Or maybe they were yelling “Boooooosh!”?? We report, you decide.
Download | Play 
Download | Play (h/t Scarce)
Cheney got a similar greeting in 2006.
ThinkProgress notes that Paul Lo Duca, the former NY Mets catcher who was mentioned 37 times in the Mitchell Report, was replaced by Manager Manny Acta to catch the first pitch.
And with all of King George’s horses and all of King George’s men, I don’t think we can put it back together again. I am so sick of hearing how the surge is working because a small discreet part of Baghdad is overmanned militarily.
One word: Basra. The Iraqi bloggers of Gorilla Guides are eyewitness to the devastation:
Parts of Basra were relatively quiet in the morning following the withdrawal of some fighters to the outskirts of the city however much of the city is seeing intensifying armed clashes. Eyewitness reports say that groups of Mahdi Army withdrew to the outskirts of the city after GZG forces backed by British tanks and US warplanes tried to eradicate them from areas that are strongholds of the Mahdi Army. Some witnesses confirmed that a group of the Mahdi Army captured two vehicles belonging to the GZG army type there are reliable reports that GZG barracks have been overrun.
One of our members in the city says that withdrawals appear to have been planned long before as part of a defense in depth strategy. Our members and contacts in city say that there is still a lot fighting going on. They also say that reports in the British media that british troops and aircraft are not involved in the fighting is a flat out lie and that British tanks are heavily involved. .
Udpate: [sic] The American war criminal Bush whose death squad in uniform called the U.S. armed forces are still trying to subjugate Irak and who have murdered innumerable Iraki Children women and men calls the carnage a “positive moment” you can read what he has to say for himself to the UK Times newspaper here.Tahseen al-Sheikhli one of the two main spokesmen for the “surge” was unavailable for comment because he has been kidnapped.
I considered editing the post to remove the reference to George Bush, but honestly, can you blame them for their characterization? These people do not think of American forces as liberators, no matter how many times that’s repeated on American TV.
There is too much and it is too difficult in this blog format to list all the reports of carnage, chaos and destruction, so click on the “Basra” link for multiple reports that shame all the media spin about the surge’s success, including the heart breaking report that the 9 year old brother of one of the bloggers passed away yesterday as a result of burns he received during an airstrike. His brother, Mohammed, author of this heartbreaking poem, already the victim of so much violence, survived being shot at while trying to carry his brother to the hospital.
Joshua Holland and Raed Jarrar write the Five Things You Need To Know To Understand The Latest Violence In Iraq.
I love Helen Thomas. Look how flustered she makes Perino.
Media Bloodhound watched this presser and Dana Perino’s assertion that Bush mourn every military loss and asked “Really?”
And how was our mourner-in-chief spending his day as our four thousandth soldier took one last breath in the sands of Iraq? Goofing around the White House and posing for pictures with a six-foot-tall Easter Bunny. No, really.
As Edward M. Gomez pointed out in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Noted the British newspaper the Daily Express yesterday: “Bush larked about with a 6-[foot-tall] Easter Bunny yesterday [Sunday, March 23] as his troops mourned their 4000th death in Iraq. The grim milestone was reached after four U.S. servicemen were killed when their patrol in southern Baghdad was hit by a roadside bomb on Easter Sunday. The president was pictured hugging the [Easter Bunny] at the White House as children…took over the South Lawn for the [annual] Easter Egg Roll….”
When we hear of turmoil in world financial markets, it can be difficult to understand how so much chaos can result from a relatively small number of defaults on individual home mortgages. Paul Solman, the business and economics correspondent for PBS's NewsHour, undertook to explain how those modest defaults could escalate to the point where they "now threaten the entire world financial system."
Solman began by noting that "the money you borrow to buy your home no longer comes from the local bank. It comes from investors from all over the world."
A firm like Bear Stearns buys up the mortgages on lots of houses, combines them into a pool, and sells slices of that pool to investors. This has been an attractive investment, because it offers a high rate of return, and it has also been considered extremely safe, because even if one mortgage defaults that will have little effect on the pool. With the US housing market booming thanks to the easy credit these deals opened up, it seemed there was no way that anyone could lose.
