Protecting America from Ebola

2014-10-12:

Some options for protecting America from arrival of Ebola,
moving from the least drastic to the most drastic action:

1. No screening.
   Do nothing special,
   relying on screening of departing passengers in African airports
   and the public health system in the U.S.
   to treat such cases as may arrive.
   This was the approach of the Obama administration until Monday, October 6,
   when Obama announced that screenings of incoming passengers
   would begin at five airports in the near future.
2. Screening for symptoms.
   Screen arriving passengers,
   but only for the external signs that suggest the person has Ebola.
   This is the approach of the Obama administration
   starting soon after Monday, 2014-10-06.
3. Testing for the virus.
   Test all arriving travelers from the Ebola area for Ebola.
   Let them continue on their way while their tests are being evaluated,
   but have them provide contact information
   so they can be contacted if the tests show they have it.
   That would enable persons who test positive for the virus,
   but are not yet showing symptoms,
   to be isolated before they begin to potentially transmit the disease.
4. Quarantine travelers until their status is confirmed.
   Quarantine all travelers from the Ebola area until the first of:
   a) a test for Ebola shows they definitely do not have it, or
   b) sufficient time passes (currently around 21 days)
   to show they do not have it.
   I have discussed this option in detail on a separate web pagee.
5. Non-essential travel ban.
   Only allow incoming passengers from the Ebola area
   who are necessary for fighting the outbreak over there.
6. Total travel ban.
   Ban all arrivals from the Ebola area.

---

Testing for Ebola

As of 2014-10-12, a CDC web page contained the following:

DIAGNOSIS:
Diagnosing Ebola in an person who has been infected for only a few days is difficult, because the early symptoms, such as fever, are nonspecific to Ebola infection and are seen often in patients with more commonly occurring diseases, such as malaria and typhoid fever.

However, if a person has the early symptoms of Ebola and has had contact with the blood or body fluids of a person sick with Ebola, contact with objects that have been contaminated with the blood or body fluids of a person sick with Ebola, or contact with infected animals, they should be isolated and public health professionals notified.
Samples from the patient can then be collected and tested to confirm infection.

---

[My thought: Why not do this testing on
all persons arriving in America from the Ebola zone?]

---

Miscellaneous Articles

2014-10-15-WP-dulles-airport-outlines-ebola-screenings-for-those-coming-from-3-west-african-nations

Ebola screening for some at Dulles detailed
By Lori Aratani
Washington Post 2014-10-15

2014-10-21-NYT-CDC-issues-new-guidelines

C.D.C. Issues New Guidelines for Ebola Care
by Donald G. McNeil, Jr.
New York Times, 2014-10-21

[Oddly, this significant article,
which appeared on page A14 of the Washington and New York print editions,
does not seem to be at the nytimes.com web site
as of 2014-10-22 1830EDT]

Federal officials announced new guidelines on Monday evening for the protection of hospital workers caring for patients infected with Ebola -- guidelines that might have prevented the infection of two nurses had they been in place a month ago.

The new guidelines, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, follow broad revisions announced just last week. The new recommendations provide considerably more detail, however, and have been reviewed by specialists at American hospitals that have successfully cared for Ebola patients.

The procedures are based on the very strict protocols used for years by Doctors Without Borders, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the C.D.C.'s executive director, said during an unusual late-evening telephone news conference. That organization also reviewed the new guidelines, he said.

They are voluntary, not required by law.

Among other changes, the guidelines say that no skin should be left uncovered; that street clothes and shoes should be replaced with waterproof fabric and boots; and that every step of putting on and taking off equipment must be done under the eyes of a supervisor whose job is to prevent mistakes.

The revamped guidelines, posted on the C.D.C. website, represent the agency's recognition that Ebola victims require precautions quite different from those for patients with airborne diseases like SARS, MERS, avian flu or tuberculosis.

Ebola patients have never been proven to infect others by coughing or sneezing, but they emit copious amounts of highly infectious vomit, blood and diarrhea, so it is crucial that not even a speck of it get into a medical worker's eyes, mouth, nose or cuts.

The most difficult and dangerous part of the process, experts agree, is removing safety gear when its surfaces are covered with infectious particles.

There are some differences between the new guidelines, intended for American hospitals, and those of Doctors Without Borders, which tends Ebola patients in makeshift field hospitals in Africa, some of which are tents built on open ground.

For example, Dr. Frieden said, in Africa it is possible to disinfect workers with a sprayed chlorine solution as they stand in a gravel pit. But that would create slippery puddles in hospital corridors, so the guidelines now recommend bleach wipes.

Since the nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital were infected after treating a man who died of Ebola, there has been a great deal of finger-pointing.

Dr. Frieden had said some hospital staff members had not followed protocols. The nurses' union replied that the hospital had no protocols, had given no training, and had forced staff to work in gear that left skin exposed.

Hospital officials said they had followed C.D.C. protocols, but those turned out to be inadequate and outdated, designed to prevent routine infections and airborne diseases. For example, under them, workers could wear only one set of gloves, leave their heads and necks uncovered, and wear street clothes and shoes that could become soaked with lethal fluids.

Last week, the C.D.C. issued a preliminary one-page summary of changes it recommended; they included waterproof head-to-toe garments and supervised removal of gear. Agency officials said they would announce the details soon -- which they did Monday evening.

Over this past weekend, as hospitals waited, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, appeared on several TV news shows to discuss the administration's Ebola response, which included the appointment of an "Ebola czar."

Dr. Fauci has been on television hundreds of times since the 1980s, when he became the face of the government's response to the AIDS epidemic, and it appeared that the administration was tentatively using him as its top medical spokesman in Dr. Frieden's place.

Dr. Frieden has been heavily criticized in public and in Congress for saying that virtually any American hospital could handle an Ebola patient.

In fact, his answers to this question had been more nuanced, explaining that any hospital with a properly trained staff could treat patients without needing isolation rooms with negative pressure airlocks and other gear that make them resemble a space station more than a field hospital.

In answer to questions over the weekend from news anchors, Dr. Fauci said the C.D.C.'s old guidelines had been based on those issued by the World Health Organization and were meant for use "in the field, in the bush" rather than in a modern hospital.

In fact, W.H.O. guidelines are far more strict, although not quite as rigorous as those of Doctors Without Borders. The W.H.O. guidelines do mandate supervised gear removal, rubber aprons and boots, extra gloves and other steps.

In an interview on Monday, Dr. Fauci said that personal protective gear was not his specialty, and that he had been told by C.D.C. officials that their old guidelines were based on the W.H.O.'s.

Some critics claimed that his remark that W.H.O. guidelines were suitable "in the bush" implied that he felt African nurses needed less protection than American ones, because they were somehow expendable.

That was not remotely his intent, Dr. Fauci said. He said he meant that the desperate measures that advanced hospitals have tried on Ebola patients -- such as dialysis, intubation, arterial puncture and rectal drainage tubes -- can produce gushes of dangerous fluids while nurses are close and vulnerable.

Doctors Without Borders protocols do call for doing as few risky procedures as possible, including even drawing blood as seldom as is medically necessary.

2014-10-26-WP-Chertoff-the-case-for-suspending-us-visas-in-ebola-affected-countries

The case for suspending U.S. visas in Ebola-affected countries
By Michael Chertoff
Washington Post Op-Ed, 2014-10-26

Michael Chertoff was secretary of homeland security from 2005 to 2009 and is co-founder and executive chairman of the Chertoff Group, a security and risk-management firm.

[1]
As alarm mounts over the spread of Ebola,
many are concerned that
screening travelers who arrive in the United States from West Africa
is not sufficiently protective
because it will not identify those who carry the virus
but are not yet symptomatic.
Yet over the past two weeks,
the Obama administration and supportive experts
saturated the media with the argument that
any comprehensive travel restrictions aimed at Ebola-infested regions
would be pointless and even counterproductive.

[2]
No doubt the experts who reject travel bans
understand disease and epidemiology.
But their arguments demonstrate less understanding of
how we manage risk in the context of border and travel security.
In fact,
restriction of U.S. travel visas
for residents of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone —
the three countries in which Ebola is out of control —
could reduce the risk of significant disease import into the United States
without hampering efforts to assist those nations in combating the illness.

