Video of the Week: Lonely Hearts Scam Division

The Scamnet: Lonely Hearts Scam Division video shows Tom Consul and Jim Tuesday investigate the latest scam using the internet. This video is from the U.S. Embassy London and offers advice on how to avoid being a victim of an online scam.

This Dragnet-inspired video from the London mission is catchy and creative, and I think it's great except for one minor quibble. I think this video would have been a lot better if they did not have to insert the Embassy's Consul General Derwood Staeben in full colors in the middle of this 7:15 minute clip. Nothing against the CG there, except that 4:28-5:07 interrupts the flow of the clip. It did not help that the camera shows him at full length in a middle of a room with a lot of distracting items. If you really must have the CG in this clip, put a close up of him at the end, just before the part when he says contact the nearest embassy.

Other than that, I think Jim Tuesday ought to get his first acting award here, with Jane Pretty as runner-up. Can you please, please do the Nigerian Letter next for scamnet?

Get Ready for the RiceHadley Strategy Group

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Zachary Roth of TPMmuckraker had some great news on Condi Rice and Stephen Hadley, Rice And Hadley Look Set To Launch Consulting Firm | November 11, 2009, 3:18PM:

"Two top Bush administration officials whose reputations for strategic acumen were badly damaged by the disasters of the Bush years may be about to market their expertise to private-sector clients.

In September, the RiceHadley Group LLC was registered as a business in California, under a San Francisco address. According to a source, the venture is to be a "strategic consulting" firm, headed by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and will be launched imminently."

Possible company slogans and other advice also offered for free at TPM comments!

In a statement to TPMmuckraker, Rice's chief of staff, Colby Cooper, said:

"Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, along with Anja Manuel, have recently founded a small strategic advisory firm focused on helping U.S. companies doing business abroad -- especially in key emerging markets like China, India, Brazil, the Middle East and others. In addition, Dr. Rice remains on the faculty of Stanford University and the Hoover Institution."

Anja Manuel was a former aide to former “P”, Nick Burns and currently counsel in WilmerHale's Litigation/Controversy Department.

Al Kamen of WaPo points out that RiceHadley is just “the latest big-time entrants in the endless battle of the groups -- as in the Kissinger Group, the Scowcroft Group, the Chertoff Group (with former CIA director Mike Hayden) and so many other strategery outfits.” (links added)

He forgot to mention the Albright Stonebridge Group of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Security Advisor Samuel Berger that merged this past July.


Um what? Are you complaining that we have too many of these folks around? Excuse me - but can you imagine just how boring Washington would be without the strategerist ...

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• Condi & Hadley Determined to Strike in U.S. (firedoglake.com)
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Peter Galbraith in the News Again

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Peter Galbraith was thrown under the bus over the Afghan election in late September. Last week, Nate Jones over at the Unredacted Blog of the National Security Archive blogged about their “hot doc,” released by the Department of State to Archive analyst William Ferroggiaro on 22 June 2004; it features Galbraith who was then US Ambassador to Croatia.

"This 1994 State Department cable, penned by then US Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith, described as “MUST READ” by its cover letter, was disseminated to White House personnel. Galbraith reported that the criteria for genocide, as defined by the Geneva Convention, were being met in the three-party war raging in the former Yugoslavia." Click here on how to decipher a State Department cable.

On November 11, NYT published U.S. Adviser to Kurds Stands to Reap Oil Profits:

Peter W. Galbraith, an influential former American ambassador, is a powerful voice on Iraq who helped shape the views of policy makers like Joseph R. Biden Jr. and John Kerry. In the summer of 2005, he was also an adviser to the Kurdish regional government as Iraq wrote its Constitution — tough and sensitive talks not least because of issues like how Iraq would divide its vast oil wealth.

Now Mr. Galbraith, 58, son of the renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith, stands to earn perhaps a hundred million or more dollars as a result of his closeness to the Kurds, his relations with a Norwegian oil company and constitutional provisions he helped the Kurds extract.

The Editors of NYT are none too happy about this. On November 12, it also published an Editors’ Note:

Like other writers for the Op-Ed page, Mr. Galbraith signed a contract that obligated him to disclose his financial interests in the subjects of his articles. Had editors been aware of Mr. Galbraith's financial stake, the Op-Ed page would have insisted on disclosure or not published his articles.

