What can you say? From the Houston Chronicle:

Jimmy Hoang Le, 18, from left, Stephanie Jacobo 18, both from the Beaumont area, and Roosevelt Smith Jr., 43, of Louisiana, have been charged in the death of Betty Blair of Pasadena.

3 hurricane evacuees accused of killing woman who helped them

By ANNE MARIE KILDAY and MÓNICA GUZMÁN
Oct. 30, 2005, 10:06

Betty Blair, 77, who was found strangled Friday in her home, was the widow of former Pasadena school board president Robert Blair, who died last spring.

Three hurricane evacuees were charged with capital murder Saturday in the strangulation of Betty Blair, a 77-year-old church leader, mother of three daughters and the widow of former Pasadena school board President Robert "Bob" Blair.

Jimmy Hoang Le, 18, Stephanie Jacobo, 18, both from the Beaumont area, and Roosevelt Smith Jr., 43, of Louisiana, were charged with murdering Blair during a robbery at her Pasadena home Friday.

An active member of St. Pius V Catholic Church, Blair had been helping the three by paying them to do odd jobs and yard work on her property.

"It appears that those that she tried to help were the ones that murdered her," said Pasadena Police Department spokesman Vance Mitchell. The three lived together in an apartment in the 900 block of Randall in Pasadena, Mitchell said.

They were arrested Friday night at the toll booth at Beltway 8 and Westheimer, driving Blair’s tan 2000 Buick, in which some of her belongings were found. Jacobo’s 10-month-old son also was in the car, and is now with "appropriate relatives," said Gwen Carter, a spokeswoman for the Department of Family and Protective Services.

The car was located through OnStar, an onboard electronic tracking system.

Police said Blair’s body was found by the youngest of her three daughters, Melissa Bishop.

Next-door neighbor Lestley Rowell heard "very loud screams" coming from the home. He helped Blair’s daughter and called Pasadena police, said his wife, Doris Rowell.

"We are just devastated by this," Rowell said. "My husband is not feeling very well today."

Rowell said her husband had "a bad feeling" earlier in the week when he saw one of the men working in the yard. "He said he was going to talk to Miss Betty about being more careful," Rowell said.

‘Very sweet, giving person’

The three suspects were the second group of evacuees Blair had helped after Hurricane Katrina, said her neighbor and fellow parishioner Mary Titus.

Since the death of her husband — who served on the Pasadena Independent School District board for 12 years — in the spring, Blair had become "even more involved" in church activities, Titus said.

"Betty was just a very sweet, giving person," Titus said. "She had told me she was just starting to get over Bob’s death — he passed away last April, or May. They did a lot of stuff together. She was very active in the church and very active in the community."

Titus, who said she had lived directly across the street from the Blairs for the last 18 years, said they were "wonderful neighbors." Just after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in late August, Blair took three women from New Orleans into her home in the Parkview Estates subdivision, which was named the 2005 "Neighborhood of the Year" in Pasadena.

"They were very nice people — a grandmother, a mother and a daughter — who went to church with Betty every Sunday," Titus said.

"They apparently got back on their feet within a month and moved on."

The pastor of St. Pius V Catholic Church in Pasadena, the Rev. Hubert Kealy, said, "My heart was broken" upon learning of Blair’s death.

"Betty Blair was a well-known, prominent member of this parish. She and her husband, Bob, God rest them both, were very active in most everything," Kealy said. The parish of St. Pius V was "the center of their life," Kealy said.

Involved in the aid

In addition to serving as chairman of the church’s Communion ministers, Blair had been a teacher at St. Pius V and had edited the parish’s last two directories.

"She was well-liked and respected by former students and the people she worked with at the present," Kealy said.

Learning of her death, he said, "I was absolutely stunned, I was breathless. The first thing I remember being able to do, when I recovered my emotional breath, was to say a prayer for her eternal peace."

"How someone abuses kindness, or how someone is led astray, we can’t second-guess that. All I can do is to do what I know the Lord wants," Kealy said.

Another parish priest, the Rev. Oscar Castro, went immediately to Blair’s home to administer last rites, Kealy said.

"Everyone in the parish that I have talked to is just stunned. It’s unbelievable," he said.

Blair’s daughters are in "shock and disbelief," he said, adding that his own feelings were of "anger and disappointment."

The most difficult thing to do now, Kealy said, "is to remind ourselves that we ask Lord’s grace that we find forgiveness. …

"I am not there yet, in asking for that grace."

Kealy said that Blair was very involved in the parish’s Social Services Ministry, which had "really geared up" after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast and Hurricane Rita hit East Texas.

That parish office offers a food pantry and small amounts of cash to people who are down on their luck, or who have been through disasters.

After Hurricane Katrina, there were 32 children from the Louisiana area enrolled in St. Pius V’s grade school. That number has dropped to 11 children who are likely to remain in the Pasadena area, Kealy said.

The priest said someone had asked him whether the parish office’s doors will remain open to those in need.

"Come Monday," he said, "I am sure we will be."

It looks like Mother Sheehan is finally getting her oft expressed wish that the media stop paying attention to her.

I was all set to post an excerpted transcript of al-Sheehan’s historic appearance before the National Press Club the other day. But it turns out that Rush Limbaugh has already done us the favor:

Sad Sack Sheehan Cast Aside

October 28, 2005

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is hilarious. Just to show you how fast the Democrats drop you when you become worthless. You remember back this past summer and going into the month of September, the celebrity in this country was Cindy Sheehan. She was the face of the Democratic anti-war movement. She was the face of the Democratic base. She was the person we needed to run for office, people like Cindy Sheehan. Yesterday she showed up — I’m sorry, it was this morning — at the National Press Club. She spoke to a nearly empty room. There were only a couple of foreign journalists there. Zilch attendance. Nobody cared that Cindy Sheehan was speaking today. She gave her opinion on possible indictments, and I guess she’s as qualified as anybody else in the media to comment on this. Unidentified foreign reporter, one of two or three in the room, said, "Big news in Washington today as the grand jury is finally reaching the conclusion in its term of the Wilson affair. I was wondering how you analyze Dick Cheney’s role in it."

SAD SACK: I haven’t — I’ve been really busy so I haven’t got to like analyze a lot of things but I believe that the corruption goes all the way to the top, and that this is encouraging to me because I believe the investigations are going to continue, especially after the indictments, and that’s all that we’ve been asking for for a long time. These indictments I think are wonderful to be able to actually to expose the lies, expose these people for what they are.

RUSH: Well, Cindy, the indictment today doesn’t expose any lie about going to war, doesn’t expose any lie about Valerie Plame, at least in outing her. It has nothing to do with the central theme of the case. Now, a reporter from the [terrorist] French News Agency, Jerome Bernard, says, "Jerome Bernard from AFP. How do you expect to keep the momentum in the coming months for your movement? What kind of actions are you planning?" Meanwhile, these questions are asked with nobody in the room. She has no momentum. She’s got this guy from the agency, the French News Agency, and one other or two other reporters there, and that’s it.

SAD SACK: There’s several major actions coming up. On November 2nd it’s national — help me — help me out here. It’s (laughing). Drive Out the Bush Regime, the World Can’t Wait. It’s a national day of — I can’t think this morning. It’s a national day of… strikes. Strikes and rallies and vigils.

RUSH: What a joke.

SAD SACK: The first anniversary of the last election, and that’s going to — and there’s hundreds of events all over the country.

