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REMEMBER KATRINA!

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BECOME A MEMBER OF GLOBAL GREEN USA TODAY AND SUPPORT THE GREEN REBUILDING OF NEW ORLEANS AND THE GULF COAST.

Your membership will support efforts to help advance the green rebuilding of New Orleans and demonstrate smart solutions to climate change that also benefit our nation's communities. Your tax-deductible contribution will help Global Green.

Make a Tax-Deductible Contribution Today! Please call 310-581-2700.

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A call today (August 9, 2007) from Senator Richard Burr’s office informing me a letter I sent regarding the 4000 cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts awarded as no-bid after the Katrina debacle will be investigated. A comprehensive letter was also received from Rep. Walter B. Jones. Senator Elizabeth Dole sent the usual form letter response signifying nothing.

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This space is devoted to a Republican friend of mine with whom I argue incessantly. Turns out Republicans have concerns, too; they just don’t replicate mine. Here is Charles during a recent e-bate.

Charles: That is why the Dems are never honest in campaign promises... if they told the truth once, the people would hold them to it.

Like I have said: yes, there are individuals pretending to be Republicans who are actually Dems who jump out at the worst moments... BUT: the vast majority of Repubs uphold and defend the Constitution.... the Dem platform from moment one is anti-freedomite.

Me:

oh, and the Pubs are honest in campaign promises! if we knew what we were in for, charles...skroo the blue noses!

and Charles in response to the mortgage debacle:

Hey–all the background anyone needs in contracts is DO NOT SIGN IT UNLESS YOU READ IT AND UNDERSTAND IT. You know? If it is too obfuscationist, say, never mind. I will not sign such garbled trash. Do you have one in English, please? Then, see if enough folks did that, the lawyers would stop winning so much...

Put that on your blog and HELP the USA!!!

Me:

charles, ever hear of predatory lending? do you know that some of the lenders didn’t even bother obtaining mortgages from the banks; they knew there would be defaults.

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HANDS OFF OUR INTERNET!

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Definition of a Mercenary

A person who takes part in an armed conflict who is not a national of a Party to the conflict and “is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised by, or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party.”

As a result of the assumption that a mercenary is exclusively motivated by money, the term “mercenary” carries negative connotations. There is a blur in the distinction between a “mercenary” and a “foreign volunteer,” when the primary motive of a soldier in a foreign army is uncertain. For instance, the French Foreign Legion and the Gurkhas are not mercenaries under the laws of war, but some journalists do describe them as mercenaries.

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Predatory Lending: The Study and a Verdict

by Lucy Griffin, BOL Guru

There is predatory lending in Jefferson County, Kentucky. The Urban Studies Institute at the University of Louisville has completed a study for the Louisville Urban League. The findings are interesting - and clear. The entire financing industry should be concerned about predatory lending. Responsible financial institutions should take active steps to prevent predatory lending and to educate consumers. This is not a study that can be dismissed with allegations of bias. The study is carefully done. The results are clear. In short, it is convincing.

The Practices

The researchers identified specific lending practices that would be considered predatory. These include the familiar practices such as loan flipping and churning, packing loans with up-front costs such as credit life insurance, offering loans with low installments but large balloon payments, and high to excessive rates.

The study also included practices that have not been so frequently identified. One problem is the use of inflated appraisals to support making a loan that the borrower cannot afford and the property cannot support. Along with this practice is the question of inflating the applicant's income to make them appear to qualify for the loan.

The study also identified loans with prepayment penalties, particularly when the penalties are imposed on loans with high interest rates. Other practices fall into unfair or deceptive categories, such as misleading or fraudulent advertisements, aggressive marketing or sales practices, using pressure or intimidation, fraudulent home repair schemes, and forcing customers to sign notes with mandatory arbitration agreements.

The Methodology

After evaluating a series of practices and considering how to determine their frequency, the researchers honed in on several practices that, particularly when used in tandem, were measurable as well as causing consumer harm. These included loans with very high interest rates, loans with prepayment penalties combined with high interest rates, balloon payment loans, and high loan-to-value ratios. The researchers examined court records for foreclosures that resulted in auctions. The 1,555 records covered a three year period from January 2000 through December 2002. The theory behind the methodology was that predatory lending is likely to result in foreclosures and that therefore foreclosures produce material for the study.

In addition, there were plenty of foreclosures. The report noted that mortgage foreclosure rates have increased dramatically in the state. In Jefferson County, the locus of the study, foreclosures increased from 438 in 1995 to 1,262 in 2002.

The researchers used court records as the information source for the study. These documents provided information about interest rates, prepayment penalties, balloon payments, the principal amount of the loan, and the auction appraisal and sale prices.

This information was used to identify four indicators that suggest predatory loans. These measurements were very high interest rates defined as rates that make the loan subject to HOEPA, prepayment penalties combined with high interest rates, balloon payments, and high loan-to-value ratios. While not including all characteristics of predatory loans, each of these loan characteristics went to the heart of the matter: the ability of the borrower to repay based on loan pricing and underwriting.

The Findings The researchers used the selected predatory loan characteristics to identify the loans for analysis. Of the 1,555 foreclosures studied, 509 foreclosures were on loans with one or more predatory characteristics. Of these loans, which constituted almost a third of the loan pool studied, almost three quarters (73%) had prepayment penalties combined with high interest rates.

