Prosecutor named to probe US attorneys' firings

By LAURIE KELLMAN and MARK SHERMAN

(AP) -- Attorney General Michael Mukasey named a prosecutor Monday to investigate whether former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, other Bush administration officials or Republicans in Congress should face criminal charges in the firings of nine U.S. attorneys.

The launching of a criminal inquiry follows the recommendation of internal Justice Department investigators who concluded that, despite denials of the administration, political considerations played a part in the firings of as many as four of the federal prosecutors.

In their 358-page report, investigators said the lack of cooperation by senior officials at the White House and in the Justice Department left gaps in their findings that should be investigated further.

"Serious allegations involving potential criminal conduct have not been fully investigated or resolved," the report said, listing lying to investigators, obstruction of justice and wire fraud among the potential felony crimes.

Mukasey's appointment of Nora Dannehy, the acting U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to continue the inquiry leaves open the possibility that it won't be finished before President Bush leaves office in January.

Senators of both parties who led a congressional probe of the firings praised Mukasey's decision and cautioned Bush against pardoning anyone as he leaves the White House.

"The American people will see any misuse of the pardon power or any grant of clemency or immunity to those from his administration involved in the U.S. attorney firing scandal as an admission of wrongdoing," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

The report unsparingly criticized Bush administration officials, Republican members of Congress and their aides for the ousters, which touched off a scandal that stripped the Justice Department of its leadership and sparked a historic showdown in court.

The report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility Director Marshall Jarrett described Gonzales and his deputy, Paul McNulty, as "remarkably disengaged" from the process that led to the dismissal of the prosecutors.

Monday's report was the latest to criticize Gonzales' management of the Justice Department during his 31 months as attorney general. Gonzales quit under fire in September 2007.

In a statement issued by his attorney, Gonzales said: "My family and I are glad to have the investigation of my conduct in this matter behind us and we look forward to moving on to new challenges."

Gonzales' attorney, George Terwilliger, noted that the report found no unlawful conduct. "It seems rather odd," Terwilliger said, "that rather than bring the investigation to a close, the department would escalate the matter to the attention of a prosecutor."

U.S. attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president, but cannot be fired for improper reasons.

The report singled out the removal of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias in New Mexico - one of the nine - as the most troubling. Iglesias's firing followed complaints from leading Republican political figures in New Mexico, including Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson, about Iglesias' handling of voter fraud and public corruption cases, the report said.

Iglesias, who now works as a paid speaker and practices law part-time, said he thinks criminal investigations should be pursued against Domenici and anyone else who may have broken federal criminal laws. He said he had not yet seen the report.

"I've said all along that these moves were improper and illegal and now it appears that they were criminal as well," he said in an interview. "Our complaints weren't just complaints of disgruntled former employees."

A spokesman for Domenici, who is leaving Congress at the end of the year, did not respond to requests for comment.

Wilson, who cooperated in the internal investigation of the firings, issued a statement in which she said the report's findings were incorrect. She acknowledged contacting Iglesias about possible indictments in a New Mexico case, but she denied complaining about him to anyone in the Bush administration.

Investigators said their inquiry of the firing of Iglesias and others was hampered by the lack of cooperation from Domenici, former White House adviser Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers, former Justice Department official Monica Goodling and other key witnesses.

The president's refusal to let Rove, Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten testify before Congress about the firings touched off a legal fight that is now before a federal appeals court. Most recently a judge ordered Miers to answer questions from the House Judiciary Committee about the firings.

The report concluded that Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, was the person most responsible for developing the plan to fire the prosecutors and said that Sampson's comments to Congress, the White House and others were misleading.

Sampson and others claimed at first that the prosecutors' poor performance inspired their firings. But the report found that Bud Cummins, the U.S. Attorney in Arkansas, was forced out to make way for Timothy Griffin, who had previously been Rove's deputy in the White House political office.

It also said the dismissal of Todd Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, probably resulted from pressure from the office of Republican Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond. Bond was upset that Graves did not intervene in a dispute between the staffs of Bond and Republican Rep. Sam Graves, the prosecutor's brother, the report said.

A spokeswoman for Bond did not immediately return a call for comment.

Investigators found no evidence that Arizona U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton and U.S. Attorney Carol Lam of San Diego were fired for prosecuting Republican members of Congress.

Similarly, the report says Justice Department officials had legitimate concerns about the work of two other prosecutors who were fired - Margaret Chiara of Grand Rapids, Mich., and Kevin Ryan of San Francisco.

---

On the Net:

Justice Department report: http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/new.htm

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

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Your Questions Answered Ask AP: Hurricane reporters, property in Cuba

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Attorney General Michael Mukasey named a prosecutor Monday to investigate whether former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, other Bush administration officials or Republicans in Congress should face criminal charges in the firings of nine U.S. attorneys.

The launching of a criminal inquiry follows the recommendation of internal Justice Department investigators who concluded that, despite denials of the administration, political considerations played a part in the firings of as many as four of the federal prosecutors.

In their 358-page report, investigators said the lack of cooperation by senior officials at the White House and in the Justice Department left gaps in their findings that should be investigated further.

"Serious allegations involving potential criminal conduct have not been fully investigated or resolved," the report said, listing lying to investigators, obstruction of justice and wire fraud among the potential felony crimes.

Mukasey's appointment of Nora Dannehy, the acting U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to continue the inquiry leaves open the possibility that it won't be finished before President Bush leaves office in January.

Senators of both parties who led a congressional probe of the firings praised Mukasey's decision and cautioned Bush against pardoning anyone as he leaves the White House.

"The American people will see any misuse of the pardon power or any grant of clemency or immunity to those from his administration involved in the U.S. attorney firing scandal as an admission of wrongdoing," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

The report unsparingly criticized Bush administration officials, Republican members of Congress and their aides for the ousters, which touched off a scandal that stripped the Justice Department of its leadership and sparked a historic showdown in court.

