TPMMuckraker

Rumsfeld On Abandoning Geneva: 'All Of A Sudden, It Was Just All Happening'

2009-07-03T22:03:34Z

Donald Rumsfeld has finally said he's sorry. Sort of.

In an interview with biographer Bradley Graham, the former secretary of defense says he has regrets about the administration's controversial detainee policy.

The twist is that Rumsfeld doesn't regret the policy itself -- specifically the abandoning of the Geneva Conventions for detainees picked up in Afghanistan. Rather, he regrets how the policy was formulated.

"All of a sudden, it was just all happening, and the general counsel's office in the Pentagon had the lead," Rumsfeld told former Washington Post journalist Bradley Graham, as quoted in By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld. "It never registered in my mind in this particular instance--it did in almost every other case--that these issues ought to be in a policy development or management posture. Looking back at it now, I have a feeling that was a mistake. In retrospect, it would have been better to take all of those issues and put them in the hands of policy or management."

Primarily at issue is the Bush Administration's decision -- in which Rumsfeld played a key role -- to not grant prisoner-of-war designation to detainees from Afghanistan. In the Department of Defense, which had authority for Gitmo, the policy initially took the form of a since-declassified January 2002 memo, written by Rumsfeld, that said Al Qaida and Taliban detainees "are not entitled to prisoner of war status" under the Geneva Convention.

This memo, as Graham puts it, "effectively nullified half a century of U.S. military adherence to the [Geneva] conventions."

But Rumsfeld, whose own memoir will hit the shelves in 2010, still sees the problem as one primarily having to do with process.

Here's the relevant section from Graham's book:

With the passage of time, Rumsfeld has come to recognize that he made a mistake, although he sees the error as one of process, not basic judgment. He faults himself for taking too legalistic an approach initially, saying it would have been better if senior Pentagon officials responsible for policy and management matters had been brought in earlier to play more of a role and provide a broader perspective. As he explained in an interview in late 2008, policies were developing so fast in the weeks after the September 11 attacks that he did not follow his own normal procedures. "All of a sudden, it was just all happening, and the general counsel's office in the Pentagon had the lead," he said. "It never registered in my mind in this particular instance--it did in almost every other case--that these issues ought to be in a policy development or management posture. Looking back at it now, I have a feeling that was a mistake. In retrospect, it would have been better to take all of those issues and put them in the hands of policy or management."
Further, Rumsfeld conceded, more should have been done to engage Congress in drafting the new policies on detainees--something he said that White House officials had opposed. Although Congress did eventually get involved, he noted that this occurred "in duress" after the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 against the administration's original approach.

Mass Of New Docs Support White House Reasons For Firing AmeriCorps IG

2009-07-03T17:42:08Z

As we noted yesterday, the Washington Post has published the documents turned over by the Corporation for National and Community Service to a Senate committee reviewing the White House's firing of AmeriCorps IG. Conservatives had charged that the IG, Gerald Walpin, was canned for going too hard after an Obama ally.

We've taken a look through the documents, and it's fair to say they offer a pretty clear picture of how and why the CNCS board lost confidence in Walpin. They jibe closely with what the White House and the board have already said -- to us, among others -- about the deterioration of the relationship between the IG and his agency. And they also make clear that this deterioration had begun long before the Obama administration existed.

Here are the key nuggets we've picked out from the 33 documents:

* Walpin clashed with CNCS General Counsel Frank Trinity over how to handle improper end-of-term service hour certifications for AmeriCorps members. An April 2008 memo by Trinity accuses Walpin of not correctly following the law on the issue.

* An email from Trinity to other agency employees about the May 2008 parody newsletter put out by Walpin's office -- which, according to the Washington Post, "included racial and sexually-themed jokes" -- makes clear that Trinity saw the newsletter as a potential violation of workplace harassment rules, and asked Walpin to "review and take appropriate action" over the issue. Corporation members have said Walpin did not do this, according to the Post.

* A string of emails from early 2009 shows that Walpin requested to telecommute from New York for part of the week, and was told by board members that doing so would weaken his effectiveness as IG. It appears that Walpin did indeed end up telecommting, despite the board's clear indication that they didn't support the idea. This issue was cited by the White House as being one of several reasons for Walpin's dismissal.

* The board also included the April 2009 letter from the US Attorney to an overseer for inspectors general, lodging a formal complaint about Walpin's behavior on the St. HOPE Academy probe. It criticizes Walpin for withholding information from the US Attorney's office, and for speaking to the media about the case, and accuses Walpin of seeking "to act as the investigator, advocate, judge, jury and town crier." This, too, was cited by the White House.

