Missing White House E-Mails Traced, Justice Aide Says

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post - A Justice Department lawyer told a federal judge yesterday that the Bush administration will meet its legal requirement to transfer e-mails to the National Archives after spending more than $10 million to locate 14 million e-mails reported missing four years ago from White House computer files.
Civil division trial lawyer Helen H. Hong made the disclosure at a court hearing provoked by a 2007 lawsuit filed by outside groups to ensure that politically significant records created by the White House are not destroyed or removed before President Bush leaves office at noon on Tuesday. She said the department plans to argue in a court filing this week that the administration's successful recent search renders the lawsuit moot.
Hong's statement came hours after U.S. District Court Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. ordered employees of the president's executive office -- with just days to go before their departure -- to undertake a comprehensive search of computer workstations, preserve portable hard drives and examine any e-mail archives created or retained from 2003 to 2005, the period in which e-mails appeared to be missing.

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Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov

A short time ago, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States and his new administration officially came to life. One of the first changes is the White House's new website, which will serve as a place for the President and his administration to connect with the rest of the nation and the world.
Millions of Americans have powered President Obama's journey to the White House, many taking advantage of the internet to play a role in shaping our country's future. WhiteHouse.gov is just the beginning of the new administration's efforts to expand and deepen this online engagement.Just like your new government, WhiteHouse.gov and the rest of the Administration's online programs will put citizens first. Our initial new media efforts will center around three priorities:

Communication -- Americans are eager for information about the state of the economy, national security and a host of other issues. This site will feature timely and in-depth content meant to keep everyone up-to-date and educated. Check out the briefing room, keep tabs on the blog (RSS feed) and take a moment to sign up for e-mail updates from the President and his administration so you can be sure to know about major announcements and decisions.

Transparency -- President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise. The President's executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government. You can also learn about some of the senior leadership in the new administration and about the President’s policy priorities.

Participation -- President Obama started his career as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where he saw firsthand what people can do when they come together for a common cause. Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the internet will play an important role in that. One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it

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Obama: Challenges real, but 'they will be met' - CNN.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Barack Obama delivered a sobering assessment of where America stands and a hopeful vision of what it can become as he gave his inaugural address as the nation's 44th president.

President Barack Obama told a crowd at the National Mall that America's challenges are real.

 

"Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time," Obama told hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the National Mall in front of the Capitol.

"But know this, America -- they will be met," he said.

He also vowed to end the divisiveness and partisanship he said was rampant through Washington.

"We come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics," he said. 

In another allusion to Washington's shortcomings, Obama promised to hold accountable anyone who handles taxpayer dollars.

"And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account -- to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day -- because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government."

The new president, who hugged civil rights stalwart Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, on the inaugural stage Tuesday, also hailed the civil rights movement.

"This is the meaning of [America's] liberty and our creed -- why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father, less than 60 years ago, might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath," Obama said. 

The address touched on other themes, including a warning to terrorists.

"With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you," the president stated.

Obama: Challenges real, but 'they will be met' - CNN.com

Technorati Tags: President Barack Obama,Barack Obama,Presidential Inauguration,inauguration,speech,Inaugural address,video

Bob Woodward: 10 Take Aways From the Bush Years

There's actually a lot that President-elect Barack Obama can learn from the troubled presidency of George W. Bush. Over the past eight years, Bob Woodward interviewed President Bush for nearly 11 hours, spent hundreds of hours with his administration's key players and reviewed thousands of pages of documents and notes.

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The Nuclear Vault: The Iranian Nuclear Program, 1974-1978

Newly Declassified Documents Reveal Remarkable Continuity with Today's U.S.-Iran Nuclear Controversy

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 268

Edited by William Burr
For more information contact:
William Burr - 202/994-7032

President Gerald R. Ford and the Shah of Iran confer over a map during the Shah's May 1975 visit to Washington, D.C. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger sits in the background. (Photo courtesy of Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library)

Washington, D.C., January 13, 2009 - During the 1970s the Shah of Iran argued, like current Iranian leaders today, for a nuclear energy capability on the basis of national "rights," while the Ford and Carter administrations worried about nuclear weapons possibilities, according to newly declassified documents published today by the National Security Archive for the first time.  Uranium enrichment capability is now the major point of controversy between Tehran and the world community, while during the 1970s Washington's greatest concern was that Iran sought a capability to produce plutonium, but in both instances the implication was that a nuclear weapons option might not be far away.

