Newshoggers.com

Murdoch paper hacked "two to three thousand" public figures' phones

By Steve Hynd

If Murdoch's gang will stoop to this in the UK, they'll stoop as low in the U.S.

Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers has paid out more than £1m to settle legal cases that threatened to reveal evidence of his journalists' repeated involvement in the use of criminal methods to get stories.

The payments secured secrecy over out-of-court settlements in three cases that threatened to expose evidence of Murdoch journalists using private investigators who illegally hacked into the mobile phone messages of numerous public figures and to gain unlawful access to confidential personal data including tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemised phone bills. Cabinet ministers, MPs, actors and sports stars were all targets of the private investigators.

...The suppressed legal cases are linked to the jailing in January 2007 of News of the World reporter Clive Goodman for hacking into the mobile phones of three royal staff, an offence under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. At the time, News International said it knew of no other journalist who was involved in hacking phones and that Goodman had been acting without their knowledge.

However, one senior source at the Metropolitan police told the Guardian that during the Goodman inquiry, officers had found evidence of News Group staff using private investigators who hacked into "thousands" of mobile phones. Another source with direct knowledge of the police findings put the figure at "two or three thousand" mobiles. They suggest that MPs from all three parties and cabinet ministers, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell, were among the targets. News International has always maintained that it has no knowledge of phone hacking by anybody acting on its behalf.

And the kicker? The editor of the newspaper in question went on to become the current communication officer for the Conservative party. Former Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, one of those who allegedly had his phone hacked, told Channel Four News:

I find it staggering that there could be a list known to the police of people known to have their phone tapped, I am named as one of them, for such a criminal act not to be reported to me and not for action to be taken against he people who've done it reflects very badly upon the police and I want to know their answer.

"I'm not surprised that News International are into this. I think Andy Coulson was editor at the time in the News of the World and moved on from the job while the reporter went to jail. And in that case they admitted to tapping phones. "

"I find it absolutely staggering that Andy Coulson can go to be the communication officer for the Tory party …  surely Andy Colson can not be the man who's been supervising over all this activity as the editor in charge of the paper and still stay in that job. "

I wonder if something like this is how Rove managed to wield so much power.

UPDATE: CJR's Ryan Chittum has an interesting connection for you.

Now, we normally wouldn’t write about a tabloid scandal in Britain. But the executive who oversaw News’ UK papers at the time is Les Hinton, who is now CEO of Dow Jones & Company, parent of The Wall Street Journal. The Guardian writes that he has “misled” Parliament and the public, “albeit in good faith.” Basically, the exec ultimately responsible for News of the World at the time of the scandal is now the guy in charge of The Wall Street Journal.

Murtha to hire Dewey Cheatum & Howe

By Fester:

Rep. Murtha will be hiring the prestigious law firm of Dewey Cheatum & Howe as some of his associates are being very friendly with the Feds investigating an alleged kickback scheme for earnmarks.  Via the Pittsburgh Post Gazette:

Federal prosecutors filed corruption charges yesterday against a onetime defense contractor who has ties to both U.S. Rep. John Murtha and a suburban Johnstown defense contractor currently under criminal investigation.

Richard S. Ianieri, former president and CEO of Coherent Systems International Corp., was accused of accepting $200,000 in kickbacks. He is charged through a criminal information and is expected to plead guilty.

If I understand the legal system well enough, a criminal information is usually what is used for an indictment where there is a pre-arranged plea deal.  Commonly that plea dealer will involve the defendent to start talking and filling in the gaps.  If I was Rep. Murtha, I would be sweating, especially after I have gone on the record with a defense of corruption that is amazingly old-school hack:

The Murtha quote in the Post Gazette is priceless (actually, we can probably get a price for it if we hire PMA...)

"If I'm corrupt, it's because I take care of my district," Mr. Murtha said. "My job as a member of Congress is to make sure that we take care of what we see is necessary. Not the bureaucrats who are unelected over there in whatever White House, whether it's Republican or Democrat. Those bureaucrats would like to control everything. Every president would like to have all the power and not have Congress change anything. But we're closest to the people."

Change names and that statement could come from Rep. Young, (R-AK), or Tom Delay or half a dozen current federal prisoners.

