Mystery massacre

I had expected the strange stories coming out of Virginia to have coalesced into something like a coherent narrative right now. But at this writing, this story still doesn't add up.

Why was the campus open for normal business after the first shooting?

On Headline News, not many minutes ago, a police expert opined that something happened during the first shooting, at West Ambler Johnston Hall, which made the local cops believe that the incident had been resolved. He made the interesting suggestion that surveillance footage might have shown the shooter leaving the campus.

Why, then, was there no manhunt throughout the town? Would there not have been a bulletin describing the assailant? Eyewitnesses describe the Norris Hall shooter as an Asian in his 20s wearing a military-style uniform, a heavy black vest, and an "ungodly" amount of ammunition.

Erin Sheehan was one of the few unwounded survivors in her German class:

"It seemed so strange," Sheehan said. "Because he peaked in twice, earlier in the lesson, like he was looking for someone, somebody, before he started shooting. But then we all heard something like drilling in the walls, and someone thought they sounded like bullets. That's when we blockaded the door to stop anyone from coming in."

"He was just a normal looking kid, Asian, but he had on a Boy Scout type outfit. He wore a tan button up vest, and this black vest, maybe it was for ammo or something."

"I saw bullets hit people's body," Sheehan said. "There was blood everywhere. People in the class were passed out, I don't know maybe from shock from the pain. But I was one of only four that made it out of that classroom. The rest were dead or injured." She described.

Another survivor, Dereck O'Dell (spelling may be incorrect) who was wounded, decribes the killer in a video available here. He says that the killer who popped into his classroom wore a maroon hat and and "a black leather jacket."

A local police official who appeared on the air within the hour said that the first shooting was "domestic," and perhaps unrelated to what happened later. As we have already noted (see previous post), the initial report carried by CNN held that only one student had been killed and one was arrested. (Alas, the link for that early story no longer works.)

We are also told that Norris Hall was barricaded with chains from the inside. How could a man who had shot up a dorm two hours earlier leave the campus, then return to the school carrying heavy chains and an "ungodly" amount of ammunition?

I will make so bold as to suggest one theory which, provisionally, makes some sense out of these strange reports: The cops arrested the wrong guy after the first incident. Now, they are loathe to admit that they made a mistake.

Another theory: Two shooters.

The Virginia Tech massacre (Updates)

In case you don't already know, a gunman has killed at least 29 students at Virginia Tech university. (Update: The most recent number is 32.) Right now, the details are hazy. Early reports held that a gunman was in custody, but more recent accounts indicate that he is dead. Stranger still, there are reports that the shootings took place in two separate locations. There have also been bomb threats against the campus, perhaps unrelated.

According to ABC News,

Law enforcement sources tell ABC News the shooting may have been set off by an off-campus incident.

Obviously, the conflicting details will be resolved as the day progresses. Nearly every blogger will be looking into this one. Right now, our thoughts are with the families and friends of the victims.

UPDATE: The student newspaper at Virginia Tech offers a unique perspective, including this odd detail:

Three people were escorted out of Norris Hall by police. The three were handcuffed, separated, questioned, unhandcuffed and then canine teams were sent into Norris Hall said junior computer engineer Nick Saunders who watched the events unfold from the the second floor of Randolph Hall.

The cops were probably simply acting out of caution. Still, worth keeping in mind. That incident may have given rise to this earlier report:

At this time, University Relations is reporting one individual in custody and is searching for a second shooter. The Collegiate Times will publish information as it is made available.

We know a little more about the "two locations" scenario -- and what we know leaves me a bit flummoxed. This is from the statement by Virginia Tech President Charles Steger:

Now here are some of the facts as we know them. At about 7:15 this morning, a 911 call came to the university police department concerning an event in West Ambler Johnston Hall. There were multiple shooting victims. While in the process of investigating, about two hours later, the university received reports of a shooting in Norris Hall. The police immediately responded.

Two hours later? This is from the student newspaper:

The first shooting occurred at 7:15 a.m. in West Ambler Johnston. Twenty of the fatalities occurred in Norris Hall, which happened approximately two hours later.

And:

Police are still investigating whether the two shootings are related.

