Iran's foreign minister to step down? (Maybe he got kooties from Zalmay Khalilzad at Davos).

NYT: At White House, second look at Iraq troop cuts.

So it's looking more and more like McCain vs. Hillary. Which if memory serves is an awful lot like what the race looked like it was going to be two years ago, when we were all a lot younger.

Yossi Melman analyzes the new Winograd commission report, released in Israel today, in the Washington Post, predicting it will usher in new Israeli elections -- and stall Palestinian peace negotiations. "Either way, from Wednesday on, Israeli politicians will be engaged in perfecting what they know best: the art of political survival. Their minds, hearts and energies will be devoted to political spins and campaigns, not to diplomatic initiatives. With an outgoing American administration, complicated inter-Palestinian relations and the controlling of Gaza by Hamas, the chance of enhancing the peace process is already quite slim."

Zalmay Khalilzad thinks impure thoughts. Oh please. The absolute fetishization of a passing contact with an Iranian at an internatoinal conference. My lord, what silliness.

Milt Bearden: "American intelligence has a serious problem. But it is not that the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine services, Jose Rodriquez, allegedly destroyed, in 2005, the videotapes of the enhanced interrogations of terrorist detainees. No, the real problem is that institutional oversight of the intelligence community has failed. It is dysfunctional, perhaps irreparably so. There is no adult supervision of American intelligence or how the White House chooses to use it. Like many Washington stories, the fury over the destruction of the videotapes of CIA interrogations is misdirected. It has diverted to the usual demands to know who did what, how far up the ladder the blame game can be played, and when will we get to see a perp walk on cable news. Some fine American intelligence officers have lawyered up, and are looking ahead to big legal fees. Congressional and media outrage are cloaked in the usual sanctimony of a quest for accountability. Yet the outrage on Capitol Hill seems oddly muted—as if there is some bipartisan agreement in hoping it will go away. Perhaps, like many Washington dramas, this one, too, will just veer off and, ultimately, fade away. ... "

NYT: "Sales of new homes fell last year by 26 percent, the steepest drop since records began in 1963, the Commerce Department said on Monday." News Bush can't welcome on the day of the SOTU.

60 Minutes: FBI Interrogator Shares Saddam's Confessions:

... [George] Piro says no coercive interrogation techniques, like sleep deprivation, heat, cold, loud noises, or water boarding were ever used. "It's against FBI policy, first. And wouldn't have really benefited us with someone like Saddam," Piro says.

Why not?

"I think Saddam clearly had demonstrated over his legacy that he would not respond to threats, to any type of fear-based approach," Piro explains.

"So how do you crack a guy like that?" Pelley asks.

"Time," Piro says. ...

NYT: "The top two American intelligence officials traveled secretly to Pakistan early this month to press President Pervez Musharraf to allow the Central Intelligence Agency greater latitude to operate in the tribal territories where Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant groups are all active, according to several officials who have been briefed on the visit. But in the unannounced meetings on Jan. 9 with the two American officials — Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, and Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director — Mr. Musharraf rebuffed proposals to expand any American combat presence in Pakistan, either through unilateral covert C.I.A. missions or by joint operations with Pakistani security forces. Instead, Pakistan and the United States are discussing a series of other joint efforts, including increasing the number and scope of missions by armed Predator surveillance aircraft over the tribal areas, and identifying ways that the United States can speed information about people suspected of being militants to Pakistani security forces, officials said."

Spencer Ackerman reports in the Washington Independent on the administration role in building the CIA's enhanced interrogation regime. "... Despite having nearly no off-the-shelf experience, the CIA was tasked by President Bush to come up with a robust interrogation program for the most important al-Qaeda captives. So the agency turned to its partners for assistance in designing its interrogation regimen: Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia—all countries cited by the State Department for using torture—among others. Additionally, as Mark Benjamin has reported for Salon, two psychologists named Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, who worked as contractors for CIA, helped the agency "reverse-engineer" the military and CIA training on resisting torture for use on detainees. Suddenly, waterboarding, an illegal practice of simulating or in some cases inducing drowning, became an American-administered practice."

Reuters:

Five U.S. soldiers were killed when their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb and then came under small arms fire in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Monday, the U.S. military said.

Iraqi army and police also reported fighting had broken out in the Haysuma neighbourhood, a known al Qaeda stronghold in eastern Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad.

