An update to my article a few weeks ago on arms-smuggling in Libya, before, during, and after the civil war there: The AP found documents from an al-Qaeda-affiliated group showing that they indeed have shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft missiles:

The 26-page document in Arabic, recovered by The Associated Press in a building that had been occupied by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in Timbuktu, strongly suggests the group now possesses the SA-7 surface-to-air missile, known to the Pentagon as the Grail, according to terrorism specialists. And it confirms that the al-Qaida cell is actively training its fighters to use these weapons, also called man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADS, which likely came from the arms depots of ex-Libyan strongman Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

Note that while the Libyan rebels took these sorts of missiles from Qaddafi’s stockpiles during the war, the Qatari government was also smuggling in this type of weapon across Libya’s southern border, with secret approval of the U.S government.

In April 2011, Reuters quoted an Algerian security official who claimed that al-Qaeda was smuggling missiles out of Libya:

The official said a convoy of eight Toyota pick-up trucks left eastern Libya, crossed into Chad and then Niger, and from there into northern Mali where in the past few days it delivered a cargo of weapons . . . al Qaeda’s north African wing, known as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), had acquired from Libya Russian-made shoulder-fired Strela surface-to-air missiles known by the NATO designation SAM-7.

The dateline of today’s AP story is . . . Timbuktu, Mali.

There is significant evidence that both U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and the CIA personnel in Benghazi were focused on recovering these type of missiles in the days leading up to his death on September 11.

Spared by the Sequester: $27,654.47 for “screened t-shirts” at the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management.

From the midweek edition of the Morning Jolt:

Why Generic Denials Just Won’t Cut It for the Latest State Department Scandals

Let’s take a close look at what we know about that State Department Inspector General memo, shall we?

An internal State Department Inspector General’s memo, several recent investigations were influenced, manipulated, or simply called off. The memo obtained by CBS News cited eight specific examples. Among them: allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut “engaged in sexual assaults” on foreign nationals hired as embassy guards and the charge that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security detail “engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries” — a problem the report says was “endemic.”

After the Secret Service scandal in Cartagena, Colombia, government security officials’ having sex with prostitutes simply cannot be dismissed as unthinkable. And there are some who suspect, or fear, that this sort of thing is a lot more widespread and even quasi-accepted than we would ever believe. As a detailed Washingtonian article on the Secret Service scandal concluded, “To believe that the Cartagena affair was unique, you’d also have to believe that this group of 13 men — not all of whom knew one another — broke into separate groups and independently got the idea, for the first time ever, to go out looking for prostitutes.”

Now the really shocking scandal that IG memo referenced:

In one specific and striking cover-up, State Department agents told the Inspector General they were told to stop investigating the case of a U.S. Ambassador who held a sensitive diplomatic post and was suspected of patronizing prostitutes in a public park.

The State Department Inspector General’s memo refers to the 2011 investigation into an ambassador who “routinely ditched . . . his protective security detail” and inspectors suspect this was in order to “solicit sexual favors from prostitutes.”

Sources told CBS News that after the allegations surfaced, the ambassador was called to Washington, D.C. to meet with Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy, but was permitted to return to his post.

Notice the plural, “agents.” So it’s not just one agent of the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service suddenly going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs and attempting to smear the name of an ambassador over a vendetta or something. While it’s possible you could get two agents to make up a bombshell allegation like this . . . it seems a little less likely, and they must have been plausible enough to get the IG’s office to take them seriously. Note that CBS News spoke to two diplomatic security agents who spoke, on camera, about higher-ups quashing their investigation: Aurelia Fedenisn and Mike Poehlitz.

Anyway, the ambassador named came out and denied the charges:

In a fast-developing story, U.S. ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman has been named as the diplomat accused of soliciting “sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children,” according to State Department documents obtained by NBC News. Gutman denied the allegations, in a statement to The Cable and other outlets.

“I am angered and saddened by the baseless allegations that have appeared in the press and to watch the four years I have proudly served in Belgium smeared is devastating,” he said. “At no point have I ever engaged in any improper activity.”

For someone accused of a horrific crime, it’s a Catch-22. Past experience makes us skeptical of weaselly, carefully worded, over specific denials; but blanket denials and an effort to dismiss the whole thing, without answering questions from a skeptics on the record, don’t provide much reassurance, either.

The score so far: two detailed accounts from two professional diplomatic security personnel, found credible by the Department’s Inspector General, against two generic sweeping denials.

If the allegation is true, there will be a lot of witnesses — particularly the ambassador’s security detail. Beyond that, we can verify or refute other parts of the story. Was Gutman called to Washington to meet with Kennedy? If so, what did they discuss?

Oh, and here’s the note you’ve been waiting for:

On Tuesday, Nicholas Merrill, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, said Clinton was completely unaware of any of the investigations mentioned in the Office of the Inspector General’s reports and memos, including the case involving her personal security detail allegedly soliciting prostitutes.

“We learned of it from the media and don’t know anything beyond what’s been reported,” Merrill told CNN in a written statement.

Of course. Of course! Why would she know about investigations of crimes by State Department employees, right?

