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Tag: Eliot Spitzer
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NY’s top ethics officer accused of ethical breach
The fallout from Eliot Spitzer’s short but contentious reign as governor of New York state continues.
This week, Joseph Fisch, the state’s inspector general, charged the state’s top ethics watchdog, Herbert Teitelbaum, with acting unethically.
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The charges came in a 174-page report (not counting appendices) that gives a detailed sense of the power of personal, professional and political connections in Albany.
The report also recalls a scandal that erupted just a few months after Spitzer took office in January 2007.
At first, the controversy focused on Republican Joseph L. Bruno, the then leader of the state Senate and a Spitzer opponent.
Allegedly, Bruno had been using state aircraft to fly to political events, a violation of law.
Rather quickly, the scandal did an about-face when it was reported that members of Spitzer’s staff had used state police to gather the damaging information on Bruno.
The use of the police for political purposes violated the law and the scandal got a label, Troopergate.
The Commission on Public Integrity launched an investigation, an investigation that posed a threat, if not to Spitzer, then to members of his inner circle.
Fisch, the inspector general, claimed in a report issued Wednesday that Teitelbaum compromised the investigation by leaking confidential information to Robert Hermann, then the director of Spitzer’s Officer of Governmental Reform and a member of Spitzer’s cabinet.
Hermann then passed information to Lloyd Constantine of Spitzer’s staff on several occasions, the report alleges. Hermann had once been Constantine’s supervisor in the state attorney general’s office.
Hermann also supposedly talked once about the investigation with Peter Pope, Spitzer’s director of policy.
Fisch also charges that the commission did not act properly when it was told of Teitelbaum’s conversations with Hermann.
Both Teitelbaum and Hermann have denied that they did anything wrong, and Teitelbaum has resisted the calls for his resignation.
Gov. David A. Paterson, Spitzer’s successor, has asked his seven appointees to the 13-member commission to resign. They, so far, have refused to step aside, just as they have refused to fire Teitelbaum.
Teitelbaum and Hermann, both Spitzer appointees and Spitzer supporters, had known early for years before they came to be officials in Albany.
As Fisch’s report explains, they first met when Hermann was at the law firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.
Hermann interviewed Teitelbaum for an associate’s position with the firm, a position that he took.
However, Hermann had left the firm by the time Teitelbaum began work. (Eliot Spitzer would later be a lawyer with Skadden, Arps.)
Later in their careers, Teitelbaum and Hermann worked together at Teitelbaum, Hiller, Rodman, Paden & Hibsher, P.C., another law firm.
They had also served at different times as the legal counsel for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Paterson was Spitzer’s lieutenant governor at the time of the Troopergate episode, and he was not swept up in the investigation.
However, he has a link to the latest news. In naming Fish inspector general last year, Paterson had returned a favor.
In 1982, Fisch, the chief assistant district attorney in Queens, hired Paterson, who was fresh out of law school.
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‘Hillaryland’ is reborn at the State DepartmentMay 18, 2009 at 6:58am
Hillary Rodham Clinton may have reinvented herself (again) as Secretary of State, but she hasn’t exactly started with a blank slate.
Socialite Marylou Whitney makes grand gesture – at Eliot Spitzer’s expense
Eliot Spitzer got another lesson in political humility from one of New York’s wealthiest and most-connected society mavens this week.
The disgraced former governor of New York was recalled – or more accurately, mocked – at Saratoga Racetrack, when a pair of colts named “Luv Gov” and “Ninth Client,” made their debut at the races. The colts’ owners are Marylou Whitney, the so-called Queen of Saratoga, and her third husband, John Hendrickson.
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Ouch.
“Luv Gov” was part of the headline splashed across the cover of the New York Daily News after Spitzer was caught on a federal wiretap arranging a visit with a high-priced prostitute. The wiretap captured the voice of a man identified in court papers as Client 9, arranging to have a prostitute travel from New York to Washington to meet him. After Spitzer was identified as Client 9, the governor was engulfed in a political furor, and resigned a few days later.
