hotel suites and found the limousine driver, who had "relationships" with several escort services. Mr. Wade told prosecutors that sometimes Mr. Cunningham would contact him to request these services, and he would pass on the request to Mr. Wilkes or his employees, who then made the actual arrangement. Mr. Wade said that other times Mr. Cunningham called Mr. Wilkes directly to make the requests.
If investigators find that any other members of Congress or their staffs received services at so-called hospitality suites, that could help make a case that they had illegally taken action to benefit Mr. Wilkes in return for favors from him. Mr. Wilkes, his family members and his employees were heavy campaign contributors to several members of Congress. But prosecutors so far apparently haven't found any evidence that other members of Congress had been bribed.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB114610728002837324.html
House Panel Probes Limo Firm's Deal
The Department of Homeland Security came under renewed scrutiny Thursday as a House panel sought to determine how it awarded $25 million in contracts to a transportation company whose selection was recommended by Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the former San Diego-area congressman convicted of accepting millions of dollars in bribes from defense contractors.
After receiving bids from three companies, agency officials said, they chose Shirlington Limousine and Transportation Inc. of Washington, based on both price and the company's ability to perform the needed services.
But Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, noted that the company's president, Christopher Baker, had done business with Brent R. Wilkes, a San Diego defense contractor identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Cunningham case.
"Then we find out that the congressman at the center of all of this sends a letter on behalf of this limousine company," he said. "If that doesn't raise issues, if that isn't more than a series of coincidences, I don't know what is."
Cunningham was the only member of Congress to support Shirlington's selection, King said.
The government is investigating allegations that Wilkes provided Cunningham, and perhaps other officials, with prostitutes and limousines. Citing an ongoing grand jury investigation, Baker did not testify Thursday.
Affidavit says Cunningham intervened on limo firm's behalf
Limo letter is found at Homeland Security
A day after Homeland Security officials denied knowing about former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham's attempts to gain a contract for a limousine service, Cunningham's letter praising the company surfaced in the department's files.
In the letter, Cunningham wrote of his “full support of (Shirlington Limousine's) wish to provide transportation services for the Department of Homeland Security,” or DHS.
FBI agents have been investigating whether the company – while working for Brent Wilkes, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Cunningham corruption case – helped Wilkes arrange for prostitutes for Cunningham while Wilkes was vying for federal contracts.
Wilkes and Shirlington founder Christopher Baker have denied any involvement with prostitutes. But Baker has said through his lawyer that he provided transportation for “entertainment” at Wilkes' hospitality suites in Washington from 1990 to the early part of the decade.
Although Baker is a convicted felon, Cunningham gave him a character reference Jan. 16, 2004.
“I have personally known Mr. Baker since the mid-1990s,” Cunningham wrote to Homeland Security. “He is dedicated to his work and has been of service to me and other Members of Congress over the years.”
At the time, the department had no plans to hire a limousine service. But within three months, the department gave Baker a $3.8 million contract. A year later, he got a contract worth up to $21.2 million.
Until recently, Homeland Security officials have denied that any legislators were involved in the contract. In May, department officials twice told Congress that they had no record of Cunningham's letter.
On Thursday, however, Baker gave Congress a sworn affidavit that he had sent the letter to the department. Homeland Security officials said they found an e-mail mentioning the letter but had no other evidence of its existence.
Yesterday the department produced the letter, saying it had been misfiled.
“This is yet another example of DHS incompetence – and I think it may have been more than just bad record-keeping,” said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who leads the House Homeland Security Committee. “This letter certainly . . . raises further questions about political manipulation in the contracting process.”
The power of persuasion
Poway businessman Brent Wilkes funneled campaign donations to key lawmakers as he tried to build a defense empire
Long before he was identified as a co-conspirator in former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham's corruption case, Poway businessman Brent Wilkes boasted of his prowess in persuading powerful lawmakers to help him push contracts through Congress.
To get a $25 million contract for a start-up defense company, Wilkes said he needed about $1.5 million for lobbying and related expenses, according to a lawsuit filed against him by a former business partner. He allegedly told his partner that about half the $25 million would be pure profit.
When Wilkes made that boast, he already had been awarded about $80 million in contracts through the congressional process known as earmarking, which allows lawmakers to slip projects into the federal budget to benefit particular causes or companies.
Cunningham admitted directing federal contracts to Wilkes in exchange for more than $630,000 in bribes. Cunningham and his political action committee also received at least $76,500 in legal campaign contributions from Wilkes and his associates.
But Cunningham wasn't the only lawmaker who benefited from Wilkes' war chest.
From 1995 to 2005, as Wilkes got federal funding for his family of small defense companies, he steered more than $600,000 in contributions to lawmakers and their political action committees.
The biggest beneficiary was House Appropriations Committee member John Doolittle from the Sacramento suburb of Granite Bay, who received at least $82,000 from Wilkes, his close relatives, employees and business partners. Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis of Redlands received $60,000. Rep. Duncan Hunter of Alpine, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, got $39,200.
In recent years, Wilkes focused on former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who got $57,000 from 2002 to 2004. In September, DeLay was indicted in Texas, accused of funneling corporate donations into elections in violation of state law. Wilkes has been subpoenaed in the case.
There is no indication that any legislator other than Cunningham made illegal deals with Wilkes. But the timing of Wilkes' many political donations closely parallels the approval of earmarks for ADCS, PerfectWave Technologies and other businesses in his corporate family.
“It almost looks like a legalized laundering of money: 'You give us $1 million for a contract and we'll make sure you'll get your share,' ” said Keith Ashdown, vice president for policy and communications at Citizens for Taxpayer Common Sense, a nonpartisan group in Washington that monitors federal spending.
ADCS probed in 2000 by Defense Department
More than five years before former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham pleaded guilty to taking millions in bribes, the Department of Defense sent the U.S. attorney's office in San Diego an investigative report on a Poway defense company that was later linked to Cunningham.
The 2000 report discussed alleged overbillings by ADCS Inc., a defense firm that in 2005 became a focal point of the Cunningham bribery scandal, Gary Comerford, a spokesman for the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, said Wednesday.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/04/21/news/top_stories/20_39_534_20_06.txt
Kyle (Dusty) Foggo
Foggo has decided to retire
CIA Executive Director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo already was under investigation by the agency's inspector general in connection with his relationship to San Diego businessman Brent Wilkes.
