Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

The moment Lurita Doan walked into the "brown bag"  meeting on January 26, 2007 at the GSA headquarters, her career as a government servant was in jeopardy. The moment it became public that Scott Jennings, White House deputy director of political affairs, gave a Powerpoint presentation (warning: large file) on 2006 election polling data and GOP political strategy in 2008, Lurita had a choice to make. She did not choose wisely.

As you may recall, I wrote a post about my personal view of Lurita before she testified in front of Congress earlier this week. In the post, I expressed my disappointment that she was alleged to be involved in this scandal but I had also reserved judgment until after the hearing. Now the hearing has passed and I want to share with you my views on the matter.

Lurita stated at the hearing that she felt that she was living out the movie "Mr. Smith goes to Washington". After her opening statement, I wanted to believe that to be true. However, under intense questioning a different picture began to emerge. When it became clear that the White House was practicing partisan politics inside GSA premises, Lurita’s response was to be non-responsive. By doing so, that is, by deciding to protect the White House, she did her country a disservice this week. She chose partisanship over her country and her integrity. As someone who has admired and respected Lurita, I felt deep shame.

While it is not clear that Lurita violated the Hatch Act by her actions, this was never about getting off on a technicality. The issue has always been the American people’s right to expect their government to work for them, and not for a political party. That right of the American people should be self-evident, with or without the Hatch Act.

Lurita asserted that she was engaged in "team building" and that political appointees are tasked with carrying out the policies of the White House. However, there is a significant difference between "policies" and "politics". There is nothing wrong with political appointees setting policy direction on behalf of the president of the United States - that is their right, and in fact, their duty. However, when the GSA administrator and senior level staff at the GSA are engaged in plotting or discussing political strategy - that is, planning how to win elections for their political party - they are no longer acting as public servants, they are acting as political hacks. By doing so, they have in effect hijacked the machinery of the US government for the benefit of a political party. The crime is larger than the Hatch Act - the crime is a high crime and misdemeanor. The accused must include the head of the political party that perpetrated the offense, that is, the President of the United States.

In her short tenure at the GSA Lurita had done much good for the troubled agency. She had attempted to cut waste and spending. She tried to take on entrenched interests such as NASA SEWP, but failed. I also believe she did the right thing in getting the Sun Microsystems contract renewed. She would have made Mr. Smith proud.

However, in the end, she could not escape the cult of the "loyal Bushies". In the end she put loyalty to the President above loyalty to country. She made her choice. In doing so, she disappointed those of us who labored under her and learned much from her.

I take no joy in this turn of events. I wish it were not so. Yet there it is. Undeniably so.

On February 23, 2007 the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco unanimously denied Mohiuddin’s petition for review of the deportation order against him. Below is the Court’s decision:

Mohiuddin A.K.M. Ahmed petitions for review of a Board of Immigration Appeals’ (BIA) order dismissing his appeal from an immigration judge’s (IJ) order denying asylum, withholding of removal, and protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). We have jurisdiction pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1252 and we deny the petition.

Ahmed is ineligible for asylum and withholding of removal for two reasons:

(1) because he engaged in terrorist activity, and (2) because he assisted or otherwise participated in the persecution of others on account of their political opinion. Even his own account of his actions established that he assisted or otherwise participated in the persecution of persons on account of their political opinion.

Ahmed failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that his in absentia murder trial and conviction in Bangladesh was fundamentally unfair and thus deprived him of due process of law. Therefore, the IJ properly relied on the conviction.

Substantial evidence supported the IJ’s and BIA’s denial of protection under the CAT. Ahmed did not present evidence so compelling that no reasonable factfinder could find that he would not be tortured if returned to Bangladesh.

PETITION DENIED.

[Emphasis added by me.]

Mohiuddin’s supporters have claimed that he was not given due process in Bangladesh and that he would be tortured in Bangladesh. However, he was able to convince neither the Court of Appeals nor the Board of Immigration Appeals of his claims. Having been duly convicted in a court of law in Bangladesh of assassination and murder, having exhausted all his appeals in Bangladesh, and having his petition denied by the Court of Appeals in the United States, Mohiuddin is now trying to spin a false story in the court of public opinion. His guilt has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. His only recourse now is to play a victim to curry sympathy from the likes of Congressman Dana Rohrabacher.

It remains to be seen whether this killer and coward will be able to continue to evade justice.

Sajeeb Wazed Joy, grandson of Bangladesh’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, has written an account of the killing of his grandfather and most of his family by Mohiuddin Ahmed and his cohorts. Joy’s mother, Mujib’s eldest daughter, survived the massacre of August 15th, 1975 because she and her younger sister were in Germany at the time. The two daughters were the only members of Mujib’s family to have survived the events of August 15, 1975.

