Author Archives: Abe Johnson

The New York Times Provides a Few New Tidbits on the Rosen Affair

by Abe Johnson Posted on May 25, 2013

Mother Jones

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Why did the Justice Department accuse Fox News reporter James Rosen of committing a crime in its application for a warrant to search his email account? The New York Times explains today:

Investigators routinely search the e-mails of suspected leakers, but Congress has forbidden search warrants for journalists’ work product materials unless the reporter committed a crime. A 2010 affidavit seeking the warrant — necessary, an F.B.I. agent wrote, because the analyst had deleted e-mails in his own accounts — declared that Mr. Rosen qualified for that exception because he violated the Espionage Act by seeking secrets to report.

In other words, they had to accuse Rosen of a crime in order to get the warrant approved. It was all pro forma, and doesn’t suggest anything one way or the other about whether they ever intended to actually charge Rosen with anything.

There’s also this interesting tidbit from the same story:

While Fox News was informed nearly three years ago about the subpoena for call logs for five lines related to Mr. Rosen — apparently after the phone company had already provided them — it did not publicly disclose the action. Instead, it emerged only this month when court papers were unsealed that also showed that the government had separately obtained a warrant for the contents of Mr. Rosen’s private e-mail account. A lawyer and spokesmen for Fox did not respond to requests for comment.

So Fox has known about this since 2010. They only went public with the outrage when it became convenient to slot it in as part of Scandalmania™. How about that.

UPDATE: Ah. We have answers on the Fox News thing. Apparently DOJ sent its notification of the subpoena to the parent company, News Corp., not Fox News itself, and News Corp. never passed this along to Fox. If this is true, Fox really did learn about this only recently.

UPDATE 2: Via Twitter, Ryan Lizza and others are intensely critical of this post. They may be right. So let me expand a bit on this.

The basic complaint is that I’m not taking seriously the implication of my post: that DOJ included the allegation that Rosen had committed a crime not because they believed it, but simply because that’s what they needed to do in order to get the warrant approved. In other words, they lied. That’s possible. However, it’s also possible that they did suspect Rosen of committing a crime, and changed their mind after they read his email exchanges with Stephen Jin-Woo Kim. A third possibility is that they believed, and continue to believe, that Rosen committed a crime, but have simply chosen not to prosecute. That happens all the time.

Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing which of these is true because DOJ isn’t talking. Nor do we have Rosen’s side of this because he isn’t talking either. So it’s all speculation. This is what I meant when I said this “doesn’t suggest anything one way or the other” about DOJ’s actual intentions. We simply don’t know. But the Times story is nonetheless interesting because it explains why the allegations about Rosen had to be in the warrant.

I’ve already made my position clear on the warrant: I don’t think it was justified. At the same time, it seems very odd that Rosen potentially blew the existence of a high-level North Korean source just for the sake of a trivial story that told us nothing new. I’d like to know whether he really did, or if his throwaway line about “sources inside North Korea” didn’t actually reveal anything that wasn’t already public. It also seems odd that Fox stayed mum about this for three years. I’d like to understand that better too.

Something about the Rosen case just doesn’t add up. But a lot of people don’t seem to be taking the possible outing of an intelligence source very seriously. They’re acting as if the DOJ prosecution is over a completely meaningless story. That might be, but I think a bit less circling the wagons, and a bit more serious questioning, might be in order here.

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The New York Times Provides a Few New Tidbits on the Rosen Affair

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Searching For The Perfect Solar Panel Contractor By Following These Techniques

by Abe Johnson Posted on May 4, 2013

It’s tempting to call the number you saw while driving around seeking a decent solar panel installtion contractor and not deal with all the hassle, but wait and consider this. If you hire the guy with the beat-up pick-up truck now, how will you know there’s someone else that’s more reputable out there? Examine all of your chances and to help you narrow those down, apply these guidelines.

Permits are very important as far as solar panel installtion contractors are concerned. Make sure that they have it as later it may lead you to pay large fines. It is always good to verify things pre hand.

