What’s in a Name, Barry? : MAUREEN DOWD

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
The New York Times

OP-ED COLUMNIST
What’s in a Name, Barry?
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: December 2, 2006

If you call Barack Obama’s office to check the spelling of his middle name, the reply comes back: “Like the dictator.”

WASHINGTON: If you call Barack Obama’s office to check the spelling of his middle name, the reply comes back: “Like the dictator.”

In the first rush of our blind date with the young senator from Illinois, we are still discovering things that are going to take some getting used to. Like his middle name: Hussein.

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Defense Dept.'s Top Intelligence Official Resigns

Key Rumsfeld aide resigns

Fri Dec 1, 8:56 PM ET

The Defense Department's top intelligence official will resign at the end of the year, the Pentagon announced.

Stephen Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, is the most senior Pentagon official to announce he is leaving since US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tendered his resignation last month.

Cambone, who came to the Pentagon with Rumsfeld in January 2001, has been a key player in his efforts to transform the US military into a lighter, high tech force and in carving out a larger role for US military intelligence.

The Defense Department expanded espionage and other covert intelligence gathering activities under Cambone, drawing criticism from some in Congress that it was intruding on turf traditionally dominated by the CIA.

General Michael Hayden, the CIA director, said in a radio interview November 22 that reports of tension between the CIA and the Pentagon over its intelligence gathering programs were exaggerated.

"There is a bit of an urban legend out there, that the distance between here and the Pentagon, which is about seven miles down the river, is the line of confrontation," Hayden told WTOP radio. "That's simply not true."

"The Defense Department performing additional intelligence tasks is good news for America; it brings more resources to a problem we have discussed as being very, very difficult," he said.

"The only question, of course, is like any team, that the performance and activities of the new players are coordinated with the squad already out there on the field. And I have to tell you, that activity is coordinated."

Hayden said Robert Gates, a former CIA director who has been tapped to replace Rumsfeld, would reinforce "the success that we've had under Secretary Rumsfeld, and frankly, with Under Secretary for Intelligence Steve Cambone."

In its announcement, the Pentagon said Cambone had no specific plans after his departure December 31 but "looks forward to spending more time with his family."

Cambone is one of the last members of the original team that came to the Pentagon with Rumsfeld, who announced his resignation November 8.

U.S. Gov't Terror Ratings Draw Outrage

Saturday December 2, 2006 11:31 AMgov

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - A leader of the new Democratic Congress, business travelers and privacy advocates expressed outrage Friday over the unannounced assignment of terrorism risk assessments to American international travelers by a computerized system managed from an unmarked, two-story brick building in Northern Virginia.

Incoming Senate Judiciary Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont pledged greater scrutiny of such government database-mining projects after reading that during the past four years millions of Americans have been evaluated without their knowledge to assess the risks that they are terrorists or criminals.

``Data banks like this are overdue for oversight,'' said Leahy, who will take over Judiciary in January. ``That is going to change in the new Congress.''

The Associated Press reported Thursday that Americans and foreigners crossing U.S. borders since 2002 have been assessed by the Homeland Security Department's computerized Automated Targeting System, or ATS.

The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years. Some or all data in the system can be shared with state, local and foreign governments for use in hiring, contracting and licensing decisions. Courts and even some private contractors can obtain some of the data under certain circumstances.

``It is simply incredible that the Bush administration is willing to share this sensitive information with foreign governments and even private employers, while refusing to allow U.S. citizens to see or challenge their own terror scores,'' Leahy said. This system ``highlights the danger of government use of technology to conduct widespread surveillance of our daily lives without proper safeguards for privacy.''

The concerns spread beyond Congress.

``I have never seen anything as egregious as this,'' said Kevin Mitchell, president of the Business Travel Coalition, which advocates for business travelers. It's ``evidence of what can happen when there isn't proper oversight and accountability.''

By late Friday, the government had received 22 written public comments about its after-the-fact disclosure of the program last month in the Federal Register, a fine-print compendium of federal rules. All either opposed it outright or objected to the lack of a direct means for people to correct any errors in the database about themselves.

``As a U.S. citizen who spends much time outside the U.S., I can understand the need for good security,'' wrote one who identified himself as Colin Edmunds. ``However, just as I would not participate in a banking/credit card system where I have no recourse to correct or even view my personal data, I cannot accept the same of my government.''

