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Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Terror threat snarls Baltimore

nydailynews.com
Terror threat snarls Baltimore

BALTIMORE - A sketchy threat to blow up vehicles full of explosives prompted authorities yesterday to close one of the busy tunnels underneath Baltimore's harbor and partially shut down the other.

One person who may have been connected to the threat was arrested on immigration charges, a law enforcement official said.

Traffic was allowed to resume by early afternoon after being diverted for nearly two hours, but the FBI continued to investigate.

The four-lane Baltimore Harbor Tunnel was closed around midday, and the eight-lane Fort McHenry Tunnel was reduced to one lane in each direction. The tunnels, both about 1.4 miles long, carry traffic between Washington and the Philadelphia and New York City areas.

A federal law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a man in custody in the Netherlands was the source of information about the threat.

The Associated Press

Hil and Chuck slam tax plan

nydailynews.com
Hil and Chuck slam tax plan
NEWS WIRE SERVICES

WASHINGTON - A proposal to do away with many tax deductions would wallop New Yorkers with an extra $12 billion tax bill, officials warned yesterday.

The President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform's offering of a drastically simplified income tax system - one that would no longer allow taxpayers to deduct what they pay in state and local taxes - was denounced by Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.).

"It is a dagger to the heart of the people on New York," said Schumer, who vowed to defeat the "pernicious proposal."

Clinton said 3.2 million families in the state would be affected and demanded Bush immediately dismiss the plan.

Gov. Pataki also vowed to fight the proposal.

Nationally, taxpayers would pay roughly the same amount of tax under the proposed system, and much of the paperwork would be eliminated.

The White House made no commitment to stick to the panel recommendations when forwarding its tax-simplification proposal to Congress next year, Bush administration spokesman Scott McClellan said.

More info about the plan is at www.taxreformpanel.gov.

Prez Iraq team fought to squelch war critics

nydailynews.com
Prez Iraq team fought to squelch war critics
BY JAMES GORDON MEEK and KENNETH R. BAZINET
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - It was called the White House Iraq Group and its job was to make the case that Saddam Hussein had nuclear and biochemical weapons.

So determined was the ring of top officials to win its argument that it morphed into a virtual hit squad that took aim at critics who questioned its claims, sources told the Daily News.

One of those critics was ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who debunked a key claim in a speech by President Bush that Iraq sought nuclear materials in Africa. His punishment was the media outing of his wife, CIA spy Valerie Plame, an affair that became a "side show" for the White House Iraq Group, the sources said.

The Plame leak is now the subject of a criminal probe that has seen presidential political guru Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, hauled before a grand jury.

Both men were members of the group, also known as WHIG. From late 2002 through mid 2003, it was locked in a feud with officials inside the CIA and State Department over claims Saddam tried to buy "yellow cake" uranium in Niger to build nukes, a former Bush administration and intelligence sources told The News.

"There were a number of occasions when White House officials or Vice President [Cheney's] staffers, or others, wanted to push the envelope on things," an ex-intelligence official said. "The agency would say, 'We just don't have the intelligence to substantiate that.'" When Wilson was sent by his wife to Africa to research the claims, he showed the documents claiming Saddam tried to buy the uranium were forgeries.

[NOTE: Wilson was NOT sent by his wife. That is an extremely inaccurate statement.]

"People in the Iraq group then got very frustrated. It was a side show," said a source familiar with WHIG.

Besides Rove and Libby, the group included senior White House aides Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, James Wilkinson, Nicholas Calio, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley. WHIG also was doing more than just public relations, said a second former intel officer.

"They were funneling information to [New York Times reporter] Judy Miller. Judy was a charter member," the source said.

Bush whacked Rove on CIA leak

nydailynews.com
Bush whacked Rove on CIA leak
BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF

WASHINGTON - An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.

"He made his displeasure known to Karl," a presidential counselor told The News. "He made his life miserable about this."

Bush has nevertheless remained doggedly loyal to Rove, who friends and even political adversaries acknowledge is the architect of the President's rise from baseball owner to leader of the free world.

As special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald nears a decision, perhaps as early as today, on whether to issue indictments in his two-year probe, Bush has already circled the wagons around Rove, whose departure would be a grievous blow to an already shell-shocked White House staff and a President in deep political trouble.

Asked if he believed indictments were forthcoming, a key Bush official said he did not know, then added: "I'm very concerned it could go very, very badly."

"Karl is fighting for his life," the official added, "but anything he did was done to help George W. Bush. The President knows that and appreciates that."

Other sources confirmed, however, that Bush was initially furious with Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the press about the Plame leak.

Bush has always known that Rove often talks with reporters anonymously and he generally approved of such contacts, one source said.

But the President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush's claim that Saddam Hussen tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger.

A second well-placed source said some recently published reports implying Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the President.

"Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way," the source said.

