1 Euro = $1.53

Ha'aretz: Israel ground operation in Gaza becomes inevitable.

One would guess that could be part of what the US warship off the coast of Lebanon is about - to deter Hezbollah, including if Israel moves against Hamas in Gaza. Heard earlier today such operations would be in March-April, with desire for stabiliity to be restored by time of Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations in May when Bush plans to visit. Then again, March is next week. So is a planned Rice visit to Israel. Jordan's King Abdullah II is here this week and next, after a meeting with the Saudi king en route to New York today. Olmert back to Israel Friday from Japan, where he overlapped with Rice.

Update: Rice did meet with Olmert in Japan about Gaza situation, at her request.

From Rice's press availability Thursday in Tokyo:

SECRETARY RICE: I just had about an hour-long breakfast with Prime Minister Olmert. We had an opportunity to review the state of affairs on a number of issues. I, once again, said to the Prime Minister that we were all sorry about the death of the Israeli university student in Sderot and affirmed to him that we will continue to state clearly that the rocket attacks against Israel need to stop.
We also talked about the situation in Gaza. I again reiterated our concerns for the humanitarian circumstances there and the need to find a more durable solution to the question of the passages. We obviously talked about the peace process, about the negotiations that are going on. And the Prime Minister confirmed again his commitment to try to move those forward. We had a brief time just to talk also about the roadmap obligations. I’ll – we’ll have a more extensive discussion of that when I’m in Israel. And I look forward to seeing him again in a few days.

So it was a good chance just to review where we are. But I think the remarkable commitment of the Prime Minister and indeed President Abbas to try to move forward on the Annapolis process, despite the considerable difficulties, that’s what I really (inaudible). So it was a good conversation.

QUESTION: A quick thing about Gaza?

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

MR. MCCORMACK: We’ll just take two quick questions.

SECRETARY RICE: Two quick questions, because we have to go. We have to go home, please.

QUESTION: (Inaudible). There’s been collateral damage in Gaza, including the death of the six-month-old baby, according to our reports and five other civilians. Did you raise any concerns about that?

SECRETARY RICE: As I said, I’m concerned about the humanitarian condition there and innocent people in the Gaza who are being hurt. We have to remember that the Hamas activities there are responsible for what has happened in Gaza, the illegal coup that they led against the Palestinian Authority institutions, the legitimate institutions of the Palestinian Authority. And so it’s very clear where this started. But of course, we are concerned about the innocent people and we are concerned about the humanitarian situation.

QUESTION: You mentioned roadmap obligations. Are you referring to the settlements? I think Prime Minister Olmert said on Japanese television that the settlements will continue.

SECRETARY RICE: No, I – look, the roadmap obligations are clear and they include also, for instance, illegal outposts and – as well as the settlement activity. And I think that General Fraser has been out and he’s begun to really gather information about the situation on both sides and the roadmap obligations of both Israelis and Palestinians. He will go again soon. And I think the way to handle these roadmap issues is through the implementation and monitoring mechanism that we’ve set up under General Fraser.

QUESTION: Did you ask him not to use disproportionate force in Gaza?

SECRETARY RICE: I have never been able to define -- I think that’s not a good way to address this issue. And I think if you look back, I’ve said many times it’s not a good way to address this issue. The issue is that the attacks, rocket attacks need to stop. There needs to be due concern for the innocent people and the humanitarian situation in Gaza. There needs to be a durable way to deal with the crossings. I hope that there will be good discussions between Egyptians, the Palestinians, Israelis about how to do that. And the most important thing that can be done, of course, is to use the opportunity before the parties to have this vision of a Palestinian state become one that is concrete. That is what will ultimately give the Palestinians and Israelis confidence that they have a future of peace and security, not one of continuing conflict.

Much more at MESH. And an updated report from Amos Harel.

The BBC is reporting that a US warship has been ordered deployed off the coast of Lebanon:

The USS Cole was sent there amid growing concern about the political impasse in the country, which has not had a president for four months.

The Western-backed governing coalition and the Syrian and Iranian-backed opposition are at loggerheads.

A US official quoted by news agencies said the destroyer's deployment off the coast was designed as a "show of support... for regional stability".

The official told Reuters news agency that the US was concerned about the political deadlock in Lebanon, which Washington blames on Syrian interference.

Lebanon's politicians have repeatedly failed to agree on a president amid months of wrangling between pro-and anti-Syrian factions.

Clashes between supporters of the rival factions have further raised tensions and led several countries to advise their citizens against travelling to Lebanon.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal warned earlier this month that the country was "on the verge of civil war."

Wired has obtained new cache of highly disturbing photos of abuses at Abu Ghraib. More from Dan Schulman.

Meepas: Ahmadinejad splits Iranian right wingers. "With his economic policies facing the scorn of many Iranians, Ahmadinejad’s recent decision to split ranks is a tactical mistake, likely to cost him even more popularity, and influence inside Iranian politics."

Air Force follows Pakistani military regime's lead in blocking access to blogs? Wired's Noah Shachtman investigates what sites are blocked. Perhaps the Air Force will follow the Pakistani government's lead as well in making the decision go away. (Balkinization's Air Force commenter has some insights on it).

About That Technical Glitch. Via Steve Benen, the NYT writes:

... In 1955, when WLBT-TV, the NBC affiliate in Jackson, Miss., did not want to run a network report about racial desegregation, it famously hung up the sign: “Sorry, Cable Trouble.” Audiences in northern Alabama might have suspected the same tactics when WHNT-TV, the CBS affiliate, went dark Sunday evening during a “60 minutes” segment that strongly suggested that Don Siegelman, Alabama’s former Democratic governor, was wrongly convicted of corruption last year.

The report presented new evidence that the charges against Mr. Siegelman may have been concocted by politically motivated Republican prosecutors — and orchestrated by Karl Rove. Unfortunately, WHNT had “technical problems” that prevented it from broadcasting a segment (the problems were resolved in time for the next part of the show) that many residents of Alabama would no doubt have found quite interesting.

After initially blaming the glitch on CBS in New York, the affiliate said it learned “upon investigation,” and following a rebuke from the network, that “the problem was on our end.” It re-broadcast the segment at 10 p.m., pitting it against the Academy Awards on rival ABC, before Daniel Day-Lewis won the best actor Oscar. As public criticism grew, it ran it again at 6 p.m. on Monday.

Too much to think this is a matter the FCC might find of even a fraction of the public policy importance of Janet Jackson?

NYT: Hamas and Israel trade attacks, killing several. Amos Harel: Hamas' calculated escalation is a response to the assassination of five of its operatives in Khan Yunis. And after an anticipated harsh Israeli response to the longer range rocket attacks today, perhaps a calculated deescalation will follow, Harel suggests. "Under the influence of the dramatic media reports, one could forget that only two weeks ago, following the wounding of the Twito brothers in Sderot, we experienced a similar escalation. The tension relaxed, or simply disappeared from the agenda, following the assassination of Hezbollah terror chief Imad Mughniyah in Damascus. This time, too, if no more Israelis are killed, the tension may slowly dissipate. Hamas, at least as it seems for now, does not want to drag Israel into all-out conflict."

Foundation for the Defense of Democracies -- Republicans? So say four Democrats who have now resigned from the group's board of advisors after it created a front group that last week ran misleading ads against a Democratic candidate and against Congressional Democratic efforts to preserve civil liberties protections in updated government surveillance legislation.

As Spencer Ackerman reports:

... The think tank, called the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, is a 501(c )3—meaning it was incorporated as a non-profit and non-partisan organization, barred from political activity. Last week, it established Defense of Democracies, a 501(c )4 "non-profit, non-partisan advocacy organization," that ran an advertisement urging the House of Representatives to pass the Senate’s version of a bill providing retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that collaborated with the Bush administration’s constellation of warrantless surveillance programs. The arrangement is probably legal, experts say, but the parent think tank receives several grants from the State Department—at least one is worth $487,000—for democracy-promotion programs, making its political activities questionable.

I reported on FDD's connections a few years ago:

... [Cliff May] explains that the [Committee on the Present Danger] is registered as a 501(c)4 organization, which gives it a tax status that allows it to lobby Congress on behalf of specific policies. And that's something that the Foundations for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) cannot do. May, who is also director of the FDD, says that is a 501(c)3 organization, which is not permitted to lobby. But the FDD's funders, he says, helped raise the money to launch the CPD.

The relationship between the FDD and CPD is central to understanding what the new CPD's true purpose is about. While one CPD member staffer told me the CPD was initially funded by a grant from the FDD, May tells me it's a bit more indirect than that. "People who have supported the FDD have also wanted to help get the Committee going," May says. "Some of our backers have gotten their friends to contribute" to the CPD.

Whether a group that sponsors such domestic partisan ads and campaigns should be getting State Department monies is an interesting question, perhaps for the Congressional foreign affairs and appropriations committees, which have the administration's budget request to approve.

Update: More from Newsweek's Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff: "Scare Tactics:" " ... Sources at both Verizon and AT&T; said their companies had nothing to do with the new TV advertising campaign by the pro-administration group." Roll Call: GOP says they're not feeling the telecom love.

Former Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel official Marty Lederman skeptical about reported internal DOJ investigation of OLC advice on waterboarding. What made me skeptical is the mention lower down in the NYT piece last week that the investigation has been going on for three years. Doesn't seem it would take that long to investigate if the process was serious.

Haaretz/Dialog poll: Majority of Israeli public backs direct talks with Hamas on captured soldier, ceasefire:

Sixty-four percent of Israelis say the government must hold direct talks with the Hamas government in Gaza toward a cease-fire and the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit. Less than one-third (28 percent) still opposes such talks.

The figures were obtained in a Haaretz-Dialog poll conducted Tuesday under the supervision of Professor Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University.

According to the findings, Israelis are fed up with seven years of Qassam rockets falling on Sderot and the communities near Gaza, as well as the fact that Shalit has been held captive for more than a year and a half. ...

An increasing number of public figures, including senior officers in the Israel Defense Forces' reserves, have expressed similar positions on talks with Hamas.

It now appears that this opinion is gaining traction in the wider public, which until recently vehemently rejected such negotiations.

The survey also showed that Likud voters are much more moderate than their Knesset representatives. About half (48 percent) support talks with Hamas. ....

See this, this and this as well.

AP: Terri McAuliffe: Obama and Clinton could be running mates. A friend interprets this, "This is a not so subtle way of saying, 'Hey, if you like Obama, you can still vote for me and I'll put him on the ticket!' But it does undermine her claim that he is not ready to be president."

Casino mogul and Freedom's Watch backer Sheldon Adelson, being sued in Israel, takes the stand tomorrow, Ha'aretz's Yossi Melman reports. Among the contentions unearthed in that and related law suits, Melman reports: that Adelson helped the Chinese government derail Congressional human rights legislation that would have called for Beijing not to get the 2008 Olympic games. In exchange, the law suits allege, Adelson received Beijing's nod to open a casino in Chinese-controlled Macau. Various businessmen along the way allege that Adelson cut them out of the deals. Adelson denies the charges. More at the link and here.

IAEA: "Latest Iran Safeguards Report Circulated to IAEA Board"

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei today circulated his latest report on nuclear safeguards in Iran to the Agency´s Board of Governors, the 35-member policymaking body. The report outlines developments since the Director General´s report of 15 November 2007.

The IAEA Board of Governors will discuss the report when it next convenes in Vienna on 3 March. The report is entitled Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and Relevant Provisions of Security Council Resolutions 1737 (2006) and 1747 (2007) in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Its circulation is restricted and cannot be released to the public unless the IAEA Board decides otherwise.

After the report (.pdf) was circulated, Dr. ElBaradei made the following comments:

"Our task in Iran is to make sure that the Iranian nuclear programme is
exclusively for peaceful purposes. We are at it for the last five years.
In the last four months, in particular, we have made quite good progress
in clarifying the outstanding issues that had to do with Iran´s past
nuclear activities, with the exception of one issue, and that is the
alleged weaponization studies that supposedly Iran has conducted in the
past. ...

"In addition to our work, to clarify Iran´s past nuclear activities, we
have to make sure, naturally, that Iran´s current activities are also
exclusively for peace purposes and for that we have been asking Iran to
conclude the so called Additional Protocol, which gives us the additional
authority to visit places, additional authority to have additional
documents, to be able to provide assurance, not only that Iran´s declared
activities are for peaceful purposes but that there are no undeclared
nuclear activities. On that score, Iran in the last few months has
provided us with visits to many places, that enable us to have a clearer
picture of Iran´s current programme. However, that is not, in my view,
sufficient. We need Iran to implement the Additional Protocol. We need to
have that authority as a matter of law. That, I think, is a key for us to
start being able to build progress in providing assurance that Iran´s past
and current programmes are exclusively for peaceful purposes. So we have
the Protocol issue and we have the weaponization, alleged weaponization
studies. ...

"As a result of Iran running an undeclared nuclear programme for almost two
decades, there has been confidence deficit on the part of the international
community about the intentions, future intentions of Iran´s nuclear
programme. Therefore the Security Council asked Iran to suspend its
enrichment-related activities. I hope that Iran will continue to work
closely with the Security Council, to create the conditions for Iran and the
international community to engage in comprehensive negotiation that would
lead to a durable solution. ..."

ISIS has made the restricted report available here.

More from an independent NGO, Security Council Report:

... Although the IAEA did not detect any use of nuclear material in connection with the alleged studies, it was not yet in a position todetermine the full nature of Iran.s nuclear programme because Iran has not yet given inspectors full access to inspect nuclear-related sites.

On implementation of the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation
Treaty, the Agency reported that its knowledge of Iran.s declared nuclear
programme became clearer with new provision of information, but that this
was not enough. Finally, ElBaradei reported that Iran had still not
suspended uranium enrichment activities and even started developing a new
generation of centrifuges. The report will officially be presented to the
IAEA Board of Governors on 3 March.

A draft resolution based on elements agreed among the E3 plus 3 (France,
Germany and the UK plus China, Russia and the US) was introduced to the
rest of the Council on 21 February by the UK and France. It tightens
sanctions against Iran because of its non-compliance with the two previous
Council resolutions demanding that Iran suspend uranium enrichment. In
particular, it includes:

*
A call on all states to exercise vigilance regarding entry into or
transit through their territories of individuals engaged in Iran.s
proliferation-sensitive activities and a demand to notify the sanctions
committee when individuals listed in the two previous resolutions enter or
transit through their territories (those individuals are also listed in
annex I of the draft resolution).
*
A travel ban on some individuals listed in previous resolutions (and
in annex II of the draft resolution).
*
Additional names of persons and entities subject to assets freeze
(in annex III of the draft resolution).
*
A call to exercise vigilance in granting export credits to Iran.
*
A call to exercise vigilance over the activities of financial
institutions with Iranian banks.
*
An expansion of the list of dual-use items under embargo.
*
A call upon states to inspect cargoes to and from Iran if there are
reasonable grounds to believe that they may contain prohibited items.

Cargo inspections considered most forward leaning.

More from Judah Grunstein.

Remember MZM, the government body shop whose founder and CEO Mitchell Wade was charged as a co-conspirator in the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal? Well, MZM is among the handful of contractors identified in writing by a White House technology official at a Waxman hearing today as having been hired to deal with White House email - a million of which have gone missing. See page 4/question 5 of this questionnaire (.pdf) filled out by Mr. Steve McDevitt, a senior manager in office of the chief information officer of the Executive Office of the President administration office from 2002 through 2006.

More on the hearing, at which McDevitt was forbidden by the White House to appear, from Dan Schulman, Marcy Wheeler and the Post:

After promising last year to search its computers for tens of thousands of e-mails sent by White House officials, the Republican National Committee has informed a House committee that it no longer plans to retrieve the communications by restoring computer backup tapes, the panel's chairman said yesterday.

