Author: latanawi

    I met a friend’s new husband many years ago, as they were selling their belongings to leave for his native South American country.  He had fled to the United States after witnessing his fellow politically active university roommate being thrown out the window by government thugs. After earning a degree in economics he returned with his American bride for a position in the government.  I wonder how long it took him to avenge his roommate’s murder.

    Time is running out for justice for the victims of decades-old repressive military dictatorships in Latin America.   Those violent eras comprised chapter one.  Now we have chapters two and three:  individuals seek reparations,  and some of the new governments pursue political accountings in trials.   There will never be enough space for all the grief and political backdrop.  What I can write here is merely a sampling of the arduous climbs taken by some.  The identity of most victims is probably lost forever.

        Chapter Two:  Reparations.

       Monetary compensation may be the easiest to win, but what survivors and families want more are public apologies, system changes, and the location of remains.   They look to the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Human Rights Court (IAHRC) [Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos], which decides cases of reparations under the OAS treaty, the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons (Convencion Interamericana Sobre Desaparacion Forzada de Personas).  Evidence is hard to assemble decades after disappearances.  Countries attempt to thwart jurisdiction.  So, most families never even get into the elevator.

    Even for the successful, though, trial orders are meaningless without effective enforcement.

•   EL SALVADOR which had a 12-year civil war, still has not complied with the court’s order to create a system to search for children who were kidnapped by the military and to identify the perpetrators of human rights violations. Many disappeared children were sold into adoption and are thought to be alive today.
•   HONDURAS was ordered to pay reparations to some families, but did not admit culpability or punish any wrong-doers.   Aided by the Center for Justice and Accountability which brings civil lawsuits in the U.S. and in Spain against human rights violators, six people sued Juan López Grijalba, the former head of the notorious intelligence police force DNI (Direción Nacional de Investigaciones) and boss of death squad “Battalion 3-16.”  
      Because of his human rights violations he was deported in 2004.   In 2006 a federal judge in Florida ordered him to pay $47 Million to torture survivors and relatives.

•  BOLIVIA admitted liability in 2000 and was ordered to pay reparations to the mother of a college student unaccountably imprisoned in 1972.  He disappeared the day his mother came to visit, accompanied by a Red Cross official. Three years after the court’s order Bolivia had paid the mother $5400 and still owed her $4,000;  it was in non-compliance otherwise, not having (1) criminalized forced disappearances, (2) investigated to identify the perpetrators, (3) located the student’s remains, and (4) named an educational center in Santa Cruz for him.  
•  PERU has been ordered to apologize and pay $20 Million to the families of 41 suspected and convicted members of the Maoist Sendero Luminoso, shot in the head execution-style when a 1992 prison riot was quelled in a semblance of a three-day mini-war (planes, heavy artillery, grenades, machine guns).  Peru’s current president, Alan Garcia, vowed a legal challenge to the decision.  

      Ironically, Peru has established a reparations council for the estimated 10,000 victims of the Sendero war begun in 1980.  Most were indigenous to the impoverished Andean highlands.  After the Senderistas had murdered local authorities and suspected military collaborators, the Peruvian Army came through killing Senderista supporters and kidnapping children in vengeance, in counterinsurgency operations.  Despite photographs and graves, however, reparations will be out of reach of families unable to legally prove a victim’s existence:  the Senderistas had targeted any sign of the presence of the state, destroying even the civil registers which contained birth and death certificates. Death certificates require a long journey to fill out a form in castellano.

                  Chapter Three:  Trials

     The new wave of political accounting is taking so long that it comes too late for many survivors and relatives.  Perpetrators may die, like Chile’s Pinochet, without being convicted. Amnesty laws are partly to blame.  Two examples:

ARGENTINA

    An estimated 30,000 people were kidnapped and killed in the 1970’s and 1980’s, including Isabel Peron’s two-year presidential tenure and the following Dirty War against leftists under military dictatorship.   Delays are frustrating activists and lawyers. Some cases have dragged on over ten years, including that of the systematic theft of young children of political prisoners, and of the torture camp at the Navy School of Mechanics.  In certain provinces, legal proceedings have halted or never even begun. After the 2005 overturning of an amnesty law protecting junta-allied police and military agents,  finally, hundreds of military officers are being prosecuted.

    Spain, which has already convicted a naval officer for throwing political dissidents out of planes, has sought extradition for trial there of 40 more Argentines.  It is extraditing an Argentine police officer accused of murdering a prominent writer in 1977.  Also likely to be extradited from her exile in Madrid:  Isabel Peron.

    Witnesses in “dirty war” trials in Argentina still risk their lives. One, whose description of being jolted with electric prods by a former police chief in a secret prison helped convict the defendant for life for six disappearances, vanished after testifying.  A 51-year-old construction worker who accused a retired police officer of torturing him in 1972 disappeared for several hours before being thrown from a car, alive but beaten and burned with cigarettes.

