HavenWorks.com/email/archive

A-Z

!Search

News by Date

NewsStand

_Global_

_US_

A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z

- E-Mail Archive
E-Mail News, E-Mail News History Archives

Use "Ctrl F" [control F] to FIND what you're looking for.
"Right Click" - "Open in New Window." to avoid reloading this page.

E-Mail Archive:

20071031

US - Global - Ron Paul - Criminal - E-Mail - Internet - Hacking - 2008 Election - Politics - Texas - "'Criminal' Botnet Stumps for Ron Paul, Researchers Allege." ... "If Texas congressman [and 2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate] Ron Paul is elected president in 2008, he may be the first leader of the free world put into power with the help of a global network of hacked PCs spewing spam, according to computer-security researchers who've analyzed a recent flurry of e-mail supporting the long-shot Republican candidate." ... ""This is clearly a criminal act in support of a campaign, which has been committed with or without their knowledge," says Gary Warner, the University of Alabama at Birmingham's director of research in computer forensics. "The question is, will we see more and more of this, or will this bring shame to the campaigns and will they make clear that this is not a form of acceptable behavior by their supporters?" Warner pointed to provisions of the federal Can-Spam Act." ... "Ron Paul spokesman Jesse Benton says the campaign has no knowledge of the scam. Warner himself says that he has no reason to believe that the Paul campaign had anything to do with these messages." ... "Some participants in the online political world have long suspected Paul's technically sophisticated fan base of manipulating online tools and polls to boost the appearance of a wide base of support. But the UAB analysis is the first to document any internet shenanigans." -By Sarah Lai Stirland -Wired

20071029

US - Iraq - Military - Government - Politician - EMail - 2008 Election - Computer - Web - Hacking - "Gen. Petraeus' Spokesman Denies Sending Angry Email -- Plot Thickens." ... "A disturbing email allegedly sent by a top U.S. military spokesman to a leading blogger at Salon.com this past weekend is just starting to draw mainstream attention. Howard Kurtz at The Washington Post mentioned it today, for example. It requires a good deal of background information to fully appreciate it, so I will provide a link to Glenn Greenwald’s blog page at Salon where he offered extensive postings (and updates) Sunday [*] and today [*] about the email purportedly from Army [Colonel] Col. Steven Boylan. But E&P has its own correspondence from Boylan, and I want to focus on that." ... "The long and short of the Greenwald postings: For months the popular blogger -- a former attorney and author of the recent bestseller "A Tragic Legacy" -- has criticized the growing “politicization” of the military attached to Iraq, starting earlier this year and peaking around the appearance of [General] Gen. David Petraeus before Congress (and the media) in September. This was even before William Safire declared, this past weekend, that the general ought to be considered as a running mate for a [2008 Election] Republican candidate for president next year." ... "In the past, Greenwald had received, and printed, emails from Boylan, a public affairs officer and chief spokesman for Gen. Petraeus, denying this trend and/or defending the general. So when he received an angry email from Boylan yesterday, he posted much of it on his blog (and linked to the entire message), while asserting that the views and language in it proved his point about “politicization.”" ... "Then it got really interesting. Boylan in another note to Greenwald seemed to deny that he wrote the email, while denouncing Greenwald for publishing it. But he did not state this clearly and refused to respond to Greenwald’s subsequent request for clarity. Meanwhile, various purported computer experts compared past and present emails from Boylan to Greenwald and suggested (to the latter) that they did seem to come from the same military email address. But no one was certain and, at the least, it raised troubling questions about someone "hijacking" the email account of Gen. Petraeus's chief spokesman. " -By Greg Mitchell -EditorAndPublisher.com

