The EOs are very similar, including the language potentially targeting US citizens. But there are some interesting differences.

As DeYoung pointed out, the Yemeni EO, unlike the Somlia one, does not include an annex with named targets, even though the EO itself speaks of “certain members of the Government of Yemen.” As such, this EO seems to be a threat with consequences, not an immediate sanction.

The Yemen EO also uses slightly different language in the clause targeting those who materially support those destabilizing the country. Whereas the Somalia EO includes those who provide “logistical” or “technical” support, the Yemen EO includes those who provide “technological” support. So make sure you don’t serve as webmaster for someone Hillary Clinton thinks is destabilizing Yemen.

The most interesting difference, IMO, is this clause, which appears in the Yemen EO but does not in the Somalia one.

Sec. 5. Nothing in section 1 of this order shall prohibit transactions for the conduct of the official business of the United States Government by employees, grantees, or contractors thereof.

In other words, while Obama doesn’t want you, or Ali Abdullah Saleh’s leave-behinds, or the AP to destabilize Yemen, he reserves the right for US government employees, grantees, or contractors to do so. Which presumably means, as happened in Afghanistan, we are and plan to continue paying some of the people who are in violation of this EO.

I wonder. Among all the adjectives we might use to describe the Saudis, do we use “grantee” among them?

The unusual order, which administration officials said also targets U.S. citizens who engage in activity deemed to threaten Yemen’s security or political stability, is the first issued for Yemen that does not directly relate to counterterrorism.

Unlike similar measures authorizing terrorist designations and sanctions, the new order does not include a list of names or organizations already determined to be in violation. Instead, one official said, it is designed as a “deterrent” to “make clear to those who are even thinking of spoiling the transition” to think again.

[snip]

The order provides criteria to take action against people who the Treasury secretary, in consultation with the secretary of state, determines have “engaged in acts that directly or indirectly threaten the peace, security or stability of Yemen, such as acts that obstruct the implementation of the Nov. 23, 2011, agreement between the Government of Yemen and those in opposition to it, which provides for a peaceful transition of power . . . or that obstruct the political process in Yemen.”

It covers those who “have materially assisted, sponsored or provided financial, material or technological support” for the acts described or any person whose property has already been blocked, as well as those who have acted on behalf of such people.

The explanation this anonymous official seems to have given Karen DeYoung is that the order is a way to make sure Ali Abdullah Saleh’s family butts out of affairs in Yemen (which would work, given that he presumably does have significant assets in the US). Using Saleh’s wealth as a way to try to keep him out of Yemeni politics is a nice idea (though the agreement itself could have done more to enforce this).

But Saleh’s not a US citizen. So why explicitly include US citizens in the order?

Moreover, since the language borrows material support language from terrorist sanctions, and since terrorist material support extends to First Amendment protected activities (as Tarek Mehanna knows well), and since Obama has already made sure a journalist remains jailed in Yemen, then what protection is there for people who say that using signature strikes in Yemen is boneheaded, or suggesting that investing all our energies in Saleh’s Vice President doesn’t really constitute a meaningful solution in Yemen?

And to make things worse, the anonymous official tries to tell DeYoung that this sanction is not the first of its kind. It was used twice before: in 2006 in Cote d’Ivoire and in 2009 in Somalia. That is, precisely this kind of sanction has been used twice–and has twice failed to do anything to bring about meaningful stability.

But the single most troubling aspect of this EO is that is guaranteed to be selectively enforced. After all, the Saudis aren’t exactly great friends of “political processes” anywhere, particularly in their backyard, and surely they’re waiting to bomb more Houthis. Yet what are the chances that any Administration would freeze the very significant assets of Saudi citizens in the US–even those operating outside official channels?

Update: I haven’t found the EO yet, but Jay Carney’s statement on it emphasizes our cooperation with the GCC, which I guess is yet another guarantee the Saudis will never be sanctioned for intervening in Yemen in unproductive ways.

Today, President Obama signed an Executive Order authorizing sanctions to be imposed on individuals and entities who threaten the peace, security, and stability of Yemen by disrupting the political transition. This Executive Order will allow the United States to take action against those who seek to undermine Yemen’s transition and the Yemeni peoples’ clear desire for change. The President took this step because he believes that the legitimate aspirations of the Yemeni people, along with the urgent humanitarian and security challenges, cannot be addressed if political progress stalls.