None of these sources offered additional specifics of what Bush and Rove discussed in conversations beginning shortly after the Justice Department informed the White House in September 2003 that a criminal investigation had been launched into the leak of CIA agent Plame's identity to columnist Robert Novak.

A White House spokesman declined to comment, citing the ongoing nature of Fitzgerald's investigation.

GOP Is Caught Between Alliances

Yahoo! News
GOP Is Caught Between Alliances

By Ronald Brownstein Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — As they navigate turbulent political seas, President Bush and congressional Republicans find themselves in a boat leaking from both ends.

Amid public discontent over the war in Iraq, high gas prices, the response to Hurricane Katrina and ethical controversies in Washington, approval ratings for Bush and the GOP-led Congress have tumbled to ominously low levels among independent and moderate voters.

But the White House and congressional leaders also are facing widespread dissatisfaction among conservative leaders antagonized by Bush's spending policies and his nomination of White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court.

This two-front war complicates the challenge for the GOP as Bush tries to regain the initiative in Washington and the party prepares for the 2006 midterm elections.

Many of the actions Bush could take to reassure conservative leaders — such as replacing Miers with a more identifiably conservative nominee — might alienate voters in the center. On immigration, Bush confronts the opposite problem: pushing for changes that might broaden the party's appeal, especially among Latinos, would further fracture his base.

Across a range of issues, said veteran GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio, Bush and Republican congressional leaders "are going to have a very tough time moving forward" in a way that pleases conservatives and moderates.

In the near term, Bush and GOP congressional leaders seem focused on quelling the uprising among conservatives. "The common theme is, 'We have to get back to the base,' " said one prominent lobbyist who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was involved in strategy discussions with Capitol Hill Republicans and the White House.

One measure of that focus is the effort by House Republican leaders to impose additional spending cuts on next year's federal budget — a response to demands from House conservatives uneasy with new federal spending Bush has promised after Hurricane Katrina.

On immigration, congressional Republicans may be executing a similar shift. In recent weeks, House and Senate leaders have said they intend to advance legislation that emphasizes the increased border security favored by conservatives, rather than the more comprehensive approach — including a guest worker program — that Bush and most Democrats prefer.

The revelation Tuesday that Miers indicated support for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion during her 1989 race for the Dallas City Council also seems likely to soothe some conservatives.

Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, said that stabilizing the president's base was more important for the GOP over the next year than wooing independents disaffected from the administration.

Those independent voters, Dowd predicted, will "shift rather quickly based on current events" in the coming months. But, he maintained, "the more important question for 2006 is: How motivated is each side's base? That's more important than the vicissitudes of swing voters."

Democrats say that calculation underestimates the difficulty Republicans could face in regaining the allegiance of independent voters who have soured on Bush and Congress, according to recent surveys.

Stanley B. Greenberg, a veteran Democratic pollster, said that independents appeared increasingly "alienated by the base-oriented Bush presidency," and that the White House and GOP congressional leaders could compound their problems if they tilted right to satisfy conservatives.

"He could lose all the independents in the process," Greenberg said.

According to polls, voters who describe themselves as independents made up about a quarter of the electorate in 2002 and 2004. But Dowd and other strategists close to the White House contend the share of voters entirely unattached to either party is much smaller.

Dowd's focus on voters from the party's base, and the recent moves by congressional Republicans, fit with the political strategy the party has generally followed under Bush.

From the outset of his presidency, Bush has consistently pursued policies that excite grass-roots conservatives and unify congressional Republicans but alienate Democrats and unsettle many independents.

In the 2002 and 2004 elections, that approach benefited the GOP. In each contest, Bush inspired a huge Republican turnout. And although he didn't run as well with independents as his father, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s, his image as a strong leader helped the GOP roughly break even with that group in the 2002 and 2004 campaigns, polls found.

Now, both ends of that formula are under pressure.

In recent national surveys, Bush's standing among independents has dropped to its lowest point during his White House tenure. In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey released Monday, 32% of independents said they approved of his performance as president, whereas twice as many — 64% — said they disapproved.

Attitudes toward Congress are even more negative. In the new poll, 1 in 4 independents said they approved of Congress' performance, whereas about 7 in 10 said they disapproved. Among all Americans, the approval rating for Congress in the survey was 29% — its lowest level since 1994, the year Democrats lost their majorities in both chambers.

If the poll numbers among independents toward Bush and Congress do not improve, many party analysts fear it would create a political problem too large for Republicans to overcome simply with high turnout from their base in next year's elections.

"The Republican base can be as intense as it wants, but if you are going to lose independents nationally by 15 [percentage] points, it doesn't matter," said Fabrizio, the pollster for GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole in 1996.

Adding to the challenge, Republicans are being warned by conservative leaders that their followers might not turn out in full force at the next election.

