the bastards don't let up

Cheney's new security adviser linked to bogus information on Iraq

BY JONATHAN S. LANDAY AND WARREN P. STROBEL

Knight Ridder Newspapers


WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney replaced I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby as his national security adviser on Monday with an aide identified by a former Iraqi exile group as the White House official to whom it fed information on Iraq that turned out to be erroneous.

The Bush administration relied on some of the information from the Iraqi National Congress to argue that Saddam Hussein had to be ousted before he could give banned biological or chemical weapons to al-Qaida for strikes on the United States.

But no such weapons were discovered after the March 2003 invasion, and U.S. intelligence agencies and the independent commission on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks found no evidence of operational cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida.

The White House announced on Monday the elevation of John Hannah to replace Libby as Cheney's national security adviser. Earlier in the day it announced that Libby would be arraigned Thursday in federal court on charges of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice. He was expected to plead innocent.

The White House also announced that David S. Addington, who's been Cheney's legal counsel, would assume Libby's duties as chief of staff. Like Hannah, Addington has played a quiet, though influential, role in the vice president's office. The Washington director of Human Rights Watch accused Addington of helping draft policies that led to the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The vice president's office has previously denied that Hannah received INC information. Cheney's office didn't respond immediately to questions Monday about Hannah and Addington.

The INC's leader, Ahmad Chalabi, now a deputy prime minister in Iraq, was close to Cheney and other senior administration architects of the invasion. The INC supplied Iraqi defectors whose information turned out to be false. It has insisted that it tried its best to verify defectors' claims before passing them to the United States.

On June 26, 2002, the INC wrote a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee staff identifying Hannah as the White House recipient of information gathered by the group through a U.S.-funded effort called the Information Collection Program. Knight Ridder obtained a copy of the letter and previously reported on it.

The letter, written by Entifadh Qanbar, then the director of the INC's Washington office, identified 108 articles in leading Western news media to which it said the INC had funneled the same information that it fed to Hannah, as well as a senior Pentagon official.

The information included a claim by an INC-supplied defector, Adnan Ihsan al-Haideri, that he had visited 20 secret nuclear, biological and chemical warfare facilities in Iraq.

Haideri's claim first appeared in a Dec. 20, 2001, article in The New York Times and then in a White House background paper, "A Decade of Deception and Defiance," released in conjunction with a Sept. 12, 2002, speech to the U.N. General Assembly by Bush.

Haideri, however, showed deception in a CIA-administered lie detector test three days before The New York Times article appeared, and was unable to identify a single illicit arms facility when he accompanied U.S. weapons inspectors to Iraq in January 2004, Knight Ridder reported in May of last year.

The White House background paper also cited INC-produced defectors' claims that Saddam ran a terrorist training camp outside Baghdad in Salman Pak where Iraqi and non-Iraqi Islamic extremists were schooled in assassination, sabotage and the hijacking of aircraft and trains.

After the war, U.S. officials determined that a facility in Salman Pak was used to train Iraqi anti-terrorist commandos.

Addington has been a key player behind widely criticized U.S. policies that have led to torture and other abuse of detainees held in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch.

He reportedly helped draft an opinion by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales stating that the Geneva Convention didn't apply to some detainees in the war on terrorism.

"This was somebody who worked very hard to make sure the advice of senior military officials and national security professionals on the question of interrogation policies was ignored," Malinowski said. "The result was an unmitigated disaster for the United States."

Libby was both Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser. He was accused of lying in a two-year grand jury investigation into the leaking to journalists of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame in 2003.

The leak came after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused President Bush of misleading the nation by alleging in January 2003 that Iraq had tried to buy uranium ore, the feedstock of nuclear weapons, from the African nation of Niger.

Wilson visited Niger a year earlier at the CIA's request and found no substance to the allegation.

lies, lies and always more lies

Article Raises Questions About Vietnam War

By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer 15 minutes ago

The National Security Agency has been blocking the release of an article by one of its historians that says intelligence officers falsified documents about a disputed attack that was used to escalate the Vietnam War, according to a researcher who has requested the article.

