The Obfuscation Report

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.

In his address to the American Enterprise Institute , a conservative policy organization in Washington , Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that's considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were "legal" and produced information that "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people."

He quoted the Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair , as saying that the information gave U.S. officials a "deeper understanding of the al Qaida organization that was attacking this country."

In a statement April 21 , however, Blair said the information "was valuable in some instances" but that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

A top-secret 2004 CIA inspector general's investigation found no conclusive proof that information gained from aggressive interrogations helped thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to one of four top-secret Bush-era memos that the Justice Department released last month.

FBI Director Mueller Robert Muller told Vanity Fair magazine in December that he didn't think that the techniques disrupted any attacks.

— Cheney said that President Barack Obama's decision to release the four top-secret Bush administration memos on the interrogation techniques was "flatly contrary" to U.S. national security, and would help al Qaida train terrorists in how to resist U.S. interrogations.

However, Blair, who oversees all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, said in his statement that he recommended the release of the memos, "strongly supported" Obama's decision to prohibit using the controversial methods and that "we do not need these techniques to keep America safe."

— Cheney said that the Bush administration "moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks."

The former vice president didn't point out that Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahri , remain at large nearly eight years after 9-11 and that the Bush administration began diverting U.S. forces, intelligence assets, time and money to planning an invasion of Iraq before it finished the war in Afghanistan against al Qaida and the Taliban .

There are now 49,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan fighting to contain the bloodiest surge in Taliban violence since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention, and Islamic extremists also have launched their most concerted attack yet on neighboring, nuclear-armed Pakistan .

— Cheney denied that there was any connection between the Bush administration's interrogation policies and the abuse of detainee at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, which he blamed on "a few sadistic guards . . . in violation of American law, military regulations and simple decency."

However, a bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report in December traced the abuses at Abu Ghraib to the approval of the techniques by senior Bush administration officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld .

"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," said the report issued by Sens. Carl Levin , D- Mich. , and John McCain , R- Ariz. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality and authorized their use against detainees."

— Cheney said that "only detainees of the highest intelligence value" were subjected to the harsh interrogation techniques, and he cited Khalid Sheikh Mohammad , the alleged mastermind of the 9-11 attacks.

He didn't mention Abu Zubaydah, the first senior al Qaida operative to be captured after 9-11. Former FBI special agent Ali Soufan told a Senate subcommittee last week that his interrogation of Zubaydah using traditional methods elicited crucial information, including Mohammed's alleged role in 9-11.

The decision to use the harsh interrogation methods "was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al Qaida ," Soufan said. Former State Department official Philip Zelikow , who in 2005 was then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's point man in an internal fight to overhaul the Bush administration's detention policies, joined Soufan in his criticism.

— Cheney said that "the key to any strategy is accurate intelligence," but the Bush administration ignored warnings from experts in the CIA , the Defense Intelligence Agency , the State Department , the Department of Energy and other agencies, and used false or exaggerated intelligence supplied by Iraqi exile groups and others to help make its case for the 2003 invasion.

Cheney made no mention of al Qaida operative Ali Mohamed al Fakheri , who's known as Ibn Sheikh al Libi , whom the Bush administration secretly turned over to Egypt for interrogation in January 2002 . While allegedly being tortured by Egyptian authorities, Libi provided false information about Iraq's links with al Qaida , which the Bush administration used despite doubts expressed by the DIA.

A state-run Libyan newspaper said Libi committed suicide recently in a Libyan jail.

— Cheney accused Obama of "the selective release" of documents on Bush administration detainee policies, charging that Obama withheld records that Cheney claimed prove that information gained from the harsh interrogation methods prevented terrorist attacks.

"I've formally asked that (the information) be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained," Cheney said. "Last week, that request was formally rejected."

However, the decision to withhold the documents was announced by the CIA , which said that it was obliged to do so by a 2003 executive order issued by former President George W. Bush prohibiting the release of materials that are the subject of lawsuits.

— Cheney said that only "ruthless enemies of this country" were detained by U.S. operatives overseas and taken to secret U.S. prisons.

A 2008 McClatchy investigation, however, found that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees captured in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent citizens or low-level fighters of little intelligence value who were turned over to American officials for money or because of personal or political rivalries.

In addition, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Oct. 5, 2005 , that the Bush administration had admitted to her that it had mistakenly abducted a German citizen, Khaled Masri , from Macedonia in January 2004 .

Masri reportedly was flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan , where he allegedly was abused while being interrogated. He was released in May 2004 and dumped on a remote road in Albania .

In January 2007 , the German government issued arrest warrants for 13 alleged CIA operatives on charges of kidnapping Masri.

— Cheney slammed Obama's decision to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and criticized his effort to persuade other countries to accept some of the detainees.

The effort to shut down the facility, however, began during Bush's second term, promoted by Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates .

"One of the things that would help a lot is, in the discussions that we have with the states of which they (detainees) are nationals, if we could get some of those countries to take them back," Rice said in a Dec. 12, 2007 , interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. "So we need help in closing Guantanamo ."

— Cheney said that, in assessing the security environment after 9-11, the Bush team had to take into account "dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists."

