ALBERTO GONZALES News:

Corporate - Government - Psychological - Military - Intelligence - Television - Radio - Media - Politics - Classified - US - History - Guantánamo - Prison - Cuba - Human Rights - Justice -  - Iraq - Terrorism - Cheney - Gonzales - "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand." ... "In the summer of 2005, the [Republican President] Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay [US military prison in Cuba]. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure." ... "The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo." ... "To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-[September]Sept. 11 world." ... "Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found." ... "The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air." ... "Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized." ... "Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks." ... "Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley." ... "In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access." ... "A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis." ... "Many also shared with Mr. Bush’s national security team a belief that pessimistic war coverage broke the nation’s will to win in Vietnam, and there was a mutual resolve not to let that happen with this war." ... "This was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from “enemy” propaganda during Vietnam." ... "“We lost the war — not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped,” he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars — taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach “MindWar” — using network TV and radio to “strengthen our national will to victory.”" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, DOCUMENTS) -By David Barstow -NYTimes 

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WATCH - "How the Pentagon Spread Its Message." ... "David Barstow, an investigative reporter for The Times, examines primary source documents detailing the Pentagon’s response to criticism of then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld by a group of prominent retired generals." -By David Barstow -NYTimes 

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John Yoo - Alberto Gonzales - Surveillance - Military - Government - Terrorism - Intelligence - Politics - Secret - Law - History - Liberties - "Memo Justified Warrantless Surveillance." ... "For at least 16 months after the Sept. [September] 11 terror attacks in 2001, the [Republican President] Bush administration believed that the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. [United States] soil didn't apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism." ... "That view was expressed in a Justice Department legal memo dated Oct. [October] 23, 2001. The administration on Wednesday stressed that it now disavows that view." ... "The October 2001 memo was written at the request of the [Republican President Bush] White House by John Yoo, then the deputy assistant attorney general, and addressed to Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel at the time. The administration had asked the department for an opinion on the legality of potential responses to terrorist activity." ... "The 37-page memo has not been released. Its existence was disclosed Tuesday in a footnote of a separate secret memo, dated March 14, 2003, released by the Pentagon in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union." ... ""Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations," the footnote states, referring to a document titled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States."" ... "Exactly what domestic military action was covered by the October memo is unclear. But federal documents indicate that the memo relates to the National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program, or TSP." -By Pamela Hess and Lara Jakes Jordan -AP via -SFGate.com 

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John Yoo - Gonzales - Cheney - Addington - War Crimes - Criminal - Torture - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Political - Law - Secret - Government - History - Civil Liberties - California - US - Guantanamo - Cuba - Iraq - Prisons - "John Yoo's war crimes." ... "As the result of a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] lawsuit the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] filed and then prosecuted for several years, numerous documents relating to the [Republican President] Bush administration's torture regime that have long been baselessly kept secret were released yesterday, including an 81-pagememorandum (.pdf) issued in 2003 by then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo (currently a Berkeley [California] Law Professor) which asserted that the President's war powers entitle him to ignore multiple laws which criminalized the use of torture:"

"If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."

[ Listen to John Yoo interview: "Cassel: If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?" ... "Yoo: No treaty." ... "Cassel: Also no law by Congress -- that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo..." ... "Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that."]

""[T]he experience of our wars," Winthrop 839, is rife with evidence that establishes beyond any doubt that conspiracy to violate the laws of war is itself an offense cognizable before a law-of-war military commission. . . . . In [World War II], the orders establishing the jurisdiction of military commissions in various theaters of operation provided that conspiracy to violate the laws of war was a cognizable offense. See Letter, General Headquarters, United States Army Forces, Pacific (Sept. 24, 1945), Record in Yamashita v. Styer, O. T. 1945, No. 672, pp. 14, 16 (Exh. F) (Order respecting the "Regulations Governing the Trial of War Criminals" provided that "participation in a common plan or conspiracy to accomplish" various offenses against the law of war was cognizable before military commissions)."

