ABC's Brian Ross is reporting on his blog The Blotter that Speaker of the House Denny Hastert is the target of an on-going FBI corruption investigation:

Federal officials say the Congressional bribery investigation now includes Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, based on information from convicted lobbyists who are now cooperating with the government.

Part of the investigation involves a letter Hastert wrote three years ago, urging the Secretary of the Interior to block a casino on an Indian reservation that would have competed with other tribes.

There's just one problem with that theory: The FBI denies the story, and Hastert himself is demanding a full retraction.

Despite the denials and request for a retraction, Ross is sticking to his storyÂ… sort of:

ABC's law enforcement sources said the Justice Department denial was meant only to deny that Hastert was a formal “target” or “subject” of the investigation.
"Whether they like it or not, members of Congress, including Hastert, are under investigation," one federal official said tonight.
The investigation of Hastert's relationship with Abramoff is in the early stages, according to these officials, and could eventually conclude that Abramoff's information was unfounded.

Gentlemen, start your parsing.

In the original article, Ross was quite careful to only say that Hastert was “in the mix,” a vague, rather nebulous statement that most readers would interpret to mean that Hastert was most likely the target of a criminal investigation. Indeed, the Reality-Based Community (an oxymoron if there ever was one) seems to be exactly under that impression in their update, and the ambiguous wording is also apparently interpreted in a similar fashion at Booman Tribune, The Carpetbagger Report, and Washington Monthly, all leading liberal political blogs.

But these blogs were hardly alone. Mainstream news sources such as Bloomberg were also taken in by Ross's too-perfect parsing, declaring:

U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert is under investigation by the FBI in the corruption scandal involving former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, ABC News reported.
ABC News, citing unidentified Justice Department officials, said the information involving Hastert was provided by lobbyists who are now cooperating with the investigation.

Reuters and even local ABC stations were also apparently taken in.

Ross provided an initial report with carefully constructed sentences that are phrased in such a way that even the best of minds inferred that Hastert is most likely the target of the investigation.

Bravo, Mr. Ross. Very well played.

So what is occurring here? Are professional journalists (Richard Esposito and Rhonda Schwartz also contributed to the ABC reports) ginning up excitable bloggers and less careful fellow journalists to establish smears they can then plausibly deny as being mere misinterpretations?

Ross's own sources seem to think so:

You guys wrote the story very carefully but they are not reading it very carefully," a senior official said.

Hastert may be a number of things, but he is not the focus of a Congressional corruption probe.

Ross's purposefully misleading, barely justifiable reporting seems to be a classic case of sensationalism, and would appear to cross into the ethically-challenged world of yellow journalism.

Denny Hastert may or may not be found to be of interest in Congressional corruption investigations, but one thing we now know to be true: the reporting of Brian Ross, "ABC News' Chief Investigative Correspondent" is not to be taken at face value.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:01 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Isn't this interesting:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.
ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

The far left, of course, has started hyperventilating about this, even though the story has just a single anonymous source. It apparently doesn't pass the credibility threshold needed to be published as a news story.

But let us assume for the sake of argument that the information above is true, and that Brian Ross and Richard Esposito are having their phone records tracked. We should then ask ourselves the following questions:

• What exactly do they mean by "tracking" in the paragraphs above? Do they mean wiretapping?
  
• Who are they tracking, or trying to track, and why?
  
• Is it legal and ethical?

What exactly do they mean by “tracking” in the paragraphs above? Do they mean wiretapping?
In this instance, tracking means that the government was looking at which phone numbers were called by these reporters. They were not listening to the actual content of the calls, which is called wiretapping.

Who are they tracking, or trying to track, and why?
The goal in such an effort would be to see if U.S. government employees were illegally leaking classified information to the press. If a government employee thinks that a crime is being committed, they are protected by legal processes on both the State and Federal level as long as they follow rules in reporting alleged infractions to higher officials via an accepted and well-defined process. If these employees instead leak these charges to the press or other outside agencies, they may guilty of serious crimes themselves.