RUSH: She doesn’t even know, she doesn’t even know what’s coming, she doesn’t know what’s going on, she can’t tell the dates, she has no clue what’s happening. This is the leader of the anti-war left who has just been cast aside and flicked away by the left as the useless creature that she is. So the Italian news agency reporter, Marco Bardazzi, says, "I want an update on your legal situation. How many times have you been arrested and what kind of legal problems do you face now? And second, are you concerned by the fact that it seems that you have much, much less media coverage now than in the past few weeks?"

SAD SACK: I don’t ever want the media coverage to be on me. I’ve only focused — I’ve only wanted to focus on being on the Iraq war, and I believe that the media in our country really also abrogated their responsibility to be checks and balances on our government, that our media sometimes only reports the press releases they get from the White House and they don’t do any investigative reporting. They don’t ask the hard questions.

RUSH: You know, she almost has a point here. They really don’t do any investigating. They just do a bunch of supposing. They do a bunch of assuming, and then they go out and cover their assumptions as though they’re reality, and they set up their agenda and their cycle, and they look through the prism of "This is the news today," and it turns out it’s the news they hope happens. That’s literally what it’s become. Here’s the news we hope to happen as though it is happening and as though it has happened, and there she is at the National Press Club saying all of this — and she doesn’t want media coverage! She doesn’t want the focus to be on her, and yet she’s at the National Press Club! Some people call this woman a moon bat, other people call her a dingbat. She’s just a sad sack. She’s been totally used. Her grief has been soaked up by a bunch of people who just want to use and exploit her, and we see here that she’s just out of here league. She doesn’t even know what her next protests are and what they’re about. She thinks the media have constitutional checks and balance responsibilities and so forth. But this is the angel of the left, folks. This is their guiding light.

END TRANSCRIPT

I wonder which of her handlers taught her how to say "abrogated"?

Here are some photos of Mother Sheehan doing her best to avoid the limelight:

Anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan is arrested by U.S. Park Police officers outside the White House during a protest Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2005. Sheehan’s son Casey was killed in Iraq.

Which reminds me, I’ve got to stock up on Halloween candy for the trick or treaters.

As much as I'd hate to see Cindy Sheehan lose her meal ticket, progess marches on:

TOOL FOR ARMCHAIR ACTIVISTS

Tool for armchair activists is a machine for remote rants and protests. It can be strapped to lampposts in front of pro-eminent buildings like the house of parliament, or other institutional buildings in front of which many protests occur.

Thanks to its embedded mobile telecommunication device, the machine is able to receive incoming sms messages and speak them out loud through its powerful megaphones, thus allowing the armchair activist to shout out its rants and protests in the comfort of his sitting room.

Tool for armchair activists offers a modern alternative to the speaker corner, and save you the hassle to sit in the rain, waiting for your favourite MP to pass by.

Programming and electronic development: Moritz Waldemeyer.

TOOL FOR ARMCHAIR ACTIVISTS IS CURRENTLY LOCATED: In Troika's Studio. Send us a SMS at +44(0)7790272804

With the support from Arts Council England.

Too bad they didn't list the price.

Isn’t that fascinating? Well, the people at the DNC-owned Associated Press seem to think it is:

Posted on Tue, Oct. 25, 2005

Peace activists to "die symbolically" outside White House

ELISABETH GOODRIDGE
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Cindy Sheehan and other peace activists plan to "die symbolically" for the next four days outside the White House to represent the American soldiers who have died in Iraq.

Sheehan, whose son Casey died in Iraq last year, organized the vigil as the U.S. military death toll in the war neared 2,000.

"I’ll be laying down and not getting up," Sheehan said Tuesday to a small crowd in which the number of journalists exceeded the number of protesters. "When they let me out, I’ll do the same thing if I get arrested."

She said she hoped 2,000 people would attend the vigil throughout the week to represent each American death. Each participant was to receive a wrist bracelet with the name of a fallen soldier.

Sheehan brought attention to the anti-war effort last summer by camping outside President Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. She was arrested outside the White House in a protest last month.

Sheehan also said she would visit Arlington National Ceremony, Walter Reed Hospital and the Iraqi Embassy this week.

"Two thousand families have been destroyed for nothing," Sheehan said. "Enough is enough. The killing has to stop sometime."

Given that Cindy has talked quite regularly about how suicidal she is, and how she wished she had died when Casey did, what is the real point?

In fact, one of her (seemingly endless) "founding" partners for the Gold Star Families For Peace scam, Nadia McCaffrey, is a big fan of dying — having tried to off herself at least three times.

Here is Ms. Judith Miller’s response to "public editor" (what does that mean, anyway?) Mr. Barney Calame’s column.

It’s kind of amazing that the New York Times printed this at all. They have a long history of not posting the responses of people they attack, like Ms. Ann Coulter.

bcalame - 10:40 PM ET October 23, 2005 (#19 of 19)

Miller Response to Column

Judith Miller sent me the e-mail message below in response to my column in The New York Times today. In her message, Ms. Miller refers to "answers" she had sent me to questions I posed to her during an interview Thursday. My column reflected the relevant responses she gave me during our interview, and her e-mail message arrived too late for inclusion in the column.

—————–

Barney,

I’m dismayed by your essay today. You accuse me of taking journalistic “shortcuts” without presenting evidence of what you mean and rely on unsubstantiated innuendo about my reporting.

While you posted Bill Keller’s sanitized, post-lawyered version of the ugly, inaccurate memo to the staff he circulated Friday, which accused me of “misleading” an editor and being “entangled” with I. Lewis Libby, you declined to post the answers I sent you to six questions that we touched on during our interview Thursday. Had you done so, readers could have made their own assessment of my conduct in what you headlined as “the Miller mess.”

You chose to believe Jill Abramson when she asserted that I had never asked her to pursue the tip I had gotten about Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger and his wife’s employment at the C.I.A. Now I ask you: Why would I – the supposedly pushiest, most competitive reporter on the planet — not have pushed to pursue a tantalizing tip like this? Soon after my breakfast meeting with Libby in July, I did so. I remember asking the editor to let me explore whether what my source had said was true, or whether it was a potential smear of a whistleblower. I don’t recall naming the source of the tip. But I specifically remember saying that because Joe Wilson’s op-ed column had appeared in our paper, we had a particular obligation to pursue this. I never identified the editor to the grand jury or publicly, since it involved internal New York Times decision-making. But since you did, yes, the editor was Jill Abramson.

Obviously, Jill and I have different memories of what happened during that turbulent period at the paper. I did not take that personally, though she never chose to discuss with me our different recollections about my urging her to pursue the story. Without explanation, however, you said you believed her and raised questions about my “trust and credibility.” That is your right. But I gave my recollection to the grand jury under oath.

My second journalistic sin in your eyes was agreeing to Libby’s request to be considered a “former Hill staffer” in his discussion about Wilson. As you acknowledged, I agreed to that attribution only to hear the information. As I also stressed, Scooter Libby has never been identified in any of my stories as anything other than a “senior Administration
official.”

The third “troubling” ethical issue you raised – my access to secret information during my embed in Iraq – had been fully clarified by the time you published. No one doubts that I had access to very sensitive information or that I did work out informal arrangements to limit discussion of sensitive intelligence sources and methods to the most senior Times editors. Though there was occasionally enormous tension over whether and when I could publish sensitive information, the arrangement ultimately satisfied the senior officers in the brigade hunting for unconventional weapons, the Times editors at the time, and me. It also led to the publication of my exclusive story that debunked some of my own earlier exclusives on the Pentagon’s claim that it had found mobile germ production units in Iraq.

I fail to see why I am responsible for my editors’ alleged failure to do some “digging” into my confidential sources and the notebooks. From the start, the legal team that the Times provided me knew who my source was and had access to my notes. I never refused to answer questions or provide any information they requested. No one indicated they had doubts about the stand I took to go to jail.

