G Greenwald: AP refuses to use WH/NBC propaganda terms for Iraq

Glen Greenwald

On August 18,NBC Newsanchor Brian Williams began his broadcast — shown live to West Coast viewers, something done only for very significant occasions – by excitedly declaring:  ”It’s gone on longer than the Civil War, longer than World War II.  And tonight, U.S. combat troops have pulled out of Iraq.”  He immediately called in Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel, who was exclusively embedded with the 4th Stryker Brigade.  Engel excitedly announced that “the last American combat troops rolled” into Kuwait just moments ago.

We were then treated to grainy video of the khaki-dressed Engel “rolling out” with the Brigade, interviews with American soldiers describing what a historic event this was, all while the “NBC NEWS EXCLUSIVE” logo was plastered on the screen — quite reminiscent of the embedded media coverage that glorified the invasion itself.  Even Williams noted the similarity:  ”We watched the invasion happen on live television thanks to, at the time, some brand new and exclusive technology.  Well, tonight again we have watched the pullout of combat troops the same way.”  At the end of the 7-minute segment, Williams heaped praise on Engel, whom he hailed as “our own young veteran of this conflict,” for this ”astounding bit of reporting.”

Meanwhile, over at MSNBC, hours of continuous melodramatic coverage were devoted to this story, and the cable network’s various personalities treated the event at least as reverentially as Williams did.   Keith Olbermann donned his most solemn baritone to begin his program this way:

Two thousand six hundred and sixty-six days since President Bush declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq.

Two thousand seven hundred and eight days since American forces invaded Iraq.

At this hour, American combat forces are leaving Iraq.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD ENGEL, NBC NEWS CHIEF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: I think we‘re coming right up to the Kuwaiti border now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: This is a special edition of COUNTDOWN.

Chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, in a world exclusive, embedded with, reporting live from the last convoy of American combat troops as it leaves Iraq via the Kuwait border.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You’re watching the end of an era of the American military.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

OLBERMANN: With Rachel Maddow inside the Green Zone in Baghdad, and Chris Matthews, Lawrence O‘Donnell, Eugene Robinson, Howard Fineman, Jim Miklaszewski at the Pentagon, retired General Paul Eaton, retired Colonel Jack Jacobs, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and former weapons inspector Charles Duelfer.

From Baghdad, from the Iraq-Kuwait border, from Washington, from New York — this is COUNTDOWN’s special continuing live coverage ofthe end of America’s Iraq combat mission.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

As Olbermann indicated, Maddow was in Baghdad’s “Green Zone,” and she explained:  ”it is really, really hot right now. But yet, seeing what we just saw, right here live with that gate closing, the last U.S. combat troop, I’m totally covered in goose bumps. It is an important moment.”

It’s not difficult to understand why NBC and MSNBC hyped the event the way they did.  The reason they had what Olbermann touted as a “worldwide exclusive” is because — in response to NBC embed requests — the Pentagon contacted them and offered exclusivity, knowing that the arrangement would incentivize NBC to treat the event as something of monumental historic importance.  By selecting NBC as the only broadcast network to be told in advance, swearing them to secrecy, but arranging for them to cover it exclusively with video, it became their story, and they thus, predictably, were eager to tout its importance.  That’s the natural inclination when someone is given exclusive access by the Government.  Maddow explained how the Pentagon arranged in secret for this exclusive coverage of the “momentous” event to be given to NBC and MSNBC:

By offering it exclusively to both NBC and MSNBC, the Pentagon ensured that this narrative would be given the Seriousness imprimatur from NBC, and would produce base-pleasing, Obama-favorable praise from MSNBC personalities.  Having Engel embedded in a Stryker vehicles as it “rolled out” of Iraq, and Maddow stationed in the Green Zone, added to the historic tone of the evening.  As The New York Times‘ Brian Stelter reported:  ”David Verdi, an NBC News vice president, added, ‘The military had said, ‘You are the ones who are going to broadcast it first’.” About that, Mediaite‘s Steve Kraukauer wrote:  ”That’s a stunning admission, and shows a degree of coziness between both sides here.”  With this cooperative venture, the White House got exactly the coverage it wanted:  the repeatedly hyped claim that under Barack Obama, “American combat forces are leaving Iraq,” as Olbermann intoned at the start.

One of the few sour notes in this coverage came when Olbermann briefly interviewed McClatchy‘s Jonathan Landay, and asked him what the 50,000 remaining soldiers would be doing.  Landay explained:

This is the great irony for me, Keith. The fact is that under the delusional plans that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had approved for the invasion of Iraq, they had intended to come down to 50,000 troops within three or four months of that invasion. . . . .That, for me, is the ultimate irony, is the fact that more than seven years later, we‘ve now gotten down to the 50,000 troops that they thought they could get down to within three months of the invasion. . . . . [T]hose 50,000 men and women include special forces who will be going out on counter-terrorism missions with Iraqi forces. That, to me, is combat. They’re armed. They’re going into combat.  There will be American, quote/unquote, advisers going out with Iraqi forces on regular patrols. That to me opens the door to combat.