* There's also a report submitted soon after by Walpin to Congress, in which he defends his actions in the St. HOPE case and accuses CNCS and the US Attorney's office of having "another agenda -- not that of protecting Corporation grant funds."

* Another string of emails reveals a dispute between Walpin and Trinity over the legal status and reporting requirements of that special report submitted by Walpin to Congress. Walpin called Trinity's inquiries, "another demonstration of the hostility you have repeatedly expressed."

* Walpin's performance at a May 20 board meeting has already been cited by the board as having exacerbated their concerns about him. Several accounts of the meeting back this up. In a memo describing the meeting, Trinity wrote:

For the next ten minutes, during back and forth between Mr. Walpin and Board members, there were long pauses in the discussion while Mr. Walpin reviewed his notes. It did not appear that he was able to process the information on his notes for lengthy periods of time; he would flip the notes and then stop flipping without ever saying anything more from the notes. I was sitting right next to Mr. Walpin and I thought he might be experiencing some type of medical event, perhaps a mini-stroke or series of mini-strokes. I was concerned for his health. Once he finished his presentation, he was unable to engage substantively with the Board on any questions they raised; he simply argued that what they were saying was not the case.

Board chair Alan Solomont wrote that Walpin "seems totally confused."

And another board member, Eric Tannenblatt, wrote: "I wonder if we should shut down the discussion due to the IG's obvious confusion and let the record reflect so."

* In a letter to Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), who had requested more information on the firing, the board wrote:

Over an extended period o f time, we observed how Gerald Walpin's effectiveness as Inspector General significantly diminished. Without an IG who can focus time and energy on areas of greatest risk, we are hampered in effectively discharging our responsibilities to you and your colleagues. Our concerns became paramount after an event in May involving the full Board of Directors that caused us collectively to question Mr. Walpin's ongoing ability to carry out his duties. As a result, the entire Board unanimously asked our Chair to convey our concerns to the White House. We support the President's decision to remove Mr. Walpin.

* In a letter to Sen. Harry Reid, the board explained their concerns about Walpin's habit of making critical public comments about the St. HOPE investigation:

The fundamental concern of the Inspector General appears to be that he was not consulted during the final week of the settlement discussions. As fully reflected in the referral of Mr. Walpin' s conduct to the Integrity Committee by the Acting United States Attorney, and as further documented by the attachments to this letter, Mr. Walpin's limited involvement in management's deliberative process in the final stages of settlement discussions was the direct result of his own conduct during the course of the St. HOPE matter. Specifically, Mr. Walpin had a marked propensity to make questionable comments on this matter in the media (against the specific direction of the United States Attorney), and to fail to disclose pertinent information to officials who must make decisions on behalf of the federal government.

You've got to assume that this mass of evidence has put to rest once and for all the line that this was a politicized firing -- and indeed, the conservative outrage seems to have receded recently.

Though that may just be because they've moved on to their next whistle-blowing hero...

Research assistance by Versha Sharma

WaPo Publishes Docs On AmeriCorps IG Firing

2009-07-02T22:17:01Z

Yesterday we told you about new documents which shed more light on the White House's decision to fire AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin.

And now, the Washington Post has published the complete set of documents, which were recently turned over by the Corporation for National and Community Service to a Senate committee reviewing the firing.

There are 33 separate documents, meaning there's a lot in there. So if you're up for it, take a look at them and let us know -- via comments or email -- what jumps out, in terms of information that further explains how and why Walpin appeared to lose the confidence of CNCS, and whether the White House acted reasonably in firing him.

Conservatives have charged that Walpin was fired because he aggressively investigated an Obama ally. But a slew of evidence has since emerged to suggest that the initiative for the firing came from CNCS itself, and that the decision was more than reasonable. At first glance, these documents appear to support that take, but let us know more...

CIA Again Delays Release Of Key Torture Report

2009-07-02T21:49:54Z

The release of the long-awaited CIA inspector general report on torture has been postponed once again.

The ACLU, which is suing to have the report released, just announced that the government is asking for yet another postponement on the date of the report's release -- this time, until August 31. The CIA had earlier said it would release the report June 19. That was then pushed back to June 26, and then again to July 1.

A heavily redacted version of the report was released last year, but at issue here is a version that would contain more information.

The ACLU says it has told the court it opposes the new delay. Jameel Jaffer, who directs the group's National Security Project said in the release:

The CIA has already had more than five months to review the inspector general's report, and the report is only about two hundred pages long. We're increasingly troubled that the Obama administration is suppressing documents that would provide more evidence that the CIA's interrogation program was both ineffective and illegal. President Obama should not allow the CIA to determine whether evidence of its own unlawful conduct should be made available to the public. The public has a right to know what took place in the CIA's secret prisons and on whose authority.