"From now on, this administration will find it difficult to muster support on the right without explaining why it should be forthcoming," David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, wrote this week in the Hill, a newspaper covering Congress. "The days of the blank check have ended."

Polls don't show the discontent among conservative leaders yet trickling down much to the rank and file. Although down from his high point of 90% or more, Bush still attracted approval ratings of about 80% from Republicans, according to the new poll.

But Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, said that if conservative leaders were "continually negative, we would expect that rank and file conservatives would eventually follow."

CIA leak case spotlights Bush tactics

USA TODAY

Analysis: CIA leak case spotlights Bush tactics
By Tom Raum, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's CIA-leak inquiry is focusing attention on what long has been a Bush White House tactic: slash-and-burn assaults on its critics, particularly those opposed to the president's Iraq war policies.

If top officials are indicted, it could seriously erode the administration's credibility and prove yet another embarrassment to President Bush on the larger issue of how he and his national security team marshaled information — much of it later shown to be inaccurate — to support their case for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

The grand jury is concluding a 22-month investigation of whether administration officials illegally leaked information disclosing the identity of an undercover CIA officer, Valerie Plame, in an effort to discredit her husband, former diplomat and war critic Joseph Wilson.

Anxiety at the White House increased after Bush adviser Karl Rove's fourth appearance last week before Fitzgerald's grand jury, and with a New York Times reporter's firsthand account of her dealings with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide.

Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes, the Bush administration's public diplomacy chief and a longtime Bush confidante, said, however, that the White House was not distracted by the investigation. "It's not something that's affecting the daily business of the White House," Hughes said in a taped interview aired Tuesday on NBC's Today show. "It's business as usual."

The piece by reporter Judith Miller also fueled speculation that Fitzgerald was seeking to determine whether Cheney played a role in a campaign to discredit Wilson.

"The grand jury investigation has the possibility of really shining a light on the credibility of the administration, how officials tried to undermine those who were criticizing them and how they then covered up that attempt," said American University political scientist James Thurber.

"The question of whether the vice president was involved, we'll probably never know. But it was pretty close to him," said Thurber. He questioned whether Rove and Libby would have operated "on their own" in discussing Wilson's wife with reporters.

White House officials have had quiet discussions about what to do if any Bush aides are charged. There is a general expectation that a staffer would resign if indicted.

Wilson had written a newspaper essay, published July 6, 2003, that sought to undermine the administration's earlier claims that Iraq had sought to buy uranium "yellowcake" from Niger to help it build nuclear bombs.

It came at a particularly difficult time for the president and his aides. The war clearly was not going well, despite Bush's "mission accomplished" speech two months earlier. And Bush was already reeling from criticism over mentioning the African yellowcake connection — which turned out to be based on faulty British intelligence — in his State of the Union address.

While the president and his top aides refuse to comment now on the investigation, or on any issues surrounding the unfounded Iraq-African uranium claim, they weren't so tightlipped in July 2003.

During a presidential trip to Africa just days after Wilson's article appeared, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice — now the secretary of state — spent nearly an hour with reporters on Air Force One trying to put blame for the faulty State of the Union conclusions on the CIA and its then-director, George Tenet.

Bush was also talkative then. "I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services," he told reporters during a stop in Uganda.

Some analysts suggest that any administration plot to undermine Wilson privately only mirrored Bush and Rice's open efforts to undermine Tenet on the same subject.

"This is an administration that was trying to play hardball at every level," said Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy scholar at the Brookings Institution. "And that's what they were doing with Wilson. And he of course was playing hardball, too. It was an ugly back and forth."

Plame was named by columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003, as a CIA operative on weapons of mass destruction. Novak wrote that "two senior administration officials" had told him that Plame had suggested her husband, a former ambassador, be sent to Niger in 2002 to check out reports that Saddam Hussein was shopping for uranium.

The reports had no basis in fact, something Wilson reported back to a Bush administration that ignored his conclusions, Wilson later wrote.

In her account in Sunday editions of The New York Times, Miller, who spent 85 days in jail before agreeing to speak to the grand jury, wrote that Fitzgerald asked her questions about Cheney. "He asked, for example, if Mr. Libby ever indicated whether Mr. Cheney had approved of his interviews with me or was aware of them," she wrote.

Such a question could suggest the prosecutor was investigating whether Cheney was part of a conspiracy to discredit Plame and Wilson.

"The answer was no," Miller wrote.

While Bush vowed as recently as July to fire anyone on his staff found to have committed a crime in the CIA-leak matter, he has since completely clammed up.

"I've made it very clear to the press that I'm not going to discuss the investigation," Bush said Monday when asked by a reporter whether he would remove an aide under indictment. "There's a serious investigation. I'm not going to prejudge the outcome of the investigation."