So I don‘t think we‘re going to see the end of – we are not going to see the end of combat for American forces I don‘t think in Iraq.

The 50,000 troops staying in Iraq were noted several times by the various MSNBC commentators, especially Maddow, but, other than the Landay interview, it did not detract from the repetitious claim that — to use Brian Williams’ formulation — “U.S. combat troops have pulled out of Iraq.”  This, of course, was the same message touted in Barack Obama’s Oval Office address to the nation on Wednesday night:

So tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country.

Yesterday, however, the Associated Press’ Standards Editor, Tom Kent,issued a memorandum to AP editors and reporters instructing them not to use this White-House-created formulation that “combat operations in Iraq are over,” on the simple ground of inaccuracy:

Whatever the subject, we should be correct and consistent in our description of what the situation in Iraq is. This guidance summarizes the situation and suggests wording to use and avoid.

To begin with, combat in Iraq is not over, and we should not uncritically repeat suggestions that it is, even if they come from senior officials. The situation on the ground in Iraq is no different today than it has been for some months. Iraqi security forces are still fighting Sunni and al-Qaida insurgents.  . . . .

As for U.S. involvement, it also goes too far to say that the U.S. part in the conflict in Iraq is over. President Obama said Monday night that “the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country.”

However, 50,000 American troops remain in country. Our own reporting on the ground confirms that some of these troops, especially some 4,500 special operations forces, continue to be directly engaged in military operations. These troops are accompanying Iraqi soldiers into battle with militant groups and may well fire and be fired on.

In addition, although administration spokesmen say we are now at the tail end of American involvement and all troops will be gone by the end of 2011, there is no guarantee that this will be the case.

Our stories about Iraq should make clear that U.S. troops remain involved in combat operations alongside Iraqi forces, although U.S. officials say the American combat mission has formally ended. We can also say the United States has ended its major combat role in Iraq, or that it has transferred military authority to Iraqi forces. We can add that beyond U.S. boots on the ground, Iraq is expected to need U.S. air power and other military support for years to control its own air space and to deter possible attack from abroad.

The ability of the Pentagon to shape coverage through controlling access, offering embedding, and doling out exclusives is too well-known and well-documented by now to require much discussion.  The problem, however, is that it remains irresistibly enticing for many media outlets to submit to it.  The fact that NBC/MSNBC was the only television news outlet with video of the “last combat brigade rolling out of Iraq” was a major coup.  The only way that coup matters — the only way the journalists covering this event ”exclusively” can feel as though they’re doing something important — is if they vest the event with historic significance, accomplished by touting it as “the end of America‘s Iraq combat mission,” exactly the message the administration wanted disseminated.

The fact that this phrase — “the end of America‘s Iraq combat mission” — is more propagandistic than anything gave no pause.  The withdrawal of 100,000 troops from that country since Obama’s inauguration is not insignificant, and it’s a good thing that he’s adhered to the withdrawal schedule.  But, as Landay explained, 50,000 troops is a huge number — it’s what Rumsfeld originally envisioned as the occupying force to be used three months after the invasion — and it’s inevitable that they will be in combat.  And that’s to say nothing of the large number of private-militias which remain — paid for by American citizens — as well as the so-called “private army” which the State Department is currently assembling, to be deployed in that country.  That’s why AP refuses to use these misleading terms ”even if they come from senior officials.”  That, and because they weren’t the ones gifted with the “worldwide exclusive” coverage by the Obama administration and its Pentagon.

\\GLENN GREENWALD

Iconic White House Reporter Retires After Words About Israel

To many in Washington, two sets of rules seemed to apply for journalists covering the president: those for regular White House correspondents, and those for Helen Thomas.

To every president since John F. Kennedy, Ms. Thomas, 89, was known for posing questions in the kind of tough and provocative manner that could make press secretaries gasp and her colleagues cringe.

And it appears that her tart tongue may have finally ended her career. Ms. Thomas said on Monday that she was retiring, effective immediately, after an uproar over her recent remarks that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go home to “Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else.”

As the furor over her comments went viral, her speaking agency dropped her, a suburban Washington high school where she was scheduled to deliver a graduation speech disinvited her, and her colleagues threatened to take away her prized perch in the front row of the White House briefing room. Ms. Thomas could not be reached for comment.

It was an ignominious end for Ms. Thomas, who helped clear the path for countless women in journalism, and was bestowed with the unofficial title of dean of the White House press corps. Few White House correspondents were ever afforded the level of deference she has been shown by presidents and fellow reporters. Her front row seat bears a small plaque with her name, the only seat in the briefing room designated by the name of a person, not a news organization.