Your essay clearly implies that the Times and I did something wrong in waging a battle that we did not choose. I strongly disagree. What did I do wrong? Your essay does not say. You may disapprove of my earlier reporting on Weapons of Mass Destruction. But what did the delayed publication of the editor’s note on that reporting have to do with the decision I made over a year later, which the paper fully supported, to protect our confidential sources? I remain proud of my decision to go to jail rather than reveal the identity of a source to whom I had pledged confidentiality, even if he happened to work for the Bush White House.

The Times asked me to assume a low profile in this controversy. I told everyone that I had no intention of airing internal editorial policy disputes and disagreements at the paper, as a matter of principle and loyalty to those who stood by me during this ordeal. Others have chosen a different path, ironically becoming “confidential sources” themselves.

You never bothered to mention in your essay my decision to spend 85 days in jail to honor the pledge I made. I’m saddened that you, like so many others, have blurred the core issue of that stand and I am stunned that you refused to post my answers to issues we had discussed on your web site at the critical moment that Times readers were forming their opinions.

Judith Miller

Lest we forget, Ms. Jill Abramson wrote the book "Strange Justice" which was a blatant hit piece on Clarence Thomas. It was meant to neutralize "The Real Anita Hill" and justify the "high tech lynching" of Thomas.

So you can see what she would be bent out of shape by Ms. Miller’s not cooperating in the high tech lynching of Libby.

My favorite part:

I am stunned that you refused to post my answers to issues we had discussed on your web site at the critical moment that Times readers were forming their opinions.

What’s this? The paper of record ™ suppressing information that would be of value to their readers? I thought they were in the news business.

I kid, of course.

Only in the bizarro world of the New York Times does refusing to lie under oath to a grand jury get you in "ethics trouble."

From the Democrat Party's other favorite house organ, the Associated Press:

Times' Ombudsman Suggests Review of Miller

By Amy Westfeldt, Associated Press

The New York Times' ombudsman said the newspaper should review reporter Judith Miller's journalism practices to address "clear issues of trust and credibility" in her role in the CIA leak investigation. Miller's attorney called the newspaper's recent criticism of her "shameless."

Times Public Editor Byron Calame also said the paper should consider updating its ethics guidelines on using anonymous sources and quoted publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. as saying "there are new limits" on what Miller can do in the future.

Calame wrote in a Sunday column that the Times and Miller's Oct. 16 accounts of the reporting that landed Miller in jail for refusing to testify to a grand jury "suggested that the journalistic practices of Ms. Miller and Times editors were more flawed than I feared."

Miller went to jail for 85 days rather than testify to a grand jury investigating the leaking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity. She was released Sept. 29 and agreed to testify after her source, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, released her from a promise of confidentiality.

Executive Editor Bill Keller wrote to Times' staff last week that Miller may have misled the paper by saying she was not one of the recipients of a leak about Plame's identity. Miller said that criticism was inaccurate.

"The Times needs to review Ms. Miller's journalistic practices as soon as possible, especially because she disputes some accounts of her conduct that have come to light since the leak investigation began," Calame wrote.

Calame noted Miller's assertion that she recommended to an editor that a story be pursued on Valerie Plame but was told there was no interest. Miller's boss at the time, Jill Abramson, said Miller didn't make such a request, and Calame wrote that he believed Abramson, now the paper's managing editor.

Miller's attorney, Robert Bennett, said on Sunday that the newspaper is trying to deflect criticism of its own coverage of the leak investigation by targeting the 57-year-old Miller.

"Judy did nothing that the New York Times did not want her to do," Bennett said. "They encouraged her to stay in jail."

"It's shameless. They should be praising her for doing what they wanted, for going to jail for 85 days to uphold an important principle, which she did," he said. "They are not treating her very well and I think it's very disgraceful."

One of my favorites passages:

"Judy did nothing that the New York Times did not want her to do," Bennett said. "They encouraged her to stay in jail."

That's right, Bob, the NYT wanted Ms. Miller to stay in jail– not testify. That way they could have continued their vicious smears against Libby and Rove unhindered by her unfortunate sworn testimony to the contrary.

The NY Times has a job to do — overthrow our duly elected leaders and put whoever their bosses in the DNC want in their place.

Either lead, follow or get out of the way!

A friendly heads up for all our grifting friends behind Camp Casey III. Hey, Cindy, Michael, Ward, Andrea, Malik — you guys lawyered-up yet?

REMARKS FROM ATTORNEY GENERAL ALBERTO R. GONZALES AT THE HURRICANE KATRINA FRAUD TASK FORCE CONFERENCE

New Orleans, Louisiana
October 20, 2005

It is my pleasure to be in New Orleans to join you in this conference of the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force.

As we begin our discussions, I think it’s important to remember the simplicity of our charge. We’re here for one reason: to help the citizens and communities affected by Hurricane Katrina.

In the hours, days, and weeks since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ripped through this area, help has come from a number of sources. Americans from across the country offered relief, reached into their pockets, and opened their arms and homes to displaced families. Corporations gave generously of their expertise and resources…and federal, state, and local authorities have worked tirelessly to put the pieces back together for the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and other affected areas.

In the midst of all of this outpouring of support, however, there are some who have sought to take advantage of our collective generosity and our comprehensive response as a Nation.

As you all know, that is why we created this Task Force - to safeguard the integrity of the rebuilding and recovery process. We have a responsibility to ensure that relief aid and reconstruction dollars reach the shattered communities and victims of these powerful natural disasters.

We have been focusing on fraud schemes intended to divert relief funds from the people who need them. And, also on the integrity of public officials who are responsible for awarding government contracts. Every dollar that is directed for hurricane relief should be used in the affected communities - not to pad the bank accounts of fraudsters and criminals.

The Task Force is directing its work in a few important areas:

· Government Benefit Fraud · Government Contract and Procurement Fraud · Fraudulent Charities · Insurance Fraud, and · Identity Theft

When these crimes occur, the Task Force has acted quickly and aggressively to punish those who would prey on our fellow citizens in their hour of greatest need, and deter others with swift and certain prosecution.

I appointed Alice Fisher, the Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division, to chair this effort. She reports that there already have been unprecedented levels of cooperation and partnership among federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and the Postal Inspection Service. Together there are over 30 member agencies and organizations. You each bring an important and valuable expertise to the table. Combined with those of your colleagues in this effort, your skills and specialties make this Task Force effective in its mission. The President and I appreciate your dedication…and the American people do as well.

I’m also aware that only six weeks into this work, we already have had a number of great successes.

The Task Force has secured criminal charges against a total of 42 persons for hurricane-related fraud - many of them resulting from joint investigations that highlight the cooperation made possible by this Task Force.

In California, for instance, 15 residents - including Red Cross employees from the largest Katrina call center in the country, located in Bakersfield - have been indicted for their role in an alleged scheme to defraud the American Red Cross of relief funds. The defendants allegedly obtained false claim information that allowed them to obtain direct payments from Western Union after claiming to be a victim from one of the affected areas.

In another case, the defendant was indicted for allegedly soliciting charitable contributions on the website AirKatrina.com. The defendant falsely claimed that he was piloting flights to Louisiana to provide medical supplies and evacuate children. In just two days, he had already received almost $40,000 in donations, before his fraudulent operation was shut down.

These cases - and several others like them, including many instances of people falsely claiming the $2,000 FEMA benefits - shed some light on the small group of criminals who look to profit from this tragedy.

The message of our collective effort is clear: We will not tolerate this kind of behavior in our compassionate society. Fraud will not go unpunished.