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-10-18-analysis-cia-leak_x.htm?csp=34

Repeat of Past Mistakes Mars Government's Disaster Response

washingtonpost.com
Repeat of Past Mistakes Mars Government's Disaster Response

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer

On Sept. 25, White House press secretary Scott McClellan defended the tumultuous evacuation of 3 million Texans from the path of Hurricane Rita. "This was an unprecedented number of people who were being evacuated," he said. His comments echoed sentiments offered by Texas's governor, a senator and several mayors.

In fact, the evacuation was the largest in U.S. history -- at least since 1999.

Barely six years ago, in a lesson seemingly forgotten by U.S. authorities, Hurricane Floyd prompted the headlong flight of more than 3 million people from coastal Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

The result, as summarized in a 240-page report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, foreshadowed the anarchy on freeways leading away from Houston last month: 18-hour traffic jams outside Charleston, S.C.; complaints that highways were not quickly converted into one-way exit routes; and shortages of supplies for hundreds of thousands of evacuees.

The repeated cycle of calamity, response and criticism highlights a persistent flaw in the nation's disaster preparedness four years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks: the inability of emergency agencies to learn from past mistakes, even those committed in recent years, say current and former government officials involved in homeland security.

Instead, personnel turnover, constantly changing priorities and split responsibilities among federal agencies and state and local governments sap the nation's ability to break patterns of bureaucratic failure, experts say. From establishing compatible communications systems for first responders to enforcing baseline preparedness standards for cities and states, goals set in 2001 remain frustratingly out of reach.

Heightened debate over the military's role in domestic preparedness is also familiar ground. On Sept. 3, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff declared that the sluggish response to the "ultra-catastrophe" wrought by Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast required officials to "break the mold" of disaster response and improve on an eight-month-old National Response Plan. On Sept. 25, President Bush proposed enabling "the Defense Department to become the lead agency in coordinating and leading the response effort."

But 13 years earlier, authorities said that Hurricane Andrew had delivered a "mega-catastrophe" to South Florida. Then-Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) called for an expanded domestic role for the military; others called for improvements to a 1-year-old Federal Response Plan, the NRP's precursor.

Within five months, the Pentagon retooled its response to domestic disasters, issuing its first directive to speed "military support to civil authorities."

Yet the changes did not take root in time to help Katrina's victims.

"We shouldn't be in the same situation, especially now that we have a department whose mission is to increase our preparedness," said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and head of the Senate investigation into the Katrina response.

Arnold Punaro, an aide to Nunn for 24 years and a major general in the Marine Corps Reserve, said the problem is not a shortage of plans or policies, but a failure to practice and execute existing powers. "The problem with lessons learned is people unlearn them and make the same mistakes," he said.

John A. Koskinen, the federal official in charge of preparing for the year 2000 software flaw, said a deeper concern is the assumption that disaster preparedness is someone else's problem -- state and local government's or the military's.

The weaknesses in federal disaster management exposed by Katrina are not new. Catastrophic events by their nature overwhelm emergency agencies' ability to respond, communicate and coordinate with one another. Likewise, human nature often places rare threats, no matter how awful, behind smaller, more routine problems in the battle for time and money.

But natural disasters are a predictable matter of actuarial certainty, said Peter Senge, a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When the complexity of a mission such as preparedness spreads responsibility so widely across governments, the challenge is to force a "cultural change" at all levels, he said.

The recent history of evacuation planning and military involvement in disaster response plans shows that need. Nine months after Floyd rolled up the Southeast's coastline and struck North Carolina as a Category 3 storm, consultants PBS&J of Tallahassee prepared a detailed evacuation assessment for FEMA and the Army Corps.

"Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina experienced the largest evacuation effort in American history," FEMA said in a Sept. 14, 2000, news release. "Traffic engineers estimated that 3 million people took to the highways in what was to become a frustrating effort. Instead, they created the largest, longest and most incredibly snarled traffic jam ever known."

Floyd's large size and "uncertain path" created "unanticipated volumes of evacuees," who fled areas not considered unsafe, the PBS&J report stated, circumstances shared with Rita last month.

Although the four Southeastern states updated their evacuation models and rebuilt some highways, the message never reached the other side of the Gulf, said PBS&J vice president Donald Lewis. PBS&J was hired to produce an evacuation study last year for the Houston-Galveston area.

The Floyd-affected states updated computer population and evacuation models to track vehicle movements. The improvement would have cost Texas "$100,000 at the most," Lewis said, but it was not done.

About $2 million a year goes to FEMA's hurricane evacuation study program, Lewis said, and the money is split among 24 states. It can take five to seven years for a state such as Virginia to accumulate the money for a full evacuation study of, say, Hampton Roads, Lewis said.

Gas shortages and traffic jams are also long predicted, but education campaigns to shape public expectations have never been undertaken. Lewis's colleague Bob Collins, hurricane program manager for Florida from 1994 to 2004, blamed a failure by government to share information with states and teach the public to prevent panicky overreactions.

