Armenian Lobby Fights Nomination of New US Ambassador to Azerbaijan

I received an email from the Armenian National Council of America in opposition to the nomination of Matthew Bryza as ambassador to Baku. Among the ANCA complaints was this item:

Firing of Ambassador John Evans:

Matthew Bryza served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, overseeing Armenia and the surrounding region, during the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John Marshall Evans, over his truthful statements on the Armenian Genocide. He also held this position during what the Washington Post has described as the State Department’s intervention with the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) regarding the withdrawal of its award to Ambassador Evans for constructive dissent.

Mr. Bryza has yet to offer any meaningful insights into the specific justification for the firing of Ambassador Evans or to discuss his role in the termination of a distinguished 35-year diplomatic career.

The Armeniapedia.org website has posted some background on the Evans controversy:

Evans's use of the word `genocide,' which is bound to anger Turkey, was also announced and welcomed by the chairman of the Armenian Assembly of America, Anthony Barsamian. `In his public commentaries, Ambassador Evans repeatedly employed the words "Armenian Genocide" to properly characterize the attempted annihilation of our people by Ottoman Turkey,' he said in a speech in Los Angeles.

Barsamian was addressing more than 270 community leaders that gathered to pay tribute to countries that attempted to stop or recognized the genocide.

Evans thus became the first U.S. official since former President Ronald Reagan to publicly describe the mass killings and deportations of Ottoman Armenia as a genocide. Reagan did so in an April 1981 statement on the genocide committed in Cambodia in the 1970s.

Judge Orders Guantanamo Prisoner Photos Released

In response to a FOIA lawsuit, reported on FOIABlog.

Congress Investigates Defense Department's "Corrupt Practices" in Kyrgyzstan

At a CESS conference in Michigan, a few years ago, I had a debate of sorts with a US State Department official from Embassy Bishkek, who complained in her presentation about corruption in Kyrgyz education. She had described American anti-corruption efforts to stamp out the selling of grades by professors. I thought the project sounded unwise, and remarked from the audience something to the effect of, "I wish we'd stop this anti-corruption rhetoric, because I bet we are corrupting them." Needless to say, the discussion ended on a sour note. Now, I find out, I may have been more right than I knew at the time, according to Eurasianet's Diedre Tynan'a report on hearings scheduled for Thurday:

Three figures said to be associated with Red Star Enterprises Ltd. and Mina Corp have been subpoenaed by a US congressional committee that is investigating potential improper dealings concerning the Manas Transit Center in Kyrgyzstan. The trio will be expected to answer questions about the companies' business operations and relationships in Kyrgyzstan, as well as the entities' ownership structures.

Chuck Squires, the director of operations for both Red Star and Mina Corp, Erkin Bekbolotov, a Kyrgyz national, and Doug Edelman, an American entrepreneur, were subpoenaed July 1 by Edolphus Towns, a New York Democrat and the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, EurasiaNet.org has learned.

Squires, a former defense attaché at the US Embassy in Bishkek, is due to appear before the committee on July 15. Bekbolotov is scheduled for questioning on July 20 and Edelman on July 22. The testimony will be given in closed committee sessions.

The subpoenas have been formally served to Squires, Bekbolotov and Edelman, as well as to Red Star and Mina Corp's company addresses in Gibraltar, sources close to the investigation insist. A spokesman for Red Star/Mina Corp declined to comment on the development.

Investigators at the Subcommittee for National Security and Foreign Affairs are said to be frustrated by a lack of cooperation from Red Star and Mina Corp since the start of the congressional probe. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

In letters dated April 12, investigators asked representatives of the two entities to provide information about the companies' structures and their respective relationships to former Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, his son Maxim, and the companies Aalam Services and Manas Aerofuels, both of which are now in the process of being nationalized by the Kyrgyz provisional government.

The congressional probe is focusing on possible corrupt practices surrounding Manas fuel supplies, as well as fuel supply arrangements at Bagram air base in Afghanistan. Representatives of Red Star and Mina Corp, the previous and current holders of US government contracts to supply jet fuel to Manas, deny any wrongdoing in connection with the fulfillment of their contracts.

The Browser's Five Books

Like an internet version of the Five Books of Moses, or a print variant of the BBC's Desert Island Discs radio program, The Browser offers a Five Books feature on topics of current interest (ht Charles Crawford). What does it mean?

FiveBooks – Become an expert with FiveBooks.

Every day an eminent writer, thinker, commentator, politician, academic chooses five books on their specialist subject. From Einstein to Keynes, Iraq to the Andes, Communism to Empire. Read the interviews, share in the knowledge, buy the books.

Our site is funded by the small percentage we get from every Amazon sale made through us. So please support us by buying your books from FiveBooks, the authoritative way to become an authority.

This week, the theme is a world gone mad:

This Week on Five Books--Mad World

Sociology Professor Frank Furedi chooses books on the crisis in education and says schools have got to stop trying to solve social problems and start educating kids, stop hiding behind gimmicks and interactive white boards and start talking to young people in an intelligent way.

BTW, there's a Russian connection, in the person of the founder, Al Breach:

I’m Al Breach, am 39, and started working on what was to become The Browser with Robert in early 2008. Along with managing the set-up of the business, I’m on the board / advisor to a few companies (Vostok Nafta and Bank of Georgia) and invest actively. My home is in a village in the Swiss mountains.