20071017

Mitch McConnell - Media - Surveillance - Intelligence - Politics - Children - Health - E-Mails - Kentucky - "McConnell knew staff encouraged media to look at boy's background." ... "Senate Minority Leader [Kentucky Republican Senator] Mitch McConnell knew his staff had sent e-mails encouraging reporters to look into the background of a boy recruited by Democrats to support expansion of a children's health-care program - even as he denied involvement by his aides, a newspaper reported Wednesday." ... "The Kentucky Republican told a WHAS-TV reporter last Friday that his staff had not been involved in trying to push reporters to look into the financial situation of the 12-year-old boy's family." ... "But McConnell spokesman Don Stewart told The Courier-Journal of Louisville [Kentucky] that he informed McConnell about the Oct. 8 e-mails sometime around Thursday, the day before the interview with the television reporter." -AP via -Kentucky.com
Mitch McConnell - Children - Health - Politics - E-Mails - Media - Radio - Ad - Money - Kentucky - Maryland - "McConnell knew of e-mails about boy: TV interview included denial." ... "Senate Minority Leader [Kentucky Republican Senator] Mitch McConnell knew last week --at a time when he was denying it -- that his staff had sent e-mails encouraging reporters to look into the background of a 12-year-old boy used by Democrats to support expansion of a health-care program." ... "In an interview Friday with WHAS-TV reporter Mark Hebert, the Kentucky Republican said his staff had not been involved in trying to push reporters to look into the financial situation of the boy's family." ... "But McConnell's communications director, Don Stewart, said in an interview Monday with The Courier-Journal that he had told McConnell about the Oct. 8 e-mails sometime around Thursday, the day before the interview with Hebert." ... ""The initial e-mails sent by Stewart were aimed at alerting reporters that bloggers were raising questions about the boy, Graeme Frost of Baltimore [Maryland], and his family's financial circumstances. He backed off that claim in his subsequent e-mails, he said, based on a report from a blogger whom he respected." ... "Stewart said he informed McConnell of his personal role in the matter around Thursday." ... "The next day, Friday, Hebert asked McConnell about the e-mails. The exchange was broadcast Sunday night and again last evening." ... "Hebert asked the senator whether his office was attempting to get reporters to look into Frost's background." ... ""No," McConnell answered." ... "The senator was then asked, "What was the deal with the e-mail from your staffer?"" ... "McConnell replied: "There was no involvement whatsoever."" ... "The boy and his family's circumstances became an issue after he was recruited by the Democrats to respond to [Republican] President Bush's Sept. 29 radio address regarding the expanded health program, which Bush vetoed Oct. 3." ... "Graeme and his sister, Gemma, suffered severe injuries in a 2004 car crash and were beneficiaries of the insurance program." -By James R. Carroll -Courier-Journal.com

20070920

Secret - Phone - E-Mail - Surveillance - Company - Consumer - Lawsuit - Politics - Terrorism - Government - Intelligence - San Francisco - California - "Case Dismissed? The secret lobbying campaign your phone company doesn't want you to know about." ... "The nation’s biggest telecommunications companies, working closely with the [Republican President Bush] White House, have mounted a secretive lobbying campaign to get Congress to quickly approve a measure wiping out all private lawsuits against them for assisting the U.S. intelligence community’s warrantless surveillance programs." ... "The campaign—which involves some of Washington's most prominent lobbying and law firms—has taken on new urgency in recent weeks because of fears that a U.S. appellate court in San Francisco [California] is poised to rule that the lawsuits should be allowed to proceed." ... "If that happens, the telecom companies say, they may be forced to terminate their cooperation with the U.S. intelligence community—or risk potentially crippling damage awards for allegedly turning over personal information about their customers to the government without a judicial warrant." ... "But critics say the language proposed by the White House—drafted in close cooperation with the industry officials—is so extraordinarily broad that it would provide retroactive immunity for all past telecom actions related to the surveillance program. Its practical effect, they argue, would be to shut down any independent judicial or state inquires into how the companies have assisted the government in eavesdropping on the telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks." ... "Among those coordinating the industry’s effort are two well-connected capital players who both worked for President George H.W. Bush: Verizon general counsel William Barr, who served as attorney general under 41, and AT&T senior executive vice president James Cicconi, who was the elder Bush's deputy chief of staff." ... "Working with them are a battery of major D.C. lobbyists and lawyers who are providing "strategic advice" to the companies on the issue, according to sources familiar with the campaign who asked not to be identified talking about it. Among the players, these sources said: powerhouse Republican lobbyists Charlie Black and Wayne Berman (who represent AT&T and Verizon, respectively), former GOP senator and U.S. ambassador to Germany Dan Coats (a lawyer at King & Spaulding who is representing Sprint), former Democratic Party strategist and one-time assistant secretary of State Tom Donilon (who represents Verizon), former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick (whose law firm also represents Verizon) and Brad Berenson, a former assistant White House counsel under President George W. Bush who now represents AT&T." (1, 2, 3) -By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball -MSNBC /Newsweek

