Watching the detectives .............

The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today.

Records turned over as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit also indicate that the FBI has investigated hundreds of potential violations related to its use of secret surveillance operations, which have been stepped up dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but are largely hidden from public view.

In one case, FBI agents kept an unidentified target under surveillance for at least five years -- including more than 15 months without notifying Justice Department lawyers after the subject had moved from New York to Detroit. An FBI investigation concluded that the delay was a violation of Justice guidelines and prevented the department "from exercising its responsibility for oversight and approval of an ongoing foreign counterintelligence investigation of a U.S. person."

In other cases, agents obtained e-mails after a warrant expired, seized bank records without proper authority and conducted an improper "unconsented physical search," according to the documents.

Although heavily censored, the documents provide a rare glimpse into the world of domestic spying, which is governed by a secret court and overseen by a presidential board that does not publicize its deliberations. The records are also emerging as the House and Senate battle over whether to put new restrictions on the controversial USA Patriot Act, which made it easier for the government to conduct secret searches and surveillance but has come under attack from civil liberties groups.

The records were provided to The Washington Post by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group that has sued the Justice Department for records relating to the Patriot Act.

David Sobel, EPIC's general counsel, said the new documents raise questions about the extent of possible misconduct in counterintelligence investigations and underscore the need for greater congressional oversight of clandestine surveillance within the United States.

"We're seeing what might be the tip of the iceberg at the FBI and across the intelligence community," Sobel said. "It indicates that the existing mechanisms do not appear adequate to prevent abuses or to ensure the public that abuses that are identified are treated seriously and remedied."

FBI officials disagreed, saying that none of the cases have involved major violations and most amount to administrative errors. The officials also said that any information obtained from improper searches or eavesdropping is quarantined and eventually destroyed.

"Every investigator wants to make sure that their investigation is handled appropriately, because they're not going to be allowed to keep information that they didn't have the proper authority to obtain," said one senior FBI official, who declined to be identified by name because of the ongoing litigation. "But that is a relatively uncommon occurrence. The vast majority of the potential [violations] reported have to do with administrative timelines and time frames for renewing orders."

The documents provided to EPIC focus on 13 cases from 2002 to 2004 that were referred to the Intelligence Oversight Board, an arm of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board that is charged with examining violations of the laws and directives governing clandestine surveillance. Case numbers on the documents indicate that a minimum of 287 potential violations were identified by the FBI during those three years, but the actual number is certainly higher because the records are incomplete.

FBI officials declined to say how many alleged violations they have identified or how many were found to be serious enough to refer to the oversight board.

Catherine Lotrionte, the presidential board's counsel, said most of its work is classified and covered by executive privilege. The board's investigations range from "technical violations to more substantive violations of statutes or executive orders," Lotrionte said.

Most such cases involve powers granted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs the use of secret warrants, wiretaps and other methods as part of investigations of agents of foreign powers or terrorist groups. The threshold for such surveillance is lower than for traditional criminal warrants. More than 1,700 new cases were opened by the court last year, according to an administration report to Congress.

In several of the cases outlined in the documents released to EPIC, FBI agents failed to file annual updates on ongoing surveillance, which are required by Justice Department guidelines and presidential directives, and which allow Justice lawyers to monitor the progress of a case. Others included a violation of bank privacy statutes and an improper physical search, though the details of the transgressions are edited out. At least two others involve e-mails that were improperly collected after the authority to do so had expired.

Some of the case details provide a rare peek into the world of FBI counterintelligence. In 2002, for example, the Pittsburgh field office opened a preliminary inquiry on a person to "determine his/her suitability as an asset for foreign counterintelligence matters" -- in other words, to become an informant. The violation occurred when the agent failed to extend the inquiry while maintaining contact with the potential asset, the documents show.

The FBI general counsel's office oversees investigations of alleged misconduct in counterintelligence probes, deciding whether the violation is serious enough to be reported to the oversight board and to personnel departments within Justice and the FBI. The senior FBI official said those cases not referred to the oversight board generally involve missed deadlines of 30 days or fewer with no potential infringement of the civil rights of U.S. persons, who are defined as either citizens or legal U.S. resident aliens.

"The FBI and the people who work in the FBI are very cognizant of the fact that people are watching us to make sure we're doing the right thing," the senior FBI official said. "We also want to do the right thing. We have set up procedures to do the right thing."

But in a letter to be sent today to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sobel and other EPIC officials argue that the documents show how little Congress and the public know about the use of clandestine surveillance by the FBI and other agencies. The group advocates legislation requiring the attorney general to report violations to the Senate.

The documents, EPIC writes, "suggest that there may be at least thirteen instances of unlawful intelligence investigations that were never disclosed to Congress."

Find the Brownie

(AP) The former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday defended the agency's decision to keep him on the job another 30 days as a "completely legitimate thing to do."

Michael Brown, who resigned under fire Sept. 12 after being heavily criticized for the federal government's slow reaction to the hurricane, told The Associated Press that he would help the agency complete its review of the response to Hurricane Katrina. He said he would also be reviewing for the agency a large number of Freedom of Information requests dealing with the response.

Asked in a telephone interview if he expects to complete that work by the end of his second 30-day extension, Brown replied, "Absolutely. I'm motivated to wrap it up. I'm ready to move on."

Brown resigned three days after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff relieved him of his onsite command of FEMA's response to Katrina. The storm killed more than 1,200 people along the Gulf Coast, flooded New Orleans and forced the evacuation of hundreds of thousands. R. David Paulison was named acting director.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is part of Chertoff's department.

Brown initially was permitted to stay on the FEMA payroll for 30 days at his $148,000 annual salary. Chertoff defended the decision to extend Brown's employment for another 30 days during an interview Wednesday as he flew to view Hurricane Wilma's damage in Florida.

"It's important to allow the new people who have the responsibility ... to have access to the information we need to do better," Chertoff said. "We don't want to sacrifice the real ability to get a full picture of Mike's experiences; we don't want to sacrifice that ability simply in order to make an image point."

