The evil temptations of lobbyists

Sibel Edmonds has a new op-ed over at BradBlog.

Brad's introduction reads:

The former FBI translator and whistleblower suggests blackmail may be at the heart of Congressional refusal to bring accountability and oversight to its own members - such as both Hastert and Harman - in matters of espionage and national security.

Read it all.

Sibel criticizes those on the left and the right, in the corporate media and alternative press, Democratic and Republican, who have either ignored the Harman/AIPAC story, or have attempted to spin the story in various directions, echoing Jeff Stein's recent criticisms of "some wild imaginations... in the blogarama coverage."

Sibel notes that the Harman case, at first glance:

"may appear to involve blackmailing --- or a milder version, exploitation of Congress by the Executive Branch --- deeper analysis would suggest even further implications, where Congressional members themselves use the incriminating information against each other to prevent pursuit or investigation of cases that they may be directly or indirectly involved in."

Regarding Harman, and those spinning the story, Sibel says:

"But, let's not forget, the misuse of incriminating information, for the purpose of blackmail, does not turn the practitioner of the wrongful deed into a victim, nor does it make the wrongful criminal deed less wrong. Instead of spinning the story, taking away attention from the facts in hand, and making Harman a victim, we must focus on this case, on Harman, as an example of a very serious disease that has infected our Congress for far too long. Those who have been entrusted with the oversight and accountability of our government cannot do so if they are vulnerable to such blackmail from the very same people they are overseeing…Period."

That is, if Harman is guilty, her guilt is independent of any motives of those targeting and/or blackmailing her, and the only way of cleaning up the system is to stand up against the 'blackmail,' whether hard or soft.

Not surprisingly, Sibel points to the direct parallels between the Harman case and the Hastert case. As far as has been publicly reported, we only 'know' that Harman was picked up on wiretaps that targeted other suspected Israeli agents, but Sibel makes clear that in the Hastert case, Hastert himself was specifically "targeted by FBI counterintelligence and counterespionage investigations."

In fact, as Sibel has repeatedly said, in 1998/9, there was so much evidence against Hastert that there were substantial steps taken to appoint a Special Prosecutor - apparently derailed by the Clinton impeachment (which incidentally led to the rise of Turkey's clients, Bob Livingston and then Hastert, to Speaker of the House.) As Sibel has repeatedly emphasized, when the Executive Branch finds evidence of illegal activity by Americans on FISA wiretaps, they can and should then open up criminal cases against the perpetrators - whether counter-narcotics, counter-espionage or whatever - and this is apparently exactly what they did in the case of Hastert, and others.

The 'debate' about what to do in the Harman case has always essentially assumed that the FBI can do exactly that; transfer something learned during a counter-intelligence investigation to somewhere that it can be acted upon. So I was very surprised to see TPM Muckraker 'report' today that:

"And Melvin Goodman, a former CIA analyst who's now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, underlined the extent to which a leak of this nature would violate national security protocol. "When American names came up on these intercepts, they were handled very carefully," Goodman told TPMuckraker. "The names would be blacked out.""

Now, I generally like the work of TPM Muckraker, but they (and others) have (correctly) been named by Jeff Stein as leading the 'Harman -was-framed' pushback.

I'm also a fan of Mel Goodman, so I suspect that his comments here have been mis-characterized, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him walking-back certain elements of his on-the-record comments. (At the end of the column, he notes that "some within the FBI were "incredibly bitter about the way [Attorney General Eric] Holder dropped the case."")

I am not an expert on FISA and minimization procedures, but if Goodman is correct that Harman's name should have been blacked out on a FISA wiretap, then perhaps this was an abuse of power (although, as Sibel says, that doesn't forgive the underlying crime), or perhaps Harman was, in fact, the target of these wiretaps. Perhaps the wiretaps were legitimately the result of a FISA investigation, and that might explain why her name was not minimized? Again, I don't pretend to know what I'm talking about here, but that might explain some of the discrepancies about the reporting here. As I noted here, for some reason, "Hastert seems keen to emphasize... that the wiretap was a "legally authorized wiretap")

I'm getting a bit off-track.

