taxpayer funded FBI agents thanked the Hollywood community for their on-going effort to portray FBI agents as the good guys.
FBI agents then handed out a commemorative plaque to all the members of the workshop. The plaque listed their greatest hits including their assassination of Martin Luther King, and President Kennedy .
The agents stressed the importance of manafacturing consent and keeping American voters and taxpayers confused about the real role of the Death Squad known as the FBI.
The agency was quick to point out the important role of Hollywood produced shows like the X-Files, 24 Hours with Keifer Sutherland and CSI
gave the public by engaging the public in mindless activity with the necessary disinformation to keep their tax dollars coming to support their death squad activities.



FBI to Hollywood: More Realism, Please
By Paul Bond
Reuters
- LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - FBI memo to Hollywood: If it's not too much trouble, could you please portray our counterterrorism efforts with a bit more realism?

Hoping for an answer in the affirmative, the FBI hosted its first workshop for screenwriters Wednesday at the Federal Building in Westwood.


"FBI -- Crime Essential for Writers" played well with the standing-room-only audience of executives and writers from several major and minor studios. Enthusiastic attendees had more questions than time allowed answers for, and few if any left the four-hour event early.


The FBI, more so than even the Department of Homeland Security, is the primary agency designated to investigate terrorism in the U.S., and the terrorist threat it is most focused on comes from radical Islam, FBI special agent Greg Wing said.


With that in mind, Wing, along with an undercover agent who asked that his identity not be revealed, presented a whirlwind history of Islam, beginning with Sunni-Shiite hostilities in 682 AD.


The major terrorist group aligned with Sunni Muslims is al-Qaida, while Hezbollah, "the best terrorist organization there is," are Shiite Muslims, the undercover agent said.


He showed flags and logos of terrorist groups and explained that the colors of turbans worn by terrorism suspects could have significance. He also showed photos and video of al-Qaida training camps and torture rooms and pictures of unfortunate Americans who had been captives there. He showed photos of the suicide bombers who killed 17 U.S. sailors aboard the USS Cole in 2000 and pictures of the house where they built their bombs.


The undercover agent played phone messages from passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which went down in a Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001, and inspired the film "United 93." He also played audio from the cockpit of American Airlines Flight 11, the airplane Mohamed Atta flew into the World Trade Center that day.


"Amazing," attendee Dave DiGilio said after the event.


DiGilio wrote the film "Eight Below" and created the upcoming ABC series "Traveler," about a couple of graduate students who might have been framed for a terrorist attack. He said his show portrays both "the good and the bad" about the


FBI.


"Seeing the extent of the organization, and the passion and intellect of the agents, was impressive," he said after the event. "They're very creative. It's not the way they're usually portrayed."


Quite the point, which is why FBI public affairs specialist Betsy Glick helped create the workshop. She said that last year the FBI helped lend authenticity to 649 projects, usually films, TV shows and books.


Michael Kortan, section chief for the office of public affairs, gave attendees a brief lesson in the history of the FBI in film and TV, beginning with the 1935 James Cagney movie "'G' Men," which he said was one of the first gangster movies to tell a story from the FBI's perspective.


Shortly thereafter, J. Edgar Hoover conceived of something he called "The Dillinger Rule" -- the FBI had great stories to tell, so Hollywood ought to tell them, and make sure that the FBI were the good guys. And he wanted to know about anything FBI-related that Hollywood had in the works.


The 1965 Disney film "That Darn Cat!" really had Hoover on edge, Kortan said, because he feared that a film about an allergic agent assigned to follow around a cat would make the FBI look a tad silly, a reputation the bureau didn't need during the tumultuous 1960s.


Too often, Kortan said, the FBI is seen on film, unrealistically, as heavy-handed, bumbling and antagonistic toward other law-enforcement agencies. Of course, Hollywood isn't always unfriendly to the bureau.


Witness "The Silence of the Lambs," for example. The 1991 film earned Jodie Foster the best actress Oscar for her portrayal of FBI agent Clarice Starling, and Kortan credited the movie for some of the FBI's success in recruiting women.


