Chief Justice John Roberts Questions McCain-Feingold Campaign Restrictions

ABC News
Roberts Questions McCain-Feingold Limits
Chief Justice John Roberts Questions McCain-Feingold Campaign Restrictions
By FREDERIC J. FROMMER Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Chief Justice John Roberts expressed doubts Tuesday about legal restrictions on political ads by outside groups as the Supreme Court took up a new challenge to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

Questioning Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, who was defending the law, Roberts raised a hypothetical case in which a group runs an issue ad every month. Does the ad, he asked, become illegal in the months before an election?

Clement responded that such a group could continue to run the ads if it used political action committee money to pay for them, or if it refrained from identifying a candidate by name.

But Justice Antonin Scalia said that would undercut the purpose of the ad, adding, "The point of an issue ad is to put pressure on an incumbent you want to vote your way."

At issue is a provision banning the use of corporate or union money for ads that identify federal candidates two months before a general election. The case involves a lawsuit by Wisconsin Right to Life, which was barred from broadcasting ads that mentioned Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., during his 2004 re-election campaign.

In the first challenge to how the law was working in practice, the group in 2004 sought an injunction barring the Federal Election Commission from enforcing the provision against it. But the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia denied the request. A month later, then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist declined the group's request to intervene.

Roberts suggested that the fact that the ad also mentioned the state's other senator Democrat Herb Kohl, who was not up for re-election that year buttressed the group's argument that the ad was meant to influence legislation, not the election.

Clement called that a "twofer" for Wisconsin Right to Life. He said most ads that run in the final weeks of a campaign are designed to influence the outcome of elections.

The McCain-Feingold restriction was aimed at forcing groups to use regulated PAC money to pay for issue ads that are widely seen as thinly veiled election commercials. But Wisconsin Right to Life says an exception should be made for "genuine issue ads" that constitute grass-roots lobbying.

The group's commercials urged people to call Feingold and Kohl and ask them to oppose Senate filibustering of President Bush's judicial selections. Feingold co-authored the campaign finance law with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

The Wisconsin group, which opposes legalized abortion, got a skeptical response from some justices, who said the court had already settled the issue when it upheld the law on a 5-4 vote in December 2003. Scalia voted against the law in that case.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, noting that the group opposed Feingold's re-election, asked why it didn't run the ad after the election if the commercial was aimed solely at lobbying.

The group's lawyer, James Bopp Jr., responded that a lobbying group makes its own determination about how to best influence legislation.

Justice Stephen Breyer said that in writing the law, Congress concluded it was impossible to tell whether such commercials were genuine issue ads or sham ads aimed at influencing the election.

"You have a very good argument," Breyer told Bopp. "But it's an argument we just heard in that (2003) case. ... Or are you asking us to go back and undo what we did?"

In a statement, Feingold called the case a good test for the court in whether it truly has respect for precedent.

"The court cannot uphold the challenge brought by Wisconsin Right to Life without ignoring the precedent it set when it upheld the issue ad provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act two years ago," Feingold said.

Both Breyer and Ginsburg voted to uphold McCain-Feingold in 2003, along with Justices David Souter, John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O'Connor, who is retiring. If Roberts votes against the restriction in question, that sets up the possibility of a 4-4 deadlock if O'Connor is off the bench by the time the court issues its new ruling.

In that case, the court could either affirm the U.S. District Court's ruling in 2004, or schedule new oral arguments with Samuel Alito on the bench. Alito is expected to win Senate confirmation to replace O'Connor this month.

The case is Wisconsin Right to Life v. Federal Election Commission, 04-1581.

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Spying on Ordinary Americans

The New York Times
Spying on Ordinary Americans

In times of extreme fear, American leaders have sometimes scrapped civil liberties in the name of civil protection. It's only later that the country can see that the choice was a false one and that citizens' rights were sacrificed to carry out extreme measures that were at best useless and at worst counterproductive. There are enough examples of this in American history - the Alien and Sedition Acts and the World War II internment camps both come to mind - that the lesson should be woven into the nation's fabric. But it's hard to think of a more graphic example than President Bush's secret program of spying on Americans.

The White House has offered steadily weaker arguments to defend the decision to eavesdrop on Americans' telephone calls and e-mail without getting warrants. One argument is that the spying produced unique and highly valuable information. Vice President Dick Cheney, who never shrinks from trying to prey on Americans' deepest fears, said that the spying had saved "thousands of lives" and could have thwarted the 9/11 attacks had it existed then.

Given the lack of good, hard examples, that argument sounded dubious from the start. A chilling article in yesterday's Times confirmed our fears.

According to the article, the eavesdropping swept up vast quantities of Americans' private communications without any reasonable belief that they could be related to terrorism. The National Security Agency flooded the Federal Bureau of Investigation with thousands of names, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers and other tips that virtually all led to dead ends or to innocent Americans.

About the only result the administration has been able to dredge up on behalf of the spying program is the claim that the information it gained helped disrupt two plots: one to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge and one to detonate fertilizer bombs in London. But officials in Washington and Britain disputed the connection. And that plot to cut down the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch has been trotted out so many times that it would be comical if the issue were not so serious.

This was not just a tragic waste of the F.B.I.'s resources in dangerous times. It was an outrageous and pointless intrusion into individuals' privacy. Anyone who read the original reports on the spying operation and thought, "Well, so what, I have nothing to hide," should think about the uncounted innocent Americans who had F.B.I. officers knocking on their doors because of secret and possibly illegal surveillance. The National Security Agency was originally barred from domestic surveillance without court supervision to avoid just this sort of abuse.

The first lawsuits challenging the legality of the domestic spying operation were filed this week, and Congress plans hearings. We hope that lawmakers are more diligent about reining in Mr. Bush now than they have been about his other abuses of power in the name of fighting terrorism.

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Purple Heartbreakers

The New York Times
Purple Heartbreakers
By JAMES WEBB

Arlington, Va.

IT should come as no surprise that an arch-conservative Web site is questioning whether Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has been critical of the war in Iraq, deserved the combat awards he received in Vietnam.

After all, in recent years extremist Republican operatives have inverted a longstanding principle: that our combat veterans be accorded a place of honor in political circles. This trend began with the ugly insinuations leveled at Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries and continued with the slurs against Senators Max Cleland and John Kerry, and now Mr. Murtha.

Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice. The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career. This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves.

Not unlike the Clinton "triangulation" strategy, the approach has been to attack an opponent's greatest perceived strength in order to diminish his overall credibility. To no one's surprise, surrogates carry out the attacks, leaving President Bush and other Republican leaders to benefit from the results while publicly distancing themselves from the actual remarks.

During the 2000 primary season, John McCain's life-defining experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam were diminished through whispers that he was too scarred by those years to handle the emotional burdens of the presidency. The wide admiration that Senator Max Cleland gained from building a career despite losing three limbs in Vietnam brought on the smug non sequitur from critics that he had been injured in an accident and not by enemy fire. John Kerry's voluntary combat duty was systematically diminished by the well-financed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in a highly successful effort to insulate a president who avoided having to go to war.

And now comes Jack Murtha. The administration tried a number of times to derail the congressman's criticism of the Iraq war, including a largely ineffective effort to get senior military officials to publicly rebuke him (Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was the only one to do the administration's bidding there).

Now the Cybercast News Service, a supposedly independent organization with deep ties to the Republican Party, has dusted off the Swift Boat Veterans playbook, questioning whether Mr. Murtha deserved his two Purple Hearts. The article also implied that Mr. Murtha did not deserve the Bronze Star he received, and that the combat-distinguishing "V" on it was questionable. It then called on Mr. Murtha to open up his military records.

Cybercast News Service is run by David Thibault, who formerly worked as the senior producer for "Rising Tide," the televised weekly news magazine produced by the Republican National Committee. One of the authors of the Murtha article was Marc Morano, a long-time writer and producer for Rush Limbaugh.

The accusations against Mr. Murtha were very old news, principally coming from defeated political rivals. Aligned against their charges are an official letter from Marine Corps Headquarters written nearly 40 years ago affirming Mr. Murtha's eligibility for his Purple Hearts - "you are entitled to the Purple Heart and a Gold Star in lieu of a second Purple Heart for wounds received in action" - and the strict tradition of the Marine Corps regarding awards. While in other services lower-level commanders have frequently had authority to issue prestigious awards, in the Marines Mr. Murtha's Vietnam Bronze Star would have required the approval of four different awards boards.

The Bush administration's failure to support those who have served goes beyond the smearing of these political opponents. One of the most regrettable examples comes, oddly enough, from modern-day Vietnam. The government-run War Remnants Museum, a popular tourist site in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, includes an extensive section on "American atrocities." The largest display is devoted to Bob Kerrey, a former United States senator and governor of Nebraska, recipient of the Medal of Honor and member of the 9/11 commission.

In the display, Mr. Kerrey is flatly labeled a war criminal by the Vietnamese government, and the accompanying text gives a thoroughly propagandized version of an incident that resulted in civilian deaths during his time in Vietnam. This display has been up for more than two years. One finds it hard to imagine another example in which a foreign government has been allowed to so characterize the service of a distinguished American with no hint of a diplomatic protest.

The political tactic of playing up the soldiers on the battlefield while tearing down the reputations of veterans who oppose them could eventually cost the Republicans dearly. It may be one reason that a preponderance of the Iraq war veterans who thus far have decided to run for office are doing so as Democrats.

A young American now serving in Iraq might rightly wonder whether his or her service will be deliberately misconstrued 20 years from now, in the next rendition of politically motivated spinmeisters who never had the courage to step forward and put their own lives on the line.

