A confidential e-mail tip line set up to report Justice Department abuses to the House Judiciary Committee has ended up exposing as many as 150 would-be whistleblowers following a mishandled bulk e-mail, according to reports on an online watchdog group's Web site.

In a post to Talking Point Memo's TPMmuckraker.com, blogger Paul Kiel cites a government e-mail sent Oct. 26 in which a list of submission recipients was shown in the public "To:" field instead of the hidden "BCC:" field used to hide the list which gets the e-mail message.

"One disgruntled recipient replied to the entire list of whistleblowers angrily complaining about the snafu; two others forwarded the committee email to TPMmuckraker with similar complaints," wrote Kiel.

The e-mail addresses were gathered from a government Web site with a section set up specifically to find "concrete and specific actions taken or statements made by management-level officials of the Department" that led to the controversial firings of eight U.S. attorneys, ultimately leading to the resignation of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Critics have said the firings appeared to be politically motivated, and some of the prosecutors who were dismissed in a Dec. 7, 2006, purge said they felt pressure by Republican lawmakers to investigate more Democrats in the months leading up to elections.

The whistleblower report form warned users to avoid using Justice Department e-mail addresses "in order to prevent such unfortunate retaliatory actions," but the personal e-mails used instead may also identify some individuals.

"Compounding the mistake, the committee later sent out a second e-mail attempting to recall the original e-mail; it, too, included all recipients in the 'to:' field, according to a recipient of the (e-mails)," reports Kiel.

According to the report, none of the tips submitted so far have been read by Judiciary Committee members, and before opening up for review, submitters were to be given a chance to withdraw their tips from the record by Oct. 30 before new governmental review processes were put in place.

dumb ...

Justice Department Government Aid Exposes Tipsters In Justice Investigation

In Friday's Washington Post Dan Eggen and I examine two expanding fronts of the Justice Department's internal investigation into Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and his top subordinates.

Justice's Inspector General and its Office of Professional Responsibility acknowledged they are examining Gonzales's recent congressional testimony for potential lies or false statements under oath, but in addition we unearthed a key document that serves as a mini-road map for a different portion of the now sprawling probe. This part of the investigation is examining whether Gonzales's top aides improperly and possibly illegally used political considerations in the hiring process at the Justice Department.

A cover letter [PDF] and 12-page questionnaire [PDF] sent out by IG-OPR investigators went to hundreds of people who were interviewed by four top aides to Gonzales over a 40-month period, from Jan. 1, 2004 through this past April. That's a much longer timeframe than was previously known to be under inquiry by Justice's investigators, who began this spring by examining the propriety of the firing of nine U.S. attorneys last year and now have a multi-faceted probe on their hands.

...

• The investigators are particularly focused on whether Goodling and other Justice officials were using personal political questions when making hiring decisions. Investigators want to know if interviewees were asked:

- to name "your favorite president, legislator, public figure, or Supreme Court justice"
- "what kind of conservative you were (law and order; social; fiscal)"
- what was "your position on the war on terror"

a) Your mother
b) N/A
c) not to land in gitmo

--timball

Document Shows Widening Probe Into DOJ Hiring - Capitol Briefing

I seem to recall, back when the Republicans were in control of the Senate, that whenever Senate Democrats would threaten to filibuster any legislation, pundits all over Washington DC would suddenly look very grave and warn that Democrats were going to pay a fearsome political price. "Oh, horrors!", they wailed. "Democrats will be called obstructionists! They will become the Party of No! And since that's a charge that has "resonance", Democrats will undoubtedly pay a price for their obstructionist ways!"

Yet oddly enough, now that Republicans are in office, and using the filibuster with wild abandon, there don't seem to be the same cries of alarm. Instead, the voters wonder what exactly has happened to all those things the Democrats said they would do.

...

The Republicans also blocked the card check bill, money for renewable energy, reform of the Medicare drug bill, a no-confidence vote on Alberto Gonzales, etc., etc., etc. All of these measures got a majority in the Senate; none of them have become law, thanks to Republican filibusters.

And now, for their latest trick, they have decided to filibuster all legislation on Iraq

Obsidian Wings: Obstruction

The Senate subpoenaed the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's office Wednesday, demanding documents and elevating the confrontation with President Bush over the administration's warrant-free eavesdropping on Americans.

Separately, the Senate Judiciary Committee also is summoning Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to discuss the program and an array of other matters that have cost a half-dozen top Justice Department officials their jobs, committee chairman Patrick Leahy announced.

Leahy, D-Vt., raised questions about previous testimony by one of Bush's appeals court nominees and said he wouldn't let such matters pass.

