The Political Chase

State to Blackwater: Talk to No One Including Congress

The Bush-Cheney administration continues its rampage to unconstitutionally obstruct, obfuscate, deceive, and distract whatever may be in its wake. State Department officials and Blackwater, the private U.S. security company providing security in Iraq, have been ordered to not talk with anyone — not even Congress.

From the House Committee on Oversight and Reform:

The State Department has instructed its officials that they cannot communicate with the Committee about corruption in the Maliki government unless the Committee agrees to treat all information, including “broad statements/assessments,” as national security secrets. Other points of growing contention between the Committee and the State Department include Blackwater’s assertion that the State Department has instructed the company to withhold information from the Committee and the refusal of Secretary Rice to testify.

On September 20, Kiazan Moneypenny, a State Department contracting officer, sent a letter (pdf) to Blackwater’s Fred Roitz ordering the security company to not discuss or reveal any information about Blackwater’s operations in Iraq, any information or documents the security company may have obtained while performing services for the Department, nor about Blackwater’s contract with the State Department. In other words, say nothing except what we tell you to say.

Yesterday, Blackwater’s attorney, Stephen M. Ryan of McDermott Will & Emory, wrote Waxman (pdf) and politely told him to stuff it, that State hard ordered Blackwater to not do or say anything without their prior approval.

Apparently Waxman was unaware of the State Department’s order and another surprise, Condi Rice’s refusal to testify before Congress, which resulted in a love letter from Waxman to Rice (pdf), informing her that State had no authority to compel Blackwater to obstruct a congressional investigation.

I am writing about three extraordinary communications the Committee has received from the State Department regarding corruption within the Iraqi government, the operations of Blackwater USA, and the status of political reconciliation in Iraq.

First, Committee staff were informed yesterday that State Department officials with direct knowledge of corruption within the Maliki government would not be allowed to provide the Committee with “assessments which judge or characterize the quality of Iraqi governance or the ability/determination of the Iraqi government to deal with corruption” unless the Committee agreed to treat this information as classified and withhold it from the public.

Second, Blackwater has informed the Committee that a State Department official directed Blackwater not to provide documents relevant to the Committee’s investigation into the company’s activities in Iraq without the prior written approval of the State Department.

Third, the Committee staff were informed that you have refused to testify at any hearing called by this Committee to examine the progress of political reconciliation in Iraq, the impact of corruption in Iraq, and the Blackwater incident.

I urge you to reconsider the unusual positions you are taking. Congress has a constitutional prerogative to examine the impacts that corruption within the Iraqi ministries and the activities of Blackwater may have on the prospects for political reconciliation in Iraq. You are wrong to interfere with the Committee’s inquiry.

Of course George Bush will view Executive Privilege extending to Blackwater. In April, he claimed Executive Privilege over the Republican National Committee, so why not Blackwater? What’s next? The Dairy Queen and McDonalds?

TPC Afternoon Roundup - Global Criticism

HEADLINES

• Washington: Press questions Bush’s language skills; Military tribunals to continue
• Congress: Iran sanctioned; Children’s health care program extended
• Supreme Court: Voter-ID laws and lethal injections to be reviewed
• Iraq: Pending legislation regulating private companies; Killing Insurgents via “Baiting Program”
• Nation: Violent crime increases
• World: Bush announces sanctions at U.N.; Monk demonstrations continue

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WASHINGTON

• “White House spokeswoman Dana Perino on Tuesday called a question that indicated President Bush might have trouble pronouncing foreign countries’ names “offensive,” the Hill reports. “The issue arose after the United Nations posted a draft of Bush’s speech to the General Assembly on its website, complete with phonetic spellings of countries that the president spoke about.”
• “A special military appeals court, overturning a lower court ruling, on Monday removed a legal hurdle that has derailed war crime trials for detainees at Guantanámo Bay, Cuba,” the New York Times reports. “The ruling allows military prosecutors to address a legal flaw that had ground the prosecutions to a halt.”
• “The Bush administration took the gloves off Monday in its fight over immigration enforcement, suing the state of Illinois for banning use of a federal system that checks whether workers are in the United States legally,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “The United States of America vs. the State of Illinois is the latest court battle the administration is waging with immigrant advocates and business groups over its crackdown on workers here illegally and the companies that hire them.”

CONGRESS

• “Congress signaled its disapproval of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with a vote Tuesday to tighten sanctions against his government and a call to designate his army a terrorist group,” the AP via TPM reports. “The overwhelming bipartisan vote of 397 - 16 “reflected lawmakers’ long-standing nervousness about Tehran’s intentions in the region, particularly toward Israel _ a sentiment fueled by the pro-Israeli lobby whose influence reaches across party lines in Congress.”
• “Congressional Democrats unveiled legislation Tuesday to keep the government running until mid-November, giving them more time to bridge gaping differences with President Bush over the budget,” the AP via TPM reports. “the bill temporarily extends health coverage for children from low-income families as Congress and Bush wrangle over how much to expand the program, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP.”
• “Republicans are decrying what they say are changes to newly enacted Senate earmark rules eliminating a ban on new earmarks being inserted into authorizing bills during conference,” Roll Call reports (sub. req.). GOP Members also complain “that key disclosure requirements that mandate Members publicly disclose who their earmarks will benefit and what the purpose of the spending is have been seriously weakened.”

