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The appeal Conrad Black is making from his jail cell at a federal prison in Florida is nearing a crucial stage. His appeal was rejected in June by a panel of the 7th United States Circuit Court of Appeals, but the panel's decision conflicts with others in the circuit, and Conrad Black is asking the circuit to hear it en banc. The question centers on how broad is the reach of the law of what is called honest services. If Conrad Black's conviction is allowed to stand, a precedent will be have been set that could leave thousands of executives...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A lawyer for former media baron Conrad Black urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to overturn his fraud conviction, and several justices asked whether the federal law at issue was too vague. The Canadian-born Black, a member of Britain's House of Lords, has been in prison since March 2008, when he began serving a 6 1/2-year sentence for fraud and obstruction of justice. Attorney Miguel Estrada, representing Black and two ex-colleagues who were found guilty of defrauding shareholders of one-time newspaper publishing giant Hollinger International Inc, argued before the Supreme Court that all convictions in the...

CHICAGO (AP) -- Former newspaper mogul Conrad Black was sentenced Monday to 6.5 years in prison for swindling shareholders in his Hollinger International media empire out of millions of dollars. Black, 63, a Canadian-born member of the British House of Lords renowned for his lavish lifestyle and flamboyant way with words, had faced up to slightly more than 8 years in prison under sentencing guidelines determined earlier Monday by U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve.

Just before the case went to the jury, Conrad Black's two lead attorneys sent him a demand for an additional million bucks each. No messing around with billable hours and 15-minute increments and $27.59 for photocopying: just a nice round seven-figure sum by way of supplementary retainer. A day or two before closing arguments to the 12 men and women who'll decide your fate is no time to pick a quarrel with your lawyers. Or, at any rate, yet another quarrel to add to those you're already having, and they're having with each other, and the American lawyer's associates are...

L’audace, encore l’audace et toujours l’audace~ Georges Danton “If you’re going to take liberties and break the law with other people’s money, there are going to be consequences.” That, U.S. federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald told reporters yesterday, was the message of the verdict in the Conrad Black trial. Those twenty words of Fitzgerald’s are a lie. His words stand as yet another manifestation of the mania and manipulation with which the prosecution prejudiced the judicial wells in this persecution. We got an earlier taste of it when the jury came back hung – a clear statement that the government had...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A U.S. jury on Friday found former media mogul Conrad Black guilty of multiple counts of criminal fraud and a single count of obstruction of justice but acquitted him of racketeering and tax charges. The 62-year-old Canadian-born member of Britain's House of Lords could face up to 35 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines and forfeitures. Black was found guilty of three mail fraud counts and one charge of obstruction of justice out of the 13 counts against him. He and three others in the trial were acquitted of failing to file corporate tax...

AP: Administration Freed Terror Suspect By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON - Nabil al-Marabh was No. 27 on the FBI (news - web sites)'s list of terror suspects after Sept. 11. He trained in Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s militant camps, sent money to a roommate convicted in a foiled plot to bomb a hotel and boasted to an informant about plans to blow up a fuel truck inside a New York tunnel, FBI documents allege. The Bush administration set him free — to Syria — even though prosecutors had sought to bring criminal cases against him and judges...

In his Loyal Opposition blog, New York Times ed page editor Andrew Rosenthal goes after the Justice Department’s decision to prosecute former CIA officer, former Democratic Senate staffer and Huffington Post blogger John Kiriakou for leaking classified information — including the names of CIA operatives — to journalists. Rosenthal writes, That may seem simple: CIA officer, classified information disclosed, prison. But take a closer look. He’s been charged with revealing that two men accused of organizing the Sept. 11 attacks, Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, were tortured. So the man who blew the whistle on torture may go to...

In a book just released, The Story: A Reporter's Journey, Judith Miller, a key witness in the Libby prosecution, states that Patrick Fitzgerald had offered repeatedly to drop all charges against Lewis Libby if he would "deliver" Vice President Cheney to him. In addition, she charges that Fitzgerald manipulated her into incorrectly testifying about a critical conversation she had with Libby and withheld exculpatory evidence from both her and the defense in order to induce her mistaken testimony – testimony the prosecution knew was made because she was acting under a false belief....[must read snip]....Rizzo, of course, is focused only...

Forty years ago, on Nov. 10, 1975, the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank during a ferocious storm on Lake Superior, killing all 29 men aboard. Rather than linking to the famous Gordon Lightfoot song (and according to SiriusXM radio, Gordon personally attended todays annual memorial service held by the families), this is a 32 minute recording of actual US Coast Guard marine radio traffic from that tragic day.