Seems possible to me that the initial CNN report of one fatality stems from the West Ambler Johnson incident. Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't this mean that CNN was reporting on the shooting before the cops had caught the shooter, and before they locked down Norris Hall? How can there have been a two hour gap?

Cudos to student reporters Kevin Anderson and Saira Haider, who are doing a great job.

Update 2: These mobile phone camera images (and sounds) will no doubt become famous.

This Sky News (UK) report has the most details so far. It identifies the gunman as an Asian "looking for his girlfriend." It also reports that the lockdown had been lifted on West Ambler Johnson Hall after the initial shootings and before the Norris Hall massacre. That seems rather odd. Why sound the "all clear" before the bad guy has been caught?

Are mobile phones wiping out bee populations?

This is the sort of story I usually leave in the capable hands of Professor Hex (who first drew it to my attention), but I'm beginning to think that this theory may have some substance. As you know, the bee population has suffered a sudden and mysterious decline. That's a serious matter: No bees = no pollination = no crops.

German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.

Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.

Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."

Here is an earlier paper by Dr. Kuhn: "How Electromagnetic Exposure can influence Learning Processes -- Modelling Effects of Electromagnetic Exposure on Learning Processes." Yes, there are bees in it. Kuhn addresses the sticky issue of non-thermal effects of electromagnetic radiation, which always leads to pooh-poohing and over-confident harrumphing. But for 40-or-so years, a number of researchers have sounded the we-don't-know-what-we're-messing-with note.

From Kuhn's paper:

In addition to the well known theory of Karl von Frisch that honey bees communicate through waggle dances on the honeycomb, Nieh and Tautz discovered that dancing makes the honeycombs vibrate... The frequencies of these vibrations are set in between 200 Hz and 300 Hz. As the honeycombs vibrate the information can be transported to honey bees which are located far away from the vibrating source. With the GSM-mobile-phones sending their information with a pulsed signal, we must consider the pure sending frequencies of 900 MHz and 1800 MHz as well as the pulsing frequency of 217 Hz. The frequency of the pulse corresponds to that of the waggle dance of the honey bee and so the dancing area could be resonantly stimulated by this pulsed frequency...

Oh boy. The term "waggle dance" leaves Kuhn open for ridicule by the professional harrumphers.

Bee open-minded.

The great question

General John J. Sheehan, in today's Washington Post, gives his reasons for declining the "war czar" position:

What I found in discussions with current and former members of this administration is that there is no agreed-upon strategic view of the Iraq problem or the region. In my view, there are essentially three strategies in play simultaneously.

The first I call "the Woody Hayes basic ground attack," which is basically gaining one yard -- or one city block -- at a time. Given unconstrained time and resources, one could control the outcome in Iraq and provide the necessary security to move on to the next stage of development.

The second strategy starts with security but adds benchmarks for both the U.S. and Iraqi participants and applies time constraints that should guide them toward a desired outcome. The value of this strategy is that everyone knows the quantifiable and measurable objectives that fit within an overall strategic framework.

The third strategy takes a larger view of the region and the desired end state. Simply put, where does Iraq fit in a larger regional context? The United States has and will continue to have strategic interests in the greater Middle East well after the Iraq crisis is resolved and, as a matter of national interest, will maintain forces in the region in some form. The Iraq invasion has created a real and existential crisis for nearly all Middle Eastern countries and created divisions among our traditional European allies, making cooperation on other issues more difficult...

Finally:

...I concluded that the current Washington decision-making process lacks a linkage to a broader view of the region and how the parts fit together strategically.

The problem with the first strategy is that, historically, the "one block at a time" approach never works against a popular insurgency. Look and see: Stalingrad, Algeria, Vietnam. The other problem is that everyone in the world hates foreign armies fighting popular insurgencies. Look and see: Stalingrad, Algeria , Vietnam. At any rate, we do not have unlimited resources -- China is printing up money just to service our debt, which means that the economy must one day experience a shit-meets-fan moment.

The problem with the second strategy outlined above is that all benchmarks have heretofore gone unmet, and likely will continue to go unmet. What then?