The move increases the likelihood that an untold number of RNC e-mails dealing with official White House business during the first term of the Bush administration -- including many sent or received by former presidential adviser Karl Rove -- will never be recovered, said House Democrats and public records advocates.

The RNC had previously told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that it was attempting to restore e-mails from 2001 to 2003, when the RNC had a policy of purging all e-mails, including those to and from White House officials, after 30 days. But Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) disclosed during a hearing yesterday that the RNC has now said it "has no intention of trying to restore the missing White House e-mails." [...]

Steven McDevitt, who left the White House in 2006, said he supervised an internal study that found hundreds of days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more White House offices from January 2003 to August 2005. The study stated a range when tallying the total number of days in which an office had no recorded e-mails, from 473 -- which had been previously reported -- to more than 1,000, McDevitt said.

McDevitt also said security was so lax that e-mail could be modified by anyone on the computer network until the middle of 2005. ....

Among the missing emails, those from the Office of the Vice President from October 2003 subpoeanaed as part of a criminal investigation.

Thomas Pickering, William Luers, & Jim Walsh in NYRB: "A Solution for the US-Iranian Nuclear Standoff."

Noam Scheiber: Obama's surprisingly non-partisan policy shop.

Miriam Pemberton writes, that she has released a new study showing "that the U.S. government is spending $88 on military security for every $1 it spends to stabilize the climate. In FY 2008, as well as during the previous four years, we have allocated to climate change one percent of what we spend on the military. The report also finds that even the modest $7 billion in the federal climate change budget is badly targeted toward what ought to be low priorities, while major climate priorities get short shrift."

Legal question. If Karl Rove goes on TV to discuss the Siegelman case, does he lose any legal privilege to not discuss the case before a Congressional committee?

Update: Attorney bmaz writes, "Generally no. The 5th Amendment privilege is against compelled self incrimination. Now if he made statements against interest or the statements on Fox (I assume that is what you are referring to) were of some other particular evidentiary value, they would almost surely be admissible through an extrinsic source at a trial or evidentiary hearing or, in your question, a congressional hearing. But not through Rove unless he chose to repeat the statement. He cannot be compelled to do so, nor to give any other testimony for that matter. There are all kinds of technical exceptions and permutations thereon, but for your general question, this is the general answer."

But he couldn't claim executive privilege as a reason not to testify as he has in the past - but the right not to incriminate himself only?

Update II: A former Congressional attorney writes:

When thinking about “legal privileges” before a congressional committee, you have to keep in mind the nature of the proceedings and the fact that once a witness asserts a privilege (no matter what its validity), the burden is on the committee to initiate a very long and cumbersome process to hold the witness in contempt. Moreover, enforcement of congressional contempt (except in the case of inherent contempt, which we can disregard for purposes of this discussion) is ultimately in the hands of the executive branch.

With regard to the possibility of Rove asserting the 5th Amendment before a congressional committee, I think “Attorney bmaz” is correct as to the general rules applying to waiver of the privilege. There are circumstances under which the privilege is waived when a witness chooses to testify before a particular tribunal (eg, a witness cannot arbitrarily invoke the privilege as to some questions but not others on the same subject matter) but those circumstances are fairly narrowly construed. I doubt that talking to the news media would be a waiver of the privilege under any circumstances.

Even if there were an arguable waiver, the chances of a congressional committee attempting to overrule the assertion of the 5th amendment privilege are virtually nil. For example, during the congressional investigations of Enron and other corporate scandals a few years ago, there were instances of corporate executives coming in and basically reading statements to the effect that they hadn’t done anything wrong, but based on the advice of their counsel, they would be asserting their 5th amendment privilege to not answer questions. There was at least a reasonable argument that some of these executives had waived the privilege by making exculpatory statements on the same subjects that the committees wanted to question them about, but as a practical matter the committees were not going to initiate the contempt process just to test this legal question.

As for the question of executive privilege, there the privilege belongs to the President, not to the witness. I am sure that the executive branch would take the position that whatever Rove chooses to say to the media or anyone else, he cannot waive the President’s right to assert the privilege. Whether this is correct as a legal matter or not, the Justice Department is not going to prosecute Rove should he invoke executive privilege before a congressional committee on the President’s instructions, just as it is not going to prosecute Miers or Bolten.

So back to changing the laundry. No one in the administration can be held accountable under most circumstances short of a solar eclipse with Mars passing Jupiter, etc. etc.

Tara McKelvey:"The debate over the subject of suicide, and the treatment of soldiers and veterans, continues in Washington. Meanwhile, veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are killing themselves at an alarming rate."

MJ: Departing US Iran Envoy says Iran nuclear issue will not be resolved by the time Bush leaves office:

Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nick Burns, who is due to leave the State Department after twenty-six years of service at the end of the month, spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington tonight. He discussed a range of issues, from Kosovo to North Korea. ...

But all were looking to Washington's top Iran envoy for a signal about what the Bush administration planned to do on the Iran nuclear issue over the next ten months; and for signs that Burns' imminent departure might be related to some bureaucratic battle -- or simple exhaustion -- at trying to lead the administration's effort to cobble and keep together an international coalition to pressure Iran diplomatically and with economic sanctions and other means to change its behavior on its nuclear program.

And Burns did deliver a fairly clear message on that question. He said that he did not think the Iran nuclear issue would be resolved by the end of the Bush administration and would still be outstanding when a new administration takes office.

"I don't think conflict with Iran is inevitable," Burns said. "There is plenty of space for diplomacy."

"I think the issue plays out well beyond 2009," Burns said. [... ...]

I heard Burns speak a year ago on US Iran policy, when the US was trying to get a second round of economic sanctions through the UN Security Council. The message then, while containing many of the same elements as tonight's CFR speech, struck me as darker, and more deliberately calibrated to convey an underlying threat. Burns used language then about there not being endless amounts of time to see Tehran's behavior change. Tonight, the message seemed to suggest a longer horizon, and perhaps as well a greater interest in probing for the possibility of talks. Whether that is because Burns feels more free to speak his mind now because he's leaving government service in a few days, or because the administration and its allies have determined they have more time, is not clear; perhaps a bit of both.

Read the rest. Good background on the policy twists and turns here.

Kosovo partition watch? Update: For his part, undersecretary of state for political affairs Nick Burns said that Serbia lost Kosovo in 1999, and that neither the US, EU, or UN would accept partition.

More from the AFP: EU mission chief dismisses possibility of Kosovo splitting in two: "The head of the EU's police mission to Kosovo says it will deploy even in the restive north, dismissing hopes among the Serb minority there that the breakaway Serbian province could itself split in two."

Rockefeller, Leahy, Reyes, Conyers: Scare Tactics and Our Surveillance Bill.

...So what's behind the president's "sky is falling" rhetoric?

It is clear that he and his Republican allies, desperate to distract attention from the economy and other policy failures, are trying to use this issue to scare the American people into believing that congressional Democrats have left America vulnerable to terrorist attack.

But if our nation were to suddenly become vulnerable, it would not be because we don't have sufficient domestic surveillance powers. It would be because the Bush administration has done too little to defeat al-Qaeda, which has reconstituted itself in Pakistan and gained strength throughout the world. Many of our intelligence assets are being used to fight in Iraq instead of taking on Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organization that attacked us on Sept. 11 and that wants to attack us again.

The president may try to change the topic by talking about surveillance laws, but we aren't buying it. ...

Harper's Scott Horton does some truth-squading of Rove and his attorney on Siegelman, the subject of a 60 Minutes story tonight. Horton's post broadcast write up here.

Paul Kiel remarks on a Soviet style technical difficulty that prevented the segment from being aired in Alabama, where the local CBS affiliate simply went dark: "And there seems to be a fitting capstone to the piece's broadcast. At least one CBS affiliate in Alabama, Scott Horton and Larisa Alexandrovna report, went dark during the broadcast. Just went dark. The station claimed that there was a technical difficulty which lasted only for the segment on Siegelman ('NewsChannel 19 lost our program feed from CBS'). Boy, is that bad luck. But not to worry -- they got the problem worked out and rebroadcast the segment that night at 10. During the Oscars."

More from the NYT's the Lede.

NBC: Nader in.

Update: Atrios' take:

Who cares?

.38% in 2004.

I could get .38%.

The LAT's Josh Meyer: "Hours after chiding Congress for not finishing a wiretapping bill and leaving the nation 'vulnerable to terrorist attack,' officials acknowledge all requested information is being received."

More from earlier in the week by Newsweek's Mark Hosenball.

Melman & Raviv: "Israel’s experience shows that assassination – or what Israel terms 'targeted killing' – is a double-edged sword. The policy only pays off in a few special cases. When a state deals with a terrorist group that is basically a 'one-man show,' chopping off the snake’s head by killing the leader can neutralize the group – so that can be justified in cost-effectiveness terms. But when a country encounters a highly motivated, solidified and structured terrorist group, killing its senior members proves to be counter-productive. The dead are soon replaced by members who are sometimes more skillful and more determined."

LAT: "Far from stabilizing the region, as the Bush administration had forecast, the move by Kosovo has launched a period of volatile uncertainty."

As a former US diplomat involved in the Balkans commented to me today, "There simply is no serious US leadership at this point on Serbia and Kosovo. It is being handled three or four levels down in the bureaucracy."

John Judis: "American Adam: Obama and the Cult of the New"

... While I worry about Obama's inexperience, I haven't been immune to his charms. When I have gone to see him speak or watched him on television, he has invariably given more or less the same speech about "fundamental change" and "choos[ing] the future over the past." Yet, each time, I find myself listening raptly, even after the sixth or seventh reiteration of the same slogans and catchwords. It is partly his voice and his cadences, but there has to be more to it than that. And there is.

Obama is the candidate of the new--a "new generation," a "new leadership," a "new kind of politics," to borrow phrases he has used. But, in emphasizing newness, Obama is actually voicing a very old theme. When he speaks of change, hope, and choosing the future over the past, when he pledges to end racial divisions or attacks special interests, Obama is striking chords that resonate deeply in the American psyche. He is making a promise to voters that is as old as the country itself: to wipe clean the slate of history and begin again from scratch. [...]

Here's the whole piece.

AP: Serbia drifts away from the West.

Office of the Director of National Intelligence/DOJ press statement: "As stated in the joint letter from the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence dated February 22, the Department of Justice and the Intelligence Community have been working assiduously to mitigate the effects of the uncertainty caused by the failure to enact long-term modernization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. We learned last night after sending this letter that, as a result of these efforts, new surveillances under existing directives issued pursuant to the Protect America Act will resume, at least for now. We appreciate the willingness of our private partners to cooperate despite the uncertainty. Unfortunately, the delay resulting from this discussion impaired our ability to cover foreign intelligence targets, which resulted in missed intelligence information. In addition, although our private partners are cooperating for the time being, they have expressed understandable misgivings about doing so in light of the on-going uncertainty and have indicated that they may well discontinue cooperation if the uncertainty persists. Even with the cooperation of these private partners under existing directives, our ability to gather information concerning the intentions and planning of terrorists and other foreign intelligence targets will continue to degrade because we have lost tools provided by the Protect America Act that enable us to adjust to changing circumstances. Other intelligence tools simply cannot replace these Protect America Act authorities. The bipartisan Senate bill contains these authorities, as well as liability protection for those companies who answered their country’s call in the aftermath of September 11. We hope that the House will pass this bill soon and end the continuing problems the Intelligence Community faces in carrying out its mission to protect the country.”

Glenn Greenwald's take.

WP: Paxson contradicts McCain on meetings.

This is a classic:

McCain attorney Robert Bennett played down the contradiction between the campaign's written answer and Paxson's recollection.

"We understood that he [McCain] did not speak directly with him [Paxson]. Now it appears he did speak to him. What is the difference?" Bennett said.

!

If McCain is so quickly caught in a lie in a key part of what he said yesterday, his credibility erodes fairly fast, no?

The NYT's Scott Shane reports on (a second) Justice Department investigation of waterboarding:

The Justice Department revealed on Friday that its internal ethics office is investigating the department’s legal approval of waterboarding of Al Qaeda suspects by the Central Intelligence Agency and is likely to make public an unclassified version of its report.

The disclosure by H. Marshall Jarrett, head of the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, was the first public acknowledgment of an internal review of the series of legal memorandums the department has issued since 2002 authorizing waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods.

His report could become the first public accounting for legal advice that endorsed methods widely denounced by human rights groups and legal authorities as torture. Mr. Jarrett’s office can refer matters for criminal prosecution, but legal experts said the likely outcome was a public critique of the legal opinions on interrogation, conceivably including reprimands for some current or former Justice Department attorneys who drafted them.

The disclosure came as a team of prosecutors and F.B.I. agents are conducting a criminal investigation of the C.I.A.’s destruction in 2005 of videotapes of harsh interrogations of two Al Qaeda suspects, both of whom were subjected to waterboarding. The technique, which has been used since the Inquisition, involves water poured into the nose and mouth to create a feeling of drowning. Congress has passed a ban on all coercive interrogations, but President Bush has said he will veto it.

Mr. Jarrett did not say when his the investigation might conclude.

In a letter to two Democratic senators, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Mr. Jarrett wrote that the legal advice approving waterboarding was one subject of an investigation into “the circumstances surrounding the drafting” of a now-infamous Justice Department legal memorandum dated Aug. 1, 2002. The memorandum declared that interrogation methods were not torture unless they produced pain equivalent to that associated with organ failure or death. The memo, drafted by Justice attorney John Yoo and signed by Jay S. Bybee, then head of the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, was withdrawn in 2004.

Mr. Jarrett said the investigation also covers “related” legal memorandums prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel since 2002, suggesting it will address still-secret legal opinions written in 2005 by Steven G. Bradbury, then and now the acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel. Those opinions gave legal approval for waterboarding and other tough methods even when used in combination.

“Because of the significant public interest in this matter, O.P.R. will consider releasing to Congress and the public a non-classified summary of our final report,” Mr. Jarrett wrote, using the initials for the Office of Professional Responsibility.

Via Atrios, Rick Renzi (R-AZ) indicted.

I wondered outloud about Renzi's provenance here last year: "Is Renzi a (Former) Spook?"

Renzi a (Former) Spook? From a lawyer correspondent, "Hmmmm, so was Renzi a spook or what? And is he tied to any of the appropriations investigations?" Check this out, from the Arizona Republic:

Blurry background

For a national political figure who served on the powerful House Intelligence Committee, Renzi's background is, as described by Wikipedia, "unclear."

He was born June 11, 1959, in Fort Monmouth, N.J. His family moved to Sierra Vista in 1975, and he completed high school there before getting a degree in criminal justice at Northern Arizona University in 1980.

Exactly what Renzi did for the next two decades is blurry. He has said he worked overseas for the Defense Department, but research turned up no information on which agency, where he was assigned or what duties he had.

Renzi founded an insurance company in 1989 and bought a six-bedroom home in Virginia two years later for $765,000. He and his wife, Roberta, lived there with their children for more than a decade.

In the late 1990s, Renzi opened an insurance agency in Sonoita and registered to vote in Santa Cruz County in 1999. A year later, he bought a vineyard in the area.

During fall 2001, a new congressional district was formed in Arizona, and Renzi bought a house in Flagstaff. He established himself as a voter there and, a month later, announced his candidacy. In interviews at the time, Renzi shrugged off the label of outsider, saying, "Let the chips fall where they may if I am a carpetbagger."

Astonishing that so little is known about a man who has already served as a congressman. This is from his home town newspaper! Of the state he already represented. Astonishing.

Update: Love the dry observation posted as a comment to this 'Renzi is a secretive mystery, now retiring' Arizona Republic article by a reader, krazy1472:

"Renzi was endorsed by the Arizona Republic in all three general elections."

A two decade blur in his background, when he worked for the "Defense Department overseas," his hometown paper that endorsed him three times doesn't have the foggiest doing what where?