"This is half the reason people get in writing -- to live vicariously and absorb the details," said attendee Luke McMullen, who wrote an episode of "Alias" and is developing a project called "Samurai Girl."


FBI agents also showed off a map of the 779 real investigations of potential terrorist activity ongoing in Los Angeles and photos of a list of possible targets that included Grauman's Chinese Theater, the Hollywood sign and Disneyland. They also showed photos of some of the equipment the FBI will have on hand as they stake out the 64th annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills on Monday.


Hollywood has been considered a potential target of Islamic terrorists since shortly after the September 11 attacks, when the FBI warned that a major film studio might be next.


Special agent George Steuer recalled Wednesday how FBI agents met with studio heads back then to tell them, "Hey, you're in this fight on terrorism."


He said the threat emanated from telephone and e-mail intercepts between suspected terrorists. Although the FBI sifts through about 300 terrorism leads a day, the one against film studios was initially deemed credible after some corroboration and background checks. Details, though, remain classified.


"Eventually we vetted it and decided that there were no links here, just overseas chatter," he said.


Nevertheless, the studios were encouraged then to beef up their security measures. Some, including Disney and Warner Bros., quickly hired FBI agents on their security staffs.


Steuer, who has been helping Hollywood with FBI requests for five years, said he was in Baghdad in 2005, witnessing the locals buying and selling pirated copies of "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith" the day it was released theatrically, making the point that the FBI is uniquely aware of Hollywood's influence even in a war zone.


Speaking after the symposium, the undercover FBI agent whose identity is protected said he purposely avoids Hollywood's treatment of modern terrorism, staying away from such movies as "World Trade Center" and "United 93" as well as TV programs like "The Path to 9/11."


"Movies don't come close," he said. "We lived a very traumatic event. It's never far from my heart."


His primary message to screenwriters? "Keep the FBI out of politics," he said. "Don't tag me Republican or Democrat. Don't suggest the FBI was better or worse under this president or that one. What we care about is protecting American lives."

Why The Revelation of the Identity Of Deep Throat Has Only Created Another Mystery
By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Jun. 03, 2005

The Bush Administration prosecutes government officials who leak sensitive information, even when that information is not classified -- as I noted in my column on Jonathan Randal. The Administration is also prepared to send reporters to jail when they refuse to reveal their sources to a grand jury, as I noted in another column.

I doubt the Justice Department will go after W. Mark Felt -- the ninety-one-year- old former Deputy Director of the FBI - even if he is the greatest leaker in American political history. Still, in the context of the Administration's stances on leaking, the surfacing of Deep Throat at this time is rather ironic.

 
 
Bob Woodward (and Carl Bernstein) have confirmed the Vanity Fair story identifying W. Mark Felt as their legendary Watergate source. The best kept secret in Washington, for three decades, is no more.

But this is not to say the mystery is resolved. To the contrary, while Mark Felt is alive, his memory for the details of his relationship with Woodward seems to be all but gone. So the revelation of his identity raises many new questions that it seems Felt himself will not be able to answer.

A Passing Tribute To Good Sleuthing -- Now Ended

The game of guessing the identity of Throat, which moved from the parlors of Washington to serious inquiry during the last thirty years, is over. A number of us who were fascinated by the inscrutability of it all have been forced into retirement.

Adrian Havill, a freelance author who did some good digging, most recently thought Throat could be no less than former president George H. W. Bush.

Leonard Garment, my successor as Nixon White House counsel, focused his considerable intellect and keen intuition on the issue, and first thought Throat must have been former Nixon White House aide John Sears. Later, however, Garment was convinced that Throat had to be a composite (a hypothesis which has yet to be shown to be incorrect - but has been denied by Woodward and Bernstein).

Similarly, yours truly (the senior Throat sleuth) has made several incorrect runs at Throat's true identity. So I tip my hat to former Los Angeles Times reporter Jim Mann, who figured it out, and wrote about Felt in a 1992 Atlantic Monthly essay. Tim Noah of Slate was not far behind, forcing Felt to deny.

