NaturalNews.com April 30 2010
Health freedom alert: Congressman Waxman sneaks anti-vitamin amendment into Wall Street reform bill
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) Of all the sneaky tactics practiced in Washington D.C., this recent action by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) is one of the most insidious: While no one was looking, he injected amendment language into the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173) that would expand the powers of the FTC (not the FDA, but the FTC) to terrorize nutritional supplement companies by greatly expanding the power of the FTC to make its own laws that target dietary supplement companies.
This is a little-known secret about the FTC and the nutritional supplements business: The FTC routinely targets nutritional supplement companies that are merely telling the truth about their products. Some companies are threatened by merely linking to published scientific studies about their products.
The FTC does much the same thing. They target a particular company that's having success in the natural products marketplace, then they accuse that company of "inferring" that their products have some health benefit. From there, the FTC demands that the company engage in paying a massive fine to the FTC, which the FTC calls "consumer redress" even though none of the money actually goes to the consumers.
If you try to fight the FTC, they haul you into their own special "FTC courts" which are not public courts where you have the benefit of a jury, but rather they are courts where the judges are actually FTC employees and you have no rights. You are essentially guilty until proven innocent, and virtually no one has been found innocent by the FTC.
If the King says you're guilty, then you're guilty
The FTC also forces you to sign a "consent decree" which involves you admitting to committing crimes that you have actually never committed. These crimes include the "criminal misrepresentation of a product" by, for example, explaining that walnuts help support healthy cholesterol levels or that cherries ease symptoms of inflammation.
Using these methods, the FTC has extorted tens of millions of dollars out of nutritional supplement companies. More importantly, it has terrorized the industry and put several companies out of business, denying the American public access to products that could improve their health and prevent disease.
Waxman wants the FTC to have even more power over your vitamins
Now Congressman Henry Waxman wants to give the FTC even more powers by allowing the FTC to write its own laws without Congressional approval. This would allow a rogue agency to simply invent any new law it wants, such as requiring nutritional supplement companies to spend hundreds of millions of dollars "proving" the efficacy of a vitamin before they can sell it.
This will allow the FTC to utterly circumvent DSHEA -- the law passed in 1994 that provides basic protections to vitamin and supplement manufacturers. This will result in an FTC war on vitamins and supplements that would no doubt see this rogue agency attempting to destroy the entire industry and imprison the founders and executives of all the top supplement manufacturers.
This is how bad things have become in America today: The criminal CEOs of drug companies are allowed to commit felony crimes, engage in routine price fixing fraud and fix their research with fraudulent clinical trials, yet the FTC and FDA do nothing. But when an honest nutritional supplement company says something like, "Walnuts are good for your heart," they get threatened with imprisonment or have their entire life savings stolen away from them by the FTC through a series of "fines."
Your help is urgently needed to halt this madness
Join NaturalNews.com and the Alliance for Natural Health to protest this deceptive action by Henry Waxman -- a lifelong opponent of natural medicine who is trying to covertly inject this expansion of FTC powers into the Finance Reform Bill.
Your help is urgently needed. I don't send out a lot of "urgent call to action" articles and emails, but this is one that definitely demands our collective attention. Please call, fax or email your representatives in Washington and strongly voice your opposition to any expansion of powers of the FTC over dietary supplements. The FTC is already a loose cannon. We don't want to now hand it nuclear weapons that could destroy the entire industry.
Protect your health freedoms or you will lose them! The U.S. Congress is literally just one vote away from granting the FTC dangerous new powers to destroy the natural products industry. A vote could take place as early as this weekend.
Attorney Jonathan Emord had this to say about this issue:
"The provision removing the ban on FTC rulemaking without Congressional preapproval contained in H.R. 4173 invites the very same irresponsible over-regulation of the commercial marketplace that led Congress to enact the ban in the 1980s. FTC has no shortage of power to regulate deceptive advertising; this bill gives it far more discretionary power than it needs, inviting greater abuse and mischief from an agency that suffers virtually no check on its discretion."
Showing posts with label Henry Waxman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Henry Waxman. Show all posts
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Food Freedom is under Assault
http://www.naturalnews.com/026114.html
Food Freedom is under Assault, H.R. 759 Worse than H.R. 875
Friday, April 24, 2009
Ethan Huff, citizen journalist
Key concepts: Food, Food safety and Freedom
(NaturalNews) Salmonella outbreaks, food contamination, and other regulatory deficiencies over the nation's food supply during the past several years have led to a barrage of proposed legislation aimed at improving food safety. H.R. 875, H.R. 759, and H.R. 1332, are three major bills that have been proposed in recent months to address food safety issues, all of which have been tailored to benefit large, industrial food processors at the expense of small, family farms. Watchdog groups, including the Cornucopia Institute, are warning that H.R. 759, expected to be voted upon before Memorial Day, is the bill most likely to make it out of committee to Congress for a vote. Various portions of H.R. 875 and H.R. 1332 are expected to be implemented within the final version of H.R. 759.
Authored and introduced by Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) on January 28, 2009, H.R. 759, The FDA Globalization Act, would do the very thing its name implies; it would grant full authority to the FDA to set minimum, "science-based" standards for what it deems the safe production and harvesting of produce in the "global market".
According to the Cornucopia Institute, all "food processing facilities", or farms, would be required to register with the FDA and pay annual registration fees for program compliance, as well as other requirements including hazard evaluation, preventive hazard control, and copious record-keeping stipulations, regardless of the farm's size, organic certification, or already-existing safety guidelines.
Similar to H.R. 875, H.R 759 makes no differentiation between "food processing facilities", lumping everything from a small, certified-organic family produce farm to a large, conventional factory farm in its "one-size-fits-all" classification system. In other words, the same regulations placed on large agribusiness would be placed on farmers providing fresh vegetables at the local farmers market. There is also no differentiation in the bill between organic farms, which are already highly regulated and have extremely high standards, and their pesticide-ridden conventional counterparts.
Rather than logically evaluating the root causes of food contamination, which are almost always caused by filthy food processors not maintaining proper standards, these "food safety" bills seem to economically disparage family farms in favor of factory farms and transfer ever-more control over food to the FDA, an odious federal bureaucracy that is unable to enforce the food safety guidelines that are already established.
With the exception of H.R. 875, the food safety bills that have been proposed fail to identify and examine the real causes of food contamination and, instead, tack excessive burdens onto farmers, thus putting many small farms out of business. Even H.R. 875, while mentioning the importance of "identifying and evaluating the sources of potentially hazardous contamination," represents an enormous shift in power from the individual to the state, representing ominous implications for food freedom.
Since foods such as spinach, peppers, almonds, peanuts, and others for which there have been recent contamination outbreaks are not inherently dangerous, it is vital for any food safety legislation to seek to identify the root causes of contamination and deal with them accordingly. Whether it is the filthy animal feedlot up the road that has contaminated with salmonella the water used by the nearby spinach farm, or the improper cleaning of peanut-processing equipment by the industrial peanut processor, the contamination source is virtually never the farm itself, but some other link in the food processing chain. Yet H.R. 759 targets farms with more regulation, particularly disadvantaging small farms. Thus it is important to make Congress aware of the facts and to urge a redirection of food safety efforts towards the real culprits rather than the farmers.
Since H.R. 759 has been referred to, and remains in, the House Energy and Commerce committee, it is important to act now and en masse to oppose it and any food safety legislation that would harm organic and family farms, increase FDA power over the nation's food supply, and bolster Big Agribusiness by squelching competition with one-size-fits-all regulations aimed at putting out of business small farms.
Additionally, any true food safety legislation should require independent analysis into the root causes of food contamination rather than penalize the "food processors" (farms) with overbearing regulatory burdens while allowing the real perpetrators to continue their unacceptable practices.
Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, can be contacted at (202) 225-2927. Congress can also be contacted by calling the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.
The Cornucopia Institute also provides a sample letter that can be downloaded, modified, and sent to one's elected officials.
Now is the time to speak out against illegitimate "food safety" bills in order to protect access to clean, healthy, local food, not to mention the freedom to grow it, sell it, and buy it.
Food Freedom is under Assault, H.R. 759 Worse than H.R. 875
Friday, April 24, 2009
Ethan Huff, citizen journalist
Key concepts: Food, Food safety and Freedom
(NaturalNews) Salmonella outbreaks, food contamination, and other regulatory deficiencies over the nation's food supply during the past several years have led to a barrage of proposed legislation aimed at improving food safety. H.R. 875, H.R. 759, and H.R. 1332, are three major bills that have been proposed in recent months to address food safety issues, all of which have been tailored to benefit large, industrial food processors at the expense of small, family farms. Watchdog groups, including the Cornucopia Institute, are warning that H.R. 759, expected to be voted upon before Memorial Day, is the bill most likely to make it out of committee to Congress for a vote. Various portions of H.R. 875 and H.R. 1332 are expected to be implemented within the final version of H.R. 759.
Authored and introduced by Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) on January 28, 2009, H.R. 759, The FDA Globalization Act, would do the very thing its name implies; it would grant full authority to the FDA to set minimum, "science-based" standards for what it deems the safe production and harvesting of produce in the "global market".
According to the Cornucopia Institute, all "food processing facilities", or farms, would be required to register with the FDA and pay annual registration fees for program compliance, as well as other requirements including hazard evaluation, preventive hazard control, and copious record-keeping stipulations, regardless of the farm's size, organic certification, or already-existing safety guidelines.
Similar to H.R. 875, H.R 759 makes no differentiation between "food processing facilities", lumping everything from a small, certified-organic family produce farm to a large, conventional factory farm in its "one-size-fits-all" classification system. In other words, the same regulations placed on large agribusiness would be placed on farmers providing fresh vegetables at the local farmers market. There is also no differentiation in the bill between organic farms, which are already highly regulated and have extremely high standards, and their pesticide-ridden conventional counterparts.
Rather than logically evaluating the root causes of food contamination, which are almost always caused by filthy food processors not maintaining proper standards, these "food safety" bills seem to economically disparage family farms in favor of factory farms and transfer ever-more control over food to the FDA, an odious federal bureaucracy that is unable to enforce the food safety guidelines that are already established.
With the exception of H.R. 875, the food safety bills that have been proposed fail to identify and examine the real causes of food contamination and, instead, tack excessive burdens onto farmers, thus putting many small farms out of business. Even H.R. 875, while mentioning the importance of "identifying and evaluating the sources of potentially hazardous contamination," represents an enormous shift in power from the individual to the state, representing ominous implications for food freedom.
Since foods such as spinach, peppers, almonds, peanuts, and others for which there have been recent contamination outbreaks are not inherently dangerous, it is vital for any food safety legislation to seek to identify the root causes of contamination and deal with them accordingly. Whether it is the filthy animal feedlot up the road that has contaminated with salmonella the water used by the nearby spinach farm, or the improper cleaning of peanut-processing equipment by the industrial peanut processor, the contamination source is virtually never the farm itself, but some other link in the food processing chain. Yet H.R. 759 targets farms with more regulation, particularly disadvantaging small farms. Thus it is important to make Congress aware of the facts and to urge a redirection of food safety efforts towards the real culprits rather than the farmers.
Since H.R. 759 has been referred to, and remains in, the House Energy and Commerce committee, it is important to act now and en masse to oppose it and any food safety legislation that would harm organic and family farms, increase FDA power over the nation's food supply, and bolster Big Agribusiness by squelching competition with one-size-fits-all regulations aimed at putting out of business small farms.
Additionally, any true food safety legislation should require independent analysis into the root causes of food contamination rather than penalize the "food processors" (farms) with overbearing regulatory burdens while allowing the real perpetrators to continue their unacceptable practices.
Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, can be contacted at (202) 225-2927. Congress can also be contacted by calling the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.
The Cornucopia Institute also provides a sample letter that can be downloaded, modified, and sent to one's elected officials.