It hasn't been a good day for the Obama administration's claims to represent a new era of transparency and openness. Earlier today, a good-government group revealed that the Justice Department is arguing, as it did under President Bush, that it should not be required to release Dick Cheney's interview with federal investigators on the Valerie Plame affair.

More Obama Secrecy -- This Time On Cheney's Plame Interview

2009-07-02T18:46:54Z

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised at this point. But the latest example of the Obama administration mimicking the Bushies in opting for secrecy over openness feels like one of the most infuriating yet.

The Justice Department is declining to release Dick Cheney's interview with federal investigators looking into the Valerie Plame leak, arguing -- as it did under President Bush -- that doing so would discourage future high-level officials from cooperating with criminal investigations.

The good-government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington had filed a lawsuit seeking to have the interview released.

CREW points out in a press release that Cheney was never promised confidentiality in the investigation. And its executive director, Melanie Sloan, notes:

It is astonishing that a top Department of Justice political appointee is suggesting other high-level appointees are unlikely to cooperate with legitimate law enforcement investigations. What is wrong with this picture?

It's really hard to see how this stance jibes with the president's much-hyped claim, upon taking office, that his administration would privilege transparency. In several previous instances where the Obama-ites have opted for secrecy -- such as the controversy over photos that show detainee abuse -- there was at least an argument to be made that the path of openness would endanger American troops or otherwise threaten national security.

In this case, no such argument can be made.

Obama Won't Rule Out Indefinite Detention for Terror Suspects

2009-07-02T17:50:26Z

President Obama will not rule out detaining terror suspects indefinitely, although he says it "gives me huge pause."

Obama, while saying he isn't comfortable using executive orders to detain prisoners, wouldn't rule it out during an interview with The Associated Press.

But he also said there are some detainees who don't fall neatly into existing categories for criminal prosecution in the United States or under international law. He said dealing with them is going to be one of the biggest challenges of his administration.

AIPAC Spy Figure: "Zionist" Wanted Me Dead

2009-07-02T17:34:38Z

It looks like a jail sentence might not have been all that Larry Franklin, the former Pentagon official convicted of spying for Israel, had to fear in recent years.

Court documents filed last week suggest a Sopranos-like effort to get rid of Franklin, who had agreed to testify against two former AIPAC activists, CQ's Jeff Stein reports.

Franklin's lawyer, Plato Cacheris, told Stein:

Somebody approached Larry and suggested it would be good if Larry could disappear and fake a suicide, and this person would assist him in doing that.

And Franklin himself made clear to Stein that he took it as a threat:

I grew up on the streets of New York, and when you fake a suicide -- Well, if you're dead to everyone else, it's a lot easier to get rid of you....Did I let him know I took it that way? No. Did I take it that way? Internally, yes.

Franklin's description of the incident seems to suggests that it was an effort by pro-Israel extremists to prevent or discourage him from testifying against the former AIPAC activists, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. Writes Stein:

"It was in West Virginia. I was parking cars at the time. He came to see me at the Charles Town Race Track. He said, 'Let's go to lunch and talk about raising money for my defense.'

"And we talked about all these rich people," Franklin continued. "But first I had to agree to a scheme...

"I was going to go somewhere, and it was going to be arranged that I could occasionally meet my wife. It was supposed to be on a bridge."

In Israel?

"No," he said. "Florida."

Franklin added that the man who approached him was "definitely a Zionist," meaning that "he's beyond good and evil. They're not subject to the laws the rest of us are."

Franklin was charged with giving classified information to suspected agents of Israel -- Rosen and Weissman -- and in 2006 was sentenced to almost 13 years in prison. That was later reduced to probation and 10 months house arrest, thanks to his cooperation with the feds. The charges against Rosen and Weissman were dropped earlier this year.

Rep. Barton: Obama Should Be Worried About "Carbongate"

2009-07-02T16:25:11Z

Yesterday we wrote about Environmental Protection Agency economist Al Carlin, the author of a report that casts doubt on climate change. Carlin's study wasn't taken as seriously by the agency as he'd been hoping -- perhaps because he's not a scientist, and because his bosses never asked him to produce it.

But his cause has become a favorite of right-wingers, who suddenly believe science to be sacred, and are charging that the Obama administration is "suppressing" a report whose conclusions it dislikes. The anti-regulatory Competitive Enterprise Institute first publicized Carlin's report last week. Since then, Carlin has discussed his "findings" with Glenn Beck on Fox News, and on Monday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) called for a criminal investigation into the issue.