URUGUAY
    The left-wing government of Uruguay has made a priority of investigations into human rights abuses during the 1973 – 1985 military dictatorship.  After thirty years trials began of several army officers and ex-policemen.  Former president Bordaberry, now 78, who had dissolved the Congress and given the army full powers to re-establish order against the resistance of Tupamaros guerrillas, now faces imprisonment, along with his minister of foreign affairs, for the assassination of two politicians and two Tupamaros militants in 1976, as well as for ten murders of leftists who disappeared after being arbitrarily detained.

    Today, Latin America has the priorities of what makes up life — soccer,  politics, scratching out a living, music, novelas, and fantasies.  Disappearances are closeted off:  reminiscence requires happier memories.  

    Unaccounted history is part of history, nevertheless, part of a collective psyche.  Everyone who disappeared or was tossed out a dormitory window had a mother or daughter or godparent or roommate, someone still alive who remembers.  To them, a salute.  If their pain buys anything in reparations and trials, in some measure they will have avenged los desaparecidos.

   —   (dear Liza, dear Liza…) the latest Bush theme song.  The hole is a glacial chasm into which Bush is pushing the least among us, those barely making traction on the ice.

    Members of the 30somethingdems in the House fathomed much of the budget, the size of two Manhattan directories, the day it was plopped on their desks this past week, and explained its major flaws that evening on C-SPAN.   These guys, as they refer to each other, are brainy bloodhounds, illustrating with charts how a gigantic chunk of the budget goes to paying the interest on the national debt for money borrowed abroad.  

    Most offensive to Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (FL) Tim Ryan (OH) Jason Altmire (PA) and Chris Murphy (CT) were slashes for health care, particularly Medicare.   Last year, the Republicans had blocked Democrats’ proposed reforms of the drug program to save Medicare beneficiaries $61 billion over a ten-year period.

    First responders?  Screw `em.   Cut firefighters’ money in half.  Education?  Rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul.  Not nearly enough for the No Child Left Behind Act.

     The AARP growled politely.

 Bush’s budget would hit low-income seniors particularly hard, via cuts in energy assistance programs, housing subsidy programs and payments to states for administrative costs of Medicaid… .

    It batted at proposed means-testing for drug benefits.  

 …people already pay taxes for Medicare based on their incomes and shouldn’t be socked with income-related premiums as well.

    The AMA added:

 … cutting funding for SCHIP [pronounced “S – chip,”  State Children’s Health Insurance for uninsured] is the wrong way to go.  Currently there are nine million uninsured children…

     Moreover, it’s sayonara to budding innovative state-sponsored universal health insurance plans, complained the AARP, AMA, and the Center for Medicare Advocacy.  Bush’s budget is geared towards replacing Medicare as a uniform health insurance program with a fragmented set of private plans.

This effort is based on industry lobbying and philosophical preferences about how to deliver health coverage, not on a fiscal analysis about what is most cost effective….  

   As Medicare evolves into an income-based program from a social insurance program, the private plans it subsidizes would bleed its budget, resulting in draconian cuts.  Those on lower incomes, still dependent on Medicare, would get the shaft.  

    This is what left Debbie Wasserman-Schultz agog.  Her Florida constituents know Medicare.  Just what are Bush’s “family values,” she wondered, that he attacks the old, the disabled, the poor.  As he was growing up, what did they talk about around the dinner table?   Didn’t his parents speak of taking care of those in need?  She, for example, grew up with the basic Jewish value,  tikkun olam — “repairing of the world,” the obligation to make it a better place through social action, helping alleviate hunger, homelessness, disease, ignorance.  

     On behalf of 16 national Jewish groups from all three religious streams and 62 local groups which advocate for vulnerable populations, the United Jewish Communities urged every member of Congress to fight the cuts.  

  [Such programs as the Social Services Block Grant, the Community Services Block Grant, Food Stamps, State Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Low Income Heating Energy Assistance Program] are critical to the elderly, refugees, children and persons with disabilities.

     I’ll ask it again, for the least among us.  Values?  What values in Bush’s budget?
       

  Contractor Has to Pay for Hiring Blackwater
   It’s nice to see the good guys win as promised.  In Wednesday’s hearing on government contractor waste, fraud and abuse the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform heard how the Army is reducing payments to KBR (Kellog, Brown & Roote) by $19.6 Million, thanks to the investigative persistence of the chair, Rep. Henry Waxman.  KBR had violated its contractual prohibition against subcontracting for armed security transportation in Iraq by employing Blackwater (which had made a hefty profit). The committee’s website features a video clip from the hearing. This updates my diary on the subject last month.

   DHS Mismanages Multi-Billion Dollar Contracts
   Yesterday the committee’s hearing focused on Homeland Security’s mismanagement of two contracts, the Coast Guard’s $24 Billion Deepwater program and the Secure Border Initiative(“SBInet”), a $30 Billion contract with Boeing.  In both cases virtually everything is being outsourced, from design to oversight.  

   The most ambitious element of the Coast Guard’s Deepwater program, the new 425-foot National Security Cutter, was assessed by the Navy for its vulnerability to fatigue. The Navy report concluded that the ship would not last its full 30-year lifespan. Rep. Waxman stated:

  What happened next raises many questions.  The Deepwater Office transmitted an edited version of the Navy report to the Commandant of the Coast Guard.  The briefing slides given to the Commandant were nearly identical to the slides prepared by the Navy, with one critical exception:  all of the Navy’s bottom line conclusions about the ship’s problems had been deleted.

