And why not rate condidates on the degree to which they support it?

Lost in the examination of political candidates for high office – perhaps understandably - are clues to their freedom of information record or philosophy. How they stand on access to government information takes second or third fiddle at best to concerns about Iraq, Social Security, about how to lessen the rancor and divisiveness in the nation, and so on.

Besides, everyone is for access to information, right along with being partial to Mom and apple pie. (And, after all, isn’t it understood that the operational definition of “being for freedom of information” means releasing information that makes one look good and hiding information that makes one look bad?)

So, why bother?

One reason to press candidates for their FOI stands is to remind them of promises made and behavior expected should they win a nomination and election. Another reason is to begin rowing back from increasing secrecy at all levels of government. A third reason is that access to information is really something a candidate can take care of on his or her own — generally, if a public official chooses to provide information, the official doesn’t have to convince anyone else of the appropriateness or the need to be open and accessible.

But the questions are not asked. So, for example, few people know that Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico generally gets good grades on FOI concerns.

How about former Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa, the first Democratic candidate to enter the race for his party’s 2008 nomination? His eight years of executive leadership in the state merit a grade of C or C+ at best, mostly because he did no significant damage to the state open meetings and open records laws. He sponsored no initiatives to make the laws stronger. When push came to shove, the first reaction of his staff was to opt for secrecy. In a January 15, 2006, article, “So what does the state have to hide?,” Des Moines Register reporter Lee Rood chronicled the FOI mood of the Vilsack administration. Her article and the Clark Kauffman one cited below are available from the Register archives. (Once in the archives, search for Vilsack + public records + reporter’s name.)

The Iowa Freedom of Information Council drafted a White Paper designed to acquaint reporters and citizens with FOI issues in the 2006 election. With regard to Vilsack, the report noted in part:

• In 2000, Gov. Tom Vilsack’s legal counsel refused to release a draft report on the state’s handling of child-abuse cases. In 2003, the governor’s office refused to respond to requests for office e-mails.
• Governor’s records that were originally open to the public for free were later hidden by a claim of “attorney-client privilege” and people who wanted to view them had to pay $15 an hour to have the materials screened first. The charges were instituted after the Des Moines Register wrote an unflattering story about the governor, based on the records.
• In a continuing Central Iowa scandal, over misuse of funds for retraining the unemployed, the governor’s staff at first refused to release a written report on the involvement of state employees in the scandal. Officials cited an exemption to the Iowa open records law that allows government officials to keep secret “personal information” in workers’ personnel files. To his credit, Vilsack corrected the error the next day and ordered the information released. (This episode is reported by Register reporter Clark Kauffman in a June 1, 2006, article, “Vilsack: Public can’t see CIETC report”)

Still, reporters and editors in the state report government antagonism toward openness and access that Vilsack did little to alleviate – despite whatever accomplishments he lists in the way of support of education, improving the state’s economy, etc. Maybe his record is still better than other candidates’. We don’t know. The question isn’t asked.

From New Scientist:

Leaking a sensitive government document can mean risking a jail sentence - but not for much longer if an online service called WikiLeaks goes ahead. WikiLeaks is designed to allow anyone to post documents on the web without fear of being traced.

The creators of the site are thought to include political activists and open-source software engineers, though they are keeping their identities secret. Their goal is to ensure that whistle-blowers and journalists are not thrown into jail for emailing sensitive documents. That was the fate of Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced to a 10-year term in 2005 after publicising an email from Chinese officials about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

According to the group’s website www.wikileaks.org, its primary targets include China, Russia, and oppressive regimes in Eurasia, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. It is not limited to these countries, however, and people anywhere will be able to use the site to reveal unethical behaviour by governments and corporations.

Normally an email or a document posted to a website can be traced back to its source because each data packet carries the IP address of the last server that it passed through. To prevent this, WikiLeaks will exploit an anonymising protocol known as The Onion Router (Tor), which routes data through a network of servers that use cryptography to hide the path that the packets took. Bruce Schneier, a cryptographer based in Silicon Valley, California, explains it like this. “Imagine a large room jammed full of people in which many of them are passing around envelopes. How would you know where any of them started?”

Julien Pain, a campaigner with Reporters Without Borders in Paris, France, sees Tor as a valuable step towards guaranteeing anonymity. “Enabling cyber-dissidents to leak information is a crucial issue we now face in many countries,” he says. There are however, fears that whistle-blowers might still be at risk. “I would not trust my life or even my liberty to Tor,” says Ben Laurie, a London-based computer security expert. In the past, determined cryptographers have breached Tor’s security, and though each breach has led to improvements to Tor there is always a risk others will be discovered.