However, the problem was that "the more investors got into the act, the greater the pressure to lend." Lenders were competing with one another to offer more favorable mortgage terms. Eventually, new buyers had so little actually invested in their homes that if any problems arose, it was easiest to just walk away from both house and mortgage.
Making things worse, the return on these mortgage pools was so high that the big lenders began investing in them on their own, often using money borrowed at a lower rate from banks like Citicorp and JP Morgan. And the banks were also investing directly in securities backed by mortgages, credit cards, or auto loans. Even more investments went into so-called "derivatives," essentially side bets on these other loans.
Everybody wanted to get in on the action and nobody was using their own money, so the debts quickly multiplied from billions to trillions. And the only thing of real value holding up the whole house of cards was the homes owned by individual buyers. If the value of those homes drops -- as it now has -- and too many of the buyers walk away, the whole structure can collapse.
If that happens, as Solman explained, there's a further problem. "The world financial system runs on credit -- on paper promises. If big borrowers and lenders don't make good on those promises, panic can set in, and the biggest financial institutions in the world can find themselves under siege."
That sort of panic was the reason Bear Stearns became unsustainable. And if a firm like Bear Stearns goes down, its creditors -- the major banks -- can become unsustainable as well. That is why the federal government has stepped in to try to salvage the situation.
And, Solman concluded, "That's why they call it the domino effect."
The following video is from PBS's Jim Lehrer News Hour, broadcast on March 21, 2008.
Mondale issues blistering attack on Cheney
Former Vice President Walter Mondale today accused the current vice president, Dick Cheney, of a wholesale assault on the Constitution, the balance of powers, and the system that evolved since World War II to coordinate intelligence and defense policy.
"They wrecked that system," Mondale said this morning at a University of Minnesota scholarly conference on the vice presidency.
This isn't some academic difference of opinion over the proper balance between branches of the federal government, Mondale said, during a question and answer session after his prepared remarks:
"I think this was a brutal, deliberate policy to ignore a wide range of written laws and constitutional principles and the legitimate powers of Congress…It's different than anything we've seen in American history and I think it ought to be seen not as two responsible positions, but ought to be seen as a dramatic challenge to American's system of government."
| U.S. policy in Iraq can lead to human rights abuses like those under British rule in last century, says Hebrew University researcher | December 17 2007 |
| U.S. policy in Iraq courting tribal leaders may be yielding positive results in combating al-Qaida and stabilizing the country, but may also be repeating British policy of the previous century which led to severe human rights abuses, particularly against women, says a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In an article being released in conjunction with Human Rights Week, now being marked around the world, Dr. Noga Efrati, head of the Iraq research group at the Hebrew University’s Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, reviews British tribal policy in Iraq from 1914-1932, during which Britain first occupied the country and then (from 1920) ruled it under mandate authority. Her article on the subject appears in a new book, Britain and the Middle East, to be published later this month The British, who came to “Under the British mandate, rural women — the majority of women in Iraq — were not constructed as citizens of a modern state whose rights and liberties should be protected, but as tribal possessions, abandoned and left outside state jurisdiction,” Dr. Efrati writes in her article. Among other things, this meant that women could be offered in marriage to settle disputes or be forced to marry within their family. Even more serious was that the state had essentially legitimized "honor" murders. The British maintained a “blind eye” toward these customs even though they were incompatible with both Islamic and Iraqi criminal law. "Tribal justice" could not be undermined lest it weaken the powers of the sheikhs who were serving British interests. Only in 1958, with the overthrow of the “old regime,” was the tribal justice system annulled. Even so, these practices did not disappear entirely and even achieved renewed recognition under Saddam Hussein, notes Dr. Efrati. Like the British of yesterday, the Americans today are increasingly depending on local leaders to restore order. However, in its effort to break the Sunni insurgency, stabilize the country and bring about political progress, the Bush Administration should learn from the mistakes of its predecessors, says Dr. Efrati, and be aware of the severe consequences that will arise by leaving the administration of "tribal" affairs in the hands of local leaders. If women are again to become “tribal property” this will be yet another strike against their human rights; the very rights the | |
This footage of the rioting in Tibet is raw and harrowing. It's also, for the most part, not being seen in China where authorities have blocked access to YouTube.com, which has many videos on Tibet.
The Internet as a liberating force? Not always.