Rudyard Kipling summed up this syndrome quite neatly more than a century ago, writing about the frequent hypocrisy directed at the British soldiers of his day:

An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;

An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

James Webb, a secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, was a Marine platoon and company commander in Vietnam.

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2 Parties Rush to Offer Curbs for Lobbying

The New York Times
2 Parties Rush to Offer Curbs for Lobbying
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 - House Republican leaders laid out a proposal on Tuesday to rewrite House rules governing lobbying as they moved to contain the political damage from an election-year scandal over undue influence and access afforded to lobbyists.

In the first of a series of competing packages of legislation, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert called for a ban on Congressional travel underwritten by outside groups, tougher restrictions on gifts and favors and the elimination of privileges for lawmakers turned lobbyists in response to three bribery and corruption convictions that have reached into the House. Inquiries related to those criminal acts are continuing.

Congressional Democrats plan to issue their own overhaul plan Wednesday, and Senate Republicans are preparing one as well in a game of one-upsmanship touched off by guilty pleas to corruption charges by the high-powered lobbyist Jack Abramoff and an associate and a House Republican's admission to taking bribes.

The House and Senate are responsible for setting the rules that apply to each chamber, but in the past have enacted these types of reforms through a combination of rules changes and legislation to give them the force of law.

Past furors like the House Post Office scandal and sensational revelations about lobbyist paid travel, suspect book deals and speaking fees have sparked previous rounds of reform. But they are often undone by lack of staff members to police them and have been riddled with loopholes that allow lawmakers and lobbyists alike to find ways around them. Some fear that could be the case this time if Congress is not vigilant.

Though the plans differ, all take aim at the opportunities available to lobbyists to provide lawmakers with benefits like luxury travel, expensive meals, scarce tickets to entertainment events, fund-raising help, contributions to pet causes and other little-scrutinized forms of financial and political support.

"I think members can probably function very well in this town without having to go out to lunch with a lobbyist or to dinner with a lobbyist," Mr. Hastert said. "They can pay for it for themselves."

Democrats plan to push ahead with their own proposals, saying they are skeptical that the Republicans who control the House and Senate will be able to clean up a system they have presided over.

"It is like asking John Gotti to do what he can to clean up organized crime," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader.

Like the other plans, the overhaul by Congressional Democrats would double to two years the time before a former lawmaker or senior aide could lobby Congress. Congressional Democrats would institute new quarterly lobbying reports with extensive new requirements for disclosure. They would also prohibit lawmakers and aides from pressing private entities to make employment decisions on the basis of political affiliation, a provision aimed at the Republican K Street push to force the hiring of Republicans by lobbying firms and trade associations. Senate Republicans are drafting a plan that, according to a party memorandum, would end travel subsidized by outside groups, ban gifts, reduce the ability of senators to stall legislation and nominations anonymously through "holds" and prohibit spouses and relatives of senators from lobbying the Senate. The last has become a growing practice in recent years.

Advocates of tighter rules say the frenzied approach to overhauling the rules could produce real changes in the way lawmakers and lobbyists interact if Congress follows through.

"If you want to be serious about it, there has to be some enforcement mechanism," said Roberta Baskin, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit group that tracks money in politics.

Some leading lobbyists, however, say Congress is in danger of going overboard and could cut off the ability of the public to advocate on Capitol Hill.

"We cannot lose sight of the fact that we have had one lawmaker and two lobbyists plead guilty," said Robert Livingston, a former House Appropriations Committee chairman who is now a Washington lobbyist. "The fact is, we have reformed campaign finance at least four times since 1974, and each time it has gotten progressively worse. I am worried we are going to do the same to lobbying."

Should Congress agree on a lobbying package this year, it would be the first extensive revision since a 1995 measure limiting gifts and requiring new lobbying disclosure.

Mr. Hastert and others acknowledged Tuesday, however, that it would not be easy to enact such legislation. He and others said that scores of House Republicans who participated in a 90-minute conference call Tuesday expressed misgivings about various elements of the House Republican approach, including the travel ban and the rights of former members.

In addition, House Republicans also intend to use the legislation to put new campaign spending and reporting restrictions on independent advocacy groups that have been seen as beneficial to Democrats, a move that could spark resistance.

"It's going to take some leadership and some pushing and pulling," Mr. Hastert said.

Representative John Shadegg of Arizona, a candidate for Republican majority leader, immediately objected to the travel ban, saying it could deprive members of crucial educational opportunities. The leadership position came open in part because of the links between Mr. Abramoff and Representative Tom DeLay of Texas.

Travel has become a chief focus since Mr. Abramoff was accused of using third-party groups to provide lavish trips for lawmakers, who said they were unaware that he had paid for the trips. Dozens of other lawmakers have had to file new disclosure reports to account for their journeys over the years while explaining the educational purposes of high-season trips to popular resorts.

Representative David Dreier, the California Republican who is the chairman of the Rules Committee and has been assembling the House plan, said he hoped to take a comprehensive proposal to the House floor by March.

But Mr. Dreier said the House would act as soon as it reconvenes Jan. 31 on a few elements of the plan, including provisions that would bar former lawmakers who are now registered lobbyists from being on the House floor or using a private gym where they have ready access to their old colleagues.

"We do know that members have raised concern about this issue," Mr. Dreier said.

Fred Wertheimer, president of the group Democracy 21 and a longtime advocate of tighter Congressional ethics rules, said he saw promise in the proposals, but he cautioned that the final judgment would await the details and the mechanisms to hold members accountable given a near collapse of the House ethics review.

"The real battle lies ahead," Mr. Wertheimer said, suggesting that Congress should consider a new professional office of public integrity to enforce the rules.

But Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the author of his own Senate plan, said Tuesday that he did not want to see a new Congressional entity created. Greater disclosure, Mr. McCain said, could ultimately bring public and political pressure to bear.

"If there are issues, my initial response is, it could be taken care of by the ethics committees and/or the Justice Department, in case of criminal activities," he said.

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Al-Jazeera Hires Lawyers to Get Transcript

Yahoo! News
Al-Jazeera Hires Lawyers to Get Transcript

By MARIAM SAMI, Associated Press Writer

Al-Jazeera has hired a British law firm to press its request to British Prime Minister Tony Blair for a partial transcript of a conversation between him and U.S. President George W. Bush in which the American leader allegedly said the Arab broadcaster's headquarters should be bombed.

Yosri Fouda, an investigative reporter and acting Al-Jazeera bureau chief in London, told The Associated Press the network had hired Finers Stephens Innocent LLP in an "attempt to put pressure on the British government" to hand over part of the record of the conversation.

"We would like to know the truth," Fouda said in a telephone interview. The news channel, which is highly popular throughout the Middle East, wanted to "set the record straight" concerning the Bush-Blair conversation.

Fouda said the network was only asking for a transcription of "the ten lines" of the conversation that purportedly involved the Doha, Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, conceding that Britain's desire to keep the rest of the conversation secret was understandable as a matter of state security.

News of Bush's alleged remarks during a White House meeting with Blair on April 16, 2004, were first reported by the British Daily Mirror tabloid in late November. The newspaper said the remarks were detailed in a leaked secret British government memo.

According to the newspaper, Blair argued against Bush's suggestion. On Monday a Blair spokeswoman said "in spite of various allegations the memo does not refer to the bombing of the Al-Jazeera TV station."

When it disclosed the alleged memo, the Daily Mirror reported that its sources disagreed on whether Bush was serious about the bombing comment.

At the time, White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the newspaper's claims "outlandish and inconceivable." Blair has said he had no information about any proposed U.S. action against Al-Jazeera, an answer Fouda said was insufficient to explain what was really said during the conversation.

Fouda said the law firm sent a request to Blair's secretary on Jan. 12 outlining the channel's demand and invoking the Freedom of Information Act. Blair's office has sent a confirmation of receipt.

On Jan. 10, a judge ordered two British men to stand trial on charges of leaking the memo.

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Supreme Court Upholds Oregon Suicide Law

Yahoo! News
Supreme Court Upholds Oregon Suicide Law

By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer

The Supreme Court upheld Oregon's one-of-a-kind physician-assisted suicide law Tuesday, rejecting a Bush administration attempt to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die.

Justices, on a 6-3 vote, said that a federal drug law does not override the 1997 Oregon law used to end the lives of more than 200 seriously ill people. New Chief Justice John Roberts backed the Bush administration, dissenting for the first time.

The administration improperly tried to use a drug law to punish Oregon doctors who prescribe lethal doses of prescription medicines, the court majority said.

"Congress did not have this far-reaching intent to alter the federal-state balance," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for himself, retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer.

Kennedy is expected to become a more influential swing voter after O'Connor's departure. He is a moderate conservative who sometimes joins the liberal wing of the court in cases involving such things as gay rights and capital punishment.

The ruling was a reprimand to former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who in 2001 said that doctor-assisted suicide is not a "legitimate medical purpose" and that Oregon physicians would be punished for helping people die under the law.

Kennedy said the "authority claimed by the attorney general is both beyond his expertise and incongruous with the statutory purposes and design."

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for himself, Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas, said that federal officials have the power to regulate the doling out of medicine.

"If the term `legitimate medical purpose' has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death," he wrote.

Scalia said the court's ruling "is perhaps driven by a feeling that the subject of assisted suicide is none of the federal government's business. It is easy to sympathize with that position."

Oregon's law covers only extremely sick people — those with incurable diseases, whom at least two doctors agree have six months or less to live and are of sound mind.