The WikiLeaks team do not plan to control what is disclosed on the site, raising fears that the anonymity it offers could be misused. “The initiative could drown in fabricated documents, pornographic records or become hijacked to serve vendettas,” warns Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists in Washington DC.

The safeguard against this, according to the WikiLeaks team, is that false postings will be sniffed out by users, who will be free to comment on what is posted. This is what happens with Wikipedia, which although unconnected to WikiLeaks is based on the same open-source software. “WikiLeaks will provide a forum for the entire global community to examine any document relentlessly for credibility,” the site claims.

WikiLeaks is raising funds and testing its software. It hopes to launch in February.

Distribution of wealth and distribution of light at night. Check it out.

Would be good in various ways—in fact, I’m thinking I’ll make it with bacon and a sliced hard-boiled egg. I’ll probably use Gomashio for the sesame seeds—I have some with seaweed in it as well.

Easy Wilted Garlic-Sesame Salad

4 servings, about 65 calories each
1 Tsp. olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 lb. spinach, stemmed,
or 1 lb. Swiss chard, stems sliced, leaves torn
or 1 lb. mixture of spinach and watercress
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 Tsp. sesame seeds for garnish

Warm oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic and stir until lightly browned, about 45 seconds. Add greens (do in two batches, if necessary) and toss until just wilted, 2 to 4 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Very interesting.

From The Independent:

The American company appointed to advise the US government on the economic reconstruction of Iraq has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into Republican Party coffers and has admitted that its own finances are in chaos because of accounting errors and bad management.

BearingPoint is fighting to restore its reputation in the US after falling more than a year behind in reporting its own financial results, prompting legal actions from its creditors and shareholders.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, BearingPoint employees gave $117,000 (£60,000) to the 2000 and 2004 Bush election campaigns, more than any other Iraq contractor. Other recipients include three prominent Congressmen on the House of Representatives’ defence sub-committee, which oversees defence department contracts.

One of the biggest single contributors to BearingPoint’s in-house political fund was James Horner, who heads the company’s emerging markets business which is working in Iraq and Afghanistan. He donated $5,000 in August 2005.

The company’s shares have collapsed to a third of their value when the firm listed in 2001, and it faces being thrown out of the New York Stock Exchange altogether. Despite annual revenues of $3.4bn, the company made a loss of $722m in 2005. Those figures were released only last month, nine months late, and the company has not yet been able to report any fully audited figures at all for 2006.

Analysts in the US claim the reason is a culture of poor management controls stretching back to before the company was carved out of KPMG, the global accounting giant, at the start of the decade. A litany of failings included invoices going astray, poorly trained accounting staff and a failure to work out the tax implications of having so many employees working in foreign countries.

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Krugman has it right, as usual:

Mr. Bush isn’t Roger Staubach, trying to pull out a win for the Dallas Cowboys. He’s Charles Keating, using other people’s money to keep Lincoln Savings going long after it should have been shut down — and squandering the life savings of thousands of investors, not to mention billions in taxpayer dollars, along the way.

The parallel is actually quite exact. During the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, people like Mr. Keating kept failed banks going by faking financial success. Mr. Bush has kept a failed war going by faking military success.

The “surge” is just another stalling tactic, designed to buy more time.

Oh, and one of the favorite techniques used by the owners of savings and loan associations to generate phony profits — it involved making high-interest loans to crooked or flaky real estate developers — came to be known as the “Texas strategy.”

What was the point of the Texas strategy? Bank owners were certainly gambling — with other people’s money, of course — in the hope of a miraculous recovery that would bail out their negative balance sheets.

But the real point of the racket was a form of looting: as long as they could keep reporting high paper profits, S.&L. owners could keep rewarding themselves with salaries, dividends and sweetheart business deals.

Mr. Keating paid himself a million dollars just weeks before his holding company collapsed.

Which brings us to Iraq. The administration has spent the last three years pretending that its splendid little war isn’t a big disaster. There have been the bromides (we’re making “good progress”); the promises (we have a “strategy for victory”); and, as always, attacks on the media for not reporting the good news from Iraq.

Who you gonna believe, the president or your lying eyes?