So why would would an 82-year-old socialite, famous for her philanthropy and her parties, seek to rub Spitzer’s face in that?
Whitney, as it turns out, had a history with the former governor. The grand dame of racing had been the honorary chairwoman of Empire Racing Associates, a consortium of companies bidding to take over the racing franchise in New York State from the not-for-profit New York Racing Association. Whitney was a powerful advocate of the take-over, arguing that a for-profit company would “protect Saratoga’s historic traditions and put horse racing first.”
Spitzer, however, nixed the deal, suggesting antitrust and other concerns involving Empire’s partners, Magna Entertainment and Churchill Downs.
If that wasn’t enough, Whitney was reportedly outraged by Spitzer’s efforts to sink the fortunes of her longtime friend, Joseph Bruno, until recently, the leader of the state Senate and a longtime advocate of horse racing.
When news broke that Spitzer’s aides had tracked Bruno’s use of state aircraft for personal travel, and then leaked their findings to the press, Whitney told the New York Times, “It made me very unhappy.”
The Times described her reaction this way: “Squinting ever so slightly, vowels stiffening, she added: ‘I stand by him. We all do.’”
When Bruno resigned last month, Whitney broke down during an interview with an Albany television station. She described him as a longtime advocate of horse racing, as well as of Saratoga County, which he had represented for more than three decades.
Whitney first came to Saratoga 50 years ago, on the arm of her late husband, Cornelius Vanderbilt “Sonny” Whitney, the scion of both the Vanderbilt and Whitney fortunes. When he died at 93 in 1992, he reportedly left his widow $100 million.
She has used that money, among other things, to carry on her late husband’s passion for horse breeding and racing., as well as for Saratoga Springs. Her colt Birdstone, a product of Marylou Whitney Stables in Lexington, Ky., defeated Smarty Jones in the 2004 Belmont Stakes.
The socialite famous for grand gestures – arriving at charity balls by balloon, in carriages shaped like pumpkins, or towed by horses disguised as unicorns – has also given millions of dollars to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the national museum of dance in Saratoga, Saratoga Hospital, and a thoroughbred retirement fund.
About 10 years ago, she married Hendrickson, a former aide to Gov. Walter J. Hickel of Alaska. Hendrickson, who is 39 years her junior, has run many of her business affairs, among other things, negotiating the sale of a large tract of Whitney family property in the Adirondacks to the state of New York for a hefty price.
Whitney remains active despite suffering a stroke in 2006, hosting her traditional opening day luncheon in Saratoga’s Carousel Restaurant late last month.
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Ousted Sierra leaders tie suspension to Clorox criticism
At the very least, the timing raises questions: The biggest environmental group in the U.S. expelled 27 leaders of its Florida chapter shortly after the state committee accused the Sierra Club’s national directors of betraying their principles to endorse a “green” cleaning line by the Clorox Company.
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Willett noted another state chapter, Massachusetts, had also criticized the Sierra Club’s decision to endorse the new biodegradable cleaning line, “and no action has been taken against them, and there won’t be. That’s not how the Sierra Club works.”
First announced in January, the unprecedented partnership between the Sierra Club and Clorox has been hailed by supporters as a way to promote a green marketplace, and denounced by critics as a sell-out to a company most closely associated with Clorox Bleach. Under the deal, the Sierra Club gets an undisclosed percentage of profits from the sale of the new line, marketed under the name Green Works, in exchange for the use of its logo.
At least some ousted activists don’t buy the assertion that their suspension is unrelated to their criticism. Joy Towles Ezell, former chairwoman of the Florida chapter, told the Guardian that the same weekend in January that the chapter passed a measure condemning the deal, they were told of their impending removal.
She said that the new Clorox products should be named “Money Works” or “Toxic Works.”
“Clorox is the bad guy to me,” Ezell said. “. . .You sell your soul when you get involved with something like that.”
Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope admits he was skeptical when first approached by Clorox. But after reviewing the ingredients of the cleaners, most of which are plant products, and contemplating Clorox’s market reach, he decided to take the gamble.
“One of the reasons green home cleaning products haven’t achieved much market penetration is if they came from an environmental brand, people had the sense they won’t work … And if it came from someone with a cleaning reputation the reaction was: They can’t be green.”
Green Works may be an even bigger gamble for Clorox’s new CEO Donald Knauss, who came from Cola Cola in 2006, and who has pushed the company to launch its first new product line in 20 years. Knauss has identified sustainability as one of three core consumer trends with which he wanted to align Clorox products, and hired “green” consultants, who led him to the Sierra Club.
Green consultant Joel Makower, who worked on the project, calls the launch a watershed:
It’s an intriguing moment. Green Works enters the marketplace with a near perfect storm of market conditions: growing mainstream consumer demand for green products that don’t require compromise or sacrifice; significant interest from Wal-Mart and other big retailers in pushing greener products to the masses; a product that seems competitive with the leading green brands; and endorsement from Big Green.
Naysayers, however, predict the endorsement will undermine the credibility of the environmental group, noting that a month before the deal was signed, Clorox was fined $95,000 by the Environmental Protection Agency for donating a mislabeled Chinese version of Clorox bleach to a Los Angeles charity.
“The Sierra Club has become little more than another corporate front group,”
said Tim Hermach of Native Forest Council in Eugene, Oregon in a piece in Corporate Crime Reporter.Hermach had special animus for the group’s executive director: “Carl Pope has sold out the Sierra Club’s mission of saving nature and now seems proud of his role as an obsequious and professional Uriah Heep. As a result, Sierra Club is getting lots of corporate appreciation, cash and favors.”
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Will MTV audience care who rocked the cradle?
MTV’s Rock the Cradle has kicked off its debut season, but does the average MTV reality show fan even care about these celebuspawn?
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MTV’s website describes the premise of the show, “Yeah, we’re searching for the next superstar, but this isn’t your average, every day singing competition. We’re shining the spotlight on children of rock stars to see who has what it takes to step out of the parental shadow and fulfill their DNA destiny. ‘Cause, really, isn’t everything better when celebrities are involved?”
But really, how many typical MTV viewers even know the music that made the parents of these contestants famous? Aside from seeing episodes of Being Bobby Brown on Bravo and reruns of the movie Grease on cable, it’s likely that “Hammer time,” would be nothing more than a legend for today’s teens, MTV’s target audience.
The contestants of Rock the Cradle sing each week, and the one with the highest score from the judges is safe from elimination. The rest have to depend on viewer support to keep them from being kicked off the show.
The show is judged by Britney Spears’ former manager Larry Rudolph, choreographer Jamie King, and celebrity stylist June Ambrose.
After the first episode, which aired last week, Lucy Walsh, daughter of The Eagles’ Joe Walsh, received the highest score, which isn’t too surprising. She’s the only contestant who already has a record deal, with Island Records.
Rock the Cradle may get some success if the contestants can hold audience attention without relying on famous parents. It’s pretty certain that the fans of Kenny Loggins, The Doobie Brothers and Olivia Newton-John aren’t tuning in to MTV regularly.
Rock the Cradle airs on MTV on Thursday at 10 p.m.
This post is tagged with: Al. B Sure!, Being Bobby Brown, Bobby Brown, Britney Spears, Eddie Money, Island Records, Jamie King, Joe Walsh, June Ambrose, Kenny Loggins, Larry Rudolph, Lucy Walsh, MC Hammer, MTV, Olivia Newton-John, Rock the Cradle, The Doobie Brothers, The Eagles, Twisted SisterRead related stories: Entertainment · Music · Television
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Cayne, Macklowe keep their condos at The Plaza
Another way the rich are different: They don’t have to pay mortgages.
