Free Internet Press Newsletter - Friday September 21 2007 - (813)

Friday September 21 2007 edition
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Blackwater's Shots Not Provoked, Concludes Iraq Interior Ministry 2007-09-21 02:05:26 Iraq's Ministry of the Interior is proposing radical reshaping of the way American diplomats in Iraq are protected. Iraq's Ministry of Interior has concluded that employees of a private American security firm fired an unprovoked barrage in the shooting last Sunday in which at least eight Iraqis were killed and is proposing a radical reshaping of the way American diplomats and contractors here are protected. In the first comprehensive account of the day’s events, the ministry said that security guards for Blackwater USA, a company that guards all senior American diplomats here, fired on Iraqis in their cars in midday traffic. The document concludes that the dozens of foreign security companies here should be replaced by Iraqi companies, and that a law that has given the companies immunity for years be scrapped. Four days after the shooting, American officials said they were still preparing their own forensic analysis of what happened in Nisour Square. They have repeatedly declined to give any details before their work is finished. Read The Full Story FBI Secretly Taped U.S. Sen. Stevens' Calls 2007-09-21 02:04:51 Recorded conversations between Stevens, businessman are part of public corruption probe. An Alaska oil contractor cooperated with the FBI by tape-recording phone calls with U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) as part of a public corruption investigation, a source familiar with the probe said Thursday night. The recordings done by former Veco Corp. chief executive Bill Allen mean that Stevens, who is the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, was under scrutiny by the FBI much earlier than June, when the senator first acknowledged publicly that he was a subject of FBI inquiries. Details about the recorded conversations between Allen and Stevens are unclear, including how many calls were taped, when they occurred and what information was gleaned from them. The recordings were first reported by the Associated Press, which cited two people close to the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity. A source familiar with the investigation who confirmed the AP report last night also declined to be identified because the investigation is continuing. Read The Full Story Dubai To Acquire 20% Stake In Nasdaq Market 2007-09-21 02:04:03 Three Mideast nations seek major stakes in the West. Middle Eastern governments announced a series of billion-dollar deals Thursday that would give them stakes in financial institutions at the heart of Western capitalism, raising concerns in Washington, D.C., about sensitive foreign investments. Under a complex three-way deal, the stock exchange owned by the government of Dubai would acquire a 19.9 percent stake in the Nasdaq Stock Market, becoming the first government in the Middle East to own a substantial interest in a U.S. exchange. Separately, Carlyle Group of the Washington, D.C., said it was selling a 7.5 percent share of its general ownership to an investment group owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, which like Dubai is part of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates. The Qatar Investment Authority, a government investment fund, said it bought a 20 percent stake in the London Stock Exchange. The transactions are the latest examples of governments of emerging economies, rich in natural resources and with healthy foreign-exchange reserves, buying shares of some of the biggest names in business. In May, as the private-equity firm Blackstone Group took itself public, the Chinese government paid $3 billion to buy a 9.7 percent stake in the IPO (initial prospectus offering). Read The Full Story Israel, U.S. Shared Data On Suspected Syrian Nuclear Site 2007-09-21 02:01:50 Sources: Bush was told of North Korean presence in Syria. Israel's decision to attack Syria on Sept. 6, bombing a suspected nuclear site set up in apparent collaboration with North Korea, came after Israel shared intelligence with President Bush this summer indicating that North Korean nuclear personnel were in Syria, said U.S. government sources. The Bush administration has not commented on the Israeli raid or the underlying intelligence. Although the administration was deeply troubled by Israel's assertion that North Korea was assisting the nuclear ambitions of a country closely linked with Iran, said sources, the White House opted against an immediate response because of concerns it would undermine long-running negotiations aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear program. Ultimately, however, the United States is believed to have provided Israel with some corroboration of the original intelligence before Israel proceeded with the raid, which hit the Syrian facility in the dead of night to minimize possible casualties, the sources said. The target of Israel's attack was said to be in northern Syria, near the Turkish border. A Middle East expert who interviewed one of the pilots involved said they operated under such strict operational security that the airmen flying air cover for the attack aircraft did not know the details of