Now Mr. Bush has grudgingly sort-of admitted that things aren’t going well — but he says his “new way forward” will fix everything.

So it’s still the Texas strategy: the war’s architects are trying to keep their failed venture going as long as possible.

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From Firedoglake again, this time catching the NY Times altering an editorial:

Miller had never published a story on the Wilsons, though she claims she pitched the story to her editors. But Fitzgerald subpoenaed her after he got Russert’s testimony, on August 12 and 14, 2004.

Fitzgerald needed Miller’s testimony for several reasons. Libby had testified that he spoke with Miller twice during the week of July 7 — on July 8 and July 12. Libby had testified that Valerie Wilson wasn’t the focus of his July 8 meeting with Miller. But since Libby’s story about getting the name from Russert now appeared to be untrue, it seemed likely that Libby was hiding something about his meeting with Miller. Perhaps Libby had told Miller of Valerie Wilson’s identity, which might mean he had violated the IIPA. Or, as many speculated at the time, perhaps Miller had told Libby of Wilson’s identity, in which case there would be merit to Libby’s claim he had heard of Valerie Wilson’s identity from a journalist after all. In any case, Fitzgerald needed Miller’s testimony before he could determine if Libby was guilty of a crime.

When Miller got her subpoena, in the fall of 2004, she had Floyd Abrams, the Times lawyer, contact Libby’s lawyer, Joseph Tate, to inquire about a waiver from Libby. According to Abrams, Tate freed Miller to speak-but he added a detail that made Miller hesitate. Libby, Tate said, had testified that he had not told Miller of Valerie Wilson’s identity, and certainly not her covert status or name. The problem was, Miller had both the names Valerie Flame and Victoria Wilson in her notes of their meeting. “Did the references in her notes to ‘Valerie Flame’ and ‘Victoria Wilson’ suggest that she would have to contradict Mr. Libby’s account of their conversations?” Miller wondered.

Miller believed that Tate was sending her a message: If she couldn’t corroborate Libby’s testimony, she should not testify. “Judy believed Libby was afraid of her testimony,” the Times reported Executive Editor Bill Keller saying. “She thought Libby had reason to be afraid of her testimony.” Abrams even claims that Tate explicitly warned him against Miller testifying. Tate disputes that he gave specific warnings, but he doesn’t dispute that he told Abrams how Libby had testified, a remarkable move. This was enough to demonstrate to Miller that truthful testimony would imperil Libby. She therefore considered the waiver to be coerced. So, in spite of the fact that Tate had given Miller the same waiver he gave three other journalists, Miller sat on that waiver and refused to testify.

After that failed negotiation, the Times turned Miller into a First Amendment martyr. Miller’s role as a martyr for source protection is an odd one, given that in a story she wrote in April 2003 Miller had exposed a source. Shortly after the article had appeared, the Times had issued a correction and an apology. But in October 2004, the newspaper went on the offensive, publishing an editorial that decried Fitzgerald’s attempts to get Miller to testify:

A prosecutor’s investigation into an apparent attempt by the Bush administration to punish a political opponent by revealing classified information has veered terribly off course. It threatens grievous harm to freedom of the press and the vital protection it provides against government misconduct

The same editorial hailing the importance of protecting sources went on to explain why Miller was refusing to testify:

Ms. Miller declined to testify, or to seek a waiver, on the basis that any consent Mr. Libby granted under a threat of firing could not be considered truly voluntary. [my emphasis]

The statement misrepresented several things. It claimed that Miller didn’t seek a waiver, though in fact she had initiated conversations to do so. It said Miller believed the waiver to be coerced because Libby signed it under threat of firing, but it failed to mention her belief that her testimony would incriminate Libby. Most stunning was the editorial’s mention of Libby’s name-even though Libby was not publicly known to be Miller’s source at this time! While preaching the need to protect sources, this editorial effectively revealed one.

And then the Times made a curious claim:

Read the rest of this entry »

From Firedoglake:

As C&L says, people need to speak out about this:

Sen. Joe Lieberman, the only Democrat to endorse President Bush’s new plan for Iraq, has quietly backed away from his pre-election demands that the White House turn over potentially embarrassing documents relating to its handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. Senator Joe Lieberman has just taken the very surprising step of revealing to Newsweek that he will not use his chairmanship on the Homeland Security committee to aggressively probe the government’s catastrophic failings in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

There’s no excuse for this other than to spit in the face of Democrats who Joe doesn’t feel supported him in his moment of need, because after all that is what is most important in the situation. How does his good friend Mary Landrieu, who showed up in CT to campaign for him, feel?