I wrote about Mohiuddin and his crimes yesterday. Today hear from a man who lives only by an accident of history:

My grandfather, even though he was the President, continued to live in his personal home in Dhanmondi instead of his official residence at Bangabhaban. It was an average house in a residential neighborhood. If any of you are interested in seeing the house, it is now a museum and I invite you to visit it. It has been preserved just as it was on that night in August 1975.

Mohiuddin and his cohorts killed the security guards and made their way into the house. They confronted my grandfather on the main stairway, where they shot him. They then proceeded through the house, shooting the rest of my family. They shot my grandmother, three uncles and my two older uncles’ wives.

My oldest uncle Kamal’s wife Sultana was five months pregnant and she begged for her life. They shot her anyway, but she was still alive until 9:00 in the morning. Mohiuddin Ahmed himself and another officer, Huda then ordered some of their junior officers to shoot her.

My youngest uncle Russell was just 10 years old. He was terrified and begged them not to kill him. One of the officers took pity on him and tried to save him. This officer took him downstairs and tried to hide Russell. Another officer said “He’s going to grow up like a snake and come back to kill us.” Then Mohiuddin Ahmed, Huda and another officer, Noor, shot Russell.

Along with my immediate family a total of 19 members of my family were murdered that night. My grandfather’s nephew and protégé Moni and his wife were shot in their home right in front of their two sons, Parash and Taposh, who were 6 and 4 at the time. My uncle Moni’s wife was pregnant as well.

The killers then buried the bodies in 18 unmarked graves at the Banani graveyard in Dhaka. To this day we do not know who is in which grave. Only my grandfather was buried separately in his home village of Tungipara.

This narrative was pieced together from confessions of some of the killers and eyewitness accounts, mostly by the staff that worked at my grandfather’s house. Some of them still work for my family.

Read the entire post on Sajeeb Wazed Joy’s blog.

Update: The Los Angeles Times published an article today that features an interview with Sajeeb Wazed Joy. The article also confirms that Mohiuddin’s deportation order will not be enforced until after April 16th.

Once you have seen tanks on the streets, you are never the same.

I was born into genocide and I grew up a witness to terrorism. I am scarred by man’s inhumanity to man. Killers have laid their filthy hands on my head, smiling as they gave me life advice. I took a different advice - that of my father. I believe in human rights and the rule of law, I believe in due process and I believe in the cause of justice - even if justice is delayed.

Three decades delayed. My hair is grayer, my hair is thinner, but my resolve is strong.

On August 15, 1975 I woke up to a violent day. My older brother brought the news of tanks on the streets. The radio brought the news of the murder of Bangladesh’s founding father and his family. The Washington Post reported the news to the world outside:

At 12:30 a.m., the plan began to roll. Led by officers of the 1st Lancer Regiment, 13 Soviet-built tanks, donated to Bangladesh by Egypt last year, rumbled out of the military cantonment just a few miles from Dacca airport on the outskirts of the capital.

…

The tanks fanned out, three of them going to Mujib’s modest bungalow in the Dhanmundi section of the capital, one tank and an artillery piece to the home of his nephew, Sheikh Falzul Huq Moni, and a company of infantry-men to the home of Mujib’s brother-in-law, Serniabat Abdur Rab, the minister for flood control.

…

At Mujib’s house, the scene was bitter and bloody. A senior officer loyal to the president, Brig. Gen. Jamil Ahmed, rushed to tell Mujib of the approaching troops. Minutes after he got to the house, it was surrounded. He went outside to argue with the officers and was shot dead with three machine gun rounds in his chest.

According to some sources, the officer leading the troops at the president’s house, a major named Huda, handed Mujib a document of resignation to sign. Mujib, in a characteristic outburst, refused and roundly abused the young officer.

At that point, according to these same sources, one of Mujib’s sons, Sheikh Jamal, burst into the room with a pistol in his hand and was shot dead. Mujib again cursed the officer. Then another son, Sheikh Kamal,  stumbled into the room, shouting for help from the Rakkhi Bahini. Huda, armed with a Sten gun, cut down the son.

Then, as one source put it, "the real massacre began." Soldiers rushed into the house and began searching the rooms. In quick succession they opened fire on Mujib’s wife, who was sobbing hysterically, their two new daughters-in-law and their youngest son, ten year-old Russell.

The soldiers discovered Mujib’s brother, Sheikh Nasser, hiding in a second-story bathroom and they stabbed him to death with bayonets. They also killed two servants.

At Sheikh Moni’s house, also in the relatively comfortable Dhanmundi section, a tank opened fire and a large shell missed the building and impacted in the neighboring Mohammedpur section, killing a dozen people. The soldiers also killed Moni’s wife and a child.

