This report was originally published on Truthout.org and is being republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The Department of Justice has not yet finished an internal review of the report prepared by an agency watchdog that probed several legal opinions John Yoo and two other former attorneys who worked at the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) wrote for the Bush White House on torture, an agency spokeswoman said Wednesday.

“The [review] process is ongoing and we hope to have [the report] complete and released soon,” Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler told Truthout.

The Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) completed the report in December 2008 following a five-year investigation.

Adding to the delay in releasing the report (Attorney General Eric Holder testified before Congress last year that the report was complete and was expected be released by end of November), according to several legal sources knowledgeable about the review process, were additional responses to its conclusions that Yoo filed via his attorney, Miguel Estrada. The legal sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because the report is still classified.

If that’s true, the career prosecutor charged with reviewing the report would have to carefully review Yoo’s responses and, as Holder testified last November, “react to those responses” as well.

Estrada told Truthout he was bound by a confidentiality agreement he entered into with the Justice Department and could not comment on the claims that he submitted another set of responses on behalf of Yoo.

Schmaler said she could not comment on the rumors. But she pointed to the Office of Professional Responsibility’s “post investigation” guidelines, which details the process that takes place during the course of such investigations.

The big question is will the report be released on or before January 15?

That’s the date lawyers representing alleged “dirty bomb” plotter Jose Padilla are due to file a response to the government’s friend-of-the-court-brief, which recommended that a lawsuit Padilla filed aginst Yoo over the legal advice he gave to the Bush White House that resulted in Padilla being tortured be tossed out because the OPR report would address the issue that Yoo provided the White House with poor legal advice.

“In addition to potential discipline by a state bar, Department of Justice attorneys are also subject to investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility (“OPR”)… OPR and the Office of the Inspector General have broad investigatory powers and can recommend discipline and even criminal prosecution, where appropriate, the government’s December 3, court filing states.

As blogger Marcy Wheeler pointed out earlier this week, “At the rate we’re going, Padilla’s lawyers will have to file their response to the boast that OPR can offer adequate discipline in cases like this, without yet learning what OPR did in this particular case.”

Believing that the report is being suppressed, a coalition of attorneys, journalists and activists to file a Freedom of Information Act request Thursday with the Justice Department to obtain a copy of the report and other documents.

Upcoming Hearings on Torture?

In an interview last month, Christopher Anders, the ACLU’s senior legislative counsel, said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and his counterpart in the House, John Conyers, have both said they intend to hold hearings next year when the OPR report is released.

Leahy and Conyers “said a number of times that they would have hearings when the OPR report comes out,” Anders told me. “It would be a big surprise if they didn’t conduct hearings. We fully expect them to hold hearings.”

Erica Cabot, a spokeswoman for Leahy, said it would be premature to discuss any plans for possible future hearings until the report is released.

“Adverse Findings”

The Justice Department was prepared to publicly release the report last January. But it underwent revisions after then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey and his deputy, Mark Filip, demanded that Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury be given the chance to review and respond to the findings.

“In the past, former Department employees who were subjects of OPR investigations typically have been permitted to appeal adverse OPR findings to the Deputy Attorney General’s Office,” said Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich’s May 4, 2008 letter to Democratic Senators Dick Durbin and Sheldon Whitehouse. “A senior career official usually conducted that appeal by reviewing submissions from the subjects and OPR’s reply to those submissions, and then reaching a decision on the merits of the appeal. Under this ordinary procedure, the career official’s decision on the merits was final. This appeal procedure was typically completed before the Department determined whether to disclose the Report of Investigation to the former employees’ state bar disciplinary authorities or to anyone else.”

Legal sources familiar with an early draft of the report said it concluded that some of Yoo and Bybee’s legal work for the Bush White House rose to the level of professional misconduct and therefore warranted a disciplinary referral state bar officials. These sources said they were unaware whether OPR reached the same conclusions about Bradbury’s legal work.

Weich’s letter noted that if the appeals filed by Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury resulted in a rejection of OPR’s findings by the “career official” reviewing the document then no such referral would occur.

“Department policy usually requires referral of OPR’s misconduct findings to the subject’s state bar disciplinary authority, but if the appeal resulted in a rejection of OPR’s misconduct findings, then no referral was made,” Weich’s letter said. “This process afforded former employees roughly the same opportunity to contest OPR’s findings that current employees were afforded through the disciplinary process.”

Weich added that the initial draft of the report was also shared with the CIA for a “classification review,” and the agency, having reviewed the findings, “requested an opportunity to provide substantive comment on the report.”

Durbin and Whitehouse, in a statement last May, said they “will be interested in the scope of the ‘substantive comment’ the CIA is providing, and the reasons why an outside agency would have such comment on an internal disciplinary matter.”

A CIA spokesperson did not return calls for comment about the agency’s response to the report.

Weich’s letter to Durbin and Whitehouse was sent in response to queries by the senators last March about revelations that Bradbury oversaw OLC’s review of the report in late 2008, despite the fact that he was a subject of OPR’s investigation and was also acting head of OLC at the time.

Three months before Bush exited the White House, Bradbury, in a “memorandum for the files,” renounced several legal opinions drafted by Yoo and Bybee.

Bradbury attempted to justify or forgive Yoo’s controversial opinion by explaining that it was “the product of an extraordinary period in the history of the Nation: the immediate aftermath of the attacks of 9/11.”

Bradbury wrote another memo five days before Bush left office last January, in which he once again repudiated Yoo’s legal opinions. It would appear that this memo was in response to the OPR report. Bradbury said in the Jan. 15 memo that the flawed theories by Yoo in no way should be interpreted to mean that Justice Department lawyers did not “satisfy” professional standards.

Durbin and Whitehouse said they believed Bradbury’s “memorandum for the files” made it a “conflict-of-interest” for him to participate in the formal review process.

But Weich said, “Because Mr. Bradbury’s participation in that process was transparent, OPR advised that it can evaluate the OLC response with the knowledge of Mr. Bradbury’s participation just as it would evaluate a response from anyone whose actions were within the scope of OPR’s investigation.

“Therefore, OPR does not believe that Mr. Bradbury’s participation in the OLC response was improper,” Weich said.

Rather, Bradbury wrote, “In the wake of the atrocities of 9/11, when policy makers, fearing that additional catastrophic terrorist attacks were imminent, strived to employ all lawful means to protect the Nation.”

This investigative report was originally published on Truthout. Mary Susan Littlepage, a Truthout intern, was a contributing reporter.

A disturbing new study released last month by the Army Mental Health Advisory Team has found that an increasing number of soldiers serving in Afghanistan are suffering from some type of mental health related injury and “significantly lower morale” compared with previous years due to an uptick in violence and multiple deployments.