John Yoo - Gonzales - Haynes - Addington - Criminal - Torture - Lawyers - Military - Government - Terrorism - Intelligence - Politics - History - Book - US - International - Guantánamo - Cuba - Iraq - "The Green Light." ... "Yesterday the public finally got to see the full text of an infamous Department of Justice memorandum from March 2003 designed to authorize torture. I will have some more comments on this odious document authored by John Yoo, a man who (amazingly) teaches at a prominent law school. But this disclosure serves as a fitting introduction for the publication today of Philippe Sands’s article “The Green Light” in Vanity Fair. The article is a teaser for Sands’s forthcoming book, set for release later this month, The Torture Team." ... "We’ve all heard ad nauseam the [Republican President Bush] Administration’s official torture narrative. This is a different kind of war, they argue. Each invocation of “different” is to a clear point: the [Republican President Bush] Administration wishes to pursue its war unfettered by the laws of war. Unfettered, indeed, by any form or notion of law. But Sands’s work is important because he has looked carefully at the chronology: what came first, the decision to use torture techniques, or the legal rationale for them?"

"[Alberto] Gonzales and [William] Haynes laid out their case with considerable care. The only flaw was that every element of the argument contained untruths. The real story, pieced together from many hours of interviews with most of the people involved in the decisions about interrogation, goes something like this: The Geneva decision was not a case of following the logic of the law but rather was designed to give effect to a prior decision to take the gloves off and allow coercive interrogation; it deliberately created a legal black hole into which the detainees were meant to fall. The new interrogation techniques did not arise spontaneously from the field but came about as a direct result of intense pressure and input from Rumsfeld’s office. The Yoo-[Jay]Bybee Memo was not simply some theoretical document, an academic exercise in blue-sky hypothesizing, but rather played a crucial role in giving those at the top the confidence to put pressure on those at the bottom. And the practices employed at Guantánamo [Cuba] led to abuses at Abu Ghraib [Iraq]." ... "The fingerprints of the most senior lawyers in the administration were all over the design and implementation of the abusive interrogation policies. [David] Addington, Bybee, Gonzales, Haynes, and Yoo became, in effect, a torture team of lawyers, freeing the administration from the constraints of all international rules prohibiting abuse."

Michael Hayden - Michael Mukasey - Alberto Gonzales - Torture - War Crimes - Criminal - Water - Terrorism - Prisons - Intelligence - Law - Politics - "CIA chief names 3 subjected to waterboarding." ... "The CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] director on Tuesday publicly named for the first time the three suspected al Qaeda detainees who were subjected to the harsh interrogation technique of waterboarding." ... ""It was used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It was used on Abu Zubayda, and it was used on [Abd al-Rahim] al-Nashiri," CIA Director Michael Hayden told a Senate hearing." ... "Waterboarding involves strapping a person to a surface, covering his face with cloth and pouring water on the face to imitate the sensation of drowning. Critics have called it torture." ... ""The CIA has not used waterboarding for almost five years. We used it against these three high-valued detainees because of the circumstances of the time," Hayden said." ... "Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, who also testified at the hearing, said waterboarding remains a technique in the CIA's arsenal, according to The Associated Press. He said it would require [Republican President Bush's] the president's consent and legal approval from the attorney general [currently Michael Mukasey, formerly Alberto Gonzales], the AP reported." -By Terry Frieden -CNN

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Alberto Gonzales - Pete Domenici - Heather Wilson - Criminal - US Attorneys - Politics - Hatch Act - Federal - Law - Civil Rights - 2006 Election - 2008 Election - New Mexico - Minnesota - "Attorneys probe deepens." ... "The federal investigation into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys could jolt the political landscape ahead of the November [2008] elections, according to several people close to the inquiry." ... "Washington’s attention has been diverted from the scandal since the August resignation of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, and has focused instead on Democrats’ efforts to hold White House officials in contempt for ignoring congressional subpoenas to testify on Capitol Hill about the firings." ... "But recent behind-the-scenes activity in several investigations suggests that the issue that roiled Congress in 2007 could re-emerge in the heat of the [2008] election year. Two inquiries by the House and Senate ethics committees are examining whether several congressional Republicans, including one running for the Senate this year, improperly interfered with investigations." ... "As potent as the congressional probes might be, they appear to be far narrower than a sprawling inquiry launched by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR)." ... "Investigators from these offices have been questioning whether senior officials lied to Congress, violated the criminal provisions in the Hatch Act, tampered with witnesses preparing to testify to Congress, obstructed justice, took improper political considerations into account during the hiring and firing of U.S. attorneys and created widespread problems in the department’s Civil Rights Division, according to several people familiar with the investigation." ... "The internal Justice Department probe cannot bring charges but can refer findings to a U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia or a special prosecutor, who could then pursue a criminal investigation." ... "[Former New Mexico U.S. Attorney David] Iglesias’s case is in the crosshairs of all three investigations. Testifying before Congress, he alleged last year that Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) pressured him to accelerate an investigation of a Democratic politician in New Mexico ahead of Wilson’s tight [2006] reelection bid. Iglesias said he did not plan to bring charges before the November elections, and was fired in December 2006." ... "In a sign that the investigation has widened beyond the nine fired attorneys, Justice last summer interviewed Thomas Heffelfinger, U.S. attorney in Minnesota, who resigned before it was revealed that he was targeted for dismissal." -By Manu Raju -TheHill.com