[3]
During my time as U.S. homeland security secretary,
we planned extensively for the possibility of a global pandemic —
specifically, mutated avian influenza.
If that virus had achieved efficient human-to-human transmission,
it would have rapidly globalized,
and closing borders would have had little lasting impact.
Simply put, it is difficult to shut out the entire world.

[4]
But Ebola is not a highly efficient contagion.
For months, the vast majority of cases have been concentrated in
Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
There, the disease is still uncontrolled
due to inadequate medical infrastructure
and family-oriented medical and burial customs.
As demonstrated by the tragic case of Thomas Eric Duncan,
the Liberian man who died of Ebola in Dallas,
there is a real risk that people who
come into contact with a contagious individual in these countries
could bring the disease to the United States.

[5]
Unlike in a global pandemic,
it is possible to reduce the risk of Ebola importation
by suspending all but essential travel to the United States
from just those three nations.
The government simply has to suspend travel visas
for citizens and residents of those nations.

[6]
Contrary to administration warnings, this does not mean
impeding the travel of essential medical personnel to the region
to help stamp out the epidemic at its source.
Trained medical and other aid experts should be supported in going to West Africa,
but as the lesson of New York doctor Craig Spencer makes clear,
they need to be more closely monitored in country and upon their return.
In particular, they should be restricted in returning to medical or other work
involving close physical contact with others in the United States
until they are cleared of any risk of infection.

[7]

Equally misguided is the contention by Thomas Frieden,
head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
that a visa suspension would drive affected travelers underground,
leading them to sneak into the United States
unscreened and unmonitored.
Whether a Liberian flies to Europe
or drives across Africa to an airport in an unaffected country,
he or she would still have to present a Liberian passport
to board a plane to the United States.
At that point, a visa suspension would result in a denial of boarding.

Nor is it realistic to fear that
our hypothetical traveler would sneak across our land borders.
First, we can and should
coordinate a visa suspension with Canada and Mexico.
Second, smugglers are unlikely to welcome migrants
who may be physically unfit to make an arduous trip
while posing a threat to the safety of the smugglers themselves.

[8]
To be sure, it is possible to conjure scenarios in which
foreign citizens denied visas forge passports from other nations.
But in the wake of the 9/11 attacks,
we and other countries substantially upgraded anti-counterfeiting protections
that can be easily adapted to detect those who seek to evade travel restrictions.

[9]
Of course, the visa suspension I suggest would not guarantee that
no Ebola sufferer would enter the United States.
But health officials, of all people,
should not argue that protective measures are unwarranted
unless they are 100 percent effective.
Public health professionals continually urge us to eat right,
get checkups and engage in other preventive behavior to reduce illness rates,
even if those rates cannot be driven to zero.
Travel restrictions
that reduce the number of Thomas Duncans traveling to the United States
are the kind of prudent risk management
that health experts applaud in other contexts.

[10]
I don’t doubt the sincerity of health officials who assure us that
we will not likely see a major Ebola outbreak in the United States.
[A key word there is "likely".
There are numerous plausible scenarios under which
just that is possible.
Specifically, what if a large number of Ebola-infected travelers enter the U.S.
before they begin showing sysmptoms?
I.e., dozens or scores of Thomas Duncans?
I can see nothing that has been done, as of 2014-11-01, to rule out that possibility.
Further, consider the argument that
people infected with Ebola but not yet showing symptoms
cannot transmit the virus.
Even if that is totally true,
what about the possibility that
the first symptom exhibited
is vomiting Ebola-carrying vomit over their companions,
or over a public carriage?]
But after the mishandling of the few cases we have had —
including allowing an infected nurse to travel by air —
we are close to a crisis of confidence.
A few more bungles and we will see significant numbers of people
canceling trips, closing schools and staying home from work.
The essence of effective public crisis management is
bold and aggressive action demonstrating that leaders are in control of events,
not reacting in a halting and belated fashion.
Targeted visa suspension is one of several steps urgently needed.

Traitor U.S. officials reveal NSA sources and methods

2015

2015-12-30-WSJ-u-s-spy-net-on-israel-snares-congress

U.S. Spy Net on Israel Snares Congress
NSA’s targeting of Israeli leaders
swept up the content of private conversations with U.S. lawmakers
By Adam Entous and Danny Yadron
Wall Street Journal, 2015-12-30 (in WSJ Washington print edition, page A1)

President Barack Obama announced two years ago he would curtail eavesdropping on friendly heads of state after the world learned the reach of long-secret U.S. surveillance programs.

But behind the scenes, the White House decided to keep certain allies under close watch, current and former U.S. officials said. Topping the list was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The U.S., pursuing a nuclear arms agreement with Iran at the time, captured communications between Mr. Netanyahu and his aides that inflamed mistrust between the two countries and planted a political minefield at home when Mr. Netanyahu later took his campaign against the deal to Capitol Hill.

The National Security Agency’s targeting of Israeli leaders and officials also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups. That raised fears—an “Oh-s— moment,” one senior U.S. official said—that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress.

White House officials believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign. They also recognized that asking for it was politically risky. So, wary of a paper trail stemming from a request, the White House let the NSA decide what to share and what to withhold, officials said. “We didn’t say, ‘Do it,’ ” a senior U.S. official said. “We didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’ ”

Stepped-up NSA eavesdropping revealed to the White House how Mr. Netanyahu and his advisers had leaked details of the U.S.-Iran negotiations—learned through Israeli spying operations—to undermine the talks; coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal; and asked undecided lawmakers what it would take to win their votes, according to current and former officials familiar with the intercepts.

Before former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed much of the agency’s spying operations in 2013, there was little worry in the administration about the monitoring of friendly heads of state because it was such a closely held secret. After the revelations and a White House review, Mr. Obama announced in a January 2014 speech he would curb such eavesdropping.

In closed-door debate, the Obama administration weighed which allied leaders belonged on a so-called protected list, shielding them from NSA snooping. French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders made the list, but the administration permitted the NSA to target the leaders’ top advisers, current and former U.S. officials said. Other allies were excluded from the protected list, including Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of NATO ally Turkey, which allowed the NSA to spy on their communications at the discretion of top officials.

Privately, Mr. Obama maintained the monitoring of Mr. Netanyahu on the grounds that it served a “compelling national security purpose,” according to current and former U.S. officials. Mr. Obama mentioned the exception in his speech but kept secret the leaders it would apply to.

Israeli, German and French government officials declined to comment on NSA activities. Turkish officials didn’t respond to requests Tuesday for comment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the NSA declined to comment on communications provided to the White House.

This account, stretching over two terms of the Obama administration,
is based on
interviews with more than two dozen
current and former U.S. intelligence and administration officials
and
reveals for the first time the extent of American spying on the Israeli prime minister.

[My comment:
Why on earth would those U.S. officials want to reveal this,
unless their goal was to stop future such surveillance activities?
In other words, the officials who revealed this are traitors,
helping Israel and hurting the United States.]

---

Taking office

After Mr. Obama’s 2008 presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials gave his national-security team a one-page questionnaire on priorities. Included on the form was a box directing intelligence agencies to focus on “leadership intentions,” a category that relies on electronic spying to monitor world leaders.

The NSA was so proficient at monitoring heads of state that it was common for the agency to deliver a visiting leader’s talking points to the president in advance. “Who’s going to look at that box and say, ‘No, I don’t want to know what world leaders are saying,’ ” a former Obama administration official said.

In early intelligence briefings, Mr. Obama and his top advisers were told what U.S. spy agencies thought of world leaders, including Mr. Netanyahu, who at the time headed the opposition Likud party.

Michael Hayden, who led the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency during the George W. Bush administration, described the intelligence relationship between the U.S. and Israel as “the most combustible mixture of intimacy and caution that we have.”

The NSA helped Israel expand its electronic spy apparatus—known as signals intelligence—in the late 1970s. The arrangement gave Israel access to the communications of its regional enemies, information shared with the U.S. Israel’s spy chiefs later suspected the NSA was tapping into their systems.

