$50 Billion. Walter Pincus on the intelligence budget:

The director of national intelligence will disclose today that national intelligence activities amounting to roughly 80 percent of all U.S. intelligence spending for the year cost more than $40 billion, according to sources on Capitol Hill and inside the administration.

The disclosure means that when military spending is added, aggregate U.S. intelligence spending for fiscal 2007 exceeded $50 billion, according to these sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the total remains classified.

Adm. Mike McConnell will announce that the fiscal 2007 national intelligence program figure, classified up to now, is being made public at the urging of the Sept. 11 commission and the insistence of Congress, which turned the commission's recommendation into law. The commission's plan was to have the president make the figure public each year. ...

In October 1997, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet disclosed that $26.6 billion was the aggregate amount appropriated for intelligence and intelligence-related activities for fiscal year 1997. He said he saw no harm to national security in such a disclosure.

Tenet also released an aggregate amount for fiscal 1998. It was $26.7 billion, or an increase of $100 million. Since that time, the overall intelligence budget has remained classified, despite several legal challenges to make the figure public.

At a public meeting in 2005, Mary Margaret Graham, the deputy director of national intelligence for collection, said the annual intelligence budget was $44 billion, including the budget for the military services. The figure was never officially confirmed.

David Ignatius: Walking into Iran's trap.

Akbar Ganji in the Post: Why Iran's democrats shun aid:

... As a fundamentalist state, Iran is dangerous, but it is dangerous for its own people, not the United States. The Iranian people, myself included, need freedom, democracy and peace -- not war conditions and constant worries about a potential barrage of U.S. missiles.

The seeds of democracy need fertile soil to take root and grow. In Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the soil is fertile for fostering fundamentalism. If fair elections were held in those countries, fundamentalists would win. Iran is the only country in the Middle East in which modern, democratic forces would win any free and fair elections. A peaceful transition to democracy is our goal. But the Iranian regime suppresses civil society on the pretext of a coming war and describes its opponents as U.S. stooges and mercenaries.

Governments provide foreign aid -- indeed, form their foreign policies -- based on their national interests; those who receive aid naturally have to align themselves with the donor's policies. ...

The Iranian regime uses American funding as an excuse to persecute opponents. Although its accusations are false, this has proved effective in poisoning the public against the regime's opponents. Fear of foreign meddling is one reason for the regime's staying power.

Of course, Iran's democratic movement and civil institutions need funding. But this must come from independent Iranian sources. Iranians themselves must support the transition to democracy; it cannot be presented like a gift. Expatriate Iranians can assist the transition. Many of the social prerequisites of democracy exist in Iran today, but dollars cannot produce the bravery or love of freedom that individuals need to make the transition possible. ...

AP: Defense contractor accused of bribing Cunningham takes stand:

Defense contractor Brent Wilkes emphatically denied bribing former U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham Friday as he took the stand in his trial, which had been suspended while wildfires ravaged San Diego County.

Wilkes' attorney, Mark Geragos, surprised prosecutors by calling Wilkes on the first day of trial in a week. The lawyer had not warned them he would be calling his client to the stand, and had not hinted in earlier hearings that Wilkes would testify in his own defense.

"Did you ever bribe him?" Geragos asked Wilkes, who took the stand in a gray suit.

"No, I didn't," Wilkes replied.

He has steadfastly denied prosecutors' claims that he bribed Cunningham with luxurious trips, meals and even a rendezvous with prostitutes at a Hawaiian resort in exchange for the lawmaker's assistance in securing nearly $90 million in federal contracts. Geragos has said the transactions between Wilkes and the lawmaker were all legitimate. ...

More here, from Seth Hettena:

... [Prosecutor] Halpern did elicit this bit of CIA humor when he asked whether Wilkes told his employees to cover up the wrongdoing with Cunningham. (Remember Wilkes’ best friend was Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, the former executive director of the Central Intelligence Agency.)

I believe you’re referring to the phrase, ‘Admit nothing, deny everything and make counteraccusations. It’s a CIA saying. It’s a joke.

At other times, the prosecutor lost control of his witness. He allowed Wilkes to trash the government’s witnesses and deliver a ringing endorsement of earmarks:

Earmarks are not dirty things and earmarks are an alternative to a bureaucracy being in complete control of the budget.

Instead of challenging this (bridge to nowhere, anyone?) Halpern only rolled his eyes in disbelief.

It dawned on me that Halpern was trying to run out the clock, stalling until the end of the day so he could regroup and prepare for a proper cross. But in the meantime, he afforded Wilkes to connect with the jury at the government’s expense. Jurors were cracking up at Wilkes’ jokes and smiling when he shook his head at Halpern’s questioning.

The AP's Pam Hess:

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has reversed the recent practice of declassifying and releasing summaries of national intelligence estimates, a top intelligence official said Friday.

Knowing their words may be scrutinized outside the U.S. government chills analysts' willingness to provide unvarnished opinions and information, said David Shedd, a deputy to McConnell.

He told congressional aides and reporters that McConnell recently issued a directive making it more difficult to declassify the key judgments of national intelligence estimates, which are forward-looking analyses prepared for the White House and Congress that represent the consensus of the nation's 16 spy agencies on a single issue. The analysis comes from various sources including the CIA, the military and intelligence agencies inside federal departments.

Referring to the public release of the reports, Shedd said during a Capitol Hill briefing: "It affects the quality of what's written." ...

CQ's Tim Starks:

A report released Friday provides new details about an important gap in the narrative about the Bush administration’s internal dissension over the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program.

The committee’s published report on legislation (S 2248) that would rewrite the rules for government surveillance states that telecommunications companies participating in the NSA program received regular letters affirming President Bush had authorized the program.

But all but one of the letters also stated that the attorney general had determined the program to be lawful, according to the report. That letter, which covered a period of “less than sixty days,” instead stated that “the activities had been determined to be lawful by the counsel to the president.”

In May, former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee that in March 2004, Alberto R. Gonzales, who was then White House counsel, had tried to bypass him and get authorization for a secret program from then-Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized at the time and had temporarily relinquished his duties to Comey.

