Day: October 20, 2005
Taiwanese Coast Guard Intercepts Ship Carrying Smuggled Birds Infected with Avian Flu
While much of the focus on the H5N1 avian influenza virus has been on migratory wild birds spreading the disease into western Europe, smuggling in both Asia and Europe is also a source of infection. And a less predictable one, as well.
Following is a report filed by Tzu Mei Huang, deputy director, Surveillance Division, Center for Disease Control, Taiwan:
Taiwan intercepted a Panama-registered cargo ship from China on October 14th and found hundreds of smuggled birds, mice and turtles. Taiwan’s Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine (BAPHIQ), the Center for Disease Control (CDC), and the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) were responsible for this joint operation. The smuggled animals were destroyed the next day. 19 specimens were collected from the 1037 birds and were sent to the Animal Health Research Institute for RT-PCR and chick embryo inoculation to examine whether these birds carried avian flu virus.
The result came out today (20th) and showed those birds were avian flu H5N1-positive. Since the smuggled animals were completely destroyed, we are able to timely prevent the invasion of avian flu.
Officials wore full protective gear in the process of making arrests and destroying animals to protect their own health. They also followed self-health-management regulations to monitor [their own] health status for 10 days. All related personnel in the operation are currently in good health, and the local health bureaus and the 3rd Branch office of the Taiwan CDC will continue to monitor their health.
At the time of the operation, a total of 25 people were on board; 24 of them left the country on the same ship on 16 Oct 2005. One of them was detained in the Taichung Detention Center on the charge of smuggling. He showed no bird flu symptoms, and he will be administered preventive medication starting today.
Is There a Plame Case If There Was No Crime?
Funny thing about the Internet — stuff, once put on it, never goes away and can circulate back into relevance just when, well, it’s relevant.
Take this Washington Post article from Jan. 12, 2005. It was written by Victoria Toensing, who was chief counsel to the Senate intelligence committee from 1981 to 1984 and served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration, and Bruce Sanford, a Washington lawyer specializing in First Amendment issues. Together, they drafted and negotiated the scope of the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, and thereby claim to be able to call “a timeout on a misguided and mechanical investigation in which there is serious doubt that a crime was even committed.”
Here’s a summary of their points:
- In passing the IIP Act, Congress did not intend to prosecute a reporter who, in the course of exposing wrongdoing once or twice published the name of a covert agent. Which is why Robert Novak remains unindicted.
- Congress did not intend for government employees to be vulnerable to prosecution for an unintentional or careless leak about an undercover identity. Which is why Scooter Libby and Karl Rove are as yet unindicted.
- The agent in question must be classified as undercover , and must have been assigned to duty outside the U.S. currently or in the past five years. Valerie Plame was stationed at CIA HQ Langley.
- The law requires that the disclosure be made intentionally, with the knowledge that the government is taking “affirmative measures to conceal [the agent’s] relationship” to the United States. There is little proof that the CIA was aggressively trying to protect Plame’s covert status.
- When Joseph Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA, he was not required to sign a standard confidentiality agreement, which enabled him to write the op-ed piece that undermined the Bush administration’s WMD argument.
The writers note that Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan, who is overseeing the grand jury, should call on the CIA to prove that it was affirmatively trying to protect Plame’s covert status as a means of ascertaining whether there indeed was a crime committed.
Toensing did work for Reagan, so one could suspect that she is partisan, but the argument does seem to hold water, and at the least should make us examine our assumptions about this case.
Fed is Hard On Viagra Users, Who Must Take Matters in Their Own Hands
No-brainers are hard to come by, so this is big stuff. AP:
It took a hurricane to do it, but Congress has finally ended federal subsidies for users of Viagra and other sexual performance drugs.
The Senate on Wednesday passed without debate and sent to the president legislation that ends Medicare and Medicaid payments for erectile dysfunction drugs as part of a package that extends medical help for the poor and provides unemployment benefit aid to states hit by Hurricane Katrina.
“This legislation extends very important benefits for people who live on the edge of poverty,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
“And the provision included to offset the cost of these programs recognizes that taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for certain lifestyle prescription drugs through Medicare and Medicaid.”
Perp Walk, Mug Shots, Fingerprints: Nothing but the Best for Tom DeLay
Mom taught me not to be gleeful at other people’s misfortunes, but surely she didn’t mean Tom DeLay. A warrant has been issued for the accused felon, and arresting him will involve fingerprints and mug shots.
Bwwahhhhaha!
DeLay was expected to appear at the sheriff’s office in Fort Bend County today for booking on state conspiracy and money laundering charges.
“Tom DeLay, turn to the right.” Oh yeah, you already did.Fort Bend County Chief Deputy Craig Brady said arrangements were being made to bring DeLay to the sheriff’s office in his home county sometime Thursday for booking and fingerprinting.
The process was expected to take between 45 minutes and an hour.
“Tom DeLay, turn to the right.” Oh yeah, you already did.
Tom’s team has employed the time-tested “I know you are but what am I?” defense on Prosecutor Ronnie Earle with no success.
“It’s retaliation, plain and simple,” [DeLay attorney Dick] DeGuerin said. “He’s retaliating because we haven’t given him any quarter.”
