Mukasey's son works for Giuliani and Verizon: FISA conflict for AG

Mukasey's son works for Giuliani and Verizon: FISA conflict for AG

FISA conflict for AG - Mukasey's son & Verizon

by Gorette

Fri Feb 01, 2008 at 01:53:24 PM PST

This is a two part diary on Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

Part I: The conflict of interest Mukasey has re the extremely important telecom immunity in the FISA case and his son Marc.

Part II: The Attorney General's statement that whether it's torture, well that's all about "circumstances" -- his refusal to now state publicly that waterboarding is torture and his tense testimony with Senator Whitehouse this week.

Part I. Yesterday I learned that Attorney General Michael Mukasey's son works with Rudy Guiliani's law firm of Bracewell & Guiliani. Marc Mukasey is heading the Verizon defense in the FISA case.

Wikipedia: Mukasey's stepson, Marc L. Mukasey .... as of 2007 leads the white-collar criminal defense practice* in the New York office of Bracewell & Giuliani....

*as in Verizon

This is a conflict of interest in a topic of supreme importance. I kept waiting to see references to it in the MSM but have not since of course the corporate owned media may not want us to know that government officials at the very top collude with corporate interests, or at the very least give that impression by their close ties.

Mukasey should recuse himself from all FISA matters as AG. Did the Senate know about the FISA connection Mukasey had when they approved him as Attorney General? They must have because these things have been out in the open for some time.

Raw Story: Mukasey conflict of interest?
Attorney General Michael Mukasey has recently been a strong proponent of retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that were involved in illegal warrantless surveillance at the request of the Bush administration.

Mukasey argued before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that allowing lawsuits against the telecoms is undesirable because it both "puts means and methods in the courts for everybody to examine and for people to become aware of" and "casts some doubt on the question of whether they acted in good faith."

Verizon (seeking immunity for illegal spying) is a client of the Houston lawfirm of Bracewell & Giuliani, where former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani became a partner in the spring of 2005. Attorney General Mukasey's son, Marc L. Mukasey also joined the firm as a partner a few months later, after having served for eight years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

talkleft.
....The conflicts even reach to the NSA wiretapping issue with respect to Verizon: snip Verizon is a prime client of Bracewell & Giuliani.

In addition, Paul Crotty, the respected federal judge who joined Mukasey on the Manhattan bench in late 2005, was the regional president of Verizon, which is based in New York. Crotty was Giuliani's corporation counsel and contributed $5,500 to his federal campaign committees before he became a judge—$1,000 more than the legal limit (the excess was returned). When Crotty left, a Verizon press release stated that he was "responsible for government relations and regulatory affairs for Verizon's largest telephone operations company," but a company spokeswoman declined to answer questions about his possible involvement in the surveillance decisions....

Newsvine....
(The Senate, in approving Mukasey as AG) overlooked a glaring conflict of interest, or did they?

Michael Mukasey is now and always has been, a close friend of Giuliani, starting when they both worked as young prosecutors and moved on to the law firm of Patterson Belknap together, and in fact, Mukasey returned to the firm after he stepped down from the federal bench....

That sounds innocent enough, but when one starts to look a little deeper into the many conflicts of interest surrounding both of these men, a pattern of deceit and lies emerges that should cause everyone to call into question not only Giuliani's integrity, but Mukasey's also.

snip (quoting)The Village Voice...: "Even the recent ruckus about Verizon and its cooperation with the National Security Agency's domestic-surveillance program may put Mukasey in a Giuliani-connected bind. The company has admitted that it (illegally spied on Americans). Verizon is a prime client of Bracewell & Giuliani."

Also, the Wayne madsen report calls for impeachment of the AG ....but I could not find the LATimes Op Ed he refers to below:

Verizon, other telecommunications companies, and the Bush administration want the phone companies given immunity from any criminal or civil violations of the law. Mukasey has not recused himself from Justice Department deliberations concerning immunity for the companies
even though his son and best friend stand to benefit from immunity for Verizon.

In fact, Mukasey has not merely failed to recuse himself from the immunity issue but he is actively lobbying for it.

In a December 12, 2007, op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Mukasey wrote that it would be unfair for telecommunications companies, including his son's and best friend's client Verizon to, "face the possibility of massive judgments and litigation costs." Verizon, AT&T, and other firms are facing lawsuits from customers for permitting NSA to engage in warrantless eavesdropping of their communications.

snip If Mukasey fails to appoint a firewalled Special Counsel in the
telecommunications immunity case and other cases that have an impact on Giuliani's business activities, the House Judiciary Committee should, without delay, begin impeachment hearings against the Attorney General.