The study also found that 57% of the loans with high interest rates had prepayment penalties while only 19% of loans with lower interest rates had prepayment penalties. The conclusion is inescapable: lenders use prepayment penalties to make it difficult or expensive for a borrower to refinance to reduce the interest rate. In effect, if the borrower learns that the rate is unfairly or unnecessarily high, the borrower may also find that refinancing is too expensive because of the prepayment penalty. These are loans where the lender - or predator - is going to make a profit either way.

Of the loans identified as predatory, 29% had balloon payments, 10% had very high (HOEPA) interest rates, and 5% had high loan-to-value ratios. While significant, these numbers leave the high rate-prepayment penalty loans as the primary predatory product.

There's more

The analysis showed that the loans that went into foreclosure were relatively new loans. In most of the cases, the loans were only 2 to 4 years old. And it gets worse. The data showed that in 65% of the entire sample and 61% of the sample with predatory characteristics, the foreclosure purchaser was the original lender.

Finally, the researchers looked at geography. They found that homeowners with mortgages were more likely to experience foreclosure in areas where there were high poverty levels and minority population.

Who Are the Predators?

The report also names names. And there are a lot of bank names on the list. This is in part because the researchers used the bank name to represent the entire holding company. So if The Associates had made some of the loans that landed in the foreclosure study, the loans were put into the Citibank bucket. The named banks included Bank One, USBank, Banker Trust Company of California, and Citigroup. Together, these four institutions accounted for over 25% of all predatory foreclosure loans.

The report notes that while active subprime lenders such as the Kentucky Housing Corporation accounted for a large number of foreclosures, these lenders had relatively few foreclosures involving loans with predatory characteristics.

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VOTE PAPER BALLOT...

ENSURE THAT YOUR VOTE COUNTS!

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The Project for a New American Century (PNAC)

The Project for a New American Century is ostensibly a non-profit educational organization dedicated to two fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy, and commitment to moral principle.

The Project for the New American Century claims to intend, through issue briefs, research papers, advocacy journalism, conferences, and seminars, to explain what American world leadership entails. It also strives to rally support for what it calls a vigorous and principled policy of American international involvement and to stimulate what it considers useful public debate on foreign and defense policy and America's role in the world.

William Kristol, Chairman

The Original 25 Signatories of PNAC

Elliot Abrams

Gary Bauer

William J. Bennett

Jeb Bush

Dick Cheney

Eliot A. Cohen

Midge Decter

Paula Dobriansky

Steve Forbes

Aaron Friedberg

Francis Fukuyama

Frank Gaffney

Fred C. Ikle

Donald Kagan

Zalmay Khalilzad

Lewis "Scooter" Libby

Norman Podhoretz

Dan Quayle

Peter W. Rodman

Stephen P. Rosen

Henry S. Rowen

Donald Rumsfeld

Vin Weber

George Weigel

Paul Wolfowitz

Additional PNAC Signatories

Morton Abramowitz

Gordon Adams

Ken Adelman

Urban Ahlin

Madeleine K. Albright

Richard V. Allen

Giuliano Amato

Mark A. Anderson

Uzi Arad

Richard L. Armitage

Timothy Garton Ash

Anders Aslund

Ronald Asmus

Andrew Y. Au

Maureen Aung-Thwin

Nina Bang-Jensen

Rafael L. Bardaji

Carolyn Bartholomew

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski

Arnold Beichman

Peter Beinart

Jeffrey Bell

Jeffrey Bergner

Robert L. Bernstein

George Biddle

Carl Bildt

Daniel Blumenthal

John Bolton

Max Boot

Ellen Bork

Rudy Boshwitz

Pascal Bruckner

Mark Brzezinski

William F. Buckley, Jr

Reinhard Buetikofer

Janusz Bugajski

Michael Butler

Martin Butora

Daniele Capezzone

Per Carlsen

Gunilla Carlsson

Frank Carlucci

Linda Chavez

Steven C. Clemons

Seth Cropsey

Ivo H. Daalder

Helle Dale

Massimo D'Alema

Dennis DConcini

Pavol Demes

Larry Diamond

Peter Dimitrov

James Dobbins

Thomas Donnelly

Nicholas Eberstadt

Robert Edgar

Uffe Elleman-Jensen

Amitai Etzioni

Jeffrey L. Fiedler

Lee Feinstein

Edwin J. Feulner, Jr.

Michele Flournoy

Hillel Fradkin

Aaron Friedberg

Frank Gaffney

Peter Galbraith

Jeffrey Gedmin

Sam Gejdenson

Robert S. Gelbard

Reuel Marc Gerecht

Bronislaw Geremek

Carl Gershmann

Marc Ginsberg

Lt. Gen. Buster C. Glosson (USAF, retired)

Andre Glucksmann

Merle Goldman

Philip Gordon

Daniel Goure

Karl-Theodor von und zu Guttenberg

Istvan Gyarmati

Morton Halperin

Pierre Hassner

Vaclav Havel

John Herfferman

Charles Hill

Richard C. Holbrooke

James Hooper

Toomas Ilves

Martin S. Indyk

Bruce P. Jackson

Eli S. Jacobs

Michael Joyce

Frederick Kagan

Robert Kagan

Max M. Kampelman

Adrian Karatnycky

Penn Kemble

Craig Kennedy

Paul Kennedy

Glenys Kinnock

Col. Robert Killebrew (USA, retired)