Harper's Ken Silverstein: "Rumors of McCain-Iseman Relationship Go Back At Least a Year." " ... The fact that [journalist Ed] Pound had started looking into the matter as far back as early last year suggests two things: First, that the origin of the Times’s piece was not a plant by one of McCain’s presidential opponents, even if some of them became aware that the Times was working on the story, and second, that firm evidence of a romance would have been very hard to come by."

Before the snows melt. Turkey sends ground troops into Iraq in anti-PKK operation. More.

Landay and Strobel:

The Bush administration is pressing the opposition leaders who defeated Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to allow the former general to retain his position, a move that Western diplomats and U.S. officials say could trigger the very turmoil the United States seeks to avoid.

U.S. officials, from President Bush on down, said this week that they think Musharraf, a longtime U.S. ally, should continue to play a role, despite his party's rout in parliamentary elections Monday and his unpopularity in the volatile, nuclear-armed nation.

The U.S. is urging the Pakistani political leaders who won the elections to form a new government quickly and not press to reinstate the judges whom Musharraf ousted last year, Western diplomats and U.S. officials said Wednesday. If reinstated, the jurists likely would try to remove Musharraf from office.

Bush's policy of hanging on to Musharraf has caused friction between the White House and the State Department , with some career diplomats and other specialists arguing that the administration is trying to buck the political tides in Pakistan , U.S. officials said.

Hamas ceasefire watch? Former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy alluded to this at the end of his post on my Halevy inteview. Top headline at Ha'aretz: "14:27 Hamas spokesman: We won`t rule out any bid to end conflict with Israel (Army Radio)." Signal as some third party action may be underway. Levy: "There are strong indications that Hamas is signaling a unilateral cessation of the rocket attacks on Israel with the intention that this would then lead to a reciprocal halt in Israel operations and ultimately to the locking-in of a ceasefire understanding. A unilateral ceasefire will not last long absent Israeli reciprocity but it could just begin to break the current escalatory cycle. My sources tell me that a third party is communicating on this between Hamas and the Israeli leadership and security establishment. More to follow on this story." Also worth reading, Kevin Drum's post on Hamas, and the comments thread.

More:

Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal told the British daily The Guardian that he would be willing to negotiate directly with Hamas in an effort to reach a cease-fire and halt the near daily barrages of Qassam rockets that have plagued his town.

"I would say to Hamas, let's have a ceasefire, let's stop the rockets for the next 10 years and we will see what happens," Moyal, who is officially a member of the Likud, told The Guardian in Saturday editions. "For me as a person the most important thing is life and I'm ready to do everything for that. I'm ready to talk to the devil."

The mayor told The Guardian that a dialogue with Hamas offers Israel the best alternative to a major military offensive in Gaza, which would result in "innocent people being killed on both sides." ...

Moyal told the paper he was invited to participate in talks with Hamas in Egypt, but the initiative never bore fruit due to it being "complicated."

"I believe that if they call me again I will be ready to do it. I will do the best I can to have that meeting," Moyal told The Guardian.

Former Shin Bet chief Yaakov Peri told Israel Radio on Saturday that the government should pursue direct talks with Hamas so as to expedite a prisoner swap for abducted soldier Gilad Shalit.

On the other hand, this: "Invasion of Gaza seen as unwanted but inevitable."

Saturday Update: Sderot mayor denies calling for cease-fire talks with Hamas.

David Ignatius: "Do you want to know who is bailing out America's biggest banks and financial institutions from the consequences of their folly -- by acting as the lender of last resort and controller of the system? Why, it's the sovereign wealth funds, owned by such nations as China and the Persian Gulf oil producers. The new titans are coming to the rescue, if that's the right word for their mortgage on America's future."

Update: A knowledgeable friend comments:

He's good and I think he has it right. But he doesn't read the FT. The simpler way of saying they can't assign a value to the more obscure financial instruments is that no one can put a price on them. Without a price they can't trade. They become invisible. The market freezes.

The Germans are suggesting that all of the central banks get together and figure out a way to create a market by offering to start buying certain instruments. When they sell, the price will be set, transparency will be re-established over time and the market will relax.

The problem is that it will mean that the price will likely be somewhere between 20 and 60 cents on the dollar for most instruments, if that much, and some very very wealthy people will have to take huge losses. These are the same people who have the power (under Bush and Merkel and Sarkozy) to prevent the central banks from taking that action, which means every day we get closer to the brink and the Arabs get richer, with their commodity markets absorbing all of the liquid capital that refuses to go into frozen credit markets. The sovereign wealth funds are just an expression of this problem, not the problem itself.

In short, the super rich, "Homo Davos," are playing musical chairs and seem perfectly willing to take the whole system down rather than be the first to take their losses. Shorter yet--capitalism can't function without losers, but the losers are so big that they can postpone their fate indefinitily. Or until someone bails them out. Guess who!

The latest installment in the Jeff Lomonaco--Byron York dustup at the LATimes on Bush's last year. Lomonaco: " ... But you seem remarkably unbothered by the fact that the Bush administration took a quite different approach, making torture a policy, and one moreover that it took elaborate steps to rationalize as legal and constitutional on the basis of outlandish theories of executive power. I would guess that you keep your tone laconic in deliberate defiance of the moralizing one often hears on this topic. But one need not be self-righteous and moralizing to be deeply troubled by the administration's breach of the prohibition on torture as a matter of policy...."

Belgrade is burning. U.S. embassy, evacuated, on fire. Turkish embassy under attack from drunk crowds.

Update: Dutch NOS Journaal has reported from Belgrade that "Firefighters and police found a burnt body inside the US embassy in Belgrade, which was set ablaze early tonight."

B92: US embassy attack video.

Update II: Dutch journalist and long time Balkans watcher Frank Tiggelaar reports to a Balkans-oriented list:

I followed Serbian state TV's live report of today's events in Belgrade from 16:00 to 20:00 local time. After the demonstration in front of the parliament building had ended peacefully, RTS continued its live coverage by showing the early attacks on the US Embassy and pictures revealing the almost complete absence of police and MUP-forces there, as well as the inactivity of the few cops that were on the spot. If this wasn't a tacit encouragement to take part, it definitely was irresponsible reporting.

Dutch NOS Journaal, which has reporters on the spot, stated at midnight that there was no police action to protect the US Embassy until the mob turned to the Croatian embassy which I understand had not been abandoned by its staff. NRC-Handelsblad's reporter was attacked by the mob and landed in hospital with several broken ribs. Shops in the center of Belgrade were looted, McDonald's premises were set on fire, added NOS.

One thing that became perfectly clear today is that Vojislav Kostunica is no Slobodan Milosevic II. Where the latter looked the crowd in the face while adressing them and spoke from the top of his mind, Kostunica rarely looked at the crowd and read his 'emotional' sound-bites from a sheet of paper throughout his address. My impression was that most of the crowd failed to fall for it. Kostunica definitely is not a politician who can p..s against the winds coming in from abroad for any length of time without getting wet feet, something Milosevic managed to do for a decade.

Throughout its coverage of today's Belgrade demonstration RTS displayed messages on the screen announcing petitions and demonstrations which are to take place elsewhere in the world these coming days. Police forces in the cities listed now know what to expect.

Thanks to Harvard University's Andras Riedlmayer for the updates.

Update: Did the Bush administration which led the pack in giving a green light to Kosovo to unilaterally declare independence Sunday think this was going to be so easy? A no brainer? An easy, no-cost accomplishment on the way out the door?

More: A US official comments, "I understand the Bosnian Serb police beat the tar out of the protesters that tried to attack the US Embassy Office in Banja Luka, and Dodik isn't going to let anything stupid happen in the RS. Since the Serbians and SDS Serbs were talking so much about the precedent Kosovo set for the RS it's interesting, no?"

The smart France-based foreign affairs journalist Judah Grunstein, whose work I have posted here several times, has got a new gig writing for World Politics Review. A link worth adding for foreign affairs junkies.

So here's my question on the McCain story. Does this sink him as the GOP candidate, or keep him -- weakened? Is it presumptuous to assume as some are doing that Obama is the luckiest guy in the world?

(Also noted: lawyer Robert Bennett, whose client Jose Rodriguez, the former DO chief, was the subject of a story that ran in the NYT yesterday, also is reportedly the lawyer for McCain, hired to push back on these allegations, who managed to at least delay the big NYT story that ran today. Kevin Drum sums up the reasons it came out now).

The Politico reports that the McCain campaign has vowed "to go to war" with the NYT over the story - a fight that may win over some of the right-flank McCain has had a hard time wooing. "Asked about the impact that the allegation of adultery would have among social conservative activists, some of whom still aren’t entirely sold on McCain, [McCain advisor Charlie] Black said they would see it as 'the New York Times spreading rumors and gossip. We’re going to war with the New York Times, so they’ll probably like it.'”

Thursday Update: The Post's Chris Cillizza agrees:

It's no secret to anyone watching this Republican race closely that McCain is still struggling to bring conservatives into the fold. Time after time he lost the conservative vote in early primary and caucus states; of the 24 states that have voted to date, McCain received the most support from self-identified conservatives in just five (Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Wisconsin).

Could this be the galvanizing force that unites this key voting bloc behind McCain?

Perhaps.

Former Israeli Intelligence Chief: Engage Hamas. Thanks to Ken Silverstein at Harper's and former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy for contextualizing in important ways my interview with former Israeli intelligence chief Efraim Halevy in which he argues for engaging Hamas, initially through indirect proximity talks.

Silverstein writes:

Last year, I published a story (“Parties of God: The Bush doctrine and the rise of Islamic democracy”), that discussed whether or not it was desirable for the U.S. government to engage with Islamic political movements, including Hamas. The piece closed with this thought:

[B]y scorning politically active Islamic movements and denying their legitimacy, the United States is essentially signaling to the Middle Eastern public that electoral politics are a meaningless dead end—precisely the same message that this public hears from Al Qaeda. Last year, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy, issued a video that attacked the [Egyptian] Muslim Brotherhood for participating in elections, saying it played into America’s “political game” of “exploit[ing] the masses and their love for Islam”; in another video he criticized Hamas, saying that armed jihad, not elections, was the only way to liberate Palestine. If America refuses to engage with Islamist movements, however foreign or flawed their ideas may seem, al-Zawahiri’s antidemocratic rhetoric may be increasingly well received. ...

Levy writes:

... Halevy then describes the Hamas breakout from the “virtual siege” imposed on Gaza as only the latest in a string of strategic surprises to which “no effective counter strategy mounted by the US and Israel proved effective.” Halevy goes on to suggest “It makes sense to approach a possible initial understanding including Hamas—but not exclusively Hamas—at a time when they are still asking for one. No side will gain from a flare up leading to Israel re-entering the Gaza strip in strength to undo the ill-fated unilateral disengagement of 2005.”

He then goes on to question the wisdom of the demand on Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a precondition for talks. “Such a demand has never been made before either to an Arab state or to the Palestinian Liberation Organization/Fatah. There is logic in the Hamas' position that ideological "conversion" is the endgame and not the first move in a negotiation.” Halevy’s preference is for what he calls “indirect proximity engagement.”

At the same time, as Laura Rozen is helping to make us privy to the thinking of a former Mossad chief there seems to be some interesting developments on the ground. There are strong indications that Hamas is signaling a unilateral cessation of the rocket attacks on Israel with the intention that this would then lead to a reciprocal halt in Israel operations and ultimately to the locking-in of a ceasefire understanding. A unilateral ceasefire will not last long absent Israeli reciprocity but it could just begin to break the current escalatory cycle. My sources tell me that a third party is communicating on this between Hamas and the Israeli leadership and security establishment. More to follow on this story. ...

Levy hints towards the end at the kind of third party action underway Halevy's interview and book describe in various contexts. Halevy in speaking with me:

Hamas shuns direct contact and negotiations with Israel and this actually meets Israel's reciprocal attitude to them. The same is true of the United States. But Hamas is eager to "engage" the two indirectly and reach a verifiable cease fire, and understands that could lead to more "down the road."

Such a strategy of indirect proximity engagement, whilst covering our flanks, offers the prospects of lowering the temperature in the region, easing constraints, and opening up real possibilities of social and economic progress. This is a policy that could be tested, and is warranted by the abject failure of the present Palestinian Authority rump leadership in the West Bank ...

A former Arab country ambassador also wrote the magazine saying he strongly agreed with what Halevy said and asking to be put in touch with him. A former US intelligence official well regarded by his Middle Eastern counterparts wrote in response to the piece, "Efraim should be heard, but sadly [will] not by" this administration. "There has to be some rationality in our approach to all the players in the Middle East, not just Hamas and Hezbollah. The current administration, in essence, has never negotiated anything with any of the players. They simply lay down the U.S. bottom line and say that the other side has to agree to all the points and demands before we are willing to negotiate. What's to negotiate?" Will be interesting to see if the debate shifts here in the coming year.

NYT: Destroyed Tapes Inquiry: Ex-Operations Chief in the Middle.

CNN: Cunningham briber sentenced to 12 years. More.

Update: From the Post:" ...Wilkes was separately charged in a corruption case involving his childhood friend Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, a former executive director at the CIA who allegedly received meals, trips and other goods from Wilkes. But Burns approved a deal yesterday in which Foggo's prosecution will be moved to Alexandria, while Wilkes will be dropped from the case. ..."

Just Out: "Out of the Shadows: Former Israeli intelligence chief Efraim Halevy explains why he advocates talks with Hamas."

Mother Jones: Mr. Halevy, in your memoir you make clear your belief that Europe, and to a lesser extent the United States, have not fully come to terms with the national security threats posed by Islamic militancy and terrorism. Yet you've also said it would be a grave mistake for the West to treat all Islamist terrorist groups the same way, and argued that Israel should have some sort of process for talking with Hamas. If the West, led by Washington, continues to shun Hamas as an illegitimate terrorist group, do you see a risk that the group could take on a more nihilistic type of violence, a la al Qaeda?

Efraim Halevy: Hamas is not al Qaeda and, indeed, al Qaeda has condemned them time and time again. Hamas may from time to time have tactical, temporary contact with al Qaeda, but in essence they are deadly adversaries. The same goes for Iran. Hamas receives funds, support, equipment, and training from Iran, but is not subservient to Tehran. A serious effort to dialogue indirectly with them could ultimately drive a wedge between them.

MJ: Why do you think Israel and Washington should talk with Hamas?

EH: Hamas has, unfortunately, demonstrated that they are more credible and effective as a political force inside Palestinian society than Fatah, the movement founded by [former Palestinian Authority president] Yassir Arafat, which is now more than ever discredited as weak, enormously corrupt and politically inept. [...]

It makes sense to approach a possible initial understanding including Hamas—but not exclusively Hamas—at a time when they are still asking for one. No side will gain from a flare up leading to Israel re-entering the Gaza strip in strength to undo the ill-fated unilateral disengagement of 2005. [...]

MJ: Should Hamas be required to recognize Israel's right to exist before Israel would talk with it?

EH: Israel has been successful in inflicting very serious losses upon Hamas in both Gaza and the West Bank and this has certainly had an effect on Hamas, who are now trying to get a "cease fire." But this has not cowed them into submission and into accepting the three-point diktat that the international community has presented to them: to recognize Israel's right to exist; to honor all previous commitments of the Palestinian Authority; and to prevent all acts of violence against Israel and Israelis. The last two conditions are, without doubt, sine qua non. The first demands an a priori renunciation of ideology before contact is made. Such a demand has never been made before either to an Arab state or to the Palestinian Liberation Organization/Fatah. There is logic in the Hamas' position that ideological "conversion" is the endgame and not the first move in a negotiation.

MJ: How should such talks be conducted?

EH: Hamas shuns direct contact and negotiations with Israel and this actually meets Israel's reciprocal attitude to them. The same is true of the United States. But Hamas is eager to "engage" the two indirectly and reach a verifiable cease fire, and understands that could lead to more "down the road."