The ability of Beijing to control information about the crisis points to the limitations of the big U.S. Web brands and others when news breaks that the Chinese government doesn't like. "There are a lot of people that think the Internet is going to bring information and democracy and pluralism in China just by existing," says Rebecca Mackinnon, assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong's Journalism & Media Studies Center. "I think what we're seeing with this situation in Tibet is while the Chinese government's system of Internet censorship controls and propaganda is not infallible by any means, it works well enough in times of crisis like this."
The whole thing is a bloody mess as the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing draws near. I think a vast majority of people have no stomach for another boycott -- most Americans would rather defeat evil on the athletic field, as Jesse Owens did in Berlin in 1936, than take our ball and go home, as Jimmy Carter did in 1980. That said, I'd like to see freedom-loving people, from the U.S. and elsewhere, figure out how to make some kind of statement this August.
PARIS (AP) - Moves to punish China over its handling of violence in Tibet gained momentum Tuesday, with a novel suggestion for a mini-boycott of the Beijing Olympics by VIPs at the opening ceremony.Such a protest by world leaders would be a huge slap in the face for China's Communist leadership.
France's outspoken foreign minister, former humanitarian campaigner Bernard Kouchner, said the idea "is interesting."
The problem is that a more effective protest would be one mounted by athletes -- but that's banned under the Olympic charter (anyone remember this?). I think the VIPs should attend the ceremony -- and at the right moment all hold up signs in Mandarin calling for free speech and a free Tibet.
I'm sure we could convince Dick Cheney to do that.
By Robert Scheer
That idiotic “what, me worry?” look just never leaves the man’s visage. Once again, there was our president, presiding over disasters in part of his making and totally on his watch, grinning with an aplomb that suggested a serious disconnect between his worldview and existing reality. Be it in his announcement that Iraq was being secured on a day when bombs ripped through that sad land or posed between his Treasury secretary and the Federal Reserve chairman to applaud the government’s bailout of a failed bank, George Bush was the only one inexplicably smiling.
Failure suits him. It is a stance he learned well while presiding over one failed Texas business deal after another, and it served him splendidly as he claimed the title of president of the United States after losing the popular, and maybe even the electoral, vote. It carried him through the most ignominious chapter of U.S. foreign policy, from the lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to an unprecedented presidential defense of torture.
The totally unwarranted assurance was there this week as the once proud dollar fell into the toilet and the debacle of Iraq and Bush’s other failed Mideast policies pushed oil prices to record highs. The Europeans, who didn’t support the U.S. imperial intervention, are doing much better, not having to pay for guarding besieged oil pipelines while U.S. taxpayers are saddled with trillions in future debt, not to mention 4,000 U.S. military deaths and 30,000 U.S. injuries in a war the administration had promised would be paid for with Iraqi oil revenues. Even in Baghdad last week, there wasn’t enough oil to keep the lights on for more than a few hours.
But the president is happy because his legacy issue, the war on terror, is intact. No matter that this week the Pentagon was forced to release a report conducted over the last five years that concluded, after surveying 600,000 official Iraqi documents captured by U.S. forces, that there is “no smoking gun” establishing any connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. The report was so embarrassing that we taxpayers, who paid for it, were not going to be told of its existence, even though the explosive conclusions were totally declassified, until ABC News forced its posting online.
The network reported that the Pentagon had canceled plans to issue a press release or make it available by e-mail or otherwise online because, as one Pentagon official put it, the study is “too politically sensitive.” Damned right it is—Bush squandered U.S. treasure and lives in an effort that had nothing to do with the infamous attack on America. As for the real war on terror against the real al-Qaida, those folks are very much on the rebound, just where they were before the 9/11 attack, building their bases in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Meanwhile, back on the home front, Wall Street is crumbling, not because of planes crashing into buildings but because the outrageous knaves of finance, freed from the most minimal requirements of public accountability, have been permitted to destroy America’s reputation in the world for financial probity.
In the name of ending what were claimed to be onerous regulations imposed after the Great Depression, this administration accelerated a bipartisan pattern of allowing Wall Street to betray investors with impunity while abandoning the federal government’s obligation, once accepted equally by conservatives and liberals, to ensure our national solvency. This tendency, under way for decades to give the bankers what they wanted—codified in the Financial Services Modernization Act, which was signed into law by Bill Clinton and which permitted banks, stock brokers and insurance companies to merge—was exacerbated by Bush’s appointment of rapacious corporate foxes to watch the corporate henhouse.