Russ Knocke, the Homeland Security spokesman, has said in the past that Brown was staying on to advise the department on his experience with Katrina. He said Brown has no decision-making or management responsibilities.

The decision quickly drew fire from members of Congress.

"Keeping Mike Brown at Homeland Security to investigate his role in the Katrina fiasco is like paying Ken Lay to run a price gouging investigation," said Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson, ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee.

Lay is the former Enron chairman now charged with fraud and conspiracy in connection with the energy company's collapse.

Mississippi Congressman Gene Taylor, whose coastal district was among the hardest hit by Katrina, said Brown's contract extension is an insult to taxpayers, particularly those Gulf Coast residents "whose lives were in danger in the aftermath of that storm because of Mike Brown's incompetence."

"I've got tens of thousands of people living in two-man igloo tents tonight, and less than a quarter of the people who have asked for FEMA travel trailers have gotten them," Taylor said. "And at the same time they can find $140,000 a year to pay this incompetent son of a gun; that's ridiculous."

Tricky Dick??

WASHINGTON - The White House on Tuesday sidestepped questions about whether Vice PresidentDick Cheney passed on to his top aide the identity of a CIA officer central to a federal grand jury probe.


Notes in the hands of a federal prosecutor suggest that Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, first heard of the CIA officer from Cheney himself, The New York Times reported in Tuesday's editions.

A federal prosecutor is investigating whether the officer's identity was improperly disclosed.

The Times said notes of a previously undisclosed June 12, 2003, conversation between Libby and Cheney appear to differ from Libby's grand jury testimony that he first heard of Valerie Plame from journalists.

"This is a question relating to an ongoing investigation and we're not having any further comment on the investigation while it's ongoing," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

Pressed about Cheney's knowledge about the CIA officer, McClellan said: "I think you're prejudging things and speculating and we're not going to prejudge or speculate about things."

McClellan said Cheney — who participated in a morning video conference on the Florida hurricane from Wyoming, where he is speaking at a University of Wyoming dinner tonight — is doing a "great job" as vice president.

The New York Times identified its sources in the story as lawyers involved in the case.

Libby has emerged at the center of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's criminal investigation in recent weeks because of the Cheney aide's conversations about Plame with Times reporter Judith Miller.

Miller said Libby spoke to her about Plame and her husband, Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, on three occasions — although not necessarily by name and without indicating he knew she was undercover.

Libby's notes show that Cheney knew Plame worked at the CIA more than a month before her identity was publicly exposed by columnist Robert Novak.

At the time of the Cheney-Libby conversation, Wilson had been referred to — but not by name — in the Times and on the morning of June 12, 2003 on the front page of The Washington Post.

The Times reported that Libby's notes indicate Cheney got his information about Wilson from then-CIA Director George Tenet, but said there was no indication he knew her name.

The notes also contain no suggestion that Cheney or Libby knew at the time of their conversation of Plame's undercover status or that her identity was classified, the paper said.

Disclosing the identify of a covert CIA agent can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent is classified as working undercover.

The Times quoted lawyers involved in the case as saying they had no indication Fitzgerald was considering charging Cheney with a crime.

But the paper said any efforts by Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Cheney might be viewed by a prosecutor as attempt to impede the inquiry, which could be a crime.

According to a former intelligence official close to Tenet, the former CIA chief has not been in touch with Fitzgerald's staff for more than 15 months and was not asked to testify before the grand jury even though he was interviewed by Fitzgerald and his staff.

The official told the Times that Tenet declined to comment on the investigation.

Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate, did not return phone calls and e-mail to his office.

Fitzgerald is expected to decide this week whether to seek criminal indictments in the case. Lawyers involved in the case have said Libby and Karl Rove,
President Bush's senior adviser, both face the possibility of indictment. McClellan said both Rove and Libby were at work on Tuesday.

Fitzgerald questioned Cheney under oath more than a year ago, but it is not known what the vice president told the prosecutor.

Cheney has said little in public about what he knew. In September 2003, he told NBC he did not know Wilson or who sent him on a trip to Niger in 2002 to check into intelligence — some of it later deemed unreliable — that
Iraq may have been seeking to buy uranium there.

"I don't know who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back," Cheney said at the time. "... I don't know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn't judge him. I have no idea who hired him."

The Cheney-Libby conversation occurred the same day that The Washington Post published a front-page story about the CIA sending a retired diplomat to Africa, where he was unable to corroborate intelligence that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium yellowcake from Niger. The diplomat was Wilson.

A year after Wilson's trip, President Bush cited British intelligence in his State of the Union address as suggesting that Iraq was pursuing uranium in Africa.

Oops they did it again

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 - As he weighs whether to bring criminal charges in the C.I.A. leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel, is focusing on whether Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, sought to conceal their actions and mislead prosecutors, lawyers involved in the case said Thursday.

Among the charges that Mr. Fitzgerald is considering are perjury, obstruction of justice and false statement - counts that suggest the prosecutor may believe the evidence presented in a 22-month grand jury inquiry shows that the two White House aides sought to cover up their actions, the lawyers said.

Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have been advised that they may be in serious legal jeopardy, the lawyers said, but only this week has Mr. Fitzgerald begun to narrow the possible charges. The prosecutor has said he will not make up his mind about any charges until next week, government officials say.

With the term of the grand jury expiring in one week, though, some lawyers in the case said they were persuaded that Mr. Fitzgerald had all but made up his mind to seek indictments. None of the lawyers would speak on the record, citing the prosecutor's requests not to talk about the case.

Associates of Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby continued to express hope that the prosecutor would conclude that the evidence was too fragmentary and that it would be difficult to prove Mr. Rove or Mr. Libby had a clear-cut intention to misinform the grand jury. Lawyers for the two men declined to comment on their legal status.

The case has cast a cloud over the White House, as has the Congressional criticism over the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers. On Thursday, responding to a reporter's question, Mr. Bush said: "There's some background noise here, a lot of chatter, a lot of speculation and opining. But the American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to."