 This was done just months before the Coast Guard extended the contract.
    Homeland Security made the same “mistakes” with the SBInet contract.

   Drug Manufacturer Fraud Unchecked; Government Purchases in Chaos
    In today’s hearing the committee examined the impact on federal programs such as Medicare of the wasteful or abusive pricing policies of pharmaceutical companies. They heard of drug manufacturer fraud costing Medicaid billions, and how only a few U.S. Attorneys offices are seriously involved — mainly in Philadelphia and Boston.

 Support from investigative agencies is skimpy.  The active support of the Attorney General and his deputy are not in evidence.  The drug manufacturer defendants are aware of these deficiencies and many of them appear to be trying to run out the clock on the Justice Department attorneys.

 
    One of the witnesses, a director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Hospital Finance and Management, delivered his review of the problems when the government purchases drugs.  He found that in some government programs, e.g., the Medicare Part D program, the government agencies in charge have no idea what they are paying for the drugs. This includes the HHS Secretary, the GAO, CBO, and so forth.  Before you can negotiate a price, you have to know what you are currently paying.

    Apparently the military and the VA pay the least:  their respective heads negotiate the prices.  Consumers Union and other organizations have attempted to estimate the prices paid and found that the VA pays maybe half as much as Part D plans for the same commonly prescribed drugs.
    Big Insurers, Big Profits for Medicare Drugs
    The committee will be delving into the enrichment of the middle-men under the Medicare drug program.  It has requested prescription drug pricing information, including profits and administrative costs associated with Medicare Part D coverage, from from twelve Medicare insurers such as Aetna, Wellpoint, and Kaiser Permanente.  

   Government agencies, beware:  if you’ve been too generous with the public purse, too accepting of shoddy work, the light of Waxman’s committee will find you.  If they could force the return of the salaries of those Republicans who did zip for all the years they abdicated their responsibilities, they’d do it.  At least they’re putting the layabouts to shame — and saving us a fat nickel, to boot.

   If it weren’t for Christine Jennings, would the general public fathom the urgency for voting system  accountability?  I think it’s the numbers.  She lost by 369 votes.  The Democrat is still in the fight for that Florida congressional seat, though.  Contending that the loss was due to an undervote of over 18,000 ascribed to malfunctioning touch-screen machines, she has gone to court and to Congress.

    Jennings is still trying to force Election Systems & Software to cough up iVotronic computer codes; probably the Florida Supreme Court will make the ultimate decision.  Meanwhile, an independent lawsuit for a revote is being pursued by a coalition of the ACLU of Florida, VoterAction, People for the American Way Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

   The House Administration Committee, which has authority over contested House elections, has opened an investigation.  The chair wrote a cautionary letter to Sarasota county’s election supervisor, requesting the preservation of election material (software, poll books, and the like).  

   We’re on a roll this week.

•   The Senate Rules and Administration Committee, chaired by Sen. Feinstein, is holding a hearing on electronic election reform, going beyond the Florida race.
•  Florida’s touch-screen electronic machines will be converted to optical scan machines, paid by the state (not the counties) if all goes as planned by newly-elected Gov. Crist in his budget proposal.  The plan is criticized, though, for allowing current touch-screen machines to be equipped with printers for disabled access — no cure for any underlying troubled technology.
•  Rep. Holt will once again introduce his legislation, the “Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act,” requiring electronic machines to have paper back-up.  It also would toughen requirements for touch-screen machines that have printers — hence, “increased accessibility.”  The bill has 222 co-sponsors.  Under last year’s supine Congress, he couldn’t even get it out of the Republican-dominated committee.

    Kudos to a project at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU’s law school for helping Rep. Holt in drafting his measure.  Last October it issued a report on voting system security, accessibility, usability, and cost.

    I don’t think voters last year said to themselves:  “We need a Democratic majority because otherwise we won’t get electronic voting reform.”  No matter.  We’re seeing lots of good stuff that had been bottled up.  Changes are a-comin’.  Cheers! (clink)  

  Others, like Kissinger and Perry, land in a university post.  Rumsfeld?  We’re still stuck with him, and for who knows how long.  He’s traded Pentagon limelight for Defense Department shadows.  As a non-paid consultant (a status needed to continue his security clearance, or so the Pentagon says) he works from an office provided by our government, with seven Pentagon-paid staff.  The excuse is paper-sifting.  

 The transition office has raised some eyebrows inside the Pentagon. Some question the size of the staff, which includes two military officers and two enlisted men. They also ask why the sorting could not have been done from the time Mr. Rumsfeld resigned Nov. 8 to when he left the building Dec. 18.

    Big deal, huh?  
    I suspect he’s doing more than assigning documents to some library.  For openers, he brought with him his close advisor, Dr. Stephen A. Cambone, his Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (that “Dr.” is for a Ph.D. in Political Science).  Guys like Cambone, who held the top spy job in the country, don’t fade away as a step’n’fetchit for someone’s book project.

