You’re dismissed and other news
By Mel Bochner
Defense attorneys were critical of the FBI’s reliance on the informant [Richard Bistrong], an executive of a Florida body armor company [Armor Holdings] who they called a sociopathic liar with a devious mind. They said he was able to persuade federal agents to let him plead guilty to a single bribery count for more than $4.4 million in bribes to officials at the United Nations and overseas even though he had a history of bribery, embezzlement, tax evasion, drug use and solicitation of prostitutes. ~Justice gives up sting case over foreign bribes
Reliance on contractors in Afghanistan draws continuing scrutiny
Charles S. Clark - (GovExec) – February 24, 2012 – The use of contractors in the decade-long U.S. effort to train Afghanistan’s army and police forces continues to raise policy questions as the Obama administration struggles to meet its goal of winding down the American troop presence in the volatile region.
The Government Accountability Office on Thursday reported that the Defense Department — after it took over from the State Department in 2009 the task of training and equipping Afghan security forces — hired a contracting firm without first weighing the advantages and disadvantages of assigning U.S. government personnel to train the war-torn country’s national police.
At the request of the Senate Armed Services Committee, GAO auditors reviewed the Pentagon’s decision process leading up to the contract award to DynCorp in 2010. Defense planners had determined the training programs were not “inherently governmental functions.” They did not assess the impact of transferring the training responsibilities from contractors to government agencies that they said lacked enough employees with the right skills in civilian policing, the auditors found.
Defense officials said they “were not aware of any lessons learned from other DoD-led foreign police training programs that directly address the advantages and disadvantages of using USG or contractor personnel to carry out the [Afghan National Security Forces] training program,” the report said. (Click HERE for article)
Obama Administration Called Out for Hypocrisy Over Whistleblower Prosecutions
Bryan Rahija – (POGO) – February 24, 2012 – Kudos to ABC’s Jake Tapper for calling out the White House on its unprecedented use of the Espionage Act to silence whistleblowers.
In a question to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney at a press briefing earlier this week, Tapper pointed out the massive disconnect between the Obama Administration’s praise of aggressive journalism abroad and its apparent proclivity for silencing truth-tellers on the home front:
The White House keeps praising these journalists who are — who’ve been killed…How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistleblowers to court?
You’re — currently I think that you’ve invoked it the sixth time, and before the Obama administration, it had only been used three times in history. You’re — this is the sixth time you’re suing a CIA officer for allegedly providing information in 2009 about CIA torture. Certainly that’s something that’s in the public interest of the United States. The administration is taking this person to court. There just seems to be disconnect here. You want aggressive journalism abroad; you just don’t want it in the United States.
That’s right—the Obama Administration has brandished the Espionage Act in six cases to prosecute leaks of classified information to the media, compared to just three such cases in all previous administrations. This effectively equates blowing the whistle to a ninth-circle offense, putting truth tellers in the same category as the likes of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.
Carney’s reply held about as much substance as a fist full of cotton candy—he said he “would hesitate to speak to any particular case, for obvious reasons,” and referred Tapper to the Justice Department. (Click HERE for article)
Judge Orders Viktor Bout Out of Solitary
Adam Klasfeld – (Courthouse News) – MANHATTAN – February 24, 2012 – International arms smuggler Viktor Bout must be transferred to general population of Manhattan Correctional Center, a federal judge ruled, in an order slamming solitary confinement as unconstitutional.