The FBI recently opened its own probe of Foggo, a longtime and close friend of Wilkes, the official said, speaking only on condition of anonymity because the investigation is under way.
Foggo has decided to retire from the CIA following the resignation last Friday of CIA Director Porter Goss, an intelligence official said Monday, also speaking on condition of anonymity. The official noted that new CIA directors have traditionally chosen their own executive directors, who run the agency's day-to-day operations.
Last week, the CIA released a statement on Foggo's behalf in which he denied any improprieties. "Mr. Foggo maintains that government contracts for which he was responsible were properly awarded and administered," the agency said.
Wilkes has been described in court papers as an unindicted coconspirator in a plot to bribe then-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, now serving a federal prison term for taking $2.4 million from government contractors.
FBI agents also have been looking into whether Wilkes supplied Cunningham with prostitutes, limousines and hotel suites. Foggo sometimes attended poker parties at the hotel rooms, but he said there was nothing untoward about his presence.
"If he attended occasional card games with friends over the years, Mr. Foggo insists they were that and nothing more," the CIA statement said.
CIA Director Porter Goss resigns
A little-known White House advisory board convinced a reluctant President Bush to launch yet another high-profile shakeup of the nation's intelligence community and can CIA Director Porter Goss, sources said yesterday.
Bush had already gotten an earful from Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte on the shortcomings of Goss, but the final push came from the "very alarmed" President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, intelligence and Congressional sources said.
Alarms were set off at the advisory board by a widening FBI sex and cronyism investigation that's targeted Kyle (Dusty) Foggo, the No.3 official at the CIA, and also touched on Goss himself.
The 16-member bipartisan board, now headed by former Goldman Sachs executive Stephen Friedman, has the mandate to conduct periodic assessments on "the quality, quantity and adequacy of intelligence collection."
The investigations have focused on the Watergate poker parties thrown by defense contractor Brent Wilkes, a high-school buddy of Foggo's, that were attended by disgraced former Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham and other lawmakers.
Foggo has claimed he went to the parties "just for poker" amid allegations that Wilkes, a top GOP fund-raiser and a member of the $100,000 "Pioneers" of Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, provided prostitutes, limos and hotel suites to Cunningham.
Cunningham is serving an eight-year sentence after pleading to taking $2.4 million in bribes to steer defense contracts to cronies.
Wilkes hosted regular parties for 15 years at the Watergate and Westin Grand Hotels for lawmakers and lobbyists. Intelligence sources said Goss has denied attending the parties as CIA director, but that left open whether he may have attended as a Republican congressman from Florida who was head of the House Intelligence Committee.
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/415620p-351086c.html
logistics chief at the CIA's main base near Frankfurt, Germany
As logistics chief at the CIA's main base near Frankfurt, Germany, Kyle (Dusty) Foggo sat at the crossroads of agency operations. Operatives and VIPs passed through, and former top spies say Foggo was customarily on hand to greet them. After Porter Goss took over as CIA director, many agency veterans were astonished when the former House intel chair chose Foggo, a midranking bureaucrat, to become CIA executive director, the agency's third-ranking official, responsible for day-to-day operations. Insiders attributed his rise to his mastery of office politics. But Foggo's glad-handing has raised awkward questions. Federal prosecutors have accused (as an unindicted co-conspirator) one of Foggo's closest friends, San Diego businessman Brent Wilkes, of participating in a scheme to bribe Randall (Duke) Cunningham, the GOP congressman from San Diego who resigned his seat after pleading guilty to federal corruption and tax charges.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11570067/site/newsweek/
Former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham
Cunningham taken into custody, ordered to repay $1.8 million
Military, Iraq War, Graft and Fraud
Rebuilding Iraq
Iraq reconstruction failures tied to contracting breakdowns
October 13, 2006 Contracting problems have hamstrung reconstruction efforts in Iraq, raising questions about how the government can adapt its procurement system to effectively address unforeseen circumstances, according to a panel that examined the role procurement has played in the Iraq reconstruction effort.
T. Christian Miller, author of Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq, Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen and Katherine Schinasi, Government Accountability Office managing director for acquisition and sourcing management, spoke at a Friday event on the reconstruction effort. The panel was organized by the George Washington University Government Procurement Law Program.
Miller said he started his work in Iraq with an expectation for the story he would encounter there: the government procurement system meets the Wild West in Iraq, and the government procurement system wins. But he said he quickly realized that the reconstruction was not working.
The first U.S. government project Miller saw was a water treatment plant that, on the day of his visit, was out of chlorine and short on generator power because the machines had seized up for lack of antifreeze in the cold climate. Worse, when the plant eventually began to pump out clean water, what flowed from the taps of Iraqi homes was tainted with sewage and other contaminants because the old, leaky pipes between the facility and the homes had not been replaced.
Neither the engineers nor the project managers, Miller said, had considered the delivery aspect of the infrastructure project they had signed on to complete.
Miller described contracting staff shortages as central to the problems he encountered. He said David Nash, the first director of the Coalition Provisional Authority's Project Management Office, framed the issue as one of bodies and budgets: the Army Corps of Engineers had about 30,000 employees in the United States with a $13 billion budget for construction projects and contracts like the ones in Iraq, Nash told Miller. In Iraq, the Corps had 50 employees for the $18 billion budget it was allocated in late 2003.
"People were blowing cash around Iraq like they had leaf-blowers," Miller said.
Helping to manage that money and the projects it funded were layers and layers of contractors, Miller said. There sometimes were as many as nine tiers of contractors between the person ordering work done and a worker laying the bricks.
The CPA started out with only three contracting officers, Miller said. While the staff eventually grew, the office remained short-handed, sometimes having just one or two days to analyze and award large, complex contracts.
With government contracting officers working three-month tours of duty, contractors became the experts who had the knowledge needed to manage projects, Miller said, creating a situation vulnerable to manipulation.
"I really can't blame [the contractors] -- it's a business, that's how it's set up. They're supposed to make money. The person that's supposed to be the ... regulation on that is the U.S. government, and it was just never, never there."
GAO's Schinasi and IG Bowen echoed several of Miller's concerns with staffing and oversight levels, though in less certain tones, drawing on a recent GAO forum on procurement and an IG report on Iraq contracting.
Procurement policy tries to strike a balance between the flexibility to allow agencies to respond quickly to circumstances, and the application of complex rules intended to minimize fraud, waste and abuse. But, Schinasi said, "The lesson so far is, what we have isn't good enough."