I spent most of my adult life in Moscow working as an economist. I started in Moscow in mid 1996 writing a journal, before joining Goldman Sachs to become their Russia & FSU economist. After an 8 month sabbatical in Japan in 2002, I joined what was then Brunswick UBS and worked there until late 2007 heading research.

I was born and raised in London, but along with Moscow and Switzerland have lived in Beijing, Tokyo, New York and Zimbabwe. I did an MSc in Economics at the London School of Economics (LSE), studied Mathematics with Philosophy at Edinburgh University, and my secondary school was Westminster.

By sheer coincidence, I actually saw Al Breach speak a few years ago, at a panel on the Russian economy chaired by Leon Aron, at the American Enterprise Institute. If he is as knowledgable about literature as about Russian business, this site should prove to be of interest...especially since Nick Clegg also went to Westminster School--Breach's alma mater.

Another Russian connection, for editor Anna Blundy:

I am a novelist and journalist, and I studied Russian at University College, Oxford. I covered Russia’s financial crisis and Yeltsin’s demise in the late 1990s as Bureau Chief for The Times AND once interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev live in Russian on Radio Svoboda. I am the author of seven critically acclaimed novels and a memoir and have appeared as a commentator on the BBC’s Newsnight Review, Radio Four’s Midweek and Woman’s Hour among others and have written for publications such as The Spectator and Cosmopolitan. My five Faith Zanetti books feature a female war correspondent at odds with a rumbling world, and my latest novel, The Oligarch’s Wife, is published by Random House in December 2009. I wrote a single-girl column for The Times in the early 1990s and now write a regular column in The Times entitled ‘How Did I Get Here?’ about life in northern Italy. I have a masters in Psychoanalytic Theory and am currently working on a PhD thesis psychoanalysing Samuel Pepys from his diaries.

And yet another Russian connection, in the person of Browser co-founder Robert Cottrell:

My name is Robert Cottrell, and I am editor of The Browser. Which is to say, mainly, that I choose the pieces we recommend in "Best of the Moment", and I collect the fragments we publish under "Browsings".

I take suggestions gladly from all sides for pieces to recommend: my email address is robert[at]thebrowser.com. Most links come from my daily reading of RSS feeds, and, increasingly, from following other strong readers on Twitter, where I am @robertcottrell.

Until 2008 I was in print journalism as a staff writer variously for The Economist, the Financial Times, the Independent and the Far Eastern Economic Review. I also contributed to the New York Review of Books for ten years, mostly on Russian topics.

In 2004 I moved to New York as deputy editor of Economist.com. I found over time that I wanted to try building something new, rather than maintaining a large and established site. My first attempt in that direction was the creation of More Intelligent Life, a "baby" site for a re-launched Economist quarterly magazine, Intelligent Life: the site has since been taken over, and improved out of all recognition, by Emily Bobrow. I left The Economist in 2008 to form a business partnership with Al Breach, out of which The Browser has grown.

I live now in Riga, Latvia, where I have a second-hand-book shop.

In my print-journalism days the pieces I most enjoyed writing were the relatively relaxed ones done for The Economist's Christmas issues. Most of those are behind a pay barrier now—such as this one, about the art of conversation. But I see my profile of Santa Claus can still be had for nothing; and, for the time being, my piece about being foreign, in the latest Christmas issue, is also free. Most of my pieces for the New York Review of Books are behind a pay barrier, though last time I looked, one of them, on Chechnya, has remained in the wild.

I wonder if they need a Washington correspondent?

New Format from Blogger

You may have noticed that this blog has switched to the "Simple" format on Blogger. Hope that makes it easier to read--and for RSS subscriptions to Mobile apps (blogger doesn't seem to have it's own app to format blogs for iPhones, yet).

Charles Crawford on British Diplomacy in the Former Yugoslavia

From Diplomat Magazine:

In my own career this question came up in an interesting way after the NATO bombing of Serbia/Kosovo in 1999. That episode represented a classic attempt by Tony Blair to establish the principle of ‘humanitarian intervention’ under the idea of a new ‘Right to Protect’ populations from massive human rights violations by their own authorities.

This principle made sense at the time – the fact that so many people had been murdered at Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia shuddered the UN system. Nonetheless, the way NATO intervened in Serbia/Kosovo was morally problematic, for me at least. NATO forces bombed countless Serb targets almost at will, killing hundreds of Serbian soldiers and civilians. Milosevic and the top Belgrade leadership whose policies had prompted the intervention were unscathed, although most of them ended up facing war crimes charges at the Hague Tribunal.

When that NATO bombing ended, I was appointed by then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook to lead on the British diplomatic policy towards the Balkans in general and Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in particular. We of course wanted Milosevic to resign or be toppled. But we were not allowed by FCO lawyers to say that we were acting to make this happen. That would be pressing for regime change – a quite improper interference in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’s internal affairs under firmly established international law.

Anything we might contemplate doing to help see Mr Milosevic depart had to be described in bland, unspecific ways – for example, supporting democratic reforms and European standards of the sort Belgrade itself had endorsed under the Helsinki Accords. Pshaw. Back in the real world we did a lot to help anti-Milosevic forces. And we won.