The report states that those letters from the administration to unnamed telecommunications companies showed that the companies acted in “good faith.”

The details about the letters were in a section of the committee report explaining the panel’s decision to provide retroactive legal immunity to companies alleged to have participated in the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program. Such immunity, repeatedly sought by the administration, has been sharply criticized by Democratic liberals. ...

While the overwhelming majority of the panel sided with Rockefeller and Vice Chairman Christopher S. Bond, R-Mo., on the immunity issue, the committee went against the two leaders in other cases.

An amendment offered by Wyden and Feingold that would require orders from the secret court established by the FISA court for spying on U.S. citizens overseas was adopted by a vote of 9-6, with Rockefeller and Bond voting “no.” That amendment has drawn the opposition from the White House.

Another amendment offered by Wyden and Feingold to assign additional oversight responsibilities to the Department of Justice’s inspector general and require the disclosure of more information to Congress in semi-annual reports was adopted by 8-7, with Bond and Rockefeller again voting “no.”

The committee rejected several other amendments opposed by Rockefeller and Bond, however, including one by Feingold that would “limit the use of U.S. information obtained through targeting procedures that the FISA court determines are not reasonably designed to target persons reasonably believed to be overseas.” It failed 5-10.

Worth Reading: former DOJ lawyer Marty Lederman on the abuse of the classification system. (As a friend who sent this around says, pretty much everything Lederman and Jack Balkin write at Balkinization is fantastically interesting.)

LAT: State Department obstructed LAT investigation of Blackwater killing of civilian. More.

Just Out: a story on a spook turned lawyer who charges the Agency abuses secrecy to insulate itself from internal demands for reform.

Also check out some of the interviews posted at the left I conducted back in August that informed an Iraq package, with: Petraeus advisor and "Dereliction of Duty" author Col. H.R. McMaster, counterinsurgency field guide co-author and trainer of the trainers Lt. Col. John Nagl, AEI military expert Tom Donnelly, CNAS military experts Jim Miller and Colin Kahl, writer and military consultant Edward Luttwak, Center for American Progress national security expert Brian Katulis, former National Intelligence Council Near East chief Paul Pillar, former State INR official Wayne White, former ORHA and CPA official, retired Col. Paul Hughes, former ambassador Peter Galbraith, and former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. Highlights, more interviews, and related stories in the new Iraq cover story package of the November/December issue of Mother Jones.

(Illusration by Brian Stauffer).

Ha'aretz:

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said a few months ago in a series of closed discussions that in her opinion that Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel, Haaretz magazine reveals in an article on Livni to be published Friday.

Livni also criticized the exaggerated use that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears. Last week, former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy said similar things about Iran.

The article also reveals for the first time a document Livni prepared and sent to Olmert a few months after the Second Lebanon War proposing a new division of labor between the two. "Enclosed is a proposal for work procedures between us, with the aim of providing an answer to Israel's strategic needs and facilitating early planning and the formulation of coordinated Israeli positions ... within the framework of cooperative relations, full transparency and continuous mutual updates," wrote Livni. ...

WP: "The Bush administration plans to roll out an unprecedented package of unilateral sanctions against Iran today, including the long-awaited designations of its Revolutionary Guard Corps as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and of the elite Quds Force as a supporter of terrorism, according to senior administration officials. The package, scheduled to be announced jointly by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., marks the first time that the United States has tried to isolate or punish another country's military. It is the broadest set of punitive measures imposed on Tehran since the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy, the officials said." More here.

Gary Sick writes at Newsweek of "Deja Vu: Musharraf and the Shah."

Freedom agenda proponents depart State.

Time/AP: White House continues to redact global warming effects from reports.

Go read the Washington Monthly forthcoming cover story by Rachel Morris on Rudy Giuliani and executive power:

... Giuliani also unashamedly flouted the First Amendment to crush dissent both inside and outside his government. He lost thirty-five First Amendment cases in court. His administration was found to have shut down or delayed legal protests, illegally prevented its own employees from making protected public statements, and illegally prevented New Yorkers from gathering on the steps of City Hall. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals took the unusual step of reprimanding the administration, noting, "[W]e would be ostriches if we failed to take judicial notice of the heavy stream of First Amendment litigation generated by New York City in recent years."

In all of these cases, Giuliani was ultimately checked by the courts, even if his strategy had gained him valuable time. Sometimes, though, he got away with skirting the law because no one was able or inclined to restrain him. ...

As his term progressed, Giuliani became increasingly unscrupulous in his manipulations of the bureaucracy to avoid oversight and transparency. He was especially sensitive about any agency charged with scrutinizing the NYPD. ...

Giuliani understood that the currency of oversight is information, and he exercised more control over information than any mayor in recent memory. His administration denied information to the public, borough presidents, the city council, and the public advocate. ...

By Giuliani's own admission, he would, as president, perpetuate many of Bush's boldest assertions of presidential authority. In 2006, Giuliani told the Wall Street Journal that he would probably keep the detention center at Guantanamo Bay open ... Giuliani has also indicated that presidents have the power to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial. At a debate, he declared himself opposed to torture but refused to say whether he would outlaw waterboarding, instead offering that interrogators should perform "any method they can think of."

What is most disturbing is the likelihood that a Giuliani administration would venture beyond the expansive claims of executive authority staked out by the Bush White House. ...

Ha'aretz's Yossi Melman:

Iran has signed a deal with China to buy two squadrons of J-10 fighter planes that are based on Israeli technology, the Russian news agency Novosti reported yesterday.

The 24 aircraft are based on technology and components provided to China by Israel following the cancellation of the Lavi project in the mid-1980s. The engines of the J-10 are Russian-made.

The total cost of the planes is estimated at $1 billion, and deliveries are expected between 2008 and 2010.

The estimated operational range of the aircraft, with external fuel tanks, is 3,000 kilometers, which means Israel falls within their radius of operation.