Lane Kirklan

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick

Harold Hongju Koh

Bernard Kouchner

Peter Kovler

Jerzy Kozminski

Louis Kraar

van Krastev

Charles Krauthammer

Girts Valdis Kristovskis

William Kristol

Ludger Kuehnhardt

Mart Laar

Mark Lagon

AnthonyLake

Vytautas Landsbergis

Stephen Larrabee

John Lehman

Lewis E. Lehrman

Mark Leonard

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger

Tod Lindberg

James Lindsay

Perry Link

Bette Bao Lord

Rich Lowry

Connie Mack

Christopher Makins

Tom Malinowski

James Mann

Mary Beth Markey

Yu Mao-chun

Will Marshall

Margarita Mathiopoulos

Clifford May

Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey (USA, retired)

Sen. John McCain

Daniel McKivergan

Michael McFaul

Matteo Mecacci

Mark Medish

Edwin Meese III

Thomas O. Melia

Sarah E. Mendelson

Michael Mertes

Ilir Meta

Derek Mitchell

Adam Michnik

Richard Morningstar

Joshua Muravchik

Klaus Naumann

Steven J. Nider

Vietmar Nietan

Wing C. Ng

James O'Brien

Michael O'Hanlon

Janusz Onyszkiewicz

Cem Ozdemir

Mackubin Thomas Owens

Wayne Owens

Can Paker

Mark Palmer

Martin Peretz

Richard Perle

Ralph Peters

Daniel Pipes

Danielle Pletka

Friedbert Pflueger

Norman Podhoretz

John Edward Porter

Florentino Portero

Samantha Ravich

Anusz Reiter

Sophie Richardson

Peter Rodman

Alex Rondos

Jim Rosapepe

Dennis Ross

Kenneth Roth

Jacques Rupnik

Major Gen. Robert H. Scales (USA, retired)

Randy Scheunemann

Gary Schmitt

William Schneider, Jr.

Richard H. Shultz

Sen. Charles Schumer

Walter Slocombe

Henry Sokolski

Stephen J. Solarz

Helmut Sonnenfeldt

James B. Steinberg

Eberhard Sandschneider

Christian Schmidt

Sen. Charles Schummer

Simon Serfaty

Stephen Sestanovich

Sin-Ming Shaw

John Shattuck

Radek Sikorski

Stefano Silvestri

Martin Simecka

Paul Simon

Walter Slocombe

Gary Smith

Abraham Sofaer

James Steinberg

Leonard Sussman

John J. Sweeney

William Howard Taft IV

John Tkacik

Dick Thornburgh

Gary Titley

Helga Flores Trejo

Ed Turner

Ivan Vejvoda

Sasha Vondra

Arthur Waldron

Malcolm Wallop

Celeste Wallander

James Webb

Ruth Wedgood

Richard Weitz

Caspar Weinberger

Kenneth Weinstein

Paul Weyrich

Leon Wieseltier

Chris Williams

Jennifer Windsor

Marshall Wittmann

R. James Woolsey

Minky Worden

Larry Wortzel

Dov Zakheim

Robert B. Zoellick

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A Quote Worth Quoting

If I had it to do over, I’d do it exactly the same.

-- Dick Cheney

Is it just me, or is that the height of arrogance and hubris?

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There is a wonderful article in the New Yorker this month (August). It is online and well worth your read.

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The Hidden Power

by Jane Mayer

The legal mind behind the White House’s war on terror, “starring” David Addington.

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Hedgemony or Survival

by Noam Chomsky

Presents a view of American foreign policy, which lies in stark contrast to that depicted by corporate media, popular pundits, and US heads of state.

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The United States v. George Bush

By Elizabeth de la Vega, Tomdispatch.com. Posted November 28, 2006.

What would the case against George Bush for intelligence fraud in the lead-up to the war in Iraq look like? A former federal prosecutor lays out her case to an imaginary grand jury, and all she needs is the evidence available in the public record to make her case.

Hypothetical indictment of the President and his senior advisers -- not a smart move for any federal employee who wishes to remain employed. Lest anyone miss the import of this paragraph, let me emphasize that it is a disclaimer: I am writing as a private citizen.

Obviously, as a private citizen, I cannot simply draft and file an indictment. Nor can I convene a grand jury. Instead, in the following pages I intend to present a hypothetical indictment to a hypothetical grand jury. The defendants are President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. The crime is tricking the nation into war -- in legal terms, conspiracy to defraud the United States. And all of you are invited to join the grand jury.

We will meet for seven days. On day one, I'll present the indictment in the morning and in the afternoon I will explain the applicable law. On days two through seven, we'll have witness testimony, presented in transcript form, with exhibits.

As is the practice in most grand jury presentations, the evidence will be presented in summary form, by federal agents -- except that these agents are hypothetical. (Any relationship to actual federal agents, living or deceased, is purely coincidental.)

On day seven, when the testimony is complete, I'll leave the room to allow the grand jury to vote.

If the indictment and grand jury are hypothetical, the evidence is not. I've prepared for this case, just as I would have done for any other case in my years as a prosecutor, by reviewing all of the available relevant information. In this case, such information consists of witness accounts, the defendants' speeches, public remarks, White House press briefings, interviews, congressional testimony, official documents, all public intelligence reports, and various summaries of intelligence, such as in the reports of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the 9/11 Commission. I've discarded any evidence, however compelling, that is uncorroborated.

Then, using a sophisticated system of documents piled on every surface in my dining room, I've organized and analyzed the reliable information chronologically, by topic, and by defendant. I've compared what the President and his advisers have said publicly to what they knew and said behind the scenes. Finally, I've presented the case through testimony that will, I hope, make sense and keep everybody awake.