Make sure you read Sibel's whole piece.

Sibel ends by quoting Will Rogers:

"If we have Senators and Congressmen there that can't protect themselves against the evil temptations of lobbyists, we don't need to change our lobbies, we need to change our representatives."

So true, and yet weirdly discomforting. Is it possible?

Bruce Fein & Turkey

There was a great discussion on Bill Moyer's Journal on Friday regarding torture. The guests were Mark Danner and Bruce Fein. As you probably know, Danner recently wrote a terrific article in the NYRB on torture and the Red Cross report, and Bruce Fein has been an elequent Republican voice on the constitution and rule of law, and called for the impeachment of George Bush way back when. Fein was also associate deputy attorney general under the Regan Administration. As it happens, I was looking into Fein earlier this week.

Fein is Chairman and co-founder (with Bob Barr, David Keene and Richard Viguerie) of a group called the American Freedom Agenda which was founded in March 2007.

The ten points of the American Freedom Agenda pledge are:

1. No military commissions except on the battlefield.
2. No evidence extracted by torture or coercion.
3. No detaining citizens as unlawful enemy combatants.
4. Restoring habeas corpus for suspected alien enemy combatants.
5. Prohibiting warrantless spying by the National Security Agency in violation of law.
6. Renouncing presidential signing statements.
7. Ending secret government by invoking State Secrets Privilege.
8. Stopping extraordinary rendition by the United States.
9. Stopping threats to prosecuting journalists under the Espionage Act of 1917.
10. Ending the listing of individuals or organizations as terrorists based on secret evidence.

All of those are admirable, of course, although the events of the last 24 hours warrant that item #9 deserves to be highlighted. That item has an odd specificity to it.

You see, Bruce Fein is now in private practice as a lobbyist. He has one company called Fein & Fein with his son Bruce which provides "premium appellate, trial, regulatory, and media services." He has another at the same address called The Lichfield Group with only two principals, the other being a Mathilde Fein, presumably a family member. The 'Expertise' page on Lichfield's website claims a lot of things.

Under a category called "United States and Canada" they claim, among other things, "high level connections with the Department of Justice, the Department of State, and the Central Intelligence Agency, on the one hand, to The New York Times, The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal."

Under "Central and Eastern Europe," they claim, among other things, that their services "reach constitutional reform, oil and gas, NATO and European Union membership, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and OPIC, relations with the Hague Tribunal, WTO problems."

Under "South America," they claim, among other things, to provide consulting regarding "drug trafficking, money laundering, and thickening ties with the United States Congress, the Executive Branch, and law and regulatory enforcement agencies."

Under "The Middle East and North Africa" they note that "The Group offers consulting in areas of major concern:... terrorism; nuclear and missile proliferation money laundering; free trade agreements with the United States; oil and gas exploration, refining, and transportation."

Also, Mathilde Fein was "recently invited by the Foreign Policy Institute of Turkey and Bilkent University to present a paper on democratic elections in Iraq and human rights issues."

I don't want to be accused of cherry picking here, so please read the 'expertise' page at the site.

Fein has another company called Bruce Fein & Associates, located at 1025 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 1000. Washington, D.C.. 20036, which incidentally shares that address with the Turkish American Legal Defense Fund - TALDF, where Bruce Fein is the main contact. A bunch of similar astro-trurf groups - including the Turkish Coalition of America, TCA - share the same address. Bruce Fein is 'resident scholar' at the Turkish Coalition of America. Fein's Huffington Post bio also notes that he was previously 'resident scholar' at ATAA. According to Sibel Edmonds, the ATAA conducts "the dirty activities" of the Turkey/Israeli lobby - including delivering bribes and other forms of blackmail to congressmen like Hastert, Roy Blunt, Tom Lantos, Dan Burton and others. Phil Giraldi similarly fingers ATAA here.

