Friday, October 28, 2005

Confused about the CIA leak case?


By Linda Feldmann | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

For almost two years, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has led an investigation to determine whether anyone acted illegally when the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame was made public. After hearing testimony from some of Washington's most powerful figures, a grand jury is expected to issue indictments as soon as Friday. The Monitor's White House correspondent, Linda Feldmann, answers key questions about the case.

Q. How did this affair begin?

At its heart lie questions about the Bush administration's case for war against Iraq. On Jan. 28, 2003, in his State of the Union address, President Bush included these 16 words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The implication was that Iraq was developing a nuclear-weapons program. But US intelligence officials had by then - and have since - expressed doubts about that claim. In July 2003, Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador to two African countries and Iraq, wrote an op-ed in The New York Times disputing Mr. Bush's statement.

The CIA, he wrote, sent him to Niger in 2002 to determine if Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Africa. He concluded no. One week after Mr. Wilson's op-ed, syndicated columnist Robert Novak reported that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked as "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."

At issue is whether Mr. Novak's government sources blew her cover as a CIA agent, in violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.

That law aims to protect the identities of "certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources." Mr. Wilson has claimed that White House officials leaked his wife's CIA role to the press as revenge for his criticism of the president's case against Iraq. Other observers say the sources were merely steering journalists away from Wilson's allegations.

Q. Why have two senior White House officials - Bush's top adviser, Karl Rove, and Vice Presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby - faced such intense scrutiny?

In grand jury testimony, several journalists revealed that one or both men had spoken to them about Wilson's wife and her employment.

Toward the end of the investigation, it has become clear that Mr. Fitzgerald has focused more on possible charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements, rather than on laws prohibiting public revelation of a CIA official's undercover status. Mr. Rove testified four times and Mr. Libby twice.

Q. How wide was the investigation?

As special prosecutor, Fitzgerald was tasked with investigating the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee's identity. The Department of Justice later clarified that he had authority to investigate any crimes committed in the course of the inquiry, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses.

In all, some three dozen people either appeared before the grand jury or were interviewed by the FBI or Fitzgerald. The special prosecutor interviewed both Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney last year, but not under oath.

Key individuals who testified late in the process include two aides to Mr. Cheney: John Hannah, an expert on weapons of mass destruction, and David Wurmser, a Middle East adviser.

Among the press, Matt Cooper of Time magazine, Judith Miller of The New York Times, Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post, and Tim Russert of NBC News all testified. Novak is widely assumed to have cooperated with prosecutors, though he has not commented publicly on the case.

Q. What was Cheney's role?

Libby learned about Wilson's wife from his boss, the vice president, before her identity had been made public, according to notes Libby took during the conversation and which were described to The New York Times by lawyers involved in the case.

It is not illegal for Libby and Cheney to discuss classified information; they both have security clearance. But the Libby-Cheney conversation contradicts reports of Libby's testimony, in which he is said to have stated that he first learned of Wilson's wife, and her employment, from reporters.


Timeline of the CIA leak case

2002

February The CIA sends Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate whether Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake uranium. He concludes it did not.

September The British government asserts that Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy uranium from an African country.

2003

January President Bush mentions the British claim in his State of the Union address.

March Mr. Bush orders the invasion of Iraq.

July Mr. Wilson disputes Bush's claim about the Iraq-Africa uranium connection.

CIA Director George Tenet and other White House officials say Bush's reference to African uranium should not have been included in his State of the Union address.

Columnist Robert Novak names Valerie Plame as a CIA operative.

September The Washington Post reports that at least six journalists had been told of the Plame story before Novak's column appeared.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan says that "[i]f anyone in this administration is involved in [the leak], they would no longer be in this administration."

The Justice Department launches a probe of the leak.

December Patrick Fitzgerald is named special prosecutor in the case.

2004

January A grand jury begins hearing testimony. Dozens of powerful government and media figures testify over the next 22 months. White House aide Karl Rove appears before the grand jury four times.

July The British and US governments publish separate reviews of prewar intelligence estimates. The reports express skepticism about the credibility of some aspects of prewar intelligence assessments, and they note that some of the evidence used to allege an Iraq-Africa uranium connection relied on Italian documents that later proved to be forgeries. However, the British and US reports generally support the reasonableness of Bush's claim at the time that he made it.