Flood Control Minister Rab was killed in his home and his wife was shot, too, but she reportedly survived and is hospitalized.

At 5:15 a.m. in the morning of August 15, 1975 a Major Dalim announced over Radio Bangladesh that the army had taken control of the country and changed the name of the country from the People’s Republic of Bangladesh to the Islamic Republic of Bangladesh. Major Dalim, and his co-conspirators, mostly Majors and a few Colonels, disgruntled members of the Bangladesh Army, took control of the country and arrested the major political leaders of the country, including four surviving leaders of Bangladesh’s war of independence. These officers became known as the "seven Majors".

The Islamist-leaning Majors ran Bangladesh until they were forced out of the country on November 3, 1975 by senior officers of the army. However, the night before they fled, they managed to enter Dhaka Central Jail and murder the four leaders they had previously jailed:

Four former top aides of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, imprisoned since the president was killed in a bloody coup Aug. 15, were killed Monday morning in Dacca’s central jail, Bangladesh Radio announced Wednesday.

…

The broadcast came as a group of Bengali officers in Bangkok, ejected from Bangladesh after Monday’s coup, charged that the coup and the killings were part of a move toward military dictatorship.

…

Khalid took control after it had been decided that Farook [the August 15th coup leader], 14 other young officers, 2 top noncommissioned officers and 12 wives and children would leave Dacca for Bangkok.

Farook and Lt. Col. Khandakar Abdur Rashid said the officers left Bangladesh to "avoid widespread bloodshed." Their departure for Bangkok apparently diffused a 21-hour standoff in the squalid streets of Dacca between infantry troops led by Khalid and armor and artillery forces loyal to President Mushtaque.

"Our main guns would have caused a bloodbath among the diplomats, their wives and children," said Farook. Asked if there wasn’t a certain irony in his concern after he and his fellow junior officers had cold-bloodedly murdered Mujib and his entire family on August 15th, he replied, "We killed only those who had to be removed. Our original plan was to kill just Mujib, but we had no choice. We had to kill the others too, although we’re very sorry about that."

Before the "seven Majors" and their co-conspirators fled, they managed to pass the Indemnity Act giving them immunity for the killings they were involved in. The events of 1975 began a 16-year period of military rule in Bangladesh. After democracy was restored in Bangladesh in 1991, the Indemnity Act was finally repealed in 1996. Finally, more than two decades after their crimes, in 1997, the government of Bangladesh began criminal proceedings against the participants in the murder of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in August 1975. Initially, of the 20 charged, 15 of the coup plotters were convicted and sentenced to death in November 1998, after a two-year trial. Only five of the accused were in court for the hearing - the rest were absconding abroad and tried in absentia. Of the five present, three were convicted and two were acquitted. On appeal, the High Court of Bangladesh in 2001 upheld 12 of the 15 original convictions.

One of those convicted and sentenced to death, in absentia, was Major (relieved) Mohiuddin A.K.M. Ahmed, one of the "seven Majors". He was specifically convicted of being one of the killers of Sheikh Mujib and his family. He had enjoyed the life of a diplomat during the period of military rule in Bangladesh. However, in 1996, he permanently fled Bangladesh and sought political asylum in the United States. He has resided in the United States since then. Soon after his arrival in the United States, the Bangladesh government requested the extradition of Mohiuddin from the United States.

In 2002, the United States issued a deportation order against Mohiuddin. Mohiuddin appealed his deportation order. In February 2007, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco denied Mohiuddin’s appeal of the deportation order. On March 13, 2007 Mohiuddin was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

Mohiuddin now claims that he was just manning a roadblock near the house where Sheikh Mujib was killedand that he was not involved in any violence. It is an argument the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected:

Ahmed, then an army major, says that although he manned a roadblock a mile from President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s home, he thought the leader would be arrested peacefully.

"Myself and others believed that the orders we received were lawful," Ahmed said. "At no time was I, or my troops, involved in any violence."

But Rahman and seven family members, including his wife and 10-year-old son, were killed, and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Ahmed had participated in terrorist activity.

"Even his own account of his actions established that he assisted or otherwise participated in the persecution of persons on account of their political opinion," a three-judge panel of the federal court said last month.

Mohiuddin is now playing victim and he has at least one taker in Congressman Dana Rohrabacher:

Ahmed’s family and lawyer want him deported to another country where he could seek political asylum and fight his conviction. His lawyer, Joseph Sandoval, said Ahmed cannot appeal in Bangladesh because he was not in the country during his trial.

"Essentially, they want to take him from the plane to the gallows," Sandoval said. "We think that is fundamentally unfair." He added that his client is not the "heinous person" the U.S. and Bangladesh governments have made him out to be.

But time is running out. Ahmed was to have left the country Monday night, but Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) called Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff’s office and requested a delay.