20070914

Mark Foley - Gay - Teenage - Student - Electronic - Mail- Internet - Messages - Florida - Enforcement - Politics - "Foley Unlikely to Be Prosecuted; Lewd Internet Messages Too Old." ... "Disgraced former [Florida Republican Representative] Congressman Mark Foley, whose e-mails and instant messages to teenage former congressional pages shocked the country, may avoid criminal prosecution in Florida because of the state's three-year statute of limitations." ... "The Florida Department of Law Enforcement did not start a criminal investigation of Foley until November 2006, making it nearly impossible to prosecute what some officials regarded as the best case, an explicit instant message sent by Foley to a 17-year-old high school student in February 2003, when Foley was in Pensacola, Fla." ... "Under Florida law, it is a third-degree felony both to use the Internet "to seduce, solicit, lure or entice" a minor "to commit any illegal act...relating to lewdness and indecent exposure" and to transmit any "information or data that is harmful to minors...via electronic mail," which includes instant messages." -By Vic Walter and Krista Kjellman -ABCNEWS.com

20070912

US - Intelligence - Politics - Terrorism - Germany - Overseas - Telephone - E-Mail - Secret - Electronic - Surveillance - Law - Connecticut - "Spy Master Admits Error: Intel czar Mike McConnell told Congress a new law helped bring down a terror plot. The facts say otherwise." ... "In a new embarrassment for the [Republican President] Bush administration's top spymaster, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell is withdrawing an assertion he made to Congress this week that a recently passed electronic-surveillance law helped U.S. authorities foil a major terror plot in Germany." ... "The temporary measure, signed into law by President Bush on Aug. 5, gave the U.S. intelligence community broad new powers to eavesdrop on telephone and e-mail communications overseas without seeking warrants from the surveillance court. The law expires in six months and is expected to be the subject of intense debate in the months ahead. On Monday, McConnell—questioned by [Connecticut Independent Democratic Senator] Sen. Joe Lieberman—claimed the law, intended to remedy what the White House said was an intelligence gap, had helped to “facilitate” the arrest of three suspects believed to be planning massive car bombings against American targets in Germany. Other U.S. intelligence-community officials questioned the accuracy of McConnell's testimony and urged his office to correct it. Four intelligence-community officials, who asked for anonymity discussing sensitive material, said the new law, dubbed the "Protect America Act,” played little if any role in the unraveling of the German plot." ... "Late Wednesday afternoon, McConnell issued a statement acknowledging that "information contributing to the recent arrests [in Germany] was not collected under authorities provided by the 'Protect America Act'."" ... "The developments were cited by Democratic critics on Capitol Hill as the latest example of the Bush administration's exaggerated claims—and contradictory statements—about ultrasecret surveillance activities." (1, 2, 3) -By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball -MSNBC /Newsweek

20070905

US - Iraq - Military - Hurricane Katrina - Historical - Secrets - Archive - Electronic - Messages - Presidential Records Act - Government - E-Mail - Politics - "White House sued again over e-mail." ... "The [law]suit by the National Security Archive, a private group, is the latest effort to find out whether the [Republican President] Bush administration lost millions of electronic messages." ... ""The period covers the period beginning with the Iraq war until the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; it doesn't get more historically valuable than that," said Tom Blanton, director of the private organization, which advocates public disclosure of government secrets." ... "The Federal Records Act and the Presidential Records Act require that e-mail be preserved." -By Pete Yost -AP via -SeattlePI

20070831

E-Mail - Computer - Tech - Company - Government - Communications - Archive - Presidential Records Act - Law - Politics - California - "Bush E-Mail Mystery Deepens: White House Won't Name Tech Contractor." ... "The [Republican President Bush] White House will not identify a private company which appears to be involved in the disappearance of millions of White House e-mails." ... "According to the White House, at least five million e-mails were not properly archived and may be lost forever, in apparent violation of the Presidential Records Act. The post-Watergate law states that communications relating to official activity in the offices of the president and vice president are owned by the American public and cannot be destroyed." ... "The firm worked for the Information Assurance Directorate, under the White House chief information officer, [California Democratic Representative Henry] Waxman said he was told." -By Justin Rood -ABCNEWS.com