2005

June US Supreme Court refuses to hear appeals from Ms. Miller and Time magazine's Matt Cooper to avoid testifying before the grand jury.

July Mr. Cooper testifies before the grand jury, after his source releases him from a confidentiality pledge.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller goes to jail to protect the identity of source(s) who leaked Plame's name to her.

September 29 Miller is released from jail and testifies before the grand jury.

October 28 The grand jury was scheduled to expire Friday.

UN team names firms in oil-for-food scandal

Nearly half of the 4,500 companies that participated paid Hussein bribes, report says.

By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – In scale, the skimming operation probably ranks as one of the greatest financial crimes of all time. Iraqi insiders knew it as the "Saddam Bribery System" - kickbacks and surcharges on the United Nations' oil-for-food program that netted Saddam Hussein $1.8 billion in the final years of his regime.

Now, as Mr. Hussein's trial gets under way in Iraq, continuing revelations about alleged corruption in the oil-for-food humanitarian effort have fueled widespread financial scandal. The controversy involves both the culpability of those accused of paying the bribes, and the zeal - or lack thereof - of UN oversight of the oil-for-food program.

Critics such as Paul Volcker, who released his final report on the whole mess Thursdayw, think it shows that concrete reform is necessary to salvage the UN's credibility. Others say that it's important to remember the context in which the oil-for-food program was cobbled together - and that its vulnerabilities were apparent from the start.

"It was well known by everyone, including the US government, that the system as constructed invited kickbacks," says James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corp.

On Thursday, the Volcker probe revealed that almost half of the 4,500 companies that participated in the program paid Hussein under-the-table cash, according to the report. The money involved amounted to a $1.8 billion tax on the $64 billion program, which ran from 1996 to 2003.

The accused represent virtually every nation that took part. Companies and individuals from 66 countries sent illegal kickbacks to Hussein's government, according to the Volcker inquiry. Those who simply paid an illegally high price for their oil to begin with came from 40 countries.

Among the firms named by the report are Volvo Construction Equipment, which allegedly paid $317,000 in extra fees to the Iraqi government on a $6.4 million contract. DaimlerChrysler tacked an extra $7,000 onto a $70,000 contract, according to the Volcker inquiry.

Mr. Volcker, a forceful presence in Washington during his tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve, strongly criticized the UN and the Security Council for laxity in watching over the oil-for-food bureaucracy. Volcker's report urges the establishment of a UN chief operating officer nominated by the UN Security Council, among other reforms.

"Whether there's a meaningful reaction remains to be seen," Volcker said this week.

The oil-for-food program was one of the largest humanitarian efforts of all time, in terms of its scope and finances. Launched as a means of softening the blow of UN sanctions on ordinary Iraqis, it allowed Iraq to sell quantities of oil, provided most of the money was used to buy goods for Iraq's hard-pressed citizens.

Whatever the program's faults, its successes should also be remembered, says Dirk Salomons, director of the program for humanitarian affairs at Columbia University. "The UN kept large chunks of the Iraqi population alive for over a decade," he says.

Given the way oil-for-food developed, problems were inevitable, according to Professor Salomons. Hussein was allowed to pick his own suppliers, for instance. "If the selection of providers had been done by UN procurement, this wouldn't have happened," he says.

Furthermore, it was not UN money that was stolen, or US money for that matter. In essence, Hussein stole his own money - or, perhaps more accurately, stole money from his own people.

Given the nature of the Hussein regime, probably nothing could have stopped all illegality in the system, says Mr. Dobbins of RAND. That said, bribes are bribes, and the Volcker inquiry has represented just one strand of an interlocking web of efforts to bring any wrongdoers to account.

In June, for instance, Joseph Stephanides, a mid-level UN official, was fired by Secretary-General Kofi Annan for allegedly colluding to steer an oil-for-food contract to a London-based shipping inspection company, Lloyd's Register.

Benon Sevon, former chief of the oil-for-food program, resigned under pressure in August, following allegations that even the head of the effort had taken kickbacks.

Last Friday, Midway Trading, a Virginia-based oil trading company, pleaded guilty in New York State Supreme Court to paying kickbacks to participate in oil-for-food. An investigation by Manhattan US Attorney Michael Garcia has produced five other guilty pleas or criminal charges.