The ruling backed a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said Ashcroft's "unilateral attempt to regulate general medical practices historically entrusted to state lawmakers interferes with the democratic debate about physician-assisted suicide."

Ashcroft had brought the case to the Supreme Court on the day his resignation was announced by the White House in 2004. The Justice Department has continued the case, under the leadership of his successor, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The court's ruling was not a final say on federal authority to override state doctor-assisted suicide laws — only a declaration that the current federal scheme did not permit that. However, it could still have ramifications outside of Oregon.

"This is a disappointing decision that is likely to result in a troubling movement by states to pass their own assisted suicide laws," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, which backed the administration.

Sen. Ron Wyden (news, bio, voting record), D-Ore., and a supporter of the law, said the ruling "has stopped, for now, the administration's attempts to wrest control of decisions rightfully left to the states and individuals."

Thomas wrote his own dissent as well, to complain that the court's reasoning was puzzling. Roberts did not write separately.

Justices have dealt with end-of-life cases before. In 1990, the Supreme Court ruled that terminally ill people may refuse treatment that would otherwise keep them alive. Then, justices in 1997 unanimously ruled that people have no constitutional right to die, upholding state bans on physician-assisted suicide. That opinion, by then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, said individual states could decide to allow the practice.

Roberts strongly hinted in October when the case was argued that he would back the administration. O'Connor had seemed ready to support Oregon's law, but her vote would not have counted if the ruling was handed down after she left the court.

The case is Gonzales v. Oregon, 04-623.

___

On the Net:

Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/

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Groups Sue to Stop Domestic Spying Program

Yahoo! News
Groups Sue to Stop Domestic Spying Program

By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer

Federal lawsuits were filed Tuesday seeking to halt President Bush's domestic eavesdropping program, calling it an "illegal and unconstitutional program" of electronic eavesdropping on American citizens.

The lawsuits accusing Bush of exceeding his constitutional powers were filed in federal court in New York by the Center for Constitutional Rights and in Detroit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The New York suit, filed on behalf of the center and individuals, names Bush, the head of the National Security Agency, and the heads of the other major security agencies, challenging the NSA's surveillance of persons within the United States without judicial approval or statutory authorization.

It asked a judge to stop Bush and government agencies from conducting warrantless surveillance of communications in the United States.

The Detroit suit, which also names the NSA, was filed by the ACLU, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Greenpeace and several individuals.

Messages seeking comment were left Tuesday morning with the National Security Agency and the Justice Department.

Bush, who said the wiretapping is legal and necessary, has pointed to a congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that authorized him to use force in the fight against terrorism as allowing him to order the program.

The program authorized eavesdropping of international phone calls and e-mails of people deemed a terror risk.

But the New York lawsuit noted that federal law already allows the president to conduct warrantless surveillance during the first 15 days of a war and allows court authorization of surveillance for agents of foreign powers or terrorist groups.

Instead of following the law, Bush "unilaterally and secretly authorized electronic surveillance without judicial approval or congressional authorization," the lawsuit said.

At a news conference, Center for Constitutional Rights Legal Director Bill Goodman portrayed the president as a man on an unprecedented power grab at the expense of basic democratic principles.

He said the public was starting to understand the assertion that the erosion of individual rights is a slippery slope that lets the government "brand anyone a terrorist with no right to counsel, no right to be brought before a judge and no right to privacy in communications."

The Detroit lawsuit said the plaintiffs, who frequently communicate by telephone and e-mail with people in the Middle East and Asia, have a "well-founded belief" that their communications are being intercepted by the government.

"By seriously compromising the free speech and privacy rights of the plaintiffs and others, the program violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution," the lawsuit states.

In its suit in New York, the Center for Constitutional Rights maintained its work was directly affected by the surveillance because its lawyers represent a potential class of hundreds of Muslim foreign nationals detained after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

It said its attorney-client privilege was likely violated as it represented hundreds of men detained without charge as enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station and a Canadian citizen who was picked up at a New York airport while changing planes, sent to Syria and tortured and detained without charges for nearly a year.

The group said the surveillance program has inhibited its ability to represent clients vigorously, making it hard to communicate via telephone and e-mail with overseas clients, witnesses and others for fear the conversations would be overheard.

Plaintiff Rachel Meeropol, an attorney at the center, said she believes she has been targeted. "I'm personally outraged that my confidential communication with my clients may have been listened to by the U.S. government," she said.

___

Associated Press writer Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.

___

On the Net:

http://www.aclu.org

http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/home.asp

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Reid To Introduce "Honest Leadership Act," Includes "Jack Abramoff Rule"

The Huffington Post
Reid To Introduce "Honest Leadership Act," Includes "Jack Abramoff Rule"...

AP

On Wednesday, Jan 18, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will unveil a set of reforms in an Honest Leadership Act to be introduced jointly by Senate and House Democrats. The Honest Leadership Act is intended to clean out the corruption and cronyism in government, and prevent abuses of power in the future.

A key proposal in the Act is known as "The Jack Abramoff Rule."

It bans members and staff from receiving gifts, meals and travel from lobbyists. Current Ethics Committee rules allow gifts and meals under $50 for members and staff and require full disclosure of lobbyist-related travel.

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Gore calls for special counsel on eavesdropping

Reuters
Gore calls for special counsel on eavesdropping
By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Vice President Al Gore called on Monday for an independent counsel to investigate whether President George W. Bush broke the law in authorizing domestic eavesdropping without court approval.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales plans to testify in Senate hearings, expected next month, to give the administration's legal justification for the secret domestic eavesdropping operation.

"A special counsel should be immediately appointed by the attorney general to remedy the obvious conflict of interest that prevents him from investigating what many believe are serious violations of law by the president," Gore said in a speech to the American Constitution Society and the Liberty Coalition.

Gore, the Democrat defeated by Bush in the 2000 presidential election, said the eavesdropping operation threatened the foundation of U.S. democracy, and he recalled the FBI's secret surveillance of Martin Luther King, on the U.S. holiday commemorating the civil rights leader.

[Editor's note: Bore was not defeated by Bush in the 2000 election. The US Supreme Court decided that all the votes would not be counted and crowned Bush as President.]

Gonzales said in an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live" later on Monday, "I don't know why there would be a need for a special counsel at this time.

"From its inception, this (eavesdropping) program has been carefully reviewed by the lawyers at the Department of Justice and other lawyers within the administration, and we firmly believe that the president does have a legal authority to authorize electronic surveillance in order to gather up foreign intelligence ... of the enemy in a time of war," Gonzales said.

Gore's comments also came at the start of a congressional election year in which Democrats are seeking to regain majority control from Republicans.

He accused Bush of breaking the law for not getting court approval for the National Security Agency eavesdropping operation on communications such as phone calls and e-mail coming into and going out of the United States of people suspected of terrorism ties.

"We still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the president of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently," Gore said.

"A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government," he said.

'INACCURACIES AND ANGER'

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act makes it illegal to spy on U.S. citizens in the United States without the approval of a special, secret court.

Bush has steadfastly said his actions were within the law and that he ordered the domestic eavesdropping operation to fight terrorism after the September 11 attacks.

"Al Gore's incessant need to insert himself in the headline of the day is almost as glaring as his lack of understanding of the threats facing America," Tracey Schmitt, spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said in a statement.

"While the president works to protect Americans from terrorists, Democrats deliver no solutions of their own, only diatribes laden with inaccuracies and anger," she said.

The New York Times reported on its Web site on Monday that the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights planned to file separate lawsuits on Tuesday against the Bush administration's domestic spying program.

The two leading civil rights groups will ask the court to immediately order an end to the eavesdropping program, the newspaper said.

(Additional reporting by Tom Doggett)


[Note: A full transcript can be found here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/16/AR2006011600779_pf.html ]

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Soldiers Prevented from Using Better Body Armor

huffingtonpost.com
Soldiers Prevented from Using Better Body Armor
Michelle Pilecki

Nearly three years in Iraq and we're still debating decent armor for the troops? The latest chapter of this ongoing saga was kicked off earlier this month when Soldiers for the Truth, an advocacy group, uncovered and quoted a Marine Corps forensic study criticizing the current Interceptor body armor:

[A]s many as 42% of the Marine casualties who died from isolated torso injuries could have been prevented with improved protection in the areas surrounding the plated areas of the vest.
Nearly 23% might have benefited from protection along the mid-axillary line of the lateral chest. Another 15% died from impacts through the unprotected shoulder and upper arm.

The New York Times extrapolated some numbers, and subsequently reported that "300 or more lives might have been saved with improved body armor" in the Iraq war. The revelation has even stirred Congress, who are talking about holding hearings. No sense of urgency there. Problems of both quality and quantity of protective gear have plagued the Iraq war for more than a couple of years now, but it's not a priority issue -- or a continuing scandal -- for the news media. Meanwhile, there may already exist a better set of body armor, Dragon Skin made by Pinnacle Armor of Fresno, Calif., according to industry observers like Defense Review (warning: very technical discussion), and many Iraq-bound soldiers and Marines have spent their own money to get it -- some $6,000 each. But now they face possible retaliation, says SFFT.

The soldiers, who are currently staging for combat operations from a secret location, reported that their commander told them if they were wearing Pinnacle Dragon Skin and were killed their beneficiaries might not receive the death benefits from their $400,000 SGLI life insurance policies. The soldiers were ordered to leave their privately purchased body armor at home or face the possibility of both losing their life insurance benefit and facing disciplinary action.

How much better is Dragon Skin than the DoD's current Interceptor (another way technical piece)? Defense Review not only has the technical specs but also a testimonial from a satisfied (i.e. alive) customer in Iraq.