the mission. The pilots who conducted the attack were briefed only after they were in the air, he said. Syrian authorities said there were no casualties. Read The Full Story British Government Refuses To Help With U.S. Investigation Of BAE 2007-09-20 22:42:05 Request from U.S. is ignored by Britain's Home Secretary. British government ministers are refusing to cooperate with the U.S. criminal investigation into allegations of corruption against BAE, Britain's biggest arms company, the Manchester, England-based Guardian newspaper reported in its edition for Friday, September 21. More than two months after an official request for mutual legal assistance (MLA) was received from Washington, D.C., Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has not yet allowed it to be acted upon. The U.S. investigators believe the British are being obstructive. Legal sources told the Guardian Thursday that the inquiry team had not been deterred by the U.K. government's hostile attitude. Some have already begun taking statements from key British witnesses. The formal request for assistance came from the U.S. Department of Justice earlier in the summer, but Ms. Smith has refused to pass it on to Britain's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) for processing in the normal way. Read The Full Story Sellafield's Plutonium Supply 'Vulnerable To Terrorist Attack' 2007-09-20 22:41:28 Britain's stocks of plutonium are kept in "unnacceptable" conditions, Royal Society experts warn. Britain's stocks of plutonium are kept in "unacceptable" conditions and pose a severe safety and security risk, experts warned Friday. The Royal Society says government ministers must urgently review the way more than 100 tons of the radioactive element, separated during the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, is held at the Sellafield complex in Cumbria, U.K.  The society, Britain's premier scientific academy, says a previous warning to the government has been ignored, and that the rise of international terrorism means the U.K. must now find a way to use or dispose of the material. Plutonium is highly toxic and is the primary component of most nuclear bombs. In a report published Friday, the society says a well-informed terrorist group could turn a small amount of the stockpiled material into a crude atomic weapon. Read The Full Story Euro Reaches All-Time High Against Dollar 2007-09-20 14:14:05 The dollar took another fall on currency markets Thursday, reaching one-to-one parity against the Canadian dollar for the first time in 30 years and plumbing a new low against the euro, the 13-nation European currency. The dramatic half-point cut in U.S. interest rates announced this week, while aimed at shoring up U.S. credit markets, also had the effect of further weakening the dollar versus other currencies by reducing the cash yield on dollars. A lower dollar can make travel more costly for U.S. residents and can also pose the risk of making imported goods more expensive over time. The euro breached the $1.40 barrier against the dollar on Thursday. That level had long been seen as a key benchmark in terms of solidifying the euro's position on currency markets and giving it momentum toward becoming a reserve currency of choice - a position long held by the now-weakening dollar. The 13-nation euro bought as much as $1.4064 in morning trading in Europe before falling back slightly to $1.4040, above its previous high Wednesday night of $1.3987, and more than the $1.3964 it bought in late New York trading. Read The Full Story U.S. Fed Reserve Chief Calls For New Mortgage Rules 2007-09-20 14:13:10 Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said Thursday that the growing turmoil from increasingly permissive subprime lending had demonstrated a need for tougher restrictions on what borrowers and lenders can do. In testimony this morning to the House Financial Services Committee, Bernanke said a full review of consumer protection regulations was under way under existing regulatory authority. “The recent problems in subprime lending have underscored the need not only for better disclosure and new rules but also for more-uniform enforcement in the fragmented market structure of brokers and lenders,” he said. Thursday’s hearing is focusing on subprime lending practices and ways to mitigate foreclosures. Among those testifying is the secretary of housing and urban development, Alphonso Jackson, who estimated that of the 2 million subprime home loans whose interest rates are scheduled to reset this year and next, perhaps 500,000 would go into foreclosure. Read The Full Story Pakistan Election Set For Oct. 6 2007-09-20 14:12:40 Election officials have set Oct. 6 for Pakistan’s presidential vote, as opponents of the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, continued to press their case before a Supreme Court panel that he should not run for re-election while still head of the army. The election has become the focus of the deepest political crisis General Musharraf has faced. Opposition parties have threatened to boycott the vote to deny it legitimacy, and there is no sign they will field candidates of their own. Two exiled prime ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, have mounted popular campaigns to return and restore civilian rule. Sharif returned briefly to