Such a strategy of indirect proximity engagement, whilst covering our flanks, offers the prospects of lowering the temperature in the region, easing constraints, and opening up real possibilities of social and economic progress. This is a policy that could be tested, and is warranted by the abject failure of the present Palestinian Authority rump leadership in the West Bank led by the aging, tired and sad Abu Mazen [Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas], and his able prime minister Salaam Fayyad, a great economist and banker but a man who does not pretend to overstay his time. ...

Read the whole interview.

Over at the LATimes.com, my friend Jeff Lomonaco, a University of Minnesota political science professor and a consultant to the Center for a New American Security, and the National Review's Byron York debate Bush's final year.

A nation is born: the long, bitter path to Kosovo's independence:

...After following NATO-led peacekeepers back into post-war Kosovo in 1999, I saw and reported on a torture chamber, in the bottom of a Serbian police station in the Pristina, a nauseating site. "The most horrifying of the many appalling tortures that went on in the Serbian police station center on Cacak Street in central Pristina is suggested by a bed, with leather straps, its ratty yellow sponge mattress plunged through with bayonet and bullet holes, and the clothes of its victims piled onto the wet floor in the corner," I reported. "In the next room sits a single chair next to a collection of wooden bludgeons, some with nicknames scrawled into them. A small wooden baseball bat-shaped club is engraved with 'the mini.' A larger one, studded, is nicknamed, in Serbian, 'the mouth shutter.' Next to them sits a wooden box filled with knuckle busters, chains, axes, hammers and a collection of dozens of knives."

At the time, I simply could never have imagined that the U.S., which led the NATO effort to protect the Kosovars from ethnic cleansing, atrocities and feared genocide, would engage in torture as a matter of policy. ...

Read the whole thing.

Question that occurred to me listening to this NPR Morning Edition piece on the WH-House Democrats' dispute over retroactive telecom immunity and FISA legislation. If the telcos feel they are being unfairly sued for cooperating with a government request that they were assured was legal, why don't they sue the government? What prohibits them from doing so? State secrets?

Via the Arabist, The Times reports that the US assets of long time Saudi ambassador to Washington Prince Bandar bin Sultan have been frozen.

BBC: Fidel Castro, 81, steps down as president.

The Dodgy Dossier. AP:

An early version of a British dossier of prewar intelligence on Iraq did not include a key claim about weapons of mass destruction that became vital to Tony Blair's case for war, the newly published document showed Monday.

The 2002 document insisted Saddam Hussein's regime had acquired uranium and had equipment necessary for chemical weapons, but does not contain a claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes _ an allegation crucial to Blair's push to back the 2003 U.S.-led invasion _ that later was discredited.

Campaigners allege that the 45-minute claim was inserted into later drafts of the document on the orders of Blair's press advisers, who were seeking to strengthen the case for invasion _ a claim the government has strongly denied.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who published the document Monday following a request filed under Freedom of Information laws, said the early draft _ produced by then-Foreign Office press office chief John Williams _ was not used as the basis for later documents, drafted by the Joint Intelligence Committee, or JIC.

Blair presented a final draft of the JIC dossier, called "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction," to parliament on Sep. 24, 2002 _ a document that included the 45-minute claim. ...

A second document, published in February 2003 _ which became known as the "dodgy dossier"_ was found to have repeated verbatim parts of an academic study on Iraq's supposed concealment of weapons of mass destruction.

Ex-U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said last year he believed Blair had replaced "question marks with exclamation marks" in intelligence dossiers to justify the decision to invade Iraq.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faysal met with Bush Friday, in an unpublicized visit to Washington, that I inquired about the other day. "I don't have anything on this in particular, but it is interesting to note that Saud Al Faysal also made a largely unpublicized visit to Washington on Friday and had a private meeting with Pres. Bush," an American knowledgeable about the country noted. "I don't know what kind of deal the Saudis are offering Moscow, but there is clearly something important that King Abdallah wanted to convey to the great powers. Lebanon? Talking to Russia might mean something there, since so much of Lebanese policy has gone through the Security Council. Iran? Could be." Hmm. More speculation here and here.

Update:

On February 14, the Saudi-owned website Elaph carried the following report by Sultan al-Qahtani: "The Saudi Government is waging a battle with time in the search for quick solutions for the critical political crisis in Lebanon as some months have passed with the presidency in that country overlooking the eastern Mediterranean still vacant as a result of the internal argument over the candidate's identity between the loyalist and opposition parties.

"Saudi King Abdallah Bin-Abd-al-Aziz has sent his Foreign Minister Prince Sa'ud al-Faysal on a long tour distributed geographically between the east and west through Berlin, London, Paris, Moscow and Egypt, and in another version Damascus too, for the purpose of mobilizing international support for electing Lebanese Army Commander General Michel Sulayman president of the republic.

"This is not the principal political mission through which Riyadh is acting and is just the public tour while "Elaph's" well-informed sources say that Prince Muqrin Bin-Abd-al-Aziz, the head of Saudi intelligence, has started a "secret tour" lasting several days carrying verbal messages from his country's government to several world leaders all of which deal with the tumultuous Lebanese crisis.

"An informed source refused to name the destination of Prince Muqrin, who is very close to his brother the king, and whether one of the stages would be Damascus whose relations with Riyadh are going through the worst phases because of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri who carried Saudi citizenship and was very close to the rulingfamily's members.

"All these successive signals from Riyadh somewhat underline how much it is worried by the scenarios of instability in Lebanon which is bound to strengthen the influence of foreign countries, at the top of them Iran, at a time when the latter's crisis with the West is escalating because of its controversial nuclear programme.

"According to a Beirut newspaper close to the Syrian Government, Prince Sa'ud al-Faysal made a secret visit to Damascus before his international tour during which he held talks with President Bashar al-Asad on the need to appoint the army commander president before that country slips into a civil war that would threaten stability and peace in the region.

"As-Safir newspaper said this visit failed to reach a compromise between Riyadh and Damascus which hastened the departure of the veteran Saudi
politician to Berlin in anger and after it to several international capitals for the purpose of exerting pressure on the Syrian Government.

A source close to senior decision-making circles told "Elaph" from Riyadh that the disagreement with Damascus over the identity of the next president and what Riyadh believes to be Damascus's attempt to disrupt the agreement on this president would have a negative impact on the size of Saudi representation at the upcoming Arab summit in Syria next month.

"It stressed in its statement that the matter could develop into Riyadh boycotting this summit, in which case it would have a negative effect on its success, particularly as reports are coming in from Cairo about the Egyptian president's refusal to attend, which would bring behind it other Arab stands that see in Damascus's position an "inflexibility" that is more than necessary towards solving the Lebanese crisis as political analysts are expecting. According to informed Gulf sources, there is a Qatari-Kuwaiti intervention in the crisis to influence Damascus following a visit by Prince Muqrin Bin-Abd-al-Aziz who carried two messages whose contents were not revealed to the leaders of these two countries last Monday." - *Elaph**, **United Kingdom*

NYT: France, Britain, join the US in recognizing Kosovo.

Paul Kiel: It's all about the telecom immunity:

But Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, a man well acquainted with the taste of his own foot, put it unfortunately succinctly during an interview with NPR:

"It's true that some of the authorities would carry over to the period they were established for one year. That would put us into the August, September time frame. However, that's not the real issue. The issue is liability protection for the private sector. We can't do this mission without their help."

Perhaps realizing the unfortunate quotability of that phrasing, McConnell took to Fox News yesterday to reassert the direness of the situation. McConnell, once upon a time broadly respected by lawmakers of both parties, seems determined to destroy the vestiges of his credibility. Keep in mind that even The Washington Times ran a story that concluded the sunset of the Protect America Act "will have little effect on national security."

What cooperation from telcos is going to be withdrawn if they don't get retroactive immunity for complying with warrantless wiretapping, even as they get immunity going forward? Have they been offering the government other information on (domestic) subscribers and analysis, such as that suggested in the Qwest lawsuit?

LAT: Political surge in Iraq. " ... Ironically, all this good news might make it harder to get American military personnel out of the country. The better things go in Iraq, the less likely it is that U.S. generals (or politicians) will want to risk jeopardizing their hard-won gains by drawing down. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has agreed to a request by Gen. David H. Petraeus to return to the pre-surge level of about 130,000 troops by August, and then allow a "strategic pause" to evaluate whether more can come home. ..."

BBC: "Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft. The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read. Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent. Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened."

AP: Bush recognizes Kosovo independence:

President Bush on Monday recognized Kosovo's historic declaration of independence, saying ''The Kosavars are now independent.''

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership announced its independence from Serbia over the weekend, and suspense gripped the province on Monday as its citizens awaited key backing from the United States and key European powers.

''It's something that I've advocated along with my government,'' Bush said in an interview on NBC's ''Today.''

By appealing directly to the U.S. and other nations for recognition, Kosovo's independence set up a showdown with Serbia -- outraged at the imminent loss of its territory -- and Russia.

NYT: Tanzania welcomes Bush, but Obama is topic number one on the streets. "Though the president’s face is on billboards all over town, the name Obama is on the lips of Tanzanians — from taxi drivers to city merchants to the artisans who sell wooden Masai warriors in makeshift stalls at a dusty open-air market on the outskirts of town. Halfway around the world, Mr. Bush cannot escape the race to succeed him."

Fruit of the poison tree. Former Guantanamo prosecutor Morris Davis in the NYT:

TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, in the final days of the Iran hostage crisis, the C.I.A.’s Tehran station chief, Tom Ahern, faced his principal interrogator for the last time. The interrogator said the abuse Mr. Ahern had suffered was inconsistent with his own personal values and with the values of Islam and, as if to wipe the slate clean, he offered Mr. Ahern a chance to abuse him just as he had abused the hostages. Mr. Ahern looked the interrogator in the eyes and said, “We don’t do stuff like that.”

Today, Tom Ahern might have to say: “We don’t do stuff like that very often.” Or, “We generally don’t do stuff like that.” That is a shame. Virtues requiring caveats are not virtues. Saying a man is honest is a compliment. Saying a man is “generally” honest or honest “quite often” means he lies. The mistreatment of detainees, like honesty, is all or nothing: We either do stuff like that or we do not. It is in our national interest to restore our reputation for the latter. [...]

My policy as the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantánamo was that evidence derived through waterboarding was off limits. That should still be our policy. To do otherwise is not only an affront to American justice, it will potentially put prosecutors at risk for using illegally obtained evidence.

Unfortunately, I was overruled on the question, and I resigned my position to call attention to the issue — efforts that were hampered by my being placed under a gag rule and ordered not to testify at a Senate hearing. While some high-level military and civilian officials have rightly expressed indignation on the issue, the current state can be described generally as indifference and inaction.

NYT: Kosovo declares its independence from Serbia. A friend there writes, " ... extraordinary HAPPY. Never felt like that. Huge work and responsibilities ahead of us.....not a single Albanian think today of Kosovo without thinking of the USA. ... At this moment [the prime minister] declared Kosovo as a democratic and an independent state and I am crying...." More.

"Black Stations". The LAT's Greg Miller reports on the CIA's non official cover program, using front company platforms based mostly in Europe, in turmoil.

Kosovo Independence. BBC: "Celebrations have begun in Kosovo's capital Pristina ahead of an expected declaration of independence." I confess that after some two years covering their plight and four years following the dissolution of the Balkans from conflict to conflict ... I guess I have felt this was inevitable. It's the one issue I've rejected website ads on, having spent so much time covering this conflict and seen so much suffering and turmoil on all sides of it, I couldn't accept them. (Here's an affecting summary from the NYT's Andrew Testa and Nicholas Wood).

Among those searing experiences, reporting with a Russian journalist, Masha Gessen, and her photographer in Drenica in 1998 after touring the site of a massacre, being asked by a young Kosovo Albanian mother in hiding from Serb forces in the hills to please take her baby, who was ill ... (we gave her medicine, and now I remember, drove her and her baby to seek help someplace); ... and witnessing the tens of thousands of refugees crossing the border into Macedonia a year later after Nato air strikes had begun, an exodus sadly all too familiar from recent news. (More dispatches here, here, here, here, here and here; from one:

The 53 ethnic Albanian inhabitants of the village of Donji Prekaz in the central Kosovo region of Drenica lay newly buried under wooden sticks in a field behind their family compound. The killing was so fresh when I went that many of their abandoned farm animals were still alive. Since then, Kosovo has exploded into a war, and the scene from Drenica has repeated itself in dozens of villages, whose surviving inhabitants have fled for their lives. Others have come back to fight. The KLA, only rumored to exist in March, is now reported to control 40 percent of the province, including much of the main east-west highway connecting Pec with Pristina. Its recruits are mostly men whom the fighting has driven out of their villages.

The Serb officials giving us Western journalists this tour of their work don't see it that way. They say the Albanian terrorists--as they call the people who have taken up guns to protect their homes--have brought this on themselves.
"Now you are invited to see the consequences of our artillery against the facilities of the terrorists!" says Gen. Sreten Lukic of the Serb police force, pointing to a group of destroyed homes that formerly made up one village. In a show made absurd by the absence of any local people, Serb police dressed in navy blue camouflage drop to their bellies and take positions on a hill, their automatic rifles pointed, to "cover" us from potential Albanian terrorists.

Meanwhile, plainclothes thugs, clearly Serbian secret police, surround us to make sure we don't slow down to take the wrong photograph or kick around the fresh dirt near the side of the road. We are not to venture off the carefully choreographed path they have chosen to show us. To deter us from exploring on our own, they warn that the "terrorists" have mined the area after burning their own homes. The Serb officials' propaganda is so primitive, it is hard to know if they believe it themselves. ...

Our tour guide Lukic was later indicted on war crimes charges, and sent to the Hague.

One wishes the peoples of that tumultuous and heartbreaking region good luck.

Anyone know the purpose of Saud Al Faisal's upcoming Washington (off-schedule) visit? Give a hollar. Update: A contact writes " ...Saud Al Faisal was probably in DC for all of the reasons speculated....[to] discuss Lebanon, Iran, Palestine, etc. but I've also read that we are asking/insisting? on oil profits being reinjected back into our economy pronto. The recession, you see. Only Allah knows."

More from Kommersant, via MoonofA:

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin met with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal yesterday, February 14, 2008. In Riyadh, they are strongly concerned about the large-scale cooperation of Russia and Iran, particularly the nuclear one.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal stayed in Moscow only for a few hours yesterday, and the meeting with President Vladimir Putin took most of his visit. The prince delivered to Putin a personal letter of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, who initiated negotiations.

The sources say the letter describes Riyadh’s evaluation of the Middle East situation. But Saud Al-Faisal evidently passed the most vital message by word of mouth. In Saudi Arabia, they are sure that Iran’s policy will shatter the region in future and the helping hand of Moscow is needed to prevent it.

Riyadh elaborated a plan to save the region from the so-called Iranian threat, where it is to play the key role in tandem with Moscow. So, the Saudi guest endeavored to persuade the Kremlin that stronger Iran would disbalance the Middle East. In return to winding up Russia’s-Iranian contracts, Riyadh promised to buy Russia’s weapons at large, replacing Iran as its partner in military and technical field.

An American contact knowledgeable about Saudi thinking suggests the visit is also almost certainly about the White House asking Riyadh for help repatriating the petrodollars the US is sending there, averting recession and propping up the dollar. "All this money gone over there, the recession: the major reason Bush went over [last month], whatever else was being discussed, is 'get this money back to us. Whatever you do, don't change it to the Euro,'" he explains.

NYT: McCain draws critics on torture vote.

Jeff Stein: DC area attack on Putin critic still unsolved one year later.

Judah Grunstein: Sarkozy's nuclear option. "Indeed, if there's been a surprise in Sarkozy's foreign policy, it has to do not with how active, but with how radioactive it has been. Everywhere he has gone, it seems, Sarkozy has been peddling nuclear energy. And while his aggressive advocacy for Areva, the French nuclear energy giant, in both China and India did not go unnoticed, it's his vigorous promotion of nuclear energy in the Arab world that has really attracted attention." More here.