[At first] I was slightly put off by the weight of the armor. It was heavy and slightly uncomfortable to begin with, but I have to admit, it kind of "adapted" to my body after a day or two. The weight distribution is a definite plus.

However, we were involved in a IED (improvised explosive device) attack and small arms fire on the [redacted date]. After the contact, when I removed my tactical vest, I saw that I had taken hits in the back of my vest. They were 7.62x39mm (AK-47) and they were inches apart. I was hit in the back (and we checked, if I was wearing any other body armor, I would not be writing this to you), as it were both low hits (below the typical 10"x12" plate coverage). In terms of bruising, nothing whatsoever. I did not even KNOW that I was hit twice until I took off my tactical vest (this was after about 2 hours after the contact) and saw the damage. It was only then that we took a close look at my body armor that we realized I was hit twice by an AK-47. I had another ricochet hit around the top end of my back that may have caused serious injury to my lower neck.

Most news outlets are still clueless about the existence of what many military types consider a superior body armor, but credit PBS' Newshour with setting up a debate between a Pentagon consultant, defending the DoD's current choice of body armor, and SFFT's president, Retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Roger Charles, describing the benefits of Dragon Skin. Both the Army and Marine Corps declined to participate. (Go here for the transcript and links to streaming video and audio, and here for Defense Review's immediate counter-argument to the criticism of Dragon Skin.) The discussion also includes a good show-and-tell on how modern body armor works.

SFFT's Charles figures that the Pentagon is being stubborn about Dragon Skin because of "bureaucratic turf protection."

We were told by several independent consultants who work for the Pentagon that cannot be named because of fear of losing their jobs that this was probably the best available body armor. It's what they would take to Baghdad. They do not have any financial ties with Pinnacle Armor. We're not saying it's the best. We're saying it ought to get a fair test.

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Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends

The New York Times

Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends
By LOWELL BERGMAN, ERIC LICHTBLAU, SCOTT SHANE and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

This article is by Lowell Bergman, Eric Lichtblau, Scott Shane and Don Van Natta Jr.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.

As the bureau was running down those leads, its director, Robert S. Mueller III, raised concerns about the legal rationale for a program of eavesdropping without warrants, one government official said. Mr. Mueller asked senior administration officials about "whether the program had a proper legal foundation," but deferred to Justice Department legal opinions, the official said.

President Bush has characterized the eavesdropping program as a "vital tool" against terrorism; Vice President Dick Cheney has said it has saved "thousands of lives."

But the results of the program look very different to some officials charged with tracking terrorism in the United States. More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.

"We'd chase a number, find it's a schoolteacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism - case closed," said one former F.B.I. official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration."

Intelligence officials disagree with any characterization of the program's results as modest, said Judith A. Emmel, a spokeswoman for the office of the director of national intelligence. Ms. Emmel cited a statement at a briefing last month by Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the country's second-ranking intelligence official and the director of the N.S.A. when the program was started.

"I can say unequivocally that we have gotten information through this program that would not otherwise have been available," General Hayden said. The White House and the F.B.I. declined to comment on the program or its results.

The differing views of the value of the N.S.A.'s foray into intelligence-gathering in the United States may reflect both bureaucratic rivalry and a culture clash. The N.S.A., an intelligence agency, routinely collects huge amounts of data from across the globe that may yield only tiny nuggets of useful information; the F.B.I., while charged with fighting terrorism, retains the traditions of a law enforcement agency more focused on solving crimes.

"It isn't at all surprising to me that people not accustomed to doing this would say, 'Boy, this is an awful lot of work to get a tiny bit of information,' " said Adm. Bobby R. Inman, a former N.S.A. director. "But the rejoinder to that is, Have you got anything better?"

Several of the law enforcement officials acknowledged that they might not know of arrests or intelligence activities overseas that grew out of the domestic spying program. And because the program was a closely guarded secret, its role in specific cases may have been disguised or hidden even from key investigators.

Still, the comments on the N.S.A. program from the law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, many of them high level, are the first indication that the program was viewed with skepticism by key figures at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the agency responsible for disrupting plots and investigating terrorism on American soil.

All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the program is classified. It is coming under scrutiny next month in hearings on Capitol Hill, which were planned after members of Congress raised questions about the legality of the warrantless eavesdropping. The program was disclosed in December by The New York Times.

The law enforcement and counterterrorism officials said the program had uncovered no active Qaeda networks inside the United States planning attacks. "There were no imminent plots - not inside the United States," the former F.B.I. official said.

Some of the officials said the eavesdropping program might have helped uncover people with ties to Al Qaeda in Albany; Portland, Ore.; and Minneapolis. Some of the activities involved recruitment, training or fund-raising.

But, along with several British counterterrorism officials, some of the officials questioned assertions by the Bush administration that the program was the key to uncovering a plot to detonate fertilizer bombs in London in 2004. The F.B.I. and other law enforcement officials also expressed doubts about the importance of the program's role in another case named by administration officials as a success in the fight against terrorism, an aborted scheme to topple the Brooklyn Bridge with a blow torch.

Some officials said that in both cases, they had already learned of the plans through prisoner interrogations or other means.

Immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration pressed the nation's intelligence agencies and the F.B.I. to move urgently to thwart any more plots. The N.S.A., whose mission is to spy overseas, began monitoring the international e-mail messages and phone calls of people inside the United States who were linked, even indirectly, to suspected Qaeda figures.

Under a presidential order, the agency conducted the domestic eavesdropping without seeking the warrants ordinarily required from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which handles national security matters. The administration has defended the legality of the program, pointing to what it says is the president's inherent constitutional power to defend the country and to legislation passed by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Administration officials told Mr. Mueller, the F.B.I. director, of the eavesdropping program, and his agency was enlisted to run down leads from it, several current and former officials said.

While he and some bureau officials discussed the fact that the program bypassed the intelligence surveillance court, Mr. Mueller expressed no concerns about that to them, those officials said. But another government official said Mr. Mueller had questioned the administration about the legal authority for the program.

Officials who were briefed on the N.S.A. program said the agency collected much of the data passed on to the F.B.I. as tips by tracing phone numbers in the United States called by suspects overseas, and then by following the domestic numbers to other numbers called. In other cases, lists of phone numbers appeared to result from the agency's computerized scanning of communications coming into and going out of the country for names and keywords that might be of interest. The deliberate blurring of the source of the tips caused some frustration among those who had to follow up.

F.B.I. field agents, who were not told of the domestic surveillance programs, complained that they often were given no information about why names or numbers had come under suspicion. A former senior prosecutor who was familiar with the eavesdropping programs said intelligence officials turning over the tips "would always say that we had information whose source we can't share, but it indicates that this person has been communicating with a suspected Al Qaeda operative." He said, "I would always wonder, what does 'suspected' mean?"

"The information was so thin," he said, "and the connections were so remote, that they never led to anything, and I never heard any follow-up."

In response to the F.B.I. complaints, the N.S.A. eventually began ranking its tips on a three-point scale, with 3 being the highest priority and 1 the lowest, the officials said. Some tips were considered so hot that they were carried by hand to top F.B.I. officials. But in bureau field offices, the N.S.A. material continued to be viewed as unproductive, prompting agents to joke that a new bunch of tips meant more "calls to Pizza Hut," one official, who supervised field agents, said.

The views of some bureau officials about the value of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance offers a revealing glimpse of the difficulties law enforcement and intelligence agencies have had cooperating since Sept. 11.

The N.S.A., criticized by the national Sept. 11 commission for its "avoidance of anything domestic" before the attacks, moved aggressively into the domestic realm after them. But the legal debate over its warrantless eavesdropping has embroiled the agency in just the kind of controversy its secretive managers abhor. The F.B.I., meanwhile, has struggled over the last four years to expand its traditional mission of criminal investigation to meet the larger menace of terrorism.

Admiral Inman, the former N.S.A. director and deputy director of C.I.A., said the F.B.I. complaints about thousands of dead-end leads revealed a chasm between very different disciplines. Signals intelligence, the technical term for N.S.A.'s communications intercepts, rarely produces "the complete information you're going to get from a document or a witness" in a traditional F.B.I. investigation, he said.

Some F.B.I. officials said they were uncomfortable with the expanded domestic role played by the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies, saying most intelligence officers lacked the training needed to safeguard Americans' privacy and civil rights. They said some protections had to be waived temporarily in the months after Sept. 11 to detect a feared second wave of attacks, but they questioned whether emergency procedures like the eavesdropping should become permanent.

That discomfort may explain why some F.B.I. officials may seek to minimize the benefits of the N.S.A. program or distance themselves from the agency. "This wasn't our program," an F.B.I. official said. "It's not our mess, and we're not going to clean it up."

The N.S.A.'s legal authority for collecting the information it passed to the F.B.I. is uncertain. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires a warrant for the use of so-called pen register equipment that records American phone numbers, even if the contents of the calls are not intercepted. But officials with knowledge of the program said no warrants were sought to collect the numbers, and it is unclear whether the secret executive order signed by Mr. President Bush in 2002 to authorize eavesdropping without warrants also covered the collection of phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Aside from the director, F.B.I. officials did not question the legal status of the tips, assuming that N.S.A. lawyers had approved. They were more concerned about the quality and quantity of the material, which produced "mountains of paperwork" often more like raw data than conventional investigative leads.

"It affected the F.B.I. in the sense that they had to devote so many resources to tracking every single one of these leads, and, in my experience, they were all dry leads," the former senior prosecutor said. "A trained investigator never would have devoted the resources to take those leads to the next level, but after 9/11, you had to."