Is it legal and ethical?
It would seem that this is legal, as this seems to be the point of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (CALEA) under President Clinton.

From the standpoint of ethics, I can come up with very little justification for employees to leak to the press. Well-defined procedures are in place to deal with illegal and unethical behaviors that they may uncover, and the government has every right—indeed, they have a duty—to enforce the law.

In short, based upon what little information contained in this ABC News blog post, it appears that the reporters are very upset that their access to leakers inside the government might be at risk. I will assume that they'll only be more disturbed if these leakers are prosecuted for the crimes they've apparently committed, and finding a willing source becomes that much more difficult for the reporters.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:47 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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So tell us CBS News, do you have any particular concerns or fears that you would like to express about President Bush's plan to send the National Guard to the border?

Border speech. Soldier firing. Bush = Hitler.

Got it.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:42 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Dear Jamie,

That "heavy" machine gun we discussed in your al-Zarqawi lovefest has surfaced again. Several can be found here, being fired by Salvadorian paratroopers roughly the same size as Oompa-Loompas. My, that sure looks tough.

BTW, I'll let you know when I find an article talking about the M249's unbearably hard trigger pull. Surprisingly, I haven't found one yet.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:11 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Real Ugly American has a nice review up of Hugh Hewitt's Painting the Map Red.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 07:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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While looking for more out-take video to analyze of Musab al-Zarqawi's shooting session for my Blooper Troopers post, I ran across a video report on the new Zarqawi footage by CNN's Jamie McIntyre.

It runs 3:07, and Ian has made it available as either a .WMV or .MP4 at Expose the Left.

As stated in my previous post, Zarqawi is shown to be less than impressive with the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) he is shown firing in this video. He is unfamiliar with the weapon's operation, bracing for heavy recoil before firing, and then...

Pop... pop... pop.

Zarqawi can't get the machine gun to fire as a machine gun, in fully-automatic mode. It then seems to seize completely, and Zarqawi looks befuddled. While the footage is too grainy to tell for certain, it appears that the gun suffers a probable "stovepipe" malfunction, where a cartridge casing fails to eject completely and is caught by the bolt, resulting in a weapon stoppage. An associate happens to be nearby who has at least rudimentary experience with firearms, and he grabs the bolt handle and cycles the action to release the stovepiped round.

And as you watch the terrorist and his henchmen wrestle with the malfunctioning M249, the damnedest thing happens: CNN's Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre starts making excuses for al-Zarqawi's performance.

From 0:48-1:07 to on the clip:

"This weapon is an American weapon. It's called a SAW, or Squad Automatic Weapon, a very heavy machine gun which has a very heavy trigger; it's not easy to fire, and in fact it might be quite understandable that anyone--even somebody with weapon's experience, wasn't familiar with this particular weapon might have trouble firing off more than a single shot at a time...

It is bad enough that a U.S. journalist is seemingly making excuses for an al Qaeda terrorist, but not only is McIntyre making excuses, he is making demonstrably false excuses.

The M249 is light machine gun, the lightest dedicated machine gun in the U.S. Military. It fires the lightweight 5.56 NATO round, a cartridge developed from the .223 Remington, a cartridge designed to kill woodchucks and other small game. Most states will not allow hunters to use such a lightweight cartridge for medium and large game because it is so underpowered.

Nor is the M249 plausibly a "heavy" machine gun as far as weight goes. The M249 in the configuration shown weighs approximately 15 lbs, with the 200-round box magazine adding another 7 lbs when full. By way of comparison, the M2 .50 Caliber Browning, a real heavy machine gun, weighs 84 lbs without its 44 lbs tripod and ammunition.

McIntyre also claims that Zarqawi was having problems because of the M249's trigger. It would be interesting for Mr. McIntyre to reveal his source for his claim that the M249 "has a very heavy trigger." I have been unable to find so much as a single source that describes the standard trigger pull of the M249 as being "heavy." It is such a minor factor in the weapon's operation that I cannot find it mentioned at all.

