David Margolis, a lawyer at the Justice Department for 40 years, was named Friday to oversee a special prosecutor's investigation of who in the Bush administration disclosed the name of an undercover CIA officer. Margolis, whose title is associate deputy attorney general, is taking the place of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, whose last day of work was Friday. Comey will be the defense manufacturer Lockheed Martin's new general counsel.
Comey made the designation of Margolis. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has stepped aside from the probe because he was White House counsel when Valerie Plame's name was leaked in 2003 and he has testified to the grand jury investigating the unauthorized disclosure. Comey gave broad discretion to US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago when he was appointed to investigate the leak in December 2003. Margolis is not expected to alter Fitzgerald's mandate in what are likely to be the final months of his investigation. The grand jury ends its term in October.
No one has been charged in the Plame case. However, it's known that Karl Rove, a top aide to President George Bush, and Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, discussed Plame with reporters before her name was first published by columnist Robert Novak in July 2003.
New York Times reporter Judith Miller has been jailed since July 6 for refusing to tell prosecutors to whom she talked about Plame.
The departure of Comey, who had been second in command at the Justice Department since 2003, leaves vacancies in two key posts. Christopher Wray resigned as head of the Criminal division in May.
Bush has nominated Timothy Flanigan, once Gonzales' deputy in the White House, to take Comey's job. Alice Fisher has been nominated to lead the criminal division. Neither has been confirmed. Flanigan faced tough questioning in his Senate confirmation hearing about his role in allowing aggressive interrogation techniques be used on detainees from Afghanistan and Iraq and his ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff. A committee vote on Flanigan has not been scheduled, and the committee will begin hearings on John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court next month.
Fisher's nomination had been held up through July by at least two senators, one Republican, one Democrat. Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, was seeking to question an FBI agent about a delay in obtaining a wiretap in a terrorism financing investigation. Grassley lifted his objection after meeting with Gonzales. Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, also met with Gonzales, but he continues to hold up Fisher's nomination because he wants to talk directly to an agent who wrote an e-mail about allegedly abusive interrogations at Guantanamo Bay.
"In my weekly meetings with DOJ we often discussed [Defense Department] techniques and how they were not effective or producing intel that was reliable," the agent wrote. In his next sentence, he said Fisher, then the No. 2 in the criminal division, was among department officials who attended all the meetings. Fisher has said she did not recall taking part in such discussions and Justice officials have said the agent did not intend to say she had. But Gonzales has refused to let senators question the agent, saying it violates long-standing policy. After failing to persuade Levin to let Fisher's nomination proceed, Gonzales went public with the dispute, saying the vacancy was especially inopportune following terror attacks in England and Egypt last month.
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
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