A case in point: Days before Bear Stearns chairman James Cayne suffered a dizzying $900-million loss in wealth as a result of the fire sale of Bear Stearns, he purchased two apartments in the storied Plaza for a cool $28 million.
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The 1907 landmark, famous as the home of children’s book heroine Eloise, recently reopened as a mix of luxury condos and hotel units. The development boasts a Who’s Who of corporate chieftains, including New England Patriots boss Robert K. Kraft, Staples Chief Executive Ronald Sargent, Italian racing mogul Flavio Briatore and Dave Barger, chief executive of JetBlue.
Like Cayne, several have been socked by recent gyrations in the real estate and financial markets. Real-estate mogul Harry Macklowe, who spent $60 million last year to buy up a string of adjacent apartments, is facing a mountain of debt himself as a result of a $7 billion, seven-building buy last year. To stave off cash-hungry creditors, he has been trying to unload the iconic General Motors building, and the office tower at 1301 Avenue of the Americas. So far, though, he’s shown no sign of giving up his dream of a palace on the park.
Italian businessman Luigi Zunino, meanwhile, is trying to flip the third-floor apartment which he is in contract to buy, according to the Wall Street Journal. Zunino is the CEO of a Milan-based real estate company that lost three-quarters of its value in the last year. While most condos in The Plaza have been selling for between $4,000 and $6,000 per square foot, Zunino is valuing his apartment at $10,000 per square foot.
If he gets his $100-million asking price, it would set a record for residential real estate in Manhattan. If not, maybe he can start a support group for onetime Masters of the Universe in the Oak Room.
This post is tagged with: Business, Dave Barger, Flavio Briatore, James Cayne, Robert Kraft, Ronald Sargent, The Plaza, WealthRead related stories: Business · Wealth
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Geoffrey Garin fills Penn’s post in Clinton campaign
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton replaced one pollster and a strategist with another Sunday, letting Mark Penn go and filling his place with Geoffrey Garin.
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The adjective “well-respected” seems glued to Garin’s name in press accounts. The adjectives “controversial,” “abrasive,” “gruff” and “rumpled” were always pasted on Penn.
Penn had been serving as Clinton’s chief political strategist until he stepped down Sunday. He is also the chief executive of the Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm.
Reportedly, Clinton had been angered that Penn and Burson-Marsteller were working to help the government of Colombia obtain a trade agreement with the United States.
Clinton opposes the alliance. Penn’s connection to Colombia could have hurt her with voters in the April 22 Pennsylvania primary.
“The important thing is just to win,” Garin told The Washington Post after he took over for Penn. “My view is the campaign has to focus on the work of April and May and the early part of June and do well at all of that. So on one level, first things first.”
Garin, 54, who joined the Clinton campaign last month as a pollster, has been president of Peter D. Hart Research Associates since 1984. He joined the company in 1978 as a senior analyst and vice president.
While at the company, he has worked as a pollster and strategist for several Democratic senatorial candidates. They include Charles Schumer of New York, Dianne Feinstein of California and Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia.
He has also worked with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of Teachers.
Garin’s connections to unions could help Clinton in Pennsylvania with some of the voters she needs to win the state and slow the momentum of Sen. Barack Obama.
Evan Miller of The New Argument blog notes that Garin gave some unsolicited advice to the Clinton campaign in February, advice the campaign ignored.
“If I were Hillary Clinton, the last thing I’d be doing is talking about super delegates, because the voters don’t want to hear that,” Garin said. “She really needs to make the case about why she’s the better candidate to lead the country.”
In other comments, Garin has emphasized the importance of speaking to the economic issues that are on people’s minds.
But at this moment in the Clinton campaign, personnel issues may be as important as policy issues.
Penn was in the middle of months of internal fighting. He seemed to have alienated everyone but Clinton and her husband, Bill Clinton.
Wolfson and Garin don’t have this history of contention, The Washington Post reported.
“People like Howard and Geoff,” one campaign aide said. “I presume there will be less strife.”