Islamabad last week but was deported within hours to Saudi Arabia, where he had been exiled after General Musharraf ousted him in a coup in 1999. Bhutto has announced her return for Oct. 18. A ruling from the nine-judge Supreme Court panel on whether General Musharraf should be disqualified is likely next week, possibly on Wednesday, said Dr. Tariq Hassan, an opposition lawyer. Read The Full Story Blackwater - Where The Military Rules Don't Apply 2007-09-20 01:25:37 Blackwater's security force was exempt from rule that applied to other security contractors in Iraq. Blackwater USA, the private security company involved in a Baghdad shootout last weekend, operated under U.S. State Department authority that exempted the company from U.S. military regulations governing other security firms, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and industry representatives. In recent months, the State Department's oversight of Blackwater became a central issue as Iraqi authorities repeatedly clashed with the company over its aggressive street tactics. Many U.S. and Iraqi officials and industry representatives said they came to see Blackwater as untouchable, protected by State Department officials who defended the company at every turn. Blackwater employees protect the U.S. ambassador and other diplomats in Iraq.  Blackwater "has a client who will support them no matter what they do," said H.C. Lawrence Smith, deputy director of the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, an advocacy organization in Baghdad that is funded by security firms, including Blackwater. The State Department allowed Blackwater's heavily armed teams to operate without an Interior Ministry license, even after the requirement became standard language in Defense Department security contracts. The company was not subject to the military's restrictions on the use of offensive weapons, its procedures for reporting shooting incidents or a central tracking system that allows commanders to monitor the movements of security companies on the battlefield. Read The Full Story African Deluge Brings Misery To 1.5 Million People 2007-09-20 01:25:05 Nearly 200 people drowned, 650,000 homes destroyed. U.N. appeals for aid as food is sent to seven countries. The small plane banks steeply to the east and the extent of the floods in the low-lying Teso region of Uganda become clear: mile upon mile of low-lying pasture land submerged, tens of thousands of acres of staple crops like cassava, millet and groundnuts waterlogged. There are impassable roads, overflowing rivers, stranded cattle and devastated bridges. Villages are cut off and mud houses and roads have been swept away. Yet this is a fraction of the devastation caused by some of the heaviest rains in memory to have hit a great swath of Africa from the Sahel to the horn. Article continues According to the United Nations Wednesday, 18 of the poorest and normally driest countries in Africa, from Senegal, Mauritania, Mali and Burkina Faso in the west, to Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia in the east, have been seriously hit by months of torrential rains which, meterologists forecast, will continue in places for many more weeks. "We believe at least 650,000 homes have been destroyed, 1.5 million people affected and nearly 200 people so far drowned," said Elisabeth Brys, at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Geneva, Switzerland. "This is harvest time for many countries and there are already food shortages." Read The Full Story Did CIA Kidnap Vacationer? It's A State Secret 2007-09-20 01:24:19 At issue is whether the White House has the power to keep an alleged victim from seeking redress in the U.S. courts. In December 2003, German citizen Khaled el-Masri boarded a bus in Germany for a holiday in Skopje, Macedonia. Instead of a restful vacation, the Muslim man of Lebanese heritage says he ended up in a Central Intelligence Agency isolation cell in Afghanistan as a suspected terrorist. He was released after five months of interrogation with no explanation justifying the action or apology if it was a mistake. Now, nearly four years later, his lawyers are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to examine whether the Bush administration has the power to prevent Masri from seeking recourse in American courts. Masri's lawyers claim that the CIA kidnapped and tortured an innocent man. The government has never responded directly to the accusation. Instead, Justice Department lawyers asked a U.S. judge to throw the case out of court to prevent disclosure of state secrets. He did. Read The Full Story Germany's Defense Minister Ready To Shoot Down Hijacked Planes 2007-09-20 01:23:46 Germany's politicians are locked in a heated debate after the defense minister signaled his readiness to shoot down hijacked airplanes at the risk of killing innocent civilians in order to avert a wider disaster. The comments of Josef Jung, of the Christian Democrats, have unleashed a passionate debate across the parties and Wednesday led to calls for his resignation in an emotional session in the Bundestag, the German parliament. "In cases of common danger or danger to free and democratic basic order" it would be possible to shoot down a plane, Jung has said. His proposal goes against the decision by Germany's federal constitutional