Yemen’s transition represents an important step forward for the Yemeni people, who deserve the opportunity to determine their future. The United States strongly supports Yemen’s political transition and will continue to work with our international partners, including the Gulf Cooperation Council, to help Yemen chart a more secure, democratic, and prosperous path forward.

Update: Here’s the Executive Order–reading it now.

The involvement of a Saudi-handled infiltrator in the plot was revealed by May 8. The Brits knew then that it was not just the Saudis and CIA whose operation had been exposed, but MI6 and MI5, who had been involved in recruiting the guy.

The spy who helped Western intelligence agencies thwart a plot to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner was a British national of Middle Eastern origin, sources tell NBC News.

The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, also say that British intelligence was “heavily involved” in recruiting the spy, who has not yet been identified publicly, and penetrating the plot by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula to detonate a new, more sophisticated underwear bomb aboard a U.S. jetliner.

Mind you, we didn’t learn that until May 11. But the British government? They already knew it.

Which means they knew it before the Queen gave new emphasis to the plan to expand the use of secret courts in counterterrorism matters.

My government will introduce legislation to strengthen oversight of the security and intelligence agencies. This will also allow courts, through the limited use of closed proceedings, to hear a greater range of evidence in national security cases.

Remember, British Justice Secretary Ken Clarke is ostensibly doing this primarily because the fact that the British told us Binyam Mohamed’s treatment might amount to torture was revealed in his suit against the British government.

Plans to expand secret hearings into civil courts have been accelerated by the government. Rather than moving to the preparatory white paper stage, a justice and security bill will be put through parliament this session.

The government has come under severe pressure from MI5 and MI6 to impose a system of secret hearings in courts ever since disclosures that the security and intelligence agencies had been involved in the brutal treatment, and knew of the torture, of UK residents and citizens detained by the CIA.
[snip]
Ken Clarke, the justice secretary, has said the powers are needed to reassure other countries, particularly the United States, that they can continue to share intelligence without fear of it being exposed in British courts. Evidence emerged during a high court hearing brought by lawyers for Binyam Mohamed, the UK resident held in Guantánamo Bay.

That is, the British are ostensibly doing this because we’re pissed at them because they didn’t keep one of our secrets about torture.

After the British role in this plot was revealed, a bunch of British spooks have complained about how cross they are that we–or someone–revealed their secrets.

Nigel Inkster, a former assistant chief of MI6, said in a Twitter message: “The revelations about the British agent in AQ [al Qaeda] remind us that Beltway leaking is a major security threat,” referring to the area of Washington DC.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chairman of the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, said that leaks about operations could be “extremely harmful.”

“It can prevent the effective involvement of intelligence officers or agencies in operations that are designed to save lives either in this country or other countries,” he added.

“Whether a leak arises in the US, the UK or elsewhere it is equally serious.”

Hmmm. Based on the assumption that we just exposed one of their agents, maybe the Brits should rethink whether perverting their justice system will do anything to help keep American–or British–secrets.

And barring that, maybe Cameron’s Administration ought to admit they’re not doing this at our behest–we can’t keep our own damn secrets. They’re just doing it because they can.

Sen. Tom Coburn’s decision to hire a former Member’s son who has a criminal record illustrates the latitude lawmakers have to hire as they see fit — and the value of personal connections in a world where information about wrongdoing can be found at a moment’s notice.

The Oklahoma Republican in March brought on Kramer James Largent as a district staff assistant in his Tulsa office, according to the website LegiStorm.
[snip]
Largent was indicted in July 2006 on four felony counts of the sexual solicitation of a minor under 16. Charging documents obtained from Delaware state court say that when Largent was 19, he met a 15-year-old girl on the Internet and tried to persuade her to meet him “for the purpose of facilitating, encouraging, offering or soliciting a prohibited sexual act.”

He later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was sentenced to one year of probation for criminal solicitation and sexual harassment, during which he completed court-ordered individual and group therapy for sex offenders.

Credit where it’s due, the Hill actually makes the connection between Coburn, the elder Largent, the Christian cabal “The Family’s” brownstone known as C Street where they shacked up together, and the involvement of both in covering up John Ensign’s extramarital affair (it also notes that Kramer worked for Ensign during college).

While it doesn’t come out and say it directly, it comes as close as possible in a Hill rag to stating the obvious: Kramer Largent only got this job because his daddy belongs to the same cabal as Coburn (and because he’s white and connected, because if he weren’t, even The Family might not have been able to help him).