Now is the time to speak out against illegitimate "food safety" bills in order to protect access to clean, healthy, local food, not to mention the freedom to grow it, sell it, and buy it.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Questions remain about Rove's CIA leak email
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2995.shtml
Questions remain about Rove's CIA leak email
By Jason Leopold
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Feb 26, 2008
It's been nearly five years since former White House political adviser Karl Rove sent an incriminating email to then Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley indicating that Rove had a candid conversation with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper about covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's prewar Iraq intelligence.
Rove had insisted publicly and privately that he was not the source for a story Cooper wrote that unmasked Plame's affiliation with the CIA in July 2003 nor, Rove said, was he the source who provided syndicated columnist Robert Novak with the same information for a column that was published a few days before Cooper's. The email Rove sent to Hadley on July 11, 2003, just three months before the start of a federal probe into the leak clearly contradicted Rove's account.
Questions about Rove's email to Hadley resurfaced after the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) revealed last April that thousands of emails Rove sent over a four-year period via an email account maintained by the Republican National Committee might have been destroyed. Many of the emails Rove sent using his RNC account pertained to White House business and the fact that it was not archived is said to be a violation of the Presidential Records Act.
Additionally, CREW said it conducted an investigation that discovered the White House lost as many as 10 million emails. The White House said in a court document that it erased backup tapes containing the email archives, some of which relate to a wide-range of administration scandals, including the role of White House officials in the Plame leak.
In late September 2003, three months after he told Hadley in an email that he spoke with Cooper, Rove and about 1,000 other White House staffers were ordered to turn over all email correspondence that contained references to Plame and Wilson to then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales when the leak of Plame's undercover status was referred to federal investigators.
But the Hadley email was never turned over to Gonzales during the early stages of the Plame investigation.
Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, had long maintained that the email was never found during the initial search because the right "search words" weren't used. Some reporters and bloggers have opined the Rove/Hadley email did not turn up because Rove sent it using his Republican National Committee account. But according to a little known story published in The Washington Post in December 2005, Rove used his government account when he sent Hadley an email describing his conversation with Time's Matthew Cooper.
In an email exchange a couple of weeks ago requesting that he clarify his position, Luskin said he "speculated that the [Hadley] email was overlooked because of a gap in search terms, but I have no direct knowledge." That contradicts his previous statements to Newsweek in which Luskin stated unequivocally that the email was not found because the wrong search terms were used.
"Neither Mr. Rove nor I was involved in any manner in the collection of emails or other electronic documents in response to subpoenas from the Special Counsel [Patrick Fitzgerald]," Luskin said. "Mr. Fitzgerald's staff worked directly with the White House counsel and the IT folks from the White House. However, Mr. Fitzgerald did advise me that Mr. Rove had absolutely no responsibility for the oversight and that he has never regarded the failure to turn over the [Hadley] email as 'culpable' by anyone."
That statement, or at least part of it, does not appear to be entirely accurate. In a May 10, 2007, deposition before investigators working for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rove's former assistant, Susan Ralston, testified that during the leak investigation she and Rove were instructed "to go and do keyword searches based on the subpoena that we got, and search all of his folders for keywords." Ralston said during her deposition that there were "six or seven" subpoenas Rove received from Fitzgerald for documents in the Plame leak. Any documents that were found were turned over to Gonzales. Yet the email Rove sent to Hadley was never turned over to Fitzgerald.
Luskin would not provide a copy of that email, which has never been released publicly. He said the contents of the exchange have been "widely reported." Luskin added that he had no interest in providing either the Hadley email "or any other documents," including a copy of a letter Fitzgerald sent Luskin that purportedly cleared Rove of criminal exposure in the leak case, to me because of a story I reported two years ago that stated Rove was indicted by Fitzgerald. Luskin added that I "played a despicable role in circulating false allegations concerning an indictment of Mr. Rove and persisted with the story even after it was demonstrated to be false" and he, therefore, would not provide documentary evidence that could demonstrate his client's innocence.
Fair enough. But Luskin also refused to voluntarily provide Senator Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with the Hadley email and other electronic messages that Rove and Luskin turned over to Fitzgerald. Last May, Leahy issued a subpoena to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for the documents.
The subpoena covered a wide range of emails Rove sent over four years, some of which related to congressional investigations into the firings of nine US attorneys two years ago that Rove is widely believed to have played a hands-on role in.
Gonzales never met Leahy's May 15, 2007 deadline to turn over the emails. So on May 24, 2007, Leahy wrote to Luskin asking if he would forfeit the emails to his committee Luskin and Rove turned over to Fitzgerald. Luskin politely refused, according to a copy of a June 4, 2007, letter he sent to Leahy, obtained by this reporter.
"As you are aware, Mr. Rove cooperated fully with the investigation by the Special Counsel, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, into the disclosure of the identity of a CIA employee. As part of that cooperation, in April 2004, Mr. Rove made available to Mr. Fitzgerald two personal computers, a Blackberry, and a computer furnished to Mr. Rove by the Republican National Committee," Luskin wrote. "Mr. Fitzgerald arranged for the FBI to image all of the data on these computers. Without any constraint by Mr. Rove, Mr. Fitzgerald reviewed all of this data and made and retained copies of any information relevant to his investigation. Because the computers also contained confidential personal information and attorney client communications, Mr. Fitzgerald returned to me for safekeeping the imaged copies made by the FBI."
"The electronic copies made by the FBI, which I retain in their sealed form, only contain information created before early April 2004, when the FBI made the copies," Luskin added. "I have reviewed the documents and testimony made publicly available by this and other congressional committees investigating the termination of the United States Attorneys. I am unaware of any evidence suggesting that Mr. Rove may have played any role whatsoever in this matter before April 2004. Accordingly, I have no reason to believe that the materials in my possession contain any information relevant to this Committee's inquiry."
So what happened? And why didn't investigators, who searched Rove's emails and computers during the early days of the leak probe, find a copy of the email Rove sent Hadley?
A fascinating new book provides some possible answers.
David Gewirtz, a former computer science professor, a former product management director for Symantec who also held the title of "Godfather" at Apple Computer, Inc., and has written more than 600 articles about email, is the author of "Where Have All the Emails Gone?," the definitive account about the circumstances that led to the loss of administration emails. A detective story that reads like a "Dummies" book for the technically challenged, "Where Have All The Emails Gone?" relied upon good old fashioned shoe-leather reporting to tell the story of the missing emails and using the public record in attempting to solve the mystery.
In an interview, Gewirtz said the one possibility that the Rove/Hadley email never surfaced was that it was sent during a time when the White House had switched its email over from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange, an issue in and of itself the author finds suspicious. The Rove/Hadley email may have been lost during the transition to the new email system.
"Why did they migrate at this time? The country was getting ready for war," noted Gewirtz, who said he has been speaking with Senate and House staffers probing the loss of White House emails. "It doesn't make sense that you would want to yank out your communications structure when you're building up toward war. It's crucial for our government to have qualified communications at a critical juncture. It's just mind bogglingly questionable that the White House would change its communication structure at that time period. Why did they need to do it then? It certainly provides a lot of plausible deniability for when emails are scrutinized."
"Another plausible reason, and this is the conspiracy theory, if you yank out an email system there goes your compliance with the Presidential Records act and there's the 'my dog ate it' excuse," Gewirtz said. "There's really no net loss other than a PR loss."
Gewirtz said his biggest concern about the loss of White House emails is the national security implications.
"There's a separate server for political activity. The server is not located or managed by security experts," Gewirtz said. "Emails are sent by White House staffers using an unsecured server. Hundreds of millions of emails are sent through the open Internet. An email message sent by a low level political employee says where the president is traveling. That can be seen by anyone and can put the president at risk. It's something of a disturbing experience talking to Washington politicians. Technical issue takes a back seat based on what the political goal is. The potential loss through homeland security is pretty profound."
In addressing Luskin's explanation that the Hadley email did not turn up because the wrong search terms were used, Gewirtz said that it's a possibility, but a poor excuse for not locating an email.
"You can type search terms that should but won't pick things up directly," he said. "You can choose to spell something wrong. Especially if there is no record of what you are searching."
Congressman Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has been trying to unravel these complicated technical issues for the past seven months. Last July, Waxman wrote Fitzgerald seeking "transcripts, reports, notes, and other documents relating to any interviews outside the presence of the grand jury of" Rove, Hadley, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other former White House officials.
In addition to his search for documents and questions surrounding the Plame leak, Waxman is also investigating how the White House lost millions of emails and why steps were not taken to preserve the electronic messages earlier . . . His committee is scheduled to hold a hearing this morning on the matter.
Gewirtz says that if congressional investigators are serious about tracking down missing White House emails, particularly emails related to the US attorney purge, then they need to start looking in the right place.
"There is a vast amount of email that has gone through the Republican National Committee," Gewirtz said. "If they're looking for a smoking gun on the firing of US attorneys, then its most likely [White House officials who played a role in the dismissals] sent the emails through the RNC system and not the EOP [Executive Office of the President] system. Meanwhile, everyone is looking for emails on the EOP sever because it's sexier. I think they are looking in the wrong place. If I were a betting man, I would say it's in the RNC system."
Still, Waxman said in an interview at his office in late December that he is determined to get answers to some of the lingering questions about Rove's role in the Plame leak, why the Hadley email never turned up, and whether there is a direct connection between that and the loss of millions of White House emails.
In the first of two letters Waxman sent Attorney General Michael Mukasey in December, the congressman said, "Fitzgerald and his staff have cooperated with the Committee’s investigation and have produced a number of responsive documents to the Committee. Among the documents that Mr. Fitzgerald has produced to the Committee are 'FBI 302 reports' of interviews with CIA and State Department officials and other individuals. Unfortunately, the White House has been blocking Mr. Fitzgerald from providing key documents to the Committee."
I met with Waxman in late December during an interview conducted by Truthout Executive Director Marc Ash at Waxman's West Los Angeles office. Waxman said two of the key documents his staff had been trying to obtain were a copy of the letter Fitzgerald sent to Luskin that apparently indicated that Rove was no longer under investigation, as well as the email Rove sent to Hadley. At the time of our meeting, Waxman had already sent Mukasey a second letter because the attorney general never responded to his first request. Waxman set a deadline of January 8 for the Plame investigation documents to be turned over to his committee.
The documents have yet to be handed over, but an aide to Waxman said the congressman has been "working" with Attorney General Mukasey over the past several weeks in hopes that an agreement may be reached.
Questions remain about Rove's CIA leak email
By Jason Leopold
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Feb 26, 2008
It's been nearly five years since former White House political adviser Karl Rove sent an incriminating email to then Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley indicating that Rove had a candid conversation with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper about covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's prewar Iraq intelligence.
Rove had insisted publicly and privately that he was not the source for a story Cooper wrote that unmasked Plame's affiliation with the CIA in July 2003 nor, Rove said, was he the source who provided syndicated columnist Robert Novak with the same information for a column that was published a few days before Cooper's. The email Rove sent to Hadley on July 11, 2003, just three months before the start of a federal probe into the leak clearly contradicted Rove's account.
Questions about Rove's email to Hadley resurfaced after the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) revealed last April that thousands of emails Rove sent over a four-year period via an email account maintained by the Republican National Committee might have been destroyed. Many of the emails Rove sent using his RNC account pertained to White House business and the fact that it was not archived is said to be a violation of the Presidential Records Act.
Additionally, CREW said it conducted an investigation that discovered the White House lost as many as 10 million emails. The White House said in a court document that it erased backup tapes containing the email archives, some of which relate to a wide-range of administration scandals, including the role of White House officials in the Plame leak.
In late September 2003, three months after he told Hadley in an email that he spoke with Cooper, Rove and about 1,000 other White House staffers were ordered to turn over all email correspondence that contained references to Plame and Wilson to then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales when the leak of Plame's undercover status was referred to federal investigators.
But the Hadley email was never turned over to Gonzales during the early stages of the Plame investigation.
Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, had long maintained that the email was never found during the initial search because the right "search words" weren't used. Some reporters and bloggers have opined the Rove/Hadley email did not turn up because Rove sent it using his Republican National Committee account. But according to a little known story published in The Washington Post in December 2005, Rove used his government account when he sent Hadley an email describing his conversation with Time's Matthew Cooper.
In an email exchange a couple of weeks ago requesting that he clarify his position, Luskin said he "speculated that the [Hadley] email was overlooked because of a gap in search terms, but I have no direct knowledge." That contradicts his previous statements to Newsweek in which Luskin stated unequivocally that the email was not found because the wrong search terms were used.
"Neither Mr. Rove nor I was involved in any manner in the collection of emails or other electronic documents in response to subpoenas from the Special Counsel [Patrick Fitzgerald]," Luskin said. "Mr. Fitzgerald's staff worked directly with the White House counsel and the IT folks from the White House. However, Mr. Fitzgerald did advise me that Mr. Rove had absolutely no responsibility for the oversight and that he has never regarded the failure to turn over the [Hadley] email as 'culpable' by anyone."
That statement, or at least part of it, does not appear to be entirely accurate. In a May 10, 2007, deposition before investigators working for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rove's former assistant, Susan Ralston, testified that during the leak investigation she and Rove were instructed "to go and do keyword searches based on the subpoena that we got, and search all of his folders for keywords." Ralston said during her deposition that there were "six or seven" subpoenas Rove received from Fitzgerald for documents in the Plame leak. Any documents that were found were turned over to Gonzales. Yet the email Rove sent to Hadley was never turned over to Fitzgerald.
Luskin would not provide a copy of that email, which has never been released publicly. He said the contents of the exchange have been "widely reported." Luskin added that he had no interest in providing either the Hadley email "or any other documents," including a copy of a letter Fitzgerald sent Luskin that purportedly cleared Rove of criminal exposure in the leak case, to me because of a story I reported two years ago that stated Rove was indicted by Fitzgerald. Luskin added that I "played a despicable role in circulating false allegations concerning an indictment of Mr. Rove and persisted with the story even after it was demonstrated to be false" and he, therefore, would not provide documentary evidence that could demonstrate his client's innocence.
Fair enough. But Luskin also refused to voluntarily provide Senator Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with the Hadley email and other electronic messages that Rove and Luskin turned over to Fitzgerald. Last May, Leahy issued a subpoena to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for the documents.
The subpoena covered a wide range of emails Rove sent over four years, some of which related to congressional investigations into the firings of nine US attorneys two years ago that Rove is widely believed to have played a hands-on role in.
Gonzales never met Leahy's May 15, 2007 deadline to turn over the emails. So on May 24, 2007, Leahy wrote to Luskin asking if he would forfeit the emails to his committee Luskin and Rove turned over to Fitzgerald. Luskin politely refused, according to a copy of a June 4, 2007, letter he sent to Leahy, obtained by this reporter.
"As you are aware, Mr. Rove cooperated fully with the investigation by the Special Counsel, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, into the disclosure of the identity of a CIA employee. As part of that cooperation, in April 2004, Mr. Rove made available to Mr. Fitzgerald two personal computers, a Blackberry, and a computer furnished to Mr. Rove by the Republican National Committee," Luskin wrote. "Mr. Fitzgerald arranged for the FBI to image all of the data on these computers. Without any constraint by Mr. Rove, Mr. Fitzgerald reviewed all of this data and made and retained copies of any information relevant to his investigation. Because the computers also contained confidential personal information and attorney client communications, Mr. Fitzgerald returned to me for safekeeping the imaged copies made by the FBI."
"The electronic copies made by the FBI, which I retain in their sealed form, only contain information created before early April 2004, when the FBI made the copies," Luskin added. "I have reviewed the documents and testimony made publicly available by this and other congressional committees investigating the termination of the United States Attorneys. I am unaware of any evidence suggesting that Mr. Rove may have played any role whatsoever in this matter before April 2004. Accordingly, I have no reason to believe that the materials in my possession contain any information relevant to this Committee's inquiry."
So what happened? And why didn't investigators, who searched Rove's emails and computers during the early days of the leak probe, find a copy of the email Rove sent Hadley?
A fascinating new book provides some possible answers.
David Gewirtz, a former computer science professor, a former product management director for Symantec who also held the title of "Godfather" at Apple Computer, Inc., and has written more than 600 articles about email, is the author of "Where Have All the Emails Gone?," the definitive account about the circumstances that led to the loss of administration emails. A detective story that reads like a "Dummies" book for the technically challenged, "Where Have All The Emails Gone?" relied upon good old fashioned shoe-leather reporting to tell the story of the missing emails and using the public record in attempting to solve the mystery.
In an interview, Gewirtz said the one possibility that the Rove/Hadley email never surfaced was that it was sent during a time when the White House had switched its email over from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange, an issue in and of itself the author finds suspicious. The Rove/Hadley email may have been lost during the transition to the new email system.
"Why did they migrate at this time? The country was getting ready for war," noted Gewirtz, who said he has been speaking with Senate and House staffers probing the loss of White House emails. "It doesn't make sense that you would want to yank out your communications structure when you're building up toward war. It's crucial for our government to have qualified communications at a critical juncture. It's just mind bogglingly questionable that the White House would change its communication structure at that time period. Why did they need to do it then? It certainly provides a lot of plausible deniability for when emails are scrutinized."
"Another plausible reason, and this is the conspiracy theory, if you yank out an email system there goes your compliance with the Presidential Records act and there's the 'my dog ate it' excuse," Gewirtz said. "There's really no net loss other than a PR loss."
Gewirtz said his biggest concern about the loss of White House emails is the national security implications.
"There's a separate server for political activity. The server is not located or managed by security experts," Gewirtz said. "Emails are sent by White House staffers using an unsecured server. Hundreds of millions of emails are sent through the open Internet. An email message sent by a low level political employee says where the president is traveling. That can be seen by anyone and can put the president at risk. It's something of a disturbing experience talking to Washington politicians. Technical issue takes a back seat based on what the political goal is. The potential loss through homeland security is pretty profound."
In addressing Luskin's explanation that the Hadley email did not turn up because the wrong search terms were used, Gewirtz said that it's a possibility, but a poor excuse for not locating an email.
"You can type search terms that should but won't pick things up directly," he said. "You can choose to spell something wrong. Especially if there is no record of what you are searching."
Congressman Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has been trying to unravel these complicated technical issues for the past seven months. Last July, Waxman wrote Fitzgerald seeking "transcripts, reports, notes, and other documents relating to any interviews outside the presence of the grand jury of" Rove, Hadley, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other former White House officials.
In addition to his search for documents and questions surrounding the Plame leak, Waxman is also investigating how the White House lost millions of emails and why steps were not taken to preserve the electronic messages earlier . . . His committee is scheduled to hold a hearing this morning on the matter.
Gewirtz says that if congressional investigators are serious about tracking down missing White House emails, particularly emails related to the US attorney purge, then they need to start looking in the right place.
"There is a vast amount of email that has gone through the Republican National Committee," Gewirtz said. "If they're looking for a smoking gun on the firing of US attorneys, then its most likely [White House officials who played a role in the dismissals] sent the emails through the RNC system and not the EOP [Executive Office of the President] system. Meanwhile, everyone is looking for emails on the EOP sever because it's sexier. I think they are looking in the wrong place. If I were a betting man, I would say it's in the RNC system."
Still, Waxman said in an interview at his office in late December that he is determined to get answers to some of the lingering questions about Rove's role in the Plame leak, why the Hadley email never turned up, and whether there is a direct connection between that and the loss of millions of White House emails.
In the first of two letters Waxman sent Attorney General Michael Mukasey in December, the congressman said, "Fitzgerald and his staff have cooperated with the Committee’s investigation and have produced a number of responsive documents to the Committee. Among the documents that Mr. Fitzgerald has produced to the Committee are 'FBI 302 reports' of interviews with CIA and State Department officials and other individuals. Unfortunately, the White House has been blocking Mr. Fitzgerald from providing key documents to the Committee."
I met with Waxman in late December during an interview conducted by Truthout Executive Director Marc Ash at Waxman's West Los Angeles office. Waxman said two of the key documents his staff had been trying to obtain were a copy of the letter Fitzgerald sent to Luskin that apparently indicated that Rove was no longer under investigation, as well as the email Rove sent to Hadley. At the time of our meeting, Waxman had already sent Mukasey a second letter because the attorney general never responded to his first request. Waxman set a deadline of January 8 for the Plame investigation documents to be turned over to his committee.
The documents have yet to be handed over, but an aide to Waxman said the congressman has been "working" with Attorney General Mukasey over the past several weeks in hopes that an agreement may be reached.
Is It Time for Clemens to Dial Nanny 911?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/sports/baseball/26araton.html
February 26, 2008
Sports of The Times
Is It Time for Clemens to Dial Nanny 911?
By HARVEY ARATON
The nanny, it turns out, speaks English and speaks it well, idioms and all.
A reading of an online transcript and a telephone call to the press office of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform revealed that Roger Clemens, aided by political muscle, distorted the linguistic skills of a former employee and grandmother of two.
“And her English, as I understand it, is not that good,” Tom Davis, the Virginia Republican and ranking minority committee member, cued Clemens at the Capitol Hill hearing earlier this month.
“It is not that good,” Clemens replied, seizing the opportunity to make the masses understand why the nanny had to be summoned to his Houston Ponderosa before her interview with committee investigators — for her own good, of course.
But Steven G. Glickman, counsel to the majority and a participant in the telephone interview, indicated through a committee press officer that the unnamed nanny spoke English that was only accented, not deficient.
For instance, when told she had the right to representation, the nanny replied she didn’t have a lawyer before adding: “But I’m not afraid, I’m telling the truth, so bring it on.”
Make her day.
Sounds like an opening line scripted by Clint Eastwood, or Clemens, the cold-blooded gunslinger from 60 feet 6 inches away, but now closer than ever to staring down at Jeff Novitzky, the I.R.S. special agent and sultan of steroid-enforcement swat.
Monday came the news that a draft letter was drawn up last week by committee staff members for the purposes of referring the Clemens case to the Justice Department. Get those scorecards ready. The real game, not the exhibition spitting contest the Clemens and Brian McNamee camps have waged all winter, may be about to begin.
You wonder: Is Clemens finally seeing the big picture, fearing that a hastily stitched tapestry of tall tales dating to 1998 is about to unravel?
It should by now be fairly well established that he was at José Canseco’s place in South Florida when they visited with the Blue Jays that year in June to drop off his family, or to take a tour of the property or a performance-enhancement tutorial.
We also know that Canseco has said Clemens was not at the party, while the nanny said that Clemens was at the house but she did not recall a party, while a photograph that reportedly has surfaced places Clemens at the possible party, while Clemens has a golf receipt to prove that while he might have stopped by, he wasn’t there long enough to party or be party to any discussion of drugs.
•
Questioned about the dizzying timeline of Clemens’s appearance and exit, the nanny — again, not as verbally challenged as Davis understood her to be and Clemens agreed she was — cut to the heart of the matter, as it relates to the possibility of meaningful disclosure.
“Well, first of all, that’s kind of hard to tell because I wasn’t with him 24/7,” she said, speaking to the absurdity of the ongoing party dissection, 10 years after. With the exception of the Republican cheerleaders who allowed Clemens and his lawyers to set this smoke screen during the hearing, who actually believed it was ever germane to the McNamee claims of injecting Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone?
Surely not Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat and committee chairman, who made himself clear after the hearing that he did not think much of what Clemens had to say. Common sense tells us that Waxman is driving the bus and ready to hand Clemens, if not McNamee, off to Novitzky and the Balco bashers that brought down Marion Jones and brought perjury and obstruction of justice charges against Barry Bonds.
Obviously, an investigation by the Justice Department does not guarantee an eventual indictment on perjury charges, à la Jones and Bonds. It does mean that Clemens’s public relations campaign against McNamee and anyone whose version of events contrasted his own has failed. In the court of public opinion, and to the committee members who did not want his autograph, the more Clemens went on the attack, the less believable he was.