Fein's Huffington Post bio also notes that he has been "a consultant to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus." Isn't that odd. Just last month I noted that the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) was at the heart of Sibel's money laundering claims -and that the TRNC was also at the heart of money laundering operations for Central Asian dictators, terrorists like Osama Bin Laden, and "US government agencies," "certain US government people," "certain non-profit organizations in the US," "certain US institutions including banking institutions," and "certain US-based organizations."

So, yeah, Bruce Fein is a 'resident scholar' at the Turkish Coalition of America, which, as Mizgin notes, "is closely linked to the Deep State and has created and founded an "academic" program to officially deny the Armenian genocide."

The president of the Turkish Coalition of America is Lincoln McCurdy who "was the president and chief executive officer, 1998 - 2004, and executive director, 1989 – 1998, of the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in Washington." The ATC is at the heart of Sibel's claims.

It should therefore not surprise anyone that Bruce Fein would be called upon to write op-eds such as this which parrots Turkey's position on the Armenian genocide. Fein's position, coincidentally, mimics the genocide-denial position of Bob Livingston, who has long been on Turkey's payroll. Who'd have thought that different people, with different ideological bents, paid to have the same opinion, would actually have the same 'opinion'?

I don't care whether the Armenian genocide resolution makes sense or not (Giraldi argues that it is stupid - but I can't find the link) - but the fact that someone with the apparent stature and integrity of Bruce Fein has apparently succumbed to Mammon on this issue is cause for concern for us all.

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Update: More here

AIPAC case dismissed. What happens to Larry Franklin?

So the long-expected dismissal of the AIPAC/Rosen/Weissman case has arrived - in a Friday news dump. Great.

Greenwald's response is typical:

(D)espite being as vigorous a critic of AIPAC as can be, I absolutely believe the Obama DOJ did the right thing.
[]
No matter how harmful one might believe AIPAC to be, the end of this prosecution is something everyone who cares about press freedoms and even free speech should cheer.

There is a problem with that, though, as JTA's Ron Kampeas writes:

But Boente (acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia) made it clear that while Rosen and Weissman are free, the government likes the tool it unearthed in an obscure section of the 1917 Espionage Act -- the ability to charge civilians with dealing in classified information -- and it's going to keep it.

Phil Giraldi adds:

"If you pass information that you know to be classified to a foreign Embassy, that should be considered espionage, shouldn’t it?
[]
Is there something wrong here? Yes, something terribly wrong, though for the life of me I don’t know how we will ever take our government back. Nothing changes. AIPAC always wins. Depressing."

One other point: None of the coverage today mentions the fact that Larry Franklin is currently a free man, and that his eventual sentence was supposed to be dependent on him co-operating. What happens to Franklin now? And what happens to all of the other evidence he has given FBI counter-intelligence in the meantime? Will that ever be acted upon?

**Update: Court filing due May 14

Bashir Noorzai

I've written, but never published, a number of articles about Bashir Noorzai. He was sentenced today to life in prison.

Here is a 2007 article about him in Time.

Here is an article from today about his conviction.

Obama on State Secrets, again

As I expected yesterday, there was a lot of buzz about the State Secrets question in Obama's presser today - some of it more favourable than others.

Michael Scherer from Time, who asked the question, wrote about it here. Glenn Greenwald has a predictable response here. CJR had a good response here - they quote the ACLU's Ben Wizner saying:

“I’m just delighted that Time magazine thought it was worth asking the question,”

and

“If he wants to put that gloss on it, that it was a mistake, that it was hasty, all the better.... We welcome it.”

(I presume that was original reporting, because I can't find a press release from Wizner.)

I agree with both of Wizner's points.. And I also agree with the criticism Obama's response received because he, you know, lied - but the important thing, I think, is that he apparently felt that he needed to walk back from an embarrassing and unsustainable position. That is good news.

Of course, the proof will be in the pudding - but in many ways, it is actually good news that he lied about the situation (and the subsequent media coverage) - because that will mean that any future decisions that Obama, Craig and Holder make about the State Secrets Privilege will be under intense scrutiny.