The AP's Steve Hurst and Qassim Abdul-Zahra, on Iran in Iraq:

...While the Americans say they have seen a decline in Iranian funding and arming of rogue members al-Sadr's Shiite militia, six key Shiite figures from across the political spectrum have told The Associated Press that Iran is pressing ahead in several directions.

Iran is gaming its future in Iraq on three fronts, the most public of which has been face-to-face meetings between U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Kazemi Qomi. Another session could be held in March.

While Crocker has insisted the talks have not veered from topics surrounding Iraqi security, the Iraqi officials, some of whom sat in on the meetings, say their scope has expanded.

While the Americans say they have seen a decline in Iranian funding and arming of rogue members al-Sadr's Shiite militia, six key Shiite figures from across the political spectrum have told The Associated Press that Iran is pressing ahead in several directions.
The result, the officials said, was Iran's pledge to stop backing the Mahdi Army in return for the Bush administration lowering its rhetoric about Iran's nuclear program. The Iraqis who spoke about the talks said they believed the release of the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate in December was a quid pro quo to Tehran for it having turned its back on the Mahdi Army.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

The NIE, in an about-face, said Iran had halted its secret attempts to build nuclear weapons in 2003, contrary to White House claims that Iran was using a civilian nuclear energy program as cover to build nuclear weapons.

Since then, Washington's pronouncements have softened significantly.

On the second front, Iran has shunned the Mahdi Army, but has continued sending arms, fighters and money into Iraq. The leaders of these groups of fighters take orders from Iran and are known as the Ettelaat, shorthand for Iranian intelligence.

The Iraqi officials who spoke to the AP said that after al-Sadr announced a freeze on his militia in August, the Iranians sent in seven Ettelaat commanders _ Iraqis loyal to Iran who had been training and handling elite Mahdi Army groups in Iran. These at the time had broken with the mainstream militia over the freeze.

The commanders were said to have slowly infiltrated with more than 1,000 men armed and trained by Iran, with orders to continue harassing the Americans with roadside bombings, mortar and rocket attacks _ a one-year high of 12 on the Army's 2nd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division in January alone, the military said.

The Ettelaat force in Iraq is recruiting more fighters from among disaffected Mahdi Army foot soldiers and commanders of the so-called "special groups," not only to keep American forces off balance but also as a sleeper brigade that would open all-out warfare should the United States attack Iran, a real fear in Tehran, the Iraqi officials said.

Top U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus said in a recent interview that he had not heard of an Iranian-sponsored group by that name, and noted that Iran's senior leaders have pledged to their Iraqi counterparts to stop fostering violent groups in this country.

But he noted the Americans were always alert for new tactics from Tehran.

"What we're trying to figure out is, has there been some change in behavior? It may have been," he said.

Petraeus said the Iranians continue to use many avenues to infiltrate and are trying to "provide assistance to and gain influence in various organizations in Iraq _ some political, some militia, some of these very closely related to the Quds Force and (Mahdi Army) special groups."

Politically, Iran has now cut ties with al-Sadr, having decided his usefulness as a tactical tool against American forces has run its course. Now, the officials said, Iran has thrown its full backing behind the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the country's most powerful Shiite political insider.

Ironically, al-Hakim has been a cornerstone of U.S. efforts to build a moderate Shiite political structure in the country. He has been used by Washington as a counterbalance to more radical Shiite tendencies and is seen as more open to sharing some power with the country's Sunni Muslim minority, which ran Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

If I'm not mistaken, and I may be, there do seem to be an awful lot of suggestions that the US is feeling out talking with Iran on several lower profile sidelines. See this too. This makes sense for a number of reasons, and may have even been quietly blessed by the US ally most concerned about the Iran threat. (See this).

AP:

A U.S. official met secretly with Iranian banking officials and senior government aides who oppose punishing the Islamic nation for not doing enough to stop money laundering and terrorism funding, The Associated Press has learned.

The talks last month in Paris took place despite the Bush administration's near-absolute ban on formal U.S.-Iran contact. They also occurred against the backdrop of Tehran's attempts to avert the imposition of new U.N. sanctions over its suspect nuclear program.

The United States co-chaired the meeting with Italy and was represented by Daniel Glaser, the Treasury Department's deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, a senior U.S. official said. Representatives of several other nations also attended.

The meeting was part of the Bush administration's attempts to ramp up international pressure on Iran to halt atomic activities that could lead to the development of nuclear weapons. The administration also wants Iran to stop its support for groups the U.S. has designated as terrorist organizations, the official said.

Iran was represented by senior officials from its central bank, known as Bank Markazi, and its government, according to a Middle Eastern diplomat familiar with the session. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe confidential close-door discussions.

The Treasury Department confirmed late Friday that the meeting took place on Jan. 24 between the Financial Action Task Force, or FATF, and an Iranian delegation to discuss "Iran's noncompliance with international standards to combat money-laundering and terrorist financing," said Andrew DeSouza, Treasury Department spokesman. He said the meeting was initiated by FATA and that Glaser attended in his capacity as co-chair of a FATF working group overseeing this effort.

The talks took place around the time the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalizad, was scolded for violating administration policy by appearing onstage in his official capacity with the Iranian foreign minister at a World Economic Forum conference in Switzerland. ...

More from Reuters: Iran plays down meeting.

WP: "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will travel to Iraq next month in the first such visit by a leader of the Islamic Republic, Iraqi officials said Thursday, adding that Iran had postponed a fourth round of talks with the United States to discuss Iraq's security. Invited by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, Ahmadinejad is scheduled to arrive March 2 for a visit of two to three days to discuss bilateral relations, the officials said. He will also meet with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki."

AP: It's not that the wiretapping will stop, but the inconvenience for the White House if the telcos don't get retroactive immunity and become less compliant:

... McConnell says any further delay in providing retroactive telecom immunity for the warrantless wiretapping program could result in phone companies challenging FISA court orders as a way to insulate themselves from future lawsuits.

Already, he says the roughly 40 lawsuits filed against telecom companies nationwide have chilled the private sector's willingness to help the intelligence agencies in ways unrelated to electronic surveillance. Exactly how is classified, and he won't elaborate.

"I'm talking about the things they've done to help us track terrorists," said McConnell. "They did lawful things at the request of the government under the conditions they've done it for 50 years."

But that help has waned over the last two years, he said. "Your country is at risk if we can't get the private sector to help us, and that is atrophying all the time," he said.

"British lives on British streets" threatened by Saudi prince Bandar if UK proceeded with BAE fraud inquiry. The Guardian's investigative team David Leigh and Rob Evans, who broke the BAE/Saudi bribery/halted UK corruption inquiry story last year, have a new blockbuster, and it's bloodcurdling:

Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.

Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.

Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.

He was accused in yesterday's high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family.

The threats halted the fraud inquiry, but triggered an international outcry, with allegations that Britain had broken international anti-bribery treaties.

Lord Justice Moses, hearing the civil case with Mr Justice Sullivan, said the government appeared to have "rolled over" after the threats. He said one possible view was that it was "just as if a gun had been held to the head" of the government. ...

Some of the court documents (.pdf) and highlighted excerpts. That regime has held a gun at all of our heads for a long time, and what to do about it is something one hopes the next administration will seriously review, with more creativity and flexibility and discipline and perhaps ruthlessness than has been shown in the past. Maybe it takes cutting a deal with Iran, one correspondent, no softy on the Iran threat, suggests. The $20 billion in arms sales to Riyadh US defense firms just secured on Bush's recent trip there are central to the problem too, and their armies of lobbyists, white-shoe law firms and bought officials and think tanks here as well, so institutionalized they have become part of the marble firmament of this corrupted city. In the meantime, maybe Bandar should lose his White House and Crawford pass?

Update: For instance, see this court statement (.pdf) by Robert Wardle, director of the UK’s Serious Fraud Office, dated 31 January 2008, about why he ultimately felt compelled to shut down his investigation: because Bandar threatened Tony Blair to cease cooperating with the UK on counterterrorism and threatened there would be more terrorist attacks on Britain:

21. It was only following my first meeting with the Ambassador (Bandar) on 30 November 2006 that I seriously began to entertain the thought that the national security public interest might be so compelling that I would have no real alternative. Ultimately, I was convinced by my discussions with the Ambassador and the Prime Minister’s minute that there was a very real likelihood of serious damage to UK national security. 22. Following my first meeting with the Ambassador I considered inviting BAE to plead guilty to certain offences, in the hope that it would be possible to avoid serious damage to UK national security without the need to drop the case. But following further discussions with the Ambassador, and the Prime Minister’s minute, it became apparent to me that unless I stopped the investigation it was likely that UK national security would be seriously damaged and lives would be put at risk. 23. I spent a considerable period of time considering the competing public interests, and discussing them with Helen Garlick, Matthew Cowie and counsel. Ultimately, I concluded that the public interest in pursuing the investigation was outweighed by the risk to people’s lives.

Though Blair did shut down the investigation, the Guardian investigation revealed with documents that BAE had paid approximately one billion pounds in bribes to Bandar through US bank accounts. How BAE still manages to operate in Washington (doesn't one see it when one drives on 66 in northern Virginia?) when there doesn't seem to be much doubt it's violated the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is curious. In the same time period in late 2006 that Bandar was holding the gun to Blair's head he was also, it's worth remembering, visiting the White House for secret consultations with Elliot Abrams and Vice President Cheney on Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. It's also worth remembering, the number one source of foreign suicide bombers in Iraq is Saudi Arabia, a fact that has never got the kind of robust policy response from Washington one would expect. So they arrest a few terrorists from time to time when they're not creating them and letting them out, they buy $20 billion in US arms to help repatriate the petrodollars, they take a few of the most outrageous teachings out of their textboks, they supply some arms and training to counter Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, and perhaps Bandar deigns to whisper secretly in Olmert's ear in Amman, and Washington considers they've gotten cooperation. What a mess.

Green Salt and the Iranian Laptop. The NYT's David Sanger and Elaine Sciolino report:

The Bush administration has agreed to turn over to international inspectors intelligence data it has collected that it says proves Iran worked on developing a nuclear weapon until a little more than four years ago, according to American and foreign diplomats.

The decision reverses the United States’ longstanding refusal to share the data, citing the need to protect intelligence sources.

The administration acted as the International Atomic Energy Agency is scheduled to issue a report as early as next week on Iran’s past nuclear activities. Administration officials hope that the nuclear inspectors can now confront Iran with what the Americans believe is the strongest evidence that the Iranians had a nuclear program.

The Bush administration’s refusal to turn over the data has been a source of friction with Mohammed ElBaradei, the director general of the agency, who has argued that Iran must be given a fair chance to examine some of the case that Washington has developed.

But it remains unclear how much of the data Dr. ElBaradei will be allowed to disclose to the Iranians. In particular, it is not clear if the information includes diagrams and designs that were secretly taken out of Iran on a laptop computer in 2004 and turned over to the Central Intelligence Agency. ...

According to American and foreign officials interviewed about the contents of the laptop, the information found there included descriptions of the so-called Green Salt Project. That project, which involved uranium processing, high explosives and a missile warhead design, demonstrated what the agency suspected were links between Iran’s military and its ostensibly peaceful nuclear program. If that evidence were substantiated, it would undercut Iran’s claims that its program is aimed solely at producing electrical power.

The documents on the laptop described two programs, termed L-101 and L-102 by the Iranians, describing designs and computer simulations that appeared to be related to weapons work. ...

The presentation included selections from more than a thousand pages of Iranian computer simulations and accounts of experiments that, according to the American officials, showed a longstanding effort to design what appeared to be a nuclear warhead or similar “re-entry vehicle.” ...

Lebanon and the US Foreign Ops Budget. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Rice testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the administration's requested FY '09 foreign affairs, foreign operations and aid budget request. I was reading through it quickly Tuesday night to pull out highlights, and noticed the section on Lebanon, with money set aside to support the Hariri tribunal and $142 million to support "countering threats to Lebanon's sovereignty and security from armed groups backed by Iran and Syria." From Rice's prepared statement:

Lebanon
Progress in Lebanon remains a critical element of our efforts to foster democracy and security in the Middle East. We have joined hands with Lebanon’s elected government to support their struggle for freedom, independence, and security. For FY 2009, the Department of State has requested $142 million in foreign assistance for Lebanon to support two parallel objectives: countering threats to Lebanon’s sovereignty and security from armed groups backed by Syria and Iran, and helping foster good governance and a vibrant economy.

Three years ago this week, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was assassinated. One month later, the Lebanese people demanded an end to foreign domination and political violence, taking to the streets to call for Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. The FY 2009 budget request includes support for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon—a concrete demonstration of our unwavering commitment to justice, an end to political violence, and the protection of Lebanese sovereignty.

Since then, Lebanon has elected a new parliament and deployed its army to the south of the country for the first time in 40 years. However, Lebanon remains under siege by a Syrian and Iranian-backed opposition working to undermine the nation’s stability, sovereignty, and state institutions. Meanwhile, political violence continues, including a January 15 bombing of an American Embassy vehicle. Our vision of a safe, secure and democratic Middle East cannot survive without a sovereign and stable Lebanon.

ECONOMIC ASSISTANCE
Economic Support Funds
The FY 2009 request for Economic Support Funds (ESF) is $3.15 billion, an increase of $164 million over the FY 2008 enacted level. ESF remains a reliable assistance mechanism by which we advance U.S. interests through programs that help recipient countries address short- and long-term political, economic, and security needs. ESF also supports major foreign policy initiatives such as working to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and regional economic integration in East Asia. ESF funds global and regional programs that support specific U.S. foreign policy goals, including assistance to states critical in the War on Terror.

The request includes significant increases in some activities over the Administration’s request for FY 2008, such as programs in Nepal to address rural poverty and help blunt the appeal of Maoist rebels, Lebanon to bolster that country’s democratic traditions and reduce the ability of Hezbollah to divide the populace, and South and Central Asia to improve communications and transportation linkages between Afghanistan and its regional neighbors. ...

[By contrast, the administration is requesting $826 million in its foreign affairs budget for Pakistan. including monies for "a five-year $750 million Presidential Commitment initiated in 2007 .... to help the Government of Pakistan recast its relationship with the country’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas; $343 million for peace and security assistance, including $7.7 million for counterterrorism programs and $32 million for border security, law enforcement capacity building, and counter-narcotics efforts. ..." The ratio of Lebanon's population to Pakistan's is roughly 1 to 40. The ratio of administraton foreign affairs budget request Lebanon to Pakistan is roughly 1 to 4. So the administration is spending a lot more money per soul on Lebanon than Pakistan.] Would be interested to see the military aid budget regarding Lebanon/contra Hezbollah monies too. Helena Cobban noted undersecretary of defense for policy Eric Edelman in Beirut this week.

Newsweek's Michael Hirsh explains why today's espionage is boring.

On the eve of Kosovo's anticipated declaration of independence on Sunday, frayed nerves, high anxiety in Belgrade. Friend hears that independent magazine Vreme (Time) is being forced to sell, that indy magazine Evropa was shut down by private police today, other panic-y rumors along those lines. More from Reuters: "Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told Serbs for the first time on Thursday the imminent loss of their historic province of Kosovo was a reality, but in a televised address he vowed the nation would never accept it. Kostunica's statement was his most open acknowledgment yet that Serbia cannot prevent Kosovo's Albanian majority from proclaiming independence on Sunday, with the promise of Western recognition but without United Nations approval." Some of you will remember how the whole Balkan wars of the 1990s started. Hopefully those energies are thoroughly spent, but not sure one can count on it. Having been there when Zoran Djindjic was assassinated, one worries that those Belgrade moderates perceived as allies of the West could be in danger, from nationalists. And Tadic's recent election victory was pretty close.