 

The documents, obtained by the Archive through a mandatory review request, show that two U.S. presidents dealing with the Shah of Iran, Ford and Carter, put concerns over proliferation and the Shah's possible desire to build a nuclear bomb front and center when they approved negotiating positions for a deal to sell nuclear reactors to Iran.  While Iranian officials argued then, as they do today, that Iran had "rights" under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to develop nuclear technology, the U.S. government successfully sought an agreement that put nonproliferation controls over U.S.-supplied nuclear material.

 

The 1979 Iranian Revolution derailed the agreement, but the approach that the Ford and Carter administrations took shows significant continuity with contemporary U.S. and world policy, which holds that Iran must not use its technological capabilities to produce nuclear weapons. The documents contradict the 2005 claim by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that non-proliferation was not an issue in the 1970s negotiations; this was a "commercial transaction," Kissinger told The Washington Post.

 

The 1970s nuclear negotiations have other parallels with the current situation.  The Bush administration has raised questions about Iranian claims that its interest in a nuclear energy program are peaceful, while the declassified record indicates that U.S. policy-makers during the 1970s were also skeptical of, but ultimately willing to accept, the Shah's similar claims, as long as a nuclear agreement with Iran restricted its freedom of action in the nuclear field.  Significantly, the Bush administration also disparages Iran's assertion that it needs to develop alternative fuels in anticipation of the eventual decline in the country's extensive oil reserves.  But the Shah and his government made the exact same statements in the 1970s. 

 

The record also shows that the Shah's regime and the current Iranian government have made the same claims that their pursuit of nuclear technology was an inherent national entitlement.  No country "has a right to dictate nuclear policy to another," said the Shah's chief atomic energy official in 1977.

 

Among the disclosures in the new documents:

• In 1974 Department of State officials wrote that if the Shah's dictatorship collapsed and Iran became unstable, "domestic dissidents or foreign terrorists might easily be able to seize any special nuclear material stored in Iran for use in bombs."  Moreover, "an aggressive successor to the Shah might consider nuclear weapons the final item needed to establish Iran's complete military dominance of the region."

• According to national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, the Ford administration hoped that the Shah would commit himself to a "major act of nuclear statesmanship: namely, to set a world example by foregoing national reprocessing."

• When officials from Oak Ridge National Laboratory received briefings on the planned Esfehan Nuclear Technology Center (ENTEC), they concluded that the "bears watching" because "unusually large" size of the facility "makes it theoretically possible to produce weapons-grade material (plutonium)" and the ENTEC plans include a "large hot lab," the first step toward reprocessing.

• Questioning U.S. efforts to restrict Tehran's freedom of action, Iranian officials argued that "Iran should have full right to decide whether to reprocess" and the "right to effective control of the management and operation of … reprocessing facilities."

• By the summer of 1978, Tehran and Washington had overcome differences and agreed to a nuclear pact that met U.S. concerns and the Shah's interest in buying reactors, but the agreement closely restricted Iran's ability to produce plutonium or any other nuclear weapons fuel using U.S. supplied material without Washington's "agreement." 

Drawing on the new documents, National Security Archive senior analyst William Burr has written an article to give perspective to the nuclear talks: "A Brief History of U.S.-Iranian Nuclear Negotiations," now appearing on-line in the January-February 2009 issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.  While the documents available so far illuminate the negotiations, more needs to be learned from U.S. government files.  To a great extent the intelligence side of the story remains an unknown. So far, the Central Intelligence Agency has denied all documents gleaned from the Archive's mandatory review request, although they are presently under appeal.

The Nuclear Vault: The Iranian Nuclear Program, 1974-1978

Technorati Tags: nuclear weapons,the Iranian nuclear program,Iran,US government,history,Shah of Iran,President Gerald Ford,classified documents

UPDATE: There Will Be No White House 'Impeach Bush' Ornament

Apparently the ornament reported on earlier has been snubbed...(I knew it was too good to be true!)