When he publicly aired a secretly taped telephone conversation with McNamee, his former trainer sounded distraught over having to give him up to George Mitchell, not like some deluded soul bent on destroying an all-time great. When Clemens was confronted with the damaging testimony of Andy and Laura Pettitte, his attempts to question his protégé’s comprehension skills made you wonder if Clemens comprehended the gravity of his denials, under oath.
•
Everyone’s reputation was deemed sacrificial to save his own. His agents took hits for his troubles. His wife, Debbie, was exposed as an H.G.H. user. The nanny, whose interview included an eloquent expression of affection seven years after she left Clemens’s employ, was made to sound like someone who had just slipped into the country in the back of a truck.
Bring it on, Clemens kept saying, while everyone around him took a hit. Now there is a draft letter that probably leads to a criminal investigation. No turning back now. No promise of relief up ahead. For his last act in baseball, he may have to go the distance.
E-mail: hjaraton@nytimes.com
February 26, 2008
Sports of The Times
Is It Time for Clemens to Dial Nanny 911?
By HARVEY ARATON
The nanny, it turns out, speaks English and speaks it well, idioms and all.
A reading of an online transcript and a telephone call to the press office of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform revealed that Roger Clemens, aided by political muscle, distorted the linguistic skills of a former employee and grandmother of two.
“And her English, as I understand it, is not that good,” Tom Davis, the Virginia Republican and ranking minority committee member, cued Clemens at the Capitol Hill hearing earlier this month.
“It is not that good,” Clemens replied, seizing the opportunity to make the masses understand why the nanny had to be summoned to his Houston Ponderosa before her interview with committee investigators — for her own good, of course.
But Steven G. Glickman, counsel to the majority and a participant in the telephone interview, indicated through a committee press officer that the unnamed nanny spoke English that was only accented, not deficient.
For instance, when told she had the right to representation, the nanny replied she didn’t have a lawyer before adding: “But I’m not afraid, I’m telling the truth, so bring it on.”
Make her day.
Sounds like an opening line scripted by Clint Eastwood, or Clemens, the cold-blooded gunslinger from 60 feet 6 inches away, but now closer than ever to staring down at Jeff Novitzky, the I.R.S. special agent and sultan of steroid-enforcement swat.
Monday came the news that a draft letter was drawn up last week by committee staff members for the purposes of referring the Clemens case to the Justice Department. Get those scorecards ready. The real game, not the exhibition spitting contest the Clemens and Brian McNamee camps have waged all winter, may be about to begin.
You wonder: Is Clemens finally seeing the big picture, fearing that a hastily stitched tapestry of tall tales dating to 1998 is about to unravel?
It should by now be fairly well established that he was at José Canseco’s place in South Florida when they visited with the Blue Jays that year in June to drop off his family, or to take a tour of the property or a performance-enhancement tutorial.
We also know that Canseco has said Clemens was not at the party, while the nanny said that Clemens was at the house but she did not recall a party, while a photograph that reportedly has surfaced places Clemens at the possible party, while Clemens has a golf receipt to prove that while he might have stopped by, he wasn’t there long enough to party or be party to any discussion of drugs.
•
Questioned about the dizzying timeline of Clemens’s appearance and exit, the nanny — again, not as verbally challenged as Davis understood her to be and Clemens agreed she was — cut to the heart of the matter, as it relates to the possibility of meaningful disclosure.
“Well, first of all, that’s kind of hard to tell because I wasn’t with him 24/7,” she said, speaking to the absurdity of the ongoing party dissection, 10 years after. With the exception of the Republican cheerleaders who allowed Clemens and his lawyers to set this smoke screen during the hearing, who actually believed it was ever germane to the McNamee claims of injecting Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone?
Surely not Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat and committee chairman, who made himself clear after the hearing that he did not think much of what Clemens had to say. Common sense tells us that Waxman is driving the bus and ready to hand Clemens, if not McNamee, off to Novitzky and the Balco bashers that brought down Marion Jones and brought perjury and obstruction of justice charges against Barry Bonds.
Obviously, an investigation by the Justice Department does not guarantee an eventual indictment on perjury charges, à la Jones and Bonds. It does mean that Clemens’s public relations campaign against McNamee and anyone whose version of events contrasted his own has failed. In the court of public opinion, and to the committee members who did not want his autograph, the more Clemens went on the attack, the less believable he was.
When he publicly aired a secretly taped telephone conversation with McNamee, his former trainer sounded distraught over having to give him up to George Mitchell, not like some deluded soul bent on destroying an all-time great. When Clemens was confronted with the damaging testimony of Andy and Laura Pettitte, his attempts to question his protégé’s comprehension skills made you wonder if Clemens comprehended the gravity of his denials, under oath.
•
Everyone’s reputation was deemed sacrificial to save his own. His agents took hits for his troubles. His wife, Debbie, was exposed as an H.G.H. user. The nanny, whose interview included an eloquent expression of affection seven years after she left Clemens’s employ, was made to sound like someone who had just slipped into the country in the back of a truck.
Bring it on, Clemens kept saying, while everyone around him took a hit. Now there is a draft letter that probably leads to a criminal investigation. No turning back now. No promise of relief up ahead. For his last act in baseball, he may have to go the distance.
E-mail: hjaraton@nytimes.com
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Justices Shield Medical Devices From Lawsuits
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/washington/21device.html
February 21, 2008
Justices Shield Medical Devices From Lawsuits
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
WASHINGTON — Makers of medical devices like implantable defibrillators or breast implants are immune from liability for personal injuries as long as the Food and Drug Administration approved the device before it was marketed and it meets the agency’s specifications, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.
The 8-to-1 decision was a victory for the Bush administration, which for years has sought broad authority to pre-empt tougher state regulation.
In 2004, the administration reversed longstanding federal policy and began arguing that “premarket approval” of a new medical device by the F.D.A. overrides most claims for damages under state law. Because federal law makes no provision for damage suits against device makers, injured patients have turned to state law and have won substantial awards.
The Bush administration will continue its push for pre-emption in another F.D.A. case that the court has accepted for its next term, on whether the agency’s approval of a drug, as opposed to a device, pre-empts personal injury suits. Drugs and medical devices are regulated under separate laws.
The case before the court concerned only medical devices that had gone through the premarket approval process specified by the Medical Device Amendments of 1976. Most devices now available reached the market through a different process, under which the F.D.A. found them to be “substantially equivalent” to those marketed before the 1976 law took effect.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that this less rigorous approval process does not pre-empt state damage suits against the manufacturers of “grandfathered” devices.
Devices subject to the premarket approval process, and thus affected by the court’s opinion, tend to be more technologically advanced, expensive and, in some instances, risky.
Examples of devices that have been the subjects of recent lawsuits include an implantable defibrillator, a heart pump, a spinal cord stimulator, a drug-coated stent, an artificial heart valve, and prosthetic hips and knees.
It was not immediately clear how many of the thousands of lawsuits against medical device manufacturers would be affected, though some pending cases will almost certainly be nullified.
The decision, for example, does not foreclose lawsuits claiming that a device was made improperly, in violation of F.D.A. specifications. Cases may also be brought under state laws that mirror federal rules, as opposed to supplementing them.
Next Monday, the court will hear another F.D.A. pre-emption case, on whether a state case can be based on the claim that a drug maker committed fraud by misrepresenting or withholding information from the agency during the approval process. The administration is supporting the manufacturer in that case, Warner-Lambert Co. v. Kent, No. 06-1498, which concerns the diabetes drug Rezulin.
Writing for the majority in Wednesday’s case, Riegel v. Medtronic Inc., No. 06-179, Justice Antonin Scalia said that permitting state juries to impose liability on the maker of an approved device “disrupts the federal scheme,” under which the F.D.A. has the responsibility for evaluating the risks and benefits of a new device and assuring that it is safe and effective for its intended use.
A jury, looking only at the injured plaintiff, will tend to weigh only the dangers of a device and “is not concerned with its benefits,” Justice Scalia said, adding, “the patients who reaped those benefits are not represented in court.”
The decision affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit by a patient who was injured during an angioplasty when a balloon catheter burst while being inserted to dilate a coronary artery. The device won F.D.A. premarket approval in 1994, two years before the incident. The patient, Charles R. Riegel, died after the lawsuit was filed, and the case was carried on by his widow, Donna.
The medical device statute contains a pre-emption clause that bars states from imposing “any requirement” related to a medical device that is “different from, or in addition to” a federal requirement. The question of statutory interpretation at the heart of the case turned on what Congress meant by “any requirement.”
Justice Scalia said that state tort law, by imposing duties of care on product makers, amounted to such an additional requirement. He said the 1976 law “speaks clearly to the point at issue,” regardless of the federal government’s previous or current positions.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the solitary dissenter, said the court had misconstrued Congress’s intent in adding the pre-emption clause to the 1976 law. The purpose, she said, was to prevent individual states from imposing their own premarket approval process on new medical devices. Devices were not regulated under federal law at the time, and California and other states had stepped in to fill the vacuum by setting up their own regulatory systems.
That was all that Congress had in mind, Justice Ginsburg said, not “a radical curtailment of state common-law suits seeking compensation for injuries caused by defectively designed or labeled medical devices.” She said that Congress had passed the 1976 law “to protect consumer safety,” not to oust the states from “a domain historically occupied by state law.” The decision was at odds with the “central purpose” of the 1976 law, Justice Ginsburg added.
Crucial Democratic lawmakers appear to agree with Justice Ginsburg, including Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, who heads the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and was the sole Senate sponsor of the 1976 legislation in question.
“In enacting legislation on medical devices, Congress never intended that F.D.A. approval would give blanket immunity to manufacturers from liability for injuries caused by faulty devices,” Mr. Kennedy said in a statement. He added: “Congress obviously needs to correct the court’s decision.”
Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and was on the House panel that approved the 1976 bill, expressed a similar view.
“The Supreme Court’s decision strips consumers of the rights they’ve had for decades,” Mr. Waxman said. “This isn’t what Congress intended, and we’ll pass legislation as quickly as possible to fix this nonsensical situation.”
The Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938, under which the F.D.A. regulates pharmaceuticals, does not contain a pre-emption clause. Nonetheless, the administration is arguing in the case the court has accepted for its next term, Wyeth v. Levine, No. 06-1249, that pre-emption is implicit in the structure of the statute.
The Supreme Court’s interest in pre-emption is not limited to the medical arena. In a similar case decided on Wednesday, this one unanimously, the court ruled that the federal law that deregulated the trucking industry in 1980 pre-empted two recent laws adopted by the State of Maine to regulate the shipment of tobacco products into the state.
The state laws were intended to prevent children who were not of legal age to buy cigarettes from ordering them over the Internet. The laws placed responsibility on shippers and delivery companies to verify the recipient’s identity and age.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the court in this case, Rowe v. New Hampshire Motor Transport Association, No. 06-457, said the state law “produces the very effect that the federal law sought to avoid, namely, a state’s direct substitution of its own governmental commands for competitive market forces” in a deregulated environment.
Barnaby Feder contributed reporting from New York and Gardiner Harris from Washington.
February 21, 2008
Justices Shield Medical Devices From Lawsuits
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
WASHINGTON — Makers of medical devices like implantable defibrillators or breast implants are immune from liability for personal injuries as long as the Food and Drug Administration approved the device before it was marketed and it meets the agency’s specifications, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.
The 8-to-1 decision was a victory for the Bush administration, which for years has sought broad authority to pre-empt tougher state regulation.
In 2004, the administration reversed longstanding federal policy and began arguing that “premarket approval” of a new medical device by the F.D.A. overrides most claims for damages under state law. Because federal law makes no provision for damage suits against device makers, injured patients have turned to state law and have won substantial awards.
The Bush administration will continue its push for pre-emption in another F.D.A. case that the court has accepted for its next term, on whether the agency’s approval of a drug, as opposed to a device, pre-empts personal injury suits. Drugs and medical devices are regulated under separate laws.