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When I took a hard look at Felt years ago, I concluded he could not have known what Throat knew when the information was given to Woodward, particularly since he was gone from the FBI at the end, and scratched him off the list of viable candidates.

In fact, so sure was I that, even after reading the Vanity Fair piece and before Woodward had confirmed Felt's identity, I bet an NBC news person $100 it was not Felt, the morning the Vanity Fair story broke.

Fortunately, though, I knew my bet was covered, for I'd made an early wager, also for $100, with former Chicago Tribune investigative reporter William Gaines. Gaines, who now teaches journalism at the University of Illinois, has used Throat sleuthing as a teaching tool, but I was confident that he was wrong in naming my former Nixon White House deputy Fred Fielding as Throat.

Throat Sleuthing Moves Into A New Phase: Scrutiny of Throat and Those at the Post

Woodward disliked this sleuthing. Now that the issue of Throat's identity appears resolved, I suspect Woodward is going to be even less enchanted with those who focus on his journalism. And Throat himself, Mark Felt, is going to be probed as he might never have dreamed.

I'm among those who believe Woodward is truly one of the great journalists. (Not an opinion shared by many of my former White House colleagues.) No Washington reporter has so consistently had access to those in power - meaning Woodward has often had uniquely compelling stories to tell. And Woodward's reporting is fair and honest - one reason he may maintain the access he has.

Still, Woodward's use of unidentified sources - a controversial practice, and one now banned at Newsweek after the "Koran desecration debacle" -- has been extreme. And because Woodward's key Watergate source was unidentified, until now, no one could test his Watergate reporting.

Bob once told me that when I learned who, in fact, Deep Throat was, all my questions would be clarified. That, however, has not happened. To the contrary, I only have more questions now that I know Throat was Mark Felt.

I will raise a few of them here, in the hope of getting some answers, while Woodward is still out and about doing talk shows.

But first, for those not following this story closely, a little background is in order:

Felt's Position - and Power - During Watergate

At the time of Watergate, Mark Felt was the Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Former Director J. Edgar Hoover, who had elevated Felt to this post, had died only weeks earlier. President Nixon had selected the Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Division, L. Patrick Gray, to serve as the Acting Director of the FBI.

Even before Hoover's death, however, Felt was for all practical purposes running the FBI -- as Hoover wanted it run, with a few exceptions. For example, when Hoover wanted to end surreptitious black bag jobs (entries onto premises without a court warrant), Felt continued them.

Later, Felt would be indicted and convicted by President Carter's Justice Department for continuing the practice of illegal searches, only to be pardoned by President Ronald Reagan for the practice. One wonders if Felt would have been pardoned by Reagan had it been known he was Deep Throat. Plus, I seriously doubt former President Richard Nixon would have testified on Felt's behalf - as indeed he did -during his trial, had he known of Felt's actions as Deep Throat. Deep Throat had earned top ranking on Nixon's post-presidency enemies list (one notch above yours truly.)

When Pat Gray became Acting Director of the FBI, I don't believe he had a clue how to run the place. In fact, he did not really focus on trying to do so. Rather, he spent much of his time traveling throughout the country literally campaigning at various FBI Field Offices to win the support of rank-and-file FBI agents for the job of Director. Thus, during much of the Watergate investigation, Gray was not even in Washington.

When I talked to Gray during the Watergate investigation, he typically said he would have to check with Felt and get back to me. No one at the Nixon White House believed Gray had any control whatsoever of the FBI. To claim otherwise, as Felt apparently did with Woodward, is absurd.

What Felt Told Woodward, and Why It Raises New Questions

Notwithstanding the article in The Washington Post (from his forthcoming book) about Mark Felt, Bob Woodward, so far, has told us little of his working relationship with Felt. Given Felt's aging memory, which is widely acknowledged to be less than razor sharp, it will be Woodward's story -- not Felt's.

Yet we do know something about the information Felt, as Deep Throat, provided to The Washington Post from Woodward's book, All The President's Men. Woodward reports some fourteen meetings (depending on how they are counted).