Here’s Hillary, unveiling a new report on human trafficking and sex trafficking, back in June 2012:

“This report gives a clear and honest assessment of where all of us stand,” Clinton said Tuesday. “It takes a hard look at every government in our world including our own . . . It is important that we hold ourselves to the same standard as everyone else.”

Thank goodness there’s a new sheriff in town at Foggy Bottom, running a much tighter ship.

Above: The new sheriff.

Of course.

The National Father’s Day Committee, an entity of the Father’s Day/Mother’s Day Council, each year confers Father of the Year Honors on contemporary lifestyle leaders of our culture whose lives are dedicated to family, citizenship, charity, civility, responsibility and reverence.

Their 2007 award winner? John Edwards.

This year’s award winner? Bill Clinton.

FILE PHOTO: President Bill Clinton, at right, with an unidentified supporter in 1995.

Do you have room for another scandal? Because this looks like a really big one:

The State Department responded to claims that internal investigators dropped a probe into alleged misconduct by department personnel, including an ambassador, who were accused of inappropriate activities including prostitution and pedophilia in a government memo.

The ambassador who came under investigation “routinely ditched his protective security detail in order to solicit sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children,” according to documents obtained by NBC News.

The alleged misconduct took place during former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tenure, according to the documents, which also say those activities may not have been properly looked into.

Top state department officials directed investigators to “cease the investigation” into the ambassador’s conduct, according to the memo.

NBC reports, “A state department spokesperson would not confirm the specific investigations, but told NBC News ‘the notion that we would not vigorously pursue criminal misconduct in a case, in any case, is preposterous.’”

Keep in mind that an ambassador would have diplomatic immunity from prosecution in the host country.

The ambassador that this government memo refers to is named by the New York Post in this article; as detailed here, the ambassador named in the article is an extremely generous donor to the Democratic party, President Obama, and Hillary Clinton.

Bill Daley is running for governor of Illinois, challenging incumbent Democrat Pat Quinn in the primary.

It wasn’t that long ago, April 2009, that another Daley — Bill’s brother Richard, then the mayor of Chicago — was telling us that Quinn was doing just fine:

Mayor Daley on Thursday all but endorsed Pat Quinn in 2010, arguing that the accidental governor has done “a very good job so far” and has the heart, soul and passion for the office he inherited when the now-indicted Rod Blagojevich was ousted.

The mayor’s brother, former U.S. Commerce Secretary Bill Daley, took a pass on the governor’s race, arguing Quinn was a good guy and that it was incumbent on Democrats to give their new governor a chance to tackle a financial crisis he did not create.

On Thursday, Mayor Daley went further than that.

He said Quinn has “done a very good job so far” and is definitely “electable,”

That primary is going to be the political equivalent of “Game of Thrones.”

Tim Miller of America Rising PAC examined Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign rhetoric and finds, “Secretary Clinton served as a senior member of a national security team that was implementing surveillance programs she once vocally opposed.”

He cites several examples, but perhaps the most glaring is from a 2005 fundraising e-mail that declared, “I am resolved to keep speaking out about my disagreements with this administration and their congressional allies: a budget that cuts back on health care . . . Cronyism and incompetence . . . weaken the social fabric of our nation. A secret program that spies on Americans!”

A secret program that spies on Americans! Yeah, that would be terrible, wouldn’t it, Madam Secretary?

Their graphic:

 

Julian Castro, the mayor of San Antonio and the keynote speaker at last year’s Democratic National Convention, will be appearing at Obama’s White House event in favor of immigration reform today.

Last year I looked at what Castro had done in his three years as mayor, and found limited results, particularly in the areas of crime and education. But that hasn’t prevented Castro from being a frequent visitor to Washington:

It is not an exaggeration to say that Castro visits the White House more frequently than some top military leaders; according to White House visitor logs, Castro had visited the White House twelve times as of August 1. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey had visited eleven times.

Today’s Morning Jolt features a quick look at U.S. diplomats behaving badly, a GOP name considering a comeback, the “Twelve Visions Party” of Massachusetts, and then . . . 

Don’t Come Crying to Us, NSA; You Guys Are the Ones Who Hired This Goofball.

Everybody’s going to have an opinion on Edward Snowden, today the world’s most famous leaker.

In the coming days, you’re going to see a lot of people talking past each other, conflating two issues: One, did he do the right thing by disclosing all these details of the vast NSA system to gather data on Americans? And two, should he be prosecuted for it?

Of course, you can do the right thing and still break the law.

John Yoo argues that the government has to pursue prosecution of Snowden, considering what they’ve done in response to much lesser leaks:

The NSA leak case will reveal if the Obama administration really means what it said about its foolish and unconstitutional pursuit of the AP and Fox News in other leak cases. Recall that the Obama Justice Department claimed that Fox News reporter James Rosen was a co-conspirator in the alleged leak of classified intelligence. If the Justice Department truly believed what it told the courts when seeking a wiretap on Rosen, then it should indict the reporters and editors for the Washington Post and the Guardian newspapers who published information on PRISM. They clearly “conspired” with Snowden to publish classified information, information that was much more harmful to the national security than in the Rosen case (on North Korea’s predictable response to sanctions). Personally, I think that the Post is protected by the First Amendment, but Holder’s Justice Department clearly doesn’t think so.