When Mr. Obama took office, the NSA and its Israeli counterpart, Unit 8200, worked together against shared threats, including a campaign to sabotage centrifuges for Iran’s nuclear program. At the same time, the U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies targeted one another, stoking tensions.

“Intelligence professionals have a saying: There are no friendly intelligence services,” said Mike Rogers, former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Early in the Obama presidency, for example, Unit 8200 gave the NSA a hacking tool the NSA later discovered also told Israel how the Americans used it. It wasn’t the only time the NSA caught Unit 8200 poking around restricted U.S. networks. Israel would say intrusions were accidental, one former U.S. official said, and the NSA would respond, “Don’t worry. We make mistakes, too.”

In 2011 and 2012, the aims of Messrs. Netanyahu and Obama diverged over Iran. Mr. Netanyahu prepared for a possible strike against an Iranian nuclear facility, as Mr. Obama pursued secret talks with Tehran without telling Israel.

Convinced Mr. Netanyahu would attack Iran without warning the White House, U.S. spy agencies ramped up their surveillance, with the assent of Democratic and Republican lawmakers serving on congressional intelligence committees.

By 2013, U.S. intelligence agencies determined Mr. Netanyahu wasn’t going to strike Iran. But they had another reason to keep watch. The White House wanted to know if Israel had learned of the secret negotiations. U.S. officials feared Iran would bolt the talks and pursue an atomic bomb if news leaked.

The NSA had, in some cases, spent decades placing electronic implants in networks around the world to collect phone calls, text messages and emails. Removing them or turning them off in the wake of the Snowden revelations would make it difficult, if not impossible, to re-establish access in the future, U.S. intelligence officials warned the White House.

Instead of removing the implants, Mr. Obama decided to shut off the NSA’s monitoring of phone numbers and email addresses of certain allied leaders—a move that could be reversed by the president or his successor.

There was little debate over Israel. “Going dark on Bibi? Of course we wouldn’t do that,” a senior U.S. official said, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname.

One tool was a cyber implant in Israeli networks that gave the NSA access to communications within the Israeli prime minister’s office.

[Again, why on earth, why in God's name,
would a loyal U.S. citizen reveal the existence of such an implant, if it exists?
If it does, and if they have revealed it,
this information surely gives Israel the knowledge and incentive to find the implant and remove it,
or even worse,
use it to send disinformation and misinformation back to the U.S.
In either case,
there can be no clearer example of revealing "sources and methods",
the revealing of which is prima facie treason.]

Given the appetite for information about Mr. Netanyahu’s intentions during the U.S.-Iran negotiations, the NSA tried to send updates to U.S. policy makers quickly, often in less than six hours after a notable communication was intercepted, a former official said.

---

Emerging deal

NSA intercepts convinced the White House last year that Israel was spying on negotiations under way in Europe. Israeli officials later denied targeting U.S. negotiators, saying they had won access to U.S. positions by spying only on the Iranians.

By late 2014, White House officials knew Mr. Netanyahu wanted to block the emerging nuclear deal but didn’t know how.

On Jan. 8, John Boehner, then the Republican House Speaker, and incoming Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed on a plan. They would invite Mr. Netanyahu to deliver a speech to a joint session of Congress. A day later, Mr. Boehner called Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador, to get Mr. Netanyahu’s agreement.

Despite NSA surveillance, Obama administration officials said they were caught off guard when Mr. Boehner announced the invitation on Jan. 21.

Soon after, Israel’s lobbying campaign against the deal went into full swing on Capitol Hill, and it didn’t take long for administration and intelligence officials to realize the NSA was sweeping up the content of conversations with lawmakers.

The message to the NSA from the White House amounted to: “You decide” what to deliver, a former intelligence official said.

NSA rules governing intercepted communications “to, from or about” Americans date back to the Cold War and require obscuring the identities of U.S. individuals and U.S. corporations. An American is identified only as a “U.S. person” in intelligence reports; a U.S. corporation is identified only as a “U.S. organization.” Senior U.S. officials can ask for names if needed to understand the intelligence information.

The rules were tightened in the early 1990s to require that intelligence agencies inform congressional committees when a lawmaker’s name was revealed to the executive branch in summaries of intercepted communications.

A 2011 NSA directive said direct communications between foreign intelligence targets and members of Congress should be destroyed when they are intercepted. But the NSA director can issue a waiver if he determines the communications contain “significant foreign intelligence.”

The NSA has leeway to collect and disseminate intercepted communications involving U.S. lawmakers if, for example, foreign ambassadors send messages to their foreign ministries that recount their private meetings or phone calls with members of Congress, current and former officials said.

“Either way, we got the same information,” a former official said, citing detailed reports prepared by the Israelis after exchanges with lawmakers.

During Israel’s lobbying campaign in the months before the deal cleared Congress in September, the NSA removed the names of lawmakers from intelligence reports and weeded out personal information. The agency kept out “trash talk,” officials said, such as personal attacks on the executive branch.

Administration and intelligence officials said the White House didn’t ask the NSA to identify any lawmakers during this period.

“From what I can tell, we haven’t had a problem with how incidental collection has been handled concerning lawmakers,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He declined to comment on any specific communications between lawmakers and Israel.

The NSA reports allowed administration officials to peer inside
Israeli efforts to turn Congress against the deal.
Mr. Dermer was described as coaching unnamed U.S. organizations—
which officials could tell from the context were Jewish-American groups—
on lines of argument to use with lawmakers,
and Israeli officials were reported pressing lawmakers to oppose the deal.

[Of course, if U.S. officials try to influence Israeli politics,
American Jews get outraged.
In my opinion, the Jewish majority is totally hypocritical about this and so many other matters,
such as immigration ("Good for the U.S., bad for Israel.").]

“These allegations are total nonsense,” said a spokesman for the Embassy of Israel in Washington.

A U.S. intelligence official familiar with the intercepts said Israel’s pitch to undecided lawmakers often included such questions as: “How can we get your vote? What’s it going to take?”

NSA intelligence reports helped the White House figure out which Israeli government officials had leaked information from confidential U.S. briefings. When confronted by the U.S., Israel denied passing on the briefing materials.

The agency’s goal was “to give us an accurate illustrative picture of what [the Israelis] were doing,” a senior U.S. official said.

Just before Mr. Netanyahu’s address to Congress in March, the NSA swept up Israeli messages that raised alarms at the White House: Mr. Netanyahu’s office wanted details from Israeli intelligence officials about the latest U.S. positions in the Iran talks, U.S. officials said.

A day before the speech, Secretary of State John Kerry made an unusual disclosure. Speaking to reporters in Switzerland, Mr. Kerry said he was concerned Mr. Netanyahu would divulge “selective details of the ongoing negotiations.”

The State Department said Mr. Kerry was responding to Israeli media reports that Mr. Netanyahu wanted to use his speech to make sure U.S. lawmakers knew the terms of the Iran deal.

Intelligence officials said the media reports allowed the U.S. to put Mr. Netanyahu on notice without revealing they already knew his thinking. The prime minister mentioned no secrets during his speech to Congress.

In the final months of the campaign, NSA intercepts yielded few surprises. Officials said the information reaffirmed what they heard directly from lawmakers and Israeli officials opposed to Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign—that the prime minister was focused on building opposition among Democratic lawmakers.

The NSA intercepts, however, revealed one surprise.
Mr. Netanyahu and some of his allies voiced confidence they could win enough votes.

[End of article.]

2015-12-29-WSJ-the-cold-war-era-rules-designed-to-protect-u-s-lawmakers-communications

The Cold War-Era Rules Designed to Protect U.S. Lawmakers’ Communications
By Adam Entous and Danny Yadron
Wall Street Journal, 2015-12-29

...

Special safeguards for lawmakers, dubbed the “Gates Rule,”
were put in place starting in the 1990s.
Robert Gates, who headed the Central Intelligence Agency from 1991 to 1993,
and later went on to be President Barack Obama‘s Defense Secretary,
required intelligence agencies
to notify the leaders of the congressional intelligence committees
whenever a lawmaker’s identity was revealed to an executive branch official.

[Duh, the intelligence agencies ARE part of the executive branch.
Maybe they mean White House official?]

...

