Of course, they're lying. RL calls, so I can't take this one apart, though. Readers?

Story here. See Cannonfire for responsible speculation.

So, I wonder if Connell's lawyer has an envelope to open in the event of his death?

Amazing stuff from the court case on Ohio 2004* from the invaluable McClatchy, with a headline that I wish I'd written, and the names of many, many old friends:

Computer expert denies knowledge of '04 vote rigging in Ohio

"'He denies it,' said the King: 'Leave out that part.'"

A Republican computer consultant denied under oath Monday that he knew of any GOP effort to steal the 2004 election for President Bush by rigging Ohio's vote totals, an attorney who questioned him said.

 Read more…

Behind the firewall: Bush loyalist Mike Connell controls Congressional secrets as his email sites serve Karl Rove

 Read more…

At the very end of Froomkin's chat yesterday, there is this little gem:

Stony Brook, N.Y.: Everybody seems to accept the claim that the CIA tapes were destroyed. Given the long history of deceptions by this administration, shouldn't we ask for proof, or at least sworn statements to that effect?

Dan Froomkin: A good point. And consider this. Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball write in Newsweek: "At one point portions of the tapes were electronically transmitted to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., so a small number of officials there could review them. A counterterrorism source, who also asked for anonymity when discussing this subject, said that there was no reason to believe that any recordings of such an electronic feed still exist."

No, no, of course not. No reason whatever. (Except that, as we know from the Stasi and, say, Guatemala, totalitarian regimes hang onto all their data.)

And who knows the dataflows? Where the data goes, its nature and volume, its timing, and who has privileges to see it? The techs. Could we talk to them, please? Didn't we get good results when we talked to Alexander Butterfield?

Get a load of this:

The head of the federal agency investigating Karl Rove's White House political operation is facing allegations that he improperly deleted computer files during another probe, using a private computer-help company, Geeks on Call.

Scott Bloch runs the Office of Special Counsel, an agency charged with protecting government whistleblowers and enforcing a ban on federal employees engaging in partisan political activity. Mr. Bloch's agency is looking into whether Mr. Rove and other White House officials used government agencies to help re-elect Republicans in 2006.

At the same time, Mr. Bloch has himself been under investigation since 2005. At the direction of the White House, the federal Office of Personnel Management's inspector general is looking into claims that Mr. Bloch improperly retaliated against employees and dismissed whistleblower cases without adequate examination.

Recently, investigators learned that Mr. Bloch erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year. They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said.

So, to recap: Karl Rove is accused of retaliating against employees and then illegally deleting the evidence. The man in charge of investigating him is accused of retaliating against employees and then deleting evidence.

Fuck. This. Shit.

Wait, though, it gets better!

Via (again, the essential, and thoroughly clad, except when not) Avedon, this from the Financial Times.

The Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network in June in the most successful cyber attack on the US defence department, say American ­officials.

But you have to read all the way to the end to find this:

The National Security Council said the White House had created a team of experts to consider whether the administration needed to restrict the use of BlackBerries because of concerns about cyber espionage.

Oh, pshaw! Sure, some Christianist General could have left his Blackberry on the nightstand after getting a room in the Pentagon City Ritz-Carlton, and the ChiComs could have latched onto it, but a high government official entrusted with national security information using an unsecured Blackberry? How plausible is that? Oh, wait...

[The story of Bush's odd bike ride near NSA headquarters is at the end. As Josh points out, "the intensity of the covering up doesn't match the alleged secret." However, if Bush was personally involved in handling any of the warrantless surveillance data, that would definitely account for the intensity. Foily? Who but the foiliest, back even after 9/11, could have imagined this story would even be happening?]

The Times, today:

A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program.

It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate. But such databases contain records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans, and their examination by the government would raise privacy issues.

Well, well. As we wrote over a year ago, after combining careful examination of how Republicans parse their statements with network engineering knowledge available through open sources:

Long story short: (1) Internet surveillance is Bush’s goal, not voice calls; (2) the Republican “wiretap” talking point is a diversion, to voice, away from from Internet surveillance; (3) Bush’s domestic surveillance system would pose no engineering challenges whatever to NSA. No rocket science—or tinfoil hats—required.

Can we please stop talking about "wiretaps" now? It's not your voice communications Bush wants. It's your mail.

I don't have time tonight, alas, to summarize all our work on warrantless surveillance (go read).

So I'll summarize some key points as I see them. Don your foil:

Now Rove:

Senate Democrats called for a perjury investigation against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on today and subpoenaed top presidential aide Karl Rove in a deepening political and legal clash with the Bush administration.