During the 1980s, Israel Aircraft Industries, along with U.S. firms, developed a multi-role aircraft that was considered the most advanced of its type at the time.

Following the development of a prototype, the Reagan administration stopped funding, bringing about the cancellation of the joint project.

Israel then began selling some of the systems it had developed to various countries, including China.

Experts point out that even with these aircraft, Iran's air force is no match for Israel's or even Saudi Arabia's.

Some analysts expressed criticism at what they called Israel's "short sighted" and lax export policies.

This is not the first time Israeli components were part of weapons systems aimed at Israel. Some reports claimed that China sold Saudi Arabia long-range missiles containing Israeli know-how.

Congressional Quarterly's John Donnelly:

Some Democrats are worried that President Bush’s funding request to enable B-2 “stealth” bombers to carry a new 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bomb is a sign of plans for an attack on Iran.

Buried in the $196.4 billion supplemental war spending proposal that Bush submitted to Congress on Oct. 22 is a request for $88 million to modify B-2 bombers so they can drop a Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, a conventional bomb still in development that is the most powerful weapon designed to destroy targets deep underground.

A White House summary accompanying the supplemental spending proposal said the request for money to modify ­B-2s to carry the bombs came in response to “an urgent operational need from theater commanders.” The summary provided no further details. The White House and the Air Force, in response to queries, did not provide additional clarification.

Previous statements by the Defense Department and the program’s contractors, along with interviews with military experts, suggest the weapon is meant for the kind of hardened targets found chiefly in Iran, which Bush suspects of developing nuclear weapons capability, and North Korea, which already has tested a nuclear device.

Bush has said repeatedly that he prefers to use diplomacy to resolve tensions with Iran over its nuclear program. But his request for funding to deliver the new bunker buster comes amid a sharp escalation of tough White House rhetoric about Iran’s nuclear program in recent days.

On Oct. 18, Bush said a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to “World War III.” Three days later, Vice President Dick Cheney warned of “serious consequences” if Tehran continued to enrich uranium.

Against that backdrop, the proposed funding for bunker busters has some in Congress worried. ...

More from ABC's Jonathan Karl.

Secretary of State Rice will appear at Rep. Henry Waxman's House Reform and Government Oversight committee on Thursday, his office announces. "The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a hearing entitled, 'The State Department and the Iraq War' on Thursday morning, October 25, 2007, in 2154 Rayburn House Office Building. The hearing will examine unanswered questions regarding the performance of the State Department on several significant issues relating to the Iraq war, including the impact of the activities of Blackwater USA and corruption within the Iraqi ministries on the prospects of political reconciliation in Iraq. The Committee may also discuss with the Secretary allegations of wrongdoing associated with the construction of the new U.S. Embassy Compound in Baghdad, as well as other matters under investigation by the Committee."

In the Guardian America's debut issue today, editor Mike Tomasky interviews Hillary Clinton on executive power. "Hillary Clinton would launch a policy review as president with an eye towards giving up some of the executive powers accumulated by George Bush." More here and here.

NYT: Telcos seeking immunity held fundraiser for Rockefeller:

Executives at the two biggest phone companies contributed more than $42,000 in political donations to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV this year while seeking his support for legal immunity for businesses participating in National Security Agency eavesdropping.

The surge in contributions came from a Who’s Who of executives at the companies, AT&T; and Verizon, starting with the chief executives and including at least 50 executives and lawyers at the two utilities, according to campaign finance reports.

The money came primarily from a fund-raiser that Verizon held for Mr. Rockefeller in March in New York and another that AT&T; sponsored for him in May in San Antonio.

Mr. Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, emerged last week as the most important supporter of immunity in devising a compromise plan with Senate Republicans and the Bush administration.

A measure approved by the intelligence panel on Thursday would add restrictions on the eavesdropping and extend retroactive immunity to carriers that participated in it. President Bush secretly approved the program after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mr. Rockefeller’s office said Monday that the sharp increases in contributions from the telecommunications executives had no influence on his support for the immunity provision.

“Any suggestion that Senator Rockefeller would make policy decisions based on campaign contributions is patently false,” Wendy Morigi, a spokeswoman for him, said. “He made his decision to support limited immunity based on the Intelligence Committee’s careful review of the situation and our national security interests.”

Alexis Debat update.

Just Out: my reported afterword to a spy memoir, Fair Game. Nice review here. First chapter here. Still awaiting my copy but I may just go to the bookstore and buy it.

Go read Newsweek's Christopher Dickey, "War and Deliverance."

Worth reading: fascinating Russ Baker/Adam Federman piece on a network of mysterious BCCI-linked money men who helped set up Bush now backing team Hillary. Influence secured in the service of hands off regulation and low taxes for hedge funds, among other purposes, the article suggests.

WP: Former prosecutor says Pentagon puts politics first in Gitmo cases. "Politically motivated officials at the Pentagon have pushed for convictions of high-profile detainees ahead of the 2008 elections, the former lead prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay said last night, adding that the pressure played a part in his decision to resign earlier this month. Senior defense officials discussed in a September 2006 meeting the 'strategic political value' of putting some prominent detainees on trial, said Air Force Col. Morris Davis. He said that he felt pressure to pursue cases that were deemed 'sexy' over those that prosecutors believed were the most solid or were ready to go. Davis said his resignation was also prompted by newly appointed senior officials seeking to use classified evidence in what would be closed sessions of court, and by almost all elements of the military commissions process being put under the Defense Department general counsel's command, something he believes could present serious conflicts of interest. 'There was a big concern that the election of 2008 is coming up,' Davis said. 'People wanted to get the cases going. There was a rush to get high-interest cases into court at the expense of openness.'"

AP: Iran nuclear negotiator Larijani resigns. " ... Differences had recently emerged between Larijani and Ahmadinejad. Larijani's absence during Russian President Vladimir Putin's meeting last week with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, raised eyebrows in Iranian political circles."