Cheney didn't explicitly repeat the contention he made repeatedly in office: that Saddam cooperated with al Qaida , a linkage that U.S. intelligence officials and numerous official inquiries have rebutted repeatedly.

The late Iraqi dictator's association with terrorists vacillated and was mostly aimed at quashing opponents and critics at home and abroad.

The last State Department report on international terrorism to be released before 9-11 said that Saddam's regime "has not attempted an anti-Western terrorist attack since its failed plot to assassinate former President ( George H.W.) Bush in 1993 in Kuwait ."

A Pentagon study released last year, based on a review of 600,000 Iraqi documents captured after the U.S.-led invasion, concluded that while Saddam supported militant Palestinian groups — the late terrorist Abu Nidal found refuge in Baghdad , at least until Saddam had him killed — the Iraqi security services had no "direct operational link" with al Qaida .

Labels: liar

During the September 28 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, in response to Media Matters for America's documentation of his recent description of service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq as "phony soldiers," Rush Limbaugh claimed that he had not been talking "about the anti-war movement generally," but rather "about one soldier ... Jesse MacBeth." Limbaugh further asserted that "Media Matters had the transcript, but they selectively choose what they want to make their point." To support this claim, Limbaugh purported to air the "entire" segment in question from the September 26 broadcast of his show. In fact, the clip he then aired had been edited. Excised from the clip was a full 1 minute and 35 seconds of the 1 minute and 50 second discussion that occurred between Limbaugh's original "phony soldiers" comment and his reference to MacBeth, the full audio of which can be heard here .

Prior to airing the edited clip, Limbaugh said: "Here is, it runs about 3 minutes and 13 seconds, the entire transcript, in context, that led to this so-called controversy." After the clip ended, Limbaugh stated: "That was the transcript from yesterday's program, talking about one phony soldier. The truth for the left is fiction that serves their purpose, which is exactly the way the website Media Matters generated this story."

Labels: liar, Rush Limbaugh

'Pinhead' 16-Year-Old Schools O'Reilly



Bill O'Reilly is in his element when it comes to badgering the children of 9/11 victims, accusing kidnapping victims of enjoying their captivity, and anything involving loofahs or falafels. But put him in front of an affable and articulate 16-year-old, and he turns to mush.

Last week, O'Reilly imploded during an interview with Jesse Lange, a rising junior at Boulder High School in Colorado (video above). He was on the program to address O'Reilly's criticism of the Boulder High sex-education program. Lange tells Radar that he knew he was brought on for an opposing view, but his main concern before the show was how to address O'Reilly. "I wasn't sure whether or not I should call him Bill or Mr. O'Reilly," Lange tells Radar. "In the end, I decided to call him Bill, because if I called him Mr. O'Reilly, it would imply that I viewed him as some sort of expert or authority figure." Lange also says that in a brief pre-show interview, O'Reilly asked him not to quote the incendiary parts from The O'Reilly Factor For Kids. "Bill expressly asked me not to talk about it on the air," he says, but the book was the perfect counterpoint to O'Reilly's thinly constructed premise.

When Lange did quote from the book, the hotheaded host got so defensive that he labeled Lange a "pinhead" and cut him off when he tried to read the kiddie propaganda book's inflammatory passages. (Fox even took it upon themselves to remove O'Reilly's "pinhead" remark from subsequent airings of the segment.)

As for what it's like being the kid who put a hurting on Bill O'Reilly, Lange says he is getting "a couple hundred Facebook requests a day" and letters from college professors, "just asking me to consider their schools when I apply to college." (He's also single, ladies.) As for any fallout with O'Reilly, Lange says Bill isn't so tough when he's not on the air, "He didn't say anything to me when the segment ended ... he just had his producers cut off my feed."

Labels: Bill O'Reilly, Dildo O'Reilly, Jackass, liar, Shouldn't Be On Television

Dems seek no-confidence vote on Gonzales

WASHINGTON - Two Senate Democrats said Thursday they will seek a no-confidence vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales over accusations that he carried out President Bush's political agenda at the expense of the Justice Department's independence.

Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California, who have led the investigation into the conduct of White House officials and Gonzales, said the attorney general has become too weakened to run the department.

"It seems the only person who has confidence in the attorney general is President Bush," Schumer told reporters. "The president long ago should have asked the attorney general to step down."

"I think the time has come for the Senate to express its will," Feinstein said. "We lack confidence in the attorney general."

Schumer said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid supports the resolution and would try to bring it to a floor vote next week. Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, too, was expected to sign on.

"I have absolutely no confidence in the attorney general or his leadership," Leahy, D-Vt, said earlier in the day.

Schumer predicted the resolution, which has yet to be finalized, would win support from at least the 60 senators required to beat a filibuster.

Five Republican senators have called outright for Gonzales' resignation, including Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who added his voice Thursday. Several other Republicans have suggested that Gonzales consider stepping down.

One of the latter group, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, has left no doubt that he thinks Gonzales should leave. But he told The Associated Press that he wanted to see Schumer's resolution before saying he would vote for it.

The announcement is the latest in a series of blows suffered by Gonzales this week, including new criticism from Republicans and the prediction of one GOP veteran that the investigation into the firings of federal prosecutors would end with the attorney general's resignation.

Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said earlier Thursday that the Justice Department can't properly protect the nation from terrorism or oversee Bush's no-warrant eavesdropping program with Gonzales at the helm.

"I have a sense that when we finish our investigation, we may have the conclusion of the tenure of the attorney general," Specter said during a committee hearing. "I think when our investigation is concluded, it'll be clear even to the attorney general and the president that we're looking at a dysfunctional department which is vital to the national welfare."

His comment echoed new criticism of Gonzales this week. Former deputy attorney general James Comey testified that Gonzales tried to get his predecessor as attorney general, John Ashcroft, to approve Bush's eavesdropping program as Ashcroft lay in intensive care.

Asked twice during a news conference Thursday if he personally ordered Gonzales and then-White House chief of staff Andrew Card to Ashcroft's hospital room, Bush refused to answer.

"There's a lot of speculation about what happened and what didn't happen. I'm not going to talk about it," Bush said.

The tale inspired Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., to become the fourth Republican senator to call for Gonzales' resignation. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., joined in the criticism.

"When you have to spend more time up here on Capitol Hill instead of running the Justice Department, maybe you ought to think about it," Roberts told The Associated Press.

Support for Gonzales fading

Bush has stood by his longtime friend and adviser, the key to Gonzales' hold on his job.

But just when some predicted that Gonzales had survived the furors over the firings, Comey's testimony helped broaden the Democrat-led probe into whether the attorney general politicized the Justice department at the White House's behest.

Gonzales has said only eight U.S. attorneys were targeted for dismissal. But the Justice Department, over nearly two years, listed as many as 26 prosecutors after concerns were raised about their performances, a senior government official familiar with the process said Thursday.

The Justice Department said it fully supports all of its current U.S. attorneys. The list of 26 names was first reported Thursday by The Washington Post.

More hearings set for next week

Many of the names on various and changing lists of prosecutors under scrutiny "clearly did not represent the final actions or views of the department's leadership or the attorney general," said Justice spokesman Dean Boyd. He said the lists "reflect Kyle Sampson's thoughts for discussion during the consultation process."

Sampson, Gonzales' former chief of staff, oversaw the review that drove the firings. He resigned in March as a result of the department's botched handling of the dismissals.

The developments came as Democrats sought more testimony from current and former Justice Department officials. House Democrats announced that Gonzales' former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, would testify next week under a grant of immunity.

At issue is whether the department, at the White House's urging, tried to cause problems for Democrats by facilitating voter fraud cases and others involving corruption.

Comey's testimony this week further weakened Gonzales among Republicans as well as Democrats.

Democrats said his testimony appeared to contradict Gonzales' account of the no-warrant eavesdropping program in February 2006, when he told two congressional panels that there had "not been any serious disagreement about the program."

Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman said Gonzales' testimony "was and remains accurate."

Joining Hagel in demanding Gonzales' resignation are GOP Sens. John Sununu of New Hampshire, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John McCain of Arizona, who is a presidential candidate. House Republican Conference Chair Adam Putman of Florida also has called for a new attorney general.

Labels: Alberto Gonzales, liar

The vice president is still trying to convince us that Saddam Hussein conspired with Al Qaeda. By Carl Levin

CARL LEVIN, a Democratic senator from Michigan, is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

April 12, 2007

TO PARAPHRASE President Reagan, there he goes again.

On Rush Limbaugh's radio program last week, Vice President Dick Cheney spoke about Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi and stated: "He went to Baghdad. He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the Al Qaeda operations inside Iraq…. This is Al Qaeda operating in Iraq and, as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq."

It is incredible that more than four years after the invasion, the vice president is still trying to convince the public that Saddam Hussein's regime was connected to Al Qaeda and that Zarqawi's presence in Iraq was evidence of a connection.

While the vice president doesn't say directly that there was a tie between the two, his clear purpose is to blur the line between Al Qaeda — the perpetrator of the 9/11 attacks — and the Iraqi dictator in order to justify the war in Iraq.

The problem is, that's simply not supported by the facts or by our intelligence community — and everyone except the vice president acknowledges it. In September, for example, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a bipartisan report that Hussein was "distrustful of Al Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from Al Qaeda to provide material or operational support." And the CIA reported a year earlier, in October 2005, that the Iraqi regime "did not have a relationship, harbor or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates." As the Intelligence Committee report noted, the Iraqi intelligence service was actually trying to capture Zarqawi, who was in Baghdad under an alias. Is the vice president willfully ignoring what the rest of the government has concluded? Or does he have access to information he hasn't shared with us? If so, he should produce it.

The vice president has a clear, documented pattern of overstating and misstating information with regard to Iraq. He also, for instance, continued to claim that 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta may have met with an Iraqi agent in Prague — long after the intelligence community believed otherwise. Again, his obvious purpose is to link Hussein's regime with Sept. 11, even though the rest of the world has concluded that no such link exists.

The vice president has made so many outlandish statements that the country barely raised an eyebrow at his false statement last week. The public has stopped believing the words of a man who promised, before we invaded Iraq, that we would be "greeted as liberators" and reassured us nearly two years ago that the insurgency was in its "last throes."

