Property downtown regularly trades for up to $50 a square foot. Assuming a conservative price of $30 per square foot, this property is worth $7.68 million. Personally, I think the sat is probably worth closer to $50 a foot or $12.3 million. SCE&G is on the hook for the environmental liability so unless I did my math wrong, we just gave away $3.68 million - at least. The reason for this - we need the cash today.
SCE&G-Columbia deal good news for buses - Local / Metro - The State
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Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Gov. Sanford at Naked Hiking Day?
Sanford disappears to hike Appalachian Trail (on Naked Hiking Day)
By Jimmy Orr 06.23.09
We’re not suggesting that the formerly missing Governor of South Carolina specifically ditched his family and security detail to go hiking on Naked Hiking Day. But that’s what he ended up doing.
Until late yesterday, no one would say publicly where he was. Poof. He just disappeared.
The story started to resemble a John Grisham novel. A southern conservative governor and very vocal critic of a popular liberal president eluded his security detail and completely disappeared with his last known whereabouts — before he (or someone) turned off his cell phones — somewhere outside of Atlanta.
Staff was silent. Some were talking about succession plans. The First Lady though said she wasn’t concerned. “He was writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids,” she said.
But many wondered aloud how this traditional, family-loving, Republican governor of a southern state could miss Fathers Day. After all he’s got four children! Was something sinister in the air?
Then it took a Farrelly brothers screenplay type of twist. Sanford had not disappeared. According to his spokesman, he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Coincidentally, on Naked Hiking Day.
It’s a big tradition. Many hikers celebrate the summer solstice by hiking au naturel. It just so happened the solstice occurred on Fathers Day — one of the days Sanford was hiking.
Late last night his spokesman, Joel Sawyer expressed remorse for not divulging details earlier.
“The governor is hiking along the Appalachian Trail,” Sawyer said. “I apologize for taking so long to send this update, and was waiting to see if a more definitive idea of what part of the Trail he was on before we did so.”
If he did participate in the summer solstice celebration (which we acknowledge is not likely), he could get into some real trouble. Rangers and police warn that people caught outdoors in the altogether could be charged with indecent exposure. Managers of the Appalachian Trail, where the tradition is sometimes observed by those trekking from Georgia to Maine, also discourage nudity.
“It’s just rude,” said Brian King, spokesman for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy in Harpers Ferry, W.Va. “People are out there hiking with their kids and families, and there are Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts.”
When will Sanford re-emerge? His spokesman gave no details.
“We knew he would be difficult to reach, and that he would be checking in infrequently. Given the media attention this has generated, we’ll obviously update you once we have some more specifics to pass along,” Sawyer said.
“He’s an avid outdoorsman,” Sawyer added. “Nobody’s ever accused our governor of being conventional.”
By Jimmy Orr 06.23.09
We’re not suggesting that the formerly missing Governor of South Carolina specifically ditched his family and security detail to go hiking on Naked Hiking Day. But that’s what he ended up doing.
Until late yesterday, no one would say publicly where he was. Poof. He just disappeared.
The story started to resemble a John Grisham novel. A southern conservative governor and very vocal critic of a popular liberal president eluded his security detail and completely disappeared with his last known whereabouts — before he (or someone) turned off his cell phones — somewhere outside of Atlanta.
Staff was silent. Some were talking about succession plans. The First Lady though said she wasn’t concerned. “He was writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids,” she said.
But many wondered aloud how this traditional, family-loving, Republican governor of a southern state could miss Fathers Day. After all he’s got four children! Was something sinister in the air?
Then it took a Farrelly brothers screenplay type of twist. Sanford had not disappeared. According to his spokesman, he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Coincidentally, on Naked Hiking Day.
It’s a big tradition. Many hikers celebrate the summer solstice by hiking au naturel. It just so happened the solstice occurred on Fathers Day — one of the days Sanford was hiking.
Late last night his spokesman, Joel Sawyer expressed remorse for not divulging details earlier.
“The governor is hiking along the Appalachian Trail,” Sawyer said. “I apologize for taking so long to send this update, and was waiting to see if a more definitive idea of what part of the Trail he was on before we did so.”