The case before the court concerned only medical devices that had gone through the premarket approval process specified by the Medical Device Amendments of 1976. Most devices now available reached the market through a different process, under which the F.D.A. found them to be “substantially equivalent” to those marketed before the 1976 law took effect.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that this less rigorous approval process does not pre-empt state damage suits against the manufacturers of “grandfathered” devices.
Devices subject to the premarket approval process, and thus affected by the court’s opinion, tend to be more technologically advanced, expensive and, in some instances, risky.
Examples of devices that have been the subjects of recent lawsuits include an implantable defibrillator, a heart pump, a spinal cord stimulator, a drug-coated stent, an artificial heart valve, and prosthetic hips and knees.
It was not immediately clear how many of the thousands of lawsuits against medical device manufacturers would be affected, though some pending cases will almost certainly be nullified.
The decision, for example, does not foreclose lawsuits claiming that a device was made improperly, in violation of F.D.A. specifications. Cases may also be brought under state laws that mirror federal rules, as opposed to supplementing them.
Next Monday, the court will hear another F.D.A. pre-emption case, on whether a state case can be based on the claim that a drug maker committed fraud by misrepresenting or withholding information from the agency during the approval process. The administration is supporting the manufacturer in that case, Warner-Lambert Co. v. Kent, No. 06-1498, which concerns the diabetes drug Rezulin.
Writing for the majority in Wednesday’s case, Riegel v. Medtronic Inc., No. 06-179, Justice Antonin Scalia said that permitting state juries to impose liability on the maker of an approved device “disrupts the federal scheme,” under which the F.D.A. has the responsibility for evaluating the risks and benefits of a new device and assuring that it is safe and effective for its intended use.
A jury, looking only at the injured plaintiff, will tend to weigh only the dangers of a device and “is not concerned with its benefits,” Justice Scalia said, adding, “the patients who reaped those benefits are not represented in court.”
The decision affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit by a patient who was injured during an angioplasty when a balloon catheter burst while being inserted to dilate a coronary artery. The device won F.D.A. premarket approval in 1994, two years before the incident. The patient, Charles R. Riegel, died after the lawsuit was filed, and the case was carried on by his widow, Donna.
The medical device statute contains a pre-emption clause that bars states from imposing “any requirement” related to a medical device that is “different from, or in addition to” a federal requirement. The question of statutory interpretation at the heart of the case turned on what Congress meant by “any requirement.”
Justice Scalia said that state tort law, by imposing duties of care on product makers, amounted to such an additional requirement. He said the 1976 law “speaks clearly to the point at issue,” regardless of the federal government’s previous or current positions.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the solitary dissenter, said the court had misconstrued Congress’s intent in adding the pre-emption clause to the 1976 law. The purpose, she said, was to prevent individual states from imposing their own premarket approval process on new medical devices. Devices were not regulated under federal law at the time, and California and other states had stepped in to fill the vacuum by setting up their own regulatory systems.
That was all that Congress had in mind, Justice Ginsburg said, not “a radical curtailment of state common-law suits seeking compensation for injuries caused by defectively designed or labeled medical devices.” She said that Congress had passed the 1976 law “to protect consumer safety,” not to oust the states from “a domain historically occupied by state law.” The decision was at odds with the “central purpose” of the 1976 law, Justice Ginsburg added.
Crucial Democratic lawmakers appear to agree with Justice Ginsburg, including Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, who heads the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and was the sole Senate sponsor of the 1976 legislation in question.
“In enacting legislation on medical devices, Congress never intended that F.D.A. approval would give blanket immunity to manufacturers from liability for injuries caused by faulty devices,” Mr. Kennedy said in a statement. He added: “Congress obviously needs to correct the court’s decision.”
Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and was on the House panel that approved the 1976 bill, expressed a similar view.
“The Supreme Court’s decision strips consumers of the rights they’ve had for decades,” Mr. Waxman said. “This isn’t what Congress intended, and we’ll pass legislation as quickly as possible to fix this nonsensical situation.”
The Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938, under which the F.D.A. regulates pharmaceuticals, does not contain a pre-emption clause. Nonetheless, the administration is arguing in the case the court has accepted for its next term, Wyeth v. Levine, No. 06-1249, that pre-emption is implicit in the structure of the statute.
The Supreme Court’s interest in pre-emption is not limited to the medical arena. In a similar case decided on Wednesday, this one unanimously, the court ruled that the federal law that deregulated the trucking industry in 1980 pre-empted two recent laws adopted by the State of Maine to regulate the shipment of tobacco products into the state.
The state laws were intended to prevent children who were not of legal age to buy cigarettes from ordering them over the Internet. The laws placed responsibility on shippers and delivery companies to verify the recipient’s identity and age.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the court in this case, Rowe v. New Hampshire Motor Transport Association, No. 06-457, said the state law “produces the very effect that the federal law sought to avoid, namely, a state’s direct substitution of its own governmental commands for competitive market forces” in a deregulated environment.
Barnaby Feder contributed reporting from New York and Gardiner Harris from Washington.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Clemens shelled by Congress
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=dw-clemenspettitte021308
Clemens shelled by Congress
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
February 13, 2008
WASHINGTON – Question by question, disputed answer by disputed answer, Roger Clemens' house of lies came tumbling down upon him Wednesday.
Whatever Clemens thought he'd get out of turning a sporting controversy into a federal case courtesy of this congressional hearing never materialized. He scored few points while getting caught up in his own words, nonsensical logic and twisted timelines, even before his friend and former teammate Andy Pettitte laid him out.
Presumably there are people in America who still believe Clemens is the only honest man in this entire sordid steroid scandal, that the entire world (friends included) decided one day to gang up and frame him, that he is just a trusting victim here, but other than those on his considerable payroll, they were hard to find anywhere near room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building on this cold, rainy day.
Clemens was doomed from the start, crushed by sworn affidavits and repeated under-oath testimony from Pettitte and his wife Laura – almost unimpeachable witnesses – who not only backed up the words of former trainer Brian McNamee, but blew Clemens' own stories out of the water.
Congressmen Henry Waxman of California and Elijah Cummings of Maryland double-teamed Clemens early, and no amount of ensuing sympathetic lawmakers, McNamee creepiness or Clemens campaign speeches could bail him out.
"I found McNamee very credible," Waxman said after the hearing. "I thought what he said had a lot of credibility."
Clemens is almost assuredly going to face federal perjury charges after he continued to stick to a story that stood in stark contrast with repeated under-oath testimony of everyone else. Once the Pettittes – and former teammate Chuck Knoblauch – backed McNamee's word over Clemens', this was no longer about he said, he said.
This was he said, everyone said.
"You understand you're under oath," Cummings kept asking Clemens, almost dumbfounded that the pitcher could be so brazen under oath.
What else could Cummings do? It was stunning to watch Clemens hang himself, trying to worm his way out from under Pettitte's testimony.
"I'm looking for an independent source to tell me what to believe," Cummings said. "There are a number of things that make (Pettitte's) testimony swing the balance over to Mr. McNamee. And a number of them come from your own words."
It was one thing for Clemens to attack the credibility of McNamee, who has his own ethical issues, but Pettitte testified not only about his own drug use. Just for honesty's sake, he admitted a few more things, and thereby became unassailable.
Clemens could only offer that Pettitte must have "misheard" or "misremembered" the detailed account Pettitte gave about Clemens telling him that he took HGH. But he had no answer for the fact that Pettitte's wife, in a sworn affidavit, said that her husband told her of the conversations at that time and the stories haven't changed.
It was a double barrel shot of destruction, the Pettittes asserting that their close friend was now not just a cheat, but a liar.
Clemens had nothing, just pathetic ramblings about how he was a great American for pitching at the Olympics, how if he was guilty of anything it was "being too nice," and throwing everyone from his agents, to his mother, to his wife under the bus of blame.
According to Clemens, this was just one big conspiracy, apparently. But he looked like a guy who's been surrounded by yes men for decades, someone so removed from reality he figured he could come to Capitol Hill, talk loud, and everyone would nod and leave him alone.
Only a couple of our most inane lawmakers bought any part of his nonsense defense.
His factual arguments were particularly ridiculous. He claimed Pettitte must be confused, because if Pettitte really thought Clemens had used HGH, he would have come and asked Clemens about the drug before taking it himself.
But Pettitte did think Clemens was using HGH and didn't discuss it with Clemens.
Cummings pointed out the failed logic behind that argument. Only to have Clemens repeat it a couple more times.
When Clemens claimed McNamee lied to save himself from prosecution, Cummings pointed out that McNamee told Pettitte about Clemens' drug use in 2002, which means he would have been predicting the future. How is that possible?
"I don’t know," Clemens said.
It was all he had, like a struggling pitcher waiting for a bullpen to come save him.
"It's hard to believe you, sir," Cummings said. "It's hard to say that; you are one of my heroes. But it's hard to believe you."
And Rep. Mark Souder added the hearings: "I found Clemens almost as believable as Rafael Palmeiro."
The lengthy hearings were predictably foolish and distracted at times, unnecessary tangents explored for no apparent reason.
In classic Washington fashion, things occasionally broke along partisan lines. Somehow Republicans and Democrats around here can't agree on anything, even the circumstances surrounding the formation of a "palpable mass" on Clemens' backside.
Clemens' best moments came when McNamee was skewered for his tendency to lie – mostly to newspaper reporters. But even that was Washington gumption; the idea that politicians should lecture anyone about telling the truth is absurd.
The most vocal grandstander was Rep. Dan Burton of rural Indiana, who absolutely skewered McNamee.
"This is really disgusting," Burton said. "I don't know what to believe. I know what I don't believe and that's you."
Strong words from a guy who while cheating on his wife knocked up his girlfriend and went years without visiting his son (though he was kind enough to cut him some checks).
But that's America and this is its pastime.
Clemens could never counter why McNamee was telling the truth about Pettitte and Knoblauch, but lying about him. Or why Pettitte was lying at all.
"Andy would have no reason to (lie)," Clemens said. "He's my friend."
Since everyone here acknowledged that one side must be lying and no one thought it was Pettitte, guess who that left with a self-imposed, ill-fated and unnecessary perjury charge on the horizon?
Dan Wetzel is Yahoo! Sports' national columnist. Send Dan a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.
Clemens shelled by Congress
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
February 13, 2008
WASHINGTON – Question by question, disputed answer by disputed answer, Roger Clemens' house of lies came tumbling down upon him Wednesday.
Whatever Clemens thought he'd get out of turning a sporting controversy into a federal case courtesy of this congressional hearing never materialized. He scored few points while getting caught up in his own words, nonsensical logic and twisted timelines, even before his friend and former teammate Andy Pettitte laid him out.
Presumably there are people in America who still believe Clemens is the only honest man in this entire sordid steroid scandal, that the entire world (friends included) decided one day to gang up and frame him, that he is just a trusting victim here, but other than those on his considerable payroll, they were hard to find anywhere near room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building on this cold, rainy day.
Clemens was doomed from the start, crushed by sworn affidavits and repeated under-oath testimony from Pettitte and his wife Laura – almost unimpeachable witnesses – who not only backed up the words of former trainer Brian McNamee, but blew Clemens' own stories out of the water.
Congressmen Henry Waxman of California and Elijah Cummings of Maryland double-teamed Clemens early, and no amount of ensuing sympathetic lawmakers, McNamee creepiness or Clemens campaign speeches could bail him out.
"I found McNamee very credible," Waxman said after the hearing. "I thought what he said had a lot of credibility."
Clemens is almost assuredly going to face federal perjury charges after he continued to stick to a story that stood in stark contrast with repeated under-oath testimony of everyone else. Once the Pettittes – and former teammate Chuck Knoblauch – backed McNamee's word over Clemens', this was no longer about he said, he said.
This was he said, everyone said.
"You understand you're under oath," Cummings kept asking Clemens, almost dumbfounded that the pitcher could be so brazen under oath.
What else could Cummings do? It was stunning to watch Clemens hang himself, trying to worm his way out from under Pettitte's testimony.