But his comments continue to erode our credibility with the international community, which has already been severely damaged by our rush to war with Iraq with little international support. If, in the months ahead, we face a crisis over Iran's weapons programs and need to rally the international community, we may find that the world has little interest in trusting an administration that misstates facts.

By all accounts, Dick Cheney is one of the most powerful vice presidents in our history, if you define power as influence over policy. We need to ask ourselves: What does it mean for our country when the vice president's words lack credibility, but he still wields great power?

Labels: Dick Cheney, Jackass, liar, turd

Memo to Bill O'Reilly: More immigrants equals less crime
Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera got into a screaming match about an illegal alien accused of manslaughter. Is there a link between illegal aliens and crime?

By Alex Koppelman

Apr. 10, 2007 | It was the video that burned up the Internet on Friday -- Fox News hosts Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera, normally amicable foes, if not allies, screaming at each other on the set of "The O'Reilly Factor" with such ferocity they seemed likely to come to blows. At issue was the case of Alfredo Ramos, an illegal immigrant who allegedly killed two teen girls while driving drunk in Virginia Beach, Va. O'Reilly argued that the two teens would not have been killed had Ramos been deported, while Rivera contended that O'Reilly was "obscuring a tragedy to score a cheap political point." Rivera also claimed that "illegal aliens commit crimes at a lower rate than citizens do."

On Monday, Salon spoke with professor Robert J. Sampson, chairman of the sociology department at Harvard University and most prominent member of a new school of academics who say that, contrary to widespread public belief, immigrants may actually be the secret to decreasing crime in the U.S. Sampson et al. believe their research shows immigrants are less likely to commit crime than native-born Americans, and that immigration itself may actually play a role in lowering the overall crime rate. Salon asked Sampson to rate O'Reilly and Rivera as debaters, and to explain what his research says about immigrants and Americans' perceptions of them.

What did you think of Bill O'Reilly's arguments?

Well, I wasn't terribly surprised -- I think it's emblematic of a larger way in which these incidents are often perceived, and I think he was thrown off by being confronted with what I thought was a pretty logical argument on Rivera's part ... So basically the way I would interpret it is as follows: [O'Reilly] was interpreting this particular incident, which, of course, is horrible, only from the lens of thinking about the person as an illegal immigrant, rather than actually confronting the data, which show that in fact immigrants, illegal aliens, are disproportionately less likely to be involved in many acts of deviance, crime, drunk driving, any number of things that sort of imperil our well-being. And so what he was doing was starting with the category of the person -- illegal -- and inferring from that things that don't follow.

In my opinion, this is sort of typical ... unfortunately, for many Americans it seems that the old adage has basically been turned around. Believing is seeing. And I think in this case O'Reilly has a particular perception and belief [about a] category [of person], which then influenced the way he saw and interpreted this particular event, and Rivera called him on it, and he got upset, obviously.

But on some fundamental level, doesn't O'Reilly have a point -- this wouldn't have happened had Alfredo Ramos not been living in this country, right?

That's true. And you can follow that logic out for a lot of different things; when I teach my crime classes, I often say, "Well, we can basically eliminate crime, right? If we really wanted to, we could abort all male babies. That would reduce the crime rate to pretty much zero in the future."

So yes, you can think of counterfactuals -- if a category of persons were not actually here, then yes, the crime would not have been committed. But let's extend that logic: If the majority of people who are in the category of producing most drunk-driving homicides or deaths were not in the country then by definition the rate of drunk-driving deaths would be reduced. So who is that? Well, they're young people, disproportionately male, disproportionately white, mainly suburban ... The perception and the stereotype is what's driving the argument, not the data.

What have you found in your research about the relation of immigration to the crime rate?

In our research, which is based on over 10 years of data collection and analysis of a long-term study in Chicago, our findings tend to be quite similar to other research showing that first-generation immigrants have lower rates of crime, particularly violent crime. In particular, first-generation immigrants, that is, people born outside the country, are much less likely to commit violence, in our data about 45 percent less likely than third-generation immigrants. In turn, second-generation immigrants are about a quarter less likely to commit crime than third-generation.

So, in other words, native Americans, those born here and whose parents are born here, are the most violent and the most criminal. And that's not just our data, this is other data. Immigrants are less likely to be imprisoned relative to their numbers; Latinos, in particular, even though they enter the country being disproportionately poor, which would signal, based on everything else we know, that they would have a high risk for all sorts of negative outcomes, including [poor] health, low-birth-weight babies, incarceration, violence and so forth, [are less likely to be imprisoned]. They are doing rather well in many dimensions, and this has led to what is known in the literature as "the Latino paradox." And the paradox is just that -- even though they are disproportionately poor and have all kinds of risk factors, they are doing better in many dimensions. So that particular finding in our data I think is consistent.

Then one can look at all kinds of other data. I would point to two broad trends. One, if you look at the crime rate or the violence rate, or in particular, one which we can measure very well in the United States, let's take homicide, where in almost all cases there's a body, so we know how to measure it pretty well. Immigration was exploding, literally, in the United States, going up by the millions -- no one disputes this -- in the '90s. I've produced charts showing that as that was going up, violence was going down at a very rapid rate. In fact, the two lines are pretty much inverse to each other. Now, that doesn't prove causation, but it certainly shows that the common perception that as immigration goes up that crime will also go up is just not true.