If he did participate in the summer solstice celebration (which we acknowledge is not likely), he could get into some real trouble. Rangers and police warn that people caught outdoors in the altogether could be charged with indecent exposure. Managers of the Appalachian Trail, where the tradition is sometimes observed by those trekking from Georgia to Maine, also discourage nudity.
“It’s just rude,” said Brian King, spokesman for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy in Harpers Ferry, W.Va. “People are out there hiking with their kids and families, and there are Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts.”
When will Sanford re-emerge? His spokesman gave no details.
“We knew he would be difficult to reach, and that he would be checking in infrequently. Given the media attention this has generated, we’ll obviously update you once we have some more specifics to pass along,” Sawyer said.
“He’s an avid outdoorsman,” Sawyer added. “Nobody’s ever accused our governor of being conventional.”
Thursday, April 30, 2009
I Wear My Hat Backwards
I am not sure how we got so fortunate to have Michael Steele become the head of the RNC but he is almost a good as Biden at saying stupid stuff. Fortunately, he plays for them and not us.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Fed Fights a Record Global Bank Run (From Barron's)
I know bailing out the banks is very unpopular but as the data from the 4th Q 2008 is beginning to show, it was necessary. Had we not done it we would be well on the way to a second Great Depression.
By RANDALL W. FORSYTH
New data show authorities' response was equal to the crisis -- unlike in the 1930s.
THE FEDERAL RESERVE has been roundly castigated in some quarters -- even former high officials of the central bank -- for its aggressive and unprecedented steps to combat the credit crisis.
But data just released by the Bank for International Settlements suggest that, if anything, the expansionary measures taken by the Fed (and in concert with the Treasury) were dwarfed by the record contraction in the global banking system brought on by the crisis.
According to the BIS, which acts as a central bank for central banks, total bank claims shrank by $1.8 trillion in the fourth quarter, or 5.4%, to $31 trillion. This was the largest decline ever recorded.
In other words, there never was a global run on the banking system such as the one seen in the final three months of 2008, which followed the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the near-collapse of American International Group (ticker: AIG) in September. The numbers serve to confirm the extent of the tsunami the swept through the world's financial system.
As the balance sheets of the global banking system threatened to shrink like a dying star and create an economic black hole that could suck in the world's economy, central banks and treasuries around the world responded in kind.
In the U.S., the Fed doubled the size of its balance sheet, to about $2 trillion from $900 billion in the fourth quarter, and is in the process of adding another $1.15 trillion to its assets through the purchase of Treasury and U.S. agency obligations and mortgage-backed securities. Meanwhile, the federal government established the Troubled Asset Relief Program to pump $700 billion into the banking system.
Meanwhile, authorities abroad have established similar programs, notably in the U.K. Central banks from Japan to Canada have embarked on similar "quantitative easing" plans, effectively printing money to offset the credit contraction that has taken place in unprecedented proportion.
Unlike in the 1930s, when central banks actually aided and abetted the collapse of the banking system, today's leaders responded to the unprecedented crisis in the fourth quarter with equally unprecedented force.
Yet, Fed officials find themselves uncharacteristically on the defensive for their actions, even from former, highly respected officials of the central bank. As with former presidents, retired Fed officials generally have followed the protocol of not criticizing their successors.
Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who saw through the fight against inflation in the late 1970s and early 1980s against fierce opposition from all quarters, has not been so reticent of late. While he kept mum during the term of his direct successor, Alan Greenspan, he has taken to task the Bernanke Fed, as well as the Treasury, for their aggressive counter-attacks against the credit crisis.
"I don't think the political system will tolerate the degree of activity that the Federal Reserve, in conjunction with the Treasury, has taken," Volcker said a symposium on monetary policy in Nashville, Tenn., last week.
Similarly, Bloomberg News quoted William Poole, the monetarist former president of the St. Louis Fed, as complaining that the central bank's actions threaten inflation. Fed officials are "dramatically underplaying the risks and the liability side of the balance sheet," said the economist who now is a consultant to an investment group.
Yet, the effects of the shrinkage of the private banking system's balance sheet are unequivocally evident. It's now history that fourth-quarter gross domestic product shriveled at a 6.3% annual rate. What's become apparent is that the real output of the finance industry shrank last year at nearly twice the previous record rate of decline, according to JP Morgan Chase (JPM) economist Michael Feroli.