The possible violations under consideration by Mr. Fitzgerald are peripheral to the issue he was appointed in December 2003 to investigate: whether anyone in the administration broke a federal law that makes it a crime, under certain circumstances, to reveal the identity of a covert intelligence officer.

But Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby may not be the only people at risk. There may be others in the government who could be charged for violations of the disclosure law or of other statutes, like the espionage act, which makes it a crime to transmit classified information to people not authorized to receive it.

It is still not publicly known who first told the columnist Robert D. Novak the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson. Mr. Novak identified her in a column on July 14, 2003, using her maiden name, Valerie Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald knows the identity of this source, a person who is not believed to work at the White House, the lawyers said.

The accounts given by Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby about their conversations with reporters have been under investigation almost from the start. According to lawyers in the case, the prosecutor has examined how each man learned of Ms. Wilson, and questioned them in grand jury appearances about their conversations with reporters, how they learned Ms. Wilson's name and her C.I.A. employment and whether the discussions were part of an effort to undermine the credibility of her husband, a former ambassador, Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Mr. Wilson had become an irritant to the administration in the late spring and early summer of 2003 even before he went public as a critic of the war in Iraq by writing a July 6, 2003 Op-Ed article in The New York Times.

In that article he wrote that he had traveled to Africa in 2002 to explore the accuracy of intelligence reports that suggested Iraq might have tried to purchase uranium ore from Niger. Mr. Wilson said that he had been sent on the trip by the C.I.A. after Mr. Cheney's office raised questions about one such report, but that he found it unlikely that any sale had taken place.

In Mr. Rove's case, the prosecutor appears to have focused on two conversations with reporters. The first was a July 9, 2003, discussion with Mr. Novak in which, Mr. Rove has said, he first heard Ms. Wilson's name. The second conversation took place on July 11, 2003 with a Time magazine reporter, Matthew Cooper, who later wrote that Mr. Rove had not named Ms. Wilson but had told him that she worked at the C.I.A. and that she had been responsible for her husband being sent to Africa.

Mr. Rove did not tell the grand jury about his phone conversation with Mr. Cooper until months into the leak investigation, long after he had testified about his conversation with Mr. Novak, the lawyers said. Later, Mr. Rove said he had not recalled the conversation with Mr. Cooper until the discovery of an e-mail message about it that he sent to Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser. But Mr. Fitzgerald has remained skeptical about the omission, the lawyers said.

In Mr. Libby's case, Mr. Fitzgerald has focused on his statements about how he first learned of Ms. Wilson's identity, the lawyers said. Mr. Libby has said that he learned of Ms. Wilson from reporters. But Mr. Fitzgerald may have doubts about his account because the journalists who have been publicly identified as having talked to Mr. Libby have said that they did not provide the name, that they could not recall what had been said or that they had discussed unrelated subjects.

Rude ..... you bet your ass

WASHINGTON - Americans' fast-paced, high-tech existence has taken a toll on the civil in society.

From road rage in the morning commute to high decibel cell-phone conversations that ruin dinner out, men and women behaving badly has become the hallmark of a hurry-up world. An increasing informality — flip-flops at the White House, even — combined with self-absorbed communication gadgets and a demand for instant gratification have strained common courtesies to the breaking point.

"All of these things lead to a world with more stress, more chances for people to be rude to each other," said Peter Post, a descendent of etiquette expert Emily Post and an instructor on business manners through the Emily Post Institute in Burlington, Vt.

In some cases, the harried single parent has replaced the traditional nuclear family and there's little time to teach the basics of polite living, let alone how to hold a knife and fork, according to Post.

A slippage in manners is obvious to many Americans. Nearly 70 percent questioned in an Associated Press-Ipsos poll said people are ruder than they were 20 or 30 years ago. The trend is noticed in large and small places alike, although more urban people report bad manners, 74 percent, then do people in rural areas, 67 percent.

Peggy Newfield, founder and president of Personal Best, said the generation that came of age in the times-a-changin' 1960s and 1970s are now parents who don't stress the importance of manners, such as opening a door for a female.

So it was no surprise to Newfield that those children wouldn't understand how impolite it was to wear flip-flops to a White House meeting with the president — as some members of the Northwestern women's lacrosse team did in the summer.

A whopping 93 percent in the AP-Ipsos poll faulted parents for failing to teach their children well.

"Parents are very much to blame," said Newfield, whose Atlanta-based company started teaching etiquette to young people and now focuses on corporate employees. "And the media."

Sulking athletes and boorish celebrities grab the headlines while television and Hollywood often glorify crude behavior.

"It's not like the old shows 'Father Knows Best,'" said Norm Demers, 47, of Sutton, Mass. "People just copy it. How do you change it?" Demers would like to see more family friendly television but isn't holding his breath.

Nearly everyone has a story of the rude or the crude, but fewer are willing to fess up to boorish behavior themselves.

Only 13 percent in the poll would admit to making an obscene gesture while driving; only 8 percent said they had used their cell phones in a loud or annoying manner around others. But 37 percent in the survey of 1,001 adults questioned Aug. 22-23 said they had used a swear word in public.

Yvette Sienkiewicz, 41, a claims adjustor from Wilmington, Del., recalled in frustration how a bigger boy cut in front of her 8-year-old son as he waited in line to play a game at the local Chuck E. Cheese.

"It wasn't my thing to say something to the little boy," said Sienkiewicz, who remembered that the adult accompanying the child never acknowledged what he had done. In the AP-Ipsos poll, 38 percent said they have asked someone to stop behaving rudely.

More and more, manners are taught less and less.

Carole Krohn, 71, a retired school bus driver in Deer Park, Wash., said she has seen children's behavior deteriorate over the years, including one time when a boy tossed a snowball at the back of another driver's head. In this litigious society, she argued, a grown-up risks trouble correcting someone else's kid.