After analyzing this evidence in light of the applicable law, I've determined that we already have more than enough information to allow a reasonable person to conclude that the President conducted a wide-ranging effort to deceive the American people and Congress into supporting a war against Iraq. In other words, in legal terms, there is probable cause to believe that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Powell violated Title 18, United States Code, Section 371, which prohibits conspiracies to defraud the United States. Probable cause is the standard of proof required for a grand jury to return an indictment. Consequently, we have more than sufficient evidence to warrant indictment of the President and his advisers.

Do I expect someone to promptly indict the President and his aides? No. I am aware of the political impediments and constitutional issues relating to the indictment of a sitting president. Do those impediments make this merely an empty exercise? Absolutely not.

I believe this presentation adds a singular perspective to the debate about the President's use of prewar intelligence: that of an experienced federal prosecutor. Certainly, scholars and experts such as Barbara Olshansky, David Lindorff, Michael Ratner, John Dean, and Elizabeth Holtzman have written brilliantly about the legal grounds for impeachment that arise from the President's misrepresentations about the grounds for an unprovoked invasion of Iraq. But for most Americans, the debate about White House officials' responsibility for false preinvasion statements remains fixed on, and polarized around, the wrong question: Did the President and his team lie about the grounds for war? For many, the suggestion that the President lied is heresy, more shocking than a Baptist minister announcing during vespers that he's a cross-dresser. For many others -- indeed, now the majority of Americans -- that the President lied to get his war is a given, although no less shocking.

So my goals are threefold. First, I want to explain that under the law that governs charges of conspiracy to defraud, the legal question is not whether the President lied. The question is not whether the President subjectively believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The legal question that must be answered is far more comprehensive: Did the President and his team defraud the country? After swearing to uphold the law of the land, did our highest government officials employ the universal techniques of fraudsters -- deliberate concealment, misrepresentations, false pretenses, half-truths -- to deceive Congress and the American people?

Elizabeth de la Vega is a former federal prosecutor with more than 20 years of experience.

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Katrina Strikes Again!

Or what happens when a fox guards a henhouse...

you’re doing a fine job, Sticky!

The man who will oversee the federal government's investigation into the disaster that has trapped six workers in a Utah coal mine for over a week was twice rejected for his current job by senators concerned about his safety record when he managed mines in the private sector.

President George W. Bush resorted to a recess appointment in October 2006 to anoint Richard Stickler as the nation's mine safety czar after it became clear he could not receive enough support even in a GOP-controlled Senate.

In the wake of the January 2006 Sago mine disaster in West Virginia, senators from both sides of the aisle expressed concern that Stickler was not the right person to combat climbing death rates in the nation's mines.

Senator Byrd (D-WV) expressed concern about the slow pace of the implementation of new mining safety laws established in the wake of the Sago disaster. He spoke to Stickler of his concerns. He said, until he sees better progress from MSHA, he would retain his hold on the nomination. Senators Byrd and Rockefeller, and Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, questioned the safety record of the mines Stickler ran when he was a coal company executive.

Over the course of his career in the private sector, Stickler managed various mining operations for Bethlehem Steel subsidiary BethEnergy Mines, Inc. The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette reported in January 2006 that three workers died at BethEnergy mines managed by Stickler during the 1980s and 1990s.

In addition to concerns about the safety record at his mines, Stickler also faced opposition from senators, union leaders and relatives of those killed in mine accidents who felt an industry insider should not oversee safety inspectors. United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts said that miners "could not tolerate" another industry executive overseeing their health and safety.

Bush first nominated Stickler to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) in September 2005. He received renewed attention from lawmakers following the Sago disaster. By May 2006 it was clear that Byrd and other Senate opponents would not allow Stickler's nomination to pass, and Republicans withdrew a scheduled vote on his job.

In October 2006, Bush used a recess appointment to install Stickler -- a decision that was quickly denounced by senators from both sides of the aisle.

Source: Huffington Post

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The White House Criminal Conspiracy

By Elizabeth de la Vega

Legally, there are no significant differences between the investor fraud perpetrated by Enron CEO Ken Lay and the prewar intelligence fraud perpetrated by George W. Bush. Both involved persons in authority who used half-truths and recklessly false statements to manipulate people who trusted them. There is, however, a practical difference: The presidential fraud is wider in scope and far graver in its consequences than the Enron fraud. Yet thus far the public seems paralyzed.

In response to the outcry raised by Enron and other scandals, Congress passed the Corporate Corruption Bill, which President Bush signed on July 30, 2002, amid great fanfare. Bush declared that he was signing the bill because of his strong belief that corporate officers must be straightforward and honest. If they were not, he said, they would be held accountable.

Ironically, the day Bush signed the Corporate Corruption Bill, he and his aides were enmeshed in an orchestrated campaign to trick the country into taking the biggest risk imaginable -- a war. Indeed, plans to attack Iraq were already in motion. In June, Bush announced his "new" pre-emptive strike strategy. On July 23, 2002, the head of British intelligence advised Prime Minister Tony Blair, in the then-secret Downing Street Memo, that "military action was now seen as inevitable" and that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Bush had also authorized the transfer of $700 million from Afghanistan war funds to prepare for an invasion of Iraq. Yet all the while, with the sincerity of Marc Antony protesting that "Brutus is an honorable man," Bush insisted he wanted peace.