This post is tagged with: Geoffrey Garin, Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, Mark Penn, PoliticsRead related stories: Politics
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Found Muckety by accident. Has the TU come back to life?
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Hey Perry. No corporate overseer in this iteration.
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Heston’s journey from left to right
He played Moses and Michelangelo, but Americans under 40 are more likely to know Charlton Heston as the conservative activist who walked out on filmmaker Michael Moore.
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Those who recall him as president of the National Rifle Association may be surprised that Heston started out as a liberal Democrat. He campaigned for Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and John F. Kennedy in 1960. He opposed Hollywood censors’ attempts to prettify the language in Ben-Hur. He supported a gun control law, passed under President Lyndon Johnson, that forbade addicts and federal convicts from owning guns, and regulated interstate commerce in firearms
He was also a leading advocate of civil rights, raising money for the cause and joining Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington in 1963 along with Harry Belafonte, Jackie Robinson, Paul Newman, Josephine Baker and Bob Dylan—none of whom can be imagined as a conservative. Two years earlier, he had picketed a segregated theater in Oklahoma that was showing one of his movies.
“We certainly disagree with his position as NRA head and also his firm, firm, unwavering support of the unlimited right to bear arms,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Round Table, a civil rights group. “Charlton Heston was a complex individual. He lived a long time, and certainly, there were many phases. The phases we prefer to remember were certainly his contributions to Dr. King and civil rights.”
As he got older, however, Heston’s politics swung rightward. He seemed to follow the lead of Ronald Reagan, who had preceded him as president of the Screen Actors Guild (”Ronald Reagan was my president before he was yours,” Heston once wrote) and also as a liberal Democrat. Heston campaigned for Reagan and for both Bushes when they ran for president.
In a 1997 speech, he deplored a culture war being waged against “the God fearing, law-abiding, Caucasian, middle-class Protestant–or even worse, evangelical Christian, Midwestern or Southern—or even worse, rural, apparently straight–or even worse, admitted heterosexuals, gun-owning-or even worse, NRA-card-carrying, average working stiff–or even worse, male working stiff–because, not only don’t you count, you are a downright obstacle to social progress.”
He resigned from Actors Equity, calling the union’s refusal to allow a white actor to play the part of a Eurasian in “Miss Saigon” “obscenely racist.” By then, he also opposed affirmative action and criticized CNN’s coverage of the Gulf War as sympathetic to the Iraqis.
A staunch defender of the Second Amendment, Heston was elected president of the N.R.A. in 1998. “Those wise old dead white guys that invented this country knew what they were talking about,” he said.
Perhaps his most famous moment at the organization came at its 2000 convention where, paraphrasing an N.R.A. bumper sticker (”I’ll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands”), he waved a replica of a colonial flintlock above his head and shouted, “From my cold, dead hands!”
Michael Moore visited Heston to talk to him for the 2002 anti-gun documentary, Bowling for Columbine, But Heston appeared angry and flustered by Moore’s questions and walked out on the interview. Moore, who was criticized by some for “ambushing” Heston, posted a picture of the actor on his web site after he died.
In 2002, Heston was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. “If you see a little less spring in my step, if your name fails to leap to my lips, you’ll know why,” he said in announcing his condition. “And if I tell you a funny story for the second time, please laugh anyway.” He withdrew from public life, resigning from the NRA in 2003, although he accepted a Medal of Freedom later that year from President George W. Bush.
“The largeness of character that comes across the screen has also been seen throughout his life,” Bush said.
This post is tagged with: Charlton Heston, Entertainment, Martin Luther King Jr., Michael Moore, National Rifle Association, PoliticsRead related stories: Entertainment · Politics
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Mark Penn leaves Clinton campaign post
Mark J. Penn, one of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s key and most controversial advisers, is no longer her chief political strategist.
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Penn is the chief executive of Burson-Marsteller, a Washington public relations firm that had been hired to help the country of Colombia gain a bilateral trade agreement with the United States.