Sen. Orrin Hatch's Case Against Elena Kagan

From National Review Online:

Ms. Kagan’s hearing did nothing to temper the picture of judicial activism painted by her record. Despite the excessive media and political attention one can receive, a confirmation hearing is only a small part of the picture for any nominee, and Supreme Court hearings have become less and less meaningful, with nominees prepared and prepped to provide answers that are more form than substance. Ms. Kagan, for example, referred to any previous Supreme Court decision as “settled law,” whether it was two days or two centuries old. Her pledge to give such “binding precedent . . . all the respect of binding precedent” told us nothing more. In effect, she said that a decision is a decision and a precedent is a precedent — not much to go on.

Ms. Kagan chose not to answer many questions by various senators about a range of issues. I spent 30 minutes asking her about freedom of speech, campaign-finance reform, and the Citizens United v. FEC case, which she argued before the Supreme Court. I asked for her own views, but she instead told me what Congress said, what she argued before the Court, and what the Court held. I already knew those things because I had read the statute, the transcript, and the opinion. She would not even admit that she had in fact written the 1996 memo about partial-birth abortion that not only bore her name but included her handwritten notes. After three attempts, all she would say is that it was in her handwriting; I suppose that left open the possibility that it had been forged.

A nominee, of course, may choose to use such code words and evasions. For Ms. Kagan, however, this choice stood in stark contrast to her previous strong critique of Supreme Court confirmation hearings. After serving on the Judiciary Committee staff during Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s hearing, Ms. Kagan wrote in a 1995 law-journal article that Supreme Court confirmation hearings had become a “vapid and hollow charade” and taken on “an air of vacuity and farce.” The solution, she said, was for a nominee to discuss “the votes she would cast, the perspective she would add, and the direction in which she would move the institution.” Ms. Kagan refused to discuss any of these at her own hearing, prompting the Associated Press to ask the question on many Judiciary Committee members’ minds: “What happened to the Kagan standard?”

Liberty requires limits on government; it always has, and it always will. That includes limits on judges. Measured against that standard, Elena Kagan’s record shows that her primarily academic and political experience and her activist judicial philosophy make her inappropriate for serving on the Supreme Court. Her hearing offered nothing to neutralize the clear evidence of what kind of justice she will be.

Happy Birthday, To Kill a Mockingbird

A friend sent me this item about the anniversary of Harper Lee's novel:

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm broken at the elbow..."

Those were the first fifteen words Harper Lee wrote in her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Little did she know that soon after her book's publication in 1960, it would go on to win not only a Pulitzer Prize, but remain a bestseller for decades to come. The film version received eleven Academy Award nominations, winning three Oscars. (Gregory Peck won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch.) I first saw the book in the hands of my mother shortly after it was published. An avid reader, she spent many hot and humid summer evenings enthralled by the words Harper Lee had composed about Scout, Jem, their father Atticus Finch, and Boo Radley and the mythical town of Maycomb, Alabama. My father, nor my two younger siblings dared to interfere with my mother's reading. It was always after supper and after the dishes were washed - by my younger brother and me - that she got comfortable in her favorite chair and in her mind traveled to visit the Finch family in Maycomb. She and my father would stroll down to the local theater to see the film version upon its arrival in our tiny town.

Years later in a college english class, my classmates and I were assigned to write an essay about a book of our choice. Being an eternal procrastinator, I waited until literally the last minute to choose, read a book, and write my essay about it. Miraculously, I recalled that my mother had not only read To Kill a Mockingbird, she had also seen the movie. So I immediately called her. I omitted the fact that I had an essay due in a matter of days. My inquiry went something like this: "Hey, mom. Remember that book you read...ummm, uhhh, the one you really liked...And then you and dad went to see the movie." Her reply: "I've read a lot of books..." "This one was about the south and a lawyer with two kids who defends a black man..." "To Kill a Mockingbird..." "That's it. I think." "Why are you asking about it now?" "Oh...ummm...I'm thinking about reading it. But I just need, uh, want to know more about it..." I readied my pen, had it hovering over note paper. My mother's long silence made me fidget in my seat at my desk. "H-u-l-l-o?" "Umm humm. Is this for one of your classes?" I was afraid to lie, but too desperate not to persist in weeding out the information I needed from my mother. "Kinda" "And you haven't read it?" "I will. I will. I just..." "I'm not going to tell you about the book. You'll have to read it for yourself, young man. Better get busy....Hope you get an A. B-y-e." Dial tone.

I dashed to the student bookstore on campus, bought a copy of Cliff Notes on To Kill a Mockingbird, and frantically read the summary and analysis. After an overnight typing session, red-eyed I turned in my essay on time. A week or so later my english professor returned the graded essays to the class. With a grade of B- I thought I had done quite well, though I had not truly read the book. As I was about to leave, my professor called for me to come to where she sat at the front of the class. I was not guilty of plagiarizing a single word, so I knew I couldn't be had for that. What could it be? I worried. Finally. She was serious, not grim, as she stared into my eyes. "I can tell that you rushed your essay... Even after you had two weeks to write it." She was right. So I kept my mouth shut. She continued. "You have an innate ability to write. And I think it's a shame that you don't work to the best of your ability. The B-... could very well have been an A."

Whether my english professor knew it or not circa 1971 or 1972, she did shame me. Since then I have at the very least attempted to do the best I can do when it comes to the written word. Some positive results have come of it. But for some odd reason or another, I have never read To Kill a Mockingbird from the beginning to the end.