Privacy advocates also were alarmed.

``Never before in American history has our government gotten into the business of creating mass `risk assessment' ratings of its own citizens,'' said Barry Steinhardt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union. ``We are stunned'' the program has been undertaken ``with virtually no opportunity for the public to evaluate or comment on it.''

The Homeland Security Department says the nation's ability to spot criminals and other security threats ``would be critically impaired without access to this data.''

And on Friday as the normal daily flow of a million or more people entered the United States by air, sea and land, the ATS program's computers continued their silent scrutiny. At that Virginia building with no sign, the managers of the National Targeting Center allowed an Associated Press photographer to briefly roam their work space.

But he couldn't reveal the building's exact location. None of the dozens of workers under the bright fluorescent lights could be named. Some could not be photographed.

The only clue he might have entered a government building was a montage of photos in the reception area of President Bush's visit to the center. But there was only one guard and a sign-in book.

Inside, red digital clocks on the walls showed the time in Istanbul, Baghdad, Islamabad, Bangkok, Singapore, Tokyo, and Sydney. Although billboard-size video screens on the walls showed multiple cable news shows, there was little noise in the basketball-court-sized main workroom. Each desk had dual computer screens and earphones to hear the video soundtrack. Conferences were held in smaller workrooms divided by glass walls from the windowless main room.

Round the clock, the targeters from Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection agency analyze information from multiple sources, not just ATS. They compare names to terrorist watch lists and mine the Treasury Enforcement Communications System and other automated systems that bring data about cargo, travelers and commercial workers entering or leaving the 317 U.S. ports, searching for suspicious people and cargo.

Almost every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea or land is assessed based on ATS' analysis of their travel records and other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered.

Government officials could not say whether ATS has apprehended any terrorists. Based on all the information available to them, federal agents turn back about 45 foreign criminals a day at U.S. borders, according to Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection spokesman Bill Anthony. He could not say how many were spotted by ATS.

Officials described how the system works: applying rules learned from experience with the activities and characteristics of terrorists and criminals to the traveler data. But they would not describe in detail the format in which border agents see the results or in which the databases store the results of the ATS risk assessments.

Acting Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Paul Rosenzweig told reporters Friday they could call it scoring. ``It can be reduced to a number,'' he said, but he clearly preferred the longer description about how the rules are used.

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On the Net:

DHS privacy impact statement: http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/privacy/privacy-pia-cbp-ats.pdf

Associated Press writers Leslie Miller and Beverley Lumpkin contributed to this report.

Welcome to Loudon, USA, where rebuilding has sparked a goldrush

Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday December 2, 2006
The Guardian

Some of the billions of dollars that Congress earmarked to be spent on Iraq have ended up much closer to home, in the plush Washington suburbs of northern Virginia.

This year Loudoun county, a mix of sleek silver office buildings and bucolic hills to the west of the capital, emerged as the wealthiest county in the country with a median household income of nearly $100,000 (£50,500). The country's second poshest place to live, Fairfax County, is right next door.

Not long ago, at the height of the dot.com boom, the big money was on the west coast. In Bush's post 9/11 America it has migrated to the east, forming a golden arc around the Pentagon which has privatised much of the war on terror and has been handing out multimillion-dollar contracts to the burgeoning defence industry.

The giant corporations that have been paid much of the $18bn set aside for Iraq reconstruction are more evenly spread around the country. Parsons is in California. Bechtel and Halliburton are in the president's home state, Texas.

But a big bite of security costs involved in every reconstruction contract has found its way to Loudoun and Fairfax, where many private security contractors have set up shop to recruit officers and defence officials as soon as they walk out of the Pentagon's doors in search of a more lucrative private career.

As the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has found, conditions there have been so difficult that on some projects more than half the expenditure has been on overheads, such as paying high-earning contract employees to stay in Baghdad for months awaiting the start of construction. That money tends not to stay in Iraq but to go back to the US, to places such as Loudoun and Fairfax, where huge new private homes, known locally as "McMansions", are popping up each day, clustered around the many golf courses.

<>However, the gravy train may have "just jumped the tracks", wrote Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein. "It's not only that the war in Iraq will start to wind down, along with all the logistical support and reconstruction work that goes with it. Even more significantly, the Democratic Congress is about to lift the veil on the orgy of contractor waste, fraud and abuse that has gone unchecked at the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies and the homeland security
department."