   Cambone was next to — maybe in front of — Rumsfeld and his decisions to expand brutal intelligence-gathering techniques into Abu Ghraib.  Seymour Hersh wrote at length:

  Cambone was a strong advocate for war against Iraq. He shared Rumsfeld’s disdain for the analysis and assessments proffered by the C.I.A., viewing them as too cautious, and chafed, as did Rumsfeld, at the C.I.A.’s inability, before the Iraq war, to state conclusively that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction.

   Cambone grabbed control of the Pentagon’s “special-access program” (sap) and its very troubling interrogation procedures.

  Cambone then made another crucial decision…: not only would he bring the sap’s rules into the prisons; he would bring some of the Army military-intelligence officers working inside the Iraqi prisons under the sap’s auspices.

   Told that no rules apply, that the interrogations were part of a covert operation kept within the Defense Department, seven members of the 372nd Military Police Company ultimately faced charges for their role in the abuse at Abu Ghraib.

    Abu Ghraib, of course, is the reason Rumsfeld and Cambone bear the stigma of war criminal, even though they have yet to be prosecuted, much less convicted.  An earlier complaint lodged in Germany had been dismissed on the eve of Rumsfeld’s trip to Munich.  By November 2006, though, the case was even stronger:  new evidence (including Brig. Gen. Karpinski’s testimony), new plaintiffs, and a new German Federal Prosecutor.    
   So, a new criminal complaint of war crimes was filed on behalf of 12 Iraqi citizens held at Abu Ghraib and one Guantanamo detainee.  Co-plaintiffs requesting an investigation include notable individuals, anti-torture leaders, and an impressive list of forty organizations from around the world.  A lot of people aren’t satisfied that the torture in Abu Ghraib was simply hicks run amok.  Who brought the dog leashes to Iraq?

    Some other defendants: George Tenet, Alberto Gonzales (as former chief White House counsel), John Yoo (as former Deputy assistant attorney general), William Haynes (DoD general counsel), Jay Bybee (former assistant attorney general) and the Vice President’s chief counsel, another lawyer with a unique perspective on the Constitution, David Addington.  The new complaint charges government lawyers with being the legal architects of the Bush Administration’s practice of torture.

   Why Germany?  Jurisdiction.  German law authorizes the investigation and prosecution of war crimes from anywhere.  The United States has refused to join the International Criminal Court, so it can’t be prosecuted there.  

   Quiz time.  You’re Rumsfeld.  You could write a boring volume after sifting through the blizzard of memoranda you showered on all and sundry.  Or you could prepare your defense to an investigation and prosecution for war crimes.  Maybe, too, you could do something that required the employment of two officers, two enlisted men, and Dr. Stephen Cambone.

   Door Number One?…

 The United States does not transport, and has not transported, detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture. The United States does not use the airspace or the airports of any country for the purpose of transporting a detainee to a country where he or she will be tortured.

  So insisted Condoleeza Rice in December 2005 as she departed for Europe to appear before the EU’s Committee on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners.  

    Not so, says the Committee.  The U.S. interprets the United Nations Convention against Torture far too strictly, especially the prohibition on any renditions that may lead to extradited prisoners being subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

   This week, the Committee announced the adoption of its lengthy report, along with recommendations that individual European countries pursue investigations and strictly regulate third countries’ secret services’ activities.  It urges closure of Guantanamo, with the return of European detainees to their respective countries. On February 13 the full European Parliament, 785 members directly elected by citizens of European Union States, will vote on the report.

  Two broad conclusions:
(1) The U.S. extraordinary rendition program contravenes established international human rights — as well as the Treaty on European Union — as it ensures suspects are not brought before a court but are transferred to third countries to be interrogated, where they could be tortured.

(2) Governments must cease the practice of attempting to limit their responsibilities by asking for diplomatic assurances from countries they will not torture the suspects.  
   

   European airspace and airports have been used by CIA front-companies in order to bypass the legal obligations for state aircraft… thus enabling persons suspected of terrorism to be transferred illegally to the custody of the CIA or the US military or to other countries (including Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Afghanistan) which frequently use torture during interrogations…

   At least 1245 flights operated by the CIA flew into European airspace or stopped at European airports 2001 – 2005, though not all were used for extraordinary rendition.  So many hundreds of flights through European airspace and airports could not have taken place without the knowledge — and tacit rendition cooperation — of the respective country’s security service.  

   The Committee did meet with hostility within the EU.  Poland was the worst.  The Belgians were uncooperative. Austria sent only something written.  Current and former Secretaries-General of NATO, Lord Robertson and Jaap de Hoop Sheffer, refused to appear or provide access to the full text of the 2001 decision providing blanket over flight and landing clearances for US aircraft engaged in anti-terrorism operations.  
    Individual cases illustrate the extent of rendition activities in Europe:

•   Sweden expelled Egyptian nationals who were seeking asylum there, based solely on diplomatic assurances from the Egyptian government of no torture, empty guarantees, as it happened. Swedish security police remained passive at the airport during the degrading treatment and horrible physical abuse of the men by US and Egyptian security agents.
•   The CIA kidnapping of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar, with the assistance of the Italian military secret services, in Milan, taken to a joint U.S.-Italian Air Base, flown to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, then to Cairo, where he was tortured and abused for months.  Milan’s public prosecutor has issued arrest warrants for 26 U.S. nationals, CIA agents.
•   Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turk held four years at Guantanamo.  
•   Four citizens and two residents of Bosnia and Herzegovina, all of Algerian origin, still in Guantanamo.
      The Bosnia and Herzegovina government is the only one to acknowledge responsibility for its illegal actions in participating in the extraordinary rendition.  The US government had threatened it with cessation of diplomatic relations unless it arrested the six men immediately.