Indeed, quoting from the above source, it seems Mukasey's position has formed the GOP talking points for immunity:

Mukasey added, "in the future we will need the full-hearted help of private companies in our intelligence activities; we cannot expect such cooperation to be forthcoming if we do not support companies that have helped us in the past."

Mukasey... wants any immunity agreement for the telecommunications companies to be retroactive.

So, I ask of the WHITE HOUSE!

Question for the White House:
You promised that the Mukasey would recuse himself
from any Guiliani issues, so why haven't you
insisted he recuse himself from
Marc Mukasey/Bracewell & Guiliani issues as well?

Part Two - Waterboarding and Attorney General Mukasey's refusal to say it is torture, pure and simple, awful torture. See BarbinMD's account-- "What an embarrassing, infuriating disgrace." --of the 1/30/08 Senate testimony which I watched on CSpan. I heard that shocking and tense exchange between Senator Whitehouse and the attorney general.

The Nuremberg Defense ... is a legal defense that essentially states that the defendant was "only following orders" ("Befehl ist Befehl") and is therefore not responsible for his crimes. The defense was most famously employed during the Nuremberg Trials, after which it is named.

Whitehouse, a gifted inquisitor, repeatedly brought up "the Nuremberg Defense"questioned the AG regarding whether waterboarding is torture. If he had had more time he might have been able to get somewhere. But the AG was on guard, speaking very carefully so as to avoid incriminating himself or anyone in the administration. You could see that Whitehouse had the AG's full attention! It was electrifying I felt.

This is a comment by Jonathan Turley, Constitutional Law professor, who cogently stated the case last year on why Congress should refuse to allow Mukasey to serve as AG even if it meant having an acting AG for the rest of Bush's term.

Jonathan Turley:

Of course, (Mukasey) took an oath to uphold the Constitution, but now believes that it would be irresponsible to address a criminal act ordered by the President of the United States. It reflects a rather curious understanding of both his oath and his duties. It is the same relativistic view that led to clearly false statements made by Mukasey under oath in first denying that he did not know what waterboarding was and then, when told what it was, refusing to answer the question during his confirmation. Click here

In a maddening added comment, he insisted that "it is my job as attorney general to do what I believe the law requires, and what is best for the country, not what makes my life easier." Yet, that is precisely what he is doing: taking the easier and unethical approach. The difficult course would be to enforce the law and state the legal standard despite its implications for the President.

Mukasey said whether or not waterboarding is torture all depends on "circumstances" in his recent letter to Sen. Leahey on this question.

Gee, I dunno.......
"If this were an easy question, I would not be reluctant to offer my views," Mr. Mukasey wrote to Senator Patrick J. Leahy...

"But with respect, I believe it is not an easy question," he said. "There are some circumstances where current law would appear clearly to prohibit the use of waterboarding. Other circumstances would present a far closer question."

The letter did not define any of the circumstances.

Digby said a couple of days ago--
It Depends On What The Definition Of Conscience Is.

Remember this?

Whether they voted for Mukasey or not, Democrats widely
want him to examine the interrogation tactic designed
to make the subject think he is drowning, and answer
definitively: Is it illegal torture?

"I do believe he will be a truly nonpolitical, nonpartisan
attorney general; that he will make his views very clear;
and that, once he has the opportunity to do the evaluation
he believes he needs on waterboarding, he will be willing
to come before the Judiciary Committee and express his
views comprehensively and definitively," said Sen. Dianne
Feinstein of California, one of the six who voted with
the majority for confirmation.

I repeat:

Question for the White House: You promised that the Mukasey would recuse himself from any Guiliani issues, so why haven't you insisted he recuse himself from Marc Mukasey/Bracewell & Guiliani issues as well?

What does this all amount to?

Our dear elected Congress has done it again. They have empowered more Bush administration breaking of law, of immunity to prosecution, of conflict of interest (read "corruption"). Democrats should have never accepted this man, Michael Mukasey, as Attorney General ofthe U.S.

Posted by CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS mparent7777 Marc Parent CCNWON at 10:08 AM

The Road from Washington to Karachi to Nuclear Anarchy
Are You With Us… or Against Us?

by Jonathan Schell

The journey to the martial law just imposed on Pakistan by its self-appointed president, the dictator Pervez Musharraf, began in Washington on September 11, 2001. On that day, it so happened, Pakistan’s intelligence chief, Lt. General Mahmood Ahmed, was in town. He was summoned forthwith to meet with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who gave him perhaps the earliest preview of the global Bush doctrine then in its formative stages, telling him, “You are either one hundred percent with us or one hundred percent against us.”