They will take care of their own, which is why Bush was smiling, happily posed in that photo op between Henry Paulson Jr. and Ben Bernanke announcing the Bear Stearns bailout, made possible only by the federal government using your tax dollars to pick up the bad debt of the banks. Tape that picture to your wall to remind you, when you open a credit card bill with a 30 percent interest rate—not the 2 percent the Fed will charge banks—or see the increase in your adjustable rate mortgage, of just what your government will do for the really big guys that it will never do for regular folks.
In the years to come, as millions lose their retirement income and homes, we will have occasion to remember Georgie Porgie, who kissed the taxpayers and made them cry before he ran away.
AP photo / Gerald Herbert
Wearing a green tie in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, Bush smiles for the camera during a meeting with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (left) and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on March 17 at the White House.
| Reuters Published: Tuesday March 18, 2008 MILLERSVILLE, Penn. - U.S. Rep. John Murtha, a leading congressional opponent of the war in Iraq, on Tuesday endorsed Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, saying her position on the war made her the best candidate to take over the White House. Murtha, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, which holds a crucial presidential nominating contest next month, said Clinton, a New York senator and former first lady, was best placed to deal with the issues surrounding the war and the economy. "Senator Clinton is the candidate that will forge a consensus on health care, education, the economy and the war in Iraq," he said in a statement. He cited a speech Clinton gave on Monday in which she said withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq did not mean defeat. "This week, she highlighted the policy failures in Iraq and addressed the real challenges we face in regards to rebuilding our military, restoring our readiness and fully preparing our armed forces to meet and deter future threats," the former Marine said. "I know that Senator Clinton has a similar position that I have in regards to the war in Iraq," he said. Clinton's Democratic opponent Barack Obama, a senator from Illinois, also favors withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq and has criticized Clinton for her vote giving President George Bush the authorization to go to war in the first place. But Murtha said Clinton's experience gave her an edge. "Her experience and careful consideration of these issues convinced me that she is best qualified to lead our nation and to bring credibility back to the White House." The endorsement gives Clinton a boost in Pennsylvania, which she hopes to win handily in an effort to catch up with Obama's lead in pledged delegates who determine the Democratic nominee. |
| Peter Lance |
"Like every other American, I was stunned by the fall of Eliot Spitzer," opens Nixon speechwriter, notable Brat Pack-era cinema actor, comedian, lawyer and former game show host Ben Stein.
Stein is troubled by what he calls the actions of a few "nosy civil servants" using evidence gained from wiretaps to unravel the career of the outgoing New York Governor, and undo a majority vote by the people of New York.
"Something sinister is happening," he says, "and it scares me."
"Men hire prostitutes by the thousands," Stein continues, "maybe tens of thousands, every day. They also bring women across state lines for sex every day.
"The punishment for the men who hire hookers is usually nil, or at most, a small fine, close to what you'd get for a traffic ticket."
Spitzer, on the other hand, was humiliated and run out of office as punishment, with Stein protesting a small number of federal officials having what he essentially calls veto power over the electoral process. Spitzer, he continues, has been stripped of his career for something picked up on a wiretap that was not a high crime like terrorism or treason.
"Having elected officials kicked out of office by appointed officials is a very dicey proposition," argues Stein.
He concludes: "Elections are a lot more important than call girls."
Stein's entire monologue, as aired on CBS's Sunday Morning on March 16, 2008, is available to view below.
If George W. Bush had read The Pet Goat to his Economic Club of New York audience on Friday, his speech would have been no less infantile. If the first 9/11 was caused by a massive failure of intelligence about terrorism, the second 9/11 -- the slow-motion collapse of the American, and maybe the global, economy -- has been caused by a catastrophic failure of intelligence about Wall Street rapacity. If the now five-year-old Iraq war was the inevitable, tragic consequence of the neoconservatives' Project for the New American Century, then the subprime mortgage quagmire, the Bear Stearns bailout, and the foreclosure fiasco are the foreordained outcome of the Republican ideology which holds that regulation of corporate financial behavior is the domestic equivalent of Islamofascism.