Now, Rep. Joe Barton is taking the outrage to a new level. This morning on America's Newsroom, the industry-friendly Texas Republican accused the EPA of suppressing the report, and declared that "just as Nixon had Watergate, Obama now has Carbongate to deal with."

Watch:

(Note that Barton called Carlin "a scientist at the EPA." In fact, Carlin has worked for the agency since months after its founding in 1971, but he does not hold an advanced degree in any natural science, and he has always worked as an economist.)

So just to compare: Watergate involved the cover-up of a criminal enterprise directed from the Oval Office. "Carbongate" involves the EPA ignoring a scientific study by a non-scientist that it never commissioned and which hasn't been published in any scientific journal. There may be better comparisons.

Ex-CIA Officer Charged With Sexual Assault

2009-07-01T16:11:54Z

The CIA's former station chief in Algeria has been indicted on sexual assault charges, the Washington Post reports.

Andrew Warren, who was the CIA's top officer in the North African country, was charged with drugging and assaulting a Muslim woman in his official residence in February 2008. The charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Warren had been sent back to America when the investigation was announced in January. At the time, the Justice Department was looking into assault allegations from two women. When they investigated his home, they found tapes of him engaged in sex acts, one with an apparently semi-conscious woman. The CIA says he has been fired.

Warren has said sex with both women was consensual.

Here are the details of the allegations:

The woman who made the 2008 allegation told investigators that she had known Warren for several months and that he invited her to his residence on Feb. 17 and gave her a tour. She said that after drinking two apple martinis, she suddenly felt paralyzed, though she could speak and see, authorities wrote in court documents.
The woman was then sexually assaulted, she told authorities. An investigator with the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service wrote in court papers that the woman's symptoms were consistent with being drugged.

Fired IG's Office Produced Newsletter With Racial And Sexual Jokes

2009-07-01T15:55:25Z

We reported recently that, according to two board members for the Corporation for National and Community Service, the firing of the agency's inspector general was initiated by the board, which had developed serious concerns about the IG's performance. Conservatives had been accusing the White House of firing the IG, Gerald Walpin, for conducting an aggressive investigation into an Obama ally.

And today the Washington Post offers more detail about what caused the board to lose confidence in Walpin, based on documents turned over by CNCS to lawmakers reviewing the firing.

Reports the Post:

Among the documents is a May 2008 parody newsletter published by staff members in Walpin's office and approved by him as a gift for a retiring assistant inspector general. The newsletter contained fake news articles, including two with racial and sexual jokes referencing the federal procurement process and the government's use of set-aside programs for minorities and disabled veterans.

One article refers to former New York governor Eliot L. Spitzer's admitted use of a prostitution service "that specializes in the procurement of blondes, brunettes and redheads." Another suggested the departing colleague had "finally procured her Federal retirement" from a vendor "known to be owned and operated by a qualified minority-female-veteran-disabled person."

An employee later complained about the newsletter to agency management, who then addressed the matter with Walpin. He never issued a warning or disciplinary action about the matter, according to corporation officials.

Walpin said that his staff had enjoyed the newsletter's humor and that no one had directly complained about its content. He acknowledged he spoke with the corporation's general counsel about the complaints but took no disciplinary actions related to the newsletter because, "I still don't see where it's objectionable."

So there was that.

And of course, we reported that board members also were unsettled by a formal complaint, filed by the local US Attorney, about Walpin's handling of the probe into the Obama ally, Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson. And the fact that at a subsequent board meeting to talk about the issue, Walpin, according to one board member, "became forgetful and couldn't remember what he had said twenty minutes ago" didn't improve his standing.

A board member also told us that Walpin's office had been investigated by CNCS's Equal Employment Opportunity unit, after a complaint, and that Walpin's response to the probe had been "intimidating," according to the staffers conducting it.

Based on memos provided to Congress, the Post sheds a bit more light on that episode:

[Walpin] raised procedural questions and suggested the investigation was handled unfairly, before admitting in a late January e-mail, "I had no prior experience and therefore no knowledge of the procedure."
Walpin said he cooperated fully with the investigation but objected to its focus and said investigators mishandled transcripts of his testimony related to the complaint.

The bottom line is that the evidence for Walpin's case that his firing was instigated by the White House for political reasons -- rather than by CNCS itself because, through a series of incidents, he lost the confidence of the agency's board -- is looking weaker and weaker.