Paul Berman on Islamism's Nazi Roots

From Saturday's Wall Street Journal:

No one disputes that the Nazis collaborated with several Islamist leaders. Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, orated over Radio Berlin to the Middle East. The mufti's strongest supporter in the region was Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Banna, too, spoke well of Hitler. But there is no consensus on how to interpret those old alliances and their legacy today.

Tariq Ramadan, the Islamic philosopher at Oxford, is Banna's grandson, and he argues that his grandfather was an upstanding democrat. In Mr. Ramadan's interpretation, everything the Islamists did in the past ought to be viewed sympathetically in, as Mr. Ramadan says, "context"—as logical expressions of anticolonial geopolitics, and nothing more. Reviews in Foreign Affairs, the National Interest and the New Yorker—the principal critics of my book—have just now spun variations on Mr. Ramadan's interpretation.

The piece in Foreign Affairs insists that, to the mufti of Jerusalem, Hitler was merely a "convenient ally," and it is "ludicrous" to imagine a deeper sort of alliance. Those in the National Interest and the New Yorker add that, in the New Yorker's phrase, "unlikely alliances" with Nazis were common among anticolonialists.

The articles point to some of Gandhi's comrades, and to a faction of the Irish Republican Army, and even to a lone dimwitted Zionist militant back in 1940, who believed for a moment that Hitler could be an ally against the British. But these various efforts to minimize the significance of the Nazi-Islamist alliance ignore a mountain of documentary evidence, some of it discovered last year in the State Department archives by historian Jeffrey Herf, revealing links that are genuinely profound.

"Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion," said the mufti of Jerusalem on Radio Berlin in 1944. And the mufti's rhetoric goes on echoing today in major Islamist manifestos such as the Hamas charter and in the popular television oratory of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a revered scholar in the eyes of Tariq Ramadan: "Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one." Foreign Affairs, the National Interest and the New Yorker have expended nearly 12,000 words in criticizing "Flight of the Intellectuals." And yet, though the book hinges on a series of such genocidal quotations, not one of those journals has found sufficient space to reproduce even a single phrase.

Why not? It is because a few Hitlerian quotations from Islamist leaders would make everything else in those magazine essays look ridiculous—the argument in the Foreign Affairs review, for instance, that Qaradawi ought to be viewed as a crowd-pleasing champion of "centrism," and Hamas merits praise as a "moderate" movement and a "firewall against radicalization."

George Will on Prohibition

From last week's Washington Post column:

Although whiskey often was a safer drink than water, Americans, particularly men, drank too much. Women's Prohibition sentiments fueled the movement for women's rights -- rights to hold property independent of drunken husbands; to divorce those husbands; to vote for politicians who would close saloons. So the United States Brewers' Association officially opposed women's suffrage.

Women campaigning for sobriety did not intend to give rise to the income tax, plea bargaining, a nationwide crime syndicate, Las Vegas, NASCAR (country boys outrunning government agents), a redefined role for the federal government and a privacy right -- the "right to be let alone" -- that eventually was extended to abortion rights. But they did.

By 1900, per capita consumption of alcohol was similar to today's, but mere temperance was insufficient for the likes of Carrie Nation. She was "six feet tall, with the biceps of a stevedore, the face of a prison warden, and the persistence of a toothache," and she wanted Prohibition. It was produced by the sophisticated tenacity of the Anti-Saloon League, which at its peak was spending the equivalent of 50 million of today's dollars annually. Okrent calls it "the mightiest pressure group in the nation's history." It even prevented redistricting after the 1920 Census, the first census to reveal that America's urban -- and most wet -- population was a majority.

Before the 18th Amendment could make drink illegal, the 16th Amendment had to make the income tax legal. It was needed because by 1910 alcohol taxes were 30 percent of federal revenue.

Workmen's compensation laws gave employers an interest in abstemious workers. Writes Okrent, Asa Candler, founder of the Coca-Cola Co., saw "opportunity on the other side of the dry rainbow." World War I anti-German fever fueled the desire to punish brewers with names such as Busch, Pabst, Blatz and Schlitz. And President Woodrow Wilson's progressivism became a wartime justification for what Okrent calls "the federal government's sudden leap into countless aspects of American life," including drink.

And so Prohibition came. Sort of. Briefly.

Senate Posts Elena Kagan's Answers to Written Questions

You can read them on the Senate Judiciary Committee website (ht Senatus blog). IMHO Senator Coburn scored a point with his question about pro bono legal work:

[SEN. COBURN:]I believe each profession has an obligation to serve the less fortunate. I take that belief personally and apply it in my career as a physician. While I am not a lawyer, I do know the legal profession encourages and actively promotes, as does my medical profession, pro bono services. In fact, Rule 6.1 of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which governs the behavior of attorneys, states “[e]very lawyer has a professional responsibility to provide legal services to those unable to pay. A lawyer should aspire to render at least 50 hours of pro bono public legal services per year.” It goes on to note the various ways that responsibility should be fulfilled, stating the lawyer should provide those services to “persons of limited means or charitable, religious, civic, community, governmental and educational organizations in matters that are designed primarily to address the needs of persons of limited means.”