"I'm looking for an independent source to tell me what to believe," Cummings said. "There are a number of things that make (Pettitte's) testimony swing the balance over to Mr. McNamee. And a number of them come from your own words."
It was one thing for Clemens to attack the credibility of McNamee, who has his own ethical issues, but Pettitte testified not only about his own drug use. Just for honesty's sake, he admitted a few more things, and thereby became unassailable.
Clemens could only offer that Pettitte must have "misheard" or "misremembered" the detailed account Pettitte gave about Clemens telling him that he took HGH. But he had no answer for the fact that Pettitte's wife, in a sworn affidavit, said that her husband told her of the conversations at that time and the stories haven't changed.
It was a double barrel shot of destruction, the Pettittes asserting that their close friend was now not just a cheat, but a liar.
Clemens had nothing, just pathetic ramblings about how he was a great American for pitching at the Olympics, how if he was guilty of anything it was "being too nice," and throwing everyone from his agents, to his mother, to his wife under the bus of blame.
According to Clemens, this was just one big conspiracy, apparently. But he looked like a guy who's been surrounded by yes men for decades, someone so removed from reality he figured he could come to Capitol Hill, talk loud, and everyone would nod and leave him alone.
Only a couple of our most inane lawmakers bought any part of his nonsense defense.
His factual arguments were particularly ridiculous. He claimed Pettitte must be confused, because if Pettitte really thought Clemens had used HGH, he would have come and asked Clemens about the drug before taking it himself.
But Pettitte did think Clemens was using HGH and didn't discuss it with Clemens.
Cummings pointed out the failed logic behind that argument. Only to have Clemens repeat it a couple more times.
When Clemens claimed McNamee lied to save himself from prosecution, Cummings pointed out that McNamee told Pettitte about Clemens' drug use in 2002, which means he would have been predicting the future. How is that possible?
"I don’t know," Clemens said.
It was all he had, like a struggling pitcher waiting for a bullpen to come save him.
"It's hard to believe you, sir," Cummings said. "It's hard to say that; you are one of my heroes. But it's hard to believe you."
And Rep. Mark Souder added the hearings: "I found Clemens almost as believable as Rafael Palmeiro."
The lengthy hearings were predictably foolish and distracted at times, unnecessary tangents explored for no apparent reason.
In classic Washington fashion, things occasionally broke along partisan lines. Somehow Republicans and Democrats around here can't agree on anything, even the circumstances surrounding the formation of a "palpable mass" on Clemens' backside.
Clemens' best moments came when McNamee was skewered for his tendency to lie – mostly to newspaper reporters. But even that was Washington gumption; the idea that politicians should lecture anyone about telling the truth is absurd.
The most vocal grandstander was Rep. Dan Burton of rural Indiana, who absolutely skewered McNamee.
"This is really disgusting," Burton said. "I don't know what to believe. I know what I don't believe and that's you."
Strong words from a guy who while cheating on his wife knocked up his girlfriend and went years without visiting his son (though he was kind enough to cut him some checks).
But that's America and this is its pastime.
Clemens could never counter why McNamee was telling the truth about Pettitte and Knoblauch, but lying about him. Or why Pettitte was lying at all.
"Andy would have no reason to (lie)," Clemens said. "He's my friend."
Since everyone here acknowledged that one side must be lying and no one thought it was Pettitte, guess who that left with a self-imposed, ill-fated and unnecessary perjury charge on the horizon?
Dan Wetzel is Yahoo! Sports' national columnist. Send Dan a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.
Monday, July 2, 2007
The Misunderestimated Mr. Cheney
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20070629.html
The Misunderestimated Mr. Cheney:
The Vice President's Record of Willfully Violating the Law, And Wrongly Claiming Authority to Do So
By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Jun. 29, 2007
Vice President Dick Cheney has regularly claimed that he is above the law, but until recently he has not offered any explanation of why.
In fact, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a law that Cheney believes does apply to him, whether that law be major or minor. For example, he has claimed that most of the laws passed in the aftermath of Watergate were unconstitutional, and thus implicitly inapplicable. His office oversees signing statements claiming countless new laws will not be honored except insofar as the President's extremely narrow interpretation allows. He does not believe the War Powers Act should be honored by the President. Nor, in his view, should the President be bothered with laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In fact, it appears Cheney has actively encouraged defiance of such laws by the Bush Administration.
For Cheney, the Geneva Conventions - considered among the nation's most important treaties -- are but quaint relics that can be ignored. Thus, he publicly embraced their violation when, on an Idaho talk radio program, he said he was not troubled in the slightest by our forces using "waterboarding" -- the simulated drowning of detainees to force them to talk. There are serious questions as to whether Cheney himself has also conspired to violate the War Crimes Act, which can be a capital crime.
A man who can so easily disregard the War Powers Act, FISA, the Geneva Conventions, and the War Crimes Act is merely flicking fleas when it comes to complying with laws like the Presidential Records Act, which requires him to keep records. Yet as CNN and other news organizations have reported, Cheney ordered the destruction of the visitor logs to his residence. These, of course, are presidential records the law requires him to preserve and protect. (Indeed, neighbors of the Vice President were surprised when, in the past, a truck for a document shredding service would regularly visit the Vice President's residence at the Naval Observatory.)
Most recently, the Vice President has refused to comply with Executive Order 12958, as amended by his boss, George W. Bush. These orders were issued to implement the law adopted by Congress in 1995 to clarify the classification and protection of national security information.
Most interesting in Cheney's defiance is his absolutely absurd explanation of why the law is not applicable to him or his staff.
Cheney's Explanation(s) For Defying the National Security Classification Orders
Henry Waxman, who may be the nation's most diligent and vigilant member of Congress, recently reported that Vice President Cheney claims he is exempt from the presidential orders requiring government-wide procedures to safeguard classified national security information because he is not an "entity within the executive branch." According to information provided to Chairman Waxman's Oversight committee, Cheney further claimed he was not an "agency" as set forth in the Executive Orders.
When Cheney was widely ridiculed by humorists, cartoonists, pundits, commentators and several members of Congress for his claim of not being an "entity within the executive branch," the Vice President's chief of staff and counsel David Addington responded by asserting that the Vice President is not subject to the order because he is not an "agency" as defined by the order. (Addington thus effectively dropped the claim that the Vice President is not an "entity.")
However, Addington does not cite any authority or language for his new claim that the Vice President is not an "agency." In fact, there is none. To the contrary, the order controlling national security classification states exactly the opposite of what Addington claims.
Executive Order 12958 states that the term "Agency" means any "Executive agency," as defined in the statutory language found at 5 U.S.C. 105, and it includes "any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information." An entity is any "body" or "unit" or "thing" within the executive branch, and to claim the Vice President's office is none of these is an insult to common sense. So is Addington's claim that the Office of Vice President is not an agency under the law.
Section 105 of Title 5 of the United States Code states that an "'Executive agency' means an … independent establishment" within the executive branch. Independent establishments are defined by Section 104 as "an establishment in the executive branch … which is not an Executive department [which are listed in Section 101, and include the Departments of State, Treasury, Justice, etc.], military department, Government corporation, or part thereof, or part of an independent establishment."
The Justice Department issued an opinion in 1994 that the Vice President was not an "agency" under the Freedom of Information Act. That opinion was largely based on the Supreme Court ruling, in Kissinger v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of the Press, that "agency" does not cover "the President's immediate personal staff or units in the Executive Office whose sole function is to advise and assist the President."
However, the agency definition in E.O. 12985 is very different from that in the Freedom of Information Act. If, as Addington claims, E.O. 12985 was intended to exempt the Vice President's office, why did it not so state? Or, why did Bush not exempt the Vice President when he amended that order in July 2005?
Cheney's claim his office is neither an entity nor agency defies logic, but it is not surprising since he continues also to claim, with absolutely no evidence to support his claim, that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 and that terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi set up an al Qaeda operation in Iraq.
Needless to say, Cheney's claim - or Addington's claim, since Cheney appears to be backing away from his chief of staff and counsel on this issue - raises the question of what the vice president is. Legally, the vice president has only the most limited of powers and authority, unless the president empowers him.
The Limited Role the Constitution and a Federal Statute Envision for the Vice President
The Vice President's very limited but vital roles are set forth in the Constitution. He is the next in succession to become President, should there be a vacancy or should the president suffer from mental or physical inability to serve. And he is the president of the Senate, which means he can preside over the Senate but under the Senate Rules, he cannot take part in debate, and under the Constitution, he can only vote to break a tie.
In the event of a vacancy in the office of the president, under Article II and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the Vice President becomes the Acting President. Also under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the Vice President, when acting with a majority of the Cabinet, can also declare the president is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office." If he so declares, then after so informing Congress, the Vice President becomes Acting President until the President notifies Congress that he is fine; if there is a dispute, the Congress resolves it.
The only other Constitutional duty of the Vice President is that set forth in Article I, Section 3, clause 4, which makes the Vice President the "President of the Senate, but [he/she] shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided." Not since the nation's second Vice President, Thomas Jefferson, decided it was a waste of time to preside over the Senate has any Vice President done so -- other than to break ties or for ceremonial events, such as the State of the Union or the tallying of electoral college votes.
Since 1947, the Vice President has been given a number of statutory duties, when President Truman recommended, and the Congress agreed, that the Vice President should be a member of the National Security Council. This, however, is the most significant of his statutory assignments.
Thus, beyond the limited constitutional responsibilities, and the few statutory tasks, the Vice President's role comes down to whatever the President assigns him. Vice Presidents can have no role greater than the assignments given by the president -- or in the case of Dick Cheney, whatever he has been able to convince the President he can appropriately handle for him.
The Source of Cheney's Power: Influence, Not a Formal Grant of Authority
Washington insiders have long understood that Cheney's power stems from his knowledge of the way the White House and the Office of the President operate. This is knowledge he acquired as President Ford's Chief of Staff. With Bush's consent, much of the paper flow of the White House which heads up the chain of command toward the President goes through Cheney's office. In addition, Cheney's staff reaches down into the executive bureaucracy to shape the debate before it reaches the White House.
Those with whom I have spoken have serious doubt that Bush and the White House staff really knows what Cheney is doing, why he is doing it, or how he is doing it. From the outset of this administration, Cheney has been instrumental in placing people loyal to him throughout the Executive Branch. This is not to say that Bush is not "the decider," for he is, but by shaping the debate and controlling the paper flow, Cheney decides what the decider will decide.
It has long been apparent that Cheney's genius is that he lets George W. Bush get out of bed every morning actually believing he is the President. In fact, his presidency is run by the President of the Senate, for Cheney is its true center of gravity. That fact has become more apparent with every passing year of this presidency, and anyone who thinks otherwise has truly "misunderestimated" our nominal president and his vice president.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John W. Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former counsel to the president.
The Misunderestimated Mr. Cheney:
The Vice President's Record of Willfully Violating the Law, And Wrongly Claiming Authority to Do So
By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Jun. 29, 2007
Vice President Dick Cheney has regularly claimed that he is above the law, but until recently he has not offered any explanation of why.
In fact, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a law that Cheney believes does apply to him, whether that law be major or minor. For example, he has claimed that most of the laws passed in the aftermath of Watergate were unconstitutional, and thus implicitly inapplicable. His office oversees signing statements claiming countless new laws will not be honored except insofar as the President's extremely narrow interpretation allows. He does not believe the War Powers Act should be honored by the President. Nor, in his view, should the President be bothered with laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In fact, it appears Cheney has actively encouraged defiance of such laws by the Bush Administration.
For Cheney, the Geneva Conventions - considered among the nation's most important treaties -- are but quaint relics that can be ignored. Thus, he publicly embraced their violation when, on an Idaho talk radio program, he said he was not troubled in the slightest by our forces using "waterboarding" -- the simulated drowning of detainees to force them to talk. There are serious questions as to whether Cheney himself has also conspired to violate the War Crimes Act, which can be a capital crime.