The fine firm of Dewey Cheatum & Howe will make a bloody fortune off of the Murtha defense if things proceed the way I think they will....

Dear Sarah, WTF? (Update: An Embezzlement Scandal?)

by Jay McDonough

Sarah Palin announced today she would resign her responsibilities as Alaska governor at the end of July.  She will turn over the responsibility to govern the state to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.

The speculation is Ms. Palin abandoned her responsibilities in order to concentrate on a 2012 Republican presidential nomination run. Here's the governors announcement.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The news comes the same week as the release of a devastating Vanity Fair profile of the governor and the leaking of McCain campaign emails.

Honestly, this is the lamest excuse for abandoning elected office I've ever heard.  "I'm a lame duck so I'm just gonna bag it now?"

I'm sure all the Palinphiles will put on their game faces and feebly attempt to argue Ms. Palin is doing the right thing for Alaskans.  The rest of us are just gonna see a narcissist who's bailing from her job midstream in order to pursue yet another office she's unqualified to hold.

Update: by Steve Hynd

Several blogs are leading with speculation that an embezzlement scandal is about to engulf Palin and is the direct cause of her resignation. Brad Friedman writes that:

I've now been able to get independent information from multiple sources that all of this precedes what are said to be possible federal indictments against Palin, concerning an embezzlement scandal related to the building of Palin's house and the Wasilla Sports Complex built during her tenure as Mayor. Both structures, it is said, feature the "same windows, same wood, same products." Federal investigators have been looking into this for some time, and indictments could be imminent, according to the Alaska sources.

The BRAD BLOG has not been able to receive confirm from any federal sources on this. Our information comes from local Alaskans who follow Palin, and who have been keeping an eye on this for some time, while keeping it quiet at the request of federal investigators.

Think Progress adds that:

The gist of the rumor is that an Alaska building company called Spenard Building Supplies (SBS) was awarded a contract by Palin to build a hockey arena in Wasilla, AK, and in return, SBS helped construct Palin’s home

Update 5 July: The FBI's Alaska spokesman says "There is absolutely no truth to those rumors that we're investigating her or getting ready to indict her."

New DOJ same as the old DOJ?

Commentary By Ron Beasley

We have covered the  Don Siegelman case here and herebut no body has been on top of it like  Larisa Alexandrovna.  Up to this point the Obama administration's Justice Department has been a major disappointment.  Today she points out that Obama Justice Department continues to cover up Bush-Era crimesbut can't find the time to look into the Siegelman case and he is about to be sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Something very questionable is happening in Obama’s Department of Justice. I don’t know if it is simply institutional loyalty that is the reason for a once admired office of justice to simply abdicate from its official duty. Whatever the reason, there is one question that no one will answer and this question only grows more urgent as new developments are made public.

Why is no one being held accountable? It is one thing to overlook a series of bad choices made in good faith. But the issues at hand have nothing to do with good faith or even bad choices. The allegations of criminal activity and extreme and willful abuses of power by officials of the Bush administration fall directly under the very definition of high crimes. The crimes are not small ones either.

But Siegelman remains hanging:

What of the domestic political prosecutions then and the victims who were targeted for political reasons? Why is no one being held accountable? Worse still, why is Obama’s DOJ seemingly engaging in payback given the latest news?

[......]

Here you have a case that is so visibly flawed, so visibly unethical and possibly even criminal on the part of the prosecutors, and so visibly implicating the Bush White House, that it calls into question everything the DOJ did during Bush’s 8 year reign (yes, you read that right).

Attorney General Holder stepped into former Senator Ted Steven’scorruption case on the grounds that federal prosecutors behaved unethically and possibly in a criminal way. This was the right decision, but why Stevens and no one else? Why are federal prosecutors demanding harsher sentencing in a case where the prosecutorial misconduct was far worse than it was in the Stevens’ case?

Why are we getting no answers to any of this?

Siegelman’s case is not remotely related to national security nor are we missing important details because those are too classified for us to see. We know a good deal about what happened and yet we are still unable to get any answers to the basic question: why is no one being held accountable?

Why is the Obama DOJ protecting Karl Rove and corrupt Republican judges and prosecutors? 