One solution for bad behavior "is to put a kid off in the middle of the road. Nowadays all people want to do is sue, to say you're to blame, get you fired," Krohn said.

Krohn, who often greeted students by name and with a hearty "good morning," once was asked by a child if she got tired of offering pleasantries.

Sienkiewicz, whose job requires hours in a car, said she tries to avoid rush-hour traffic because of drivers with a me-first attitude. The most common complaint about rudeness in the poll was aggressive or reckless driving, with 91 percent citing it as the most frequent discourtesy.

Margaret Hahn-Dupont, a 39-year-old law professor from Oradell, N.J., noticed that some of her students showed little respect for authority and felt free to express their discontent and demand better grades.

Close on the heels of the baby boomers are the affluent teens and young adults who have known nothing but the conveniences of computers and cell phones, devices that take them away from face-to-face encounters and can be downright annoying in a crowd.

"They got a lot of things and feel entitled to get a lot of things," said Hahn-Dupont.

Bernard F. Scanlon, 79, of Sayville, N.Y., would like to see one railroad car set aside for cell phone users to ensure peace and quiet for the rest. Amtrak has taken a stab at that by banning cell phones and other loud devices in one car of some trains, especially on chatty Northeast and West Coast routes.

But if those trains are sold out, the Quiet Car service is suspended and anything goes.

How rude.

Whos says money cant buy you happiness (or in this case safety)

The city's rich and well-connected were tipped off to last week's subway terror threat days before average New Yorkers, the Daily News has learned.

At least two E-mails revealing the purported plot were sent to a select crowd of business and arts executives early last week by New Yorkers who claimed to have close connections to Homeland Security and other federal officials, authorities said.

The NYPD confirmed that it learned of the E-mails on Oct. 3 - three days before Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and the FBI went public with the threat.

"I have just received a most disturbing call from one of my oldest friends from growing up in Washington," one E-mail began. "He called with a very specific caution to not enter or use the New York City subway system from Oct. 7 through 10th."

A second E-mail sounded a similar ominous tone: "As some of you know my father works for Homeland Security, at a very high position and receives security briefings on a daily basis.

"The only information that I can pass on is that everyone should at all costs not ride the subway for the next two weeks in major areas of NYC."

One of the E-mails was dated Oct. 3 with a 6:05 p.m. time stamp, about 90 minutes before Bloomberg was fully briefed on the threat, a police source said.

The early warning infuriated several police officials, who noted that Homeland Security officials had challenged the credibility of the threat after the city and FBI warned the public.

"We're briefing the mayor, ratcheting up security, talking about when to go public - and Homeland Security is downplaying the whole thing while their people are telling friends to stay out of the subways," a police source said. "It's pretty bad."

NYPD investigators obtained copies of the E-mails on Oct. 4, as Bloomberg and Kelly were finalizing a plan to respond to the threat, and police officials gave the E-mails to the Homeland Security Department, police said.

'Members of our corporate security network informed the Police Department of the E-mails' existence days prior to any announcement of the threat," NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said yesterday.

Homeland Security officials confirmed that they were told about the early E-mail warnings.

"We have looked into them, but do not consider them to be of great significance," Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said yesterday.

"At best, they were based on anecdotal accounts of very limited information," he added, declining to reveal whether the feds were investigating.

The News obtained copies of two E-mails, one with the foreboding subject line: "Alarming call from Washington." Unsigned versions were also posted on Snopes.com, a site that examines urban legends.

One of the E-mail senders, when reached by The News, declined comment.

The plot, calling for terrorists to detonate bombs hidden in briefcases, suitcases or strollers, has been largely discredited since the public warning.

Bloomberg has defended his response, arguing the city had no choice but to act on the "specific threat." He has said he held off alerting the public until Oct.6 to give authorities time to round up suspects in Iraq.

Taking a nose dive

(from MSNBC)
WASHINGTON - It has been weeks since Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast; since gas prices began spiking to record highs; and since Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, held her antiwar vigil outside President Bush’s Texas ranch. But, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, the fortunes of the Bush administration and the Republican Party have not yet begun to recover.

For the first time in the poll, Bush’s approval rating has sunk below 40 percent, while the percentage believing the country is heading in the right direction has dipped below 30 percent. In addition, a sizable plurality prefers a Democratic-controlled Congress, and just 29 percent think Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers is qualified to serve on the nation’s highest court.

"Any way you slice this data, I think these are just terrible sets of numbers," said Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff.
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The poll shows that Bush’s approval rating stands at 39 percent, a new low for the president. In the last NBC/Wall Street Journal survey, which was released in mid-September, 40 percent approved of Bush’s job performance while 55 percent disapproved. In addition, just 28 percent believe the country is headed in the right direction, another all-time low in Bush’s presidency.

Strikingly, much has happened in the time between those two polls — many of them seemingly positive events for the White House. The president delivered a prime-time speech from New Orleans, in which he promised to rebuild the Gulf Coast. He also made several more visits to the region, to examine the damage caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Furthermore, he saw the Senate confirm John Roberts to the Supreme Court, and he nominated Miers, his White House counsel, to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

‘Huge question mark’ on Miers
The Miers nomination, however, has disappointed some of the president’s conservative supporters, because they say she lacks judicial experience and a clear conservative record on social issues. According to the poll, 29 percent say she’s qualified to serve on the Supreme Court, while 24 percent think she’s unqualified. Forty-six percent say they don’t know enough about her.

"There is nothing to suggest that people have turned on her," Hart said. "But there is just a huge question mark behind her at this stage. She has to establish her own bona fides."
The poll, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points and which was conducted from Oct. 8-10 of 807 adults, also finds that strong majorities don’t believe that the recent charges against GOP leaders Tom DeLay of Texas and Bill Frist of Tennessee are politically motivated. Sixty-five percent say that DeLay’s indictment on charges of illegally using corporate contributions for political campaigns suggests potential illegal activity, while 24 percent say the indictment is politics as usual and has little merit. (Since his indictment, DeLay stepped down from his leadership position but still plays a prominent role in the U.S. House of Representatives.)