And then if you look at the cities that are by all accounts immigrant inflows, or border cities in particular, such as El Paso [Texas] or San Diego, Tucson [Ariz.] or other cities, they are not our leaders in violence by any means. In fact, those cities have done quite well. It typically, historically, continues to be cities with high proportions of native Americans that have the high homicide rates, whether it be Baltimore, Detroit, Atlanta or Washington, D.C.

Do the trends for immigrants hold true for illegal aliens in particular? Was Geraldo Rivera right about illegal aliens committing less crime?

It's hard to break out that precise figure, because of the uncertainty. First of all, we're not even allowed, because there are certain restrictions placed on our research, to ask about someone's immigration status.

But ... it certainly would track in our data, in most data. If you think about it, the national trend, an over 50 percent increase in immigration flow over the last 10 or more years, has also been highly correlated with the influx of illegals, so you're finding an influx in both and so the pattern would be similar, and that's my read of the data. Similarly, in Chicago, the neighborhoods we studied that were immigrant enclaves, they were also where you found illegal immigrants ... So to the extent that the patterns hold that link immigration to lower crime, then I think it would also hold for illegal immigrants.

What is it about immigrants, do you think, that makes them less likely to commit crime?

There are several things that I would point to. One is just a simple selection factor, as we would call it in the academic literature. What that means is that the pool of people that are coming into the country are selected on certain characteristics, such as wanting to get ahead in the United States, and that's associated with working hard, keeping out of trouble, keeping their heads down. Then it's not terribly surprising, if you think about it, that people who are coming here to better their lives would not necessarily be picking up and doing crime right away. It's a selection factor that makes a lot of sense.

And this is not just from Mexico, but if you're thinking about immigration from around the world. That's another factor, I think, that in any story about immigration has to be emphasized, that this is now something that is going on in all ethnic groups.

Secondly, and related to it, there's less incentive to commit crime, and greater sanctions, because of course one can be deported, and one doesn't want to draw attention to oneself.

Third, I think there's a family structure relationship here, in that the immigrants, at least in our data, are much more likely to be in intact families. In Chicago, for example, the Mexican-Americans are more likely to be married even than whites, and family structure is related to the risk of certain outcomes among offspring in our data and [that of other researchers]. So the fact that there are more intact families is, I think, part of the explanation, which of course also points out an irony in the anti-immigrant onslaught from the far right. David Brooks has written about this. If one views family intactness as "family values," then one would be actually in favor of more immigration. That's an interesting irony there.

Fourth ... increasing immigration has been associated with changes in cities in particular. We've seen this rebuilding and economic boom in part, I believe, due to immigration. That is something that would lead to lower crime.

And lastly, which is a little bit more speculative on my part, but I think it's an interesting hypothesis to consider, is that a lot of violence in American cities is associated with subcultures of honor. The notion [is] that a lot of homicides, in particular, derive from disputes over honor and a sense of perceived insult. And that sort of honor system or cultural system, if it exists, then to the extent that is diluted by immigration, then one would expect lower crime rates. At the very least, you would think that immigrants are less exposed to that, because of the tendency to settle in immigrant enclave areas. And in fact another irony in all of this is that there are many scholars who attribute the subculture of violence and honor of violence in American society to Scottish-Irish dueling culture that was brought over centuries ago. Now, that's also sort of a speculative hypothesis, but there are a lot of people who buy into it, the notion that the culture of violence is brought over by the white immigrants, the Scots-Irish, who settled in the South, South Carolina and other areas, and then diffused into the inner city.

Have you looked back at previous immigrant groups and seen whether they had similar patterns in terms of crime?

Yeah, the data are pretty consistent with this, and if you look back at the criminological literature, even going way back, you can see this as well, where first-generation kids were doing better.

So again, it's not a new finding, and that's why I think that the question really as to why this is generating the kinds of responses that you see, and that this video kind of captures, the fury, the question really is why the fury?

I've argued, and some of our data on another topic, really, but it bears on this, shows that there are these deep perceptions that are linked not just to immigrant groups but also to racial minority groups in the United States. [These perceptions] are tenacious, and they hold regardless of what the data actually tell us. So, for example, we've done studies where we've videotaped very slowly, going down the street, each side of the block, videotaping the amount of disorder -- for example, the number of people drinking in the street, or the number of broken windows, graffiti, vacant houses and so forth -- and also measured the crime rate in the community, and then asked people about their perceptions of the exact same thing that we're looking at, and we can objectively measure through videotapes.

What we find is huge, huge effects of the racial and immigrant composition of the population and what people perceive to be a problem. The way it works is that the more there is a concentration of blacks, Latinos and immigrants, the more people perceive disorder to be a problem. That's pretty interesting, and a bit sad.

Furthermore, we found that [perception] to be true [among] all groups. This is not a story about, "Oh, whites are the bad guys who perceive these groups to be linked to disorder." All groups, actually -- Latinos and blacks and whites, Asians -- were all exposed to the cultural stereotypes in the society, and so what's happening, I think, is that there's this implicit and deep-rooted sense [among all groups] that low-income and immigrant groups are inevitably associated with certain characteristics.

