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In Congress, rich keep getting richerFINANCIAL DISCLOSURE ONLY HINTS AT WHAT MEMBERS ARE WORTH By Jim Abrams Associated Press Article Launched: 06/15/2007 01:30:57 AM PDT WASHINGTON - The political fortunes of new congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid soared last year, and financial disclosure forms revealed Thursday they're also doing well in personal money matters. New House Speaker Pelosi, through her investor husband, holds stocks and property worth well into the millions. Senate Majority Leader Reid, a gold miner's son, reported property around his hometown of Searchlight, Nev., as well as investments valued at several million dollars. They are...

Plame’s testimony shifting, source says Mar 23, 2007 3:00 AM by Rowan Scarborough, The Examiner The public testimony of former CIA officer Valerie Plame before a House committee last week conflicts with what she told a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee three years ago, a government source told The Examiner this week. The difference centers on Plame’s role in a CIA supervisor’s decision in 2002 to send former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, her husband, on a trip to Niger to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein pursued uranium for nuclear bombs.The trip eventually embroiled the White House in a three-year criminal investigation.Plame...

Congress's new Democratic majority is expanding its review of the Bush administration's push for broad executive power, as the Senate is set to look into how the Pentagon has increased its covert intelligence operations. Lawmakers plan to study whether the Pentagon obtained the proper authorization for covert operations and notified Congress as required under the law. The inquiry will also explore whether the Pentagon engaged in activities that legally are the responsibility of the Central Intelligence Agency. The hearings, to be conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee beginning March 1, stem from concerns of some lawmakers, particularly Democrats, about an...

Vice President Dick Cheney exerted "constant" pressure on the Republican former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to stall an investigation into the Bush administration's use of flawed intelligence on Iraq, the panel's Democratic chairman charged Thursday. In an interview with McClatchy Newspapers, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia also accused President Bush of running an illegal program by ordering eavesdropping on Americans' international e-mails and telephone communications without court-issued warrants. In the 45-minute interview, Rockefeller said that it was "not hearsay" that Cheney, a leading proponent of invading Iraq, pushed Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., to drag out the probe...

The Rockefellers and Iran: Jay Rockefeller’s Reversal and the Iranian-American LobbyBy Fedora In 1979, Rockefeller representatives launched an unsuccessful operation to lobby the Carter administration in support of the Shah of Iran, who was seeking safe haven in the wake of a coup by Islamic revolutionaries. Codenamed Project Alpha, the operation was spearheaded by Chase Manhattan Bank Chairman David Rockefeller and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, with support from oil lobby lawyer John McCloy. Although Project Alpha won the support of National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, it met opposition from Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and failed to win...

I knew that Jay Rockefeller was a U.S. senator from West Virginia, but before now I had no idea what a seer the man is. Not only can Rockefeller peer into the future and confidently tell us how it turns out, but he can turn the clock back to the past, specifically March of 2003, and, like a projectionist putting on an alternate reel, show us the better future that might have been. If only the United States and its allies had not invaded Iraq, Swami Rockefeller explains, the world would be a better place today - even if Saddam...

CBS) When the Senate Intelligence Committee released a declassified version of its findings this past week, the Republican chairman of the committee, Pat Roberts, left town without doing interviews, calling the report a rehash of unfounded partisan allegations. Its statements like this one, made Feb. 5, 2003, by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell that have become so controversial, implying Iraq was linked to terror attacks. "Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by abu Musab al-Zarqawi, an associated collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants," Powell said. But after 2 1/2 years of reviewing pre-war intelligence...

Finally some reports are coming out regarding the NSA leak investigation and their prime target for the leaks: Capitol Hill. Jay Rockefeller, who was interviewed for the NY Times story which exposed our efforts to identify terrorists here in the US ready to attack us, is probably on the interview list. From the sounds of the reporting it does not appear to be a pleasant exercise for these all powerful men and women in Congress: There are also indications from at least one Senator, Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), that the FBI is asking Members about comments of theirs that appeared in...

Mac Ranger has been listening in on the internal investigation regarding the leaks of the criticial Terrorist Surveillance Program run by the NSA and the CIA programs to transfer suspected terrorists into US custody. The focus is coming down on two heavy weight Democrat Senators: Rockefeller and Durbin. This source expands on the Washington Post story and confirms some of Mac Rangers information that these two US Senators (and their staff) may be facing polygraph tests. During the Bush Administration, a nexus of politicians, government workers and members of the news media have worked overtime in leaking classified information. From...