court last year to throw out a law allowing the downing of planes. The government is in the throes of trying to agree to new legislation, but the grand coalition is split on the issue. It also does not want to ignore the 70% of Germans who are against shooting down passenger planes. Read The Full Story	Scientists Report Severe Retreat Of Arctic Ice 2007-09-21 02:05:01 The cap of floating sea ice on the Arctic Ocean, which retreats under summer’s warmth, this year shrank more than one million square miles - or six Californias - below the average minimum area reached in recent decades, scientists reported Thursday. The minimum ice area for this year, 1.59 million square miles, appeared to be reached Sunday. The ice is now spreading again under the influence of the deep Arctic chill that settles in as the sun drops below the horizon at the North Pole for six months, starting Friday. The findings were reported by the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, and posted online at www.nsidc.org. While satellite tracking of polar sea ice has been done only since 1979, several ice experts who have studied Russian and Alaskan records going back many decades said the ice retreat this year was probably unmatched in the 20th century, including during a warm period in the 1930s. “I do not think that there was anything like we observe today” in the 1930s or 1940s, said Igor Polyakov, an ice expert at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Read The Full Story Commentary: Lost At Sea 2007-09-21 02:04:23 Intellpuke: The following commentary was written by Robert D. Kaplan, and appears in the New York Times edition for Friday, September 21, 2007. In his commentary, Mr. Kaplan writes that, while the American government has been occupied in Mesopotamia, Asian militaries have been quietly modernizing and enlarging. Mr. Kaplan is a correspondent for The Atlantic magazine and a visiting professor at the United States Naval Academy. He is the author of "Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea and on the Ground." His commentary follows: The ultimate strategic effect of the Iraq war has been to hasten the arrival of the Asian Century. While the American government has been occupied in Mesopotamia, and our European allies continue to starve their defense programs, Asian militaries - in particular those of China, India, Japan and South Korea - have been quietly modernizing and in some cases enlarging. Asian dynamism is now military as well as economic. The military trend that is hiding in plain sight is the loss of the Pacific Ocean as an American lake after 60 years of near-total dominance. A few years down the road, according to the security analysts at the private policy group Strategic Forecasting, Americans will not to the same extent be the prime deliverers of disaster relief in a place like the Indonesian archipelago, as we were in 2005. Our ships will share the waters (and the prestige) with new “big decks” from Australia, Japan and South Korea. Then there is China, whose production and acquisition of submarines is now five times that of America’s. Many military analysts feel it is mounting a quantitative advantage in naval technology that could erode our qualitative one. Yet the Chinese have been buying smart rather than across the board. Read The Full Story Pentagon Probes $6 Billion Worth Of Contracts For Equipment, Services In Iraq 2007-09-21 02:02:38 Federal investigators are examining allegations of criminal misconduct related to $6 billion worth of contracts for equipment and services needed in Iraq and Afghanistan, a senior Pentagon official said Thursday. The financial scope of the inquiries was provided during a congressional hearing at which Defense Department representatives were criticized for moving too slowly to deal with a growing number of cases of contract fraud and abuse. Following the testimony from Thomas Gimble, the Pentagon's deputy inspector general, members of the House Armed Services Committee questioned whether a "culture of corruption" had consumed the military's system for buying the gear the troops need to fight. No, said the witnesses. In addition to Gimble, they included Lt. Gen. N. Ross Thompson, a top Army acquisition official, and Shay Assad, director of defense procurement. Read The Full Story Veto Threat On Children's Health Bill Angers Republicans 2007-09-21 02:00:44 Some on Capitol Hill disagree with Bush on child health care. Republicans reacted angrily yesterday to President Bush's promise to veto a bill that would renew and expand the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program, raising the likelihood of significant GOP defections when the package comes to a vote next week. "I'm disappointed by the president's comments," said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who urged Bush, in an early-morning telephone conversation Thursday, to support the emerging bipartisan compromise. "Drawing lines in the sand at this stage isn't constructive. ... I wish he would engage Congress in a bill that he could sign instead of threatening a veto." "I'm very, very disappointed," said Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Oregon). "I'm going to be voting for it." With the program about to expire on Sept. 30, Bush said in a news conference that he will reject the $35 billion