Clarksburg Audit Depicts Agency on ‘Autopilot,’ Lacking Records

A culture of sloppiness and arrogance pervades the Montgomery County planning process, creating a system in which staff and developers work together out of public view with little supervision, according to a County Council audit released yesterday.

The four-month investigation by the Office of Legislative Oversight into the construction of Clarksburg Town Center does not single out individuals in key posts, such as county Planning Board Chairman Derick Berlage or Charles Loehr, former executive director of the Department of Park and Planning. But it offers biting criticism of the system’s performance on their watch and that of their predecessors.

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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 15:09:14 -0500
From: “banning+Low”
Subject: Fw: Just like Nixon

White House keeps dossiers on more than 10,000 ‘political enemies’
DOUG THOMPSON, Capitol Hill Blue 8/11/05

Spurred by paranoia and aided by the USA Patriot Act, the Bush Administration has compiled dossiers on more than 10,000 Americans it considers political enemies and uses those files to wage war on those who disagree with its policies.

The “enemies list” dates back to Bush’s days as governor of Texas and can be accessed by senior administration officials in an instant for use in campaigns to discredit those who speak out against administration policies or acts of the President.

The computerized files include intimate personal details on members of Congress; high-ranking local, state and federal officials; prominent media figures and ordinary citizens who may, at one time or another, have spoken out against the President or Administration.

Capitol Hill Blue has spoken with a number of current and former administration officials who acknowledge existence of the enemies list only under a guarantee of confidentiality. Those who have seen the list say it is far more extensive than Richard Nixon’s famous “enemies list” of Watergate fame or Bill Clinton’s dossiers on political enemies.

“How is that you think Karl (Rove) and Scooter (Libby) were able to disseminate so much information on Joe Wilson and his wife,” says one White House aide. “They didn’t have that information by accident. They had it because they have files on those who might hurt them.”

White House insiders tell disturbing tales of invasion of privacy, abuse of government power and use of expanded authority under the USA Patriot Act to dig into the personal lives of anyone the administration deems an enemy of the state.

Those on the list include former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, former covert CIA operative Valarie Plame, along with filmmaker and administration critic Michael Moore, Senators like California’s Barbara Boxer, media figures like liberal writer Joe Conason and left-wing bloggers like Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (the Daily Kos) and Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette).

“If you want to know who’s sleeping with whom, who drinks too much or has a fondness for nose candy, this is the place to find it,” says another White House aide. “Karl (Rove) operates under the rule that if you fuck with us, we’ll fuck you over.”

Rove started the list while Bush served as governor of Texas, compiling information on various political enemies in the state and leaking damaging information on opponents to friends in the press. The list grew during Bush’s first run for President in 2000 but the names multiplied rapidly after the terrorist attacks of 2001 and passage of the USA Patriot Act. Using the powers under the act, Rove expanded the list to more than 10,000 names, utilizing the FBI’s “national security letters” to gather private and intimate details on American citizens.

National security letters, which can be issued by an FBI supervisor without a judge’s review or approval, allows the bureau to examine the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of any Americans.

The FBI issues some 30,000 national security letters a year to employers, credit bureaus, banks, travel agencies and other sources of information on American citizens. The Patriot Act also forbids anyone receiving such a letter to reveal they have passed on information to the federal government.

“Those letters helped us build files quickly on those we needed to know more about,” says a former White House aide.

The database of political enemies of the Bush administration is not maintained on White House computers and is located on a privately-owned computer offsite, but can be accessed remotely by a select list of senior aides, including Rove. The offsite location allowed the database to escape detection by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald during his investigation of the Valerie Plame leak. The database is funded by private donations from Bush political backers and does not appear on the White House budget or Federal Election Commission campaign reports.

Bush is not the first President to use the FBI to keep track of his enemies. Richard M. Nixon used FBI files to try and discredit his opponents, including Daniel Ellsberg, the Department of Defense employee who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. Bill Clinton used the FBI to compile dossiers on critics like Conservative Congressman Bob Barr and legal gadfly Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch.

But worried White House insiders say the intelligence gathered by the Bush administration is far larger, more extensive and potentially more damaging than the excesses of previous occupants of the White House. Even worse, it dovetails into a pattern of spying on Americans that has become commonplace since Bush took office.

“We’re talking about Big Brother at its most extreme,” says one White House staffer. “We know things about people that their spouses don’t know and, if it becomes politically expedient, we will make sure the rest of the world knows.”

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Amtrak President David Gunn Is Fired

“Amtrak’s future now requires a different type of leader who will aggressively tackle the company’s financial, management and operational challenges,” Amtrak Chairman David Laney said in a statement.

“The board approved a strategic plan in April that provides a blueprint for a stronger and more sustainable Amtrak. Now we need a leader with vision and experience to get the job done.”

Rep. John Mica said Gunn was fired because of a clash over the board’s vote in September to authorize splitting off the Northeast Corridor, an idea backed by the Bush administration. The corridor accounts for the largest share of the railroad’s ridership.

“David Gunn bucked that idea, so that was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Mica, R-Fla.

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GOP Leaders Urge Probe in Prisons Leak

Congress’s top Republican leaders yesterday demanded an immediate joint House and Senate investigation into the disclosure of classified information to The Washington Post that detailed a web of secret prisons being used to house and interrogate terrorism suspects.

The Post’s article, published on Nov. 2, has led to new questions about the treatment of detainees and the CIA’s use of “black sites” in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. The issue dogged President Bush on his recent trip to Latin America and has created consternation in Eastern Europe.

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After spending Saturday morning helping to leaflet for the Instant Runnoff Voting referendum in Takoma Park, I spent last evening at the polling place, passing out literature and helping convince the handful of people who hadn’t made up their minds, including one woman whose husband had told her the reasons to vote against the referendum but came to me to get the real facts. (n.b. husbands)

IRV won with an impressive 84% of the vote, 1,992 to 390. It had the support of religious leaders, PTA presidents, and neighbhorhood association
presidents so the outcome is no surprise. However, I still count this as a Green Party victory since we provided much of the shoe leather for the leafleting and poll watching.

Instant Runoff Voting has won by lopsided margins in the last four cities where it has been on the ballot: Ferndale, Michigan, Berkeley, California, Burlington, Vermont, and now Takoma Park. San Francisco ran its first IRV election.

This issue will continue to spread.