DC burning. Heartbreaking. Hopefully both Capitol Hill's historic Eastern Market and Georgetown's library will be quickly rebuilt.

National Journal's Murray Waas:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides -- who have since resigned because of their central roles in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys -- extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department. A copy of the order and other Justice Department records related to the conception and implementation of the order were provided to National Journal.

In the order, Gonzales delegated to his then-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, and his White House liaison "the authority, with the approval of the Attorney General, to take final action in matters pertaining to the appointment, employment, pay, separation, and general administration" of virtually all non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department, including all of the department's political appointees who do not require Senate confirmation. Monica Goodling became White House liaison in April 2006, the month after Gonzales signed the order.

The existence of the order suggests that a broad effort was under way by the White House to place politically and ideologically loyal appointees throughout the Justice Department, not just at the U.S.-attorney level. Department records show that the personnel authority was delegated to the two aides at about the same time they were working with the White House in planning the firings of a dozen U.S. attorneys, eight of whom were, in fact, later dismissed.

Check out Apple's latest I-product.

Robin Wright: "In a serious rebuff to U.S. diplomacy, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has refused to receive Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on the eve of a critical regional summit on the future of the war-ravaged country, Iraqi and other Arab officials said yesterday. The Saudi leader's decision reflects the growing tensions between the oil-rich regional giants, the deepening skepticism among Sunni leaders in the Middle East about Iraq's Shiite-dominated government, and Arab concern about the prospects of U.S. success in Iraq, the sources said. The Saudi snub also indicates that the Maliki government faces a creeping regional isolation unless it takes long-delayed actions, Arab officials warn. For the United States, the Saudi cold shoulder undermines hopes of healing regional tensions between Sunni- and Shiite-dominated governments and producing a new spirit of cooperation on Iraq ... "

Iranian tip-off on al Hadi? The Guardian: "British diplomats are checking secret reports that elements within Iran, normally hostile to the West, helped the American secret services to capture Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, the Kurdish-born senior al-Qaeda militant who was revealed last week to have been arrested on the border between Iran and Iraq late last year. Abdul Hadi, 45, a former Iraqi army officer who speaks five languages and is a key link between the al-Qaeda leadership in western Pakistan and militants in Iraq, had 'met with al-Qaeda leaders in Iran' and had urged them to support efforts in Iraq and to cause 'problems within Iran', US military sources told The Observer." That's what I speculated too.

WP: Maliki's office seen behind purge in forces.

NYT: Hadley seeks Iraq czar.

WP: Scheuer contra Tenet.

Damascus-based journalist Andrew Tabler, who blogs here, reports on the signs of Shiitization in Syria in the NYT mag. Also in the NYT, an interview with the president of Blackwater by blogger R J Hillhouse.

WP: "More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers."

This American Life is rerunning its tour through Guantanamo, "Habeas Schmabeus." If you haven't heard it yet, it's well worth listening to, occasionally grimly funny (the Gitmo detainee whose Gitmo guard gradually realizes he's no terrorist; who tells one of his interrogators he doesn't want to go home because he likes him so much; since released without charges or explanation after being held for three years) and immensely troubling. The overwhelming theme of the show is summed up by one of the attorneys for a Uighur from China held by the US for years at Gitmo though it long ago determined he's innocent: "When you take a look at Adel, you are going to realize you have been lied to for a long time."

Transcript here (.pdf).

Dafna Linzer:

U.S. officials would not say where al-Iraqi was captured, but sources ruled out all of Iraq's immediate neighbors, as well as Pakistan and Afghanistan, and said he was not stopped at a border crossing. Officials said that several recent reports that al-Iraqi was operating freely were erroneous and that he has been in custody, in a third country, since late December.

WP:

The Justice Department is removing political appointees from the hiring process for rookie lawyers and summer interns, amid allegations that the Bush administration had rigged the programs in favor of candidates with connections to conservative or Republican groups, according to documents and officials.

The decision, outlined in an internal memo distributed Thursday, returns control of the Attorney General's Honors Program and the Summer Law Intern Program to career lawyers in the department after four years during which political appointees [working for DAG McNulty] directed the process. [...]

According to a former deputy chief in the civil rights division, one honors hire was a University of Mississippi law school graduate who had been a clerk for U.S. District Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. about the time the judge's nomination by President Bush to a federal appeals court provoked opposition by congressional Democrats, who contended that Pickering was hostile to civil rights.

A few months after he arrived, that lawyer was given a cash award by the department, after he was the only member of a four-person team in the civil rights division who sided with a Georgia voter-identification law that was later struck down by the courts as discriminatory to minorities, according to two former Justice lawyers.

AP: Aid chief quits over call girl links. "Randall Tobias, head of the Bush administration's foreign aid programs, abruptly resigned Friday after his name surfaced in an investigation into a high-priced call-girl ring, said two people in a position to know the circumstances of his departure." This all apparently came up very suddenly. More from Justin Rood: "On Thursday, Tobias told ABC News he had several times called the 'Pamela Martin and Associates' escort service 'to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage.' Tobias, who is married, said there had been 'no sex,' and that recently he had been using another service 'with Central Americans' to provide massages. ... As the Bush administration's so-called 'AIDS czar,' Tobias was criticized for emphasizing faithfulness and abstinence over condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS."

Update: Sounds like there's more to come. WP. "ABC's '20/20' is mining that database of phone numbers, Sibley said, for a news report on the more notable of Palfrey's customers."

McClatchy:

A senior Justice Department official has resigned after coming under scrutiny in the Department’s expanding investigation of convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to a Justice Department official with knowledge of the case.

Making the situation more awkward for the embattled Department, the official, Robert E. Coughlin II, was deputy chief of staff for the criminal division, which is overseeing the Department’s probe of Abramoff.

He stepped down effective April 6 as investigators in Coughlin’s own division ratcheted up their investigation of lobbyist Kevin Ring, Coughlin’s long-time friend and a key associate of Abramoff. ...