Torture is not a mere policy difference

By Fester:

Policy disputes over taxes are political questions. Disputes and disagreements about the healthcare delivery and payment system are political questions. People and political parties can both disagree, adovcate preferred alternatives, bitch and moan when non-preferred alternatives are implemented by the party in power, and then implement preferred policies once political allies gain power. Sometimes those preferred or closer to preferred policies are implemented in a bipartisan manner, and sometimes they are not. However these political questions are not in contravention to established federal criminal law nor multiple ratified treaties.

Torture is in clear violation of both federal criminal law and multiple ratified treaties. It is not a purely political question to have an interested party look into well-founded allegations of systemic torture and its alleged attendant cover-up is not a policy dispute. It is one of the core elements of a functional democracy to have the strength to look at its elites, investigate strong allegations of clear criminality and then prosecute individuals in situations where there is strong evidence of massive illegal undertakings. That is what a healthy society should be capable of doing. It should not be a partisan question to have limited accountability for the behaviors and actions of our political elite past a quadrennial election of a Presidential absolute dictator.

The Wall Street Journal disagrees:

Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington ended. By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their antiterror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret.

Policy disputes, often bitter, are the stuff of democratic politics. Elections settle those battles, at least for a time, and Mr. Obama's victory in November has given him the right to change policies on interrogations, Guantanamo, or anything on which he can muster enough support. But at least until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements.

L'etat c'est Bushie

Evidently accountability for engaging in torture according to the Wall Street Journal is only for West Virginia National Guardsmen and not the people who set up the structure of torture. Those people are too important and it might burden their beautiful minds.

And anyways, any comprehensive investigation into the torture enabling regime of the Bush Administration will hit multiple Democrats as well as Republican elites. Democratic congressional leaders should have been informed of at least some of the practices that were going on and they did nothing about it beside write a sternly worded letter.

Political Prosecutions and Rove's "Permanent Republican Majority"

by anderson

After Ron's earlier posted piece about the Don Siegelman case, I thought I punch up a post (originally from shockfront) that is both relevant to that tale, and germane to the larger problem the Bush administration created in the DoJ (of course, to the GOP, corrupting the DoJ in service of electoral goals is a feature, not a bug).

_____________________________________

One of the questions that immediately sprang up in the wake of the US Attorney scandal was, what about the other 84 USAs who apparently did not meet with Karl Rove's disapproval?  Indeed, the Shields-Cragan study found a heavily biased litany of prosecutions of Democratic office holders, Democratic campaign contributors and other Democratic affiliates, where it was found that Democrats were seven (7) times more likely to be investigated and/or indicted by various accommodating US Attorneys, with generous help of the FBI.

Director John McTiernan (Predator, Die Hard) has pieced together a documentary regarding the vast swamp of political prosecutions that occurred during the reign of GOP terror that has come to define the Bush regime.

The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove is a must see (and is going to be added to the Shockfront Must See TV section) McTiernan does something here that no one else has done, so far as I've seen: he has traced the pattern of low level prosecutions and found -- surprise! -- that much of the DoJ chicanery focused on the swing states.  Subsequent to the film's debut, and after thrashing about with the DoJ for two years in the wiretapping case of Anthony Pellicano, McTiernan now finds himself indicted again.  The timing of the indictment appears to be … inauspicious.

The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove.

Obama better start cleaning up the cesspool that still exists in the DoJ.  Will he?  Who knows given the grotesque fealty he's demonstrated to the Bush/Cheney crime bosses and their cabal of sniffing, not-so-legalistic toadies.  As with most Democrats, Obama seems to prefer to pretend that nothing is amiss, or that his fellow Democrats really are seven times more corrupt and scabrous than the GOP.

And if he believes that, perhaps he should consider moving to another party.  Then again, why bother?  The Democrats, after all, look like nothing so much as a front company for the GOP, which in turn operates as a front for various business sectors, especially Big Oil, Wall Street, the security-surveillance complex, and the M-I complex.  And when one is operating a front company, the parameters are known; criticisms about operations simply do not happen.

