Congressmen Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz Break Their Oath on Libyan Investigation IMHO

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God. (Oath of Office of the Congress enacted in 1884)

Yesterday Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) who is a Romney surrogate, released sensitive information on Libya.  Why is Issa investigating Libya instead of  Chairman Rogers of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence?  Is it because Rogers wouldn't allow public hearings or leak information on Libya because he always puts Country over Party?  That is not a trait that some of today's Republicans want as they will say and do anything including lying to get Romney elected.  This stunt by Issa should immediately remove the Libya investigation from Issa's Committee to Chairman Roger's Intel Committee because Issa and Chaffetz cannot be trusted with sensitive information:

Issa uploaded scores of sensitive material and didn’t redact names of Libyan civilians or local leaders, exposing them to physical danger from the very people the Obama administration is investigating regarding the September 11, 2012 attacks. 

If that does not break the oath of office that members of the Congress take, then I don't know what does.  This comes on top of the outing of a CIA base in Libya from this same Committee of Issa:

Dana Milbank wrote Wednesday:

Through their outbursts, cryptic language and boneheaded questioning of State Department officials, the committee members left little doubt that one of the two compounds at which the Americans were killed, described by the administration as a “consulate” and a nearby “annex,” was a CIA base. They did this, helpfully, in a televised public hearing.

So Issa accomplished outing the location of a CIA base in their big show, but no doubt this will magically be blamed on Obama by Republicans. Dana Milbank wrote, “When House Republicans called a hearing in the middle of their long recess, you knew it would be something big, and indeed it was: They accidentally blew the CIA’s cover.” 

So the committee investigating whether or not secrets were leaked is now leaking secrets. Will this clown show ever end? Oh, no. They even managed to out that their investigation might be looking into the wrong agency. It looks like it might be the CIA, not the State Department.

This was pure politics with the debate on foreign policy coming up Monday night.  IMHO, the FBI needs to launch an investigation into Darrell Issa (R-CA) and his co-conspirator Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) who is a Romney surrogate:

This week Chaffetz came through with the promises he made to his Mormon brother (Romney). Before a national audience, Chaffetz threw all sense of decency out the window when he started throwing every scrap of mud he could find at the White House, the State Department, and everyone in between.  

These are the kind of people that are now Republicans in the House putting the Party and election of Romney over the Country.  Is that what Americans want from their House of Representatives?  I don't think so and if the Democrats take back the House, they can blame people like Issa and Chaffetz who cannot keep their mouths shut even foreign affairs and intelligence operations.  Some Republicans will do and say anything to make Obama a one-term President even if they have to lie which we are seeing daily.  Any member of the House or Senate that has been involved in obstruction and releasing information that should not have been made public needs to resign, but that would take class and honesty but most of today's Congressional Republicans have the class and honesty of a gnat.

While Investigating Obama Over Libya, Darrell Issa Puts Libyans’ Lives at Risk
By: Sarah JonesOctober 19th, 2012 

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has placed several Libyans lives at risk in the course of investigating the alleged security issues regarding the deaths of four Americans in Libya on September 11, 2012. 

Issa uploaded scores of sensitive material and didn’t redact names of Libyan civilians or local leaders, exposing them to physical danger from the very people the Obama administration is investigating regarding the September 11, 2012 attacks. 

Speaking to The Cable, an administration official said, “Much like WikiLeaks, when you dump a bunch of documents into the ether, there are a lot of unintended consequences. This does damage to the individuals because they are named, danger to security cooperation because these are militias and groups that we work with and that is now well known, and danger to the investigation, because these people could help us down the road.” 

This comes after Issa already outed a CIA base in Libya during the course of this (one of many) partisan witch hunt, allegedly based on concerns over security. As Richard Clarke explained, however, anyone who thinks that initial information is correct knows nothing about terrorism or combat. 

Issa is doing the exact same thing his party did when we first discussed going into Libya and they were warned by their own party policy makers to stop giving aid to our enemies just because they wanted to cause problems for President Obama. 

So, Darrell Issa has leaked important information while investigating alleged leaks of security — again. He is doing more damage in this investigation than our enemies could have hoped for. This is hardly Issa’s first go at hacking up a partisan witch hunt of this administration. 

This isn’t just your typical Republican incompetence. The Republicans don’t care that they’ve endangered our work and civilians in Libya over their alleged concern over Americans killed in Libya.  

They’re politicizing Libya and hoping that by leaking info that even Wikileaks wouldn’t have leaked (Wikileaks offered the State Department the chance to redact sensitive material unlike the Republican Party), they can stir up more chaos and violence in order to blame it on Obama before the election.  

