Yesterday, in my diary on the U.S. attorney scandal, I followed up Google links on Brett Tolman and William Moschella that took us to lies told about U.S. attorneys, the "inserted" section 501 of the Patriot Act that allowed administration indefinite appointments, and to an obscure battle over an interim appointment in South Dakota that links to GOP voter intimidation efforts there.
Today, I have something more explosive. Tip of the hat to hungrycoyote, whose comment in the diary led me to Daniel Collins, and hence to a shadowy group, Citizens for the Common Defence, whose roots go into the Oval Office, and are connected to the crucial changes in the Patriot Act that allowed Bush to game the judiciary.
hungrycoyote's comment is worth quoting as a whole. It refers to a McClatchy article the other day, discussing Moschella's contacts on the famous insertion discussion. (All emphases in bold are mine, unless otherwise noted.)
There's more on the story about Collins:
Excellent job putting together all the pieces. I think this piece from McClatchy Newspapers tells a little more of the story about Collins than the Yahoo story you linked to did:
The e-mails released Wednesday show Moschella corresponding in 2004 with a Los Angeles attorney named Daniel Collins, who had previously worked for the Justice Department.
In telephone interviews, Moschella and Collins both said Collins had floated the idea of taking district judges out of the vacancy-filling process back in 2003, when he was still at Justice. A former assistant U.S. attorney, Collins said the ability of a district court judge to appoint an interim U.S. attorney if the Senate did not confirm a nominee raised constitutional questions about the separation of powers.
In 2004, Collins said Moschella e-mailed him saying he wanted to pursue such a change. Collins said he did not ask Moschella what triggered his interest and Moschella did not volunteer it.
Collins warned Moschella that if district judges lost their appointment power, the Justice Department would have to figure out how to fill the vacancies. Among the options were making rolling appointments; putting the deputy U.S. attorney in the job temporarily, or allowing the interim appointee to remain indefinitely, Collins said Wednesday.
Collins said that the last option "was certainly never my intention." He added that he did not know why Moschella chose to draft the provision that way.
None of the e-mails released so far by the Justice Department connects the White House's political team to the legislation prior to its passage. More documents are expected to arrive by week's end.
Justice Dept. distances White House from firings of U.S. attorneys
By Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor, McClatchy Newspapers, Wed, Mar. 14, 2007
First, on the question of why Moschella called Collins, and what motivated him to make the change in the Patriot Act on the appointment of judges. You can read my previous diary for a more complete answer. But Arlen Specter himself said the impetus came from a "difficulty with the replacement of a US Attorney in South Dakota."
But second, why call Daniel Collins in the first place? Who is Daniel Collins? Be patient, because the links will take us right back to... Gonzales and Bush!
The story says he's an attorney and a former Justice Department official. Well, I will draw upon Collins's own testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 11, 2006. The hearing is on Hamdan v Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court case that threw out Bush's military commissions, as initially constituted, as not consistent with either federal law or the Geneva Convention.
Daniel Collins and the "Citizens for the Common Defense"
Before the Senate committee (and perhaps you remember him, Senator Leahy?), Collins described himself as a former Associate Deputy Attorney General ("ADAG") in the office of Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson from June 2001 to September 2003. I will let Collins speak for himself:
I am now back in private practice in Los Angeles, and in that capacity, I filed an amicus curiae brief in support of the Government in Hamdan, on behalf of an association known as "Citizens for the Common Defence." I emphasize, however, that the views I offer today are solely my own.
I had never heard of the "Citizens for a Common Defense" (CCD). They don't have their own website. Who are they?
Well, three prominent speakers were introduced by prominent neocon David Frum at an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) meeting on April 26, 2004. They were Bradford Berenson, Richard Klingler, and Adam Charnes -- the first two were described as leaders or founders of CCD, while Charnes is described as their counsel. Frum calls Berenson and Klingler his "friends".
Political savvy readers should recognize some of these names. Berenson, for instance, is the current attorney for key U.S. attorney scandal figure Kyle Sampson!!
Klingler is a recently appointed Senior Associate Counsel to President Bush!
Charnes is a former Principal Deputy District Attorney General at the Department of Justice, also said to work in the Office of Legal Affairs there. Charnes is also described as a protege of John Roberts while Charnes was at the law firm of Hogan & Hartson.
Bradford Berenson: this guy is Everywhere!