• As Iraqis Celebrate, the Kurds Hesitate(February 1, 2005)
• Our Corner of Iraq(July 25, 2006)
• Make Walls, Not War(October 23, 2007)
• Questions for the Next Vice President(October 2, 2008)
  
  

Last night, Galbraith spoke openly about the issue at an appearance at the Centre Congregational Church in Brattleboro, Vermont. The Brattleboro Reformer reported that Galbraith spoke to a large crowd regarding the recent elections and future American involvement in Afghanistan, where he served as the deputy special representative to the United Nations. The conversation reportedly shifted quickly to the new reports of his business interests in Kurdistan. Excerpts below:

Defending his business decisions, Galbraith said "I actually find the article quite, well, it is full of innuendo. If you read the facts [with the implications and innuendo], I find [it] offensive."
[…]
In August 2005, Galbraith said he was asked by the Kurds to advise them on a permanent constitution, even after they were aware of his business interests with foreign oil companies. With the Kurdish political leaders controlling their own oil industry, it provides them an economic base for the people, a goal Galbraith said he always supported.

"I gave them advice and the end result that they achieved was identical to what was already proposed in February 2004," he said. "Now, it’s true that people in Baghdad may disagree with that, people in Washington may disagree with that, but there’s no conflict there. The advice I was giving and the economic interest were exactly, exactly congruent."

If you talk to a majority of the Kurdish people, they say the oil under their feet is a curse because it has given former Iraqi leaders the financial means to kill them, said Galbraith. By having their own natural resources, the Kurds have a vehicle to defend themselves against future attacks, he added.

"I make no apologies for my role here ... at that time, I was a private citizen. Private citizens engage in business, that’s what I did."

Read the whole thing here.

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• American Adviser to Kurds Stands to Reap Oil Profits (nytimes.com)
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Jumping the Gunman

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From ProPublica by Stephen Engelberg | November 12, 2009 2:11 pm EST. Republished under Creative Commons license.

The recent reporting on Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who is accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, is a classic run-and-gun investigative story in which dozens of reporters badger officials to disclose a new fact (which gets you on page one) or two new facts (which is enough to snag the coveted lead-of-the-paper slot on a slow day). This wolf-pack approach to reporting almost invariably produces stories that lack context, which is hardly surprising.

After all, reporters are telling a complex story by unveiling the key aspects as they learn them. It’s roughly akin to taking scenes from say, the three "Godfather movies" and spitting out them out as YouTube videos in random order. Good luck to anyone trying to follow the plot.

On the Hasan story, one of the earliest newsbreaks seems, at least so far, to be among the least clear.

About a year ago, U.S. intelligence intercepted messages sent by Hasan to Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical imam in Yemen. A task force of counterterrorism officials reviewed those messages , determined they were benign —consistent with work-related research Hasan was doing — and never contacted anyone in the military familiar with Hasan’s record in the military.

Newspapers, Web sites and TV all gave huge play to the story. But what was anyone expecting the government to do about someone who exchanged e-mails or text messages with a known bad guy? Seize his legally obtained gun? Remove him from his job? Arrest him as a material witness to a crime not yet committed?

Last night, NPR provided some context in an exclusive story on "All Things Considered." Daniel Zwerdling reported that Hasan’s supervisors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center had become increasingly worried that their young resident was losing touch with reality and might be psychotic and a danger to himself or others. They weighed firing Hasan, decided that would be too difficult, and sent him off to Fort Hood without a formal mental health evaluation.

Now, the intercepted messages story has more meaning.

Remember the contacts between Hasan and the Yemeni cleric? They are reported to have occurred in December 2008, which appears to be the same time as Walter Reed doctors were wondering whether Hasan might be capable of what NPR termed "fratricide."

The terrorism task force that reviewed the potential threat posed by Hasan looked at his personnel files. But they never knew of the doctors’ concerns, because as, The New York Times reported today, the doctors didn’t add them to his file.

Had the Federal Bureau of Investigation spoken to his supervisors – an idea that raises a host of civil liberties and privacy questions – the assessment of the danger he posed might have been different. But the available facts suggest that no one knew the full picture, which meant no one could start "connecting the dots.’’

The reader faces a similar challenge as the Hasan story unfolds in the coming months.