Meanwhile, 57 percent say Frist’s sale of stock in a company his family runs — just before the value of the stock declined — indicates potential illegal activity, compared with 28 percent who say the charge has little merit.

48 percent want Democratic-controlled Congress
In addition, with 13 months until the 2006 congressional elections, 48 percent say they prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress, compared with 39 percent who want the Republicans to control Capitol Hill. In fact, that nine-point difference is the largest margin between the parties in the 11 years the NBC/Journal poll has been tracking this question.

But Hart argues that Democrats aren’t necessarily responsible for this margin. "It is not that Democrats have done so well," he said. "It is that people are disgusted." McInturff puts it this way: "People are very turned off and unhappy with the state of play in American politics."

People also seem to be turned off and unhappy with high gas prices. According to the survey, 69 percent believe the worst is still to come with energy and fuel prices. Just 25 percent think the worst is behind us.

Because of this generally sour attitude, the NBC/Journal pollsters doubt that Bush will be able to climb out of his standing anytime soon. "His trampoline [is] made of cement," Hart said.

And while McInturff thinks that Bush’s approval rating actually may actually hover between 40 and 45 percent, he says that’s still problematic terrain from which to govern. "It is a very difficult place to be."

Is anyone actually surprised by this?

A PLAN drawn up by the Bush Administration to combat a pandemic bird flu outbreak reveals that America is grossly unprepared to deal with what would likely be the worst disaster in US history.

The 381-page draft plan, leaked by health officials who claim that it contains fundamental failures, predicts that a full-scale outbreak could kill as many as 1.9 million Americans and put 8.5 million in hospital at a cost of more than $450 billion (£256 billion).

Hospitals would quickly become overwhelmed, riots would break out at vaccine clinics, civil unrest would sweep the country, and power and food would be in short supply, according to the plan, which has been years in the making. It calls for quarantine and travel restrictions but concedes that those measures “are unlikely to delay introduction of pandemic disease into the US by more than a month or two”.

A large outbreak in Asia, because of modern travel patterns, would be likely to reach the US within “a few months or even weeks”. The plan, which was passed to The New York Times, calls for the ability to manufacture 600 million vaccine doses within six months, more than ten times the country’s current capacity.

The document, called the Pandemic Influenza Strategic Plan, also calls for a national stockpile of 133 courses of flu treatment. The Bush Administration has purchased only 4.3 million courses at present.

On Friday, President Bush met officials from the country’s top six vaccine producers at the White House to urge them to step up production and to discuss ways to increase their production capacity.

Health officials claim that the plan fails to place a central figure in charge of co-ordinating a national response to a bird flu outbreak. After the Bush Administration’s disastrous initial response to Hurricane Katrina, and Mr Bush’s subsequent admission that a lack of clear and unified central leadership exacerbated the disaster, the officials told The New York Times: “We don’t want to have a FEMA-like [Federal Emergency Management Agency] response, where it’s not clear who’s running what.”

The officials conceded, however, that the plan was a “major milestone”.

One of the most controversial parts of the plan addresses who should be given the vaccines first. The military and National Guard are not mentioned

The cracks FINALLY appear

BAGHDAD -- "I don't know if I have the moral authority to send troops into combat anymore," a senior American general recently told United Press International.

He knows what his power means -- that on his word hundreds or thousands of young men would step into danger.

"I'm no longer sure I can look (a soldier or a Marine) in the eye and say: 'This is something worth dying for.'"

He doesn't mean Iraq. There are plenty of bad people here to fight, and plenty of innocents worth protecting.

His moral crisis was that he had been to Washington, D.C.

He had been asked politically loaded questions from both sides of aisle about the war, each questioner seeking ammunition to use for their own political ends.

[Visit a blog post related to this article: blog.wpherald.com/wphblog/?p=108 ]

He was dismayed. And he's not the only one.

"Everything that happens in Iraq is viewed in Washington through a prism of whether it is good for George W. Bush or bad," said a civilian U.S. official, who spoke to UPI on the condition he not be named.

Successful election? "Proof" the invasion was the right thing to do. Car bombs in Baghdad? "Proof" this was wrong from the start.

There is a growing disconnect between Washington and those fighting the Iraq war -- between the people sweating in the desert, saddled with making the policy work, and the people in suits and air conditioning, hoping to be proven right in the end, on whichever side they sit.

"I am seeing signs that are frustrating to me," said Lt. Col. Mike Gibler, an Army battalion commander serving in Mosul whose father fought in the Vietnam war. "There are huge divides, and not only at the senior levels of government. There's a competition for who wants to be the loudest voice to be heard regardless of what they say, regardless of what they know.

"I am seeing a change in our nation's willingness to support this over the long haul," said Gibler.

To many here, that political reductionism is obscene. It degrades their daily work as much as it does the loss of more than 1,900 Americans.

The good in Iraq has been hard won -- it was never a given. And the bad in all its forms -- the car bombs, the ambushes, the rockets, the innocent dead -- is the predictable product of warfare. Even putting aside the questionable post-war planning and rosy predictions, the outcome was always sure to include many, many undeserving deaths.

Once a nation decides to go to war, the consequences will be ugly.

It also interferes with their mission. One commander asked that a reporter not quote a junior officer who mentioned how thinly stretched the troops were in his area of operations. He didn't mind that it be reported there weren't enough troops -- he could do with more -- he just didn't want it connected to him.

He's not a coward and he's not a liar. He's busy.

"When people say stuff that conflicts with the politicians back home we just end up answering a lot of questions from D.C. We're going backwards," he said.

Time spent on e-mail finessing opinions that are offered in honesty with professional military judgment is time taken away from the mission at hand.

"The debate about the war is finally happening, but it is two years too late," the U.S. official said.

"It's no bullshit on the ground here between us and the Iraqis. But back home it's still in f(ing) ideological political mode," he said. "We need to separate 'accountability' from 'success.'"

