The LNS is posted today from the 33rd floor of a high
rise office building in the downtown financial
district in San Franciso...Secretary of Homeland
Insecurity Tom Ridge is playing with his Crayolas
again...and so, these scandal, as well as very bad
economic news, and, of course, the compelling message
of Kerry-Edwards, are kept off the air waves as much
as possible...But, in the spirit of the increasingly
unhinged and incredibly shrinking _resident's new
stress on the theme "RESULTS MATTER," the LNS wants to
make sure you don't miss the latest news on the MOST
INCOMPETENT, CORRUPT and ILLEGITIMATE administration
in US history...Does anyone care? What has happened in
this country? The LNS believes you do. The LNS feels
there is an Electoral Uprising coming in November
2004.
Associated Press: The U.S. grand jury investigating
the leak of an undercover CIA operative's name has
interviewed Secretary of State Colin Powell, but he is
not a subject of the inquiry, the State Department
said Sunday. Department spokesman Richard Boucher,
traveling with Powell on a diplomatic visit to Poland,
said Powell appeared on July 16 at the grand jury's
invitation. ``The secretary is not a subject of
inquiry,'' Boucher said. ``He was pleased to cooperate
with the grand jury.''
Matt Kelley, Associated Press: U.S. authorities in
Baghdad spent hundreds of millions of Iraqi dollars
without keeping good enough records to show whether
they got some services and products they paid for,
government investigators said.
Officials of the former Coalition Provisional
Authority did not have records to justify the $24.7
million cost for replacing Iraq's currency, according
to the report from the authority's inspector general.
The report also said the authority paid nearly
$200,000 for 15 police trucks without knowing if the
trucks were delivered.
Michael Hirsh and John Barry, Newsweek: Rumsfeld may
be rebuked by his own commission investigating prison
abuse. James Schlesinger has always been a hawk. But
in four decades of public life, the square-jawed
former professor has also been known as mulishly
independent, whether as Defense and Energy secretary
or CIA director. (President Gerald Ford, annoyed by
Schlesinger's arrogance, fired him.) All of which
could add up to an unpleasant surprise for another old
Washington lion who is not renowned for his humility:
Donald Rumsfeld. In mid-August, the commission that
Schlesinger chairs - handpicked by Rumsfeld from
members of his own Defense Policy Board - is expected
to issue its final report on abuses by U.S.
interrogators stemming from the Abu Ghraib Prison
scandal. NEWSWEEK has learned the Schlesinger panel is
leaning toward the view that failures of command and
control at the Pentagon helped create the climate in
which the abuses occurred.
The four-member commission's report is still being
drafted and its final conclusions are not yet
definite. But there is strong sentiment to assign some
responsibility up the line to senior civilian
officials at the Pentagon, including Rumsfeld, several
sources close to the discussions say. The Defense
secretary is expected to be criticized, either
explicitly or implicitly, for failing to provide
adequate numbers of properly trained troops for
detaining and interrogating captives in Afghanistan
and Iraq. His office may also be rebuked for not
setting clear interrogation rules and for neglecting
to see that guidelines were followed. The
commissioners "are taking an unvarnished look at the
issue as a whole," said a source close to the
commission. "A more extensive look than some people
had initially thought they might take."
Cleanse the White House of the Chickenhawk Coup and Its
War-Profiteering Cronies, Show Up for Democracy in
2004: Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-CIA-Leak-Powell.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 1, 2004
Grand Jury Hears Testimony From Powell
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:11 p.m. ET
WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- The U.S. grand jury
investigating the leak of an undercover CIA
operative's name has interviewed Secretary of State
Colin Powell, but he is not a subject of the inquiry,
the State Department said Sunday.
Department spokesman Richard Boucher, traveling with
Powell on a diplomatic visit to Poland, said Powell
appeared on July 16 at the grand jury's invitation.
``The secretary is not a subject of inquiry,'' Boucher
said. ``He was pleased to cooperate with the grand
jury.''
Powell is the latest official from the Bush
administration to be called before the grand jury in
Washington.
White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and spokesman
Scott McClellan have been summoned, and grand jury
investigators have interviewed President Bush and Vice
President Dick Cheney in their offices.
Powell's appearance was first reported Sunday by
Newsweek.
The grand jury investigation is to determine who
leaked the name of Valerie Plame to syndicated
columnist Robert Novak last July. Disclosure of an
undercover officer's identity can be a federal crime.
Novak revealed Plame's work for the CIA a week after
her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador,
criticized Bush's claim in the 2003 State of the Union
address that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from
Niger, a major uranium-exporting nation in Africa.