Matthew Aid, who asked for the article under the Freedom of Information Act last year, said it appears that officers at the NSA made honest mistakes in translating interceptions involving the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident. That was a reported North Vietnamese attack on American destroyers that helped lead to President Johnson's escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Rather than correct the mistakes, the 2001 article in the NSA's classified Cryptologic Quarterly says, midlevel officials decided to falsify documents to cover up the errors, according to Aid, who is working on a history of the agency and has talked to a number of current and former government officials about this chapter of American history.

Aid draws comparisons to more recent intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that overstated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's arsenal.

"The question becomes, why not release this?" Aid said of the article. "We have some documents that, from my perspective, I think would be very instructive to the public and the intelligence community ... on a mistake made 41 years ago that was just as bad as the WMD debacle."

The NSA is the largest spy agency in government, responsible for much of the United States' codebreaking and eavesdropping work. In spy lingo, the agency collects and analyzes "signals intelligence" — or "SIGINT."

The article, written by NSA Historian Robert Hanyok, and the controversy over its release were first reported in The New York Times on Monday.

In a written statement, NSA spokesman Don Weber said the agency had delayed releasing the article "in an effort to be consistent with our preferred practice of providing the public a more contextual perspective." He said the agency plans to release the article and related materials next month.

"Instead of simply releasing the author's historical account, the agency worked to declassify the associated signals intelligence ... and other classified documents used to draw his conclusions," Weber said.

Aid has been told that Hanyok's article analyzes problems found in interceptions about the events. He said the nature and extent of the mistakes remain unclear, and some senior officials at NSA who were not involved with the errors have taken issue with the journal article.

Many historians believe that Johnson would have escalated U.S. military action in the region anyway.

Yet Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists project on secrecy, said events of the Cold War cannot remain off limits, effectively a secret history.

"A lot of what we think we know of our recent history may be mistaken," Aftergood said. "It is a disgrace that it should be so in a democracy, but it is."

James Bamford, who has written several books on the NSA, said the agency has a "lethargic attitude" about revealing historic information "that may be useful for people in the future, to help prevent mistakes."
___

On the Net:

National Security Agency: http://www.nsa.gov/

diluted america

Exxon-Mobil Employees Given Fake Flu Shots

Fake flu shots were given out last week at a health fair at Exxon Mobil Corp.'s Baytown complex and an investigation was under way, authorities said.

Exxon Mobil spokeswoman Treacy A. Roberts said Thursday that the FBI told the company that what was administered "definitely not the flu vaccine."

It doesn't appear that the fake shots were harmful, but steps were being taken to ensure workers' safety, U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg said in a statement Thursday.

Exxon Mobil offered blood tests and counseling to the up to 1,000 employees who took part in the health fair at the oil company's vast complex of refineries and chemical plants just east of Houston.

The FBI and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are investigating what was in the syringes and whether others might have received the fake vaccine, Rosenberg said.

Jeanne Miller, another Exxon Mobil spokeswoman, said a doctor provided the shots in Exxon's first use of an outside contractor to administer the shots. She declined to identify the doctor because of the federal investigation.

In the past, Miller said, company medical staff had offered flu shots at health fairs.

FBI officials did not explain how they found out about the potential fraud, Roberts said.

In May, a nurse in Minnesota, Michelle Torgerson, pleaded guilty to dispensing a drug without a prescription, admitting she used diluted vaccine left over from an earlier clinic and pocketed the cash when she gave college students shots at $20 each.

mannequin hired as white house press secretary

news at 11.

aberration, bastardizations and perturbations

Former Powell Aide Says Bush Policy Is Run by 'Cabal'

By BRIAN KNOWLTON / NY TIMES

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 - Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff has offered a remarkably blunt criticism of the administration he served, saying that foreign policy had been usurped by a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal," and that President Bush has made the country more vulnerable, not less, to future crises.