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=35268&dcn=todaysnews
Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq
After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon.
To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.
O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .
Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.
The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193.html
SOCOM
Bribe Inquiry Looks at Sale of Field Gear to Military
In a widening scandal at the United States Special Operations Command, federal investigators are looking into a bribery scheme as well as accusations of improper influence involving millions of dollars in battlefield equipment used by Navy Seals and Army Green Berets and Rangers.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12712
http://www.beachblogger.net/bwtm/index.php?title=Hunter%2C_Duncan_Lee#Trouble_brewing
Whistle-blower slams Iraq contractor
Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root charged millions to the government for recreational services never provided to U.S. troops in Iraq, including giant tubs of chicken wings and tacos, a widescreen TV, and cheese sticks meant for a military Super Bowl party, according to a federal whistle-blower suit unsealed Friday.
Instead, the suit alleges, KBR used the military's supplies for its own football party.
Filed last year in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., by former KBR employee Julie McBride, the lawsuit claims the giant defense contractor billed the government for thousands of meals it never served, inflated the number of soldiers using its fitness and Internet centers, and regularly siphoned off great quantities of supplies destined for American soldiers.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060908/ap_on_go_ot/contractor_fraud_claim
This ties in to the SOCom Rec-Center scandal and Hunter's Santa Rosa Island hunting perserve. Hunter contends it would not be difficult for the government to run free hunts at no cost to taxpayers, something his opponents dispute. The 'free' part would be kickbacks from other contracts.
SOCom sentence: 15 months
As Tom Spellissy walked into U.S. District Court Monday, he had no idea what his punishment might be.
The federal judge about to impose his sentence had already overturned a jury's verdict and dismissed the bulk of the case against him. His lawyer was arguing for probation, citing the dubious evidence against his client and his exemplary 29-year military career.
But prosecutors said Spellissy caused irreparable harm at Special Operations Command in Tampa by seeking special treatment for his clients in the defense industry. They recommended he spend up to two years in prison on the single conspiracy charge he still faced.
U.S. District Judge James Whittemore weighed the case for more than two hours. He noted Spellissy's sterling reputation and his unfortunate family circumstances: a wife with ovarian cancer and two young children.
In the end, Whittemore said he had no choice but to sentence Spellissy to 15 months in prison.
"Probation is not an appropriate sentence for this offense," Whittemore said.
Spellissy was also ordered to pay a $4,000 fine. His company, Strategic Defense International Inc. of Clearwater, was fined $125,000.
Spellissy, a retired Army colonel who worked as a private defense contractor, looked shocked as he left the courtroom.
"To tell you the truth, I don't know what to think," Spellissy said before his lawyer, Pat Doherty, ushered him away from reporters.
http://www.sptimes.com/2006/08/15/Hillsborough/SOCom_sentence__15_mo.shtml
Military recruiting
The Pentagon's 12-Step Program to Create a Misfit Military
Military recruiting in 2006 has been marked by upbeat pronouncements from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, claims of success by the White House, propaganda releases by the Pentagon, and a spate of recent press reports touting the way the military has made its wo/manpower goals.
But the armed forces have only met with success through a fundamental "transformation," and not the transformation of the military -- that "co-evolution of concepts, processes, organizations and technology" -- Rumsfeld is always talking about either.
While the Secretary of Defense's longstanding goal of transforming the planet's most powerful military into its highest tech, most agile, most futuristic fighting force has, in the words of the Washington Post's David Von Drehle, "melted away," the very makeup of the Armed Forces has been mutating before our collective eyes under the pressure of the war in Iraq. This actual transformation has been reported, but only in scattered articles on the new recruitment landscape in America.
Last year, despite NASCAR, professional bull-riding, and Arena Football sponsorships; popular video games that doubled as recruiting tools; TV commercials dripping with seductive scenes of military glory; a "joint marketing communications and market research and studies" program actively engaged in measures to target for military service Hispanics, drop outs, and those with criminal records; and at least $16,000 in promotional costs for each soldier it managed to sign up, the U.S. military failed to meet its recruiting goals. This year those methods have been pumped up and taken over the top in twelve critical areas of recruitment that make the old Army ad-line, "Be All That You Can Be," into material for late night TV punch lines of the future.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/41685/
Concern over US army recruitment
23 August, 2006 As the "war on terror" drags on, the US military is finding it difficult to fill its ranks and there are growing concerns some recruiters are breaking the rules.
Nearly five years into the war, with conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the death toll is approaching 3,000 servicemen and women.
The pressure to sign up new recruits against this background has challenged the US military.
The problem is especially acute for the army.
It had a goal of bringing in 80,000 new soldiers in the financial year that ended on 30 September 2005.
It finished that year with just 73,000 recruits.
This year the army appears to be on target to reach the 80,000 goal but to do so it has had to double the top enlistment bonuses for recruits from $20,000 to $40,000.
It has also had to loosen medical standards, forgive more minor criminal offences, raise the age limit for new recruits from 35 to 42 and accept more people who did not finish high school.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/5278654.stm
Military recruiters cited for misconduct
20 August, 2006 More than 100 young women who expressed interest in joining the military in the past year were preyed upon sexually by their recruiters. Women were raped on recruiting office couches, assaulted in government cars and groped en route to entrance exams.
A six-month Associated Press investigation found that more than 80 military recruiters were disciplined last year for sexual misconduct with potential enlistees. The cases occurred across all branches of the military and in all regions of the country.
"This should never be allowed to happen," said one 18-year-old victim. "The recruiter had all the power. He had the uniform. He had my future. I trusted him."
At least 35 Army recruiters, 18 Marine Corps recruiters, 18 Navy recruiters and 12 Air Force recruiters were disciplined for sexual misconduct or other inappropriate behavior with potential enlistees in 2005, according to records obtained by the AP under dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests. That's significantly more than the handful of cases disclosed in the past decade.
The AP also found:
-The Army, which accounts for almost half of the military, has had 722 recruiters accused of rape and sexual misconduct since 1996.
-Across all services, one out of 200 frontline recruiters - the ones who deal directly with young people - was disciplined for sexual misconduct last year.
-Some cases of improper behavior involved romantic relationships, and sometimes those relationships were initiated by the women.