•   German national, Khaled El-Masri, an innocent victim of American rendition now represented by the ACLU in El-Masri v. Tenet.  He was abducted January 2004 while on holiday in Macedonia, held initially in a hotel for 23 days, beaten, drugged, and transported to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan, where he was subjected to inhumane conditions and coercive interrogation.
      After the CIA officers realized their mistake and notified CIA head Tenet, El-Masri remained in detention for two more months.  In May 2004 he was abandoned on a hill in Albania, never having been charged with a crime, and returned his belongings, including his passport stamped in Albania that day.  The NYT reported more details of his capture.

    As Knucklehead related in his diary today, the United States refuses to remove Canadian citizen Arar from its no-fly watch list even though Canada has just announced a settlement with the man, whom it had allowed to be taken under the U.S. rendition program to Syria, where he was tortured.  The defense (“national security privilege”) to the El-Masri case shows that even where its mistakes have ended with the horrible abuse of innocent people (and their families), the United States government — unlike its more civilized northern neighbor — refuses to apologize or explain.  Bush arrogance and intractability is pervasive.  

Human Rights Watch reviewed the EU committee’s report in November 2006. It explains more on the absence of any legal effect of diplomatic assurances.  The U.K.’s MOU’s with Jordan, Libya, and Lebanon, as a U.K. parliamentary committee concluded last May, leave transferred individuals at substantial risk of being tortured.  

    Statewatch maintains a page devoted to reports and documents about the CIA’s use of European countries for rendition.

    Amnesty International’s page on the CIA’s rendition program features many more details about cases and CIA-operated aircraft landings.  It believes the number of  rendition victims is in the hundreds.  

    Last March, Senator Harry Reid deplored congressional refusal to hold the Bush Administration accountable.

  Despite numerous troubling reports about detainee abuse as a result of Bush Administration’s detention, interrogation, and rendition policies and questions about the role of the intelligence community, the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee has refused to formally investigate these actions.

    This week, the chair of EU’s CIA Activities Committee hopefully applauded the vigorous oversight intentions of the new Democratic majority in Congress.   It was admirable tact.  

    World moral leadership is not ours to claim.  Maybe it belongs to no one.  Yet, look. There is Europe with all its squabbles, poised to take back its sovereignty in unison, abandoning complicity with our shameful practices to the gutter.

   What sounded so traditionally American came from a small, culturally mixed group in Brussels:  

 The fight against terrorism cannot be won by sacrificing the very principles that terrorism seeks to destroy, notably that the protection of fundamental rights must never be compromised…

   
This month the President resubmitted 28 district and circuit judge nominations to the Senate. A few controversial names were abandoned.  The remainder, as selections from Mr. Screw-the-constitution, are worth eyeballing.  “Merit” has been redefined as “Do you promote the Bush Agenda?”

  The President’s list doesn’t shine to reflect the importance and power of federal judges.  I’ve grouped some of the district court nominations to make this easier to skim, saving the other nominations for future diaries.  

   NEW YORK

             Mary O. DONOHUE
  Seen as “lackluster and virtually anonymous,” she has been opposed by Sen. Schumer. From 1999 – 2006 Donohue was Lt. Gov. under Gov. Pataki, who then appointed her to the bench in the state court of claims.  She bombed as Pataki’s running mate.

 The specter of Donohue in charge of New York might be enough to prompt a statewide stampede to the Democrats. The Republicans added her to the ticket four years ago because she was blond and leggy …

   Again, how has she earned a lifetime job as a judge?

        Roslynn Renee MAUSKOPF
   Another Pataki-follower, she was rated by the ABA merely as “qualified.”  Her credentials were questioned when she was put up for U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn in 2002.  

 Pataki’s inspector general since 1995, [she] would be the first U.S. attorney in Brooklyn without any credentials as a federal prosecutor in at least the last 30 years.

.    
   Her coziness with high-level Pataki aides and look-the-other-way reputation didn’t help.  Neither did delaying the release of an audit of state architectural contracts to the governor’s next-door neighbor and in-law until her nomination for U.S. Attorney was in trouble.  
   Another Republican wolf in judge’s robes?

     You’d think Bush could find well-qualified candidates.  New York is big enough to have, oh, at least a few.  

      CONNECTICUT

        Vanessa Lynne BRYANT
    In a rare move, the ABA rated her not qualified.  She was a bond attorney before her eight years with the Connecticut superior court, principally in administrative positions.  She has no huge volume of written work to analyze.  The ABA team had interviewed 65 lawyers and judges, and spent over two hours interviewing Judge Bryant.  Judge Bryant is pleasant off the bench, but rigid in court business.  They heard a large number of adverse comments about (1) her judicial temperament (“arrogant and unreasonable” “rude to litigants” “impatient” “erratic” “ill-tempered”) and (2) her competence (“opinions poorly done” “snap judgments” “lacks significant trial experience” “may not bother to do legal research”).  