The comments came in a speech Wednesday by Lawrence Wilkerson, who worked for Mr. Powell at the State Department from 2001 to early 2005. Speaking to the New America Foundation, an independent public-policy institute in Washington, Mr. Wilkerson suggested that secrecy, arrogance and internal feuding had taken a heavy toll in the Bush administration, skewing its policies and undercutting its ability to handle crises.

"I would say that we have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita - and I could go on back," he said. "We haven't done very well on anything like that in a long time."

Mr. Wilkerson suggested that the dysfunction within the administration was so grave that "if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence."

Mr. Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel and former director of the Marine Corps War College, said that in his years in or close to government, he had seen its national security apparatus twisted in many ways. But what he saw in Mr. Bush's first term "was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberration, bastardizations" and "perturbations."

"What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues," he said.

The former aide referred to Mr. Bush as someone who "is not versed in international relations, and not too much interested in them, either." He was far more admiring of the president's father, whom he called "one of the finest presidents we've ever had."

Mr. Wilkerson has long been considered a close confidant of Mr. Powell, but their relationship has apparently grown strained at times - including over the question of unconventional weapons in Iraq - and the former colonel said Mr. Powell did not approve of his latest public criticisms.

president denial

Bush Calls Recent Woes 'Background Noise'
- By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent
Thursday, October 20, 2005

(10-20) 09:16 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

President Bush vowed Thursday to avoid the "background noise" of criminal investigations and other Republican political problems to focus on the nation's needs.

"The American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to," the president said.

With his political stock falling and several allies under investigation, Bush tried to keep focus on the nation's business at a Rose Garden news conference with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

He said that prospects for Palestinians were gaining steam and noted that there have been elections and Israeli land withdrawals since Abbas' last White House visit. "It's been an eventful year," Bush said.

Abbas criticized Israel's security wall and urged the nation to lift curbs on Palestinian travel on the West Bank. "Peace requires a departure from the policies of occupation," he said.

Even with a foreign leader at his side, it was hard for Bush to ignore the contretemps of Washington. He was asked about his political problems in general, and one in particular: the troubled nomination of Harriet Miers to be a Supreme Court justice.

He acknowledged that Miers, a longtime friend, emerged from a "little different process from the norm."

After relative smooth sailing with the nomination of John Roberts to be chief justice, Bush faces criticism from both sides of the political divide — most notably from longtime conservative allies — over Miers. His claim that she is the most qualified candidate has been roundly criticized.

With opponents calling for her withdrawal, Bush said the process will show that Miers is a "competent, strong, capable woman" who shares his conservative judicial philosophy.

A federal prosecutor is wrapping up his investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's identity, putting the White House on edge as the fate of two senior advisers hang in the balance. Bush's long-serving political confidant, Karl Rove, and a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, are key figures in the inquiry.

Former House Leader Tom DeLay faces conspiracy and money-laundering charges in Texas. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's stock transactions are being scrutinized by federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

DeLay and Frist are loyal foot soldiers to Bush on Capitol Hill. But their ethical issues threaten the White House legislative agenda.

Bush's political woes came into focus with a natural disaster: the sluggish response of state, local and federal governments to Hurricane Katrina dented his aura of sure-footed leadership. He has sought to recover politically by promising a massive relief effort on the Gulf Coast.

Asked how he is dealing with such a full plate, Bush said: "There is some background noise here, a lot of chatter, a lot of speculation and opining, but the American people expect me to do my job and I'm going to."

He also said, "part of my job is to work with others to fashion a world that will be peaceful for future generations. I've got a job to do to make sure the economy continues to grow. I've got a job to make sure there is a plausible reconstruction plan for cities affected by Katrina."

Polls show six in 10 Americans disapprove of Bush's job performance and even more believe the country is headed on the wrong course. Support for the president's handling of the Iraq was has also plummeted as the mood of the nation has soured.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/10/20/national/w082234D83.DTL

Judith Miller is a fucking liar

No single facet of Sunday's Times account drew more condemnation than Miller saying she cannot recall the name of another source who told her about "Valerie Flame," as she recorded the name in her notebook. Miller said the notation was in a different part of the same notebook used for her first interview with Libby in June 2003.

just fucking end this goddamn war already!!!!!

