All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

In an ongoing investigation into the serious breaches by security guards during wild parties at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, CBS News learned that complaints against ArmorGroup, the private company that provides the Embassy security, reached the office of Former State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard in 2007.

Yet nothing was done, as the complaint was apparently "lost."

Krongard faced a serious conflict of interest: His brother Buzzy was on ArmorGroup's board of directors at the time. CBS News Investigative Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson asked Howard Krongard if he was aware of his brother's position on "Washington Unplugged" Wednesday.

"No. 1 I'm not sure why I should've known, but No. 2 he never told me," he responded.

Krongard maintains there was no conflict because he and his brother "lead separate lives."

When asked if he would have liked to have known in retrospect, Krongard replied, "If you're asking me do I think that either ArmorGroup or he should have told me, yes. It wouldn't have made any difference, as I say; I never had anything to do with ArmorGroup."

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The White House officially announced today Dennis Ross, previously Hillary Clinton's special adviser on Iran, is joining the National Security Council staff and will serve as a special assistant to the president.

The veteran Middle East negotiator will have a portfolio that encompasses the Middle East, the Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and South Asia, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said today. Ross will report to Deputy National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and National Security Adviser Jim Jones.

"If you look at all of the regions that are encompassed in that larger framework, you have different parts of the Middle East -- Iran and Iraq, the Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan. You've got a number of very important places in our foreign policy and in our national interests," Gibbs said today. "I can assure you, given the list of countries, that they'll be plenty busy."

Ross first gained notoriety as President Bill Clinton's Middle East envoy and director of policy planning in the first Bush administration.

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Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote an op-ed piece for the Washington Post today emphasizing the importance of combating human trafficking.

"To some, human trafficking may seem like a problem limited to other parts of the world. In fact, it occurs in every country, including the United States, and we have a responsibility to fight it just as others do," writes Clinton.

The op-ed follows the State Department's release yesterday of the ninth annual Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP).

Clinton describes a young Russian female, Oxana, who was forced into prostitution and killed after trying to escape. The secretary explains that victims of trafficking are people who are manipulated into leaving their families and moving abroad, after which they are sold into manual and/or sexual labor.

"They labor in fields and factories under threat of violence if they try to escape. They work in homes for families that keep them virtually imprisoned," Clinton explains.

According to Clinton, the victims are often held very far from home, with no money or connections in order to prevent cries for help. Because human trafficking is so discreet, the secretary further warns that there are more than the estimated 12 million worldwide victims.

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A senior official has confirmed that the State Department asked Twitter to delay a schedule maintenance shutdown and keep the social networking site running over the past weekend, when it was slated to be offline.

The action was seen as a likely effort to maintain communication with users in Iran, where the contested presidential election has sparked a series of increasingly violent demonstrations and protests.

At the State Department Briefing today, spokesman Ian Kelly acknowledged that officials had been communicating with Twitter and other media sites, but refused to comment on whether those conversations were in reference to Iran.

"I know the secretary has a - wants a big push for Diplomacy in using these new social media to develop horizontally communities," he said. “And of course, twitter is another one of those social media."

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By CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller and CBS News Political Director Steve Chaggaris.

For the president who promised "change you can believe in," some things never change.

Barack Obama is adhering to the long-standing practice of appointing big-money campaign fundraisers to serve as U.S. Ambassadors.

Late last evening, the White House quietly put out a list of 12 individuals Mr. Obama intends to nominate to represent the U.S. in foreign capitals.

Only three of the 12 are career foreign service officers; a fourth is in the foreign commercial service.

But a check by CBS News shows that at least four others played important financial roles in the Obama campaign, bundling contributions in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

• John V. Roos, nominee to be Ambassador to Japan. Bundled contributions of at least $500,000


• Charles, H. Rivkin, nominee to be Ambassador to France. Bundled contributions of at least $500,000.


• Louis B. Susman, nominee to be Ambassador to Britain. Bundled contributions of between $100,000 and $200,000.