So either the Justice Department will indict not just Snowden, but also the Post and Guardian reporters, or it will have been shown to have been untruthful to the courts in the Rosen case (which I think has become clear) . . . 

Yoo also points out that Snowden’s claim to noble motives is muddied quite a bit by his decision to run to Hong Kong. (By the way, the last guy to run to Hong Kong, certain that he was beyond the reach of American law enforcement and extradition treaties, was Mr. Lau, the money-keeper for the Gotham City mob. And we all remember how that turned out.) When Snowden declares, “Hong Kong has a reputation for freedom in spite of the People’s Republic of China. It has a strong tradition of free speech,” we have to wonder if A) he’s already working for the Chinese or B) he’s an imbecile.

This may be a story with no heroes. A government system designed to protect the citizens starts collecting all kinds of information on people who have done nothing wrong; it gets exposed, in violation of oaths and laws, by a young man who doesn’t recognize the full ramifications of his actions. The same government that will insist he’s the villain will glide right past the question of how they came to trust a guy like him with our most sensitive secrets. Who within our national-security apparatus made the epic mistake of looking him over — completing his background check and/or psychological evaluation — and concluding, “yup, looks like a nice kid?”

Watching the interview with Snowden, the first thing that is quite clear is that his mild-mannered demeanor inadequately masks a huge ego — one of the big motivations of spies. (Counterintelligence instructors have long offered the mnemonic MICE, for money, ideology, compromise, ego; others throw in nationalism and sex.)

Snowden feels he has an understanding of what’s going on well beyond most of his colleagues:

When you’re in positions of privileged access like a systems administrator for the sort of intelligence community agencies, you’re exposed to a lot more information on a broader scale then the average employee and because of that you see things that may be disturbing but over the course of a normal person’s career you’d only see one or two of these instances. When you see everything you see them on a more frequent basis and you recognize that some of these things are actually abuses.

What’s more, he feels that no one listens to his concerns or takes them seriously:

And when you talk to people about them in a place like this where this is the normal state of business people tend not to take them very seriously and move on from them. But over time that awareness of wrongdoing sort of builds up and you feel compelled to talk about. And the more you talk about the more you’re ignored. The more you’re told its not a problem until eventually you realize that these things need to be determined by the public and not by somebody who was simply hired by the government.”

My God, he must have been an insufferable co-worker.

‘Look, you guys just don’t understand, okay? You just can’t grasp the moral complexities of what I’m being asked to do here! Nobody here really gets what’s going on, or can see the big picture when you ask me to do something like that!’

‘Ed, I just asked if you could put a new bottle on the water cooler when you get a chance.’

Of course, all of this is presided over by a guy who thought that civil liberties were a useful cudgel against a Republican president back when he was outside the Oval Office. John Sexton turns the wayback machine to 2005, when then-Senator Obama, from the floor of the Senate, sternly declared that the Patriot Act “didn’t just provide law enforcement the powers it needed to keep us safe, but powers it didn’t need to invade our privacy without cause or suspicion” and added:

If someone wants to know why their own government has decided to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document — through library books they’ve read and phone calls they’ve made — this legislation gives people no rights to appeal the need for such a search in a court of law. No judge will hear their plea, no jury will hear their case. This is just plain wrong.

Ace of Spades:

James Rosen could not be reached for comment, but secret government surveillance into all of his phone calls and emails indicates he’s pretty pissed.

Glenn Reynolds, in USA Today yesterday:

As for abuse, well, is it plausible to believe that a government that would abuse the powers of the IRS to attack political enemies, go after journalists who publish unflattering material or scapegoat a filmmaker in the hopes of providing political cover to an election-season claim that al-Qaeda was finished would have any qualms about misusing the massive power of government-run snooping and Big Data? What we’ve seen here is a pattern of abuse. There’s little reason to think that pattern will change, absent a change of administration — and, quite possibly, not even then. Sooner or later, power granted tends to become power abused. Then there’s the risk that information gathered might leak, of course, as recent events demonstrate.

Most Americans generally think that politicians are untrustworthy. So why trust them with so much power? The evidence to date strongly suggests that they aren’t worthy of it.

President Obama, speaking at the National Defense University, May 23:

The use of drones is heavily constrained. America does not take strikes when we have the ability to capture individual terrorists; our preference is always to detain, interrogate, and prosecute. America cannot take strikes wherever we choose; our actions are bound by consultations with partners, and respect for state sovereignty.

Around the time of that speech, White House sources revealed that the drone program would no longer be managed by the CIA, and would move over to the Defense Department.

Whoever is managing the drone program, the results look pretty much the same.

Since that speech:

May 29: “A U.S. drone strike killed the number two of the Pakistani Taliban in the North Waziristan region on Wednesday, three security officials said. . . . The drone strike killed seven people, Pakistani security officials said, including Taliban deputy commander Wali-ur-Rehman . . .”