Comment 1 of Rule 6.1 reinforces the importance of pro bono services when it states, “[e]very lawyer, regardless of professional prominence or professional work load, has a responsibility to provide legal services to those unable to pay...” Comment 9 goes even further by stating, “[b]ecause the provision of pro bono services is a professional responsibility, it is the individual ethical commitment of each lawyer.”

Based on the Model Rules and your comments in the committee-required questionnaire for your nomination as solicitor general, which merely notes Harvard Law School’s institution of a tuition-free third year and loan forgiveness for students engaged in public service, I am concerned by your personal lack of pro bono legal services.

a. In your Supreme Court questionnaire, you note that you have “served on the boards of numerous non-profit organizations” and “promoted public service and pro bono work” while Dean at Harvard. But, you “did not engage in any individual representation of clients.” In fact, your pro bono work appears to be far less than prior Supreme Court nominees, despite some of those nominees’ restrictions on providing these services due to their careers as judges. Both Chief Justice John Roberts and Harriet Miers listed extensive pro bono activities, including representing indigent clients, in their questionnaires. Even Justices Sotomayor and Alito, who had spent most of their careers as judges and were prohibited from representing clients in pro bono work, had more meaningful volunteer work for the underprivileged and indigent.

i. Since graduating from law school, have you ever volunteered your time for pro bono legal services that would qualify you to fulfill the yearly requirements of Rule 6.1 of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct? Why or why not?

Response:
My pro bono work as a lawyer is listed in my questionnaire response except that I may have done some pro bono work at Williams and Connolly that I do not now recall. My general practice as both a government lawyer and an academic was not to represent individual clients (whether for pay or pro bono). I do not know whether my efforts to expand pro bono opportunities as Dean of Harvard Law School or my service on the boards of several organizations devoted to representation of needy persons falls within Rule 6.1.

[SEN. COBURN:]ii.Please list the cases or clients you have participated in or in which you have represented a client pro bono.

Response:
Please see above.

Document of the Week: Chief FOIA Officer Report FY09 Central Intelligence Agency March 15, 2010

The CIA recently posted its report by a secret author on its handling of Freedom of Information Act requests for 2009. It makes for interesting reading.

In section one, part one, the CIA admits that it has released declassified documents to students at a private military day and boarding high-school located in Culver, Indiana for a symposium it called "Creating Global Intelligence: the Creation of the US Intelligence Community and the Lessons for the 21st Century." While it must have been fun for the high-schoolers, and nice for the school, one has to wonder how such a private event at a private military school, located out in the country, could be classified as a contribution to "the presumption of openness." (I'm guessing someone at the CIA knew someone connected to Culver Military Academy). I don't think that even the producers of Team America: World Police would have thought of this.

Chief FOIA Officer Report
FY09
Central Intelligence Agency
March 15, 2010

I. Steps Taken to Apply the Presumption of Openness
1. Describe below the steps your agency has taken to ensure that the
presumption [of openness] is being applied to all decisions involving
the FOIA. This section should include a discussion of the range of
steps taken by your agency to apply this presumption. From
publicizing the President’s FOIA Memorandum and Attorney
General’s FOIA Guidelines and providing training on them, to
implementing the presumption in response to FOIA requests and
administrative appeals, with examples or statistics illustrating your
agency’s action in making discretionary releases of records or partial
releases when full disclosure is not possible.

Both the President’s FOIA Memorandum and the Attorney General’s FOIA
Guidelines were widely circulated and discussed with all individuals involved
in the FOIA process. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has worked
diligently to release information to the public that no longer requires
protecting, including discretionary releases not mandated under FOIA.

Under the CIA’s Historical Review Program, several discretionary collections
on historically significant topics were released to the public in FY09. These
collections included (date of release in parentheses):

• Office of Scientific Intelligence (10/08)
• Polish Martial Law (12/08)
• Vietnam Histories (3/09)
• Air America: Upholding the Airmen’s Bond (4/09)
• Founding Documents of the Intelligence Community (5/09)

These discretionary releases provided official acknowledgement of
previously undisclosed information. For example, in the case of the Polish
Martial Law documents, the documents provided insight into the
contributions of Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski to U.S. policymakers’
understanding of the events leading up to the imposition of martial law in
Poland. In the case of the Air America documents, the CIA acknowledged
for the first time the role that Air America pilots played in the search and
rescue of airmen during the Vietnam conflict.

The CIA also partnered with Culver Academy, a private school in Indiana
during a year long effort to place declassified documents into the classroom
for hands-on study in the classroom. The CIA released the Founding
Documents of the Intelligence Community, 833 documents primarily from
the late 1940’s through the 1950’s. The documents provide specific
procedural and implementing guidance for the establishment of the CIA and
more broadly, the Intelligence Community. Historians from the CIA’s Center
for the Study of Intelligence Historians, the National Security Agency, and
Villanova University conducted in-class learning experiences with the
students showing them how to use the primary sources and also providing the
background framework and events that shaped the documents. The Capstone
of the project was a symposium entitled Creating Global Intelligence: the
Creation of the US Intelligence Community and the Lessons for the 21st
Century.

