Pentagon announces charges in Cole bombing

I believe this is the first time the US has actually charged anyone:

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon said Monday it is charging a Saudi Arabian with "organizing and directing" the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole — and will seek the death penalty.

Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, legal adviser to the U.S. military tribunal system, said charges are being sworn against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi of Yemeni descent, who has been held at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since 2006.

The charges still must be approved by a Defense Department official who oversees military tribunals set up for terrorism suspects.

Hartmann said the allegations include conspiracy to violate laws of war, murder, treachery, terrorism, destruction of property and intentionally causing serious bodily injury.

North Korea Demolishes Nuclear Cooling Tower

Make no mistake, Curt Weldon helped us get here:



From Larry King Live in 2006:

KING: So, what do they do Congressman Weldon? What do they do at the White House?

WELDON: You can have bilateral talks in the six party context which is what we've been advocating. I spent 15 hours over two visits with (INAUDIBLE) their lead negotiator and I'm firmly convinced that there is a way to diplomatically resolve this issue and there's a way to bring Russia in.

The day that I left Pyongyang on my last trip (INAUDIBLE) was going into Pyongyang. The Russians have an interest in running gas supply lines from the Russia far east at Socoline (ph) down to the North Korean rail corridor into South Korea. The South Koreans, and I've met with the Chong (ph) family of the Hyundai Corporation in South Korea and gas. They're willing to finance such pipelines.

There's a natural interest on the part of Russia both of (INAUDIBLE) and (INAUDIBLE) on the oil side to have those pipelines supply their land-locked energy which would give North Korea a non- nuclear source of energy and a source of income.

But you can't make those kinds of discussions occur in what appears to be a context of bowing down to the pressure they brought forward. That's why I thought the administration should continue to have kind of an unofficial or second tier dialog, not to give them the status of direct bilateral talks because as we saw with the '94 framework, as Colin Powell said on March the 26th of '03 before the House Appropriations Committee and our Congress, before the ink was even dry they were cheating with their enriched uranium program, which they finally admitted to in the middle of 2002. That enriched uranium program was specifically designed to build nuclear weapons. You need to be candid and transparent with them. I think the six party framework is the right one but I think there need to be secondary talks at the second tier, third tier level which is why I took two bipartisan delegations in, not to try to preempt the administration but to support the president's overall intentions and to try to find a way to convince the North Koreans that it was in their best interest.

And I can tell you, Larry, they are ready to do that and I still believe that today. I think what you're seeing now is the result of the pressure we've applied by the tightening up on (INAUDIBLE) Asia which has basically shut down much of their economy.

That was an action this administration took in recent months and it's had a devastating impact on their economic capability and I think you're seeing Kim Jong-il lash out because of that.

Sentencing for Russ Caso delayed

This whole thing is sad to watch. Russ is a good guy. Here's the latest:

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

v. Criminal No. 07-332 (HHK)

RUSSEL J. CASO, JR.

Defendant.

JOINT MOTION TO CONTINUE STATUS CONFERENCE

On December 11, 2007, the Court accepted Russell J. Caso’s plea of guilty and deferred setting a date for his sentencing. The Court scheduled a status conference for May 23, 2008, at 9:45 a.m. As part of his plea agreement, Mr. Caso has agreed to cooperate with the government in any and all matters when required. In conformity with this agreement, Mr. Caso has been cooperating with government agents and prosecutors. The government anticipates that Mr. Caso’s cooperation will continue for the foreseeable future. In the view of both parties, no issues have arisen which require the Court’s intervention at this time.

Accordingly, the parties jointly move the Court to again defer setting a date for the sentencing of Mr. Rudy. The parties also ask that the Court continue the status conference to a date not less than 90 days in the future in order to allow Mr. Caso’s cooperation to continue uninterrupted. A proposed order is attached.

Dated this 2nd day of May, 2008.

FOR THE UNITED STATES:
JEFFREY A. TAYLOR
United States Attorney
Howard R. Sklamberg
Deputy Chief,

FOR THE DEFENDANT:
Kelly B. Kramer, Esq.
Nixon Peabody, LLP

Obviously, "Mr. Rudy" was an error. The motion was followed by this:

Reset Hearings as to RUSSELL JAMES CASO, JR:

Status Conference is reset for 9/19/2008 @ 10:30 AM in Courtroom 27A before Judge Henry H. Kennedy.

Probe of USS Cole Bombing Unravels

Glad to see someone is still looking into this. New front page story in the Washington Post. Doesn't mention preincident indicators, but it's a start.