-Most recruiters found guilty of sexual misconduct are disciplined administratively, facing a reduction in rank or forfeiture of pay; military and civilian prosecutions are rare. -The increase in sexual misconduct incidents is consistent with overall recruiter wrongdoing, which has increased from just over 400 cases in 2004 to 630 cases in 2005, according to a General Accounting Office report released this week.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Recruiters_Sex.html
Gen. Hal M. Hornburg: Air Force's Thunderbirds
The FBI is investigating the award of a $50 million publicity contract for the Air Force's Thunderbirds aerial stunt team to a company with ties to a recently retired general, military and law enforcement officials said Friday.
The Air Force canceled the contract with Strategic Message Solutions in February, after two losing bidders complained that the company had an unfair advantage, including its decision to make retired Gen. Hal M. Hornburg a partner, according to a federal lawsuit over the contract.
Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne directed the Pentagon's inspector general to review the contract award. The inspector general referred the matter to the FBI to look into possible violations of federal contracting laws, a law enforcement official said.
A senior defense official said the Inspector General's Defense Criminal Investigative Service opened a criminal investigation into the matter around the end of February. A short time later DCIS brought in the FBI.
Strategic Message Solutions, based in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., and its president, Edward Shipley, sued the government in February, demanding that the contract be reinstated. The suit says Hornburg had no involvement in obtaining the contract.
James E. Beasley, the company's lawyer, did not immediately return messages left Friday by The Associated Press. While lauding the company's services and Shipley's role in developing the publicity package, the lawsuit describes an unusual chain of events that includes a purported decision by Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the Air Force chief of staff, to provide Shipley an immediate $8.5 million in federal funds in April 2005, without any request for bids for the work.
At the time, Moseley was the Air Force's No. 2 officer.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1152ap_air_force_contract.html
Ex-Navy officials accused of fraud
Two former Pentagon officials, including an acting secretary of the Navy, have been accused of scheming with a banned American contractor to get lucrative rebuilding contracts in Iraq, The Associated Press has learned.
The contracting firm, Custer Battles LLC, was suspended two years ago by the military for submitting millions of dollars in fake invoices.
The charges come in a sealed federal lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by the AP. It was filed by two whistle-blowers -- one of whom won a $10 million judgment in another suit when a federal jury agreed that Custer Battles had swindled the government.
The current suit names former acting Navy Secretary Hansford Johnson, former acting Navy Undersecretary Douglas Combs and Custer Battles LLC officials including founders Scott Custer and Mike Battles, who were barred in 2004 after billing the government for work that was never done and for padding invoices by much as 100 percent.
Also named were six companies connected to the contracting firm, including Windmill International Ltd., a worldwide contractor run by Combs and Johnson, and a Romanian company, Danubia Global, which bought Custer Battles in 2005.
The new lawsuit contends Custer and Battles, both Army veterans with Washington political connections, tried to get around the suspension order by plotting with Johnson and Combs "to set up sham companies (thereby) concealing their ownership and control of those entities."
According to the suit filed in Virginia, the shell companies committed other illegal acts, including selling weapons on the Iraqi black market, creating a dangerous possibility that "insurgents could buy them and use them to attack U.S. soldiers."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/278509_fraud22.html
Army Corps of Engineers employee indicted on fraud charges
A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers employee signed off on inflated apartment rental leases for military personnel in Kuwait in exchange for $47,000 in bribes from a real estate agent, according to a federal indictment made public Friday.
Gheevarghese Pappen, 62, was charged with three counts of honest services wire fraud in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Savannah, Ga. He faces up to 60 years in prison and $750,000 in fines, the Justice Department said.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/06/10/military/16_24_226_9_06.txt
Lincoln Groups
I Was A PR Intern in Iraq
In this astonishing confessional by an Oxford graduate who worked in the green zone of Baghdad, we see the perversity of the American version of a 'free press' in Iraq.
I arrived at the Baghdad airport on July 7, after waiting for my luggage in Amman for nearly a week. People at the baggage claim shouted like tour guides for KBR employees to gather in one spot, while others, holding aloft signs with the names of various security firms, urged bulky, tattooed men to congregate in groups. But I saw no one there to greet me. As the hall emptied, I noticed a man and woman loitering indifferently near the exit. I eventually made my way over and asked if they were here to meet Willem Marx. They were. Each shook my hand, and then they led me in silence out of the airport and to the back seat of a battered sedan.
To get to the villa where I would be living for the summer, I was awakened before dawn and loaded onto what was essentially a Greyhound bus with armored plating and shatterproof windows. The road to Baghdad's Green Zone, where the Lincoln Group villa was located, is known as the Highway of Death, for the number of convoys that have been attacked along its route. And so we trundled along the dangerous road in complete darkness, flanked by a quartet of Humvees and watched over by helicopters with nightscopes.
There were four bedrooms on the villa's ground floor, and I was to share one of these with an Iraqi named Ahmed. Ahmed, who had attended American University in Washington, always wore immaculately pressed shirts and remained clean-shaven. Because he often shared his bed with one of several Baghdadi girlfriends, I moved down the hall after only a few nights. My new roommate, Steve, a recent Brown graduate, had signed on with Lincoln Group for a full year and seemed to be pacing himself accordingly. Most nights he would drink beers bought from a nearby market, and the next day he would sleep well into the afternoon.
I was soon contacted by a Lincoln Group employee named Jon, who formerly had run political campaigns in Chicago and now worked on the company's I.O., or Information Operations. Over lunch at the recently bombed and rebuilt Green Zone Café -- an air-conditioned tent with plastic chairs and a TV airing Lebanese music videos -- Jon explained that he was returning home for several weeks of
R & R and that Jim Sutton had chosen me to be his replacement. Jon quickly sketched out my new I.O. responsibilities. An Army team inside the Al Faw palace, another of Saddam's former residences, would send me news articles they had cobbled together from wire stories and their own reports from the field. It was my job to select the ones that seemed most like Iraqis had written them. I was then to pass these articles along to our Iraqi employees, who would translate the pieces into Arabic and place them in local newspapers. Jon told me that the U.S. Army could hardly carry out this work in their military uniforms, so they hired Lincoln Group, which could operate with far fewer restrictions. It was a bread-and-butter contract, he said, that paid the company about $5 million annually. I asked if the newspapers knew that Lincoln Group or the U.S. military were behind these articles. They did and they didn't, Jon said. The Iraqis working for us posed as freelance journalists, but they also paid editors at the papers to publish the stories -- part of the cost Lincoln Group billed back to the military. "Look," Jon assured me, "it's very straightforward. You just have to keep the military happy."