The economic meltdown is the new 9/11, and it's George W. Bush's fault -- his, and the fundamentalist free-marketeers who have been living high on the hog, feeding at the public trough, intimidating Democrats, and getting away with capitalist murder ever since Ronald Reagan made "government" a dirty word.
"An interesting time," Bush called it at the Economic Club. That's the financial version of Rumsfeld's "stuff happens" analysis when rioting and looting engulfed Baghdad. (Will the media celebrate that five-year anniversary, too?) Every cocky corporate titan who has been caught in flagrante delicto has been written off by Republicans as an isolated exception. Every ingenious, computer-assisted Ponzi scheme has turned out, Milton Freedman be praised, to be legal. Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling? A couple of bad apples. Pump and dump? In the eye of the beholder. Slice-and-dice derivatives? As patriotic as a flag lapel pin.
"Moral hazard" is a term given currency by today's subprime mortgage crisis. It means that people will take a stupid risk if they believe they won't have to pay a price if things go sour. Years ago, during the savings and loan crisis, the principle of moral hazard was front and center; gamblers like Neil Bush, of Silverado Savings and Loan, flourished because buccaneers of his ilk were protected from the downside of their speculation by no-fault taxpayer-funded insurance. (No doubt that's what his brother the President meant in his first inaugural about ushering in an era of personal responsibility.) Today, the Fed's rescue of Bear Sterns -- the poster child of Wall Street greed and recklessness -- has brought "moral hazard" back to the fore. Bear Stearns says these guiding principles are the blueprint for how it does business: "respect, integrity, meritocracy, innovation and a commitment to philanthropy." In the wake of the bailout, maybe they should switch their motto to Alfred E. Newman's: "What, Me Worry?"
"Moral hazard" is how we got into Iraq. Colin Powell's Pottery Barn rule -- "you break it, you own it" -- is wrong. Bush broke Iraq, but we own it. Just as we, the taxpayers, are being forced to pay for the crockery broken by the Bush Party on Wall Street, we -- the taxpayers, the soldiers, their families, and America's reputation in the world -- are being forced to pay the price for the hubris of the neocon "freedom agenda." Is it too farfetched to compare Bush's pardon of Scooter Libby with Ben Bernanke's pardon of Bear Stearns? If you want to see why the insane risks of invading Iraq seemed so tolerable to the White House, look no farther than the unitary executive, the signing statements, and an opposition that would take impeachment off the table.
Toxic dumps are required to have warning signs on them. It would be fitting if schoolchildren saw a mandatory DANGER: MORAL HAZARD notice when, on a day that can't come too soon, they enter the George W. Bush Presidential Library.
JPMorgan Chase says that in conjunction with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York it will provide temporary funding for Bear Stearns.
The funding will be provided as necessary for up to 28 days. During that time, JPMorgan Chase will also help Bear Stearns find permanent financing.
Bear Stearns says its liquidity significantly deteriorated over the past day and the temporary funding will help it continue operating normally. The investment bank added there is no guarantee any permanent strategic alternatives will be successful.
The House has just passed the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 3773, to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to establish a procedure for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence, and for other purposes, by a vote of 213-197-1. The revised House legislation to amend FISA grants new authorities for conducting electronic surveillance against foreign targets while preserving the requirement that the government obtain an individualized FISA court order, based on probable cause, when targeting Americans at home or abroad. The House bill also strongly enhances oversight of the Administration’s surveillance activities. Finally, the House bill does not provide retroactive immunity for telecom companies but allows the courts to determine whether lawsuits should proceed.This is the version of the FISA bill Bush threatened to veto.
The former treasurer for the National Republican Congressional Committee diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars -- and possibly as much as $1 million -- of the organization's funds into his personal accounts, GOP officials said yesterday, describing an alleged scheme that could become one of the largest political frauds in recent history.
For at least four years, Christopher J. Ward, who is under investigation by the FBI, allegedly used wire transfers to funnel money out of NRCC coffers and into other political committee accounts he controlled as treasurer, NRCC leaders and lawyers said in their first public statement since they turned the matter over to the FBI six weeks ago.
"The evidence we have today indicated we have been deceived and betrayed for a number of years by a highly respected and trusted individual," said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the NRCC chairman.[...]
The magnitude of the alleged fraud staggered Republicans, who are bracing for the final accounting from the forensic audit in six to eight weeks. Many said they expect a total far greater than the minimum cited yesterday.