In section one, part two, the CIA states that it released 363 records in full and 918 records in part, in response to FOIA requests. This is compared to the previous years totals of 237 and 532, respectively. Thus, the CIA concludes: "The data show that more documents were released in full or in part in FY09 in comparison to 2008." This data is almost meaningless, because it consists only of raw numbers, rather than percentages of requests answered. How many requests were made as opposed to answered in the two years discussed? They don't say, we don't know, and so cannot make any claim as to relative trends in this regard. The information has been kept secret, in such a way as to negate the validity of the claim, except as technically responsive to the question. Perhaps some high school students at Culver Military Academy could explain principles of statistical analysis to the CIA FOIA officer?

2. Report whether your Agency shows an increase in the number of
requests where records have been released in full or where records
have been released in part when compared with those numbers in
previous year’s Annual FOIA Report.

In FY09, the CIA released 363 records in full and 918 records in part as
compared to FY08 when 237 records were released in full and 532 records
were released in part. The data show that more documents were released in
full or in part in FY09 in comparison to 2008.

In section two, sections one and two, the CIA first admits that it didn't have a functioning IT system in 2008 to track FOIA requests, then describes the new system in such vague terms as to be almost meaningless. I couldn't find one hard fact, statistic, or number to analyze. A non-answer. Again, the CIA FOIA officer might benefit from a refresher course in English composition at Culver Military Academy.

II. Steps Taken to Ensure that Your Agency has an Effective System for
Responding to Requests
1. Describe here the steps your agency has taken to ensure that the
system for responding to requests is effective and efficient.
2. This section should include a discussion of how your agency has
addressed the key roles played by the broad spectrum of agency
personnel who work with FOIA professional in responding to
requests, including, in particular, steps taken to ensure that FOIA
professionals have sufficient IT support.

1. In FY08 we replaced an outdated case management system with a new--
more efficient--system compatible with modern technology platforms. We
continue to assess and modify the current system in order to make it as
efficient and effective as possible. We also automated capturing, forwarding,
and tracking requestor phone calls to our public FOIA phone number in order
to respond to these requests effectively and efficiently.

2. The FOIA program office involves IT support in every aspect of the
FOIA/PA process and has partnered with it to further advance the common
goal to use technology to improve responsiveness. IT support personnel are
located within close proximity of the FOIA program office, fostering greater
interaction and support, and are proactive in their trouble-shooting efforts and
looking ahead for system enhancements.

III. Steps Taken to Increase Proactive Disclosures
1. Describe here the steps your agency has taken to increase the amount
of material that is available on your agency website, including
providing examples of proactive disclosures that have been made
since the issuance of the new FOIA guidelines.

In addition to posting documents from closed FOIA cases each month, the
electronic FOIA Reading Room website also hosts documents released
through the discretionary Historical Review Program (see Section I above for
details). Web site statistics show that many visitors to the CIA FOIA Reading
Room website are most interested in these historically significant document
releases. New additions since the memo and guidelines include a
downloadable version of the previously released Family Jewels collection and
Warsaw Pact documents.

Part three actually contains a concrete fact. It's nice to know that some old documents have been put online. However, re-releasing already publicly available "Family Jewels" doesn't strike one as the same thing as making new material available under FOIA. If something has been made public once, it can't be made public again, even if it is now "downloadable". Perhaps Culver Military Academy offers courses in Logic?

IV. Steps Taken to Greater Utilize Technology
1. Does your agency currently receive requests electronically? No.
2. If not, what are the current impediments to your agency establishing a
mechanism to receive requests electronically?

CIA is evaluating the security, counterintelligence, and resource issues
associated with the implementation of electronic FOIA submissions.
Currently, resources are devoted to automating the processing, tracking,
and required reporting of FOIA requests. Emphasis on back-end
processing has contributed to improved response time to requesters as
noted in our FY09 FOIA Annual Report.

3. Does your agency track requests electronically? Yes.
4. If not, what are the current impediments to your agency utilizing a
system to track requests electronically? Not applicable.
5. Does your agency use technology to process requests? Yes.
6. If not, what are the current impediments to your agency utilizing
technology to process requests? Not applicable.
7. Does your agency utilize technology to prepare your agency Annual
FOIA Report? Yes.
8. If not, what are the current impediments to your agency utilizing
technology in preparing your Annual FOIA Report? Not applicable.

Part Four seems to be the most interesting of all. While almost every government agency and business in the USA does business by email and on websites, the CIA does not receive requests electronically. While this may be justifiable somehow or other, there is no explanation given. The only answer I can think of is that it makes it harder to submit a request. They just don't want to hear from the public. But of course, I didn't go to Culver Military Academy. Perhaps they have a better explanation. Although I'd reckon some kids in the Culver Military Academy IT department might figure how to set up an email FOIA request service on a secure website.

V. Steps Taken to Reduce Backlogs and Improve Timeliness in Responding
to Requests
1. If you have a backlog, report whether your backlog is decreasing.
That reduction should be measured both in terms of numbers of
backlogged requests and administrative appeals that remain pending
at the end of the fiscal year, and in terms of the age of those requests
and appeals.

Note: Privacy Act Cases were not included in CIA’s FY08 data but were
included and reported in FY09. As reported in the FOIA Annual Reports,

CIA’s backlog is decreasing -- from 940 cases in FY08 to 592 in FY09. The
median number of days to process simple and complex cases decreased
(detailed below in Section 3), and we closed the four oldest pending FOIA
cases and the three oldest appeals cases. At the end of FY09, the oldest
FOIA/PA and administrative appeals cases were dated 10/7/1998 and
4/26/1995 compared to FY08’s oldest FOIA and administrative appeals cases
of 5/1/1992* and 3/1/1993, respectively.