Any suggestion that Clinton supports the trade agreement could hurt her in Pennsylvania’s April 22 primary. Voters there connect foreign trade with the loss of jobs in their state and in the country.
Penn had said that other members of the firm were doing the work with Colombia. But according to The New York Times, Clinton was angered when she learned that Penn had met with officials from Colombia last week and she insisted on his demotion.
“After the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up his role as chief strategist of the Clinton campaign,” Maggie Williams, the campaign manager, said in a statement Sunday evening.
Penn’s company also has ties with Blackwater Worldwide, the military contractor and Countrywide Financial, one of the leading issuer of subprime mortgages. According to the Times, Penn had also refused to stop dealing with those companies while helping Clinton.
Penn did call his meeting with the Colombia officials an “error in judgment.” After that statement, the government of Colombia severed its ties with Burson-Marsteller.
Clinton has been under pressure to do something about Penn for months. He is known to have an abrasive style that has irritated other staffers. And, especially when Clinton was losing in primaries, he was criticized for giving her bad advice.
“No matter how much bad stuff happened, (Clinton) kept to her Bush playbook, stubbornly clinging to her own Rumsfeld, her chief strategist, Mark Penn,” Frank Rich wrote in the Times earlier in the year.
Drawn to Bill Clinton’s team by Dick Morris, Penn helped fashion President Clinton’s 1996 re-election. Penn was also a leader in Hillary Clinton’s successful senatorial campaign in 2000.
And he guided Britain’s Tony Blair to his a third re-election as prime minister, just as he put Israel’s Menachem Begin in the win column.
Penn is the co-author of Microtrends: The Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes.
In Microtrends, Penn and co-author E. Kinney Zalesne divide the American public into emerging demographic categories. (Stay-at-home workers, etc.)
“There is no One America any more, or Two or Three or Eight,” Penn writes. “In fact, there are hundreds of Americas, hundreds of new niches made up of people drawn together by common interests.”
Penn is the nominal boss of Charles R. Black Jr., a key McCain adviser and spokesman.
Black is the chairman of BKSH & Associates, a lobbying firm that is a subsidiary of Burson-Marsteller.
The Times reports that Penn’s polling firm, Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, will continue to poll for Clinton.
This post is tagged with: Burson-Marsteller, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mark Penn, Penn, Politics, presidential campaign, Schoen and Berland AssociatesRead related stories: Politics
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Jay-Z cuts 2 deals – with Live Nation & Beyonce
Jay-Z has had a big week. The rapper is expected to finalize a contract with Live Nation records soon worth $150 million. If that weren’t enough to celebrate, last night he reportedly married his superstar girlfriend, Beyonce Knowles.
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Although the couple has yet to confirm their marriage officially, they were spotted last week in Scarsdale, NY obtaining a marriage license.
In addition to paying Jay-Z $25 million up front, Live Nation would also finance his future endeavors, including any talent consulting, clothing lines, tours, albums, and record labels that the rapper would work on in the future. The conglomeration of Jay-Z’s efforts would be labeled Roc Nation. The company would then split future profits with Jay-Z.
Jay-Z is known for his entrepreneurial success outside of the music business. He has made significant achievements in both the fashion and nightlife industries. He founded Roc-a-wear, a clothing line he sold for $204 million last year. He also started his own nightclub, the 40/40 club, which now has locations in New York, Atlanta, and Las Vegas.
Although Jay-Z still owes another album to Def Jam records, where he held the position of president until December 2007, he will be paid $10 million per record by Live Nation. His contract will require three albums from Jay-Z in the next ten years.
This deal will further cement Jay-Z’s departure from his self-proclaimed retirement. In 2003, when he released The Black Album, Jay-Z announced it would be his last studio album. In 2006, he released the album Kingdom Come, which he followed with American Gangster, an album meant to accompany the Denzel Washington film.