2015-12-30-oversight-house-gov-Letter-to-DIRNSA-Rogers

Letter from the House Oversight Committee to DIRNSA Michael Rogers
House Oversight Committee, 2015-12-30

2015-12-31-WSJ-some-senior-u-s-officials-not-comfortable-with-obamas-curbs-on-nsa-spying-on-leaders

Some Senior U.S. Officials Not Comfortable With Obama’s Curbs on NSA Spying on Leaders
Advisers voice concerns that critical pieces of information could be missed
By Adam Entous and Danny Yadron
Wall Street Journal, 2015-12-31

President Barack Obama’s decision two years ago to limit the National Security Agency’s spying on certain allied heads of state didn’t sit well with some advisers, who worried that critical pieces of information could be missed, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Stung by disclosures in 2013 about the scope of the spy agency’s operations and under diplomatic pressure to respond, Mr. Obama settled on a revamped system. Certain allies, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande, were added to a so-called protected list, making their communications off-limits to the NSA. As a workaround, however, the White House authorized the NSA to target the communications of a select group of those leaders’ top advisers.

Senior intelligence officials weren’t entirely comfortable with those changes, even in apparently cut-and-dried cases, including the decision to stop spying on the world leaders closest to Mr. Obama.

A Wall Street Journal article published Tuesday revealed how the U.S.’s spying regime devised after the 2013 revelations of NSA contractor Edward Snowden prohibited eavesdropping on some world leaders but allowed the NSA to target others, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In the case of Ms. Merkel, U.S. intelligence veterans feared losing access to her private communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin. They also questioned the wisdom of the move, especially given their belief that the intelligence agencies of many close U.S. allies, including Germany’s BND federal intelligence service, spy on the White House.

At the time, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned about the dangers of tying the intelligence community’s hands. He warned that the administration was asking for what he termed “immaculate collection,” meaning they wanted the information without getting their hands dirty, according to officials.

Top Israeli officials, in response, on Wednesday said the country could file a formal protest with the White House. Yisrael Katz, Israel’s intelligence and transport minister, said if the spying claims were found to be true, Israel would demand the U.S. immediately cease surveillance.

Spokesmen for Mr. Netanyahu and Israel’s foreign ministry declined to comment on whether Israel would lodge a formal protest. Current and former U.S. officials have long singled out Israel as an ally that spies aggressively on the U.S., a charge the Israelis deny.

[Never heard of Jonathan Pollard?
What a bunch of shameless liars these people are.]

Along with capturing the communications of Israeli officials, the spying swept up details about their lobbying campaign in Congress, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the intercepts.

The chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.), said Wednesday his panel was looking into allegations contained in the Journal article and said the committee had requested additional information from the intelligence agencies “to determine which, if any, of these allegations are true, and whether the [intelligence agencies] followed all applicable laws, rules, and procedures.”

[My view: Thank God somebody is keeping an eye on the ZOG.]

...

The NSA started eavesdropping on the communications of friendly heads of state long before Mr. Obama came to office in 2009.

The spy agency zeroed in on Ms. Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, when he was chancellor around 2002 in response to his government’s opposition to then-President George W. Bush’s plans to invade Iraq, former U.S. officials say.

When Ms. Merkel took over in Germany, there was little hand-wringing about whether to target her. “The machinery was in place. The machinery never stops,” a former Bush administration official said.

...

Under the new regime that emerged, once a leader was added to the protected list, spying on his or her direct communications was off limits. Restarting monitoring required a consensus among the White House National Security Council, the intelligence services and other government agencies, according to current and former officials.

At the urging of his intelligence advisers, Mr. Obama agreed to keep in place around the world eavesdropping implants—the specific tools that enabled some of the eavesdropping—including in countries where leaders’ communications were protected.

Mr. Obama decided instead to remove so-called selectors, which are the email addresses and phone numbers of NSA targets. Officials said such a move would allow Mr. Obama and his successors to easily adjust the list of targets.

[Again, why on earth are these traitors blabbing such obviously "sources and methods" information?
Why does the DOJ not investigate and prosecute those who are leaking sources and methods?]

...

Ms. Merkel’s protests about the NSA’s snooping raised hackles among U.S. intelligence officials because they believed the Germans were attempting to spy on the White House.

On one occasion, before the Snowden revelations, the BND inadvertently showed the NSA a target list meant for German eyes only, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials. On it, they said, were BND “selectors” for senior officials at the White House.

...

Barack Obama

2009

2009-06-01-Samuelson

The Obama Infatuation
By Robert J. Samuelson
Washington Post, 2009-06-01

2009-11-25-Pearlstein

Whose side is Obama on?
By Steven Pearlstein
Washington Post, 2009-11-25 (Wednesday)

2009-12-10-Walt-Nobel-Peace-Prize-speech

How about we just ignore Obama's Nobel Prize speech?
by Stephen M. Walt
walt.foreignpolicy.com, 2009-12-10

...

[T]he U.S. strategy [for Afghanistan] is still predicated on
the goal of creating an efficient centralized state in Afghanistan,
one that can field 400,000 well-trained and reliable troops and security forces,
even though this goal is at odds with
Afghanistan's political traditions
and takes little account of
the considerable ethnic divisions within the country.
It's like trying to build a pyramid with marbles,
and about as likely to succeed.

...

2009-12-18-Calhoun-Obama-Nobel-Peace-Prize-speech

Barack Obama’s Doublespeak “Peace” Speech
Laurie L. Calhoun
Independent Institute, 2009-12-18

2014

2014-05-22-CNN-nsa-obama-blackberry

'I made Obama's BlackBerry'
by Erica Fink
CNN Money, 2014-05-22

It was a rough day at the NSA in 2008 when President Obama asked for a smartphone.

"It just really bothered a lot of people -- nobody wanted to put anything out there that wasn't completely secure," said retired NSA technical director Richard "Dickie" George in an interview with CNNMoney.

George's role was to review the BlackBerry's algorithms and write and engineer diagrams for the phone.

In response to Obama's request, the NSA set up a lab where dozens of experts performed surgery for several months on a high-profile patient: the soon-to-be presidential BlackBerry. The course of treatment was to manipulate the device's innards to weed out potential threats to secure communication.

In the end, that meant taking most of the fun out of the phone: the president can't play Angry Birds, for example.

"You try to get rid of any functionality that's not really required. Every piece of functionality is an opportunity for the adversary," George says.

According to George, the president simply wanted a phone that enabled him to communicate with his advisers. Though the president was a well known BlackBerry (BBRY) addict at the time, the choice of smartphone model was the NSA's, not Obama's, George explained.

What functionality the president's phone actually possesses is secret -- and the NSA won't even confirm that he can use it to send a text or write an email (but it's a pretty safe bet it isn't used for Oval Office selfies).

"There was a change at that point in time from taking whatever the government could build in the way of security equipment ... to a guy who said, 'ya know, I'm used to using this, this is great, I've got to be able to take advantage of this," George said.

At the time there were only about ten phones that the president could contact directly on his device, but that didn't make the technology simple to develop. Both phones would either need to have the same encryption algorithms or use a gateway that would decrypt and encrypt the communications. That means the phones needed to speak the same secret language or have a translator fluent in both of their secret languages.

Of course, mobile devices existed long before 2008. George couldn't say for certain which other presidents used smartphones. But if any did, they weren't exactly something that could be carried in a pocket.

"You're talking, like a brick," George said. And if George W. Bush had one, "I'm betting he didn't know it was five pounds because I'm betting he didn't carry it."

Basically, if Bill Clinton or either President Bush had a cell phone, it was carried by a member of his entourage and looked like the one Zack Morris used on the 1990s sitcom, "Saved by The Bell."

Instead, George says, the secure device of choice from the '90s through early 2000s was the STU-III, or Secure Telephone Unit. These looked like regular telephones with a few extra phone lines connected.

George also had a hand in creating the famous "Red Phone" early in his career. The phone -- which was not actually red -- provided the president with a secure connection to the Kremlin in Moscow.

For the Red Phone, George's team determined the encryption algorithms.

"The problem [was]...we didn't want to put our best classified algorithm in, cause you're giving it to the Russians."