"There truly is no overriding coordination, no guidance from the federal government," Collins said.

The debate over the Defense Department's role in disasters raises a different question, of whether the best plans can be stymied by poor execution, experts said. Bush's push for the military to play an expanded role in the worst natural disasters follows lengthy discussions in the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Reviews and the post-Sept. 11 creation of the U.S.-based Northern Command to assume greater homeland security functions.

A 2004 Rand Corp. study proposes a strategy that might permit the Army Reserve to conduct domestic homeland security missions, dedicate some active-duty forces for rapid deployment and training, and develop regional National Guard task forces with special law enforcement units.

Such discussion, joined by the White House, the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security and senior members of Congress, echoes debate in 1992, said Col. Mark Eshelman, director of defense support to civil authorities at the Army War College.

A January 1993 Defense Department directive reflected that Andrew "was a formative event for the military," Eshelman said, and laid out the military's construction of "a single system . . . to plan for, and respond to requests from civil government agencies for military support" and respond to "major disasters or emergencies" in cooperation with FEMA.

Lynn Davis, author of the Rand report, said the current debate should not focus so much on new legal authorities or powers, which already exist, but on what the public and leaders are prepared to do in an emergency. "The way you want to use your forces is really the issue," Davis said.

After reports that civilian authorities were slow to request or order military assets for Katrina on Aug. 29, the United States was able to muster what became a force of about 70,000 troops, 21 ships and 215 aircraft in the region for Rita about three weeks later.

Staff writer Josh White contributed to this report.

Messages Depict Disarray in Federal Katrina Response

washingtonpost.com
Messages Depict Disarray in Federal Katrina Response

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer

As Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans on Aug. 29, Michael D. Brown, then director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, appeared confused over whether Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had put him in charge, senior military officials could not reach Brown and his team became swamped by the speed of the unfolding disaster, according to e-mails to and from Brown.

When Chertoff belatedly named Brown the on-site disaster coordinator on the night of Aug. 30 and declared Katrina an "incident of national significance" -- the highest- order catastrophe under a new national response plan -- Brown and his assistants privately complained.

"Demote the Under Sec to PFO [Principal Federal Officer]?" an outraged FEMA press secretary Sharon Worthy wrote Brown at 10:54 p.m., soon after Chertoff's decision. "What about the precedent being set? What does this say about executive management and leadership in the Agency?"

"Exactly," replied Brown, then-under secretary for preparedness and response, according to e-mails obtained by The Washington Post.

The e-mails also show that the government's response plan, two years in the making, began breaking down even before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. Before the storm hit, Brown's deputy chief of staff, Brooks Altshuler, said White House pressure to form an interagency crisis management group was irrelevant, even though a task force and principal federal officer are key parts of the plan.

"Let them play their raindeer games as long as they are not turning around and tasking us with their stupid questions. None of them have a clue about emergency management," Altshuler told Brown and Brown's chief of staff, Patrick Rhode.

The documents offer a glimpse of the disarray in preparations for and the response to Katrina, for which FEMA has been widely criticized. A misunderstanding of national disaster plan roles, communications failures, delayed decision-making and absent voices of leadership mark the documents, which came as a partial response by FEMA's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, to a request by a House select investigative committee.

The Post obtained copies of 20 of about 80 e-mails to and from Brown between Aug. 23 and Sept. 12.

There are many gaps in the record. For instance, there are few references to Chertoff or the White House. Brown has testified that he was in at least daily telephone or e-mail contact with Chertoff and White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. or his deputy, Joe Hagin.

The Homeland Security Department has not completed its response to the House panel's request for Brown's e-mails and for his correspondence with Chertoff or his predecessor as secretary, Tom Ridge, regarding the development of FEMA's budget since 2003.

Brown has said the department caused "the emaciation of FEMA" by cutting funds, staff and denying spending on a New Orleans hurricane preparedness plan.

Chertoff's voice is markedly absent from the correspondence so far, said I. Michael Greenberger, a former Clinton administration official who heads the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland. "Chertoff appears to be sort of an interested overseer, rather than the chief of staff to the president managing this in Washington," he said.

Chertoff is scheduled to testify Wednesday before the House Katrina committee, his first extended public appearance on Capitol Hill regarding the disaster.

A spokesman for Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the investigation, declined to discuss the documents yesterday, saying members will ask Chertoff about them Wednesday.

"Davis wants to know if Michael Brown had it right. Does Secretary Chertoff agree that FEMA has grown emaciated, that its budget's been hijacked and that it's been organizationally undermined since Congress folded it into DHS?" Davis spokesman David Marin said.

Asked about the e-mails, Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke cautioned: "It is extraordinarily difficult to extract a clear understanding of everything that was going on from a single e-mail, or even a few e-mails." As reviews continue, he said, "We'll undoubtedly deconflict some individual accounts."