This show of respect continued despite what many in Washington observed to be the increasingly hostile and outlandish nature of her questions in recent years — and despite the fact that her column was not widely read. Though she has worked as a columnist for Hearst for the last 10 years, she was known more for her presence at White House press conferences than for her writing. Ms. Thomas seemed particularly critical of the Iraq war and repeatedly pointed out during White House briefings that the American-led invasion was costing civilian lives. Dana Perino, a press secretary under President George W. Bush, once scolded Ms. Thomas, saying that the United States regretted the war’s civilian toll. Ms. Thomas, unmoved, shot back, “Regret, it doesn’t bring back a life.”

“The rules have been different for Helen for many years, and only for Helen,” said Ari Fleischer, another Bush press secretary who had called on Ms. Thomas to step down after she made her latest remarks about Israel and the Jews. “Helen earned that right, and she was treated differently. And I never minded it. I enjoyed my ideological thrust and parry with Helen.”

He added, “And sadly she brought this on herself.”

Mr. Fleischer is just one of many of Washington’s most powerful figures who has clashed with Ms. Thomas over the years. President Kennedy once remarked that she would be “a nice girl if she’d ever get rid of that pad and pencil.” And Colin Powell, the former secretary of state, once jokingly griped, “Isn’t there a war somewhere we could send her to?”

In a statement released by Hearst, Ms. Thomas apologized for her remarks. “I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians,” Ms. Thomas’s statement said. “They do not reflect my heartfelt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance.”

Before joining Hearst, she had worked for United Press International since 1943. A native of Detroit and the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, she had a résumé with a litany of firsts: first female officer of the National Press Club, first female president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

Ms. Thomas’s tone became more opinionated in recent years after she moved from being a news reporter to being a columnist once she joined Hearst. The White House Correspondents’ Association now says it is re-evaluating whether to allow opinion columnists reserved seats in the briefing room.

Her remarks about Israel surfaced late last week in a video filmed by a Long Island rabbi who had been visiting the White House for a Jewish heritage event on May 27. The rabbi, who is also a blogger, happened to bump into Ms. Thomas on the White House lawn.

“I recognized her and thought, ‘Oh this is interesting.’ I went and said hello. I had told her what we were there for, and that I had been asking people about Israel,” the rabbi, David Nesenoff, said.

“I couldn’t believe what came out of her mouth,” he added. “I was shocked and hurt.”

Sam Donaldson, the former White House correspondent for ABC News and a friend of Ms. Thomas, said she had been allowed to keep her seat once she became a columnist because she had become such a mainstay of the White House press corps.

“No one wanted to say now that you’re no longer representing U.P.I. you have to move to the back row — because she was Helen,” Mr. Donaldson said.

Other former colleagues of Ms. Thomas recalled that her brashness made her something of a marvel in the press corps.

“Cranky was her modus operandi. And it worked,” said Charles Bierbauer, who was CNN’s White House correspondent for nine years and is now the dean of the college of mass communications and information studies at the University of South Carolina.

Ms. Thomas was also known for her stubbornness. Mr. Bierbauer recalled a conversation he had with her when he left the White House beat in 1993.

“I said to her, ‘How long are you going to stay?’ And she said, ‘Until they take me out feet first.’ ”

\\NEW YORK TIMES

RELATED: NYT Gallery on Helen Thomas’s Career

Rep. Neugebauer: White House positions ‘being handled out as candy suckers’

Rep. Randy Neugebauer: White House positions ‘being handled out as candy suckers’ – 9/19/2009

An elephant never forgets? George W. Bush’s lost e-mails

The case of the missing e-mail

A federal magistrate judge on Thursday chastised the Bush administration for failing to fully answer questions related to a long-running dispute over missing White House emails. The White House is facing lawsuits from two public interest groups, Citizens for Responsibilty and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive at George Washington University, demanding that the White House restore the missing e-mails and put in place systems to prevent further e-mail losses. Administration officials were ordered to provide detailed information about the burdens involved in taking immediate actions to preserve copies of hard drive, tapes, and other media that may contain copies of the missing e-mails.

The ongoing dispute spotlights a part of the executive branch that doesn’t often get much attention: its e-mail system. Two laws govern the retention of executive branch documents. The Federal Record Act requires the head of each federal agency to ensure that documents related to that agency’s official business be preserved for federal archives. The Watergate-era Presidential Records Act augmented the FRA framework by specifically requiring the president to preserve documents related to the performance of his official duties. A 1993 court decision held that these laws applied to electronic records, including e-mails, which means that the president has an obligation to ensure that the e-mails of senior executive branch officials are preserved.

In 1994, the Clinton administration reacted to the previous year’s court decision by rolling out an automated e-mail-archiving system to work with the Lotus-Notes-based e-mail software that was in use at the time. The system automatically categorized e-mails based on the requirements of the FRA and PRA, and it included safeguards to ensure that e-mails were not deliberately or unintentionally altered or deleted.