Probe of USS Cole Bombing Unravels

Plotters Freed in Yemen; U.S. Efforts Frustrated

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 4, 2008; A01

ADEN, Yemen -- Almost eight years after al-Qaeda nearly sank the USS Cole with an explosives-stuffed motorboat, killing 17 sailors, all the defendants convicted in the attack have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials.

Jamal al-Badawi, a Yemeni who helped organize the plot to bomb the Cole as it refueled in this Yemeni port on Oct. 12, 2000, has broken out of prison twice. He was recaptured both times, but then secretly released by the government last fall. Yemeni authorities jailed him again after receiving complaints from Washington. But U.S. officials have so little faith that he's still in his cell that they have demanded the right to perform random inspections.

Two suspects, described as the key organizers, were captured outside Yemen and are being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Many details of their alleged involvement remain classified. It is unclear when -- or if -- they will be tried by the military.

The collapse of the Cole investigation offers a revealing case study of the U.S. government's failure to bring al-Qaeda operatives and their leaders to justice for some of the most devastating attacks on American targets over the past decade.

Dieter Snell back in the news

As Peter Lance points out here:

As the sex scandal hurricane engulfed Eliott Spitzer last week, one of his closest advisors at the eye of the storm was Dietrich “Dieter” Snell. An ex U.S. Attorney from the same office conducting the prostitution probe, Snell is now defending Spitzer in the “Troopergate” scandal and reportedly raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees for the international law firm he joined last year.

A former Southern District prosecutor who later became Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, Snell is also one of the ex Feds who rewrote history in the Commission’s “Final Report” by relying entirely on the tortured “confession” of 9/11’s purported “mastermind” to pinpoint the origin of the “planes as missiles” plot.

He’s the same investigator who dismissed as not “sufficiently credible” the testimony of a decorated Navy Captain who was part of a secret data mining operation that uncovered evidence of 9/11 hijackers in the U.S. more than a year before the attacks.

A former Deputy Attorney General under “the Sheriff of Wall Street,” Snell is now attempting to quash the subpoenas of investigators probing whether Spitzer misused state troopers to investigate his chief political rival, protecting his ex boss and mentor with a “separation of powers” defense worthy of Dick Cheney.

Lance's column also references an article by Larisa Alexandrovna on the new book by Phil Shenon. Ms. Alexandrovna writes:

Bayoumi moved to London in 2001 and lived there until his arrest immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks. Following his release, Bayoumi returned to Saudi Arabia, where he was interviewed in October 2003 by the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, and Senior Counsel Dieter Snell.

Snell did not respond to requests for comment; Zeilkow could not be reached.

According to Shenon, several staff members working under Snell, “felt strongly that they had demonstrated a close Saudi government connection,” based on “explosive material” on al-Bayoumi and Fahad al-Thumairy, a “shadowy Saudi diplomat in Los Angeles.”

Shenon recounts how Snell, in preparing his team’s account of the plot, purged almost all of the most serious allegations against the Saudi government and moved the “explosive” supporting evidence to the small print of the report’s footnotes. (The Commission, pp. 398-399)

Two commission investigators who were working on documenting the 9/11 plot, Michael Jacobsen and Raj De, argued that it was “crazy” to insist on 100 percent proof when it came to al-Qaeda or the Saudi regime. In the end, however, and with a publishing deadline looming, Snell’s caution and Zelikow’s direction buried apparently promising leads.

Zelikow denies explosive charges in new book

From ABC News:

The former executive director of the 9/11 Commission denies explosive charges of undisclosed ties to the Bush White House or interference with the panel's report.

The charges are said to be contained in New York Times reporter Philip Shenon's unreleased book, "The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation," according to Max Holland, an author and blogger, and generally confirmed by the book's publisher. Although the book is not slated to hit stores until early next month, Holland says he bought a copy of the audio version at a bookstore. (Attempts to purchase the book, in any format, at the Barnes & Noble across the street from ABC News headquarters were unsuccessful.)

9/11 Commission co-chairs Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton hired former Condoleezza Rice aide Philip Zelikow to be executive director, Zelikow failed to tell them about his role helping Rice set up President George W. Bush's National Security Council in early 2001 – and that he was "instrumental" in demoting Richard Clarke, the onetime White House counterterrorism czar who was fixated on the threat from Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, according to Holland's version of Shenon's tome.

"[Zelikow] had laid the groundwork for much of what went wrong at the White House in the weeks and months before September 11. Would he want people to know that?" Shenon writes, according to Holland.

Zelikow denied that was the case. "It was very well-known I had served on this transition team and had declined to go into the administration. I worked there for a total of one month. I had interviewed Sandy Berger, Dick Clarke and most of the NSC staff." He noted he recused himself from working on the section of the panel's report addressing the NSC transition, and that other staffers had held conflicting positions in the Clinton administration.