But that is a cop out.  Peoples' lives are being ruined.  Obama's AG, Eric the PlaceHolder, just recently denied a request by Paul Minor to attend his wife's funeral, dying recently after a long bout with cancer.  Minor is undeniably a victim of Rove's political strategy and yet Holder cruelly and unnecessarily denies Minor leave, while reprimanding the prosecutors in Ted Stevens' case, clearing Stevens' conviction altogether.  Yeah, figure that one out.

But things get worse.  Subsequent to clearing Stevens, Eric Holder then announced increased scrutiny of federal prosecutors "in the wake of mistakes in the Ted Stevens case."  Despite glaring irregularities -- if not outright criminality -- on the part of US Attorneys and Republican judges in cases involving fellow Democrats like Don Siegelman, Paul Minor, and many, many more, Eric Holder is now having a fit because Republican Ted Stevens got stiffed by Bush administration prosecutors.  In fact, in the wake of the Stevens disposition, a bipartisan group of 75 former state attorneys general have now sent a letter to Eric the PlaceHolder demanding a review of Siegelman's case, citing " gravely troubling facts" about the conduct of the federal prosecutors.  This follows a July, 2008 letter on the part of 44 state attorneys general, then urging a review of Siegleman's case by a Democratically controlled Congress, a letter which fell upon the moist, blind eyes of sputtering Democrats.

Obama and the rest of these clueless fucking Democrats better wake up to what is going on and what is in place to rekindle the GOP's electoral prospects.  We hear a lot of flapping jowls these days, all talking about how the GOP have been cast into the political wilderness for some indefinite period, and that they have no ideas.

Well, they have one idea.

'Rangement Syndrome

By Fester

You're not paranoid if they really are out to get you...

The same applies to derangement syndromes. If your accusations and fears are proven true, then you are not deranged, just extraordinary cynical.

Jim Henley is writing about his very early anti-torture blogging in 2002 and 2003 and reflects upon the release of the most recent torture authorization memos:

There’s lots of space for coloring and shading yet. Are those indistinct figures off in the corner, in what may be a be a briefing room, senior congressional leaders of both parties? Is that fellow on the phone the secretary of defense saying that while the document says “slap,” no one will raise a fuss if you hit instead? If we rough in the features of that tall silhouette with fingers in his ears, will it look like the Secretary of State? All interesting stuff! But we can already title the picture: “America’s Elites Go Out of Their Way to Legitimize Torture.”

The thing is, while we have a clear record now, we already had major clues back in the day. We knew what happened to Maher Arar. We could have read between the lines of the Abdallah Higazy case. We had very early reports from former prisoners, whistle-blowers and third-party watchdogs. We could see the extra-legal infrastructure taking shape before our eyes: the construction projects on foreign soil; the no-admittance signs; the declarations of exemption from this or that convention. Someone who simply interpreted the news of 2002-3 in the worst light would have been able to draw as good a picture as we have now. Some people did exactly this....

It is not a Bush derangement syndrome if the feared actions are true. Lefties were worried about the deficit busting impacts of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts --- that is true. Lefties were worried about invading Iraq for no good reason (see the Fall 2001 White House notes asking to "sweep it all up, related and not"), and saw an irrational but finely executed rush to war. The Colin Powell presentation at the UN was mocked because it reminded too many of a book report done on a book that had yet to be read. We were worried about torture, we were worried about unbridled executive power (hi 4th Branch Cheney) and we were worried about Democratic complicity in all of this.

When your worries are proven true, you are not deranged, just cynical as hell.

Political Hackery

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Oregon's only Republican congressman, Greg Walden, has said that he thinks Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner should resign.

Walden says he first called for a new Treasury secretary earlier this week. Here he is on Fox News, talking about Geithner.

Rep. Greg Walden: “I’ve lost confidence in him, I think America has lost confidence in him, and many in the Congress have. And you’re hearing more and more members of Congress, House and Senate, coming forward and joining in this call for him to go.”

As Karla at Blue Oregon points out coming from Walden this is pure political hackery. Never once in eight years did he call for the resignation of any Bush official in spite of the fact that 42 Bush Administration officials were forced to resign in disgrace.

Powell's coterie and Gitmo

By Fester:

Here is what Larry Wilkerson, chief of staff to former Sec. State Colin Powell, has to say about Gitmo:

 

The first of these is the utter incompetence of the battlefield vetting in Afghanistan during the early stages of the U.S. operations there. Simply stated, no meaningful attempt at discrimination was made in-country by competent officials, civilian or military, as to who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation....