Moscow Times: Mega post-Soviet oligarch/mobster Semyon Mogilevich arrested in Moscow:

A posse of about 50 armed police commandos detained Nekrasov and Ukrainian-born Mogilevich near the city's World Trade Center, the Interior Ministry said Friday.

The Ukrainian security service, the SBU, has investigated the purported involvement of Mogilevich with RosUkrEnergo, the controversial gas trader that acts as a middleman in Russian gas exports to Ukraine.

Mogilevich, 61, was using the name Sergei Shnaider when detained.

Mogilevich's lawyer, Alexander Pogonchenkov, confirmed in a Friday interview that his client was born in Ukraine as Semyon Mogilevich, but has changed his name to Sergei Shnaider.

The Ostankinsky District Court placed Mogilevich and Nekrasov under arrest on suspicion of large-scale tax fraud late Thursday, Moscow City Court spokeswoman Marina Malygina said.

Mogilevich, has been wanted by the FBI on racketeering, fraud and money-laundering charges since 2003. He is believed to have been living in Moscow for several years. [...]

The arrest of Mogilevich comes as newly appointed Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is stepping up calls for Gazprom and Ukraine to cut out RosUkrEnergo from its role as middleman in Russian gas exports.

The SBU in 2005 investigated the trader over possible ties to Mogilevich. The probe was dropped, however, following a change of leadership at the SBU.

Tymoshenko is scheduled to visit Moscow next month for talks with Russian officials, and is expected to push for the contract with RosUkrEnergo to be canceled, a December pricing agreement to be ditched and transit fees for Russian gas to be raised.

In Davos last week, however, President Viktor Yushchenko opposed calls for higher tariffs.

The Ukrainian investigation into RosUkrEnergo, during Tymoshenko's previous term as prime minister, was closed after she was fired by Yushchenko in September 2005.

The head of the SBU under Tymoshenko, Oleksandr Turchynov, later claimed in an interview that the order to close the investigation had come directly from Yushchenko. ...

In January 2006, RosUkrEnergo, jointly owned by Gazprom and billionaire Ukrainian businessman Dmytro Firtash, emerged as the major beneficiary of the bitter gas-price dispute between Russia and Ukraine, winning control over the flow of Russian and cheaper Central Asian gas to Ukraine. [...]

On Friday, state energy firm Naftogaz Ukrainy abruptly pulled out of talks with RosUkrEnergo and Gazprom over gas prices and debt, a RosUkrEnergo spokesman said, Bloomberg reported.

Zeev Gordon, an Israeli lawyer who has represented Mogilevich in the past, said by telephone Sunday from Tel Aviv that Mogilevich had always denied any links to RosUkrEnergo and Firtash.

Gordon confirmed that he had personally worked previously for Firtash in 2003, when he acted as a trustee for several months to help him set up RosUkrEnergo's predecessor as middleman in Russian-Ukrainian gas supplies, Eural Trans Gas, in Hungary.

Gordon insisted that this coincidence in no way meant that there were any ties between Mogilevich and Firtash. [...]

The U.S. indictment against Mogilevich dates back to a 2003 case in Philadelphia in which he and two associates were accused of manipulating stock of the Pennsylvania-based company YBM Magnex.

The FBI notice on Mogilevich says he set up a "complex network of corporations" to "create the illusion that YBM was engaged in a profitable international business, primarily the industrial magnet market."

He and the two other suspects were charged with 45 counts of racketeering, securities fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering, according to the FBI web site, which states that Mogilevich "should be considered armed and dangerous."

A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said the United States was "not involved in the recent investigations and arrests in Russia." The two countries do not have an extradition treaty.

The embassy spokeswoman referred all questions to the U.S. Justice Department, which did not return calls for comment Friday.

Pogonchenkov, Mogilevich's lawyer, said Friday that Mogilevich changed his name to Sergei Shnaider after getting married.

Malygina, the Moscow City Court spokeswoman, said the suspect was born in 1946 and officially worked as a consultant in a company called Evergate Ltd. ...

Mogilevich has used 17 different names and holds passports from several countries, Itar-Tass reported, citing a law enforcement source.

Amman dispatch.

Melman: Arms and the man.

After recent reporting trips to Lebanon and Syria where she interviewed Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal, Helena Cobban is blogging Gaza.

The Hill's Manu Raju: US attorneys firing probe deepens:

... But recent behind-the-scenes activity in several investigations suggests that the issue that roiled Congress in 2007 could re-emerge in the heat of the election year. Two inquiries by the House and Senate ethics committees are examining whether several congressional Republicans, including one running for the Senate this year, improperly interfered with investigations.