Recently, I went through the book again, and pulled out every fact -- or factoid -- that Throat/Felt shared with Woodward, and noted when the information exchange had occurred. For a list of these facts - and an indication of which of them I believe may well be untrue -- please see the Appendix to this column.

This summary of what Throat told Woodward and when, according to All The President's Men, is particularly illuminating now that we know Throat's identity. It, along with a few more clues Woodward has dropped since confirming Felt's role, raises new questions about the Watergate investigations and about Felt's leaking to Woodward.

Here are just a few questions that need to be answered:

How Could Felt Get So Many Things Wrong?

In his position as the No. 2 man in the FBI, and the man running the Watergate investigation for the FBI, Felt saw virtually all the raw data from the FBI's field investigations. In the few days since the revelation of his identity, I have not had an opportunity to compare the material from the FBI's Watergate investigation with the information that Felt gave Woodward to see if it is possible to determine how he got it wrong. But such a comparison will doubtless be fascinating.

Woodward, it appears, was seldom in a position to correct information that Felt gave him that was wrong. But when writing All The President's Men, he did correct one major false statement from Felt. Sometime in early May, 1973, Felt told Woodward "In early February, [Patrick] Gray went to the White House and said, in effect, 'I'm taking the rap on Watergate.' He got very angry and said he had done his job and contained the investigation judiciously, that it was unfair that he was being singled out to take the heat. He implied that all hell could break loose if he wasn't able to stay in the job permanently and keep the lid on. Nixon could have thought this was a threat, though Gray is not that sort of guy. Whatever the reason, the President agreed in a hurry and sent Gray's name up to the Senate right away. Some of the top people in the White House were dead set against it, they couldn't talk him out of it."

It appears that Felt has invented this statement out of whole cloth - or was seriously misinformed. It never happened this way, as the Nixon White House tapes make clear.

To reflect this, Woodward did add a footnote in this instance, stating that Pat Gray's attorney advised Woodward that the suggestion Gray had pressured or blackmailed Nixon was "outrageously false."

But most of Felt's bad information has never been corrected. In fact, a few writers about the period have quoted Felt's bad information as historical fact. As can be seen from the Appendix, some of these inaccuracies are minor (although I doubt not so minor to persons erroneously maligned by Felt). But some are not.

Given the complexity of Watergate, it is not difficult to understand how Felt made some mistakes when meeting with Woodward in the dead of the night. Yet in other instances, it is not easy to comprehend how the No. 2 man in the FBI could have provided such bad information, knowing it could become public. And why has Felt let this bad information sit on the historical record for the past three decades?

My opinion as to which information, provided by Felt, is wrong is based on my many years of reviewing great swathes and stacks of documents about the Watergate investigation. The Appendix speaks for itself. But here, allow me to flag just one (of several) particularly egregious sessions where Felt gave Woodward appalling information, apparently to try to manipulate Woodward and The Washington Post.

Was Felt Trying To Frighten Woodward And The Washington Post Into Over-reaction?

It must be noted, according to Woodward's reports, that Felt frequently told Woodward -- falsely -- they he and The Washington Post were under surveillance. And based on Woodward's most recent article about Felt, it seems Felt equated Nixon with Hitler, and that he saw the Watergate investigation as a Nazi hunt (harking back to his pre-FBI days in the military).

A month before Felt retired from the FBI, he had one of his more remarkable sessions with Woodward. On May 16, 1973 (as reported at pages 317-18 of All The President's Men), Woodward says Felt has become "transformed" by the Watergate investigation, and talks to him almost in a monologue. When finished, Felt departs; Woodward wrote it all down in a notebook, which he later typed out for Bernstein.

It is one of the most dramatic scenes in the movie, "All The President's Men": With a Rachmaninoff piano concerto playing in the background, a frightened Woodward types his notes from this session with Felt. Woodward's dread is understandable. The No. 2 man at the FBI has told him - now, it clearly seems, falsely -- "Everyone's life is in danger . . . electronic surveillance is going on and we had better watch it. The CIA is doing it." The CIA role in Watergate was investigated, and had this occurred, it would be known today.