Coughlin appears to be the first Justice Department official to come under scrutiny in the wide-ranging probe that has implicated a veteran congressman, a deputy Cabinet secretary, a White House aide and eight others. Abramoff has pleaded guilty to three counts in the corruption probe and could face up to 11 years in prison.

It was unclear whether Coughlin is a target in the investigation, which would mean he is under intense scrutiny, or whether he is a subject in the investigation, which would mean investigators have not yet determined whether he committed any wrongdoing.

Via Kevin Drum, McClatchy reports that the State Department's annual terrorism report, due out next week, will show a 29% rise in attacks between 2005 and 2006.

Paul Kiel: Schlozman back in the saddle at the Justice Department's executive office.

Worth reading in Armed Forces Journal: "A failure in Generalship," by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling:

For the second time in a generation, the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency. In April 1975, the U.S. fled the Republic of Vietnam, abandoning our allies to their fate at the hands of North Vietnamese communists. In 2007, Iraq's grave and deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and portends risk of an even wider and more destructive regional war.

These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America's general officer corps. America's generals have failed to prepare our armed forces for war and advise civilian authorities on the application of force to achieve the aims of policy. The argument that follows consists of three elements. First, generals have a responsibility to society to provide policymakers with a correct estimate of strategic probabilities. Second, America's generals in Vietnam and Iraq failed to perform this responsibility. Third, remedying the crisis in American generalship requires the intervention of Congress. ...

More Waxman information requests. WP:

A House committee chairman asked 27 federal departments and agencies yesterday to turn over information related to White House briefings about elections or political candidates, substantially widening the scope of a congressional investigation into the administration's compliance with the law that restricts partisan political activity by government employees. ...

Waxman asked that the information be submitted by mid-May, including the dates, times, locations and names of attendees of briefings that occurred from 2001 until this month, as well as any related "communications and documents." Waxman's committee has the authority to subpoena the data if the Bush administration declines to provide them voluntarily. This week, the panel endorsed three subpoenas on unrelated matters.

Update: House Oversight committee press release: "Waxman has invited former CIA Director George Tenet to testify before the Committee on May 10th regarding one of the claims used to justify the war in Iraq - the assertion that Iraq sought to import uranium from Niger - and related issues."

Phoenix Business Journal: Renzi could soon resign from Congress. "... His resignation could come as early as Friday or soon after, according to sources familiar with the matter. Top Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, have been meeting to discuss what they will do if Renzi resigns and his rural congressional seat opens up. Republican leaders also are starting to encourage Renzi to resign, saying a prolonged investigation will hurt the party's chances of holding onto his Arizona seat, according to knowledgeable sources. ..."

NYT: In New Book, Tenet Assails Cheney on Iraq.

White House turns over docs on its 2002 contract with MZM. AP:

The White House has turned over to a House committee about 200 pages of documents related to a contract with a company run by a man who pleaded guilty to bribing a congressman.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform had planned to vote on a subpoena for the documents. That proved unnecessary after the White House delivered the documents Tuesday evening, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the committee's chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

Lightfoot could provide no details on the documents Wednesday.

At issue is a $140,000 contract awarded to MZM Inc. in July 2002 by the Executive Office of the President. MZM was run by Mitchell Wade, who is cooperating with federal prosecutors.

One thing I've recently learned is that the 2002 MZM contract with the White House was to scan email to the White House for threats.

This one month July-August 2002 $140k contract with the White House was the first contract MZM had received from the federal government as a primary contractor. It had previously -- circa April 2002 - jointly bid with Gray Hawk and a third company for a Pentagon contract with the Counter Intelligence Field Activity. Funny thing is, when it made its initial bid, MZM didn't quite have its Federal Supply Schedule contract approved - its application was still pending. Someone put his thumb on the scale at GSA to make that go through, and MZM got its federal supply schedule contract approved in May 2002. Less than two months later, MZM got the White House contract. And of course, a couple weeks after getting the $140,000 White House contract, MZM's Mitchell Wade paid $140,000 to buy a yacht which he gave to Congressman Duke Cunningham.

Go read Christopher Dickey on Halbertsam's The Making of a Quagmire. "...Halberstam had seen firsthand the way the U.S. military commanders struggled with the realities on the ground, then fell back on clichés that Washington wanted to hear: 'The enemy, they said, succeeds because of terror.' ... Halberstam was agonizing as he wrote. Some 400 American soldiers had been killed in Vietnam by the beginning of 1965. 'What is there to recommend at the end of that long road down which we have traveled for years and years when the policy was: There is no place else to go? How do you find somewhere else to go now?' He realized he did not have the answer. The quagmire that Halberstam was describing was, precisely, a place where you could not stay and you could not leave, and a situation that might remain like that indefinitely. ..."

Ron Brownstein: "GEORGE W. BUSH'S presidency is devolving into an extended holding action. On too many fronts, his top priority now appears to be delaying the inevitable. Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former Defense secretary, once described the Iraqi resistance as a few 'dead-enders' who refused to acknowledge that the world around them had changed. Increasingly that phrase applies as a self-portrait for the administration that Rumsfeld served. Forget 'the decider.' Bush has become the dead-ender."

WP: Several subpoenas authorized.

NYT: More ethical foie gras.

POGO's Nick Schwellenbach has an interesting find.

Many interesting details in this piece, including that Renzi has apparently been wiretapped since October.

David Ignatius:

As Bush gave his manifestly inaccurate defense of Gonzales, Gen. David Petraeus sat silently next to him, his newly minted fourth star on his shoulder and his hands folded in his lap. He is the intelligent, ambitious officer the White House has selected as the front man for its endgame strategy in Iraq. One can only wonder what Petraeus was thinking as he watched the president circle the wagons ever tighter around his embattled White House.