The report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility Director Marshall Jarrett described Gonzales and his deputy, Paul McNulty, as "remarkably disengaged" from the process that led to the dismissal of the prosecutors.

Monday's report was the latest to criticize Gonzales' management of the Justice Department during his 31 months as attorney general. Gonzales quit under fire in September 2007.

In a statement issued by his attorney, Gonzales said: "My family and I are glad to have the investigation of my conduct in this matter behind us and we look forward to moving on to new challenges."

Gonzales' attorney, George Terwilliger, noted that the report found no unlawful conduct. "It seems rather odd," Terwilliger said, "that rather than bring the investigation to a close, the department would escalate the matter to the attention of a prosecutor."

U.S. attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president, but cannot be fired for improper reasons.

The report singled out the removal of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias in New Mexico - one of the nine - as the most troubling. Iglesias's firing followed complaints from leading Republican political figures in New Mexico, including Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson, about Iglesias' handling of voter fraud and public corruption cases, the report said.

Iglesias, who now works as a paid speaker and practices law part-time, said he thinks criminal investigations should be pursued against Domenici and anyone else who may have broken federal criminal laws. He said he had not yet seen the report.

"I've said all along that these moves were improper and illegal and now it appears that they were criminal as well," he said in an interview. "Our complaints weren't just complaints of disgruntled former employees."

A spokesman for Domenici, who is leaving Congress at the end of the year, did not respond to requests for comment.

Wilson, who cooperated in the internal investigation of the firings, issued a statement in which she said the report's findings were incorrect. She acknowledged contacting Iglesias about possible indictments in a New Mexico case, but she denied complaining about him to anyone in the Bush administration.

Investigators said their inquiry of the firing of Iglesias and others was hampered by the lack of cooperation from Domenici, former White House adviser Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers, former Justice Department official Monica Goodling and other key witnesses.

The president's refusal to let Rove, Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten testify before Congress about the firings touched off a legal fight that is now before a federal appeals court. Most recently a judge ordered Miers to answer questions from the House Judiciary Committee about the firings.

The report concluded that Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, was the person most responsible for developing the plan to fire the prosecutors and said that Sampson's comments to Congress, the White House and others were misleading.

Sampson and others claimed at first that the prosecutors' poor performance inspired their firings. But the report found that Bud Cummins, the U.S. Attorney in Arkansas, was forced out to make way for Timothy Griffin, who had previously been Rove's deputy in the White House political office.

It also said the dismissal of Todd Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, probably resulted from pressure from the office of Republican Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond. Bond was upset that Graves did not intervene in a dispute between the staffs of Bond and Republican Rep. Sam Graves, the prosecutor's brother, the report said.

A spokeswoman for Bond did not immediately return a call for comment.

Investigators found no evidence that Arizona U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton and U.S. Attorney Carol Lam of San Diego were fired for prosecuting Republican members of Congress.

Similarly, the report says Justice Department officials had legitimate concerns about the work of two other prosecutors who were fired - Margaret Chiara of Grand Rapids, Mich., and Kevin Ryan of San Francisco.

---

On the Net:

Justice Department report: http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/new.htm

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

House Judiciary Warns DoJ on Perata Leaks

by: David Dayen Sat Aug 09, 2008 at 12:50:48 PM PDT

I've been mulling this around in my head for a few days. Three powerful members of the House Judiciary committee have have sent a letter to the Justice Department calling for an investigation into leaks surrounding the inquiry into State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata. No article since November 2004 has explicitly said that any information came from a federal government source. But in a letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey obtained by The Times on Monday, U.S. Reps. John Conyers Jr., Linda Sanchez and Zoe Lofgren wrote, "We are disturbed and concerned that news story after news story . . . has cited federal law enforcement sources as the basis of information." The only article specifically mentioned in the July 31 letter was a story in the San Francisco Chronicle. The article cited "sources familiar with the probe," a broad term that could encompass federal agents, defense attorneys and people who have been questioned [...] On Friday, the day after the congressional letter was sent, a Wall Street Journal article said the investigation into Perata "gained momentum over the past year." The article's details were attributed to anonymous people "close to the defense," who said Perata's longtime political consultant, Sandi Polka, was granted immunity to compel her to answer questions. (Here's that SF Chron article mentioned in the letter.) The Perata investigation certainly has dragged on for years, leading to him needing more and more funds to raise in his defense. In particular, the dumping of $250,000 from the California Democratic Party into his legal defense fund raised a lot of eyebrows around these parts. After the initial explanation of "We're the CDP and we can do what we want," a secondary explanation was that the investigation had been politicized and that this was part of the DoJ's efforts to prosecute and delegitimize Democrats. A couple weeks later, out comes this letter, signed by two members of the California delegation. But it's Conyers' participation that makes me believe that this is a real concern. I trust Conyers enough to think that he wouldn't simply badger the DoJ to help out a political problem in California. Of course, let's look at what the letter is actually alleging. It's not suggesting that the investigation itself is unnecessarily political, but that someone inside the investigation is using the media to disparage Perata. That may well be true, but it doesn't necessarily follow that the whole investigation is a farce. Let's now look at what this does NOT suggest: • It in no way excuses the CDP for paying off Perata with $250,000 in the middle of an election year, whether that money was simply laundered through them and earmarked for Perata or not. Based on this SacBee report, it appears Perata is perfectly capable of raising money for himself: Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata has solicited at least $200,000 this year from political interest groups for a nonprofit foundation that promotes and rallies support for one of his bills. The arrangement, apparently legal, allows the Senate leader to solicit unlimited funds for his own political agenda without having to detail how the money is spent. "He may have found a loophole in the Political Reform Act that needs to be closed," said attorney Bob Stern, a co-author of the state's Political Reform Act who now runs the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. Which leads me to point 2: • There is no way that Perata should still be Senate President Pro Tem at this point. While he has done a good job of hammering Republicans for their intransigence on the budget, this image hit, as well as the constant distraction of having to find new ways to raise money for his legal bills, are not what we need at this sensitive time, ESPECIALLY when Darrell Steinberg is waiting in the wings and perfectly capable of performing the same duties without the black cloud of indictment hanging over the head of the Democratic leadership. They haven't even taken a caucus vote on this yet, to my knowledge - it's currently scheduled for August 21, but during these budget negotiations that's doubtful to come off. It is perfectly consistent to be skeptical of the Justice Department's case against Perata and to ALSO demand that he step down from his leadership position, and to excoriate the CDP for their conduct in either shoveling Perata money or acting as a conduit for that fund transfer.