Americans may have been unaware of this deceit then, but they have since learned the truth. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in June, 52% of Americans now believe the President deliberately distorted intelligence to make a case for war. In an Ipsos Public Affairs poll, commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org and completed October 9, 50% said that if Bush lied about his reasons for going to war Congress should consider impeaching him. The President's deceit is not only an abuse of power; it is a federal crime. Specifically, it is a violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371, which prohibits conspiracies to defraud the United States.

So what do citizens do? First, they must insist that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence complete Phase II of its investigation, which was to be an analysis of whether the administration manipulated or misrepresented prewar intelligence. The focus of Phase II was to determine whether the administration misrepresented the information it received about Iraq from intelligence agencies. Second, we need to convince Congress to demand that the Justice Department appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the administration's deceptions about the war, using the same mechanism that led to the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the outing of Valerie Plame. (As it happens, Congressman Jerrold Nadler and others have recently written to Acting Deputy Attorney General Robert McCallum Jr. pointing out that the Plame leak is just the "tip of the iceberg" and asking that Fitzgerald's authority be expanded to include an investigation into whether the White House conspired to mislead the country into war.)

Third, we can no longer shrink from the prospect of impeachment. Impeachment would require, as John Bonifaz, constitutional attorney, author of Warrior-King: The Case for Impeaching George Bush and co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, has explained, that the House pass a "resolution of inquiry or impeachment calling on the Judiciary Committee to launch an investigation into whether grounds exist for the House to exercise its constitutional power to impeach George W. Bush." If the committee found such grounds, it would draft articles of impeachment and submit them to the full House for a vote. If those articles passed, the President would be tried by the Senate. Resolutions of inquiry, such as already have been introduced by Representatives Barbara Lee and Dennis Kucinich demanding that the Administration produce key information about its decision-making, could also lead to impeachment.

These three actions can be called for simultaneously. Obviously we face a GOP-dominated House and Senate, but the same outrage that led the public to demand action against corporate law-breakers should be harnessed behind an outcry against government law-breakers. As we now know, it was not a failure of intelligence that led us to war. It was a deliberate distortion of intelligence by the Bush Administration. But it is a failure of courage on the part of Congress (with notable exceptions) and the mainstream media that seems to have left us helpless to address this crime. Speaking as a former federal prosecutor, I offer the following legal analysis to encourage people to press their representatives to act.

The Nature of the Conspiracy

The Supreme Court has defined the phrase "conspiracy to defraud the United States" as "to interfere with, impede or obstruct a lawful government function by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest." In criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement "between two or more persons" to follow a course of conduct that, if completed, would constitute a crime. The agreement doesn't have to be express; most conspiracies are proved through evidence of concerted action. But government officials are expected to act in concert. So proof that they were conspiring requires a comparison of their public conduct and statements with their conduct and statements behind the scenes. A pattern of double-dealing proves a criminal conspiracy.

The concept of interfering with a lawful government function is best explained by reference to two well-known cases where courts found that executive branch officials had defrauded the United States by abusing their power for personal or political reasons.

One is the Watergate case, where a federal district court held that Nixon's Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman, and his crew had interfered with the lawful government functions of the CIA and the FBI by causing the CIA to intervene in the FBI's investigation into the burglary of Democratic Party headquarters. The other is U.S. v. North, where the court found that Reagan administration National Security Adviser John Poindexter, Poindexter's aide Oliver North, and others had interfered with Congress's lawful power to oversee foreign affairs by lying about secret arms deals during Congressional hearings into the Iran/contra scandal.

Finally, "fraud" is broadly defined to include half-truths, omissions or misrepresentation; in other words, statements that are intentionally misleading, even if literally true. Fraud also includes making statements with "reckless indifference" to their truth.

Conspiracies to defraud usually begin with a goal that is not in and of itself illegal. In this instance the goal was to invade Iraq. It is possible that the Bush team thought this goal was laudable and likely to succeed. It's also possible that they never formally agreed to defraud the public in order to attain it. But when they chose to overcome anticipated or actual opposition to their plan by concealing information and lying, they began a conspiracy to defraud -- because, as juries are instructed, "no amount of belief in the ultimate success of a scheme will justify baseless, false or reckless misstatements."

From the fall of 2001 to at least March 2003, the following officials, and others, made hundreds of false assertions in speeches, on television, at the United Nations, to foreign leaders and to Congress: President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his Under Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz. Their statements were remarkably consistent and consistently false.

Even worse, these falsehoods were made against an overarching deception: that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks. If Administration officials never quite said there was a link, they conveyed the message brilliantly by mentioning 9/11 and Iraq together incessantly -- just as beer commercials depict guys drinking beer with gorgeous women to imply a link between beer drinking and attractive women that is equally nonexistent. Beer commercials might be innocuous, but a deceptive ad campaign from the Oval Office is not, especially one designed to sell a war in which 2,000 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, and that has cost this country more than $200 billion so far and stirred up worldwide enmity.

The fifteen-month PR blitz conducted by the White House was a massive fraud designed to trick the public into accepting a goal that Bush's advisers had held even before the election. A strategy document Dick Cheney commissioned from the Project for a New American Century, written in September 2000, for example, asserts that "the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." But, as the document reflects, the administration hawks knew the public would not agree to an attack against Iraq unless there were a "catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."

Not surprisingly, the Bush/Cheney campaign did not trumpet this strategy. Instead, like corporate officials keeping two sets of books, they presented a nearly opposite public stance, decrying nation-building and acting as if "we were an imperialist power," in Cheney's words. Perhaps the public accepts deceitful campaign oratory, but nevertheless such duplicity is the stuff of fraud. And Bush and Cheney carried on with it seamlessly after the election.