Something's got to give. That's the sense around Washington this week as the news from Baghdad worsens and the president defiantly continues an Iraq policy that many military leaders question. Unfortunately, what's giving way right now is the national interest. Bush is hunkered down with his troop surge strategy, and the military is expected to pay the price. A grim example of that human cost was Monday's deaths of nine U.S. soldiers from car bombs that hit one of the vulnerable forward operating bases that are a key part of the surge strategy.

MSNBC:

An Army Ranger who was with former NFL star Pat Tillman when he died by friendly fire in Afghanistan testified Tuesday that he was told by a higher-up to conceal that information from Tillman’s family.

"I was ordered not to tell them," Army Spc. Bryan O’Neal told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which was also looking at how the military portrayed the rescue of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch.

He said he was given the order by then-Lt. Col. Jeff Bailey, the battalion commander who oversaw Tillman’s platoon. ...

"He basically just said, 'Do not let Kevin know, he’s probably in a bad place knowing that his brother’s dead,'" O’Neal said. He added that Bailey made clear he would "get in trouble" if he told.

Earlier, Kevin Tillman accused the military of "intentional falsehoods" and "deliberate and careful misrepresentations" in initially portraying his brother's death as the result of heroic engagement with the enemy instead of friendly fire.

"We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public," Tillman testified. ...

Cummings cited a memo written by a top general seven days after Tillman’s death warning it was "highly possible" the Army Ranger was killed by friendly fire and making clear his warning should be conveyed to the president. President Bush made no reference to the way Tillman died in a speech delivered two days after the memo was written.

A White House spokesman has said there’s no indication Bush received the warning in the memo written April 29, 2004, by then-Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal to Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command.

"It’s a little disingenuous to think the administration didn’t know," Kevin Tillman told the committee. "That’s kind of what we hoped you guys would get involved with and take a look."

This from David Iglesias' interview with Chris Matthews is interesting:

I think Monica Goodling is holding the keys to the kingdom. I think if they get her to testify under oath with a transcript, and have her describe the process between the information flow between the White House counsel, White House and the Justice Department, I believe the picture becomes a lot clearer.

Walter Pincus: Pentagon to end Talon data-gathering program, which was established by Wolfowitz in 2002.

"Iglesias reveals he filed complaint against Rove, leading to Special Counsel probe. ... [IGLESIAS]: It could have started the ball rolling, yes. It’s is something I filed back on April 3 of this year…based on, you know, Special Counsel having powers to investigate where evidence goes. I actually filed a Hatch Act complaint against Gonzales, McNulty, Sampson and Goodling and they’re already getting documents from the Justice Department and possibly from the White House." More: LAT: Critics doubt official looking into Rove. And from Mother Jones.

NYT: A Pentagon that can apparently produce Soviet levels of disinformation, and does. Astounding, really. And an IG's investigation which apparently daintily avoids investigating too hard:

Committee members heard from Specialist Bryan O’Neal, who was with Corporal Tillman when he died. Specialist O’Neal said he knew immediately that it was American troops that had killed his comrade and that he wanted to tell Kevin Tillman, who was a specialist in the same platoon, right away. But he was barred from doing so, he said, by his battalion commander, Lt. Col. Jeff Bailey.

“I was ordered not to tell him what happened,” he said, explaining that it was made clear that he “would get in trouble.”

Specialist O’Neal also said he did not write statements attributed to him in the recommendation for Corporal Tillman’s Silver Star about “engaging the enemy.”

Thomas F. Gimble, acting inspector general at the Pentagon, said his investigators were unable to determine who had altered the statement.

“Somewhere in the approval chain, it got edited,” Mr. Gimble said.

Glenn Greenwald has put together some of Halbertsam's talks and writings including on the state of contemporary journalism, worth reading.

Hirsh: White House wants Gates to keep his thoughts to himself, prevent Democrats from citing him favorably.

AP/Ha'aretz:

The United States denied Tuesday that it is considering proposals that would allow Iran to partially retain its uranium enrichment program.

"We're not considering any proposals that would allow the Iranians to retain any enrichment-related activities," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. "We would hope the Iranians would take us up on the offer for negotiations, but the conditions for entering those negotiations are the same."

Earlier, foreign government officials said that the United States, Russia, China and key European powers may for the first time be ready to allow Tehran to keep some of its uranium enrichment program instead of demanding it be completely shelved.
Speaking on the eve of talks between top Iranian envoy Ali Larijani and Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, the officials - some of them diplomats, others based in their capitals - said the discussions were key because for the first time they could try to sidestep the deadlock over uranium enrichment by trying to agree on a new way of defining it.

McCormack said that Washington fully supports Solana's efforts.

Via the Friday Lunch Club, Syria's formerly lonely ambassador to the US tells Newsweek he is suddenly getting more visitors.

AP: Wal-Mart recruits intel officers. "Wal-Mart's interest in intelligence operatives comes at a time when the retailer is defending itself against allegations by a fired security employee that it ran surveillance operations against targets including critics, dissident shareholders, employees and suppliers. Wal-Mart has denied any wrongdoing."

LAT: The Office of Special Counsel will investigate U.S. attorney firings and other political activities led by Karl Rove:

The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.

First, the inquiry comes from inside the administration, not from Democrats in Congress. Second, unlike the splintered inquiries being pressed on Capitol Hill, it is expected to be a unified investigation covering many facets of the political operation in which Rove played a leading part. [...]

The 106-person Office of Special Counsel has never conducted such a broad and high-profile inquiry in its history. One of its primary missions has been to enforce the Hatch Act, a law enacted in 1939 to preserve the integrity of the civil service.

Bloch said the new investigation grew from two narrower inquiries his staff had begun in recent weeks.

One involved the fired U.S. attorney from New Mexico, David C. Iglesias.

The other centered on a PowerPoint presentation that a Rove aide, J. Scott Jennings, made at the General Services Administration this year.

Update: A friend from home writes that, "Scott Bloch from OSC has roots in Lawrence KS – was an adjunct prof. at KU Law School & was a partner at a Lawrence firm for many years."

ABC: Security breakdown at the White House.