Also worth reading, former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy in Ha'aretz urging Israel to greenlight US-Iran talks: "It may sound counterintuitive, even heretical, but it could just be that Israel is overlooking - or worse, helping to block - what is possibly the best option available for avoiding a nuclear Iran. Direct American-led negotiations are not in play, and Israel is complicit in this omission. [...] Let's call the alternative double-dip diplomacy. The U.S. would offer Iran two negotiating tracks. The first focuses on the priority security concerns of each side: the nuclear file, Iraq, regime security, sanctions. The second would address all issues of mutual concern, region-wide. ... The U.S.-Iranian talks would be direct, not via proxy, and without preconditions. A genuine U.S. offer would most effectively give regime pragmatists a tool to work with and leverage the pressure that has been generated but that, absent diplomacy, leaves nothing constructive to navigate toward. Beyond the nuclear question, a U.S.-Iranian detente may best deliver on Israeli interests across a range of issues."

WP:

Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.

Disclosure of the deal followed a decision by House Democratic leaders to pull a competing version of the measure from the floor because they lacked the votes to prevail over Republican opponents and GOP parliamentary maneuvers.

The collapse marked the first time since Democrats took control of the chamber that a major bill was withdrawn from consideration before a scheduled vote. It was a victory for President Bush, whose aides lobbied heavily against the Democrats' bill, and an embarrassment for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who had pushed for the measure's passage.

The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and Bush's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.

Such a demonstration, which the bill says could be made in secret, would wipe out a series of pending lawsuits alleging violations of privacy rights by telecommunications companies that provided telephone records, summaries of e-mail traffic and other information to the government after Sept. 11, 2001, without receiving court warrants. Bush had repeatedly threatened to veto any legislation that lacked this provision.

On the road, light posting.

AP: Turkish parliament approves incursion into northern Iraq.

MSNBC: Cheney and Obama 9th cousins. Obama and Bush 11th cousins.

Middle East Economic Survey: "The simmering row between Iraq’s Oil Ministry and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Irbil over its recent moves to license oil companies for exploration and development in KRG-controlled areas of northern Iraq stepped up a gear this week after allegations by former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam Chalabi, in a /MEES /interview, that the production-sharing contract awarded to US independent Hunt Oil in early September relates to areas of Iraq at present outside KRG control. If confirmed, the development would appear to suggest that the KRG is not only targeting oil investment, but may have broader political ambitions for control of oil and gas in the disputed areas adjacent to its territory in northern Iraq."

Newsmax's Ken Timmerman reports from the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq while hanging out with the Iranian Kurdish militants the PJAK dreaming of attacking Iran and anticipating a possible Turkish invasion. An Iranian American contact quite hostile to the Iranian regime comments skeptically, "[PJAK] are not destabilizing Iran, They are destabilizing IRAQ! Turkish forces want to enter the Kurdish area to go after them." But Newsmax sounds quite excited with its new found rebel friends, kissing cousins of the PKK terrorist group attacking Turkey.

Congressional Quarterly's Tim Starks:

Democrats on Wednesday will move a bill through the House governing electronic surveillance, without allowing individual lawmakers the chance to try to alter it.

As the House was preparing Tuesday for floor debate, the Senate Intelligence Committee received access to long-sought legal documents related to the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program, according to the chairman of the panel. House leaders were still awaiting the documents.

The House legislation (HR 3773) is likely to gain the support of most Democrats and even a handful of Republicans when it comes to a floor vote, but the White House threatened a veto Tuesday.

The only changes to the bill will come as a result of the House Judiciary and Intelligence panels combining their two, slightly different versions of the legislation and an amendment incorporated into the rule for floor debate that would allow a court to issue temporary surveillance orders when an application is under appeal. It also would require any administration demand for assistance from telecommunications companies to cite the section of law with which it is in compliance.

Among the amendments blocked Tuesday by the House Rules Committee when it approved a closed rule, 8-4, was one supported by House liberals that would have required individual warrants for communications where one party is a U.S. citizen. Another major amendment, backed by Republicans, would have offered retroactive legal immunity to companies that participated in the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program.

The Democrats’ decision to prohibit amendments on the House floor drew harsh words from Republicans during a Rules Committee debate. The minority Republicans called the decision “arrogant,” “sad,” “outrageous” and more. ...

The new bill, which would amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA, PL 95-511), would allow the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to apply to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for an order authorizing up to one year of surveillance of people reasonably believed to be located outside the United States. The officials also could apply for one-year extensions of such orders. Any one order could encompass a large number of targets.

The director and attorney general would have to certify that the surveillance targets were not “U.S. persons” and that a significant purpose of the surveillance was to obtain foreign intelligence information.

Any surveillance authorized under the legislation before its Dec. 31, 2009, expiration date would be permitted to continue for as long as it had been authorized.

The merged text of the Intelligence and Judiciary bills would retain all the major amendments adopted by both panels.

That means it would reaffirm that FISA is the only basis for conducting domestic surveillance and require the administration to “fully inform” Congress of any surveillance programs put into place since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It would increase the number of FISA court judges and personnel handling FISA warrants and mandate that the court examine and approve how guidelines are applied for surveillance targeting.

Additionally, it would require a federal judge to review government compliance with the terms of the surveillance orders and require the government to inform lawmakers of the “primary purpose” of the foreign surveillance authorized by FISA court orders.

Democrats contend their bill gives proper attention to both security and civil liberties. ...

Across the Capitol, Senate Intelligence Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, D W.Va., said his staff Tuesday reviewed legal opinions and other documents the panel had sought related to the NSA program. He said his staff was allowed to take notes, but he hadn’t been briefed on their contents yet and intended to view them for himself.

Although Rockefeller’s panel had been tentatively scheduled to mark up its own FISA legislation Thursday, “There wasn’t going to be a markup unless we got that stuff,” he said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee had issued a subpoena this summer for the documents, but Rockefeller said he did not know if that panel would receive access to them. House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, Jr., D-Mich., in a letter to White House counsel Fred Fielding, complained that the documents were being provided to Senate Intelligence, but not to his panel or the House Intellligence Committee.
...