In May 2008, during a campaign stop in Charleston, West Virginia, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama gave a passionate speech about the inadequate care war veterans had received, particularly those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, under the Bush administration’s tenure in office.

Without identifying him by name, Obama cited the case of Grover Cleveland Chapman, a World War II veteran from Greenville, South Carolina, who had been repeatedly denied PTSD benefits by the Department of Veterans Affairs. After his final appeal for treatment was turned down in April 2008, Chapman took a cab to his local VA clinic, sat down in front of the facility, and pulled out a loaded Smith & Wesson revolver. He pointed the .38 caliber revolver to his temple and squeezed the trigger. He was 89 years old.

“How can we let this happen? How is that acceptable in the United States of America? The answer is, it’s not. It’s an outrage,” Obama said at the time. “And it’s a betrayal – a betrayal – of the ideals that we ask our troops to risk their lives for. …

“We have to understand that for far too many troops and their families, the war doesn’t end when they come home. Just the other day our own government’s top psychiatric researcher said that because of inadequate mental health care, the number of suicides among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan may actually exceed the number of combat deaths. Think about that. Think about how only half of the returning soldiers with PTSD receive the treatment they need. Think of how many we turn away – of how many we let fall through the cracks. We have to do better than this.”

Although Obama has taken steps to overhaul the VA – he nominated retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki as secretary of Veterans Affairs and Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran whose combat wounds cost her both of her legs, as assistant secretary of public and intergovernmental affairs – he still hasn’t nominated an assistant and deputy assistant secretary of defense for health affairs to tackle some of the lingering mental health issues plaguing the military, particularly for those veterans who have served mulitple towards of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And while Obama was successful in getting Congress to radically increase the VA budget, his administration has struggled to deal with a massive benefits backlog that has nearly topped 1 million, an epidemic of veterans’ suicides that has reached historic levels this year, and an unprecedented number of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who suffer from PTSD and traumatic brain injury and still cannot obtain adequate treatment.

Afghan Vets Suffering

The mental health crisis afflicting veterans of both wars will only worsen now that Obama said he intends to send tens of thousands of additional troops to battle in Afghanistan.

In fact, a disturbing new study released last month by the Army Mental Health Advisory Team underscores that point:

The study, the sixth one the Army has conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003, found that an increasing number of soldiers serving in Afghanistan are suffering from some type of mental health related injury and “significantly lower morale” compared with previous years due to an uptick in violence and multiple deployments.

The Mental Health Advisory Team surveyed 638 Soldiers from 27 maneuver platoons and 744 Soldiers from 25 support or sustainment platoons.

“About 14 percent of the Soldiers surveyed met screening criteria for psychological problems, which is similar to the findings of the 2007 assessment in Afghanistan,” the study concluded. “Soldiers with three or more deployments had higher rates of psychological problems and marital problems. The team also found barriers to behavioral-health care were higher than in previous years.”

Remarkably, there are only 40 mental health care professionals in Afghanistan and about 68,000 US soldiers currently deployed there, thousands of whom are on their second, third and, in some cases, fourth deployment. The additional troops Obama intends to deploy would bring the total number of troops in the region to roughly 100,000.

The advisory team recommended “increasing the number of behavioral-health personnel in [Afghanistan] and maintaining a low ratio as troop numbers surge, and appointing a senior theater-wide behavioral-health consultant and noncommissioned officer.”

The Army wants to have at least one mental health care professional in place for every 700 soldiers. That would require sending 60 mental health care professionals to the region this month to support the soldiers who are currently stationed there, but it’s unclear what the plans would be, if any, to send in additional workers to support a troop surge.

Paul Sullivan, executive director for Veterans for Common Sense, said he is troubled that “for all the talk about expanding the Afghanistan War or winding down the Iraq War, there remains very little discussion about our troops in the trenches and our veterans struggling here at home.”

Historic Number of PTSD/TBI Cases Predicted

Of the 1.9 million US soldiers who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan thus far, as many as 700,000 will suffer from PTSD and traumatic brain injury, according to a recent report published by Stanford University. A similar study released by the RAND Institute in April 2008, estimated that 350,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans would suffer from PTSD. But the Stanford study, unlike the RAND report, factored in a delayed onset of PTSD, which accounts for the larger number of projected cases.

Veterans advocacy groups say the Obama administration and staunch veterans advocates like Shinseki and Duckworth have been unable to cut through the bureaucratic red tape that continues to permeate the VA and the Department of Defense. Moreover, the agency has not fully met its goal of hiring additional mental health professionals, leaving veterans who need immediate treatment on the brink of suicide.

“With 42 percent of troops still deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan it is crucial that the DOD improve transitional support and that the VA increase the number of mental health staff in order to provide mental health care and compensation in a timely manner,” said Michael Blecker, executive director of Swords to Plowshares, a veterans group based in San Francisco, after the study was released in September. “These delays are unacceptable because they create overwhelming stress and health complications for veterans.”

Sullivan said his group briefed several “congressional and [Obama] administration offices about the ongoing shortage of mental health care professionals to treat and diagnose returning veterans and to conduct medical evaluations for all soliders who are tapped to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan , many for a second or third tour of duty.

“Our military is not following the law: leaders have not hired enough medical professionals to conduct the required pre- and post-deployment medical exams and provide care,” Sullivan said. “The failure of top military leaders is shocking, and President Obama must take action and hold top military leaders accountable for not taking care of our nation’s most important national security asset – our troops.”

The 1997 Force Health Protection law requires the military to conduct medical examinations for soldiers returning from combat. But Sullivan and other veterans advocacy groups claim the Defense Department has routinely skirted the law.

Ira Katz, the deputy chief patient care services officer for the Veterans Health Administration, however, disputes Sullivan’s assertions. Katz told Truthout that soldiers receive a post-deployment mental health screening when they return from Iraq and Afghanistan and are re-evaluated three to six months later in a post-deployment reassessment. In both cases, soldiers who show signs of PTSD receive additional treatment.

“We do know that multiple deployments increases PTSD and related problems,” Katz said. “PTSD is most common, but it’s not the only problem.”

He pointed to substance abuse as another problem veterans struggle with upon returning from combat.

Katz and Sullivan have sparred before over veterans’ mental health care.

Katz was one of the VA officials identified last year in a federal court case involving a federal lawsuit filed against the agency by Sullivan’s group as trying to cover up the extent of suicides and suicide attempts among veterans who were treated or had sought help at VA hospitals around the country.

On February 13, 2008, Katz, who was then the VA’s mental health director, and Ev Chasen, the agency’s chief communications director, exchanged e-mails discussing a public relations strategy for handling this troubling news, according to evidence made public in the federal court case in Northern California.

