Murray Waas has a new article in the National Journal, Internal Affairs, in which he reports that the aborted DOJ probe probably would have targeted Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:

Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according to government records and interviews.

Had it not been quashed, a Justice Department inquiry into the domestic eavesdropping program would likely have examined the actions of Alberto Gonzales.

Bush personally intervened to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work.

Chiquita Banana has agreed to pay $25 million for paying Colombian terrorists to protect its workers in the field. It will also plead guilty to a criminal Information.

The settlement resolves a lengthy Justice Department investigation into the company's financial dealings with terrorist organizations in Colombia.

In court documents filed Wednesday, federal prosecutors said the Cincinnati-based company and several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers paid about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC for its Spanish initials. The AUC has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia's civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country's cocaine exports. The right-wing group was designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization in September 2001.

Chiquita also paid money to FARC. How did the Justice Department find out?

Remember the six Imans who were removed from a U.S. Airways flight because they prayed together at the airport gate?

Six imams attending a conference in Minneapolis took time to pray at the gate before boarding a U.S. Airways flight to Phoenix. A passenger handed a note to a flight attendant pointing out the "6 suspicious Arabic men" on the plane. Disturbed by their "unsettling" behavior -- which apparently consisted of praying and asking for seat belt extensions -- the crew told the police that the imams needed to be removed. They were escorted from the plane in handcuffs and detained for five hours before authorities conceded that they posed no threat.

The Imans have sued U.S. Airways alleging discrimination.

When the men returned to the airport the next day, they said, the airline refunded their fare but refused to sell them another ticket.

More...

ABC News' blog reports:

Armed with fresh intelligence, the CIA is moving additional man power and equipment into Pakistan in the effort to find Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al Zawahri, U.S. officials tell ABC News.

Officials tell ABC the trail's not cold.

People familiar with the CIA operation say undercover officers with paramilitary training have been ordered into Pakistan and the area across the border with Afghanistan as part of the ramp-up.

...Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell testified last week that current intelligence "to the best of our knowledge" puts both bin Laden and al Zawahri in Pakistan. It was the first time a high-ranking U.S. official publicly identified Pakistan as bin Laden's hiding place.

This may just be a yearly thing, as bin Laden changes locations every March when the mountain snow covers melt.

Vice President Dick Cheney was whisked off to a bunker Tuesday morning in Afghanistan after a suicide bomber attacked the main entrance to the U.S. military base he was visiting.

The Taliban has taken credit for the attack. At least 23 others were killed.

...a purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said Cheney was the target of the attack.

Almost a year ago, Seymour Hersh warned of the Bush administration's "intensified planning" for an attack on Iran. Other voices have sounded the same alarm. The White House has consistently denied that it plans to invade Iran. The president said:

"Some are trying to take my words and say what he is really trying to do is go invade Iran. Nobody is talking about that."

Nobody except the president's war planners, who are developing a contingency plan to execute just such an invasion, according to a Hersh story in today's online New Yorker. As distilled by Reuters:

Despite the Bush administration's insistence it has no plans to go to war with Iran, a Pentagon panel has been created to plan a bombing attack that could be implemented within 24 hours of getting the go-ahead from President George W. Bush, The New Yorker magazine reported in its latest issue. The special planning group was established within the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in recent months ...

It sounds like people actually are "talking about that," Mr. President. Or do they communicate only by email and memo?

On the ridiculous over-reaction to the Boston non-terror scare:

• Boing-Boing

• Sean Bonner

• Metroblogging Boston:

Next, let's all get out our dictionary and look up "hoax", shall we? Because while "War of the Worlds" was a hoax, this was not. There was no subterfuge involved, and no effort made to convince people that these devices were bombs. If I see a scary looking tree out my bedroom window, think it's a monster, and then discover upon closer inspection that it isn't, it doesn't mean the tree has perpetrated a hoax against me. What it means is that for a moment I took leave of my senses. And just because I'm embarrassed about it doesn't give me the right to go cut down the tree.

Law Prof. Karl Tobias argues that Congress must investigate the NSA's warrantless surveillance program, despite the Attorney General's belated assurance that the administration will cooperate with FISA courts in the future.

Congress must expeditiously acquire all of the applicable data that lawmakers need to make the most informed determinations. Once Congress systematically assembles and evaluates pertinent material, it should guarantee that the program appropriately balances national security and civil liberties.

The Justice Department today disclosed that the NSA warrantless surveillance will be discontinued in its present form and in the future operate under the FISA court.

The Justice Department announced today that the National Security Agency's controversial warrantless surveillance program has been placed under the authority of a secret surveillance court, marking an abrupt change in approach by the Bush administration after more than a year of heated debate.

It looks like President Bush and the Pentagon are trying to sneak another fast one by us. This time, it's the deletion of a wiretapping provision that has been in the Army Manual since 1984.

The manual, described by the Army as a “major revision” to intelligence-gathering guidelines, addresses policies and procedures for wiretapping Americans, among other issues.

The original guidelines, from 1984, said the Army could seek to wiretap people inside the United States on an emergency basis by going to the secret court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, or by obtaining certification from the attorney general “issued under the authority of section 102(a) of the Act.”

That last phrase is missing from the latest manual, which says simply that the Army can seek emergency wiretapping authority pursuant to an order issued by the FISA court “or upon attorney general authorization.” It makes no mention of the attorney general doing so under FISA.

Bush asks us to trust him.

Government agencies use national security letters to snoop through financial records without the bother of a judicially issued warrant. The NY Times reports that the FBI "has issued thousands of national security letters" since 9/11, distressing news that TalkLeft discussed here.

But it was not previously known, even to some senior counterterrorism officials, that the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency have been using their own “noncompulsory” versions of the letters. Congress has rejected several attempts by the two agencies since 2001 for authority to issue mandatory letters, in part because of concerns about the dangers of expanding their role in domestic spying.

While assuring us that it only investigates terrorism, the Pentagon won't say why it pokes around in domestic financial records. This statement is nonetheless telling:

Now the U.S. is killing suspected Islamocists in Somalia in the name of the war on terror. But it's not releasing any details.

Are we about to get into another pre-emptive war or are we trying to bring democracy to Somalia or do we just believe we can go anywhere in the world and kill people because they might be al-Qaida followers?

Thoughts?