As potent as the congressional probes might be, they appear to be far narrower than a sprawling inquiry launched by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) and the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR).

Investigators from these offices have been questioning whether senior officials lied to Congress, violated the criminal provisions in the Hatch Act, tampered with witnesses preparing to testify to Congress, obstructed justice, took improper political considerations into account during the hiring and firing of U.S. attorneys and created widespread problems in the department’s Civil Rights Division, according to several people familiar with the investigation. [...]

Public records show that the Senate ethics committee spent nearly $5,000 to send three staff members to Albuquerque in March and July last year.

According to one source, investigators met last September with Iglesias’s wife, Cindy, who was in the room when Domenici placed the telephone call asking about the status of the investigation. Both Domenici and Wilson have admitted placing phone calls, but deny trying to influence Iglesias or put any political pressure on his investigation.

Last month, the Senate panel’s investigators returned to Albuquerque to interview Iglesias’s former staff members, the source said. With Domenici retiring this Congress, it is unclear whether the panel will take steps against him. These could include public hearings, an admonishment or, in the extreme, expulsion from the Senate. Wilson is seeking to replace Domenici in the Senate. ...

New Freedom House report: Global freedom in retreat.

Counterinsurgency guru and one of the U.S. Army's brightest, Ltn. Col. John Nagl joins the think tank, the Center for a New American Security. From their press release:

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is pleased to announce that John Nagl will join CNAS as a senior fellow in July 2008.

Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, U.S. Army, currently serves as commander of the 1st Battalion, 34th Armor at Fort Riley, Kansas where he teaches U.S. soldiers how to train and advise Iraqi and Afghani forces. He led a tank platoon in Operation Desert Storm and served as the operations officer of a tank battalion task force in Anbar province in Operation Iraqi Freedom. A West Point graduate and Rhodes Scholar, Nagl earned his doctorate from Oxford University, taught national security studies at West Point, and served as a Military Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

Thompson out. Chris Cillizza on who benefits.

Suzanne Maloney and Ray Takeyh in Newsweek:

... The next American president will face an Iranian regime that is flush with oil money, essentially impervious to financial pressures and indifferent to U.S. threats. Perhaps most dangerous, he or she will have to grapple with a greatly accelerated Iranian nuclear program.

That said, the next president will inherit one big advantage. Simply not being George W. Bush—who even Iran's relatively pragmatic former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has dismissed as a "dinosaur with a sparrow's brain"—will enormously improve the next president's prospects for dialogue.

The challenge will be how to take advantage of this opening. Washington must figure out how to regulate Iran's power and diminish its unsavory practices. Although the model of Chinese-American rapprochement is often invoked, a more suitable example is the detente pursued between the United States and the U.S.S.R. during the 1970s, when the two powers came together not because of any mutual fears (as was the case with the U.S.-Chinese opening) but out of a desire to stabilize their increasingly dangerous competition. Of course, Iran today is not the Soviet Union of that era. But Henry Kissinger's approach—creating mutually reinforcing commercial and diplomatic incentives to persuade adversaries to avoid conflict and conform to international norms—is just as relevant now as it was then.

In the case of Iran, applying this means beginning a comprehensive dialogue that puts all the major issues on the table. ...

On the road, light posting.

Robin Wright: "A three-year international effort to pressure Iran is faltering, with a new report to Congress questioning the impact of 20 years of U.S. economic sanctions on Tehran and a long-sought U.N. resolution against Iran in trouble. In a report released yesterday, the investigative arm of Congress challenged the impact of U.S. sanctions against Iran dating to 1987. Tehran has circumvented many economic sanctions, it concluded, noting Iran's ability to negotiate $20 billion in contracts with foreign firms since 2003 to develop its energy resources. With the country's oil wealth, Iranian banks also have funded their activities in currencies other than the dollar. ... 'Iran's overall trade with the world has grown since the U.S. imposed sanctions, although this trade has fluctuated.' ... The divisions among the world's major powers will make it increasingly difficult for the Bush administration to achieve its goal of getting Iran to suspend uranium enrichment before leaving office, diplomats said."

Convenient Punching Bag. From a Dana Priest chat today at the Post:

Minneapolis: I'm trying to understand whose interests line up and whose interests conflict in the unfolding torture tapes scandal. In particular, I understand the CIA would be happy to see Rodriguez shoulder the blame -- but is there anyone on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence who would push back against that effort? Also, is Porter Goss -- who has gotten little scrutiny in press reports although a lot of anonymously sourced information that portrays him in a surprisingly positive light has appeared -- protected because he's a former member of the House Intel Committee?