Of course, Coburn is also the guy who once sterilized at least one woman without her consent because he thought she had had too many babies already. Vagina monsters, you see, aren’t entitled to the same kind of second chances as male members of The Family.

Update: Fixed mis-identification of original report to Roll Call thanks to Peterr.

Two to three suspected ‘al Qaeda militants’ were killed in the double strike which Xinhua initially reported as ‘a botched air strike carried out by Yemeni warplanes.’ But three Yemeni security officials have since told CNN it was a drone strike.

I think–but am not sure–that this is not new. That is, I think Yemen changed its policy of pretending it had launched any drone attacks some years ago. But I find the competing stories being told interesting, particularly in light of questions about who leaked information on the latest Underwear Bomb “plot.” At first, a “government official” told China’s Xinhua news that the Yemeni military had executed the attacks.

Earlier in the day, a botched air strike carried out by Yemeni warplanes hit a residential building near a compound used by al- Qaida militants in the insurgents-controlled town of Jaar, killing at least eight civilians and injuring five others, a government official said.[my emphasis]

But later, “three Yemeni security officials” blamed the strikes on drones, not the Yemeni military.

Two suspected U.S. drone strikes killed seven al Qaeda militants and eight civilians in the southern part of Yemen on Tuesday, three Yemeni security officials said.

It was the latest of several U.S. strikes in Yemen, which is home to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, described by U.S. officials as the al Qaeda affiliate that poses the most serious threat to the United States.
At least seven civilians were injured in the Tuesday strikes, the officials said.

CNN also has a source (potentially one of those three security officials) making it clear that they’ve gotten terror threats against diplomatic targets in Sanaa.

The Interior Ministry warned on Tuesday that al Qaeda is planning to conduct suicide operations in Sanaa.

Tight security presence was noticeable near Western embassies and in the diplomatic zone of the capital.

“The ministry has been given intelligence information warning of a possible attack in the heart of the Yemeni capital and we are on high alert,” one Interior Ministry official told CNN on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

Now, I don’t think this is a new development. That is, I assume this is not the first time that Yemeni officials blamed civilian strike deaths on US drones. But particularly in the face of questions about who leaked news of the UndieBomb (I’m increasingly convinced, btw, that Robert Mueller retrieved the UndieBomb when he made a surprise visit on April 24, which would mean some Yemenis would have been involved in the handoff), I find it interesting that the Yemenis are no longer willing to take the fall for poor Saudi pinpointing American targeting.

Update: Jim reminds me that this has been going on since at least October, when he examined a similar instance in-depth. And the Aviationist suggests (via David Axe) one thing Yemenis may be covering up with strikes they claim are not our drones, but our F-15s.

Some of the air strikes in Yemen were reportedly launched with the support of warplanes believed to be Yemeni Air Force ones. But there are also chances that U.S. conventional planes have been involved in air-to-surface operations officially or unofficially credited to the Yemeni government.

For the better part of the last decade, a small cabal of self-anointed counterterrorism experts has been working its way through the U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement communities, trying to convince whoever it could that America’s real terrorist enemy wasn’t al-Qaida — but the Islamic faith itself. In his course, Dooley brought in these anti-Muslim demagogues as guest lecturers. And he took their argument to its final, ugly conclusion.

“We have now come to understand that there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam,’” Dooley noted in a July 2011 presentation (.pdf), which concluded with a suggested manifesto to America’s enemies. “It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction.”

If I had, though, I would have said largely what Human Rights First wrote in a letter to General Martin Dempsey emphasizing that the disdain for the Geneva Convention must get as much attention as the Islamophobia exhibited in the training materials.

Publicity surrounding this incident has rightly centered on the discriminatory nature of the materials. But we are equally distressed by an aspect that has received less attention: the cavalier and ignorant dismissal of the principles and rules of distinction and proportionality reflected in the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols. In a nation committed to equality under the rule of law, this aspect of the materials is as disturbing as their anti-Islamic nature. Military personnel are supposed to be well trained in the applicability of the law of armed conflict, even if the military cannot train away their personal prejudices. The military must also reinforce the point that law trumps any personal religious beliefs of members of the military.

President Bush made clear his understanding that the United States was not at war with Islam, but rather with violent extremists. Unfortunately, we are still living with the toxic legacy of his determination that the Geneva Conventions are an irrelevant nuisance.