The exchange came in the context of how to handle inquiries from CBS News, which was reporting on the surge of suicides among US veterans – reaching an average of 18 per day – with part of that rise attributed to soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In an e-mail headlined “Not for the CBS News Interview Request,” Katz notified Chasen that the VA had identified some 1,000 suicide attempts per month among war veterans treated by the VA.

“Shh!” Katz wrote to Chasen. “Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?”

The lawsuit against the VA, which Sullivan and Veterans United for Truth filed in July 2007 in an attempt to get the agency to immediately treat veterans who show signs of PTSD and are at risk of suicide and overhaul the internal system that handles benefits claims, is currently before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where a decision is expected soon. A lower court judge dismissed the complaint last year stating in an 82-page ruling that “the court can find no systemic violations system-wide that would compel district court intervention.”

Sullivan pointed out that it’s holdovers like Katz who are part of the problem because they continue to downplay the seriousness of the issue.

And that’s exactly how Katz characterized the suicide epidemic he sought to conceal.

While the Army’s latest figures show that 211 active-duty and non-active-duty veterans have committed suicide this year, Katz told Truthout that from 2001 to 2007 there has been a 10 to 15 percent decrease in suicide among vets who received care from the VA. He said it takes two years to process accurate statistics.

Katz also said the VA has stepped up mental health services and increased VA mental health staffing by 40 percent since 2005.

But at a briefing last month for reporters after the Army released the suicide statistics, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, vice chief of staff of the Army, said although the Army has hired 900 mental health care professionals over the past two years, “I see a shortage today of somewhere in the vicinity of, I would argue, 800 – 750 to 800.”

“The reason why I’m having a problem with mental health care providers is, United States society as a whole is having a problem with mental health care providers,” Chiarelli said.

Sullivan said the record number of suicides is indicative of a “failure of leadership in the military to implement solutions,” such as implementing a “robust anti-stigma campaign that encourages our troops to seek mental health care and discourage officers from discriminating against soldiers who seek care.”

Chiarelli said the Army is “working very, very hard … to eliminate the stigma long associated with seeking and receiving help. This is a matter of life and death, and it is absolutely unacceptable to have individuals suffering in silence because they’re afraid their peers or superiors will make fun of them or, worse, it will adversely affect their careers.”

The “program” the general spoke specifically about in hopes of removing the stigma associated with PTSD was simply a questionnaire soldiers fill out as part of the Army’s suicide prevention efforts, which Sullivan said falls far short of what needs to be done to treat veterans.

Sullivan said he is concerned that, after 12 years, Katz and the military “intentionally confuse a ‘medical examination’ by a doctor, required by the 1997 Force Health Protection Law, and a ’self screening’ performed by a soldier using a pencil and paper without a doctor’s exam.”

“So long as the government fails to do the exams immediately upon redeployment home and then provide prompt treatment when needed, the tragic military and veteran suicide crisis will continue escalating,” Sullivan said. “While there may be an Internet web site with an anti-stigma message, there is no multimillion dollar joint DoD-VA television, radio, and print campaign encouraging veterans to seek care. The reason DoD and VA refuse to do this is because such an effort would increase the number of patients flooding into an already overwhelmed system.”

Katz disagreed. He noted that the Real Warriors Campaign, an initiative launched by the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, is one program that aims to de-stigmatize mental illness among vets. He also said the VA has a suicide prevention hot line —implemented last year after revelations were made in federal court about the VA’s substandard suicide prevention efforts.

“There are stigmas associated with mental health throughout America and that is just unfortunate,” Katz said. “Where people have special concerns, though, is whether there are specific stigmas associated with mental health conditions when you’re in the service and while you’re in the Department of Defense.”

Blecker, of Swords to Plowshares, added that it’s “disheartening that even after witnessing the tragic effects that a lack of mental health diagnosis, treatment and compensation had on Vietnam veterans, we continue to stigmatize PTSD and other mental illnesses.”

Journalist Aaron Glantz, author of the book “The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle Against America’s Veterans,” said in an interview that Obama’s plan to send as many as 35,000 additional troops to Afghanistan has to be matched with his administration putting more effort into improving and expanding the medical care veterans receive when they return from war to treat PTSD and other combat injuries, a proposal Sullivan said is already mandatory under the 1997 federal law, but one that he claims has not been implemented due to a lack of mental health care professionsals.

Glantz said it’s clear that PTSD cases will see a dramatic increase as more soldiers are shipped off to war. It’s how these soldiers need to be treated when they return from combat that concerns him.

“That is something that everyone in the military, the VA and our society as a whole needs to understand,” Glantz said. “It’s going to take a national mobilization to really welcome our soldiers home in a meaningful way that hasn’t happened yet.”

Massive Benefits Claims Backlog

Recently, Sullivan’s group obtained internal documents from the VA under a Freedom of Information Act request that shows the ongoing neglect of veterans who suffer from PTSD and traumatic brain injury.

According to the documents, the VA treats about 300 newly discharged Iraq and Afghanistan veterans per day and the agency receives around 330 new disability claims per day from veterans of both wars.

As of June, more than 480,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans were treated at VA facilities throughout the country and nearly half have been diagnosed with at least one type of mental health condition, such as PTSD or traumatic brain injury, according to the documents.

But the VA has only approved about 59,000 benefits claims for PTSD out of the 134,000 veterans who have been specifically diagnosed by the agency as suffering from the disorder, the documents show.

Sullivan said, “that’s the real and unreported VA scandal.”

“After eight years, VA still fights against PTSD benefits,” Sullivan said. “The cause remains the heavy anti-veteran and anti-PTSD policies of the Bush administration.”

But VA appears to be providing veterans with some relief.

Within the next month or two the VA will implement new PTSD benefits rules aimed at streamlining the way VA processes PTSD disability claims.

Still, Sullivan said Obama and Shinseki should pay closer attention to the Veterans Benefits Administration, one of the few agencies remaining under full control of former Bush administration political appointees.

Shinseki appears to have heeded warnings about cleaning house.

Two weeks ago, Adm. Patrick Dunne, the under secretary for benefits for the VA since 2006, announced his resignation, effective early next year. Dunne replaced Adm. Daniel Cooper, another Bush appointee who was forced to resign in 2006 following revelations that he used his office to promote fundamentalist Christianity.

Though Shinseki’s office dismissed rumors that Dunne was forced out, numerous veterans groups said they were privately told by VA officials that Dunne was asked to step down due in large part to several high-profile scandals that took place on his watch, such as the shredding of benefits claims at VA regional offices and the VA’s mishandling of the post-9/11 GI Bill benefits payments to veterans.