The problem with the third strategy, the big picture, is that we cannot have a presence in the Middle East if war radicalizes the region against us. Oil will increasingly be denominated in dollars. The Saudi monarchy is unstable and could be replaced by something much worse. Bush will never properly address the festering issue of Israel's brutality toward the Palestinians. The people of that region know, as Americans will not allow themselves to know, that we got into this mess because we lusted for oil, because we put Israel's strategic interests ahead of ours, and because the neocon "grand vision" had the disadvantage of being untethered to reality.

What, then, to do?

Suppose we wake up one fine day, a week or two hence, and discover that Nancy Pelosi has been sworn in as President. What "broader view" should she pursue -- aside from wishing that this whole debacle had never happened?

Funniest Cheney photo ever

You can almost hear his image handler whispering words of advice just before the cameras roll: "One last thing, Mr. Cheney -- our testing indicates that people prefer smiling to snarling. Could you try smiling?"

Lesser-known tales of the Great Prosecutor Purge

The "stars" of Prosecutorgate have been Carol Lam and David Iglesias. Their tales have, deservedly, received much coverage. But recent posts on Talking Points Memo -- especially those delving into the Biskupic affair -- have caused many to look beyond the Silence of the Lam. The other sub-scandals are also quite fascinating.

Josh Marshall has promised to deliver more details on the first U.S. Attorney to go down, Todd Graves of Missouri. (Actually, Graves left voluntarily, after his name was placed on the guillotine list.) I have tried my humble best to beat Marshall to the punch.

You can see the results of my labors here.

It's quite a squalid little tale. I am sure that Josh will add further squalid little details -- but for now, I give you plenty of squalor for your wallowing pleasure.

And I'm open to suggestions as to where to turn next...

I don't need a degree to know that Bill Maher is a genius

This ranks with the best "New Rule" segments Maher has ever done. He tears into Monica Goodling (a name right out of Ian Fleming, that) and her Alma Mater, Pat Robertson's Jesus-approved Regent University.

Regent is a fourth-tier school, the lowest tier there is. To put this into perspective: I happen to know someone going to a third-tier school who has just discovered that, despite her 3.9 GPA, her undergrad degree is basically worthless -- because her university does not command sufficient respect. Grad schools do not want her, and neither do "real world" employers in her field.

But 150 fourth-tier Regent U grads have gone on to work for the White House -- including Monica, all of 33, who became the third ranking member of the Justice Department of the United States.

Maher's final line is priceless.

Backin' the USSR...

In a fit of nostalgia, I flipped through the IMDB comments for an early-'70s paranoia-fest called Colossus: The Forbin Project. That's the one where NORAD's artificially-intelligent supercomputer joins forces with its Soviet counterpart to take over the world. One commenter, "tedg," offered a fascinating insight:

I saw this when it was new. At the time I was exposed to a project that of all in the world then and since would be closest to this. Not very, not very at all but as close as reality ever got.

We all laughed at the improbabilities. The first of course was that the Soviets could ever have built something as sophisticated as the Americans. Among Soviet deficiencies was the abject impossibility for clever hardware guys to exist, and fundamental software to be created. We were so worried about Soviet bad computers the US arranged for the Soviets to "steal" enough modern computers and decision support software to ensure that their missiles weren't launched by buggy machines.

(Emphasis added.) This info might force us to take a new look at the intelligence scandals of yesteryear -- especially if we presume that similar "help" went to China and other nuclear powers.

Computergate: Who's running the show?

"Computergate." Until someone else comes up with a name that catches on, that's my nomenclature and I'm stickin' to it. (Hey, check out the latest results on that Kos poll!)

Today's L.A. Times (subscription required) emphasizes that Rove, upon assuming his duties, was officially cautioned not to misplace any emails, which is sort of like cautioning Charles Ng not to kill people. So where did the missing missives go? How do the White House email systems (official and non-official) actually work?

In response to the latest document dump, a Democratic Underground poster with the euphonious nick "Tandalayo_Scheisskopf," who seems to have a technical background, offered a reaction deserving of repetition here:

1. The documents offered up do not have full email headers included. For those who understand such things, email headers are a rich source of information. I do not think that a lack of full email headers in these documents is a mistake.