NYT: New CentCom commander Admiral William Fallon retires "the long war."

The Hill: Miers weighed firing Yang, according to Feinstein. Debra Wong Yang, the former US attorney in Los Angeles, was leading the investigation into former House appropriations committee chairman Jerry Lewis. Yang has said she decided to step down last fall to take a more lucrative private sector job at the firm, Gibson Dunn and Crutcher, which happens to be representing Lewis. The Hill:

In her previous comments to The Hill, Yang argued that her departure would not affect the case against Lewis in any way, noting that the Justice Department said it would have allowed her to stay in the position “as long as I wanted to.”

“The investigation [into Lewis] would never be delayed or affected in any way because of my departure,” she said. “We had 260 attorneys in that office.”

She said she had been looking for a more lucrative position in the private sector for months. She added that a longtime friend in the Orange County office of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, Nick Hanna, was the one who first contacted her about the position, not Olson or anyone else with close ties to the Bush administration. She also said she turned down a more lucrative offer from another firm.

Worth reading, in a New Republic issue devoted to Iran, Laura Secor on "The Case for Doing Nothing."

Haaretz's Ze'ev Schiff:

The gist of the Israeli message in its recent talks with United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates is that Syria is preparing for a military confrontation with Israel.

The U.S. message to Israel on Syria, in contrast, remained unchanged: Israel should at present avoid diplomatic talks with Damascus because President Bashar Assad plans on using such talks to extricate Syria from its isolation. Israeli talks with Damascus would be a knife in the back of the government of Fouad Siniora in Lebanon.

No tangible evidence exists, Israel told the U.S., that Damascus is planning an all-out war with Israel. But it is believed that Damascus has concluded that Israel might respond to various Syrian actions and that would be the cause of a full-blown confrontation.

Sheryl Crow and Laurie David confront Karl Rove at the WHCD on global warming. Rove comes off as lacking any of the charm or humor he has conjured at other of these events. Via David Kurtz. More from the Washington Post and Editor & Publisher.

Worth reading: the NYT's Celia Dugger with the second part of an interesting series on the Bush administration trying to win support from an industry and Congress invested in the status quo for a new and sensible approach to global food aid, that would provide more cash to locally purchase food and less expensively-shipped US-grown food.

There are a bunch of excellent short pieces over at Harper's blog: check out this on a defeat in Missouri for the forces pushing claims of voting fraud, this outstanding piece by Scott Horton on a DOJ plot against the first amendment, and this interview by Ken Silverstein on African oil and American foreign policy.

Check out, at Mother Jones's blog, my take on one segment of the PBS series "America at a Crossroads."

National Journal's Congress Daily:

Pentagon lawyers abruptly blocked mid-level active-duty military officers from speaking Thursday during a closed-door House Armed Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee briefing about their personal experiences working with Iraqi security forces.

The Pentagon's last-minute refusal to allow the officers' presentations surprised panel members and congressional aides, who are in the middle of an investigation into the effort to train and organize Iraqi forces.

Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Martin Meehan, D-Mass., called the Pentagon's move "outrageous" and left open the possibility of issuing subpoenas.

NYT editorial: "Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch. ... He delegated responsibility for purging their ranks to an inexperienced and incompetent assistant who, if that’s possible, was even more of a plodding apparatchik. ... At the end of the day, we were left wondering why the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer would paint himself as a bumbling fool. Perhaps it’s because the alternative is that he is not telling the truth. There is strong evidence that this purge was directed from the White House, and that Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s top political adviser, and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, were deeply involved." Perhaps not such a fool after all.

Check out Marc Lynch's Prospect piece on al Qaeda in Iraq.

Offline today, back on tonight.

NYT: "In the deadliest day in Baghdad since the latest American-led security plan for the city took effect two months ago, at least 171 people were killed today in a flurry of insurgent attacks, including car bombs that tore through predominantly Shiite crowds gathered at a bus hub, on a shopping street and near a police checkpoint, the authorities said."

MSNBC: Virginia Tech gunman Cho mailed video, documents to NBC after first attack. NPR reports that Cho was involuntarily committed to mental hospital in 2005 as imminent danger to self, others. Virginia gun licensing laws apparently ask the applicant to attest whether he has been involuntarily committed, Cho lied, and got his permit and gun.

Roll Call: FBI raids Doolittle's home:

The FBI has raided the Northern Virginia home of Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.), according to Congressional sources. No details are publicly available yet about the circumstances of the raid, but Doolittle and his wife, Julie, have been under federal investigation for their ties to the scandal surrounding imprisoned former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Reader CM:

I've been interested in the news today that Victoria Toensing is claiming Ms. Riza to be a volunteer for her trip to Iraq. The Government Accountability Project has put up the contract that SAIC had for this work here:

http://whistleblower.org/doc/2007/Riza%20SAIC%20contract.pdf

Not so sure why SAIC would need a contract for a volunteer. This contract names Riza and two others as Subject Matter Experts and the total contract is for $235,000. It is for Time and Materials (with the government providing transportation) -- even given that SAIC likely took 1/3 of this for overhead, this is a decent amount of money for 90 days of work that does not seem to result in any written reports. ...

Worth reading: David Kilcullen on Edward Luttwak's critique of the counterinsurgency manual.

The LAT has a very good account of the gunman at Virginia Tech.

Politico: Politicization of Career Hiring at DOJ. And who was the gatekeeper on politically vetting what was supposed to be non political hiring at DOJ? Politico: "...Recently, a number of divisions' requests to interview certain applicants were turned down, and the career employees started to wonder why. They were told that the interview approval now must be made by the office of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, and 'when the list of potential interviewees was returned this year, it was cut dramatically.'"

NYT:

The Defense Department directed a private contractor in 2003 to hire Shaha Ali Riza, a World Bank employee and the companion of Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense, to spend a month studying issues related to setting up a new government in Iraq, the contractor said Monday.

