BushCo Articles of Impeachment

Bush White House has its own interrogation room
Think Progress

In Ron Suskind’s new book, Suskind describes a disturbing case in Washington, D.C., where security officials detained and interrogated Usman Khosa, a Pakistani U.S. college graduate, because he was “fiddling” with his iPod near White House gates. Officials took Khosa to an interrogation room “beneath” the White House:

Usman is trundled from the SUV, escorted through the West Gate, and onto the manicured grounds. No one speaks as the agents walk him behind the gate’s security station, down a stairwell, along an underground passage, and into a room — cement-walled box with a table, two chairs, a hanging light with a bare bulb, and a mounted video camera. Even after all the astonishing turns of the past hour, Usman can’t quite believe there’s actually an interrogation room beneath the White House, dark and dank and horrific.

Maybe if Nancy "Impeachment is off the table" Pelosi were to spend some time strapped to that little chair under the White House, she would see some sort of crime?

Book says White House ordered forgery
Politico.com

A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.

Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.

The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”

The letter’s existence has been reported before, and it had been written about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam.’”

The Telegraph story by Con Coughlin (which, coincidentally, ran the day Hussein was captured in his “spider hole”) was touted in the U.S. media by supporters of the war, and he was interviewed on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"Over the next few days, the Habbush letter continued to be featured prominently in the United States and across the globe," Suskind writes. "Fox's Bill O'Reilly trumpeted the story Sunday night on 'The O'Reilly Factor,' talking breathlessly about details of the story and exhorting, 'Now, if this is true, that blows the lid off al Qaeda—Saddam.'"

The White House flatly denied Suskind’s account. Tony Fratto, deputy White House press secretary, told Politico: “The allegation that the White House directed anyone to forge a document from Habbush to Saddam is just absurd.”

The White House plans to push back hard. Fratto added: "Ron Suskind makes a living from gutter journalism. He is about selling books and making wild allegations that no one can verify, including the numerous bipartisan commissions that have reported on pre-war intelligence."

Gee, all the indicators that Suskind's allegation is completely true.

The author claims that such an operation, part of “false pretenses” for war, would apparently constitute illegal White House use of the CIA to influence a domestic audience, an arguably impeachable offense.

But don't tell Nancy Pelosi, since impeachment is "off the table".

Report accuses Bush of misrepresenting Iraq intel
Associated Press

A new Senate report gives a fresh shot of adrenaline to the election-year debate over the Iraq war. President Bush and his top officials deliberately misrepresented secret intelligence to make the case to invade Iraq, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The panel put a new spin on old charges, comparing claims made in five speeches by top Bush administration officials with intelligence reports. The committee says officials wrongly linked Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11 attacks and al-Qaida; claimed Iraq would give terrorist groups chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, and said Iraq was developing drone aircraft to spread chemical or biological agents over the United States.

None was borne out by intelligence.

And once again, we are proven right.

White House recycles backup e-mail tapes
Associated Press

The White House has acknowledged recycling its backup computer tapes of e-mail before October 2003, raising the possibility that many electronic messages — including those pertaining to the CIA leak case — have been taped over and are gone forever.

The disclosure came minutes before midnight Tuesday under a court-ordered deadline that forced the White House to reveal information it has previously refused to provide.

Just in the nick of time.

Among the e-mails that could be lost are messages swapped by any White House officials involved in discussions about leaking a CIA officer's identity to reporters.

And how delightfully convenient.

Before October 2003, the White House recycled its backup tapes "consistent with industry best practices," according to a sworn statement by a White House aide.

The "industry best practices" that they mention apply to folks who don't deal in records that MAY NOT BE DELETED UNDER PENALTY OF LAW. So, while it is perfectly acceptable for Joe's Rib Shack to rotate the backup tapes of it payroll data, it is NOT acceptable for the White House or any other government agency> The FBI should impound the drives and all the mail servers' back up tapes the emails may have passed through.

"If the backup tapes have been erased or taped over or recycled, it's hard to imagine where we will find copies of many lost e-mails," said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive, said in an interview Wednesday.

"It appears that the White House has now destroyed the evidence of its misconduct," said Anne Weismann, the chief counsel for the ethics group.

I don't know about that. I would turn all the tapes over to the FBI's forensics division. You would be surprised at what can be discovered. Also, I would go after the computers of every single recipient under investigation.

This is obstruction of justice, pure and simple.

US says it has right to kidnap British citizens
London Times

AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

Of course, this was also an illegal act of terrorism, but since the US Congress under Reid/Pelosi have chosen to collude with Bush rather than impeach him, this is what happens. They sanctioned illegal actions by reusing to act, so Bush now expands the scope of his illegal actions.

Kidnapping foreign nationals is an act of war, in fact, we went to war in 1815 over just such actions and wrote a song about it.

Bush E-Mail Mystery Deepens: White House Won't Name Tech Contractor
ABC News

The White House will not identify a private company which appears to be involved in the disappearance of millions of White House e-mails.