I know that this group understands what is necessary for us to collectively make good on this “ zero tolerance ” promise - made not only to those who’ve been affected by Katrina, but to every American.

When he spoke to the Nation from New Orleans, the President offered this pledge, “Throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives.”

This Task Force is a part of that pledge…a part of the rebuilding process. And we will do whatever it takes to get this job done.

Your work every day will dictate whether we are successful. So I urge you to rededicate yourselves - at every opportunity - to the coordination and cooperation that is necessary to effectively execute our responsibility to this region, to this country, and to our fellow citizens.

I am going to do everything I can to support you in this effort. That’s why I am pleased to announce the creation of the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force’s Joint Command Center on the campus of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

It’s easier to work together when everyone is under one roof. With this Joint Command Center, Task Force representatives from federal law enforcement, the federal community of Inspectors General, and United States Attorneys Offices can better pool their resources to ensure a coordinated attack on procurement fraud and public corruption.

In the coming weeks and months, relief funds will continue to rush into the Gulf area. And with this influx will come further opportunities for fraud.

It is imperative that we continue to work together to do our part to secure the integrity of the rebuilding process here in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf region. I appreciate the dedication you’ve shown to this mission already - but there is more to come and more to do.

The road to full recovery is long and I expect that we will be there every step of the way to support the process that helps the displaced families and disaster-stricken communities rebuild, recover, and reclaim their lives.

Thank you for your work, for your compassion and dedication. God bless you and may God continue to bless the United States of America.

And as a further public service, I will add this DOJ " fact sheet ":

U.S. Department of Justice Fact Sheet: Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force

10/20/2005 12:03:00 PM

---

To: National Desk

Contact: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, 202-514-2007 or 202-514-1888 (TDD), Web: http://www.USDOJ.gov

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 /U.S. Newswire/ — On Sept. 8, in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales established the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force. The Task Force is charged with deterring, detecting, and prosecuting unscrupulous individuals who try to take advantage of the Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita disasters. The Task Force tracks referrals of potential cases and complaints, coordinates with law enforcement agencies to initiate investigations, and works with the appropriate United States Attorneys’ Offices to ensure timely and effective prosecution of Katrina and Rita-related fraud cases. By casting a broad net and using the investigative assets of federal law enforcement agencies, federal Inspectors General, and state and local law enforcement-together with the prosecution resources of the 94 United States Attorneys’ Offices-the Task Force is positioned to act quickly and aggressively to bring to justice those who would further victimize the victims of these natural disasters.

The Task Force is combating all types of fraud relating to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita with a particular emphasis on the following areas:

– Fraudulent Charities: Cases in which individuals falsely hold themselves out as agents of a legitimate charity, or create a "charity" that is in fact not legitimate;

– Identity Theft: Cases in which the identities of innocent victims are stolen and assumed by criminals who convert the funds of, or otherwise defraud, the victims;

– Government-Benefit Fraud: Cases in which individuals file false applications seeking benefits to which they are not entitled;

– Government-Contract and Procurement Fraud: Cases in which individuals and companies engage in fraud related to federal funds provided for the repair and restoration of infrastructure, businesses, and government agencies in the affected region; and

– Insurance Fraud: Cases in which false or inflated insurance claims are filed.

TASK FORCE MEMBERS

The Attorney General appointed Alice S. Fisher, Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, as the chair of the Task Force.

The Task Force includes the following members:

– Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI);

– The Criminal, Civil, and Antitrust Divisions of the Department of Justice;

– The Executive Office for the United States Attorneys;

– United States Attorney’s Offices in the Gulf region and throughout the country;

– United States Postal Inspection Service;

– United States Secret Service;

– Federal Trade Commission;

– Securities and Exchange Commission;

– Internal Revenue Service;

– Department of Homeland Security;

– Inspectors General from 57 federal departments and agencies;

– Representatives of state and local law enforcement, including the National Association of Attorneys General, and the National District Attorneys Association.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

In the six weeks since the Task Force was established, U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and a variety of investigative agencies — including the FBI, the Postal Inspection Service, the Secret Service, and the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS-OIG) — have already brought more than 40 prosecutions stemming from a diverse range of crimes related to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The prosecutions announced thus far have come from districts as far as California and Georgia and places in between. With numerous cases pending, the Task Force will continue to work aggressively, focusing on these crimes and prosecuting wherever possible. A sampling of these prosecutions include the following:

California - Central District (U.S. Attorney Debra Wong Yang):

– On Sept. 29, a federal grand jury returned an indictment against two individuals, charging them with violating the American Red Cross fraud statute by allegedly pretending to be American Red Cross volunteers and soliciting funds on behalf of the American Red Cross for Katrina relief. The FBI, with the cooperation of the Burbank Police Department, is investigating the case.

California - Eastern District (U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott):

– On Oct. 13, a federal grand jury returned indictments against a total of 15 California residents, charging them with wire fraud for their alleged roles in a scheme to defraud the American Red Cross of funds intended for Hurricane Katrina victims. The indictments allege that the defendants participated in a plan or scheme to defraud the American Red Cross by submitting or causing others to submit a fraudulent claim through the American Red Cross call center located in Bakersfield. The complaint explains that the American Red Cross, in an attempt to expedite payments to actual victims of Hurricane Katrina, set up at least two call centers in the U.S., the largest of which is in Bakersfield. According to the indictments, seven of the defendants were employed at the Bakersfield call center, and the other eight were closely associated with someone employed at the call center. They were allegedly able to obtain false claim information and, using that information, obtain payment from Western Union. The FBI is continuing to investigate the case.

Florida - Southern District (U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta):

– On Sept. 29, a federal grand jury returned a four-count indictment against an individual, charging him with wire fraud for allegedly using the website airkatrina.com to fraudulently solicit donations to help Katrina victims. This is the first federal case in the country involving a fraudulent charity website related to Katrina. The FBI is investigating this case.

Texas - Eastern District (U.S. Attorney Matthew D. Orwig):

– On Oct. 4, a federal grand jury returned a two-count indictment against an individual for allegedly making a false claim to FEMA for hurricane relief funds. The FBI and the Tyler, Texas Police Department are investigating the case.

Mississippi - Southern District (U.S. Attorney Dunn O. Lampton):

– As of Oct. 7, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi had filed criminal complaints against four individuals for allegedly making false claims to FEMA for hurricane relief funds. The DHS-OIG, the Postal Inspection Service, and the FBI are investigating the cases.

Oregon (U.S. Attorney Karin J. Immergut):

– On Oct. 12, a federal grand jury returned an indictment against a Portland, Ore., man under the mail fraud statute for allegedly making a false claim to FEMA. The indictment alleges that the defendant falsely represented that he suffered hurricane-related damage to a property located in Baton Rouge, La. The Postal Inspection Service with the DHS-OIG, the FBI, and the Secret Service are investigating the case.

PUBLIC AWARENESS TO REPORT FRAUD

The Task Force has been proactive in engaging in extensive public education and awareness about fraudulent activities through print advertisements, radio public service announcements, flyers, and Web sites.

Ways to report hurricane-related fraud:

Charity Fraud, Emergency-Benefit Fraud, and other Types of Consumer Fraud:

– Call the FTC’s Consumer Response Center, toll-free at 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357), or

– File an online complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (a joint project of the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center) at http://www.ic3.gov.