That is, it needed to be secure, but not too secure. It also needed to function properly every time the president picked it up.

"There's your real problem. What if he picks up that phone and it doesn't work? I'm not worried if he picks up a cell phone and it doesn't work -- we're going to get yelled at. But if he picks up the hotline and it doesn't work...".

So what does Dickie use for his personal communication? A BlackBerry. But he says when his contract is up, he'll probably switch.

2016

2016-04-Atlantic-Goldberg-the-obama-doctrine

The Obama Doctrine
The U.S. president talks through his hardest decisions about America’s role in the world.
by Jeffrey Goldberg
The Atlantic, 2016-04

Obama and fraud

[For general background on fraud in the health-care field,
see these non-Obama-specific references:
@Wikipedia: Health care fraud
@Wikipedia: Medicare fraud
www.stopmedicarefraud.gov/]

2013-07-25-CPI-Schulte-obamacare-oversight-among-health-watchdog-cuts

ObamaCare oversight among health watchdog cuts
by Fred Schulte
Center for Public Integrity, 2013-07-25

Budget squeeze, staff departures force HHS inspector general
to trim investigative targets

[What this indicates so clearly is how low combating fraud in the health care field is
in the priorities of the Obama administration,
and of Congress.]


...

The cuts are “deeply regrettable,” said Malcolm Sparrow,
a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and health fraud expert.
“We’d save a huge number of taxpayer dollars
by doubling the size of these operations.”

Sparrow said fraud artists are adept at quickly figuring out
how to exploit new health care initiatives
and that officials have an obligation to “stay ahead” of them.
“Otherwise three years from now we’ll be saying,
‘how could we not have predicted this mess?’ ”

Louis Saccoccio, chief executive officer of the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association,
said that OIG audits not only stem financial losses,
but also can protect patients from harm.
Money spent on these efforts “pays for itself many times over,”
he said in an email.

OIG officials contend their investigations typically return $8 for every dollar invested.
They reported fiscal 2012 expected recoveries of about $6.9 billion
and more than 1,100 criminal and civil investigations of individuals or health care businesses.

...

“OIG will not be able to keep pace with the ACA (Affordable Care Act) expansion,
maintain/expand our highly successful Medicare Fraud Strike Forces,
or keep pace with the expanding Medicare and Medicaid enrollment
and the expected need for growth to combat on-going health care fraud,”
an agency document states.

---

The following item tempts me to label this post "Obama: Fraud and Doubletalk",
since it so clearly represents both.
However, for simplicity, I stuck to just the fraud modifier.

2013-11-05-NYT-federal-health-law-may-not-be-a-federal-health-care-program

Strategic Move Exempts Health Law From Broader U.S. Statute
By ROBERT PEAR
New York Times, 2013-11-05

WASHINGTON —

The Affordable Care Act is the biggest new health care program in decades, but
the Obama administration has ruled that
neither the federal insurance exchange
nor the federal subsidies paid to insurance companies on behalf of low-income people
are “federal health care programs.”

The surprise decision, disclosed last week,
exempts subsidized health insurance from a law that bans
rebates, kickbacks, bribes and certain other financial arrangements in federal health programs,
stripping law enforcement of a powerful tool used to fight fraud in other health care programs, like Medicare.

The main purpose of the anti-kickback law,
as described by federal courts in scores of Medicare cases,
is to protect patients and taxpayers against
the undue influence of money on medical decisions.

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services,
disclosed her interpretation of the law in a letter to Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, who had asked her views.
She did not explain the legal rationale for her decision,
which followed a spirited debate within the administration.

Under the Affordable Care Act, millions of people will be able to buy insurance from “qualified health plans” offered on exchanges, or marketplaces,
run by the federal government and by some states.

Most of the buyers are expected to be eligible for subsidies to make insurance more affordable.
The subsidies, paid directly to insurers from the United States Treasury,
start in January and are expected to total more than $1 trillion over 10 years.

Ms. Sebelius said
the Health and Human Services Department
“does not consider” the subsidies to be federal health care programs.
She reached the same conclusion with respect to federal and state exchanges, built with federal money,
and with respect to “federally funded consumer assistance programs,”
including the counselors, known as navigators,
who help people shop for insurance and enroll in coverage through the exchanges.

...

Lawyers and law enforcement officials said Ms. Sebelius’s decision was unexpected
because the insurance exchanges and subsidy payments appeared to fit
the definition of federal health care programs in the anti-kickback statute.

Generally, the law makes it a crime to pay or receive anything of value
in return for the referral of patients
or as an inducement for people to buy goods and services reimbursed by federal health care programs.
Such programs are defined broadly as
“any plan or program that provides health benefits, whether directly,
through insurance, or otherwise,
which is funded directly, in whole or in part, by the United States government.”

“The secretary’s decision will have some very significant consequences,”
said D. McCarty Thornton, former chief counsel to the inspector general at the Health and Human Services Department.
“The federal anti-kickback statute will, in most cases,
not apply to subsidized health plans or the items and services furnished by those plans.”

“Plans and providers are very happy to be relieved of that concern,” Mr. Thornton added.

Kevin G. McAnaney, a lawyer who specializes in health care fraud and abuse cases,
said Ms. Sebelius’s decision would allow drug companies
to give coupons to people who buy insurance through the exchanges.

Such coupons subsidize co-payments and reduce out-of-pocket costs for consumers,
encouraging them to use certain brand-name prescription drugs
when lower-cost alternatives are available, Mr. McAnaney said.

The federal government has forbidden the use of drug coupons
in Medicare and other federal health programs,
saying they amount to a classic kickback scheme,
with drug companies paying consumers to use their products.

Mark Merritt, the president of the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, which represents benefit managers like Express Scripts and CVS Caremark, expressed a similar concern.
“The coupons steer consumers away from lower-cost alternatives
to more expensive drugs, increasing costs to insurers and to the government,” he said.

Coupons may drive down the co-payment for an expensive brand-name drug,
but often, the insurer must pay much more than it would for a generic version of the medication.

Some drug companies and their lawyers had assumed that
federal insurance subsidies were part of a federal health care program.

Drug coupons offered by Merck, for example,
say that they are not valid for patients covered by Medicare, Medicaid
or “any qualified health plan purchased through a health insurance exchange
established by a state government or the federal government.”

In a vivid demonstration of how the anti-kickback law can be applied,
the Justice Department announced on Monday that
Johnson & Johnson would pay more than $2.2 billion to resolve criminal and civil investigations.
The government said the company had, among other things,
paid kickbacks to doctors and nursing home pharmacies to promote the use of certain drugs.
The company said the payments were “lawful rebates.”

The National Health Council, which represents patients and drug companies,
praised Ms. Sebelius’s decision.
“People with chronic diseases and disabilities will be able to continue using
co-payment assistance programs,”
said Myrl Weinberg, the chief executive of the council.

Ms. Sebelius may not have the last word, lawyers said.
A whistle-blower could file suit under the False Claims Act,
charging that health care providers, health plans or drug makers
had defrauded the government,
and a federal court might then decide
whether the federal exchange or subsidy payments were federal health care programs.


[Obama = corruption]

Obama and technology

Shortly after President Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, he did two things that surprised me:
He accepted the resignations (which are demanded when a new president takes office) of the NASA administrator, Michael D. Griffin,, and the DARPA director, Anthony Tether.
Normally, NASA and DARPA are hardly co

The Obama (44) Administration

2008

2008-11-04-Giraldi

Obama's Neocon in Residence
by Philip Giraldi
Antiwar.com, 2008-11-04

[An excerpt; emphasis is added.]

[W]hat is really scary about a possible Obama administration is Dennis Ross.
Ross claims that he believes in diplomacy
and has even written a book on the subject,
though his one major foray in that area, Camp David in 2000,
demonstrated that
he was more interested in advancing Israeli interests
than he was in creating a viable peace with the Palestinians.
He was the architect of so-called “no surprises” negotiations
between the Palestinians and Israelis in which
all positions supported by the U.S.
had to be cleared by Israel
before they were even placed on the table.
If the Israelis said “no,” the U.S. would back down.
Ross was also one of the most vocal critics
of former Democratic President Jimmy Carter
after Carter wrote Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

...