David Dayen :: House Judiciary Warns DoJ on Perata Leaks

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Perata really needs to go

And not just because of these distractions - he's failed grassroots Democrats, especially here on the Central Coast. Fabian Núñez rightly stepped down as Speaker when it became clear he couldn't serve another term, and the result has been wonderful as Karen Bass asserts strong budget leadership. But Perata chooses to cling to power during his lame-duck term. He would be doing Democrats a huge favor by letting the next generation of Senate leadership in the form of Steinberg take over sooner, rather than later.

WAR CRIMES DOSSIER: Lawyers, alleged terrorists consult on court ruling

Lawyers, alleged terrorists consult on court ruling

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — Bolstered by a U.S. Supreme Court victory, defense attorneys streamed onto this base Monday to consult alleged al Qaeda captives on whether to sue in federal court over their war-on-terror detention.

The lawyers arrived by early-morning charter from Washington, D.C., organized by the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions to ferry lawyers, staff and observers to this week’s hearings for two detainees who were captured, separately, as teenagers in Afghanistan.

Canadian Omar Khadr, accused of the July 2002 grenade killing of a U.S. soldier, Wednesday goes before a new war court judge, Army Col. Patrick Parrish. Khadr’s original judge is retiring.

Then Thursday, an Air Force defense attorney is calling witnesses to argue for dismissal of war crimes charges against Afghan Mohammed Jawad, accused of maiming two other U.S. soldiers in a different grenade attack in a Kabul marketplace.

The military commissions hearings are the first since the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the 270 ”enemy combatants” at this remote U.S. Navy base can, one by one, challenge their detention in federal courts, through habeas corpus petitions.

The Supreme Court decision effectively allows civilian judges to independently evaluate Pentagon findings that the foreign prisoners are too dangerous to be let go, or sent home.

It also undermined the Bush administration doctrine that sought to curb detainee rights by keeping them here, offshore.

”The landscape has changed,” declared Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, defense attorney for Osama bin Laden’s driver.

His client is Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni on track to face trial by military commission later this summer, becoming the first Guantánamo detainee to face the first U.S. war crimes tribunals since World War II.

Australian al Qaeda foot soldier David Hicks earlier averted trial by pleading guilty to a war crimes charge in exchange for a nine-month sentence. He is free.

Monday, Mizer joined the lawyers’ pilgrimage to the prison camps from the Washington Beltway to consult with Hamdan as well as his other client, alleged 9/11 co-conspirator Ammar al Baluchi, facing death if convicted.

Also arriving were the four lawyers for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Baluchi’s uncle; the Army defense attorney for Ahmed Khalfan Ghalani, accused of the 1998 East Africa Embassy bombings; and counsel to Saudi captive Mustafa Hawsawi, accused of financing the 9/11 hijackers.

For his part, Attorney General Michael Mukasey and other Justice Department officials said the Supreme Court ruling would have no impact on the war crimes trials where the Pentagon plans to try up to 80 detainees.

Pentagon prosecutors and Bush administration advocates argue that the point of the war court is that war-on-terror detainees don’t get the same rights as U.S. citizens.

But Mizer and other war court lawyers argue that detainees facing trial can use the habeas corpus petitions as a tool to contest their charges as well, invoking a range of constitutional rights.

As captives, the argument goes, they were interrogated without the right to remain silent, subjected to ”cruel and unusual punishment” and are facing ex post facto charges for crimes enacted after they were allegedly committed.

Unclear Monday was whether the alleged architect of the Sept. 11 terror attacks would seek to sue for his freedom to avert or delay the Pentagon’s complex war crimes case, which seeks the death penalty for five alleged conspirators in the mass murder of 2,973 men, women and children in New York, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

”We’re going to talk to him about his options,” said Boise, Idaho, lawyer David Nevin, a civilian criminal defense attorney chosen by the American Civil Liberties Union to defend Mohammed, known in CIA circles as KSM.

”I’m going to talk to Mr. Mohammed about where he wants to go from here,” he added.

The meeting would be the first since Mohammed’s June 5 arraignment, in which Mohammed said he would defend himself at trial — and would welcome martyrdom were the U.S. to execute him.

Now that the Supreme Court has given detainees recourse to civilian courts in a case called Boumediene vs. Bush, the question is whether Mohammed wants attorneys to file a habeas corpus petition on his behalf — claiming his detention is unlawful.

The Supreme Court ruling ”may change our client’s perspective. But I don’t have the faintest idea,” said Navy Reserves Capt. Prescott Prince, KSM’s Pentagon-appointed defense lawyer.

Also, lawyers who had been shuttling to remote Guantánamo for years noted that the Supreme Court ruling rendered this outpost useless to the degree that it did not seal off detainees from recourse to the U.S. Constitution.