A publicly traded affiliate of the Carlyle Group said yesterday that lenders were seizing its assets, sending the fund, Carlyle Capital, into insolvency.
The collapse of Carlyle Capital is the first time a Carlyle Group fund has failed and is a stinging embarrassment for the District private-equity powerhouse, which has built an international reputation with a client list that reaches around the world.
The high-profile downfall, part of the broad turmoil in credit markets worldwide, followed a week of frantic negotiations between the Carlyle Group and a number of lenders. Carlyle Group's three founders as recently as Monday were considering injecting cash into the fund as a way to usher it through the credit crisis.
By yesterday the fund had defaulted on $16.6 billion of debt and said it expected to default soon on its remaining debt. The fund's $21.7 billion in assets were exclusively in AAA mortgage-backed securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, traditionally considered secure and conservative investments, which it was using as collateral against its loans.
In a statement, Carlyle Capital said that it had been unable to meet margin calls in excess of $400 million over the past week and that it expected its lenders to take control of its remaining assets. The lenders, headed by Deutsche Bank and J.P. Morgan Chase, began selling the securities last night, according to a report on the Wall Street Journal's Web site.
The problems at Carlyle Capital have preoccupied the top leaders at Carlyle Group. The firm's founders, David M. Rubenstein, William E. Conway Jr. and Daniel D'Aniello, had been in meetings with lenders in an effort to resolve Carlyle Capital's problems, not only to protect their own investment and that of employees who have put millions of dollars into the company, but also to preserve Carlyle's Midas-touch reputation.
Forbes magazine last year estimated Carlyle's three founders to each be worth about $2.5 billion.
Carlyle Capital is incorporated on Guernsey, an island in the English Channel, and is traded on Amsterdam's Euronext exchange.
The fund was set up in August 2006 with roughly $670 million in cash from Carlyle's owners and other investors, and about $300 million in additional capital raised from a public stock sale.
The capital allowed the fund to go to banks and borrow far more, leveraging its cash investment some 20 times into the portfolio.
Carlyle Capital's prospects were dimmed by the same doubts that have upended securities linked to riskier subprime mortgages, namely whether the underlying assets were losing value and whether the homeowners would continue to make their payments.
As the market value of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities has dropped, Carlyle Capital's lenders asked it to increase its cash equity from what was 1 percent to as much as 5 percent. An increase of that amount on $20 billion in loans amounts to several hundred million dollars.
The Carlyle Group last summer loaned Carlyle Capital $150 million to cover debt obligations.
Conway and Rubenstein were in New York much of this week, accompanied by a team of Carlyle Group insiders, including the company's chief financial officer, negotiating a "standstill" agreement with lenders as they tried to work out a financial solution.
The agreement would have stopped lenders from foreclosing on loans they made to Carlyle Capital.
Carlyle Capital stock closed at $2.80 in Amsterdam yesterday before the announcement, off 89 percent from its peak.
The long-anticipated audit, to be released Thursday, is expected to show a fourth consecutive year of privacy breaches by FBI agents using so-called national security letters to gain access to telephone, e-mail, and financial records of Americans and foreigners without a judge's approval.
Officials familiar with the report say it will note that the lapses all took place before the FBI and Justice Department enacted broad new reforms in March 2007 aimed at protecting individual privacy rights.
The report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine follows a similar audit he released last year. That report found 48 violations of law or rules during 2003-2005 in the bureau's use of national security letters.
Fine estimated that there could be 3,000 more such violations among the more than 143,000 FBI requests for information during that period.
Additionally, last year's audit found that the FBI had underreported to Congress how many national security letters were requested by more than 4,600. Fine blamed agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct.
Thursday's audit largely is expected to mirror last year's findings, FBI Director Robert Mueller said in Senate testimony last week.
National security letters, as outlined in the USA Patriot Act, are administrative subpoenas used in suspected terrorism and espionage cases.
Following last year's audit, the Justice Department enacted guidelines that sternly reminded FBI agents to carefully follow the rules governing national security letters. The new rules caution agents to review all data before it is transferred into FBI databases to make sure that only the information specifically requested is used.
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On the Net:
Justice Department: http://www.usdoj.gov