The House bill has left out retroactive legal immunity. Several developments have given Democrats ammunition in their effort to withhold it. ...

Haleh Esfandiari and Robert Litwak in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, "When Promoting Democracy Is Counterproductive":

... In the post-September 11 era, Washington has sent a mixed message as to whether the U.S. objective is to change the regime in Tehran or to change its objectionable behavior.

This unresolved tension in U.S. policy was exacerbated by the election of Ahmadinejad, in 2005, with his anti-Americanism and his harsh rhetoric about Israel. In advancing its $75-million program aimed at Iranian nongovernmental organizations, the U.S. government seemed to be operating on the assumption that the Islamic Republic was vulnerable to a civil-society uprising from below. But the administration has underestimated the regime's capacity to fend off any serious challenge at home through the largess of expanded oil revenues, which allow it to buy off key domestic constituencies, such as the urban proletariat and rural poor. Ahmadinejad has effectively played the nationalist card, using U.S. regime-change rhetoric to deflect attention from his government's poor performance. He has managed to cast himself as a defender of Iran's interests against an interventionist America.

Current U.S. policy precludes broad government-to-government talks with Iran and seems to permit only episodic ambassadorial discussions in Baghdad on Iraqi issues — meetings that serve as a forum for dueling talking points. U.S. law places formidable restrictions on the ability of American NGO's to operate in Iran. Meanwhile, while eschewing official contact, the United States attempts to financially support Iran's own nascent NGO's so that they can become agents of change within the society. Yet this program of democracy promotion has had the unintended consequence of further reducing the political space for open debate in Iran. In this new climate of intimidation, NGO's and journalists are subject to censorship and are defensively engaging in self-censorship. Prominent Iranian activists, such as the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, declared their opposition to the U.S. program because of continued sensitivity about foreign, particularly American, intrusion in Iran's domestic politics. The fact that the identities of Iranian recipients of U.S. aid are regarded as classified information by the U.S. government feeds the regime's paranoia and casts suspicion on all Iranian NGO's.

The intractable realities in the diplomatic arena and on the ground in Iran call for a change of approach to one that would reverse the current focus of U.S. policy: Governments should talk to governments, while Iranian and American NGO's should be permitted to interact in a transparent fashion without the intrusion of governments. If the United States is to have any chance of enlisting Iranian cooperation on issues of major concern — stabilizing Iraq and resolving the nuclear impasse — it must make clear that its objective is a change in Iranian behavior, not a change of regime. That would shift the onus to Tehran and force its multiple power centers to confront the consequences of Ahmadinejad's policies for Iranian interests. Although such a U.S. assurance is no guarantee of success, it is the prerequisite for a change in Iranian foreign-policy behavior, as well as for positioning the United States to win multilateral support for meaningful action at the United Nations if Iranian intransigence continues.

In tandem with a shift on the government-to-government level, the counterproductive democracy-promotion program aimed at Iranian NGO's should be scrapped in favor of a more permissive U.S. stance toward the operation of U.S. nonprofit organizations in Iran. ...

Iran's incarceration of scholars as part of a broader crackdown on civil-society activities has had a chilling effect both there and among Iranian-Americans. The practical possibilities for dialogue will depend largely on the political situation within Iran, where indigenous forces will dictate the direction and speed of change. U.S. policy should be guided by a recognition that the ability of outside actors to influence that potentially long-term process is severely limited.

Politico oped on politicization at the IRS.

WP: Verizon says it turned over customer data to government without warrants. "Verizon also disclosed that the FBI, using administrative subpoenas, sought information identifying not just a person making a call, but all the people that customer called, as well as the people those people called. Verizon does not keep data on this 'two-generation community of interest' for customers, but the request highlights the broad reach of the government's quest for data. ... Yesterday's 13-page Verizon letter indicated that the requests went further than previously known. Verizon said it had received FBI administrative subpoenas, called national security letters, requesting data that would 'identify a calling circle' for subscribers' telephone numbers, including people contacted by the people contacted by the subscriber. Verizon said it does not keep such information."

NYT:

The second-highest-ranking member of the Air Force’s procurement office was found dead Sunday in an apparent suicide, Air Force and police officials said Monday.

The official, Charles D. Riechers, 47, came under scrutiny by the Senate Armed Services Committee this month after reports that the Air Force had arranged for him to be paid about $13,400 a month by a private contractor, Commonwealth Research Institute, while he awaited clearance from the White House for his selection as principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition. He was appointed to the job, which does not require Senate confirmation, in January.

Reuters: Iran jails reformist journalist, Emadaddin Baghi.

NYT: Debating who lost Iraq - the civilians or the generals - at Ft. Leavenworth.

Frank Rich on the 'Good German':

... Our moral trajectory over the Bush years could not be better dramatized than it was by a reunion of an elite group of two dozen World War II veterans in Washington this month. They were participants in a top-secret operation to interrogate some 4,000 Nazi prisoners of war. Until now, they have kept silent, but America’s recent record prompted them to talk to The Washington Post.

“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he “never laid hands on anyone” in his many interrogations, adding, “I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”

Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.

Given the Nacchio/Qwest news, this 2006 USA Today article is worth reading closely again:

... The NSA's domestic program began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the sources. Right around that time, they said, NSA representatives approached the nation's biggest telecommunications companies. The agency made an urgent pitch: National security is at risk, and we need your help to protect the country from attacks.

The agency told the companies that it wanted them to turn over their "call-detail records," a complete listing of the calling histories of their millions of customers. In addition, the NSA wanted the carriers to provide updates, which would enable the agency to keep tabs on the nation's calling habits.

The sources said the NSA made clear that it was willing to pay for the cooperation. AT&T;, which at the time was headed by C. Michael Armstrong, agreed to help the NSA. So did BellSouth, headed by F. Duane Ackerman; SBC, headed by Ed Whitacre; and Verizon, headed by Ivan Seidenberg.

With that, the NSA's domestic program began in earnest.