”The thing about Boumediene is, we really don’t need to be down here any more,” said Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, a military defense attorney, as he rode a ferry crossing Guantánamo Bay ahead of Wednesday’s hearing for the Canadian captive, Khadr.

IMPEACHMENT TOOLKIT: House panel subpoenas FBI interviews of Bush, Cheney

WASHINGTON - A House committee has issued a subpoena for FBI reports from interviews with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in the CIA leak investigation.

The subpoena to Attorney General Michael Mukasey from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is the latest move by Congress to shed light on Cheney's precise role in the leak of Valerie Plame's CIA identity.

On Friday, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan is scheduled to testify to the House Judiciary Committee.

He is expected to talk about White House higher-ups directing him to publicly deny that Cheney's chief of staff and White House political adviser Karl Rove played any role in leaking the CIA employment of Plame, who is married to Bush administration war critic Joseph Wilson.

Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Rove were among the leakers of the CIA identity of Wilson's wife. Both have since left the White House.

In publicly released grand jury testimony, Libby acknowledges having told the FBI early in the Plame probe that "it's possible" he spoke to Cheney about whether to share information with the press about Wilson's wife.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has been trying to get FBI interviews of Bush and Cheney since last year. Waxman renewed the request June 3 and Mukasey says the department is considering a response. Monday's subpoena also seeks other documents related to the Plame probe, the committee said in announcing the action.

Libby was convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI.

Last July, Bush commuted Libby's 2 1/2-year sentence, sparing him from serving any prison time.

Briana Waters: More DoJ skullduggery

Or .. how to take a person and turn them into an excuse to get more dollars for crooked people in goverment.

John Ashcroft and Robert Mueller are real architects of CRIME in the GWOT pyramid ...

See any corporate executives being prosecuted for environmental damage as TERRORISTS or held accountable for CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY?

Expect Michael Mukasey to draw a line at this kinds of kangaroo court proceedings that are being held?

From Salon.com ...

V

Is Briana Waters a terrorist? In an alarming case, U.S. attorneys exploited post-9/11 counterterrorism laws to pursue and prosecute an environmental activist.
By Tracy Tullis

Is Briana Waters a terrorist?

In an alarming case, U.S. attorneys exploited post-9/11 counterterrorism laws to pursue and prosecute an environmental activist.

By Tracy Tullis

March 27, 2008 | In the early morning hours of May 21, 2001, a group of five men and women dressed in dark clothing and carrying backpacks crept close to the Center of Urban Horticulture on the University of Washington campus in Seattle. One of the intruders cut open a window of a ground-floor office; another climbed through it and placed a digital alarm clock wired to a 9-volt battery and a model-rocket igniter in the drawer of a filing cabinet. Next to the cabinet, he filled plastic tubs with gasoline. He set the timer and climbed back out the window.

Not long after, at about 3 a.m., a university security officer driving on his rounds saw "billowing smoke and flames" rising from the building. The building's cedar latticework had acted as kindling and the fire raced to the roof. From a city park a few miles away, the arsonists listened to the firefighters on an emergency scanner.

It took firefighters two hours to put out the flames. By that time the office where the fire had started had burned down to the studs, and the central hall and several botany labs were damaged. Damages were estimated at $2.5 million. The morning after the fire, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms sifted through the ash but found no fingerprints. Any hairs that might have yielded a DNA signature had been incinerated.

Ten days later, the Earth Liberation Front, a loose group of underground activists who had burned a horse-slaughtering plant, logging company headquarters, SUV dealerships and a luxurious Vail ski lodge built on mountain lynx habitat, claimed responsibility for the fire. The group explained that it had targeted the office of Toby Bradshaw, a plant geneticist who they believed was genetically engineering trees for the benefit of the timber industry. They said his research would "unleash mutant genes into the environment" and "cause irreversible harm to forest ecosystems."

Federal and local authorities launched an exhaustive investigation, code-named Operation Backfire. For nearly two years, the FBI had no real leads in the Washington case or 16 other ELF arsons. The Earth Liberation Front is a secretive, amorphous group, with no structure or leaders or formal membership. It is more of a movement than an organization; anyone with a rage against ecological destruction and a match can act in the name of the ELF. The FBI didn't know where to go looking for them.

In spring 2003, FBI agents finally got their first break. They closed in on Jacob Ferguson, a heroin-addicted drifter who played in a metal band called Eat Shit Fuckface, and who had insinuated himself into the radical environmental movement -- no doubt finding a convenient outlet for the pyromaniacal tendencies he'd exhibited since the age of 8.

Ferguson quickly turned informant. He admitted to setting the first fire attributed to the ELF in the United States, in 1996, and to 12 additional arsons, mostly in Oregon. Although many ELF "elves" knew only two or three others, Ferguson knew pretty much everyone. Prosecutors dispatched him across the country -- from Arizona to Massachusetts -- to meet with his former compatriots and record their conversations with a hidden wire. Soon the FBI was knocking on doors across the country.

Most of the suspected arsonists, if convicted, would face at least 30 years in prison. Lured with promises of reduced sentences, friends turned in friends, boyfriends offered up the names of girlfriends. Recriminations flew. Those who named names "have dishonored themselves ... by becoming vicious traitors and tools of the state," wrote two non-cooperators in the Earth First! journal. In 2006, the trail of accusations led the FBI to the door of a quiet 32-year-old violin teacher in Berkeley, Calif., named Briana Waters.

Earlier this month, on March 6, a federal jury in Tacoma, Wash., found Waters guilty of two counts of arson for serving as a lookout at the University of Washington fire. According to two women who testified against her in return for dramatically reduced sentences, Waters hid in a shrub near the Center for Urban Horticulture with a walkie-talkie, ready to alert the others if the campus police strolled by. Waters testified she wasn't even in Seattle that night.