Dana Priest: I like this question because I can't read any of these stories without making an automatic whose-trying-to-get-back-at-whom calculation. Here's a run-down:

Former House intel chair Peter Hoekstra is suddenly more outraged at this than the dems because he is still really po'd at agency and former agency types who helped undo Porter Goss and then came back to power at the CIA. Ditto Porter Goss, although it's harder for him because his real role is not yet known (at least I bet not). Dems are dumping on the Republican administration on this subject because it is now politically safe to do so (as opposed to when all this was actually happening in 2002 and 2005!). The CIA ends up being a very convenient punching bag. To repeat what I've said before: CIA interrogators got their approval of waterboarding and other extreme techniques from above: From the CIA Counterterrorism Center, which derived its authority andapproval from the CIA director, who derived his from the White House and it's legal team.

More on the Iran NIE and Bush's Mideast trip. The Washington Institute's Michael Jacobson: " ... While some have seized on the NIE to argue that sanctions are no longer necessary, in fact, the opposite conclusion could be drawn from the report. The NIE suggests that Iran might modify its behaviour on its entire nuclear programme in the face of the right mix of carrots and sticks, and that the regime is vulnerable to outside pressure on the nuclear issue. UN sanctions remain an important part of the overall efforts to ratchet up pressure against Tehran. In light of this, the US, UK, France and Germany must find a way to overcome the obstacles they are currently facing in securing a third round of sanctions."

Once again, with the destroyed torture tapes inquiry, it's all about the cover up, not the crime.

NYT: No immunity, no testimony, from Jose Rodriguez. "The only C.I.A. witness currently scheduled to appear Wednesday at the closed hearing is John A. Rizzo, the agency’s acting general counsel, who held that job when the tapes were destroyed."

Alcove 1. Great Timothy Noah review of Jacob Heilbrunn's book on the neoconservatives, They Knew They Were Right:

...As late as 1944, the founding-neocon-to-be, Irving Kristol, publicly dismissed the “near hysterical insistence upon the pressing military danger,” Jacob Heilbrunn reports in his new book, “They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons.” While the Nazis herded Jews into the gas chambers, Kristol, then a 24-year-old Trotskyist, held fast to his conviction that the Allies were no different from the Axis in their imperialism. Kristol took this view because he was “indulging in an abstract crusade for a better world.”

Sound familiar? . . .

WP: FBI Counterterrorism and the Whistleblower.

The FBI named a career-long expert in terrorism to its top national security job yesterday as one of its own agents went public with allegations that the bureau still lacks the experience and skills needed to effectively combat terrorists.

Agent Bassem Youssef, a whistle-blower who alleged he was passed over for promotions after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said in an interview with The Washington Post that counterterrorism agents and their managers still lack basic knowledge about Middle Eastern culture, Arabic language and terrorist mind-sets.

In some cases, Youssef said, that lack of knowledge has caused agents to investigate people they should not, by claiming emergency circumstances. As a result, he added, they are missing others who should be under scrutiny. Youssef currently oversees a headquarters office involved in the gathering of phone records in counterterrorism cases. [...]

Youssef said that in 2005 his entire office was diverted to work on the "Coyote Runner" case in which raw intelligence suggested Iraqi agents were being smuggled across the Mexican border for some sort of dirty-bomb plot. The intelligence proved wrong, and Youssef said he tried to tell his boss at the beginning that the tip was suspect, but he was overruled.

To your list of top ten theories of what really happened Sunday in the Straits of Hormuz, add the Filipino Monkey:

Indeed, the voice in the audio sounds different from the one belonging to an Iranian officer shown speaking to the cruiser Port Royal over a radio from a small open boat in the video released by Iranian authorities. He is shown in a radio exchange at one point asking the U.S. warship to change from the common bridge-to-bridge channel 16 to another channel, perhaps to speak to the Navy without being interrupted.

Further, there’s none of the background noise in the audio released by the U.S. that would have been picked up by a radio handset in an open boat.

So with Navy officials unsure and the Iranians accusing the U.S. of fabrications, whose voice was it? In recent years, American ships operating in the Middle East have had to contend with a mysterious but profane voice known by the ethnically insulting handle of “Filipino Monkey,” likely more than one person, who listens in on ship-to-ship radio traffic and then jumps on the net shouting insults and jabbering vile epithets.

