Month: April 2009

Reviewing Dick Cheney’s Security Clearance

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So I was reading this account of a Seymour Hersh interview on Fresh Air in which he says that Cheney loyalists have been “burrowed” into sensitive government positions, and continue to feed him information:

“I’ll make it worse. I think he’s put people left. He’s put people back. They call it a stay-behind. It’s sort of an intelligence term of art. When you leave a country and, you know, you’ve been driven out the, you know, you’ve lost the war. You leave people behind. It’s a stay-behind that you can continue to have contacts with, to do sabotage, whatever you want to do. Cheney’s left a stay-behind. He’s got people in a lot of agencies that still tell him what’s going on. Particularly in defense, obviously. Also in the NSA, there’s still people that talk to him. He still knows what’s going on. Can he still control policy up to a point? Probably up to a point, a minor point. But he’s still there. He’s still a presence.”

(Audio at bottom)

And the first thing that went through my head was, “People from the NSA are talking to a guy who orchestrated the outing of a covert CIA agent?”

Then I realized that the real question was, “Why does Richard Bruce Cheney still have a security clearance?”

Based on my reading of the entire Lewis “Scooter” Libby case, it’s clear that Patrick Fitzgerald had concerns that Cheney was aware of the leaks on some level, though he lacked any hard evidence (missing emails anyone?) to go any further.

That being said, a security clearance is not a legal procedure, it’s an administrative procedure, and to a significant degree, it is necessary for the holder of this clearance to show that they not a security risk, either intentionally or through negligence.

There is also an additional duty to report any credible potential security violations to the appropriate authorities.

This is a lower standard of proof than, for example, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, or obstruction of justice statutes.

There is therefore a significant concern that Dick Cheney violated the terms of his clearance, and pending an investigation, his clearance should be suspended pending an investigation.

Unlike a government employee whose livelihood is dependent on having a clearance, this should not provide an undue burden, and a hearing, with witnesses, including Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Mr. Cheney, testifying under oath, would be an appropriate venue to decide whether or not he was either deliberately or negligently cavalier with sensitive intelligence data.

Of course, if Mssrs Cheney or Libby were to make untrue statements in the process of giving their testimony, that would be a matter for the federal prosecutors.


Youtube link

File Under: I Used to Be Disgusted, Now I Try to Be Amused

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It appears that the Treasury Department is stonewalling the body charged with monitoring the various bank bailouts.

But “without a clearer explanation” about parts of the program, “it is not possible to exercise meaningful oversight over Treasury’s actions,” said Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School professor who leads a special congressional oversight panel monitoring the TARP program. Her comments came in a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the bailout program.

Noting that TARP passed Congress six months ago, Warren said that her group has repeatedly called on the Treasury Department to provide a clear strategy for the program — and that “the absence of such a vision hampers effective oversight.”

Dr. Warren, this is not a but, it’s a feature.

Geithner is a former Federal Reserve Bank of New York president. Opacity and secrecy are how they think that it’s supposed to work.

That’s the whole idea behind the Federal Reserve system.

Reports that GM Wants to Force GM Into Bankruptcy

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We have reports that appear to be leaked from the White House that say that they want to see GM go through some sort of preplanned bankruptcy here, and here.

I don’t see this happening, and I tend to agree with Yves Smith’s analysis that says that this would be next to impossible, because you would have to essentially get all the creditors to agree ahead of time.

Smith suggests that a realistic timetable for a bankruptcy would be over a year, and the analysis of the cascade effect on auto parts suppliers is that no one in the United States, including Toyota, Nissan, and Honda, would be able to make automobiles for something on the order of a year, because it would force the already tightly strapped auto parts suppliers into bankruptcy too.

I see this as primarily a way to apply pressure to two parties, the UAW and Pimco, who runs the world’s largest bond fund.

I think that Pimco is particularly a problem. Their behavior in the GMAC bailout was to dig in their heels, and make everyone else take a haircut, and all indications are that they are doing the same thing with GM.

Colman-Franken: The Fat Lady is Warming Up

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The election court has ruled against the Coleman campaign’s request that 1,400 absentee ballots be reviewed, instead allowing only 400 to be reviewed, many of which were stricken by the Coleman team.

With a 225 point vote gap, this comes very close to being “game over” at least in the state courts.

I think that one of the interesting subtexts here is that the ‘Phants have donated very large sums of money just to tie this up, and that Cornyn is suggesting that they will continue to refuse to seat Franken, which does not bode well for Republicans in Minnesota.

But, great googly moogly, make it stop!

Economics Update

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Well, the job loss report from payroll processor ADP is out, and according to them, there were 742,00 job losses in March, well above the 655K forecast.

Part of this is driven by continued declines in construction spending, as Calculated Risk notes and graphs (see graph pr0n).

As he notes, non-residential construction spending is following residential spending off a cliff.

There was also an increase in the NAR’s pending home sales index, though it remains firmly in the horrible range, at 82.1, up from 80.4, with 100 being the average level of pending home sales in 2001.

Still, mortgage applications are up again, though this is largely still refi activity.

The Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing Index mirrors the pending home sales index, in that it is up, to 36.3 from 35.8, but still in a firmly contracting posture, as 50 is neutral.

On the other side of the Pacific, we are seeing Japanese business confidence numbers fall to record lows.

The news in the auto industry, whether foreign or domestic is grim, with sales numbers for GM, Toyota, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, and Nissan all falling significantly.

We also see the Fed printing money to buy $6 billion in Treasuries, so as to keep the interest rates down.

In currency, the dollar is up on risk aversion again. Investors are concerned about the G-20 meeting, though I’m not sure if the concern is about nothing being done, or something being done….Maybe it’s a bit of both.

In energy, oil fell on strong inventory reports.

Aprils Fools Jokes: A Sampling

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Here is a sampling.

The biggest whopper is Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana, saying that using budget reconciliation to pass healthcare or environmental reform though dispite his, ““repeated concerns that doing so would damage bipartisan cooperation in the Senate.”

Bipartisan cooperation in the Senate….That’s a good one….What? He was serious????? Never mind.

Then we have Grauniad newspaper dropping paper, and going all twitter.

A sample from the archives, “JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?”

Google has CADIE: Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity, which includes printable 3-D glasses and a CADIE powered submarine.

Also Gmail Autopilot™ by CADIE. Never have to read email again, CADIE will reply to all your email for you. (I actually want something like this)

Expedia has $99 Flights to Mars.

Qualcomm has new wireless convergence models, like the WolfPigeon, CrocodEagle, and SharkFalcon

Technologizer’s First Forty-Five Fabulous Years!:

Not everybody remembers that Technologizer began as an online service. When we launched in April of 1964, there were only three IBM mainframes in the world powerful enough to receive us, we charged an hourly access fee of $15,000, and our network ran at 300-bpw (bits per week).

Opera Face Gestures: ’nuff said.

And Amazon is appealing to the Ron Paul crowd with Floating Amazon Cloud Environment(FACE), “Using the latest in airship technology, we’ve created a cloud that can come to you.”

Where the Bailout Money is Going

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CNN has a handy interactive chart, though Bloomberg, using slightly different math, gives us a figure of $12.8 Trillion, or over 90% of last year’s GDP.

Meanwhile, as has been noted earlier, AIG has been cutting sweetheart deals with the banking giants, and now the GAO, the investigative branch of Congress, is saying that the Treasury Department is being too lax in its policies on repaying AIG counterparties, confirming once again that Tim Geithner is the large banks’, and large Wall Street firms’ bitch.

There is no need for AIG to pay off at 100¢ on the dollar here, and the insistence that they do so is an excuse to pump more money into insolvent banking giants.