The documents show a quick breakdown in communications after the hurricane hit Aug. 29. With telephone and wireless reception spotty, FEMA's operations center resorted to e-mailing Brown the next afternoon to ask him to call Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon R. England.

As late as Sept. 1, the head of the military's Hurricane Katrina Task Force, Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, was unable to reach Brown and asked FEMA officials to track down his satellite phone.

"He [Honore] wants to speak with Mike very badly," FEMA aides wrote at 1 p.m. Three hours later, the reply came from a Brown aide: "Not here in [Mississippi.] Is in [Louisiana], as far as I know."

The first FEMA request to the Defense Department was not reported in Brown's e-mails until 10 a.m. on Sept. 2 -- nearly three days later -- seeking "full logistical support to the Katrina disaster in all [emergency] declared states."

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) requested 40,000 U.S. troops on Aug. 31.

Brown's e-mails show that FEMA leaders acted on information that conflicts with the timeline released by Homeland Security a week after the hurricane. Altshuler's e-mail of Aug. 28, for example, referred to White House pressure to create the interagency team that would include FEMA, the Pentagon, the State Department and others. The group began meeting Aug. 26, according to the department timeline.

Knocke said that the group convened Aug. 29, but that individuals received updates earlier.

9/11 Panel Says Congress and White House Are Failing to Act

The New York Times
October 19, 2005
9/11 Panel Says Congress and White House Are Failing to Act
By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - The members of the Sept. 11 commission will sharply criticize the Bush administration and Congress this week in a new, privately financed report expected to single out the F.B.I. as having failed to act on many of the panel's recommendations to protect the nation from terrorist attack, members of the bipartisan panel and its staff said.

They said the report, scheduled for release on Thursday by a private educational group created by the 10 former commissioners, will also criticize the White House as not doing enough to defend civil liberties and privacy rights as it expanded the government's surveillance powers after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. A civil liberties oversight board created by the White House earlier this year is toothless and underfinanced, some of the commissioners said.

A Democratic member of the commission, Timothy J. Roemer, a former House member from Indiana, said the new "report card" would show that the administration and Congress had taken no action on many of the panel's central recommendations, "and we're not going to get many more chances to get things right before the terrorists come at us again."

Mr. Roemer said in an interview that the F.B.I. would be criticized because it "has talked about well-intentioned reform but has not delivered it."

"We still need to see a big change in that culture," he said.

Congress would be criticized, Mr. Roemer said, for having failed to follow through on the panel's major recommendations for an overhaul of Congressional oversight of intelligence and terrorism issues. In its final report last year, the commission described Congressional oversight as "dysfunctional."

The report is being prepared by the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, a privately financed lobbying group that reflects an unusual effort by members of a federal blue-ribbon commission to press for their recommendations.

Asked about the report, a White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy, said that "while we haven't seen the report, the president knows that protecting the American people from terrorist threats requires a comprehensive approach." The administration had a "clear strategy of strengthening our defenses at home and taking the fight to the enemy abroad," Ms. Healy said.

The F.B.I. had no comment on the new report. A spokesman referred to testimony last month for Congress by the bureau director, Robert S. Mueller III, who insisted it had made important progress in pursuing terrorist threats.

In its final, book-length report last year, the commission offered some of its strongest criticism for the F.B.I. and documented how the bureau had repeatedly mishandled intelligence about terrorist threats before the Sept. 11 attacks, including detailed warnings that terrorists might try to use commercial planes in an attack. The report said the bureau should retain its responsibility for domestic terrorism investigations "only if it makes an all-out effort to institutionalize change."

In recent months, the bureau has acknowledged that many of the failings identified by the Sept. 11 commission continue to plague it, including antiquated computer and communications equipment that make it almost impossible for agents to coordinate information on terrorism investigations easily.

In March, the F.B.I. shut a $170 million program to update computer software, admitting it would take more than three years to develop a workable system. The Justice Department inspector general reported this year that the bureau had a backlog of thousands of hours of tapes to be translated from Arabic and other languages for terrorism inquiries. Commission members said they expected that the new report would include some praise for the administration and Congress, especially on enacting a central recommendation, creating the post of director of national intelligence to force the intelligence and law-enforcement agencies to work together.

MI6 goes online in plea for spies

CNN.com

MI6 goes online in plea for spies

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Britain's foreign spy service MI6 has turned to the Internet in an attempt to recruit real-life James Bonds and dispel myths about the secretive agency.

The launch of the Web site on Thursday marked the first time the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) -- as MI6 is also known -- has publicly appealed for staff since its creation in 1909.

The move follows intelligence failures that gave no warnings of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States or this year's July 7 transport bombings in London.

MI6 also said it hoped the Web site would help to quash "ridiculous" conspiracy theories such as the idea that British agents murdered Princess Diana, a spokesman said.