Always have a signed agreement that states your project expectations. Require the hours workers work to be recorded with time sheets. Have those time sheets submitted to you daily or weekly. Also, stop in to your work-site to ensure everything is going well and staying professional.

Lots of solar panel installtion contractors employ an onsite manager, which can be a tremendous asset to your job. If a contractor is busy, you need to know they have a backup plan for how to have our job completed. Project managers are a big plus and can facilitate smooth operations even during unexpected difficulties.

Discuss with your solar panel installtion contractor about the sub-contractors they will have working on your project. You can ask them how long they’ve had these sub-contractors working for them and if you could get those workers references, too. It’s good to get reassurance on all workers involved in your project.

It seems silly to say, but if your solar panel installtion contractor has a specialty – and that specialty isn’t involved in your project – they’re probably not the right contractor! Hiring someone with the wrong sort of experience, or no experience at all, can lead to delays, costly mistakes or a finished product that’s just plain bad quality.

If you are new in this field and inexperienced then you can find difficult to read improvement plans. You can consult your solar panel installtion contractor to make you understand it and give you every detail about it. In this manner, you can evaluate the information which you will require for designing budget and schedule of your project.

Often a solar panel installtion contractor with try to give you a discounted price you let them use your project as an example of their work and skills. If you feel that it’s worth it to let strangers view your project all the time, by all means go for it.

Establish a tight schedule and deadline for your project with your solar panel installtion contractor. Clarifying these will make sure that your contractor does not let your project drag on too long and cost you more money.

Simply find any popular search engine and look for solar panels uk if you need more helpful suggestions about solar panel consulting.

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Gitmo Detainee Explains Why He’s on Hunger Strike

by Abe Johnson Posted on May 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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Obaydullah, a detainee at Gitmo who was first captured in Afghanistan in 2002, filed a declaration in federal court in March that was unsealed and posted by the national security blog Lawfare on Friday. The declaration goes into striking detail about the circumstances that Obaydullah (who goes by one name) says provoked the hunger strike at the detention camp, which began in February and now involves 100 out of the 166 remaining detainees, according to the Pentagon’s count.

“In response to the dehumanizing searches, the confiscation of our personal items, and the desecration of the holy Quran, I and the men at Camp 6 and some at Camp 5, waged a hunger strike on Feburary 6 2013,” the declaration reads. “But our strike continues because conditions have gotten worse, not better, and there is no hope that we will ever leave here.”

The declaration corroborates the descriptions of Gitmo defense attorneys who have said that although the hunger strike began as a response to what the detainees saw as desecration of their holy books, it has now grown into a protest of the Obama administration’s policy of indefinite detention. According to Obaydullah, conditions had improved until the February “shake down” that he says provoked the strike. In response, Obaydullah says, the guards began to interrupt detainees’ prayers and moved detainees to more restrictive conditions. Access to recreational facilities was limited and, according to Obaydullah, camp authorities deliberately began to lower the temperature in Camp 6 to the point of “freezing.” “All of these actions showed me and the other prisoners that camp authorities were treating us the way we were treated in the years under President Bush,” Obaydullah writes.

In his declaration, Obaydullah hints at what the detainees would require to end the three-month protest. “We plan to remain on strike until we are treated with dignity, the guards stop trying to enforce old rules, our prayer and religion are respected, and our Qurans are handled with the care and sanctity required.”

Obaydullah has been challenging his detention for years with little success. Although he maintains he was never a fighter for Al Qaeda or the Taliban, a federal judge concluded in 2010 that the evidence against him “unmistakably supports the conclusion that it is more likely than not that petitioner Obaydullah was in fact a member of an al Qaeda bomb cell committed to the destruction of U.S. and Allied forces,” and was therefore lawfully detainable.

“I am losing all hope because I have been imprisoned at Guantanamo for almost 11 years now and I still do not know my fate,” Obaydullah concludes.

Here’s the full declaration:

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Obaidullah Declaration (PDF)

Obaidullah Declaration (Text)

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Gitmo Detainee Explains Why He’s on Hunger Strike

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