Identity Theft:

– Call the FTC’s Identity Theft Hotline, toll-free, at 1-877-ID-THEFT (1-877-438-4338), or

– File an online complaint with the FTC at http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft

Government Fraud and Public Corruption:

– Call the FBI’s tipline, 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324)

– Call the DHS Katrina Hurricane Relief Hotline at 1-866-720-5721

For more information, please visit the following Web sites:

– U.S. Department of Justice: http://www.usdoj.gov

– Federal Bureau of Investigation: http://www.fbi.gov

– U.S. Postal Inspection Service: http://www.uspis.gov

– Federal Trade Commission: http://www.ftc.gov

It’s still not too late to get right with the law, guys.

Reading this "memo" is almost exactly like reading a letter from Al-Zarqawi to his henchmen. Except that Al Qaeda is a little more restrained in its expression of hatred for our elected President and its contempt for our country.

For, according to its executive editor, Bill Keller, the New York Times hasn't done enough to damage the Bush administration. And Mr. Keller regrets that terribly.

He is particularly disappointed at how Judy Miller passed up her chance to stick it to the Republicans. So much so that he will make damn sure the Times never defends (or employs) anyone who won't go the extra mile to try to bring down our elected leaders:

Text of E-Mail Sent to The New York Times Staff by Its Executive Editor

Published: Oct 21, 2005

Text of an e-mail sent to the staff at The New York Times from Bill Keller, the paper's executive editor:

—

Title: Memo from NYT executive editor Bill Keller

A Message from Bill Keller:

Colleagues,

As you can imagine, I've done a lot of thinking - and a lot of listening - on the subject of what I should have done differently in handling our reporter's entanglement in the White House leak investigation. Jill and John and I have talked a great deal among ourselves and with many of you, and while this is a discussion that will continue, we thought it would be worth taking a first cut at the lessons we have learned.

Aside from a number of occasions when I wish I had chosen my words more carefully, we've come up with a few points at which we wish we had made different decisions. These are instances, when viewed with the clarity of hindsight, where the mistakes carry lessons beyond the peculiar circumstances of this case.

I wish we had dealt with the controversy over our coverage of WMD as soon as I became executive editor. At the time, we thought we had compelling reasons for kicking the issue down the road. The paper had just been through a major trauma, the Jayson Blair episode, and needed to regain its equilibrium. It felt somehow unsavory to begin a tenure by attacking our predecessors. I was trying to get my arms around a huge new job, appoint my team, get the paper fully back to normal, and I feared the WMD issue could become a crippling distraction.

So it was a year before we got around to really dealing with the controversy. At that point, we published a long editors' note acknowledging the prewar journalistic lapses, and - to my mind, at least as important - we intensified aggressive reporting aimed at exposing the way bad or manipulated intelligence had fed the drive to war. (I'm thinking of our excellent investigation of those infamous aluminum tubes, the report on how the Iraqi National Congress recruited exiles to promote Saddam's WMD threat, our close look at the military's war-planning intelligence, and the dissection, one year later, of Colin Powell's U.N. case for the war, among other examples. The fact is sometimes overlooked that a lot of the best reporting on how this intel fiasco came about appeared in the NYT.)

By waiting a year to own up to our mistakes, we allowed the anger inside and outside the paper to fester. Worse, we fear, we fostered an impression that The Times put a higher premium on protecting its reporters than on coming clean with its readers. If we had lanced the WMD boil earlier, we might have damped any suspicion that THIS time, the paper was putting the defense of a reporter above the duty to its readers.

I wish that when I learned Judy Miller had been subpoenaed as a witness in the leak investigation, I had sat her down for a thorough debriefing, and followed up with some reporting of my own. It is a natural and proper instinct to defend reporters when the government seeks to interfere in our work. And under other circumstances it might have been fine to entrust the details - the substance of the confidential interviews, the notes - to lawyers who would be handling the case. But in this case I missed what should have been significant alarm bells. Until Fitzgerald came after her, I didn't know that Judy had been one of the reporters on the receiving end of the anti-Wilson whisper campaign. I should have wondered why I was learning this from the special counsel, a year after the fact. (In November of 2003 Phil Taubman tried to ascertain whether any of our correspondents had been offered similar leaks. As we reported last Sunday, Judy seems to have misled Phil Taubman about the extent of her involvement.) This alone should have been enough to make me probe deeper.

In the end, I'm pretty sure I would have concluded that we had to fight this case in court. For one thing, we were facing an insidious new menace in these blanket waivers, ostensibly voluntary, that Administration officials had been compelled to sign. But if I had known the details of Judy's entanglement with Libby, I'd have been more careful in how the paper articulated its defense, and perhaps more willing than I had been to support efforts aimed at exploring compromises.

Dick Stevenson has expressed the larger lesson here in an e-mail that strikes me as just right: "I think there is, or should be, a contract between the paper and its reporters. The contract holds that the paper will go to the mat to back them up institutionally - but only to the degree that the reporter has lived up to his or her end of the bargain, specifically to have conducted him or herself in a way consistent with our legal, ethical and journalistic standards, to have been open and candid with the paper about sources, mistakes, conflicts and the like, and generally to deserve having the reputations of all of us put behind him or her. In that way, everybody knows going into a battle exactly what the situation is, what we're fighting for, the degree to which the facts might counsel compromise or not, and the degree to which our collective credibility should be put on the line."

I've heard similar sentiments from a number of reporters in the aftermath of this case.

There is another important issue surfaced by this case: how we deal with the inherent conflict of writing about ourselves. This paper (and, indeed, this business) has had way too much experience of that over the past few years. Almost everyone we've heard from on the staff appreciates that once we had agreed as an institution to defend Judy's source, it would have been wrong to expose her source in the paper. Even if our reporters had learned that information through their own enterprise, our publication of it would have been seen by many readers as authoritative - as outing Judy's source in a backhanded way. Yet it is excruciating to withhold information of value to our readers, especially when rival publications are unconstrained. I don't yet see a clear-cut answer to this dilemma, but we've received some thoughtful suggestions from the staff, and it's one of the problems that we'll be wrestling with in the coming weeks.

Best, Bill

It is crystal clear that Keller is pig-biting mad. He defended the integrity of the press and a reporter who then stabbed him in the back by not lying about what happened.

Keller wanted a journalistic coup d'etat. He wanted Judy Miller to do a Bill Burkett and supply him with the forged memos to bring down an elected President so the Times could put one of their choosing in his place.

For whatever reason, Judy didn't deliver, so to hell with her! And, in fact, the Times wants to put it in writing that from now on, if you don't toe the company line and do whatever it takes to destroy the republic, we won't go to bat for you and you're on your own.

How else to read this?

"I think there is, or should be, a contract between the paper and its reporters. The contract holds that the paper will go to the mat to back them up institutionally - but only to the degree that the reporter has lived up to his or her end of the bargain, specifically to have conducted him or herself in a way consistent with our legal, ethical and journalistic standards…"

The NY Times is at war with this country and it will not abide any soldier who is derelict in his duty in that war. What used to pass for journalism, the reportage of facts, news — has nothing to do with it. That is a quaint out-dated concept. Like Lenin, Mr. Keller realizes that the press is a just another tool of power and that is how he plans to wield it.

I especially enjoyed this howler:

"Yet it is excruciating to withhold information of value to our readers…"

It has been reported by the AP that Mr. Keller himself knows who was Ms. Miller's source. So, since this is the the single most important subject of the day, why doesn't Mr. Keller report that valuable information? Isn't that something Time's "readers" should know?

The answer is obvious. That information would exonerate the NY Times ' enemies — Mssrs. Rove and Libby, the White House, Republicans, the United States in general. So that name will never pass Mr. Keller's keyboard. After all, Mr. Keller is an honorable man!

"Everybody knows going into a battle exactly what the situation is, what we're fighting for…"

Yes, we do, Mr. Keller. It becomes more clear every day. But thanks for reminding us again so forcefully.