The contractor, Science Applications International Corporation, or SAIC, said that it had been directed to hire Ms. Riza by the office of the under secretary for policy. The head of that office at the time was Douglas J. Feith, who reported to Mr. Wolfowitz.

After her trip to Iraq, Ms. Riza briefed members of the executive board of the World Bank on efforts to rebuild after the American invasion and specifically on the status of Iraqi women, according to Ms. Riza’s supervisor at the time.

Victoria Toensing, a lawyer representing Ms. Riza, said this evening that Ms. Riza went to Iraq as a volunteer and took a leave of absence from the World Bank, paying for her own benefits while she was on leave.

Ms. Riza has been at the center of a controversy at the World Bank involving the role of Mr. Wolfowitz, now the World Bank president, in giving her a raise, promotions and a transfer from the bank in 2005, when he arrived to assume the bank presidency.

Mr. Wolfowitz has apologized for his role in her arrangements. But on Sunday, he rejected calls by the bank’s staff association to resign. An oversight committee of the bank on Sunday expressed “great concern” about the situation involving Mr. Wolfowitz, and the bank’s board is studying the matter.

Mr. Feith, the former under secretary of defense, said he had no recollection of any request by his office to have Ms. Riza hired. The office of Mr. Wolfowitz said it had insufficient information to be able to comment on short notice.

What kind of foreign policy would France pursue under Nicolas Sarkozy? The National Interest interviews the French presidential candidate on that issue, here and here.

Al Kamen on Tenet's Tell All.

Madness: 22 dead, 28 wounded in Virginia Tech shooting rampage. Update.

NYT: British government urgently seeking information about BBC reporter Alan Johnston in Gaza, after group claims it killed him.

Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty putting out feelers for a new job.

Ret. General John Sheehan: Why I declined to serve, as war czar. "What I found in discussions with current and former members of this administration is that there is no agreed-upon strategic view of the Iraq problem or the region. [...] There has to be linkage between short-term operations and strategic objectives that represent long-term U.S. and regional interests, such as assured access to energy resources and support for stable, Western-oriented countries. These interests will require a serious dialogue and partnership with countries that live in an increasingly dangerous neighborhood. We cannot 'shorthand' this issue with concepts such as the 'democratization of the region' or the constant refrain by a small but powerful group that we are going to 'win,' even as 'victory' is not defined or is frequently redefined."

The FT reports that missing former FBI agent Robert Levinson was meeting with Dawud Salahuddin, an American who assasinated an Iranian opposition activist in Washington in 1980 and then fled to Iran, before Levinson disappeared:

There is another theory for Mr Levinson's journey to Kish – a possible media connection. In 2002, Ira Silverman, a former NBC chief investigative producer, went to Tehran to meet Mr Salahuddin and wrote about him in the New Yorker magazine. He noted that his capture "would be a triumph for law enforcement", but also argued that "from an intelligence perspective" he would be "more useful left in place" because of his access to the inner circles in Iran.

Mr Silverman was also a friend of Mr Levinson and Mr Shoffler. Acquaintances believe he introduced Mr Lev­in­son to the fugitive with a documen­tary in mind. Mr Silverman declined to be interviewed for this article.

A US official, who asked not to be named, said US authorities also suspected that Mr Levinson was on a media mission. He did not name Mr Silverman.

Interesting column by Jim Hoagland: "In Iran, feeling the heat."

A literary critic makes predictions about George Tenet's forthcoming memoir - except, well, that he hasn't seen it yet.

LAT: In divided Iraq, rival spy agencies.

Law.com: Justice Department's independence 'shattered,' says former DOJ director:

... Ashcroft's Justice Department appointees, with few exceptions, were not the type of people who caused you to wonder what they were doing there. They might not have been firm believers in the importance of government, but generally speaking, there was a very respectable level of competence (in some instances even exceptionally so) and a relatively strong dedication to quality government, as far as I could see.

Under Gonzales, though, almost immediately from the time of his arrival in February 2005, this changed quite noticeably. First, there was extraordinary turnover in the political ranks, including the majority of even Justice's highest-level appointees. It was reminiscent of the turnover from the second Reagan administration to the first Bush administration in 1989, only more so. Second, the atmosphere was palpably different, in ways both large and small. One need not have had to be terribly sophisticated to notice that when Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey left the department in August 2005 his departure was quite abrupt, and that his large farewell party was attended by neither Gonzales nor (as best as could be seen) anyone else on the AG's personal staff. Third, and most significantly for present purposes, there was an almost immediate influx of young political aides beginning in the first half of 2005 (e.g., counsels to the AG, associate deputy attorneys general, deputy associate attorneys general, and deputy assistant attorneys general) whose inexperience in the processes of government was surpassed only by their evident disdain for it. ...

AP: "An Indonesian jet carrying hundreds of passengers was forced to turn around over Indian airspace after a nuclear-capable ballistic missile streaked across the sky, the Foreign Ministry said Friday. Indonesia has demanded an explanation from New Delhi, which insisted that aviation authorities were informed about Thursday's test launch well in advance."

The WP's Robin Wright: "After intense internal debate, the Bush administration has decided to hold on to five Iranian Revolutionary Guard intelligence agents captured in Iraq, overruling a State Department recommendation to release them, according to U.S. officials. At a meeting of the president's foreign policy team Tuesday, the administration decided the five Iranians will remain in custody and go through a periodic six-month review used for the 250 other foreign detainees held in Iraq, U.S. officials said. The next review is not expected until July, officials say." (Via David Kurtz).

From a DC lawyer reader:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez appointed Jeffrey Taylor to be the US Attorney for the District of Columbia in late September 2006 under the now-infamous provision of the Patriot Act allowing the Attorney General to appoint interim US Attorneys:

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/dc/US_Attorney/index.html

At that point, it was evident that the Democrats would retake control of the House of Representatives and that Henry Waxman (D-CA) would be the next chairman of House [Oversight and Government Reform] Committee, with its vast oversight jurisdiction. In fact, numerous stories like ths one had appeared in major newspapers indicating that Waxman would wage a war of oversight on the White House:

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-waxman17jul17,1,6461779.story?coll=la-headlines-politics

It seems apparent that Taylor was placed in to his position to specifically frustrate any Congressional oversight effort.