(Continue reading: ars technica)

Pelosi wants Bush aides investigated

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked the Justice Department on Thursday to open a grand jury investigation into whether President Bush’s chief of staff and former counsel should be prosecuted for contempt of Congress.

Pelosi, D-Calif., demanded that the department pursue misdemeanor charges against former White House counsel Harriet Miers for refusing to testify to Congress about the firings of federal prosecutors in 2006 and against chief of staff Josh Bolten for failing to turn over White House documents related to the dismissals.

She gave Attorney General Michael Mukasey one week to respond and said refusal to take the matter to a grand jury will result in the House’s filing a civil lawsuit against the Bush administration.

The White House branded the request as “truly contemptible.” The Justice Department said it had received Pelosi’s request and anticipated providing further guidance after Mukasey’s review. It noted “long-standing department precedent” in such cases against letting a U.S. attorney refer a congressional contempt citation to a grand jury or prosecute an executive branch. The top House Republican called it “a partisan political stunt” and “a complete waste of time,” according to a spokesman.

The Democratic-controlled House voted two weeks ago to hold Bolten and Miers in contempt for failing to cooperate with committee investigations.

“There is no authority by which persons may wholly ignore a subpoena and fail to appear as directed because a president unilaterally instructs them to do so,” Pelosi wrote Mukasey. She noted that Congress subpoenaed Miers to appear before the House Judiciary Committee, which is investigating the firings.

“Surely, your department would not tolerate that type of action if the witness were subpoenaed to a federal grand jury,” Pelosi wrote.

She added: “Short of a formal assertion of executive privilege, which cannot be made in this case, there is no authority that permits a president to advise anyone to ignore a duly issued congressional subpoena for documents.”

Pelosi sent an additional letter to U.S. Attorney Jeff Taylor, the chief federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia, whose office would oversee the grand jury. The letters point to sections of federal law that require the Justice Department to bring the House contempt citations before a grand jury to investigate.

At the White House, spokesman Tony Fratto said House Democrats “have been trying to redefine the notion of contempt and they succeeded.”

Both Fratto and House GOP leader John Boehner said the House should focus on passing legislation allowing the government to more easily eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails of suspected terrorists.

“Rather than passing critical national security legislation, they continue to squander time on partisan hijinx,” Fratto said. Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said “this sort of pandering to the left-wing fever swamps of loony liberal activists does nothing to make America safer.”

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers, said he hoped Pelosi’s demand would spur the department to “put the partisan manipulation of our system of justice behind it” and take the issue to a grand jury. “To do otherwise would turn on its head the notion that we are all equally accountable under the law,” said Conyers, D-Mich.

But the department told the House leadership last July that it generally would not let a U.S. attorney make a grand jury referral or prosecute executive branch officials when they followed a president’s instruction and invoked a claim of executive privilege before a congressional committee, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said.

The letter was the latest chapter in a yearlong saga that began with the firings of nine federal prosecutors and led to Alberto Gonzales’ resignation as attorney general last August.

The House voted 223-32 this month to hold Miers and Bolten in contempt for failing to cooperate with an inquiry into whether the prosecutors’ firings were politically motivated. Angry Republicans boycotted the vote and staged a walkout in an unusually bitter scene even for the fractious House.

At the time, the Bush administration was no less harsh, saying the information sought by the House was off-limits under executive privilege and that Bolten and Miers were immune from prosecution.

It was the first time in 25 years that a full chamber of Congress voted on a contempt of Congress citation. The White House pointed out that it was the first time that such action had been taken against top White House officials who had been instructed by the president to remain silent to preserve executive privilege.

via//Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Bush to veto Senate ban on waterboarding

US President George W. Bush plans to veto legislation passed by the Senate to bar the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods including waterboarding, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

“The president will veto that bill,” said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

“The United States needs the ability to interrogate effectively, within the law, captured Al-Qaeda terrorists.”

The Democratic-led Senate voted 51-45 on Wednesday in favor of a bill calling for the Central Intelligence Agency to adopt the US Army Field Manual, which forbids waterboarding and other types of coercive interrogation methods.

However, the vote fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to overcome a presidential veto. The House of Representatives passed similar legislation in December.

Democratic New York Senator Charles Schumer said that if Bush “vetoes intelligence authorization, he will be voting in favor of waterboarding.”

Asked by a reporter if Bush, who leaves office in 2009, would be labeled as the first US president who favored torture, Perino rejected the assertion and dismissed Schumer’s argument as “simplistic.”

“Across the board people will see, over time, that this was a president who put in place tools to protect the country against terrorists,” Perino said.

“The president does not favor torture. The president favors making sure we do all these programs within the law,” she said, adding that “all the interrogations that have taken place in this country have been done in a legal way.”