COLONEL'S TOUGHEST DUTY

Battalion commander pays his respects, apologizes to Iraqis whose civilian relatives have been killed by anonymous GIs in passing patrols and convoys
- Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, October 14, 2005

Tikrit, Iraq -- Nebras Khalid Nasser understood this much: Insurgents often killed people in Beiji, a northern Iraqi town where he lived with his pregnant wife and their year-old son. He needed to move his family to Tikrit, a safer city about 40 miles to the south. He helped his wife, Zahoya, into his brother-in-law's beat-up Toyota sedan. They started driving south. They saw a U.S. military convoy.

A shot rang out.

Blood poured from Zahoya's head. Then she died.

Standing on the blue concrete floor of his brother's compound Thursday, Nasser wiped his tears with the collar of his gray dishdasha shirt. A U.S. officer sat in front of him in a beige plastic chair, telling him he was sorry about his loss. Nasser nodded, barely comprehending what was happening. All he could repeat was, "She was pregnant. She died right away."

Lt. Col. Todd Wood, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, avoided looking at him.

Wood's battalion has lost eight soldiers since January, and he has had a hard enough time explaining the randomness and the suddenness of the death of his own soldiers. Now, he had to explain to this bereaved Iraqi man how his wife had died at the hands of a U.S. military convoy that was not even under Woods' command.

"This was a terrible accident -- it was not intentional," Wood, 42, said with an army interpreter by his side. "The soldier who did this did not intend to shoot and kill a woman. I wanted to apologize on behalf of those soldiers.

"I know that explanation doesn't make anything any easier."

"She was pregnant. She died right away," Nasser said again and again.

U.S. military officials do not keep track of Iraqi civilians who have died from U.S. fire. The Brookings Institution's Iraq Index said last month that 8,347 to 14,576 Iraqis had been killed by acts of war since 2003, but the estimates were not broken down by type of incident. Other groups attempting to track civilian deaths put the number even higher. Wood estimated that since his battalion was deployed here in January, U.S. soldiers had killed about 10 Iraqi civilians in this sector of north central Iraq.

Often the deaths are the result of split-second decisions made by U.S. soldiers who have to weigh the risk of being blown up by insurgents, who use car bombs as their weapon of choice, against the possibility of killing innocent civilians. Although U.S. troops in Iraq use their weapons far more carefully than they did at the beginning of the war, innocent civilians still get killed.

No matter the reason or the circumstance, every time U.S. soldiers kill an Iraqi civilian in his sector, Wood meets with the family of the deceased to pay his respects. On Thursday, he had to do it twice.

Both victims apparently were shot by U.S. soldiers from other units passing through Beiji, where insurgents mount regular attacks on Americans, Iraqi security forces and Iraq's oil pipeline. Neither convoy stopped to help the civilians the soldiers had shot. It would be pretty much impossible to ascertain which U.S. unit was passing through the area at the time and track down those who did the shooting, Wood said. "Seems like I pick up a lot of people's pieces around here," he said. "These ... patrols that drive around and shoot people have been a thorn in everybody's side all year."

Other members of the 2-7 battalion are equally concerned about the incidents.

"I hate the fact that American soldiers ride around killing civilians," said Command Sgt. Major Samuel Coston, 44, from North Carolina. "All you got to say is 'I feel threatened,' 'the car was driving aggressively,' and you shoot. They have no remorse. They just keep on driving."

Last week, according to local Iraqi police, a U.S. soldier shot Jamal Yassin Hussein, a fisherman and a father of five. Hussein, who lived in Tikrit, was on his way to meet with a friend who had been fishing upstream in the murky green waters of the Tigris River.

"He was observing the Ramadan fast, and he had packed some food so that he could break fast with his friend," Hussein's father-in-law, Maher Mara'e, told Wood. "He was always so careful, and that day, he left home early so that he would get to his friend on time.