Live Nation will ink the long-term deal with Jay-Z even though his last album, American Gangster, did not garner the same success of his previous records, selling about one third the number of records that The Black Album sold. Jay-Z refused to release American Gangster on iTunes because believed the album should be purchased as a whole and not by individual tracks.
This is the third major deal Live Nation has made with a top recording artist. The company signed a similar deal with with Madonna in 2007 and another with U2 earlier this week, worth $120 and $300 million, respectively.
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- Josh Brolin has several reasons to watch Oscars – January 23, 2008
- Muckety this! Madonna to Dalton Trumbo – March 23, 2008
- Smoke gets in Bono’s eyes – May 16, 2007
- Bill Gates yuks it up at CES 2008 – January 8, 2008
- Matt Damon, George Clooney and other sexy men – November 22, 2007
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This post is tagged with: 40/40 club, American Gangster, Beyonce Knowles, Chris Martin, Def Jam records, Denzel Washington, Destiny’s Child Gwyneth Paltrow, iTunes, Jay-Z, Kingdom Come, Live Nation, Madonna, Roc Nation, Roc-a-wear, The Black Album, U2Read related stories: Celebs · Entertainment · Music
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Did ‘Yoo Doctrine’ spawn torture?
The disclosure this week of a March, 2003 memo from Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo, asserting that laws banning torture were trumped by the president’s authority as commander-in-chief in a time of war, appears to offer a direct line to subsequent abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.
Hint: Click in map to explore connectionsStory continues below interactive map
MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.The 81-page document, declassified as a result of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and first reported by the Washington Post, argues that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes during military interrogations of al-Qaeda captives would not give rise to criminal liability. It also appears to defend the use of mind-altering drugs that do not produce “an extreme effect” calculated to “cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality.”
Part One of the memo is here, and Part Two is here.
The memo was intended to deal with “unlawful combatants,” a label that would not apply to the largely Iraqi population captured during the Iraq war. But as our friends over at TPM Muckraker point out:
The natural suspicion remains that Yoo’s expansive parsing might have migrated over to Iraq. After all, Major General Geoffrey Miller, then the commanding officer at Guantanamo Bay, did travel to Iraq in August of 2003 to advise officials there on interrogating Iraqi detainees. Miller had been briefed on the Pentagon’s guidelines for interrogation, which owed much to Yoo’s green light.
Yoo denies that, noting that several military investigations have found that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were not authorized by military policy.
The ACLU also points out that the March, 2003 document refers to other still-secret Justice documents, including one from 2001 that found that the “Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.”
The October 2001 memo was almost certainly meant to provide a legal basis for the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program, which President Bush launched the same month the memo was issued.
The existence of the March, 2003 document, which was addressed to William Haynes II, then the top lawyer at the Pentagon, has long been known, but its contents had not been disclosed before. Although the Justice Department told the Defense Department to stop relying on it nine months after it was written, the Post’s Dan Eggen and Josh White assert that Yoo’s reasoning provided the legal foundation for the military’s use of harsh interrogation tactics at a crucial time, as captives were pouring into military jails in Afghanistan and as the U.S. was preparing to invade Iraq.
Yoo’s opinions in the months after the 911 attacks have come to be known collectively as the “Yoo Doctrine.” Critics accused him of enabling torture and claiming unlimited powers for the president, charges which Yoo has denied.
In his 2007 book, “The Terror Presidency,” Jack Goldsmith, who took over the Office of Legal Counsel after Yoo departed, writes that the two memos “stood out” for “the unusual lack of care and sobriety in their legal analysis.”
Yoo was born in South Korea, grew up in Philadelphia, and earned degrees from Harvard and Yale Law School. After graduation, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and became a favored legal philosopher in conservative circles. He is now on the faculty of the school of law at the University of California, Berkeley.
