All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

It’s been a good day for proponents of government transparency, a good day but no more than a productive start toward unraveling some of the most important secrets of our legal (and sometimes illegal) war on terrorism.

First, the Justice Department early Monday was forced to admit to a federal judge that the Central Intelligence Agency has destroyed at least 92 videotapes, some of which may contain images of “enhanced interrogation sessions” with detainees. Spies routinely destroy evidence of their own work. That’s often what makes them good spies. But the scope and timing of the destruction of the evidence warrants far more public attention than it has so far received.

Although there is usually great separation between truth and fact when it comes to the intelligence community, it looks quite clearly as though CIA officials during the Bush Administration deliberately deceived the 9/11 Commission, and the federal courts, by destroying tapes that had been formally requested by those bodies. Could the courts hold the CIA and/or its officials at the time in contempt for such conduct? If not, are there any other remedies available that would create some sort of future disincentives to such conduct? The Obama Administration must decide—and the sooner the better.

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In Pennsylvania, a cost-saving exercise in private prisons has gone terribly wrong—two judges pleaded guilty Thursday to fraud after taking money in exchange for rulings that sent kids to a certain privately-run detention facility. Investigators now are trying to figure out whether and to what extent innocent young men and women were jailed in the scheme.

In Virginia, an untimely effort by Republican lawmakers to expand the death penalty in the Commonwealth faces a veto from Governor Timothy M. Kaine. Among the many other arguments against the measure, no doubt Gov. Kaine will point to the fact that capital cases are tremendously more expensive to the state than are cases which result only in the possibility of a life sentence without parole. Here’s how the Death Penalty Information Center’s Richard Dieter calculates it:

“A Maryland study concluded that the cost was about $37 million per execution. In Florida, the estimate was about $24 million per execution. In California, they are spending about $138 million per year on the death penalty. Considering that they only have one execution every two years, that amounts to a cost of over $250 million per execution.”

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Last month, 42-year-old Sherry Johnston of Wasilla, Alaska was arrested and charged with selling OxyContin, a prescription painkiller. Johnston is the mother of Levi Johnson, the young man who just had a baby with Bristol Palin, the daughter of 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

Now an Alaska trooper is alleging that the investigation and arrest of Johnson was delayed for political purposes.

"[A]s soon as investigators realized who the target was...this case became anything but normal," Kyle Young wrote in an email to the union that represents troopers and other Alaska law enforcement officials.

"It was not allowed to progress in a normal fashion, the search warrant service WAS delayed because of the pending election and the [regional] Drug Unit and the case officer were not the ones calling the shots," he continued.

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CBS News correspondent Bob Orr and producer Robert Hendin report the following from a U.S. law enforcement source:

The FBI's "suspicious letters" case has gone international. Letters containing white powder have begun showing up at "a handful of U.S. embassies abroad." One of the letters was received at the U.S. Embassy in Germany.

The letters seem to be nearly identical to the white powder letters that have been sent to more than 30 governors' offices in the U.S. since October. All of the mailings contain a non-hazardous powder and a vague generic one line threat. And, all of them have been postmarked and sent from the North Texas area.

Law enforcement officials say this letter campaign is an obvious hoax that is not a danger in and of itself, but the investigation is time-consuming and taxes already thin resources.