So how is it that the US Attorney for the District of Columbia spot so conveniently became open at such a critical time? ...

Ken Wainstein was the US Attorney for the Districty of Columbia prior to Jeffrey Taylor. ...

He was in office only six months before being kicked upstairs to become the first Assistant Attorney General for the new National Security Division at the Justice Department.

Technical problems. The website server/host has been having problems for a couple days, will try to figure it out and fix it.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), newly released DOJ emails reveal, White House's newly favorite cat's paw:

According to the e-mails, the White House sought to recruit Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to help defend against charges that Griffin was unqualified to become U.S. attorney in Arkansas.

"WH political reached out to Sen. Sessions and requested that he ask helpful questions to make clear that Tim Griffin is qualified to serve," wrote former Justice Department official Monica M. Goodling, who resigned last week after refusing to appear before Congress. "They requested that someone in our [Office of Legislative Affairs] call the senator's staff and make sure that we take advantage of the offer."

Walter Pincus:

The proposed revisions to FISA would also allow the government to keep information obtained "unintentionally," unrelated to the purpose of the surveillance, if it "contains significant foreign intelligence." Currently such information is destroyed unless it indicates threat of death or serious bodily harm.

And they provide for compelling telecommunications companies and e-mail providers to cooperate with investigations while protecting them from being sued by their subscribers. The legal protection would be applied retroactively to those companies that cooperated with the government after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Also, noted from further down:

The White House also threatened to veto a Senate version of the annual intelligence authorization bill, primarily over provisions that require a response within 15 days to Senate intelligence committee requests for particular documents, and reports to all committee members upon the initiation of extraordinarily sensitive activities, under threat of withholding funds. Under current practice, only committee chairmen and vice chairmen are told of such activities.

The White House, in a "statement of administration policy" sent to the Senate on Thursday, questioned the 4 percent reduction in funding that the intelligence committee applied to national intelligence programs and its threat of prohibiting funding for several classified projects pending reports to the panel.

Check out Marc Perelman's lead story in the Forward, "While Republicans and Democrats in Washington trade blows over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Syria last week, officials and pundits in this ancient capital describe the political feuding as a distraction from a more important truth. From their viewpoint, Pelosi’s visit was not a freelance bid for American-Syrian thaw but rather the latest step in a larger Syrian-Western rapprochement that has been under way for months." More on the topic of Syria-US back-channels from CQ's Jeff Stein.

ABC with tough news: "The Pentagon will extend the tours of duty for every active-duty soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan. As ABC News first reported Tuesday, this plan was in consideration, but will be announced today by the secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs. ... Under the plan, deployments for active-duty soldiers will be extended from the current 12 months to 15 months. This will apply to all active-duty soldiers, but not to the National Guard and Reserve."

Just Out: a piece in Mother Jones, "Kurdistan's Covert Back Channels: How an ex-Mossad chief, a German uberspy, and a gaggle of top-dollar GOP lobbyists helped Kurdistan snag 15 tons of $100 bills."

The Las Vegas Sun has some fun with the allegations by Gov. Gibbons that the WSJ is conspiring with the Dems to target him.

Heated but intelligent discussion of US attorneys firings on NPR's Diane Rehm show.

WP: No takers to assist the president in overseeing Iraq, Afghanistan. Cloning of Bob Gates to be considered.

LAT/Bloomberg poll: "Most Americans believe Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales should resign because of the controversy over his office's firing of federal prosecutors, and a big majority want White House aides to testify under oath about the issue."

The Washington Post has collected documents and correspondence related to the US attorneys firing case.

Worth listening to: Fresh Air's interview with Walter Isaacson, the author of a new biography of Albert Einstein.

WP:

A half-dozen sitting U.S. attorneys also serve as aides to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales or are assigned other Washington postings, performing tasks that take them away from regular duties in their districts for months or even years at a time, according to officials and department records.

Acting Associate Attorney General William W. Mercer, for example, has been effectively absent from his job as U.S. attorney in Montana for nearly two years -- prompting the chief federal judge in Billings to demand his removal and call Mercer's office "a mess." ...

The number of U.S. attorneys pulling double duty in Washington is the focus of growing concern from other prosecutors and from members of the federal bench, according to legal experts and government officials.

The growing reliance on federal prosecutors to fill Washington-based jobs also comes amid controversy over the firings of eight other U.S. attorneys last year. One of them, David C. Iglesias of New Mexico, was publicly accused by the Justice Department of being an "absentee landlord" who was away from his job too much. ...

CBS legal analyst Andrew Cohen on the gutting of the Justice Department:

... The White House and Justice Department, under the reign of attorneys general Ashcroft and Gonzales, have encouraged over the past half decade an atmosphere that sullies the coin of the realm under our rule of law — the perceived legitimacy and authority and objectivity and neutrality and professional competence of the men and women who are tasked with enforcing our laws uniformly, fairly and without fear or favor. Without that legitimacy, the legal system devolves down into Third World status, perceived by those within and without it as subject to manipulation for political purposes.

When you populate an office with ideologues and partisans and underachieving talent, you get an ideological and partisan office with underachieving results. And if there is any department in our federal system that can least afford to be ideological and partisan and underachieving, it is the Justice Department. This sorry state is true today, regardless of how and when the scandal over the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys is resolved. Of all the dismaying legal legacies left by this administration, this one surely ranks near the top.

A smart reader found a 2002 article that describes some unexpected businesses that unindicted co-conspirator in the Duke Cunningham corruption case, Tommy Kontogiannis, was involved with, including a Chapel Hill, North Carolina nightclub, and a company, LetterPath, that echoes Brent Wilkes' Mailsafe:

... It was through Garrison's New York connections that he met businessman Tommy Kontogiannis. Kontogiannis, recalls Garrison, "had the big money." He was brought in as the primary shareholder in DVD Holdings/Catalogue.com and provided the companies with an influx of cash. ...

