Government Executive - Authors - Kristin Roberts

Eric Holder in the Hot Seat as Lawmakers Probe Scandals

Rebecca Kaplan and Kristin Roberts, National Journal — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:18:41 -0400

Eric Holder comes to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a show of fireworks that could be unlike any seen in this Congress so far.

And if he doesn’t offer the House Judiciary Committee more details on the scandals piling up at the White House’s doorstep than Jay Carney did on Tuesday, the Obama administration is in for another full news cycle of criticism from not only their adversaries on the right but their Democratic allies as well.

It’s a full committee hearing where members of the panel’s Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations Subcommittee will lead the questioning. Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte has outlined an agenda that covers the AP phone-records grab by the Justice Department, the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups, agencies’ failure to share information that might have prevented the Boston bombings, and, as if that were not enough, allegedly lavish spending at DOJ under Holder’s watch.

“This administration is having more ethical lapses and what seems to fall under the heading of scandal than anything I've seen in a long time,” said Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., a member of House Judiciary.

Holder tried to get out in front of the hearing, at least on the IRS, announcing that DOJ was opening a criminal inquiry. But on the AP phone records, so far, all the attorney general has offered is that he recused himself from that case.

“Here's what I'd like to see from the representatives of this administration, the cabinet members: Come to a hearing once with the intention of informing the committee,” said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa., who also sits on Judiciary. “His demeanor I think will be to stall and to weather the ordeal."

As congressional Republicans aim to fold three issues – IRS, AP phone records, and Benghazi – together, Democrats are trying to treat them separately. But cracks in the caucus’ unity on this approach already are starting to appear. (Even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he had trouble defending the Justice Department’s decision to take AP’s phone records.

As Shane Goldmacher reports, how aggressively Democrats on House Judiciary go after Holder will be a strong indicator of whether that side’s lawmakers will continue to toe a party line that is still, for now, defined by the White House.

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Analysis: The High Cost of Stonewalling on Benghazi

Kristin Roberts, National Journal — Wed, 08 May 2013 14:29:13 -0400

Benghazi is not going away.

On Wednesday, U.S. diplomat Gregory Hicks came to Congress with headline-worthy testimony. He told House Oversight that officials in Libya were denied permission to deploy special forces to counter the attacks that killed an American ambassador. Hicks is one of three officials brought in as “whistleblowers” to challenge the administration account of its handling of the incident last year.

Hicks raises big questions – serious ones about what the Obama administration (especially Hillary Clinton) knew and did in response.

When asked about the upcoming hearing, White House spokesman Jay Carney largely deflected. Curiously, the Obama administration also won’t talk about the footage that they have from the compound – video that some people who have seen it argue could clear up questions about whether the incident was a premeditated terrorist attack or something less.

They just really don’t want to talk about this.

But the last time the administration played keep-away on a security issue was drones, and that didn’t work out so well for the White House. Benghazi has already cost the president his first choice for secretary of State. What could stonewalling cost the White House this time?

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How Many Americans Are on the Kill List? Zero.

Kristin Roberts, National Journal — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 09:27:10 -0400

No Americans are currently marked for death on the U.S. government’s terrorist strike list, according to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

The White House has wrapped its kill list in secrecy and already the United States has killed four Americans in drone strikes. Only one of them, senior al-Qaida operative Anwar al-Awlaki, was the intended target, according to U.S. officials. The others—including Awlaki’s teenage son—were collateral damage, killed because they were too near a person being targeted.

But no more Americans are in line for such killings—at least not yet. “There is no list where Americans are on the list,” House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers told National Journal. Still, he suggested, that could change.

The Obama administration has asserted it has legal authority to kill U.S. citizens who join al-Qaida, so long as the individuals rise to a leadership position in the group and plan attacks against the nation. That rationale has driven many lawmakers to join civil-rights groups’ long call for the White House to open up about the strike list, the criteria, and its counterterrorism policy more broadly.

At its height, the demand by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that the administration publicly state it does not have the right to ignore the Constitution’s guarantee of due process by killing an American on U.S. soil led to a 13-hour filibuster of CIA Director John Brennan’s nomination. It garnered so much attention and support that more than a dozen Republican senators joined Paul on the Senate floor and won acaveated concession from Attorney General Eric Holder that the U.S. would not use drones to take out Americans who were not actively engaged in combat.