    Republican Connecticut Gov. Rell recommended her to President Bush, and the state’s Attorney General testified on her behalf before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Senators Dodd and Lieberman supported her.  

Bryant would be the first black woman named as a federal judge in New England.

    How can Judge Bryant still have so much juice if she is so unqualified?  Could it be her husband, Tracy L. Rich, Executive V. P. and General Counsel of the Phoenix Companies?  Mr. Rich was appointed by Gov. Rell to the Connecticut Ethics Commission.  

    That Judge Bryant hasn’t asked to withdraw her name is testament to an enormous ego.  She embarrasses everyone. Shame on Governor Rell.

        INDIANA  

      Joseph S. VAN BOKKELEN
     Sen. Lugar is promoting him.

  As U.S. Attorney, Van Bokkelen has built a reputation for leading a string of high-profile public corruption cases, as well as a steady stream of gun, drug and gang prosecutions.

   Picayune public corruption cases can be high profile on slow news days.  The man is 64.  His appointment has been seen as reward for “tenacious pursuit” of Lake County Democrats.

 Doesn’t matter about qualifications; this is little more than a payback.  It all makes you wonder about the GOP philosophy of filling the courts with young Republicans to have an impact on the direction of the federal judiciary for decades to come. … makes Republican criticism of Lake County Democrats giving jobs to campaign workers pale in comparison.

 

 
 U.S. ATTORNEYS

  In addition to Van Bokkelen and Mauskopf, above:

       Lisa Godbey WOOD  —  Georgia
    A young U.S. Attorney since late 2004, last year she promoted the Patriot Act.  

     Heidi M. PASICHOW   D. C. Superior Court
   This Assistant U.S. Attorney has made a name with anti-porn prosecution.  And this is a reward.    
     Attorney General Gonzales has prioritized adult ponography cases, even though that reduces resources available for prosecuting terrorism, money laundering, public corruption, and other activities far more dangerous to the public weal.  

  With the rapid growth of Internet pornography, stamping out obscene material has become a major concern for the Bush administration’s powerful Christian conservative supporters.

   LITIGATORS REPRESENTING BIG BUSINESS and GOVERNMENT

 Nora Barry FISCHER    Pennsylvania
  A Pittsburgh trial lawyer she has represented General Electric in toxic tort and product liability cases for more than 18 years.

    Martin Karl REIDINGER    North Carolina
  Buncombe Co. NC Bar Pres. 2003-2004, practices in Asheville.

      Thomas D. SCHROEDER     North Carolina
   A Winston-Salem trial lawyer with extensive complex litigation experience in several jurisdictions, he was lead trial counsel for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in a multi-billion dollar cost reimbursement lawsuit.  

       Thomas Alvin FARR   North Carolina
   Representing management in employment law, he has been named one of North Carolina’s Super Lawyers.  Many years ago he was an attorney with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and counsel to the U.S. Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee.

    Halil Suleyman OZERDEN Mississippi
    He graduated Stanford 1998 and practices insurance defense in Gulfport. He was rated simply “qualified” by the ABA.  

  William Lindsay OSTEEN, Jr.     North Carolina
   Nominated to replace his father (retiring), as part of his Greensboro practice he won a county’s right to display “In God We Trust” on front of its government center.
   So?  

   THE CATHOLIC CONNECTION — Right-to-Life?

  John Preston BAILEY  West Virginia
  Rated simply “qualified” by the ABA, he practices criminal defense and civil litigation in Wheeling, was president of the WV State Bar and is on the Diocesan Sexual Abuse Review Board for the local Catholic Diocese.

      Sarah E. LIOI Ohio
     A Stark county judge since 1997, she has been recommended by Senators Voinovich and DeWine. She is also a parishioner of St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church.

     OTHERWISE ULTRA CONSERVATIVE

    Benjamin Hale SETTLE    Washington State
    In private practice since 1977, representing hospitals and municipalities, he lacks judicial experience altogether.  However, he hosted a fundraiser for Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi and worked on several Slade Gorton campaigns.

    James Edward ROGAN    California
  Nominated for the nation’s busiest federal court, he is a former congressman who prosecuted Clinton’s impeachment.

    Gregory Kent FRIZZELL   Oklahoma
  A state court judge in Tulsa (resigned upon this nomination).  Sen. Inhofe describes him as an ideal conservative.
  So?

    A few nominees are magistrate judges of varying experience.

   
    The President can’t whine and pule that Democrats are unreasonably delaying appointments of people with sterling credentials, when most are silver-plate and some downright rusted.  The Committee for Justice, which advises the President on nominations, creates a we-they simplistic dichotomy, echoing the President’s good-evil Biblical mindset:  “we,” with conservative candidates, are “constitutionalist” and “they,” with the other candidates, are “activist.” Strangers to high standards, pretending to a corner on the market of devotion to the Constitution, they certainly have no call to their demand for an up or down vote by the full Senate.  