The CIA had sent Wilson to Niger in mid-1992 to check
the allegation, and he concluded it was unfounded. The
administration has acknowledged that its inclusion in
the State of the Union address was a mistake.
In printing Plame's name, Novak wrote that two
administration officials said Wilson's wife suggested
that he be sent to Niger.
Boucher referred questions about Powell's testimony to
the Justice Department because grand jury operations
are secret.
Asked whether Powell called or talked to Novak about
Wilson's wife, Boucher said: ``Of course not!
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&u=/ap/20040730/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_audit_13&printer=1
Audit: Spending Records on Iraq Lacking
Fri Jul 30,11:23 AM ET
By MATT KELLEY
WASHINGTON - U.S. authorities in Baghdad spent
hundreds of millions of Iraqi dollars without keeping
good enough records to show whether they got some
services and products they paid for, government
investigators said.
Officials of the former Coalition Provisional
Authority did not have records to justify the $24.7
million cost for replacing Iraq (news - web sites)'s
currency, according to the report from the authority's
inspector general. The report also said the authority
paid nearly $200,000 for 15 police trucks without
knowing if the trucks were delivered.
The report, released in Washington late Wednesday, is
the first formal audit of contracting procedures under
the authority, which oversaw billions of dollars in
reconstruction spending that critics say was doled out
without proper controls.
The agency's defenders say it did the best it could
given the pressure of operating in a war zone and
trying to get reconstruction going quickly.
In a report to Congress being released Friday, the
authority's inspector general, Stuart W. Bowen Jr.,
said his teams found several management problems.
Bowen's office is investigating 27 possible criminal
cases and has closed or referred for prosecution 42
others.
One example was poor control over an oil pipeline
repair contract that resulted in more than $3 million
in overcharges, including billing for work not done.
Also, the assistant to the U.S. military coach for an
Iraqi sports team gambled away part of the $40,000
allocated for team travel to tournaments.
Officials have seized $29,000 in an investigation of
counterfeiting in Iraq, the report to Congress said.
The report did not say if any investigations had
resulted in criminal charges but noted that at least
two Americans had been fired and returned to the
United States. Iraqi prosecutors are handling the case
of an Iraqi who took payoffs while falsely claiming to
be with the Education Ministry, the report said.
The general overseeing reconstruction contracts in
Iraq said in response to the audit that the lack of
documentation did not prove the money was wasted.
"We believe the contracts awarded with Iraqi funds
were for the sole benefit of the Iraqi people, without
exception," Army Brig. Gen. Stephen M. Seay wrote to
the inspector general.
The authority ran Iraq from May 2003 until the United
States handed over power to an interim Iraqi
government on June 28. The authority used seized funds
from Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s government
and oil revenues to pay for 1,928 contracts worth
about $847 million, the inspector general's report
said.
An authority rule from last August called for
following international law and U.N. regulations while
spending Iraqi money. But the authority did not issue
standard operating procedures or develop effective
contract review, monitoring and evaluation, the report
said.
Seay said the authority's contracting office was
overworked, understaffed and under constant threat of
attack.
The investigators reviewed 43 contracts and found 29
had incomplete or missing documentation. For each of
the 29, "We were unable to determine if the goods
specified in the contract were ever received, the
total amount of payments made to the contractor or if
the contractor fully complied with the terms of the
contract," investigators wrote.
For example, the official overseeing a contract for 15
double-cab pickup trucks for an Iraqi police
department paid $87,500 before the trucks were
delivered and an additional $100,000 without getting
written records that the trucks arrived at the police
department, the report said. The report did not say
whether the trucks were ever delivered.
The report also criticized the contract for exchanging
Iraqi currency, which had been cited as a key success
by the authority's former administrator, L. Paul
Bremer.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press | Home | Privacy
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http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/080204Y.shtml
Battle Over Blame
By Michael Hirsh and John Barry
Newsweek
09 August 2004 Issue
Rumsfeld may be rebuked by his own commission
investigating prison abuse.
James Schlesinger has always been a hawk. But in
four decades of public life, the square-jawed former
professor has also been known as mulishly independent,
whether as Defense and Energy secretary or CIA
director. (President Gerald Ford, annoyed by
Schlesinger's arrogance, fired him.) All of which
could add up to an unpleasant surprise for another old
Washington lion who is not renowned for his humility:
Donald Rumsfeld. In mid-August, the commission that
Schlesinger chairs - handpicked by Rumsfeld from
members of his own Defense Policy Board - is expected
to issue its final report on abuses by U.S.
interrogators stemming from the Abu Ghraib Prison
scandal. NEWSWEEK has learned the Schlesinger panel is
leaning toward the view that failures of command and
control at the Pentagon helped create the climate in
which the abuses occurred.
