Who is the new co-chair of the Bush Administration self-investigation? Let's look, shall we?
By the way, I searched Google for his photograph. I couldn't find one. Anyone know what he looks like?
There is a lot of information out there about him, but you have to dig a bit. This is a summary of what I've learned so far:
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He is a
member of the Federalist Society who participated in the anti-Clinton coup along with Kenneth Starr: <snip>
The judge who
declared that Clinton was "at war with the US government" is a long-time political operative in the right-wing of the Republican Party. In 1980 Silberman served as a Reagan campaign aide carrying out some of the most delicate and politically sensitive assignments. He was dubbed the Reagan-Bush campaign's "ambassador to Iran" for his
behind-the-scenes contacts with the Khomeini regime.The Republican campaign was seeking to determine whether Khomeini intended to release any American hostages, held in the US embassy in Tehran, before the election. By some accounts, Reagan and Bush sought to forestall any such "October surprise," which would presumably have aided the Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter, and Silberman conveyed their sentiments to the Iranians.
Silberman's reward was a nomination to the Court of Appeals for Washington DC, the most political and powerful circuit court because it handles most cases involving the federal government. His most important decision on the Court of Appeals came in the case of
Lt. Col. Oliver North, the principal figure in the Iran-Contra affair. Silberman and fellow justice David Sentelle, a former aide to arch-right-wing Republican Senator Jesse Helms,
voided the convictions of both North and Admiral John Poindexter in 1990. Their intervention played a key role in sabotaging the investigation by Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh.Silberman's close ally Sentelle was largely responsible for the 1994 decision to remove Whitewater prosecutor Robert Fiske and
replace him with the more conservative and highly partisan Republican Kenneth Starr as Independent Counsel. Sentelle chaired the three judge panel which removed Fiske and appointed Starr in his place. The other two members of the panel were retired judges who normally follow the direction of chairman. When Silberman declares that Starr alone represents the US government, he is silent on how the right-wing judge--a former colleague of Silberman's on the Circuit Court bench--came to be chosen.
http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/oct1998/clin-o13.shtml--------------------------------------------------------------------
Laurence Silberman is also the mentor of
USA PATRIOT Act author (versions I and II) Viet Dinh. Viet Dinh is also a member of the Federalist Society, and a former assistant attorney general under John Ashcroft. He resigned over a dispute regarding the detention of Jose Padilla, a US citizen:
<snip>
The Justice Department's war on terrorism has drawn intense scrutiny from the left and the right. Now, a chief architect of the USA Patriot Act and a former top assistant to Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft are joining the fray, voicing concern about aspects of the administration's anti-terrorism policy.
At issue is the government's power to designate and detain "enemy combatants," in particular in
the case of "dirty bomb" plot suspect Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn-born former gang member who was picked up at a Chicago airport 18 months ago by the FBI and locked in a military brig without access to a lawyer. Civil liberties groups and others contend that Padilla — as an American citizen arrested in the U.S. — is being denied due process of law under the Constitution.
Viet Dinh, who until May headed the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy, said in a series of recent speeches and in an interview with The Times that he thought the government's detention of Padilla was flawed and unlikely to survive court review.
source:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/120103E.shtml--------------------------------------------------------------------
Laurence Silberman provided the deciding vote on the US Court of Appeals that overturned the felony conviction of Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal:Some of that fury played out within conservative judicial circles. In Firewall, Walsh’s book about the Iran-contra scandal, the special prosecutor described how the black-robed Republican appointees to the U.S. Appeals Court in Washington “waited like the strategic reserves of an embattled army.”
A leader of this partisan faction was Judge Laurence H. Silberman, an obstreperous conservative who had served as a foreign policy adviser to Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign. At one point during the Iran-contra scandal, Silberman berated MacKinnon over his support for the special-prosecutor law.
“At a D.C. circuit conference, he
had gotten into a shouting match about independent counsel with Judge George MacKinnon,” Walsh wrote. “Silberman not only had hostile views but seemed to hold them in anger.”
On the North appeal in 1990, Silberman teamed up with a younger conservative, Judge David Sentelle, to overturn the three felony counts against North. The vote was 2-1.
source: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/012901b.html
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Others here have posted about Chuck Robb, the other vice-chairman of this sham investigation. That's a whole 'nother story.
This will be a central campaign issue, count on it.
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