What's the reaction been to your research?

It's kind of been all over the map. I've gotten gratifying support and confirmation in the sense of scientific data from other studies, and I've been able to give a number of talks and I think present the data in a way that has hopefully shed some light on the beliefs in the country that have, I think, gone some ways toward counteracting some of the stereotypes. And of course I've gotten lots of angry diatribes as well from people who are angry, don't believe the data, think that it's untrue, that I have some kind of sinister agenda. I've gotten vile e-mails, hate mails, threats, that kind of stuff as well. So that's not been pleasant, of course.

Is it that they just don't want to believe that what you're saying could be true?

I think that's the biggest part of it. There's almost a sense of outrage because it's obviously not true, and therefore how could I say it? That's the feeling among some.

I'm talking about serious reactions. I've gotten reactions on the order of somebody who wrote something like, "You need to pass your research out so Mexicans can wipe their asses in the streets where they're shitting." That kind of stuff, you can't take that seriously.

Labels: Bill O'Reilly, Jackass, liar, Moron

Taking One for the Team, When He Could Remember
By Dana Milbank
Friday, March 30, 2007; A02

Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, was in his fourth hour testifying yesterday about the firing of federal prosecutors when Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy cut him off.

"We've just received word that the Republicans have objected, under the Senate rules, to this meeting continuing," Leahy (D-Vt.) announced before angrily bringing down the gavel.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), in the middle of questioning Sampson, was puzzled. "Does it apply to a Republican, too?" he inquired.

It turned out that nobody had really objected -- Republicans blamed a procedural mistake in their cloakroom for the false alarm -- and order in the committee was restored. But not before Democrats turned the gaffe into a PR bonanza.

"The Republicans are the ones that don't want to have the hearing," Leahy inveighed. "What bothers me is if nobody has anything to hide, why not have these hearings, why not have them in the open?" In the senatorial equivalent of the "we shall fight on the beaches" speech, he continued: "We will have the hearings if we have to have them in the evenings or on weekends or during recess!"

In the confusion, Sampson's lawyer Brad Berenson noticed that the witness chair was empty. "Where's Kyle?" he asked reporters.

Republicans had, inadvertently, produced a fitting sequel to the prosecutor imbroglio. The Bush administration's mishandling of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys and the misinformation its Justice Department sent Congress turned an embarrassing story into a full scandal. Yesterday, the Senate Republicans' procedural mishap turned a modestly embarrassing hearing into a spectacle.

That's too bad for the GOP, because Sampson seemed content to fall on his sword rather than naming names when he was questioned about the prosecutor mess. Only the red felt on the witness table concealed the blood. "I could have and should have helped to prevent this," Sampson offered. "I let the attorney general and the department down. . . . I failed to organize a more effective response. . . . It was a failure on my part. . . . I will hold myself responsible. . . . I wish we could do it all over again."

The witness fessed up to an expanding list of sins. He admitted that the Justice Department was trying to circumvent the Senate confirmation process. He confessed that he proposed firing Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor in the Valerie Plame leak case. "I regretted it," he explained. "I knew that it was the wrong thing to do."

But the self-sacrificing witness still managed -- inadvertently, perhaps -- to implicate Gonzales and Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove. Sampson, who resigned from the Justice Department earlier this month, admitted that Gonzales "had received a complaint from Karl Rove about U.S. attorneys in three jurisdictions." Asked about the accuracy of Gonzales's claim of non-involvement, Sampson confessed: "I don't think it's entirely accurate what he said."

Walking down the center aisle with no fewer than six lawyers, some carrying heavy briefcases, the witness made a grand entrance. His hair was trim and gelled, his frameless octagonal glasses polished clean. Described in news accounts as a young version of Rove, Sampson was indeed a bit pudgy and jowly, and he spoke in a nerdy voice that sounded strange coming from a man whose combative e-mails had been released by the Justice Department in recent weeks. His tie was a bright yellow -- the same color chosen by Sen. Chuck Schumer, who moved quickly to take control of the proceedings.

The New York Democrat warned there would be "lengthy" questioning, and he made good on his threat. Seven hours into the hearing, Schumer -- ignoring notes from Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) pleading with him to cease and desist -- announced: "We're on Round Four here."

"The purpose is, as they said in 'Dragnet,' just the facts, ma'am," Schumer advised the witness. Sampson, however, was a little fuzzy.

"I can't pretend to know or remember every fact that may be of relevance," he warned at the start -- and he wasn't kidding. He used the phrase "I don't remember" a memorable 122 times.

It may have been a tactical effort to limit his risk of perjury, but Sampson displayed the recall of a man who recently fell off a ladder.

"Since the 2004 election, did you speak with the president about replacing U.S. attorneys?" Leahy asked.

"I don't ever remember speaking to the president after the 2004 election," he said. (He later remembered that he had.) "Did you have further communications with the White House regarding the plan to regard and replace several U.S. attorneys?"

"I don't remember specifically."

"I wish you did remember," Leahy finally said. "I would hope that you would search your memory as we go along."

Sampson searched. He came up empty.

After Schumer elicited three consecutive I-don't-remembers, John Cornyn (R-Tex.) objected to the questioning style.

