“I Spy” Legal Beagles

12 Comments

1. 

   philinmaine on January 2, 2006 at 10:46 pm

   Wow…another in the seemingly endless cases of ‘either you’re with us or you’re not’. The parade never ends but the public is so mis-informed. They won’t hear about this justice guy. It’s maddening.

   just tonight, NBC Nightly news reported the Oil Minister resigned. They didn’t report who replaced him and what a travesty that is.

   There’s often good stuff over at ABC’s ‘The Note’ which resumes tomorrow:

   http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=156238

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     Dean Pajevic on January 2, 2006 at 10:50 pm

     Are you telling me that NBC News did not report that Chalabi has gotten the job?

     … re Comey … so was the cushy job at Lockheed Martin — the largest arms dealer in the world — not only an offer he couldn’t refuse but also a way to silence him?

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       on January 2, 2006 at 11:40 pm

       I have never understood why James Comey appointed Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the Plame affair. They are best friends. I see now that Fitzgerald is a straight shooter. So then one might think Comey is a straight shooter….but why would he then go to work for a Cheney influenced company that is completely crooked like Lockheed Martin. Lynn Cheney was on the board of directors and her son in law once held comey job as corporation counsel. Cheneys son in law now works for Homeland Security as corporation counsel.

       Comey must be in big trouble not only with the administration but with Lockeheed Martin for appointing Fitzgerald. Cheney is a possible target of Fitzgerald and comey works for a company on which Lynn worked and who is a prime recepient of government contracts.

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         Dean Pajevic on January 2, 2006 at 11:45 pm

         The whole sequence of events in Comey’s career moves sticks in my craw … something has never smelled right … I wonder when and if we’ll find out.

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           rumi on January 2, 2006 at 11:53 pm

             Take an honest objective look at the entire al Qaeda network, investigations and prosecutions. Track each participant from both sides and note the contradictions or anomalies. It generally comes to the same end result in that the governments, corporations and terror networks are all basically on the same side at alternate times.

             Either all of our politicians, intelligence and DOJ are so fucking worthless stupid as to explain the failures or they are somehow, in some ways complicit along the way.

         • 

           Dean Pajevic on January 3, 2006 at 12:00 am

           How does this relate to Comey?

         • 

           rumi on January 3, 2006 at 12:16 am

           Almost every current controversial problem we have is related to the ‘GWoT’ in one way or another. It’s all about money and power and so is the al Qeada network that has it’s roots in various countries’ intelligence agencies. Comey’s appearance of possible questionable motives are the result of money, power and actions in the GWoT.

            

         • 

           rumi on January 3, 2006 at 1:10 am

           How does this relate to Comey?

           James B. Comey currently serves as Deputy Attorney General for the US Department of Justice. Prior to becoming Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Comey served as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from January 2002 to the time of his confirmation. Previously, Mr. Comey served as Managing Assistant U.S. Attorney in charge of the Richmond Division of the United States Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia. As United States Attorney, Mr. Comey oversaw numerous terrorism cases and supervised prosecutions of executives of WorldCom, Adelphia, and Imclone on fraud and securities-related charges. Mr. Comey also created a specialized unit devoted to prosecuting international drug cartels. As an assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, he handled the Khobar Towers terrorist bombing case, arising out of the June 1996 attack on a U.S. military facility in Saudi Arabia in which 19 Airmen were killed.  Jim Comey writes an Introduction to the project.
           Comey Bio clip

             Where do we begin in looking at all of the possible conflicts of interest? Worldcom-bankruptcy, no-bid contract in Iraq that they weren’t qualified for, wiretapping potential, rerouted domestic calls to international servers….Drug cartels and terrorist financing- ties to covert actions involving intelligence agencies at the least of the problems, terrorist financing in general has been covered up for conflicts of interest when favored corporations and lobby/politicians are involved….Adelphia-ImClone-look closely at the end result of those trials…

           Lockheed Martin conflicts involving GWoT–
           Lockheed Martin Acquires Aspen Systems
           “The acquisition of Aspen Systems further strengthens (Lockhead’s) Systems and IT offerings and allows us to provide a broader array of diversified services to our expanding customer base,” said Bob Stevens, Lockheed Martin chairman, president, and chief executive officer, in a statement.

           JFCOM, Lockheed Martin sign R&D agreement
           Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) and Lockheed Martin signed a three-year agreement last month to work together on researching and developing technologies to help commanders better oversee warfighters.

           The Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) for the Joint Command-Future project calls for JFCOM and Lockheed Martin to identify and improve command, control, communications and computer systems and information tools to better share data in a network-centric environment. JFCOM will have access to Lockheed Martin’s new, multimillion-dollar Center for Innovation in Suffolk, Va., and the company will get to work with the command’s warfighting experts, according to JFCOM and company statements.

           Lockheed Martin Gets Pact With Air Force

           Data management
           Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) announced recently that its Information Technology unit’s Application Development and Maintenance organization has achieved the Software Engineering Institute’s (SEI(SM)) Capability Maturity Model® Integration (CMMI) Maturity Level 5 rating for process excellence in producing and supporting software applications deployed at dozens of civil government and defense agencies.

