intelligence

This weekend amazed me. During all the talk shows hardly a word was mention about the resignation of Susan Ralston. Instead all focus was on the Foley scandal yet again. Ralston's resignation is equally, if not more, important than Foleygate.

Ralston was Karl Rove's top aide. You could say she was to Karl Rove what Karl Rove is to Bush (she was Rove's Rove). The reasoning for her resignation is very troubling and shows an extreme lapse in our national security:

A top aide to White House strategist Karl Rove resigned Friday after disclosures that she accepted gifts from and passed information to now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, becoming the first official in the West Wing to lose a job in the influence-peddling scandal.

(emphasis mine).

Something that must be asked is what information Ralston passed to Abramoff. It is bad enough that a now convicted felon had 485 visits to the White House, but just as troubling is Abramoff's super Zionistic life. Abramoff was using much of his money to help fund militias in Israel. Now we must ask the question, "If Ralston was passing secrets to Abramoff, was Abramoff in turn passing secrets to these Israeli militias?".

It is troubling that the intelligence committees in both the House and Senate are not looking more into a possible breach of our national security. Of course with the Republican leadership, nothing Bush does is wrong. This is why we need the media to spend a little less time on Foley and a lot more time on Ralston and Abramoff. Their ignoring of this story could be detrimental to our nation's security.

From Yesterday's NYTimes:

On July 10, 2001, the book says, Mr. Tenet and his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, met with Ms. Rice at the White House to impress upon her the seriousness of the intelligence the agency was collecting about an impending attack. But both men came away from the meeting feeling that Ms. Rice had not taken the warnings seriously.

Tomorrow's WaPo:

The book also reports that then-CIA Director George J. Tenet and his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, grew so concerned in the summer of 2001 about a possible al-Qaeda attack that they drove straight to the White House to get high-level attention.

Tenet called Rice, then the national security adviser, from his car to ask to see her, in hopes that the surprise appearance would make an impression. But the meeting on July 10, 2001, left Tenet and Black frustrated and feeling brushed off, Woodward reported. Rice, they thought, did not seem to feel the same sense of urgency about the threat and was content to wait for an ongoing policy review.

I wonder if Condi feels the urgency now?

Raw Story has much more.

Turns out Gonzalez can authorize a wiretap for up to a year under FISA as
Georgia10
points out:

First, let me point out that under Section 1802, the government can
wiretap a foreign power for up to one year without a warrant. Not 72 hours.
An entire year. This provision is applicable when the Attorney General can
"certify" that the information is used only for foreign intelligence
purpose. It requires certainty, but that provision is available to the
administration.

Check out her entry at
Daily Kos,
it is filled with some fun facts including how much Bush has actually used FISA.
I remember one of the Senators making a statement during Monday's hearings that
they extended the time a tap could be conducted without a warrant after 9/11. I
wasn't sure how long they extended or what the grounds were but apparently this
is what they were talking about.

The domestic spying debate is no stranger to Washington. As matter of fact,
the same argument took place thirty years ago:

An intense debate erupted during the Ford administration over the
president's powers to eavesdrop without warrants to gather foreign
intelligence, according to newly disclosed government documents. George H.W.
Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are cited in the documents.

The roughly 200 pages of historic records obtained by The Associated
Press reflect a remarkably similar dispute between the White House and
Congress fully three decades before President Bush's acknowledgment he
authorized wiretaps without warrants of some Americans in terrorism
investigations.

Article continues

here.

Amazing the same people involved in today's argument are the same ones
involved so long ago. The big difference today is we have a law that clearly
lays out the procedure for wiretapping and even gives the President a special
court with a 72 hour window to get warrants.

It appears more evident that this groups only goal is creating an imperial
presidency that answers to no one.

Two weeks ago tomorrow was when Democrats shut down senate in order to get
answers about the intelligence committees phase two report. That is the second
part of the report that looks into the intelligence leading up to the war in
Iraq. During that closed session, it was agreed upon that a committee be formed
including three Senators from each side of the aisle. They were to act as a over
site into Sen. Pat Robert's committee and find out why the report has not been
completed. Today is the deadline for that committee to report back.

Now I am sitting here wondering if we will actually hear back from that
committee today, or if it will just be forgotten like phase two was. If that is
the case then perhaps another ballsy move by Harry Reid is in order. The
American people deserve to know and are demanding to know the truth. We want to
know if the President lied, manipulated the intelligence, or disposed of key
intelligence so he could promote this invasion. With over 2,000 soldiers dead it
is not just our right to know, it is our duty as citizens and voters to know the
truth.

I will be following C-Span closely today to see if anything comes out on this
story. Hopefully we will start hearing the truth but I won't hold my breath. It
seems as though there are too many important questions that still need to be
answered and those answers will only come from the President and vice-President
and they must be under oath. If a blow job can be important enough to make a
President swear on the Bible to tell the truth then A war certainly is.

Arianna Huffington has put together a cheat sheet on the CIA leak case to
help people better understand what has transpired. She has coined that the leak
case is worse than Water Gate, which could actually be an understatement.

Watergate never actually got out of the planning cycle. It was more like a
deterred terrorist attack that we hear so much about today. In the leak case,
the crime has already been committed and our valuable resource of intelligence
has been crippled because of it.

To make matters even worse, we are also now in a war over the faulty
information that was at the heart of this crime. No one died in Watergate. 2,000
American soldiers and countless other lives have been lost over Plamegate.

Sorry, but this crime is far worse than Watergate. I kind of stayed clear of
calling it  Plamegate because of the seriousness of this case as compared
to Watergate. We actually need a new catch phrase for these crimes. Something
that echoes the dreadful outcome of the actual cry.

What we have seen unfold before our eyes is something that you would usually
only see in a Hollywood action movie. A President's trusted aides working hard
to lie a nation into war, effectively deceiving the very public that gave him
his job.

Indeed, calling this Plamegate sends out an over all message to the American
people that this may not be as bad as some are making it out to be. It is far
worse, so if anyone has any suggestions to a name for this treasonous crime
please leave it in the comments.

In the mean time go on over to

The Huffington Post and read what Arianna has put together. She does do
great work.

We continue to hear stories of torture from Guantanimo Bay.
The administration continues to denounce the claims. They do admit to some
“extreme” interrogation tactics that result in good intelligence however.

The big question is; If the intelligence is so good then
why must we “rig” the trials?

Leaked emails from two former military prosecutors said
that the hearings were in fact being rigged because of the lack of evidence the
military has. A month prior to being transferred out of Gitmo, Major Robert
Preston, who was one of the prosecutors, concluded an email with:

After all, writing a motion saying that the process will
be full and fair when you don't really believe it is kind of hard,
particularly when you want to call yourself an officer and lawyer.

Another prosecutor, Captain John Carr who ended up leaving
the post also wrote:

When I volunteered to assist with this process and was
assigned to this office, I expected there would at least be a minimal effort
to establish a fair process and diligently prepare cases against significant
accused, Instead, I find a half-hearted and disorganised effort by a skeleton
group of relatively inexperienced attorneys to prosecute fairly low-level
accused in a process that appears to be rigged.

Capt Carr also said further in the email that:

You have repeatedly said to the office that the military
panel will be handpicked and will not acquit these detainees and that we only
needed to worry about building a record for the review panel.