Although Waters was on trial for only the University of Washington arson, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Friedman charged that she was part of a conspiracy -- a member of a "prolific cell" of the Earth Liberation Front, responsible for 17 fires set in four states over five years. Ten conspirators have pleaded guilty and been sentenced; four have fled the country; three are awaiting sentencing. Waters, the only one of the accused to have pleaded innocent and therefore the only one to have stood trial, now faces 20 years in prison.

The group's alleged ringleader, William Rodgers, avoided a trial in his own way. From his jail cell in Flagstaff, Ariz., two weeks after his arrest in December 2005, he wrote, "I chose to fight on the side of the bears, mountain lions, skunks, bats, saguaros, cliff roses and all things wild. But tonight ... I am returning home, to the Earth, the place of my origins." He placed a plastic bag over his head and suffocated himself. According to medical records, Rodgers was found with his right arm raised, his hand held tight in a fist -- the Earth First! symbol of resistance.

Prosecutors celebrated the guilty verdict against Waters as a signal victory in the campaign against "eco-terror," a mission that the U.S. Department of Justice has made the centerpiece of its domestic counterterrorism program. "This cell of eco-terrorists thought they had a 'right' to sit in judgment and destroy the hard work of dedicated researchers at the UW and elsewhere," U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sullivan declared in announcing Waters' conviction. "Today's verdict shows that no one is above the law."

Civil libertarians draw a different moral from the verdict. For them it is evidence of how the Justice Department has exaggerated the threat of eco-sabotage; they see Waters' story as a disturbing example of the misuse of federal authority and the excessive reach of the American counterterrorism program in the wake of 9/11. As Lauren Regan, director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Eugene, Ore., remarks: "There's a question of whether burning property is really the equivalent of flying a plane into a building and killing humans."

Briana Waters wouldn't seem to fit the profile of a dangerous terrorist. The daughter of an engineer and a stay-at-home mother, Waters was raised in suburban Philadelphia and migrated west to attend Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., a magnet for left political activists. She has long, straw-colored hair and blue-gray eyes, and always seems to hold her shoulders forward, like a girl who is shy about being tallest in her sixth-grade class. At Evergreen, she became head of the campus animal rights organization and led nature hikes through the nearby woods, teaching people how to identify native plants.

In her senior year, she participated in a prolonged campaign to prevent logging in the old-growth forest on Watch Mountain, part of the Cascade Mountain range. Her senior project was a documentary film about the protest, an elegy to the cooperation between Earth First! members and the residents of a small town, who together climbed into the canopy and refused to come down for five months, until Congress promised the public lands would not be handed over to the timber company. The protest saved 28,000 acres of wilderness.

Kim Marks, an Evergreen graduate who joined the tree-sit, remembers Waters playing her violin as she perched in the treetops. "It was the most amazing thing to be 120 feet up in the canopy and hear this beautiful fiddle music floating through the forest," Marks says.

Waters certainly brushed up against the radical environmentalist milieu, even if she was not one of the "elves." Her boyfriend at the time, fellow Evergreen student Justin Solonz, has been indicted for building the device that sparked the Center for Urban Horticulture fire, and she was friendly with others in the ELF underground.

But Waters has insisted she had nothing to do with underground activities. She testified at her trial that in May 2001, the month of the arson, she was busy promoting her film, showing it to college audiences on the West Coast. She has no specific recollection of where she was on the 21st; most likely, she said, she was sleeping at home in Olympia. She told the jury that the Watch Mountain protest, especially her experience building bridges between students and locals, and even logging families, impressed her as a model of sound activism, and confirmed her belief that more extreme measures, like arson, were "alienating" and counterproductive.

As it turned out, the University of Washington Horticulture building was a poor target for arson. Among the items destroyed were hundreds of photographs documenting plant regeneration on Mount St. Helens after the volcanic eruption, research on wetlands and prairie restoration, and a collection of rare showy stickseed plants that were being raised to replenish dwindling wild stocks in the Cascade Mountains. Bradshaw, the targeted professor, has said that although he had considered doing genetic engineering, he was not at the time of the fire. Rather he was conducting basic research on hybrid poplars, a fast-growing species that could reduce the pressure for logging in natural forests.

About a year after the fire, in 2002, Waters left her college town and moved to Berkeley, where she made her living teaching children violin and playing in Balkan and Irish folk music groups. She met her partner, John Landgraf, a carpenter, at a summer music retreat, and had a baby girl, Kalliope. She had little contact with the radicals she'd met in Olympia, and was only marginally involved in environmental causes.

But while Waters had moved away from the old radical environmental circles, the hunt for "eco-terrorists" was intensifying. During the 1990s, the FBI's domestic terrorism division focused on militias, white supremacists and cults like the Branch Davidians. But after 9/11, the agency began shifting its priorities.

Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert Mueller decided "they were going to restructure the FBI as a terrorism prevention organization rather than just a crime-fighting organization," explains Ben Rosenfeld, a civil rights attorney in San Francisco. The FBI vastly expanded its domestic and international terrorism capabilities, adding whole new categories of crime to its terrorism portfolio. Acts once considered property crimes -- like the arson at the University of Washington -- were now assigned not to the bureau's criminal division but to the terrorism division.

In testimony before a Senate committee in February 2002, James Jarboe, the FBI's domestic terrorism chief, alerted the public to this new mission, warning that the ELF and its sister organization, the Animal Liberation Front, had become a "serious terrorist threat." By May 2005, agents in 35 FBI offices would be investigating 104 separate incidents of "animal rights/eco-terrorist activities," including the fires set by the ELF in the Pacific Northwest.

In the wake of 9/11, federal prosecutors had some new legal tools at their disposal. Historically, the crime of terrorism has required civilian deaths. In fact, the State Department defined terrorism as "premeditated politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatants." But the USA Patriot Act created a new category of domestic terrorism, which is defined as an offense "calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government" or "to intimidate or coerce a civilian population." Under this broad definition, eco-saboteurs become terrorists if their crime seeks to change government policy or action.