Even the fact that the M249 is a fully-automatic weapon doesn't keep McIntyre from trying to float the excuse that some who, "wasn't familiar with this particular weapon might have trouble firing off more than a single shot at a time." Even General Lynch notes at 2:06 that "it's supposed to be automatic fire, he's shooting single shots, one at a time...something's wrong with his machine gun."

But it isn't just that Jamie McIntyre floated one lame excuse for the ineptitude of a terrorist that was so astounding, it is that he did so more than once.

After General Lynch makes his comments on Zarqawi's problems with his machine gun, McIntyre states from 2:50-3:50 into the clip:

...it's not clear at all that it really shows much about Zarqawi's military abilities with the weapon, because as I said, the Squad Automatic Weapon, a very heavy trigger, hard to fire unless you've had specific training on it, and one would imagine he hasn't had a lot of specific training on American weapons."

I can understand that as CNN's senior Pentagon correspondent for well over a decade McIntyre might have developed a certain degree of respect for this nation's enemies, but that doesn't mean he should go out of his way to fabricate excuses for them.

Update: I've now talked to several SAW gunners, including one who was a trainer, and the consensus viewpoint among them is that the terrorists have not cleaned this particular weapon, which caused cycling problems leading to the embarrassing jam. Jason at milblog Countercolumn has a post that compliments this one any goes into further details about the M249.

Sadly,as pathetic as McIntyre's video segment was, that bastion of liberalism, the NY Times is always ready to go that extra mile:

An effort by the American military to discredit the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi by showing video outtakes of him fumbling with a machine gun — suggesting that he lacks real fighting skill — was questioned yesterday by retired and active American military officers.

The video clips, released on Thursday to news organizations in Baghdad, show the terrorist leader confused about how to handle an M-249 squad automatic weapon, known as an S.A.W., which is part of the American inventory of infantry weapons.

[snip]

The weapon in question is complicated to master, and American soldiers and marines undergo many days of training to achieve the most basic competence with it. Moreover, the weapon in Mr. Zarqawi's hands was an older variant, which makes its malfunctioning unsurprising. The veterans said Mr. Zarqawi, who had spent his years as a terrorist surrounded by simpler weapons of Soviet design, could hardly have been expected to know how to handle it.

Now, who do you chose to believe?

In one corner, we have the New York Times, who cites two officers and a couple of professors (one of whom is a veteran) in their article, without stating if any of these four men have any knowledge of the M249. They do not profess any specific knowledge of the weapon in question at all, and the Times does not provide one fact in this story. It's all opinion. Also in this corner, CNN's Jamie McIntyre who cites completely erroneous information to make excuses for a terrorist.

In the other corner, you have a couple of bloggers who did what the professionals should have, and "Googled" facts about the M249 and similar weapons. The bloggers were in contact with and verified facts through current and former SAW gunners from two countries (United States and Canada).

One side has facts, the other opinion. You choose who you want to believe.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:05 AM | Comments (35) | Add Comment
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Major Chaz is not impressed with what he sees coming from ABC's pending made-for-television bird flu movie:

How many people will now base their knowledge on the Bird Flu from a television movie written by a guy who also wrote the previous TV blockbusters as "Atomic Twister", "Meat Loaf: To Hell and Back", and "Daydream Believers: The Monkees Story".

Hey, it has to be more realistic than Commander in Cheif.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:22 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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You've got to hand it to the Boston Globe's Charlie Savage; if he doesn't like how the facts are arranged, he's more than willing to arrange them on his own. Such was the case in his article Hearing vowed on Bush's powers.

The main focus of the article was President Bush's decision to use Presidential signing statements to bypass provisions of 750 bills that the President thinks may conflict with the Constitution. According to the definition provided by Savage in his article, signing statements are:

Â…official documents in which a president lays out his interpretation of a bill for the executive branch, creating guidelines to follow when it implements the law. The statements are filed without fanfare in the federal record, often following ceremonies in which the president made no mention of the objections he was about to raise in the bill, even as he signed it into law.