The next day, the administration, dictating to the dictator, presented seven demands that a Pakistan that wished to be “with us” must meet. These concentrated on gaining its cooperation in assailing Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, which had long been nurtured by the Pakistani intelligence services in Afghanistan and had, of course, harbored Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda training camps. Conspicuously missing was any requirement to rein in the activities of Mr. A.Q. Khan, the “father” of Pakistan’s nuclear arms, who, with the knowledge of Washington, had been clandestinely hawking the country’s nuclear-bomb technology around the Middle East and North Asia for some years.

Musharraf decided to be “with us”; but, as in so many countries, being with the United States in its Global War on Terror turned out to mean not being with one’s own people. Although Musharraf, who came to power in a coup in 1999, was already a dictator, he had now taken the politically fateful additional step of very visibly subordinating his dictatorship to the will of a foreign master. In many countries, people will endure a homegrown dictator but rebel against one who seems to be imposed from without, and Musharraf was now courting this danger.

A public opinion poll in September ranking certain leaders according to their popularity suggests what the results have been. Osama bin Laden, at 46% approval, was more popular than Musharraf, at 38%, who in turn was far better liked than President Bush, at a bottom-scraping 7%. There is every reason to believe that, with the imposition of martial law, Musharraf’s and Bush’s popularity have sunk even further. Wars, whether on terror or anything else, don’t tend to go well when the enemy is more popular than those supposedly on one’s own side.

Are You with Us?

Even before the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq, the immediate decision to bully Musharraf into compliance defined the shape of the policies that the President would adopt toward a far larger peril that had seemed to wane after the Cold War, but now was clearly on the rise: the gathering nuclear danger. President Bush proposed what was, in fact if not in name, an imperial solution to it. In the new dispensation, nuclear weapons were not to be considered good or bad in themselves; that judgment was to be based solely on whether the nation possessing them was itself judged good or bad (with us, that is, or against us). Iraq, obviously, was judged to be “against us” and suffered the consequences. Pakistan, soon honored by the administration with the somehow ridiculous, newly coined status of “major non-NATO ally,” was clearly classified as with us, and so, notwithstanding its nuclear arsenal and abysmal record on proliferation, given the highest rating.

That doctrine constituted a remarkable shift. Previously, the United States had joined with almost the entire world to achieve nonproliferation solely by peaceful, diplomatic means. The great triumph of this effort had been the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, under which 183 nations, dozens quite capable of producing nuclear weapons, eventually agreed to remain without them. In this dispensation, all nuclear weapons were considered bad, and so all proliferation was bad as well. Even existing arsenals, including those of the two superpowers of the Cold War, were supposed to be liquidated over time. Conceptually, at least, one united world had faced one common danger: nuclear arms.

In the new, quickly developing, post-9/11 dispensation, however, the world was to be divided into two camps. The first, led by the United States, consisted of good, democratic countries, many possessing the bomb; the second consisted of bad, repressive countries trying to get the bomb and, of course, their terrorist allies. Nuclear peril, once understood as a problem of supreme importance in its own right, posed by those who already possessed nuclear weapons as well as by potential proliferators, was thus subordinated to the polarizing “war on terror,” of which it became a mere sub-category, albeit the most important one. This peril could be found at “the crossroads of radicalism and technology,” otherwise called the “nexus of terror and weapons of mass destruction,” in the words of the master document of the Bush Doctrine, the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States of America.

The good camp was assigned the job not of rolling back all nuclear weapons but simply of stopping any members of the bad camp from getting their hands on the bomb. The means would no longer be diplomacy, but “preventive war” (to be waged by the United States). The global Cold War of the late twentieth century was to be replaced by global wars against proliferation — disarmament wars — in the twenty-first. These wars, breaking out wherever in the world proliferation might threaten, would not be cold, but hot indeed, as the invasion of Iraq soon revealed — and as an attack on Iran, now under consideration in Washington, may soon further show.

…Or Against Us?

Vetting and sorting countries into the good and the bad, the with-us and the against-us, proved, however, a far more troublesome business than those in the Bush administration ever imagined. Iraq famously was not as “bad” as alleged, for it turned out to lack the key feature that supposedly warranted attack — weapons of mass destruction. Neither was Pakistan, muscled into the with-us camp so quickly after 9/11, as “good” as alleged. Indeed, these distinctions were entirely artificial, for by any factual and rational reckoning, Pakistan was by far the more dangerous country.