Perino said the United States does not currently use waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique denounced by rights groups as torture, even though the CIA has admitted using the technique in the past.

She reiterated the administration’s assertion last week that it would not rule out the use of such techniques in the future.

“Currently under the law it is not (allowed),” she said. “As we said last week as well, we are not going to talk about what may or may not be lawful in the future.”

The Senate bill would limit the CIA and other intelligence agencies to the 19 interrogation techniques outlined in the military’s manual. Waterboarding is not among them.

Perino said the intelligence community’s view is that the Army Field Manual sets an inappropriate standard for seasoned CIA interrogators who are working to extract information from sophisticated militant operatives.

“Today with this bill that they are sending to us they would basically repeal the terrorist interrogation program in favor of something that will definitely weaken our ability to protect the country,” Perino said.

“This Army Field Manual is something that is public for all to see, and we know that Al-Qaeda trains to resist interrogation techniques such as those.”

Rival Democratic White House hopefuls Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were on the road campaigning and did not take part in the vote Wednesday.

The likely Republican nominee, Arizona Senator John McCain, voted against the bill. The former prisoner of war however said that his vote was consistent with his anti-torture stance.

“We always supported allowing the CIA to use extra measures,” he said. “I believe waterboarding is illegal and should be banned,” McCain said.

via//AFP

Contempt for the Law

Add the “Presidential Records Act” to the list of laws the Bush Administration has broken.

There is much cause for outrage over the White House’s brazen disregard for federal public records law, which may well have resulted in the destruction of millions of official e-mails. But today’s focus on the recycling of backup tapes may actually be a bit of a red herring.

The law is clear that e-mails sent and received by anyone in the White House — just like all official White House documents — should be instantaneously and automatically archived.

So someone in the White House should have been making sure the law was being followed, and that all e-mails were indeed being properly stored for posterity.

That same someone also should have been making sure White House staffers weren’t circumventing archive requirements by using outside e-mail addresses. But the White House legal counsel’s office remained silent as top aides, including Karl Rove, fired off possibly hundreds of thousands of official-business e-mails from Republican National Committee accounts, where most data is routinely deleted after 30 days.

The matter in the news today relates not to those e-mails, but to as many as several million others — these actually on the eop.gov accounts — that seem to have vanished.

The best information we have about those e-mails comes from an Aug. 30, 2007 letter from House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman to White House Counsel Fred Fielding, outlining what congressional investigators had discovered so far.

“On May 29, 2007, Keith Roberts, the Deputy General Counsel of the White House Office of Administration, and Emmet Flood, Special Counsel to the President, briefed Committee staff on the White House e-mail system and the missing e-mails,” Waxman wrote. “At the briefing, Mr. Roberts informed Committee staff that the White House had discovered in 2005 that an unknown number of e-mails may not have been preserved in the White House archive, as required by the Presidential Records Act. According to Mr. Roberts, the Office of the Chief Information Officer then conducted a review of the e-mail system to determine the scope of the potential loss. He said that this review apparently found some days with a very small number of preserved e-mails and some days with no e-mails preserved at all. He also stated that a report summarizing these findings had been presented to the White House Counsel’s office.

“In addition, Mr. Roberts informed the Committee that an unidentified company working for the Information Assurance Directorate of the Office of the Chief Information Officer was responsible for daily audits of the e-mail system and the e-mail archiving process. Mr. Roberts was not able to explain why the daily audits conducted by this contractor failed to detect the problems in the archive system when they first began.”

Waxman requested more information. He’s still waiting.

As soon as White House officials determined that e-mails might be missing from the archives, it was their responsibility to launch a search-and-rescue mission. And they should have starting going through the emergency backup tapes — which provide snapshots of the entire network at a given point in time and allow you to fish specific things out if need be.

But the White House took no immediate action. It only recently launched a full-scale investigation — an investigation that is conveniently still underway.

And, as the White House explained in a court filing late Tuesday night, those backup tapes were regularly overwritten until October 2003.

It seems unconscionable that the tapes were not preserved. But the underlying failure — the apparently complete disregard for the law — is considerably more serious than that.

It took a federal court order for the White House to tell us even as much as it did on Tuesday. But the new filing raises many more questions than answers.

Hopefully, reporters and congressional investigators will be asking those questions with renewed ferocity in the days to come.

For background, see my April 12 column, Countless White House E-Mails Deleted, my June 19 column, Casual Lawbreaking at the White House, and my Nov. 13 column, Where Are the E-mails?

The Coverage
Elizabeth Williamson and Dan Eggen write in The Washington Post: “E-mail messages sent and received by White House personnel during the first three years of the Bush administration were routinely recorded on tapes that were ‘recycled,’ the White House’s chief information officer said in a court filing this week.

“During the period in question, the Bush presidency faced some of its biggest controversies, including the Iraq war, the leak of former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson’s name and the CIA’s destruction of interrogation videotapes.