Ross is a commentator for Fox News
and the Ziegler distinguished fellow at WINEP,
which he helped found in the 1980s.
He is also chairman of
the Jerusalem-based Jewish People Policy Planning Institute.
He would only be a spear-carrier in the latest neocon absurdity
if it weren’t for the fact that he is a major player in the Obama campaign
as Obama’s top adviser on the Middle East and a key link to AIPAC.
Ross reportedly has been helping the Obama campaign
formulate positions that AIPAC would be comfortable with.

2008-11-07-Raimondo

Forget the Honeymoon
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com, 2008-11-07

[Raimondo takes a horrified look at
who is being considered as policy-makers in the Obama administration.
Here is its initial two-thirds.]

[1]
When I hear talk of a “honeymoon“ for the President-elect –
to last as long as six months, by some accounts –
I think: “Fine. You lay off, and I’ll do the same.”
But oh no, it doesn’t work that way.
Obama has already started in on us,
and he hasn’t even taken the oath of office yet.
I’m talking about his appointments,
starting with Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff.

[2]
Hey, I thought we were going to be treated to a bipartisan approach by the Obama administration,
that he was going to “reach across the aisle” – what happened to that?
Señor Emanuel is known as a street-fightin’ Democrat,
and that’s understating it.
A Rolling Stone profile of Emanuel had this to say:

“There’s the story of how,
the night after Clinton was elected,
Emanuel was so angry at the president’s enemies
that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign,
grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting ‘Dead! . . . Dead! . . . Dead!’
and plunging the knife into the table after every name.
‘When he was done, the table looked like a lunar landscape,’
one campaign veteran recalls.
‘It was like something out of The Godfather.’ ”

[3]
He’s mean, he’s ultra-partisan,
and he’s a fully-paid up member in good standing of the War Party:
during the Democratic primaries in 2006,
when Emanuel headed up the Dems’ congressional operation,
he backed pro-war candidates over antiwar Democrats every time.
As Bill Safire put it on “Meet the Press” just before Tim Russert died:

“What about Rahm Emanuel [for Vice President],
the most powerful voice in the House of Representatives
that agrees with Hillary Clinton on foreign affairs?
He’s a hawk.
And although he’s a rootin’ tootin’ liberal on domestic affairs,
he is a hawk on foreign affairs.
I was at the – a roast for him for Epilepsy Association,
and Hillary Clinton was there,
and I said, quite frankly,
here you have the hawkish side of the Democratic Party.
If they get together, the bumper sticker will read
‘Invade and bomb with Hillary and Rahm.’ ”

[4]
When the House Democratic majority
passed a military appropriations bill slated for Iraq,
a clause that would have
prohibited an attack on Iran without a vote in Congress
was deleted at the instigation of Emanuel and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
When Rep. John Murtha presaged the popular rebellion against the Iraq war
by coming out against it in no uncertain terms,
Emanuel urged Pelosi to refrain from endorsing his call for withdrawal,
arguing that it would hurt the Democrats politically.

[5]
With the smiling face of Don Obama serving as a front
for the knife-wielding Emanuel and his “legendary intensity” –
as Rolling Stone writer Joshua Green puts it –
one has to wonder:
what (or who) else does the Prez-elect have in store for us?

---

[6]
The answer is: Jane Harman – as head of the CIA!
(If she doesn’t get it, not to worry:
she’s also up for head of Homeland Security –
and if she doesn’t get that,
she’s on the short list for National Intelligence czarina)….

[8]
Harman has always taken the side of the Bushies
when it comes to eavesdropping:
during Gen Michael Hayden’s confirmation hearings for CIA director,
she was against making government eavesdropping an issue.
When the New York Times revealed the illegal eavesdropping program authorized by Bush, she was outraged –
at the Times, which she strongly hinted ought to be prosecuted.
She was pro-war, and did her part in spreading the “bad intel”
she now claims to have been fooled by –
declaring not only that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,
but also purveying the rather far-out notion that
al-Qaeda had taken up residence there prior to the US invasion.

[9]
Harman’s ambition is matched only by her recklessness:
she came up against the FBI, in 2006,
when she was investigated for going a little too far in her aggressive campaign to retain her seat as head of the House Intelligence Committee.
Apparently she had AIPAC officials and major Democratic donors
personally lobby Pelosi,
in return for the promise that she, Harman,
would intercede on behalf of Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman,
two top AIPAC officials currently being prosecuted
for stealing US top secret intelligence
and passing it on to Israeli officials.
Law enforcement officials aver hard evidence for this quid pro quo
was never uncovered.
I’m hoping, however, that some Republican back-bencher
has the balls to bring it up at her confirmation hearing.
Perhaps they could call Pelosi as a witness.

[10]
Combined with the foreign policy views of Dennis Ross,
Obama’s senior advisor for Middle East affairs –
who is reportedly up for the National Security Advisor slot –
what seems to be shaping up is a perfect trifecta of trouble on the horizon.
The old adage that
presidents rarely govern in synch with the way they campaign
applies here, and in spades.
Change?
Not in the foreign policy realm, buster.
Indeed, if any change is involved, it may well be for the worse.

2008-11-17-Raimondo

Hillary at Foggy Bottom?
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com, 2008-11-17

2008-11-19-Raimondo

What the Clinton Appointment Means
And why we won't see any change in American foreign policy
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com, 2008-11-19

2008-11-20-Scahill-This-Is-Change?

This Is Change?
20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama's White House
By Jeremy Scahill
Alternet.org, 2008-11-20
[URL for just the introduction]

2008-11-21-Raimondo

Stop Hillary!
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com, 2008-11-21

2008-11-24-Raimondo

Obama's Foreign Policy: The Case for Pessimism
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com, 2008-11-24

His appointments augur ill

2008-11-24-NYT-Calmes-Rubin-et-al

Rubinomics Recalculated
By JACKIE CALMES
New York Times, 2008-11-24

[Its beginning; emphasis is added.]

WASHINGTON — It is testament to former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin’s star power among many Democrats that as President-elect Barack Obama fills out his economic team, a virtual Rubin constellation is taking shape.

The president-elect’s choices for his top economic advisers — Timothy F. Geithner as Treasury secretary, Lawrence H. Summers as senior White House economics adviser and Peter R. Orszag as budget director — are past protégés of Mr. Rubin, who held two of those jobs under President Bill Clinton. Even the headhunters for Mr. Obama have Rubin ties: Michael Froman, Mr. Rubin’s chief of staff in the Treasury Department who followed him to Citigroup, and James Rubin, Mr. Rubin’s son.

All three advisers — whom Mr. Obama will officially name on Monday and Tuesday — have been followers of the economic formula that came to be called Rubinomics: balanced budgets, free trade and financial deregulation, a combination that was credited with fueling the prosperity of the 1990s.

But times have changed since then.
On Wall Street,
Mr. Rubin is facing questions about his role as director of Citigroup
given the bank’s current woes.

[Which are heavily and specifically due to Mr. Rubin:
see this article.
How can Rubin, or his disciples, now be given power in Washington
when Rubin bears so much direct responsibility
for Citigroup’s gigantic problems?
Politics is amazing.
Sex “scandals” call for instant removal (see Spitzer, E.),
while clueless leadership leading straight to disaster
(see Rice, C. and Rubin, R.) lead to uninterrupted leadership at the top.]

And in Washington,
he and his acolytes are calling for a new formulation
to address the global economic crisis that Mr. Obama will inherit —
and rejecting or setting aside, for now, some of their old orthodoxies.

2008-12-01-Raimondo

The End of the Affair
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com, 2008-12-01

Obama and the antiwar movement

[This is posted in
“The War Party ” and
“The Obama (44) Administration”.]