Obama, meanwhile, has said the Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act he signed at the end of October will “harness new technologies” and “cut the red tape and backlogs.”

Still, Sullivan said unless the Obama administration enacts immediate reforms, veterans will continue to suffer in the short term.

“Veterans wait, on average, about five to six months for an initial decision from VA for a disability compensation claim, plus another four or five years if the veteran appeals VA’s decision,” Sullivan said, adding that his group projects more than 1 million veterans will be treated by VA at a cost of $1 trillion over 40 years. “We remain deeply concerned that the backlog of veterans’ claims recently reached 950,000 [which accounts for all wars] and continues rising.”

Jason Leoold is Editor-at-Large for The Public Record and Deputy Managing Editor at Truthout.org. Mary Susan Littlepage is an intern at Truthout.org.

Abu Zubaydah

This story was originally published on Truthout.

Abu Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee captured after 9/11, is expected to finally gain access to diaries he wrote during the years while he was being brutally tortured at secret black-site prisons by CIA interrogators.

A federal court judge has ordered the government to turn over unredacted volumes of the diaries and other “specified” writings to defense attorneys representing Zubaydah.

Although the order issued by US District Court Judge Richard Roberts on September 30 was filed under seal, Zubaydah’s attorney, Brent Mickum, said in an interview that while he could not discuss the substance of the ruling, it was his opinion that the order “should have been made public from the get-go” because “there’s nothing in [the order] that should be considered classified.”

In his motion, Mickum asked for original copies of the diaries to be released. It is not known whether Roberts’ order required the government to produce original versions of Zubaydah’s diaries. However, it is believed that Roberts’ order applies to three volumes of diaries Zubaydah wrote between 2002 and 2006, the time he spent in CIA custody and was tortured.

Those volumes, identified as seven, eight and nine, “were drafted while [Zubaydah] was in CIA custody,” according to court papers filed by Mickum last January. “Volumes 10 and 11 were completed in [Department of Defense] custody at Guantanamo, after September 2006; only these last two volumes, written after [Zubaydah] was transferred from CIA to DoD custody, were given to counsel in late 2008 by [Zubaydah] because they were in his possession.”

Mickum said he already has access to volumes one through six and 11 and 12. Though volumes one through six are unclassified, they have been designated by the government as “protected” and are not publicly available.

In a public summary describing his order, Roberts wrote that Mickum’s motion for “a preservation order and additional relief will be granted in part and denied in part, and [his] motion for an order requiring the [government] to return unredacted versions of [Zubaydah's] diaries and other specified writings to him will be granted in part and denied in part.”

The diaries have been the subject of legal wrangling for years. Justice Department attorneys in both the Bush and Obama administrations have argued that releasing unredacted copies of the diaries would constitute a threat to national security because they contain names of government employees, including an FBI agent, and names of individuals who assisted in translating the diaries from Arabic to English, plus information about ongoing counterterrorism efforts.

Mickum has filed numerous motions in federal court accusing the government of improperly classifying the diaries – even after portions have already surfaced in public documents – and abusing the classification process related to other materials in Zubaydah’s case.

For example, last August Mickum filed court papers seeking additional copies of Zubaydah’s medical records and an in-person medical evaluation, both of which Mickum says he needs in order to “challenge the lawfulness” of Zubaydah’s detention. The court previously ordered the release of medical records related to the more than 200 seizures Zubaydah has suffered since being transferred to Guantanamo in 2006.

The Justice Department balked and filed its opposition in the matter under seal. Mickum objected to the government’s “ongoing abuse of the classification system” in a motion he filed in federal court in June. The court hasn’t ruled on that motion yet although it has been fully briefed on the matter.

Mickum said he has not been able to mount a meaningful defense because the government continuously denies his requests for documents related to Zubaydah’s time in CIA custody.

“The government is preventing us from working up the case,” Mickum said. “They are trying to keep things closely guarded.”

A Justice Department spokesman would not return calls for comment regarding Judge Roberts’ ruling.

Zubaydah has written 11 volumes of his diary in a “slender bound notebook” and has started work on volume 12, according to court papers in the case filed last January. He wrote the first six volumes before his March 2002 arrest in Pakistan.

The government’s case against Zubaydah is based heavily on entries contained in the first six volumes of his diaries, according to court papers. But the materials were designated by the government as “protected,” even though the diaries are unclassified and both the defense team and Zubaydah have access to volumes one through six.

In a July 14 motion opposing the government’s attempt to “protect” volumes one through six, Mickum said he is not permitted to inform Zubaydah “which passages the government relied upon” in the charges it prepared against him as outlined in the “factual return.”

“The Government has redacted every reference to the unclassified volumes of [Zubaydah's] diary from the unclassified factual return,” Mickum’s motion states. “By removing every reference to the diary, the Government leaves very few of the relevant allegations against [Zubaydah] to be seen by the eyes of the public. Moreover, what is left is an incredibly misleading picture. For example, for several pages of the factual return, virtually the only words that are left unredacted are the names: Abu Hafs al-Masri, [al-Qaeda-in-Iraq leader] Abu Mas’ab al-Zarqawi, [self-professed 9/11 mastermind] and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, known al-Qaeda operative. What the public does not see if that the only reason these people are mentioned in [the government's] factual return is that they are alleged to have been in the same city as [Zubaydah]. The Government does not even allege [Zubaydah] had direct, or even indirect, contact with them.

“What possible explanation can the Government offer to justify that the diaries are unclassified but the quotations from the diaries upon which the government relies in the factual return are classified? There is none. By doing so, the Government simply demonstrates its disregard for the fact that the authority to designate unclassified information as protected properly belongs to the court.

“It is understandable that the Government would want to avoid the public criticism that may follow from an honest discussion of who [Zubaydah] was and how the Government mistreated him, but this is not a legitimate basis for sealing information [in his] case. [This is about] the Government’s simple desire to keep information about [Zubaydah] and the case against him secret, primarily to cover up evidence contradicting its own public misstatements about [Zubaydah] as well as potential evidence of further as-yet-undisclosed government wrongdoing.”

Mickum said diaries Zubaydah kept while in CIA custody will go a long way toward establishing the brutal treatment Zubaydah was subjected to – far surpassing what the public has learned thus far from declassified \Justice Department legal memos documenting the brutal methods, such as sleep deprivation and beatings, used by CIA interrogators against Zubaydah.

He added that the diaries contain a “list of names, dates and activities” that will assist the defense in generating leads and prove that Zubaydah was not a senior member of al-Qaeda.

But by designating the material as “protected,” the government “severely hinders [the defense team's] ability to prepare [Zubaydah's] defense and vindicate his constitutional entitlement to habeas corpus at numerous levels.”