“White House spokesman Tony Fratto said he has no reason to believe any e-mails were deliberately destroyed.

“From 2001 to October 2003, the White House’s practice was to use the same backup tape each day to copy new as well as old e-mails, he said, making it possible that some of those e-mails could still be recovered even from a tape that was repeatedly overwritten. ‘We are continuing to analyze our systems,’ Fratto said last night. . . .

“Two federal statutes require presidential communications, including e-mails involving senior White House aides, to be preserved for the nation’s historical record, and some historians responded to the court disclosure yesterday by urging that the White House’s actions be thoroughly probed.

“‘There certainly could have been hugely important materials there . . . and of course they’re not owned by President Bush or anybody in the administration, they’re owned by the public,’ said presidential historian and author Robert Dallek. ‘Given how secretive this administration has been, it of course fans the flames and suspicions about what has been destroyed here. I hope we’ll get an investigation.’”

Pete Yost writes for the Associated Press: “The White House started preserving backup tapes in October 2003, which would have been shortly after the start of the probe into who outed CIA operative Valerie Plame in July of that year.

“The backup tapes, which also contain electronic documents in addition to e-mail, are the last line of defense for saving electronic records. . . .

“Two years ago, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald first disclosed a White House e-mail problem, which the White House says it discovered in October 2005.

“‘What has the White House been doing for two years?’ said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, one of two groups suing the White House over the e-mail issue. ‘The White House still doesn’t seem to have a clue.’

“White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that ‘as we have repeatedly stated, we do not know that there is actually a problem’ with missing e-mail.”

Anne Weismann, chief counsel for the other group suing the White House, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, “pointed to previous White House statements suggesting there was missing e-mail and to the fact that the White House is refusing to turn over numerous documents about the problem. . . .

“‘It appears that the White House has now destroyed the evidence of its misconduct,’ Weismann said.

“Fratto, the White House spokesman, said that ‘there is no basis to say that the White House has destroyed any evidence or engaged in any misconduct.’”

Writing in Government Executive, Jill R. Aitoro provides some background on archiving obligations and notes: “By Feb. 1, the National Archives and Records Administration and the White House must provide congressional watchdogs with an update on preparations for the transition of all presidential records to the National Archives by January 2009.”

Mark your calendars.

Back From the Middle East
Scott MacLeod writes for Time: “Seldom has an American President’s visit left the region so underwhelmed, confirming Bush’s huge unpopularity on the street and his sagging credibility among Arab leaders he counts as allies. Part of the problem was the Administration’s increasingly mixed message, amplified by the intense media coverage of his trip. For example, in Dubai he gave what the White House billed as a landmark speech calling for ‘democratic freedom in the Middle East.’ But during his last stop in Sharm el-Sheikh Wednesday, he lauded President Hosni Mubarak as an experienced, valued strategic partner for regional peace and security and made no mention of Cairo’s ongoing crackdown on opponents and critics — and the continuing imprisonment of Mubarak’s main opponent in the 2005 presidential election. . . .

“Commenting on the two main purposes of the tour, even the most liberal Arab press questioned the sincerity of Bush’s efforts to establish a Palestinian state and criticized his campaign to pressure Iran over its nuclear program. On occasion, senior Arab officials contradicted or disputed Bush’s pronouncements even before he left their countries. . . .

“Bush’s efforts to rally an Arab coalition to isolate Iran in the Gulf seemed to fall flat. Only days after he visited Kuwait, liberated in 1991 by a coalition led by the President’s father, Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Mohammed Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah was standing beside Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in Tehran, declaring: ‘My country knows who is our friend and who is our enemy, and Iran is our friend.’ . . .

“‘We ought to be celebrating President George Bush’s declaration that a Palestinian state is ‘long overdue,” said the Arab News in Jidda. ‘It is impossible to feel any excitement about Bush’s words, because no Palestinian, no Arab believes he will, or can, deliver. We have the Bush record with its damning testimony of failure and disaster. That is the reason for the skepticism and the cynicism.’”

USA Today’s Richard Wolff reviews the highlights:

“Bush sought to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace talks by shuttling along the checkpoint-studded roads between Jerusalem and Ramallah. Even as he praised both sides for being willing to compromise, 11 members of the right-wing Yisrael Beitenu Party withdrew from the Israeli government to protest Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s handling of the peace negotiations, and Arab newspapers denounced Bush for refusing to push Israel on Jewish settlements.

“The president sought to unite the region against Iran by stressing that U.S. policy on Tehran had not changed despite a U.S. intelligence report that said Iran’s nuclear program was shelved in 2003. Israel disputed the intelligence report and refused to rule out military action, while Saudi Arabia said it has no problems with Iran.

“Bush’s lone policy speech promoted human rights reforms and democratization in the Middle East. On Wednesday here, he praised Egypt for helping to lead ‘the freedom and justice movement’ in the Middle East ? even though the nation has backtracked on reforms in the past few years.