UPDATE:
In his first interview since the release of the 2003 memo, Yoo denied to Esquire today that his memo applied to soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan, or that it authorized the kinds of abuses revealed at Abu Ghraib.“The memo released yesterday does not apply to Iraq. It applied to interrogations of al Qaeda detained at Guantanamo Bay. I don’t [necessarily] agree that the methods did migrate to Iraq, because I don’t know for a fact that they did. The analysis of the memo released yesterday was not to apply to Iraq, and we made clear in other settings that the Geneva Conventions fully applied to the war in Iraq. There was no intention or desire that the memo released yesterday apply to Iraq.”
Related posts on Muckety- Bradbury nomination is torturous – January 26, 2008
- Anti-terrorism policies crafted by ex-court clerks – October 4, 2007
- Did Spitzer get a little help in hanging himself? – March 12, 2008
- Lies led Marion Jones to prison – January 14, 2008
- McCain backed by conservative law profs – February 4, 2008
- Military contractor accused of bribes – August 31, 2007
- Rumsfeld proposes U.S. propaganda agency – January 25, 2008
- Wolfowitz is back, as arms control adviser – January 25, 2008
- The Federalist Society litmus test – November 20, 2007
- High-profile lawyer takes Britney’s case – February 20, 2008
Read related stories: Colleges · Law · News
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Another mogul mulls Newsday bid
A fourth suitor may join the bidding war over Newsday, the suburban tabloid put on the auction block by the financially-beleaguered Tribune Company.
Hint: Click in map to explore connectionsStory continues below interactive map
MAP HINTS: Click expands a name. Control+Click centers map on a name. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For advanced tools choose Tools > Options from the menu at top. More help. Not seeing the maps? Please go here to check for the latest version of Java.Jared Kushner, boy publisher of the New York Observer, and son of New Jersey real-estate mogul Charles Kushner, is inquiring about the Long Island-based newspaper, according to today’s Wall Street Journal.
Among New York media moguls, the 27-year-old may be considered an upstart, but he has deep pockets. In July, 2006, he spent $10 million to buy the money-losing Observer while still getting his MBA at New York University, telling the New York Times that the opportunity to buy a newspaper doesn’t come along very often.
Kushner joins a field of giants who are eyeing the still-profitable tabloid, including billionaire magnate Rupert Murdoch, publisher of the New York Post, real-estate developer Mortimer Zuckerman, owner of the New York Daily News and James Dolan, whose family owns Cablevision.
The magic number sought for Newsday is upwards of $500 million, as Tribune Chairman Sam Zell struggles to stay afloat after his highly leveraged purchase of the company last year. Besides Newsday, Tribune owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun, among other newspapers, as well as local television stations and the Chicago Cubs baseball team.
Kushner, a grandson of Holocaust survivors, is the scion of a real-estate, banking and insurance empire valued at more than $1 billion built by his father Charles. But the elder Kushner suffered a spectacular fall from grace several years ago. He spent nearly a year in jail after pleading guilty to 18 counts of tax evasion, admitting, among other things, to hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law and sending a videotape of the encounter to his sister to retaliate for her cooperation with federal investigators.
Jared Kushner is the only one of his parents’ four children to work at the family company, where he is a principal.
Related posts on the Muckety Maps in the news blog- Will the Tribune Company sell Newsday? – March 20, 2008
- Zell takes over Tribune – December 21, 2007
- Newspaper lobbyists may lose a moneymaker – October 20, 2007
- Bill Gates enjoyed biggest payday of 2007 – March 7, 2008
- Bruce Sherman and Hearst-Argyle – August 27, 2007
- Sulzberger dodges bullet – for now – March 18, 2008
- Murdoch’s media machine – June 25, 2007
- Burkle still chasing a newspaper dream – July 9, 2007
- Yucaipa may pay Bill Clinton $20M – January 24, 2008
- Mays family awaits Clear Channel buyout – February 12, 2008
Read related stories: Business · Media
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If Kushner was so smart, why did he buy a newspaper when he could have started one from scratch? Why stick yourself with a teetering brand, when now is the time to invent one’s brand anew in this brave new world of new media, particularly if you have a billion bucks to cover early mistakes?
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