The intelligence agency has frequently been the subject of fiction over the years, most famously in the adventures of Ian Fleming's spy James Bond.

"Although the SIS archive remains closed, a great deal has been written about the service. Much of it is inaccurate or misleading," the Web site warned.

The site also has a careers page outlining the qualities SIS, which is based at Vauxhall Cross in south London, requires in an agent.

Applicants are promised foreign travel and must be resourceful and flexible, thrive on a challenge and be able to cope with stress.

"Whether you feel that your strengths could lead you towards operations, intelligence analysis, management, data handling or security, whether you have the skills to design high-tech gadgets or to deploy them in a hostile environment, SIS may have the career for you."

Candidates must be over 21 and British, have lived in Britain for five of the last 10 years and pass an "extensive security clearance process."

The Web site -- at www.sis.gov.uk and also www.mi6.gov.uk -- details the role and history of the overseas intelligence gathering organization.

Nev Johnson, a spokesman for MI6, said: "It's important for the public to know more about the service and to explain why MI6 has to be secret in its operations and personnel.

"Also some of the allegations, myths and rumors that have grown up around the service, such as conspiracy theories that Princess Diana was murdered, are so ridiculous that they need to be corrected," he said.

"And the best way of enhancing the public's knowledge of SIS's roles and responsibilities is a Web site because that is accessible to everyone."

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/10/13/britain.mi6/index.html

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Miers Backed Ban on Most Abortions in '89

ABC News
Miers Backed Ban on Most Abortions in '89
Court Nominee Miers Indicated in 1989 Questionnaire That She Supported Banning Most Abortions
By JESSE J. HOLLAND Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers pledged support in 1989 for a constitutional amendment banning abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, according to material given to the Senate on Tuesday.

As a candidate for the Dallas city council, Miers also signaled support for the overall agenda of Texans United for Life agreeing she would support legislation restricting abortions if the Supreme Court ruled that states could ban abortions and would participate in "pro-life rallies and special events."

Miers made her views known in a candidate questionnaire the White House submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is expected to hold hearings on her Supreme Court nomination next month. The one-page questionnaire was filled out, but unsigned, although the Bush administration affirmed its authenticity.

"The answers clearly reflect that Harriet Miers is opposed to Roe v. Wade," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat and only woman on the Judiciary Committee. "This raises very serious concerns about her ability to fairly apply the law without bias in this regard. It will be my intention to question her very carefully about these issues."

GOP Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn of Texas, who support Miers, say the questionnaire was written while Miers was a politician, and she would leave political decisions behind as a judge. "That information is interesting, and some people may draw their own conclusions from it, but I believe that Harriet Miers will be the type of judge who will not attempt to pursue a personal or political agenda from the bench," Cornyn said.

That view was echoed at the White House where presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said that Miers answered the questions as a candidate during the course of a campaign.

"The role of a judge is very different from the role of a candidate or a political officeholder," McClellan said.

"Harriet Miers, just like Chief Justice (John) Roberts, recognizes that personal views and ideology and religion have no role to play when it comes to making decisions on the bench," he said. "Your role as a judge is to look at all the facts and look at the law and apply the law to that case."

The questionnaire also revealed that the White House was considering Miers for its first Supreme Court nomination along with now-Chief Justice John Roberts.

"When Justice Sandra Day O'Connor first announced her desire to retire, I was asked whether my name should be considered," she said in the questionnaire. "I indicated at that time that I did not want to be considered."

The document surfaced as the White House struggled to reassure conservatives who have been critical of Miers' appointment, depicting her as a crony of President Bush who lacks the background or qualifications to sit on the high court.

There was fresh evidence of trouble for Miers during the day, when Sen. David Vitter, R-La., issued a statement saying, "My top questions are: does she have a consistent and well-grounded conservative judicial philosophy and what objective evidence is there of it from her life's work?"

Miers, 60, meanwhile, continued meeting privately with senators during the day, part of a round of courtesy calls that precede the opening of confirmation hearings.

"With her conservative judicial philosophy, she understands that judges must not legislate from the bench," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the conservative American Center for Law and Justice and a Miers supporter. "And while she may hold personal views that underscore the value of human life, it would be wrong for those views to be used against her in the confirmation process."

The 1989 questionnaire was designed to gauge candidates' views on the drive to ban most abortions, either by constitutional amendment or by state law in the event the Supreme Court overturned a 1973 ruling that established abortion rights.

"If Congress passes a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution that would prohibit abortion except when it was necessary to prevent the death of the mother, would you actively support its ratification by the Texas Legislature," asked an April 1989 questionnaire sent out by the Texans United for Life group.

Miers checked "yes" to that question, and all of the group's questions, including whether she would oppose the use of public moneys for abortions and whether she would use her influence to keep "pro-abortion" people off city health boards and commissions.