Several Republican members of Congress didn't want to stop there. In a letter sent to eight mainstream environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, Colorado Rep. Scott McInnis and six other congressmen demanded that respectable environmental organizations "publicly disavow the actions of eco-terrorist organizations." In 2006, Congress passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, which imposes severe punishments on anyone who "intentionally damages or causes the loss of any real or personal property used by an animal enterprise."

During her trial at the Union Station Courthouse in Tacoma, Waters sat straight in an oversize leather chair, her hair pulled back in a rubber band. She wore gold wire-rimmed glasses and sometimes bit her nails as she listened to the proceedings.

In his opening statement before the jury, Assistant U.S. Attorney Friedman described how Rodgers, the unofficial leader of the University of Washington arsons, organized a series of instructional and strategizing meetings, which took place in five different cities. The group shared information on lock picking, reconnaissance, and the construction of devices that could ignite a fire. They also used the meetings to select targets and gather recruits for their "actions." They called their gatherings Book Club meetings because they communicated with coded messages, using passages from a book as the key. (At one meeting it was Ursula Le Guin's portentous novel "The Dispossessed"; at another, "The Only World We've Got," by environmental philosopher Paul Shepard.)

Waters and the other members of the group took "extraordinary measures," Friedman told the jury, to conceal their identities and their movements: adopting aliases, meeting in public places not associated with any of them, building their incendiary devices in a "clean room" to eliminate DNA evidence. The ELF activists were "organized in cells so if some are discovered the others can continue," Friedman explained. "It's a classic structure for a terrorist or a guerrilla organization."

On the witness stand, Waters declared that she never had an alias, never attended the clandestine Book Club meetings, and never saw any fire-starting device being built anywhere near her house. The prosecution argued that Waters had met with the arsonists at 8 p.m. in Seattle on the night of the crime. Defense lawyers presented a bank card receipt that shows Waters made a purchase at 7:12 p.m. in Olympia, 60 miles away, which would have made it difficult for her to have been in Seattle at 8 p.m.

The government's case against Waters rested heavily on the testimony of two informants, a radical journalist named Lacey Phillabaum and a yacht-racing aficionado with a master's degree in astrophysics named Jennifer Kolar. Both testified Waters was the lookout on campus that night.

Yet as Waters' defense attorneys pointed out, their initial statements to the FBI about the University of Washington fire contradicted one another. Kolar, who worked in high-tech jobs in Seattle and used her expertise to teach encryption at the Book Club meetings, apparently did not identify Waters as a co-conspirator the first time she was interviewed by the FBI in December 2005; instead, she named four others, giving their aliases. Neither did she identify Waters the next four or five times she spoke with the authorities.

During the trial, FBI special agent Anthony Torres acknowledged that nearly two months before Kolar named Waters as a participant in the arson, she'd been shown a photo of Waters and had identified her by name. But she did not say then that Waters had been involved. It was only several weeks after Kolar's first FBI interview, during the time she was seeking to trade information for an advantageous plea deal, that she told her lawyer that she suddenly "remembered" Waters had been at the Center for Urban Horticulture that night. A third cooperating defendant, Stanislas Meyerhoff, who had earlier implicated Phillabaum, his own fiancée, in the fire, told investigators that he was "familiar" with Waters but that she was "not involved" in the arson.

During the tense three-week trial, Waters' lawyers accused the prosecution of misconduct, including falsification of FBI reports to conceal evidence favorable to her defense. Documents produced in court reveal that FBI agents taking notes during their first conversation with Kolar dutifully recorded that she specifically named four collaborators. None of the four was Waters. A typed version of that interview, admitted into evidence in the trial, says only that Kolar identified "Avalon" (the code name of Rodgers) and "some others."

The jury was unconvinced that these inconsistencies constituted reasonable doubt. Although the jurors could not reach a unanimous decision on several counts -- including a "destructive device" charge -- they convicted Waters on two counts of arson, each of which carries a minimum sentence of five years (running concurrently) and a maximum of 20. She could spend as much as two decades behind bars for allegedly holding a walkie-talkie.

"Obviously we were thrilled by the verdict," says First Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Bartlett. "There is a price for people to pay for not showing any remorse, for not accepting responsibility. It will be up to the judge to determine how big a price that is."

Waters' lawyer, Robert Bloom, remains outraged. Prosecutors "used scare-mongering to get the jury to convict an innocent person," he says. "This is really a study in American prosecution. It was an absurdly slanted American prosecution."

If Waters encounters the full force of the government's anti-terror zeal, it will be when she is sentenced on May 30. Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to seek a "terrorism enhancement" -- a sentencing rule that was written into the federal sentencing guidelines in 1995, after the bombings in Oklahoma City and at the World Trade Center, and would allow the judge to add up to 20 years to her prison term if her crime can be construed as a terrorist act.

Prosecutors sought the enhancement for six of the 10 Operation Backfire arsonists, who have been sentenced already, a significant departure from legal convention. (Meyerhoff, despite his cooperation, received a 13-year sentence.) "Never before has the terrorism enhancement been applied where there were no deaths," says Lauren Regan of the Civil Liberties Defense Center.

If Waters spends more than the minimum of five years in prison, her sentence would be disproportionate to punishments received by other arsonists. "That would be a far harsher standard than fits the crime in a lot of arsons," says Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild. James King, for example, a seasonal firefighter, set two fires in California's Cleveland National Park in the summer of 2001 in order to score some extra paydays. More than 50 acres of pristine wilderness were razed. King received a jail term of 30 months and a fine; he was also ordered to retire from the firefighting profession.