By now it's no secret that the Bush administration used the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to promote its war. They began talking privately about invading Iraq immediately after 9/11 but did not argue their case honestly to the American people. Instead, they began looking for evidence to make a case the public would accept -- that Iraq posed an imminent threat. Unfortunately for them, there wasn't much.

In fact, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in effect as of December 2001 said that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons; was not trying to get them; and did not appear to have reconstituted its nuclear weapons program since the UN and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors departed in December 1998. This assessment had been unchanged for three years.

As has been widely reported, the NIE is a classified assessment prepared under the CIA's direction, but only after input from the entire intelligence community, or IC. If there is disagreement, the dissenting views are also included. The December 2001 NIE contained no dissents about Iraq. In other words, the assessment privately available to Bush Administration officials from the time they began their tattoo for war until October 2002, when a new NIE was produced, was unanimous: Iraq did not have nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons programs. But publicly, the Bush team presented a starkly different picture.

In his January 2002 State of the Union address, for example, Bush declared that Iraq presented a "grave and growing danger," a direct contradiction of the prevailing NIE. Cheney continued the warnings in the ensuing months, claiming that Iraq was allied with Al Qaeda, possessed biological and chemical weapons, and would soon have nuclear weapons. These false alarms were accompanied by the message that in the "post-9/11 world," normal rules of governmental procedure should not apply.

Unbeknownst to the public, after 9/11 Wolfowitz and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith had created a secret Pentagon unit called the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group (CTEG), which ignored the NIE and "re-evaluated" previously gathered raw intelligence on Iraq. It also ignored established analytical procedure. No responsible person, for example, would decide an important issue based on third-hand information from an uncorroborated source of unknown reliability. Imagine your doctor saying, "Well, I haven't exactly looked at your charts or X-rays, but my friend Martin over at General Hospital told me a new guy named Radar thinks you need triple bypass surgery. So -- when are you available?"

Yet that was the quality of information Bush Administration officials used for their arguments. As if picking peanuts out of a Cracker Jacks box, they plucked favorable tidbits from reports previously rejected as unreliable, presented them as certainties and then used these "facts" to make their case.

Nothing exemplifies this recklessness better than the story of lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. On December 9, 2001, Cheney said it was "pretty well confirmed" that Atta had met the head of Iraqi intelligence in Prague in April 2001. In fact, the IC regarded that story, which was based on the uncorroborated statement of a salesman who had seen Atta's photo in the newspaper, as glaringly unreliable. Yet Bush officials used it to "prove" a link between Iraq and 9/11, long after the story had been definitively disproved.

But by August 2002, despite the Administration's efforts, public and Congressional support for the war was waning. So Chief of Staff Andrew Card organized the White House Iraq Group, of which Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove was a member, to market the war.

The Conspiracy Is Under Way

The PR campaign intensified Sunday, September 8. On that day the New York Times quoted anonymous "officials" who said Iraq sought to buy aluminum tubes suitable for centrifuges used in uranium enrichment. The same morning, in a choreographed performance worthy of Riverdance, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Gen. Richard Myers said on separate talk shows that the aluminum tubes were suitable only for centrifuges and so proved Iraq's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

If, as Jonathan Schell put it, the allegation that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Niger is "one of the most rebutted claims in history," the tubes story is a close second. The CIA and the Energy Department had been debating the issue since 2001. And the Energy Department's clear opinion was that the tubes were not suited for use in centrifuges; they were probably intended for military rockets. Given the lengthy debate and the importance of the tubes, it's impossible to believe that the Bush team was unaware of the nuclear experts' position. So when Bush officials said that the tubes were "only really suited" for centrifuge programs, they were committing fraud, either by lying outright or by making recklessly false statements.

When in September 2002 Bush began seeking Congressional authorization to use force, based on assertions that were unsupported by the National Intelligence Estimate, Democratic senators demanded that a new NIE be assembled. Astonishingly, though most NIEs require six months' preparation, the October NIE took two weeks. This haste resulted from Bush's insistence that Iraq presented an urgent threat, which was, after all, what the NIE was designed to assess. In other words, even the imposition of an artificially foreshortened time limit was fraudulent.

Also, the CIA was obviously aware of the Administration's dissatisfaction with the December 2001 NIE. So with little new intelligence, it now maintained that "most agencies" believed Baghdad had begun reconstituting its nuclear weapons programs in 1998. It also skewed underlying details in the NIE to exaggerate the threat.

The October NIE was poorly prepared -- and flawed. But it was flawed in favor of the administration, which took that skewed assessment and misrepresented it further in the only documents that were available to the public. The ninety-page classified NIE was delivered to Congress at 10 PM on October 1, the night before Senate hearings were to begin. But members could look at it only under tight security on-site. They could not take a copy with them for review. They could, however, remove for review a simultaneously released white paper, a glitzy twenty-five-page brochure that purported to be the unclassified summary of the NIE. This document, which was released to the public, became the talking points for war. And it was completely misleading. It mentioned no dissents; it removed qualifiers and even added language to distort the severity of the threat. Several senators requested declassification of the full-length version so they could reveal to the public those dissents and qualifiers and unsubstantiated additions, but their request was denied. Consequently, they could not use many of the specifics from the October NIE to explain their opposition to war without revealing classified information.