These officials now care far less who was right two-and-a-half years ago than they do about stabilizing Iraq and returning home with their troops in one piece.

To do that, Washington needs to get serious about winning, they say. The White House and its congressional supporters are so focused on "staying the course," and the opposition so intent on forcing the White House to admit its mistakes there seems to be no time for anything else.

And there is actual work to be done.

If the December elections are held and are successful, the U.S. military plans to begin pulling back, turning over more responsibility to local politicians and Iraqi security forces. While ostensibly a sign of progress, it will also be a time of great vulnerability for U.S. interests.

Across Iraq, in small towns and large, there are young captains and lieutenants and sergeants who are not just patrolling streets but who are shepherding town councils and water projects. What will happen in those towns when those Americans are gone? Will the city council fall apart? Will the water pump break and not be fixed because of a lack of spares or money? How will U.S. forces, once on intimate terms with the town, know if things are turning dangerous?

"There is going to be a vacuum when the military draws down," the official said. "When they pull back, who is going to interface with the Iraqis? Before it's stable enough for the (United Nations) and the (non-governmental organizations) to come in? What is the American face going to be in the interim?"

The Iraqi government ministries are barely functioning; many are still being staffed, and few in their roles have experience working in a government meant to serve rather than dictate to the people.

The troubles are understandable. Iraq has had four governments in three years -- Saddam Hussein, Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority, Ayad Allawi's interim government, and Ibrahim Jaafari's interim government. Each of these had its own favorites to staff and head ministries, and there has been frequent turnover -- as well as a number of assassinations. In December, if all goes well, Iraq will get another government, and with it the attendant time it takes any government to organize. In Baghdad's case, it is almost starting from scratch, again.

But Iraq can not afford to serve its people poorly, not while an insurgency threatens a democratic existence. Baghdad's ineffectiveness will only feed its opponents.

"It'll be the lack of government services that could make this fail," said Army Lt. Col. Bradley Becker, in an interview with UPI in Qayyara, where he has been commanding a battalion for the last 11 months. "The people have to have confidence in the government, the teachers have to get paid."

U.S. interlocutors -- nearly all of them military -- have served as buffers so far, making things happen on the regional and local level that otherwise would not. Though the military presence may be diminished next year, there will not be a reduction in the requirement for American influence -- money, problem-solving skills, and arm-twisting, the official said.

Gen. George Casey, the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, has held meetings with U.S. Ambassdor Zalmay Khalilizad to begin forming up provincial transition teams to take on the civil works after U.S. forces are reduced. Finding staff for it is a challenge, a senior military official told UPI.

The State Department has fewer than 3,000 civilians assigned to Iraq, according to officials here, and nearly all of them are in Baghdad. There is just one State Department representative in all of vast Anbar province, home to some of the worst fighting.

"The Department of State hasn't mobilized for this war. They need to start assigning people ... We have never had our A-Team here," the U.S. official said. "The ratio is outrageous."

A senior military official said the United States needs "expeditionary diplomats, treasury planners, etc, if our goal is to win the peace, to create a better peace."

"When we do things -- like initiating war with Saddam -- and haven't the managerial integrity to have the international and interagency blocks incorporated and integrated into the planning and execution, we end up with a mess paid for in lives of innocent Iraqis and U.S. servicemen and women."

The only way to be sure Iraq does not become the threat it was posited to be before the war, a safe haven for terrorists, is to raise the standard of living and the expectations of the people, creating a country of "haves" who don't tolerate terrorists and thugs, and who have confidence their government and security force will back them up.

Another looming problem that may need attention: whether the reconstruction projects undertaken by the United States with $18.6 billion appropriated in 2003 are actually bringing about stability. Some of the projects on the books won't yield results for two or three years. And by the end of this year, all of the money earmarked for Iraq reconstruction will be committed or on contract, U.S. officials involved in reconstruction point out. There will be no flexibility after that to redirect money to high-impact projects -- those that influence public opinion -- unless there is new money for reconstruction.

"We're in a tactical security environment. I don't give a rat's ass that in two years the sewer system is going to work," the U.S. official said. "We may not get there if we aren't careful."

Khalilizad is reviewing the reconstruction priorities now, as did the ambassador before him, John Negroponte.

Negroponte ended up taking money from water and electricity projects and pumping money into the security sector, but that may have been shortsighted. Projects that impact the quality of Iraqi's lives in the short term may do more to shore up security than new guns and border forts, as Maj. Gen. Peter Chiarelli posits in an article for the July/August edition of Military Review.

Chiarelli, whose Task Force Baghdad was responsible for policing the city's restive Sadr City, overlays a map of the slum's water and electrical infrastructure with its insurgent cells. There is a striking correlation: the worse the conditions, the more numerous the cells. As his troops improved that infrastructure with local projects, the fighting diminished.

"The question is, are we -- the Iraqi people, the United States and the international community -- willing to take the time, energy and sacrifice to see it through?" said Gibler. "I honestly believe this can be won. I have to be optimistic. I couldn't look them in the eye and tell them to go fight, otherwise."

Does Rupert Murdoch own radio stations too????

Clear Channel Communications, the world's largest radio broadcaster, called on Congress to ease restrictions on station ownership to help it compete with satellite and Internet-based rivals.

Congress should increase limits to 10 outlets from eight in markets where 60 or more stations operate and to 12 from eight in markets with 75 or more stations, Clear Channel CEO Mark Mays said this week in a speech in Washington.

''Free radio" stations are losing audience to competing media, including Sirius and XM. The Internet and electronic devices such as Apple's iPod are also taking listeners away from traditional broadcasters, Mays said.

San Antonio-based Clear Channel, which operates 1,200 stations, has reduced advertising airtime to help retain listeners.