• Laurie S. Fulton, nominee to be Ambassador to Denmark. Bundled contributions of between $100,000 and $200,000.

These nominees have distinguished careers, but not in diplomacy. Roos and Fulton are top lawyers. Susman is a retired investment banking executive. Rivkin is a Hollywood CEO who once ran the Jim Henson Company, home of The Muppets. He was also a Democratic Convention delegate for then-Candidate Obama.

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Following disclosure by a Senate Armed Services Committee report that she gave verbal approval to CIA Director George Tenet to use waterboarding on detainees, former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended herself in an impromptu interview (see the video below) with Stanford students at a campus reception on April 27.

Rice told the Stanford students that waterboarding is not torture, based on the authorization to use an extreme method that simulates drowning by President Bush and legal counsel. “I didn’t authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency,” she said.

In other words, as Richard Nixon said in his interview with David Frost in 1977, "When the President does it, that means it is not illegal."

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Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been out of the spotlight, earning up to $150,000 for speaking engagements and lunching with celebrities like American Idol judge Randy Jackson. But the political spotlight is turning toward her again, and it could be a little harsh.

A 232-page report released this week by the Senate Armed Services Committee states that Rice, as well as several other Bush administration officials, reviewed and subsequently approved the use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques.

CBS News's David Martin reported that, while serving as Bush's National Security Advisor, Rice gave verbal approval to CIA Director George Tenet to continue using harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding and stress positions, on detainees.

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The U.S. State Department today called Iranian charges of espionage filed against American journalist Roxana Saberi "baseless." The strongly worded rebuke comes a day after the United States announced it would join other nations in talks to encourage Iran to abandon its nuclear program, part of a larger shift in American foreign policy toward more direct engagement with the Middle Eastern country.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood claimed that the accusations were "without foundation" and said that the U.S. was "deeply concerned about the Iranian announcement,'' the Associated Press reports.

Saberi, a dual Iran/U.S. citizen, was arrested by the Iranian police in late January. She was initially charged with working without press credentials, but this week an Iranian judge made new allegations about the 31-year-old freelance journalist. Born in the United States and raised in Fargo, North Dakota, Saberi has been living in Iran for the past six years while filing stories for the BBC, NPR, and Fox. She was working on a book about the country and planned to return to the states this year, her father Reza Saberi told reporters.

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This post was written by Brent Lang.


Samantha Power, Pulitzer Prize winning author and Harvard University academic, will join the Obama White House as a senior foreign policy advisor. Power got into trouble while stumping for President Obama last March, when she labeled Hillary Rodham Clinton a "monster."

Hours after making her comment to a Scottish newspaper, Power abandoned her advisory role in the campaign.

The Associated Press reports that Power will serve as senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council. This may make for some awkwardness: In her new capacity, Power will be in close contact and may have to travel with Clinton, the new Secretary of State.

Since the media firestorm that greeted her comments, Power has been inching back into a more public role in the Obama fold. She reached out to Clinton and was on transition teams for the State Department and the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived for work at the State Department just after 9 am and spoke to an enthusiastic gathering of about a thousand of her new employees including foreign service officers, members of the civil service and others who work at the Harry S Truman building, known fondly as "the building." Clinton, America's 67th Secretary of State, was greeted with real enthusiasm, saying "I want you to think outside the proverbial box," something most bureaucrats never hear their bosses say. Then she took a not so veiled shot at the Bush administration, saying "We are not any longer going to tolerate the kind of divisiveness that has paralyzed and undermined our ability to get things done for America."

As if to underscore the importance the new administration places on its foreign policy goals, by 3 pm the Secretary of State hosted her boss, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden at a ceremony in the department's ornate Benjamin Franklin room. Some 300 employees representing every bureau in the department---from senior members of the foreign service to the newest class of incoming diplomats--- heard Clinton and Mr. Obama speak of the need to work together to solve the problems America faces abroad.

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