"The next thing we knew, Iraqi police officers are bringing his dead body to the family and saying he was shot by coalition forces. I don't know why, for what reason, he was killed."

Wood, who met with Mara'e at an Iraqi army headquarters in Tikrit, told him:

"I know that there are no words to make pain and suffering any easier, but sometimes it helps to look a person in the eye and to hear an apology."

There was a moment of silence, as Mara'e and Wood looked at the floor.

"This was not my unit that did this," Wood finally said.

"I understand that," Mara'e nodded.

"But you live in the town where I live, and I'm responsible for you," Wood said. "I will be held accountable for this event."

Wood reached into his pocket and produced an envelope with $2,500 -- a compensation package the U.S. military gives to the families of innocent civilians its troops kill in Iraq.

"No matter how much money you give me, it's not going to give me my son back," Mara'e said. Then, he said "thank you" and took the money.

Capt. Ray Osorio, 31, from Orlando, who handles the colonel's relations with Iraqis, said he did not feel the $2,500 could compensate for the loss of a life.

"I always try to put myself in their shoes -- what if it was my sister who got killed, and someone is giving me money?" Osorio said. "You can't solve it by paying. We just want to make things right."

When the 2-7 battalion's soldiers are responsible for the killing of a civilian, the commanders investigate the killing, the way they have been doing since June, when a soldier mistakenly shot and killed an Iraqi fire engine driver who had arrived at the site of a suicide car bombing. But when the civilians are killed by other units driving through the 2-7's territory, Wood only finds out about their deaths from their families or local residents or not at all.

In Jamal Hussein's case, the mayor of Tikrit told Wood about the killing and arranged a meeting for the colonel to pay condolences to Mara'e.

Wood found out about the killing of Zahoya Nasser two days ago when a woman in a black abaya covering approached him as he was inspecting polling sites ahead of the Saturday referendum on the new Iraqi constitution in Khansa Square in downtown Tikrit. She was Zahoya's sister-in-law, Intisar Abdallah Abid, and she had been in the car when Zahoya was shot.

Abid said they were traveling south behind two other Iraqi civilian cars. When the cars approached a procession of U.S. military trucks, the first two cars sped up and cut in front of the convoy.

"One round missed the second car and hit our car," said Abid. "It hit my sister-in-law in the head. She didn't make it to the hospital. The convoy kept going."

Wood promised Abid that he would visit the family the next morning. Now, he sat in the beige plastic chair in front of grief-stricken Nasser. He stared down at his combat boots and at the concrete floor sticky with spilled soda as Nasser cried, searching for words that would make the bewildered man feel better and finding none. He handed over the $2,500.

When Abid turned to leave, Wood stood for a while, stooping in the hot October sun.

"I hate that," he said quietly.

"Probably ricocheted off the ground, sir," his translator, Omar Elmenshawi, offered, as a possible explanation for how a U.S. soldier's bullet had killed an Iraqi man's beloved wife.

"Yeah, probably," Wood said vaguely. Then, after a pause, he repeated: "I hate this," climbed into his armored humvee and drove off.

E-mail Anna Badkhen at abadkhen@sfchronicle.com.

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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/14/MNGJ2F8D8L1.DTL

selling america down a river

Bush: Miers' Religion Key Part of Her Life
AP - 20 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Wednesday his advisers were telling conservatives about Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers' religious beliefs because they are interested in her background and "part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion." "People are interested to know why I picked Harriet Miers," Bush told reporters at the White House. "They want to know Harriet Miers' background. They want to know as much as they possibly can before they form opinions. And part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion."

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

what does this have to do with the FUCKING LAW?????????????????????????

get me out of this country!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

further evidence that delay is a monkey

DeLay Lawyers Subpoena District Attorney

- By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, October 11, 2005

(10-11) 18:23 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

Indicted Rep. Tom DeLay's defense team tried Tuesday to serve Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle with a subpoena, but Earle refused to accept it, DeLay lawyer Dick DeGuerin said.