The aluminum tubes issue is illustrative. The classified October NIE included the State and Energy departments' dissents about the intended use of the tubes. Yet the declassified white paper mentioned no disagreement. So Bush in his October 7 speech and his 2003 State of the Union address, and Powell speaking to the United Nations on February 5, 2003, could claim as "fact" that Iraq was buying aluminum tubes suitable only for centrifuge programs, without fear of contradiction -- at least by members of Congress.

Ironically, Bush's key defense against charges of intentional misrepresentation actually incriminates him further. As Bob Woodward reported in his book Plan of Attack, Tenet said that the case for Iraq's possession of nuclear weapons was a "slam dunk" in response to Bush's question, "This is the best we've got?" Obviously, then, Bush himself thought the evidence was weak. But he did not investigate further or correct past misstatements. Instead, knowing that his claims were unsupported, he continued to assert that Iraq posed an urgent threat and was aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons. That is fraud.

It can hardly be disputed, finally, that the Bush Administration's intentional misrepresentations were designed to interfere with the lawful governmental function of Congress. They presented a complex deceit about Iraq to both the public and to Congress in order to manipulate Congress into authorizing foreign action. Legally, it doesn't matter whether anyone was deceived, although many were. The focus is on the perpetrators' state of mind, not that of those they intentionally set about to mislead.

The evidence shows, then, that from early 2002 to at least March 2003, the President and his aides conspired to defraud the United States by intentionally misrepresenting intelligence about Iraq to persuade Congress to authorize force, thereby interfering with Congress's lawful functions of overseeing foreign affairs and making appropriations, all of which violates Title 18, United States Code, Section 371.

To what standards should we hold our government officials? Certainly standards as high as those Bush articulated for corporate officials. Higher, one would think. The President and Vice President and their appointees take an oath to defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States. If they fail to leave their campaign tactics and deceits behind -- if they use the Oval Office to trick the public and Congress into supporting a war -- we must hold them accountable. It's not a question of politics. It's a question of law.

Elizabeth de la Vega is a former federal prosecutor with more than twenty years' experience. During her tenure she was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and chief of the San José branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California.

This is the cover story of the November 14 issue of the Nation magazine just now appearing on the newsstands.

Copyright 2005 Elizabeth de la Vega

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The Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers were written and published during the years 1787 and 1788 in several New York State newspapers to persuade New York voters to ratify the proposed constitution. They consist of 85 essays outlining how this new government would operate and why this type of government was the best choice for the United States of America. The essays were signed PUBLIUS. The authors of some papers are under dispute, but the general consensus is that Alexander Hamilton wrote fifty two, James Madison wrote twenty eight, and John Jay contributed the remaining five. The Federalist Papers remain today as an excellent reference for anyone who wants to understand the U.S. Constitution. The following is attributed to Alexander Hamilton.

To the People of the State of New York:

ASSUMING it therefore as an established truth that the several States, in case of disunion, or such combinations of them as might happen to be formed out of the wreck of the general Confederacy, would be subject to those vicissitudes of peace and war, of friendship and enmity, with each other, which have fallen to the lot of all neighboring nations not united under one government, let us enter into a concise detail of some of the consequences that would attend such a situation.

War between the States, in the first period of their separate existence, would be accompanied with much greater distresses than it commonly is in those countries where regular military establishments have long obtained. The disciplined armies always kept on foot on the continent of Europe, though they bear a malignant aspect to liberty and economy, have, notwithstanding, been productive of the signal advantage of rendering sudden conquests impracticable, and of preventing that rapid desolation which used to mark the progress of war prior to their introduction. The art of fortification has contributed to the same ends. The nations of Europe are encircled with chains of fortified places, which mutually obstruct invasion. Campaigns are wasted in reducing two or three frontier garrisons, to gain admittance into an enemy's country. Similar impediments occur at every step, to exhaust the strength and delay the progress of an invader. Formerly, an invading army would penetrate into the heart of a neighboring country almost as soon as intelligence of its approach could be received; but now a comparatively small force of disciplined troops, acting on the defensive, with the aid of posts, is able to impede, and finally to frustrate, the enterprises of one much more considerable. The history of war, in that quarter of the globe, is no longer a history of nations subdued and empires overturned, but of towns taken and retaken; of battles that decide nothing; of retreats more beneficial than victories; of much effort and little acquisition.

In this country the scene would be altogether reversed. The jealousy of military establishments would postpone them as long as possible. The want of fortifications, leaving the frontiers of one state open to another, would facilitate inroads. The populous States would, with little difficulty, overrun their less populous neighbors. Conquests would be as easy to be made as difficult to be retained. War, therefore, would be desultory and predatory. PLUNDER and devastation ever march in the train of irregulars. The calamities of individuals would make the principal figure in the events which would characterize our military exploits.

This picture is not too highly wrought; though, I confess, it would not long remain a just one. Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.

The institutions chiefly alluded to are STANDING ARMIES and the correspondent appendages of military establishments. Standing armies, it is said, are not provided against in the new Constitution; and it is therefore inferred that they may exist under it. Their existence, however, from the very terms of the proposition, is, at most, problematical and uncertain. But standing armies, it may be replied, must inevitably result from a dissolution of the Confederacy. Frequent war and constant apprehension, which require a state of as constant preparation, will infallibly produce them. The weaker States or confederacies would first have recourse to them, to put themselves upon an equality with their more potent neighbors. They would endeavor to supply the inferiority of population and resources by a more regular and effective system of defense, by disciplined troops, and by fortifications. They would, at the same time, be necessitated to strengthen the executive arm of government, in doing which their constitutions would acquire a progressive direction toward monarchy. It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority.