Climate Skeptic: "I Was Hoping People At EPA Would Pay Attention" To My Work

2009-07-01T12:43:07Z

Conservatives are jumping up and down over a report by an EPA analyst expressing skepticism about climate change, which, they claim, was suppressed by agency brass because it didn't conform to Obama administration orthodoxy on global warming. The story has sparked explosive claims, on Fox News and other right-wing outlets, that the EPA censored scientific data for political reasons. And Monday, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) called for an outright criminal investigation into the matter.

But it's hard to blame EPA for not paying much attention to the study. And it's more than a little ironic that DC Republicans have chosen its author as their new standard-bearer in the defense of pure science against politics. Because the author, EPA veteran Al Carlin, is an economist, not a climate scientist. EPA says no one at the agency solicited the report. And Carlin appears to have taken up the global warming topic largely as a hobby on his own time. In fact, a NASA climatologist has called the report -- whose existence was first publicized last week by the industry-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) -- "a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at."

Still, the report's author, veteran agency economist Al Carlin, doesn't sound happy with the way things played out. In an interview with TPMmuckraker, Carlin talked of the extraordinary effort he put into the study, and lamented the fact that, over the years, a series of skeptical climate-change reports he has produced -- on his own initiative, he said -- have consistently been overlooked by higher-ups at the agency. "I was hoping that people at EPA would pay attention" to the studies, he said. "I haven't seen too much evidence of that."

Carlin, who said he joined the EPA three months after its founding in 1971, explained that, despite working as an economist for EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE), he'd been doing research on issues of climate-change science for the last five or six years on his own initiative. He said that much of this work -- which can be found on his personal website -- advocates an approach to addressing global warming which he calls "stratospheric geo-engineering." "It would actually work, and it would cost three to five orders of magnitude less" than regulating carbon dioxide, he said.

True, the studies he's produced were "not specifically commissioned by the EPA," Carlin conceded. But he said his boss at the agency was aware of them, and added that they've been published, though "not all in academic journals."

The recent controversy first emerged last week, when CEI released emails exchanged between Carlin and his bosses, concerning a report Carlin had authored in response to an EPA document on global warming. Carlin explained to TPMmuckraker that EPA had circulated a draft of an "endangerment finding" on the issue. The finding concluded that global warming is indeed a danger to mankind and should be regulated, and, in keeping with standard procedure, requested feedback from agency staff.

It's unclear whether Carlin was supposed to be a member of the working group of staffers whose input on the document was actively solicited. He says he thought he was, since he was included on emails about the document, and invited to meetings on the issue. But the EPA subsequently said he wasn't.

The topic at hand also may have strayed a bit from his core expertise. Carlin described the report he ultimately produced as "85-90 percent science and 5-10 percent economics." Carlin is an economics PhD, but he described himself as "somewhat unique, in that I have a background in both economics and also in physical sciences," citing an undergraduate degree in physics from the California Institute of Technology. "I've always sort of been on the boundary between science and economics," he said.

Asked whether it was common for EPA staffers to prepare reports on subjects outside the area for which they're officially responsible, Carlin allowed that "it's not normal." But, he said it is done. And he added: "The important thing is from a federal bureaucratic viewpoint, I'm equally well-qualified in both fields."

In any case, Carlin felt strongly when he saw the draft document that it was on weak scientific footing. But he said he only had four days until the deadline to submit comments. "This is not what I normally do," Carlin explained. "I normally write research papers and reports, which take six months to a year. So I was faced with the problem of how to prepare thorough comments within a few days." Ultimately, Carlin -- who declined to give his exact age, but suggested he's around 71 -- pulled out all the stops to produce his study questioning the finding. "I worked very hard," he added.

But Carlin was soon told by a colleague coordinating responses to the draft that there were "reservations" about including Carlin's comments in the finding. Soon afterward, NCEE director Al McGartland informed Carlin that his comments would not be included. McFarland then told Carlin via email not to have any further contact with other EPA staff on the issue of climate change, and not to do any more work on the issue. Those emails and several others were leaked to CEI.

Carlin indicated that the incident was in keeping with his prior experience at the agency, suggesting that his labors of love on global warming have never received the attention they deserve. That was the case, said Carlin, even before the Obama administration took over. "To the best of my knowledge, the Bush administration never followed up on my ideas," he said.

Carlin stressed that he wasn't CEI's source for the emails, saying the first he heard about the story becoming public was when a reporter called him last week asking him to verify the emails. In fact, he said, he was chagrined that a hastily produced draft of his work was being circulated before he had had a chance to polish it up. "I was concerned that, heaven knows, I didn't have time to fix all the problems -- and they still aren't fixed," he said, adding that an updated version of his report had subsequently been put out.