(Beware .... my thoughts ahead)

I know that in Dallas that Clear Channel owns ALL 5 of the "top" stations and it just seems to me that if Clear Channel were REALLY worried about fear of losing market share that hey .... THEY'D STOP PLAYING CRAP and actually do more of what stations like Jack FM are doing (yes I am aware that a lot of people dont like Jack.) So let me clarify, they dont have to model a station after Jack but maybe a bit more after their behaviour, from what I understand they allow people to submit their podcasts to the station play lists. As far as Sirius and XM, well thats the wave of the future. Howard Stern realized that but I think that his move was more of a political statement than anything. Also, please remember that Clear Channel did this following gem:

One of the most famous cases of alleged banned songs occurred several days after September 11, 2001. As the story goes, a Program Director at one of the Clear Channel Radio stations, decided on his own to compile a list of songs that might be considered in "bad taste" - if played - following the awful events of 9/11. (I'll attach the link at some point if anyone really wants to see.)

Clear Channel said at the time that this wasnt a "hard" list but merely a suggestion for offering songs that were more "sensitive" to what the country was going through at the time. I saw the list the day it was leaked and none of the Clear Channel stations here in Dallas thought this was a "suggested play list." They pretty much followed lock step to not play any of the songs on the list.

My whole theory is this though, like Rupert Murdoch, if one station controls so much of what we see, and now hear, how much harder is it going to be to hear new music or to be able to watch a digestable news program where we dont have a babble head like Bill O'Reilly putting a "no-spin" on his lies. Contrary to popular opinion, just like the government, if we stop listening to corporate interests and start doing more things like XM and Sirius at some point, the media mega-conglomerates will have no choice but to take notice that people are walking away from them. Those are just my thoughts though.

Guess whos gonna be confirmed

NEW YORK On its front page Tuesday, The New York Times published a photo of new U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers going over a briefing paper with President George W. Bush at his Crawford ranch “in August 2001,” the caption reads.

USA Today and the Boston Globe carried the photo labeled simply “2001,” but many other newspapers ran the picture in print or on the Web with a more precise date: Aug. 6, 2001.

Does that date sound familiar? Indeed, that was the date, a little over a month before 9/11, that President Bush was briefed on the now-famous “PDB” that declared that Osama Bin Laden was “determined” to attack the U.S. homeland, perhaps with hijacked planes. But does that mean that Miers had anything to do with that briefing?

As it turns out, yes, according to Tuesday's Los Angeles Times. An article by Richard A. Serrano and Scott Gold observes that early in the Bush presidency “Miers assumed such an insider role that in 2001 it was she who handed Bush the crucial 'presidential daily briefing' hinting at terrorist plots against America just a month before the Sept. 11 attacks.”

So the Aug. 6 photo may show this historic moment, though quite possibly not. In any case, some newspapers failed to include the exact date with the widely used Miers photo today. A New York Times spokesman told E&P: "The wording of the caption occurred in the course of routine editing and has no broader significance."

The photo that ran in so many papers and on their Web sites originally came from the White House but was moved by the Associated Press, clearly marked as an “Aug. 6, 2001” file photo. It shows Miers with a document or documents in her right hand, as her left hand points to something in another paper balanced on the president's right leg. Two others in the background are Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin and Steve Biegun of the national security staff.

The PDB was headed “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” and notes, among other things, FBI information indicating “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks.”

Hey Buddy .... curb that mongrel

(From Time.com)

Oct. 10, 2005 issue - In the Tom DeLay era—now at least temporarily ended—a meeting of the House Republican Conference usually was a ceremonial affair, at which "Leadership" (always a single word, spoken with a mixture of awe and fear) clued in the flock on Done Deals. The proceedings had the spontaneity of a Baath Party conclave. But last week the erstwhile majority leader, and the rest of the Leadership he had forged since taking effective control of the House in the late '90s, was struggling to maintain its grip. The members applauded him as he proclaimed his innocence of the charge leveled against him: that he had funneled streams of laundered corporate cash into legislative races in Texas. They cheered as he attacked the Democratic prosecutor in Austin. And they didn't argue when he denounced the conference itself for having written a rule that barred him from continuing to serve as majority leader, even under indictment. Speaker Denny Hastert, ever the avuncular wrestling coach, gave a pep talk on the virtues of unity in adversity.

Still, when it came time to discuss precisely what would happen next, discipline broke down. DeLay and Hastert had wanted Rep. David Dreier to step in as acting majority leader. Instead, the hard-charging Roy Blunt got the job. Members demanded full-scale elections sooner rather than later for a new permanent Leadership, and if DeLay doesn't escape his legal problem by January—hardly a certainty—that vote will occur and he won't be in the race. Reaching for inspiration, one acolyte compared the Speaker to Robert E. Lee and DeLay to Stonewall Jackson: when the latter was wounded, the former still won a crucial battle. But another member elicited wry laughter by pointing out that Jackson had been shot, accidentally, by his own troops. Some backbenchers were gloomy and resentful, but unwilling to say so on the record, for fear that the vindictive DeLay might survive. "Leadership has become ossified and hopelessly out of touch," lamented one such member. "They only care about one thing, hanging onto their own power. I'm not ready to take them on, at least not yet, not unless I have to!"

The president's many visits to the Gulf Coast seem to have shored up, at least somewhat, his eroded standing. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, his job-approval rating inched up two points, to a still-dismal 40 percent. But, safely back in the White House, he now has to deal with another disaster area: Republican Washington. The list of official inquiries is long and growing, involving issues ranging from arguably excusable bureaucratic mismanagement to insider trading to allegations of lawbreaking that potentially lead to the highest levels of the White House staff. "Look, the Democrats' numbers are just as low as the Republicans' are," said James Carville, who helped guide Bill Clinton into the White House in 1992. "People see a lot of this stuff just as 'more Washington.' But the danger for Republicans and for Bush is that there are too many things they can't control—and the odds are that all of them aren't going to work out in their favor."