"Reduced & controlled crisis" vs. large-scale attacks -- and more scalps. So predicts Lebanese-American blogger the "Friday Lunch Club" in his analysis of the implications of the Mugniyah assassination:

... Folks in the region seem to believe that taking out Mughniyeh ushered [in] a period of (in the words of a 'friend) 'tasfiyat' (liquidations). This of course (again, in the mind of this same source) has once and for all, ruled out the possibility of a 'conventional' large scale attack on either Iran &/or Syria, ... and the nature of the hit (Mughnieh) meant to say just that! It is believed that the 'discounted' Fath El Islam (& co.) are not operating according to a 'purely takfiri-salafi' agenda BUT according to the 'dictates' of the struggle in the region. Look for M14 to continue sloganeering and sectarian (ultra-nationalist) mobilization(s) in the hope that a 'reduced & controlled' crisis would warrant a large scale foreign intervention. Look for Saudi-Syrian relations to stoke differences further, and look .... for a major campaign of 'scalping' to encompasse the whole Levant (perhaps further in the ... Gulf!).

"FLC," a former advisor to the Lebanese government, further adds, in response to an email query:

As I said, this ushers a phase of operations of this type (huge & costly to all sides) as it became clear that the choice of the target, and the location are meant as an indicator of the type of upcoming war. There is going to be huge 'scalping' operations. The instruments could be Syrian Kurds or Druzes. The commanditore is someone who has the Intel, stomach and means to deliver... (that does not leave you with many!)

As for the theory that says it's the Syrians (Mughnieh's inconvenience) or even Hezbollah whacked him ... this is nonsense. Mughnieh's hit has been costly to both ... VERY costly. Izzies did it, for all the obvious and not so obvious reasons.

Or perhaps Izzies using local for-hire proxies, as Baer suggested here.

More links:

The Washington Institute's Matthew Levitt and David Schenker, "Who was Imad Mugniyah?"

Former CIA/NSC official Bruce Reidel interviewed at Yediot Ahranot.

Andrew Exum: "For researchers such as myself, Mughniyah was of great interest because he represented a constant figure in Hezbollah throughout its evolution from an Iranian-backed Lebanese militia in the 1980s to a nationalist insurgent group in the 1990s and finally to its current incarnation as the most powerful political party in Lebanon—both in terms of weapons and popular support."

CSIS's Jon Alterman, "If nothing else, his death is a lesson that if you hang out with people who have no respect for human life, they tend not to have very much respect for your life either."

Ha'aretz's Yossi Melman:

The big and more important question arising from the killing in Damascus is not whether Hezbollah will respond, but how and when.

There is no doubt Hezbollah and its Iranian masters, who had excellent relations with Mughniyah, have long memories and will demand revenge. It will not necessarily come immediately in a reflex action. ...The more reasonable and likeliest possibility is that Hezbollah, with Iranian approval, will try to make a revenge attack against Israel overseas, in particular against an embassy.

In this case it seems they will look for areas that are Israel's "soft underbelly" such as the Israeli Embassy in Jordan, Egypt or certain African capitals - where it will be easier for them to act surreptitiously.

Helena Cobban: "Back in November, [Lebanese Druze leader] Walid [Jumblatt]notoriously threatened to unleash car-bombs against the Syrian capital, Damascus. Yesterday, just such a bomb did explode there. It killed Imad Mughniyeh [...] No indication, yet, of whether Walid's threat of last November was related in any way to Mughniyeh's killing. But did the belligerent words Walid pronounced last Sunday about 'We have no problem with weapons, no problem with missiles' have anything to do with yesterday's visit by US Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman to Beirut?"

How he went down: Follow up:

As a tense south Beirut buried assassinated Hezbollah militant Imad Mugniyah Thursday and Israel and the region braced for feared retribution and an escalation of tensions, analysts continued to speculate on who killed the elusive terror suspect. (See this piece for a primer).

Former CIA officer Robert Baer, who served in Beirut and extensively researched Mugniyah, offered a model about how things might have gone down. "An old friend of mine," Baer emailed. "Friend may not be the word. Anyhow the Israelis persuaded him to set off a car bomb in a Damascus bus station. He used the Guardians of the Cedars, paid them something like $200,000. Bomb went off as requested."

"Point two is Syria these days is completely corrupt," Baer added. "You buy what you want."

Former Defense Department analyst and Levant expert David Schenker, now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, ruled highly unlikely the Syrians doing it themselves. "The Syrians feel perfectly comfortable to kill their own and they do," Schenker said in a telephone interview. "But they don't do it like that. They render them," as they did Kurdish Workers' Party leader Abdullah Ocalan, as Turkish troops amassed on the the Turkish-Syrian border threatening an invasion.

"This is not a case like Ghazi Kanaan, who was the Syrian viceroy in Lebanon," Schenker continued. "In Arabic, they say, 'He was suicided.' He 'killed himself' with two shots to the head. He knew too much about the Hariri assassination." ...

Read the rest.

Point, via Eli Lake:

A Lebanese-Christian-born analyst today said it was unlikely any Lebanese faction was involved in the Mugniyah killing.

"To say that any faction in Lebanon is behind this is to greatly misstate reality. They don't have the operational capacity. They don't have the intelligence capacity. It is extremely unlikely that anyone in Lebanon has anything to do with this," a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Anthony Badran, said.

Counterpoint, from former CIA officer Robert Baer, in an email to me this morning:

An old friend of mine. Friend may not be the word. Anyhow the Israelis persuaded him to set off a car bomb in a Damascus bus station. He used the Guardians of the Cedars, paid them something like $200,000. Bomb went off as requested. Point two is Syria these days is completely corrupt, you buy what you want.

More here and here.

WP:

Lawyers representing military detainees at Guantanamo Bay have expressed concern that the government has violated a federal court order by losing or erasing several years' worth of digital video recordings that could shed light on the legality of detainee treatment.

The concerns are based in part on a recent court filing by Guantanamo's commander, Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, who said video surveillance recordings in several areas of the facility have been automatically overwritten and no longer exist.

"In January 2008, it was brought to my attention that such . . . [recording] systems may have been automatically overwriting video data contained on recording devices, at predetermined intervals," Buzby wrote. "That is, only a specified number of days' worth of recorded data could be retained on the recording devices at a time."

Defense lawyers said the admission suggests that the military has not complied with a 2005 court order to preserve such evidence, even if the deletion of the recordings was inadvertent. They claim that the tapes were of potential use at forthcoming court hearings and trials, a view supported by a Seton Hall University report slated to be released today.

The report, "Captured on Tape," asserts that officials at the facility recorded more than 20,000 interrogations at Guantanamo Bay. It cited FBI statements and military investigative reports as a basis for concluding that video cameras were in interrogation booths and tapes existed.

The blatant, willful destruction of evidence ... not too much pretense of rule of law here.

WP: Financier of Georgia's Rose Revolution found dead in England. Badri Patarkatsishvili, 52, was a business partner of Boris Berezovsky.

The AP's George Jahn at the IAEA in Vienna:

Iran's new-generation advanced centrifuges have begun processing small quantities of the gas that can be used to make the fissile core of nuclear warheads, diplomats said Wednesday.

The diplomats emphasized that the centrifuges were working with minute amounts of uranium gas. One diplomat said Tehran has set up only 10 of the machines -- far too few to make enriched uranium in the quantities needed for an industrial-scale energy or weapons program.

Still, the information revealed details about Iran's experiments with its domestically developed IR-2 centrifuges, which can churn out enriched uranium at more than double the rate of the machines that now form the backbone of the Iranian nuclear project.

The existence of the IR-2 was made known only last week by diplomats accredited to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, which is investigating Iran's nuclear program for any evidence that it might have been designed to make weapons.

AP: Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah threatens Israel in videotaped speech broadcast at Mugniyah funeral. "''You have crossed the borders,'' he said. ''With this murder, its timing, location and method -- Zionists, if you want this kind of open war, let the whole world listen: Let this war be open.'''

Reuters: Israel fears reprisal after Hezbollah chief killed.

Moughniyah, who had also topped U.S. wanted lists, was the most senior member of Hezbollah to be killed since its previous secretary-general, Abbas Mussawi, died in a 1992 Israeli helicopter ambush in southern Lebanon.

That killing was followed closely by the bombing of the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community centre in Argentina, attacks that claimed dozens of lives and which Israel described as the work of Iranian agents. Tehran denied involvement.

"To my regret, we are aware of the past in this context, and we know how to prepare for further scenarios," Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter told Israel Radio.

More here.

AP: "In a new challenge to President Bush's use of executive power, Senate Democrats want to make the government produce evidence to a judge for review when it claims that disclosing that evidence endangers national security. The Senate Judiciary Committee's chairman is developing legislation aimed at reining in the administration's use of a state secrets privilege to argue for dismissing cases that might reveal misconduct."

NPR reports that Iran has cancelled talks with the US planned to be held in Iraq tomorrow. And that the Iranian president announced he is going to visit Baghdad.

CQ: McCain votes against torture ban. "There goes the one thing I still respected him for," comments the friend who sent the news.

Just Out: A terrorist is assassinated in Damascus: a Whodunnit

When the news broke today that long sought Hezbollah terrorist leader Imad Mugniyah had been killed in a car bomb in Damascus recently, speculation quickly turned to who brought the accused plotter of the 1983 US embassy bombing in Beirut, the 1983 simultaneous bombings of US Marine and French peacekeeping barracks in Beirut, the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airplane and killing of a US Navy diver, the 1992 and 1994 bombings of the Jewish community center and Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, and other terrorists attacks to his end.

Naturally, the Israeli intelligence service Mossad quickly came to everybody's mind (and Hezbollah quickly accused the 'Zionists of martyring' him). Israeli security officials made no secret that they considered it a service to humanity whoever did the job. "I don’t know who killed him, but whoever did should be congratulated," former Israeli military intelligence official Gideon Ezra told Israel Radio. After a delay or some confusion, the office of Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert denied Israeli involvement. “Israel rejects the attempt by terrorist elements to ascribe to it any involvement whatsoever in this incident."

"There are a lot of motivations to kill him, but in particular anti-Syrian groups have the means and the motive," said former CIA officer Robert Baer, who served in Beirut and spent extensive time researching Mugniyah, in a telephone interview. "That would be [the family of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik] Hariri [allegedly assassinated by Syrian-backed elements], and his son. You've got Lebanese Christians, you've got the Druze. They would be pushing back for the deputies of Lebanon's parliament that were assassinated they think by Hezbollah or Syria."

"It’s a huge embarrassment for Syria," Baer added. "Here’s probably the most dangerous terrorist in the world. Imad Mugniyah is the equivalent of [Osama] bin Laden. He is more adept. He has killed hundreds of people and has the potential, with his group [Hezbollah], to kill thousands more. This is a bigger catch than bin Laden."

But don't be so sure Mugniyah wasn't offed by Hezbollah or Syria, another former CIA officer with Middle East field experience told me in an interview. "He's an embarrassment for them," he said. "Hezbollah's public line is that he is not associated with them and they have no American blood on their hands. They say that when they get together with anyone trying to talk to them. And it's full of shit. It's a lie. They are a terrorist organization."

About one thing, the former CIA officer was sure: "I know goddamn well we didn't do it. Because it's too good of an operation. If we did it, it would be fifteen years in the making, and there'd be video surveillance from Washington....I'm serious." [...]

But Daniel Levy, a Washington-based former advisor to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, suggested Israel's denial was "pro forma," and "there is a lot of clucking going on, interviews on Israeli TV with families of victims of operations, that Mughniyah was behind," Levy said in an email. "I think there might be some rumors coming out over the next days in the Israeli press, maybe quoting the foreign press, you know the routine, of Israeli involvement.

"If this is perceived by the Israeli public to be an Israeli hit, then there would be certain advantages for the Israeli government," Levy continued. "(1) The Israeli leadership appears pretty helpless right now in the face of the rockets on Sderot from Gaza. The assassination would be a useful distraction and show of force and be seen to send a signal to the Hamas leadership. And (2) Israel has been looking to poke Hezbollah in the eye for some time ... especially after Winograd," a government commission that recently reported on Israeli accountability for the disappointing Israeli performance fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006.

After watching the Israeli evening news, Levy further reported, "The nature of the coverage is suggesting an Israeli operation," Levy said. "Whether or not Israel did it, they are giving the Israeli public the impression that they did it," he said, adding, "They are going to have a little ride on this for a couple of days." ...

Here.

Reuters: Hezbollah says top leader, Imad Mugniyah, killed by car bomb in Damascus:

Hezbollah leader Imad Moughniyah, on the United States' most wanted list for attacks on Israeli and Western targets, was killed by a bomb in Damascus, the Lebanese group said on Wednesday.

Hezbollah swiftly accused Israel of assassinating Moughniyah, who was head of the Hezbollah security network during Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war. In Gaza, Hamas Islamists called for the Arab world to unite against Israel.

Israel denied any involvement in the killing, seen as a blow to Syrian-backed Hezbollah that fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006.

Moughniyah, 45, was killed late on Tuesday by a bomb planted in his car. He had long been on a list of foreigners Israel wanted to kill or apprehend and the United States had offered a reward for his capture.

He was implicated in the 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassy and U.S. Marine and French peacekeeping barracks in Beirut, which killed over 350 people, as well as the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the kidnapping of Westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s.

The United States indicted him for his role in planning and participating in the June 14, 1985, hijacking of a U.S. TWA airliner and the killing of an American passenger. ...

Israel also accuses Moughniyah of planning the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires that killed 87 people and of involvement in a 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in the Argentinian capital that killed 28.

More.

Ha'aretz's Yossi Melman writes in an analysis, " ... If Israel is behind this act, it can be seen as the most significant intelligence accomplishment in the war on terror, coming before the assasination of Fathi Shikaki, leader of the Islamic Jihad in 1995. ...Naturally, Israel had a long list of scores to settle with Mughniyah. Hezbollah is pointing a blaming finger now at Israel because of this history, but the U.S. and other Western intelligence groups had an issue with him, because Mughniyah was considered one of the most dangerous and active terrorists in the world. ... Nevertheless, it cannot be ruled out that other intelligence organizations are involved as well in what might be a joint operation- including the Jordanians, who also have scores to settle with Nasrallah."

Interesting interview at Harpers with John Brabender, a GOP media consultant, about how the GOP will run against Obama, should he become the Democratic presidential nominee. Here's a snippet:

But how can a Republican candidate, presumably McCain, campaign against Obama? Unlike the case with Hillary Clinton, there aren’t a lot of negatives?

I watched Obama during the debates. Just like everyone else, I said, ‘This guy is good,’ but he also brings serious problems to the table. If you want to reduce political campaigns to marketing, Obama is a great new product with great packaging and people are anxious to try it, but they don’t yet know whether it’s a product they want to use over and over again. People know McCain. He is Coca-Cola. You might not always want a Coke, but you always know what it’s going to taste like and that it’s good when you’re thirsty. These are turbulent times and the safe pick might be the best pick. The race will be about Obama, not McCain, and we still don’t know a lot about Obama. At some point, he is going to have to defend a pretty liberal record in both the U.S. Senate and especially the Illinois Senate. He hasn’t had to do that in the Democratic primaries, but in a general election, his record could cause alarm to those in the middle. He has not gone through the rigors of a general election campaign, which is very different from a primary. He can say in a Democratic primary that he wants to sit down and talk to leaders in Iran, but Republicans and some in the middle hear that and cringe –are we just going to roll over for countries like Iran and let them build a nuclear bomb? I don’t want to diminish the fact that he is a different kind of candidate, but it’s too early to know whether Americans will see him as the right candidate at the right time.

Tapped. Controversial government surveillance bill, providing telecom companies retroactive immunity, passes in the Senate.

BBC:

Two employees of Pakistan's atomic energy agency have been abducted in the country's restive north-western region abutting the Afghan border, police say.

The technicians went missing on the same day as Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin, was reportedly abducted in the same region.