The four-member commission's report is still being
drafted and its final conclusions are not yet
definite. But there is strong sentiment to assign some
responsibility up the line to senior civilian
officials at the Pentagon, including Rumsfeld, several
sources close to the discussions say. The Defense
secretary is expected to be criticized, either
explicitly or implicitly, for failing to provide
adequate numbers of properly trained troops for
detaining and interrogating captives in Afghanistan
and Iraq. His office may also be rebuked for not
setting clear interrogation rules and for neglecting
to see that guidelines were followed. The
commissioners "are taking an unvarnished look at the
issue as a whole," said a source close to the
commission. "A more extensive look than some people
had initially thought they might take."
"Some people" includes Rumsfeld himself. The
Defense secretary's original charter for the
commission asked only for the Schlesinger team's
"professional advice" and obliquely urged them to
steer clear of "issues of personal accountability,"
which Rumsfeld said "will be resolved through
established military justice and administrative
procedures." (After Schlesinger argued about the
charter language, Rumsfeld allowed that "any
information you may develop will be welcome.")
Rumsfeld also indicated that he expected members to
spend most of their 45-day inquiry reviewing the
findings of the other "procedures." These include five
ongoing inquiries into abuses, none of which is
designed to probe responsibility beyond the uniformed
ranks.
But the commission quickly struck out on its own,
recruiting 20 investigators and sending them as far
afield as Afghanistan and Iraq. They also
re-interviewed most of the principal players in the
abuse scandal - including the commanders at Abu
Ghraib, senior Pentagon civilians and Rumsfeld - and
obtained classified material that even the Senate
Armed Services Committee hasn't yet seen. Pentagon
spokesman Joseph Yoswa said he had no comment on the
forthcoming report.
As Schlesinger and his team rush to complete their
draft report by Friday - the final version is expected
Aug. 18 - participants say there's been a good amount
of contention over how high to go and how tough to be.
The central "philosophical debate," sources say, turns
on whether Al Qaeda poses such a new challenge that
the old rules of detention and interrogation are no
longer adequate, or whether America should stick to
its traditions and treaty obligations, even against an
adversary that respects neither. Despite Schlesinger's
willingness to criticize, to go "where the facts and
information take them," as one source said, he tends
to take the hawkish, this-is-a-new-war side. Arrayed
with him is said to be commission director James
Blackwell, a civilian contractor. On the
traditionalist, Geneva side of the debate are former
Defense secretary Harold Brown, a Democrat, and
retired Air Force Gen. Charles Horner. At one point,
Schlesinger argued that Geneva Conventions did not
apply to Afghanistan because the Taliban were not
"reciprocating." He backed off when Brown countered
that U.S. legal and moral standards conform to Geneva
in any case.
Rumsfeld has been widely criticized for paring
down the occupation force for Iraq. Until now,
however, that criticism has rarely extended to the
prison-abuse issue. But some commissioners believe
that the 800th Military Police Brigade, which ran the
Iraqi prison system, was badly overstretched and not
trained well for detention duty. Previously, the
brigade's 372nd MP Company - the main culprit in the
Abu Ghraib abuses - had served as traffic cops.
Some on the commission also believe that Rumsfeld
and senior officials failed early on to set up clear,
baseline rules for interrogations - an ethical "stop"
sign, in a sense. This opened the way to abuse in an
atmosphere in which President George W. Bush and
senior officials were demanding that interrogators
obtain better intel and were openly questioning the
Geneva Conventions. The lack of direction from the top
created confusion at Abu Ghraib and other prisons,
according to testimony heard by the Schlesinger
commission. Documents indicate that interrogation
officials often undercut or ignored Army Field Manual
34-52, the standard doctrine setting interrogation
guidelines in conformance with Geneva. One example is
a classified assessment of Army detention operations
in Iraq done in the late summer of 2003 - a copy of
which was obtained by NEWSWEEK. While the author, the
then Gitmo commander Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, refers
at one point to "providing a humane environment," he
does not mention Geneva protections or the field
manual when he recommends that MPs "set conditions"
for "successful exploitation of the internees."
The Schlesinger commission report is one of
several slated for completion in the doldrums of
mid-August, when few people are paying attention. But
the report won't be the final word on abuse. The
Senate Armed Services Committee will likely hold
hearings in the fall, despite administration pressure
on the chairman, Sen. John Warner, to wrap his
investigation up quickly. And those hearings - with
help from the Schlesinger team - could well determine
how history will view Rumsfeld's tenure.
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