funding expansion being cobbled together by House and Senate negotiators. He said the bill would inappropriately extend coverage to children in families with incomes of as much as $83,000 a year, prompting many parents to drop private insurance. He urged Congress to pass, instead, a temporary extension of the program until a more lasting compromise can be worked out. Read The Full Story Only $1 Billion, It's Not Enough For The U.S. Rich List 2007-09-20 22:41:49 A billion dollars is no longer enough to secure a place on Forbes' rich list of Americans, the business magazine said Thursday . The 25th annual ranking of the wealthiest individuals in the U.S. found the minimum net worth required for inclusion on this year's list was $1.3 billion (£647 million), up $300 million from last year. It is the first time that simply having $1 billion would not secure you a place among the top 400 names on the list, and 82 U.S. billionaires missed out, said Forbes. The collective net worth of those listed this year rose $290 billion to $1.54 trillion. Read The Full Story In Britain, Sir Menzies Campbell Defiantly Fights On Liberal Agenda 2007-09-20 22:41:06 Age and experience will be needed in resisting potential U.S. military action against Iran, says Campbell. Sir Menzies Campbell Thursday promised to take the Liberal Democrats into the next election with a defiantly progressive message, eschewing the narrow center ground in favor of radical policies to tackle climate change and reminders to voters of the party's long-standing opposition to the war in Iraq. Pledging to fight for a "free, fair and green" Britain, the 66-year-old Sir Menzies insisted his age was an asset, not a drawback, bringing experience that would enable the party to resist support for any potential U.S. military action against Iran. His passionate, strongly-delivered 45-minute address at the end of a choppy conference week in Brighton received an enthusiastic standing ovation and may have staved off serious talk of replacing him until after the next election, even if that is delayed beyond next spring. Read The Full Story Thousands Rally In Louisiana To Support 'Jena Six' 2007-09-20 14:13:33 Thousands of demonstrators jammed the streets of this rural Louisiana town Thursday to protest what they view as excessive criminal charges against six black teenagers involved in a schoolyard brawl. Spurred by the Internet and a popular disc jockey's nationwide urban radio program, protesters from across the United States gathered to hear national civil rights leaders demand fair treatment for the group known as the "Jena Six." The mostly black crowd chanted slogans such as "free the Jena six" in scenes that recalled civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s. Among those who addressed the throng Thursday morning was the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who complained that "the Department of Justice in Washington has gone silent" on the situation in Jena. "We need federal intervention," he told the demonstrators, many of them clad in black to show their solidarity. He called for "hearings on the matter of criminal justice in Jena" and other towns across the nation. "There is a Jena everywhere," said Jackson. "In Louisiana, Jena is just a biopsy of the cancer." Read The Full Story Carlyle Group Selling 7.5 Percent Stake To Abu Dhabi 2007-09-20 14:12:54 The Carlyle Group, the Washington, D.C.'s private-equity giant, announced that it is selling a 7.5 percent share of its general partnership to an investment group owned by the government of Abu Dhabi - one of a flurry of deals today involving Arab governments and U.S. and British financial assets. The $1.35 billion sale to the Mubadala Development Co. marks the second time Carlyle has brought an outside owner into its highly profitable fold. The purchase price values Carlyle, a high-profile equity player with longstanding ties to the Middle East, at roughly $20 billion, less a 10 percent discount for the new partners. That is more than six times what Carlyle was valued when the California public pension system purchased about 5 percent of the company in 2000. Mubadala is wholly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, the capital of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates. As part of the deal, Abu Dhabi will make a separate $500 million investment in Carlyle funds. Founded in 1987, Carlyle raises money from private investors and uses it to buy and resell other companies and invest in real estate and other assets. The company currently has about $75 billion under its management. Read The Full Story Bin Laden Audio Message Calls For Jihad Against Pakistan's Musharraf 2007-09-20 14:12:24 An audio message from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden released Thursday called on Muslims to "carry out jihad" against Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. The 23-minute 37-second audio message - titled "Come to Jihad: A Speech to the People of Pakistan" - is recorded over a montage of old video, and begins with bin Laden reciting prayers and citations from the Quran in Arabic. The audio fades down, then a narrator translates bin Laden's message into Pashto. The tape is subtitled in English, and an Arabic transcript was released. Terrorism analyst Laura Mansfield told CNN that while the