    I expect the Judiciary Committee to hold out for well-qualified candidates, and nothing less.  They shouldn’t waste their time with hearings on this bunch.  Approve the best and send the rest back.

    Again, military tribunals are up against the Nuremberg principles — refuse to obey orders to commit war crimes.  Again, they prefer to throw the book at an officer to make an example, rather than rise to the challenge.

   Watada – Iraq
   First Lieutenant Lt. Ehren Watada, from Hawaii, publicly criticized Bush and called the Iraq conflict illegal, refusing to accompany his Stryker brigade in June.  He will be court-martialed next month in Fort Lewis, WA, for missing a troop movement and conduct unbecoming an officer.  

    A military judge has ruled that Watada’s “illegal war” defense is a political question outside the authority of a military court to consider.

 Watada’s lawyer said the ruling guaranteed a conviction on the charge of missing a troop movement and would make it hard to defend Watada against four charges of conduct unbecoming an officer, based on the officer’s public statements.

   Levy – Vietnam
   In the Vietnam era, among soldiers of conscience the most prominent was Capt. Howard Brett Levy, M.D. This is his story.

    Upon completion of his medical training in Brooklyn, dermatologist Howard Levy was driven by the draft into the Army while Vietnam was escalating.  He was sent to Fort Jackson, SC, where he ran a clinic.  While there, he helped out in neighboring counties in the Black voter registration drive.  

    The Yankee’s voter-registration activities angered white Southerners in the Army.  He was flagged.  
 

 At some point the Army assigned some Green Beret guys to me and I was supposed to train them in some aspect of dermatology.  I did that for a number of months… The more I got to know them, the more upsetting some of their stories became.  … I said, “I don’t really want you in the clinic, so let’s not make a big fuss about it, but I want you to leave.” And they did.  Each month a new guy would come and I’d give him the same spiel.  That went on for a number of months.

 
   It violated Dr. Levy’s medical ethics to train soldiers to use medicine as another propaganda tool, a reward for friendliness from Vietnamese villagers.  

 That strikes me as illegitimate because it can be taken away as easily as it can be given.

    More on the ethical dilemmas of medical personnel in the military here.

    Charged
    In 1966, when he had only another two or three months in the Army, he was charged with (1) promoting “disloyalty and disaffection” among soldiers — for encouraging Black soldiers to refuse to serve in Vietnam because it was a racist war, and (2) for refusing to obey a written order to teach dermatology to Green Berets.
  Court Martial – Nuremberg Rule
   Presiding Law Officer, Col. Earl Brown (a former dean of Columbia Law who died in 2004) opened another possible exit:    

  Now the defense has intimated that special forces aidmen are being used in Vietnam in a way contrary to medical ethics. My research on the subject discloses that perhaps the Nuremberg Trials and the various post war treaties of the United States have evolved a rule that a soldier must disobey an order demanding that he commit war crimes, or genocide, or something to that nature.

 The disobedience charge would be dropped if Levy could prove that by obeying the order to teach dermatology to Special Forces, he would be aiding in the commission of atrocities.

    The medical ethics and Nuremberg principle defenses attracted reporters from 38 news organizations to Fort Jackson.  Time reported an array of sympathetic doctors testified in his support, such as Benjamin Spock.  Capt. Levy’s defense counsel, including ACLU luminary Charles Morgan, Jr., then director of the ACLU’s Southern Regional Office, were given one extra day for the Nuremberg-related defense.  In a hearing before the presiding law officer alone, they offered the testimony of three witnesses, a list of thirty-eight others available, as well as 4,000 articles describing war crimes in Vietnam.  A brief was submitted from noted international law professors.

   The presiding law officer drew back, simply sweeping aside the defense. He said there was no evidence the Special Forces would use medical training in crimes against humanity.

   Capt. Levy was found guilty in June 1967 and sentenced to three years hard labor in Leavenworth.  In two months, veterans and civilians marched in New York to demand Levy’s release.

   On his fourth try, in August, 1969, with two weeks before the expiration of his [amended] sentence Justice Douglas granted him bail of $1,000.  By November, 1969, Levy was participating in an anti-war “conference” at a coffee-house in Killeen called the Oleo Strut, which Fort Hood GI’s had turned into an anti-war headquarters for what was then called the GI Movement.

    U.S. Supreme Court Opinion
    Capt. Levy’s appeals took time.  In June, 1974, shortly before the end of the conflict in Vietnam, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in Parker v. Levy — another of Rehnquist’s shameful outcome-driven numbers.  Not surprisingly, the Court upheld the validity of the UCMJ and of Levy’s court martial conviction.  Of course, by then, Levy was long gone from Leavenworth.

   Justices Stewart, Douglas, and Brennan dissented angrily, arguing that the UCMJ general articles, under which Levy had been convicted, were so meaningless that they should not be used to send anyone to prison.  They found no disloyalty in Levy’s opposition to the war, a “viewpoint shared by many American citizens.”

   The Nuremberg principles were not even considered.