Real output in the finance industry fell 3.0% in 2008, compared to the previous record of a 1.6% decline in 1958. Because finance looms much larger in the economy, last year's contraction shaved a hefty 0.24% from GDP, compared to just 0.05% in 1958.
From 1997 to 2000, finance typically kicked about 0.5 percentage points to GDP growth, Feroli notes. In 2008, only construction and manufacturing detracted as much or more than finance from GDP, 0.24% and 0.32%, respectively.
Construction and manufacturing are directly affected by the collapse in credit, so the financial travails extend far beyond Wall Street. Now, however, policy makers are accused of being too solicitous of Wall Street.
To be sure, banks, including the I-banks, have benefited from the actions of the Fed and the Treasury. But that is separate from the question of the macroeconomic impact of their actions.
Those who contend that the expansion of central bank balance sheets is inflationary ignore the contraction of balance sheets in the banking system, as well as the so-called shadow banking system of assets and liabilities not recorded on banks' books.
This analysis is very different from arguments that appeal to the "output gap," the difference between the economy's potential output and actual production. That analysis effectively says that high unemployment will hold down wages and prices, which manifestly did not happen in the staflationary 'Seventies.
Inflation, as Milton Friedman taught, is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. Yet the current central-bank expansion is offsetting the contraction in the banking system -- which Friedman criticized the Fed for failing to do in the 1930s.
The new BIS data bear out the justification for the Fed's actions, notwithstanding the critics' claims.
By RANDALL W. FORSYTH
New data show authorities' response was equal to the crisis -- unlike in the 1930s.
THE FEDERAL RESERVE has been roundly castigated in some quarters -- even former high officials of the central bank -- for its aggressive and unprecedented steps to combat the credit crisis.
But data just released by the Bank for International Settlements suggest that, if anything, the expansionary measures taken by the Fed (and in concert with the Treasury) were dwarfed by the record contraction in the global banking system brought on by the crisis.
According to the BIS, which acts as a central bank for central banks, total bank claims shrank by $1.8 trillion in the fourth quarter, or 5.4%, to $31 trillion. This was the largest decline ever recorded.
In other words, there never was a global run on the banking system such as the one seen in the final three months of 2008, which followed the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the near-collapse of American International Group (ticker: AIG) in September. The numbers serve to confirm the extent of the tsunami the swept through the world's financial system.
As the balance sheets of the global banking system threatened to shrink like a dying star and create an economic black hole that could suck in the world's economy, central banks and treasuries around the world responded in kind.
In the U.S., the Fed doubled the size of its balance sheet, to about $2 trillion from $900 billion in the fourth quarter, and is in the process of adding another $1.15 trillion to its assets through the purchase of Treasury and U.S. agency obligations and mortgage-backed securities. Meanwhile, the federal government established the Troubled Asset Relief Program to pump $700 billion into the banking system.
Meanwhile, authorities abroad have established similar programs, notably in the U.K. Central banks from Japan to Canada have embarked on similar "quantitative easing" plans, effectively printing money to offset the credit contraction that has taken place in unprecedented proportion.
Unlike in the 1930s, when central banks actually aided and abetted the collapse of the banking system, today's leaders responded to the unprecedented crisis in the fourth quarter with equally unprecedented force.
Yet, Fed officials find themselves uncharacteristically on the defensive for their actions, even from former, highly respected officials of the central bank. As with former presidents, retired Fed officials generally have followed the protocol of not criticizing their successors.
Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who saw through the fight against inflation in the late 1970s and early 1980s against fierce opposition from all quarters, has not been so reticent of late. While he kept mum during the term of his direct successor, Alan Greenspan, he has taken to task the Bernanke Fed, as well as the Treasury, for their aggressive counter-attacks against the credit crisis.
"I don't think the political system will tolerate the degree of activity that the Federal Reserve, in conjunction with the Treasury, has taken," Volcker said a symposium on monetary policy in Nashville, Tenn., last week.
Similarly, Bloomberg News quoted William Poole, the monetarist former president of the St. Louis Fed, as complaining that the central bank's actions threaten inflation. Fed officials are "dramatically underplaying the risks and the liability side of the balance sheet," said the economist who now is a consultant to an investment group.