"For over four months, I have exhausted every avenue seeking the voluntary cooperation of Karl Rove and J. Scott Jennings, but to no avail," the Vermont lawmaker said. "They and the White House have stonewalled every request. Indeed, the White House is choosing to withhold documents and is instructing witnesses who are former officials to refuse to answer questions and provide relevant information and documents."

Excellent, but "four months" was much, much too long.

"So, Karl, does that mean that there's a backup of your email after all?"

Oddly, or not, that Sheryl Gay Stolberg didn't even think to ask that question.

Shake, baby, shake. From yesterday's press briefing at the Whitewash House:

Q Waxman's committee has put out an interim report on the issue of the RNC emails showing, they say, that there was more use of those emails than the White House suggested, indicating possibly widespread violation of the Presidential Records Act. It's, like, 140,000 emails of Rove's, so the White House Counsel's Office is aware that official business was being conducted through this party (inaudible) system? Can you respond to all that and what --

MR. BLOW: Look, I can't respond specifically to things that the committee may have put out. But those email accounts were set up, A, on a model based on the prior administration, which had done it the same way, in order to try to avoid Hatch Act violations. And we'll just -- we'll leave it at that. I mean, these were designed precisely to avoid Hatch Act violations that prohibit the use of government assets for certain political activities.

Oh, come on. This is the most transparent fucking cover story I've ever heard. They say "Move everything that's political into the private RNC accounts." But, to this White House, everything is political; as John DiIulio and many others have written, there's no policy arm in this White House at all. So, since everything is political, all the correspondence moves off the White House servers onto the RNC servers. Eh?

The shakin' continues:

It's still only in WaPo.com, not the dead-tree verson yet, but it's progress.

Long version is here. Short version--from The Invaluable Froomkin of course, starts thusly:

" * The number of White House officials given RNC [Republican National Committee] e-mail accounts is higher than previously disclosed. In March 2007, White House spokesperson Dana Perino said that only a 'handful of officials' had RNC e-mail accounts. In later statements, her estimate rose to '50 over the course of the administration.' In fact, the Committee has learned from the RNC that at least 88 White House officials had RNC e-mail accounts. The officials with RNC e-mail accounts include Karl Rove, the President's senior advisor; Andrew Card, the former White House Chief of Staff; Ken Mehlman, the former White House Director of Political Affairs; and many other officials in the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Communications, and the Office of the Vice President.

" * White House officials made extensive use of their RNC e-mail accounts.

Breaking on CNN:

Two congressional panels are issuing subpoenas to two former White House staffers to testify about their roles in the firings of eight federal prosecutors, officials familiar with the investigation said today.

Newsreader is saying the names Miers and Taylor. More after this commercial break...

Very seldom can this be said, but it looks to me like ThinkProgress got so excited by a story that they didn't (yet) absorb the other, really explosive, story inside it. Check this out:

Justice Department documents released tonight include new emails linking Karl Rove’s top aides — former White House political director Sara Taylor, who resigned last month, and her deputy Scott Jennings — to the U.S. attorney scandal. Subpoenas have been authorized, but not approved, for both Taylor and Jennings.

Significant, sure. Illegal as shit, well, duh! This goes without saying for this crew. But way down the story this sorta leaps out:

The messages from Taylor and Jennings to the Justice officials are sent from their Republican National Committee email accounts.

Now can we get those subpoenas to Chattanooga Rep. Waxman? There is no longer any way anybody can claim that "those RNChq.com and gwb43.com and other Smartech emails were just used for political matters." These mails were entirely about government business, to wit the US Attorney positions. They should have gone through the legal, mandatory, US Archivist-recorded .gov email system. They did not. Case fucking closed already, dammit.

I nearly put the "gwb43.com" headline on this but decided it's too early. This is a "cloud on the horizon the size of a man's hand" sort of story. I don't know the source but something called "law.com" has a certain impressiveness about it. At least somebody was smart enough to grab a good URL early on.

Now to the problem: this piece claims, in essence, that those "RNChq.com" mails, even if we (sounds of grinding teeth aimed in Rep. Henry Waxman's direction) ever get the subpoena issued to Smartech.com and Coptix.com, may not be usable in court.

This is a very readable piece which nonetheless cites actual cases. Could any legal scholars kindly leave comments as to whether this is an attempt to blow smoke up our asses or a straightforward piece of evolving technolegalism? Details follow:

As we wait for the subpoenas to be served on Smartech (and their backup servers at Coptix) Chattanooga TN, we wile away our time exploring the universe of the illegal use of behind-the-scenes, not covered by the Presidential Records Act, hidden from the National Archivist email network variously called "RNCHQ.com" and "gwb43.com."