Digby calls him “a vindictive old prick.” I think that puts it mildly.

Good post from TalkingPoints Memo:

TPM Reader PS chimes in on our man Fred Kagan …

Just a note on Fred Kagan – the guy is not an expert on insurgency, civil war, or stability ops. He has a Ph.D in history, with a focus on the 19th century Russian military. His major scholarly book is on Napoleon from 1801-5. From what I can tell, he has no serious background studying the issues that are at the core of his “surge” plan (his AEI bio page is below). So I am completely baffled by the extent to which the media has given him credibility as a “military expert”; one imagines how the surge would have been received if Kagan was accurately identified as “an expert on Napoleon and the early 19th century Russian army.” His CV reveals no publications in refereed history or political science journals in the last decade. Basically the intellectual architect of the surge is an oped/Weekly Standard writer whose only substantive expertise is on Napoleon. Great. . . .

And it gets better.BelgraviaDispatch notes that Kagan seems to have trimmed his necessary number for the surge from 80,000 to 30,000 over the three and a half weeks from early to late December. They’ve got him kowtowing so bad you’d think the White House were a tenure committee.

And if he’s a Napoleon expert, what does he say about the Peninsular War.

Late Update: TPM Reader SR speaks up in Kagan’s defense: “Your downplay of Kagan as a military expert is baseless, he stayed at the Holiday Inn last night.”

I would add that Kagan is 36, well short of the age limit to enlist in the Army. But I would bet any amount of money that he has definite plans not to be a part of any surge into Baghdad.

Interesting study. I am not presenting this as for or against private ownership of guns—in fact, I have a couple of air pistols myself. It’s just an interesting finding which, I would think, must be taken into account in developing one’s position on the issue.

Firearms are used to kill two out of every three homicide victims in America. In the first nationally representative study to examine the relationship between survey measures of household firearm ownership and state level rates of homicide, researchers at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center found that homicide rates among children, and among women and men of all ages, are higher in states where more households have guns. The study appears in the February 2007 issue of Social Science and Medicine.

Matthew Miller, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Injury Prevention at Harvard School of Public Health, and his colleagues David Hemenway and Deborah Azrael, used survey data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2001 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the world’s largest telephone survey with over 200,000 respondents nationwide. Respondents in all 50 states were asked whether any firearms were kept in or around their home. The survey found that approximately one in three American households reported firearm ownership.

Analyses that controlled for several measures of resource deprivation, urbanization, aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, and alcohol consumption found that states with higher rates of household firearm ownership had significantly higher homicide victimization rates for children, and for women and men. In these analyses, states within the highest quartile of firearm prevalence had firearm homicide rates 114% higher than states within the lowest quartile of firearm prevalence. Overall homicide rates were 60% higher. The association between firearm prevalence and homicide was driven by gun-related homicide rates; non-gun-related homicide rates were not significantly associated with rates of firearm ownership.

These results suggest that it is easier for potential homicide perpetrators to obtain a gun in states where guns are more prevalent. “Our findings suggest that in the United States, household firearms may be an important source of guns used to kill children, women and men, both on the street and in their homes,” said Miller.

This study was supported by the Joyce Foundation.

Reference: Miller M., Hemenway D., Azrael D. “State-level homicide victimization rates in the US in relation to survey measures of household firearm ownership, 2001-2003″. Soc Sci Med. 2007 Feb;64(3):656-64. Epub 2006 Oct 27.

Fascinating.

One of Laura Rozen’s readers thinks so. I’ve blogged previously about both Jerry Lewis and Carol Lam (use search to find posts).

Is Lam’s forced resignation as San Diego US attorney related to the investigation of former House appropriations committee chairman Jerry Lewis?

From a knowledgeable reader: “I strongly suspect that the forced resignation of Carol Lam has much more to do with her office’s prosecution of Jerry Lewis - and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s defense of Lewis - than her alleged failure to prosecute immigration and gun smuggling cases. This excuse for firing Lam makes no sense given that public integrity cases are in the top five of Justice Department priorities …

“It is far more likely that Lam’s forced resignation was part of Gibson, Dunn’s aggressive defense of Jerry Lewis - a defense that the White House may be aiding against its own Justice Department.

