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t r u t h o u t | 01.14
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Democrats Seek Criminal Probe of Bush "Abuses"
Tuesday 13 January 2009
by: Larry Margasak, The Associated Press
Washington - The incoming Obama administration should launch a criminal investigation of Bush administration officials to see whether they broke the law in the name of national security, a House Democratic report said Tuesday. President-elect Barack Obama has been more cautious on the issue and has not endorsed such a recommendation.
Along with the criminal probe, the report called for a Sept. 11-style commission with subpoena power, to gather facts and make recommendations on preventing misuse of power, according to the report by the Democratic staff of the House Judiciary Committee.
The report covers Bush administration policies that Democrats have protested for some time. Among them: interrogation of foreign detainees, warrantless wiretaps, retribution against critics, manipulation of intelligence and political dismissals of
The White House was asked for comment on the report Tuesday, but did not immediately respond.
However, in an interview this month with The Associated Press, Vice President Dick Cheney said, "I can't speak for everybody in the administration, but my view would be that the people who carried out that program - intelligence surveillance program, the enhanced interrogation program, with respect to al Qaeda captives - in fact were authorized to do what they did ...."
Cheney said legal opinions supported the officials.
"And I believe they followed those legal opinions and I don't have any reason to believe that they did anything wrong or inappropriate," the vice president said.
Obama said last week in a television interview, "We're still evaluating how we're going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions and so forth. And obviously we're going to be looking at past practices and I don't believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards."
Obama said intelligence officials were "extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don't want them to suddenly feel like they've got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering."
Obama said he has not made a final decision about a Sept. 11-type commission.
The criminal probe may need a special prosecutor named by the attorney general, the report said.
An alternative would be expansion of an existing investigation into the CIA's alleged destruction of a tape or tapes showing harsh interrogation methods against a prisoner.
The criminal investigation would include issues apart from national security, such as whether laws were violated in the politically inspired firing of
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said his staff has met with the Obama transition officials on the report. The president-elect's transition team has not endorsed it.
The congressionally appointed commission should have subpoena power, the report said. It suggested the new president order "full cooperation by all present and past federal employees with requests for information."
Conyers already has introduced legislation to form the commission.
http://www.truthout.org/011409O
Official Lied to Congress, Internal Probe Finds
Tuesday 13 January 2009
by: Greg Gordon, McClatchy Newspapers
More evidence released of politics in Justice Department hiring.
Bradley Schlozman privately dubbed liberal department lawyers "commies" and "pinkos" and told a subordinate that the Civil Rights Division shouldn't be limited to hiring "politburo members" who belong to some "psychopathic left-wing organization designed to overthrow the government," the department's inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility found.
Last March, officials from the two offices asked the
The 70-page report, the last to be publicly released on four joint internal investigations stemming from the 2007 scandal over politicization of the Justice Department, was completed in July but had been kept secret pending the outcome of the criminal inquiry.
It concludes that Schlozman kept tight control over hiring in five key sections of the Civil Rights Division and "improperly used political or ideological affiliations" in assessing applicants for experienced and entry-level career jobs, violating the federal Civil Service Reform Act and department policy.
Of 65 lawyers whom Schlozman hired from 2003 to 2006 and whose political affiliations were evident, 63, or 97 percent, were Republicans or conservatives and only two were Democrats or liberal, it said.
When Schlozman was approached by a lower-level manager or fellow department political employee about a job applicant, he sometimes blurted, "Conservative?" or "What's his view of the world?" the report says.
Schlozman also directed several section chiefs not to assign important cases to attorneys he identified as liberal, investigators concluded.
Senior managers in the division, including former civil rights chiefs R. Alexander Acosta, who's now the U.S. attorney in Miami, and Wan Kim, had enough information to be alerted to Schlozman's misbehavior, but "failed to exercise sufficient oversight," the report found.
Schlozman, who left the department in 2007 and now works for a law firm in Wichita, Kan., refused along with several other former division political employees to be interviewed by internal investigators.
His
Schlozman provided prosecutors with the results of a lie detector test - conducted by a polygrapher of his choosing - "that demonstrated his testimony before Congress was truthful and accurate,"
Tuesday's report, based on 120 interviews and reviews of 200,000 e-mails and thousands of other documents, paints a different picture. It cites one instance after another in which Schlozman probed job applicants' political or ideological views.
Shanetta Cutlar, the chief of the Civil Rights Division's Special Litigation Section, told investigators that Schlozman and others culled resumes from the applicant pool that typically reflected membership in conservative organizations but had little relevant experience, then overrode her objections. Cutlar also said that Schlozman confided in March 2007 that he "probably made some mistakes ... (and) considered politics when I shouldn't have."
Schlozman went to events sponsored by the conservative Federalist Society to recruit young applicants, but investigators found no similar forays to liberal-leaning groups.
In a 2003 e-mail exchange with a former colleague, Schlozman referred to lawyers in the department's Voting Rights Section as "mold spores" and said: "My tentative plans are to gerrymander all of those crazy libs ... out of the section."
Schlozman's conduct persisted even after Kim, at the time a fellow deputy, learned of his screening methods in 2004, met with him and reminded him that a civil service law barred partisanship in hiring, the report says.
While Schlozman was the acting division chief from June 2005 to December 2005, the report found, he considered political and ideological leanings in the transfers of three veteran Appellate Section attorneys to other jobs. The unit's section chief, Diana Flynn, said Schlozman described many of the unit's career attorneys as "against us," "not on the team" and "treacherous" and that he wanted to replace them with "real Americans," the report says.
On June 15, 2006, after leaving the division to serve as interim
Schlozman's name surfaced in 2007 as allegations flew over the firings of nine
Department spokesman Peter Carr said Tuesday's report described troubling conduct and that Schlozman had deviated from the department's mission of "evenhanded application of the Constitution and the laws enacted under it."
Pat Riley, a spokeswoman for the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney's Office, declined to specify why Schlozman wasn't prosecuted on perjury charges for denying to the Senate that politics had entered his personnel decisions. She said six prosecutors had conducted an "exhaustive review," questioned witnesses not previously interviewed and used additional investigative techniques before deciding not to file perjury charges.
Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of
"It should come as no surprise that the result, and of course the intent, of this political makeover of the Civil Rights Division has been a dismal civil rights enforcement record," he said.
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