2. If there has not been a reduction in the backlog, describe why that has
occurred and what steps your agency is taking to bring about a
reduction. Not applicable.

3. Describe the steps that your agency is taking to improve the timeliness
in responding to requests and to administrative appeals.

Throughout the fiscal year, CIA placed concerted efforts into streamlining
processes to improve timeliness. In FY09, the median number of days to
process simple and complex cases decreased from 28 to 15 and 68 to 51 days
respectively. For administrative appeals, the median number of days
decreased from 161 to 112 days. CIA also implemented several refinements
to its automated case management system to better address workflow and
other system issues as well as to add key data collection capabilities relative to
statistical reporting for the FOIA Annual Report.

*FY08’s Annual FOIA Report should have recorded this date as 7/7/1989.

Well, let's look at the bottom line: the oldest requests in 2009 dated from 1995 instead of 1992. That's to say, you only needed to wait for 14 years for an answer in 2009, rather than 16 years in 2008, for the CIA to process your FOIA request.

IMHO, this type of answer makes a mockery of FOIA--as well as a mockery of the CIA, the headquarters of which features the words of John 8:32 carved in stone, at the insistence of Allen Dulles, its first director:

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

A Newly Discovered Poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar

(NOT 2 Live Crew...)

Andrew McCarthy: Kagan's Sharia Finance History Disqualifies Her for Supreme Court

From National Review Online:

Kagan and other apologists for SCF (Sharia Compliant Finance) would absolve themselves from the real-world consequences of their allegedly well-intentioned diversity fetish. But legitimizing any aspect of sharia is the endorsement of all of it. Moreover, there is no cut-and-dried separation of sharia brutality from the tidy, white-collar world of financial transactions.

To pull off the SCF chicanery, financial institutions hire as advisers Islamic clerics who are expert in Muslim jurisprudence — there being, again, no separation between divine edicts and the secular law in Islam. It is those clerics, many of them Islamists, who decide what transactions are permissible. And very often, to purge the taint, prohibited interest payments are diverted to Islamic “charities.” It all sounds wonderful . . . except for what they don’t tell you: The major schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach that support for violent jihad is a legitimate form of charitable giving.

Indeed, as the Middle East Forum’s Raymond Ibrahim observes, the Koran actually prioritizes the need to fund jihad over the need to fight it. (See, e.g., Sura 9:41: “Go forth, light-armed and heavy-armed, and strive with your wealth and your lives in the way of Allah!”) In a canonical hadith, Mohammed confers on the financial backer the same glorious status as the mujahid fighter: “He who equips a raider so he can wage jihad in Allah’s path . . . is himself a raider.”

SCF is thus the Islamist triple-play: It elbows sharia’s way into our legal system, from whence it can expand its influence; it institutionalizes financial jihad; and it pressures true Muslim moderates to shun Western practices. It is, furthermore, unabashedly anti-capitalist — another reason the Left likes it so much. As Frank Gaffney points out, the economic meltdown in late 2008 was taken by SCF proponents as “proof of the inherent corruption of capitalism” and the need to replace it with the asserted virtues of sharia.

But let’s put all that aside. Let’s pretend that there were some way you could compartmentalize sharia, some way you could even slice and dice SCF to facilitate market access without all the unsavory fallout. There would still be the matter of Elena Kagan’s bizarre moral universe.

The U.S. military is an unparalleled force for good in the world. Kagan has said as much, but she claims, straight-faced, that it is just this “extraordinary service” to our society that makes DADT “more not less repugnant” — the bathwater that requires throwing out the baby.

But let’s compare the U.S. military with sharia. Sharia is the cause of indescribable suffering in the world: for homosexuals, women, non-Muslims, and Muslims who wish to embrace the West. Yet for Kagan, sharia’s repugnance is irrelevant. Like opposition to DADT and support for abortion, the engagement of Islamists, the embrace of their case against American capitalism, is a progressive cause célèbre. So count Ms. Kagan in. She’ll worry about logic and sharia victims like Sakineh Ashtiani later — if ever.

Sheer political willfulness is an unattractive quality. In a Supreme Court candidate, it ought to be disqualifying.

African-American Legal Groups Have Not Endorsed Kagan

From the Washington Informer:

...two key legal groups have so far refrained from endorsing the former Harvard law dean amid questions about whether she would be a strong civil rights advocate on the court.

That split underscores the complexities of a civil rights community eager – some say over eager – to support the nation’s first African-American president and some highly-respected legal organizations that are in a much better position to evaluate the appointment of Kagan to fill the seat vacated by Justice John Paul Stevens, a reliable liberal vote on the sharply-divided Supreme Court.

Mavis T. Thompson, president of the National Bar Association, the largest organization of Black lawyers and judges, said the group gave Kagan only a lukewarm rating because of concerns about her positions on crack-cocaine sentencing disparities and her record on diversity at Harvard.
Although Kagan is clearly qualified to join the court, Thompson said, “We hope Ms. Kagan’s views on civil rights and equal justice will become apparent during the confirmation hearings. To date, the NBA has withheld its endorsement due to insufficient information to ensure that Ms. Kagan’s views are consistent with the core missions of the organization.”