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John Ashcroft - Michael B Mukasey - Alberto R Gonzales - Debra Wong Yang - Criminal - Corporate - Government - Lawyers - US Attorneys - Politics - Medical - New Jersey - Indiana - New York - Los Angeles - California - "Ashcroft Deal Brings Scrutiny in Justice Dept.." ... "When the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey [Christopher J. Christie] needed to find an outside lawyer to monitor a large corporation willing to settle criminal charges out of court last fall, he turned to [Republican] former Attorney General John Ashcroft, his onetime boss. With no public notice and no bidding, the company awarded Mr. Ashcroft an 18-month contract worth $28 million to $52 million." ... "That contract, which Justice Department officials in Washington learned about only several weeks ago, has prompted an internal inquiry into the department’s procedures for selecting outside monitors to police settlements with large companies." ... "The contract between Mr. Ashcroft’s consulting firm, the Ashcroft Group, and Zimmer Holdings, a medical supply company in Indiana, has also drawn the attention of Congressional investigators." ... "The New Jersey prosecutor, United States Attorney Christopher J. Christie, directed similar monitoring contracts last year to two other former Justice Department colleagues from the [Republican President] Bush administration, as well as to a former Republican state attorney general in New Jersey." ... "Officials said that while there had been no accusations of wrongdoing on the part of Mr. Christie or Mr. Ashcroft, aides to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey were concerned about the appearance of favoritism." ... "Mr. Mukasey, a former federal judge who was sworn in as attorney general in November, has vowed to remove political considerations from decision-making at the department in the wake of a series of scandals under his predecessor, Alberto R. Gonzales." ... "In the Bush administration, federal prosecutors have increasingly relied on out-of-court settlements with large corporations in criminal investigations that in the past might have resulted in indictments and trials." ... "Mr. Christie directed similar contracts in settlements with other medical-supply companies to two other former Justice Department colleagues — David N. Kelley, the former United States attorney in Manhattan [New York], and Debra Wong Yang, his counterpart in Los Angeles [California] — and to David Samson, the former Republican attorney general in New Jersey." (1, 2) -By Philip Shenon -NYTimes

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Secret - Alberto R Gonzales - David S Addington - Dick Cheney - Harriet E Miers - Torture - War - Crimes - Tapes - Censorship - Law - Politics - Military - Government - Intelligence - Terrorism - History - US - Iraq - "Bush Lawyers Discussed Fate of C.I.A.Tapes." ... "At least four top [Republican President Bush] White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials." ... "The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than [Republican President] Bush administration officials have acknowledged." ... "Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel." ... "It was previously reported that some administration officials had advised against destroying the tapes, but the emerging picture of White House involvement is more complex. In interviews, several administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes should be destroyed." ... "One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq." ... "The current and former officials also provided new details about the role played in November 2005 by Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the chief of the agency’s clandestine branch, who ultimately ordered the destruction of the tapes." ... "The officials said that before he issued a secret cable directing that the tapes be destroyed, Mr. Rodriguez received legal guidance from two C.I.A. [Central Intelligence Agency] lawyers, Steven Hermes and Robert Eatinger. The officials said that those lawyers gave written guidance to Mr. Rodriguez that he had the authority to destroy the tapes and that the destruction would violate no laws." ... "Current and former officials said the two lawyers informed the C.I.A.’s top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, about the legal advice they had provided." (1, 2) -By Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane with contributions by David Johnston -NYTimes 