The report continues: "Dean talked with Senator Baker after [the] Watergate committee formed and Baker is in the bag completely, reporting back directly to [the] White House." This is absolutely false. I never spoke with Baker. And Baker certainly was not in the bag.

Felt says that the "President threatened Dean personally and said if he ever revealed the national security activities the President would insure he went to jail." This never happened, a fact that can be corroborated by Nixon's tapes.

As my Appendix notes, the flow of false facts continued. At one point Felt says, "The covert activities involve the whole U.S. intelligence community and are incredible," although he refused to give Woodward any details, claiming "it is against the law." In fact, no such operation was ever directed out of the Nixon White House.

Even more absurd are Felt's claims that those involved in the Watergate cover up were "chipping in their own personal funds. And Mitchell couldn't meet his quota [so] . . . they cut Mitchell loose." Absurd, too, is his claim that "these guys in the White House were out to make money and a few of them went wild trying."

Because Woodward could not quote Felt directly, none of the surprising number of false statements highlighted in my Appendix made their way into The Washington Post, but apparently Woodward believed them sufficiently to include them in his book.

If Felt was not trying to manipulate the Post, it is not clear what he was doing. Surely, he had to know - or at least, should have known -- that much of his information was worse than speculative; it was plain wrong.

In short, the amount of bad information that Felt gave Woodward is alarming. How and why did it happen?

Was Felt Working Alone? The Evidence Makes It Seem Very Unlikely

Woodward reports -- in The Washington Post story recently excerpted from his forthcoming book on Throat/Felt -- how he and Felt devised a system indicating that Woodward needed to talk to Felt, since Felt did not want him calling his office.

"If you keep the drapes in your apartment closed, open them and that could signal me, [Felt] said. I could check each day or have them checked, and if they were open we could meet that night at a designated place." (Emphasis added.) But because Woodward liked to keep his drapes open, they agreed that Woodward would place a flowerpot with a road construction flag in it on his balcony as the signal.

Clearly, Woodward suspects that Felt, who would have been extremely busy running the day-to-day activities of the FBI, was not checking his apartment balcony daily himself. Woodward writes, "How [Felt] could have made a daily observation of my balcony is still a mystery to me. * * * The Iraqi Embassy was down the street, and I thought it possible that the FBI had surveillance or listening posts nearby. Could Felt have had the counterintelligence agents regularly report on the status of my flag and flowerpot? That seems highly unlikely, if not impossible."

I don't think it is impossible at all. To the contrary, I believe that Felt had to have one or more persons working with him. Thus, others in the FBI must have known Felt was feeding The Washington Post.

This is evident from the last reported conversation in All The President's Men between Throat and Woodward. Felt retired from the FBI five months before this last contact during the first week of November 1973. As a result of the conversation, Woodward (breaking his prior agreement not to quote Felt directly) uses his words in the Post story, which told of gaps of "a suspicious nature" in Nixon's secret tapes that "could lead someone to conclude that the tapes have been tampered with."

How did Felt, no longer in the FBI, get information that "one or more of the tapes contained deliberate erasures"? And when reporting this story in The Washington Post, on November 8, 1973, why did Woodward quote Felt as an anonymous "White House source"? Was Woodward by this time aware that Felt had an agent inside the White House, or a mole?

Is Felt A Hero And, More Specifically, What Is His Legacy?

There has been much discussion, on television in particular, as to whether Mark Felt is a hero or villain, not to mention what his legacy will be now that we know Throat's identity. Clearly, he is history's supreme whistleblower.

Because of my own involvement in Watergate, my knowledge of how those who sought to discredit my testimony (particularly before the Nixon tapes surfaced) operate, and my knowledge of the historical record, I know that Nixon apologists will attack Felt -- and Woodward.

These attacks will be senseless (but that has long been the operative word with Watergate). It is time to learn from what happened, not refight battles Nixon has, for good reason, lost.