2. From their format, as supplied, especially as regards how file attachments are shown on them, I would expect that their email server infrastructure is based upon Microsoft Exchange (version unknown). Now, this possibility, taken with the recent CREW information that 5 million emails are missing, tells me something:

5 million emails are missing, out of how many emails? That is hard to divine, but I can say this: this is a very high volume email infrastructure, one that surely has a ton of security. In an Exchange environment like that, you are going to have Exchange bridgehead servers, connectors, routing servers, active directory servers, firewalls, clustering, a number of email stores, IIS servers, service-dedicated servers, ISA servers, SAN storage and a lot more. Plus Blackberry servers. And, most importantly, a dedicated sub-infrastructure of servers for just backups and archiving.

For all these emails to be scrubbed completely is No Small Taters. Either this was the single worst configured and administered Exchange infrastructure in the history of mankind, or one or more people with a very detailed knowledge of Exchange came in, mapped the topology and proceeded to sanitize the system.

There is a third possibility: That the White House and the RNC have decided to stonewall and ignore subpoenas.

Any way you slice and dice it, this is big and it points to organized criminal effort. I also cannot think of any geek who would willingly sign onto duty like this and place themselves in a position of such jeopardy. Especially one with the high level of technical expertise needed to do all of this.

Which leads to a fourth possibility: Could this system have been intentionally set to wipe out, lose, obfuscate and obscure. That is not unlikely.

Were I advising Leahy or Waxman, I would find out where those servers are and put seals on them post haste.

The RNC servers are in Chattanooga. But where are the official .gov servers?

Now that is an intriguing question.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

According to an interesting letter published in an earlier post, official governmental communications are supposed to be the purview of CSS (Central Security Service), the little-known sister agency to the NSA. The NSA breaks codes; CSS makes them. However, the small amount of information about CSS available online suggests that their mission is military; the White House goes unmentioned here, for example.

The official NSA/CSS "faq" page says:

Specifically, NSA/CSS provides intelligence products and services to the White House, Executive Agencies (such as the CIA and State Department), Chairman and Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), military Commanders-in-Chief (CINCs) and component commands, military departments, multinational forces, and U.S. allies. In addition, NSA/CSS provides information assurance products and services to government customers and government contractors, as required.

This statement is deliberately non-specific. (Can anyone tell me what is an "information assurance product"? Do they sell 'em at Frys?)

(By the way, the spiffy new NSA site is, as my ladyfriend might say, "totally gothed up." All they need is that cool dripping blood font...)

If CSS stores the .gov emails, then the data rests securely in Big Brother's hands in Maryland. But what if the gig went elsewhere? What if "Little Brother" -- that is, Little Republican Brother -- handles those missives?

Nothing in the Presidential Records Act (it's here and the 2001 update is here) prevents Bush from giving that job to anyone he likes. The PRA requires that the whole kit-n-caboodle should end up at the National Archives; nothing in the Act stipulates how emails are handled during a president's tenure.

If Bush outsourced the task of archiving emails to a non-governmental firm, nobody at NSA/CSS would have raised a public stink. "Public stinks" are not what they do. Alas, I doubt whether anyone at Never Say Anything or Can't Say Shit will answer my questions about who runs the White House email system -- although they might well provide help to the beleaguered congressfolk looking into these matters.

As we revealed a short while ago, the firm GovTech, run by a Bush family friend, got the gig to do a still-mysterious internet project for the White House. If GovTech is handling the official email -- the stuff which is supposed to be archived, pursuant to the Presidential Records Act -- where does that stuff get stored before (presumed) delivery to the Archives?

We have seen (scroll down to previous posts on the topic, and check out both the links and the reader commentary) that GovTech uses the services of SmarTech, also in securely Bush-friendly hands. SmarTech handles all the RNC stuff. They're in Chatanooga.

Which means that -- who knows? -- the official emails and the non-official emails may be in the same hands, in the land of Davy Crockett's nativity.

It also means that the Bushies intended to install a "legacy" system in the White House, which might well have kept WH communications in Republican control, even if there had been a turnover in 2004. Plenty of room for mischief there.

If the Dem wins in 2008, someone at the new White House had better make it his job to learn who runs what when it comes to information technology.

Finally: Many have bandied about the question of whether the emails can be recovered. The common presumption (see here) is that they remain somewhere in cyberspace. But this presumption does not take into account the possibility of a "friendly" service provider creating a system designed to make the evidence go bye-bye.