Barbara R. Arwine, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law, said her organization voted not to take a position on Kagan.

“There isn’t a judicial record to review, indicating her views on critical civil rights matters,” she told the Washington Post. “And otherwise, the civil rights record that exists is thin and mixed.”

Judicial Crisis Network: The Case Against Kagan

You can read a JCN opposition brief to the Kagan nomination, in PDF format, at this link.

Washington Times: Elena Kagan v The Bill of Rights

From today's Washington Times:

In short: Yes, Congress has the constitutional right to make you eat your fruits and veggies. Forget freedom; if the government chooses to be coercive, the government can coerce.

Ms. Kagan hemmed and hawed about whether the Constitution should be interpreted in the context of natural rights as described in the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Coburn asserted "that we have certain God-given, inalienable rights that aren't given in the Constitution, that they're ours, ours alone, and that the government doesn't give those to us." The best Ms. Kagan could do in reply was to provide a jumbled double-negative: "I'm not saying I do not believe that there are rights preexisting the Constitution and the laws, but ..."

Indeed, Ms. Kagan's record indicates that she doubts the Constitution serves preexisting rights. She has spoken of government "redistribut[ing] expression" and of "dol[ing] out" speech rights "as favors." On economics, she wrote, "corporate wealth derives from privileges bestowed on corporations by the government. ... Individual wealth also derives from government action."

Ms. Kagan seems to think the federal government is responsible for just about anything and has the power to dictate just about everything in the realm of speech or economics. It's not a set of beliefs fit for a Supreme Court justice.

Charles Crawford on US-Russian Spy Swap

From his blogoir:

Are we about to see a major 'spy swap'?

"Why waste time on all those tedious legal processes and prisons? We get our spies back, and so do you."

Hard for me at least to see why the Russians would want to do this unless the illegals/sleepers rounded up in the USA were likely to spill so many operational beans during their looming long years on trial and then in prison that it is worth Moscow eating great slabs of humble pie to end the agony asap.

Maybe the Americans likewise feel that in fact so many KGB/SVR beans have been spilled already that they can afford to be magnanimous.

However, look at the world from the point of view of the hapless Russian spies.

They have been living agreeable and comfortable lives in leafy US suburbs. Now they face abrupt repatriation to Russia, where they will be regarded as failures and losers for ever.

Plus they face sustained and stressful interrogations from the SVR as the Russian agencies try to find out where it all went wrong - and what they have confessed about Russian operations and methodology.

Gulp. Political asylum bid, anyone?

The more you look at it, the more this looks like a five-star triumph for the Americans in general and the FBI in particular.

Frank Gaffney: Kagan Koshered Shariah Compliant Finance at Harvard

From The Washington Times:

Worse yet, Dean Kagan had an even more direct connection to the Saudis' Shariah-recruitment efforts at Harvard. She personally officiated in 2003 over the establishment of an Islamic Finance Project at the law school. The project's purpose is to promote what is better known as Shariah-compliant finance (SCF) by enlisting in its service some of the nation's most promising law students.

Consequently, it is absolutely appropriate for senators to explore Ms. Kagan's attitude toward Shariah - an anti-constitutional, supremacist legal doctrine that is a threat not only to homosexuals, but also to our civil liberties and society more generally.

hariah-compliant finance dates back to the 1940s, when it was invented by leading figures in the Muslim Brotherhood. This international organization has as its stated mission "destroying Western civilization from within ... by its own miserable hand." SCF is designed to further these seditious purposes by: legitimating Shariah in non-Muslim societies; compelling non-Shariah-adherent Muslims to use SCF rather than conventional financial products (in particular, arrangements that involve charging or paying interest); and diverting funds through techniques known as "zakat" (tithing) and "purification" to support jihad. In fact, one of the driving forces behind the SCF industry, Qatari Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has called SCF-generated zakat "jihad with money."

Ms. Kagan's Islamic Finance Project also has played a prominent role in encouraging the U.S. government to endorse Shariah-compliant finance. Notably, a founding adviser to the project, Harvard professor Samuel Hays III, conducted a "seminar for the policy community" in November 2008. It was sponsored by a former Goldman-Sachs-executive-turned-assistant-treasury-secretary, Neel Kashkari, who at the time was responsible for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The signal thus sent could not have been clearer, either to Mr. Kashkari's colleagues in government or to those in the financial sector: At a moment when the very viability of major banks and investing institutions critically depended on this individual's favor, it would be advisable to embrace Shariah-compliant finance.

USA Today reported that Kagan was paid by Goldman Sachs for her services:

WASHINGTON — A top prospect for the Supreme Court was a paid member of an advisory panel for the embattled investment firm Goldman Sachs, federal financial disclosures show.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan was a member of the Research Advisory Council of the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Institute, according to the financial disclosures she filed when President Obama appointed her last year to her current post. Kagan served on the Goldman panel from 2005 through 2008, when she was dean of Harvard Law School, and received a $10,000 stipend for her service in 2008, her disclosure forms show.

A spokesman for Goldman Sachs did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

Radio Netherlands on Dutch World Cup Win

The Dutch broadcaster calls it Orange Madness. (Full disclosure, I'm rooting for Holland, too...)