While we'd like to know what all was said, there is another source which allows us to look at who was saying what to whom. A most creative party has taken the statistical universe of the emails sent by accident in 2004--smack in the summer of the high Bush-Kerry campaign as it happens--to the address "[INSERT-ANYTHING-HERE]@georgewbush.org" and posted way back then by "whitehouse.org." While they may be a satire/parody site (hey, at least they ain't porn any more) but these mails were real. They called that section "The DEAD LETTER OFFICE: GeorgeWBush.org: Bush/Cheney in 2004!"

Our mystery compiler calls his dissection of this data The Missing Link. We do not, that I could see, have a name for this heroic compiler/correlator, an omission presumably inspired by the fact that he or she did this work on the website of George Mason University where the party is either employee or student. We suggest our readers copy all the files, data and lovely, lovely pictures to sites elsewhere, as GMU is likely to find the material embarassing and make it go away. I've got 'em stashed but you get copies too--accidents happen.

Now once you have them stashed away--or if you want to live dangerously and

I guess it all makes sense. If you have your head totally up your butt. But the journamalists are already wet:

Politician-turned-actor Fred Thompson has been coy with audiences as he flirts with a bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

In an interview with USA TODAY, however, the former Tennessee senator not only makes it clear that he plans to run, he describes how he aims to do it. He's planning an unconventional campaign using blogs, video posts and other Internet innovations to reach voters repelled by politics-as-usual in both parties.

"I can't remember exactly the point that I said, 'I'm going to do this,' " Thompson says, his 6-foot, 6-inch frame sprawled comfortably across a couch in a hotel suite. "But when I did, the thing that occurred to me: 'I'm going to tell people that I am thinking about it and see what kind of reaction I get to it.' "

Not a dry seat in the house.

I know what my reaction is:

Froomkin, of all people, may have (I'm gonna say inadvertently) buried a lede in his Wednesday column. Quoting an AP piece on the subject of Susan Ralston's Dance of the Seven Veils of Immunity, there is the line

Waxman's memo is worth a read. As Waxman notes: "In September 2006, Chairman Davis and Ranking Member Waxman released a staff report summarizing what the Committee had learned from a review of billing records and e-mails provided to the Committee by Mr. Abramoff's former lobbying firm, Greenberg Traurig.

Ralston, of course, was Abramoff's former top aide who he conveeeeeniently handed off to the Dark Lord when one K. Rove needed a top aide when they completed their hijacking of the US executive branch. Think of Ralston as the hijacker who guarded the cockpit door against passengers trying to bang it open with the food cart.

But what makes this particular story jump out at me is that a few weeks ago Lambert ran across a record of some Abramoff-related emails as we were digging into the [ILLEGAL] private communications net we've been calling "gwb43.com" run for the Republican National Committee [RNC.com] by Smartech Corp out of Chattanooga TN. [with backup storage at Coptix.com also of C'noogie--wouldn't want Jeffy to think we'd forgotten him!]

In the header was an Abramoff message--I forget who it was to, might have been Ralston herself--and the return address caught my eye for having the letters "gt" in it.

No, we hadn't forgotten about this. We just laid low to wait for some more promising game to come up the trail to the waterhole. Huntmaster Josh Marshall is doing the drive, and a fellow hunter found this in the new Department of Justice document dump very quietly released last night:

From: Jennings, Jeffee S.
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 10:17 AM
To: ~KR@georgewbush,com'; Fielding, Fred F.; Sullivan, Kevin F.; Perino, Dana M.;
tkyle [dot] sampson [at] usdoj [dot] gov'
Cc: 'Sara Taylor'
Subject: NM USATTY - urgent issue
Importance: High -
I just received a telephone call from Steve Bell, Sen. Domenici's CoS, who urgently reported the following:
1. Outgoing USATTY David 1glesias.i~h olding a press conference at 11:30 Eastern this
morning. I
2 . He is allegedly going to say that he was contacted by' two Members of Congress last Fa11

No longer is there honor among thieves Republicans! Abu G heaves McNulty under the bus:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday he relied on his resigning deputy more than any other aide to decide which U.S. attorneys should be fired last year.

"You have to remember, at the end of the day, the recommendations reflected the views of the deputy attorney general. He signed off on the names," Gonzales told reporters at a National Press Club forum in Washington. "And he would know better than anyone else, anyone in this room, anyone — again, the deputy attorney general would know best about the qualifications and the experiences of the United States attorneys community, and he signed off on the names."

O.M.F.G. Gosh, remember those happy days, those innocent days the Republicans were the accountability party?