Mickum opined that the government would force him to have potential witnesses sign an agreement stating that they would be bound by a protective order if he were to discuss the diaries with them. Mickum said that was impractical as his investigations “are taking place all over the world” and it would also have a “chilling effect” on foreign witnesses. “Counsel are right now seeking the cooperation of witnesses in foreign countries who can corroborate the substance of [Zubaydah's] defense, much of which is articulated in his diary,” Mickum’s July 14 court filing says. “The Government’s attempt to designate the diary as protected, if granted, would preclude counsel from conducting such crucial investigations.”

Zubaydah began keeping a diary in 1992, after he suffered a severe head injury while fighting communist insurgents in Afghanistan. The injury left “significantly impaired both his long- and short-term memory,” states Mickum’s January 14 court motion.

“He cannot remember his father’s name and dimly recalls that he looked like a movie star in the Arab world (whose name he cannot remember). He cannot remember the name of his business partner with whom he ran a news agency prior to his arrest. Long after his 1992 injury, once [Zubaydah] had recovered the ability to speak and write, he began to keep a diary. It is his memory. Without it, he is lost.”

Dan Coleman, a former FBI agent who analyzed the diaries, said he was convinced that Zubaydah was “certifiable” and was not a high-level official in al-Qaeda as top Bush administration officials had claimed. Rather, Coleman said, Zubaydah was more like heavyweight boxing champ Joe Louis, who worked as a greeter in Las Vegas at the end of his life.

According to author Ron Suskind, Zubaydah’s diaries were written in the voices of three people – Hani 1, Hani 2 and Hani 3, which, Suskind wrote in his book, “The One Percent Doctrine,” helps establish that Zubaydah was mentally ill.

Furthermore, Suskind wrote, “Zubaydah was a logistics man, a fixer, mostly for a niggling array of personal items, like the guy you call who handles the company health plan, or benefits, or the people in human resources. There was almost nothing ‘operational’ in his portfolio. That was handled by the management team. He wasn’t one of them.”

Suskind’s account closely matches what Jack Cloonan, a former FBI special agent assigned to the agency’s elite Bin Laden unit, told me in a recent interview. Cloonan said the CIA and the Bush administration were flat wrong in designating Zubaydah as a top official in al-Qaeda. Zubaydah “wasn’t privy to a lot of what I would consider to be a lot of really good operational details,” getting most of his information secondhand, Cloonan said.

Mickum denies that Zubaydah was privy to any operational details of al-Qaeda.

“My client was never, ever, even a member of al-Qaeda, much less a high-level operative,” Mickum told Truthout. “The camp he was alleged to have assisted was closed in 2000 by the Taliban. Leaders of the camp known as Khalden closed it rather than allowing it to fall under the control of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda because they disagreed with al-Qaeda’s missions and attacks on innocent civilians.” Cloonan agreed, for the most part, with Mickum’s characterization of Zubaydah.

“We thought [Zubaydah] would be best described as a logistical officer who managed a series of safe houses and was a great travel agent,” Cloonan said. “But to cast him and describe him as the al-Qaeda emir or leader for the subcontinent or worse … I think was a mistake…. Based on his age and ethnicity, [he] would [n]ever be brought into the inner circle of al-Qaeda.”

There was also the question of Zubaydah’s personality. “My partner had a chance to look at a lot of Abu Zubaydah’s diaries, poems and other things that he has written and he said that after reading this you just come away with the feeling that this is a guy who can’t be trusted or be given huge amounts of responsibility,” Cloonan said. “He just seemed mentally unstable…. “I’m not at all suggesting that Abu Zubaydah wasn’t valuable. Anytime you get one of these guys and get their cooperation, I think [it] is a win. You can get information that’s really valuable from people who are further down the food chain. It’s how you get the information and whether you’re getting real cooperation or simply compliance because somebody’s either waterboarding you or gets you on sleep deprivation.

“We know, and the science tells us, that people cannot recall details accurately, they can’t look at pictures, they will make things up if deprived of the bare essentials of life over the course of time. I don’t understand how you could sleep deprive somebody for 11 days and expect this person to provide you with accurate information.

“Even if they wanted to they’re probably so debilitated at this point they need to be rehabilitated before they ever give you anything.”

Zubaydah’s 2002 torture sessions were videotaped. But CIA officials destroyed the tapes and a special prosecutor was appointed to investigate whether federal laws were broken when the tapes were purged.

As I previously reported, CIA interrogators provided top agency officials in Langley with daily “torture” updates of Zubaydah. The extensive back-and-forth between CIA field operatives and agency officials in Langley likely included updates provided to senior Bush administration officials.

In justifying his torture, the Bush administration had maintained that Zubaydah was the No. 3 official in al-Qaeda and had information about pending terrorist attacks against the US. But documents, news reports, books and former FBI interrogators familiar with Zubaydah said he was a low-level figure in the terrorist organization and was mentally ill.

CIA interrogators waterboarded Zubaydah 83 times in one month, according to recently released documents, and placed him inside a coffin-like box for hours at a time. The Bush administration claimed it obtained actionable intelligence by torturing Zubaydah – an assertion contradicted by a CIA inspector general’s report on the agency’s torture and detention program.

CIA documents from a Combatant Status Review Tribunal in March 2007 revealed that Zubaydah’s torturers eventually apologized to him and said they concluded he was not a top al-Qaeda lieutenant as the Bush administration and intelligence officials had claimed.

“They told me sorry we discover that you are not number three [in al-Qaeda], not a partner, even not a fighter,” Zubaydah said during his tribunal hearing.

Mickum said volumes seven, eight and nine of Zubaydah’s diaries would shed further light on his brutal treatment while “in CIA custody and recount his torture and damaging exculpatory admission made by [Zubaydah's] torturers and other CIA officials.”

The diaries “are critically important to show what [Zubaydah] was doing during this time frame and contain exculpatory evidence.”

Public court filings also state that Zubaydah “created other relevant writings and drawings, none of which have been returned to him.” Although Mickum said he could not describe the drawings because they remain classified, but it appears likely that they may depict Zubaydah’s torture.

“You’ll just have to use your imagination as to what they might be,” Mickum said. Zubaydah’s “really good.”

This story was originally published on Truthout.org

The Obama administration indicated in court papers it may appeal a federal judge’s ruling ordering the Justice Department to release portions of the transcribed interview between former Vice President Dick Cheney and Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor appointed to probe the roles Bush administration officials played in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson six years ago.

Last week, Jeffrey M. Smith, an attorney in the Justice Department’s civil division, filed an emergency motion in US District Court in Washington, DC, requesting a 30-day stay of the court’s Oct. 1, order that called for the parts of the Cheney interview to be released by Oct. 9.