Yet, the effects of the shrinkage of the private banking system's balance sheet are unequivocally evident. It's now history that fourth-quarter gross domestic product shriveled at a 6.3% annual rate. What's become apparent is that the real output of the finance industry shrank last year at nearly twice the previous record rate of decline, according to JP Morgan Chase (JPM) economist Michael Feroli.
Real output in the finance industry fell 3.0% in 2008, compared to the previous record of a 1.6% decline in 1958. Because finance looms much larger in the economy, last year's contraction shaved a hefty 0.24% from GDP, compared to just 0.05% in 1958.
From 1997 to 2000, finance typically kicked about 0.5 percentage points to GDP growth, Feroli notes. In 2008, only construction and manufacturing detracted as much or more than finance from GDP, 0.24% and 0.32%, respectively.
Construction and manufacturing are directly affected by the collapse in credit, so the financial travails extend far beyond Wall Street. Now, however, policy makers are accused of being too solicitous of Wall Street.
To be sure, banks, including the I-banks, have benefited from the actions of the Fed and the Treasury. But that is separate from the question of the macroeconomic impact of their actions.
Those who contend that the expansion of central bank balance sheets is inflationary ignore the contraction of balance sheets in the banking system, as well as the so-called shadow banking system of assets and liabilities not recorded on banks' books.
This analysis is very different from arguments that appeal to the "output gap," the difference between the economy's potential output and actual production. That analysis effectively says that high unemployment will hold down wages and prices, which manifestly did not happen in the staflationary 'Seventies.
Inflation, as Milton Friedman taught, is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. Yet the current central-bank expansion is offsetting the contraction in the banking system -- which Friedman criticized the Fed for failing to do in the 1930s.
The new BIS data bear out the justification for the Fed's actions, notwithstanding the critics' claims.
Monday, April 20, 2009
More Evidence of Bush Administration Corruption
There continue to be a trickle of these stories coming out. (DOJ dropping case against Sen. Stevens). I think in time we will collectively view the Bush administration as corrupt as the Nixon administration. It looks like DOJ was the nexus of lots of the problem (just like Nixon).
Wiretap Recorded Rep. Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC
By Jeff Stein, CQ SpyTalk Columnist
Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.
Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.
In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.
Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”
Harman declined to discuss the wiretap allegations, instead issuing an angry denial through a spokesman.
“These claims are an outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact,” Harman said in a prepared statement. “I never engaged in any such activity. Those who are peddling these false accusations should be ashamed of themselves.”
It’s true that allegations of pro-Israel lobbyists trying to help Harman get the chairmanship of the intelligence panel by lobbying and raising money for Pelosi aren’t new. They were widely reported in 2006, along with allegations that the FBI launched an investigation of Harman that was eventually dropped for a “lack of evidence.”
What is new is that Harman is said to have been picked up on a court-approved NSA tap directed at alleged Israel covert action operations in Washington. And that, contrary to reports that the Harman investigation was dropped for “lack of evidence,” it was Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush’s top counsel and then attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe.
Why? Because, according to three top former national security officials, Gonzales wanted Harman to be able to help defend the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about break in The New York Times and engulf the White House. As for there being “no evidence” to support the FBI probe, a source with first-hand knowledge of the wiretaps called that “bull****.”
“I read those transcripts,” said the source, who like other former national security officials familiar with the transcript discussed it only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of domestic NSA eavesdropping.
“It’s true,” added another former national security official who was briefed on the NSA intercepts involving Harman. “She was on there.”
Such accounts go a long way toward explaining not only why Harman was denied the gavel of the House Intelligence Committee, but failed to land a top job at the CIA or Homeland Security Department in the Obama administration.
Gonzales said through a spokesman that he would have no comment on the allegations in this story.
The identity of the “suspected Israeli agent” could not be determined with certainty, and officials were extremely skittish about going beyond Harman’s involvement to discuss other aspects of the NSA eavesdropping operation against Israeli targets, which remain highly classified. But according to the former officials familiar with the transcripts, the alleged Israeli agent asked Harman if she could use any influence she had with Gonzales, who became attorney general in 2005, to get the charges against the AIPAC officials reduced to lesser felonies. AIPAC official Steve Rosen had been charged with two counts of conspiring to communicate, and communicating national defense information to people not entitled to receive it. Weissman was charged with conspiracy. AIPAC dismissed the two in May 2005, about five months before the events here unfolded.