Oh, Monica, Monica, Monica. I shake my head in sorrow. You should have skipped Regent and the law degree and gone someplace where they taught history. Recent American history for example. Like the Watergate story.

You, dear reader, or I may delete a hundred emails a day. Employees of the Justice Department operate under somewhat different rules. So when one Monica wrote (we don't know at this point if it was on her .gov email or that nasty gwb43.com one) looked suspicious to several people scanning the Friday Document Dump, including our own scarshapedstar, it was because he noted her use of the word "friendlies." Now it turns out there were other words of interest in this same mail as well.

These were found, and Monica got busted, by a party with the excellent name of Anonymous Liberal, who happens to be a lawyer too. She/he makes clear just why Monica is now well and truly screwed, blued and tattooed: the words, in bold even, on her email of Feb. 12 2007, Please delete prior versions.

Our magic word for today is "imaged." For some reason that made me think of the old Star Trek ep where they transport into the Bizarro Universe and meet the Spock with the Beard and Uhura is dressed even hotter than usual, complete with dagger in a leg holster. From, as usual, Your Daily Froom:

In a letter to the House oversight committee, the Republican National Committee turned over a heavily caveated list with 37 names on it. It was described as a "current list of users who we believe are or were White House employees using RNC accounts for whom we have been able to identify active e-mail data on operational RNC servers." The RNC said more names may well show up later.

The RNC says it is "working diligently to identify and preserve all potentially relevant data that may exist" and has already gathered 25.5 million kilobytes of e-mail from the 37. It has also hired a computer forensics firm that has "imaged" several RNC computers and blackberries that are currently being used by White House employees.

The Associated Press has an annotated version of the list. The most prominent name on it, other than Karl Rove of course: Presidential counselor Dan Bartlett.

Are there any contests currently running for "greatest number of weasle words that can be squeezed into one sentence"? If so I have a nominee.

Great news! The guy Bush has tapped to investigate clear Karl Rove is a crony-hiring, gay-hating adjunct Professor who's gutted his department and hired Christianists just of out of law school to replace the professsionals!

In other words, the guy's a "loyal Bushie."

Anyhow:

The obscure federal investigative unit known as the Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.

The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.

First, the inquiry comes from inside the administration, not from Democrats in Congress. Second, unlike the splintered inquiries being pressed on Capitol Hill, it is expected to be a unified investigation covering many facets of the political operation in which Rove played a leading part.

So who's heading the investigation?

"We will take the evidence where it leads us," Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel and a presidential appointee, said in an interview Monday. "We will not leave any stone unturned."

So, who is Scott J. Bloch? I'm glad you asked:

Can Rep. Conyers order the National Guard and Marines (whatever's left of them) to surround Chattanooga already?

This high-tech system used to count and report the 2004 presidential vote- from server-hosting contracts, to software-writing services, to remote-access capability, to the actual server usage logs themselves -- must be added to the growing congressional investigations.

...That web-hosting firm is SMARTech Corp. of Chattanooga, TN, operating out of the basement in the old Pioneer Bank building. The firm hosts scores of Republican websites, including georgewbush.com, gop.com and rnc.org.

Arrest all Porkers, I say, and seize the servers!

UPDATE: OK, OK! That was kind of an authoritarian impulse, there. I blame Bush Fatigue.

How about this: offer free barbecue and a chance to wrestle Karl Rove in a tub full of Crisco to any Chattanoogans who "know stuff about the internets". And let's see who doesn't show up, eh? Is that non-coercive enough?

It's just the sheer absurdity of MULTIPLE 21st century high-tech political ratfucking operations being run out of a town known for its Choo-Choo.

I missed this until today, but as usual, McClatchy has the goods:

[Republican] David Iglesias, the former New Mexico U.S. attorney and one of the eight fired last year, said investigating the White House's role is the logical next step - one that would follow existing clues about Rove's involvement.

"If I were Congress, I would say, `If the attorney general doesn't have answers, then who would?' There's enough evidence to indicate that Karl Rove was involved up to his eyeballs."

Iglesias said another clue that the White House may have been the driving force is the relative lack of Justice Department documentation for the firings in the 6,000 pages of documents turned over to Congress.

"If you want to justify getting rid of someone, you should have at least some paper trail," Iglesias said. "There's been a remarkable absence of that. I'm wondering if the paper trail is at the White House."

Duh.

Funny, I'm not hearing our famously free press make this point. Maybe they were all too busy shopping for Nehru jackets or gogo boots to watch Rich Little's Fuhrergefluffen in the White House Stenographers Association's return to wankery.