SUPREME COURT

• “The Supreme Court agreed today to consider whether voter-identification laws unfairly keep poor people and members of minority groups from going to the polls,” the New York Times reports. “The justices will hear arguments from an Indiana case, in which a federal district judge and a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in January upheld a state law requiring, with certain exceptions, that someone wanting to vote in person in a primary or general election present a government-issued photo identification.”
• The Court also “agreed today to hear constitutional challenges brought by two death-row inmates in Kentucky, who assert that the state’s lethal-injection procedures amount to cruel and unusual punishment, the New York Times reports. “The step could have the effect of postponing executions across the country scheduled to be performed by lethal injection, the method is used by nearly all states with a death penalty, as well as by the federal government.”

IRAQ

• “The Iraqi interior ministry has said it has drafted legislation regulating private security companies following a shooting allegedly involving a US firm,” the BBC reports. “The new code would require contractors to be subject to Iraqi law and to be monitored by the Iraqi government.”
• “Under a program developed by a Defense Department warfare unit, Army snipers have begun using a new method to kill Iraqis suspected of being insurgents, using fake weapons and bomb-making material as bait and then killing anyone who picks them up, according to testimony presented in a military court,” the New York Times reports. “The existence of the classified ‘baiting program,‘ as it has come to be known, was disclosed as part of defense lawyers’ efforts to respond to murder charges the Army pressed this summer against three members of a Ranger sniper team.”
• “Sunni extremists appear to have begun a systematic campaign to assassinate police chiefs, police officers and other Interior Ministry officials throughout Iraq, with at least 10 attacks in the last 48 hours,” the New York Times reports. “Eight policemen have been killed, among them the police chief of Baquba in Diyala Province.”

NATION

• “Violent crime in the United States rose more than previously believed in 2006, continuing the most significant increase in more than a decade, according to an FBI report released yesterday, the Washington Post reports. “The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program found that robberies surged by 7.2 percent and homicides rose 1.8 percent from 2005 to 2006. Violent crime overall rose 1.9 percent.”
• “Investigators used a ruse to question a man later charged with aiding terrorists, an FBI agent testified Tuesday at a hearing over admissibility of the conversation and a search of the defendant’s luggage,” the AP reports. “FBI agent Michael Scherck said he and another law enforcement officer approached Ehsanul Sadequee as he got off a flight from Atlanta to New York on Aug. 18, 2005, and told him they wanted to talk to him about passenger complaints that he had acted suspiciously on the plane.” Instead, “Scherck said that in fact there were no complaints, but investigators wanted biographical information from Sadequee as part of a terrorism probe involving him.

WORLD

• Addressing the United Nations General Assembly today, President Bush “chided nations to live up to the rights and freedoms the United Nations promised six decades ago, announced new sanctions on Myanmar and denounced the governments of Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Zimbabwe as ‘brutal regimes,’ ” the New York Times reports. The president “called on members of the United Nations to do more to support nascent democracies and to oppose autocratic and tyrannical governments.”
• “Tens of thousands of Buddhist monks and supporters today defied a government warning in Myanmar and returned to the streets for an eighth day of peaceful antigovernment protests, the New York Times reports. “For the first time since protests began on Aug. 19, the government began to issue warnings and to move security forces into positions in Yangon, the largest city and former capital.”
• “Iranians on Tuesday called the combative introduction of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by the head of Columbia University “shameful” and said the harsh words only added to their image of the United States as a bully,” AP reports. “In a region where the tradition of hospitality outweighs personal opinions about people, many here thought Columbia University President Lee Bollinger’s aggressive tone — including telling Ahmadinejad that he exhibited the signs of a ‘petty and cruel dictator’ — was over the top.”
• Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto criticized U.S. support for President Gen. Pervez Musharraf as a strategic miscalculation,” the Los Angeles Times reports. “Backing Musharraf, a close U.S. ally who seized power in a 1999 coup, makes the fight against extremists operating along the Pakistani-Afghan border more difficult, she said today.”

SCANDALS

• A Minnesota judge will be hearing Sen. Larry Craig’s petition to overturn his guilty plea on a disorderly conduct charge in Minneapolis on Wednesday, but the Idaho Republican will not be at the hearing,” CNN reports. ” ‘I have been advised not to. I will not be attending,’ Craig said.”

Spy chief reiterates Congress’s questions will kill Americans

That settles it. We should cease and desist public debate and Congressional oversight of the Bush administration’s policies. The blood of Americans will be on the hands of Members of Congress.

Quintessential fear-mongering.

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in a FISA hearing today, reiterated his prior testimony that Congressional questioning of the Bush administration’s surveillance program would lead to the killing of Americans.

I can’t possibly make that up. Watch the video.

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