June 1: “A U.S. drone strike killed at least eight members of the Yemen-based al-Qaida offshoot in the southern province of Abyan on Saturday, a government official told Xinhua. The U.S. unmanned aircraft fired three missiles at a convoy of the al-Qaida militants in the Mahfad region, in Abyan province, leaving at least eight terrorists killed and three others injured, the local government official said on condition of anonymity.”

June 7: “A suspected U.S. drone strike killed seven people Friday night in northwest Pakistan, two days after the country’s new prime minister vowed to stop such attacks. Pakistani intelligence officials said the attack occurred shortly after sunset in a forested tribal area that straddles North and South Waziristan, not far from the border with Afghanistan. Four people were seriously hurt, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.”

Remember that line about “bound by consultations with partners, and respect for state sovereignty”?

A top American envoy was summoned by Pakistan’s new government to protest a U.S. drone strike that killed at least six militants in the volatile North Waziristan province, the Pakistan government said Saturday.

U.S. charge d’affaires Richard Hoagland was summoned Friday at the order of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and given a letter of protest, the government said.

“Pakistan strongly condemns the drone strikes which are a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The importance of bringing an immediate end to drone strikes was emphasized,” it said in a written statement.

Now, I don’t particularly care if the Pakistanis are outraged about this, but I don’t think it’s good for the American president to loudly and proudly declare that we’re doing all of this in consultation with our partners, and then not actually do so.

June 9: “Yemeni security and tribal sources say an apparent U.S. drone strike has killed at least three suspected al-Qaida militants in the north of the country. The sources said several drone-fired missiles struck at least one vehicle carrying the militants in the northern province of al-Jawf on Sunday.”

So, since the new policy was announced, four strikes, 25 killed, unknown number of people injured.

From the first Morning Jolt of the week . . . A National Security Agency leak tells me many of you are already subscribers, but some of you aren’t. If you’re not already a subscriber, click on the link or look for the box in the upper right hand of your screen.

Three Administration Lies to the Public That Must Have a Consequence

President Obama, speaking to the American public, Friday afternoon:

If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress, and don’t trust federal judges, to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution with due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.

In the specific issue that Obama is discussing, i.e., oversight of the National Security Agency’s vast data collection on American citizens, there is the problem in that no one within that system of oversight has the role or duty to speak on behalf of those being monitored, or about to be monitored. The executive branch knows what it wants — it wants to monitor people. The Congress may or may not want to advocate the argument, “Hey, that person hasn’t done anything wrong, you have no good reason to collect that information on them” — judging from what we now know, no one argued that perspective very strongly. And the oversight of the judicial branch is pretty weak when we know the Department of Justice goes “judge shopping” when their initial requests are rejected. If the executive branch can keep going to new judges until they get the decision they want, there isn’t really much of a check on their power, now is there?

Regarding that alleged congressional oversight, Senator Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, is coming awfully close to accusing the president of lying:

“Since government officials have repeatedly told the public and Congress that Patriot Act authorities are simply analogous to a grand jury subpoena, and that intelligence agencies do not collect information or dossiers on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans, I think the executive branch has an obligation to explain whether or not these statements are actually true,” Wyden said.

Wyden’s suspicion is driven by a lie he appears to have been told under oath, one we’ll look at in a moment. But more generally, we have seen quite a few folks in the executive branch abuse the public’s trust and then see no real consequences for it.

LIE ONE: White House Press Secretary Jay Carney’s November 28 explanation about changes made to talking points about the Benghazi attack:

The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two — of these two institutions were changing the word “consulate” to “diplomatic facility,” because “consulate” was inaccurate. Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened.

You can see the twelve rounds of revisions here, well more than a single adjustment, and mostly in response to State Department objections.

After it became clear that Carney had put forth false information, he dug in deeper, insisting that the twelve rounds of revisions were merely “stylistic changes.” Carney paid for his lie with two days of hostile questions from the White House Press Corps . . . and then the storm seemed to have blown over.

LIE TWO: Attorney General Eric Holder, testifying under oath before the House Judiciary Committee, May 15:

Well, I would say this. With regard to the potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material, that is not something that I’ve ever been involved in, heard of or would think would be a wise policy.

Michael Isikoff later reported the precise opposite: The Justice Department pledged Friday to to review its policies relating to the seizure of information from journalists after acknowledging that a controversial search warrant for a Fox News reporter’s private emails was approved “at the highest levels” of the Justice Department, including “discussions” with Attorney General Eric Holder.

There is a claim from the usual suspects — Media Matters — that Holder is in the clear because he was asked about prosecutions for publishing classified information, not solicitation for classified information; they assert that the two actions are totally different. A pretty thin reed for a perjury defense, and one that utterly fails the standard of the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States informing the public of his department’s operations.

For us to believe that, it would mean that during the entire Justice Department discussion of prosecuting Fox News’s James Rosen for soliciting the information, no one suggested or mentioned prosecuting Rosen for publishing it. Remember, Holder didn’t just say he didn’t agree with that idea; he said he never heard of the idea.

LIE THREE: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, testifying under oath before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on March 12, responding to questions from Wyden, Democrat of Oregon:

Wyden: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

Clapper: “No, sir.”

Wyden: “It does not?”