March 7, 2006 Expect Journalistic Tongues to Loosen By Jack Kelly Journalists will be paying rapt attention when Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman go on trial next month for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were officials of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. They received classified information from Lawrence Franklin, an analyst at the Department of Defense, which they passed on to an Israeli diplomat, and to journalists. They are the first private citizens ever to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. Mr. Franklin pled guilty Jan. 20th and was sentenced to more than...

Journalists will be paying rapt attention when Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman go on trial next month for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman were officials of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. They received classified information from Lawrence Franklin, an analyst at the Department of Defense, which they passed on to an Israeli diplomat, and to journalists. They are the first private citizens ever to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. ..... But it's more likely prosecutors will use the Plame precedent to get journalists to disclose their sources. The NSA leak investigation issaid...

I have been waiting for more information on what I thought I heard this afternoon on Fox News. What I heard was Durbin, Rockefeller and Wyden had criminal referrals and were being asked to submit to lie detector tests. This was tied to the leak investigation. I don't post too often and I might be suffering from excess radon consumption.....and hallucinating.???? Help me out..... anyone else out there hear the same thing I did???

March,4,2006One Dangerous Feller: Senator Wants No SecretsDaniel Clark   When Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, W.Va.) accused President Bush of endangering America by releasing classified information, most conservatives simply laughed him off. That's certainly an understandable reaction, since Rockefeller accusing others of leaking government secrets is a little like his state's other senator, Robert Byrd, telling somebody to get to the point. The tactic behind this absurdity, however, is something that's got to be taken seriously. In a February 17th letter to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, Rockefeller wrote, "Given the administration's continuing abuse of intelligence information for political purposes,...

WASHINGTON (Hollywood Reporter) - A senior Democratic senator plans to force a series of votes on indecency legislation when the Senate Commerce Committee takes up a broad-based telecommunications reform bill in the spring, an aide said Monday. Sens. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, have introduced legislation that seeks to expand indecency regulations to cable and satellite TV providers, include violent content under the same regulations as indecent content and codify the current children's television rules. "Sen. Rockefeller plans to offer his bill, in totality, or section-by-section, as amendments to the telecom bill as this goes forward," James...

Word out of the Defense Intelligence Agency and law enforcement sources has the FBI and the Department of Justice comparing notes and dates on who in the U.S. Senate received national security briefings on both the overseas terrorist prisons and the NSA overseas terrorist monitoring programs, and when those briefings took place. "The number of Senators who received briefings is not as large as people think," says one law enforcement source. "These were programs with a limited 'Need to Know" list on Capitol Hill." Federal investigators looking into the leaks of both those programs to the press are zeroing in...

Rockefeller Feeling the Heat? - Friday, February 24, 2006 @ 10:33:34 AM So Sen. Jay Rockefeller sent a letter to Amb. John Negroponte complaining about White House leaks to Bob Woodward. Why would Rockefeller be so uptight? Perhaps because he senses the FBI is locking in some of his loyalists in the NSA and overseas prison leaks? Things are going to be getting interesting for a number of folks on Capitol Hill in the coming days. Posted By: The Washington Prowler

WASHINGTON (AP) - The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee wants the panel to look into whether the National Security Agency was eavesdropping without proper authority in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. It was one of the questions outlined by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., in writing this week in a proposal to investigate. The Bush administration has repeatedly said intelligence officials acted lawfully. As a leader on the intelligence committee, Rockefeller is one of a select group of lawmakers who has been briefed more fully on the program, but he and others still have a number of...

I just got around to watching a tape of this Sunday's "Meet the Press" The discussion was about the NSA surveillance. On the Panel were the chair and ranking member of the House Intelligence committee...Hoekstra and Harmon, and the chair of the Senate Intelligence committee..Pat Robertson....but very noticeable by his conspicuous absence was the ranking member, Jay Rockefeller...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 — Federal agents have interviewed officials at several of the country's law enforcement and national security agencies in a rapidly expanding criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding a New York Times article published in December that disclosed the existence of a highly classified domestic eavesdropping program, according to government officials. The investigation, which appears to cover the case from 2004, when the newspaper began reporting the story, is being closely coordinated with criminal prosecutors at the Justice Department, the officials said. People who have been interviewed and others in the government who have been briefed on the...

Turned on the radio, happened to catch the last segment of the John Batchelor show. He was interviewing Jeb Babbin....who many of us know and respect, and read his columns. I was absolutely stunned by what Babbin just said...hadn't seen/heard it anywheres..and thought it merits reposting for your benefit....