The day had been extremely long, and I was exhausted and more than a little shaken. The blocks of cash that we had locked up in my room had been picked up and moved to a bank in central Baghdad. In my email inbox, there were messages from both my parents, asking me when I would leave Iraq and saying they hoped that it would be very soon. Lincoln Group had also sent me a newly drawn contract; they were offering me up to $70,000 to postpone journalism school and to work another ten months in Baghdad. But I couldn't fathom doing the work any longer. I had become what I had to admit was the antithesis of a journalist. And if I continued to suborn Iraqi reporters with U.S. military money, this would surely mean I would never be able to work as one.
That night I rang Christian Bailey and Paige Craig at the company's D.C. headquarters and told them I wanted to go home. On August 20, I boarded a plane out of Baghdad, and my summer internship was over.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/41479/
Business Booms for U.S. Firm That Planted Stories
Just two years ago, the Lincoln Group was a small start-up communications firm with an idealistic vision and a handful of employees, many of them former service members.
Today, the company boasts 300 employees worldwide, is drawing $100 million contracts from the military, and is at the center of a recent Washington miniscandal as the firm that planted pro-American news articles in Iraqi newspapers on behalf of the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Even though the placed stories apparently were factually correct, critics worried the contract amounted to a U.S. propaganda campaign that ran roughshod over the fledgling independence of the Iraqi media.
Those officials declined to talk in much detail about the nature of their work or with whom they are contracted. But [Paige Craig], a former enlisted Marine who co-founded the company, said it is active in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates and is hoping to make inroads in Africa and Asia.
He said the firm’s goal is to promote commerce in hostile environments by “bridging the cultural divide” between those nations and Western governments and businesses.
Lincoln employs a mix of former military personnel — a former Special Forces medical sergeant works alongside a former New York University professor — as well as public relations specialists, television producers, business development consultants and research analysts.
The private sector definitely has a role to play in efforts to gather and dispense information, said Eric Larson, a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corp., Santa Monica, Calif. And private marketing and advertising firms tend to attract the kind of “creative types” who can think of ways to get an effective message through to native populations.
“The government and the military are limited,” both in manpower and other resources, to do this kind of thing, he said. “These are complementary skills that are out there in the private sector [and] could be helpful.”
The Lincoln Group was one of three firms hired last summer by the Defense Department to work in Iraq to improve public opinion of the United States and its military.
The arrangement became controversial in December when the Los Angeles Times and other news outlets reported that Lincoln received a contract worth up to $100 million to do work on behalf of Multi-National Forces-Iraq, to include planting favorable stories produced by the U.S. military in Iraqi newspapers and on Iraqi radio.
Report questions over $1.4B of Halliburton bills
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2005-06-27-halliburton-usat_x.htm
http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/6/3479
Iraq War, Torture, Rape and Abuse
Soldiers in 'guns for coke' scandal
September 24, 2006 BRITISH soldiers have been caught smuggling stolen guns out of Iraq and allegedly exchanging them for cocaine and cash on the black market.
Security officials confirmed this weekend that soldiers from the 3rd Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment are at the centre of a criminal inquiry by the Royal Military Police (RMP) into a “guns for cocaine” network.
Their alleged involvement with organised crime is a fresh blow to the British Army after a week in which a corporal from the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment admitted he had committed a war crime against an Iraqi civilian.
Although drug use is increasing in the armed forces, this is the first time military police have evidence that stolen weapons are being sold to pay for them.
One of the first soldiers from the Yorkshire Regiment to have been arrested is alleged to have bought drugs by trading handguns, including Glock pistols, smuggled from Iraq to Germany on at least six occasions.
A security source said some of the weapons had been exchanged for about 50 grams of cocaine with a street value of £2,500. The drugs were sold to other British soldiers serving in Iraq.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2372277,00.html
Youtube
Cowboy soldiers on notice over videos
September 18, 2006 DEFENCE chief Angus Houston has ordered a full investigation into video images posted on the internet showing skylarking Australian soldiers in Baghdad brandishing weapons. One of the clips posted on the popular website www.youtube.com shows an Australian Defence Force soldier pointing a pistol at a fellow Digger dressed in an Arab headdress, with other clips showing soldiers aiming their weapons at one another.
Air Chief Marshal Houston said yesterday that there was "no place in the ADF for members who behave in this way".
And army chief Peter Leahy flagged the possibility of soldiers being sacked.
"We will complete an investigation and then, put simply, I will be asking a question why these soldiers should remain in the army," he said yesterday.
"They will have an opportunity to put their case and it will be done under the correct administrative procedures. Everybody would expect me to ask that question: if you are that silly, what are you doing in the army?"
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20429796-601,00.html
Hamdania, Six Marines charged with assault
The Marine Corps has filed charges against six Marines for an alleged April 10 assault on an unnamed Iraqi man in the village of Hamdania, officials announced Thursday.
Three of the charged are already in the base brig awaiting court action on charges they kidnapped and killed another Iraqi civilian on April 26.
The early evening announcement from Camp Pendleton identified the suspects in the April 10 incident as Lance Cpls. Saul H. Lopezromo and Henry D. Lever and Pfc. Derek I. Lewis. Also charged are Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III, Cpl. Trent D. Thomas and Lance Cpl. Jerry E. Shumate Jr., who along with four other Marines and a Navy corpsman stand accused of premeditated murder in the April 26 death of Hashim Ibrahim Awad.
Lt. Col. Sean Gibson, a Marine Corps spokesman at Camp Pendleton, said more specific details about the alleged April 10 assault would not be available until this morning.
Victor Kelley, a civilian attorney hired by the Thomas family to defend him on the murder charge, termed the latest allegation "bull...." and said his client is innocent.
"It didn't happen," Kelley said in a telephone interview from his home in Birmingham, Ala. "Cpl. Thomas had nothing to do with that, and it is not going to be proven."
Salahuddin province, Soldiers say orders were to kill all military-age Iraqis
Four U.S. soldiers accused of murdering suspected insurgents during a raid in Iraq said they were under orders to "kill all military-age males," according to sworn statements obtained by The Associated Press.
The soldiers took some of the men into custody because they were using two women and a toddler as human shields. They shot three of the men after the women and child were safe and say the men attacked them.
"The ROE (rule of engagement) was to kill all military age males on Objective Murray," Staff Sgt. Raymond Girouard told investigators, referring to the target by its code name. That target, an island on a canal in the northern Salahuddin province, was believed to be an al-Qaida training camp.