“On oil prices, Bush failed to convince Saudi officials that supplies should be increased to drive down gas prices.”

Ellen Knickmeyer writes in The Washington Post: “President Bush on Wednesday ended a Middle East tour that political activists saw as lacking the strong calls for democratization made earlier in his administration, disappointing those once encouraged by the statements of American leaders. . . .

“On Wednesday, after discussions with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Bush commended him for progress. ‘You have taken steps toward economic openness . . . and political reforms,’ Bush said.

“But Hisham Kassem, an Egyptian political activist who last year received a U.S. National Endowment for Democracy award, was left dispirited by Bush’s tour. The year 2005 ‘was the best year in my life, politically . . . . Our hopes were way up there,’ Kassem said. ‘But — it was just another story.’

“Anger grew in his voice. ‘Bush, as far as American foreign policy vis-a-vis democracy, civil rights, is right back to square one,’ Kassem added. ‘This trip marks it.’”

Steven Lee Myers writes in the New York Times that Bush “spoke passionately at times about the birth of liberty and justice in countries that restrict them and the role of women in societies that still largely sequester them.

“And yet he avoided public disputes with monarchical leaders widely accused of limiting freedoms as he sought Arab support for the peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians, the war in Iraq, diplomatic efforts to isolate Iran and easing the strain on the American economy caused by high oil prices.”

Dion Nissenbaum writes for McClatchy Newspapers: “It didn’t take long for President Bush’s ambitious Middle East peace initiative to collide with a sobering reality. . . .

“Six days after Bush personally appealed for his support, conservative Israeli lawmaker Avigdor Lieberman abandoned Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s coalition government on Wednesday.

“‘All negotiations based on territory for peace are a fateful error, an incomprehensible mistake,’ Lieberman said Wednesday.

“Wednesday also was the second straight day of stepped-up Israeli military operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which began hours after Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiators began their first substantive round of peace talks.”

Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh found it hard to distinguish between Bush and Alysheba, the aging Derby and Preakness winning horse that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia paraded around his farm outside Riyadh.

“Like Bush, Alysheba was the scion of a proud lineage (in the stallion’s case, the famed Alydar). And like Bush, the 24-year-old bay was still proud but more than a little broken down–in the horse’s case, so far past his prime he looked swaybacked.

“There’s one big difference, of course. Alysheba has long since given up on winning (in fact, he’s not even used for stud anymore). George W. Bush, with just 12 months to go before he’s put out to pasture, still thinks he can win the big ones: a Mideast peace deal, an Iranian surrender on nukes, a functioning Iraqi government.”

Iraq Watch
The New York Times editorial board writes: “President Bush is discussing a new agreement with Baghdad that would govern the deployment of American troops in Iraq. With so many Americans adamant about bringing our forces home as soon as possible, a sentiment we strongly share, Mr. Bush must not be allowed to tie the hands of his successor and ensure the country’s continued involvement in an open-ended war. . . .

“Mr. Bush is rushing to complete a deal before he leaves office in January 2009. That is just as reckless and irresponsible as most of his decisions regarding Iraq. America’s interests demand that his successor has maximum flexibility to plot a course, which we hope includes a quick and orderly withdrawal of troops.

“One way to ensure that flexibility is to make sure that Congress approves any deal with Iraq, as leading Democrats, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, are insisting. The time for Congressional intervention is now.”

Stimulus Watch
Jonathan Weisman and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum write in The Washington Post: “A rush by President Bush and Democratic leaders to assemble an economic stimulus package to stave off a recession is being complicated by a potentially debilitating brew of presidential politics, ideological differences and special interest lobbying. . . .

“Republican contenders and GOP leaders are warning the White House not to compromise too much with Democrats on an economic stimulus they are not even sure is warranted.”

Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes in the New York Times: “As President Bush weighs a stimulus package to jump-start the sagging economy, a debate has broken out inside the White House over how hard to push Congress to make Mr. Bush’s tax cuts permanent — a priority for the president, but one that Democrats say would kill the plan before it is even considered.

“On one side, according to people familiar with the deliberations, is a powerful group of pragmatists, including Henry M. Paulson Jr., the treasury secretary; Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff; and Ed Gillespie, counselor to Mr. Bush. They argue that the need for a stimulus is urgent, but have expressed concern that the administration may have to scale back its ambitions for permanent tax cuts to get a package through Congress.

“On the other side, these people say, are staunch economic conservatives like Keith B. Hennessey, the new director of Mr. Bush’s National Economic Council. They have reservations about the need for an economic rescue package and maintain that if the White House proposes one, it should use the plan as leverage to press lawmakers into making the tax cuts permanent…..

“Vice President Dick Cheney has also been a strong supporter of the tax cuts, although it is not clear what role he is playing in the current debate.”