For a real eye-opener, read the L.A Times piece here. (Subscription required.) A sample:

Many companies now make it a policy to get rid of all deleted e-mails after 30 or 90 days.

For consumers wondering how long their correspondence lives on, the Internet service providers that control the routes through which e-mail travels may expunge sent and deleted messages in less than a week.

Network Solutions purges deleted e-mails after just a few hours, said Pete Fox, senior vice president of engineering. Then it's really, really gone.

"We do it very consciously, because we didn't want to get in a situation where government entities come asking for people's deleted e-mails," Fox said.

When an AOL user hits the delete key, the message is sent to a file called "Recently Deleted E-Mail."

It sits there for three days, then vanishes, AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein said.

MORE computergate!

This story does not stop! All eyes are now on Karl Rove...

Rove's lawyer argues that all of his 2005-and-before emails on RNC servers were deleted by accident. Not deleted from Rove's computers. Deleted from the servers. Presumably, that means the ones in Tennessee. By accident. And Karl Rove's emails were the only ones deleted from those servers -- even though dozens of other people in the White House used those RNC accounts.

That sound very likely to you?

But wait -- there's more: On January 23, 2006, Fitz sent a letter to Scooter Libby's attorneys which included these words:

...we advise you that we have learned that not all email of the Ofice of Vice President and the Executive Office of President for certain time periods in 2003 were preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system.

There's more than one way to interpret those words. The most obvious interpretation: Fitz had learned about the RNC emails but did not possess them at that time.

And that is why CREW is asking Fitz to re-open the case against Karl Rove.

Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, said today, "It looks like Karl Rove may well have destroyed evidence that implicated him in the White House's orchestrated efforts to leak Valerie Plame Wilson's covert identity to the press in retaliation against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson." Sloan continued, "Special Counsel Fitzgerald should immediately reopen his investigation into whether Rove took part in the leak as well as whether he obstructed justice in the ensuing leak investigation."

Computergate, GovTech and SmarTech

A couple of posts down, I linked to a long piece published elsewhere in which I outline everything currently known about computergate (my preferred term) and the roles played by GovTech and SmarTech.

GovTech is a company that does IT work "behind the firewall" of government, even though it is run by a Bush family friend. I found that they once bragged about a project involving still-mysterious "complex internet communications" for the White House -- a gig they do not mention on their web site. This project potentially places GovTech at the heart of the growing email scandal.

SmarTech is the Chatanooga-based server that handles everything Republican. They were in charge of the GWB43 domain used by White House officials when doing shady business, in direct violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Rumor had it that GovTech and SmarTech were in some way linked. A tech-savvy reader named ViViDVeW has found a concrete link between the two firms:

Well Joe, if your looking for a connection between SMARTech and GovTech, here it is.

http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/whois.ch?ip=64.203.97.226

Guess who's owns the IP that GovTech's web site is on. YUP. SMARTtech. It's in the same network block as all the servers that run gwb43, and for all the same reasons looks like its run from servers in the same datacenter in Chattanooga.

I hope someone passes this info along to congressional investigators.

The New York Times reveals the latest outrage: White House counsel Fred Fielding insists that official work done on private servers -- even though done in violation of the law -- is covered by executive privilege! So even if Congress finds the stuff, they cannot read it.

Mr. Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, issued a tart reply: "The White House position seems to be that executive privilege not only applies in the Oval Office, but to the R.N.C. as well. There is absolutely no basis in law or fact for such a claim."

Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who is spearheading the Senate inquiry into the prosecutors’ dismissals, said the Fielding letter "can be summed up in three words: ‘We are stonewalling.’"

Back to GovTech: The company is run by Bush family friend Michael Connell (technically, it is a "woman-owned business" in his wife's name). Connell, we learn, is part of a larger concern: A "specialized online advertising agency" called Connell Donatelli, Inc..

Take a look at their clients: Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth. The American Center for Voting Rights (the fake 'votER fraud" propaganda outfit exposed by Brad Friedman), Katherine Harris, FrontPage Mag and a host of others -- including the Friends of Mark Foley and the Log Cabin Republicans (!)