20070816

Government - Intelligence - Wiretap - Secrets - Phone - E-Mail - Internet - Messages - Technology - Companies - Politics - San Francisco - California - "Classified evidence debated: Court likely to allow suit against AT&T, reject wiretap case." ... "A federal appeals court holding a high-stakes hearing Wednesday in San Francisco [California] on President Bush's clandestine eavesdropping program appeared inclined to keep alive a lawsuit accusing AT&T of illegally letting the government intercept millions of Americans' phone calls and e-mails." ... "At the same hearing, however, the panel appeared skeptical about a suit by a defunct Islamic charity that said it had evidence that it and two of its lawyers had been wiretapped - the only such case in the nation filed by an alleged target of the surveillance program. The snag is that the evidence, a document that the government inadvertently released to the plaintiffs in 2004, is classified top secret and thus can't be used in court to prove that the calls were overheard." ... "The two-hour hearing by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals involved two different cases with a common theme: the Bush administration's argument that the details of the program were so sensitive that a lawsuit challenging any aspect of it would pose an unacceptable risk of exposing state secrets." ... "The AT&T suit, like several cases pending against other telecommunications companies, accuses the firm of giving the National Security Agency unlimited access to customers' phone calls, e-mails and message records. Plaintiffs in the AT&T case have submitted a declaration by a former company engineer who said he helped install equipment at the company's San Francisco office that would divert Internet messages to a room reserved for government-cleared employees." -By Bob Egelko -SFGate.com

20070812

Americans - Global - Communications - Liberty - Politics - Law - Secret - Government - Intelligence - Electronic - Surveillance - Tech - E-Mail - Terrorism - History - "How the Fight for Vast New Spying Powers Was Won." ... "For three days, Mike McConnell, the [Republican President Bush's] director of national intelligence, had haggled with congressional leaders over amendments to a federal surveillance law, but now he was putting his foot down. "This is the issue," said the plain-spoken retired vice admiral and Vietnam veteran, "that makes my blood pressure rise."" ... "McConnell viscerally objected to a Democratic proposal to limit warrantless surveillance of foreigners' communications with Americans to instances in which one party was a terrorism suspect. McConnell wanted no such limits. "All foreign intelligence" targets in touch with Americans on any topic of interest should be fair game for U.S. spying, he said, according to two participants in the Aug. 2 conversation." ... "McConnell won the fight, extracting a key concession despite the misgivings of Democratic negotiators. Shortly after that exchange, the [Republican President] Bush administration leveraged Democratic acquiescence into a broader victory: congressional approval of a Republican bill that would expand surveillance powers far beyond what Democratic leaders had initially been willing to accept." ... "Until September -- and possibly for much longer -- the new law will enable the high-tech collection of foreign communications without judicial scrutiny on a vastly larger scale than previously possible, allowing billions of phone calls and e-mails inside as well as outside the United States to be routinely screened for possible links to terrorism and other security threats." ... "What McConnell wanted most from Congress was to be able to intercept, without a warrant, purely foreign-to-foreign communications that pass through fiber-optic cables and switching stations on U.S. soil. That provision was meant to restore a U.S. capability that existed three decades ago, when a 1978 law allowed warrantless surveillance of foreign calls that were overwhelmingly relayed wirelessly." ... "Since then, advances in technology have caused 90 percent of global communications to pass through wires -- mostly optic fibers capable of carrying 6,000 calls in a strand. That development has been a boon to the National Security Agency, which has worked hard to monitor the traffic with U.S.-based taps and concluded it was doing so legally." ... "But in a secret ruling in March, a judge on a special court empowered to review the government's electronic snooping challenged for the first time the government's ability to collect data from such wires even when they came from foreign terrorist targets. In May, a judge on the same court went further, telling the administration flatly that the law's wording required the government to get a warrant whenever a fixed wire is involved." (1, 2, 3) -By Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus -WashingtonPost