   Fortunately, Dr. Levy survived Leavenworth and retained his devotion to service of the poor.  In 1972 he was awarded the Ethical Humanist Award by the New York Society for Ethical Culture (in 1998 the award went to Senators Feingold and McCain for their finance campaign reform commitment).  Today, Dr. Levy  is Associate Professor of Clinical Dermatology at the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.  He practices in the Bronx at the Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center.

   Today, it’s another court martial, another defense rooted in Nuremberg, another presiding law officer guaranteeing conviction with a pre-trial ruling limiting evidence. Deja vu. Stopping a war ain’t easy.

   Not one to break with his tradition of appointing old-timers from other Republican administrations, Bush is reportedly replacing White House counsel, Helen Miers, with a man who held that position under Reagan. If Bush hopes to resist the subpoenas expected from dirt-digging Democrats, why Fred Fielding?  This stands out:

• When he was White House counsel one of his assistants was John Roberts, now the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice.
• He was Chief Deputy counsel for John Dean, in that subpoena-filled era called Watergate.
• He does a lot of white collar crisis management counseling, negotiating, and large-scale problem solving.
• He has an impressive background as a Washington business litigator and legal strategy counsel in government affairs and white collar defense.  That includes those pesky congressional investigations.

    Reagan wrote him warmly when he resigned.  

  At times of crisis, yours was a voice of calm and reason. Your intellect, skill, and tact mixed with warm personal qualities of compassion and good humor….

   If I were sporting Bush’s Stetson, I’d have wooed Fred Fielding into the White House the day Bush’s nervousness over intelligence committees was belied by his foot in mouth disease:  

 I’d rather have them sacrificing on behalf of our nation than, you know, endless hours of testimony on congressional hill.

   The new White House counsel must have moved in.  That’s the President saying Bring them on.

   Is our Defense Department simply unwilling or is it incapable of proper contract management?  Did it know that multiple tiers of Halliburton subcontractors added exorbitant overhead fees?  Follow the sleuthing of Henry Waxman and the committee he chairs, Oversight and Government Reform.  

   In Iraq and other deployed locations contractors provide billions of dollars worth of services each year and play a role in most aspects of military operations.  Last month the GAO issued another report giving Defense a D, “High Level DOD Action Needed to Address Long-standing Problems with Management and Oversight of Contractors”.

   Past reports of enormous waste and the potential for fraud prompted recommendations that Defense establish clear accountability and authority to coordinate actions over contractor support.  DOD agreed but stalled. Interviews yielded many examples, a few among them:

•  The Air Force has about 500 civilians deployed to Iraq, but could not readily identify how many were contractor personnel and how many were DOD
•   the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense was unaware of its responsibility to develop and implement procedures for counterintelligence and security screenings of contractors
•  A battalion commander from a Stryker brigade said he was unable to determine the number of contractor-provided interpreters available for his unit
•  Contracting officials at U.S. Central Command said they do not maintain centralized information on contractor support in their area

    Henry Waxman’s office has collected information on government contractor fraud and waste for years.  Following the issuance of this GAO report, he sent a letter to the general in charge of U.S. Army Materiel, requesting a briefing on the report’s conclusions as related to Halliburton.  He cited the history of inflated costs of dining halls for contractors:  Halliburton and its subcontractors supply free meals for people who receive per diem food allowances.  The Army estimates it loses $43 Million every year on this.  

    Halliburton deserves a colonoscopy.  The story is outlined in a readable December 2006 letter to Rumsfeld.  A Halliburton subcontractor, ESS, operated in Iraq as a dining facility subcontractor.  Apparently, it used Blackwater USA for armed security. Blackwater received a reported markup of 36% on each employee paid $650 a day.  Additional costs include $1200 a day for hotel room (another 100% markup).  Blackwater’s vice president refused to provide documents as promised;  his testimony contradicted the terms of his firm’s contract.  

   Meanwhile, the Army denied knowing of any such arrangement.  Its contract with Halliburton prohibited it.

    In probing for the multiple layers of overhead caused by contract tiers, Rep. Waxman is pressing the Army to account for payments for Blackwater services to all defense subcontractors.

… the Defense Department still lacks a basic understanding of these contractor activities and their effect on the prices paid by the U.S. taxpayer.

   An aside —
    Who in the Pentagon has been responsible for preventing fraud and waste?  The Army Inspector General.  
    Who was that, March 2002 – September 2005?  Joseph E. Schmitz.  He became the target of a congressional inquiry about blocking two criminal investigations, one of John Shaw, former deputy undersecretary of defense and former Rumsfeld aide, and the other of Mary Walker, general counsel for the Air Force.  
    Where did he go?  General counsel and COO for the Prince Group, parent company of Blackwater USA .    
    The world of Waste and Abuse is so, so small.

   Rep. Waxman’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has established a searchable database of “problem contracts” under the Bush administration, Dollars, Not Sense.  Currently 142 contracts are in the database, each found by investigators or auditors to involve significant waste or mismanagement.  You can plug in a federal department, e.g., Defense, an issue, e.g., “Iraq” and/or a problem, e.g., “wasteful spending.”  Try it out.  I found three Defense contracts flawed by “corruption.”

    And it’s only January.