The company was responsible for reviewing and archiving White House e-mails, a White House official told congressional staff in May, according to a letter yesterday from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Congressional investigators asked then for the name of the company and "have repeatedly requested" the information since then, according to Waxman.

They are still waiting for an answer, the chairman wrote to White House counsel Fred Fielding. Waxman asked the White House to come up with the company's name by Sept. 10.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel declined to tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com the company's name or explain why the White House would not provide it to Congress.

Fee, fie, foe, fum, I smell another Bush buddy or relative that got a sweet heart deal. You know, maybe someone like Neil Bush? Or maybe some big dollar campaign contributor who got a contract WAY out of proportion to the actual cost of providing the service. Perhaps another "no bid" contract for "cost plus".

Other than that, I can't think of any reason why the Bushies would want to hide this information.

Bush aides' use of GOP e-mail probed
Associated Press

The White House said Wednesday it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mails concerning official White House business.

Congressional investigators looking into the administration's firing of eight federal prosecutors already had the nongovernmental e-mail accounts in their sights because some White House aides used them to help plan the U.S. attorneys' ouster. Democrats were questioning whether the use of the GOP-provided e-mail accounts was proof that the firings were political.

Democrats also have been asking if White House officials are purposely conducting sensitive official presidential business via nongovernmental accounts to get around a law requiring preservation - and eventual disclosure - of presidential records. The announcement of the lost e-mails - a rare admission of error from the Bush White House at a delicate time for the administration's relations with Democratically controlled Capitol Hill - gave new fodder for inquiry on this front.

The reason they have "admitted error" is that this was the plan all along. The whole point of using an outside mail server was to play this card if and when subpoenas started flying.

Note to Henry Waxman: It is VERY hard to get rid of email entirely. Copies of the sent mail exist on the sender's computers. Backups are made of mail servers. Commercial services like Yahoo!, Google, Hot Mail, et al, probably have copies.

It is time to start seizing hardware.

U.S. attorney worried 'gloves would come off' over criticism of ouster
McClatchy News Service

A high-ranking Justice Department official told one of the U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration that if any of them continued to criticize the administration for their ousters, previously undisclosed details about the reasons they were fired might be released, two of the ousted prosecutors told McClatchy Newspapers.

While the U.S. attorney who got the call regarded the tone of the conversation as congenial, not intimidating, the prosecutor nonetheless passed the message on to five other fired U.S. attorneys. One of them interpreted the reported comments by Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, as a threat.

How can anyone with a functional brain cell view that phone call as anything BUT a threat?

Justice Department officials denied that the conversation with the U.S. attorney ever took place, and Elston said he called several of the fired U.S. attorneys but never made any such comments.

“I had no conversation in which I discussed with any U.S. attorney what they should or should not say to the media regarding their removal,” Elston said.

Right, and I wonder how long this denial will remain "operational"?

Justice Department Fires 8th U.S. Attorney
Washington Post

An eighth U.S. attorney announced her resignation yesterday, the latest in a wave of forced departures of federal prosecutors who have clashed with the Justice Department over the death penalty and other issues.

Margaret Chiara, the 63-year-old U.S. attorney in Grand Rapids, Mich., told her staff that she was leaving her post after more than five years, officials said. Sources familiar with the case confirmed that she was among a larger group of prosecutors who were first asked to resign Dec. 7.

Chiara is the second female U.S. attorney to be dismissed. The other is Carol Lam of San Diego. Before the firings, 15 of 93 U.S. attorneys were women, department records show.

The firings have been criticized by lawmakers in both parties and have prompted proposals in Congress to restrict the ability of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to appoint interim prosecutors indefinitely.

White House Is Reported to Be Linked to a Dismissal
New York Times

A United States attorney in Arkansas who was dismissed from his job last year by the Justice Department was ousted after Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, intervened on behalf of the man who replaced him, according to Congressional aides briefed on the matter.

Ms. Miers, the aides said, phoned an aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales suggesting the appointment of J. Timothy Griffin, a former military and civilian prosecutor who was a political director for the Republican National Committee and a deputy to Karl Rove, the White House political adviser.

Later, the incumbent United States attorney, H. E. Cummins III, was removed without explanation and replaced on an interim basis by Mr. Griffin. Officials at the White House and Justice Department declined to comment on Ms. Miers’s role in the matter.

Paul J. McNulty, the deputy attorney general, said at a hearing last week that Mr. Cummins had done nothing wrong but was removed to make room for Mr. Griffin. It was not known at the time Mr. McNulty testified that Ms. Miers had intervened on Mr. Griffin’s behalf.

Her involvement was disclosed on Wednesday by Justice Department officials led by Mr. McNulty, who held a closed-door briefing for senators on the Judiciary Committee after Democrats criticized the dismissals of 7 to 10 United States attorneys as politically motivated.