As my Appendix shows, the quality of Felt's information -- at least as reported so far and what is found in All The President's Men -- is of questionable value, given the amount of misinformation. It seems it was Felt's position alone that gave Woodward, and in turn, Woodward's editor at The Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, confidence in pursuing a story that other news organizations initially largely ignored. (Initially, Bradlee only knew Woodward had a source who was a high official in the Department of Justice - and Bradlee did not learn more until after Nixon had resigned).

To me, a true hero of Watergate is Ben Bradlee, who not only supported Woodward and Bernstein, but had the trust of the Post's owner, Katharine Graham. Initially, the rest of the national media and the nation ignored the story. Although The Washington Post never "cracked the case," their keeping the story in the news within the Beltway had a great influence on the Congress, making it an important story. Had Bradlee not done so, history might have been much different.

We still need to know much more about Mark Felt's activities, not to mention his accomplices, to understand the Byzantine workings of the FBI of that era. I hope Bob Woodward will answer these questions -- about which he has knowledge -- sooner rather than later, while there is still interest in the story. For it is information that is as uniquely relevant today -- with the current White House hell-bent on returning the presidency to the imperial status it occupied before Watergate.

Saddam Lives, Says Author

(Conspiracy Nation, 01/30/07) -- A book published in Egypt this January reportedly makes the case that the real Saddam Hussein was not hanged in Iraq, but a Saddam look-alike. Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay also, if the author is correct, remain alive.

The book, Saddam Was Not Executed and 'Uday and Qusay Were not Killed - The United States' Lies and the Double Game, by Egyptian researcher, author, and journalist Anis Al-Daghidi (363 pp), is not currently available for consideration by open-minded readers in the U.S. Here, there is almost no discussion of the possibility that the "Saddam hanging" may have been staged.

"The hanging of 'Saddam Hussein' saga must be prefaced by a cornerstone: We do not know for sure it was Saddam Hussein who was hanged, nor do we even know with certainty a hanging actually happened," reported Conspiracy Nation not long after the performance. ("'Hanged Man' Starts New Year," http://www.shout.net/~bigred/HangedMan.html). Saddam Hussein may have "done a Houdini" and gone into peaceful retirement. ("Saddam Does A Houdini," http://www.shout.net/~bigred/Houdini.html)

Reportedly, Saddam Hussein's wife, Sajida Heiralla Tuffa, in 2004, upon being allowed to visit her husband, emerged from the prison screaming, "This is not my husband, it's his double, where is my husband? Take me to my husband!" ("Mrs. Saddam says defendant Saddam is not her Saddam," http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20040717.htm)

Photos of the man being tried as Saddam revealed that he had bad teeth and an underbite. Conversely, photos of the real Saddam consistently show that he has near perfect teeth and an overbite.

MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) today reports several other anomalies in the "Saddam" capture, trial, and execution. ("New Conspiracy Theory in Egypt: It Wasn't Saddam But His Double Who Was Executed," http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP144507) Among the "sore thumbs" sticking out are...

• "Saddam" has a mole on his forehead. The real Saddam has no such mole;
• The real Saddam's hair is thick. The double, Mikhail Ramadhan (a.k.a. Makhluf Ramadhan), has/had thin hair;
• Forensic examination of ear photos do not match the real Saddam with whoever was supposedly hanged;
• The regional dialect spoken by the double is southern Iraqi. Saddam's dialect is central Iraqi;
• Handwriting samples of the "captured Saddam" and the real Saddam show marked differences.

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Past as Prologue: GAO Access and the FBI

Michael Ravnitzky has provided POGO with some Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) documents from 1993 and 1994 (pdf) he received through the Freedom of Information Act.  In August 2004, FBI Director Louis Freeh, reiterating directions sent out during his predecessor Acting Director Floyd Clarke's tenure the year before, tells his field office Special-Agents-in-Charge and Legal Attachés to control and reduce GAO access to FBI documents (pdf):

In the past, GAO [Government Accountability Office] has attempted to make direct contact with various Field Office, Legat [Legal Attachés], and FBIHQ [FBI Headquarter] personnel without coordination or approval of FBIHQ.  Interviews of personnel, disclosure of information, or dissemination of documentation should not take place until the proper notification from GAO has been submitted to and coordinated by OPCA [Office of Public and Congressional Affairs] at FBIHQ.