This morning, the Washington Post reported that Seattle-based artist Deborah Lawrence would have her ornament hung on the White House Christmas tree. The ornament saluted Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) for attempting to impeach Bush. Sally McDonough, a spokeswoman for First Lady Laura Bush, reported this afternoon that the ornament would not be displayed:

"It's inappropriate and it's not being hung," she said. She said that when asked
about the issue yesterday, the White House tree decorations were not complete.
"We reviewed the ornament along with all the [other] ornaments, and Mrs. Bush
deemed it inappropriate for the holiday tree."

Lawrence responded, "Oh, dear. This doesn't really surprise me. But it's disappointing that I won't get to see it on the tree."
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Butler who saw racial history being remade

FOR more than three decades Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land.

Mr Allen trekked home every night, where his wife, Helene, kept him out of her kitchen.
At the White House, he worked closer to the dirty dishes than the large desk in the Oval Office. Mrs Allen didn't care; she just beamed with pride.
President Truman called him Gene, while President Ford liked to talk golf with him.
He saw eight presidential administrations come and go, often working six days a week. "I never missed a day of work," he says.
His is a story from the back pages of history. A figure in the tiniest of print; the man in the kitchen.
He was there while America's racial history was being remade: the Little Rock school crisis, the 1963 March on Washington, the cities burning, the civil rights bills, the assassinations.
When he started at the White House in 1952, he couldn't even use the public restrooms when he ventured back to his native Virginia. "We had never had anything," Mr Allen, 89, recalls of black America at the time. "I was always hoping things would get better."

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Powell tried to push Iran talks in 2003 and ‘couldn’t sell it at the White House.’

'couldn’t sell it at the White House'?...in other words, it didn't work for the propaganda machine...

Former Bush National Security Council official also says Rice likely lied about not seeing document

Former Bush National Security Council official Flynt Leverett, speaking on Wednesday at a forum held by the New America Foundation, told a crowd in a Senate office building that in 2003 then-Secretary of State Colin Powell received a “grand bargain” offer from Iran and was rebuffed by the White House, RAW STORY can reveal.

“I know as a fact from multiple sources this went all the way up to Secretary Powell,” Leverett said, citing multiple sources at the State Department and the NSC. “In [Secretary Powell’s] words, he ‘couldn’t sell it at the White House.’”

Source: The Raw Story Powell tried to push Iran talks in 2003 and was rebuffed, former official says

Technorati tags: Iran, Colin Powell, The White House, government, propaganda

They refuse to be identified?

If "they" refuse to be indentified then I refuse to believe a word "they" say. I learned a long time ago not to believe anything "they" say and pay attention to the facts. In turn, it has become increasingly obvious to me that "they" are very much the purveyours of the propaganda machine that constantly misleads the American people into wars. The propaganda machine is a terrorist act against the American people. The fear that it installs in us is worse than any foriegn nation can make us feel. This is our country terrorizing us ( YES, us the American People ) by lies and manipulations into yet another conflict? I don't know about you but, I refuse to let my rich uncle fiddle with my mind. Our government is akin to an abusive, incestuous uncle who always thinks he'll get away with it. Because he always does. It's time for us to stop him.

Bush and 3 of the geniuses behind Iraq soil America's Medal of Honor.

On Sunday, "under unusually secretive circumstances," three US officials attempted to show that Iran was aiding the insurgency in Iraq. That is to say, the three Defense and Intelligence officials would not allow their identities to be made public.

Source: AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: Bush's masked men make case for attacking Iran...

Technorati tags: opinion, political opinion, oped, politics, Iran, news

Impeach Cheney First

Vice President Cheney was a key architect of the illegal and disastrous invasion of Iraq. Behind the scenes, Cheney was in charge of assembling bogus "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction, both by "stovepiping" evidence from paid liars and by visiting the CIA to personally intimidate analysts who disputed those lies. In public, Cheney uttered the Administration's most egregious and bald-faced lies, especially about Iraq's non-existent nuclear program. When his nuclear lies were exposed by Ambassador Joe Wilson, Cheney led the criminal campaign to attack Joe Wilson, including "outing" Wilson's wife Valerie Plame to reporters. By "outing" Plame, Cheney destroyed Plame's covert network which was fighting the spread of weapons of mass destruction in Iran and elsewhere. Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, committed perjury and obstruction of justice to keep Cheney from being indicted for his role in outing Plame. Cheney adamantly refuses to take any responsibility for the war or for his crimes. To hold Cheney accountable - and to deter future Vice Presidents from committing similar crimes - Congress must begin impeachment proceedings against Vice President Cheney immediately.