Smith said the stay, which US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan granted, was needed “in order to allow the Solicitor General [Elena Kagan] sufficient time in which to exercise her statutory authority to determine whether the [Department of Justice] will file an appeal in this action.”

“This case involves an important issue that will require consultations at high levels of Government,” Smith said, adding that the stay “is necessary to avoid the irreparable harm that would result if the Government is forced to disclose its documents to the public before it has the opportunity to consider whether to pursue its appellate rights.”

The case stems from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed last year by the public interest group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). The organization has been trying to gain access to Cheney’s interview transcript and has found its efforts thwarted first by Justice Department attorneys in the Bush administration, who had said the interview transcript was being withheld on national security grounds, and now by the Obama administration, whose attorneys said the material, if released, could become “fodder for The Daily Show.”

The resistance from the Obama administration has left some of its supporters shaking their heads. Not only does the obstruction go against President Obama’s pledge of government openness, but it is protecting the reputation of Cheney, one of Obama’s most vocal critics.

It was Smith who argued in July that the transcript of Cheney’s 2004 interview with Fitzgerald about the CIA leak should remain secret for as long as ten more years to protect Cheney from any political embarrassment that would result from the transcript being released.

As previously reported by Truthout, Sullivan rejected Smith’s argument as well as others that claimed releasing the contents of the transcript would derail law enforcement efforts to obtain the cooperation of sitting vice presidents in future criminal probes.

“Any attempt to predict the harm that disclosure of these records could have … is therefore inherently, incurably speculative,” Sullivan wrote in his ruling. “Accordingly, the Court concludes that DOJ has failed to meet its burden of demonstrating that the records were properly withheld.”

Sullivan, however, did agree that the Justice Department can keep under wraps, on national security grounds, statements Cheney had made to Fitzgerald about declassification discussions he had with George W. Bush, conversations Cheney had with former CIA Director George Tenet about Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s February 2002 trip to Niger to investigate allegations that Iraq was seeking to purchase yellowcake uranium, discussions surrounding the 16 words in Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address that asserted Iraq had attempted to purchase the uranium, talks between Cheney and then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and conversations between Cheney and other Bush officials about how to respond to media inquiries about the Plame Wilson leak.

Senior Bush administration officials disclosed Plame Wilson’s identity to several journalists in June and July of 2003 amid White House efforts to discredit her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for challenging Bush’s use of bogus intelligence to justify invading Iraq.

Plame Wilson’s CIA employment was revealed in a July 14, 2003, article by the late right-wing columnist Robert Novak, effectively destroying her career. Two months later, a CIA complaint to the Justice Department sparked a criminal probe into the identity of the leakers.

Initially, Bush professed not to know anything about the matter, and several of his senior aides, including political adviser Karl Rove and the vice president’s chief of staff I. Lewis Libby, followed suit.

However, it later became clear that Rove and Libby had a hand in the Plame leak and that Bush and Cheney had helped organize a campaign to disparage Wilson by giving critical information to friendly journalists.

On June 24, 2004, Bush was interviewed by Fitzgerald for 70 minutes about the Plame leak. The only other member of the Bush team in the room during the meeting was Jim Sharp, the private lawyer that Bush hired, according to a press briefing by then press secretary Scott McClellan.

“The President … was pleased to do his part to help the investigation move forward,” McClellan said. “No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the President of the United States.”

A couple of weeks earlier, Cheney was interviewed by Fitzgerald. Cheney retained a private attorney, Terrence O’Donnell, to represent him in the matter.

Fitzgerald’s criminal investigation led to Libby’s indictment in October 2005 and his subsequent conviction in March 2007 on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, which Bush later commuted.

During closing arguments at Libby’s trial, Cheney was implicated in the leak, as Fitzgerald acknowledged that Cheney was intimately involved in the scandal and may have told Libby to leak Plame’s status to the media.

Court papers filed by Obama’s Justice Department in July revealed that Bush and Cheney were in contact about the scandal, including what is described as “a confidential conversation” and “an apparent communication between the Vice President and the President.”

That court filing also revealed that Fitzgerald questioned Cheney about his participation in the decision to declassify parts of a 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s alleged WMD. It ultimately fell to Bush to clear selected parts of the NIE so they could be leaked as part of the White House campaign to disparage Wilson.

Ruling in a 2008 lawsuit by the Justice Department, U.S. District Court Judge Richard L. Williams declared that Virginia’s failure to mail more than 2,000 absentee ballots at least 30 days prior to the election violated the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), a federal law that guarantees military personnel and other citizens living abroad the right to vote by absentee ballot in federal elections.

Judge Williams wrote in his ruling: “The right to vote means a right to cast a ballot that will be counted.” As a result, the court held that Virginia’s failure to mail absentee ballots to its military and overseas voters sufficiently in advance of the election “offended these voters’ prized right to vote in a federal election[.]”

To remedy this violation of federal law, the Court ordered the Commonwealth to count all otherwise proper ballots received by the Commonwealth within 30 days after the election. The case will remain open for a determination of what relief is needed to ensure that Virginia complies with UOCAVA in future federal elections.

“The men and women who bravely put their lives on the line to serve their nation deserve, at the very least, to know that their votes will be counted, and their voices will be heard,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “I am gratified the Court acted so decisively to uphold the right of those serving our country in uniform and other citizens living abroad to vote, and I applaud the attorneys and staff in the Voting Section for their hard work on this case to protect that right.”

UOCAVA requires states to allow uniformed service members and overseas citizens to register to vote and to vote absentee for all elections for federal office. The Justice Department has brought numerous suits under UOCAVA to ensure that voters are not deprived of an opportunity to vote due to late mailing of absentee ballots by election officials

David Safavian

Former General Services Administration (GSA) Chief of Staff David H. Safavian was sentenced Friday to one year in prison on charges of obstruction of justice and making false statements in connection with the investigation into the activities of former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

In addition to the prison term, Safavian was sentenced today to two years of supervised release by U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman of the District of Columbia.

Safavian was found guilty by a federal jury in June 2006 of obstruction of justice and making false statements, but the verdicts were later vacated by the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and remanded for a new trial. A federal jury once again convicted Safavian of one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements on Dec. 19, 2008.

The jury in the second trial heard evidence that while Safavian assisted Abramoff in connection with the lobbyist’s attempts to acquire GSA-controlled properties, Abramoff took him on a luxury golf trip to Scotland and to London. The jury found that over the span of three years, Safavian made false statements in an attempt to conceal the fact that around the time of the golf trip he aided Abramoff with business before the GSA. The false statements included statements made to a GSA ethics officer and a GSA Office of Inspector General (GSA-OIG) Special Agent as well as falsely certifying a financial disclosure form.