So, to recap. Moschella calls Collins about changing the Patriot Act provision on how interim U.S. attorneys are appointed. Moschella believes leaving such appointments to judges is too political (see my last diary). He then also leaves out Congressional approval when drafting that portion of the law. Collins says he doesn't understand how that happened.
Collins is linked to CCD, presenting an amicus curiae to the Supreme Court re Hamdan on CCD's behalf. CCD is led by former and current White House Counsels.
Former? Well, Bradford Berenson was Associate White House Counsel from Jan. 2001 to Jan. 2003. He was an associate counsel to Alberto Gonzales. This member of the Federalist Society now works as an attorney at Sidley Austin Brown & Wood:
After serving as associate White House counsel under President George W. Bush, Bradford A. Berenson has rejoined the Washington office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood as a partner. He will divide his time between the firm’s white collar and appellate litigation groups, where he practiced before being appointed by the president in January 2001. During his two-year tenure in the White House, he handled a variety of legal, legislative and policy issues associated with the Administration’s initiatives with Congress, domestic issues, and the war on terrorism.
At the White House, Mr. Berenson’s responsibilities included work on judicial selection, executive privilege, and responses to congressional oversight efforts. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, he played a significant role in the executive branch’s counterterrorism response. He worked on the USA Patriot Act, the military order authorizing the use of military commissions, detainee policy and anti-terrorism litigation, presidential action against terrorist financing, and the restructuring of the federal government to create a new Department of Homeland Security.
Oh, yes, and besides being the current attorney for Kyle Sampson, Berenson was also the attorney for Rove aide Susan Ralston, implicated in the Abramoff scandal.
[Begin update]
But before all this, according to a Jane Meyer piece at the New Yorker, Berenson was a close associate of David Addington, now Cheney's chief of staff. He also helped draft the original Military Commissions executive order!
On November 13, 2001, an executive order setting up the military commissions was issued under Bush's signature. The decision stunned Powell; the national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice; the highest-ranking lawyer at the C.I.A.; and many judge advocate generals, or JAGs, the top lawyers in the military services. None of them had been consulted. Michael Chertoff... was also bypassed.... According to multiple sources, Addington secretly usurped the process. He and a few hand-picked associates, including Bradford Berenson and Timothy Flanigan, a lawyer in the White House counsel's office, wrote the executive order creating the commissions.
SourceWatch has also plenty to say about Mr. Berenson. And I note they also call CCD a "shadowy group".
Bradford A. Berenson is one of the original eight associate counsels during Alberto Gonzales's tenure as White House counsel, that was described in a Washington Post 2005.01.02 article titled, Gonzales Helped Set the Course for Detainees, as being comprised of:
a tightknit group of Washington-based former clerks to Supreme Court or appellate judges, all of whom had worked on at least one of three touchstones of the conservative movement: the Whitewater and Monica S. Lewinsky inquiries of former president Bill Clinton, the Bush-Cheney election campaign, and the Florida vote-counting dispute.
This group of associate counsels exerted a great deal of control in the creation of the Patriot Bill, Gonzales' determinations regarding the legal statures of "detainees" captured in the War on Terrorism, the validity of the Geneva Conventions, and a new less stringent legal definition of torture.
Quite a club, eh?
[end update -- and thanks to adios and cotterperson in comments below, in addition to smintheus who nudged me some]
I'd really like to see Berenson called before a Senate or House committee to see what he knows.
What about Richard Klingler?
The other founder of CCD, Richard Klingler, is a former National Security Council Legal Adviser. In October 2006, he was appointed by Bush to be his Senior Associate Counsel.
So, let's connect the dots. Moschella turns to CCD attorney Collins for help in redrafting judicial appointment legislation to be inserted, i.e., hidden, in the 100s of pages of that omnibus, so-called antiterrorism bill, the Patriot Act. (Remember Michael Moore asking Congressmen if they had ever even read the legislation?)
Now, who did Collins talk to about this? Did he discuss matters with Bradford Berenson, founder of CCD, and a White House Counsel who had worked on judicial selection and executive privilege? Or with current W.H. counsel Klingler, or with anyone else at Justice? Or with Bush? Rove?
I don't know the answers to this, but the plotters behind this attempt to change the Constitution and game the judicial system are becoming clearer.
I fear that the circus that will become this scandal will revel in the fall of Gonzales, and miss the behind-the-scenes actors who really made this all possible. And that would be a shame, because they lead right to the Oval Office.