Navy women — a helicopter pilot hailing a tanker, for example — who are overheard on the radio are said to suffer particularly degrading treatment.

Several Navy ship drivers interviewed by Navy Times are raising the possibility that the Monkey, or an imitator, was indeed featured in that video.

Rick Hoffman, a retired captain who commanded the cruiser Hue City and spent many of his 17 years at sea in the Gulf was subject to the renegade radio talker repeatedly, often without pause during the so-called “Tanker Wars” of the late 1980s.

“For 25 years there’s been this mythical guy out there who, hour after hour, shouts obscenities and threats,” he said. “He could be tied up pierside somewhere or he could be on the bridge of a merchant ship.”

And the Monkey has stamina. [..]

When asked if U.S. officials considered whether the threats came from someone besides the Iranians when releasing the video and audio, Roughead said: “The reason there is audio superimposed over the video is it gives you a better idea of what is happening.”

Similarly, Davis said the audio was part of the “totality” of the situation and helped show the “aggressive behavior.”

Another former cruiser skipper said he thought the Monkey might be behind the audio threats when he first heard them earlier this week.

“It wouldn’t have surprised me at all,” he said. “There’s all kinds of chatter on Channel 16. Anybody with a receiver and transmitter can hear something’s going on. It was entirely plausible and consistent with the radio environment to interject themselves and make a threatening comment and think they’re being funny.”

This former skipper also noted how quiet and clean the radio “threat” was, especially when radio calls from small boats in the chop are noisy and cluttered. ...

Snow Falls in Baghdad. From the AP:

After weathering nearly five years of war, Baghdad residents thought they'd pretty much seen it all. But Friday morning, as muezzins were calling the faithful to prayer, the people here awoke to something certifiably new.

For the first time in memory, snow fell across Baghdad.

Although the white flakes quickly dissolved into gray puddles, they brought an emotion rarely expressed in this desert capital snarled by army checkpoints, divided by concrete walls and ravaged by sectarian killings - delight.

"For the first time in my life I saw a snow-rain like this falling in Baghdad," said Mohammed Abdul-Hussein, a 63-year-old retiree from the New Baghdad area.

"When I was young, I heard from my father that such rain had fallen in the early '40s on the outskirts of northern Baghdad," Abdul-Hussein said, referring to snow as a type of rain. "But snow falling in Baghdad in such a magnificent scene was beyond my imagination."

Morning temperatures uncharacteristically hovered around freezing, and the Baghdad airport was closed because of poor visibility. Snow is common in the mountainous Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, but residents of the capital and surrounding areas could remember just hail.

"I asked my mother, who is 80, whether she'd ever seen snow in Iraq before, and her answer was no," said Fawzi Karim, a 40-year-old father of five who runs a small restaurant in Hawr Rajab, a village six miles southeast of Baghdad.

Just Out: Freedom Fighters:

On Sunday, when President Bush delivers a speech trumpeting what he calls his "freedom agenda" from Abu Dhabi, absent from the presidential entourage will be many of the policy warriors who fought within the State Department for the president's initiative to spread democracy in the Middle East. Over the past year and a half, officials charged with implementing the president's pro-democracy agenda have slowly trickled out of Foggy Bottom, as well as from other government offices, amidst increasing resistance to their efforts. Foremost among them was the vice president's daughter Elizabeth Cheney, who never returned to her post as a senior State Department official after going on maternity leave in the summer of 2006.

One of the most recent to leave was David Denehy, who left his job as a senior advisor to the State Department's Iran democracy program in October. "My decision to leave the administration is due, in part, to my belief that I am better able to serve the goals of the President's Freedom Agenda from outside of government," Denehy wrote in an email notifying friends of his impending departure. His words were telling, signaling that democracy-promotion advocates have lost confidence in their efforts to make their initiative a top priority within the U.S. government.

The centerpiece of this effort was the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), created in 2002 to fund reformers throughout the region. Scott Carpenter, a former top aide to Elizabeth Cheney who left his State Department post of deputy assistant secretary in August, says the MEPI was created as a "viral" force inside the agency and was deliberately placed within the Near East division, which hawks have long viewed as stronghold of status quo-ism. "The innovation of the Bush administration," he says, "was to try to create a bureaucratic counterweight to business as usual, within the Near East regional bureau." [...]