           These are just a couple of the current announcements that wouldn’t be possible without the past 5 years of a GWoT.

         • 

           rumi on January 3, 2006 at 1:57 am

             As Comey and others are hailed as some of the most successful prosecuters of GWoT suspects, the responsibility also falls with them as to how some of these cases are handled.

           This piece from CNN in Dec 2001 shows an interesting trend in the 5 years prior

           WASHINGTON (CNN) — More than two-thirds of terrorism-related cases sent to federal prosecutors in the last five years never resulted in charges, according to a nonpartisan, nonprofit group’s analysis of Justice Department records.
           Prosecutors did not bring charges in 68 percent of the terrorism cases that federal investigators referred to them during a five-year period that ended September 30, the analysis said.

           Authorities declined to prosecute 34 percent of all criminal referrals during the same time period, half the rate for terrorism-related cases. When rejecting cases, prosecutors cited weak evidence or a weak legal case far more often in terrorism cases than in others, the study found.

           One former federal prosecutor said the Justice Department labels numerous minor offenses as terrorism, but authorities vigorously prosecute the most serious cases.
           ————

           Then somehow, 9/11 changed everything and the trend took off severely in the opposite direction. The cases were still weak and in most cases, vague. In this period though, all the stops were pulled and convictions were the goal even if evidence didn’t really support it. In the history of the GWoT there are alarming circles of relying on poorly sourced evidence to further charge others and then using that connection to justify the next ones.

           Tomgram: Greenberg on the Legal War on Terror at Home

           ——–
           In fact, looked at with a cold eye, the administration’s record of convictions in terrorism cases is remarkably inconsequential. Although it is extremely difficult to obtain reliable information on such cases, the facts, as best we know them, are these: Of the 120 terrorism cases recorded on Findlaw, the major information source for legal cases of note, the initial major charges leveled have resulted in only two actual terrorism convictions — both in a single case, that of Richard Reid, the notorious shoe bomber. Of 18 actual charges of “terrorism” brought between September 2001 and October 2004, 15 are still pending and one was dismissed. In lieu of convictions for terrorist acts, the Justice Department uses another related, lesser charge – that of “material support,” which means providing aid or services to a terrorist or a terrorist organization. Its extreme breadth and over-inclusiveness has rendered it the fallback charge of choice and a catch-all for anything from having trained in an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan back in the 1990s (when Al Qaeda’s focus was the war in Bosnia and other places outside of the United States) to weapons training, or even the exceedingly modest category of producing fraudulent documents, so long as they are knowingly provided to a designated “foreign terrorist organization.”

           But what of the six cases of “terrorism convictions,” material support or otherwise, that the President himself hailed as the benchmarks of the administration’s courtroom success story? As it happens, five resulted from questionable plea bargains, often on lesser charges, not necessarily closely related to terrorism, and one has yet to be tried. Only in the Detroit case has there been an actual conviction for “terrorism,” (albeit material support for terrorism), and that case has since been overturned in a manner embarrassing to the Bush administration.

           When the plea bargains are considered in their own right, their apparent circumstances should cause the odd eyebrow to be raised. After all, over half of all terrorism cases tried so far have resulted in plea bargains. The Department of Justice (DOJ) alleges that such pleas are offered in exchange for important information in the war on terrorism and spokespersons at the DOJ invariably maintain that, as in criminal cases generally, these have yielded invaluable information. Yet despite the implementation of the Patriot Act and the re-organization of our law enforcement efforts to fight terrorism, the yield seems neither better, nor worse than that which existed prior to 9/11.

           Let’s just consider the five already tried cases that the President cited. In most of them, the evidence seems to show that the use of plea bargains had a good deal less to do with getting crucial “terror” information than with getting convictions on the books in situations where a conviction at trial might have proved difficult indeed. In the Buffalo case, the defendants — known as the Lackawanna Six – were initially accused of belonging to an “al-Qaeda sleeper cell,” but instead ended up pleading to material support charges.

           There are several possibilities to explain this but none of them support the claims made in the GWoT and it’s management. 2 choices of many possible choice of explanation are either gross incompetence/negligence or complicity.

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           on January 3, 2006 at 9:54 am

           Yes, I don’t really think there are any or many terrorists that have plotted or are plotting attacks against the U.S. And so what if someone is ? There have been no attacks since 911 and that says that there is not a plethora of terrorists out there. The reaction is exaggerated.

           That there have been only 2 convictions according to Rumi’s post says a lot also. Richaard Reid. Anybody else. He has a shoe bomb. How sophisticated is that?

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           DuctapeFatwa on January 3, 2006 at 12:01 am

           this to be looked into too closely, even more than Washington would, and too specific a documentation of it would be considered a criminal act.

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           rumi on January 3, 2006 at 9:34 am

             The American standard has always been that it’s not criminal if it’s for a good cause and done by/with the government.