So who spread that ka-ka about Al Qaqaa?

Well, the official White House spin on the Al Qaqaa fiasco -- the "blame Russia" strategy -- is falling apart faster than a kleenex dam. Apparently, we have video footage of the explosives in situ -- after the Americans showed up.

Combine that video with the Russian denials of involvement, the descriptions by Iraqis on the scene, the utter lack of satellite imagery showing a Russian convoy -- and we can fairly say that Matt Drudge's beloved "Russia" defense is holding up about as well as a pre-viagra Bob Dole.

I'd like to focus, once more, on a little-discussed aspect of this affair. Who the hell is John A. "Jack" Shaw, undersecretary of defense, and why did he spread the "Rooskies" yarn? Who are his associates? Who are these mysterious "foreign intelligence officials" who provided Shaw with his so-called evidence?

The closer you look into these areas, the murkier they become.

As we noted in a previous post, whispers of scandal swirled around Shaw (who previously held top jobs in the Reagan and Bush administrations) earlier this year. What kind of whispers? Allegations of profiteering in Iraqi. Steering no-bid business toward favored companies. Weird undercover assignments. That sort of thing.

Well, hell -- in this war, who hasn't?

But: An L.A. Times story strongly hints that Shaw's "enabler" in all this was Joseph E. Schmitz, the inspector general of the Department of Defense. Some of us have been keeping an eye on Schmitz, who runs the "internal affairs" division of a DOD plagued by these recurrent claims of profiteering and dubious intelligence -- not to mention those nasty little prison abuse scandals.

Some of us, in fact, have been keeping an eye on the whole Schmitz family, as I have since the 1970s.

It's a strange clan. If a Tennessee Williams had grown up in Southern California's Orange County, Congressman John "Big Daddy" Schmitz and his brood might have inspired some truly feverish drama.

An admirer of McCarthy and a leading proponent of far-right conspiracy theories (even the local John Birchers eventually decided that he was too wacky), the elder John Schmitz was the American Independent party candidate for president, running under the slogan "If you're out of Schmitz, you're out of gear." His outbursts -- anti-Semitic snarlings, calls for a military coup -- fetched him ink on a regular basis.

Alas, his glorious political career ended in 1982, when his secrets spilled all over the front pages -- lurid stories about a mistress, a second family, and an infant with a mutilated penis.

John the paterfamilias hated the Bush family -- a classic "Cowboy-vs.-Yankee" reaction one might expect from the fellow who wrote the introduction for None Dare Call it Conspiracy. Even so, one of his sons, John P. Schmitz, became counsel to George Bush the elder throughout his presidency and much of his vice-presidency. His sister, Mary Kay Letourneau, a teacher, made the news when she became pregnant by a 13-year-old student, whom she called one of the two "remarkable men" in her life, the other being her father.

Joseph Schmitz is the other noteworthy sibling (not counting the one with the mutilated penis; I have no idea what happened to him). A member of the Knights of Malta, the Federalist Society, the American Council on Germany and something ominously titled the American Security Network, Joseph Schmitz led the effort to keep the blame for the Abu Ghraib abuses restricted to the lower levels. (Considering his family, I doubt that he considered the photos a very big deal.)

One can say much about Joseph's tenure as the DOD's inspector general, but let us now bring our tale back to Jack Shaw, the man in the news.

Shaw has denied financial links to Qualcomm and Lucent, the companies benefiting from the deals he made. Even so, he did go to some rather extreme lengths to make sure other companies didn't get the sweetheart contracts. As the L.A. Times investigation noted:

John A. "Jack" Shaw, deputy undersecretary for international technology security, represented himself as an agent of the Pentagon's inspector general in conducting the investigations, sources said.

In one case, Shaw disguised himself as an employee of Halliburton Co. and gained access to a port in southern Iraq after he was denied entry by the U.S. military, the sources said.

Needless to say, this bit of James Bond-ing is not the sort of behavior one expects from an undersecretary of defense. To be frank, I've never heard of a man in his position doing anything of this sort.

Later, we read:

Shaw justified his investigations under a special agreement with
the Pentagon inspector general, Joseph E. Schmitz...

Shaw frequently cited the agreement in his dealings with reporters and the military, telling them it allowed him to "wear an IG hat" to conduct investigations. In a recent letter to the inspector general, he said the agreement gave him "broad investigatory authority."

That contention is the subject of dispute, however. The agreement states that Shaw "may recommend" that the inspector general initiate audits, evaluations, investigations and inquiries, but it does not appear to give him investigative powers.

"Jack Shaw was never authorized to do any kind of investigation or auditing on his own," said one source close to Schmitz. "The agreement was not for that. He's trying to cram more authority into that agreement than it gives him."

Despite these words, the DOD exonerated Shaw of all wrongdoing.

Thus, the office which provided Shaw with the cover for his skullduggery was also the office tasked with investigating him -- and the office which cleared him. The man who ran that office, the man who had an "agreement" with Shaw, was the notable Joseph Schmitz.

Since Mr. Schmitz and Mr. Shaw appear to be quite close, perhaps Schmitz can now tell us just which "foreign intelligence service" provided Shaw with documents (still unseen by anyone other than Shaw) purporting to demonstrate Russian involvement in the the Al Qaqaa disaster. Why was this one undersecretary of defense the only one to receive such startling material? Why not the CIA? Why not anyone at the DIA? Why hasn't anyone else verified it?

And just what are Shaw's relations with those unnamed foreign intelligence officials?