By the administration's account, the N.S.A. eavesdropping helped lead investigators to Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver and friend of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Faris spoke of toppling the Brooklyn Bridge by taking a torch to its suspension cables, but concluded that it would not work. He is now serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison.

But as in the London fertilizer bomb case, some officials with direct knowledge of the Faris case dispute that the N.S.A. information played a significant role.

By contrast, different officials agree that the N.S.A.'s domestic operations played a role in the arrest in Albany of an imam and another man who were taken into custody in August 2004 as part of an F.B.I. counterterrorism sting investigation. The men, Yassin Aref, 35, and Mohammed Hossain, 49, are awaiting trial on charges that they attempted to engineer the sale of missile launchers to an F.B.I. undercover informant.

In addition, government officials said the N.S.A. eavesdropping program might have assisted in the investigations of people with suspected Qaeda ties in Portland and Minneapolis. In the Minneapolis case, charges of supporting terrorism were filed in 2004 against Mohammed Abdullah Warsame, a Canadian citizen. Six people in the Portland case were convicted of crimes that included money laundering and conspiracy to wage war against the United States.

Even senior administration officials with access to classified operations suggest that drawing a clear link between a particular source and the unmasking of a potential terrorist is not always possible.

When Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, was asked last week on "The Charlie Rose Show" whether the N.S.A. wiretapping program was important in deterring terrorism, he said, "I don't know that it's ever possible to attribute one strand of intelligence from a particular program."

But Mr. Chertoff added, "I can tell you in general, the process of doing whatever you can do technologically to find out what is being said by a known terrorist to other people, and who that person is communicating with, that is without a doubt one of the critical tools we've used time and again."

William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting from New York for this article.

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In New Orleans' Shadow, Many on Mississippi's Coast Feeling Neglected

ABC News
Many on Miss. Coast Feel Overshadowed
In New Orleans' Shadow, Many on Mississippi's Coast Feeling Neglected
By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
The Associated Press

GULFPORT, Miss. - Nicki Henderson has had plenty of reasons to be angry since Hurricane Katrina destroyed her Biloxi home, but it was a simple news item about dislocated dolphins that really made her blood boil.

Henderson lost her temper when she logged on to her computer and spotted this headline: "New Orleans Dolphins Find New Home." She knew the dolphins actually came from a hurricane-ravaged marine park in Gulfport, not New Orleans.

The headline writer's error reinforced her belief shared by many on Mississippi's Gulf Coast that New Orleans has gotten a disproportionate share of the news coverage and the nation's attention in the aftermath of the storm, now more than four months gone.

There is a growing sense the catastrophic damage along Mississippi's 70-mile stretch of coastline is being treated as a mere footnote to the story in New Orleans, which was ravaged by flooding.

Worse, some say the lack attention could hamper the recovery of an area that had experienced an economic renaissance in the past decade thanks to billions of dollars of investment by major casino and hotel companies.

"I am terrified the American people are going to forget about us," Henderson said.

On Dec. 14, The Sun Herald in Gulfport devoted its entire front page to an editorial, headlined "Mississippi's Invisible Coast," that argued the region is fading into a "black hole of media obscurity." Next to the editorial was a graphic tallying Katrina's toll on the region: $125 billion in estimated damage, 236 dead, 65,380 houses destroyed.

Louisiana's death toll stands at 1,078. More than 6,000 homes in New Orleans and neighboring St. Bernard Parish may have to be demolished.

The piece ended with a plea to the national media to "tell our story."

"The depth of the suffering and the height of the courage of south Mississippians is an incredible story that the American people must know. But, in the shadows of the New Orleans story, the Mississippi Coast has become invisible and forgotten to most Americans," the editorial read.

Sun Herald publisher Ricky Mathews said more balanced coverage would give Mississippi's residents a sorely needed morale boost. "They need to know they haven't been forgotten," Mathews said.

Mississippi residents are not the only ones feeling overshadowed by New Orleans. Larry Hooper, 63, has been living on a campground since Katrina destroyed his home in Empire, La., about 60 miles from New Orleans.

"Our town was wiped off the map," he said. "We feel as left out as the people in Mississippi and Alabama because of all the New Orleans reporting."

Rem Rieder, editor and senior vice president of the American Journalism Review, said it is obvious New Orleans has gotten the overwhelming share of headlines.

"Part of it has to do with the mythical status that New Orleans has in this country," he said. "It did become the focal point of national attention. The unfortunate byproduct is that the story on the Mississippi Gulf Coast can be backburnered."

Mathews said he worries that a "national obsession" with New Orleans will cost Mississippi its fair share of federal aid, private investment and help from volunteers.

"The government can help us get our important infrastructure rebuilt, but it's the private investment that's going to tell the story long term," he added.

Congress has approved tens of billions of dollars for recovery and rebuilding on the Gulf Coast. Only time will tell how the money is divided, but news coverage "does have an impact on what Congress does," said Biloxi native Jack Nelson, former Washington bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times.

"When it's off the screen of the media, it's off the screen of the federal government," said Nelson, who landed his first newspaper job at The Sun Herald.

Not everybody is clamoring for a brighter media spotlight, because bad news can be bad for business.

"I really think there's a downside to overexposure, if it's exposure that says things aren't working well," said Stephen Richer, executive director of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau. "Yes, there has been less coverage here, but I think in the long term we may come out ahead, because there's been more focus on the constructive things we're doing."

Three casinos already have reopened in Biloxi and others have vowed to be back before Katrina's anniversary on Aug. 29. In 2004, the dozen casinos on the Mississippi coast generated $1.2 billion in gross revenue.

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New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin Says God Mad at America, but Also at Blacks

ABC News
New Orleans Mayor Says God Mad at U.S.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin Says God Mad at America, but Also at Blacks
By BRETT MARTEL
The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS - Mayor Ray Nagin suggested Monday that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and other storms were a sign that "God is mad at America" and at black communities, too, for tearing themselves apart with violence and political infighting.

"Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country," Nagin, who is black, said as he and other city leaders marked Martin Luther King Day.

"Surely he doesn't approve of us being in Iraq under false pretenses. But surely he is upset at black America also. We're not taking care of ourselves."

Nagin also promised that New Orleans will be a "chocolate" city again. Many of the city's black neighborhoods were heavily damaged by Katrina.

"It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild New Orleans the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans," the mayor said. "This city will be a majority African American city. It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn't be New Orleans."

Nagin described an imaginary conversation with King, the late civil rights leader.

"I said, `What is it going to take for us to move on and live your dream and make it a reality?' He said, `I don't think that we need to pay attention any more as much about other folks and racists on the other side.' He said, `The thing we need to focus on as a community black folks I'm talking about is ourselves.'"

Nagin said he also asked: "Why is black-on-black crime such an issue? Why do our young men hate each other so much that they look their brother in the face and they will take a gun and kill him in cold blood?"

The reply, Nagin said, was: "We as a people need to fix ourselves first."

Nagin also said King would have been dismayed with black leaders who are "most of the time tearing each other down publicly for the delight of many."

A day earlier, gunfire erupted at a parade to commemorate King's birthday. Three people were wounded in the daylight shooting amid a throng of mostly black spectators, but police said there were no immediate suspects or witnesses.

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Poll: Economic Concerns Recede at Start of Year; Worries About Iraq and Political Leaders Grow

ABC News
Poll: Concerns Shift From Economy to War
AP Poll: Economic Concerns Recede at Start of Year; Worries About Iraq and Political Leaders Grow
By WILL LESTER
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Economic worries have decreased over the last six months as the American public has shifted its concern more to the war in Iraq and problems faced by political leaders, AP-Ipsos polling found.

The economy has been showing signs of strength in recent months. But the violence in Iraq has continued, before and after the latest round of elections in mid-December. And high-profile politicians in this country have been ensnared by scandal.

When people were asked in an open-ended question to name the nation's top problem, 25 percent named war, close to the level in October, but up from 19 percent in July. The number of people who named political leaders as the most important problem has almost tripled, from 5 percent in July to 14 percent as the new year starts.

"The war is a problem that fouls up what we need to do in the world," said Peter Palys, a lawyer from Wheaton, Ill. "My feelings about Iraq have solidified over the last six months. ... We can't stay; we can't leave, and we can't win. Our success or failure is not in our hands."

American troops are still dying at a rate of about two per day and the insurgency has shown no clear signs of weakening in recent months.

But U.S. officials are heartened by progress they see in training Iraqi security forces a key step toward disengaging U.S. forces.

While violence continues in Iraq, scandals involving prominent politicians in this country have been growing.

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is facing trial on felony charges in a Texas campaign finance investigation. He's one of several lawmakers who were close to lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Abramoff lavished favors on lawmakers and is now cooperating with prosecutors after pleading guilty to corruption charges.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, sometimes mentioned as a possible 2008 presidential candidate, is under investigation by federal prosecutors in New York and by the Securities and Exchange Commission because of his handling of stock sales. U.S. Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., pleaded guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes.

"It's a steady drumbeat," said Walter Mebane, a professor of government at Cornell University. "People who aren't political junkies may not follow the names, but they're always hearing something about corrupt politicians in Washington."

Neal Bowser, a carpet technician from Westchester, Pa., said the bribery scandals are his top concern now.

"Money seems to be corrupting the whole bottom line," he said. "Our political leaders are not working for the people when they're working for their own pockets."