Corruption: the 'second insurgency' costing $4bn a year

One third of rebuilding contracts under criminal investigation

Julian Borger in Washington, David Pallister
Saturday December 2, 2006
The Guardian

The Iraqi government is in danger of being brought down by the wholesale smuggling of the nation's oil and other forms of corruption that together represent a "second insurgency", according to a senior US official. Stuart Bowen, who has been in charge of auditing Iraq's faltering reconstruction since 2004, said corruption had reached such levels that it threatened the survival of the state.

"There is a huge smuggling problem. It is the No 1 issue," Mr Bowen told the Guardian. The pipelines that are meant to take the oil north have been blown up, so the only way to export it is by road. "That leaves it vulnerable to smuggling," he said, as truckers sell their cargoes on the black market.

Mr Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (Sigir), cites Iraqi figures showing that the "virtual pandemic" of corruption costs the country $4bn (£2.02bn) a year, and some of that money goes straight to the Iraqi government's enemies. A US government report has concluded that oil smuggling abetted by corrupt Iraqi officials is netting insurgents $100m a year, helping to make them financially self-sustaining.

"Corruption is the second insurgency, and I use that metaphor to underline the seriousness of this issue," Mr Bowen said. "The deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh, told Sigir this summer that it threatens the state. That speaks for itself."

The Bush administration's strategy in Iraq hinges on the survival of the government run by Nuri al-Maliki, despite US reservations about the prime minister's readiness or ability to confront extremists in his own Shia community.

But Mr Bowen's office has found that the insurgents and militias have also been abetted by US incompetence. A recent audit by his inspectors found that more than 14,000 guns paid for out of US reconstruction funds for Iraqi government use could not be accounted for. Many could be in the hands of insurgents or sectarian death squads, but it will be almost impossible to prove because when the US military handed out the guns it noted the serial numbers of only about 10,000 out of a total of 370,000 US-funded weapons, contrary to defence department regulations.

Jim Mitchell, a Sigir spokesman, said: "The practical effect is that when a weapons cache is found you're deprived of the intelligence of knowing if they were US-provided, which might allow you to follow the trail to the bad guys."

Mr Bowen's inspectors are among the few US civilian officials who still venture beyond the fortified bounds of the Green Zone in Baghdad into the rest of Iraq, to see how $18bn of American taxpayers' money is being spent. Much of the money has been wasted. Sigir officials have referred 25 cases of fraud to the justice department for criminal investigation, four of which have led to convictions, and about 90 more are under investigation.

A culture of waste, incompetence and fraud may be one legacy the occupiers have passed on to Iraq's new rulers more or less intact. Mr Bowen's office found that nearly $9bn in Iraqi oil revenues could not be accounted for. The cash was flown into the country in shrink-wrapped bundles on military transport planes and handed over by the ton to Iraqi ministries by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) run by Paul Bremer, a veteran diplomat. The money was meant to demonstrate the invaders' good intentions and boost the Iraqi economy, which Mr Bremer later insisted had been "dead in the water". But it also fuelled a cycle of corruption left over from Saddam Hussein's rule.

"We know it got to the Iraqis, but we don't know how it was used," Mr Bowen later told Congress.

In the Hillah region a defence department contract employee and two lieutenant colonels were found to have steered $8m in contracts to a US contractor in return for bribes. The Pentagon contract employee, Robert Stein, pleaded guilty earlier this year, admitting he and his co-conspirators received more than $1m in cash, help with laundering the funds, jewellery, cars and sex with prostitutes. Stein also admitted that they simply stole $2m from the construction fund, accounting for the money with receipts from fictitious construction companies.

Hillah just happened to be the district Mr Bowen's inspectors examined in depth. It is still far from clear how much reconstruction money has gone missing around the whole country.

A potentially far more serious problem has been the way the US government decided to give out reconstruction contracts. It split the economy into sectors and shared them out among nine big US corporations. In most cases the contracts were distributed without competition and on a cost-plus basis. In other words the contractors were guaranteed a profit margin calculated as a percentage of their costs, so the higher the costs, the higher the profits. In the rush to get work started the contracts were signed early in 2004. In many cases work did not get under way until the year was nearly over. In the months between, the contractors racked up huge bills on wages, hotel bills and restaurants.