Now they’re crying they’re being persecuted. I guess when you hang out with people like Indian-tribe-stealing-contract-killer-using Jack Abramoff and play by the kind of rules DeLay uses, you naturally assume everyone else does. And you expect to have a more dignified arrest than the average American. Guess again.
When DeLay was first indicted Sept. 28, DeGuerin said he wanted to avoid having Earle put the congressman through a publicly humiliating “perp walk” like those federal defendants often face.
“What I’m trying to avoid is having Ronnie Earle having him taken down in handcuffs and fingerprinted and photographed,” he said. “That’s uncalled-for, and I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
That is when Lynch issued the summons at Earle’s request.
“We’re treating him just like any other felonious scumbag fraud,” Earle said.
O.K., he didn’t really say that but he should have. Can’t wait to see those pix!
Feds’ Katrina Screw-Ups — Chertoff Blames ‘Brownie’
How now, Brown scapegoat? Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff testified yesterday before the House Select Committe on Katrina, and ex-FEMA chief Michael Brown came out the worse for it. If that’s possible.
Committee members were were much less critical and argumentative in questioning Chertoff than when former FEMA Director Michael Brown appeared before them Sept. 27.
Chertoff defended the government’s emergency response: “I don’t think it was a lack of a sense of urgency or complacency,” he said. “If there was a lack, it may have been in some better planning that should have been done in terms of our general capability for dealing with catastrophes.”
Chertoff said he and President Bush “were deeply and personally engaged” both before and after the hurricane hit.
Chertoff acknowledged problems with the immediate response, but laid it at Brown’s feet, noting that Brown was the government’s “battlefield commander on the ground” in charge of preparation and response to Katrina.
[…]
Plame Name Game: What Did Bush Know, and When Did He Know It?
Prevaricator in Chief: The gang that can’t shoot straight now can’t keep it’s story straight. As we’ve said before, it strains credulity that President Bush – our first “CEO President” – did not demand to know exactly who said what to whom about CIA agent Valerie Plame within hours after White House propagandist Bob Novak revealed her secret identity to the world back in July 2003.
Nobody – not even Mr. Bush – is that incurious. Nonetheless, in public statements since – and perhaps in unsworn testimony to the prosecutor investigating the treasonous leak – Bush has claimed to be ignorant of the dirty deeds done by his own Flying Monkeys.
But now the veneer of ignorance supporting the President’s plausible deniability appears to beeroding. A leak to the New York Daily News reveals that Bush knew about Rove’s role in the scandal by the fall of 2003, at the very latest:
An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.
“He made his displeasure known to Karl,” a presidential counselor told The News. “He made his life miserable about this.”
Bush has nevertheless remained doggedly loyal to Rove, who friends and even political adversaries acknowledge is the architect of the President’s rise from baseball owner to leader of the free world.
And…
Other sources confirmed, however, that Bush was initially furious with Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the press about the Plame leak.
Whether Bush learned about Rove’s shenanigans in July 2003 or three months later is immaterial. Now we have a leak from the President’s staff admitting for the first time that Bush knew what had been done in his name. This renders disingenious everything Bush has done and said – no matter how carefully parsed – especially his unsworn testimony to investigators on July 24, 2004.
Ex-Powell Aide: Cheney, Rumsfeld Secretly Commandeered Foreiqn Policy
“What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions [on foreign policy] that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”
— Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell when he was Secretary of State
Amnesia Epidemic Sweeps Capitol: Like Judy, Rove Can’t Remember Who Gave Him Plame’s Name
Something in the water: Forget bird flu, there’s been an outbreak of chronic amnesia in Washington, D.C. First New York Times Judith Miller testified before the CIA Leak grand jury that she could not remember who gave her the name of CIA secret agent Valerie Flame, er, Plame – now President Bush’s top Flying Monkey Karl Rove says he can’t remember who first said her name to him either.
What are the chances of two witnesses (suspects?) in this political scandal having a memory lapse about essentially the very same thing: the identity of the person who gave them the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame?
We learn of Rove’s memory lapse, ironically, from an account of his grand jury testimony leaked to the Associated Press:
During one of his grand jury appearances, Rove was shown testimony from Libby suggesting the two had discussed with each other information they had gotten about Wilson’s wife from reporters in early July 2003.
Rove responded that Libby’s testimony was consistent with his general recollection that he had first learned Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA from reporters or government officials who had talked with reporters.
Rove testified that he never intended any of his comments to reporters about Wilson’s wife to serve as confirmation of Plame’s identity. Rove “has always clearly left open that he first heard this information from Libby,” said one person directly familiar with Rove’s grand jury testimony.
That person said Rove testified he believes he heard general information about Wilson’s wife on two occasions before he talked with reporters in July 2003 and then learned her name from syndicated columnist Robert Novak.
Rove testified he probably first heard of Wilson’s wife in a casual social setting outside the White House in the spring of 2003 but could not remember who provided the information.
What are the chances of two witnesses (suspects?) in this political scandal having a memory lapse about essentially the very same thing: the identity of the person who gave them the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame?
Answer: Zero to none.