Mike Connell does this kind of work with one hand, while, with the other, he does IT work for Congress and, it seems, the White House. Something about this does not sit right.

Remember the Bush and Victor Ashe "thing"?

On another site, a commentator said that it looks like the only thing that could destroy Bush at this point is an old fashioned sex scandal. He has tried every other sort of scandal, and he's still there.

Leola McConnell, that noted Domina (the term she prefers to "Dominatrix") from Las Vegas, claims that she can provide just that in her new book, Lustful Utterances. McConnell claims that she personally witnessed a tryst between George W. Bush and Victor Ashe, our current ambassador to Poland.

Bush and Ashe were roommates together at Yale. And they were both male cheerleaders. Have I ever mentioned that before?

I've been trying to land an interview with McConnell, but she is playing a bit coy. She did send me the following, vis-a-vis Ann Coulter's infamous "faggot" remark:

If she [Ann Coulter] wants to have a conversation so badly about buggery, she needs to go over to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and have a sit down with the Decider in Chief and the American Ambassador to Poland [Victor Ashe] about the F word. He [Bush] knows a lot about buggery I can assure you. Little anorexic Annie needs her head slapped in a circle. I recall some guy tossed a pie at her, she looked like she was going to s**** herself from fright. Where was all that clever conversation she's so famous for then?

The image of Leola slapping Ann's head in a circle is -- you must admit -- kind of funny. Please understand: I am sure that she meant these words poetically; this blog does not advocate violence.

As for the Bush-Ashe accusation (which Leola is hardly the only one to make): The issue is not whether I believe it or you believe it -- but whether she (or anyone else) can deliver the details which will make a wide public believe it.

GovTech, GWB43 and the White House

I have a juicy new piece on another site about GovTech and the White House email controversy.

I've been hesitant to focus too heavily on GovTech, run by Bush family friend Mike Connell, whose IT enterprises straddle the "firewall" separating private from public. Although ePluribus Media has placed a great deal of emphasis on Connell and his enterprises (see here and here), I have yet to see hard evidence linking any of his firms with SmarTech. We know that SmarTech can be traced to the GWB43.com domain.

But.

The GovTech story has just become very, very interesting. In this story, I note that a NewMedia web page lists GovTech as a "partner" business. (NewMedia is Connell's "other" business.) There is a link to GovTech and a brief description of what they do.

That description reveals that GovTech has set up "complex internet communications" for the White House.

Hello...?

So far, no other published account has mentioned any work done by GovTech for the White House. In fact, the White House is never mentioned on the company's site! (At least, I could find no such reference.) Congress, yes; the Department of Energy, yes; various state governments, yes. But not the White House.

Looks to me like GovTech may have scrubbed all reference to the White House from its site. If so, they forgot to rewrite the NewMedia site.

I theorize that the rewrite occurred when Patrick Fitzgerald tried to acquire emails relevant to the Plame inquiry in 2004-2006.

CREW has just revealed that no less than FIVE MILLION emails may have been scrubbed. (See the full CREW report here.) What does Mike Connell, Bush loyalist, know about this?

Oops! (Added note)

GWB43 -- the "Oops" excuse: Did we call the shot or what?

The White House said Wednesday it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mails concerning official White House business.

We knew it would happen. And now it has happened. The Oops story has already evinced hundreds of comments on Kos, some of which are quite amusing and incisive. My own reaction to the Oops excuse can be reduced to one word:

BULLSHIT!

But hey -- why stop with computergate? Why not try to Oops your way out of responsibility for the war?

Niger forgeries -- the "Oops" excuse: On another site, I offer my response to the rather simplistic ABC News story that a little Googling could have exposed the Niger forgeries and avoided war. My piece is long and yet not nearly long enough, since it tries to summarize in a short space the work of Larisa Alexandrovna, Peter Eisner, and La Repubblica.

An impossible task, that. Woody Allen once offered a three-word precis of War and Peace: "It's about Russia." If only Niger-gate were that easy...

Added note: Kos now features a name-the-scandal contest for GWB43 addicts. My entry, "computergate," has a mere three votes at this writing. The leader is "e-gate" (ho-hum) at ten votes and "Secret Servers" at nine. I think "Secret Servers" is really funny, but I just can't see it making the newscasts, and people will mis-hear it as "Secret Service." Vote for computergate!