Mr Azizuddin had been going overland from the city of Peshawar to Kabul.

Pakistan's north-west has witnessed fierce fighting between Islamist militants and government troops.

The pro-Taleban guerrillas declared a unilateral ceasefire last week after months of clashes with troops garrisoned there.

The workers from Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission were on a mission to map mineral deposits in the mountains when they were kidnapped, police say.

The NYT's Mike Nizza: U.S. carrier intercepts Russian bombers.

Administration Win, Retroactive Immunity, Diluted Civil Liberties, in New FISA Bill. Congressional Quarterly's Tim Starks reports on the FISA bill:

Last August, after the Senate angered Democratic liberals by hurriedly passing a temporary but broad spy law, the chamber's top Democrat said he wanted to change it.

"I would like to see the Senate consider as soon as possible a bill reported by your committees that addresses the deficiencies in the recently enacted law and any other matters you believe must be addressed," Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., wrote to the chairmen of the Intelligence and Judiciary panels on Aug. 14.

Earlier, Reid had criticized the measure, noting, "it fails to provide the accountability needed in light of the administration's repeated mismanagement of key tools in the war on terror."

But experts and advocacy groups say a bill (S 2248) the Senate is likely to pass Tuesday would preserve most of the broad new spying authority the administration was granted last August in what was called the "Protect America Act" and would lock it in for six years.

"Big picture, the biggest similarity is that under both laws, it's the executive branch, not the judicial branch, that authorizes the program of surveillance," said Greg ­Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. "While the Senate Intelligence bill does contain some civil liberties bells and whistles, it is worse than the Protect America Act in two respects. It lasts for six years instead of six months, and it provides immunity to telecommunications carriers that assisted with an illegal warrantless surveillance program."

The August law is set to expire Feb. 15.

The bill on the Senate floor is a long-term rewrite of a 1978 law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA, PL 95-511), which established a secret court to approve warrants for electronic surveillance in the United States.

According to most experts and advocacy groups, the bill would only slightly rein in the new powers granted to the administration in the temporary law (PL 110-55).

The new bill would authorize the president to conduct warrantless surveillance of foreign targets even when they are communicating with someone in the United States.

None of the amendments that would scale back the bill's grant of executive spying powers are expected to win adoption when they come up for votes Tuesday.

That includes amendments to alter or delete one of its controversial provisions "retroactive legal immunity for telecommunications companies being sued for allegedly assisting the administration's warrantless surveillance program. Backers of the legislation, including the Bush administration, view that provision as essential to ensuring private sector cooperation with spy programs.

Minor Changes to Current Law

David Rivkin, a partner with Baker Hostetler and a former Justice Department official who testified before Congress last year on the FISA law, said the short-term ramifications of the changes in the administration's spying powers are minor.

"The administration has compromised on things that may not have immediate operational implications," he said. "The administration did it to get retroactive immunity."

Besides retroactive immunity and its expiration date, the most significant difference between the temporary law and the Senate bill, according to experts, are:

-- A more active role for the secret FISA court in approving procedures for warrantless surveillance that may involve people in the United States;

-- A warrant requirement when the administration targets the communications of U.S. citizens overseas;

-- Clarification of several "ambiguities," according to Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, such as a provision that some read as allowing warrantless domestic physical searches.

-- Additional congressional oversight of spying programs through mandated administration disclosures to Congress.

But Nojeim said that even some of the bill's pluses for civil liberties are diluted. For example, he said the FISA court's more active role is limited under the Senate bill.

Under the temporary law, the court has the ability to approve or reject procedures for warrantless surveillance of international calls in which one party is in the United States only if the administration's procedures are "clearly erroneous" in how they target foreigners. Under the Senate bill, the FISA court has more leeway in the standards by which it evaluates those procedures, but Nojeim said they could only ask the administration to stop the surveillance program or return with changes.

Martin and others said the broad spying powers in the Senate bill largely can be attributed to Democrats' slim margin of control in that chamber.

"The Democrats barely have a majority, and the Republicans are voting in lock step, with the exception of Sen. Specter on occasion," she said, referring to Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

But Martin also said Democrats did a poor job of conducting oversight and articulating problems with Bush's warrantless surveillance program. Caroline Fredrickson, the director of the ACLU's Washington legislative office, said Democrats repeatedly caved in to Bush's demands for more spying authority out of concern that they might be blamed in the event of another terrorist attack.

"The rhetoric coming out of Harry Reid's office is very different from when they started in August," Fredrickson said. Where once Reid was more critical of the temporary law, Fredrickson said there has been a shift to saying that the temporary law is "pretty good" but needs to be better. ....

Fruit of the Poison Tree. WP: FBI "Clean Team" Re-Interrogated 9/11 Suspects. "FBI and military interrogators who began work with the suspects in late 2006 called themselves the 'Clean Team,' and set as their goal collecting of virtually the same information the CIA had obtained from five of the six through duress at secret prisons. [...] Prosecutors and top administration officials essentially wanted to cleanse the information so that it could be used in court, a process that federal prosecutors typically follow in U.S. criminal cases with investigative problems or botched interrogations. Officials wanted to go into court without any doubts about the viability of their evidence, and they had serious reservations about the reliability of what the CIA had obtained for intelligence purposes. ...

"Notably absent from the Pentagon's list [of those to go military commission trial] are Zayn Abidin Muhammed Hussein, commonly known as Abu Zubaida, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the detainees who, in addition to Mohammed, are known to have been subjected to waterboarding. Lawyers for the detainees have predicted that courts will throw out as illegal the evidence the CIA obtained in such sessions. ...

"'There's something in American jurisprudence called 'fruit of the poisonous tree': You can clean up the tree a little but it's hard to do,' said John D. Hutson, a retired Navy rear admiral and former judge advocate general. 'Once you torture someone, it is hard to un-torture them. The general public is going to be concerned about the validity of the testimony.'"

WP: "Two CBS News journalists have been kidnapped in the southern city of Basra and remain missing, Iraqi officials said Monday." Maybe it's a bit more complicated than that, I'm told.

Sad. Long time chairman of the House foreign relations committee Tom Lantos, a survivor of the Holocaust, and an advocate for human rights, dies at 80, Steve Clemons hears. Here's the NYT, the UN Dispatch's Mark Goldberg, and the Post.

WP: Iran's clerical old guard being pushed aside:

After Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's followers toppled a U.S.-backed autocracy in Iran, he brought to power a coterie of politically engaged clerics who sought to create the world's first Islamic republic. Nearly 30 years later, a new generation of politicians is sweeping aside those clerics, many of whom had become proponents of better relations with the West and gradual steps toward greater democracy.

The newcomers are former military commanders, filmmakers and mayors, many younger than 50 and only a few of them clerics. They are vowing to carry out the promises of the revolution and to place Iran among the world's leading nations. This rising generation has the support of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme leader in Iran's political system, who backs the government's assertive foreign and nuclear policies.

Last month, local election councils disqualified scores of clerics and their allies -- including Khomeini's grandson, Ali Eshragi -- from seeking election to parliament March 14. Such candidates have been disqualified before, but analysts said the absence of members of the clerical old guard from other institutions of power in Iran means they will find it difficult to mount an electoral comeback ...

Analysts say the purging of those clerics strengthens President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most prominent leader of the new generation, and will result in a smaller political class that is more beholden to the supreme leader and less tolerant of even internal dissent. ....

During the days when the Republican-controlled Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was busy not investigating abuses and shortcomings of the administration's handling of intelligence matters like its linking al Qaeda/9/11 and Saddam Hussein, and the Niger forgeries episode, the New York Times editorial page occasionally inveighed against the SSCI's chairman Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), who acted to protect the White House and the Vice President's office from scrutiny, as Iraq sank into chaos. Now, more than a year after the midterm elections brought Democrats to power in Congress, finally some meaningful Congressional intelligence oversight, right? Not on key areas, the NYT editorial page finds, such as torture and wiretaps. And it has a new object of disappointment:

Even by the dismal standards of what passes for a national debate on intelligence and civil liberties, last week was a really bad week.

The Senate debated a bill that would make needed updates to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — while needlessly expanding the president’s ability to spy on Americans without a warrant and covering up the unlawful spying that President Bush ordered after 9/11.

The Democrat who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, John Rockefeller of West Virginia, led the way in killing amendments that would have strengthened requirements for warrants and raised the possibility of at least some accountability for past wrongdoing. Republicans declaimed about protecting America from terrorists — as if anyone was arguing the opposite — and had little to say about protecting Americans’ rights.

We saw a ray of hope when the head of the Central Intelligence Agency conceded — finally — that waterboarding was probably illegal. But his boss, the director of national intelligence, insisted it was legal when done to real bad guys. And Vice President Dick Cheney — surprise! — made it clear that President Bush would authorize waterboarding whenever he wanted.

The Catch-22 metaphor is seriously overused, but consider this: Attorney General Michael Mukasey told Congress there would be no criminal investigation into waterboarding. He said the Justice Department decided waterboarding was legal (remember the torture memo?) and told the C.I.A. that.

So, according to Mukaseyan logic, the Justice Department cannot investigate those who may have committed torture, because the Justice Department said it was O.K. and Justice cannot be expected to investigate itself.

As it was with torture, so it was with wiretaps. ....

So Mr. Rockefeller and other senators want to give the companies immunity even if the administration never admits they were involved. This is short-circuiting the legal system. If it is approved, we will then have to hope that the next president will be willing to reveal the truth.

Mr. Rockefeller argues that companies might balk at future warrantless spying programs. Imagine that! ...

Ouch. To be fair to Rockefeller, he seems to have restored a certain equilibrium and basic functionality to the committee, ("We call it the dark days," is how some staffers call the Roberts' era, describing a committee that was destroyed), and there's apparently pretty decent cooperation between him and vice chairman Kit Bond on serious oversight of the underlying raw intelligence feeding Iran intelligence analytical products. And expected later this month, the rest of the long awaited Phase-II investigation. On wiretapping, and the issue of retroactive telco community, the committee chairman has got the intelligence community rabbis, the White House, the Justice Department, the Republicans, half the other Democrats, the telcos, the lobbyists, and some staff lawyers on one side, and I guess, four bloggers, the electronic frontier foundation, the ACLU, a couple Democratic senators, and the odd newspaper editorial on the other, and a public mostly in the dark. And probably plenty of Democrats consider this a no-win issue and are hoping to have the whole issue off the radar.

NYT: IM messages show Societe Generale trader did not act alone. A fascinating story, I confess I still don't begin to understand.

Discovery cancels airing of Taxi to the Dark Side, saying it's too controversial.

McClatchy's Warren Strobel reports on McCain's foreign policy worldview.

Just Out: Herzliya dispatch: the hawks' last hurrah?

There was perhaps no better vantage point from which to chronicle the twilight months of the Bush administration and its national security policy than the Israeli resort town of Herzliya, where in January the Interdisciplinary Center, a private college and research institute, convened its annual international security confab. The four-day conference, organized by Uzi Arad, a former national security advisor to onetime Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, brought together Israeli policymakers and thought leaders with their American and European counterparts. Attending the event, dubbed "Israel at Sixty: Tests of Endurance," were a host of prominent Washington hawks, among them, former United States ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, neoconservative and former Rudy Giuliani advisor Norman "World War IV" Podhoretz, Vice President Dick Cheney's national security advisor Samantha Ravich, and former Middle East advisor David Wurmser. Given the D.C.-centric crowd, it was at times easy to forget that the conference was taking place on the Mediterranean coast and not inside the Beltway.

While their numbers were strong, the hawks this year appeared less confident about their influence on Washington's foreign policy, and resentful of an American bureaucracy perceived by many attendees as having hijacked Iran policy from the weakening grasp of the White House. "It's close to zero percent chance that the Bush administration will authorize military action against Iran before leaving office," Bolton told the conference. "No one should be under any illusions about the United States' part in the Iranian situation in the coming year."

Podhoretz, for his part, agreed: "Unless Bush realizes or fulfills my fading hope of air strikes, it is undoubtedly up to Israel to prevent" Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. ...

Here's the rest. And more depth on the Iran discussion in Israel excerpted here.

Economist: Reformists blocked in Iran, from March parliamentary elections.

Recently Out: From National Journal, here are excerpts of a recent piece of mine, "Iran policy makes Israel uneasy."

HERZLIYA, Israel—For years, Israeli diplomats have pursued a single-minded campaign to convince Washington and other allies that Iran’s nuclear program is an international problem, not just Israel’s problem, and that the international community must take the lead in solving it. Up to now, the campaign has arguably been successful, with successive U.S. presidents declaring the prospect of an Iranian bomb an unacceptable global threat. But a series of recent developments have thrown Israel’s strategy into doubt.

Participants in the eighth Herzliya Conference, a policy-making confab that significantly influences Israeli national security strategy, are increasingly concerned that President Bush may not take action on Iran before he leaves office, and that they cannot count on the next U.S. administration to take out Iran’s nuclear program in a timely fashion. Israeli officials are reconsidering their own options, which have always included the possibility of striking Iran alone. At the same time, Israel is ramping up efforts to push Washington toward pursuing more-robust international sanctions to pressure and destabilize the Iranian regime. [...]

Given Israel’s reported second-strike capabilities, most government officials here consider it unlikely that Iran would target Israel with a nuclear bomb. But they fear that Iran’s possession of fissile material could lead to several other developments that would imperil Israel’s security. Knowing that Tehran has the bomb could embolden the militant Islamist groups that Iran supports, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Moreover, an Iranian nuclear weapon could spur regional rivals to pursue their own nuclear programs, raising the prospect of a poly-nuclear Middle East in which some terrorist group would eventually end up with a nuclear weapon. Finally, Israelis leaders worry that the psychological threat of these scenarios could itself spur Jewish emigration out of Israel.

“The issue of Iran is a bipartisan policy in Israel,” said David Menashri, a professor at Tel Aviv University who is considered the country’s leading Iran expert. “In Israel, it doesn’t matter if one is Labor or Likud. There is some kind of total agreement, and I think for good reasons, because a nuclear Iran is very, very problematic.” [...]

The NIE suggested that the “worst case” estimate for when Iran would have produced enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon was 2009 but that the more realistic timeframe was 2010 to 2015. Israeli officials, though, judge that Iran could have a bomb by 2009-10, and they worry that a new U.S. administration might take much of 2009 to develop its policy toward Iran.

Analysts here note that both Israeli and U.S. forecasts of Iran’s nuclear threshold have tended to get nudged further into the future as new information becomes available. “This really is the problem: How much time do we have with Iran?” Patrick Cronin, director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at Washington’s National Defense University, asked the conference participants. [...]

In interviews, some Israeli officials and intelligence analysts say that the Iranian nuclear problem will not be finally solved for Israel until the regime in
Tehran is overturned. [....]“Our problem is not Iran’s nuclear project itself,” said another member of the Knesset, Brig. Gen. Ephraim Sneh. “Our problem lies in the nuclear regime—a regime that combines imperial aspirations, hatred of Israel, military prowess, and endless wells of money. That is why the goal is to topple this regime from the inside. Not regime change in what has become in the U.S. a four-letter word not to be mentioned near children or ladies—a massive invasion—but regime change by the Iranian people.”

Sneh suggests that three things have to happen to trigger such a powerful internal upheaval: an embargo on refined oil products going to Iran, which, he noted, imports half of its gas; a cutoff of international credit lines for financing energy projects in Iran; and steps to block Iran from modernizing its energy industry. [...]

Some U.S. officials argued at the conference, perhaps a bit defensively, that the National Intelligence Estimate does not signal a change in U.S. policy. On the contrary, they said, it contains the justification for increased coercive diplomacy to pressure Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment activities.