Here’s something to keep in mind: It is a long-established rule for reporting that the first accounts of any military action are frequently wrong. A corollary: The initial reports in a run-and-gun investigative story seldom age well. Remember the hero female cop who shot Hasan? Well, maybe she did and maybe she didn’t. And the purported view of Walter Reed officials that Hasan might be a threat? Shortly after the NPR story aired, the Washington Post asserted the possibility that Hasan might be "delusional" was never taken seriously and addressed by his supervisors only "in passing.’’

Stay tuned.

Stephen Engelberg is managing editor of ProPublica.

Quickie: TelConference With Ambassador Eikenberry (That Did Not Happen)

Photo by US Embassy Kabul
via Flickr

Note: Since Spencer Ackerman retracted this story, the title of this post has also been updated. The original title was "Quickie: TelConference with Ambassador Eikenberry."




You’ve heard about those “leaked” cables on Afghanistan? If not, read The Washington Post piece U.S. envoy resists increase in troops (November 12, 2009). The U.S. ambassador in Kabul reportedly sent two classified cables to Washington in the past week expressing deep concerns about sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

Spencer Ackerman has a follow-up on this:

It was a tense meeting this morning at the White House, as Ambassador Karl Eikenberry addressed the National Security Council by teleconference from Kabul just hours after the media got hold of his dissent on the crucial question of sending more troops to Afghanistan. “He is very unpopular here,” said a National Security Council staffer who described the meeting.
[…]
The prevailing theory is that “he leaked his own cables” because “he has a beef with McChrystal,” the staffer said. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Eikenberry’s successor as NATO commander in Afghanistan, has requested an increase in troops to support a counterinsurgency strategy with a substantial counterterrorism component.
[…]
The ambassador told the NSC not to send additional troops to Afghanistan “without an exit strategy” and urged that the president to adopt a “purely civilian approach” with the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development in the lead, not the military. According to the NSC staffer, Eikenberry “wants a realignment” of USAID, the Afghanistan inspector general’s office and the State Department’s stabilization and reconstruction office. Eikenberry said President Obama “wants that” — although Obama was not in the meeting — and he hailed the arrival of the new USAID administrator-nominee, Rajiv Shah, “because he will not wage war when the org charts start changing.”

Read the whole thing here.

Update: 11/13/09
Whoops! Spence Ackerman has retracted this story:

"From the start, the post should have a) more clearly indicated that my source wasn’t present at the meeting; b) more clearly indicated that the account provided was single-sourced; and c) verified the information provided before publication. My enthusiasm for a hot story outpaced my professional judgment. For that I take full responsibility, retract the story and issue a full apology for its publication." Read: A Retraction of My Eikenberry Post. See what a retraction looks like here. Wow! You don't see this very often in the media now.

Obama’s UN-Mgt Reform Nominee's Troubles

President Obama nominated Jide Zeitlin to be Representative of the United States to the United Nations for U.N. Management and Reform on September 14. Mr. Zeitlin had his confirmation hearing at the SFRC last November 4. Over the weekend, Pervez Iqbal Siddiqui of The Times of India reported on more trouble for Mr. Zeitlin in India (Obama envoy wanted by Lucknow police | TNN 8 November 2009) :

"The criminal case has been lodged under Section 406 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) by a group of 16 telecom sector contractors based in Lucknow accusing IMI of not clearing their outstanding dues worth an estimated Rs 4.5 crore (Almost a million US dollars). Apart from IMI chairman Jide Zeitlin, the FIR also names Nakul Wafna of Mumbai, Rishad Currimjee and Amitabh Srivastava as having represented IMI in different capacities."
[…]
"Allegations are that even after 10 months of their contract job being executed in full, the IMI was yet to clear outstanding dues that should have been paid within 30 days of the work order being executed. The FIR, lodged by Bhupak Singh, a partner in Satakshi Contractors (Allahabad) on behalf of the 16 contractors, states that all out efforts to trace and contact the authorities of IMI named above have proved futile. The outstanding dues on IMI were causing heavy financial losses as it has blocked liquid capital of the contract companies which were issued the work orders."

The case was reportedly filed in Lucknow, the capital city of Uttar Pradesh in India.

Read the whole thing here.