"Amnesty International and our State Department has questioned the integrity of the Bangladeshi judicial system," said Tara Setmayer, a spokeswoman for Rohrabacher.

"And because of that, Dana felt as though there would be no harm in trying to buy some time for his legal counsel to find a country" where he would not be put to death.

"Given the circumstances, he said he’d be willing to place a phone call or two to buy some time and figure things out," she said.

Rohrabacher is trying to pressure the U.S. government not to deport Mohiuddin to Bangladesh. If he is successful, a terrorist, by the U.S. government’s own account, will continue to evade justice.

Three decades later, we who lived in Bangladesh at the time still remember the names and faces of the murderers. We remember their public boasts about the killings. We remember how they plunged a secular republic into military rule and allowed Islamists to infiltrate the country. We know where they are hiding: in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Libya, the United States and Canada. We keep our list of the killers close at hand.

Notwithstanding Dana Rohrabacher’s support for a convicted terrorist, it should be noted that Mohiuddin has received significantly more due process than any detainee at Guantanamo Bay. He received a two-year trial and an appeal to Bangladesh’s highest court that took another three years. He has been found guilty by a legitimate court of law.

In hiding in the United States, Mohiuddin has shown the cowardice that led him and his cohorts to murder women and children, in cold blood, including a 10-year old boy. He has lived three decades that he denied his victims. In his case, justice has not been swift. It has been delayed but deliberate. In the end, however, Mohiuddin will have to face his cowardice.

Update

Bangladeshi bloggers are covering this case extensively:

• Drishtipat, the blog of the Bangladeshi human rights organization, has coverage here and here. They also have contact information for Dana Rohrabacher for those who want to write and express their concerns.
• Rezwan, at The 3rd world view, has extensive coverage including many links to other bloggers here.
• Salam Dhaka has updates about NPR coverage of this story here.
• Shafiur, at Imperfect World, goes prehistoric on Dana Rohrabacher here.
• Mohiuddin’s son, who is lobbying extensively for his father, has posted a defense of his father on his blog here. He claims to have "first hand experience" of the "truth". I leave it up to the reader to determine if the so-called "first hand experience" is the "truth". The only comment I would make is that Mohiuddin must have been sleep-walking the night of the murder not to have remembered his involvement in killing Mujib and his family or to not have heard the artillery shelling that most of the millions of Dhaka city residents heard.

Update #2

Two more important posts on this case:

• Salam Dhaka writes that Mohiuddin’s deportation has been delayed by 45 days.
• Sajeeb Wajed Joy, Mujib’s grandson, retells the story of the massacre by Mohiuddin and his cohorts. Compare and contrast this post with the "truth" as told by Mohiuddin’s son (in the link from the previous update above).
   

[Via Think Progress]

Henry Waxman is requesting information on White House contracts with MZM:

As part of the Committee’s ongoing investigation into waste, fraud, and abuse in federal contracting, the Committee has requested information on a $140,000 contract awarded by the Executive Office of the President to MZM, Inc. in July 2002.

The contract with the White House appears to have been MZM’s first prime contract with the federal government. Subsequent investigations of other MZM contracts had uncovered serious irregularities. To date, there has been no examination of the circumstances surrounding the company’s initial contract and the role that White House officials played in the award and execution.

I wrote about MZM’s contracts Sunday night. I noted that much reporting needed to be done. It is encouraging to see Congress investigating this issue.

Today the Washington Post reported that Lurita Doan, the GSA Administrator, will testify this coming Wednesday in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about recent reports of her involvement in the politicization of the GSA. The charges are serious and, if substantiated, she would be removed from her position in violation of the Hatch Act.

Before I discuss this latest scandal, I want to share my personal experience with Lurita Doan. I will warn the reader that I have a positive opinion of Lurita, and I ask that you take my bias into consideration when you read the following. Though we differ in our political views, I have immense respect for Lurita.

Lurita became the first female GSA Administrator on May 31, 2006. Before becoming GSA Administrator, she was the founder and sole owner of New Technology Management, Inc. (NTMI), a small federal contractor located in Reston, Virginia. She sold NTMI before becoming GSA Administrator.

I started working at NTMI in November of 2002. I worked there for four years. For part of my tenure there I led the technical staff in designing and developing a large-scale software application that helps detect and eliminate fraud for a large government agency.

During my time at NTMI I came to admire and respect Lurita. In a bit of coincidence it turned out that she and I attended the same college, ten years apart. Lurita is one of the most dynamic and charismatic people I have ever known in my life. She may also be the most driven and hardest working person I have had the pleasure of knowing. She has been a mentor to me and has been very supportive of me during my time at NTMI. In my long career in the IT industry, she is one of the few CEOs I have met who earned my respect for her honesty, her hard work, and her ability to communicate effectively and build rapport at every level in the company. I am grateful to have known her and have learned much from her.