GAO is presently conducting several different audits that directly or indirectly involve the FBI.  While each of these audits has been approved and coordinated by FBIHQ, each subsequent audit must also be approved and coordinated by OPCA, even if the same GAO staff and FBI personnel are involved in the new audit.  No documentation or additional interviews are to be given to GAO without coordination and authorization by FBIHQ.

Despite instructions from FBIHQ, GAO often will ask for documentation and more information than they are authorized to receive.  For example, there have been a number of requests from GAO for information relating to pending investigations.  As a matter of longstanding policy, FBIHQ will continue to deny GAO access to any information that will identify pending cases.  GAO is not to be given direct and unlimited access to our files...

This might as well have been written yesterday. 

Ironically, in 1997, it was Freeh who called the FBI "potentially the most dangerous agency in the country" if it is "not scrutinized carefully." Freeh also called for more congressional oversight.

Months before the attacks on September 11, 2001, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the FBI entitled "Oversight of the FBI" (pdf).  One of the witnesses, Norman Rabkin of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress' investigative arm, testified that:

While things go smoothly on occasion, on many other occasions our access at the FBI has been difficult, resulting in us having to follow cumbersome procedures to meet with Bureau officials and get basic information about their programs and activities.  We have had access issues in a number of agencies over the years.  However, across law enforcement-related agencies, FBI access issues have been the most sustained and intractable.

Rabkin also remarked that the last time the GAO testified on access problems at the FBI and Justice Department was in 1991 (pdf).

A month later in July 2001, two House Government Reform subcommittees held a joint hearing entitled, "Is the CIA's Refusal to Cooperate with Congressional Inquiries a Threat to Effective Oversight of the Operations of the Federal Government?"

There the GAO's Henry L. Hinton, Jr. stated:

We have broad authority to evaluate CIA programs. In reality, however, we face both legal and practical limitations on our ability to review these programs. For example, we have no access to certain CIA “unvouchered” accounts and cannot compel our access to foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information. In addition, as a practical matter, we are limited by the CIA’s level of cooperation, which has varied through the years. We have not actively audited the CIA since the early 1960s. (emphasis POGO's)

Then 9/11 occurred and though there were important exceptions, Congress as an institution did not express much interest in the decades-long issue.  In fact, GAO access took some big hits over the course of 2001 and into 2002, especially in regards to the battle it lost over access to Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force records, partly because its main Congressional support was in the minority at the time.

Whistleblowers and the families of 9/11 victims need to be given particular credit for what was done in those years.  But finally, as can be seen in the muscle flexing of House Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) (pdf) in the U.S. Attorney firing investigation, though this battle is about Congressional access more generally, Congress is coming back.

GAO access at the FBI and CIA are still problems however.  Though Congressional committee staff can provide a great deal of oversight firepower, Congress' large and professional investigative arm, the GAO, needs access to information.  As Hinton stated, the GAO has not "actively audited the CIA since the early 1960s."  And the problem with the FBI goes back to at least 1941, when then-Attorney General Robert H. Jackson, representing J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, wrote in an opinion that:

It is the position of the Department of Justice, restated now with the approval and at the direction of the President, that all investigative reports are confidential documents of the executive department and that congressional or public access thereto would not be in the public interest.

Though it still had not been named as "Executive Privilege," Jackson was relying on the same concept, which would not become a mature concept until the Cold War:

This accords with the conclusions reached by a long line of predecessors in the office of Attorney General and with the position taken by the President from time to time since Washington's administration; and this discretion in the executive branch has been upheld and respected by the judiciary.

As recent developments have made clear, we need more oversight of the FBI and other national security agencies.  The GAO serves the Congress, but it needs Congress' support too.