In retrospect, none of the local entrepreneurs knew whom they were getting in bed with, business-wise. According to court records, Kontogiannis pleaded guilty to a 1993 conspiracy charge and was put on five years probation. And, at the time of the merger between DVD Holdings and Catalogue.com--unbeknownst to any of his partners in North Carolina--Kontogiannis was under investigation in New York for bribery charges that he'd later be indicted for.

While there's no evidence that Kontogiannis did anything illegal in his dealings with DVD Holdings/Catalogue.com, the deal did go sour: By the end of '99, Garrison was out; his company DVD Holdings--for all purposes--was gone. ...

"The lawyers did the submission but not an extensive patent search," says Tisdale. "Tommy [Kontogiannis] wanted his money back."

"That was a very bizarre situation," explains Gabel. "He's [Kontogiannis] a Greek guy who made his money in shipping and construction and he tried to run this the same way, which meant it wasn't going to work. It turns out there was a guy in California who had a preexisting patent but he'd gotten it as a utility patent, claiming the various hardware and software things as an invention, which was not right. I don't think it should have been granted but I didn't want to fight it."

In the meantime, Kontogiannis had already been laying the groundwork for LetterPath, using his connections to snag a meeting with the U.S. Postmaster General and his people at the postmaster's D.C. office, recalls Gabel, who attended the meeting along with Lee, Settle and "a couple of Tommy's people." Bravo had even gone ahead and rented several of the pricey Pitney Bowes machines that were capable of handling the e-mail to snail mail process (the machines were never used).

Kontogiannis and the rest of the Bravo staff even toyed with the idea of buying the original patent, Tisdale says, but they and the patent holder couldn't agree on a price. ....

JTA's Ron Kampeas reports on the Pelosi delegation to Syria.

Read this. Via Atrios.

North County Times: Is Kontogiannis cooperating? Or is he protected?

The WP's Peter Baker reports on what's leaking out of the White House.

NYT:

... Within weeks, those rations, provided by the United Nations World Food Program, are at risk of running out for them and 500,000 other paupers, including thousands of people wasted by AIDS who are being treated with American-financed drugs that make them hungrier as they grow healthy. ...

Hoping to forestall such a dire outcome, the World Food Program made an urgent appeal in February for cash donations so it could buy corn from Zambia’s own bountiful harvest, piled in towering stacks in the warehouses of the capital, Lusaka.

But the law in the United States requires that virtually all its donated food be grown in America and shipped at great expense across oceans, mostly on vessels that fly American flags and employ American crews — a process that typically takes four to six months.

For a third year, the Bush administration, which has pushed to make foreign aid more efficient, is trying to change the law to allow the United States to use up to a quarter of the budget of its main food aid program to buy food in developing countries during emergencies. The proposal has run into stiff opposition from a potent alliance of agribusiness, shipping and charitable groups with deep financial stakes in the current food aid system.

Oxfam, the international aid group, and other proponents of the Bush proposal say it would enable the United States to feed more people more quickly, while helping to fight poverty by buying the crops of peasants in poor countries.

The United States Agency for International Development estimated that if Congress adopted the Bush proposal, the United States could annually feed at least a million more people for six months and save 50,000 more lives.

But Congress quickly killed the plan in each of the past two years, cautioning that untying food aid from domestic interest groups would weaken the commitment that has made the United States by far the largest food aid donor in a world where 850 million go hungry. ...

Over the past three years, the same four companies and their subsidiaries — Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Bunge and the Cal Western Packaging Corporation — have sold the American government more than half the $2.2. billion in food for Food for Peace, the largest food aid program, and two smaller programs, according to the Department of Agriculture.

Shipping companies were paid $1.3 billion over the same period to move the food aid overseas, the department’s figures show. ...

Agribusiness and shipping groups vigorously oppose the Bush administration proposal to buy food in developing countries with cash, which they argue is more likely to be stolen. ... And they defend the idea that federal spending should benefit American business and farming interests, as well as the hungry. Without support from such interest groups, food aid budgets from Congress would wither, they say.

NPR: Monica Goodling resigns. More from the Post.

Unbelievable. The US attorney's office in Minneapolis appears to collapse.

Senate Foreign Relations committee members Dodd, Kerry, Casey ask the GAO to investigate the legality of the recess appointment of Sam Fox to be ambassador to Belgium.

An audience of one. The Post's Jeff Smith:

Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.

The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. The report had been released in summary form in February.

The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June. ....

The report, in a passage previously marked secret, said Feith's office had asserted in a briefing given to Cheney's chief of staff in September 2002 that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was "mature" and "symbiotic," marked by shared interests and evidenced by cooperation across 10 categories, including training, financing and logistics.

Instead, the report said, the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials, and said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the one Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups. ...

The CIA was not alone, the defense report emphasized. The Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded that year that "available reporting is not firm enough to demonstrate an ongoing relationship" between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda, it said.

But the contrary conclusions reached by Feith's office -- and leaked to the conservative Weekly Standard magazine before the war -- were publicly praised by Cheney as the best source of information on the topic, a circumstance the Pentagon report cites in documenting the impact of what it described as "inappropriate" work. ...

Cheney's public statements before and after the war about the risks posed by Iraq have closely tracked the briefing Feith's office presented to the vice president's then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. That includes the briefing's depiction of an alleged 2001 meeting in Prague between an Iraqi intelligence official and one of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers as one of eight "Known Iraq-Al Qaida Contacts." ...

Justin Rood: Probe targets GSA chief. "The Office of Special Counsel confirmed to ABC News it has launched an investigation into General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan, probing concerns she may have violated a ban against conducting partisan political activity at government expense by participating in a meeting featuring a presentation by a White House political aide on GOP election strategy."