Lurita is also nothing if not blunt. She will tell you what she thinks and has a very low tolerance for excuses. When she is in a room with you, she commands and demands attention by the sheer force of her personality. Her bluntness has made her many enemies in her short tenure in the government.

Those of us who worked at NTMI knew that Lurita was a long-time supporter of the Republican Party and the Bush Administration. In fact, she was one of the speakers at the 2004 Republican National Convention. She has also met with Mr. Bush as a woman small business owner in 2004 and was cited by Mr. Cheney in his speech at the Small Business Administration in 2003. So, it did not come as a surprise when she was nominated for the position of GSA Administrator.

However, unlike companies like MZM (which I wrote about yesterday) and their meteoric rise, NTMI’s business did not benefit from Lurita’s Republican Party ties. A look at NTMI’s contracts will show the less than stellar performance by the company over the last six years. I should know - I slaved over preparing many responses to RFPs only to be outbid by companies offering a better price or with more experience or leverage. NTMI’s fortunes dwindled when the company graduated from 8(a) status (the graph of NTMI’s revenue trend here will leave no doubt when NTMI graduated from 8(a) status). NTMI struggled, like other government contractors (with the exception of MZM and other shady outfits), to compete for bids in full and open RFPs against much larger and well established companies such as SAIC, EDS, CSC and others. It was an uphill battle in this competitive environment and NTMI suffered as a consequence.

Lurita has been a champion of women and minorities in business. Her appointment to the post of GSA Administrator was supposed to be a step forward for advancement of minorities and women in government. It was widely expected during her Senate confirmation that she would bring her energy and her drive to the GSA after a scandal-ridden period in the agency’s history.

Lurita replaced Stephen Perry as the GSA Administrator. Mr. Perry, you will recall, resigned in October 2005 in the wake of the Jack Abramoff scandal. Mr. Perry resigned two weeks after David Safavian, Perry’s chief of staff, was arrested for obstructing justice and his connections to Jack Abramoff. I should note that it was during Mr. Perry’s tenure that companies such as MZM, with no experience or revenue, mysteriously obtained multi-million dollar blanket purchase agreements.

Lurita was expected to clean up the mess at GSA:

Investigations in 2003 revealed the agency’s procurement organizations, particularly its Federal Technology Service regional shops, had parlayed their reputation for quick turnaround with few questions asked into a scandalous misuse of technology contracts.

…

Doan, who stepped in more than half a year after Perry quit on Oct. 31, 2005, was expected to clean up the mess. She seemed primed for the job.

 

Doan exudes energy. She leans forward to emphasize points. She gesticulates. She visibly reacts with displeasure or pleasure. Her voice grows animated. She groans audibly when she hears something or encounters someone she doesn’t like. She is not shy.

 

But within weeks of her Senate confirmation, she picked a fight with NASA over the future of its Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement. She was accused of saying that the GSA inspector general’s staff "terrorized" regional administrators. She angered an already irritated Defense Department by resisting limitations on using Defense dollars.

…

Despite her energy, some of Doan’s efforts have backfired. The Office of Management and Budget renewed NASA’s governmentwide procurement contract and told her to "avoid unnecessary discordant publicity on this matter." Late last year, she capitulated to the Pentagon on how quickly its funds must be disbursed.

She picked the wrong people to pick a fight with in trying to eliminate government waste. She may have also made some political enemies inside and outside GSA who were accustomed to the Bush Gravy Train:

Contracts specific to a department or function of government, such as the Navy’s Seaport, a 2004 IT contract, and the Homeland Security’s Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge Solutions, an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity technology acquisition, compete with GSA. For years, agencies other than GSA have run technology contracts open to all agencies. Doan contends they waste tax dollars.

 

"We just don’t want duplications," she says. "If it’s a unique requirement that’s being supplied by a particular [agency’s governmentwide contract], that’s fine." Otherwise, procurement should go through GSA, Doan says. Only GSA covers its costs by collecting fees as opposed to using appropriated funds, she asserts. Other agencies might say they’re not using appropriated money to support contracts open to all, "but unless you absolutely carve out your costs for your rent, you carve out your costs for the air you breathe, practically . . . then there’s an added burden to the taxpayer," she says.

I always suspected she would make powerful enemies with her style. She picked a fight with the biggest guy in the schoolyard - the Defense Department contracting office. It was probably a matter of time before she was pushed out.