Mr. Zeitlin had been officially nominated but has yet to be confirmed by the Senate. Click here for the official statement from the WH on this nomination and here for Forbes.com’s profile of Mr. Zeitlin. The testimony of this nominee has not been posted in the SFRC website but you can watch the video of the confirmation hearing here. Click on the word “NOMINATIONS” to view the video (Zeitlin’s official statement starts at 26:00, but Q&A follows after all the nominees have read their prepared statements).

Related Item:
U.N. point-man nominee seeks to assure lawmakers (TWP)

Related Posts:

• Officially In: Jide Zeitlin to UN Mgt and Reform
• SFRC Hearings: Zeitlin, Arvanat, Barton, Yohannes, Lomellin
  

Update: @9:15 pm
I have received several emails and comments in this blog about Mr. Zeitlin's business troubles. I will not be posting them here. If you have something to say about his nomination, I suggest that you contact the following office which is tasked with considering this nomination:

U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-6225
Majority Phone: (202) 224-4651
Minority Phone: (202) 224-6797

AFSA 2009: Four Post Election Possibilities

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Here is what I got from an individual familiar with deliberations inside AFSA:

• A re-vote is not a prospect anyone in AFSA looks forward to.

• A new election would embarrass AFSA and cost the organization tens of thousands of dollars in things like postal fees, printing costs, etc.

• The DOL investigation has moved to the adjudicative phase, and it was the sense of the leadership that the membership should be informed, thus, the AFSANET message.

It is my understanding that there are three items pending before the Department of Labor with respect to the 2009 AFSA election:

1. Complaint by one of the slates alleging that several sitting AFSA Board members and committee chairs lobbied improperly for the competing slate. I was aware of this complaint but did not know this was formally submitted to AFSA or to DOL.
   
   
2. Challenge filed by a number of candidates who lost the election, asserting improper use of email addresses. I understand that one slate used a mailing list which had been previously distributed to candidates in the 2007 election but not in the 2009 election. NDS has something about this specific issue here and the Elections Committee response.
   
   
3. Challenge filed by one individual alleging a number of technical violations, like the wrong placement of paid advertisement, etc. This is the first time I've heard of this complaint.
   

The ruling from the Department of Labor’s Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) is supposedly expected to happen soon. Four months after the 2009-2011 Governing Board was officially seated, here are four post-election possibilities:

-- No significant wrongdoing, results stand: If OLMS decide that no significant wrongdoing occurred and that despite some minor issues the election was essentially fair, it could rule that the results stand as is.

-- Wrongdoing occurred but results stand: If OLMS decide that wrongdoing occurred but it did not affect the outcome of the election, it could rule that the election results stand as is.

-- Order AFSA to re-do some races: If OLMS decide that wrongdoing occurred that affected the outcome of some races, it could order a redo of selected races, and let the other results stand.

-- Order AFSA to re-vote: If OLMS decide that wrongdoing occurred that affected the outcome of the entire election, it could order AFSA to redo the entire election.

Each of the above possibility will not make everybody happy but by far, the last possibility would be the most expensive and embarrassing possibility of all, specifically for AFSA but also for the Foreign Service community.

This may sound preachy -- but politics is often ugly, whether it is the high office or the school board, but it need not have to be ugly. As Secretary Gates said, "If you took all the Foreign Service officers in the world, they would barely crew one aircraft carrier.” The FS, in fact, is a very small world. And in that very small world of an "aircraft carrier," you need every crew to move that ship. You need people who can fight tooth and nails on the issues, but you also need them to maintain a sense of decorum, and collegial harmony. Because on this one – jumping ship is seldom an option.

I do think that the Election Guidelines need some work and some teeth. If a new one ever becomes available, I think it ought to be posted for comments before it becomes final. That would give the membership a chance to participate in crafting the ground rules of their election engagement. The challenges submitted and the corresponding decisions of the Elections Committee also ought to be publicly available and easily accessible in the union's website. The membership has a stake in the outcome, and should be aware of this information.

AFSA’s challenge is not unique, of course, as it is the same for all who engage in politics. The people must be able to believe that their representatives are concern about the state of the country/organization/board more than they care about the state of their own parties/slates or their own individual interest. Perhaps this is a naive way of looking at it, but when people stop believing, they stay away.

You can read the AFSA By-Laws here. The AFSA 2009 election materials are archived here. This matter is out of AFSA’s hands now, but it might not be too late to let the Governing Board hear your thoughts on this. After all, the next election is just around the corner.