Public concern about the economy, while still relatively high, has been declining. About one in five, 21 percent, named economic issues as the top problem, down from 28 percent in July, according to the poll of 1,001 adults taken Jan. 3-5. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The economy has been bolstered by a strong housing sector, a rising stock market and relative strength in jobs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average crept above 11,000 last week before slipping a bit at week's end.

Some still worry about the economy, however.

"I think the economy is still struggling now, and I won't be surprised if it gets worse," said Wes Byers, an engineer from Wellington, Colo. "I don't think jobs are there like they used to be, especially better-paying jobs. There's getting to be a bigger and bigger gap between low-income and high-income people."

Associated Press writers Jeannine Aversa, Robert Burns and Larry Margasak contributed to this story.

On the Net:

Ipsos http://www.ap-ipsosresults.com

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Translator's Conviction Raises Legal Concerns - Trial Transcripts Show Lack of Evidence

washingtonpost.com
Translator's Conviction Raises Legal Concerns
Trial Transcripts Show Lack of Evidence
By Michael Powell and Michelle Garcia
Washington Post Staff Writers

NEW YORK -- For three years federal agents trailed Mohammed Yousry, a chubby 50-year-old translator and U.S. citizen who worked for radical lawyer Lynne Stewart. Prosecutors wiretapped his phone, and FBI agents shadowed and interviewed him. They read his books and notepads and every file on his computer.

This was their conclusion:

"Yousry is not a practicing Muslim. He is not a fundamentalist," prosecutor Anthony Barkow acknowledged in his closing arguments to a jury in federal district court in Manhattan earlier this year. "Mohammed Yousry is not someone who supports or believes in the use of violence."

Still, the prosecutor persuaded the jury to convict Yousry of supporting terrorism. Yousry now awaits sentencing in March, when he could face 20 years in prison for translating a letter from imprisoned Muslim cleric Omar Abdel Rahman to Rahman's lawyer in Egypt.

In June 2000, Stewart released to a reporter a version of the letter, which discussed a cease-fire between Islamic militants and the Egyptian government. Prosecutors said that the lawyer and the translator, by these acts, conspired to use Rahman's words to incite others to carry out kidnappings and killings. No attack took place.

"Kill who? What are they talking about?" Yousry asked recently as he sat alongside his wife, Sarah, an evangelical Christian, in their modest Connecticut condominium. "The words I'm looking for, it's insane."

The prosecution and conviction of Stewart, 66, on charges of aiding terrorist activity, drew international attention, overshadowing Yousry's case. But legal experts, civil liberties lawyers and a juror say Yousry's conviction raises many troubling questions, not least how a court-appointed translator working on instruction from lawyers could be held responsible for navigating complicated and dangerous legal waters.

The trial transcripts reveal that prosecutors advanced no evidence to back up certain claims, including the assertion that Yousry was in touch with Middle Eastern terrorists.

"You would expect a translator to take his lead from the defense lawyer and you would not expect that translator to understand the intricacies of a very broad criminal statute," said Neal R. Sonnett, a former federal prosecutor who chaired an American Bar Association task force that opposed the Bush administration's position on enemy combatants. "There is a real issue whether it's even fair to charge, much less convict, someone like him."

Yousry had no legal training and translated nothing without instruction from defense lawyers. He passed rigorous federal security clearance checks. A PhD candidate at New York University, Yousry harbored no affinity for Rahman, writing that the cleric promoted "Muslim totalitarianism."

Justice Department prosecutors said secret recordings of meetings in Rahman's prison showed that Yousry crossed the line between legal and illegal behavior. Yousry read letters to Rahman from radical supporters, even though he understood that they were violent men.

"He stuck his head in the sand and deliberately avoided knowing what would have been obvious," prosecutor Robin Baker told the jury. "We don't need to prove why."

Yousry was tried alongside Stewart, who supports armed revolution, and Ahmed Sattar, a Rahman aide and sympathizer with fundamentalist causes, in Manhattan, five blocks from Ground Zero. All three were convicted. Prosecutors played a videotape of Osama bin Laden and mentioned al Qaeda attacks, even though the case had nothing to do with that group.

A month after the trial, a female juror wrote to U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl, complaining that fellow jurors talked of terrorist attacks and their desire to teach the defendants a lesson. "They had an agenda," Juror 39 told The Washington Post in her first interview. "People are so fearful that if you disagree with the government on one thing it makes you a terrorist.

"I have to plead guilty to being a coward," Juror 39, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said of her vote to convict. "It doesn't feel good, but I punked out."

Out of Egypt

Yousry has round cheeks and curly hair, wears baggy sweaters and jeans and has the aspect of an absent-minded professor. He's far removed from a privileged upbringing in Egypt, where his father was a military general, a physician and a supporter of President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Yousry came to New York City in 1980. He met Sarah, and they married in a church. Their daughter graduated from a Baptist college.

In 1995, Yousry's translation agency offered him a job with the legal defense team for Rahman, a prominent Egyptian radical who was accused of conspiring to blow up the United Nations building and the Holland and Lincoln tunnels. Yousry struck up a cordial if fractious relationship with Rahman, who speaks little English. "He liked to torture me about drinking and not praying and all that good stuff," Yousry recalled.

In October 1995, Rahman was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Stewart and former attorney general Ramsey Clark, a courtly Texan with decidedly left-wing politics, set about trying to persuade the United States to transfer Rahman to an Egyptian prison. They asked Yousry to return to the case in 1997.

Yousry declined -- he wanted to write his dissertation and teach. His adviser, historian Zachary Lockman, suggested a marriage of academics and work. "Knowing that he would have access to the FBI tapes and to Rahman, I suggested a biography of Rahman and his movement," Lockman said. "I guess I'm responsible in a very sad way for the trouble he's in."

In April 1997, Attorney General Janet Reno imposed unprecedented restrictions known as "special administrative measures" on Rahman, denying him access to mail, newspapers and any visitor except his wife and attorneys. Prosecutors argued that Rahman's words were so dangerous that they constituted a weapon. Theirs was not an idle worry: Egyptian militants had slaughtered 58 tourists in Luxor in 1997 in hopes of forcing Rahman's release.

Clark and Stewart signed the administrative measures. Prosecutors did not demand the same of Yousry. The defense attorneys repeatedly tested the regulations. Clark in 1997 told reporters of Rahman's support for a cease-fire with the Egyptian government without earning a rebuke from prosecutors.

Prosecutors argue that the translator should have balked when the lawyers skirted the legal edge. This notion bemuses Clark. "Mohammed would assume that the lawyers knew what they were doing," he said in an interview.

Prison Meeting

By 2000, Stewart had taken the lead in Rahman's defense. A grandmotherly Maoist, she was an accomplished trial lawyer who eschewed Clark's diplomatic speech.

But Stewart did not realize that a year earlier Justice Department lawyers -- under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- obtained permission to secretly videotape visits to Rahman in his maximum-security prison in Rochester, Minn. They also obtained wiretaps on Yousry and Sattar.

At the core of the government's case were two prison meetings with Rahman in May 2000. On May 19, Yousry read a note to Rahman from his radical followers, asking whether to maintain a cease-fire with the Egyptian government. Rahman dictated a response the next day. Contrary to prosecution claims, government tapes show the cleric did not favor ending the cease-fire.

"The militants," Rahman wrote to his attorney in Egypt, "should not cancel it altogether."

Stewart chattered to distract the guards and joked with Yousry that they could get in trouble. Prosecutors argued this was proof of a "red-handed" conspiracy. Yousry denied involvement, saying Stewart reveled in thumbing her nose at prosecutors.

On June 14, 2000, Stewart -- without Yousry's knowledge -- read a statement about the cease-fire to a Reuters correspondent. Misinterpreting Rahman's intent, she said he had withdrawn his support for it.

If this was a conspiracy, it was a remarkably uncoordinated affair. Four months later, Sattar, the postal clerk, released a fatwa, or religious edict, in Rahman's name urging followers to "kill Jews everywhere." Yousry, government tapes show, learned of the fatwa days later while reading the newspaper to Rahman. He immediately said he had to inform the lawyers.

"Mr. Yousry," Rahman snapped in a rare use of English, "this is none of your business!"

Later government tapes reveal Yousry upbraiding Sattar when he learned the postal clerk spoke to suspected terrorists after militants bombed the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000. Yousry became worried. "I asked Ramsey what I should do," he recalled. "He told me: 'Listen to the lawyer and you'll be safe.' "

Indictment

A plume of black smoke rose from Ground Zero as four FBI agents knocked on the door of Yousry's home in Queens two days after Sept. 11, 2001. Yousry said little. Two more days passed, and he thought better of his reticence. He called the agents back and talked about Sattar and the USS Cole and Rahman. He met four more times with FBI agents over six months.

In the spring of 2002, a federal prosecutor suggested Yousry testify if the government indicted Stewart and Clark. This was confirmed by a federal law enforcement source. "They wanted me to entrap Lynne and Ramsey," Yousry said. "I said no."

On April 9, 2002, FBI agents and helmeted police officers with high-powered rifles came to arrest Yousry while his friends and neighbors peered behind cruisers and kitchen curtains. Stewart had been arrested that morning.

The FBI ultimately recorded thousands of hours of Yousry's telephone conversations and electronic activity over three years, but prosecutors introduced none of those tapes into evidence. Yousry never spoke to Rahman without the lawyers' permission, even when left alone with him. Nor, transcripts show, did the prosecutors offer evidence to back up assertions that Yousry talked to militants in the Middle East.