That's what Charlie wants you to see. How about another perspective?

Walter Dellinger, Assistant Attorney General under President Clinton, wrote to Bernard Nussbaum, Counsel to President Clinton, in 1993, The Legal Significance of Signing Statements:

To begin with, it appears to be an uncontroversial use of signing statements to explain to the public, and more particularly to interested constituencies, what the President understands to be the likely effects of the bill, and how it coheres or fails to cohere with the Administration's views or programs.

A second, and also generally uncontroversial, function of Presidential signing statements is to guide and direct Executive officials in interpreting or administering a statute. The President has the constitutional authority to supervise and control the activity of subordinate officials within the Executive BranchÂ…

[snip]

A third function, more controversial than either of the two considered above, is the use of signing statements to announce the President's view of the constitutionality of the legislation he is signing. This category embraces at least three species: statements that declare that the legislation (or relevant provisions) would be unconstitutional in certain applications; statements that purport to construe the legislation in a manner that would "save" it from unconstitutionality; and statements that state flatly that the legislation is unconstitutional on its face. Each of these species of statement may include a declaration as to how -- or whether -- the legislation will be enforced.

Thus, the President may use a signing statement to announce that, although the legislation is constitutional on its face, it would be unconstitutional in various applications, and that in such applications he will refuse to execute it. Such a Presidential statement could be analogized to a Supreme Court opinion that upheld legislation against a facial constitutional challenge, but warned at the same time that certain applications of the act would be unconstitutional.

[snip]

In each of the last three Administrations, the Department of Justice has advised the President that the Constitution provides him with the authority to decline to enforce a clearly unconstitutional law. This advice is, we believe, consistent with the views of the Framers. Moreover, four sitting Justices of the Supreme Court have joined in the opinion that the President may resist laws that encroach upon his powers by "disregard[ing] them when they are unconstitutional."

(note: footnote numbers stripped for readability)

The four justices? Scalia, O'Connor, Kennedy and Souter. One might have reason to believe that Justice Alito and/or Chief Justice Roberts would make a similar judgment, rendering a majority decision of 5-4 or 6-3 in the President's favor on the modern Court, though Savage couldn't be troubled to go through the "extensive research" once could do in several minutes on Google that led to this potentially important information.

In other words, despite Specter's incessant grandstanding, John Dean's whining and Savage's perhaps intentionally leading framing, it appears that while Bush's frequency in using signing statements is unusual, it does have both precedent and the apparent support of the Supreme Court.

Of course, Charlie Savage isn't quite done there. Why stop with a little misdirection, when you can try adding to The Big Lie?

Speaking of the President executive order authorizing the National Security Agency to conduct targeted intercepts of suspected terrorist communications where at least one end was on foreign soil, Savage wrote:

Feingold is an outspoken critic of Bush's assertion that his wartime powers give him the authority to set aside laws. The senator has proposed censuring Bush over his domestic spying program, in which the president secretly authorized the military to wiretap Americans' phones without a warrant, bypassing a 1978 surveillance law.

But Savage's assertion as to the nature of the program is is false, and demonstrably so. Not one single claim has ever been made that shows this was a domestic spying program. In all instances, from the original article written in the NY Times, to specific comments made about the program by former NSA director General Michael V. Hayden, to comments made by the White House itself, it has been emphatically stated that the program is not domestic, but international in nature. International means more than one country, which was a primary criteria for all of these intercepts. My six-year-old can understand that oft-repeated concept, so why is it so difficult for Savage to understand? The intercepts were also not a wiretapping of Americans' phones, another "fact" Mr. Savage conveniently cannot support.

Once you have the real facts and misrepresentations of this Globe article laid out in front of you, it is hardly surprising that a recent Reuters poll found that 69% of Americans don't trust the media. With reporters like Charlie Savage more interested in manufacturing news than reporting it, why should they?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:04 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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