According to a Sigir review published in October, Kellogg, Brown and Root (a subsidiary of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company) was awarded an oil industry repair contract in February 2004 but "direct project activity" did not begin until November 19. In that time KBR's overhead costs were nearly $53m. In fact more than half the company's $300m project costs from 2004-06 went on overheads, the audit found.

Iraq also represented a grey zone beyond the reach of the US civil courts. KBR was found to have overcharged the US military about $60m for fuel deliveries, but that did not stop it winning more government contracts.

A California company, Parsons, had its contract terminated this year after it was found to have finished only six of more than 140 primary healthcare centres it was supposed to build, after two years work and $500m spent. However, the contract was ended "for convenience", meaning Parsons was paid in full. In a police college Parsons built for $75m in Baghdad the plumbing was so bad that urine and excrement rained down from the toilets on to the police cadets. Parsons left a sub-contractor to do repairs but in general there is little punitive action that can be taken for shoddy work.

Part of the reason big US contractors have been able to get away with so much is that there has been limited proper supervision. CPA employees were picked not for their financial expertise but for their political loyalty.

Mr Bowen would have passed the test. He campaigned for George Bush in Texas and was one of the small army of Republican lawyers called in to Florida in 2000 to oversee the vote recounts on Mr Bush's behalf. When he started the job in March 2004 few expected he would do anything to embarrass the administration.

However, Mr Bowen has emerged as the scourge of the big corporations who are among the Republican party's biggest donors. Earlier this year a clause extending his mandate was stripped from a military spending bill just before a vote. Sigir, however, seems to have been saved by the Democratic victory in last month's elections.

Mr Bowen bristles at the suggestion that Mr Bush might have had a hand in the attempt to close his office. "I'm doing exactly what the president expects me to do," he said.

UPDATED: Is Bush Opening a Backdoor to Tehran Through al-Hakim?

The Bush Administration reportedly has threatened to turn its back on negotiatiations with the Sunni. This is probably a bargaining position. Note the following influential writer is a neocon, perhaps trying to stir up support against dealing with the Iranians, thereby keeping the Bush administration on the Sunni side. I have a hunch the DLC want Alawi, a Sunni, as Iraq's new strongman.
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by Meteor Blades
tleelange@hotmail.com

Sun Dec 03, 2006 at 12:26:31 AM NZDT

The New York Times and other sources are reporting that Mister Bush will meet Monday at the White House with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. SCIRI was founded in Tehran 24 years ago, and it has not been a favorite of the Bush Administration in the past.

The effort is part of a White House strategy that calls for reaching out to a wider circle of Iraqi politicians to give greater support to the weak government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and lessen his dependence on Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric.

But it immerses Washington even deeper into Baghdad’s byzantine coalition politics, and it risks being interpreted in Baghdad as a sign that Mr. Bush is hedging his bets.

"If you think Maliki may not survive," said one senior administration official, "you’d want to make sure that the president is talking to the guy who might well form the next government."

Bush's patronizing public appearance with Maliki on Thursday underscored the doubts the White House has about the prime minister's capabilities as expressed in a leaked confidential memo written for Bush by national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and published by the Times on Wednesday.

Given the Saudi threat to become involved in the Iraq civil war monetarily and perhaps militarily if the U.S. doesn't find a means to quell the violence, particularly against Iraqi Sunnis, meeting with al-Hakim might seem a strange choice. He once headed the Badr Corps, SCIRI's paramilitary wing that has been involved in the killings of Sunnis since 2003. On the other hand, the Badr Corps has also been involved of late in Shi'ite-on-Shi'ite killings, many of these directed against the Madhi Army, the militia put together by al-Sadr.

Controversy was stirred early this week when the Arab media reported that al-Hakim had said Sunnis would be the losers in any civil war. Al-Hakim denied the reports. And on Friday, in a sermon at a mosque in Amman, Jordan, he said that a civil war would "burn everyone," according to Agence France-Presse.

"The eruption of a sectarian war will not only burn everyone but it will also undermine the security of the entire region and lead to the unknown," Hakim told worshippers at Jordan's largest mosque.