“The open question is whether Iran plans to reopen its weaponization program,” said Kori Schake, principal deputy director of policy planning at the State Department. “The NIE says we don’t have enough information to know for sure if and when they have resumed these activities. What does it mean for U.S. policy?” The NIE “does not significantly change U.S. objectives,” shesaid. “Iran’s continued pursuit of enrichment in the face of U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for it to halt those activities remains deeply troubling. The United States continues to put pressure on Iran to suspend those activities. Our allies remain just as concerned. We are calling for a third round of sanctions [at the United Nations]. And the U.S. offer to begin multilateral talks with Iran if it suspends enrichment remains on the table.” [...]

Some Israeli experts on Iran say quietly, however, that the U.S. should pursue dialogue with Iran. “I think the West should keep the ‘stick’ long, but down, and give the Iranians hope, respect,” says Tel Aviv University’s Menashri. “Now, to be honest with you, I don’t think dialogue with Iran will solve the problem. Both the United States and Iran have made each other giant enemies, and it will be very difficult for Iranians to retreat from anti-American rhetoric,” he said. But dialogue is a “prerequisite for serious pressure. Iran should know that America is sincere in offering dialogue. The American people should be convinced that everything has been done [to pursue] peaceful dialogue.”

In a January 23 interview, Yaakov Peri, a former head of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency and now the chairman of Mizrahi Tefahot Bank, also sounded a more tempered note about Tehran. “I don’t think a military attack is going to work.... Even if a military attack is successful, it would only postpone, and not finish, the [nuclear] program. And it would be one hell of an operation, as Iran has installations scattered all over the country, buried deepunderground. We have some capability—very impressive. But there are problems if we use it.”

An Israeli defense analyst who asked not to be identified said that Israel has in recent years boosted its procurement of long-range unmanned aerial vehicles,
planes with extra exterior fuel tanks, and other military equipment that could be used in a strike on Iran. After all, he said, acting alone is a default mode of behavior that Israeli decision makers are ultimately very comfortable with. “There’s a mentality that no one loves us and there’s a Holocaust around every corner,” he said.

From the January 26, 2008 print issue.

Stonings. AFP: "Two Iranian sisters convicted of adultery face being stoned to death after the supreme court upheld the death sentences against them, the Etemad newspaper Monday quoted their lawyer as saying. The two were found guilty of adultery -- a capital crime in Islamic Iran -- after the husband of one sister presented video evidence showing them in the company of other men while he was away."

Ken Silverstein at Harper's: Curt Weldon, back in business.

The WP's Chris Cillizza: Romney considers bowing out.

Update: That was fast. Romney out.

William Arkin: Leaked Iraq Rules of Engagement more cautious, meticulous, than widely understood.

AP:

The lead prosecutor in the terrorism case against Zacarias Moussaoui likely knew the CIA destroyed tapes of its interrogations of al-Qaida suspects more than a year before the government admitted it to the court, newly unsealed documents show.

The documents, which were declassified and released Wednesday by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, detail efforts by Moussaoui's attorneys to send the case back to a lower federal court to find out why the tapes weren't disclosed and whether they would have influenced his decision to plead guilty.

In a Dec. 18, 2007, letter to the appeals court's chief judge, the Justice Department acknowledged that its lead prosecutor in the case had been informed about the CIA's tapes of al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Zubaydah being interrogated.

The letter said the prosecutor, Robert A. Spencer, may have been told of the tapes' destruction in late February or early March of 2006, just as the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., was beginning its trial on whether Moussaoui would be eligible for the death penalty.

Moussaoui, a French citizen of Morrocan descent, pleaded guilty in April 2005 to his role in the Sept. 11 attacks. Spared the death penalty, he was sent to prison for life.

‘Does not recall being told’
Spencer, who was one of three prosecutors on the government's team, "does not recall being told this information," U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg wrote in the Dec. 18 letter to 4th U.S. Circuit Chief Judge Karen J. Williams.

Another prosecutor in Rosenberg's office in Virginia's eastern district who was not involved in the case "recalls telling (Spencer) on one occasion," the letter said.

That second, unnamed, prosecutor learned about the videotapes of Zubaydah "in connection with work he performed in a Department of Justice project unrelated to the Moussaoui case," the letter said.

It is unclear what that project was.

Attempts to reach Spencer on Wednesday evening were unsuccessful. ...

Update: Attorney Bmaz, a frequent commenter at Emptywheel, writes,"You probably have already picked up on this thought, but every bit as important as the Moussaoui prosecutor(s) knowing and failing to appropriately disclose, if not more so, is that this clearly establishes specific knowledge within the DOJ and in a widespread fashion it would appear. Knowledge so known in very early 2006 to boot. This is (although I don't think we ever thought any different) pretty damning. ... "

AP confirms secret camp inside Gitmo.

Washington encounters, perils of the elevator.

Reuters: Iran testing advanced centrifuges at nuke site, IAEA diplomats report.

Left Hand/Right Hand. NYT: US Department of Energy funding Russian institutes aiding Iran's nuclear program:

The Energy Department is subsidizing two Russian nuclear institutes that are building key parts of Iran’s Bushehr reactor even though the United States has spent years trying to shut it down, according to a House committee.

In a letter sent to Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman on Wednesday, Representative John Dingell, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Bart Stupak, chairman of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee, say that the Energy Department has approved projects with the two institutes worth $4 million.

Mr. Dingell, in a telephone interview, pointed out that the State Department has accused Iran of using the Bushehr reactor as a cover for obtaining nuclear technologies useful in a weapons program. “We’ve got a bunch of Federal laws that impose sanctions on U.S. companies that develop Iran’s oil,” he said, adding, “Here we’ve got U.S. money providing assistance to help develop a reactor that we’re busy denouncing.”

He said the committee would also pursue whether the Energy Department was subsidizing any institutes that worked with North Korea, Syria or other countries that are developing nuclear weapons or want to. [...]

The institutes, both in Nizhniy Novogrod, gave sales presentations to American officials in which they described their capabilities and listed the Bushehr reactor, which Russia has agreed to fuel, as one of their projects. One institute is providing control systems, including control room equipment, and the other, hundreds of pumps and ventilation fans.

Reuters: Egypt, Iran conduct talks on restoring diplomatic relations.

Yoav Stern: US signs MOU to help Jordan develop nuclear energy program. "U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman and Jordanian Minister for Scientific Research Khaled Toukan signed Sunday's memorandum of understanding on the sidelines of a nuclear energy summit in Vienna. Under the agreement, the two countries will work together to develop requirements for appropriate power reactors, fuel service arrangements, civilian training, nuclear safety, energy technology and other related areas, the U.S. Embassy said in a statement. Jordanian King Abdullah II announced his intention to develop a peaceful nuclear program in January, saying alternative energy sources were needed to generate electricity and desalinate water in the kingdom. ... Jordan's energy czar Khaled al-Shraydeh has said the country possesses the uranium needed to develop the program. The country is estimated to have 80,000 tons of uranium, and its phosphate reserves also contain some 100,000 tons of uranium." The wisdom of Bush's and also Mr. Sarkozy's policies of promoting (their national companies' sale) of nuclear energy programs in the Middle East is worth debating. Sarkozy made sure to get to Saudi Arabia the day before Bush arrived last month, to make sure his companies get a cut of the arms pie.

NYT's John Schwartz: Armed with binoculars, amateur satellite watchers decode government secrets: "Mr. Pike said the officials who complained about the hobbyists 'don’t like it, but they’ve got to lump it.' Despite the many clever ways that the spy agencies try to minimize the likelihood that their satellites will be spotted, he said, they will be. And that, he said, is a valuable warning: a world with so many eyes on the skies renders deep secrets shallow. 'If Ted can track all these satellites,' Mr. Pike said, 'so can the Chinese.'”

NYT's Mike Nizza: Iran's Space Program, Through 3-D Glasses.

(Photo: Agence France Presse–Getty Images, via NYT)

Marty Lederman, "Finally, the Senate Judiciary committee to investigate videotape destruction." Uh, the other videotape destruction scandal.

The WP's Carol Leonnig: another administration official in the market for a good criminal defense attorney:

Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson demanded that the Philadelphia Housing Authority transfer a $2 million public property to a developer at a substantial discount, then retaliated against the housing authority when it refused to do so, a recent court filing alleges.

The authority's director, Carl Greene, contends in a court affidavit that Jackson called Philadelphia's mayor in 2006 to demand the transfer to the developer, Kenny Gamble, a former soul-music songwriter who is a business friend of Jackson's. Jackson's aides followed up with "menacing" threats about the property and other housing programs in at least a dozen letters and phone calls over an 11-month period, Greene said in an interview.

Greene and his colleagues have alleged in the court filing that Philadelphia is now paying a severe price for disobeying a Bush Cabinet official. The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently vowed to strip the city's housing authority of its ability to spend some federal funds, a move that the authority said could raise rents for most of its 84,000 low-income tenants and force the layoffs of 250 people.

The LAT's Josh Meyer: "A key Al Qaeda operative and chemical engineer who was reported to have been slain is alive and leading the WMD effort, officials say."

Seymour Hersh: A Shot in the Dark:

... However, in three months of reporting for this article, I was repeatedly told by current and former intelligence, diplomatic, and congressional officials that they were not aware of any solid evidence of ongoing nuclear-weapons programs in Syria. It is possible that Israel conveyed intelligence directly to senior members of the Bush Administration, without it being vetted by intelligence agencies. (This process, known as “stovepiping,” overwhelmed U.S. intelligence before the war in Iraq.) But Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations group responsible for monitoring compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, said, “Our experts who have carefully analyzed the satellite imagery say it is unlikely that this building was a nuclear facility.” ...

AP: Bush budget calls for adding 1,000 new foreign service posts:

President Bush wants to hire nearly 1,100 new diplomats to address severe staffing shortages and put the State Department on track to meet an ambitious call to double its size over the next decade, according to administration officials.

The additional positions are part of Bush's budget for fiscal 2009, which he will submit to Congress today, according to documents described by officials. The spending request is subject to congressional approval.

Bush's proposal envisions adding 1,076 jobs at the State Department and diplomatic missions overseas in what officials believe would be one of the largest one-year boosts to the ranks of the foreign service.

The department is facing a critical shortage of diplomats, and many embassies are operating at 70 percent of their desired staffing levels. Last fall, the department said 10 percent of vacant positions would have to remain unfilled this year because of a lack of personnel.

The plan includes 450 jobs to free up current diplomats for intensive language and national security training; 350 posts for a new Civilian Stabilization Program, which would work to improve conditions in post-conflict zones; 200 diplomatic security agents; and 50 political advisers for military commands.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has lobbied hard for the new hires, making several appearances before a White House budget appeals committee to fight efforts to trim the proposal, officials said.

Hot Pursuit. NYT:

American military forces in Iraq were authorized to pursue former members of Saddam Hussein’s government and terrorists across Iraq’s borders into Iran and Syria, according to a classified 2005 document that has been made public by an independent Web site.

The document, which was disclosed by the organization Wikileaks and which American officials said appeared authentic, outlined the rules of engagement for the American division that was based in Baghdad and central Iraq that year.

It also provided instructions for how to deal with the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr: his status as a hostile foe was “suspended,” and he and his key associates were not to be attacked except in self-defense.

Wikileaks, a Web site that encourages posting of leaked materials, says its goal in disclosing secret documents is to reveal “unethical behavior” by governments and corporations. It has previously posted the United States military’s manual for operating its prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; a military assessment of a 2004 attack in Falluja; and lists of American military equipment in Iraq.

The American military command in Baghdad on Sunday sharply criticized the group’s decision to post the document.

“While we will not comment on whether this is, in fact, an official document, we do consider the deliberate release of what Wikileaks believes to be a classified document is irresponsible and, if valid, could put U.S. military personnel at risk,” said Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, a spokesman for the command.

Rules of engagement in Iraq, which cover the procedures for using force on a battlefield in which insurgents and terrorists mix with civilians, have long been considered highly classified. The American military’s concern is that adversaries will be able to adjust their tactics if they know the rules that describe the specific circumstances in which force may and may not be used.

The 2005 document covers the procedures used by Multi-National Division Baghdad, the American unit that operated in the Iraqi capital and central Iraq. At a time when sectarian divisions had brought Iraq to a low-level civil war, the document suggests that capturing and killing former members of Mr. Hussein’s government was still a concern.

In a section on crossing international borders, the document said the permission of the American defense secretary was required before American forces could cross into or fly over Iranian or Syrian territory. Such actions, the document suggested, would probably also require the approval of President Bush.

But the document said that there were cases in which such approval was not required: when American forces were in hot pursuit of former members of Mr. Hussein’s government or terrorists. ...

First suicide attack in Israel in a year kills woman at a shopping mall in Dimona, near the site of Israel's nuclear program. Update: Dimona bombers came from Hebron, Hamas claims responsibility.

When did that happen? Giants stun Patriots.

NYT: Pentagon budget -- excluding costs of Iraq and Afghanistan - tops $515 billion, most in history, adjusted for inflation. "Since coming to office, the administration has increased baseline military spending by 30 percent over all, a figure sure to be noted in the coming budget battles as the American economy seems headed downward and government social spending is strained, especially by health-care costs. [...] Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Admiral Mullen have said military spending should not drop below 4 percent of the national economy. 'I really do believe this 4 percent floor is important,' [Centcom commander] Admiral [Michael] Mullen said. 'It’s really important, given the world we’re living in, given the threats that we see out there, the risks that are, in fact, global, not just in the Middle East.'"

Jonathan Stein decodes delegates.

The AP obtains previously unpublished death photo of WWII war correspondent Ernie Pyle.

Jerusalem Post: "Israel did not have a clear idea of the nature of the facility it targeted in Syria in September 2007, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh posits in a New Yorker article scheduled to be published next week. The article, titled A shot in the dark, cites interviews with American, Israeli and Syrian sources. Hersh, a Pulitzer prize winner for his exposes on the My Lai massacre of 1968, claimed in his article that Israel decided to bomb the facility before its exact purpose was established. Speaking on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Hersh said that the primary objective of the bombing was to send a forceful message to Iran. He added that the most remarkable feature of the operation was the absolute silence of everyone involved given that bombing another country constitutes a casus beli."

Slate is excerpting Fred Kaplan's new book, Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power.

Jeff Stein: State secrets cases come to a boil.

We hear Sy Hersh has a piece out this weekend on those Israeli strikes on a facility in Syria last fall about which John Bolton was agitating at a conference we attended last week in Israel for the US and Israel to declassify what they could.

Newsweek:

Last June, Bill Clinton took a break from helping his wife run for president to take care of some business of his own. He jetted off to the Black Sea resort of Yalta for an international conference sponsored by one of his good friends: Victor Pinchuk, a billionaire steel magnate and one of the richest men in Ukraine. In recent years, Pinchuk has become a fixture in Clinton's world, in part because Pinchuk has contributed millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, the former president's charity that fights AIDS and poverty. Pinchuk's generosity paid dividends. He was a guest at the inauguration of Clinton's presidential library in Little Rock, and he attended Clinton's exclusive 60th birthday bash in New York.

Pinchuk won an even bigger favor when Clinton agreed to speak at the Yalta conference. Clinton dazzled the audience with a powerful address about the global challenges facing Ukraine. But he also inadvertently caused a stir when he was embraced by Pinchuk's father-in-law, Ukraine's former president Leonid Kuchma, whose authoritarian rule had been condemned by the State Department. Three years ago, a Ukrainian government investigation linked Kuchma's regime to the decapitation in 2000 of dissident journalist Georgy Gongadze. When Gongadze's widow, Myroslava, saw a newspaper photo of Clinton and Kuchma at the conference, "I wanted to throw up," she told NEWSWEEK. Clinton, she says, was being used by Pinchuk "to clean up and legitimize Kuchma's legacy." (A Clinton spokesman declined to comment on the ex-president's encounter with Kuchma.)

If Hillary Clinton had been seen with a discredited former autocrat, it would have made front pages across the country. But Bill's Yalta visit went unnoticed outside Ukraine. The trip illustrates the unusual position the former president is in. ...

Bad news.