The White House will not talk about the strike list. It would not comment on Rogers’s statement that no Americans are currently being targeted. But the lawmaker’s assertion fits with what’s known about the American terrorists who most worry the federal government.

Four U.S.-born men are listed on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list: Adam Gadahn, Omar Hammami, Jehad Serwan Mostafa, and Abdul Yasin. They also are highlighted in the National Counterterrorism Center’s macabre 2013 calendar, which provides descriptions of terrorist groups, wanted men, and terrorist threats in a daily-planner format.

But, according to what officials have released about the criteria the U.S. government uses, a potential target must be a senior, operational leader of al-Qaida or an affiliated group who presents an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States. These four men do not appear to fit the bill. While Gadahn, perhaps the best known of the group, rose quickly in al-Qaida’s ranks, he serves as a propagandist, not an operational planner.

“Some notion that every American would even rise to the list by just going over and even signing up is, candidly, just not the truth,” Rogers said.

Awlaki, Rogers said, was unique among homegrown terrorists—he publicly declared jihad against the United States, and he was involved in multiple terrorist-related plans, including the failed Christmas Day bombing and the Fort Hood shooting.

“What worries me is they are taking this isolated case and saying, ‘Oh well, there’s a list of Americans, and you could be on the list of Americans.’ That just simply is not how this works,” he said.

But Rogers, who said he reviews every strike after it is carried out and sends his staff to a monthly meeting with intelligence officials to ensure staffers have enough information on the strike program, cautioned that should another American citizen again attain the status Awlaki did, the U.S. government has the authority to kill him.

“If you ever got another American who rose to that same level in the ranks and leadership role in al-Qaida and they were operating in Yemen or Mali or southern Algeria or Libya, well, they’ve picked their team, and their team is al-Qaida. And the United States is in conflict with al-Qaida. In the rules of war, you’re allowed to defend yourself.”

The question of American citizens being on the kill list is just one of many concerns raised about U.S. counterterrorism strategy and drone strikes. Among them, civil-rights groups, security experts, and lawmakers question the administration’s legal authorization for the strikes, the lack of third-party review, the opacity of the policy, and the potential blowback the United States faces over collateral damage.

“If your focus is on the handful of Americans who have been killed, and only one of them was killed intentionally, you’re really missing the bigger story,” said Micah Zenko, national security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Senate Intelligence Committee member Angus King, the Maine independent who has called for greater oversight of the drone program, said he thought the administration was taking calls for greater transparency seriously.

“There’s a possibility of reasonable people finding a solution here. And to me, the important thing is not necessarily the representations of the administration or all the things they’re putting in place,” King said. “The problem is, you can’t rely on that five, 10, or 15 years from now. You’ve got to have a structure in place that will protect us.”

(Image via MISHELLA/Shutterstock.com)

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Watchdog Finds Well-Oiled Revolving Door Linking SEC and Industry

Kristin Roberts, National Journal — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 10:40:48 -0500

Former Securities and Exchange Commission employees routinely helped companies overseen by the regulator to influence rulemaking, soften enforcement actions, and secure exemptions from federal law, according to a report that will be released Monday by the Project On Government Oversight.

POGO – an independent watchdog group – studied disclosure statements filed from 2001 through 2010 and said it found numerous instances where the line between regulator and industry was blurred.

Over that period, 419 former SEC employees filed 1,949 disclosure statements, indicating their intent to contact the SEC on behalf of an employer or client.

Among the most blatant examples of a revolving door between the SEC and regulated companies, POGO found a former SEC manager helped companies such as JPMorgan, UnitedHealth Group, Yahoo! and Alaska Air to block proposals from shareholders. When the manager was at the SEC, he served as deputy director in the division that reviewed these proposals.

In another case, an enforcement branch chief in the SEC’s San Francisco office left the agency in 2010 to take a job as Wells Fargo & Co.’s in-house counsel. Less than two weeks later, she filed six separate disclosure statements, indicating she would be representing Wells Fargo in connection with pending enforcement matters, including probes conducted by her former office.

POGO’s database of disclosure statements is available here.

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