"We are attached to unity for Iraq and its people and we are opposed to any attempt to divide Iraq because our strength is in our unity," said the head of the powerful Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

During his sermon before hundreds of worshippers, including many Iraqi citizens, at the Sunni Muslim King Hussein Mosque, the Shiite cleric and politician stressed his support for a national unity government in Iraq.

"We do not want a Shiite government that sidelines the Sunnis and we don't want a Sunni government that marginalises the Shiites," said Hakim, whose SCIRI is a key part of Iraq's ruling coalition,

"We want a government in which everyone takes part and that is at the service of all the citizens"...

Whether Bush's meeting with al-Hakim is, in addition to get him to support Maliki, also an effort either to pry the cleric away from SCIRI's Iranian sponsors or to open backdoor talks with Tehran depends on who you talk to.

Whatever the case, as with Vice President Cheney's visit to Saudi Arabia, there's a different take on who asked for this meeting. According to the Times:

While administration officials suggested it was Mr. Hakim who sought the meeting, Mr. Hakim’s son, Amar al-Hakim, said in a telephone interview that the invitation came from Mr. Bush. The elder Hakim will discuss the Iraq situation with the president, conduct negotiations and visit Iraqis living in the United States, his son said, but he declined to talk in more detail. When asked whether Mr. Hakim was going to discuss matters related to Iran, with which Mr. Hakim has very close ties, his son said, "They’re only talking about Iraqi matters."

Uh-huh.

Appearances can be deceiving. But Mister Bush appears to be engaging in some of the diplomacy that critics have urged him to try since 2002. Whether that diplomacy is serious, window-dressing, or merely a way to get a jump on the recommendations coming Wednesday when the Iraq Study Group's report is officially released remains to be seen.

Spy Chief Cites Perils in Iraq: Worse Than Vietnam

- By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
Friday, December 1, 2006

(12-01) 12:50 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) --

National Intelligence Director John Negroponte says Iraq is far more precarious than much of Vietnam was when he served as a U.S. diplomat there in the 1960s.

An expert on Vietnam and one-time adviser to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Negroponte said he sees more differences than similarities between the two conflicts. In Vietnam, for example, there was a clear enemy, given Soviet support of the North Vietnamese.

Additionally, "in Vietnam, the cities were secure. The province capitals were secure. I walked around that country as an unarmed civilian for almost four years without ever having any serious brushes," said Negroponte, who served in the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. "In Iraq, even the capital is highly insecure — perhaps one of the most insecure places in the country."

Negroponte made the remarks in a wide-ranging interview that airs Sunday evening on C-SPAN's "Q&A" program. A transcript was made available to The Associated Press.

Negroponte took over as the nation's top intelligence official last year, assuming a post created to unify the 16 intelligence agencies. He indicated in the interview that he wants to stay on through the Bush administration. Many associates have expected Negroponte to return to his diplomatic roots, perhaps serving as deputy secretary of State, a position open since July.

His answer to the question — will he "stay with it for a while?" — didn't completely close to door to a new assignment. "In my own mind at least, I visualize staying with it through the end of this administration and, then I think, probably that'll be about the right time to pack it in," he said.

Negroponte, who also is a former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, said Iraqis must take more responsibility for their security and defense. The key, he said, is Baghdad, where the violence is greatest. His comments closely tracked the conclusions of an independent group led by former Secretary of State James Baker that is advising the administration as it redraws its Iraq policy.

"This has really got to become more and more of an Iraqi problem, and less and less of a U.S. one," he said. "I would hope that our forces can take more of a support role and a training role, and fall more into the background rather than being in the lead in the months ahead."

Negroponte said he wasn't certain of the impact should an Iraq court follow through with its Nov. 5 sentence to hang former dictator Saddam Hussein for ordering the execution of nearly 150 Shiite Muslims. The sentence triggered an automatic appeal.

"There are a lot of the Iraqis that want some kind of closure in this situation," Negroponte said. "There are probably also some insurgents, some Sunni extremist insurgents, who are fighting in the belief that — under the illusion that — they may be fighting to bring Mr. Saddam back to power, so it could have the effect of actually discouraging some of the Sunni extremists."

Negroponte voiced one regret about the nine months he served as ambassador to Iraq: that the United States wasn't able to convince Sunni politicians to scrap their boycott of the January 2005 elections. "I think that that was a real setback for the political process," he said.

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