AT&T;, when asked about the program, replied with a comment prepared for USA TODAY: "We do not comment on matters of national security, except to say that we only assist law enforcement and government agencies charged with protecting national security in strict accordance with the law."

In another prepared comment, BellSouth said: "BellSouth does not provide any confidential customer information to the NSA or any governmental agency without proper legal authority."

Verizon, the USA's No. 2 telecommunications company behind AT&T;, gave this statement: "We do not comment on national security matters, we act in full compliance with the law and we are committed to safeguarding our customers' privacy."

Qwest spokesman Robert Charlton said: "We can't talk about this. It's a classified situation."

In December, The New York Times revealed that Bush had authorized the NSA to wiretap, without warrants, international phone calls and e-mails that travel to or from the USA. The following month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T.; The lawsuit accuses the company of helping the NSA spy on U.S. phone customers.

Last month, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales alluded to that possibility. Appearing at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Gonzales was asked whether he thought the White House has the legal authority to monitor domestic traffic without a warrant. Gonzales' reply: "I wouldn't rule it out." His comment marked the first time a Bush appointee publicly asserted that the White House might have that authority. ...

One major telecommunications company declined to participate in the program: Qwest.

According to sources familiar with the events, Qwest's CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was deeply troubled by the NSA's assertion that Qwest didn't need a court order — or approval under FISA — to proceed. Adding to the tension, Qwest was unclear about who, exactly, would have access to its customers' information and how that information might be used.

Financial implications were also a concern, the sources said. Carriers that illegally divulge calling information can be subjected to heavy fines. The NSA was asking Qwest to turn over millions of records. The fines, in the aggregate, could have been substantial.

The NSA told Qwest that other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA, also might have access to the database, the sources said. As a matter of practice, the NSA regularly shares its information — known as "product" in intelligence circles — with other intelligence groups. Even so, Qwest's lawyers were troubled by the expansiveness of the NSA request, the sources said.

The NSA, which needed Qwest's participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard.

Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest's patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest's refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled.

In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused. ...

NYT: "Ever since 9/11, we have watched Republican lawmakers help Mr. Bush shred the Constitution in the name of fighting terrorism. We have seen Democrats acquiesce or retreat in fear. It is time for that to stop."

Update: The only explanation for this WP editorial is that Verizon pays the Post for advertising. How does the Post know what the telcos' motivation was for handing over all customer call records on an ongoing basis without warrants? And what does it have to say that some companies refused without the government agreeing to take it to the FISA court? More here.

Larry Johnson asks, what is going on with the CIA IG counterinvestigation.

High crimes. The WP has a shocking story that suggests the Bush administration immediately after taking office -- perhaps as early as half a year before the September 11 attacks -- sought to illegally obtain the phone records of all Americans without any legal process from phone companies. When Qwest refused, retribution ensued:

... Nacchio's account, which places the NSA proposal at a meeting on Feb. 27, 2001, suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The Sept. 11 attacks have been cited by the government as the main impetus for its warrantless surveillance efforts.

The allegations could affect the debate on Capitol Hill over whether telecoms sued for disclosing customers' phone records and other data to the government after the Sept. 11 attacks should be given legal immunity, even if they did not have court authorization to do so.

Spokesmen for the Justice Department, the NSA, the White House and the director of national intelligence declined to comment, citing the ongoing legal case against Nacchio and the classified nature of the NSA's activities. Federal filings in the appeal have not yet been disclosed.

In May 2006, USA Today reported that the NSA had been secretly collecting the phone-call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by major telecom firms. Qwest, it reported, declined to participate because of fears that the program lacked legal standing.

In a statement released after the story was published, Nacchio attorney Herbert Stern said that in fall 2001, Qwest was approached to give the government access to the private phone records of Qwest customers. At the time, Nacchio was chairman of the president's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.

"Mr. Nacchio made inquiry as to whether a warrant or other legal process had been secured in support of that request," Stern said. "When he learned that no such authority had been granted and that there was a disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process, including the Special Court which had been established to handle such matters, Mr. Nacchio concluded that these requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act." ...

Update: More from Wired's Ryan Singel,who lines up other sources who say the NSA began building a massive database of Americans' call records without warrants as soon as the Bush administration was inaugurated. Who was NSA director then? Hayden.

Newsweek reports on Giuliani's foreign policy team.

Cheney's office tried to censor ... Chris Matthews, three times.

NYT: CIA director controversially orders investigation of CIA Inspector General. "A report by Mr. Helgerson’s office completed in the spring of 2004 warned that some C.I.A.-approved interrogation procedures appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as defined by the international Convention Against Torture. Some of the inspector general’s work on detention issues was conducted by Mary O. McCarthy, who was fired from the agency last year after being accused of leaking classified information. Officials said Mr. Helgerson’s office was nearing completion on a number of inquiries into C.I.A. detention, interrogation, and 'renditions' — the practice of seizing suspects and delivering them to the authorities in other nations."

Ann Coulter says it would be better if the Jews converted to Christianity.

Karl Rove directed head of Justice Department public integrity section?

Alberto Gonzales hires a lawyer.

Congressional Quarterly's Tim Starks:

The public was kept out of a House Intelligence Committee markup Wednesday despite the fact that a portion of the meeting was officially “open.”

Which is interesting because last fall — when Republicans still controlled the House — Democrats complained mightily when a committee markup of surveillance legislation that was supposed to be open was closed and conducted under a “cloak of secrecy,” as they charged at the time.

Fast-forward to Wednesday. Democrats held a closed committee markup at which, coincidentally, another bill addressing surveillance law (HR 3773) was approved.

Both last year’s and Thursday’s markups were held in the Intelligence panel’s special, secure meeting room on the top floor of the Capitol, where all meetings are closed to the public regardless of content.

Kira Maas, a spokeswoman for Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, said the meeting was held in the secure room because “there was a strong likelihood that there would be classified discussion.” But she said the committee would soon provide a transcript of the 20 minutes of “open” meeting the public wasn’t allowed to attend.