A man who can so easily disregard the War Powers Act, FISA, the Geneva Conventions, and the War Crimes Act is merely flicking fleas when it comes to complying with laws like the Presidential Records Act, which requires him to keep records. Yet as CNN and other news organizations have reported, Cheney ordered the destruction of the visitor logs to his residence. These, of course, are presidential records the law requires him to preserve and protect. (Indeed, neighbors of the Vice President were surprised when, in the past, a truck for a document shredding service would regularly visit the Vice President's residence at the Naval Observatory.)
Most recently, the Vice President has refused to comply with Executive Order 12958, as amended by his boss, George W. Bush. These orders were issued to implement the law adopted by Congress in 1995 to clarify the classification and protection of national security information.
Most interesting in Cheney's defiance is his absolutely absurd explanation of why the law is not applicable to him or his staff.
Cheney's Explanation(s) For Defying the National Security Classification Orders
Henry Waxman, who may be the nation's most diligent and vigilant member of Congress, recently reported that Vice President Cheney claims he is exempt from the presidential orders requiring government-wide procedures to safeguard classified national security information because he is not an "entity within the executive branch." According to information provided to Chairman Waxman's Oversight committee, Cheney further claimed he was not an "agency" as set forth in the Executive Orders.
When Cheney was widely ridiculed by humorists, cartoonists, pundits, commentators and several members of Congress for his claim of not being an "entity within the executive branch," the Vice President's chief of staff and counsel David Addington responded by asserting that the Vice President is not subject to the order because he is not an "agency" as defined by the order. (Addington thus effectively dropped the claim that the Vice President is not an "entity.")
However, Addington does not cite any authority or language for his new claim that the Vice President is not an "agency." In fact, there is none. To the contrary, the order controlling national security classification states exactly the opposite of what Addington claims.
Executive Order 12958 states that the term "Agency" means any "Executive agency," as defined in the statutory language found at 5 U.S.C. 105, and it includes "any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information." An entity is any "body" or "unit" or "thing" within the executive branch, and to claim the Vice President's office is none of these is an insult to common sense. So is Addington's claim that the Office of Vice President is not an agency under the law.
Section 105 of Title 5 of the United States Code states that an "'Executive agency' means an … independent establishment" within the executive branch. Independent establishments are defined by Section 104 as "an establishment in the executive branch … which is not an Executive department [which are listed in Section 101, and include the Departments of State, Treasury, Justice, etc.], military department, Government corporation, or part thereof, or part of an independent establishment."
The Justice Department issued an opinion in 1994 that the Vice President was not an "agency" under the Freedom of Information Act. That opinion was largely based on the Supreme Court ruling, in Kissinger v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of the Press, that "agency" does not cover "the President's immediate personal staff or units in the Executive Office whose sole function is to advise and assist the President."
However, the agency definition in E.O. 12985 is very different from that in the Freedom of Information Act. If, as Addington claims, E.O. 12985 was intended to exempt the Vice President's office, why did it not so state? Or, why did Bush not exempt the Vice President when he amended that order in July 2005?
Cheney's claim his office is neither an entity nor agency defies logic, but it is not surprising since he continues also to claim, with absolutely no evidence to support his claim, that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 and that terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi set up an al Qaeda operation in Iraq.
Needless to say, Cheney's claim - or Addington's claim, since Cheney appears to be backing away from his chief of staff and counsel on this issue - raises the question of what the vice president is. Legally, the vice president has only the most limited of powers and authority, unless the president empowers him.
The Limited Role the Constitution and a Federal Statute Envision for the Vice President
The Vice President's very limited but vital roles are set forth in the Constitution. He is the next in succession to become President, should there be a vacancy or should the president suffer from mental or physical inability to serve. And he is the president of the Senate, which means he can preside over the Senate but under the Senate Rules, he cannot take part in debate, and under the Constitution, he can only vote to break a tie.
In the event of a vacancy in the office of the president, under Article II and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the Vice President becomes the Acting President. Also under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, the Vice President, when acting with a majority of the Cabinet, can also declare the president is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office." If he so declares, then after so informing Congress, the Vice President becomes Acting President until the President notifies Congress that he is fine; if there is a dispute, the Congress resolves it.
The only other Constitutional duty of the Vice President is that set forth in Article I, Section 3, clause 4, which makes the Vice President the "President of the Senate, but [he/she] shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided." Not since the nation's second Vice President, Thomas Jefferson, decided it was a waste of time to preside over the Senate has any Vice President done so -- other than to break ties or for ceremonial events, such as the State of the Union or the tallying of electoral college votes.
Since 1947, the Vice President has been given a number of statutory duties, when President Truman recommended, and the Congress agreed, that the Vice President should be a member of the National Security Council. This, however, is the most significant of his statutory assignments.
Thus, beyond the limited constitutional responsibilities, and the few statutory tasks, the Vice President's role comes down to whatever the President assigns him. Vice Presidents can have no role greater than the assignments given by the president -- or in the case of Dick Cheney, whatever he has been able to convince the President he can appropriately handle for him.
The Source of Cheney's Power: Influence, Not a Formal Grant of Authority
Washington insiders have long understood that Cheney's power stems from his knowledge of the way the White House and the Office of the President operate. This is knowledge he acquired as President Ford's Chief of Staff. With Bush's consent, much of the paper flow of the White House which heads up the chain of command toward the President goes through Cheney's office. In addition, Cheney's staff reaches down into the executive bureaucracy to shape the debate before it reaches the White House.
Those with whom I have spoken have serious doubt that Bush and the White House staff really knows what Cheney is doing, why he is doing it, or how he is doing it. From the outset of this administration, Cheney has been instrumental in placing people loyal to him throughout the Executive Branch. This is not to say that Bush is not "the decider," for he is, but by shaping the debate and controlling the paper flow, Cheney decides what the decider will decide.
It has long been apparent that Cheney's genius is that he lets George W. Bush get out of bed every morning actually believing he is the President. In fact, his presidency is run by the President of the Senate, for Cheney is its true center of gravity. That fact has become more apparent with every passing year of this presidency, and anyone who thinks otherwise has truly "misunderestimated" our nominal president and his vice president.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John W. Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former counsel to the president.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
A Vice President Without Borders
A Vice President Without Borders, Bordering on Lunacy
Maureen Dowd, The New York Times
June 24, 2007
WASHINGTON - It’s hard to imagine how Dick Cheney could get more dastardly, unless J. K. Rowling has him knock off Harry Potter next month.
Harry’s cloak of invisibility would be no match for Vice’s culture of invisibility.
I’ve always thought Cheney was way out there — the most Voldemort-like official I’ve run across. But even in my harshest musings about the vice president, I never imagined that he would declare himself not only above the law, not only above the president, but actually his own dark planet — a separate entity from the White House.
I guess a man who can wait 14 hours before he lets it dribble out that he shot his friend in the face has no limit on what he thinks he can keep secret. Still, it’s quite a leap to go from hiding in a secure, undisclosed location in the capital to hiding in a secure, undisclosed location in the Constitution.
Dr. No used to just blow off the public and Congress as he cooked up his shady schemes. Now, in a breathtaking act of arrant arrogance, he’s blowing off his own administration.
Henry Waxman, the California congressman who looks like an accountant and bites like a pit bull, is making the most of Congress’s ability, at long last, to scrutinize Cheney’s chicanery.
On Thursday, Mr. Waxman revealed that after four years of refusing to cooperate with the government unit that oversees classified documents, the vice president tried to shut down the unit rather than comply with the law ensuring that sensitive data is protected. The National Archives appealed to the Justice Department, but who knows how much justice there is at Justice, now that the White House has so blatantly politicized it?
Cheney’s office denied doing anything wrong, but Cheney’s office is also denying it’s an office. Tricky Dick Deuce declared himself exempt from a rule that applies to everyone else in the executive branch, instructing the National Archives that the Office of the Vice President is not an “entity within the executive branch” and therefore is not subject to presidential executive orders.
“It’s absurd, reflecting his view from the first day he got into office that laws don’t apply to him,” Representative Waxman told me. “The irony is, he’s taking the position that he’s not part of the executive branch.”
Ah, if only that were true. Then maybe W. would be able to close Gitmo, which Vice has insisted he not do. And Condi wouldn’t have to worry every night that she’ll wake up to find crazy Dick bombing Iran, whispering to W. that they have to do it before that weak sister Hillary takes over.
“Your decision to exempt your office from the president’s order is problematic because it could place national security secrets at risk,” Mr. Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote to Cheney.
Of course, it’s doubtful, now that Vice has done so much to put our national security at risk, that he’ll suddenly listen to reason.
Cheney and Cheney’s Cheney, David Addington, his equally belligerent, ideological and shadowy lawyer and chief of staff, have no shame. After claiming executive privilege to withhold the energy task force names and protect Scooter Libby, they now act outraged that Vice should be seen as part of the executive branch.
Cheney, they argue, is the president of the Senate, so he’s also part of the legislative branch. Vice is casting himself as a constitutional chimera, an extralegal creature with the body of a snake and the head of a sea monster. It’s a new level of gall, to avoid accountability by saying you’re part of a legislative branch that you’ve spent six years trying to weaken.
But gall is the specialty of Addington, who has done his best to give his boss the powers of a king. He was the main author of the White House memo justifying torture of terrorism suspects, and he helped stonewall the 9/11 commission. He led the fights supporting holding terrorism suspects without access to courts and against giving Congress and environmentalists access to information about the energy industry big shots who secretly advised Cheney on energy policy.
Dana Perino, a White House press spokeswoman, had to go out on Friday and defend Cheney’s bizarre contention that he is his own government. “This is an interesting constitutional question that legal scholars can debate,” she said.
I love that Cheney was able to bully Colin Powell, Pentagon generals and George Tenet when drumming up his fake case for war, but when he tried to push around the little guys, the National Archive data collectors — I’m visualizing dedicated “We the People” wonky types with glasses and pocket protectors — they pushed back.
Archivists are the new macho heroes of Washington.
Maureen Dowd, The New York Times
June 24, 2007
WASHINGTON - It’s hard to imagine how Dick Cheney could get more dastardly, unless J. K. Rowling has him knock off Harry Potter next month.
Harry’s cloak of invisibility would be no match for Vice’s culture of invisibility.
I’ve always thought Cheney was way out there — the most Voldemort-like official I’ve run across. But even in my harshest musings about the vice president, I never imagined that he would declare himself not only above the law, not only above the president, but actually his own dark planet — a separate entity from the White House.
I guess a man who can wait 14 hours before he lets it dribble out that he shot his friend in the face has no limit on what he thinks he can keep secret. Still, it’s quite a leap to go from hiding in a secure, undisclosed location in the capital to hiding in a secure, undisclosed location in the Constitution.
Dr. No used to just blow off the public and Congress as he cooked up his shady schemes. Now, in a breathtaking act of arrant arrogance, he’s blowing off his own administration.
Henry Waxman, the California congressman who looks like an accountant and bites like a pit bull, is making the most of Congress’s ability, at long last, to scrutinize Cheney’s chicanery.
On Thursday, Mr. Waxman revealed that after four years of refusing to cooperate with the government unit that oversees classified documents, the vice president tried to shut down the unit rather than comply with the law ensuring that sensitive data is protected. The National Archives appealed to the Justice Department, but who knows how much justice there is at Justice, now that the White House has so blatantly politicized it?
Cheney’s office denied doing anything wrong, but Cheney’s office is also denying it’s an office. Tricky Dick Deuce declared himself exempt from a rule that applies to everyone else in the executive branch, instructing the National Archives that the Office of the Vice President is not an “entity within the executive branch” and therefore is not subject to presidential executive orders.
“It’s absurd, reflecting his view from the first day he got into office that laws don’t apply to him,” Representative Waxman told me. “The irony is, he’s taking the position that he’s not part of the executive branch.”