Harman responded that Gonzales would be a difficult task, because he “just follows White House orders,” but that she might be able to influence lesser officials, according to an official who read the transcript.
Justice Department attorneys in the intelligence and public corruption units who read the transcripts decided that Harman had committed a “completed crime,” a legal term meaning that there was evidence that she had attempted to complete it, three former officials said.
And they were prepared to open a case on her, which would include electronic surveillance approved by the so-called FISA Court, the secret panel established by the 1979 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to hear government wiretap requests.
First, however, they needed the certification of top intelligence officials that Harman’s wiretapped conversations justified a national security investigation. Then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss reviewed the Harman transcript and signed off on the Justice Department’s FISA application. He also decided that, under a protocol involving the separation of powers, it was time to notify then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Minority Leader Pelosi, of the FBI’s impending national security investigation of a member of Congress — to wit, Harman.
Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, deemed the matter particularly urgent because of Harman’s rank as the panel’s top Democrat. But that’s when, according to knowledgeable officials, Attorney General Gonzales intervened. According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he “needed Jane” to help support the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.
Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program. He was right.
On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, “I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities.”
Pelosi and Hastert never did get the briefing.
And thanks to grateful Bush administration officials, the investigation of Harman was effectively dead.
Many people want to keep it that way.
Goss declined an interview request, and the CIA did not respond to a request to interview former Director Michael V. Hayden , who was informed of the Harman transcripts but chose to take no action, two knowledgeable former officials alleged.
Likewise, the first director of national intelligence, former ambassador John D. Negroponte, was opposed to an FBI investigation of Harman, according to officials familiar with his thinking, and let the matter die. (Negroponte was traveling last week and did not respond to questions relayed to him through an assistant.)
Harman dodged a bullet, say disgusted former officials who have pursued the AIPAC case for years. She was protected by an administration desperate for help.
“It’s the deepest kind of corruption,” said a recently retired longtime national security official who was closely involved in AIPAC investigation, “which was years in the making.
“It’s a story about the corruption of government — not legal corruption necessarily, but ethical corruption.”
Ironically, however, nothing much was gained by it.
The Justice Department did not back away from charging Rosen and fellow AIPAC official Keith Weissman with espionage (for allegedly giving classified Pentagon documents to Israeli officials).
Gonzales was engulfed by the NSA warrantless wiretapping scandal. And Jane Harman was relegated to chairing a House Homeland Security subcommittee.
Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com
Wiretap Recorded Rep. Harman Promising to Intervene for AIPAC
By Jeff Stein, CQ SpyTalk Columnist
Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.
Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.
In exchange for Harman’s help, the sources said, the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., then-House minority leader, to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections, which the Democrats were heavily favored to win.
Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.”
Harman declined to discuss the wiretap allegations, instead issuing an angry denial through a spokesman.
“These claims are an outrageous and recycled canard, and have no basis in fact,” Harman said in a prepared statement. “I never engaged in any such activity. Those who are peddling these false accusations should be ashamed of themselves.”
It’s true that allegations of pro-Israel lobbyists trying to help Harman get the chairmanship of the intelligence panel by lobbying and raising money for Pelosi aren’t new. They were widely reported in 2006, along with allegations that the FBI launched an investigation of Harman that was eventually dropped for a “lack of evidence.”
What is new is that Harman is said to have been picked up on a court-approved NSA tap directed at alleged Israel covert action operations in Washington. And that, contrary to reports that the Harman investigation was dropped for “lack of evidence,” it was Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush’s top counsel and then attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe.
Why? Because, according to three top former national security officials, Gonzales wanted Harman to be able to help defend the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about break in The New York Times and engulf the White House. As for there being “no evidence” to support the FBI probe, a source with first-hand knowledge of the wiretaps called that “bull****.”
“I read those transcripts,” said the source, who like other former national security officials familiar with the transcript discussed it only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of domestic NSA eavesdropping.
“It’s true,” added another former national security official who was briefed on the NSA intercepts involving Harman. “She was on there.”
Such accounts go a long way toward explaining not only why Harman was denied the gavel of the House Intelligence Committee, but failed to land a top job at the CIA or Homeland Security Department in the Obama administration.