By the time Elizabeth Cheney, then principal deputy assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, left the State Department to have her fifth child in 2006, Carpenter and Denehy found themselves working in an agency increasingly unreceptive, if not hostile, to their agenda. For a time, they took pains to be elusive about when exactly their well-connected boss would return. "When we lost Liz, that was a big loss," Carpenter says. "We wanted to be vague" about if she was coming back. Despite the president's ideological sympathies, their efforts met increasing resistance, especially after they lost their heavyweight. (Cheney is reportedly serving as a foreign-policy advisor to Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson.) "When Liz Cheney was at the Near East bureau, she battled the bureaucracy very hard to take a stronger view on democracy," says Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House. "I was not in the meetings, but from the outside we were impressed—because she was connected to the [Office of the Vice President], people listened to her, and MEPI got a big push and had a lot of forward movement." [...]

As for Carpenter, on Sunday he'll be watching the president's speech intently—and this time from the sidelines. Despite the administration's last-ditch shove to resurrect the democracy push, he says, the president's freedom agenda remains far from realized. "The Bush administration stated as its policy objective to push this [pro-democracy agenda] first and keep it first," he says. "And I have to say, by the end of the administration, it is very difficult to maintain that it has."

Update: A U.S. diplomat comments, "Good article and pretty fair – the problem is that it makes it sound like the career State Department is somehow the ones blocking the march towards democracy in NEA whereas it is, as you say 'to get what we need to get, we have to get it from undemocratic leaders.' The [neoconservatives] believed in democracy as long as it was democracy as defined by them – Hamas which was democratically elected was beyond the pale. Democratic elections in Egypt would have brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power. And these democrophiles were also cheering the brutal bombing of Lebanon by Israel which really set back that fragile country. But if your core issues are opposing Al-Qa’ida and containing Iran, you don’t need fragile, tempestuous democracies, you need the usual local tyrants we have been dealing with for decades."

ABC News: US: Voices on Recording May Not Have Been from Iranian Speedboats. "Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the tape could have come from the shore or from another ship. ..."

More from the Post and Fred Kaplan.

AP: FBI wiretaps dropped due to unpaid bills. Cue the Congressional fulminations, late night talk show parody, etc.

From the annals of the secret lives of .... accountants: "A Vienna court sentenced the 43-year-old former financial manager of the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) to three years in prison, the Austria Press Agency reported. The fraud forced the IHF to shut up shop after 25 years last November and begin insolvency proceedings. The court heard how over a period of six years he had diverted funds from the IHF to his bank account, disguising the transfers as payments to humanitarian projects. In fact, the money went mainly to his 31-year-old mistress. She used it to gamble—apparently spending up to 5,000 euros a week playing poker—and to pay for cosmetic surgery, including breast implants and a nose job. The accountant told the court he was ‘practically her slave.’" Via a reader.

About that video. The NYT's Mike Nizza: Degrees of Confidence on U.S.-Iran Naval Incident.

AP: CIA Official Jose Rodriguez demands immunity to testify before Congress in destroyed interrogation tapes inquiry:

Attorneys for Jose Rodriguez told Congress that the former CIA official won't testify about the destruction of CIA videotapes without a promise of immunity, a person close to the tapes inquiry said Wednesday.

Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, ordered the tapes destroyed in 2005. Rodriguez was scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee at a Jan. 16 hearing.

Defense attorney Robert Bennett told lawmakers, however, that he would not let Rodriguez testify because of the criminal investigation into the case. Without a promise of immunity, anything Rodriguez said at the hearing could be used against him in court.

The discussions were described to The Associated Press by someone close to the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were to be private.

Reached by telephone Wednesday night, Bennett said he would have no public comment on the matter. A spokesman for the committee also declined to comment.

CounterSpy: Philip Agee dies in Cuba:

... Agee's actions in the 1970s inspired a law criminalizing the exposure of covert U.S. operatives.

But in 2003, he drew a distinction between what he did and the exposure of CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a prominent critic of President Bush's Iraq policy.

''This is entirely different than what I was doing in the 1970s,'' Agee said. ''This is purely dirty politics in my opinion.''

Agee said that in his case, he disclosed the identities of his former CIA colleagues to ''weaken the instrument for carrying out the policy of supporting military dictatorships'' in Greece, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.

Those regimes ''were supported by the CIA and the human cost was immense: torture, executions, death squads,'' he said. ...

Update: A British journalist colleague who covered some of the uglier episodes of Latin American modern history, writes, citing Agee on himself: "'Why did I denounce the CIA? Because I met and fell in love with a woman who believed Che Guevara was the most wonderful man in the world.' He leaves it to us to make the obvious deduction -- that he tried to imitate him to win her over. It all goes to prove that the Human Factor trumphs all in spying as Graham Greene so brilliantly detailed in his book of the same name. ..."