The abortion issue hangs over Miers' nomination much as it did over the appointment of Chief Justice John Roberts earlier this year. The situations are different, however Roberts replaced the late William Rehnquist, who voted to overturn the 1973 abortion ruling. Miers would succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has voted to uphold it.

"A candidate taking a political position in the course of a campaign is different from the role of a judge making a ruling in the judicial process." said Jim Dyke, a White House spokesman.

Miers' nomination has been met with skepticism from some conservatives, who say she has little by way of a record to establish her views on abortion, affirmative action and other issues. The Texans United for Life questionnaire is additional evidence of how Miers feels about abortion, with some of her supporters assuring conservatives that they believe she would overturn the Supreme Court's landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.

Miers also bought a $150 ticket to a Texans United for Life dinner in 1989 and took a leadership role in trying to get the American Bar Association to reconsider its abortion-rights position in 1993.

Senators say Miers has insisted that she has not given anyone any assurances that she would overturn Roe v. Wade if given the chance.

"She said nobody knows my views on Roe v. Wade. Nobody can speak for me on Roe v. Wade," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., on Monday, referring to the case that guaranteed women's constitutional right to an abortion, setting a legal precedent that abortion foes have been trying to overturn ever since.

In the questionnaire that she turned in the Judiciary Committee, Miers answered "no" to questions asking whether anyone during the nomination process discussed specific cases or legal issues with her to get an assurance on her positions. She also answered "no" to whether she told anyone how she might rule if confirmed.

Miers also revealed that her law license was suspended in the District of Columbia earlier this year for non-payment of bar dues. "I immediately sent the dues to remedy the delinquency," she wrote. "The nonpayment was not intentioned, and I corrected the situation upon receiving the letter."

Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman and Elizabeth White contributed to this report.

On the Net:

Documents including the full questionnaire, financial disclosures and the TULPAC letter are available at: http://wid.ap.org/documents/scotus/miers/index.html

White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov

Senate Judiciary Committee: http://judiciary.senate.gov

Key CIA leak detail disputed as announcement nears

Reuters

Key CIA leak detail disputed as announcement nears

By Adam Entous

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff may have given New York Times reporter Judith Miller inaccurate information about where the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson worked at the CIA, a former intelligence official said on Monday.

The possible discrepancy comes amid signs the federal prosecutor investigating who leaked the identity of Wilson's wife, covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, will announce whether he will bring charges as early as Wednesday, people close to the case said.

Investigators have questioned Miller and other witnesses about whether Cheney was aware or authorized his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, to talk to reporters about Wilson, Miller and others involved in the case have said.

The Washington Post reported special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has assembled evidence showing Cheney's long-running feud with the CIA contributed to Plame's unmasking.

Wilson, a former diplomat, says White House officials exposed his wife, damaging her ability to work undercover, to discredit him for accusing the Bush administration of twisting intelligence to justify the Iraq war in a New York Times opinion piece on July 6, 2003.

According to Miller's account of a meeting with Libby on July 8, she wrote in her notes that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control, or Winpac, unit, which tracks unconventional arms.

A former intelligence official said Plame did not work at Winpac but for the CIA's clandestine service. The former official, who is familiar with Plame's CIA activities, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity.

AFFECT THE INVESTIGATION

It is unclear how the discrepancy might affect the investigation. The former intelligence official said the WINPAC error could bolster Libby's defense, if he were charged with intentionally compromising the identity of a covert operative, since most Winpac employees are not undercover.

"It may actually be helpful to him by showing he was acting under a misimpression and it wasn't an intentional outing of a known undercover officer," the official said.

Libby and President George W. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, are among the officials facing possible charges, legal sources have said.

Miller, who was jailed for 85 days before agreeing to testify about her conversations with Libby, said she told the grand jury Libby "indicated that Ms. Plame worked for Winpac, I assumed that she worked as an analyst, not as an undercover operative."

While Fitzgerald could try to charge administration officials with knowingly revealing the identity of an undercover operative, several lawyers in the case said he was more likely to seek charges for conspiracy and easier-to-prove crimes such as disclosing classified information, making false statements, obstruction and perjury.

Fitzgerald's office said on Monday it had decided to announce any decisions in the Plame case in Washington, rather than Chicago, where the special prosecutor is based.

It is unusual for Fitzgerald's office to comment on the case and the statement led some observers to wonder if it might signal an imminent decision or that Fitzgerald was trying to increase pressure on potential targets to cut a deal.

After promising to fire anyone found to have leaked the information, Bush offered a more qualified pledge in July, saying, "If someone committed a crime they will no longer work in my administration."

Asked on Monday if he would expect members of his administration to resign or take a leave if they were indicted, Bush said: "My position hasn't changed since the last time I've been asked this question. There's a serious investigation. ... I'm not going to prejudge the outcome of the investigation."