We are still trying to undo all the damage Bush’s decision to ignore the Geneva Conventions did. But up until a few months ago, top officers were still being taught the Geneva Conventions didn’t apply to our current wars against Muslims. (I really wonder whether any of these instructors was involved in Falluja?)

And until HRF sent this letter, I really hadn’t seen anyone talking about how problematic it was that the military was still teaching that Bush’s rules remained in effect.

Neutrons passing through steel would occasionally collide with a cobalt-59 nucleus, producing easily detectable cobalt-60 if trigger experiments were carried out in the steel chamber at Parchin. (From a Wikimedia Commons illustration of the 1911 Rutherford experiment where alpha particles were sent through a thin gold foil.)

Both Marcy, here,  and b, over at Moon of Alabama, have roundly criticized the cartoon released on Sunday by AP’s George Jahn purporting to depict a chamber at Iran’s Parchin site where various groups accuse Iran of carrying out work aimed at an explosive trigger device for a nuclear weapon. David Albright, working through his Institute for Science and International Security, has been near the forefront in most of these accusations, with one of his accusations coming out in December of 2009 (pdf). As described in his 2009 piece, Albright accuses Iran of attempting to replicate A.Q. Khan’s uranium deuteride (UD3) initiator for a bomb, which “works by the high explosives compressing the nuclear core and the initiator, producing a spurt of neutrons as a result of fusion in D-D reactions. The neutrons flood the core of weapon-grade uranium and initiate the chain reaction.”

Prior to the release of the cartoon, Albright had claimed on May 8 that he had detected activity aimed at “cleansing” the Parchin site.  I debunked that claim the next day, by pointing out that all traces of radioactivity cannot be washed away and that Albright’s claims would mean that the waste water carrying the radioactivity was allowed to drain freely onto the grounds surrounding the building, where the radioactivity could be found without much effort. Albright repeats those claims in Jahn’s article accompanying the cartoon, and he brings in another expert to support his claims that residue from testing a trigger device could be scrubbed:

A cleanup “could involve grinding down the surfaces inside the building, collecting the dust and then washing the area thoroughly,” said David Albright, whose Institute for Science and International Security in Washington looks for signs of nuclear proliferation. “This could be followed with new building materials and paint.

“It could also involve removing any dirt around the building thought to contain contaminants,” Albright said in a statement emailed to selected recipients. “These types of activities could be effective in defeating environmental sampling.”

Fitzpatrick, the other nuclear nonproliferation expert, also said a cleanup could be effective.

“In the past, the IAEA has been able to catch out Iran by going to a building that Iran tried to clean and they still found traces of uranium,” he said. “And Iran learned from that and they learned that ‘boy you have to scrub everything really clean; get down into the drains and grind away any possible residue.”

Earlier in the article, Fitzpatrick (who is  Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Program of the International Institute for Strategic Studies) mentions that Iran is specifically accused of using uranium in the explosives research. Also, the article claims that the equipment associated with the chamber includes “a neutron detection system outside the explosion chamber to measure neutron emissions”.

Albright and Fitzpatrick completely overlook a very important basic aspect of the nuclear physics involved here. If they really are going to claim that uranium is being used and that bursts of neutrons capable of initiating a nuclear reaction are the goal of the experiments, then the neutrons originating from the uranium and from the neutron bursts would result in neutron activation of the steel container itself. Neutron activation occurs when the nucleus of an atom absorbs a neutron, forming a new, radioactive, form of the original atom.

The most common neutron activation product in steel is production of cobalt-60 from the naturally occuring cobalt-59 in the steel. Cobalt-60 has a half-life of over five years and is very easily detected due to the high energy beta and gamma radiation released by it and its decay products. It is critically important to note that this neutron activation occurring within the steel of the container would not be just on the inside surface of the chamber. The collisions of neutrons with cobalt-59 nuclei in the steel would occur throughout the full thickness of the steel, because at the scale of a neutron, the metal atoms comprising the steel are mostly empty space. Thus, the neutrons pass through the steel, only occasionally colliding with a metal nucleus. If the collision is with a cobalt-59 nucleus, then cobalt-60 can be formed as the nucleus absorbs a neutron. (See this helpful tutorial from Florida State University showing the classic 1911 Rutherford, Geiger and Marsden experiment where alpha particles are shot through a gold foil. The concept for neutrons going through steel is essentially the same.)