Prosecutors argued that Yousry metaphorically closed his eyes to the bad characters around him. They noted that he padded his résumé and suggested that he addressed Rahman as "spiritual master" to show allegiance; in fact, it's a common Arabic honorific. Prosecutors speculated that Yousry betrayed the nation in hopes of gaining a Harvard teaching position.

The jury began deliberations in early 2005 and conversation was not friendly to the defendants. "A woman was in tears she was so scared of terrorism," Juror 39 said. "Another kept asking why it took Yousry so long to finish his dissertation, that it was suspicious."

On Feb. 10, 2005, the jury foreman pronounced the defendants guilty on all counts. Yousry went ashen; his daughter, Leslie, dissolved in tears.

Afterward

Judge Koeltl recently rejected Yousry's legal appeal based on the account of Juror 39. The judge noted that juries are given great leeway. David Stern, Yousry's lawyer, cannot quite accept that. "I'm in the habit of defending bad people, and they've mostly done what they're accused of," he said. "This guy is flat-out innocent, and it's disgraceful he's going to prison."

Michael Gasper, who studied with Yousry and teaches at Yale, often visits the translator. The friends drink wine and laugh, and when Gasper leaves, Yousry presses another favorite history book into his guest's hands. The translator will have no use for them in prison. "The way he has taken it makes me cry, he's so gracious," Gasper said. "I try not to talk about it, but he keeps giving me those . . . books."

Yousry talks of hope. "I awake every morning and think: I will be vindicated," he said. "It just hasn't happened yet." But he passes the days until sentencing in his book-lined study. He figures it is the size of a prison cell and he wants to get used to it.

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Democrats Preparing Proposal on Congressional Code of Conduct, Including Ban on Lobbyist Gifts

ABC News
Dems Ready Proposal on Code of Conduct
Democrats Preparing Proposal on Congressional Code of Conduct, Including Ban on Lobbyist Gifts
By DAVID ESPO
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Democrats intend to unveil a sweeping plan this week to tighten Congress' code of conduct, officials said Saturday night, including a ban on lobbyists' gifts to lawmakers and a crackdown on special interest provisions slipped into legislation in the final moments before passage.

Eager to claim the mantle of reform in the wake of an election-year corruption scandal, Democrats also will propose doubling the current one-year cooling off period that former lawmakers or senior aides must observe before they are allowed to lobby without restriction.

The ban on lobbyist gifts would include meals and tickets to sporting or entertainment events as well as travel, according to officials familiar with the proposals.

The party's top leaders in Congress, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, are scheduled to announce the Democratic proposals on Wednesday.

The officials who described their plans did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to pre-empt the formal announcement.

Republicans hold a majority in both houses of Congress, and beginning last year, Democrats signaled their intention of making ethics an issue in the 2006 elections.

Their efforts have intensified since lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist with close ties to senior House Republicans, pleaded guilty earlier this month to federal charges of conspiracy, mail fraud and tax evasion in a wide-ranging corruption investigation.

Republicans responded rapidly to the guilty plea, hoping to limit the political fallout. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., have both announced plans to consider changes in rules or law to limit the impact lobbyists have on members of Congress. Both men are considering bans on gifts and privately funded travel, and waiting to hear recommendations from fellow Republicans on other measures.

At the same time, Republicans have yet to agree on a comprehensive approach, as Pelosi and Reid intend to do. Howard Dean, the Democratic party chairman, is scheduled to travel to Ohio on Wednesday to stress the same issue. The state's Republican governor, Bob Taft, pleaded no contest last summer to charges that he failed to report numerous golf outings since taking office in 1999.

The Democratic proposals would end practices that Abramoff used frequently to court members of Congress.

Investigators have said that at a Washington restaurant Abramoff once owned, for example, the staff had a list of lawmakers who were permitted to dine on the owner's tab whenever they were present.

Current rules permit lawmakers to accept gifts of up to $50 in value. But there is no aggregate annual limit on the gifts they are allowed to take.

The practice of making changes in legislation shortly before a final vote is a time-honored one in Congress. In the Senate, it is not unusual for key lawmakers seeking additional votes for their bill to insert last-minute changes.

Pelosi and Reid intend to call for curbs on the practice, requiring that printed copies of legislation, including last-minute amendments, be given to all lawmakers 24 hours before a vote, officials said.

The requirement could be waived under terms that effectively require the agreement of the minority party.

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Despite Budding Corruption Scandal, Congress' Ethics Committees Won't Commit to Action

ABC News
Ethics Committees Won't Commit to Action
Despite Budding Corruption Scandal, Congress' Ethics Committees Won't Commit to Action
By LARRY MARGASAK
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The leaders of Congress' ethics committees are not committing to any investigation of misconduct despite the growing revelations about the favors that lobbyist Jack Abramoff won for clients and the largesse he arranged for lawmakers.

The committees, for now, are poised to remain on the sidelines.

The House committee, stymied by partisan disagreements, launched no investigations in 2005 even after former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, requested an inquiry into his foreign travel arranged by Abramoff.

The lack of commitment to investigate issues about lawmakers' conduct with Abramoff, his lobbying team and his clients is raising anew the question of whether Congress adequately can discipline its own.

"There have always been questions about whether Congress can police itself," said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in ethics. "The situation in the House removes all doubt. The House is not policing itself."

The Associated Press asked the four lawmakers who lead the ethics committees whether they would make a commitment to investigate ethical wrongdoing if, as expected, the information Abramoff supplies in a plea agreement exposes misconduct by a number of members of Congress. Each of the four two Republicans and two Democrats declined, through his spokesmen, to do so.

The House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct is headed by Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.; the top Democrat is Rep. Alan Mollohan of West Virginia.

The Senate Select Committee on Ethics is led by Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio; the ranking Democrat is Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota.

While the committees have an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, forging a bipartisanship consensus in ethics investigations often has proved difficult.

After the House levied a $300,000 fine against former Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., for ethical violations in 1997 payment for part of the cost of investigating his conduct weary members of both parties declared an ethics truce. For several years, there were no major cases for several years.

The House committee revived itself in 2004, admonishing DeLay on three separate issues. The House Republican leadership reacted by refusing to extend the term of the chairman at that time, Rep. Joel Hefley, R-Colo. He had asked to stay on.

Last year, Hastings and Mollohan feuded for months over investigative rules, and then for additional months over the composition of the staff. The entire year was gone before the leaders finally chose the committee's top staff member; he started work only recently.

Abramoff pleaded guilty this month to conspiracy, tax evasion and mail fraud in Washington and to additional charges in Miami. He has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

The committees traditionally defer to prosecutors and do not interfere with criminal investigations. But they can investigate violations of standards of conduct that are separate from criminal violations.

Committee actions can range from a critical letter to recommendations of serious punishment by the full House all the way to expulsion.

The Abramoff criminal inquiry raises numerous issues. Lawmakers, for instance, are prohibited from accepting trips from lobbyists.

One way Abramoff lavished favors on lawmakers was through free travel that he arranged through nonprofit organizations that got money from the lobbyist's clients. DeLay has said he was unaware that Abramoff may have paid for some of his travel.

Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio, who has been implicated in the Abramoff investigation, announced Sunday that he will step aside temporarily as chairman of the House Administration Committee with jurisdiction over many of the rules governing lobbyists and travel.

More than four dozen lawmakers from House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., to Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. sent to federal agencies letters that were favorable to Abramoff clients or took official actions in Congress to help them.

Around the same time, those lawmakers received large political donations or used Abramoff's skybox or restaurant for fundraising. Some lawmakers didn't provide reimbursement until years later.

Ethics watchdog groups have written the committees alleging those activities violate congressional ethics standards that require lawmakers to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Congress' response to the budding scandal so far, especially in the House, has been a flurry of proposals to write new laws to control lobbyists' relations with lawmakers. Some experts believe that without an investigation that can lead to discipline, ethics violators get a free pass.

"You have to publicly reprimand someone," said Judy Nadler, the former mayor of Santa Clara, Calif., and now a senior fellow at Santa Clara University. "If there are no consequences, things will not change. This is drive-by ethics."

Former Sen. Warren Rudman, a Republican who served on the Senate ethics committee, said, "The amount of politics that intruded into the House committee is discouraging."

Rudman said the ethics leaders have an obligation to follow up on any potential violations of standards of conduct. "It would be impossible not to address some of these issues," said Rudman, who served during the Keating Five investigation that suffered through partisanship in the Senate panel.

That investigation had similarities to the Abramoff case. It involved donations to five senators from a savings and loan operator, who persuaded the lawmakers to intervene with federal regulators on his behalf. The timing of the donations and official actions was a key issue with both the Keating Five and the Abramoff cases.

Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, said the Abramoff case is "likely to raise the issue of how well Congress does in keeping track of its own behavior."

But he said the public will not really get interested until more lawmakers are publicly named in the criminal investigation.

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Murtha Details His Exit Strategy

CBSNews.com
Murtha Details His Exit Strategy

Jan. 15, 2006(CBS) The vast majority of American troops will be out of Iraq by the end of this year. Who says so? Congressman John Murtha says so, and he explains his plan to make that happen to correspondent Mike Wallace.

The 73-year-old Democrat from Pennsylvania is a much-decorated war hero from Vietnam and Korea; a heavyweight in military matters in the Congress who stunned the Bush White House last November by calling for the withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq.

"Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces, and we have become a catalyst for violence," Rep. Murtha says. "My plan calls for an immediate redeployment of U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces."

And now he tells 60 Minutes the withdrawal is going to happen sooner than we think.

"I think the vast majority will be out by the end of the year. And I’m hopeful it’ll be out sooner than that," the congressman says.