Our favorite paid Democrat political assassin unbiased journalist, Pete Yost, valiantly tries to work up the faithful for a public lynching, Associated Press style:

A cartoon threatening that the KKK would lynch carpetbaggers. Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Independent Monitor, 1868.

White House Defense Shaky in CIA Leak Case

White House Defense Looking Shaky in CIA Leak Case As New Evidence Accumulates

By Pete Yost
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Even if White House aides leaked a covert CIA officer’s identity, they were simply passing along information they’d already heard from the news media, the administration’s supporters maintain in a defense that looks increasing shaky as new evidence accumulates.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald now knows that Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, met three times with a New York Times reporter before the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity, that Libby initiated a call to NBC newsman Tim Russert and that Libby was a confirming source about the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson for a Time magazine reporter.

Presidential political adviser Karl Rove has testified that it’s possible Libby was his source before Rove talked to two reporters about the CIA operative.

Where Libby first heard the information still isn’t publicly known, but a full three weeks before Plame’s name first showed up in print, Libby was telling New York Times reporter Judith Miller that he thought Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, according to Miller’s testimony.

While Libby maintains that he didn’t know Plame’s name until it was published in the news media, the now-public evidence suggests Libby at least was aware that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and that he spread the information.

Prosecutors must determine whether it was part of an effort to undermine the credibility of Plame’s husband. Leaking the identity of a covert agent can be a crime, but it must be done knowingly.

Plame’s name was first made public by syndicated columnist Robert Novak in July 2003, eight days after Wilson published an op-ed piece in The New York Times saying the Bush administration had manipulated prewar intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs to justify going to war.

Novak’s column said Plame worked for the CIA and that she had suggested her agency send Wilson, a former ambassador, on a mission to Africa that raised questions about the prewar intelligence.

Until this week, "the news media did it" was a standard defense among Republicans trying to protect the Bush administration from the political fallout of Fitzgerald’s criminal investigation. Loyalists said that even if White House aides had passed on information, they didn’t get it from classified sources and were simply repeating what they heard from journalists.

In grand jury testimony shown to Rove, Libby said he had told Rove about information he had gotten about Wilson’s wife from Russert, according to a person directly familiar with the information.

Prosecutors, however, have a different account from Russert. The TV network has said Russert told authorities he did not know Wilson’s wife’s identity until it was published and therefore could not have told Libby about it. Russert also says that it was Libby who initiated the contact with him.

In Miller’s case, she was interviewing Libby on June 23, 2003, for a story on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when the vice president’s chief of staff suggested a CIA tie for Wilson’s wife, Miller has said.

"This was the first time I had been told that Mr. Wilson’s wife might work for the CIA," Miller wrote in a first-person account over the weekend.

Miller said this week that she never wrote a story about Wilson’s wife because "it wasn’t that important to me. I was focused on the main question: Was our WMD intelligence slanted?"

Never mind that just yesterday the newspaper of record, the New York Times, reported:

It is still not publicly known who first told the columnist Robert D. Novak the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson. Mr. Novak identified her in a column on July 14, 2003, using her maiden name, Valerie Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald knows the identity of this source, a person who is not believed to work at the White House, the lawyers said.

And never mind that Judy Miller testified under oath that Libby was nother source. The important thing is to establish some appearance of vague impropriety firmly in the minds of the public in case there are no indictments.

Yost is just doing his job. The DNC/MSM has to get somethingout of their investment of so much time and money creating and promulgating this story.

Hopefully Pete Yost will get a Pulitzer Prizefor his tireless but noble efforts. Or whatever it is that prostitutes are given when they provide services beyond their usual call of duty.

Just for the hell of it, I thought it would be fun to look at the law that the DNC/MSM are now claiming Fitzgerald is going to try to use to indict Bush’s evil henchmen, Rove and Libby.

You know that no one in the media could be bothered to look it up:

U.S. Espionage Act Of 1917

Passed by the U.S. Congress on 15 June, two months after America’s declaration of war with Germany.

---

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled

Title I

ESPIONAGE

Section 1

That:

(a) whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defence with intent or reason to believe that the information to be obtained is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation, goes upon, enters, flies over, or otherwise obtains information, concerning any vessel, aircraft, work of defence, navy yard, naval station, submarine base, coaling station, fort, battery, torpedo station, dockyard, canal, railroad, arsenal, camp, factory, mine, telegraph, telephone, wireless, or signal station, building, office, or other place connected with the national defence, owned or constructed, or in progress of construction by the United States or under the control or the United States, or of any of its officers or agents, or within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, or any place in which any vessel, aircraft, arms, munitions, or other materials or instruments for use in time of war are being made, prepared, repaired. or stored, under any contract or agreement with the United States, or with any person on behalf of the United States, or otherwise on behalf of the United States, or any prohibited place within the meaning of section six of this title; or

(b) whoever for the purpose aforesaid, and with like intent or reason to believe, copies, takes, makes, or obtains, or attempts, or induces or aids another to copy, take, make, or obtain, any sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blue print, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, document, writing or note of anything connected with the national defence; or

(c) whoever, for the purpose aforesaid, receives or obtains or agrees or attempts or induces or aids another to receive or obtain from any other person, or from any source whatever, any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blue print, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note, of anything connected with the national defence, knowing or having reason to believe, at the time he receives or obtains, or agrees or attempts or induces or aids another to receive or obtain it, that it has been or will be obtained, taken, made or disposed of by any person contrary to the provisions of this title; or

(d) whoever, lawfully or unlawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blue print, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defence, wilfully communicates or transmits or attempts to communicate or transmit the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; or

(e) whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blue print, plan, map, model, note, or information, relating to the national defence, through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be list, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000, or by imprisonment for not more than two years, or both.

Section 2

Whoever, with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury or the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation, communicated, delivers, or transmits, or attempts to, or aids, or induces another to, communicate, deliver or transmit, to any foreign government, or to any faction or party or military or naval force within a foreign country, whether recognized or unrecognized by the United States, or to any representative, officer, agent, employee, subject, or citizen thereof, either directly or indirectly and document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blue print, plan, map, model, note, instrument, appliance, or information relating to the national defence, shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than twenty years: Provided, That whoever shall violate the provisions of subsection:

(a) of this section in time of war shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for not more than thirty years; and

(b) whoever, in time of war, with intent that the same shall be communicated to the enemy, shall collect, record, publish or communicate, or attempt to elicit any information with respect to the movement, numbers, description, condition, or disposition of any of the armed forces, ships, aircraft, or war materials of the United States, or with respect to the plans or conduct, or supposed plans or conduct of any naval of military operations, or with respect to any works or measures undertaken for or connected with, or intended for the fortification of any place, or any other information relating to the public defence, which might be useful to the enemy, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for not more than thirty years.

Section 3

Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall wilfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies and whoever when the United States is at war, shall wilfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall wilfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, to the injury of the service or of the United States, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both.

Section 4

If two or more persons conspire to violate the provisions of section two or three of this title, and one or more of such persons does any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be punished as in said sections provided in the case of the doing of the act the accomplishment of which is the object of such conspiracy. Except as above provided conspiracies to commit offences under this title shall be punished as provided by section thirty-seven of the Act to codify, revise, and amend the penal laws of the United States approved March fourth, nineteen hundred and nine.

Section 5

Whoever harbours or conceals any person who he knows, or has reasonable grounds to believe or suspect, has committed, or is about to commit, an offence under this title shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or by imprisonment for not more than two years, or both.