Neutron activation of steel resulting in cobalt-60 was used in efforts to reconstruct the radiation doses at various locations around the atomic bombs dropped on Japan (pdf). Furthermore, neutron activation of steel in nuclear reactor facilities is a major consideration in the decommissioning of these facilities (pdf).

With those thoughts in mind, we now have tools with which to evaluate subsequent developments surrounding the chamber at Parchin. The claims from Albright and Fitzpatrick appear to be aimed at setting the stage for accusations that Iran carried out trigger research at the facility, even using uranium, but subsequently removed all radioactive traces of that work. Such an accusation could be made after IAEA gaining access to the site but failing to find traces of radioactivity. However, the neutron activation information above would make such an accusation highly dubious, as it would be impossible to remove all traces of neutron activation of the steel from which the chamber is constructed.

On the other hand, should Iran remove the chamber, then that would be suggestive that they were unable to remove neutron activation evidence and thus unable to hide evidence of trigger research. Further, analysis of the metal itself, if access to the chamber is granted, would be very informative about Iran’s intentions when the chamber was constructed.

The AP cartoon article claims the chamber was constructed in the early 2000′s by Azar AB Industries. It is doubtful that this Iranian company has experience working with steel intended for nuclear uses. The cobalt concentration in the steel used for this chamber should be compared to the cobalt concentration in other steel materials produced by Azar AB Industries, because steel intended for use in nuclear activities is intentionally engineered to be low in cobalt content:

Due to the ability of cobalt to absorb neutrons, severe restrictions are placed on its concentration in steels destined for atomic energy applications. Levels of 0.01 and 0.005% Co maximum and lower are commonly listed by the N.R.C.

If the chamber was constructed of steel that is artificially low in cobalt content, then that would suggest that Iran intended the chamber to be used in trigger device development. On the other hand, if no evidence of neutron activation is found upon analysis of the chamber and if it is found to be comprised of steel no different in cobalt content from other steel produced by Azar AB Industries, that would be very strong evidence that the chamber had always been intended for nanodiamond work and no trigger work involving uranium was carried out.

Update: It seems relevant to note how far neutrons can penetrate in steel. The illustration above for the Rutherford experiment is for a very thin foil of gold. Penetration of neutrons into steel depends on the speed at which the neutrons are travelling. The ability of radiation to penetrate into an object is measured as the half-value layer, which is the thickness of the material that is needed to stop half of the radiation that is incident on it. For neutrons, we have this for passage through steel or iron:

10-100 keV neutrons = 0.36 cm

100-500 keV neutrons = 2.73 cm

1 MeV neutrons = 3.45 cm

The neutrons emitted in uranium decay are in the 250-560 keV range, so up to one fourth of neutrons emitted by uranium would travel as far as 5 cm, or two inches, into the steel of the chamber walls. I have not seen an estimate of the chamber wall thickness, but this rough calculation should suffice to demonstrate that virtually the entire thickness of the chamber walls would be subject to neutron activation.

The Obama administration is moving to remove an Iranian opposition group from the State Department’s terrorism list, say officials briefed on the talks, in an action that could further poison Washington’s relations with Tehran at a time of renewed diplomatic efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear program.

The exile organization, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MeK, was originally named as a terrorist entity 15 years ago for its alleged role in assassinating U.S. citizens in the years before the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and for allying with Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein against Tehran.

The MeK has engaged in an aggressive legal and lobbying campaign in Washington over the past two years to win its removal from the State Department’s list. The terrorism designation, which has been in place since 1997, freezes the MeK’s assets inside the U.S. and prevents the exile group from fundraising.

Oddly, the entire article makes no mention of allegations that MEK trained at a US Special Forces camp in the NV desert and/or killed a bunch of Iranian civilians with magnet bombs.

Though its last paragraph amounts to as much.

“If there’s a coalition against the mullahs, then we should fund that coalition, and the MeK should be a part of it,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.). He cautioned that for now, he wasn’t advocating directly funding MeK. “The MeK has the resources to resist and fight the mullah dictatorship. They don’t need our money, they just need us to get out of the way and take the shackles off.”

Jim? I believe this is your department.

Though maybe it’s not all the dead scientists that made the difference here. Maybe it’s the art project that significantly resembles the INC’s finger painting projects leading up to the Iraq War. America. Big fans of primitive art.

We demand our terrorists to be able to both kill civilian scientists and draw crude pictures, you know.

Update: In potentially related news,

Iran has hanged a man it said was an agent for Israeli intelligence agency Mossad whom it convicted of killing one of its nuclear scientists in 2010, Iranian state media reported on Tuesday.