The panel, however, has yet to provide a transcript of portions of a May markup of the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill (HR 2082) that were also supposed to be “open” but were actually closed because they were held in the panel’s secure room.

Go read Bruce Falconer's Blackwater timeline:

... September 24, 2006
Blackwater convoy driving down the wrong side of the road ("counter flowing") in al-Hillah strikes an oncoming car, propelling it into a telephone pole. The Iraqi car bursts into flames. Blackwater contractors leave the scene without offering help to the victim, who dies in the fire.

December 24, 2006
Drunken Blackwater operator Andrew Moonen shoots the Iraqi vice presidents' security guard in the Green Zone. He is fired, fined, and flown back to the United States, but returns to Kuwait two months later with another private contracting firm.

2007
Blackwater's federal contracts total $1 billion. ...

WP: Site Institute accuses White House of leaking advance copy of bin Laden video to Fox news and other media that shut channel down. More from the NY Sun which neglects to mention either the White House or Fox news role in the leak.

Update: Damage not so bad?

NYT:

Two months after vowing to roll back broad new wiretapping powers won by the Bush administration, Congressional Democrats appear ready to make concessions that could extend some of the key powers granted to the National Security Agency.

Bush administration officials say they are confident they will win approval of the broadened wiretapping authority that they secured temporarily in August as Congress rushed toward recess, and some Democratic officials admit that they may not come up with the votes to rein in the administration.

As the debate over the N.S.A.’s wiretapping powers begins anew this week, the emerging legislation reflects the political reality confronting the Democrats. While they are willing to oppose the White House on the conduct of the war in Iraq, they remain nervous that they will be labeled as soft on terrorism if they insist on strict curbs on intelligence gathering.

Petrelis: CBS assigns Lynn Cheney interview to spouse of Cheney's literary agent. But they do disclose the advomercial aspect to the interview.

More here.

Wires: "U.K. PM Brown says Britain will cut Iraq troops to 2,500 starting in early '08."

They're taking name suggestions for the new State Department blog. Of the rejected, I like number 9, "Condi Meant (First Post title: 'Condi Fiddles while Nick Burns')."

Rushing for the exits. Peter Baker: "There is so much turnover that on one recent Friday there were four farewell parties or last-day exits. Bush poses for so many Oval Office photos with departing aides it feels like an assembly line. ... All the more so in a White House beset by an intractable war, a hostile Congress, a shipwrecked domestic agenda and near-historic-low approval ratings. The long-term ideals that many of them came to the White House to pursue appear jeopardized, even discredited to many. They tell themselves that they have acted on principle, that the decisions they helped make will be vindicated. But they cannot be sure."

Go read Jeff Stein on Richard Shelby obtaining FBI files on his political enemies, and seeking NSA intercepts of others. This is the Senator who leaked the fact that the NSA had intercepted bin Laden's satellite communications to Fox News' Carl Cameron. Kind of makes you wonder what political decisions at the Justice Department prevented Shelby from being prosecuted.

Go read this.

Gitmo prosecutor, Air Force Col. Morris Davis, quits. "People involved in the prosecutions, who spoke on condition of anonymity, have said that General Hartmann challenged Colonel Davis’s authority in August and pressed the prosecutors who worked for Colonel Davis to produce new charges against detainees quickly. They said he also pushed the prosecutors to frame cases with bold terrorism accusations that would draw public attention to the military commission process, which has been one of the central legal strategies of the Bush administration. In some cases the prosecutors are expected to seek the death penalty. ... Colonel Davis filed a complaint against General Hartmann with Pentagon officials this fall saying that the general had exceeded his authority and created a conflict of interest by asserting control over the prosecutor’s office. Colonel Davis said it would be improper for General Hartmann to assess the adequacy of cases filed by prosecutors if the general had been involved in the decision to file those cases."

C&L;: Massachusetts GI found shot through the head in Afghanistan warned her family last month her financial investigations were earning enemies.

Reuters: There's still black site prisons too.

Rockefeller reaction to "President's Claims Congress fully briefed on CIA detention and interrogation program: The Administration can’t have it both ways. I'm tired of these games. They can’t say that Congress has been fully briefed while refusing to turn over key documents used to justify the legality of the program. The reality is, the Administration refused to disclose the program to the full Committee for five years, and they have refused to turn over key legal documents since day one. As I have said from the beginning, Congress has a constitutional responsibility to determine whether the program is the best means for obtaining reliable information, whether it is fully supported by the law, and whether it is in the best interest of the United States.” Maybe the NYT will post the docs so Congress can see them?

CQ: Perjury investigation on administration statements preceding revelation of new torture docs. Bush sticks to the talking points that imply his authorization of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment is not tantamount to authorizing torture. White House spokesman Tony Fratto complains such leaks make the administration look like it has lied to Congress and the public once again for years.

Would be interesting to note what McCain thinks about the new docs issued after Congress overwhelmingly passed the anti torture legislation he introduced.

Human Rights Watch's Ken Roth asks in the Post: "Should Gonzales and other Bush administration officials be investigated for being part of a criminal enterprise to commit torture? "

National Journal's Bara Vaida reports on Beltway blogs.

Outrageous.

Intelligence Online reports from Damascus on the Israeli raid on Syria last month:

In attacking Dair el Zor in Syria on Sept. 6, the Israeli air force wasn't targeting a nuclear site but rather one of the main arms depots in the country.

Dair el Zor houses a huge underground base where the Syrian army stores the long and medium-range missiles it mostly buys from Iran and North Korea. The attack by the Israeli air force coincided with the arrival of a stock of parts for Syria's 200 Scud B and 60 Scud C weapons.

The parts were shipped from North Korea aboard a container ship flying the Panamanian flag. The U.S. Navy wanted to board the ship in Morocco's territorial waters but Rabat vetoed the operation. The parts were loaded aboard six trucks in the Syrian port of Tartus on Sept. 3 and took three days to reach Dair el Zor. The trucks and their loads were destroyed the moment they arrived at the underground base. A unit of military police that escorted the convoy was also wiped out in the attack.