Kiriakou, 47, was a source for stories by The New York Times and other news organizations in 2008 and 2009 about some of the agency’s most sensitive operations after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. ......... that the information Kiriakou supplied to journalists ... enabling defense attorneys there to obtain photographs of CIA operatives suspected of being involved in harsh interrogations. Some of the pictures were subsequently discovered in the cells of high-value detainees.

David Petraeus saw his career come to an end for mishandling classified information. Sandy Berger was punished for mishandling classified information. Scooter Libby got it worst of all. And he did virtually nothing. Remember Scooter Libby? Libby was the Bush aide who went to prison for having a bad memory. He was hunted down and persecuted by Peter Fitzgerald who was looking for the scalp of the person who allegedly leaked the name of Valerie Plame. Libby went to prison and he wasn't even the leaker. Richard Armitrage was. Jennifer Rubin: Right Turn readers know my view that former vice...

An activist who was using his position on Colorado’s oil and gas task force to push for a New York-style ban on oil and natural gas development has given up on the fringe proposal for lack of support, according to documents released by state officials overnight. The proposal’s demise is yet another defeat for national anti-fracking groups in Colorado, such as Food and Water Watch and the Sierra Club, which are desperately trying to reboot their failed campaign for an effective statewide oil and gas development ban. It’s also a reminder of how outside of New York, the “ban fracking”...

A team of CIA counterintelligence officials recently visited the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and concluded that CIA interrogators face the risk of exposure to al Qaeda through inmates' contacts with defense attorneys, according to U.S. officials. The agency's "tiger team" of security specialists was dispatched as part of an ongoing investigation conducted jointly with the Justice Department into a program backed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The program, called the John Adams Project, has photographed covert CIA interrogators and shown the pictures to some of the five senior al Qaeda terrorists held there in an effort...

CIA official's John Rizzo's revelations in new book, Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA, establish beyond peradventure of doubt that the Plame case was a hoax, stirred up by her husband and Patrick Fitzgerald. See these excerpts from the book:

The documents kept by the Iraqi Intelligence Service were meticulous in detail and sweeping in scope. In some, Iraqi intelligence officers in the United States are directed to use informers to track the "criminal'' actions of one current and one former Chicago area resident, both Assyrian Christians from Iraq who founded an anti-Saddam Hussein political party. Another accuses the group of being influenced by "imperialists'' and "Zionists.'' Others include the exact dates of the group's meetings and conventions in Chicago and elsewhere, the names of the people who ran the events, those in attendance and what statements were made. Trips...

Accused spy had one-way ticket to Jordan WAR ON TERROR - Man accused of spying on Iraqi dissidents arrested one day before departure By MIKE ROBINSON Associated Press Writer CHICAGO -- An Arabic-language community newspaper publisher accused of spying on Iraqi dissidents in this country for Saddam Hussein's intelligence service apparently was planning to leave the country when he was arrested, an FBI agent testified Friday. Khaled Dumeisi, 61, was arrested on July 9, one day before the scheduled departure date on a one-way ticket to Jordan discovered in his home, agent Edward Lawson testified. The testimony came just before...

FoxNews just reported that an agent for Saddam Hussein has been arrested in Chicago. .....developing....

CHICAGO - A community newspaper publisher accused of spying on Iraqi dissidents in the United States was found guilty Monday of serving as an unregistered agent for Saddam Hussein. The jury took less than two hours to convict Khaled Abdel-Latif Dumeisi after the weeklong trial. "This sends an important message that people can't come to our country and spy on their fellow residents," U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said. Dumeisi, 61, was convicted of failing to obey a federal law that requires agents of foreign governments to register with the Justice Department. Prosecutors maintained that the Palestinian-born Dumeisi spied on...

Guilty verdict in spying case Tue Jan 13,11:14 AM ET - Chicago Tribune By Matt O'Connor, Tribune staff reporter A federal jury deliberated less than three hours Monday before convicting a suburban Arabic-language newspaper publisher on charges he acted as a secret agent of Iraq before Saddam Hussein fall. The government alleged that since 1999, Palestinian-born Khaled Abdel-Latif Dumeisi provided information to Mukhabbarat, the Iraqi intelligence agency, about Hussein opponents living in the U.S. Prosecutors said Dumeisi betrayed the U.S. out of admiration for Hussein's support for the Palestinian cause and to get money for his cash-strapped publication, though he...