In fact, he said, he'd only been speaking to reporters at all out of a basic belief in openness and transparency. "I could find lots of other things I would rather do," he said. But as a government employee, he added, "I don't think it's appropriate -- for reporters or taxpayers -- to [tell reporters], 'go away.'" Soon after speaking to TPMmuckraker, he appeared on Glenn Beck's show on Fox News, armed with a chart to demonstrate his view that warming isn't happening.

Before hanging up, Carlin made sure to caution that during our interview, he hadn't been speaking for his employer. "The views I expressed are my own, not the EPA's," he said.

Presented By:

2009-07-01T12:43:07Z

Book: Rumsfeld Didn't Cut Weapons Programs Because Of 'His Own Financial Situation'

2009-06-30T22:45:55Z

Here's an intriguing detail from the new 685-page tome on Donald Rumsfeld, Bradley Graham's By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld: Several Rumsfeld associates say the defense secretary didn't order any cuts of major weapons programs early in his tenure because of financial stakes he held in the defense business.

Rumsfeld valued his personal fortune at between $50 to $210 million at the beginning of the Bush Administration. The problem was many of the securities he held were in companies that did business with the DOD, which could put Rumsfeld in violation of government ethics rules.

So Rumsfeld had to divest some of these assets -- a whole lot of them, it turned out. And during that process, which went "slowly," Graham reports, Rumsfeld simply put off canceling any major weapons programs, a move some on his staff apparently expected him to make. Rumsfeld's specific thinking is unclear.

Graham writes: "Several of Rumsfeld's associates saw the secretary's inclination to put off big cuts early on as a direct result of his own financial situation."

Now, it's not entirely clear here whether Rumsfeld was worried his policy decisions would cause his stakes to gain or lose value, or if he just wanted to avoid any conflict of interest. But whatever his reasons, it sure seems like a bad way to make decisions about the national military budget.

Here's how Graham describes the episode:

Until Rumsfeld had things all figured out, he appeared reluctant to move ahead with any major decisions on weapons programs. For all his bluster, Rumsfeld was at the same time strikingly averse to risk, even though the cancellation of a major problem could have underscored the seriousness of his transformation agenda.
Several of Rumsfeld's associates saw the secretary's inclination to put off big cuts early on as a direct result of his own financial situation. Rumsfeld had taken steps to sell interests he had in firms that did business with the Pentagon so as to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. During his Senate confirmation hearing in January 2001, Rumsfeld had said he owned "a large number of investments and activities that would have to be characterized as 'conflicts' were they to be maintained during service as secretary of defense" and had promised to divest them.

But the divesture process was going slowly because a considerable amount of Rumsfeld's wealth was in private partnerships and closely held corporations that were difficult to sell. Under the circumstances, Rumsfeld told associates he was hesitant to take significant action on defense acquisition programs.

Sanford Admits More Trysts With Lover

2009-06-30T16:14:45Z

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who originally admitted to meeting his Argentine mistress four times in the past year, told the AP that the number is more like seven.

Apparently there were five meetings in the last year, including "two multi-night stays" in New York. That's the first time he's admitted to trysts on U.S. soil.

There were also two more meetings before the. The two first met in 2001.

The AP interview was, unsurprisingly, "lengthy" and "emotional."

Late update: The AP has released more of the interview. Looks like Sanford attempted to end the relationship earlier this year (or at least, that's what he told his wife). After asking her several times, Sanford got permission from his wife to go to New York, meet his lover and end the affair in person. He took along a "trusted spiritual adviser" as a chaperone for an evening of church, dinner and no overnight stay.

Then, of course, he ended up in Argentina.

Also of note: One of those pre-2008 meetings was over coffee during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York.

"The Commission Has Been Road-Blocked": Republicans' War On The FEC

2009-06-30T13:13:39Z

Last fall, James Ross, a New York City resident and a donor to several Democratic organizations, received an unusual letter. "Your name has been put in our database," Ross was told. "We are monitoring all reports of a wide variety of leftist organizations. As your name appears in subsequent reports, it is our intent to publicize your involvement in your local community. Should any of these organizations be found to be engaged in illegal or questionable activity, it is our intent to publicize your involvement with those activities."

The letter was signed by Howard Rich, a publicity-shy New York real-estate investor and the founder of the conservative activist group Americans for Limited Government. Rich and his group were accused by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee of illegally using Federal Election Commission disclosure reports to obtain the names and addresses of political donors in order to discourage them from making contributions -- a violation of election law. In April, three of the FEC's six commissioners voted to open an investigation into the matter. But the commission's three Republicans opposed a probe. The FEC deadlocked 3-3, and no action was taken against Rich.