Immediately after her tussle with DOD and NASA, articles appeared in the Washington Post about her falling out with the GSA IG and her attempt to offer a $20,000 contract to a long-time friend. Now the scandal has gone into overdrive because White House political staff were coaching GSA political appointees in a videoconference that was presided over by Lurita. This latest scandal reeks of the same politicization of the government that the U.S. attorney scandal reeks of. Given the central role GSA has played in the Jack Abramoff scandal and in the Duke Cunningham/Gonzogate scandal, it rings true that the White House is involved in across-the-board politicization of government.

I am disappointed that Lurita is alleged to be involved in the latest scandal. I eagerly await Congressman Waxman’s hearing this Wednesday to learn more. I do hope the investigation does not stop at Lurita. I expect, like in Gonzogate, that the Congress will hold the White House accountable and not be satisfied with being thrown scraps. With her blunt style and her immediate attack on government waste she is ripe to be thrown overboard by this White House as scrap.

Finally, I wrote this diary, from a personal point of view, partially because I saw an alarming diary on Daily Kos that called Lurita an unconscionable name. I hope, as we continue to ferret out corruption in the Bush Administration, that we do not lose sight of who we are and what our mothers taught us.

Thanks for reading, and now let the flaming begin.

When Carol Lam, the US Attorney for the Southern District of California, was publicly humiliated and dismissed by the Bush Administration on December 7, 2006, she became the latest casualty in George W Bush’s "War on Terror". The "War on Terror" is multi-pronged. It consists of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war against al Qaeda, and the war of profit and political favors. It was the war of profit and political favors that killed Carol Lam’s career.

This is the story of one of the warriors of greed and profit. This is the story of the warpath of dollars that leads all the way to the White House.

The reason being floated by the Administration for Carol Lam’s dismissal is her alleged lax pursuit of immigration cases. Congressman Darryl Issa has attacked Ms. Lam on her office’s prosecution of immigration misdemeanors prior to her firing, and that attack is being now spun as a cause for her dismissal. However, it is clear from the emails released by the Justice Department that the Department was aggressively defending Ms. Lam and considered Mr. Issa something of a pest.

It is ironic that Darryl Issa, who has been arrested multiple times for gun possession and auto theft, should pursue Carol Lam for exercising prosecutorial discretion in deciding whether to pursue misdemeanor offenses. If the prosecutors had not exercised prosecutorial discretion in the cases involving the Congressman, Mr. Issa would likely have seen some jail time. But I digress.

Politics however is sometimes fought as asymmetrical warfare. The most plausible speculation about Carol Lam’s dismissal is that she was fired because of her prosecution of Duke Cunningham and the possibility that the ongoing investigation was starting to come too close to the White House. Darryl Issa, a defender of Duke Cunningham to the end, may have been prosecuting a flanking maneuver.

The smoking gun tying Carol Lam’s firing to the Duke Cunningham case seemed to be contained in an email from Kyle Sampson:

The U.S. attorney in San Diego notified the Justice Department of search warrants in a Republican bribery scandal last May 10, one day before the attorney general’s chief of staff warned the White House of a "real problem" with her, a Democratic senator said yesterday.

The prosecutor, Carol S. Lam, was dismissed seven months later as part of an effort by the Justice Department and the White House to fire eight U.S. attorneys.

…

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a television appearance yesterday that Lam "sent a notice to the Justice Department saying that there would be two search warrants" in a criminal investigation of defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes and Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who had just quit as the CIA’s top administrator amid questions about his ties to disgraced former GOP congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

The next day, May 11, D. Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, sent an e-mail message to William Kelley in the White House counsel’s office saying that Lam should be removed as quickly as possible, according to documents turned over to Congress last week.

"Please call me at your convenience to discuss the following," Sampson wrote, referring to "[t]he real problem we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires."

Since that revelation the issue has been much clouded by the raising of the immigration issue. But where there is smoke, there is likely to be fire - especially when the Bush Administration is involved.

Duke Cunningham was being bribed by MZM, a company run by Mitchell Wade. It has emerged through the hard work of Talking Points Memo and Think Progress that MZM got its start in government contracting and the bribery business in a most unusual way:

– Wade’s company MZM Inc. received its first federal contract from the White House. The contract, which ran from July 15 to August 15, 2002, stipulated that Wade be paid $140,000 to “provide office furniture and computers for Vice President Dick Cheney.”

– Two weeks later, on August 30, 2002, Wade purchased a yacht for $140,000 for Duke Cunningham. The boat’s name was later changed to the “Duke-Stir.” Said one party to the sale: “I knew then that somebody was going to go to jail for that…Duke looked at the boat, and Wade bought it — all in one day. Then they got on the boat and floated away.”

Of course, the big prize for MZM followed the very next month:

The money and gifts MZM gave Cunningham were a small price to pay for the ultimate prize. In September 2002, the General Services Administration signed a so-called blanket purchase agreement with MZM totaling $250 million over five years.