And of course, given my particular interest in all of this, the Obama DoJ needs to retroactively review cases of SSP abuse, and Obama will be judged on the DoJ's response to the Ben-Ami Kadish case, the Rosen/Weissman/AIPAC case, as well as the Harman/AIPAC case.

It should be an interesting couple of months. Things seem to be escalating from all angles.

(BTW - Nobody seemed to notice my analysis of Sibel's latest interview. Take a look)

Who is Israeli spy MEGA?

In an interview last week, Phil Giraldi told Scott Horton that he had heard that admitted Israeli spy Ben-Ami Kadish was to be finally sentenced last Friday, but, according to PACER, nothing has happened.

Let's hope that he is negotiating with the authorities to disclose the identity of Mega.

As some background, here is a snip from Giraldi's June 08 article, "The Spy Who Loves Us. Pay no mind to the Mossad agent on the line":

"The arrest revived suspicions that Israeli agents might still be operating inside the U.S., most particularly “Mega,” whose cover name was revealed in an NSA-intercepted conversation between two Israeli intelligence officers. “Mega” was clearly at the policymaker level, as Kadish and Pollard frequently sought files by name or number. Someone more senior in Washington appeared to be directing the Israeli handlers toward sensitive information. Whoever “Mega” was, he is still at large."

Scott Horton interviewed Giraldi at the time. I wrote up a transcript a while ago, but never published it. Here you go:

Scott Horton: Do me a favor, Phil, I was ten years old at the time. I barely know a thing about it, tell me and the audience about Jonathan Pollard and the giant spying case in the 1980s.

Phil Giraldi: Well, Jonathan Pollard was an Israeli spy, he spied for at least three years for them, he was receiving money. His motivation apparently was somewhat loyalty to Israel in a kind of generic way, but it was mostly money that he was interested in.

And he worked for the Defense Department and he was able to steal apparently an entire room full of highly sensitive documents, many of which related to security of communication systems and things like this, and capabilities of satellites and the kind of information that is of top-level interest to any intelligence service.

So he stole a whole room full of this type of classified information, gave it to Israel, and Seymour Hersh among others believes that a lot of this information wound up in Russia, where the Israelis exchanged it for Russian permission to let some Russian Jews leave the country. So this information wound up presumably in the US's principal enemy, so this was not a benign activity that wound up just in Israel to benefit the Israelis. It went far beyond that.

Scott Horton: Well now there's something that I do remember from 1986 - that the Soviet Union were the bad guys and had a bunch of nuclear missiles pointed at us.

Phil Giraldi: Yeah, that's the point. The defenders of Pollard often say that he really did nothing wrong, he was helping an ally; he was giving them information they needed for their defense and so on and so forth. That's nonsense, and the reason why Pollard has not been released from prison is the fact that everyone on the inside knows very well that Pollard gave them tons of information that had nothing to do with Israel, nothing to do with the Middle East, and in fact the information went on to the Russians, and benefited the Russians in their confrontation with us.

Scott Horton: Right, now just recently - a month and a half ago or so, it came out that there was another Israeli spy, actually an American citizen who was spying for Israel named Ben-Ami Kadish and, just from what I read in Newsweek, I think this sort of shed brand new light on the Jonathan Pollard case from 1986. How's that?

Phil Giraldi: Yes, it does indeed shed new light on it because when Pollard was caught and convicted, the Israelis privately agreed with the US government that they had been spying, and that they wouldn’t do it anymore, and they basically said that this was a rogue operation.

Well it turns out that it wasn’t a rogue operation, because there was another rogue out there, and also the NSA has intercepted communications that the Israelis had yet another more senior spy whom they referred to as MEGA - and there's been a lot of speculation as to who MEGA is. MEGA obviously is still out there.

Scott Horton: I want to hear some speculation as to who MEGA is!

Phil Giraldi: I don't think I'd better do that (laughs) - I know a few names that are being thrown around, I mean, even Henry Kissinger has been named as a possible MEGA, but there are a couple more that are quite plausible when one thinks about it, but I'd rather not name names.

