Obama’s Team is So Transparent, They’re Opaque; Release of Mid-Year Budget Review Delayed
The release of the mid-year budget review from the White House has been delayed. It really comes as no surprise anymore that the Obama team meant “transparency for thee but not for me.”
As a democrat, it’s ok to harp about Republicans, scream, and whine when you feel as though they aren’t being transparent enough. Then campaign on empty slogans of hope and change, but once in office do nothing of the sort. As they say to the victor goes the spoils and in this scenario, the spoils include hypocrisy and a lack of information disseminated to the American public. Read more
N.Y. Flyover Photo Released; White House Aide, Caldera, Fired Over Incident
Isn’t it convenient how this story breaks late Friday afternoon when people don’t care about news and just want to go home and relax for the weekend or partake in happy hour with friends?
A White House aide has lost his job for his role in Air Force One’s photo-op flyover over New York City. A White House official says Obama has accepted the resignation of military office director Louis Caldera. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Caldera’s departure ahead of a full report on the flight.
Caldera, a former Army secretary, took responsibility for the Air Force flyover that sparked panic in New York on April 27.
The White House conducted a review of the flight near the Statue of Liberty. The full review was set to be released Friday afternoon.
I guess Michelle Malkin’s prediction was correct after all! The White House has been exonerated, somebody else in the administration takes the fall, and this all unravels at the very end of the week… It’s as if this was written for film!
I would like to know who was on board and the real chain of command for taking Air Force One out for a spin. It is my understanding that the president has to approve of any and all usage of Air Force One!
Here’s the released photo:
(Photoshopped or Not? – you be the judge)
The White House Loves MSNBC
No media bias here – move along, nothing to see…
Around the 1:58 mark:
New White House decor:
White House and CIA Lied, Cheney Wrote Request for Full Memo Release
The cat is out of the bag and Cheney did make a hand-written request to the CIA to release the entire documentation/memos of the detainee interrogations.
The White House and some CIA officials were denying that Cheney ever made that request, however, this documentation has been found and it appears that both the White House and the CIA members who were scared to go against the orders of the current Executive Branch lied to try and discredit Cheney so they could get away with only releasing the “torture.”
You can find Cheney’s hand-written request here.
Politico reported on this:
The form filed with the National Archives’ Presidential Libraries section on March 31 of this year shows that Cheney asked for declassification review of the two items from a folder called “detainees” within “OVP Cheney immediate office files.” The titles of the memoranda or reports were blacked out for classification reasons, however, one memo sought was dated July 13, 2004, and totaled eight pages, and another dated June 1, 2005, totals 13 pages.
Cheney filled out the request himself–it’s in his handwriting. The Archives later amended Cheney’s request to describe the two records simply as CIA reports (probably more vaguely than the ex-veep did). The archvists also upped the page counts to a total of 31.
I’m looking further at those dates to see whether we can identify the documents indpendently. However, June 1, 2005 seems to coincide with a time frame involving a lot of action surrounding the legal justifications for the interrogation program. One Justice Department memo released last week, finding the techniques did not constitute torture under international law, was issued on May 30, 2005, just a day before the document Cheney asked for.
National Archives officials said earlier this week that the request has been routed to the CIA for action.
POLITICO obtained Cheney’s request under the Freedom of Information Act.
UPDATE: The July 13, 2004, memo seems to coincide roughly with a meeting the CIA held with the so-called principals of the National Security Council to discuss the status of the interrogation efforts and perhaps to discuss a May 2004 report from the CIA’s inspector general on the program. The meeting was revealed in a chronology issued this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
UPDATE 2: Blogger Marcy Wheeler points out that the July 13 date is also the same as a CIA report called “Preeminent Source” about Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. The report is referenced in the same May 30, 2005 legal memo. So likely that’s one item Cheney was after.