The New Yorker profiles Wolfowitz at the World Bank (Via the Washington Monthly's Scoop).

Via Paul Kiel, Sen. Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin releases the declassified Feith office briefing to Hadley and Libby in the White House (it pushes the bogus Atta-Prague meeting), and the declassified DOD IG report.

LAT:

In a direct challenge to Congress and the way it does business, the White House on Wednesday unveiled an online list of all the pet spending projects lawmakers tucked in the federal budget for the 2004-05 fiscal year.

The Internet database details spending known as earmarks, funds that lawmakers funnel to projects, programs and sometimes even specific recipients without going through the normal budget review — such as the $25 million provided to California spinach farmers in the recent Iraq spending bill. ...

The database, which allows the public to search for earmarks by state and by agency but not by name of the sponsoring lawmaker, is the most comprehensive list produced by the government. But Democrats pointed out Wednesday that it did not include the earmarks the president and his administration requested.

Balt Sun: "U.S. spy agencies widen recruiting: Native speakers now given scholarships, easier path through security screenings."

New PIPA poll on public opinion on Darfur and international response.

Newsweek has more on Matthew Dowd, dissident from the Bush cause.

Check out this "clarification" from the Israeli prime minister's office, and wonder what the back story is on that.

NYT:

A major arms-sale package that the Bush administration is planning to offer Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to deter Iran has been delayed because of objections from Israel, which says that the advanced weaponry would erode its military advantage over its regional rivals, according to senior United States officials.

Israeli officials, including the former defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, have come to Washington in recent months to argue against elements of the planned sales. In particular, the Israelis are concerned about the possible transfer of precision-guided weapons that would give Saudi warplanes much more accurate ability to strike targets, officials said. [...]

“It’s not like the Israelis are going to end up with nothing,” said a senior administration official, adding “the Israelis understand that it’s in our interest and their interest” that the United States try to shore up military systems for Sunni Arab allies. But Israel is also concerned that the Bush administration’s ambitions for an American-Israeli-Sunni coalition allied against Iran may never materialize, or that there could be a revolution in Saudi Arabia that would leave the mostly American-made Saudi arsenal in the hands of militant Islamists. ...

“It’s not like the Israelis are going to end up with nothing,” said a senior administration official, adding “the Israelis understand that it’s in our interest and their interest” that the United States try to shore up military systems for Sunni Arab allies. But Israel is also concerned that the Bush administration’s ambitions for an American-Israeli-Sunni coalition allied against Iran may never materialize, or that there could be a revolution in Saudi Arabia that would leave the mostly American-made Saudi arsenal in the hands of militant Islamists.

WP: U.S. Lets Red Cross see Seized Iranians.

The U.S. military has allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit five Iranian officials who were detained in Iraq nearly three months ago on suspicion of plotting against American and Iraqi forces.

A Red Cross delegation that included one Iranian citizen visited the detainees, and a request for a formal consular visit with them is "being assessed at this time" by the U.S. military, said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq.

In a briefing for reporters Wednesday, Caldwell did not say when the visit took place or whether it was connected to the case of the 15 British sailors and marines detained by Iran on March 23; Iran subsequently announced that they would be released.

The Iraqi government has called for the release of the five Iranians, who were captured during a U.S. military raid in January on an office providing consular services in the Kurdish city of Irbil.

A spokeswoman for the ICRC, Dorothea Krimitsas, confirmed that her organization had visited the Iranian officials but declined to provide details. In general, she said, such inspections involve multiple visits, and information about the detainees' treatment is discussed privately with the "detaining authorities."

News of the visit came a day after the Iraqi government confirmed that an Iranian diplomat, Jalal Sharafi, who was abducted Feb. 4 in downtown Baghdad by people dressed in military uniforms, had been freed. The back-to-back developments raised questions about whether they were connected to the diplomatic crisis involving Britain and Iran. U.S. and Iraqi officials denied that Sharafi's release was related.

Harper's has redesigned its website, and it looks great. And don't miss Scott Horton's blog, No Comment, either.

Time: The other kidnapped Briton.

WP:

A secret FBI intelligence unit helped detain a group of war protesters in a downtown Washington parking garage in April 2002 and interrogated some of them on videotape about their political and religious beliefs, newly uncovered documents and interviews show.

For years, law enforcement authorities suggested it never happened. The FBI and D.C. police said they had no records of such an incident. And police told a federal court that no FBI agents were present when officers arrested more than 20 protesters that afternoon for trespassing; police viewed them as suspicious for milling around the parking garage entrance.

But a civil lawsuit, filed by the protesters, recently unearthed D.C. police logs that confirm the FBI's role in the incident. Lawyers for the demonstrators said the logs, which police say they just found, bolster their allegations of civil rights violations.

The probable cause to arrest the protesters as they retrieved food from their parked van? They were wearing black -- a color choice the FBI and police associated with anarchists, according to the police records.

FBI agents dressed in street clothes separated members to question them one by one about protests they attended, whom they had spent time with recently, what political views they espoused and the significance of their tattoos and slogans, according to interviews and court records.

The revelations, combined with protester accounts, provide the first public evidence that Washington-based FBI personnel used their intelligence-gathering powers in the District to collect purely political intelligence.

AP: Iran to release 15 British sailors.

WP: Officials name former FBI agent gone missing in Iran.

NPR's Terri Gross interviews 'the axis of evil' comedy group.

The Independent: The botched US raid in Irbil.

McClatchy's Warren Strobel:

President Bush is losing his top day-to-day adviser on Iraq, the White House confirmed Monday.

Meghan L. O'Sullivan, who has played a key behind-the-scenes role in implementing Bush's controversial Iraq policies over the last four years, will leave later this spring.

Her departure, which follows that of her deputy, could leave the White House with a vacuum of long-term experience on Iraq policy, and it comes as Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress prepare for a showdown over withdrawing U.S. troops.

Some background on Monica Goodling.