Ms. Miers, whose resignation as White House counsel was effective Jan. 31, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Senators to seek answers about U.S. attorneys' exits
San Diego Union

A national political storm is brewing over the departures of several top prosecutors, including San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam.

Lam has not commented since reports surfaced last week that she was asked to resign as the chief federal law enforcement officer in San Diego.

Sources told The San Diego Union-Tribune that superiors in the Justice Department are unhappy with decreased prosecutions for gun and immigration violations.

Lam, a political independent, was appointed by President Bush in 2002.

In recent months, at least four other U.S. attorneys have announced their departures, two of them confirming that they've been asked to resign.

With reports yesterday that the Department of Justice has demanded the resignation of another top prosecutor, in Las Vegas, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is scheduled this week to answer questions from skeptical senators.

Meanwhile, H.E. “Bud” Cummins, the former U.S. Attorney in Little Rock, Ark., said this weekend that he was, asked to leave his job so the Bush administration could fill it with a political appointee.

Cummins said he had planned to leave the post anyway, so was not troubled by the request.

Arkansas' senators, both Democrats, criticized the appointment of Tim Griffin, a former White House lawyer who also worked for the Republican National Committee, as Cummins' successor.

Outgoing New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias also said he was asked to resign, but without explanation.

Lam's sin was prosecuting Randy "The Dukester" Cunningham for corruption.

Cheney admits expanded military spying role inside US
AFP

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has admitted that the US military and CIA have been spying on the financial dealings of Americans -- intelligence gathering normally authorized only by civilian policing agencies.

The New York Times broke the story overnight, reporting that the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency had been using "national security letters" to obtain the banking and credit records of Americans and foreigners suspected of terrorist activities in the United States.

The US military and the CIA have long been restricted in their spying activities inside the United States and are barred from conducting traditional domestic law enforcement work in the country.

But Cheney confirmed the main outlines of the report and defended the Pentagon and CIA activities as legal and necessary to protect military installations inside the United States.

Actions such as this was one of the reasons Nixon was being impeached.

He misused the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service, and other executive personnel, in violation or disregard of the constitutional rights of citizens, by directing or authorizing such agencies or personnel to conduct or continue electronic surveillance or other investigations for purposes unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office; he did direct, authorize, or permit the use of information obtained thereby for purposes unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office; and he did direct the concealment of certain records made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of electronic surveillance.

Troop Surge Already Under Way
ABC News

President Bush's speech may be scheduled for tonight, but the troop surge in Iraq is already under way.

ABC News has learned that the "surge" Bush is expected to announce in a prime time speech tonight has already begun. Ninety advance troops from the 82nd Airborne Division arrived in Baghdad Wednesday.

An additional battalion of roughly 800 troops from the same division are expected to arrive in Baghdad Thursday. Eighty percent of the sectarian violence occurs within a 30-mile radius of Baghdad, so that is where most of the additional troops will be concentrated.

CNN: Bush Is ‘Very Seriously’ Considering Sending More Troops To Iraq
Think Progress

CNN’s John King reported this afternoon that President Bush is planning a “substantial policy shift” on Iraq and is “very seriously considering…agreeing with Sen. John McCain and increasing U.S. troop levels in the short-term.”

King said the White House has postponed the announcement of the policy shift to January because Bush “has asked for more advice about” how he could send 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq, and administration officials “need more time to put all that on the table.”

King said the White House sees a political benefit to delaying the announcement. “If you are going to disagree with the Iraq Study Group and not accept its major recommendations, then let some time go by, let the American people forget about that a little bit” and “buy some time for critics” to attack the ISG.

U.S. Army Battling To Save Equipment
Washington Post

Field upon field of more than 1,000 battered M1 tanks, howitzers and other armored vehicles sit amid weeds here at the 15,000-acre Anniston Army Depot -- the idle, hulking formations symbolic of an Army that is wearing out faster than it is being rebuilt.

The Army and Marine Corps have sunk more than 40 percent of their ground combat equipment into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to government data. An estimated $17 billion-plus worth of military equipment is destroyed or worn out each year, blasted by bombs, ground down by desert sand and used up to nine times the rate in times of peace. The gear is piling up at depots such as Anniston, waiting to be repaired.

The depletion of major equipment such as tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and especially helicopters and armored Humvees has left many military units in the United States without adequate training gear, officials say. Partly as a result of the shortages, many U.S. units are rated "unready" to deploy, officials say, raising alarm in Congress and concern among military leaders at a time when Iraq strategy is under review by the White House and the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, is lobbying hard for more money to repair what he calls the "holes" in his force, saying current war funding is inadequate to make the Army "well." Asked in a congressional hearing this past summer whether he was comfortable with the readiness levels of non-deployed Army units, Schoomaker replied: "No."

Lt. Col. Mike Johnson, a senior Army planner, said: "Before, if a unit was less than C-1," or fully ready, "someone would get fired." Now, he said, that is accepted as combat-zone rotations are sapping all units of gear and manpower. "It's a cost of continuous operations. You can't be ready all the time," he said.