Consider this chart, for example, showing that Mike Bloomberg has had even more success inflating stop-and-frisk numbers than he ever had inflating the stock market.

Then there’s the stat that shows more young black men were stopped last year (168,126 stops of young black men) than reside in the city over all (158,406 total)–statistically, at least, every single young black man has been stopped.

Finally, though, there’s the list of reasons cops gave for having stopped someone in the first place–with “furtive movements” accounting for over half the stops, and “clothes commonly used in a crime” (does this mean hoodies?) cited in 31,555. What’s worse, cops only suspect a violent crime 10% of the time.

The cops frisked the person they stopped over half the time–purportedly because they suspected a weapon that might threaten the officer. Yet they found the weapon that justified the search less than 2% of the time–and weapons were more often found on white men who were stopped than blacks or LatinosIn December, Nicholas Peart wrote a devastating op-ed on what it has been like for him to mature under Bloomberg’s stop-and-frisk explosion, describing the four times he has been stopped and frisked.

Last May, I was outside my apartment building on my way to the store when two police officers jumped out of an unmarked car and told me to stop and put my hands up against the wall. I complied. Without my permission, they removed my cellphone from my hand, and one of the officers reached into my pockets, and removed my wallet and keys. He looked through my wallet, then handcuffed me. The officers wanted to know if I had just come out of a particular building. No, I told them, I lived next door.

One of the officers asked which of the keys they had removed from my pocket opened my apartment door. Then he entered my building and tried to get into my apartment with my key. My 18-year-old sister was inside with two of our younger siblings; later she told me she had no idea why the police were trying to get into our apartment and was terrified. She tried to call me, but because they had confiscated my phone, I couldn’t answer.

Meanwhile, a white officer put me in the back of the police car. I was still handcuffed. The officer asked if I had any marijuana, and I said no. He removed and searched my shoes and patted down my socks. I asked why they were searching me, and he told me someone in my building complained that a person they believed fit my description had been ringing their bell. After the other officer returned from inside my apartment building, they opened the door to the police car, told me to get out, removed the handcuffs and simply drove off. I was deeply shaken.

For young people in my neighborhood, getting stopped and frisked is a rite of passage. We expect the police to jump us at any moment. We know the rules: don’t run and don’t try to explain, because speaking up for yourself might get you arrested or worse. And we all feel the same way — degraded, harassed, violated and criminalized because we’re black or Latino.

He ends this passage by asking, “Have I been stopped more than the average young black person?” And the ACLU report makes it clear that his experience is absolutely statistically normal for a young black man.

Which presumably means the result he describes–the fear, the degradation, the criminalization–are fairly typical as well.

This systematic humiliation of one segment of our society must not be tolerated.

But I’m particularly struck by this story, in which Gretchen Morgenson recounts how Jamie DImon called Paul Volcker and Richard Fisher “infantile” at a party a month ago, for warning about Too Big To Fail banks. That piece of news, like all the rest, added to my sugar buzz. But I was struck by this passage, describing Morgenson’s sources.

The party, sponsored by JPMorgan for a group of its wealthy private clients, took place at the sumptuous Mansion on Turtle Creek hotel. Mr. Dimon was on hand to thank the guests for their patronage and their trust.

During the party, Mr. Dimon took questions from the crowd, according to an attendee who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of alienating the bank. One guest asked about the problem of too-big-to-fail banks and the arguments made by Mr. Volcker and Mr. Fisher.

Mr. Dimon responded that he had just two words to describe them: “infantile” and “nonfactual.” He went on to lambaste Mr. Fisher further, according to the attendee. Some in the room were taken aback by the comments.

That is, Morgenson’s source(s) is not some entry level trader. He or she is a private client, a very rich person, whom Dimon was brought in to suck up to. Not just suck up to, but “thank … for their trust.”

Here we are a month later and Dimon and JPM generally have proven that trust was misplaced. If it were me, I’d be pulling my money out of JPM before Dimon pulls an MF Global with it. Yet even still, this very rich person is afraid of “alienating the bank.”

Not that that’s surprising. After all, Goldman Sachs still commands the kind of fear that leads people to invest with it, even after it became clear it was suckering clients to buy shitpile that it could then short.

Still, if there’s a sign of just how perverse our finance system is right now, it’s that the rich people Dimon is supposed to be sucking up to actually fear him, even after he has been disgraced.