Alleging misconduct with grand jurors, the defense team wants to compel Earle to explain his behavior.

A state campaign finance investigation conducted by Earle led to DeLay's indictment on conspiracy and money laundering charges. DeLay, R-Texas, was obligated by House Republican rules to temporarily step aside as House majority leader.

DeGuerin said acceptance of the subpoena was voluntary Tuesday because it had not been stamped by a court official, but added the defense team would go through the court procedure Wednesday and redeliver it. He said Earle, district attorney for Travis County, would then be obligated to accept the subpoena, but could file a motion to have it dismissed.

The defense lawyer, who is trying to get the indictments dismissed, said an assistant district attorney also refused to accept her subpoena, but a second assistant accepted the subpoena delivered to him. Acceptance simply involves signing a paper acknowledging delivery.

The subpoenas asked that the prosecutor and the two assistants appear in court or submit to a deposition in which the defense lawyers would question them.

DeGuerin also asked that grand jurors be released from their secrecy oath so they could answer questions about the prosecutor's conduct.

Earle's office said in a written statement, "Because of laws protecting grand jury secrecy, there are limitations to what we can say at this time, but we fully expect to prevail in this matter."

DeGuerin wants Earle to answer 12 questions about conversations he had with grand jurors, including whether the prosecutor became angry when a grand jury decided against an indictment of DeLay and why that decision was not publicly released.

He also wants to know the details of Earle's conversation with William Gibson, foreman of a grand jury that indicted DeLay on conspiracy charges, whose term has since ended.

"If you did nothing improper, you should not be concerned about answering these questions," DeGuerin said in his letter to Earle.

Earle, leading a Texas campaign finance investigation that indicted DeLay and two political associates, went to three grand juries. He presented evidence on DeLay's alleged role in funneling corporate money to Texas legislative candidates in violation of state law.

The first grand jury indicted DeLay on conspiracy charges, the second failed to indict and the third indicted him on an allegation of money laundering. DeLay has said he is innocent of wrongdoing.

DeLay has accused Earle — a Democrat — of pursuing the case against him for political reasons. Earle has denied any political motives.

In a motion filed last week, the defense team said that from Sept. 29 through Oct. 3, Earle and his staff "unlawfully participated in grand jury deliberations and attempted to browbeat and coerce" the grand jury that refused to indict DeLay.

The motion said Earle then attempted to cover up and delay public disclosure of the refusal, and also "incited" the foreman of the first grand jury to violate grand jury secrecy by talking publicly about the case — in an effort to influence grand jurors still sitting.

The foreman, William Gibson, gave media interviews after the grand jury finished its work but told The Associated Press that Earle did not ask him to discuss the case.

"That's a bunch of (expletive) there," Gibson said. "That man did not talk to me."

He said Earle advised him and other grand jurors to keep an open mind as they considered evidence and cautioned them, "What goes on behind closed doors is secret."

The lawyers said Earle then spoke about the case with members of the first grand jury, whose work was finished, to get their opinion of what they might have done if they had known their conspiracy indictment was flawed — as defense attorneys alleged.

Earle then submitted the grand jury opinions to the third grand jury to persuade it to hand down the money laundering indictment, the defense team contended.

The indictments against DeLay triggered a House Republican rule that forced him to step aside — at least temporarily — from his post as majority leader.

Both indictments of DeLay focused on an alleged scheme to move money around and conceal the use of corporate contributions to support Texas Republican legislative candidates. State law prohibits use of corporate donations to support or oppose state candidates, allowing the money to go only for administrative expenses.

DeGuerin is asking for all documents, notes, telephone records and other relevant materials from Earle's staff.

"I am determined to put on record the steps taken by you and your staff to obtain a replacement indictment against my client, Tom DeLay," DeGuerin said in a letter to the prosecutor.
____

Associated Press writer Suzanne Gamboa contributed to this report.


URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/10/11/national/w144144D27.DTL