The expedients which have been mentioned would soon give the States or confederacies that made use of them a superiority over their neighbors. Small states, or states of less natural strength, under vigorous governments, and with the assistance of disciplined armies, have often triumphed over large states, or states of greater natural strength, which have been destitute of these advantages. Neither the pride nor the safety of the more important States or confederacies would permit them long to submit to this mortifying and adventitious superiority. They would quickly resort to means similar to those by which it had been effected, to reinstate themselves in their lost pre-eminence. Thus, we should, in a little time, see established in every part of this country the same engines of despotism which have been the scourge of the Old World. This, at least, would be the natural course of things; and our reasonings will be the more likely to be just, in proportion as they are accommodated to this standard.

These are not vague inferences drawn from supposed or speculative defects in a Constitution, the whole power of which is lodged in the hands of a people, or their representatives and delegates, but they are solid conclusions, drawn from the natural and necessary progress of human affairs.

It may, perhaps, be asked, by way of objection to this, why did not standing armies spring up out of the contentions which so often distracted the ancient republics of Greece? Different answers, equally satisfactory, may be given to this question. The industrious habits of the people of the present day, absorbed in the pursuits of gain, and devoted to the improvements of agriculture and commerce, are incompatible with the condition of a nation of soldiers, which was the true condition of the people of those republics. The means of revenue, which have been so greatly multiplied by the increase of gold and silver and of the arts of industry, and the science of finance, which is the offspring of modern times, concurring with the habits of nations, have produced an entire revolution in the system of war, and have rendered disciplined armies, distinct from the body of the citizens, the inseparable companions of frequent hostility.

There is a wide difference, also, between military establishments in a country seldom exposed by its situation to internal invasions, and in one which is often subject to them, and always apprehensive of them. The rulers of the former can have a good pretext, if they are even so inclined, to keep on foot armies so numerous as must of necessity be maintained in the latter. These armies being, in the first case, rarely, if at all, called into activity for interior defense, the people are in no danger of being broken to military subordination. The laws are not accustomed to relaxations, in favor of military exigencies; the civil state remains in full vigor, neither corrupted, nor confounded with the principles or propensities of the other state. The smallness of the army renders the natural strength of the community an over-match for it; and the citizens, not habituated to look up to the military power for protection, or to submit to its oppressions, neither love nor fear the soldiery; they view them with a spirit of jealous acquiescence in a necessary evil, and stand ready to resist a power which they suppose may be exerted to the prejudice of their rights. The army under such circumstances may usefully aid the magistrate to suppress a small faction, or an occasional mob, or insurrection; but it will be unable to enforce encroachments against the united efforts of the great body of the people.

In a country in the predicament last described, the contrary of all this happens. The perpetual menacings of danger oblige the government to be always prepared to repel it; its armies must be numerous enough for instant defense. The continual necessity for their services enhances the importance of the soldier, and proportionably degrades the condition of the citizen. The military state becomes elevated above the civil. The inhabitants of territories, often the theatre of war, are unavoidably subjected to frequent infringements on their rights, which serve to weaken their sense of those rights; and by degrees the people are brought to consider the soldiery not only as their protectors, but as their superiors. The transition from this disposition to that of considering them masters, is neither remote nor difficult; but it is very difficult to prevail upon a people under such impressions, to make a bold or effectual resistance to usurpations supported by the military power.

The kingdom of Great Britain falls within the first description. An insular situation, and a powerful marine, guarding it in a great measure against the possibility of foreign invasion, supersede the necessity of a numerous army within the kingdom. A sufficient force to make head against a sudden descent, till the militia could have time to rally and embody, is all that has been deemed requisite. No motive of national policy has demanded, nor would public opinion have tolerated, a larger number of troops upon its domestic establishment. There has been, for a long time past, little room for the operation of the other causes, which have been enumerated as the consequences of internal war. This peculiar felicity of situation has, in a great degree, contributed to preserve the liberty which that country to this day enjoys, in spite of the prevalent venality and corruption. If, on the contrary, Britain had been situated on the continent, and had been compelled, as she would have been, by that situation, to make her military establishments at home coextensive with those of the other great powers of Europe, she, like them, would in all probability be, at this day, a victim to the absolute power of a single man. 'T is possible, though not easy, that the people of that island may be enslaved from other causes; but it cannot be by the prowess of an army so inconsiderable as that which has been usually kept up within the kingdom.

If we are wise enough to preserve the Union we may for ages enjoy an advantage similar to that of an insulated situation. Europe is at a great distance from us. Her colonies in our vicinity will be likely to continue too much disproportioned in strength to be able to give us any dangerous annoyance. Extensive military establishments cannot, in this position, be necessary to our security. But if we should be disunited, and the integral parts should either remain separated, or, which is most probable, should be thrown together into two or three confederacies, we should be, in a short course of time, in the predicament of the continental powers of Europe --our liberties would be a prey to the means of defending ourselves against the ambition and jealousy of each other.

This is an idea not superficial or futile, but solid and weighty. It deserves the most serious and mature consideration of every prudent and honest man of whatever party. If such men will make a firm and solemn pause, and meditate dispassionately on the importance of this interesting idea; if they will contemplate it in all its attitudes, and trace it to all its consequences, they will not hesitate to part with trivial objections to a Constitution, the rejection of which would in all probability put a final period to the Union. The airy phantoms that flit before the distempered imaginations of some of its adversaries would quickly give place to the more substantial forms of dangers, real, certain, and formidable.

PUBLIUS.