Indeed, the Pakistan of Pervez Musharraf has, by now, become a one-country inventory of all the major forms of the nuclear danger.

*Iraq did not have nuclear weapons; Pakistan did. In 1998, it had conducted a series of five nuclear tests in response to five tests by India, with whom it had fought three conventional wars since its independence in 1947. The danger of interstate nuclear war between the two nations is perhaps higher than anywhere else in the world.

*Both Iraq and Pakistan were dictatorships (though the Iraqi government was incomparably more brutal).

*Iraq did not harbor terrorists; Pakistan did, and does so even more today.

*Iraq, lacking the bomb, could not of course be a nuclear proliferator. Pakistan was, with a vengeance. The arch-proliferator A.Q. Khan, a metallurgist, first purloined nuclear technology from Europe, where he was employed at the uranium enrichment company EURENCO. He then used the fruits of his theft to successfully establish an enrichment program for Pakistan’s bomb. After that, the thief turned salesman. Drawing on a globe-spanning network of producers and middlemen — in Turkey, Dubai, and Malaysia, among other countries — he peddled his nuclear wares to Iran, Iraq (which apparently turned down his offer of help), North Korea, Libya, and perhaps others. Seen from without, he had established a clandestine multinational corporation dedicated to nuclear proliferation for a profit.

Seen from within Pakistan, he had managed to create a sort of independent nuclear city-state — a state within a state — in effect privatizing Pakistan’s nuclear technology. The extent of the government’s connivance in this enterprise is still unknown, but few observers believe Khan’s far-flung operations would have been possible without at least the knowledge of officials at the highest levels of that government. Yet all this activity emanating from the “major non-NATO ally” of the Bush administration was overlooked until late 2003, when American and German intelligence intercepted a shipload of nuclear materials bound for Libya, and forced Musharraf to place Khan, a national hero owing to his work on the Pakistani bomb, under house arrest. (Even today, the Pakistani government refuses to make Khan available for interviews with representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency.)

*Iraqi apparatchiks could not, of course, peddle to terrorists, al-Qaedan or otherwise, technology they did not have, as Bush suggested they would do in seeking to justify his war. The Pakistani apparatchiks, on the other hand, could — and they did. Shortly before September 11, 2001, two leading scientists from Pakistan’s nuclear program, Dr. Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the former Director General of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, and Chaudry Abdul Majeed, paid a visit to Osama bin Laden around a campfire in Afghanistan to advise him on how to make or acquire nuclear arms. They, too, are under house arrest.

If, however, the beleaguered Pakistani state, already a balkanized enterprise (as the A.Q. Khan story shows) is overthrown, or if the country starts to fall apart, the danger of insider defections from the nuclear establishment will certainly rise. The problem is not so much that the locks on the doors of nuclear installations — Pakistan’s approximately 50 bombs are reportedly spread at sites around the country — will be broken or picked as that those with the keys to the locks will simply switch allegiances and put the materials they guard to new uses. The “nexus” of terrorism and the bomb, the catastrophe the Bush Doctrine was specifically framed to head off, might then be achieved — and in a country that was “for us.”

What has failed in Pakistan, as in smashed Iraq, is not just a regional American policy, but the pillars and crossbeams of the entire global Bush doctrine, as announced in late 2001. In both countries, the bullying has failed; popular passions within each have gained the upper hand; and Washington has lost much of its influence. In its application to Pakistan, the doctrine was framed to stop terrorism, but in that country’s northern provinces, terrorists have, in fact, entrenched themselves to a degree unimaginable even when the Taliban protected Al-Qaeda’s camps before September 11th.

If the Bush Doctrine laid claim to the values of democracy, its man Musharraf now has the distinction, rare even among dictators, of mounting a second military coup to maintain the results of his first one. In a crowning irony, his present crackdown is on democracy activists, not the Taliban, armed Islamic extremists, or al-Qaeda supporters who have established positions in the Swat valley only 150 miles from Islamabad.

Most important, the collapsed doctrine has stoked the nuclear fires it was meant to quench. The dangers of nuclear terrorism, of proliferation, and even of nuclear war (with India, which is dismayed by developments in Pakistan as well as the weak Bush administration response to them) are all on the rise. The imperial solution to these perils has failed. Something new is needed, not just for Pakistan or Iraq, but for the world. Perhaps now someone should try to invent a solution based on imperialism’s opposite, democracy, which is to say respect for other countries and the wills of the people who live in them.

Jonathan Schell is the author of The Fate of the Earth, among other books, and the just-published The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger. He is the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at The Nation Institute, and a visiting lecturer at Yale University.