-- Nick Schwellenbach

Giuliani Testified He Was Briefed on Kerik in ’00

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Rudolph W. Giuliani told a grand jury that his former chief investigator remembered having briefed him on some aspects of Bernard B. Kerik’s relationship with a company suspected of ties to organized crime before Mr. Kerik’s appointment as New York City police commissioner, according to court records.

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Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik in August 2000, with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, right.

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In His White House, Giuliani Says, His Wife Might Have a Very Visible Role as Adviser (March 30, 2007)

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Mr. Giuliani, testifying last year under oath before a Bronx grand jury investigating Mr. Kerik, said he had no memory of the briefing, but he did not dispute that it had taken place, according to a transcript of his testimony.

Mr. Giuliani’s testimony amounts to a significantly new version of what information was probably before him in the summer of 2000 as he was debating Mr. Kerik’s appointment as the city’s top law enforcement officer. Mr. Giuliani had previously said that he had never been told of Mr. Kerik’s entanglement with the company before promoting him to the police job or later supporting his failed bid to be the nation’s homeland security secretary.

In his testimony, given in April 2006, Mr. Giuliani indicated that he must have simply forgotten that he had been briefed on one or more occasions as part of the background investigation of Mr. Kerik before his appointment to the police post.

He said he learned only in late 2004 that the briefing or briefings had occurred, after the city’s investigation commissioner reviewed his own records from 2000. To this day, Mr. Giuliani testified, he has no specific recollection of any briefing or the details of what he was told. But he said he felt comforted because the chief investigator had cleared Mr. Kerik to be promoted.

“He testified fully and cooperatively,” a statement from Mr. Giuliani’s consulting firm said of the former mayor’s grand jury appearance. The statement added: “Mayor Giuliani has admitted it was a mistake to recommend Bernie Kerik for D.H.S. and he has assumed responsibility for it.”

Mr. Kerik pleaded guilty last summer to improperly allowing the company, Interstate Industrial Corporation, or its subsidiaries, to do $165,000 worth of free renovations on his Bronx apartment in late 1999 and 2000. The company has denied paying for the work, and has disputed any association with organized crime. But the two brothers who run it have been indicted in the Bronx on charges they lied under oath about their dealings with Mr. Kerik.

There is no evidence that Mr. Giuliani knew about the apartment renovation before promoting Mr. Kerik to police commissioner. But the top investigator who briefed Mr. Giuliani in 2000, the transcript shows, was aware that Mr. Kerik’s brother and a close friend had been hired by an affiliate of the company, which for years had been struggling to secure a city license.

For Mr. Giuliani, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president and who has done well in early polls, his history with Mr. Kerik looms as a likely issue in the campaign. His own aides have anticipated that questions are likely to arise about Mr. Giuliani’s judgment in, among other things, promoting Mr. Kerik for one of the country’s most important national security posts.

Now, Mr. Giuliani, whose private company provides background checks for companies as part of its services, may have to explain his response to the information that was provided to him in 2000.

His company’s statement yesterday said that Mr. Giuliani was not concerned that issues surrounding Mr. Kerik would become a liability to his presidential campaign.

The transcript of Mr. Giuliani’s testimony was not given to The New York Times by any rival campaign.

In his testimony, Mr. Giuliani suggests he might have been presented with only limited information about Mr. Kerik’s issues. And he said the city investigators who did the background check on Mr. Kerik ultimately cleared him to be hired as police commissioner.

Mr. Giuliani testified that the background investigators’ approval might explain why he, and aides who were involved, could not recollect any briefing, according to the 101-page transcript of his April 20, 2006, testimony.

“We may have filed it away somewhere that it wasn’t as significant,” Mr. Giuliani testified. Mr. Giuliani said Edward J. Kuriansky, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation, had also forgotten about the briefings until he checked his records days after Mr. Kerik’s withdrawal from consideration as homeland security secretary in late 2004.

Mr. Kuriansky did not return phone calls seeking his account of what he remembered telling Mr. Giuliani.