Posted on 06/16/2016 7:47:43 PM PDT by Fedora
President Obama on Thursday nominated a former CIA officer and longtime lawyer who examined missteps in U.S. intelligence to be the spy agencys next inspector general, hoping to fill a position at the watchdog office thats been vacant for more than a year.
If confirmed by the Senate, Shirley Woodward would fill the role left empty since David Buckley stepped down from in January 2015, on the heels of a landmark determination that CIA officials had gained unauthorized access to Senate computer files. Lawmakers called the episode a potential violation of constitutional separation of powers, and the spat led to one of the bitterest moments in relations between the spy agency and its congressional overseers in recent history.
In Buckleys absence, the spy agency watchdog has been helmed by Deputy Inspector General Christopher Sharpley, who has filled the role on an acting basis.
Woodward was an intelligence operations officer at the CIA from 1985 to 1997, and later clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day OConnor
In 2004 and 2005, she was a senior lawyer on a special panel created by then-President George W. Bush to examine errors that led to the false conclusion that Iraq had acquired weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 U.S. invasion. The scathing report concluded that intelligence services had suffered one of the most public and most damaging intelligence failures in recent American history.
For the past nine years, Woodward has worked at the law firm WilmerHale.
In a statement, Obama praised her as experienced and hardworking.
If confirmed, Woodward would take the reins of the inspector generals office at a time of new scrutiny.
Last month, the office revealed that Sharpley had accidentally destroyed both the digital and hard copies of a classified Senate report lambasting the CIA for its formal brutal interrogation program.
An executive summary of the 6,700-page report was made public, but the full classified version exists in just a few offices aside from Capitol Hill, which has guarded it zealously since Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015.
The apparently unintentional deletion, which occurred last summer, raised eyebrows among critics of the CIAs past. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) the driving force behind the 2014 report and the vice chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee has called for the inspector generals office to be given a new copy of the analysis, but that step appears unlikely for the time being.
CIA Director John Brennan appeared to hint at the possibility of a looming nomination while testifying on Capitol Hill earlier on Thursday.
I like to think that I would be seen as prescient today if I were to say that such a nomination may be forthcoming soon, he said during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.
"I hope you'll convey back to the administration the importance that this committee puts on that position, and that we believe an appointment in the immediate future is appropriate," Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) told him in response.
good point.
Before joining Holder’s office, Farhadian worked on a team at a law firm that wrote legal briefs for two organizations, Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First, which were representing Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri. The Qatari student, who had been designated an enemy combatant,
Human Rights Watch was the group which came to the rescue of the Iraqi facilitator detained in Jordan - the one who had escorted 2 of the 9/11 hijackers to the terrorist summit in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia in January 2000 - the same two connected to Imam Anwar al Awlaki and the ones who followed him to the Falls Church VA area before the 9/11 attacks.
The Iraqi facilitator had all kinds of stuff in his pocket litter when he was stopped by the UAE before ending up in Jordan; he had the contact infor for the 1993 world trade center bombers and also I think for people involved in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa. HRW raised hell and harassed Jordan and accused them of abusing the guy, etc... when the Jordanians finally let him go he headed for Baghdad. The Falls Church cell was also involved with the anthrax investigation because of an Iraqi-American Imam named Ali A Timimi who preached at a mosque in Falls Church and who was the mentor of the Virginia Jihad Paintball cell.
al Marri was transferred to Qatar even though he hadn’t completed his term in federal prison.
From FOX :
In a 2007 speech at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, in Connecticut, President George W. Bush acknowledged that al Marri was taken into federal custody because of the danger he posed to Americans.
“Our intelligence community believes (he) was training in poisons at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, and had been sent to the United States before September the 11th to serve as a sleeper agent ready for follow-on attacks,” Bush said. Among the potential targets our intelligence community believes this al Qaeda operative discussed
were water reservoirs, the New York Stock Exchange and United States military academies such as this one.