Girouard, Spc. William Hunsaker, Pfc. Corey Clagett and Spc. Juston Graber are charged with murder and other offenses in the shooting deaths of three of the men during the May 9 raid.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/278480_soldiers22.html
Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, US soldiers charged in rape case
Four US soldiers have been charged with rape and murder over an attack on an Iraqi woman who was killed along with her family last March. The soldiers, on active duty in Iraq, are accused of conspiring with former soldier Steven Green to commit the crimes in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad. Mr Green, who is being held in the US, denies the rape and murder charges. A fifth soldier serving in Iraq has been charged with dereliction of duty for failing to report the offences.
Iraq rape-slaying hearing begins
A preliminary hearing began Sunday for four U.S. soldiers charged in connection with the rape and slaying of an Iraqi female and the killings of her family earlier this year in Mahmoudiya, Iraq.
Three witnesses took the stand on the first day of the Article 32 hearing at Camp Victory near Baghdad, including an Iraqi army medic who gave graphic testimony about the state of the bodies.
Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, Spec. James P. Barker, Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, and Pfc. Bryan L. Howard were all charged with conspiring with former Pfc. Steven D. Green to commit the crimes, the military said.
The four could face the death penalty, the military has said.
A fifth soldier, Sgt. Anthony W. Yribe, was charged with failing to report the rape and killings but is not alleged to have been a direct participant. He is not facing an Article 32 hearing at this time.
Green, who was discharged from the Army in May due an "anti-social personality disorder," faces rape and murder charges in federal court. He is being held in a Kentucky jail, where last month he was granted a three-month delay in his arraignment. He has pleaded not guilty.
All six are from the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) out of Fort Campbell, Ky.
The incident took place in March in Mahmoudiya, just south of Baghdad. A Justice Department affidavit filed in Green's case says Green and other soldiers planned the rape.
The affidavit says Green shot and killed the woman's relatives, including a girl of about 5 years of age; raped the woman; then fatally shot her. It says the incident took place "on or about March 12, 2006."
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/08/06/iraq.main/index.html
Friends of former soldier charged in Iraq deaths recall unpredictable behavior
Medic testifies at U.S. troops' hearing
Investigator: Troops drank, golfed before Iraqi killings, rape
Torture and Prisoner Abuse
Shays: Abu Ghraib abuses were sex ring
October 13, 2006 HARTFORD, Conn. - Republican Rep. Christopher Shays (bio), who is in a tough re-election fight, said Friday the Abu Ghraib prison abuses were more about pornography than torture.
The veteran Connecticut congressman said a National Guard unit was primarily responsible for the abuses although it was actually the 372nd Military Police Company from Cresaptown, Md., an Army Reserve unit.
"It was a National Guard unit run amok," Shays said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It was torture because sex abuse is torture. It was gross and despicable ... This is more about pornography than torture."
Shays sought to defuse controversy over his previous comments suggesting the Abu Ghraib abuses weren't torture but instead involved a sex ring of troops.
"Now I've seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture," Shays said at a debate Wednesday.
"It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from (Maryland) who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked," added Shays. "And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn't torture."
The lawmaker's comments were in a transcript of the debate provided by his opponent, Diane Farrell. Shays' campaign, contacted Friday, did not dispute the comments.
Abu Ghraib is the Baghdad prison where abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers led to an international scandal. Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib were brutalized and sexually humiliated by military police and intelligence agents in the fall of 2003. At least 11 U.S. soldiers have been convicted in the scandal.
Elected in 1987, Shays has distinguished himself as a moderate Republican who often breaks with his party, especially on his signature issue of campaign finance reform. But in the last week, his comments have echoed conservative talk radio.
Shays defended House Speaker Dennis Hastert's handling of a congressional page scandal, saying no one died like at Chappaquiddick in 1969 when Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) was involved.
"I know the speaker didn't go over a bridge and leave a young person in the water, and then have a press conference the next day," the embattled Connecticut congressman told The Hartford Courant in remarks published Wednesday.
"Dennis Hastert didn't kill anybody," he added
Shays is waging a bruising re-election fight against Farrell.
"Once again, Chris is trying to back away from an earlier statement because it's politically expedient," Farrell said Friday. "It's typical Chris."
Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd, who appeared at a news conference with Farrell on Friday, said people are going to jail because of torture at Abu Ghraib.
"It's not because it was some pornography ring. I'm surprised anyone would make that suggestion," Dodd said. "The suggestion that somehow this was something less than that is, again, almost bordering on the bizarre."
During the campaign stop, Dodd criticized a direct-mail flier from the National Republican Congressional Committee titled, "Diane Farrell: Coffee Talk with the Taliban," that had been sent to voters in the southwestern Connecticut district.
"This is absolutely the worst kind of politics in America," Dodd said. "The people who associate themselves with that party and these things must be held accountable."
Farrell has received money and an endorsement from the Council for a Livable World, a 44-year-old Washington, D.C., organization that works to reduce nuclear weapons. In the mailer, Republicans said the Council has a "leader who wanted someone to sit down and talk with the Taliban instead of just forcibly removing them from power."
In a statement Friday, Shays said the NRCC had crossed the line with the mailing and called on the Republican organization to "put an end to sending this type of garbage."
On its Web site, the council calls the NRCC claim bogus and says board member Roger Fisher, an expert on conflict resolution who teaches at Harvard University, "recommended combining carrots and sticks to persuade the government of Afghanistan to turn over Osama bin Laden."
Recently, Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist said during a trip to Afghanistan that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and he favored bringing "people who call themselves Taliban" into the government.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061013/ap_on_el_ho/connecticut_shays
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5I1rGFCVOs
Marine Sergeant Comes Forward to Report Abuse at Guantanamo Bay
The Pentagon says it is fully cooperating with a brand new investigation into allegations of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay.
The allegations come from a Marine Corps sergeant, 23-year-old Heather Cerveny, who spent a week at the base in late September as a legal aide to a military lawyer representing detainees.
In a sworn affidavit filed with the Pentagon Inspector General, Sgt. Cerveny says she met several Navy prison guards at a club on the base where, over drinks, they described harsh physical abuse.
"One sailor specifically said, 'I took the detainee by the head and smashed his head into the cell door,'" Sgt. Cerveny tells ABC News in an exclusive interview.