Scott Horton: Geez. I'm trying to remember, because I know that James Bamford has talked about, or brought up, an old Washington Post story from 1997 or something like that where they talk about, whoever this guy MEGA was, he was in a position where he knew not just the file numbers, but even the super-duper top secret titles of intelligence reports and so forth, that he must be a very senior level person to have this kind of intelligence clearance, is that right?

Phil Giraldi: Yeah, that's the theory, because apparently both Pollard and Kadish were directed to request and steal specific intelligence reports or assessments, and they had the names, they had the numbers, and these names and numbers - because of the sensitivity of the reports - could only have come from someone who was at the very top level of the US government.

Scott Horton: At the very top level? So this would be, maybe not necessarily cabinet level, but say, someone like the head of counter-terrorism or something like that?

Phil Giraldi: I would say, yeah - you're looking basically at maybe the one or two or three top people in something like the FBI, something like the NSA, but more likely, the evidence seems to indicate that MEGA was a political player, so that would actually more likely be someone at the cabinet level, or somebody equivalent to that. So the speculation would be that it is someone maybe in the National Security Council structure - someone like that.

Scott Horton: Yeah, I guess that's what I was trying to get at with the counter-terrorism thing - somebody who is an executive agent, not necessarily a Secretary or something, but pretty high up - and I think one of the other qualifications for this MEGA is that they've had this level of clearance in multiple administrations, right?

Phil Giraldi: Yeah, the individual involved would have - so it seems - would have been in place during both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Scott Horton: Alright. Interesting stuff!

Phil Giraldi: That narrows down the speculation as to who it might be...

Scott Horton: That's got to be less than a dozen people on your list though, right?

Phil Giraldi: Try about six!

Scott Horton: Try about six... half a dozen on Phil's short list there. Well I'm sure that there's a grand jury investigating this right now, right?

Phil Giraldi: Of course.

Scott Horton: (laughs) OK. Sorry. I'm sure that's actually not the case. Now this guy Ben-Ami Kadish apparently gave the Israelis information on F15s and I think even on nuclear weaponry - is that right?

Phil Giraldi: Yeah, my understanding is he gave them avionics information on F15s and F16s and also there was information that dealt with nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

Scott Horton: Now, this is an old case, sort of a cold case. This guy is an old man, he's not going to be prosecuted for treason?

Phil Giraldi: Well, I would like to see him prosecuted for treason, but it is not likely. I'm quite surprised that they let him out on bail, and this is a case of treason if there ever was one, but he is out on bail. I would think that there is considerable risk of his fleeing to Israel, from which he would not be extradited. So, I'm quite confused by the signal that the US courts are sending on this.

Scott Horton: (Some snippage) Now, we've got to get to the neoconservatives, because, I don’t think it has been alleged, for at least a long, long time, that our household-name favorite neocons like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, are actually Israeli spies, but are clearly such Israeli partisans that their foreign policy seems to be all centered around the Clean Break plan that David Wurmser and Douglas Feith and Richard Perle wrote up for Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, and they've been described as agents of influence for Israel - what do you say about that?

Phil Giraldi: Well, first of all let me point out that all those people you've named have in fact been investigated, under suspicion of passing classified information to Israel, so it's not just pure speculation that these people would on occasion have indicated or demonstrated a willingness to go beyond what are the normal restraints to assist the Israelis as they see it. Whether they are agents of influence for Israel or not is a matter of semantics I think. These people are all deeply in love with Israel and have strong and continuing relationships, and very often business relationships.

Doug Feith as you know and Richard Perle both have had business interests in Israel that have enriched them greatly. So that's one side of it. But the point is that the neocons have been engaging in this con-job forever, which is essentially that, the way the see the world, Israel and the US are united and are virtually one entity, and everybody else is basically a shade of grey or a shade of black.

I have tried to reconstruct the org charts from way-back-when to see who was on the National Security Council during those administrations in an attempt to identify who is on Giraldi's short list for MEGA but didn't have much luck.

Who is MEGA?