Leahy overruled him. "We're trying to find what in heaven's name he does remember," the chairman said.

Schumer persisted, eventually asking the witness a question about Rove's role. "I don't remember," Sampson said. "I don't remember anything like that. I don't think so. I don't remember. I don't remember."

Labels: Brain Dead, Kyle Sampson, liar

In today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, former chief of staff to Atttorney General Alberto Gonzales confirmed that Gonzales was involved in the prosecutor purge.

Gonzales, 3/12/07:

“I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on.”

Sampson, 3/29/07:

“I don’t think the attorney general’s statement that he was not involved in any discussions of U.S. attorney removals was accurate.”

UPDATE: According to E&P, Sampson said Gonzales was involved in “at least five” discussions about the U.S. attorney firings. (via Atrios)

Labels: Alberto Gonzales, liar

WP: Firings had genesis in White House

The White House suggested two years ago that the Justice Department fire all 93 U.S. attorneys, a proposal that eventually resulted in the dismissals of eight prosecutors last year, according to e-mails and internal documents that the administration will provide to Congress today.

The dismissals took place after President Bush told Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that he had received complaints that some prosecutors had not energetically pursued voter-fraud investigations, according to White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

Gonzales approved the idea of firing a smaller group of U.S. attorneys shortly after taking office in February 2005. The Gonzales aide in charge of the dismissals — his chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson — resigned yesterday, officials said, after acknowledging that he did not tell Justice officials about the extent of his communications with the White House, leading them to provide incomplete information to Congress.

Lawmakers requested the documents as part of an investigation into whether the firings were politically motivated. While it is unclear whether the documents will answer Congress's questions, they show that the White House and other administration officials were more closely involved in the dismissals, and at a much earlier date, than they have previously acknowledged.

Seven U.S. attorneys were fired on Dec. 7, and another was fired months earlier, with little explanation from the Justice Department. Several former prosecutors have since alleged intimidation, including improper telephone calls from GOP lawmakers or their aides, and have alleged threats of retaliation by a Justice Department official.

Administration officials have repeatedly portrayed the firings as a routine personnel matter, designed primarily to rid the department of a handful of poor performers.

But the documents and interviews indicate that the idea for the firings originated at least two years ago, when then-White House counsel Harriet E. Miers suggested to Sampson in February 2005 that all prosecutors be dismissed and replaced. Miers resigned this January.

Gonzales immediately rejected that idea as impractical and disruptive, Justice officials said, but over the next 22 months Sampson orchestrated more limited dismissals.

‘Mitigating the shock’
"I recommend that the Department of Justice and the Office of the Counsel to the President work together to seek the replacement of a limited number of U.S. Attorneys," Sampson wrote to Miers in January 2006. A "limited number of U.S. attorneys could be targeted for removal and replacement, mitigating the shock to the system that would result from an across the board firing."

Administration officials say they are braced for a new round of criticism today from lawmakers who may feel misled by testimony in recent weeks from Gonzales, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty and William E. Moschella, principal associate deputy attorney general. Several Democrats, including Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), have asked for Gonzales's resignation in recent days.

Perino said that "it doesn't appear the president was told about a list nor shown a list" of U.S. attorneys at any point in the discussions. She said White House political adviser Karl Rove had an early conversation with Miers about the idea of firing all chief prosecutors and did not think it was wise.

Bush mentioned complaints about voter-fraud investigations to Gonzales in a conversation in October 2006, Perino said. Gonzales does not recall the conversation, Justice Department officials said.

Bush "believes informally he may have mentioned it to the AG during the meeting discussing other matters," Perino said. "White House officials including the president did not direct DOJ to take any specific action with regards to any specific U.S. attorney."

Rove and other White House officials also forwarded complaints that U.S. attorneys were not doing enough to prosecute voter fraud.

Since the 2000 election ended in dispute in Florida, Republicans at the national and local levels have repeatedly raised concerns about possible voter fraud, alleging that convicted felons and other ineligible voters have been permitted to cast ballots to the benefit of Democrats.

The documents show that Sampson sent an e-mail to Miers in March 2005 ranking all 93 U.S. attorneys. Strong performers "exhibited loyalty" to the administration; low performers were "weak U.S. attorneys who have been ineffectual managers and prosecutors, chafed against Administration initiatives, etc." A third group merited no opinion.

At least a dozen prosecutors were on a "target list" to be fired at one time or another, the e-mails show.

The e-mails also show that Rove was interested in the appointment of a former colleague, Tim Griffin, as an Arkansas prosecutor. Sampson wrote in one e-mail that "getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc."

Only three of the fired given low ratings
Only three of those eventually fired were given low rankings: Margaret Chiara in Grand Rapids, Mich., Bud Cummins in Little Rock and Carol S. Lam in San Diego. Two were given strong evaluations: David C. Iglesias in Albuquerque, who has alleged political interference from GOP lawmakers, and Kevin V. Ryan in San Francisco, whose firing has generated few complaints because of widespread management and morale problems in his office.

Ten months later, in January 2006, Sampson sent to the White House the first list of seven potential candidates for dismissal, including four who were dismissed at year's end: Chiara, Cummins, Lam and Ryan. The list also recommended Griffin and other replacements, most of whom were edited from the documents viewed by The Post.