And here’s how it will happen: Murtha tells 60 Minutes that mounting pressure from constituents in this election year will force Congress to pass his withdrawal plan, or something similar to bring troops home.

Asked if he is going to press for a new debate on Iraq during this session of Congress, Murtha says, "I think you’ll see not only debate, I think you’ll see some changes."

Does Murtha think Congress is going to insist upon a major withdrawal from Iraq before election day in November?

"Sure," he says. "You’re gonna see a plan for withdrawal."

And how does he think he will get that plan through the Congress and impose a withdrawal plan on President Bush?

"I think the political people who give him advice will say to him, 'You don’t want a Democratic congress. You want to keep the Republican majority. And the only way you’re gonna keep it, is by reducing substantially the troops in Iraq,'” Murtha explains.

Apparently, the president hasn’t gotten that message yet. This past week, here’s what he told a veterans group about future decisions to withdraw troops from Iraq:

"All of my decisions will be based upon conditions on the ground, not artificial timetables set by Washington politicians," President George W. Bush said on Jan. 10.

But it’s those conditions on the ground – most Iraqis wanting the U.S. occupation to end, and insurgents killing or maiming Americans – that has convinced the congressman that it’s now time to get troops out.

"Troops I talk to and they say to me, 'In the daytime, they wave at us. At nighttime, they throw hand grenades,'" says Murtha.

Asked who these insurgents are, Murtha says they are Iraqis. "Ninety-three percent of the insurgents are Iraqis. A very small percentage are foreign fighters. The Iraqis know who they are. Once we’re out of there, they’ll eliminate ‘em,” he says.

The White House isn’t as confident that Iraqis will drive out the foreign fighters, but Murtha says U.S. troops are now caught in the middle of an Iraqi civil war, not the fight against terrorists that the White House keeps talking about.

"They take Iraq and then they talk about terrorism," Murtha says. "We’re diverting ourselves away from the war, the war on terrorism, when we’re fighting an insurgency in Iraq."

Murtha’s criticism prompted the president to launch a series of speeches to regain public support.

The president says the congressman is wrong. Two days after Murtha's Nov. 17 speech, Mr. Bush said, "The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. If they’re not stopped, the terrorists will be able to advance their agenda to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, and to break our will and blackmail our government into isolation. I’m going to make you this commitment. This is not going to happen on my watch."

"He’s trying to fight this war with rhetoric," Murtha responds. "Iraq is not where the center of terrorism is. So when he says we’re fighting terrorism over there, we’re inciting terrorism over there. We’re encouraging terror. We’re destabilizing the area by being over there ‘cause we’re the targets. He said before there’s weapons of mass destruction. He said there’s an al Qaeda connection. There’s many things he said turned out not to be true. So why would I believe him when he says the things he just – made that statement.


Murtha believes that all along the White House has been long on spin and short on truth.

"They need to be honest with the public. They need to admit they’ve made mistakes," Murtha says. "The admin — the president himself - needs to be honest with the public. He’s getting bad information from somebody. And I’ve been arguing with him now for several months."

Asked if he has talked to Mr. Bush face-to-face, Murtha says no, saying he hasn't been invited.

Asked what he thinks of the president, Murtha says he is isolated. "The most isolated president that I’ve served with," he says.

Murtha has served with seven presidents starting with Richard Nixon. He has been in congress for 32 years representing Johnstown, Pa. Most of his constituents back the war, but the congressman is king there, so his stand has led a shift in some local opinion about Iraq.

Murtha, who has two purple hearts, tells 60 Minutes that if George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld had been in combat themselves, they’d have been more reluctant to send young Americans into battle.

"War’s a nasty business. It sears the soul. The shadow of friends killed, the shadow of killing people lives with you the rest of your life. So there’s no experience like being in combat," says Murtha.

Murtha wants all the troops home within six months, except for a quick reaction force of about 20,000 who would be based nearby in Kuwait. But he admits that when the Americans leave, a civil war in Iraq will intensify.

"If we leave, it’s gonna continue and somebody will prevail, just like in our Civil War in the United States. Somebody’s gonna prevail. It’s up to them. They want democracy, they gotta fight for that democracy," says Murtha.

But President Bush believes U.S. troops can stop a civil war and implies that John Murtha is a defeatist.

"Now, there are only two options before our country: victory or defeat," the president has said. "To retreat before victory would be an act of recklessness and dishonor and I will not allow it."

"Victory versus defeat is not a policy at all. What is the definition of victory?" Murtha questions. "There’s two policies. The one policy is you stay with an open-ended policy and Iraqis determine when we leave. And the other policy, is my recommendation, where we redeploy as quickly as possible."

Why has his policy not been endorsed by potential Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden or John Kerry?

"Because," says Murtha laughing, "they’re afraid. They’re afraid. They don’t understand it. They think there’s a safe way to work their way through this. And they’re afraid to get out there and make a statement that later on might come back to haunt ‘em."

But Murtha’s stand could come back to haunt him, if President Bush turns out to be right about Iraq.

Murtha, who left college to fight in the Korean War and stayed in the Marines for 37 years, said last week he would not have enlisted to fight in Iraq, and wouldn’t encourage others to enlist.

"Yeah, that’s because I disagree with the policy. I mean, when I was in college I remember vividly, I stood in my dormitory room and I looked down at - it was in the wintertime and I said I can’t stay here. This is not right, for me to be here. We’re fightin’ communism. And I oughta be in the military," Murtha recalls. "And I remember my mother cried. She was upset. My goodness, I left college. And after that three of my brothers joined the Marine Corps. My dad, three of his brothers served in World War II. So, you know, we know what it’s all about."

General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Murtha's comments are damaging to recruiting and hurting the troops.

"It’s damaging the morale of the troops who are deployed and it’s damaging the morale of their families who believe in what they are doing to serve this country," Gen. Pace said.

Murtha says Pace is frustrated. "He’s frustrated because he can’t meet the goals. Here’s what hurts recruitment. They’re rotated four and five times. They have no clear mission. It’s not what I say that hurts morale. This is long before I said anything that their recruiting had a problem."


"One of the problems they have with enlistment is because they continually say how well things are going and the troops on the ground know better," Murtha adds.

To prove his point, he reads 60 Minutes a letter he received from a soldier in Iraq.

“I’m a soldier currently stationed in Talafar. It’s frustrating to me and many other soldiers to be fighting a war with no goal for victory, with no end in sight. Iraq is a country that’s never going to stand on its own until we leave and give them a chance to do so. Our presence is no longer beneficial to anyone,” Murtha reads. "Now this is an ordinary soldier that’s saying this," he says.

But while working on a story about soldiers wounded in Iraq, 60 Minutes heard from many of them with a very different opinion.

"In talking to these various people who have lost legs and arms and traumatic brain injury and so forth, I was astonished. They’re not taking any punches at the people who sent them there," Wallace says.

"Now, obviously the troops themselves have to believe in what they’re doing," Murtha replies.

"Why do the generals who speak publicly all say that the U.S. is on the right track in Iraq? And that you, in effect, are off your rocker?" Wallace asks.

"Well, they don’t say that to me privately, I’ll tell ya," Murtha says, laughing. "You know, they’re gonna be fired if they speak out."

Murtha tells 60 Minutes that 80 percent of his mail has been positive, but he also got this:

"Congratulations! You are now an honorary member of al Qaeda. Your words have emboldened the enemy and endangered our troops on the ground. You have become the new Hanoi Jane," the sender wrote.

But Murtha has a thick hide.

"When I don’t agree with a policy, I have to speak out," Murtha says.

But a year ago, Murtha argued against what he is arguing for now. “A premature withdrawal of our troops based on a political timetable could rapidly devolve into a civil war which would leave America’s foreign policy in disarray as countries question not only America’s judgment but also its perseverance,” he stated.

Murtha says he was wrong a year ago and that times have changed since that statement.

But the change Murtha wants, pulling all troops out, could embolden the terrorists. When President Bush announced he would withdraw just 20,000 troops after Iraq’s recent election, al Qaeda claimed victory.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s number two leader, said in a video message this month, “America’s plan to withdraw troops from Iraq proves the victory of Islam in Iraq.”

"I think they’re trying to get this administration to stay. I think they want us there. Because we have united the Iraqis against us. We’re spending all this money and diverting our resources away from the war on terrorism because we’re involved in a civil war in Iraq," says Murtha.

And al-Zawahiri also says al Qaeda is growing and increasing in strength.

"If it is increasing in strength, I think it’s because it actually helps terrorists to be in Iraq because it united the world against us," says Murtha.

"Hasn’t the occupation done a lot of good in Iraq? Look, Saddam’s dictatorial reign, over. Democracy has begun. Schools and factories are reopening. The economy’s coming back," Wallace says.

"That election of course is being trumpeted as being so important to democracy. When I came back from Vietnam in 1967, they had an election. It was supposed to set the stage. It was supposed to legitimize the government, if you remember. And we lost 38,000 people after that. Now, I don’t say that this has the same intensity and that we’re gonna lose 38,000 people. But I’m just saying there’s a lot more things have to be done if you’re going to have a democratic government," says Murtha.

Murtha says 13 of his constituents from Pennsylvania have been killed in Iraq. Do their families think Murtha is dishonoring their memory by speaking out against the war that they gave their lives for?

"Well I hope they understand it’s my job, my responsibility, to speak out when I disagree with the policy of the president of the United States. All of us want this president to succeed," Murtha says. "But you just can’t sit back and allow this war to continue on without a clear exit strategy. That’s the reason I’m so strong about this. I feel a mission here, with my experience, that, that I have to help the president find a way out of this thing."

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