"House Panel Says Rice Is Hindering Its Work"

[madrchsod]

"...In a Monday letter, Blackwater attorney Stephen M. Ryan told the committee that the State Department had directed the company "not to disclose any information" regarding its Iraq security contract without prior department authorization in writing. "This contractual direction from the DOS is unambiguous," Ryan wrote...

Ryan enclosed a Sept. 20 State Department letter to Blackwater reminding that "all documents and information generated in the course of performance" of its contract "are fully subject to the control of the State Department...

Calling the department's position "wholly inappropriate," Waxman wrote that "unless the President is prepared to make an assertion of executive privilege over the Blackwater documents, the State Department has no authority to prevent their transmission to Congress....

A subsequent department letter to Blackwater, dated yesterday and sent to the committee, clarified that only "classified" company documents are subject to prior review, after which the State Department "will . . . provide authorization, as appropriate, for disclosure to the Committee, consistent with Executive Branch responsibilities to safeguard national security information."

so blackwater still gets a pass unless waxman demands every scrap of paper on blackwater relationship with the state dept. will bush assert executive privilege? this is going to be very interesting...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/25/AR2007092502447_pf.html
House Panel Says Rice Is Hindering Its Work - washingtonpost.com

[ananda]

1. It's all pretend.

Everything Congress does and says is just for show..
including investigations and hearings.

Absolutely nothing gets done that Bushinc doesn't
want done... and everything gets done that Bushinc
wants.

Period.

[Supersedeas]

6. Condi's version of transparent and open government

[Totally Committed]

8. Exactly... until she is brought in in cuffs and jailed for contempt, they are just play-acting.

NOthing else to see here....

TC

[Clovis Sangrail]

2. not interesting... sad

There will be a great gnashing of teeth from "Democratic" politicians and then.... nothing.

Just like Harriet Myers.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. Does that make Blackwater, the White House's private army?

[madrchsod]

4. i would say it does

i think they really do not to admit they are.

[The Backlash Cometh]

5. Sounds like they're taking direct orders from the White House, and

the White House is blocking interference for them.

[hootinholler]

7. Outrageous!

Since when does the DOS get to over rule a Congressional oversight inquiry?

It's long past time to play hardball.

-Hoot

[bleever]

9. Maybe if Congress snowed the administration under in subpoenas

their own approval rating might go up just a wee bit.

Remember all the talk about how impeaching Clinton would doom the Republican party in the next election, and it didn't happen?

We have nothing to fear but hesitation.

[hootinholler]

11. I think the Sargent At Arms should be sent to acquire what ever is necessary.

We are well and truly screwn.

-Hoot

[bleever]

12. And get those jail cells in the Capitol building swept and ready

for new guests.

[hootinholler]

13. Fuck sweeping them...

Maybe we can route sewage through them?

-Hoot

[Supersedeas]

10. Interesting exchange bt State Dept spokesman and reporter -- link

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2007/sep/92462.htm

QUESTION: Has the Department made some determination that this multibillion dollar umbrella contract for worldwide personal protective services is secret and needs to be kept from the American people, either the entire thing itself or its components with the three -- the tens of millions of dollars that are spent by the government for these three companies to provide security in Iraq?

MR. CASEY: Matt, you know, in terms of the specific document that's been signed by people, I honestly don't know whether there are some elements of contracts for security reasons that aren't public, whether this document is specifically publicly available or not.

I don't believe there's any great secret about it and again, as we've said, the operations of Blackwater in Iraq are covered under a worldwide protective services contract. That contract has a ceiling on it of several billion dollars. That contract is -- has been awarded through a competitive process to three companies. Blackwater is one of them. DynCorp and Triple Canopy are the other two. Off of that general contract, there are individual task orders that are given for operations for varying amounts at varying times depending on the services needed. And those three companies compete for each of those task orders.

So these are public contracts, they're competed through the regular, normal system. I don't think there's any particular surprises in them. And again, we -- I don't think it also comes as any surprise to anyone out there that we spend tens of millions of dollars every year through our Diplomatic Security service as well as through these contractors to protect our officials out there, and not only our officials in Iraq, but under the worldwide contract, officials in a variety of other countries and locations. Unfortunately, it's the world we live in and we need to make sure that our people can do the job they need to do, but that they also have the proper kinds of security necessary to ensure that they can do that job safely and securely.

QUESTION: So if they're public and there's nothing secret about them, why can't we see them?

MR. CASEY: Matt, I'm not sure you can't. I just, you know, didn't bring a sheet of contract documents with me.

QUESTION: Tom, I've spent three day -- two and a half days now, almost three days trying to find -- trying to get a hold of these things and nobody seems to be able to help me.

MR. CASEY: Well, Matt, you know, what can I tell you? I'd invite you to talk to our folks in the contracting office and certainly, there are, you know, other means at your disposal for getting these documents.

QUESTION: Such as?

MR. CASEY: Such as the Freedom of Information Act, such as the conversations that you might care to have with our contracting officials. I'm not a contracting expert. I don't have contracting documents carried around in my pocket. But the fact of the matter is these contracts are a matter of public record. They, I'm sure, are something that you can obtain and peruse at your leisure.

But I also still don't quite understand what the point is about whether it's 20 million dollars or 30 million dollars or 50 million dollars. We had an incident here in which innocent loss -- life was lost. We want to do what we can to figure out why that happened and we also want to deal with some of the larger issues that are raised here and that's why we've got this commission established. But I'm still kind of at a loss to understand what the value of an individual contract does or has to bear on that discussion.

QUESTION: Well, you seem to be hooked on the idea that it's the value of the contract and that's not necessarily what -- although it is an important element and one that I think that the American taxpayer probably deserves to know, it is not the -- certainly, the only thing that would be in these contracts and tasking orders that you mention. There are other things as well that are in there that would be of extreme interest to people, I think.

MR. CASEY: Matt, I invite you to talk to our folks that do contracting. And to the extent these are public documents, I'm sure they'll be happy to provide them to you.

QUESTION: But you just said that they are public documents, so I guess --

MR. CASEY: Matt, I do not know the status of any of these individual contracts. My assumption is contracts that are competitively bid have at least certain elements of them that are public, whether all of them, part of them, whether fifteen lawyers would give you fifteen different answers, I don't know. But I'm -- there is no secret about any of this. There's nothing that's being hidden from you or anybody else.

............................

Does the far right hand speak to the left or even the middle??