2009

2009-01-Harbaugh-NASA-Administrator-Griffin-forced-to-resign

This is a comment that is actually being added to this post on 2013-10-22,
but as it is about events that occurred in January 2009,
I have put it here in the post.
Consider the following extract from the Wikipedia article on Michael D. Griffin (as of 2013-10-22):

It was widely and erroneously speculated that
[Bush's NASA administrator Michael D.] Griffin
hoped to keep his job under President Barack Obama
so that Constellation and NASA's other programs could maintain their steady progress.[21][22][23]
In a phone call on the day after the election,
Senator Bill Nelson (D, FL) requested of Lori Garver,
who led the incoming Obama Administration's Transition Team,
that the Administration allow Griffin to remain as NASA Administrator
to provide programmatic and management continuity.
However, his resignation
(required of and offered by all agency heads due to an incoming President)
was accepted.
In part, this was because of disagreements between Griffin and Garver
over the state of Project Constellation.
In reality it was because
Griffin refused to accept Garver as his Deputy.
Griffin gave a farewell address to NASA on 16 January 2009,
in which he praised NASA for its recovery from the Columbia disaster
and urged employees to support the new administrator,
whoever it may be.[24][25]
He left office the day President Obama was inaugurated.

My thoughts:
Griffin has a very extensive academic background on issues relevant to NASA management.
That Obama would insist that Lori Garver
[whose degrees in political science, economics, and "science, technology and public policy"
do not demonstrate much mathematical skill]
be Griffin's deputy, over Griffin's objections,
certainly raises questions about Obama's interests in technical competence in his appointments.
Note that when Lori Garver left NASA, she left it to become
General Manager of the Air Line Pilots Association,
a non-technical position.

2009-01-30-Zunes

Obama Gathering a Flock of Hawks to Oversee U.S. Foreign Policy
By Stephen Zunes
AlterNet.com, 2009-01-30

2009-04-28-York-black-white-divide

The black-white divide in Obama's popularity
By Byron York
Washington Examiner, 2009-04-28

2009-05-05-Barone-UAW

White House puts UAW ahead of property rights
By Michael Barone
Washington Examiner, 2009-05-05

[Its conclusion; emphasis is added.]

[11]
Obama’s attitude toward the rule of law is apparent
in the words he used to describe what he is looking for
in a nominee to replace Justice David Souter.
He wants
“someone who understands justice
is not just about some abstract legal theory,”
he said,
but someone who has “empathy.”
In other words,
judges should decide cases so that the right people win,
not according to the rule of law.

[12]
The Chrysler negotiations will not be the last occasion
for this administration to engage in
bailout favoritism and crony capitalism.
There’s a May 31 deadline to come up with a settlement for General Motors.
And there will be others.
In the meantime,
who is going to buy bonds from unionized companies
if the government is going to take their money away
and give it to the union?
We have just seen an episode of Gangster Government.
It is likely to be part of a continuing series.

2009-05-06-Carney-UAW-Dems

Obama’s auto policy: All in the Democratic family
By: Timothy P. Carney
Washington Examiner, 2009-05-06

[1]
President Barack Obama’s auto industry policy
promises to heighten the influence of lobbyists
and to open the door to ethical transgressions and even outright corruption.
By naming as car czar a financier who is also
a Democratic fundraiser steeped in cozy business-government relationships,
and by replacing the traditional bankruptcy procedures
with the will of politicians,
Obama has injected Detroit with all the elements of crony capitalism.

[2]
Auto czar Steve Rattner, 56, a top Democratic fundraiser,
is an old hand at leveraging political influence into profit,
as shown by the business dealings of his hedge fund,
Quadrangle Group.

[3]
One Quadrangle client was New York City’s pension fund —
an arrangement at the heart of recent federal convictions for illegal kickbacks.
Federal authorities charged that a “senior executive” at Quadrangle —
Rattner, according to the Wall Street Journal —
met with a consultant who was looking for places
to invest the city’s pension fund money.
A short time later, the city invested in Quadrangle,
and Quadrangle cut a check to the consultant,
who has since pleaded guilty to taking illegal kickbacks.

[4]
Quadrangle is not under investigation
nor has it been accused of wrongdoing in making the payment,
but New York’s comptroller is looking into
whether the firm failed to disclose the payment.

[5]
Rattner, it turns out,
is also the personal money manager
for New York City’s Republican [sic -- Independent] Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

[6]
In Washington, Quadrangle also seems to play politics for profit.
Quadrangle paid $160,000 to the K Street firm Navigant Consulting
from February 2005 through the end of 2006
to lobby Congress, the White House, and the Department of Labor
on a handful of bills regarding asbestos litigation and compensation.

[7]
What was Quadrangle’s stake in asbestos legislation?
The firm didn’t return a phone call seeking an answer,
but it’s not too hard to deduce.
Many hedge funds invested in companies damaged by asbestos lawsuits.
These funds then lobbied for legislation
that would alleviate some of the liability the companies faced,
thus boosting companies’ stock value.

[8]
Alternatively, a hedge fund could make the opposite play:
Watch a vulnerable company’s stock rise
as prospects improve for asbestos legislation,
then short the company and lobby to kill the bill.
Sometimes the lobbyists just acted as intelligence gatherers.
A Wall Street Journal article in December 2006 explained the dynamic:
“Some hedge funds,
which tend to choose riskier investments that can yield high returns,
saw the troubled asbestos companies as attractive.
To weigh the value of their investments and decipher bankruptcy-court actions,
hedge funds hired teams of analysts and researchers.
When Congress began considering legislation to bail out the industry,
the funds hired lobbyists to assess its prospects.”

[9]
So Rattner understands how public policy can create private profits.
It should come as no surprise, then,
that his auto plan involves upending bankruptcy law and precedent
in favor of a system in which
the winners and losers are chosen by politicians or their appointed “czars.”

[10]
Rattner and Obama have decided that
the United Auto Workers union should get 55 percent of Chrysler.
At the same time, they’ve attacked many of Chrysler’s secured creditors —
who, in a regular, nonpoliticized bankruptcy, would be repaid in full —
for resisting this deal.
In a federal complaint, these administration targets alleged:
“The government exerted extreme pressure
to coerce all of [Chrysler’s] constituencies into accepting a deal
which is being done largely for the benefit of unsecured creditors
at the expense of senior creditors.”

[11]
For the foreseeable future,
Chrysler will be on the federal dole, both directly and indirectly.
The Obama-Rattner plan puts UAW in charge of Chrysler,
which is good news for the Democratic Party.

[12]
UAW’s political action committee spent $13.1 million last election cycle,
a slow year for the union’s political arm.
Of the PAC’s $2.3 million in direct contributions to candidates and candidate PACs,
more than 99 percent went to Democrats.
Of 42 Senate candidates to get UAW money, only one was Republican, and that was Arlen Specter.

[13]
The union’s PAC also reported $4.5 million in independent expenditures supporting Obama,
plus an additional $423,000 opposing John McCain.

[14]
So, here’s the arrangement:
You pay your taxes,
the Obama administration funnels some of the money to Chrysler,
whose profits enrich the UAW,
which in turn funds Obama’s re-election.

[15]
Predictability, precedent and the rule of law have been replaced with
the fiat of politicians.
Chrysler could become
a pass-through entity from taxpayers to the Democratic Party.
And in charge of it all is a Democratic fundraiser.
Boss Tweed would be proud.

2009-10-22-Goldstone-Gaza-Report-Obama

Goldstone Challenges Obama to Point Out Flaws in Report
Administration Condemned Report as 'Deeply Flawed'
by Jason Ditz
Antiwar.com, 2009-10-22

2009-11-25-Pearlstein

Whose side is Obama on?
By Steven Pearlstein
Washington Post, 2009-11-25 (Wednesday)

2012

2012-01-14-Barone-obamas-1-man-rule-thumbs-nose-at-founders

Obama's 1-man rule thumbs nose at Founders
By MICHAEL BARONE
Washington Examiner Opinion, 2012-01-14

2013

2013-08-15-WP-Krauthammer-can-obama-write-his-own-laws

Can Obama write his own laws?
By Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post Op-Ed, 2013-08-15

2013-10-22-NYT-sebelius-names-administration-veteran-to-lead-tech-repair-efforts

Sebelius Names Administration Veteran to Lead Tech Repair Efforts
by Jackie Calmes
New York Times Web Site (In Practice), 2013-10-22

2013-12-08-FP-white-house-v-holder

White House v. Holder
The fight over the government’s top national security lawyer.
by Shane Harris
Foreign Policy, 2013-12-08

In September, President Obama nominated John Carlin, a career federal prosecutor, to run the Justice Department’s National Security Division, a senior post whose occupant plays a key role in authorizing secret surveillance operations and managing national security investigations. It was a controversial pick. Not only did some of Carlin’s peers think he wasn’t the most qualified candidate. Attorney General Eric Holder — the man who was supposed to be Carlin’s boss — hadn’t supported him. Several former officials told Foreign Policy that the attorney general "strenuously" objected to nominating Carlin.