Clapper: “Not wittingly. There are cases where they could, inadvertently perhaps, collect—but not wittingly.”

The subsequent explanation from Clapper: “What I said was, the NSA does not voyeuristically pore through U.S. citizens’ e-mails. I stand by that,” Clapper told National Journal in a telephone interview.

But that’s not what he was asked, nor was it even close to what he was asked. In fact, the light from what he was asked takes several years to reach a question about voyeurism.

If your excuse is that you are incapable of discerning what “any type of data at all” means, you are no longer allowed to have a job title that has the word “intelligence” in it.

This weekend, the Guardian reported, “During a 30-day period in March 2013, the documents indicate, the NSA collected nearly 3 billion pieces of intelligence from within the United States.”

Two of these three were under oath before Congress; the other was to the press, with the cameras rolling, on a topic of high public interest and great controversy.

If Obama were to ask for the resignations of Carney, Holder, and Clapper tomorrow, all of us who don’t trust him would have to at least acknowledge that he’s trying to set a better standard for consequences of lying to the public. But all of us know that he will do nothing of the sort.

Instead, he will continue to give speeches where he expresses incredulity that the public wouldn’t trust him and his administration.

Politico: “The data cadged in the Verizon case can be used as a menu — giving agents an idea of which individuals or organizations warrant further scrutiny.”

Because there hasn’t been any controversy over government agents giving individuals or organizations further scrutiny lately, right?

They’re referring to FBI agents, not IRS agents . . . right?

Above: “Agents.”

I’m scheduled to appear on Real News on The Blaze network this afternoon.

From today’s Morning Jolt:

Quick Summary: The NSA Is Collecting Everything You Write, Short of Your Handwritten Grocery List

If you typed it or spoke it into an electronic device, the government probably has a record of it.

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track one target or trace a whole network of associates, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post.

The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or sidestep barriers. But there has never been a Google or Facebook before, and it is unlikely that there are richer troves of valuable intelligence than the ones in Silicon Valley.

Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants, according to the document: “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.”

PRISM was launched from the ashes of President George W. Bush’s secret program of warrantless domestic surveillance in 2007, after news media disclosures, lawsuits and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court forced the president to look for new authority.

In case you had forgotten what Candidate Barack Obama said:

Barack Obama believes that we must provide law enforcement the tools it needs to investigate, disrupt, and capture terrorists, but he also believes we need real oversight to avoid jeopardizing the rights and ideals of all Americans. There is no reason we cannot fight terrorism while maintaining our civil liberties. Unfortunately, the current administration has abused the powers given to it by the PATRIOT Act. A March 2007 Justice Department audit found the FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the PATRIOT Act to secretly obtain personal information about American citizens. As president, Barack Obama would revisit the PATRIOT Act to ensure that there is real and robust oversight of tools like National Security Letters, sneak-and-peek searches, and the use of the material witness provision.

• Eliminate Warrantless Wiretaps. Barack Obama opposed the Bush Administration’s initial policy on warrantless wiretaps because it crossed the line between protecting our national security and eroding the civil liberties of American citizens. As president, Obama would update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to provide greater oversight and accountability to the congressional intelligence committees to prevent future threats to the rule of law.

Tyler Cowen:

The general problem is the unholy government and tech alliance, based on a mix of plutocracy, information-sharing, and a joint understanding of the importance of information for future elections. Which current politician wouldn’t want to court the support of tech, and which major tech company can today stand above politics?

Late Thursday night, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a lengthy statement.

The program does not allow the Government to listen in on anyone’s phone calls. The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the identity of any subscriber. The only type of information acquired under the Court’s order is telephony metadata, such as telephone numbers dialed and length of calls.

The collection is broad in scope because more narrow collection would limit our ability to screen for and identify terrorism -related communications. Acquiring this information allows us to make connections related to terrorist activities over time. The FISA Court specifically approved this method of collection as lawful, subject to stringent restrictions.

The information acquired has been part of an overall strategy to protect the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it may assist counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities.

Here’s the thing: this latest round of mega-data-collection got started just after the Boston Marathon bombing. I’m all for having the good guys know who known or suspected terrorists are calling. So why wouldn’t you start with those phone records, and then work your way out from there? Collect the numbers they called, and then check out who was on the other end of those calls, and then check out the outgoing calls from those people, and so on, until you feel like you’ve rolled up the cell.

The only way that this method of collecting every bit of data produced works is if you take the whole dataset and then start applying various searches, presumably through algorithms, having decided criteria A, B, and C are indicators that this person is a terrorist or a threat.

Here’s a fascinating July 2012 article:

The algorithms that the NSA has created, according to whistle blower William Binney, are actually a part of the Big Data Research and Development Initiative, which has the official purpose to improve the tools and techniques needed to access, organize, and glean discoveries from huge volumes of digital data. William goes on by saying that the algorithms will go through the data base looking at everybody.