Damascus immediately appealed to several Palestinian groups with strong ties to Syria to retaliate. But Hamas, whose strategy chief Khaled Meshal lives in exile in Syria, refused to act. That was also the case of Hezbollah, which sent its political adviser, Hussein Khalil, to Damascus to signify the movement's reluctance to strike back at Israel.

Khalil, who met with the head of Syrian military intelligence, gen. Assef Chawkat, as well as the official in charge of Lebanese affairs in the president's office, gen. Mohamed Nassif, claimed that Israel would launch a new invasion of southern Lebanon if Hezbollah began firing at Israeli targets.

Update: ABC's Martha Raddatz reports differently.

Via TPMm, Time: Alabama prosecutors chose not to investigate money laundering allegations against Jeff Sessions (R-AL) while pursuing Democratic pol. "Several people involved in the Siegelman case who spoke to TIME say prosecutors were so focused on going after Siegelman that they showed almost no interest in tracking down what Young said about apparently illegal contributions to Sessions, Pryor, other well-known figures in the Alabama GOP."

Fitzgerald contra a shield law for the press, Ted Olson for. Fitz apparently plans to make getting the press his calling card and legacy.

Update: More from Marcy Wheeler.

Go listen to NPR John McChesney's report on Minnesota National Guard families collapsing at 22 month Iraq deployments. Commander: "The sad reality is: we are crushing families."

Update: And then go read this:

The 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard recently ended a 22-month tour of duty in Iraq, the longest deployment of any ground-combat unit in the Armed Forces. Many of its members returned home, looking forward to using education benefits under the GI bill. ...

It's not working that way. The Guard troops have been told that in order to be eligible for the education benefits they expect, they had to serve 730 days in Iraq. They served 729. ...

Minnesota's congressional delegation is apoplectic, and the Army has vowed to look into the matter, but the troops are understandably suspicious that they were deliberately brought home after 729 days so the Pentagon could deny them GI Bill benefits.

The Gonzales/Bradbury Torture Memo. The NYT:

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, according to current and former officials. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President Bush’s second term and Mr. Gonzales’s tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil. ...

The interrogation opinions were signed by Steven G. Bradbury, who since 2005 has headed the elite Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. He has become a frequent public defender of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program and detention policies at Congressional hearings and press briefings, a role that some legal scholars say is at odds with the office’s tradition of avoiding political advocacy.

Mr. Bradbury defended the work of his office as the government’s most authoritative interpreter of the law. “In my experience, the White House has not told me how an opinion should come out,” he said in an interview. “The White House has accepted and respected our opinions, even when they didn’t like the advice being given.” ...

Mr. Bradbury belonged to the same circle as his predecessors: young, conservative lawyers with sterling credentials, often with clerkships for prominent conservative judges and ties to the Federalist Society, a powerhouse of the legal right. Mr. Yoo, in fact, had proposed his old friend Mr. Goldsmith for the Office of Legal Counsel job; Mr. Goldsmith had hired Mr. Bradbury as his top deputy. ...

Justice Department colleagues say Mr. Gonzales was soon meeting frequently with Mr. Bradbury to review national security issues, a White House priority. Admirers describe Mr. Bradbury as low-key but highly skilled, a conciliator who brought from 10 years of corporate practice a more pragmatic approach to the job than Mr. Yoo and Mr. Goldsmith, both from the academic world. ...

In the end, Mr. Bradbury’s opinion delivered what the White House wanted: a statement that the standard imposed by Mr. McCain’s Detainee Treatment Act would not force any change in the C.I.A.’s practices, according to officials familiar with the memorandum. ...

More from Marty Lederman.

Jack Balkin: "The Administration said, 'Trust us.' And then this is what they did in secret."

Just Out: "Six Degrees of Debat."

... According to multiple sources, one of the firms Debat approached was the Lincoln Group, a government contractor that specializes in influence operations and strategic communications; its projects have included a Pentagon contract to, among other things, plant propaganda in Iraqi newspapers.

Sources say Debat was introduced to a co-founder of the Lincoln Group, Paige Craig, at a Washington dinner party, and the two became friends. Craig, contacted by phone, said that Debat never worked for the Lincoln Group. He later called back, saying he'd spoken to Debat, who'd indicated he'd actually done two hours of consulting work for Lincoln Group staff on the Horn of Africa.

"He was supposed to get with some of my guys in Dubai," Ray Petty, CEO of the Lincoln Group, told me Tuesday. "But he was never an employee in any capacity." ...

Jack Abramoff bullied LA Weekly food critic. "'Every high school has its nerdy soft kid who brings his cello to class, and that would have been me,' the L.A. Weekly food critic tells This American Life's Ira Glass. He talks about one particular bully who picked on him quite a bit: 'In my most notable instance, I was walking down the hall to history class, and he hip-checked me ... I went sailing down the stairs with my cello,' Gold says. 'He was laughing about it with his friends. I suspect he forgot about it five minutes later. I didn't.' Years later, Gold says he felt vindicated when that same bully -- Jack Abramoff -- became a criminal felon, his corruption case splashed on front pages across the country. 'It's just beautiful; it's more than I could have wished for,' he says. 'Who wouldn't feel satisfied that he was getting his comeuppance?' An Abramoff spokesman denies the incident: 'Mr. Abramhoff does not know Mr. Gold and he has no idea why Mr. Gold would fabricate such a story.'"

"Friday's Bill Moyers Journal profiles the politically powerful group, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), whose leader Pastor John Hagee sat down with the Journal to discuss why the US should consider a military preemptive strike against Iran. Then, Bill Moyers gets theological and political context from Rabbi Michael Lerner and evangelical Christian and historian Dr. Timothy Weber. It's a most important and timely discussion that your members will want to tune in to. ... A preview is available here."

Yossi Melman: "Records on North Korean ship docked in Syria were altered."

The Jerusalem Post reports on censors lifting some restrictions on Israeli reporting on the Syria strike last month.

FBDC/Kurtz: State spokesman Sean McCormack doesn't like Kessler's book.