Many people have forgotten that the first Executive Order Duhbya signed was to greatly restrict

public access to executive documents, even long after one’s term is over. It was a clear declaration of how secretive and paranoid this

administration, chockful of Nixon compatriots, would be.

Who leaked this document? We’ve been demanding this info for 5 years —

gone to court for it. Now it is handed over just in time to make these well-paid execs look like tools and fools. Thanks, leaker! mjh

Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force By Dana Milbank and Justin

Blum, Washington Post Staff Writers

A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President

Cheney’s energy task force in 2001 — something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week

by industry officials testifying before Congress.

The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials

from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with

the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp.

and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force. The president of Shell Oil said his company did not

participate “to my knowledge,” and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know. …

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who

posed the question about the task force, said he will ask the Justice Department today to investigate. “The White House went to

great lengths to keep these meetings secret, and now oil executives may be lying to Congress about their role in the Cheney task

force,” Lautenberg said. …

The executives were not under oath when they testified, so they are not vulnerable to

charges of perjury; committee Democrats had protested the decision by Commerce Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) not to swear in the

executives. But a person can be fined or imprisoned for up to five years for making “any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent

statement or representation” to Congress.

Republicans say whoever is in power pushes their own agenda. Sounds like the defense of a child or

schoolyard bully. Everywhere, Republicans are following Duhbya’s lead to change everything they can as quickly as they can, like

vandals. mjh

Row over Plan B unearths

suspicion of political manipulation
Congressional investigators are saying there is a suspicion that senior U.S. Food and Drug

Administration (FDA) officials may have decided to reject a politically sensitive request for over-the-counter sales of a “morning-after”

contraceptive months before agency scientists finished reviewing the scientific data.

In a report from the Government

Accountability Office (GAO) it was found that found the FDA’s May 2004 rejection of Barr Pharmaceuticals’ bid for the Plan B

contraceptive was “unusual,” because of the involvement of high-level managers.

The investigation requested by the congressional

Democrats say it provides evidence that opposition from political conservatives had swayed the FDA review.

The Republicans say liberals are “criminalizing

conservatives.” There is no doubt Abramoff is both a conservative and a criminal. Now his “victims” cry they were duped — what’s that

about “the party of personal responsibility”? Reminds me of Krusty the Klown crying that he didn’t want to lend his name to cheap

products but “they dumped a truck full of money in my driveway. What was I supposed to do?!” mjh

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Lawmakers

pressured Interior while taking donations from Abramoff tribes By John Solomon, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — While

Congress investigated Jack Abramoff’s efforts to win influence inside government, its members held a secret: Nearly three dozen

lawmakers pressed to block a Louisiana Indian casino while collecting large donations from the lobbyist and his tribal clients.

Many, including leaders in both parties, intervened with letters to Interior Secretary Gale Norton within days of receiving money

from tribes represented by Abramoff or using the lobbyist’s restaurant for fundraising, an Associated Press review of campaign reports,

IRS records and congressional correspondence found.

Lawmakers said their intervention had nothing to do with Abramoff and that

the timing of donations was a coincidence. They said they wrote letters because they opposed the expansion of tribal gaming,

even though they continued to accept donations from casino-running tribes.

Many of the lawmakers involved lived far from

Louisiana and had no constituent interest in the casino dispute.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., held a fundraiser

at Abramoff’s Signatures restaurant in Washington on June 3, 2003, that collected at least $21,500 for Hastert’s Keep Our Majority

political action committee from the lobbyist’s firm and tribal clients.

Seven days later, Hastert wrote Norton urging her to

reject the Jena tribe of Choctaw Indians’ request for a new casino. Hastert’s three top House deputies also signed the letter. …

In the midst of the congressional letter-writing campaign, the Bush administration rejected the Jena’s casino on technical

grounds. …

The Coushattas wrote two checks to Rep. Tom DeLay’s groups in 2001 and 2002, shortly before the GOP leader

wrote Norton. But the tribe was asked by Abramoff to take back the checks and route the money to other GOP groups. In

all, DeLay received at least $57,000 in Abramoff and tribal donations between 2001 and 2004. [mjh: this is known as

“money laundering”]
—–

Big

Donations From Abramoff’s Tribal Clients Probed – Los Angeles Times By Mary Curtius, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — The

head of a Republican environmental organization clashed repeatedly today with senators who accused her of trying to use her friendship

with an Interior Department official to further the business interests of super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s tribal clients.

Italia

Federici, president of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, told an incredulous Senate Indian Affairs

Committee that she believed Abramoff’s tribal clients donated $500,000 over a three-year period to her organization

because they were generous, not because they hoped she would help them thwart the efforts of competing tribes to open

casinos. …

Echoing other Abramoff associates who have testified before the committee in hearings that began more than a year

ago, Federici insisted that she had been duped by the lobbyist.

“I had no reason in 2002 to believe that Mr. Abramoff was anything

other than a truthful, friendly, charismatic, well-liked and well-respected Republican advocate in Washington,” Federici

said.

When she found out that Abramoff had funded the anti-casino campaign, Federici said, “I felt tremendously manipulated.”

—–

Committee on Indian Affairs

Exhibits

released to the public as part of the Oversight Hearing on Lobbying Practices.

Yet another in a series of abusers of power and access. They’re starting to fall from the trees

like rotten fruit. mjh

A Detour in The Corridor Of Power By Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post Staff

Writer

Indictment Snaps Rapid Rise of Republican Star

Before he was indicted on five felony counts of lying to

investigators, David H. Safavian was positioned to break out of the pack of Republican operatives working in Washington.

Just 38, he was administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the president’s Office of Management and Budget, with the

authority to make the rules governing $300 billion in annual expenditures, including those in response to Hurricane Katrina.

But

that was before federal agents appeared at his home on Sept. 19 and arrested Safavian in connection with the investigation of

Jack Abramoff, charging that Safavian lied about his dealings with the onetime powerhouse lobbyist and misled investigators from

the General Services Administration and the Senate.

Knowing the indictment was imminent, Safavian had resigned his post three days

earlier….

Safavian set out a decade ago to win the backing of influential conservative Republicans such as Abramoff and anti-tax

crusader Grover Norquist. In the intense competition for power in Washington, Safavian climbed the political ladder in the relatively

short span of 10 years. …

On Sept 28, 2004, The Washington Post disclosed that in August 2002, Safavian, who was then at the

GSA, had gone on a golfing trip to Scotland arranged by Abramoff. House Administration Committee Chairman Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) and

lobbyist and former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed were also on the trip.

Safavian told GSA officials when he took the trip

that he had no business dealings with Abramoff. The federal affidavit filed when Safavian was arrested says Abramoff had asked Safavian

about acquiring property controlled by the GSA, butSafavian’s lawyer contends the inquiries did not constitute “doing business,” and

said Safavian paid his share of the $120,000-plus trip by giving Abramoff a check for $3,100.