That's happened with increasing frequency at the FEC lately. Election-law experts, supporters of campaign-finance regulations, and even some members of the commission itself are expressing growing concern about a string of cases in which the three Republicans on the commission -- led by Tom DeLay's former ethics lawyer -- have voted as a block against enforcement, preventing the commission from carrying out its basic regulatory function. As the normally mild-mannered Washington Post editorial board wrote recently: "The three Republican appointees are turning the commission into The Little Agency That Wouldn't: wouldn't launch investigations, wouldn't bring cases, wouldn't even accept settlements that the staff had already negotiated."

Craig Holman of Public Citizen told TPMmuckraker the commission is currently "defunct." (The FEC's press office declined to make any of the commissioners available for interviews.)

FEC watchers say the commission's three Republicans -- Donald McGahn, Matthew Petersen, and Caroline Hunter, each nominated by President Bush -- are acting out of philosophical opposition to the very idea of regulating campaign money. "It's the Republican caucus that actually believes there shouldn't be campaign-finance regulation," said Holman. "It is ideological. They are ideologically opposed to the purpose of the Federal Election Commission."

It may also have become personal. At an open meeting of the commission last week, there was barely concealed animosity between the Republican and Democratic commissioners, according to one attendee.

The result of this dysfunction -- along with the growing likelihood that the Supreme Court will soon strike down key aspects of campaign-finance law -- could be to dramatically increase the influence of money in political campaigns going forward. "The severe ideological split on the Commission raises the question of whether it will be able to function effectively as an enforcement agency in the upcoming election year," Brett Kappel, an election lawyer with Vorys, Sater, Seymour, and Pease told TPMmuckraker via email.

Rick Hasen, an election-law expert and a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, was blunter. "If things remain the way they're going, the campaign-finance rules come 2010, come 2012, are going to be much looser," he told TPMmuckraker. "Money's going to be able to play a much larger role than it has in the past."

Hasen continued: "If we don't fix the FEC very soon, we're going to go into the next election cycle with everyone knowing they can do whatever they want to do, and the Federal Election Commission won't clamp down on them."

"A Glorified Congressional Committee"
How did we get to this point?

At the root of the problem is the fact that, although officially the president nominates commissioners, in practice the job has been left to the relevant party leader in the Senate -- which means responsibility for picking Republican commissioners falls to GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell, the long-time point man for his party's opposition to campaign-finance regulation.

Things originally reached an impasse in December 2007, when the tenure of GOP recess appointee Hans Von Spakovsky, as well as two other recess appointments, expired. But McConnell -- whose office did not respond to TPMmuckraker's request for comment for this story -- refused to confirm any replacements unless Spakovsky, a prominent supporter of efforts to create obstacles to voting for poor people and minorities, was confirmed.

That left the commission with only two members -- it needs four to take action -- which was fine with McConnell, since it meant the commission was hamstrung. Eventually, in May, the impasse was broken when Spakovsky withdrew his nomination, and a full slate of replacement commissioners -- including McGahn -- was nominated.*

McGahn had been general counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee, before serving as a legal adviser on campaign finance for Tom DeLay, both during the Jack Abramoff affair and when The Hammer was indicted for campaign-finance violations in Texas. Judging by comments McGahn has made about the role of the commission, he doesn't appear to conceive of it as the kind of powerful, independent enforcement agency that supporters of regulation think we need: "You're gonna appoint your guys to make sure you are taken care of." McGahn told the author of a 2003 academic study of the commission, as reported at the time by Roll Call (via Nexis). "The original intent was for it to be a glorified Congressional committee. That's the way I see it."

In other words, he's just McConnell's kind of guy. "Don McGahn was appointed to approve [public funds for McCain], and has since essentially shut down the agency," said Holman. The FEC, he said, has been made "ineffective" -- and not by accident. "This is what McConnell had in mind."

David Donnelly of Public Campaign agreed. "Clearly the commission has been road-blocked," Donnelly told TPMmuckraker. "There's a bloc on the commission led by Don McGahn that wants to take campaign-finance law in the wrong direction."

Indeed, since McGahn's appointment, the FEC's three Republicans have voted in a string of cases against enforcement, blocking the commission from taking action -- and often provoking unusually outraged responses from the commission's Democrats.