10:45pm: CNN joins the AP in calling NH for Hillary Clinton.

Kevin Drum: "Hillary Clinton's victory felt to me an awful lot like a repudiation of the mainstream pundits who spent the entire weekend first dumping all over her and then playing the 'Hillary in tears' tape on practically a continuous loop yesterday."

Barack Obama a close second with 99k votes (36%), to HRC's 107k (39%). McCain got 84k, Romney 71k (94% reporting, 12:44am).

9pm: McCain wins NH GOP primary. Clinton/Obama too close to call.

Reuters:

A U.N. inquiry into Iran's nuclear activity has entered its final phase with Tehran addressing U.S. intelligence about secret, past efforts to "weaponize" atomic material, a diplomat close to the process said on Tuesday.

The development coincides with International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei's decision to pay a rare visit to Tehran on Friday and Saturday for talks with Iranian leaders to speed efforts to clarify Iran's past and present nuclear work.

Tehran denies its program to generate electricity from enriching uranium is a facade for bomb-making. It long refused even to discuss intelligence obtained by U.N. inspectors pointing to military diversions, rejecting it as propaganda.

Therefore IAEA officials see Tehran's new readiness to examine and respond to the information as a potentially important step to rebuild confidence in its nuclear intentions.

Ahead of ElBaradei, IAEA officials flew into Tehran late on Monday to resume talks aimed at resolving lingering questions about the program. Iran hid it from the IAEA until 2003 and stonewalled inquiries until agreeing last August to come clean.

After broadly clarifying how work began with materials obtained from nuclear smugglers, Iran has begun substantive talks with IAEA officials on the intelligence about attempts to militarize the program, the diplomat said.

Apologies for the light posting, have been hobbled by various minor computer ailments. Back shortly.

Newsweek reports on a scramble for lawyers at CIA: "One key figure, Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA chief of clandestine services who gave the order to destroy the videotapes, has retained Robert Bennett, a renowned defense lawyer who represented Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones lawsuit. Another potential witness, George Tenet, who was CIA director when the tapes were made, will be represented by former FBI general counsel Howard Shapiro. Roy Krieger, a Washington lawyer who has repre sented about 100 CIA employees, says that two agency officers have approached him about representation, though neither has retained him yet."

The WP's Chris Cillizza:

The line snaked for at least a half mile from the entrance of Nashua North High School. The first people in it had arrived at 7:30 a.m. -- two-and-a-half hours before Barack Obama was scheduled to start speaking. One woman had driven from West Hartford, Conn. The crowd was estimated at 3,000 and looked every bit of that number.

The movement has begun.

The Fix has long believed that the lone path for Obama to the Democratic nomination was to transform himself from a candidate into a movement. That is, by voting for Obama people would believe they are choosing something greater than simply a political candidate, that they are supporting a cause to change the way politics in America has been conducted.

In his speech here this morning, Obama cited the results in Iowa as a sign that things had changed in America politics. "A few days ago something special happened in the Midwest," Obama said to loud cheers. "The people of Iowa decided to set aside their fear and cynicism and reach for what is possible."

He cast New Hampshire as the next step in that process, a chance to validate the change that Iowa had voted for on Thursday. ....Echoing perhaps the single best campaign commercial run so far in this race, Obama urged the crowd: "Our moment is now."

That message -- that in voting for Obama Americans are opting for a broad change in the way politics is conducted -- is VERY powerful and will be exceedingly difficult for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) or anyone else to overcome.

Put another way: Obama's opponents are playing checkers while he is playing chess. When Clinton or John Edwards speak, they are regarded by those in attendance as politicians. Obama -- at least at the moment -- is seen as the leader of a movement.

"This is not about me," asserted Obama. "This is about you."

Chicago Trib: Padilla sues Yoo over torture. "In the latest legal contest over the treatment of detained terrorist suspects, attorneys for Jose Padilla filed a suit in a California federal district court this morning against John Yoo, the former deputy assistant Attorney General whose legal opinions formed the basis for Padilla's detention and the interrogation techniques used against him that the attorneys call torture." Via Paul Kiel.

Update: The NYT adds: " ... The suit is based in part on a recent book by Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who, while serving in the Justice Department in 2003 and 2004, disavowed some of Mr. Yoo’s work. In the book, 'The Terror Presidency' (W.W. Norton), Mr. Goldsmith wrote that two of Mr. Yoo’s memorandums were 'legally flawed' and 'tendentious in substance and tone.'"