Today, as Waters sits in the Federal Detention Center in Seattle, awaiting sentencing, environmentalists and civil libertarians worry that her conviction may beat a path to more convictions, including of nonviolent protesters. In recent years, a number of states have passed laws aimed at eco-sabotage that could implicate law-abiding groups along with the lawbreakers. The American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-leaning, corporate-backed association of state legislators, has written legislation that defines any act of destruction aimed at protecting animal rights or punishing ecological despoilers as terrorism. At least 14 states have introduced bills since 2001 based on this model, and they have passed in Arizona, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The problem with such laws, says David Willett of the Sierra Club, is they can be used "to crack down on environmental groups engaged in legitimate activities as well."

Nonviolent protesters have already felt the heat. Documents obtained in 2005 by the ACLU reveal that the FBI has been surveying animal rights and environmental groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Greenpeace, sending undercover agents to activist conferences and cultivating inside informants. Some of the documents suggest that the bureau was also attempting to link those groups with the ELF and ALF. The National Lawyers Guild reports that it receives calls regularly from environmental and animal-rights activists all over the country who had been contacted by the FBI after attending political events. "It has a chilling effect on free speech," says Guild director Boghosian, "and that's where the real damage to the Constitution is happening."

On March 3, while jurors in the Waters trial were deliberating, three luxury houses for sale in a suburban Seattle cul-de-sac called "Street of Dreams" -- a plot of land surrounded by wetlands -- were destroyed by fire. A banner at the scene pointed to the culprit: the Earth Liberation Front. The FBI immediately announced that the fire "is being investigated as a domestic terrorism act."

The Gatehring Storm at Jusitce; Scott Horton

The Gathering Storm at Justice

Scott Horton

I don’t in the ordinary course review and recommend law review articles, but I’ve just come across one that is close to indispensable for public affairs junkies. On December 7, 2006—the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor—at least eight U.S. attorneys received phone calls from Michael Battle, the executive director of the Office of U.S. Attorneys at the Justice Department. Each was essentially ordered to submit his or her resignation.

The Administration attempted to sell the event as a routine personnel turn-over. But Congress and the public weren’t buying. After a series of hearings at which senior members of the Administration committed acts of perjury, there was a public uproar. In its wake the entire senior echelon of political appointees at the Justice Department were forced to leave office under a cloud and subject to an investigation into potentially criminal misconduct, as were a number of senior White House figures, most prominently including Bush’s senior political advisor, Karl Rove.

The storm has died down a bit now as the Justice Department completes its own internal investigation of what happened. This has been led by Inspector General Glenn Fine and by the Office of Professional Responsibility. I understand that this investigation is approaching its conclusion now, and that a report is likely in the course of the spring. The report will almost certainly be explosive.

Of George W. Bush’s cohort of U.S. Attorneys, one of the most highly regarded—perhaps even the most highly regarded—was John McKay, who headed the office in Seattle. He was included in the December 7 massacre. McKay has now authored a law review article that examines the history of the scandal, reviews the legal issues that it raises, and provides some observations on the trajectory the matter is likely to take going forward. It’s called “Train Wreck at the Justice Department,” and it was published in volume 31 of Seattle University Law Review. Here are some key elements of the article, which really merits being read in its entirety.

A Torrent of Lies Under Oath

The falsehoods presented, under oath, to Congressional committees were sweeping. They included varying and at points inconsistent accounts of the reasons for the dismissals—which internal documents from Justice reflect were often fabricated on the eve of hearings, sometimes after attempts to synch a false story with the White House. This was largely part of an effort to disguise the obvious fact that the dismissals were the implementation of a political plan which had been formulated in the White House, largely under the guidance of Karl Rove. They were also designed to disguise the fact that an elaborate scheme had been concocted to circumvent the process through which candidates are reviewed and confirmed by the Senate using a secret amendment to the USA PATRIOT Act.

Participants in the conspiracy to misdirect Congress included Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, Associate Attorney General Will Moschella—the top three figures at the Justice Department—and a stream of staffers led by Michael Elston, Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling.

After a flurry of phone calls among the U.S. Attorneys who had been ordered to resign, many of those former U.S. Attorneys concluded that the Attorney General was lying to the Senate about the intent of the Justice Department to seek Senate confirmation of their prospective replacements. In Seattle, for example, no known efforts had been underway by either the White House or the Justice Department to recruit or interview candidates for my replacement. In spite of my frequent requests for guidance, Justice officials had not revealed their plans, and no internal candidates had been contacted by the Justice Department or the White House. With only a few days remaining before our departures, it was clear the Justice Department planned to name their own interim U.S. Attorneys under the new powers granted them in the amendments to the USA PATRIOT Act. Other fired U.S. Attorneys confirmed similar patterns in San Francisco and San Diego, and we also knew that an interim U.S. Attorney had been serving in Kansas City for many months.

The article documents a series of further conscious falsehoods from Gonzales and other senior figures of the Justice Department related to similar issues.

The White House in Charge
Perhaps the hallmark of the administration of justice in the Bush era is its complete politicization. No aspect of the process of law enforcement seems beyond the reach of political meddling. This was dramatically demonstrated when Senator Sheldon Whitehouse disclosed early in the hearing process that virtually every political staffer in the White House had been authorized to meddle with criminal investigations and prosecutions. But the reach of Karl Rove was most apparent, and his fingerprints are all about the December 7 scandal. Moreover, when senior figures of the New Mexico G.O.P. decided they wanted to fire their U.S. attorney because he had refused to prostitute his office for electoral political purposes, they went straight to the man who could obviously make it happen: Karl Rove.

McKay reviews the politically motivated dismissal of Iglesias in some detail, and shows the focal role of Rove and the involvement of a number of further political operatives.