20070807

Alberto R Gonzales - US - Government - Foreign - Intelligence - Surveillance - Law - Politics - E-Mail - Communications - Secrecy - "Same Agencies to Run, Oversee Surveillance Program." ... "The [Republican President] Bush administration plans to leave oversight of its expanded foreign eavesdropping program to the same government officials who supervise the surveillance activities and to the intelligence personnel who carry them out, senior government officials said yesterday." ... "The law, which permits intercepting Americans' calls and e-mails without a warrant if the communications involve overseas transmission, gives Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales responsibility for creating the broad procedures determining whose telephone calls and e-mails are collected. It also gives McConnell and Gonzales the role of assessing compliance with those procedures." ... "The law, signed Sunday by President Bush after being pushed through the Senate and House over the weekend, does not contain provisions for outside oversight -- unlike an earlier House measure that called for audits every 60 days by the Justice Department's inspector general." ... "Central to the new program is the collection of foreign intelligence from "communication service providers," which the officials declined to identify, citing secrecy concerns." -By Walter Pincus with contributions by Joby Warrick-WashingtonPost

20070806

Secret - United States - Government - Foreign - Intelligence - Surveillance - History - Electronic - E-Mail - Telephone- Law - Language - Politics - Terrorism - "Bush Signs Law to Widen Legal Reach for Wiretapping." ... "[Republican] President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government’s authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants." ... "Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States." ... "They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens." ... "“This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation." ... "Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special intelligence court to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, e-mail messages and other electronic communications between individuals inside the United States and people overseas, if the government conducted the surveillance inside the United States." -By James Risen -NYTimes

20070803

Secret - US - World - Intelligence - E-Mail - Communications - Spying - Government - Law - Politics - John A Boehner - Ohio - Illinois - California - New York - "Ruling Limited Spying Efforts: Move to Amend FISA Sparked by Judge's Decision." ... "A federal intelligence court judge earlier this year secretly declared a key element of the [Republican President] Bush administration's wiretapping efforts illegal, according to a lawmaker and government sources, providing a previously unstated rationale for fevered efforts by congressional lawmakers this week to expand the president's spying powers." ... "House Minority Leader [Ohio Republican Representative] John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) disclosed elements of the court's decision in remarks Tuesday to Fox News as he was promoting the administration-backed wiretapping legislation. Boehner has denied revealing classified information, but two government officials privy to the details confirmed that his remarks concerned classified information." ... "The judge, whose name could not be learned, concluded early this year that the government had overstepped its authority in attempting to broadly surveil communications between two locations overseas that are passed through routing stations in the United States, according to two other government sources familiar with the decision." ... "The practical effect has been to block the NSA's [National Security Agency's] efforts to collect information from a large volume of foreign calls and e-mails that passes through U.S. communications nodes clustered around New York and California." ... ""There's been a ruling, over the last four or five months, that prohibits the ability of our intelligence services and our counterintelligence people from listening in to two terrorists in other parts of the world where the communication could come through the United States," Boehner told Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto in a Tuesday interview." ... "Commenting on Boehner's remarks, [Illinois Democratic Representative] Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), the House Democratic Caucus chairman, said yesterday that "John should remember the old adage: Loose lips very much sink ships."" (1, 2) -By Carol D. Leonnig and Ellen Nakashima with contributions by Dan Eggen, Barton Gellman, and Paul Kane -WashingtonPost