Balkanization's Marty Lederman argues that Jane Harman's declassified 2003 letter urging CIA not to destroy interrogation videotapes demonstates the strangling of the intelligence ovesight process and how captive the committees are:

...Of course, if Harman had done any of the things I suggest above, she would have paid a high price -- namely, that the CIA would have ceased briefing her about its activities. It is therefore understandable that she simply took what she was offered, offered futile complaints going forward, and did nothing to spread the word of what the CIA was doing, nor of the destruction of evidence that it was planning. Such is the nature of congressional oversight as it has come to be practiced: If members of Congress play by the rules that the intelligence community insists upon as a condition of providing member with any information at all, there's really not much the members can do, even when they are confronted by reports of continuing activitiy of dubious (at best) legality. ...

MSNBC/NBC/wires: Huckabee, Obama win.

Update: CNN: "The Iowa Democratic Party released the following turnout information tonight, to be updated later this evening: 'With 96 percent of the precincts reporting we are seeing record turnout with 227,000 caucus attendees.' In 2004, the turnout was about 125,000 caucus goers."

Heads up from a friend, an article one might have missed from Christmas Eve.* The LA Times' Greg Miller reports that the the CIA investigation of its top investigator John Helgerson has reached some conclusions.

The CIA has completed a controversial in-house probe of its inspector general and plans to make a series of changes in the way the agency conducts internal investigations, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

CIA Inspector General John L. Helgerson has consented to more than a dozen procedural changes designed to address complaints that investigations carried out by his office were unfair to agency employees, the officials said.

But the agency will not force Helgerson to revise previously issued reports or acknowledge flaws in the reports, including one report that was sharply critical of top CIA officials for intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"The broader objective is to make the process fair, or fairer," said a senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the matter.

In particular, the official said, the changes are designed to give employees a greater ability to defend their actions and present their views in reports issued by the inspector general, whose job is to be an in-house watchdog.

The officials said the changes would probably be announced next month by CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, who ordered the internal probe this year.

The investigation was criticized on Capitol Hill and by former agency officials as an attack on the independence of the inspector general.

*Publication date fixed.

9/11 Commission co-chairs charge the CIA obstructed their investigation. Update: Attorney General Mukasey announces criminal probe of videotapes destruction, appoints US attorney in Connecticut to oversee it. Mukasey's statement. Former Justice Department official Marty Lederman argues that the US attorney appointed to oversee the investigationis not really independent. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence chairman Jay Rockefeller responds in a statement: "Attorney General Mukasey has made the right decision to begin a criminal investigation and place it in the hands of a career prosecutor. We, however, have an obligation to continue our own congressional investigation and that is exactly what we will do. Our negotiations with the CIA and DOJ over the scope of our investigation are ongoing. I fully expect their continued cooperation, including relevant testimony and documents, so that the Committee can thoroughly review and publicly report on all actions related to the destruction of the tapes.”

Update: NYT. "John L. Helgerson, the C.I.A. inspector general who took part in the preliminary inquiry, said Wednesday that he would step aside from the criminal investigation to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. Mr. Helgerson’s office had reviewed the videotapes, documenting the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, as part of an investigation into the C.I.A’s secret detention and interrogation program. Mr. Helgerson completed his investigation into the program in early 2004."

More on Helgerson seeing the tapes from the WP:

Although the tapes in question were not provided to any court or to the members of the government-appointed 9/11 Commission, they were evidently seen by CIA Inspector General John L. Helgerson, who disclosed in a statement yesterday that he plans to recuse himself from the criminal inquiry to avoid a conflict of interest.

Helgerson said he and his staff "reviewed the tapes at issue some years ago," when agency officials were debating whether to destroy them. "During the coming weeks I anticipate describing fully the actions I and my office took on this matter to investigators from the executive and legislative branches," Helgerson said.

Was part of the Hayden investigation of the IG related to the IG concern over the destruction of the tapes? Reporting it to Congress? to the Justice Department?

Something else: allegedly top terrorism suspects, high value detainees being interrogated. Does the CIA really not tape them? Does a notetaker sit in there? They don't worry about missing a word? No chance for review? So - if not more videotapes, are there more audio tapes? And what about military interrogations? Is all the stuff destroyed after transcription? So defense lawyers can't call for it? and IGs?