In contempt of the majority of Americans who want Bush to be impeached, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leaders in Congress insist impeaching Bush is "off the table." Why? Because they are afraid of the vicious backlash from Bush supporters led by FOX.

If Democratic leaders are afraid to impeach Bush, then they should Impeach Cheney First - both because he is the "real" President (as John Nichols proves in his book Dick), and because he is the only politician in the U.S. who is more unpopular than Bush himself.

What are the grounds for impeaching Cheney?

1. Cheney Led the Campaign to Attack Joe Wilson, which led to the Outing of Covert CIA Operative Valerie Plame

The trial of Scooter Libby has produced overwhelming evidence that Vice President Cheney personally led the campaign to attack Joe Wilson through the media. This "get Wilson" campaign included telling numerous reporters that Wilson was sent to Niger by his wife Valerie Plame, a CIA operative. Cheney was told by the CIA that Valerie Plame worked as a covert agent in the CIA's Nonproliferation Division, which is the critical division of the CIA responsible for stopping the spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Cheney's efforts to expose Plame actually exposed her entire covert network, at tremendous cost to the CIA's secret war against terrorism. If Plame's work had been exposed by a double-agent in our government like Aldrich Ames or Robert Hanssen, that person would face prosecution for espionage and treason. The evidence of Cheney's role is more than enough to start an impeachment investigation.

2. There are many other reasons to impeach Dick Cheney.

The Scooter Libby trial also exposed the lead role of Vice President Cheney's office in manipulating pre-war intelligence to defraud Congress into authorizing the invasion of Iraq. Sworn testimony revealed that Cheney's office managed the evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, all of which proved to be lies. Cheney personally visited the CIA several times before the invasion to pressure the CIA to distort pre- war intelligence.

Dick Cheney also created the secret Energy Task Force which operated in defiance of open government laws. Cheney's lawyer, David Addington, advocated the "Unitary Executive Theory" which is used by the White House to defy laws duly enacted by Congress and thereby justify dictatorial action.

Source: Impeach Cheney First Democrats.com

Technorati tags: impeachment, Cheney, government

"How We Lost Our Fifth Amendment Rights"

The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution says that no person "shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law."

But when Congress passed the Military Commissions Act last summer, it gave the Bush Administration the right to detain anyone labeled an "unlawful enemy combatant" - without charge or trial - for as long as it pleases.
Such practices have already been used against American citizens - not on some faraway battlefield, but right here on our own soil.

What do your fellow Americans think? Watch our 90-second video and find out.

Amnesty International USA

Habeas Corpus

Provided By:

Amnesty International USA

Technorati tags: Amnesty International, human rights, fifth amendment rights, the Constitution

Neocons: "Invade Iran. Then everyone will see how smart we are."

This is just getting more pathetic by the hour.
When Grover Norquist, the wacko who compared raising the taxes of the wealthy to the morality behind the Holocaust, has abandoned the fraudulent ship of state isn't it time for it to look into the mirror (or, as I spouted recently in a fit of anger, "walk into the mirror")?
Vanity Fair, via ThinkProgress notes that Norquist is alarmed by the Iran talk:
"Everything the advocates of war said would happen hasn’t happened," says the president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, an influential conservative who backed the Iraq invasion. "And all the things the critics said would happen have happened. [The president’s neoconservative advisers] are effectively saying, 'Invade Iran. Then everyone will see how smart we are.' But after you’ve lost x number of times at the roulette wheel, do you double-down?"
Now, whether Norquist is just worried that a third disastrous war will require a tax increase or whether he's concerned about the nation is up for grabs, but...
TP goes on to note that plans are being drawn up for a strike against Iran (something I suspect is always going on), but they also mention that "Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi said, 'I’ve heard from sources at the Pentagon that their impression is that the White House has made a decision that war is going to happen.'"
The White House may have made its decision but, as Terry Gross pointed out to Grover Norquist in the same interview mentioned above, this nation is run by "we, the people." Just because the White House is set doesn't mean it's a done deal...
Joshua adds ...
Don't forget, Ev, that Norquist is actually in league with the Islamofascists, tied together by a grand plot to turn the White House into a hot-bed of radical Wahabbism. That, according to even nuttier wingnuts (hard to believe, I know) like Frank Gaffney and Michelle Malkin.

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