Gonzales said through a spokesman that he would have no comment on the allegations in this story.
The identity of the “suspected Israeli agent” could not be determined with certainty, and officials were extremely skittish about going beyond Harman’s involvement to discuss other aspects of the NSA eavesdropping operation against Israeli targets, which remain highly classified. But according to the former officials familiar with the transcripts, the alleged Israeli agent asked Harman if she could use any influence she had with Gonzales, who became attorney general in 2005, to get the charges against the AIPAC officials reduced to lesser felonies. AIPAC official Steve Rosen had been charged with two counts of conspiring to communicate, and communicating national defense information to people not entitled to receive it. Weissman was charged with conspiracy. AIPAC dismissed the two in May 2005, about five months before the events here unfolded.
Harman responded that Gonzales would be a difficult task, because he “just follows White House orders,” but that she might be able to influence lesser officials, according to an official who read the transcript.
Justice Department attorneys in the intelligence and public corruption units who read the transcripts decided that Harman had committed a “completed crime,” a legal term meaning that there was evidence that she had attempted to complete it, three former officials said.
And they were prepared to open a case on her, which would include electronic surveillance approved by the so-called FISA Court, the secret panel established by the 1979 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to hear government wiretap requests.
First, however, they needed the certification of top intelligence officials that Harman’s wiretapped conversations justified a national security investigation. Then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss reviewed the Harman transcript and signed off on the Justice Department’s FISA application. He also decided that, under a protocol involving the separation of powers, it was time to notify then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and Minority Leader Pelosi, of the FBI’s impending national security investigation of a member of Congress — to wit, Harman.
Goss, a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, deemed the matter particularly urgent because of Harman’s rank as the panel’s top Democrat. But that’s when, according to knowledgeable officials, Attorney General Gonzales intervened. According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he “needed Jane” to help support the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.
Harman, he told Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program. He was right.
On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, “I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities.”
Pelosi and Hastert never did get the briefing.
And thanks to grateful Bush administration officials, the investigation of Harman was effectively dead.
Many people want to keep it that way.
Goss declined an interview request, and the CIA did not respond to a request to interview former Director Michael V. Hayden , who was informed of the Harman transcripts but chose to take no action, two knowledgeable former officials alleged.
Likewise, the first director of national intelligence, former ambassador John D. Negroponte, was opposed to an FBI investigation of Harman, according to officials familiar with his thinking, and let the matter die. (Negroponte was traveling last week and did not respond to questions relayed to him through an assistant.)
Harman dodged a bullet, say disgusted former officials who have pursued the AIPAC case for years. She was protected by an administration desperate for help.
“It’s the deepest kind of corruption,” said a recently retired longtime national security official who was closely involved in AIPAC investigation, “which was years in the making.
“It’s a story about the corruption of government — not legal corruption necessarily, but ethical corruption.”
Ironically, however, nothing much was gained by it.
The Justice Department did not back away from charging Rosen and fellow AIPAC official Keith Weissman with espionage (for allegedly giving classified Pentagon documents to Israeli officials).
Gonzales was engulfed by the NSA warrantless wiretapping scandal. And Jane Harman was relegated to chairing a House Homeland Security subcommittee.
Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Happy Patriots Day (by Paul Begala)
(CNN) -- Happy Patriots' Day. April 15 is the one day a year when our country asks something of us -- or at least the vast majority of us.
For those who wear a military uniform, those who serve the rest of us as policemen and firefighters and teachers and other public servants, every day is patriots' day. They work hard for our country; many risk their lives -- and some lose their lives.
But for the rest of us, the civilian majority, our government asks very little. Except for April 15. On this day, our government asks that we pay our fair share of taxes to keep our beloved country strong and safe.
Freedom isn't free. That's what the courageous World War II veterans of the American Legion taught me back in Texas Boys State decades ago. That phrase had special meaning for them. Those guys had seen buddies blown apart at Anzio or Guadalcanal.
I grew up in a different era. There was no draft, and while I have friends and family members who joined the military, most of my peers, like me, opted for the security and prosperity of the private sector.
This country has showered me with the blessings of liberty. So what do I owe my country in return? Paying my fair share of taxes, it seems, is the least I can do. Thanks to President Obama and the Democratic Congress, 95 percent of Americans will get a tax cut this year. No one -- not even the wealthiest 1 percent -- will have to pay higher income taxes until 2011.