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Michael Mukasey - Alberto Gonzales - Government - Spying - Intelligence - Politics - "Domestic Spying Inquiry Restarted at DoJ." ... "The Justice Department has reopened a long-dormant inquiry into the government's warrantless wiretapping program, a major policy shift only days into the tenure of Attorney General Michael Mukasey." ... "The investigation by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility was shut down last year, after the investigators were denied security clearances. Gonzales told Congress that [Republican] President Bush, not he, denied the clearances." ... "The OPR investigation was begun in February 2006 but was shut down a few months later when the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the security clearances to ask questions about the program. Justice Department officials said Gonzales recommended Bush approve the clearances, but the president said no." ... "Bush's decision to authorize the spy agency to monitor people inside the United States, without warrants, generated a host of questions about the program's legal justification." -By Devlin Barrett with contributions by Lara Jakes Jordan -AP via -SFGate.com 

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Alberto Gonzales - Bradley Schlozman - Michael Mukasey - Poor - Race - Politics - People - Election - Civil Rights - Enforcement - "Justice Department returns to enforcing voter laws." ... "The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division is reversing course and has begun taking steps to enforce a 1993 law that's intended to make it easier for poor minorities to register to vote." ... "The division, which has come under attack for allegedly pursuing policies aimed at suppressing the votes of Democratic-leaning minorities, has demanded that 18 states provide evidence that they're complying with the National Voter Registration Act." ... "If it is fully pursued, this new action will represent the first significant return to traditional enforcement of voting-rights laws since a scandal erupted earlier this year over the alleged politicization of the Justice Department." ... "McClatchy Newspapers disclosed last spring that the Civil Rights Division had failed to enforce a variety of voting-rights laws intended to protect the ability of minorities, especially African-Americans, to vote. The controversy led to the resignations of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and seven other officials, including Bradley Schlozman, the former acting civil rights chief." ... "Now attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey, whose confirmation was debated by the Senate Thursday night, has pledged to insulate the agency's law enforcement decisions from partisan politics." ... "Some election watchdog groups are skeptical, saying that the enforcement push might be a cosmetic response to widespread criticism and congressional scrutiny of the division." -By Greg Gordon -McClatchyDC.com

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Michael Bernard Mukasey - Alberto R Gonzales - Water - Torture - Politicians - Human Rights - Law - Conn - Calif - New York - Ind - Del - La - Neb - "Senate Confirms Mukasey By 53-40: Historically Low Tally for New Attorney General." ... "The final tally gave [Republican President Bush's Attorney General nominee Michael Bernard] Mukasey the lowest number of yes votes for any attorney general since 1952, just weeks after lawmakers of both parties had predicted his easy confirmation. Mukasey takes the place of Alberto R. Gonzales, who left under a cloud of scandal in September." ... "He avoided defeat only because a half-dozen Democrats voted in favor of the appointment along with Republicans and Democrat-turned-independent Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn. [Connecticut])." ... "Mukasey, 66, had outraged many lawmakers and human rights groups by repeatedly refusing to classify waterboarding, a simulated-drowning technique, as torture. His few Democratic supporters said last night that, although they are troubled by his equivocal views on waterboarding, they believe Mukasey represents the best possibility for change at the troubled Justice Department. "This is the only chance we have," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif. [California])." ... "The other Democrats in favor of the confirmation were Sens. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y. [New York]), Evan Bayh (Ind. [Indiana]), Thomas R. Carper (Del. [Delaware]), Mary Landrieu (La. [Louisiana]) and Ben Nelson (Neb.)." ... "Mukasey garnered the lowest number of yes votes among confirmed attorneys general since James P. McGranery, who was approved by a vote of 52 to 18 in 1952 during the [Democratic President Harry] Truman administration. The only recent competitor is [Republican President Bush's nominee] John D. Ashcroft, who attracted 58 yes votes from the GOP-controlled Senate in 2001." (1, 2) -By Dan Eggen Paul Kane with contributions by Madonna Lebling -WashingtonPost

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