So, the facts are a company (MZM) gets its first contract from the White House, gets paid $140,000, and two weeks later spends $140,000 to bribe Duke Cunningham, and the very next month gets a $250 million dollar contract from the Defense Department. That kind of meteoric rise is unheard of in government contracting. Add to that the fact that MZM was the only bidder for a $250 million dollar contract from DOD, and you have the makings of major corruption. Anyone who has ever bid for a government contract, especially a $250 million dollar contract that was a full and open bid, knows that everyone who is anyone in government contracting would have bid for such a lucrative contract.

When the Pentagon noticed that they had handed out such a large contract without a competitive bidding process, they apparently stopped any new work on the contract. That Pentagon decision, in June 2005, came the same week that the relationship between Duke Cunningham and MZM became known:

The Pentagon has ordered a halt in new work for MZM Inc., a local defense and intelligence firm, under a contract that has brought the company $163 million in revenue during the past 2 1/2 years.

A Pentagon spokesman said in a statement that the decision to cut off further awards for MZM under the 2002 contract, known as blanket purchase agreement, was because of a change in procurement law.

Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), a member of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, acknowledged last week that his relationship with MZM founder Mitchell J. Wade is being examined by federal authorities.

The story so far is quite damning. But, it is far from complete.

The contract MZM received from the White House for $140,000 was not an isolated contract. That contract was part of a Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) that MZM signed with the GSA on May 13, 2002 [Click here for a PDF of the GSA schedule for this BPA]. In addition to this BPA, MZM rode the gravy train on two other BPAs. The three BPAs are as follows:

• GSA BPA contract number GS-35F-0486M effective May 13, 2002 to May 12, 2007
• GSA BPA contract number GS-10F-0392R effective July 19, 2005 to July 18, 2010
• DITCO contract number DCA20002A5016 effective sometime in September, 2002

Between 2002 and 2006, when MZM was ostensibly sold (more on that later), the company was paid over $176 million mainly under GS-35F-0486M and DCA20002A5016. A company that made no money before 2002, made $140,000 in 2002, over $43 million in 2003, over $69 million in 2004, over $60 million in 2005 and over $3 million in a few months in 2006 before the company was sold.

The White House got the ball rolling in 2002 under GS-35F-0486M. In 2004, the Executive Office of the President also paid MZM a total of $421,474 ($50,115, $92,161, $112,161 under DCA20002A5016 and $167,037 under GS-35F-0486M) for "intelligence services" .

On February 24, 2006, the government secured a guilty plea from Mitchell Wade, the head of MZM. Wade pleaded guilty to funneling $1 million in bribes to Duke Cunningham. In the plea agreement Wade admitted to bribing the DOD Program Manager on the DITCO contract (DCA20002A5016) by hiring the Program Manager’s son and later hiring the Program Manager at MZM. In return MZM received favorable reviews and inside information that helped secure contracts for MZM under the BPA.

As I mentioned earlier in this post, the Pentagon claimed in June 2005 that they would not award any further work to MZM under the DCA20002A5016 BPA. However, government records show that MZM was awarded multiple task orders, amounting to millions of dollars, in fiscal year 2006 on the BPA.

On July 18, 2005, while MZM was being investigated for bribery and after the Pentagon claimed to have cut off the DCA20002A5016 gravy train, the GSA awarded MZM with a $2,250,000 blanket purchase agreement (GS-10F-0392R) for the MOBIS program [Click here for a PDF of the GSA schedule for this BPA]. In September 2005 MZM was renamed Athena Innovative Solutions after a purchase by Veritas Capital. Athena has continued where MZM left off by collecting over $7 million in 2006 under GS-10F-0392R and GS-35F-0486M. The gravy train continues.

Surprisingly, fully 100 percent of Athena’s inherited (from MZM) contracts and 78 percent of MZM’s contracts were full and open bids, but only had one bidder - MZM. Given the size of these contracts, these statistics should raise eyebrows.

The question must be asked - how does a small business with no revenue secure a BPA worth tens of millions of dollars (GS-35F-0486M) as the prime contractor in a full and open (not a small-business set-aside) bidding process? The question must be asked - what role did the White House play in securing this contract given that the White House was MZM’s first customer?

The question must be asked - how does a small business which has only one prior past performance in buying furniture secure a massive DOD contract worth up to $250 million dollars to do classified work without any prior DOD related experience? The question must be asked - how did the White House grant a series of unprecedented contracts in 2004 for "intelligence services" to the very same company that the White House previously hired to buy furniture? The question must be asked - since the DCA20002A5016 contract has been shown to involve bribery, were there any improprieties involved in the granting of task orders by the White House to MZM under this BPA?

The question must be asked - why would the GSA grant a multi-million dollar contract (GS-10F-0392R) to MZM within a month of it becoming public that the company was involved in bribery involving government contracts?