So why are a bunch of Fox News clowns and right-wing cranks hosting "tea parties" all over the country? The Boston Tea Party, in case the clods at Fox didn't know it, protested "taxation without representation." Note the second word: without. The goofballs tossing tea bags today have representation. They voted in the election; they lost.
That a bunch of overpaid media millionaires would lead a faux-populist revolt is comical. They somehow held their populist instincts in check as George W. Bush and the Republicans cut taxes on the idle rich and put the screws to the working stiffs.
Bush's tax policies were a godsend to the Paris Hilton class, but they sent the country on the road to bankruptcy and helped ruin the economy. But now that we the people have decided to set things right, now that we've hired Obama to fix the mess conservatives created, now they're protesting?
Give me a break. Instead of tossing tea bags for the cameras, the Fox phonies ought to go to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. There they would find better, braver men who have truly sacrificed for their country. They deserve nothing but the best -- not the shameful and shoddy conditions they endured during the Bush administration.
You want something to protest? How 'bout protesting how little we give back to our veterans? Or how 'bout protesting that the entire budget of the National Cancer Institute (where government researchers battle a disease that will strike half of all men and a third of all women) is 0.03 percent of what we gave the bandits at American International Group alone? Oh, but veterans benefits and cancer research might cost money. It might require -- dare I say it? -- paying taxes.
If the whiners at Fox News want to advertise their selfishness, they are free to do so. But please don't dress it up as patriotism. Patriotism is putting your country ahead of yourself -- which is the precise opposite of what the tea party plutocrats are doing.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul Begala.
For those who wear a military uniform, those who serve the rest of us as policemen and firefighters and teachers and other public servants, every day is patriots' day. They work hard for our country; many risk their lives -- and some lose their lives.
But for the rest of us, the civilian majority, our government asks very little. Except for April 15. On this day, our government asks that we pay our fair share of taxes to keep our beloved country strong and safe.
Freedom isn't free. That's what the courageous World War II veterans of the American Legion taught me back in Texas Boys State decades ago. That phrase had special meaning for them. Those guys had seen buddies blown apart at Anzio or Guadalcanal.
I grew up in a different era. There was no draft, and while I have friends and family members who joined the military, most of my peers, like me, opted for the security and prosperity of the private sector.
This country has showered me with the blessings of liberty. So what do I owe my country in return? Paying my fair share of taxes, it seems, is the least I can do. Thanks to President Obama and the Democratic Congress, 95 percent of Americans will get a tax cut this year. No one -- not even the wealthiest 1 percent -- will have to pay higher income taxes until 2011.
So why are a bunch of Fox News clowns and right-wing cranks hosting "tea parties" all over the country? The Boston Tea Party, in case the clods at Fox didn't know it, protested "taxation without representation." Note the second word: without. The goofballs tossing tea bags today have representation. They voted in the election; they lost.
That a bunch of overpaid media millionaires would lead a faux-populist revolt is comical. They somehow held their populist instincts in check as George W. Bush and the Republicans cut taxes on the idle rich and put the screws to the working stiffs.
Bush's tax policies were a godsend to the Paris Hilton class, but they sent the country on the road to bankruptcy and helped ruin the economy. But now that we the people have decided to set things right, now that we've hired Obama to fix the mess conservatives created, now they're protesting?
Give me a break. Instead of tossing tea bags for the cameras, the Fox phonies ought to go to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. There they would find better, braver men who have truly sacrificed for their country. They deserve nothing but the best -- not the shameful and shoddy conditions they endured during the Bush administration.
You want something to protest? How 'bout protesting how little we give back to our veterans? Or how 'bout protesting that the entire budget of the National Cancer Institute (where government researchers battle a disease that will strike half of all men and a third of all women) is 0.03 percent of what we gave the bandits at American International Group alone? Oh, but veterans benefits and cancer research might cost money. It might require -- dare I say it? -- paying taxes.
If the whiners at Fox News want to advertise their selfishness, they are free to do so. But please don't dress it up as patriotism. Patriotism is putting your country ahead of yourself -- which is the precise opposite of what the tea party plutocrats are doing.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul Begala.
Monday, March 30, 2009
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