But Carlin had the backing of two senior officials in the White House, who had made it known that he was their preferred choice. In the end, their candidate won out, prompting several former law enforcement and national security officials to decry the nomination as an act of undue political influence over law enforcement decisions.

"I think it is extraordinary and unusual to have someone forced upon an attorney general over his objections," said one former law enforcement official. "The independence of the Justice Department from the White House is institutionally important." Decisions on which cases to prosecute and how to manage criminal investigations are supposed to be made free of political considerations.

Holder had his own list of candidates, which included another career prosecutor who had been his adviser on national security issues and had years more experience than Carlin working on terrorism and espionage cases, officials said. Holder didn’t know Carlin well and hadn’t worked closely with him.

Ultimately, the decision on whom to nominate for the position is the president’s alone. And Holder has since embraced Carlin — at least in public. But the rocky path to Carlin’s nomination, described in interviews with a dozen current and former Justice Department and administration officials, reveals a tense personal and political struggle over one of the most important national security positions in the government.

Carlin’s biggest advocates in the White House were Kathryn Ruemmler, the White House counsel, and Lisa Monaco, the president’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, according to current and former officials. Ruemmler and Monaco had worked with Carlin at the Justice Department and in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, where all three served at the same time as prosecutors.

Former officials said they are concerned that Carlin, who has been acting in the position since March, doesn’t speak as an independent voice for the department, but rather is aligning his positions first with the White House, and particularly with Monaco, thus undermining Holder’s authority. Two individuals drew comparisons to John Yoo, the controversial Justice Department attorney in the George W. Bush administration, who was known to have his own relationships with White House officials and was seen as operating outside channels meant to guard against political influence.

"It shouldn’t be that way," said a former government official who doesn’t support Carlin’s nomination. "There should be some walls between the Justice Department and the White House. The White House should not have a direct feed."

Former officials could not point to a specific instance in which Carlin had bowed to White House influence or shared information with Monaco before talking to the attorney general. But they said his close relationship with Monaco has created an impression among many national security lawyers in Washington that Carlin is the White House’s inside man at the Justice Department. Carlin became the acting director of the National Security Division after Monaco left the post and went to the White House. He was the chief of staff when she ran the division.

The concerns about Carlin’s independence run deeper than that, however. Two former officials, citing conversations with current Justice Department employees, said that Carlin is avoiding taking documented positions before his Senate confirmation hearing. Instead, Carlin has requested that colleagues not copy him on emails about sensitive policy issues. Many of Carlin’s communications are taking place by phone, former officials said. A date for a confirmation hearing hasn’t been set.

Carlin is not without experience in national security, and he has some of the same credentials as his predecessors in the job for which he’s been chosen. He was once chief of staff to former FBI Director Robert Mueller, for example. And he has held two senior posts in the National Security Division.

But several career prosecutors who know and have worked with Carlin say he does not have a firm enough grasp of national security and surveillance law, which is particularly important when approving applications for surveillance warrants in terrorism and espionage cases. Carlin has spent the bulk of his career on computer crime and intellectual property cases, and in prosecuting homicide, sexual offenses, and public corruption, according to his official resume.

By contrast, one of the candidates that former officials say ranked high on Holder’s list is Amy Jeffress, who until recently was the department’s legal attache in London. From 2009 to 2010, Jeffress was Holder’s counselor on national security and international matters, advising him on some of the highest-profile cases in the Justice Department. She worked with Holder to bring a criminal case against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, whom Holder wanted to try in a federal court. (Congress later blocked the move.) Jeffress also set up three inter-agency task forces that reviewed cases of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. She worked for thirteen years in U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, where she was chief of the National Security Section overseeing terrorism and espionage cases.

In the contentious nomination process, the balance finally tipped in Carlin’s favor when Holder received a phone call from FBI Director Robert Mueller, Carlin’s former boss. "Director Mueller weighed in both at [the Justice Department] and at the White House in strong support of John’s nomination," said a senior administration official. After the call, Holder dropped his objections to Carlin. President Obama announced his nomination on September 10.

The tussle over Carlin’s nomination has had more than just political or personal consequences. In the eight months he has been serving in an acting capacity, Carlin has not been legally able to sign off on surveillance requests before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the body that approves secret intelligence-gathering conducted by the FBI and the National Security Agency. Until Carlin is confirmed, Holder and James Cole, the deputy attorney general, have to pick up the slack, because they are the only other department officials authorized to review and sign off on the orders.

Surveillance operations have not lapsed as a result, but given the pressing demands of their jobs, it has been harder to find time to sit down with Holder or Cole to get their approvals, a Justice Department official said. One of them has to review and receive a briefing on each application, which can take as little as five to ten minutes. But those minutes add up. Last year, the government made 1,856 requests to the court for permission to conduct electronic surveillance or physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes. Figures for this year have not been compiled.

But Carlin is still able to perform many of the duties of the position, including consulting with the White House, the FBI, and intelligence agencies. The National Security Division was created in 2006 to tear down barriers betwee
n law enforcement and intelligence personnel that had kept them from working together. Today, the law allows White House officials to stay in closer contact with career prosecutors than they would on criminal cases, where barriers are placed to ward against political influence.

"Of course the President’s Counterterrorism Advisor and all of her operational counterparts, including at DOJ and FBI, are in regular touch," said Caitlin Hayden, a White House spokesperson. "It is the CT [counterterrorism] Advisor’s job to make sure that the interagency is coordinated."

Kenneth Wainstein, who served as the head of the National Security Division and the White House counterterrorism adviser during the Bush administration, said, "It’s absolutely critical that the assistant attorney general for national security, who is the head of the intelligence and national security element of the Justice Department, be centrally involved in the interagency process that is run out of the White House."

Wainstein, who knows both Monaco and Carlin, said he could not speak to the nature of their communications today. But he said it would be expected that they’d have frequent conversations and correspondence, including about criminal investigations and intelligence operations, as well as policy. "It’s critical for both the effectiveness and the constitutional integrity of our national security program that the Justice Department have a strong voice in the policymaking process," Wainstein said.

In the months since he’s been nominated, whatever distance there may have been between Carlin and Holder seems to have shrunk a bit. Another Justice Department official said that the week before Thanksgiving, Carlin invited Holder to address an all-hands meeting at the National Security Division. The attorney general praised Carlin’s leadership and the work of its employees. The division has been under unusual pressure and scrutiny amid investigations of global surveillance operations by the NSA and the FBI, revealed by Edward Snowden.

The official also said that Holder brings Carlin with him to weekly principals meetings in the White House Situation Room, where the top members of the president’s national security team are allowed to bring one member each from their staff.

"He’s a tremendous attorney and a strong leader, and is highly regarded in the intelligence community," Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told Foreign Policy. "He brings a wealth of legal, policy, and national security expertise to the position, and I think he’s a terrific choice to lead the [National Security Division]," added Olsen, a former general counsel at the NSA, who was also the acting head of the National Security Division during the presidential transition in 2008.

Among those who have written letters to the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of Carlin’s nomination are Tim Murphy, the former deputy director of the FBI; Pat Rowan, the former head of the national security division under President George W. Bush; and Michael Morrell, the former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Morrell wrote that he’d mostly worked with Carlin during meetings of deputy officials on the National Security Council at the White House, where Carlin was a "backbencher" or stood in for Monaco when she couldn’t attend. "He was always prepared, he was articulate and persuasive when he spoke, and he asked excellent questions of the other participants," Morrell wrote. "In addition to his performance, Mr. Carlin certainly has the experience required to do the job."

Hayden, the White House spokesperson, said "We look forward to the Senate confirming [Carlin] as soon as possible."