The Fools On The Hill

Remember Able Danger? Remember how the Pentagon ordered its witnesses to clam up in their congressional testimony and had thousands of pages of documents detailing the program, including the penetration of the 9/11 plot and fingering of Mohammed Atta and several other al Qaeda ringleaders as much as a year before the attacks, destroyed?

Or so they claimed:

In two possibly related developments in the past week, the Pentagon denied access to almost 10,000 pages of classified documents relating to a top-secret intelligence program senior officials have three times previously testified were destroyed or unable to be located. And the attorneys for the secret team members who disclosed the existence of the data-mining counter-terrorism program, called ABLE DANGER, have argued in a new court filing that they be “cleared” to review such files.

The Defense Department’s Inspector General’s office (DoD-OIG) and the joint Special Operations Command (SOCOM) have amassed some 9,500 pages of documents on a program that senior DoD and 9/11 Commission officials have stated repeatedly were destroyed or can no longer be located.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, “The Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, has determined that approximately 9,500 pages of these collected documents are potentially responsive to your FOIA request.” [emphases added]

Cap'n Ed called this "stunning." I call it sloppy. Clearly the Bushies don't know the first thing about cover-ups. Good thing they don't have any scandals of their own - other than concealing their predecessor's biggest one of all.

Will anybody in Congress besides Curt Weldon give a crap that Pentagon witnesses lied to them in their sworn testimony? Will this ever get blown into the blockbuster scandal it really is?

Heck, why would they start now? Sheesh, they just caught up to the year-and-a-half-old story about the idiotic dress codes that the Federal Air Marshal Service is still imposing upon its agents that makes "incognito," and defending against fresh Islamikaze attacks, a practical impossibility. What were you expecting? Vigilence?

Har har hardy har har. Congress only reserves vigilence for covering its own ass. Which brings us wearily back to the House GOP leadership losing its what remained of its collective mind by insanely rushing to the moronic defense of Donk crook Willie Jefferson. A stunt so monumentally stupid as to make even the Washington Post sound sane for a change:

The uproar over the FBI's search of Representative William J. Jefferson's congressional office is understandable but overblown. A demand [Wednes]day by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) that the Justice Department return the papers it seized goes way too far. Constitutional provisions designed to protect lawmakers from fear of political retribution, such as the speech-and-debate clause, counsel restraint and caution in circumstances such as these. They do not transform congressional offices into taxpayer-funded sanctuaries.

No one wants to have FBI agents pawing through lawmakers' files. Prosecutors and agents need to exhaust other avenues of obtaining evidence before doing so. If a search is required, they must take care not to trample on lawmakers' privileged activities.

It's not yet possible to make determinations about whether these principles were followed in the apparently unprecedented search of Mr. Jefferson's office. But the material for which agents searched had been under subpoena for eight months; Mr. Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat, resisted complying. Under those circumstances, seeking judicial approval for a search warrant is more reasonable. And while the "Saturday night raid," as Mr. Hastert called it, sounds melodramatic, it's less disruptive than having FBI agents in the House during normal business hours.

Mr. Jefferson was, according to the search warrant affidavit, caught with cold, hard cash: Agents videotaped him taking $100,000 in $100 bills from a Northern Virginia investor working undercover and then found $90,000 of it in his freezer. This was no fishing expedition.

Cap'n Ed is correct that the "uproar" is not at all "understandable" - as far as Congress is concerned. It is, however, eminently understandable to the American voter every bit as much as the House bank and post office "uproars" of the early '90s. Just as ordinary citizens cannot kite checks and launder money through the local USPS, so an outraged defense of a Joe Sixpack caught red-handed with ninety grand of filthy lucre in his ice box on high constitutional dudgeon would become the instant stuff of Leno and Letterman monologues. Even the ACLU would be even money to take such a case. So why are Denny Hastert and John Boehner stubbornly pursuing this? And in defense of a Democrat, no less? Is this bipartisanship gone wild?

Or might it have something to do with this?

Despite a flat denial from the Department of Justice, federal law enforcement sources [i.e. liberals in the DOJ bureaucracy] tonight said ABC News accurately reported that Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is "in the mix" in the FBI investigation of corruption in Congress.

Speaker Hastert said tonight the story was "absolutely untrue" and has demanded ABC News retract its story.

Law enforcement sources told ABC News that convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff has provided information to the FBI about Hastert and a number of other members of Congress that have broadened the scope of the investigation. Sources would not divulge details of the Abramoff’s information.

Ordinarily I'd dismiss this as just another Extreme Media smear. Most likely that's still all it is. But what if the Dems do have dirt on the Speaker and are blackmailing him into commiting political suicide on behalf of his majority caucus? Is there another plausible explanation for why Hastert would be seen in public as a co-babbling idiot alongside Crazy Nancy? One that doesn't involve men in white coats and butterfly nets?

And what is President Bush's excuse for sealing the seized Jefferson documents for forty-five days - meaning neither Jefferson, Congress, or the FBI will have access to them - as a "cooling off measure"? Does he really believe he can serve as an impartial referee when congressional leaders are pushing this as a separation of powers issue between the Legislative and Executive Branches? Isn't he himself obstructing the corruption investigation of Willie Jefferson? Why isn't he dragging Hastert down to the Oval Office and putting him in a headlock the way Hastert blasted him just a few weeks ago for shafting Porter Goss? Who the bleep is the leader of the Republican Party, anyway?

This is insanity. It is the New Tone run amok. And it is upping the ante on the apparent all-out GOP effort to return to the minority just over five months from now.

Some reporter should corner the Speaker and rip off the tagline from the Capital One ads: "What's in YOUR freezer?"