 

It did not help that poor U.S. policies such as bounty-hunting, a weak understanding of cultural tendencies, and an utter disregard for the fundamentals of jurisprudence prevailed as well (no blame in the latter realm should accrue to combat soldiers as this it not their bailiwick anyway).

The second dimension that is largely unreported is that several in the U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released.

But to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership from virtually day one of the so-called Global War on Terror and these leaders already had black marks enough: the dead in a field in Pennsylvania, in the ashes of the Pentagon, and in the ruins of the World Trade Towers. They were not about to admit to their further errors at Guantanamo Bay. Better to claim that everyone there was a hardcore terrorist, was of enduring intelligence value, and would return to jihad if released...

In addition, it has never come to my attention in any persuasive way--from classified information or otherwise--that any intelligence of significance was gained from any of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay other than from the handful of undisputed ring leaders and their companions, clearly no more than a dozen or two of the detainees, and even their alleged contribution of hard, actionable intelligence is intensely disputed in the relevant communities such as intelligence and law enforcement. [MY EMPHASIS]

This would have been damn nice to have been written in say 2003 before Gitmo became a massive stain upon our reputation.  This would be one hell of a nice spot to start investigations so we can see where we systemically failed in a moment of panic and then proceeded to flush quite a bit of credibility down the drain in an attempt to cover-up incompetence, venality and torture. 

This should be yet another nail in Colin Powell’s reputation; if what his Chief of Staff writes is anywhere near true, why didn't he and his entire staff resign and reveal in 2002, 2003 or 2004 when it could have made an iota of a difference instead of ‘coming clean’ when it is safe to do so in an attempt to deflect blame and responsibility to agreed upon coterie of villains led by Cheney...

 

The value of a Murtha Primary?

By Fester:

Pennsylvania Democrats are not the cleanest bunch of politicians in the world.  Right now Harrisburg is the center of the muck, as one Democratic state senator was convicted of 137 counts of corruption and covering it up, and another Democratic state senator's defense in a corruption probe evaporated as there are e-mails that showed him acknowledging the alleged act of corruption. 

And then there is John Murtha and his amazing ability to pull largess into his district.  Most recently the Washington Post looked at a research center at Penn State and the very close relationship that the director had with two of Murtha's political allies/cronies:

A Pennsylvania defense research center regularly consulted with two "handlers" close to Pennsylvania's Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, as it collected nearly $250 million in federal funding through the lawmaker....

The research facility, called the Electro-Optics Center, then channeled a significant portion of the funding to companies that were among Mr. Murtha's campaign supporters.....

A PMA lobbyist and a close associate of Mr. Murtha's helped make many key decisions about which research and contractors would get the federal money flowing to the center, according to the documents.....

So what is the primary calculus here?

I think there are grounds for a primary on good government and cover your ass grounds.  Murtha is one of the oldest boys in the old boys network and that is the game that he plays.  Pennsylvania Democrats are facing a severe risk of being successfully categorized as corrupt self-schemers with possible externalities going national. 

From the progressive who tends to be allied with Democrats lens, the calculus is not that good as any primary challenger who can get above 30% in the primary will not be anyone who would ever self-identify as progressive.  However sending out a candidate as a good government alternative forces Murtha to campaign and to defend his actions to the electorate.  That in and of itself is a good thing for political process.  In the extremely low probability outcome of defeating Murtha in a primary, the district would probably favor the generic Republican over the generic Democratic candidate in 2010.

Using the Democratic partisan lens, the positive pay-off of a successful primary challenge is significantly larger if the meta narrative can be established that Democrats police their own.  This is important to restore the anti-douchebaggery incentives that were absent in 2008.  The failure of Democrats to aggressively challenge corruption, the allegations of corruption or the appearance of corruption cost them at least one seat in the House, and potentially more as people shrugged their shoulders.  An aggressive primary campaign with any credible Democratic challenger should at least have national positive externalities, if not in-district externalities. 

I don't think a primary challenge by anyone who is not a perpetual political gadfly is likely, but I think it is justified and could begin re-aligning some of the political costs and incentives of alleged douchebaggery.