Finally, the question must be asked whether Carol Lam was asking these very questions? In light of the email from Kyle Sampson cited above, it appears quite likely that Carol Lam’s investigation of the Duke Cunningham scandal was probably venturing into sensitive areas - thus making Carol Lam a "real problem".

That "real problem" was solved on December 7, 2006 when Carol Lam was fired.

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We are beginning to see the first signs of reason returning to the American political discourse in the post-9/11 era. Leading the fight for reason over fear is Zbigniew Brzezinski. Today in the Washington Post, Mr. Brzezinski delivered a message that deserves the attention of all thinking Americans.

In an op-ed entitled "Terrorized by ‘War on Terror’: How a Three-Word Mantra Has Undermined America", Mr. Brzezinski writes:

The "war on terror" has created a culture of fear in America. The Bush administration’s elevation of these three words into a national mantra since the horrific events of 9/11 has had a pernicious impact on American democracy, on America’s psyche and on U.S. standing in the world. Using this phrase has actually undermined our ability to effectively confront the real challenges we face from fanatics who may use terrorism against us.

The damage these three words have done — a classic self-inflicted wound — is infinitely greater than any wild dreams entertained by the fanatical perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks when they were plotting against us in distant Afghan caves. The phrase itself is meaningless. It defines neither a geographic context nor our presumed enemies. Terrorism is not an enemy but a technique of warfare — political intimidation through the killing of unarmed non-combatants.

But the little secret here may be that the vagueness of the phrase was deliberately (or instinctively) calculated by its sponsors. Constant reference to a "war on terror" did accomplish one major objective: It stimulated the emergence of a culture of fear. Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. The war of choice in Iraq could never have gained the congressional support it got without the psychological linkage between the shock of 9/11 and the postulated existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Support for President Bush in the 2004 elections was also mobilized in part by the notion that "a nation at war" does not change its commander in chief in midstream. The sense of a pervasive but otherwise imprecise danger was thus channeled in a politically expedient direction by the mobilizing appeal of being "at war."

To justify the "war on terror," the administration has lately crafted a false historical narrative that could even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. By claiming that its war is similar to earlier U.S. struggles against Nazism and then Stalinism (while ignoring the fact that both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were first-rate military powers, a status al-Qaeda neither has nor can achieve), the administration could be preparing the case for war with Iran. Such war would then plunge America into a protracted conflict spanning Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and perhaps also Pakistan.

He goes on to argue that the cottage industry that has grown around the "war on terror" benefits economically from sustaining this culture of fear and paranoia. In doing so, the political and economic beneficiaries undermine US national security. It is a powerful argument that benefits from also being true.

Mr. Brzezinski drives home what many of us have been trying to articulate for a long time now. He does it with the clarity that comes from his many years of national security experience.

He concludes his tour de force with the following call to action:

The events of 9/11 could have resulted in a truly global solidarity against extremism and terrorism. A global alliance of moderates, including Muslim ones, engaged in a deliberate campaign both to extirpate the specific terrorist networks and to terminate the political conflicts that spawn terrorism would have been more productive than a demagogically proclaimed and largely solitary U.S. "war on terror" against "Islamo-fascism." Only a confidently determined and reasonable America can promote genuine international security which then leaves no political space for terrorism.

Where is the U.S. leader ready to say, "Enough of this hysteria, stop this paranoia"? Even in the face of future terrorist attacks, the likelihood of which cannot be denied, let us show some sense. Let us be true to our traditions.

Where indeed is such a U.S. leader? I do not yet recognize one amongst the Democratic presidential frontrunners. Let this clarion call bring forth some sanity in our leadership. Let it bring forth some courage. The American people demand and deserve both.

Via The Heathlander:

John Bolton explains the Bush Administration’s Freedom Agenda:

A former top American diplomat says the US deliberately resisted calls for a immediate ceasefire during the conflict in Lebanon in the summer of 2006.
Former ambassador to the UN John Bolton told the BBC that before any ceasefire Washington wanted Israel to eliminate Hezbollah’s military capability.

Mr Bolton said an early ceasefire would have been "dangerous and misguided".

He said the US decided to join efforts to end the conflict only when it was clear Israel’s campaign wasn’t working.

…

More than 1,000 Lebanese civilians and an unknown number of Hezbollah fighters were killed in the conflict.

Israel lost 116 soldiers in the fighting, while 43 of its civilians were killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks.

To those of us who understand common sense, it was clear from the start that Israel would fail. But it took over 1159 dead bodies before the Bush Administration faced reality in Lebanon.

In Iraq, perhaps over a half million dead bodies has not been enough of a reality check for the Bush Administration.

What did the Attorney General know and when did he know it?

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