During 2006 in New Mexico, then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias led an investigation which eventually resulted in the indictment and conviction of the Treasurer of the State of New Mexico, an elected Democrat. Iglesias has testified that he received phone calls from Senator Pete Domenici and U.S. Representative Heather Wilson (R-N.M.), in which he was allegedly pressured to accelerate the indictment in order for it to occur before the November re-election campaign of Representative Wilson. Iglesias responded to questions before the Senate on March 6, 2007:

SENATOR SCHUMER: Please describe for the committee now, as best you can, your entire recollection of that communication. Please tell us what Senator Domenici said and what you said.

DAVID IGLESIAS: Thank you, Sir. I was at home. This was the only time I’d ever received a call from any member of Congress while at home during my tenure as United States attorney for New Mexico. Mr. Bell called me. I was in my bedroom. My wife was nearby. And he indicated that the senator wanted to speak with me. He indicated that there were some complaints by some citizens, so I said, “OK.” And he said, “Here’s the Senator.” So he handed the phone over, and I recognized the voice as being Senator Pete Domenici. And he wanted to ask me about the matters of the corruption cases that had been widely reported in the local media. I said, “All right.” And he said, “Are these going to be filed before November?” And I said I didn’t think so, to which he replied, “I’m very sorry to hear that.” And then the line went dead.

SENATOR SCHUMER: So in other words, he hung up on you?

MR. IGLEGIAS: That’s how I took that. Yes, Sir.

The public record shows that Domenici, Heather Wilson and other figures of the New Mexico G.O.P. lobbied for Iglesias’s dismissal because he refused their demands that a high-profile Democrat be indicted on a schedule calculated to influence the 2006 elections. The demands made were arguably a felony: an attempt to corruptly influence a criminal investigation. They were ultimately implemented through Iglesias’s dismissal.

McKay calls this a process of obstruction of justice.

The elements of a prima facia case of obstruction of justice are (1) the existence of the judicial proceeding; (2) knowledge of or notice of the judicial proceeding; (3) acting “corruptly” with intent to influence, obstruct, or impede the proceeding in the due administration of justice; and (4) a nexus (although not necessarily one which is material) between the judicial proceeding sought to be corruptly influenced and the defendant’s efforts. The omnibus clause of Section 1503(a) is a “catchall” provision, which is broadly construed to include a wide variety of corrupt methods.

Facts surrounding the dismissal of Carol Lam in the Southern District of California, and the equally suspicious but more graceful edging out of the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles also point to obstruction of justice—in those cases for purposes of freezing or stopping in its tracks a series of criminal investigations involving Republican political officeholders and senior figures at the CIA.

This conduct probably runs afoul of several other statutes. One is the Hatch Act, which “limits the political activities of federal employees in the interests of promoting efficient, merit-based advancement, avoiding the appearance of politically-driven justice. . .”

The Next Steps
At this point on the basis of the public record alone, no report by the Inspector General could credibly dismiss the serious charges which have been leveled against senior former Justice Department and White House figures connected to the December 7 events. Moreover, an examination of other cases points to rampant, likely criminal manipulation of prosecutions in a number of other cases involving U.S. attorneys in Birmingham, Jackson, Montgomery, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Milwaukee. The recent exposé by CBS News 60 Minutes links Karl Rove directly to the fabricated charges brought against former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. And notwithstanding the exposure of the fraud through which he was prosecuted, Siegelman remains in prison in Louisiana today, cleaning latrines.

There are two clear steps which must follow the release of the Inspector General’s report:

• Appointment of a special prosecutor with full authority to investigate and prosecute those involved in criminal conduct associated with this affair.
• Commencement of hearings in the House Judiciary Committee to fully explore the role played by the White House in the misconduct identified in the Inspector General’s report.

The issues surrounding the appointment of a special prosecutor will be numerous. It will be a critical test for the independence and objectivity of Attorney General Mukasey. There are already grounds to suspect that he gave some form of assurance that he would not appoint a special prosecutor in the course of political meetings leading up to his nomination. That is disturbing and a disappointment. If Mukasey were to fail to act under circumstances as compelling as this, it would provide cause for his removal from office.

Any special prosecutor appointed must be a person of unquestioned integrity and professional acumen and not be a person who is or has been involved in partisan politics of any flavor. Moreover, the special prosecutor must be given authority to fully pursue charges relating to the politicization of the U.S. attorney’s office and his remit should not be limited to the U.S. attorney’s dismissed on December 7, 2006. (Note that among other things, Gonzales, McNulty and others continue to maintain their silence in the face of questioning under oath as to the actual number of U.S. attorneys dismissed in this political process).

Further, the special prosecutor must be in fact independent in his pursuit of these matters. Mukasey, his deputy and other senior figures in the Department of Justice are hopelessly politically conflicted and cannot credibly purport to exercise any authority over the process. The manner in which Deputy Attorney General James Comey authorized the investigation and work of Patrick Fitzgerald on the Plamegate matter continues to furnish an example of how this process can and should be handled.

But we should also keep in mind that the jurisdictional basis for the Inspector General’s review is formally limited to the Justice Department and its employees. Therefore the Judiciary Committee in the House of Representatives should convene its own hearings to follow up on the trail to the extent it goes into the White House. In particular the involvement of Karl Rove and Harriet Miers must be fully tested, using the subpoena power, and invoking the power of impeachment if necessary. No claims of Executive Privilege may be lawfully raised to obstruct these hearings, and they should proceed as a matter of urgency and priority.

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March 18th 2008 ..Posted in.... Criminality, Crooks and Liars, World Dominance, WingNut Agenda, Bush Crime Family, Lies, The Ugly, The Bad, The Stupid, Wackos, Crooks On The Hill, Corruption, End of Democracy, Sickos, crime, AssHoles, Truely Obscene, Pure Evil