We in the general public have no idea if the algorithms work, if they’re fair, if they’re putting a lot of innocent Americans under suspicion or on watch lists, etc. This is simply not the way criminal investigation or even counter-intelligence has ever worked in this country under our Constitution; it’s working backwards. Those we have entrusted with the duty of our protection always previously started from the wrongdoing (or a tip of wrongdoing) and work their way out from there; it has never been, collect every bit of information they can on absolutely everyone, and then sift through it until they find what they’re looking for.

Clapper emphasizes, “The program at issue here is conducted under authority granted by Congress and is authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). By statute, the Court is empowered to determine the legality of the program.”

But who watches the watchmen?

“I would just push back on the idea that the court has signed off on it, so why worry?” said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “This is a court that meets in secret, allows only the government to appear before it, and publishes almost none of its opinions. It has never been an effective check on government.”

Andy Levy: “DNI Clapper also tells Steve Turner of Carlsbad, CA that his vacation pics look great, but that he should ‘maybe slow down on the shots lol’”

Ken Cuccinelli speaks, and the federal bureaucracy actually moves, for once:

After eight months of waiting, the Department of the Treasury on Wednesday agreed to release in excess of $100 million owed to Virginia for its role as lead investigator in a $1.5 billion court-approved Medicaid Fraud settlement with Abbott Pharmaceuticals.

Officials in the office of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said the office expects to receive $115 million of the $125 million it says it is owed from the settlement.

Confirmation of the release of the money came in a letter sent by the Executive Office for Asset Forfeiture to Deputy Virginia Attorney General John Childrey late Wednesday.

It followed a press briefing in Richmond earlier in the day in which Cuccinelli blasted the Internal Revenue Service for failing to complete paperwork necessary to release the funds following the final court order issued in the case in October, 2012.

What a Jolt today: The National Security Agency collects every Verizon customer’s phone records; a new poll indicates Obamacare has never been less popular; a look at the new ABC Family series, “The Fosters”; and then these developments in the IRS scandal . . . 

IRS: Okay, We’ll Stop Taking Free Food When Asking About the Content of Your Prayers

Turn the Internal Revenue Service into a partisan cudgel, and nobody blinks. But man, if you take free food, you’re toast. And you can’t even accept that toast, apparently.

Acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel is placing two officials — including a top staffer implementing the health care law — on administrative leave for violating government ethics rules at a 2010 conference.

“When I came to IRS, part of my job was to hold people accountable,” Werfel said in a statement Wednesday. “There was clearly inappropriate behavior in this situation and immediate action is needed.”

Werfel didn’t specify which staff members he disciplined but congressional sources tell POLITICO one official is Fred Schindler, the director of implementation oversight at the IRS Affordable Care Act office. The other is Donald Toda, a California-based employee.

The staffers received $1,100 in free food and other items at the conference, the sources said.

$1,100 in free food? Just how much did these two guys eat? What, did they order the surf and turf and say, ‘man, this is so good, let’s get a dozen more for the road?’

Well, at least these two guys are . . . wait a minute. “Suspended employees are often paid during suspension while supervisors decide how to proceed.”

You’re going to take this paid vacation indefinitely, buster!

In other IRS news, courtesy our friends at the Franklin Center:

Recent press reports focused on the 157 visits to the White House by former IRS Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman, but there has been little scrutiny of the 165 White House visits by the IRS ‘Obamacare’ official Sarah Hall Ingram.

According to White House visitor data, Shulman never attended any of Ingram’s meetings, and Ingram never attended a White House meeting with Shulman.

All of Ingram’s165 meetings were with White House staff, while only 151 of Shulman’s visits were with staff. Shulman attended six meetings with President Barack Obama.

Ingram attended 62 White House meetings in 2011, 90 in 2012 and 13 this year (though February).

But wait, there’s more on the IRS front today!

Two Internal Revenue Service employees in the agency’s Cincinnati office told congressional investigators that IRS officials in Washington helped direct the probe of tea-party groups that began in 2010.

Transcripts of the interviews, viewed Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal, appear to contradict earlier statements by top IRS officials, who have blamed lower-level workers in Cincinnati.

Elizabeth Hofacre said her office in Cincinnati sought help from IRS officials in the Washington unit that oversees tax-exempt organizations after she started getting the tea-party cases in April 2010. Ms. Hofacre said Carter Hull, an IRS lawyer in Washington, closely oversaw her work and suggested some of the questions asked applicants.

Trust us.

Virginia’s attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, won a giant $125 million settlement prosecuting Medicaid fraud . . . and yet for some reason, the U.S. Department of the Treasury is mysteriously delaying the transfer of the settlement to the state government.

Why, it’s almost as if a giant, politicized and partisan federal bureaucracy wants to deny the GOP candidate for governor something to brag about.

Eight months after a federal court approved a $1.5 billion Medicaid fraud settlement — the second largest in U.S. history — federal officials have yet to release any of the roughly $125 million owed to Virginia for being the lead investigator.

The Abbott Pharmaceuticals illegal marketing case was investigated for five years by the nationally known Medicaid Fraud Control Unit in the office of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. Officials have told the office that the Internal Revenue Service has refused to properly fill out post-case paperwork for almost a year, which is holding up the disbursement intended for Virginia law enforcement.

But the delay, which state officials say is unprecedented, has Cuccinelli wondering whether the problem is more about politics than completing paperwork.