In France, Serge Boidevaix, a former secretary-general for the Foreign Ministry, is under investigation for suspect corruption in connection with the oil-for-food effort. Jean-Bernard Merrimee, France's former UN ambassador, also allegedly received more than $150,000 in commission from oil allocations awarded him by Hussein, according to the Volcker report. He is also under investigation by French authorities.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

PVR Killers

ExtremeTech's Jason Cross examines PVR software that runs on Windows -- applications from SnapStream, Cyberlink, and SageTV. With TiVo's mounting price hikes, service contracts, and 'features' like self-deleting shows, the DIY option is getting more appealing all the time." From the article: "All the major TV features you're used to with TiVo or Windows Media Center Edition are there--quick 30 second skip, padding show recordings (start early and stop late), a nice integrated guide with easy-to-read program info. The interface design isn't quite as good as either of those two other options, but it's one of the best we've seen in a Windows-based PVR application outside of MCE. If we had to pick an annoyance, it's that you can't seem to bring up the program guide or navigate the menu without stopping the live TV or recording that you're watching. TiVo plays the current TV program in the background, and MCE plays it in a small window in the lower left. We didn't miss it until it was gone.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Slashdot Headlines (Early October 2005)

Google & Sun Planning Web Office

According to this post at Dirson's blog, Google and Sun Microsystems are to announce a new and kick-ass webtool: an Office Suite based on Sun's OpenOffice and accesible with your browser. Today at 10:30h (Pacific Time) two companies are holding a conference with more details, but Jonathan Schwartz (President of Sun Microsystems) claimed on Saturday on this post of his blog that "the world is about to change this week", predicting new ways to access software.

Bush Supreme Court Nominee Former Microsoft Lawyer

Bush's most recent Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers, successfully argued that people who were sold defective software by Microsoft weren't "injured," and couldn't participate in a class action against the company. The case involved unstable compression features in MS DOS 6.0, which were corrected by a $9.95 update, MS DOS 6.2. Plaintiffs wanted Microsoft to offer the updates for free, but eventually lost to Miers' arguments.

Linux Gains Lossless File System

An R&D affiliate of the world's largest telephone company has achieved a stable release of a new Linux file system said to improve reliability over conventional Linux file systems, and offer performance advantages over Solaris's UFS file system. NILFS 1.0 (new implementation of a log-structured file system) is available now from NTT Labs (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone's Cyber Space Laboratories).

Taiwan Irked at Google's Version of Earth

As reported in The Register, Taiwan wants Google Earth to stop calling it a province of China. Although Google has yet to comment on this issue, it will be interesting to see the brightest minds that money can buy trying to solve what decades of diplomats have unsuccessfully wrestled with - how to balance the nationalistic pride of the inhabitants of Taiwan against the nationalistic pride of the inhabitants of mainland China." From the article: "Foreign ministry spokesman, Michel Lu, explained: 'It is incorrect to call Taiwan a province of China because we are not. We have contacted Google to express our position and asked them to correct the description.' Google has maintained a stony silence on the matter, presumably while it tries to work out a solution which will please both the Taiwanese and the hosts of the (lucrative, burgeoning, inviting) Chinese internet search business opportunity market

Condensing Your Life on to a USB Flash Drive?

"My wife and I figure that if we plan for the worst, it'll never happen, so we've been putting together 'If public transportation bites it and we have two minutes to grab our stuff and start walking, never to return to NYC' getaway knapsacks. With luck they'll live in the closet forever. Coincidently, this morning the New York Times has an article about what to take when you have to leave home in a big hurry [DNA verification required], and they suggest making a list of all of things like Social Security and credit card numbers, scanning birth certificates, marriage license and tax returns, and saving it all on a USB flash drive. Since this would be a complete identity kit, encryption is of utmost importance. What's the best solution? A flash drive that claims to encrypt or a platform-independent, self-extracting, encrypted file on a regular drive? Any suggestions for sturdy drives?" Of course, the choice of USB flash drive covers only a part of the problem. What other data would you put on this piece of "contingency hardware", and how would you protect the drive itself in case you did have to "swim for it?

Yahoo Competes with Google in Book Scanning

UltimaGuy writes "A consortium backed by Yahoo has launched an ambitious effort to digitize classic books and technical papers and make them freely available on the Web. The company is partnering with the newly formed Open Content Alliance, which aims to offer PDF documents of books to the public at no charge. Consumers will be able to search the contents of the Open Content Alliance's database and download the entire content of any work, such as a scanned copy of a book.