“Consider these facts:

Jerry Lewis has reported paying Gibson, Dunn $800,000 in legal fees - far more than any other public official known to be under investigation - except Tom DeLay, who is under both federal and state investigation.

Even accounting for Gibson, Dunn’s well-known penchant for over-lawyering a case, legal fees of that magnitude indicate that five or six lawyers are working full-time on Lewis’s defense.

Shortly after Lewis hired Gibson, Dunn to represent him, Gibson, Dunn hired Deborah Wong Yang, the principal prosecutor in the Duke Cuninngham case.

Yang is co-chairing Gibson, Dunn’s Crisis Management Team with Bush’s former Solicitor General Ted Olson.

Gibson, Dunn - and Olson’s Appellate and Constitutional Law Practice Group in particular - is a well-known training ground for conservative legal activists who conservatives have tired for decades to install as federal judges.

Gibson, Dunn has many, many ties to the Bush White House. And, in fact, the White House side-stepped the usual U.S. Attorney selection process in order to try and install a Gibson, Dunn partner as the U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles.

This reader’s conclusion: “The White House doesn’t want the Lewis prosecution to proceed given what Lewis, as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, knows about the Bush Administration’s covert budget. If Gibson, Dunn can get the White House to try and get one of its partners appointed to be the U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles, they certainly could have input into which U.S. Attorneys in California are replaced - thereby helping both the White House and their client, Jerry Lewis.”

The GOP is incredibly corrupt—and determined to stay that way.

From Glenn Greenwald, commenting Dahlia Lithwick’s column:

The reason Bush violated the law when eavesdropping is the same reason Lithwick cites to explain his other lawless and extremist measures — because he wanted purposely not to comply with the law in order to establish the general “principle” that he was not bound by the law, to show that he has the power to break the law, that he is more powerful than the law. This is a President and an administration that are obsessed first and foremost with their own power and with constant demonstrations of their own strength. Conversely, what they fear and hate the most is their own weakness and submission to limitations.

For that reason, the weaker and more besieged the administration feels, the more compelled they will feel to make a showing of their power. Lashing out in response to feelings of weakness is a temptation most human beings have, but it is more than a mere temptation for George Bush. It is one of the predominant dynamics that drives his behavior.

His party suffered historic losses in the 2006 midterm elections as a result of profound dissatisfaction with his presidency and with his war, and his reaction was to escalate the war, despite (really, because of) the extreme unpopularity of that option. And as Iraq rapidly unraveled, he issued orders that pose a high risk of the conflict engulfing Iran. When he feels weak and restrained, that is when he acts most extremely.

Bush officials and their followers talk incessantly about things like power, weakness, domination, humiliation. Their objectives — both foreign and domestic — are always to show their enemies that they are stronger and more powerful and the enemies are weaker and thus must submit (”shock and awe”). It is a twisted world view but it dominates their thinking (and that is how our country has been governed for the last six years, which is what accounts for our current predicament). As John Dean demonstrated, a perception of one’s weakness and the resulting fears it inspires are almost always what drive people to seek out empowering authoritarian movements and the group-based comforts of moral certitude.

The most dangerous George Bush is one who feels weak, powerless and under attack. Those perceptions are intolerable for him and I doubt there are many limits, if there are any, on what he would be willing to do in order to restore a feeling of power and to rid himself of the sensations of his own weakness and defeat.

Pretty funny. From TPMmuckraker:

So, a senior Pentagon official is calling for a boycott of all law firms who aid Guantanamo prisoners. The call has been repeated by conservative talk show hosts.

Funny thing: among the practices working for accused terrorists is New York firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. The lead lawyer for former Cheney aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s defense team is a Paul Weiss man. Who knew? (Probably not Charles D. Stimson, the Pentagon official whose comments have now been officially disavowed by the Defense Department.)

Paul Weiss’ lawyers weren’t just on the sidelines of the Guantanamo issue; they achieved some notable victories in changing conditions at the prison, and have even traveled to the Middle East to meet with the detainees’ families.

As it happens, Libby’s case heads to trial on Monday. Who, pray tell, will be the Pentagon official to demand Libby give up his lead defender — immediately? Who will be the first radio talk show host to denounce Cheney’s former chief of staff as an aider and abettor of terrorism?