"A Refusal To Enforce The Law"
In addition to the Howard Rich case, here are a few more examples:

A case in which the Chamber of Commerce was accused of illegally contributing $3 million in 2004 to bankroll the November Fund, a 527 group that had failed to register as a political action committee, despite having no advertised purpose other than to attack then vice-presidential candidate John Edwards over his past as a trial lawyer. In their Statement of Reasons after the vote against enforcement, Democratic commissioners Ellen Weintraub and Cynthia Bauerly wrote (pdf): "Our colleagues' refusal to accept the signed conciliation agreement with the November Fund amounts to a refusal to enforce the law."

A case in which Wal-Mart was accused of having managers give presentations informing employees that the Employee Free Choice Act, if passed, would hurt Wal-Mart and its employees, and that the law would be passed if Democrats won Congress and the White House in 2008. As the Wall Street Journal revealed (sub req.) in August 2008, some presenters went off-script to attack EFCA and Barack Obama directly. In a report to commissioners, FEC employees said Wal-Mart later acknowledged "even more egregious" violations than those exposed by the Journal. But the commission's Republicans voted against opening an investigation even to determine whether violations of law had occurred.

A case in which George Soros was accused of failing to report $272,000 associated with sending brochures to advertise an anti-Bush book during the 2004 presidential campaign. The Republican commissioners argued that the cost of the mailing list Soros used was not an independent expenditure. In response, Democratic commissioner Ellen Weintraub wrote (pdf): "One cannot do a mailing without a mailing list. It seems obvious to me that the distribution list is part of the distribution cost."

A case in which Mitt Romney's presidential campaign and Kem Gardner, a Utah real estate developer, were accused of violating campaign-finance law after Gardner chartered a plane for $150,000 to fly about 200 Romney supporters from Utah to Boston to make fund-raising phone calls. The commission's Republicans claimed there was no proof that the Romney campaign had asked Gardner to charter the flight, and thus it wasn't certain that this was a campaign expense. But Democratic commissioners Weintraub and Cynthia Bauerly maintained that the flight was an obvious campaign contribution. "This was not a difficult case," they wrote.

"The President Has To Decide"
Of course, the one person who could do the most to get the commission back on track is President Obama. To do so, experts say, he could push to change the commission's structure -- perhaps by moving to a single commissioner -- making it more difficult for an anti-enforcement faction to block action.

But in early May, reformers' hopes that Obama is committed to a more pro-enforcement commission took a hit when he nominated John Sullivan to replace Weintraub, whose term has expired. "By nominating Sullivan, [Obama] basically sent the signal that at this point he's willing to go along with the status quo," said Hasen. Sullivan is a labor lawyer who has in the past argued against campaign-finance regulations on behalf of the SEIU.

Most experts believe that the White House supports stronger campaign-finance laws as a goal, but, with a host of other issues on its plate, is reluctant to pick a fight with the GOP Senate leader. "They're picking their priorities, and they don't want to take on Mitch McConnell right now," said Hasen. "I consider that unfortunate."

Holman agreed. McGahn's term, abridged by the Spakovsky holdup, has now expired as well, and Holman suggested that Obama could play a more active role in nominating McGahn's replacement -- as the president would be within his rights to do -- rather than leaving it to McConnell. "The president has to decide," said Holman. "He's either going to go with Mitch McConnell's appointee and render the FEC functionless, or he's going to break tradition and bring the FEC back to life."

The choice the president makes will likely help determine the level of influence that big money wields in electoral politics into the future. That seems like an issue worth spending some political capital on.

*The preceding two paragraphs have been corrected from an earlier version.

#EmailFail: Lt. Gov. Hires Swift Boat Operative to Nudge Sanford From Office

2009-06-29T20:09:54Z

All sex aside, the Sanford scandal offers plenty of political intrigue.

If Gov. Mark Sanford resigns, Lt. Gov. André Bauer would get to run as an incumbent in 2010 -- a definite leg up -- and his supporters have been pushing hard for Sanford's resignation. But some of them have been pushing the wrong people.

The NYT obtained an email from one of Bauer's political consultants, Chris LaCivita, a former media consultant for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. He sent the email, which mentioned his efforts to oust Sanford, to fellow GOP operative Curt Anderson.

"André Bauer is my client; I've been working this since Monday," the email read. "I need to get this guy (Sanford) out."

Unfortunately, Anderson isn't exactly sympathetic to Bauer's ambitions, as he's a close friend of one of his likely opponents, Attorney General Henry McMaster.

"On this, I can't help you," Anderson replied. "Henry McMaster has been a friend of mine for almost 20 years." Anderson, by the way, is also one of Michael Steele's political consultants.

Note to LaCivita: Better check those email lists.