message is directed at the Pakistani people, "the simultaneous release of transcripts in English, Pashto, and Arabic indicate the terror group is looking at a wider audience, including the English-speaking world." The only time reference in bin Laden's message is to the July siege of Islamabad's Red Mosque - a week-long standoff between Pakistani security forces and Islamic extremists who hoped to establish a Taliban-style rule across the capital. More than 100 people, including militant leader Abdul Rashid Ghazi, died when troops stormed the mosque compound. Read The Full Story Iraqis Aim Anger At Blackwater 'Dogs' After Shootings 2007-09-20 01:25:22 Hated by Iraqis who refer to them as "Mossad," Blackwater contractors are also mistrusted by fellow private security guards operating in Iraq who say they are arrogant, rude and dangerous. "They kill innocent people in the street," Hameed Hussein, a pensioner in west Baghdad's Al-Maamoun neighborhood said on Tuesday, two days after guards from the U.S. security firm opened fire on civilians, killing 10 people and wounding 13. "Where else in the world does this happen?" asked 60-year-old Hussein. "These are not security forces but rather forces to kill Iraqis. They are frenzied dogs." Iraq's interior ministry ordered the cancellation of Blackwater's operating license after its guards who were escorting U.S. embassy officials were involved in Sunday's shooting in Baghdad's Al-Yarmukh neighborhood. Read The Full Story Ahmadinejad's Party Attacks Him Over Jocular Attitude On Inflation 2007-09-20 01:24:36 In Iran, living costs spiral, rising prices hurting poor, say fundamentalists. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has suffered an embarrassing blow to his prestige after his own party attacked him for adopting a jocular tone towards inflation at a time of rampant price rises. The Islamic Revolution Devotees Society - a fundamentalist grouping of revolutionary veterans co-founded by  Ahmadinejad - has added its voice to a rising chorus of economic discontent by warning the president that spiralling living costs are hurting the poor and undermining his stated goal of social justice. The society says the government is to blame because it embarked on extravagant projects while failing to control the money supply. "Unrestrained inflation increases the pressure on the weak and leads to the poor becoming poorer as owners of non-monetary assets get richer," it says in an economic report. "The result is counter to the goals, plans and slogans of Dr. Ahmadinejad's government." The report also accuses Ahmadinejad and other officials of refusing to acknowledge the problem and of making light of it with inappropriate jokes. It says: "Sometimes some high-ranking government officials deny the growth of prices and deal with them through making jokes. To deny the current inflation or ignoring it through jokes is totally unacceptable." Read The Full Story Israel Declares Gaza Strip 'Hostile Entity' 2007-09-20 01:24:04 Threat to cut fuel supplies if rocket attacks continue. Rice backs crackdown, but U.N. chief calls for rethink. The Israeli government Wednesday declared the Gaza Strip a "hostile entity" and threatened to further cut fuel and electricity supplies if militants continue to fire Qassam rockets at Israel, a decision that was backed by the United States. The decision was described by Palestinians and international agencies, including the United Nations, as collective punishment, which is illegal under international law. Hamas said the policy is a declaration of war. In a statement, the Israeli government said that Hamas had taken over the Gaza Strip and turned it into a hostile territory. It said: "Additional sanctions will be placed on the Hamas regime in order to restrict the passage of various goods to the Gaza Strip and reduce the supply of fuel and electricity." Further restrictions on the movement of people in and out of Gaza would also be implemented. Read The Full Story U.S. Senate Ethics Committee Intensifies Probe Of Domenici 2007-09-20 01:23:30 The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics has stepped up its probe of Pete Domenici, the Republican senator from New Mexico, who allegedly pressured David Iglesias, the former U.S. attorney in that state, to return an indictment against a local Democratic official who was the target of a corruption investigation prior to the 2006 midterm elections. Over the past couple of weeks, the Ethics Committee has been interviewing witnesses - including staffers from the US attorney's office in New Mexico - who were privy to a phone call Domenici made to Iglesias last November in which he asked the former federal prosecutor about the timing of an indictment against Manny Aragon, a prominent former New Mexico state senator and the subject of a federal corruption probe, according to the senior staffers. Congressional ethics rules prohibit lawmakers from contacting federal agency officials during ongoing probes. Iglesias is one of at least eight U.S. attorneys who were fired last December. He believes his termination was due in part to his staunch refusal to allow investigations he had undertaken to be politicized in order to swing the November 2006 midterm elections toward Republicans. Read The Full Story
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