Today Steve Gilliard in his blog made a reference in passing to one of the characters in the very fine novel Once an Eagle, by Anton Myrer. It’s an old-fashioned full novel, published in 1968 and written by a guy who served in the Army in WW II, signing up right after the attack on Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941). It’s a novel about a man who served his entire career in the Army, and depicts the Army fully, both the good and the bad. Mesmerizing and still read by military men.

Great article. I’ll get you started:

When political leaders make drastic mistakes, accountability is delivered in the form of elections. That occurred in November when voters removed the party principally responsible for the war in Iraq. But the invasion would not have occurred had Americans not been persuaded of its wisdom and necessity, and leading that charge was a stable of pundits and media analysts who glorified President Bush’s policies and disseminated all sorts of false information and baseless assurances.

Yet there seems to be no accountability for these pro-war pundits. On the contrary, they continue to pose as wise, responsible experts and have suffered no lost credibility, prominence, or influence. They have accomplished this feat largely by evading responsibility for their prior opinions, pretending that they were right all along or, in the most extreme cases, denying that they ever supported the war.

Michael Ledeen, a Freedom Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor to National Review, chose the boldest option. In response to a Vanity Fair article about the swarms of neoconservatives abandoning the administration and the war as both become increasingly unpopular, Ledeen emphatically denied that he backed the invasion in the first place. Writing on National Review’s blog, The Corner, Ledeen claimed, “I do not feel ‘remorseful,’ since I had and have no involvement with our Iraq policy. I opposed the military invasion of Iraq before it took place.”

It is difficult to overstate the audacity—and the mendacity—of Ledeen’s claim. In August 2002, he wrote a scathing article in National Review following an appearance by Brent Scowcroft on “Face the Nation,” in which the former national security adviser argued against the invasion. Ledeen devoted his entire column to mocking Scowcroft’s concerns:

It’s always reassuring to hear Brent Scowcroft attack one’s cherished convictions; it makes one cherish them all the more. … So it’s good news when Scowcroft comes out against the desperately-needed and long overdue war against Saddam Hussein and the rest of the terror masters.

Declaring that “Saddam is actively supporting al Qaeda, and Abu Nidal, and Hezbollah,” Ledeen wrote, “the Palestinian question can only be addressed effectively once the war against Saddam and his ilk has been won.” In response to Scowcroft’s concern that invading Iraq could “turn the whole region into a caldron and destroy the War on Terror,” Ledeen retorted, “One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Ledeen is a morally and intellectually challenged hero of the right, and this obituary is right on target.

Note this story from the NY Times:

Deep into an updated Army manual, the deletion of 10 words has left some national security experts wondering whether government lawyers are again asserting the executive branch’s right to wiretap Americans without a court warrant.

The manual, described by the Army as a “major revision” to intelligence-gathering guidelines, addresses policies and procedures for wiretapping Americans, among other issues.

The original guidelines, from 1984, said the Army could seek to wiretap people inside the United States on an emergency basis by going to the secret court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, or by obtaining certification from the attorney general “issued under the authority of section 102(a) of the Act.”

That last phrase is missing from the latest manual, which says simply that the Army can seek emergency wiretapping authority pursuant to an order issued by the FISA court “or upon attorney general authorization.” It makes no mention of the attorney general doing so under FISA.

Bush administration officials said that the wording change was insignificant, adding that the Army would follow FISA requirements if it sought to wiretap an American.

But the manual’s language worries some national security experts. “The administration does not get to make up its own rules,” said Steven Aftergood, who runs a project on government secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists.

The Army guidelines were finalized in November 2005, and Mr. Aftergood’s group recently obtained a copy under the Freedom of Information Act. He said he was struck by the omission, particularly because of the recent debate over the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program. President Bush has asserted that he can authorize eavesdropping without court warrants on the international communications of Americans suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda.

Like several other national security experts, Mr. Aftergood said the revised guidelines could suggest that Army lawyers had adopted the legal claim that the executive branch had authority outside the courts to conduct wiretaps.

But Thomas A. Gandy, a senior Army counterintelligence official who helped develop the guidelines, said the new wording did not suggest a policy change. The guidelines were intended to give Army intelligence personnel more explicit and, in some cases, more restrictive guidance than the 1984 regulations, partly to help them respond to new threats like computer hackers.

“This is all about doing right and following the rules and protecting the civil liberties of folks,” Mr. Gandy said. “It seeks to keep people out of trouble.”

I believe that Mr. Gandy is lying through his teeth. And getting permission for a wimp like Alberto Gonzales is trivial: he’ll allow anything his boss wants.