Bush and his fellow Republicans have little margin for error. Three forces—sky-high gasoline prices, the massive costs of rebuilding the Gulf Coast and ever-gloomier public assessments of the war in Iraq—have combined to weaken Bush's reputation as a strong leader, and leave him vulnerable to the kind of second-term fiascoes that tend to befall all presidents: think Ronald Reagan and Iran-contra, or Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Indeed, polltaker Frank Luntz, who helped develop the "Contract With America" message that swept Republicans to power in 1994, was on the Hill last week warning the party faithful that they could lose both the House and the Senate in next year's congressional elections.

The Republicans' power outage is real—and the historical irony is as vast as Texas. Beginning in the 1950s, the Democratic Party of Texans Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn built a congressional machine of unrivaled power. But starting in the '80s, led by a firebrand named Newt Gingrich, Republicans led a revolt from below in the name of smaller government and an ethically cleansed Congress. In 1989 Newt & Co. forced out Democratic Speaker Jim Wright—a Texan, too, who resigned over charges that he profited improperly from book sales—and five years later the GOP took control of the House after a Biblical 40 years in the wilderness. But it took the Republicans only 10 years to become yet another ruling party beset by charges of profligate spending, bloated government and corruption—a party led by two Texans, Bush and DeLay, who don't particularly care whether they are beloved outside their inner circle. To paraphrase David Mamet, the Republicans became what they beheld.

And there is much to behold. Michael Brown, the hapless yet arrogant former head of FEMA, managed to anger even putative Republican allies in an appearance before a House committee. Democrats consider the probe a whitewash in waiting, but Republican Chairman Tom Davis vowed a thorough look at the government's pre- and post-Katrina performance. Questions have already arisen about no-bid contracts awarded to companies with ties to one of Bush's closest political friends from Texas, former FEMA head Joe Allbaugh, who has denied any wrongdoing—and who, in any case, has the hide of a rhino.

The skin is a little more sensitive on the princely Senate majority leader, Bill Frist. Buffeted by the complex politics of his job, he now finds himself the subject of a full-scale investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. A physician, his substantial wealth is partly derived from HCA Inc., a leading managed-care and hospital company founded by his family back home in Tennessee. The SEC is examining Frist's decision to dump all the HCA stock from the "blind trust" in which he placed it after he was elected in 1994. The stock price dropped shortly after the sale. By Frist's account, he decided to initiate the sale last April, and says that he had no information that wasn't available to the public when he did so.

As Frist deals with new questions of insider trading, the White House continues to deal with old questions of insider leaking. The issue: who revealed the classified identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, wife of Bush administration foe Joe Wilson? Last week Judith Miller, The New York Times reporter who had spent 85 days in jail for refusing to testify on the matter, cut a deal, winning freedom and revealing that her source was the same one others have identified: vice presidential chief of staff Lewis (Scooter) Libby. Miller's testimony is said to be the last being sought by Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor. He is expected to conclude his work soon, and may issue a report. If he does, it can be expected to include potentially embarrassing, if not necessarily criminal, actions and phone calls by insiders such as Libby and Bush political consigliere Karl Rove.

The DeLay indictment has gotten tons of ink. Even before last week, the now suspended majority leader had an astonishingly high "name ID" in the country, and a very low "favorability" rating. But Washington legal experts see the most serious threat to the GOP machinery in the widening federal probes of lobbyist Jack Abramoff. A hustler with ties to conservatives dating to his days in the College Republicans, Abramoff made it his business to do favors for DeLay—from arranging golf trips to sponsoring fund-raisers—in exchange for access to Leadership. If DeLay, as Hill insiders say, rose to power in part by being the "concierge" to House Republicans, Abramoff, in turn, rose by being concierge to the concierge.

Now the deputy concierge is under the microscope. He and a business partner were indicted by a federal grand jury in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., on charges that they tried to fraudulently purchase a fleet of gambling boats from a businessman who was later killed in a gangland-style hit. Abramoff, who denies any wrongdoing, was accused of having used his connections with members of Congress to facilitate the deal.

In Washington, meanwhile, a separate investigation is gathering speed. It has resulted so far in one arrest: David H. Safavian, the head of procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget. A former lobbying partner of Abramoff's, he is accused of lying to the FBI about the assistance that he had given Abramoff on a lucrative land deal with the General Services Administration. Safavian, who has denied wrongdoing, is expected to be indicted this week. Investigators, NEWSWEEK has learned, are pressing him for information about Abramoff's dealings with members of Congress.

The Abramoff probe, originally centered on allegations that he had fleeced tens of millions of dollars from Indian tribes eager for gaming licenses, has complicated life at the Justice Department. Bush has nominated Timothy Flanigan, who had been deputy White House counsel, to be deputy attorney general—the key No. 2 position. But then Flanigan disclosed to Congress that, as a lawyer for the Tyco Corp., he had hired Abramoff to lobby on an obscure issue, the maintenance of certain offshore tax breaks. (Flanigan also told Congress that he had hired Abramoff in part because of the lobbyist's connection to DeLay.) Tyco paid Abramoff an eye-popping $1.7 million. Abramoff, according to Flanigan, claimed that he had lobbied Rove. (The White House says Rove has "no recollection" of talking to Abramoff about Tyco matters.)

Congressional investigators are even more interested in another $1.5 million that Tyco paid, at Abramoff's direction, to a company called Grassroots Interactive. Abramoff, who declined to comment, allegedly controlled the firm, but, according to Flanigan, didn't tell Tyco. Lawyers for the conglomerate later complained that Tyco had been ripped off by Grassroots Interactive. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are pressing for answers about what happened to the cash.

In politics, timing is everything, and GOP officials worried that the many Abramoff investigations—not to mention a DeLay trial in Texas, if it comes to that—could take place next summer, just before the midterm elections. In the meantime, Leadership wrestled with their own characteristically crucial issues. Such as: who occupies the Majority Leader Suite in the Capitol? DeLay has moved out, but most of his official staff have remained. Blunt will not move in, officially, keeping his whip office as home base. Instead, Blunt, Dreier and Deputy Whip Eric Cantor will hover in the vicinity. So the office will remain officially vacant. It's symbolic evidence of Leadership—or the absence of it.