Fraud, scandal and murder

Top that headline! This is one of those days when I must play traffic cop. My job is to point out where to go.

Vote fraud and votER fraud: Larisa Alexandrovna (who, I am happy to note, has received good news from her doctor) has compiled a map-o-scandal worthy of your study.

The Carol Lam firing: Daniel Hopsicker has a new piece that'll set your head spinning like Linda Blair on a Tilt-A-Whirl. He has uncovered a Carol Lam quote which pretty much confirms that the fired prosecutor had intended to bring charges against another big fish.

He also points out a matter of timing that had never before occurred to me. As those of you who nosed your way through the prosecutorgate document dump may recall, Rep. Ric Keller (Republican of Florida) started to lay the groundwork for a "soft on immigration" charge against Lam back in May of 2006. As it happens, he did so right after Lam started to bring her inquiry to the CIA's doorstep:

When she informed superiors she was taking her corruption probe to the doorstep of the Central Intelligence Agency, notifying them on May 10, 2006 of the imminent arrival of FBI agents at Dusty Foggo’s Washington D.C. home to execute a search warrant, alarm bells went off all over Washington D.C.

Never in the CIA’s history has such a search warrant been issued against a high-level CIA official for non-espionage criminal conduct.

Keller, we learn, has had financial ties to both Jack Abramoff and Adam Kidan.

Hopsicker also has some interesting new points to make about the infamous murders of Kevin Ives and Don Henry -- the Arkansas "train deaths." This mystery may or may not be related to the Cunningham scandal (frankly, I think Daniel is straining a bit too much for connective tissue here), but it sure is fascinating in its own right.

Nick Berg redux: "Nick Possum," the famed investigator Down Under, has whipped up a fascinating new theory concerning the death of Nick Berg, the U.S. contractor with the unusual history who was murdered on camera, allegedly by Zarqawi himself. (Although we later were told -- very briefly, in one of those vanishing news squibs -- that the killers were captured and had nothing to do with either Z-man or Al Qaeda.)

While I never agreed with those who argued that the execution was faked, I always felt that a strange odor pervaded this affair. Berg's previous encounter (in Oklahoma) with Zacarias Moussaoui, along with other clues, set me to thinking that he may have dabbled in espionage. See my previous pieces here, here, and here.

Nick Possum looks at the Berg affair through an unusual lens:

The case of Donald Vance, an American citizen secretly imprisoned by the US military in Iraq after making accusations against an Iraqi-owned security company for which he worked, has revealing parallels with the 2004 disappearance of Nick Berg, a US contractor whose murder is officially attributed to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

More:

Vance is a US Navy veteran who signed on with an Iraqi-owned security company based in Baghdad. He and a fellow-worker, Nathan Ertel, came to suspect that the company was involved in illegal arms dealing “and other nefarious activity”.
He contends that he fell foul of the Occupation military authorities because he shared this information with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. According to David Phinney:

Vance claims that during the months leading up to his arrest, he worked as an unpaid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sometimes twice a day, he would share information with an agent in Chicago about the Iraqi-owned Shield Group Security, whose principals and managers appeared to be involved in weapons deals and violence against Iraqi civilians. One company employee regularly bartered alcohol with U.S. military personnel in exchange for ammunition they delivered …

Vance and Ertel barricaded themselves in their office after the Iraqi firm confiscated their ID tags. They were rescued by US soldiers and taken back to the Green Zone. There they were arrested and held, secretly, for three months. They were systematically mistreated and tortured with very loud music.

Possum argues that Vance fell victim to a turf war between our "official" intelligence agencies and the not-quite-official spook networks set up by the neocons.

Moreover, what happened to Vance may be what happened to Berg -- who was photographed in an Abu Ghraib-style orange jumpsuit, sitting in surroundings that bore a striking resemblance to the images that came out of that notorious prison.

The 911 investigator Michael Wright unearthed evidence supporting the view that Berg was working under CIA supervision at OU [University of Oklahoma], perhaps spying on some of the alleged 911 hijackers who were living nearby at the time. Whatever the truth of this, suspicion must arise that Nick Berg was a part-time CIA operative and/or FBI informant.