She says she was "shocked" to hear several guards from different parts of the camp speak openly of mistreating prisoners.
"Everyone in the group laughed at all their stories of beating detainees," she recalled. "None of them looked like they cared. None of them looked shocked by it."
One of the guards "was telling his buddy, 'Yeah, this one detainee, you know, really pissed me off, irritated me. So I just, you know, punched him in the face.'"
Sgt. Cerveny says the guards also talked about taking away detainees' privileges "even when they're being good" and denying their requests for water. In her affidavit, she states she was told "they do this to anger the detainees so they can punish them when they object or complain."
When asked why, she claims a guard named Steven told her it's "because he hates the detainees and that they are bad people. He stated that he doesn't like having to take care of them or be nice to them," she says in the affidavit.
Sgt. Cerveny says the guards told her they worked at Camps 5 and 6. When she asked one of the guards about the consequences of their actions, "He said nothing. Everyone in the group was laughing."
They stopped laughing when they found out she worked for a marine defense lawyer.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/10/exclusive_full_.html
Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse
Haditha killings
Report suggests Marines culpable in Haditha killings
03 August, 2006 A probe into the killing of 24 Iraqis by a squad of Camp Pendleton Marines last November concluded the killings were carried out deliberately and apparently in violation of the rules of engagement, an unnamed Pentagon official was quoted as saying Wednesday.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/08/03/news/top_stories/8106191650.txt
beginning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haditha_killings
outside Samarra, U.S. soldiers crossed the line in slayings, prosecutor argues
TIKRIT, Iraq -- A military prosecutor said Friday that four U.S. soldiers accused of murder in Iraq crossed the line and violated the "laws of war," arguing they freed three detainees, encouraged them to flee and then shot them down as they ran.
"Soldiers must follow the laws of war. That's what makes us better than the terrorists, what sets us apart from the thugs and the hit men. These soldiers did just the opposite," Capt. Joseph Mackey said in closing arguments at a hearing to determine if the four should face a court-martial -- and possibly the death penalty.
But a lawyer for one of the accused soldiers said the three Iraqi men "got exactly what they deserved" and urged a military investigator to recommend that murder charges filed against the four be dismissed.
Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, Spc. William B. Hunsaker, Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard and Spc. Juston R. Graber are accused of murder in the killing of the three Iraqi men taken from a house May 9 outside Samarra.
The soldiers, all from the 101st Airborne Division's 187th Infantry Regiment, declined to testify at the hearing, relying instead on statements they made to military investigators.
By RYAN LENZ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
sexual assault on military personnel
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/274349_robert17.html
http://hometown.aol.com/milesfdn/myhomepage/
West Point cadet found guilty of rape, attempted rape
September 29, 2006 West Point — A senior at the U.S. Military Academy will spend the next eight years behind bars for the rape and attempted rape of two former cadets.
Lonnie Austin Story of Poplar Bluff, Mo., was found guilty after a four-day court-martial that ended yesterday.
He is the first cadet convicted of rape at the nation's oldest service academy since women were admitted in 1976. A previous case nine years ago ended in acquittal.
Cadet Story "hasn't just ruined his own reputation; he tarnished the reputation of West Point, where trust, loyalty, honesty and respect are supposed to mean the world," said Capt. Tom Song, an Army prosecutor.
"Cadets are supposed to live by (these ideals) so when they are tested they know what the right thing to do is. After four years at West Point, he missed the point all together," Song said.
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060929/NEWS/609290319
Female Soldiers Treated 'Lower Than Dirt'
U.S. Army Specialist Suzanne Swift will spend her 22nd birthday tomorrow confined to the Fort Lewis base in Washington, where she is awaiting the outcome of an investigation into allegations that she was sexually harassed and assaulted by three sergeants in Iraq.
Swift says the sergeants propositioned her for sex shortly after arriving for her first tour of duty in February 2004. She remained in Iraq until February 2005. "When you are over there, you are lower than dirt, you are expendable as a soldier in general, and as a woman, it's worse," said Swift in a recent interview with the Guardian.
When Swift's unit redeployed to Iraq in January 2006, she refused to go and instead stayed with her mother in Eugene, Oregon. She was eventually listed as AWOL, arrested at her mother's home on June 11, sent to county jail, and transferred to Fort Lewis.
"She's miserable and isolated," says Sara Rich, Swift's mother. "It's not good to have an idle mind while you're dealing with PTSD and sexual trauma. I want them to release her so I can get her the care she needs. I'm tired of waiting."
A colonel outside of Swift's chain of command is investigating the case, but Rich says she has been given little information with no time frame. "I believe they're trying to break her down using fear and intimidation."
http://www.alternet.org/story/38942/
Mitchell Wade
Former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham
Cunningham taken into custody, ordered to repay $1.8 million
Once-honored name now tops list of infamy
The former Republican lawmaker's sentence of eight years and four months edges out Democrats James Traficant of Ohio, with whom Cunningham served in Congress, and Mario Biaggi of New York.
In 2002, Traficant was sentenced to eight years in prison for conspiracy to commit bribery, obstruction of justice and other charges.
In 1988, Biaggi was sentenced to eight years for racketeering, bribery, conspiracy and other charges for directing federal contracts to a military contractor. Biaggi extorted stock worth about $1.8 million in the case.
Other top sentences include the case of Mel Reynolds, D-Ill., who was sentenced to five years in prison in 1995 for criminal sexual assault, soliciting child pornography and obstruction of justice.
In the celebrated Abscam scandal in 1980, seven members of Congress were convicted of accepting bribes in an FBI sting investigation, but the average amount for each was $45,000. Traficant was convicted of accepting a few thousand dollars.
Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., was charged in 1995 in the congressional check-kiting scandal. He was convicted and sentenced to 17 months. His take for that and other crimes totaled less than $1 million in cash and services.
Thomas Kontogiannis
April 15, 2006 ROSEDALE, N.Y. – In 1996, multimillionaire businessman Thomas Kontogiannis threw a party for a Queens school superintendent, who was planning a run for Congress.
The star of the party was Randy “Duke” Cunningham, then a Republican congressman from San Diego.
Today, Cunningham is serving eight years and four months in prison for taking more than $2.4 million in bribes, most of it from two defense contractors.
His old friend Kontogiannis, meanwhile, has emerged as the mystery man – co-conspirator No. 3 – in the continuing investigation.
According to Cunningham's plea agreement, Kontogiannis gave the former congressman $328,000, most of it through an overpayment for Cunningham's boat, the Kelly C.
