| chshkt |
05-06-2006 04:35 PM |
May 6, 2006 -- Friday morning in Washington started out as a slow news day. But that situation quickly changed when it was reported that CIA Leakgate Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was on his way to the US Court House in the early afternoon. The grand jury investigating the leak of classified CIA information had convened earlier in the morning. Then, former Vice Presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby arrived at the court house for a hearing before Judge Reggie Walton. The special prosecutor and Libby's defense team wrangled over evidence to be submitted in pre-trial legal maneuvers, which had already commenced with a number of filings to the court. Walton was not inclined to permit the release of a number of classified documents to Libby's defense team. After the hearing, in which Fitzgerald argued against the release of the classified documents, Libby walked alone to Finemondo, a restaurant-lounge in downtown Washington just a few blocks from the White House, where he had some drinks with three other individuals, two males and a female. It is not known whether Fitzgerald participated in any of the grand jury proceedings after the hearing before Judge Walton.
Yesterday's press vigil outside the US Federal Court House in Washington: Arrival of grand jury was followed by Scooter Libby's and Patrick Fitzgerald's appearance at pre-trial hearing before Judge Reggie Walton and by the sudden announcement of CIA Director Porter Goss' resignation.
The day became more surreal when reporters covering the court hearing were told that CIA Director Porter Goss had just tendered his resignation at the White House. Although the White House spun Goss' departure as expected following some sort of "transition," it was clear that what WMR has been reporting for some time -- that Goss and his closest advisers, all GOP political operatives and hacks -- had been implicated in the contractor scandals surrounding Goss' Executive Director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo and ADCS head Brent Wilkes. The scandal involved poker parties at the Watergate Hotel and Westin Grand that reportedly featured prostitutes of both sexes, limousines, and situations in which CIA officials could be subject to potential blackmail. Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte became so concerned about the CIA scandal, he told Goss that it was time for him to go. it is now expected that other members of the Goss team -- including Foggo, chief of staff Patrick Murray, Michael Kostiw (who left the CIA under a cloud in the early 1980s after being arrested for shoplifting a package of bacon from a McLean, Virginia supermarket), Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, and others who Goss brought with him from Capitol Hill -- will be shown the door.
Although many current and recently retired CIA officials expressed relief that Goss resigned, his replacement, Negroponte's deputy and former NSA Director General Michael Hayden, is also problematic. Although Hayden and Negroponte get along very well -- a primary reason Hayden was selected -- Hayden's role in permitting warrantless wiretaps by the NSA of the international and domestic communications of U.S. persons, caused him problems with long serving employees of the signals intelligence agency. Hayden's mismanagement of NSA's modernization efforts have cost the American taxpayers perhaps billions of dollars. Hayden presided over an NSA that saw the first whistleblowers coming forward to report illegal activities, intelligence cover-ups, intelligence fabrications, and serious misconduct by senior NSA officials. There will be a lot of sharing of notes between NSA and CIA personnel on Hayden and his stint as CIA Director may prove as stormy as that faced by Goss. Hayden was also a good foot soldier for neo-con policy makers in the Pentagon. Hayden's arrival at Langley gives Donald Rumsfeld a trusted foothold inside the agency he has sought to bring under the control of his parallel Pentagon intelligence operation run by Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone and General William "Jerry" Boykin.
May 6, 2006 -- General Hayden's nomination to be the next CIA Director came as another scandal involving the intelligence agency emerged in addition to the "Hookergate" scandal centered on the Watergate and another Washington hotel. Under Goss, the CIA's venture capital arm, IN-Q-TEL, which provides CIA money to promising high-tech start-up firms, became the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation for possible massive misappropriation of taxpayer money and private money involving IN-Q-TEL, NASA's venture capital branch -- Red Planet Capital -- The US Special Operations Command's venture capital firm On Point, and the infamous Carlyle Group -- the war profiteering company in which George H. W. Bush, the Bin Laden family, and former Secretary of State James Baker have held major financial interests.
Suspicions about IN-Q-TEL were raised in late April when its 35-year-old CEO, Amit Yoran, abruptly resigned to "spend more time with his family." Yoran, an Israeli-American, had been on the job for just four months after he succeeded IN-Q-TEL's first CEO, Gilman Louie, a well-known Silicon Valley investor and technical guru. Before taking over IN-Q-TEL, Yoran was the director of the National Cyber Security Division at the Department of Homeland Security. Under Yoran, IN-Q-TEL's operating budget increased exponentially and the firm began negotiating with various high-tech firms to develop deep data mining programs and spy technology. Yoran's rumored successor was said to be Mark Frantz, who Yoran brought from The Carlyle Group to be IN-Q-TEL's managing general partner and board of trustees member. Frantz worked for George H. W. Bush and held a senior position with Alex Brown, later merged with Deutsche Bank, the firm where the CIA's former Executive Director, A. B. "Buzzy" Krongard served as Chairman. IN-Q-TEL's board of trustees chairman is Lee A. Ault III of Delray Beach, Florida, who also serves on the board of Office Depot.
Individuals familiar with IN-Q-TEL report that the company is suspected of steering CIA funds to start-up firms with close ties to the GOP as well as "pump and dump" penny stock firms tied to three foreign nations -- Israel, Dubai, and Malaysia. The emerging IN-Q-TEL scandal is mirrored by the financial scandal involving favoritism in CIA contracts to Brent Wilkes' ADCS and its subsidiaries.
Deputy DNI Gen. Michael Hayden, who presided over dubious multi-billion dollar contracts -- including Groundbreaker and Trailblazer -- as NSA director, has a great deal of experience in covering up cost overruns, contractor fraud, and contract favoritism. Beyond the need to have a good foot soldier at the helm of the CIA, the Bush administration is clearly hoping that Hayden, using his special form of intimidation through the use of psychiatric and security personnel to threaten whistleblowers, can tamp down the emerging financial "Watergate" emerging at the CIA.
May 6, 2006 -- As expected, it did not take long for the neo-con media and their "swiftboating" informants in the US Capitol Police, Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), and the "Hawk and Dove" bar on Capitol Hill to spin the story that Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy was drunk when his car collided with one of the many "Checkpoint Charlie"-style security barricades that now surround the Capitol and the House and Senate office buildings. Yesterday, Kennedy announced he was checking into a rehab program at the Mayo Clinic for prescription drug addiction. Chief among the media sources that are turning the Kennedy incident into a major "scandal" is the neo-con Boston Herald, a paper that works closely with the Fox affiliate in Boston. As previously reported by WMR, the Capitol Police and the Washington, DC and Capitol Police FOP are rife with GOP activists who have already targeted Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney and now Kennedy for the type of "special attention" not dished out to Republican members.
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