Some of my contributions in his aid were inadvertently syndicated here, with HTML not escaped properly, etc. I’ve removed those posts.

“The residents in the District have a right to know exactly who is operating on their streets, under what authority, and who is authorized to use force,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a co-founder of the group.

Verheyden-Hilliard and the Partnership gave myself and a colleague at the time some initial consultations when we were considering pursuing legal action against the city (we ended-up working with ACLU-affiliated representation). The Partnership for Civil Justice seems to have fought a long-standing and principled battle for civil liberties in the District of Columbia, where Federal powers seems to trump local power, and local power seems to think it is bigger than it is — with the a frequent effect of constricting movement and speech of civilians. She, as it seems everyone at the Partnership is, is also involved in the activist group ANSWER, whose tactics and tone I’ve found myself disagreeing with (while sharing many overlapping issues of concern).

Colin Powell was on Face The Nation today. Bob Schieffer lead the interview by asking him first about a recent volley of remarks that one might say started with Powell critizing conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh during Q&A at a cybersecurity conference, as reported by Chris Strohm of Congress Daily. Then Cheney went on the record, also on Face The Nation, after being asked by Schieffer, saying he’d pick Limbaugh over Powell. Powell’s response this morning was, in part, to affirm he still saw himself as a Republican and to invoke Jack Kemp as an example he admired.

Washington’s stenographers must’ve started scribbling as soon as they heard this because that has become the headline of the day at both the Washington Post (“Still a Republican, Powell Urges Party to Become More Inclusive“) and the New York Times (“Powell Still a Republican, Despite Party Differences“).

But Schieffer also asked Powell if he agreed that EITs were effective and when he knew about them. Powell claimed to have been kept apart, without direct knowledge, and that the CIA “had to be given some room” (really, given their history of abuse?). Schieffer didn’t ask Powell why he didn’t insist on knowing the nature of the elicitations in which were given to him and his aid, Lawrence Wilkerson, as evidence for claims he had to make to the world.

While admitting being party to some discussions, Powell pleaded ignorance, saying “I don’t know know what I don’t know.” Logic hard to deny, but he’s really not saying anything there. Almost Rumsfeldian.

At the same time, in saying “we” used “EITs” — a pseudonym for torture — he admits to his complicity in human rights abuses. He seems to think it was OK to do that, but maybe just for a year or two. “It’s easy now to look back … to say … you shouldn’t have done anything. … Now we see that these [tactics] are not appropriate,” Powell said.

The Geneva Conventions didn’t make that clear before? Isn’t there some contradiction suggested in what Powell admits being a party to and what he says he didn’t know at the time? Such questions were not pressed in the studio.

If we take Powell at his word, he seems to have conveniently not known and not asked (and if he asked and got no answer, still proceeded in his role as an apparent cog rather than a principal), despite his responsibility.

The importance of this issue and the overall shallowness of Powell’s replies, as a one-time “principal,” seems more critical to me than his political affiliation and political name-calling. To me this subject of national security, the answers, the questions and the un-asked questions would make a more substantive lead.

Isn’t it relevant to ask why Powell was making claims apparently based on assertions with little context from an agency (CIA) with a known track record of lying? An agency whose other primary source for other claims (“Curveball”) was challenged by the Defense Intelligence Agency? This was when Powell was Secretary of State and reports say that the State Department’s own Bureau of Intelligence and Research was skeptical of these claims.

My friend Sam Husseini was outside Face The Nation, and followed-up to ask Powell about torture that produced lies used in support of the specious claims Powell made before the United Nations. Jonathan Schwarz sees a disparity between Powell’s comments now and what he said before the UN.

Ray McGovern, an ex-CIA analyst (who once had a sting briefing the first President Bush) and Catholic activist, has written a piece based in part on an email interview with Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell’s chief aide during his reign over the State Department, that should leave even more questions in your mind. One might even wonder if Powell is leaving Wilkerson out to dry.

Updated (26 May 2009): Robert Parry at Consortium News follows-up on Powell’s Face The Nation appearance and Sam’s question, bringing along analysis that goes deeper into Powell’s career.

This news struck me as I recall when investigative journalist Allan Nairn shared some recent history with the audience of Democracy Now! about how the Clinton administration continued George H. W. Bush’s policies and backed a CIA effort that supported the military junta there (see some of his reporting from then). These were thugs and rapists (those were Clinton’s own accurate labels for them) which Clinton ironically now takes some credit for opposing — but only after years of paying them, and perhaps with much more effort than was necessary, if he hadn’t supported them to begin with.

Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, the founder of a paramilitary group that came be known as FRAPH, and whose activities were supported by Bush and Clinton administration officials, is now in jail in the US. He’s spent the better part of the last decade living in New York City, where the US once tried to deport him on immigration charges — except to let off the hook by Clinton while he was still president. Later, when Haiti requested his extradition, the US, under George W. Bush, refused to comply. Constant has threatened to expose his CIA connections. He’s in jail not for human rights violations, but for being recently convicted in a fraud scheme.

Noam Chomsky recounted some of the same history at the same time, during the 2004 coup, and drew a comparison between the history of US involvement in Haiti with the US occupation of Iraq that was taking just taking hold then.

This is history Bill Clinton is entwined with, of which I’ve seen no refutation that extracts him. It should put into question the credibility of putting him in this position, however you weigh his current efforts of doing good — efforts which are now politically convenient. Their efficacy and their function, latent or otherwise, to whitewash this past need to be considered.

Updated: Jeremy Scahill has compiled his own sense of this history and accounts of first-hand reactions from journalists and activists working in Haiti during the Clinton era.

How could this be?

The article describes Schumer offering a limit to the proposed public national health insurance plan so that it can’t compete with private health insurance companies to the best of its ability. The effort for national health insurance is ostensibly beneficial because it could compete with private insurance plans, but would still be an insurance effort that wouldn’t promise complete coverage. Senator Schumer’s idea is not a “middle ground,” it is a move to defend an industry most are discontent with. It is a further push right of an already compromised position from the point of view of public interest.

Today doctors with PNHP and other activists were arrested in a coordinated protest that disrupted the start of a Senate Finance Committee hearing that further demonstrated the degree to which serious consideration of single-payer health care has been and is being avoided by politicians. Democratic Senator and Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus both declared “we need more police” and that he respected the views of all Americans — but apparently not enough to include the options quite possibly preferred by a majority of them in his committee hearing. Senator Schumer also sits on this committee.

Single-payer health care, a concept that excludes the middle-man layer of insurance entirely, which Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP) says polls show most Americans want, and which most of the western industrialized world has successfully adopted, is seemingly excluded from both political debate and factual scrutiny and reporting by commercial media.

There has been no exhaustive political or media effort to reconcile what most of the western world has done to provide far more health care per dollar to its citizens than the United States has via its private system with the veracity of the positions favoring maintaining an insurance-based system that has failed Americans through under-coverage and complete lack of coverage for 40 million or more Americans. Surely foes of such a system who feel they’re in the right could provide a thorough debunking of PNHP’s resources, including highlighting polls that seem to demonstrate political viability? 

I admit heavily linking to them here without providing much balance, as PNHP does a convincing job of demonstrating both support of practicing doctors and aggregating the spare reports of widespread small-d democratic support for their views. In my spare time, I’ve yet to see any criticisms that reconsile their assertions and evidence or thoroughly debunk them. Please share any such challenges you find so well formed.

In related news, my friend Sam Husseini was the originator and a writer in the creation of ads starring Mike Farrell (of M*A*S*H fame) advocating such a plan. That disclosure no doubt indicates a bias on my part to many, but such associations are not the real root of my bias. Rather, it is the acceptance of the stance that health care is a human right. From that position comes my skepticism regarding most political and commercial offerings on the issue (and to me there is no such thing as no bias or individual objectivity for anyone in matters of such broad potential effect). This shouldn’t weaken the observations with regards to apparently non-existent, or at best — disingenuous and weak, public debate on the issue in the Congress.

We’ll know if it is Bamford, and presumably more context and details, tonight.

It’ll be curious to see how far the Obama administration’s transparency schtick sticks when it comes to dealing with these allegations.

Updated: Long confirmed it is Bamford and has noted that a NOVA documentary, “The Spy Factory“, that Bamford was involved in is being broadcast on PBS tomorrow (similar in name to Bamford’s latest book, “The Shadow Factory”). We kind of feel like shills here, but while we’re at it: We’re waiting for another documentary to become available on Netflix, Secrecy.

Added on the evening of 15 April 2009: In the New York Times, the article “NSA’s Intercepts Exceed Limits Set By Congress” seems to reinforce the hearsay I quoted in this post.

Reportedly overheard by a reporter at a pre-inauguration party laden with Homeland Security lobbyists and contractors last night.