“For a long time we thought it was glaring incompetence,” Cuccinelli said in an interview. “But in light of the last month or two, we’re now beginning to wonder whether maybe there are more deliberate motives.”

It was a reference to the recent scandal and congressional testimony stemming from reports of the IRS targeting conservative non-profit groups for investigation.

Cuccinelli, a conservative Republican and Tea Party darling running for governor this year, has been a chief antagonist of the federal government — being the first attorney general to file suit challenging President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act and also fighting EPA regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.

“I have to openly wonder whether this is an intentional act to deny Virginia its asset forfeiture money,” Cuccinelli said.

The $1.5 billion resolution included a criminal fine and forfeiture totaling $700 million — a $500 million fine to the federal government and roughly $200 million in criminal asset-forfeiture penalties. There were also civil settlements with the federal government and the states totaling $800 million.

The $125 million reflects Virginia’s share of roughly $200 million in asset forfeiture funds owed to the state and local law enforcement agencies involved in the investigation of Abbott, which settled a case that it illegally marketed the prescription drug Depakote for non-approved uses.

Abbott paid the full amount of its settlement to the U.S. Treasury Department last October, but officials have since refused to release Virginia’s portion of the settlement.

This is what happens when national Democrats pretend a special U.S. House election isn’t happening: Republican Jason Smith wins 67 percent to 27 percent over Democrat Steve Hodges, 42,145 votes to 17,203 votes. Yes, it’s a conservative district, but this is a bigger margin than Romney’s win over Obama in 2012 in that district.

The strategists over at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee didn’t merely choose to not allocate any funds to help Hodges; they didn’t even mention the special election on their web site, Twitter account, or Facebook page.

Susan Rice, who worried about how a Rwanda genocide declaration would impact the 1994 midterm elections while she was on the National Security Council, will be President Obama’s next National Security Adviser.

Rwanda comes up in the longest section of today’s Morning Jolt:

The Disintegration of Syria, and Obama’s Very Quiet Atrocities Prevention Board

President Obama, speaking at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., April 23, 2012:

Remembrance without resolve is a hollow gesture. Awareness without action changes nothing. In this sense, “never again” is a challenge to us all — to pause and to look within.

Is ‘never again’ really a challenge to us all to pause and to look within? Isn’t it a challenge to those with the authority to prevent, interrupt, impede or stop mass killings to do something about it?

He declared in that speech, “Last year, in the first-ever presidential directive on this challenge, I made it clear that ‘preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America.’”

That presidential directive came on August 4, 2011; four months into the Syrian conflict, where the brutal tactics of the Assad regime were clear.

It was at that 2012 event that President Obama announced he was forming a “new Atrocities Prevention Board, to bring together senior officials from across our government to focus on this critical mission.” (Because there’s nothing like a board of senior officials to prevent an atrocity.) Obama emphasized, “This is not an afterthought. This is not a sideline in our foreign policy.”

Here’s a list of what the board has done in the past year. I’m pleased to learn that “the intelligence community is finalizing the first-ever National Intelligence Estimate on the Global Risks of Mass Atrocities and Prospects for International Response, which will provide a rigorous analytical framework for anticipating and preparing for mass atrocities over the coming years.” It will make fascinating reading for our foreign policy professionals.

Back in college in the mid-90s, I remember some colleague on the school paper expressing incredulity that so many Americans in the 1930s remained oblivious to the threat of Hitler’s Germany and the horrors it was perpetuating. In true progressive fashion, he remarked how much more aware and moral “we” were now. I asked if he had followed the news in the Balkans lately. This was, I’m pretty sure, before we learned about Rwanda.

Above: what happened in Rwanda.

We say “never again”… and then the “ethnic cleansing” of the Balkans occurs (estimated 40,000 civilians killed). And then we see what happens in Rwanda (500,000 dead). And then Darfur, Sudan (between 178,258 and 461,520 dead, mostly from disease).

And now Syria, 70,000 to 94,000 dead, depending upon who you ask.

We say, “never again,” but the evidence of history is “again and again and again and again, each time in slightly different ways, as long as they’re relatively far away.”

We’re all supposed to tip-toe around how things really are, aren’t we? We talk a good game about how much we would have opposed those horrible massacres of the past, but we’re not often that motivated the next time one comes around. The administration, and the vast majority of the American people, want nothing to do with the maelstrom that is what’s left of Syria. That may be even be the wise course considering how neither side appears to be aligned with our interests and both sides have proven capable of brutality.

But polling indicates that public opinion shifts if chemical weapons get used: Support for involving the U.S. military in general rises to 63 percent if Syria’s government uses chemical weapons on its own people. If the Syrian government lost control of their stockpile of chemical weapons — known to be among the world’s largest — 70 percent would support U.S. military action.

So a whole lot rides on whether or not the Western public sees evidence that the Assad regime uses chemical weapons.

Now, in Syria, France says sarin has been used:

“These results show the presence of sarin in the samples that are in our possession,” Fabius said. “In view of these elements, France now has the certainty that the sarin gas was used in Syria several times and in a localized manner.”