20070802

US - Foreign - Intelligence - Surveillance - Government - Terrorism - E-Mail - Telephone - Politics - "Court puts limits on surveillance abroad: The ruling raises concerns that U.S. anti-terrorism efforts might be impaired at a time of heightened risk." ... "A special court that has routinely approved eavesdropping operations has put new restrictions on the ability of U.S. spy agencies to intercept e-mails and telephone calls of suspected terrorists overseas, U.S. officials said Wednesday." ... "The previously undisclosed ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has prompted concern among senior intelligence officials and lawmakers that the efforts of U.S. spy agencies to track terrorism suspects might be impaired at a time when analysts have warned that the United States is under heightened risk of attack." ... "One official said the issue centered on a ruling in which a FISA court judge rejected a government application for a "basket warrant" — a term that refers to court approval for surveillance activity encompassing multiple targets, rather than warrants issued on a case-by-case basis for surveillance of specific terrorism suspects." ... "The recent FISA court ruling was a blow to the [Republican] Bush administration, which had bypassed the court when it launched the NSA program in 2001. The White House moved it back under the FISA court's supervision last year after Democrats won control of Congress and appeared poised to challenge the constitutionality of a program that monitored U.S. residents' communications without warrants." ... "The issue has become the center of a fierce new debate on Capitol Hill over how to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to get a special court's approval before monitoring communications of people in the U.S. Public records show that the court rejects few of the government's requests: In 2005, for example, it approved 2,072 applications and denied none; in 2006 it approved 2,176 and denied, in part, one." -By Greg Miller with contributions by Richard B. Schmitt -LAtimes
Karl Rove - Scott Jennings - US Attorneys - Political - Government - E-Mail - Internet - Presidential Records Act - Vermont - "Rove a no-show at hearing, aide skirts questions." ... "The top aide to White House political adviser Karl Rove refused to answer at least a dozen questions from a Senate committee Thursday about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year, asserting -- as expected -- a claim of executive privilege by [Republican] President Bush." ... "Scott Jennings, who also is a special assistant to Bush, arrived at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with his attorney, Mark Paoletta, to avoid a contempt citation." ... "The panel had subpoenaed both Jennings and Rove, but Rove refused to show up, angering [Vermont Democratic Senator] Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont." ... ""I consider that blanket claim (of executive privilege) to be unsubstantiated," Leahy said he told Jennings before the meeting." ... "The senators sought answers about e-mail sent by dozens of White House staff using e-mail accounts provided through a Republican National Committee Internet address." ... "In March, congressional investigators found evidence that White House staffers had used those e-mail accounts to discuss government business -- including the firings of the U.S. attorneys -- in violation of the Presidential Records Act. The law is aimed at keeping government business separate from partisan political activities." ... ""Mr. Rove has given reasons for the firings that have now been shown to be inaccurate, after-the-fact fabrications," Leahy said in a statement issued Wednesday evening. "Yet he now refuses to tell this committee the truth about his role in targeting well-respected U.S. attorneys for firing and in seeking to cover up his role and that of his staff in the scandal."" -CNN

20070726

Alberto Gonzales - Karl Rove - Monica Goodling - US Attorneys - Terrorism - Phone - E-Mail - Surveillance - Intelligence - Law- Politics - New York - "Rove Summoned as Democrats Escalate Fight With Bush (Update2)." ... "Senate Democrats sought a special prosecutor to investigate whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lied to lawmakers and they subpoenaed [Republican] President George W. Bush's top political aide, Karl Rove, to testify about the firing of U.S. attorneys." ... "Charges by four Democratic senators that Gonzales repeatedly lied under oath, plus the latest subpoena, raised the stakes in the congressional fight with Bush over his refusal to allow aides to testify about the firing of nine prosecutors last year." ... "``The attorney general took an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,'' New York [Democratic Senator] Democrat Charles Schumer told reporters today. ``Instead, he tells the half-truth, the partial truth and everything but the truth. And he does it not once, and not twice, but over and over and over again.''" ... "The lawmakers said Gonzales's testimony that he never talked to other colleagues about the prosecutor firings after the controversy erupted was contradicted by former aide Monica Goodling. She told Congress in May that she felt ``uncomfortable'' when Gonzales raised the subject." ... "The Democrats also said they found ``deeply troubling'' Gonzales's assertions in 2006 Senate testimony that ``there has not been any serious disagreement'' in the administration over the interception of suspected terrorists' international phone calls and e-mails without court warrants." ... "The attorney general's statement was contradicted in congressional testimony earlier this year by former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, who said there had been dissent at the highest levels of the Justice Department in March 2004." -By James Rowley -Bloomberg

20070706

Spying - Lawsuit - Politics - History - US - International - Phone - E-Mail - Intelligence - "Court dismisses lawsuit on spying program." ... "A U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday a lawsuit challenging the domestic spying program created by [Republican] President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks must be dismissed, in a decision based on narrow technical grounds." ... "The surveillance program was authorized by Bush to monitor the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens, without first obtaining a court warrant. A lower court had ruled in August 2006 that the program was unconstitutional." ... "But the two judges in the majority opinion said the plaintiffs had failed to prove they were under surveillance." ... "In the previous ruling, a U.S. district judge in Detroit ruled the program violated the Constitution and a 1978 law prohibiting surveillance of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil without the approval of the special surveillance court." ... "The two judges in the majority, Julia Smith Gibbons and Batchelder, are Republican appointees, named by Bush and his father [former Republican President George H. W. Bush], respectively." (1, 2) -By Andrea Hopkins with contributions by James Vicini and Matt Spetalnick -Reuters