The jury heard evidence at trial that Safavian’s efforts to cover up the assistance he provided Abramoff continued after he left the GSA in November 2004 to become the Administrator for the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the Office of Management and Budget. The jury found that in May 2005, Safavian made false statements to an FBI Special Agent investigating Abramoff’s lobbying activities. According to evidence introduced at trial, Safavian told the FBI agent that he was unable to assist Abramoff with GSA-related activities around the time of the golf trip because he was a new employee at GSA.

Abramoff pleaded guilty in January 2006 to charges of conspiracy, honest services mail fraud and tax evasion and was sentenced in September 2008 to four years in prison in addition to the 22 months he served prior to the sentencing date.  To date, 20 individuals, including lobbyists and public officials, have pleaded guilty, been convicted at trial, or are awaiting trial in connection with the ongoing investigation into the activities of Abramoff and his associates.

US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan rejected arguments by Obama Justice Department appointees that releasing the transcript would discourage future vice presidents from cooperating with criminal investigations because their words could become “fodder for The Daily Show.”

At a federal court hearing in July, Jeffrey Smith, an attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Division, argued that the transcript of Cheney’s 2004 interview with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about the CIA leak should remain secret for as long as ten more years to protect Cheney from any political embarrassment that would result from the transcript being released.

“Any attempt to predict the harm that disclosure of these records could have … is therefore inherently, incurably speculative,” Sullivan wrote in his ruling. “Accordingly, the Court concludes that DOJ has failed to meet its burden of demonstrating that the records were properly withheld.”

Sullivan, however, did agree that the Justice Department can keep under wraps, on national security grounds, statements Cheney had made to Fitzgerald about declassification discussions he had with George W. Bush, conversations Cheney had with former CIA Director George Tenet about Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s February 2002 trip to Niger to investigate allegations that Iraq was seeking to purchase yellowcake uranium, discussions surrounding the 16 words in Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address that asserted Iraq had attempted to purchase the uranium, talks between Cheney and then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and conversations between Cheney and other Bush officials about how to respond to media inquiries about the Plame Wilson leak.

Court papers filed by Obama’s Justice Department in July revealed that Bush and Cheney were in contact about the scandal, including what is described as “a confidential conversation” and “an apparent communication between the Vice President and the President.”

That court filing also revealed that Fitzgerald questioned Cheney about his participation in the decision to declassify parts of a 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s alleged WMD. It ultimately fell to Bush to clear selected parts of the NIE so they could be leaked as part of the White House campaign to disparage Wilson.

“Judge Sullivan rightly rejected a Justice Department interpretation of the [Freedom of Information Act] that would have allowed the government to withhold virtually any law enforcement record even where an investigation has long since been concluded,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the government watchdog group Citizens For Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW). The case stems from a FOIA lawsuit filed last year by CREW.

“We are disappointed, however, that the judge allowed DOJ to withhold portions of some records because the American people deserve to know the truth about the role the vice president played in exposing Mrs. Wilson’s covert identity. High-level government officials should not be permitted to hide their misconduct from public view,” Sloan added.

A Justice Department spokesman said Sullivan’s ruling is under review. Unless the Obama administration decides to appeal, the public may learn additional details about Cheney’s role in the leak of Plame Wilson’s covert identity by October 9, the deadline Sullivan gave the Justice Department to release a redacted version of Cheney’s interview transcript.

Senior Bush administration officials disclosed Plame Wilson’s identity to several journalists in June and July of 2003 amid White House efforts to discredit her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for challenging Bush’s use of bogus intelligence to justify invading Iraq.

Plame Wilson’s CIA employment was revealed in a July 14, 2003, article by the late right-wing columnist Robert Novak, effectively destroying her career. Two months later, a CIA complaint to the Justice Department sparked a criminal probe into the identity of the leakers.

Initially, Bush professed not to know anything about the matter, and several of his senior aides, including political adviser Karl Rove and the vice president’s chief of staff I. Lewis Libby, followed suit.

However, it later became clear that Rove and Libby had a hand in the Plame leak and that Bush and Cheney had helped organize a campaign to disparage Wilson by giving critical information to friendly journalists.

On June 24, 2004, Bush was interviewed by Fitzgerald for 70 minutes about the Plame leak. The only other member of the Bush team in the room during the meeting was Jim Sharp, the private lawyer that Bush hired, according to a press briefing by then-press secretary Scott McClellan.

“The President … was pleased to do his part to help the investigation move forward,” McClellan said. “No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the President of the United States.”

A couple of weeks earlier, Cheney had been interviewed by Fitzgerald. Cheney retained a private attorney, Terrence O’Donnell, to represent him in the matter.

Fitzgerald’s criminal investigation led to Libby’s indictment in October 2005 and his subsequent conviction in March 2007 on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice, which Bush later commuted.

During closing arguments at Libby’s trial, Cheney was implicated in the leak, as Fitzgerald acknowledged that Cheney was intimately involved in the scandal and may have told Libby to leak Plame’s status to the media.

Fitzgerald told jurors that his investigation into the true nature of the vice president’s involvement was impeded because Libby obstructed justice.

Libby’s attorney, Theodore Wells, told jurors during his closing arguments that Fitzgerald had been trying to build a case of conspiracy against the vice president and Libby, and that the prosecution believed Libby may have lied to federal investigators and to a grand jury to protect Cheney.

“Now, I think the government, through its questions, really tried to put a cloud over Vice President Cheney,” Wells said.

Rebutting Wells, Fitzgerald told jurors: “You know what? [Wells] said something here that we’re trying to put a cloud on the vice president. We’ll talk straight. There is a cloud over the vice president. He sent Libby off to [meet with New York Times reporter] Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel. At that meeting – the two-hour meeting – the defendant talked about the wife [Plame]. We didn’t put that cloud there. That cloud remains because the defendant obstructed justice and lied about what happened.”

Moreover, copies of Cheney’s handwritten notes also appeared to implicate Bush in the leak case.

Cheney’s notes, which were introduced as evidence during Libby’s trial, called into question the truthfulness of Bush’s vehement denials about having prior knowledge of the sub rosa campaign against Wilson.

In an October 2003 note to then-press secretary McClellan, Cheney demanded that the press office add Libby to a list of White House officials being cleared of any role in the Plame leak.

“Not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of incompetence of others,” Cheney wrote. However, the note revealed that Cheney had originally written “this Pres” before crossing that out and using the passive tense “that was.”

In other words, the original version suggested that Bush had asked Libby “to stick his head in the meat grinder,” an apparent reference to dealing with the Washington press corps.