Kontogiannis and one of his relatives, identified as co-conspirator No. 4, also allowed Cunningham, 63, to use one of the family's mortgage companies to make favorable property deals.
What Kontogiannis, 59, got from the relationship with Cunningham remains unclear.
“It's not the standard bribe scenario,” said a Justice Department official who declined to be identified because the investigation is ongoing. “He had a lot of money. What went to Duke was chump change.”
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20060415-9999-1n15tommyk.html
Katherine Harris
Group files criminal complaint against Rep. Katherine Harris
We believe the Public Integrity Division of the Department of Justice should conduct an investigation to determine if Representative Katherine Harris (R-FL) has violated U.S. Code 18§201: Bribery of public officials and witnesses.
The Chief Executive of MZM, Inc., Mitchell Wade, recently plead guilty to conspiracy, tax evasion, corrupting defense officials, and election fraud as a result of the investigation into former Representative Randolph "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA). MZM, Inc. is described as a homeland security and counterintelligence company. The statement includes references to other members of Congress in addition to Rep. Cunningham. According to the Statement of Offense, U.S.A. vs. Mitchell J. Wade, filed in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia on February 23, 2006:
In early 2005, Wade dined with Representative B in Washington DC restaurant. At this dinner, Wade and Representative B discussed, among other topics, the possibility of MZM's hosting a fundraiser for Representative B later in the year, and the possibility of obtaining funding and approval for a Navy counterintelligence program in Representative B's district and locating an MZM office in that district.
Rep. Harris has been identified publicly as "Representative B." According to The Washington Post:
Washington defense contractor Mitchell J. Wade admitted yesterday in federal court that he attempted to illegally influence Defense Department contracting officials and tried to curry favor with two House members…
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Group_files_criminal_complaint_against_Rep._0501.html
Ties to Mitchell Wade
U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris may have given her dirty campaign money to a charity, but she can't pretend to have cleansed herself. "Representative B," as she is called in a federal prosecutor's account of bribery and election fraud by Washington defense contractor Mitchell Wade, is too close to this scandal to brush it off. Voters deserve more answers than the vague statement she released Thursday night.
Leave aside the fact that, in March 2004, Wade personally placed 16 $2,000 campaign checks with the same date in Harris' hands. Now comes the disclosure that one of her aides, Mona Yost, left last May to work for MZM Inc., the company Wade owned. Further, Harris dined with Wade in early 2005 and then asked her Defense Appropriations subcommittee to set aside $10-million for an MZM facility in Sarasota. The subcommittee refused.
This is past the point where Harris can credibly claim ignorance. She claimed in her statement Thursday night that she requested the money to bring jobs to Sarasota, not in exchange for contributions she says she did not know would be illegally reimbursed. Let's get this straight: Harris is handed $32,000 in checks by an executive who wants a $10-million defense contract, she dines with him to discuss the request and then she writes a letter specifically for his project after her other appropriations requests were submitted? And she is unclear about the intent?
The strange case of supernatural water
Florida's citrus crop contributes billions of dollars to the state's economy, so when that industry is threatened, anything that might help is considered. Back in 2001, when citrus canker was blighting the crop and threatening to reduce that vital source of revenue, an interesting — if not quite scientific — alternative was considered.
Katherine Harris, then Florida's secretary of state — and now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives — ordered a study in which, according to an article by Jim Stratton in the Orlando Sentinel, "researchers worked with a rabbi and a cardiologist to test ‘Celestial Drops,' promoted as a canker inhibitor because of its ‘improved fractal design,' ‘infinite levels of order,' and ‘high energy and low entropy.'"
The study determined that the product tested was, basically, water that had apparently been blessed according to the principles of Kabbalic mysticism, "chang[ing] its molecular structure and imbu[ing] it with supernatural healing powers."
Rep. John T. Doolittle
A week before former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham was sentenced to prison, he stressed to the court that a number of other lawmakers also helped arrange federal funding for the defense contractors who bribed him.
None of the lawmakers Cunningham mentioned by name – Reps. Katherine Harris of Florida, Virgil Goode of Virginia and John Doolittle from the Sacramento suburb of Granite Bay – has been accused of criminal wrongdoing. But each has admitted assisting either Mitchell Wade or Brent Wilkes, co-conspirators in the Cunningham case, at a time when the two businessmen were giving them tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions.
And at least one of the lawmakers, Doolittle, received a direct monetary benefit from those contributions through commissions paid to his wife, Julie.
Acting as her husband's campaign consultant, Julie Doolittle charged his campaign and his Superior California Political Action Committee a 15 percent commission on any contribution she helped bring in.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20060319-9999-1n19dolittle.html
Reagan Regime scandals
More Executive branch appointees were indicted and convicted of felonies during the Reagan Administration than any other administration.
More than likely the Bush 43 regime will push Reagan to second place in the 'Most Corrupt' rating.
Iran Contra
#26: Michael Ledeen: Improving on Mussolini
Ledeen has been called the driving philosophical force behind the neoconservative movement and (by me) "the most influential and unabashed warmonger of our time." A resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (#7), contributing editor at National Review and former Pentagon, State Department and White House consultant under Reagan (when his Israeli intelligence contacts were used to help broker the illegal Iran-contra affair), Ledeen is often quoted by top Bush officials, including Cheney, Rumsfeld and former Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. But they don't quote quotes like these--at least not in public: In March 2003, Ledeen, a leading and longtime proponent of the invasion of Iraq--and of Iran, Syria and no doubt other countries yet to be named--told a forum that "the level of casualties [in Iraq] is secondary" because "we are a warlike people...we love war."
He has written that "Change--above all violent change--is the essence of human history"; "the only way to achieve peace is through total war"; and "The purpose of total war is to permanently force your will onto another people." He was quoted approvingly by National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg as saying, "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."
In April 2003--one month into the Iraq war--Ledeen gave an address titled "Time to Focus on Iran," and declared, "the time for diplomacy is at an end." Ledeen's attacks on Iran, even when Iran was assisting the US, "helped keep the Bush administration from seeking any rapprochement with Tehran," wrote William Beeman of the Pacific News Service in 2003. "Were it in Ledeen's hands, we would invade Iran today."
Most Americans have never heard of Michael Ledeen, Beeman noted, but if the US "ends up in an extended shooting war throughout the Middle East, it will be largely due to his inspiration."