In September, Sampson produced another list of firing candidates, telling the White House that Cummins was "in the process of being pushed out" and providing the names of eight others whom "we should consider pushing out." Five of the candidates on that list were fired in December; three others were spared.

Iglesias, the New Mexico prosecutor, was not on the list in September. Justice officials said Sampson added Iglesias in October, based in part on complaints from Sen. Pete V. Domenici and other New Mexico Republicans that he was not prosecuting enough voter-fraud cases.

Sampson also strongly urged bypassing Congress in naming replacements, using a little-known power slipped into the renewal of the USA Patriot Act in March 2006 that allows the attorney general to name interim replacements without Senate confirmation.

"I am only in favor of executing on a plan to push some USAs out if we really are ready and willing to put in the time necessary to select candidates and get them appointed," Sampson wrote in a Sept. 17, 2006, memo to Miers. "It will be counterproductive to DOJ operations if we push USAs out and then don't have replacements ready to roll immediately.

"I strongly recommend that as a matter of administration, we utilize the new statutory provisions that authorize the AG to make USA appointments." By avoiding Senate confirmation, Sampson added, "we can give far less deference to home state senators and thereby get 1.) our preferred person appointed and 2.) do it far faster and more efficiently at less political costs to the White House."

Miers thanked Sampson for the idea. "Kyle thanks for this. I have not forgotten I need to follow up on the info. But things have been crazy," she wrote.

One e-mail from Miers's deputy, William Kelley, on the day of the Dec. 7 firings said Domenici's chief of staff "is happy as a clam" about Iglesias. Sampson wrote in an e-mail a week later: "Domenici is going to send over names tomorrow (not even waiting for Iglesias's body to cool)."

Talking about bypassing Democratic senators
The documents also provide new details about the case of Griffin, a former Rove aide and Republican National Committee researcher who was named interim U.S. attorney in Little Rock in December.

E-mails show that Justice officials discussed bypassing the two Democratic senators in Arkansas, who normally would have had input into the appointment, as early as last August. By mid-December, Sampson was suggesting that Gonzales exercise his newfound appointment authority to put Griffin in place until the end of Bush's term.

"There is some risk that we'll lose the authority, but if we don't ever exercise it then what's the point of having it?" Sampson wrote to a White House aide. "(I'm not 100 percent sure that Tim was the guy on which to test drive this authority, but know that getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc.)."

Labels: Alberto Gonzales, liar, lies, lying

New York Times Editorial

Americans often suspect that their political leaders are arrogant and out of touch. But even then it is nearly impossible to fathom what self-delusion could have convinced Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico that he had a right to call a federal prosecutor at home and question him about a politically sensitive investigation.

That disturbing tale is one of several revealed this week in Congressional hearings called to look into the firing of eight United States attorneys. The hearings left little doubt that the Bush administration had all eight — an unprecedented number — ousted for political reasons. But it points to even wider abuse; prosecutors suggest that three Republican members of Congress may have tried to pressure the attorneys into doing their political bidding.

It already seemed clear that the Bush administration’s purge had trampled on prosecutorial independence. Now Congress and the Justice Department need to investigate possible ethics violations, and perhaps illegality. Two of the fired prosecutors testified that they had been dismissed after resisting what they suspected were importunings to use their offices to help Republicans win elections. A third described what may have been a threat of retaliation if he talked publicly about his firing.

David Iglesias, who was removed as the United States attorney in Albuquerque, said that he was first contacted before last fall’s election by Representative Heather Wilson, Republican of New Mexico. Ms. Wilson, who was in a tough re-election fight, asked about sealed indictments — criminal charges that are not public.

Two weeks later, he said, he got a call from Senator Pete Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, asking whether he intended to indict Democrats before the election in a high-profile corruption case. When Mr. Iglesias said no, he said, Mr. Domenici replied that he was very sorry to hear it, and the line went dead. Mr. Iglesias said he’d felt “sick.” Within six weeks, he was fired. Ms. Wilson and Mr. Domenici both deny that they had tried to exert pressure.

John McKay of Seattle testified that the chief of staff for Representative Doc Hastings, Republican of Washington, called to ask whether he intended to investigate the 2004 governor’s race, which a Democrat won after two recounts. Mr. McKay says that when he went to the White House later to discuss a possible judicial nomination (which he did not get), he was told of concerns about how he’d handled the election. H. E. Cummins, a fired prosecutor from Arkansas, said that a Justice Department official, in what appeared to be a warning, said that if he kept talking about his firing, the department would release negative information about him.

Congress must keep demanding answers. It must find out who decided to fire these prosecutors and why, and who may have authorized putting pressure on Mr. Cummins. And it must look into whether Senator Domenici and Representatives Wilson and Hastings violated ethics rules that forbid this sort of interference. We hope the House committee will not be deterred by the fact that Mr. Hastings is its ranking Republican. The Justice Department also needs to open its own investigation. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s claim that these prosecutors were fired for poor performance was always difficult to believe. Now it’s impossible.

Labels: Alberto Gonzales, Bush Administration, corrupt, Gonzales Eight, liar, purge, Senator Pete Domenici