-— http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/01/20/al-qaeda-operative-freed-from-us-federal-prison.html
They’re more interested in defending Iran than doing their job.
Anwar al Awlaki is still popping up in terror investigations even though he’s now dead... even in this latest one in Orlando.
Has John Brennan figured something important out recently? He’s changed...
Let me guess, another LGBTQP?
Seven months - just enough time to unpack and get her pencils sharpened; why even bother?
Related:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/06/former-cia-lawyer-gitmo-ids-graver-than-plame-leak/
Ex-CIA lawyer: Gitmo IDs graver than Plame leak (Holders People Aid Terrorists Out CIA Agents?)
Washington Times ^ | 5/6/2010 | Eli Lake and Bill Gertz
Posted by mojito
Covertly taken photos of CIA interrogators that were shown by defense attorneys to al Qaeda inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison represent a more serious security breach than the 2003 outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame, the agencys former general counsel said Wednesday.
John Rizzo, who was the agencys top attorney until December, said in an interview that he initially requested the Justice Department and CIA investigation into the compromise of CIA interrogators identities after photographs of the officers were found in the cell of one al Qaeda terrorist in Cuba. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
The apparently unintentional deletion, which occurred last summer,
Only in the bizarre world of political reporting, can one accidently and unintentionally destroy hard copies of a classified Senate report...
Digitial is plausible...barely
John Kiriakou divulged the classified information to journalists who, in turn, disclosed it to an investigator working for the taxpayer-funded defense team of an incarcerated terrorist. Authorities subsequently found some of the files, including photographs of certain government employees and contractors, in the cells of high-value detainees at the military prison.
treason by attorneys for terrorists
all aided and abetted by a depraved Obamanation
Thanks; were there any prosecutions on that one?
In a scary development, a major Obama fundraiser who defended a convicted al Qaeda terrorist will become the third highest ranking official at the Department of Justice (DOJ), which, ironically, is charged with defending the interests of the United States.
Northern California lawyer Tony West has been named Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, making him the No. 3 guy at the agency. In 2009 West, who helped Obama raise tens of millions of dollars as finance co-chairman of his first presidential campaign, was appointed to help run the DOJs civil division which represents the government, Congress and presidential cabinet officers and handles cases dealing with significant policy issues.
In a statement announcing the promotion this week, Attorney General Eric Holder says West has served the department with professionalism, integrity and dedication. Holder also mentions Wests work before coming to the DOJ a few years ago, including a stint as a Special Assistant Attorney General in California and a lengthier career at a large San Francisco law firm.
Conveniently omitted in the press release is that West represented convicted al Qaeda terrorist John Walker Lindh, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence. Lindh was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 while fighting against the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance as a member of the Taliban army. He actually pleaded guilty to aiding the Taliban and carrying explosives while fighting U.S. troops in the region.
Holder also knows a thing or two about defending terrorists. After all, he was a senior partner in a prestigious Washington D.C. law firm (Covington & Burling) that represented more than a dozen Yemeni terrorists held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay Cuba. While Holder was a senior partner the firm employed a number of radical attorneys to provide the Islamic extremists with thousands of hours of free legal representation, according to a news report.
Another highlight in Holders resume is that he orchestrated Bill Clintons shameful last-minute pardons, including that of a fugitive financier and a pair of jailed domestic terrorists. In fact, shortly after the pardon scandal, Holder predicted that his public career was over. Under his leadership the DOJ has been embroiled in a number of high-profile scandals, including a gun-running operation (Fast and Furious) in which weapons were sold to Mexican drug cartels. One was later used to murder a federal agent. Judicial Watch has sued the DOJ to obtain records involving the operation.
Mr. Hiss, a specialist in international trade and tariff laws, was with the firm of Covington & Burling from 1945 until his retirement in 1976. He was a brother of Alger Hiss and, like Alger, faced accusations from Federal investigators in the late 1940's that he had been a Communist spy. But unlike Alger, he was never charged. . .