The announcement did not say when, where or by whom it may have been used in Syria, where rebels have been fighting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in a civil war.

The announcement coincided with the release of a draft report posted on the website of the U.N. Human Rights Council that concludes: “There are reasonable grounds to believe that chemical agents have been used as weapons. The precise agents, delivery systems or perpetrators could not be identified.”

The administration says, “well, we’re not quite sure.” Maybe that “red line” is still intact and the president doesn’t have to do anything.

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the United States was working with the French and other allies as well as the Syrian opposition to determine those answers.

“We need to expand the evidence we have,” he told reporters Tuesday. “We need to make it reviewable; we need to have it corroborated before we make any decisions based on the clear violation that use of chemical weapons would represent by the Syrian regime. So, we will continue in that effort.”

Asked how long that might take, he said, “I don’t have a timetable for you.”

Let’s not kid ourselves about what’s happening here. Assad’s regime is periodically using chemical weapons, but not on a large scale, and testing to see what the U.S. reaction is. Our government is looking for any thin reed of plausible deniability, any gray area, any way to avoid acknowledging that the “red line” is getting crossed more frequently than a crosswalk in Times Square.

By avoiding any action beyond garden variety sanctions and nonlethal aid to the rebels — does anyone think a regime willing to use sarin will be deterred by sanctions? — we’re declaring to every leader, present and future, that you can use chemical weapons against your opponents as long as you don’t use them too broadly. The world hasn’t changed that much since Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds in Halabja in 1988.

We’ll tell ourselves that this won’t come to bite us at some point in the future. We’ll tell ourselves that “blowback” only comes from action, not from inaction.

Bret Stephens:

What should be obvious today is that we are at the dawn of a much wider Shiite-Sunni war, the one that nearly materialized in Iraq in 2006 but didn’t because the U.S. was there, militarily and diplomatically, to stop it. But now the U.S. isn’t there. What’s left to figure out is whether this megawar isn’t, from a Western point of view, a very good thing.

The theory is simple and superficially compelling: If al Qaeda fighters want to murder Hezbollah fighters and Hezbollah fighters want to return the favor, who in their right mind would want to stand in the way? Of course it isn’t just Islamist radicals of one stripe or another who are dying in Syria, but also little children and aging grandparents and every other innocent and helpless bystander to the butchery.

But here comes the whispered suggestion: If one branch of Islam wants to be at war with another branch for a few years — or decades — so much the better for the non-Islamic world. Mass civilian casualties in Aleppo or Homs is their tragedy, not ours. It does not implicate us morally. And it probably benefits us strategically, not least by redirecting jihadist energies away from the West.

Wrong on every count.

He cites the Iran-Iraq war as the most recent comparable large-scale Sunni-Shia bloodbath:

. . . the 1980s were the years of the tanker wars in the Gulf, including Iraq’s attack on the USS Stark; the hostage-taking in Lebanon; and the birth of Hezbollah, with its suicide bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks and embassy in Beirut. Iraq invaded Kuwait less than two years after the war’s end. Iran emerged with its revolutionary fervors intact — along with a rekindled interest in developing nuclear weapons.

In short, a long intra-Islamic war left nobody safer, wealthier or wiser.

Oh, and if you’re wondering how that Atrocities Prevention Board was working out…

Wanting to ascertain whether the board was actually doing anything to help prevent crimes against humanity, some 60 scholars of genocide studies and human-rights activists from across the globe sent a letter to Samantha Power, then-chair of the board, in December. Power never responded. They sent her a second letter in January, and again received no response.

When Power resigned in late February, they sent a letter to Steven Pomper, who assumed Power’s position as senior director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. He, too, never replied. On March 28, a letter was sent to another member of the board, Donald Steinberg, deputy administrator of USAID. Again, no response. In early April the scholars wrote to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice about this situation. To date, she has not responded…

. . . the board does not have a website, a Twitter account or even list email addresses for its main office or its members.

Over in New Jersey:

Hours after Chris Christie set the special election clock in motion, New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) started making a round of calls telling people [he] plans to run for the Senate, sources confirmed to POLITICO.

Pallone, who had acted as next-in-line for Lautenberg’s seat for years, had been on the fence about whether to challenge Newark mayor Cory Booker in a primary in 2014 for the seat.

Booker is a strong fundraiser and is the odds-on favorite. But the special election this year allows Pallone to keep his congressional seat if he loses, making this something of a free shot for him.

The coverage seems to suggest Booker is running. So Booker’s big pledge from last December is now moot, huh? “Let there be no doubt, I will complete my full second term as mayor. As for my political future, I will explore the possibility of running for the United States Senate in 2014.”

Notice the lack of conditions or wiggle room in that statement.

But I guess he meant, “unless our 89-year-old senator dies in office or something.”

The Associated Press finds that “some of President Barack Obama’s political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts.”

The official explanation is that the cabinet members use the secret accounts to “prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages” . . . but the AP notes that using secret accounts has another benefit:

secret email accounts complicate an agency’s legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.

Maybe Sebelius was just afraid Eric Holder would try to read her e-mail.

There is also this bizarre detail: “The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.”