Clustering vs. Fault-Tolerant Servers

According to SearchDataCenter.com fault-tolerant server vendors say the majority of hardware and software makers have pushed clustering as a high-availability option because it sells more hardware and software licenses. Fault-tolerant servers pack redundant components such as power supply and storage into a single box, while clustering involves the networking of multiple, standard servers used as failover machines.

AMD Geode Internet Appliance

Justin Davidow writes "For a new twist on internet appliances, AMD is finally attempting to go mainstream with their mobile Geode processor, with the Personal Internet Communicator (PIC), a stand-alone device that allows users a striped down laptop/inflated PDA (without a screen included!) for internet surfing. Expected retail price: $299USD.

Another Victim Countersues RIAA Under RICO Act

Another single mother is taking the fight to the RIAA. More than just standing up to them however, Tanya Anderson has decided to go on the offensive and countersue. In a move that aims to put the RIAA on the same level as your average organized crime syndicate the suit identifies violations of the Oregon RICO Act in addition to 'fraud, invasion of privacy, abuse of process, electronic trespass, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, negligent misrepresentation, the tort of "outrage", and deceptive business practices.' Ms. Anderson has also demanded a trial by jury.

PC World's 100 Best Products of 2005

PC World published its top 100 best products of 2005. These include Firefox(1), GMail(2), OSX 10.4(3), Alienware Aurora 5500(6), Seagate USB 2.0 Pocket Drive(7), Skype(8), PalmOne Treo 650(10), Google(16), PSP(19), GeForce6600GT(20), Ubuntu(26), iTunes(34), Half-Life 2(38), Wikipedia(60), ThinkPad X41(67), Mac Mini(75), Acronis True Image(83), Opera(88). Surprisingly, iPod only has IPod Photo at 78.

20 Million Year Old Spider Found

BBC News is reporting that Paleontologist Dr. David Penny has found a spider, and two droplets of blood, perfectly perserved in amber. He was able to extract the blood and determine its age: 20 million years old. Since it is thought to be the first time that spider blood has been found perserved in amber, it is hoped that DNA could be extracted.

Sorry, Wrong Wiretap

CNN is covering a little-mentioned Inspector General's report which mentions that the FBI 'sometimes gets the wrong number when it intercepts conversations in terrorism investigations' due to various reasons, and that 'The FBI could not say Friday whether people are notified that their conversations were mistakenly intercepted or whether wrongly tapped telephone numbers were deleted from bureau records.

Google Plans to Offer Free WiFi in San Francisco

What's been rumored for some time has now been confirmed -- Google has made a bid in response to Mayor Gavin Newsom's request for information. The details of the bid include citywide access, for free, at 300kbps. The plans dovetail into their location-based advertising and services strategy, and come on the heels of their recent VPN service rollout.

Neiman Marcus Offers First Moller Skycar For Sale

Neiman Marcus has just unveiled its 2005 Christmas Catalog of Fantasy Gifts last Tuesday, and one of the items up for purchase is the prototype M400 Skycar from Moller International (for only $3.5 million US). If you've ever dreamed of owning a Skycar, this may be your only chance." From the Skycar site: "Can any automobile give you this scenario? From your garage to your destination, the M400 Skycar can cruise comfortably at 350+ MPH and achieve up to 28 miles per gallon. No traffic, no red lights, no speeding tickets. Just quiet direct transportation from point A to point B in a fraction of the time. Three dimensional mobility in place of two dimensional immobility. No matter how you look at it the automobile is only an interim step on our evolutionary path to independence from gravity. That's all it will ever be.

Intelligent Coasters Keep Beer Mugs Full

CNN.com is reporting that two German students have invented a beer mat, or coaster, that uses sensor chips to determine when the beer glass it supports is empty and then radios the bartender for a refill. One of the students interviewed for the story suggested that lifting mugs from sensing mats could double as a voting system during karaoke competitions." From the article: "Unlike the usual cardboard beer mats, the invention is made out of plastic, which means it does not absorb water. Butz said that to get around the problem, ordinary cardboard mats could be placed on top of the plastic version to absorb liquid and display advertising. 'Cardboard beer mats could still sit on top of the plastic mat and there could still be advertising, and you would just exchange the cardboard mat when you wanted to change the advertising.