. . . In World War II he was an assistant to Dean Acheson, then the Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs. . .At the war's end he went with Mr. Acheson to Covington & Burling, which Mr. Acheson left later to become Secretary of State. . .
The revolving door between the Department of Justice and a certain corporate law firm is spinning faster than ever. On July 6, former Attorney General Eric Holder returned to his previous employer, Covington & Burling — a firm that's represented the biggest banks on Wall Street, and is internationally known for its white-collar defense practice. A week later, his DOJ chief of staff Margaret Richardson announced that she would be following him there.
Meanwhile, the latest data from the DOJ reveals that criminal prosecutions for white-collar crimes are at a 20-year low. This decline and the rapid circulation of personnel between Covington and the DOJ has raised questions about the Obama administration's handling of the banking industry and the 2008 financial crisis.
Under Obama, the DOJ decided not to pursue criminal charges against most of the executives and financial institutions behind the economic collapse, opting instead to impose hefty fines that were paid out by shareholders, not the employees or executives of the banks. In contrast, some 1,100 individuals faced criminal prosecution during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, and the heads of several major banks served jail time.
"I'm not accusing anyone of anything specific, but we're looking at a gigantic built-in conflict of interest revolving in and out of the attorney general's office," Ted Kaufman, a former Delaware senator who went on to chair the Congressional Oversight Panel tasked with monitoring the $700 billion bailout of the financial industry during the crisis, told VICE News.
When lawyers shuffle back and forth between prosecuting and defending white-collar criminals, he said, it makes observers wonder "whether the laws are the same for everyone."
A spokesperson for Covington told VICE News that the firm has "a strict conflicts check process," which it does not discuss in public, adding that its recruitment of former government officials is something it is "most proud of." Holder and Richardson declined to comment.
The Public Accountability Initiative, a nonprofit research organization, has prepared an interactive map that charts many of the connections between the DOJ and Covington. It includes not only their white-collar defense division, but dozens of other lawyers who have circulated between the firm and the Justice Department.
Some media outlets and commentators have begun referring to Covington as a "shadow Justice Department" — a place for talented lawyers to become familiar with how corporations work before entering public service, and a landing pad for former federal prosecutors transitioning to the private sector.
Holder worked at Covington for eight years before Obama tapped him to lead the DOJ in 2009. Plotting his return to the fold became a six-year "project," Covington chairman Timothy Hester told the National Law Journal. The firm even reserved a vacant corner office for Holder's expected return.
"It's not coincidence that the higher up you are at the DOJ, when you leave, the more prestigious or elite the law firm you land at," Bartlett Naylor, a former chief of investigations for the US Senate Banking Committee, told VICE News. Naylor now works as a policy advocate for the public interest group Public Citizen, where he monitors the influence of money in politics.
'Are we going to operate under the assumption that attorneys at DOJ who are leaving for high-paying jobs in the private sector aren't going to be influenced by their financial connections? It's absurd to try to make that case.'
Covington's white-collar defense division, which represents clients accused of corporate, financial, or regulatory crimes, is particularly well stacked with government talent.
"Our team includes former senior SEC officials, a former Secretary of Homeland Security, three former heads of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, former federal judges, numerous former federal prosecutors with extensive criminal trial experience, as well as former senior Treasury Department, State Department, and EU officials," boasts the firm's white-collar defense and investigations web page.
Holder and Richardson have joined five other top DOJ lawyers who left government to work in the lucrative division.
Holder will reassume his lucrative partnership (he made $2.5 million the last year he worked there) and take his seat in an office that reportedly this is no joke was kept empty for him in his absence.
The office thing might have been improper, but at this point, who cares? More at issue is the extraordinary run Holder just completed as one of history's great double agents. For six years, while brilliantly disguised as the attorney general of the United States, he was actually working deep undercover, DiCaprio in The Departed-style, as the best defense lawyer Wall Street ever had.
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