Section 6

The President in time of war or in case of national emergency may by proclamation designate any place other than those set forth in subsection:

(a) of section one hereof in which anything for the use of the Army or Navy is being prepared or constructed or stored as a prohibited place for the purpose of this title: Provided, That he shall determine that information with respect thereto would be prejudicial to the national defence.

Section 7

Nothing contained in this title shall be deemed to limit the jurisdiction of the general courts-martial, military commissions, or naval courts-martial under sections thirteen hundred and forty-two, thirteen hundred and forty-three, and sixteen hundred and twenty-four of the Revised Statutes as amended.

Section 8

The provisions of this title shall extend to all Territories, possessions, and places subject to the jurisdiction of the United States whether or not contiguous thereto, and offences under this title, when committed upon the high seas or elsewhere within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States and outside the territorial limits thereof shall be punishable hereunder.

Section 9

The Act entitles "An Act to prevent the disclosure of national defence secrets," approved March third, nineteen hundred and eleven, is hereby repealed.

Okay, you legal mavens at the New York Times, let’s hear what part of this you think applies to anyone at the White House. We’ll wait.

It is simply laughable. And disgusting that our "journalists" are so pig-ignorant about the laws they so blithely pretend to understand. But when did the facts ever concern our one party media?

Note that practically everything mentioned in the act is physical. Maps, photographs, code books and the like. And note to that the act talks about giving such things to the enemyand in a time of war. (Come to think of it, maybe that would apply to Rove telling someone in our our media, since they are clearly our enemy in a war to bring down our elected government.)

It should be noted that only one conviction has ever been obtained under this law. In July 1984, Samuel Morrison leaked three classified photos to Jane’s Defense Weekly. The photos were of the Soviet Union’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which had been taken by a U.S. spy satellite.

The Reagan administration prosecuted and the Nation(the rag) and other "friends of liberty" howled. The leftist stooge Alexander Cockburn called it, "The Day Of The Jackboot."

Morrison was pardoned by Clinton, as soon as he could. And the nasty old law was forgotten until the uber-weaselJohn Dean brought it up recently as yet another way to contort the law and criminalize political differences by trying to apply it to Karl Rove.

Never mind that the media and the rest of the anti-American leftwing have been trying to get this law repealed for ages. But now that they might be able to twist it to their advantage, it’s a whole other story.

But come to think of it, this section might be kick to enforce:

Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall wilfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies and whoever when the United States is at war, shall wilfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall wilfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, to the injury of the service or of the United States, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both."

Oh, Mother Sheehan…

That really does seem to be the only “news” imparted in this piece from the Democrats’ house organ, the New York Times .

The rest just reads as more wishing, hoping and praying:

The master criminals: Karl Rove, White House Counsel Dan Bartlett, Lewis Libby, and Dick Cheney

Cover-Up Issue Is Seen as Focus in Leak Inquiry

David Johnston

October 21, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 - As he weighs whether to bring criminal charges in the C.I.A. leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel, is focusing on whether Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, sought to conceal their actions and mislead prosecutors, lawyers involved in the case said Thursday.

Among the charges that Mr. Fitzgerald is considering are perjury, obstruction of justice and false statement - counts that suggest the prosecutor may believe the evidence presented in a 22-month grand jury inquiry shows that the two White House aides sought to cover up their actions, the lawyers said.

Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have been advised that they may be in serious legal jeopardy, the lawyers said, but only this week has Mr. Fitzgerald begun to narrow the possible charges. The prosecutor has said he will not make up his mind about any charges until next week, government officials say.

With the term of the grand jury expiring in one week, though, some lawyers in the case said they were persuaded that Mr. Fitzgerald had all but made up his mind to seek indictments. None of the lawyers would speak on the record, citing the prosecutor’s requests not to talk about the case.

Associates of Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby continued to express hope that the prosecutor would conclude that the evidence was too fragmentary and that it would be difficult to prove Mr. Rove or Mr. Libby had a clear-cut intention to misinform the grand jury. Lawyers for the two men declined to comment on their legal status.

The case has cast a cloud over the White House, as has the Congressional criticism over the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers. On Thursday, responding to a reporter’s question, Mr. Bush said: "There’s some background noise here, a lot of chatter, a lot of speculation and opining. But the American people expect me to do my job, and I’m going to."

The possible violations under consideration by Mr. Fitzgerald are peripheral to the issue he was appointed in December 2003 to investigate : whether anyone in the administration broke a federal law that makes it a crime, under certain circumstances, to reveal the identity of a covert intelligence officer.

But Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby may not be the only people at risk. There may be others in the government who could be charged for violations of the disclosure law or of other statutes, like the espionage act, which makes it a crime to transmit classified information to people not authorized to receive it.

It is still not publicly known who first told the columnist Robert D. Novak the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson. Mr. Novak identified her in a column on July 14, 2003, using her maiden name, Valerie Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald knows the identity of this source, a person who is not believed to work at the White House, the lawyers said.

The accounts given by Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby about their conversations with reporters have been under investigation almost from the start. According to lawyers in the case, the prosecutor has examined how each man learned of Ms. Wilson, and questioned them in grand jury appearances about their conversations with reporters, how they learned Ms. Wilson’s name and her C.I.A. employment and whether the discussions were part of an effort to undermine the credibility of her husband, a former ambassador, Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Mr. Wilson had become an irritant to the administration in the late spring and early summer of 2003 even before he went public as a critic of the war in Iraq by writing a July 6, 2003 Op-Ed article in The New York Times.

In that article he wrote that he had traveled to Africa in 2003 to explore the accuracy of intelligence reports that suggested Iraq might have tried to purchase uranium ore from Niger. Mr. Wilson said that he had been sent on the trip by the C.I.A. after Mr. Cheney’s office raised questions about one such report, but that he found it unlikely that any sale had taken place.

In Mr. Rove’s case, the prosecutor appears to have focused on two conversations with reporters. The first was a July 9, 2003 discussion with Mr. Novak in which, Mr. Rove has said, he first heard Ms. Wilson’s name. The second conversation took place on July 11, 2003 with a Time magazine reporter, Matthew Cooper, who later wrote that Mr. Rove had not named Ms. Wilson but had told him that she worked at the C.I.A. and that she had been responsible for her husband being sent to Africa.

Mr. Rove did not tell the grand jury about his phone conversation with Mr. Cooper until months into the leak investigation, long after he had testified about his conversation with Mr. Novak, the lawyers said. Later, Mr. Rove said he had not recalled the conversation with Mr. Cooper until the discovery of an e-mail message about it that he sent to Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser. But Mr. Fitzgerald has remained skeptical about the omission, the lawyers said.

In Mr. Libby’s case, Mr. Fitzgerald has focused on his statements about how he first learned of Ms. Wilson’s identity, the lawyers said. Mr. Libby has said that he learned of Ms. Wilson from reporters. But Mr. Fitzgerald may have doubts about his account because the journalists who have been publicly identified as having talked to Mr. Libby have said that they did not provide the name, that they could not recall what had been said or that they had discussed unrelated subjects.

Who are these "lawyers" who are breaking the law and talking to the New York Times? Or are they just made up, like so many of the Times’"sources" and "stories"?

By the way, this report claims that Rove and Libby have been "have been advised that they may be in serious legal jeopardy." How does the Timesreporter know that? He later says that both Rove’s and Libby’s attorneys "declined to comment on their legal status."

Are we supposed to believe that Fitzgerald told the NY Timesthis information? Sure he did.

Actually, if you pare away the reporter’s outrageous bias and the inner contradictions and try to puzzle out what little "facts" are actually being related, it actually sounds like indictments against Rove or Libby aren’t all that likely.