Last year, Congressman Henry Waxman, then the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, revealed in a letter sent to Attorney General Michael Mukasey that, according to FBI transcripts given to Waxman’s committee, Libby told federal investigators that Cheney might have told him to leak Plame’s CIA ties to reporters.

“In his interview with the FBI, Mr. Libby stated that it was ‘possible’ that Vice President Cheney instructed him to disseminate information about Ambassador Wilson’s wife to the press. This is a significant revelation and, if true, a serious matter. It cannot be responsibly investigated without access to the Vice President’s FBI interview,” Waxman wrote.

Enron imploded in a wave of accounting scandals in 2001.

In addition to the prison term, U.S. District Court Judge Vanessa Gilmore ordered Hirko, 53, of Portland, Oregon, to pay about $7 million in restitution to victims through the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Enron Fair Fund, in accordance with the terms of the plea agreement. Hirko pleaded guilty on Oct. 14, 2008, in U.S. District Court in Houston to one count of wire fraud charged in a superseding indictment.

“I reviewed and approved press releases that contained, among other things, statements that the BOS was complete and I knew it was in development,” Hirko told Gilmore when he entered his guilty plea.

In July 2005, Hirko and four other EBS executives were tried on various charges of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud, securities fraud, wire fraud, insider trading and money laundering relating to their employment at Enron. The trial resulted in a mistrial, and Hirko was subsequently charged in a superseding indictment with wire fraud, securities fraud and insider trading.

According to the superseding indictment and the plea agreement, Hirko participated in Enron’s annual analyst conference in Houston at which Enron introduced EBS as one of its “core” units. Enron also announced the development of a broadband operating system or “BOS.” According to the plea agreement, the BOS was purported to be an “intelligent” operating system and was described as, among other things, a standard protocol for accessing real-time bandwidth.

As alleged in the superseding indictment, Enron issued a press release on May 15, 2000, announcing the acquisition of Warpspeed Communications. According to Hirko’s guilty plea, the Warpspeed release falsely represented the status of the BOS and implied that it was already embedded and functioning as a part of Enron’s network.

Specifically, the Warpspeed release stated that the BOS “allows application developers to dynamically provision bandwidth on demand for the end-to-end quality of service necessary to deliver broadband content.” According to the plea agreement, Hirko reviewed and approved this language even though the Warpspeed release contained material inaccurate representations regarding the BOS’s status.

In doing so, Hirko admitted that he acted with reckless indifference to the true facts, including: that the BOS was under development throughout his employment at Enron; that it was never embedded on Enron’s network; and that it could not dynamically provide bandwidth on demand or provide for the end-to-end quality of service necessary to deliver broadband content.

According to the plea agreement, Hirko’s approval of the Warpspeed release, as well as other press releases, assisted in maintaining Enron’s overall stock price, thereby improperly maintaining the value of Hirko’s holdings of Enron stock.

The Houston Chronicle reported last October that Hirko, who joined Enron in 1997, worked closely with former Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling and co-CEO Kenneth Rice to make EBS appear profitable when it was actually a money-losing venture.

Former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling embraced the division as a major profit center amid the dot-com boom. However, the unit fizzled despite big plans for video streaming, bandwidth-on-demand and bandwidth trading as the telecom industry cratered in 2000 and 2001.

Hirko, Rice and Skilling talked up the division at Enron’s January 2000 analyst conference, and the company’s stock rose $13 a share that day.

Rice pleaded guilty to securities fraud in July 2004. A few weeks later, Kevin Hannon, the former chief operating officer of EBS, pleaded guilty to conspiracy.

Charges against the EBS employees were initially brought in March 2003 by the Enron Task Force, a team of federal prosecutors and agents formed to investigate matters related to the collapse of Enron. All remaining Enron Task Force cases are now being handled by the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, with the investigatory assistance of the FBI.

Screengrab of the Facebook poll asking whether President Obama should be killed. Image credit: The Political Carnival. Click on graphic for enhanced view.

A Facebook poll that asked users to vote on whether they believed President Obama should be killed was removed Monday from the popular social networking website and is now the subject of an investigation by the Secret Service.

Blogger GottaLaff at The Political Carnival broke the story Sunday about the existence of the Facebook poll.

The poll, which was removed from Facebook Monday after GottaLaff and others contacted the Secret Service Sunday evening, is just the latest example of right-wing extremism aimed at Obama.

The poll asked: “Should Obama Be Killed?”

The four multiple choice answers were: “yes,” “maybe,” “if he cuts my healthcare,” “no.” More than 730 people took the poll before it was removed Monday.

According to Raw Story, as of noon Monday, 90 percent of the poll’s respondents voted “no.” However, a little more than five percent voted yes, 2.6 percent voted maybe, and 1.9 percent voted “if he cuts my health care.”

“The application that enabled a user to create the offensive poll was brought to our attention this morning and was disabled,” Barry Schnitt, director of policy communications for Facebook, told Raw Story. “We’re following up [with] the developer to ensure the offending content has been removed and that they have better procedures in place going forward to monitor their user-generated content.”

In an e-mail sent Monday to blogger GottaLaff, the developer of the application used to create the Facebook poll took issue with the fact that the blogger reached out to the Secret Service, saying “this could have been resolved in a much less public and destructive way…”

Some facts:
1. Polls is a third-party application and are not affiliated with Facebook
2. Polls are created by other users on Facebook, not me or Facebook
3. There is a mechanism for reporting polls and we take action after a
poll has been reported a sufficient number of times
4. If a poll is egregious enough (and this one certainly was), you should have just contacted me directly. Facebook provides links to contact the developer (that’s me!). I would have deleted the application in a second. I’ve deleted polls in the past that have to do with killing gays, etc. As it stands now, Facebook has disabled the entire application (not just that one poll), which is frustrating for me and will be taking up most of my time for the next few days. I’m sure I’ll also get a call from the Secret Service which will be awesome. I understand you’re enjoying your 15 minutes of blogging fame and are feeling pretty righteous right now, but keep in mind this could have been resolved in a much less public and destructive way if you had taken the time to reach out to me first.

Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan told ThePlumLine’s Amanda Erickson that the agency is “aware” of the poll and “taking the appropriate investigative steps.”

A month ago, CNN reported that death threats against Obama increased by 400 percent. The revelation was made following a month of intense townhall meetings centered on healthcare reform. One attendee carried an assault rifle to a townhall meeting in Phoenix, Arizona where Obama was speaking.

“A CNN source with very close to the U.S. Secret Service confirmed to me today that threats on the life of the president of the United States have now risen by as much as 400 percent since his inauguration, 400 percent death threats against Barack Obama — quote — ‘in this environment” go far beyond anything the Secret Service has seen with any other president,’” CNN’s Rick Sanchez reported last month.