Ah, if only that were true. Then maybe W. would be able to close Gitmo, which Vice has insisted he not do. And Condi wouldn’t have to worry every night that she’ll wake up to find crazy Dick bombing Iran, whispering to W. that they have to do it before that weak sister Hillary takes over.
“Your decision to exempt your office from the president’s order is problematic because it could place national security secrets at risk,” Mr. Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote to Cheney.
Of course, it’s doubtful, now that Vice has done so much to put our national security at risk, that he’ll suddenly listen to reason.
Cheney and Cheney’s Cheney, David Addington, his equally belligerent, ideological and shadowy lawyer and chief of staff, have no shame. After claiming executive privilege to withhold the energy task force names and protect Scooter Libby, they now act outraged that Vice should be seen as part of the executive branch.
Cheney, they argue, is the president of the Senate, so he’s also part of the legislative branch. Vice is casting himself as a constitutional chimera, an extralegal creature with the body of a snake and the head of a sea monster. It’s a new level of gall, to avoid accountability by saying you’re part of a legislative branch that you’ve spent six years trying to weaken.
But gall is the specialty of Addington, who has done his best to give his boss the powers of a king. He was the main author of the White House memo justifying torture of terrorism suspects, and he helped stonewall the 9/11 commission. He led the fights supporting holding terrorism suspects without access to courts and against giving Congress and environmentalists access to information about the energy industry big shots who secretly advised Cheney on energy policy.
Dana Perino, a White House press spokeswoman, had to go out on Friday and defend Cheney’s bizarre contention that he is his own government. “This is an interesting constitutional question that legal scholars can debate,” she said.
I love that Cheney was able to bully Colin Powell, Pentagon generals and George Tenet when drumming up his fake case for war, but when he tried to push around the little guys, the National Archive data collectors — I’m visualizing dedicated “We the People” wonky types with glasses and pocket protectors — they pushed back.
Archivists are the new macho heroes of Washington.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Bush aides may have illegally lost e-mail, Dems say
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN1839309320070618?feedType=RSS&rpc=22
Bush aides may have illegally lost e-mail, Dems say
Mon Jun 18, 2007
By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Karl Rove and dozens of other White House staffers appear to have illegally routed official e-mails through a Republican group that subsequently deleted them, a congressional report said on Monday.
By using Republican National Committee e-mail accounts for official business, senior White House aides may have broken a law requiring them to preserve presidential records, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said in an interim report.
"This should be a matter of grave concern for anyone who values open government and the preservation of an accurate historical record," said committee Chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat.
The Presidential Records Act of 1978 requires White House officials to save official correspondence. While the White House automatically archives its e-mail the RNC typically deletes messages on its server older than 30 days, the report said.
The White House and the RNC said Waxman's committee was jumping to conclusions.
"We have seen a number of times right now where people have been putting together investigations to see what sticks. They have had very little success so far," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.
White House officials have for years used RNC e-mail accounts to comply with the Hatch Act, which forbids public servants from using government property to conduct political business.
At least 88 White House staffers had RNC accounts and there are signs that many of them used those accounts extensively for nonpolitical matters, the committee said.
Rove, a top political adviser to President George W. Bush, sent more than 100 e-mail messages and received more than 200 each day through his RNC account in 2007, the report said.
More than half of the 140,000 Rove messages saved by the RNC was correspondence with other government officials, the committee said. Most of his correspondence from Bush's first term has not been preserved, it said.
Rove thought his messages were being archived, his former assistant Susan Ralston told the committee. His lawyer has said he never intentionally deleted e-mail from any accounts.
The RNC said it is still searching for the missing e-mails.
"There is no basis for an assumption that any e-mail not already found would be of an official nature," RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said by e-mail.
The report also points a finger at Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, currently facing pressure to resign over U.S. attorney firings that Democrats say were political in nature.
As White House counsel, Gonzales may have known that Rove and others were using RNC accounts but did nothing to stop it, the report says.
A Justice Department official referred questions to the White House.
The committee said it will investigate Gonzales' role further and search federal agencies for copies of the missing e-mails. It also said it plans to subpoena Bush's 2004 re-election campaign for additional e-mails because the campaign has not cooperated.
Bush aides may have illegally lost e-mail, Dems say
Mon Jun 18, 2007
By Andy Sullivan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Karl Rove and dozens of other White House staffers appear to have illegally routed official e-mails through a Republican group that subsequently deleted them, a congressional report said on Monday.
By using Republican National Committee e-mail accounts for official business, senior White House aides may have broken a law requiring them to preserve presidential records, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said in an interim report.
"This should be a matter of grave concern for anyone who values open government and the preservation of an accurate historical record," said committee Chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat.
The Presidential Records Act of 1978 requires White House officials to save official correspondence. While the White House automatically archives its e-mail the RNC typically deletes messages on its server older than 30 days, the report said.
The White House and the RNC said Waxman's committee was jumping to conclusions.
"We have seen a number of times right now where people have been putting together investigations to see what sticks. They have had very little success so far," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.
White House officials have for years used RNC e-mail accounts to comply with the Hatch Act, which forbids public servants from using government property to conduct political business.
At least 88 White House staffers had RNC accounts and there are signs that many of them used those accounts extensively for nonpolitical matters, the committee said.
Rove, a top political adviser to President George W. Bush, sent more than 100 e-mail messages and received more than 200 each day through his RNC account in 2007, the report said.
More than half of the 140,000 Rove messages saved by the RNC was correspondence with other government officials, the committee said. Most of his correspondence from Bush's first term has not been preserved, it said.
Rove thought his messages were being archived, his former assistant Susan Ralston told the committee. His lawyer has said he never intentionally deleted e-mail from any accounts.
The RNC said it is still searching for the missing e-mails.
"There is no basis for an assumption that any e-mail not already found would be of an official nature," RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said by e-mail.
The report also points a finger at Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, currently facing pressure to resign over U.S. attorney firings that Democrats say were political in nature.
As White House counsel, Gonzales may have known that Rove and others were using RNC accounts but did nothing to stop it, the report says.
A Justice Department official referred questions to the White House.
The committee said it will investigate Gonzales' role further and search federal agencies for copies of the missing e-mails. It also said it plans to subpoena Bush's 2004 re-election campaign for additional e-mails because the campaign has not cooperated.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Rambo image was based on lie
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329790868-103681,00.html
Rambo image was based on lie, says US war hero Jessica Lynch
· Tale of heroics was untrue, Congress hearing told
· Dead corporal's brother says military misled public
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Wednesday April 25, 2007
The Guardian
A female US soldier who came to personify the US invasion of Iraq yesterday appeared before a Congressional hearing to reject the Pentagon's portrayal of her as "Rambo from West Virginia", shot down in a blaze of glory.
Appearing as a witness at the Congressional committee investigating military misinformation from the battlefield, Jessica Lynch said: "Tales of great heroism were being told. My parent's home in Wirt county [West Virginia] was under siege of the media all repeating the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills who went down fighting. It was not true."
Ms Lynch was a 19-year-old private captured by Iraqis in an ambush at Nassiriya in the opening days of the war and subsequently rescued by US forces.
She told the committee: "I have repeatedly said, when asked, that if the stories about me helped inspire our troops and rally a nation, then perhaps there was some good.
"However, I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were, in fact, legendary." She said the US people did not need to be told "elaborate tales". She concluded: "The truth of war is not always easy to hear but it always more heroic than the hype."
When she was captured at Nassiriya, the US military told the media she had been wounded but carried on firing until the end.
She had in fact been riding in a truck and had not been firing a weapon. The US military also presented her escape as a heroic feat, ignoring the role of friendly Iraqi medical staff in the rescue.
Ms Lynch said she was not politically motivated and supported the troops in Iraq. But she added: "I believe this is not a time for finger pointing. It is time for the truth, the whole truth, versus misinformation and hype."
The House committee on oversight and government reform, chaired by the energetic Democrat Henry Waxman, is focusing on two incidents, Ms Lynch's capture and rescue, and the death of an army corporal, Pat Tillman, a former football star, in Afghanistan in 2004. Corporal Tillman's death attracted media attention because he had turned down a $9m (£4.5m) football contract to volunteer for service.
Mr Waxman accused the government of inventing "sensational details and stories" about Cpl Tillman and Ms Lynch.
Although the US defence department reported Cpl Tillman had been killed by enemy combatants while leading an attempt to rescue US troops, five weeks later it finally emerged he was killed by friendly fire.
His younger brother, Kevin, also giving evidence yesterday, accused the US military of "intentional falsehoods" and "deliberate and careful misrepresentations" in portraying his death as the result of heroic engagement with the enemy.
"We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public," he said. "Pat's death was clearly the result of fratricide [friendly fire]."
Kevin, who had been in a convoy behind his brother, said the heroic account was to distract attention from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and other setbacks in Iraq. "Revealing that Pat's death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster in a month of political disasters ... so the truth needed to be suppressed."
He said the military attempted to give the killing "a patriotic glow", awarding his brother a Silver Star and concocting a story that was complete fiction.
In Iraq yesterday, the US military said that nine paratroopers had been killed in a suicide attack on army outpost at Diyala, north of Baghdad, one of the most lethal attacks on US personnel since the invasion.
Rambo image was based on lie, says US war hero Jessica Lynch
· Tale of heroics was untrue, Congress hearing told
· Dead corporal's brother says military misled public
Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Wednesday April 25, 2007
The Guardian
A female US soldier who came to personify the US invasion of Iraq yesterday appeared before a Congressional hearing to reject the Pentagon's portrayal of her as "Rambo from West Virginia", shot down in a blaze of glory.
Appearing as a witness at the Congressional committee investigating military misinformation from the battlefield, Jessica Lynch said: "Tales of great heroism were being told. My parent's home in Wirt county [West Virginia] was under siege of the media all repeating the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills who went down fighting. It was not true."
Ms Lynch was a 19-year-old private captured by Iraqis in an ambush at Nassiriya in the opening days of the war and subsequently rescued by US forces.
She told the committee: "I have repeatedly said, when asked, that if the stories about me helped inspire our troops and rally a nation, then perhaps there was some good.
"However, I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were, in fact, legendary." She said the US people did not need to be told "elaborate tales". She concluded: "The truth of war is not always easy to hear but it always more heroic than the hype."
When she was captured at Nassiriya, the US military told the media she had been wounded but carried on firing until the end.
She had in fact been riding in a truck and had not been firing a weapon. The US military also presented her escape as a heroic feat, ignoring the role of friendly Iraqi medical staff in the rescue.
Ms Lynch said she was not politically motivated and supported the troops in Iraq. But she added: "I believe this is not a time for finger pointing. It is time for the truth, the whole truth, versus misinformation and hype."
The House committee on oversight and government reform, chaired by the energetic Democrat Henry Waxman, is focusing on two incidents, Ms Lynch's capture and rescue, and the death of an army corporal, Pat Tillman, a former football star, in Afghanistan in 2004. Corporal Tillman's death attracted media attention because he had turned down a $9m (£4.5m) football contract to volunteer for service.
Mr Waxman accused the government of inventing "sensational details and stories" about Cpl Tillman and Ms Lynch.
Although the US defence department reported Cpl Tillman had been killed by enemy combatants while leading an attempt to rescue US troops, five weeks later it finally emerged he was killed by friendly fire.
His younger brother, Kevin, also giving evidence yesterday, accused the US military of "intentional falsehoods" and "deliberate and careful misrepresentations" in portraying his death as the result of heroic engagement with the enemy.
"We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public," he said. "Pat's death was clearly the result of fratricide [friendly fire]."
Kevin, who had been in a convoy behind his brother, said the heroic account was to distract attention from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and other setbacks in Iraq. "Revealing that Pat's death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster in a month of political disasters ... so the truth needed to be suppressed."
He said the military attempted to give the killing "a patriotic glow", awarding his brother a Silver Star and concocting a story that was complete fiction.
In Iraq yesterday, the US military said that nine paratroopers had been killed in a suicide attack on army outpost at Diyala, north of Baghdad, one of the most lethal attacks on US personnel since the invasion.
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