Mr. Fitzgerald is " skeptical" about Rove not remembering the details of a conversation with Cooper? Fitzgerald "has doubts" about where Libby first heard about Plame?

You don’t indict people on skepticism or doubts. Not unless you are a political hack who is embarrassed at having squandered so much time and money on nothing.

All in all, just going from this bizarre report, I think it sounds like there will be no indictments. But I never believe anything I read in the NY Times, even if it might be construed as good news.

Instead, it is just as likely to be the Timespositioning the story so that when there are no indictments handed down, the moonbats can scream that Fitzgerald wanted toindict Rove and Libby, but was pressured out it by the White House.

Never mind that even the Solons at the Timescouldn’t come up with an even slightly plausible charge.

But heck, if Fitzgerald starts indicting people with bad memories, nobody will be safe. Not even Judy "I can’t remember my source who I sat in jail for 84 days rather than reveal" Miller of the New York Times.

Talk about obstruction of justice.

If his last twenty-some articles on this same subject hadn’t convinced Peter Yost’s overlords at the DNC he is earning his keep–Yost has rolled up his sleeves to really show them this time.

From the DNC’s Associated Press:

White House defense – the news media did it – crumbling in leak case

By Pete Yost
October 20, 2005

WASHINGTON – The evidence prosecutors have assembled in the CIA leak case suggests Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff sought out reporters in the weeks before an undercover operative’s identity was compromised in the news media, casting doubt on one of the White House’s main lines of defense.

For months, the White House and its supporters have argued top presidential aides did not knowingly expose Valerie Plame, the wife of administration critic Joseph Wilson, as a CIA operative.

At most, the aides passed on information about her that entered the White House from reporters, the supporters argued.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald now knows that Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby met three times with a New York Times reporter before the leak of Plame’s identity, initiated a call to NBC’s Tim Russert and was a confirming source about Wilson’s wife for a Time magazine reporter.

And in a new twist, presidential political adviser Karl Rove has testified that it’s possible Libby was his source before Rove talked to two reporters about the CIA operative.

In light of all the disclosures, "it’s going to be as difficult for the defense to prove the theory that the White House got the information from reporters as it is for Fitzgerald to prove that the White House leaked the information about Wilson’s wife," said Washington-based white-collar defense attorney James D. Wareham.

Where Libby first heard the information still isn’t publicly known, but a full three weeks before Plame’s name first showed up in print, Libby was telling New York Times reporter Judith Miller that he thought Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, according to Miller’s testimony.

While Libby maintains that he didn’t know Plame’s name until it was published in the news media, the now-public evidence suggests Libby at least was aware that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and that he spread the information.

Prosecutors must determine whether it was part of an effort to undermine the credibility of Plame’s husband who was criticizing the White House.

Until this week, "the news media did it" was a standard defense among Republicans trying to protect the Bush administration from the political fallout of Fitzgerald’s criminal investigation. Loyalists said that even if White House aides had passed on information, they didn’t get it from classified sources and were simply repeating what they heard from journalists.

As new evidence accumulates on the public record, Libby’s original source of information and how he passed the information on are becoming crucial unanswered questions. The public still doesn’t know much about what the vice president and his top aide talked about, either.

In grand jury testimony shown to Rove, Libby said he had told Rove about information he had gotten about Wilson’s wife from Russert, according to a person directly familiar with the information.

Prosecutors, however, have a different account from Russert. The TV network has said Russert told authorities he did not know about Wilson’s wife’s identity until it was published and therefore could not have told Libby about it. Russert also says that it was Libby who initiated the contact with him.

In Miller’s case, the reporter was interviewing Libby on June 23, 2003, for a story on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when the vice president’s chief of staff suggested a CIA tie for Wilson’s wife, Miller has said.

"This was the first time I had been told that Mr. Wilson’s wife might work for the CIA," Miller wrote in a first-person account over the weekend. Miller said this week that she never wrote a story about Wilson’s wife because "it wasn’t that important to me. I was focused on the main question: Was our WMD intelligence slanted?"

An honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.

Hey, never mind that "Punchy" Judy swore under oath to the Grand Jury that Libby was notthe source for her knowledge of Valerie Plame.

That was last week, and a reporter’s got to eat.

From the Alabama Mobile Register:

No holiday for crime on ship

Thursday, October 20, 2005

By Susan Daker Staff Reporter

Nearly 30 arrests ranging from domestic violence to drug possession have been made on the Holiday cruise ship in Mobile since Hurricane Katrina evacuees moved in a month ago, a police spokesman said.

The arrest rate on board the ship during its service as an evacuee shelter has been significantly higher per thousand people than the average arrest rates in Alabama and Mississippi, according to available criminal statistics.

Police received 98 calls summoning officers to the Carnival Cruise Line ship from Sept. 17 through Monday, Oct. 17, according to information provided by Cpl. Marcus Young, police spokesman. The Mobile Police Department is responsible for security on board the ship, which is docked in downtown.

Slightly more than 1,200 people are residing on the ship, although that number has been as high as 1,400, said Sheila Gurganus, Alabama Cruise Terminal manager.The Holiday has a capacity of 1,452 guests.

Police have made 27 arrests aboard the ship thus far, including four for domestic violence, six for public drunkenness, and three for disorderly conduct. There have been 11 drug-related arrests. The most serious charge appears to be possession of cocaine, a felony.

Three arrest warrants have been served on the ship, Young said. One was a forgery warrant out of Mississippi; no records were available on the other two warrants.

Also, officers have helped locate three missing children on the ship, assisted five times with mental patients and dealt with seven calls for disorderly people.

According to the FBI, which tracks arrest rates from data collected by local law enforcement agencies, Alabama had an average of 4.3 arrests per 1,000 people a month in 2004. Mississippi, meanwhile, averaged about 6.3 arrests per 1,000 people per month last year.

The number of arrests on board the Holiday for the past month computes to about 19 per 1,000 people, based on a ship occupancy of 1,400.

When evacuees first checked onto the ship, they had to pass through metal detectors and their luggage was screened, Gurganus said. People leaving the ship to run errands or make other temporary trips are required to check in and out, Gurganus said. She was unsure whether people and their possessions were being screened upon their return.

The Mobile Fire Rescue-Department has received 14 emergency calls to the ship since Sept. 17, said spokesman Steve Huffman.

In the beginning of September, the Federal Emergency Management Agency contracted with the cruise line to charter the Holiday and two other ships for evacuees.

The deal with the federal government, worth in excess of $200 million, has sparked controversy in Congress, with some lawmakers expressing concern that the government paid too much.

FEMA would prefer to dock the Holiday in Mississippi, the home state of most evacuees on board, but has not decided when the ship will depart. Gurganus said the terminal officials hear "something different every day."

Like a dog returns to his vomit, Mother Sheehan has given into her primal urge and moved to her spiritual home–Berkeley.

From aptly named, Berkeley Daily Planet:

Cindy Sheehan Moves to Berkeley, Joins Call for National Guard Return

By Richard Brenneman

One of the country’s most famous anti-war activists is now one of Berkeley’s newest residents.

Cindy Sheehan, who gained the world’s attention with her protest outside President George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, has moved into a Berkeley apartment following her separation from her husband.

“ I needed a place to stay, and some friends got me an apartment,” she said.

Not that Berkeley will see much of the mother who lost her son Casey in the Iraq war in April 2004.

“I spend most of my time traveling, and I’m home maybe seven to 10 days a month,” she said following a Friday press conference in the San Francisco office of Assembly member Mark Leno. “I spend a lot of time in Southern California, and tomorrow I’ll be in New York City.”

Sheehan said that when she told Republican Sen