By the way, I know that times are tough economically, but Antiwar.com really should employ an intern to transcribe all/many of Scott Horton's interviews exist in print as well as audio. Scott is such an insanely great interviewer, and he gets such great interviews, and the long-format fleshes out such important detail. Unfortunately most of it disappears into the ether because Google can't (yet) search audio. For example, consider yesterday's Eric Margolis interview where Scott asks Eric to repeat his claims that the CIA sponsored and supported the Uighur terrorist movement. This is directly relevant to the third category of Sibel's Gallery of Rogues. If / when I get a chance I'll transcribe the relevant parts of this Margolis interview, and his previous interviews with Scott about the same issue - and I'll connect some dots - but this stuff is too important to be dependent on my availability / state of mind or whatever.

(Updated from the original)

Obama's State Secrets.

Obama was asked about State Secrets Privilege in his presser by Michael Scherer of Time. Here is the exchange:


Transcript:

Question: Thank you, Mr. President. During the campaign, you criticized President Bush's use of the state secrets privilege, but U.S. attorneys have continued to argue the Bush position in three cases in court. How exactly does your view of state secrets differ from President Bush's? And do you believe presidents should be able to derail entire lawsuits about warrantless wiretapping or rendition if classified information is involved?

Obama: I actually think that the state secret doctrine should be modified. I think right now it's overbroad.

But keep in mind what happens, is we come in to office. We're in for a week, and suddenly we've got a court filing that's coming up. And so we don't have the time to effectively think through, what exactly should an overarching reform of that doctrine take? We've got to respond to the immediate case in front of us.

There -- I think it is appropriate to say that there are going to be cases in which national security interests are genuinely at stake and that you can't litigate without revealing covert activities or classified information that would genuinely compromise our safety.

But searching for ways to redact, to carve out certain cases, to see what can be done so that a judge in chambers can review information without it being in open court, you know, there should be some additional tools so that it's not such a blunt instrument.

And we're interested in pursuing that. I know that Eric Holder and Greg Craig, my White House counsel, and others are working on that as we speak.

That comment should get some traction tomorrow. It appears as though Obama has changed his mind on this issue, and if he wants to use the excuse that he simply inherited the problem, I don't care much even if it is not true, as Wired's Threat Level notes:

Obama’s explanation has a nice ring to it, but ultimately falls flat.

Describing the Justice Department as essentially on auto-pilot when pushing for the blanket dismissal of warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition cases would be reasonable enough if this were Obama’s 14th day in office, instead of his 100th. When the administration first argued Bush’s state secrets position just two days after Obama was sworn in, really, only Threat Level complained.

But since then the Justice Department has unrelentingly continued to push the privilege, including making an argument before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the administration’s position on Tuesday.

Brain Beutler makes the same point at TPM:

But it's hard to square (Obama's excuse) with what the administration's actually done. DOJ lawyers haven't asked the courts for more time, or to withhold key pieces of information. Rather, they've argued that these cases--Jewel v NSA, Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v Obama, and Mohammed v Jeppesen Dataplan--be tossed out entirely. And they've done that by invoking the state secrets privilege. In fact, in Jewel, the administration went so far as to claim "sovereign immunity" for the government from just about any lawsuit involving wiretapping. That position is even more radical than Bush's was.

It's hard to imagine Obama walking that claim back. But as far as state secrets go, now he's on the record.

There was also an NYT editorial yesterday re the Jeppesen ruling, The State-Secrets Privilege, Tamed:

Of the many ways that the Bush administration sought to evade accountability for its violations of the law and the Constitution under the cover of battling terrorism, one of the most appalling was its attempt to use inflated claims of state secrecy to slam shut the doors of the nation’s courthouses.

Sadly, the Obama administration also embraced this tactic, even though President Obama criticized the cult of secrecy while running for office, leaving it to the courts to stand up for transparency and accountability.

It appears that Obama didn't like stuff like this, not surprisingly. It is good to see that Obama is apparently willing to change his mind. Of course, we still need to see the results of the Craig/Holder review, and whether they will review previous cases as well. It's also somewhat interesting that Obama mentioned the DoJ review, but didn't mention the State Secrets Protection Act.