20070628

US - International - Dick Cheney - Secret - Military - Surveillance - Telecommunications - E-Mail - Companies - Intelligence - Law - History - Politics - "Panel pushes for files on spy program: White House, Cheney get subpoenas." ... "The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday issued subpoenas to the Bush administration for documents related to its warrantless surveillance program, elevating a long-simmering dispute between Congress and the [Republican] White House over classified national-security information into a possible constitutional showdown." ... "Specifically, the committee is seeking documents related to White House authorization and reauthorization of the warrantless surveillance program, internal memos analyzing whether the surveillance is legal, agreements with telecommunications companies that assisted in the spying, orders by a secret national-security court regarding the program, and papers concerning [Republican] President Bush's decision to shut down an in-house Justice Department investigation related to the program." ... "The program dates to the weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when [Republican President George] Bush signed an order authorizing the military's National Security Agency to monitor Americans' international phone calls and e-mails without a judge's approval." ... "A 1978 statute makes it a felony to conduct such surveillance without a warrant, but the president's legal team secretly asserted that his wartime powers include an unwritten right to bypass such laws at his own discretion. Cheney and his counsel, David Addington , were the leading proponents of the program and the controversial legal theory supporting it, former administration lawyers have said." ... "The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, which polices compliance with legal ethics, opened an investigation into whether department lawyers knowingly signed off on a faulty interpretation of the law to give the program legal cover. But Bush shut down the investigation by refusing to grant the office security clearance." -By Charlie Savage -Boston/Globe

20070618

Karl Rove - Susan Ralston - Government - E-Mail - Presidential Records Law - Computer - Politics - Business - "Missing White House e-mails may have violated law, panel says." ... "[Republican President George Bush] Presidential adviser Karl Rove sent more than 140,000 e-mails through the Republican National Committee's computer system, circumventing a federal law intended to guarantee the preservation of presidential records, House of Representatives investigators have concluded." ... "While 88 White House aides used the back-channel system, Rove was its biggest user at the White House, and more than half of his communications dealt with official business, according to an interim report by the House Oversight Committee." ... "Susan Ralston, a former aide to Rove, told congressional investigators that Rove sent almost all of his e-mails through the RNC system and used a Blackberry that he received from the Republican Party from his first day at the White House." -By Ron Hutcheson -McClatchyDC.com
Jack Abramoff - Ralston - Alberto Gonzales - Karl Rove - Political - Government - E-Mail - Communications - Presidential Records Act - Law - US Attorneys - California - "Report: White House aides used GOP e-mail to skirt law." ... "E-mail records are missing for 51 of the 88 White House aides with Republican Party accounts, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee reported Monday." ... "The White House says the accounts were set up to keep political work separate from official business, but investigators concluded White House officials used the accounts to conduct official business in a way that circumvented the Watergate-era Presidential Records Act." ... "The committee, led by California Democrat [Represenative] Henry Waxman, began looking into the GOP e-mail accounts after messages from the accounts turned up in two cases -- the case of imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the 2006 firings of eight U.S. attorneys by the Justice Department." ... "[Susan] Ralston told investigators that [Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales, now attorney general, knew [Karl] Rove was using his party e-mail account for official business, "but took no action to preserve Mr. Rove's official communications," the report states." -CNN
Alberto Gonzales - Government - Electronic - E-Mail - Politics - Presidential Records Act - "White House aides' e-mail records gone." ... "E-mail records are missing for 51 of the 88 [Republican President George Bush] White House officials who had electronic message accounts with the Republican National Committee, the House Oversight Committee said Monday." ... "The Bush administration may have committed "extensive" violations of a law [the Presidential Records Act] requiring that certain records be preserved, said the committee's Democratic chairman, adding that the panel will deepen its probe into the use of political e-mail accounts." ... "The administration has said that about 50 White House officials had RNC e-mail accounts during Bush's presidency. But the House committee found at least 88." ... "The report especially criticized Alberto Gonzales, now the attorney general, for actions when he headed the White House Counsel's office. There is evidence that under Gonzales the office "may have known that White House officials were using RNC e-mail accounts for official business, but took no action to preserve these presidential records," the report said." -By Charles Babington -AP via