In his book, Shenon also says that while working for the panel, Zelikow appears to have had private conversations with former White House political director Karl Rove, despite a ban on such communication, according to Holland. Shenon reports that Zelikow later ordered his assistant to stop keeping a log of his calls, although the commission's general counsel overruled him, Holland wrote.

Zelikow told ABC News he was under no prohibition that barred his conversations with Rove, and did not recall asking his assistant to stop logging his calls, although he did speak to her about leaving phone messages in a publicly visible place. "Two other people took my calls as well, and neither have a recollection" of Zelikow asking for calls not to be logged, he said. Further, Zelikow said 9/11 Commission general counsel Daniel Marcus did not raise the matter with Zelikow at the time.

Reached by phone Wednesday afternoon, Marcus declined to confirm or deny the events.

Zelikow flatly denied discussing the commission's work with Rove. "I never discussed the 9/11 Commission with him, not at all. Period."

What's more, the idea of Zelikow and Rove conspiring over the commission's work was unrealistic, the ex-director indicated. "I was not a very popular person in the Bush White House when this was going on. There's a lot of carryover of that to this day."

Holland reports that Shenon discovered some panel staffers believed Zelikow stopped them from submitting a report depicting Rice's performance as "amount[ing] to incompetence, or something not far from it."

"I don't think that staffers will bear that out," Zelikow said. Out of 85 staffers, half a dozen were disgruntled, Zelikow told ABC News. "Under the circumstances, that was a pretty low fraction," he said. "But they all talked to Shenon."

Halfway into the panel's operation, Zelikow told his bosses under oath of the once-hidden ties, Holland's blog says Shenon's book reports. Upon hearing the details, Shenon writes, Marcus concluded Zelikow "never should have been hired," according to Holland.

"That's not right," Marcus said when told of the account. "That's certainly not true."

Shenon directed calls to his publisher, Twelve Books, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group.

Cary Goldstein, a spokesman for Hachette, confirmed the blog's characterization of the book's contents, but said he could not confirm direct quotes.

"It's not a surprise," Goldstein said when asked his reaction to the leak of the book's details before its Feb. 5 publication date. "I think people are really curious to see what the report had looked like if it hadn't been neutered in [the panel's] effort to be unanimous."

Former Rep. Weldon Aide Pleads Guilty

From the AP:

The one-time top aide to former Rep. Curt Weldon pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to a conspiracy charge as part of a plea agreement.

Russell James Caso Jr., 34, who was chief of staff for the Pennsylvania Republican, acknowledged he intentionally did not report to the House income his wife made for doing work for a nonprofit company tied to Weldon.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Howard Sklamberg told U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. that Caso has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in an investigation. Outside court, Sklamberg was asked after the hearing whether that probe involved Weldon. The prosecutor said he could not discuss the case.

But Weldon's defense lawyer, William Winning, said it would be a "little naive" to think the investigation didn't involve Weldon.

Weldon has not been charged. He used to represent the Philadelphia-area, speaks Russian and led congressional trips abroad before his election loss last year.

He served on the governing body of the nonprofit, which sought to help U.S. businesses operate in Russia and facilitate the flow of trade between the countries, records show.

At Weldon's direction, Caso organized meetings in which Weldon and Caso made presentations to high-level officials in the departments of State and Energy and the National Security Council seeking money for the proposals that Caso's wife, Sherrill Caso, had worked on, court records show.

One proposal sought to facilitate cooperation for joint missile activities and the other sought to reduce the risk of proliferation of biological and chemical weapons from Russia to rogue nations, records show.

Court records indicate that Caso's wife did "little work" for $17,500 she received from the company, but that she received $1,500 for editing documents for the firm that were part of the proposals presented to the officials.

Caso, who was Weldon's top aide in 2005 and 2006, could face up to five years in prison. His next court date is May 23.

He was named a vice president this year at Avineon Inc., a technology company that has contracts with the government.

Caso's lawyer, Kelly Kramer, declined comment after the hearing.

Weldon spent 20 years in Congress before losing to Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa. Weldon was vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee at the time of his loss.

Three weeks before Election Day last year, the FBI raided the homes of Weldon's daughter, Karen Weldon, and her business partner, Charles P. Sexton Jr., as well as other locations.

Winning, Weldon's attorney, declined to discuss details spelled out in the court documents.

"I can assure you that we're confident that the congressman did not do anything wrong, and at the end of the day here, his name will be cleared and his reputation will be cleared, and this cloud of suspicion that has been circling around him will be lifted," Winning said.

UPDATE: Here is the press release from the Justice Department.