"If there have been lies told to us, we'll refer it to the Department of Justice and the U.S. attorney for whatever legal action they think is appropriate," Leahy told reporters. He did just that Wednesday, referring questions about testimony by former White House aide Brett Kavanaugh, who now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

The escalation is part of the Democrats' effort to hold the administration to account for the way it has conducted the war on terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The subpoenas extend the probe into the private sector, demanding among other things documents on any agreements that telecommunications companies made to cooperate with the surveillance program.

Too bad we forgot what "tricky dick" did and let this *&^ get away with ... well ... everything...

Spy vs Spy @ Home

Decius wrote:

Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on Election Night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush's re-election?

The answer appears to be yes. There is more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website -- which gave the world the presidential election results -- was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's firing of eight federal prosecutors.

This is troubling.

[ To say the fucking least. -k]

OMG!

RE: Network Hosting Attorney Scandal E-Mails Also Hosted Ohio's 2004 Election Results

Feinstein said that on May 10, Lam "sent a notice to the Justice Department saying that there would be two search warrants sent in the case of Dusty Foggo and a defense contractor. The next day, an e-mail went from the Justice Department to the White House."

The May 11 e-mail was from D. Kyle Sampson, chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, to White House Deputy Counsel William Kelley. "The real problem we have right now with Carol Lam … leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her four-year term expires," it said.

Can you say "Obstruction of Justice?" No? How about Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations? Too hard? Try RICO. See? Isn't that easy?

Democrats turn up heat on firing of U.S. attorney - Los Angeles Times

In testimony on Jan. 18, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Justice Department had no intention of avoiding Senate input on the hiring of U.S. attorneys.

Just a month earlier, D. Kyle Sampson, who was then Gonzales's chief of staff, laid out a plan to do just that. In an e-mail, he detailed a strategy for evading Arkansas Democrats in installing Tim Griffin, a former GOP operative and protege of presidential adviser Karl Rove, as the U.S. attorney in Little Rock.

"We should gum this to death," Sampson wrote to a White House aide on Dec. 19. "[A]sk the senators to give Tim a chance . . . then we can tell them we'll look for other candidates, ask them for recommendations, evaluate the recommendations, interview their candidates, and otherwise run out the clock. All of this should be done in 'good faith,' of course."

That would be "Lying to Congress," "Perjury," and "Violating the Oath of Office." Goodbye Alberto. Now apologize about the door, you could have walked through it gracefully rather than defenstrate yourself.

Statements On Firings of Prosecutors Are Key Issue - washingtonpost.com

The New York Times got the editorial ball rolling on Monday, calling for the firing of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales due largely, if not completely, to the burgeoning scandal involving the forced departure of eight U.S. attorneys. Today the notion spread across the country.

That Georgie Bush, he's a uniter, not a divider. Why, the whole country is united that he should show Alberto Gonzales the door!

Editorial Pages Call for Axing Attorney General

The Bush administration has agreed to allow a federal court that specializes in wiretap requests to oversee its non-warrant electronic surveillance program, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

In a letter to Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wrote that a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has agreed to authorize the program and preserve "the speed and agility necessary" to battle terrorism.

The Bush administration has asserted for more than a year that it had the authority to monitor U.S. residents' international communications without a judge's approval, as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires. But many lawmakers and legal observers have questioned that claim and argued that President Bush violated that 1978 law by authorizing the eavesdropping.

"It proves that this surveillance has always been possible under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and that there was never a good reason to evade the law," Reyes said in a written statement.

Well, it's about damn time.

"These orders allow us to do the same thing that we've been doing, but we will be operating under the orders we've obtained from a FISA judge," the official said.

The government will ask the court to approve surveillance requests for 90 days, after which it must seek renewed permission. Justice Department officials said the court issued more than one order governing the program, but they refused to provide details of the still-classified program.

Basically, what they are saying is that the whole time there was no reason to be operating the program outside of the long established legal framework designed to govern this type of monitoring, and that the whole time this was just an attempt to see if they could get away with skirting checks intended for this type of program.

Gonzales wrote that the effort to bring the program under the FISA court dates back two years. That assertion drew questions at the White House, where Snow tried to fend off suggestions that Wednesday's announcement was politically timed.

I call bullshit! Of course it was politically timed. This would not have happened if the Republicans didn't lose control of Congress.

Administration to let court monitor domestic spying - CNN.com

New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It's called war crimes, and it's the hole in the bottom of George Bush's leaky boat that I don't see any way for him to plug.

TIME.com: Exclusive: Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse -- Page 1