Maura Reynolds and Richard Simon write in the Los Angeles Times that “senior congressional Republicans said Wednesday they would put aside demands to make President Bush’s tax cuts permanent if that was what it took to get quick action on a stimulus package.”

Reynold and Simon also write: “Some Republicans acknowledged that the emerging shape of the stimulus legislation made it more likely that the president — who mentions the issue at every opportunity — would not get his tax cuts extended before he left office.”

Torture Tapes Watch
Walter Pincus and Joby Warrick write in The Washington Post: “The CIA’s destruction of videotapes containing harsh interrogations of detainees at secret prisons drew bipartisan criticism from House lawmakers who attended a closed hearing yesterday at which the agency’s acting general counsel testified about the matter.

“Intelligence committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) said afterward that he remained convinced that the CIA did not meet its obligation to fully inform congressional overseers about the tapes and their destruction.”

One anonymous source present at the hearing told The Post “that White House officials did not seem as involved ‘as they might have or should have been’ in 2005 decision making about the tapes.”

Padilla’s Complaint
The Washington Post editorial board urges Congress to investigate Jose Padilla’s allegations that he was tortured while being held as an enemy combatant for years: “Congress has launched an investigation of the destruction of CIA tapes that allegedly depicted two al-Qaeda suspects undergoing harsh interrogation. Lawmakers have an even greater interest in determining whether a U.S. citizen was tortured on U.S. soil and, if Mr. Padilla is telling the truth, in ensuring that it never happens again.”

Bush v. Whales
Marc Kaufman writes in The Washington Post: “The White House has exempted the Navy from two major environmental laws in an effort to free the service from a federal court’s decision limiting the Navy’s use of sonar in training exercises.

“Environmentalists who had sued successfully to limit the Navy’s use of loud, mid-frequency sonar — which can be harmful to whales and other marine mammals — said yesterday that the exemptions were unprecedented and could lead to a larger legal battle over the extent to which the military has to obey environmental laws.

“In a court filing Tuesday, government lawyers said President Bush had determined that allowing the use of mid-frequency sonar in ongoing exercises off Southern California was ‘essential to national security’ and of ‘paramount interest to the United States.’

“Based on that, the documents said, Bush issued the order exempting the Navy from provisions of the Coastal Zone Management Act, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality granted the Navy a waiver from the National Environmental Protection Act.”

Kenneth R. Weiss writes in the Los Angeles Times: “The battle pits concerns over injuries to marine mammals against troop readiness and national security. But with Bush’s latest action, it took on overtones of a struggle between the administrative and judicial branches of government.”

Bush does not “have the legal power to overturn a federal court order. So Justice Department lawyers followed his move with legal papers asking the federal courts to remove the order, which was a preliminary injunction that imposed an array of restrictions on the use of sonar, including its shutdown when marine mammals ventured within 2,200 yards of sonar devices.”

Here is competing information on sonar and whales from the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Navy.

Pocket Veto Redux
David M. Herszenhorn writes in the New York Times: “The House on Wednesday approved a sweeping $696 billion military policy measure after revising a single provision in the 1,300-page bill that had prompted a surprise veto by President Bush.

“Mr. Bush had strongly supported the original bill, which included pay raises for the military and was approved by wide margins in both the House and the Senate. But he vetoed it last month after the Iraqi government raised objections to a provision allowing American victims of state-sponsored terrorism under Saddam Hussein to sue and to collect judgments by seizing foreign assets in the United States.

“The Iraqis had threatened to withdraw $25 billion from American banks if the president signed the measure.”

Megan Scully writes for Congress Daily: “House leaders had been weighing whether to hold a veto override vote to publicly challenge the White House’s assertions that its actions constituted a pocket veto, an absolute rejection that cannot be overturned by Congress.

“Ultimately, lawmakers opted to avert a constitutional showdown with the White House over the bill.”

Karl Rove Watch
Ralph Z. Hallow writes in the Washington Times: “Karl Rove yesterday reprised one of his favorite post-September 11 campaign themes for Republicans, saying Democrats have an outdated — but not unpatriotic — view of national security.” Rove was speaking at a Republican National Committee gathering.

Sam Youngman writes in The Hill: “Rove, the man President Bush called ‘the architect,’ might have retired from the White House, he is clearly still very much engaged in the day-to-day mechanics of the presidential contests on both sides. . . .

“The Bush confidant also trotted out one of the lines of attack the RNC has already been working feverishly against [Hillary] Clinton, questioning why she and former President Bill Clinton will not release records from their time in the White House. This, according to Rove, ‘raises legitimate questions about what she’s hiding.’”

Faiz Shakir writes for ThinkProgress.org: “As the subject of a contempt resolution for hiding documents, Rove is hardly one to talk. Just last month, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12-7 to approve a contempt citation against Rove for withholding information relating to the firing of U.S. attorneys.”

via//Washington Post