Let’s see. Wikileaks has been named an enemy of the state for their document dumping, and yet Republicans are still running wild after dumping unredacted documents that Wikileaks would not have without first running it past the State Department.  

Read the entire Darrell Issa story at The Cable.

To add fuel to the fire, it is the Republicans who have been cutting embassy security in the House budgets and then blame in on Obama for not increasing security:

Remember when the House that Ryan built defunded security for consulates, even after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “warned that Republicans’ proposed cuts to her department would be “detrimental to America’s national security” — a charge Republicans rejected”:

For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department’s Worldwide Security Protection program — well below the $2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration. 

House Republicans cut the administration’s request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012. (Negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate restored about $88 million of the administration’s request.)

Ryan’s 2014 budget cuts non-defense discretionary spending, “which includes State Department funding, would be slashed nearly 20 percent in 2014, which would translate to more than $400 million in additional cuts to embassy security.” 

Maybe you don’t remember any of that because you were busy screaming “Valerie Plame!” today when you found out that in their (yet another) Darrell Issa led witch hunt with taxpayer money, Republicans accidentally outed the location of a secret CIA base. 

Years ago when I worked for the Air Force, my boss used to get the daily intel paperwork from FTD from the Air Force listening posts and media overseas.  He would go through the report every morning highlighting with the 4-star Commander needed to see.  After he had highlighted the report, it went to the Commander.  We had a local Congressman who demanded to see the report but he was turned down as he didn't have the necessary clearance.

Will never forget my boss saying that if they gave that report to any member of Congress not on Intelligence or Foreign Affairs, they might as well release to the media themselves.  That is exactly what happened when the Darrell Issa Committee was given information that should have stayed in Congress not been released.  This is the same Republican Investigation Committee that leaked the location of a CIA base in Libya.


Never thought I would be saying this, but for the good of the Country and for our Federal employees around the world, it is time to throw out Republicans and bring back the Democrats to head the House.  What is a shame is that we have some good chairs like Chairman Rogers of Intel but we cannot afford two more years of Issa and his investigations and the Ryan budgets that cut necessary foreign operations to give the Defense Department money for weapons systems they don't want.

The GOP has proven with their obstructionist agenda and now leaking this information including outing a CIA operation, that they should not be in charge of the House because with that comes Committee Chairs and Issa has no business ever being in charge of an investigative committee again.  IMHO Issa shouldn't be a member of Congress after his stunts for the last two years putting the GOP and Romney over the Country he swore in his oath to serve:

The current oath was enacted in 1884:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Wall Street Journal Covers Parent Company, News Corp, and Murdoch 's Scandal with Facts

Since Murdoch and his News Corp was allowed to buy The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), their coverage of corporate  news has been sinking into more general news and less in-depth business articles we had come to expect on the front page.  Then we learn the facts from The Daily Beast that since 2007 only 12% of articles on The Wall Street Journal front page were about corporations.  The first question that pops in your mind is WHY?

 "Did Murdoch Costs The Wall Street Journal the Scoop on the Goldman-Sachs/SEC Story?"  According to the linked Daily Finance article it did.  Turns out that Murdoch bought the WSJ to compete with the New York Times for local news and politics which ended up bitting the WSJ on this story when the New York Times broke the full story and 20 minutes later the Journal went with a bare bones story.

Why would Murdoch have WSJ sit on the story?  Was Murdoch's purchase of the WSJ meant to help Obama when he took office with Murdoch's switch of the WSJ to more political news and less business news?  With only 12% front page stories being about corporate America, it left a big hole for those stories how corporate America was affected by the Obama Administration.  That may be a reach but in hindsight, that looks to be a possibility.   Makes sense with the bad economy that Murdoch, who supported Obama, would make the Journal into more of a regular newspaper ignoring what was happening in corporate America for the most part.

Murdoch's support of Obama was largely ignored by the loyal supporters of Fox News who turned even more on McCain.  If Fox News told them to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, some of them would probably do just that.




There you have it -- Murdoch supporting Obama and the Wall Street Journal goes more mainstream news and less corporate.  Connect the dots.

Why have most of the conservative pundits from the beginning been ignoring this huge story out of London on News Corps which has now reached inside the United States with the FBI investigation opened?  This should be big news to everyone.  It made our local papers and the broadcast news.

Murdoch Scandal Roils WSJ

Faced with sleazy corporate cousins, reporters at the august Wall Street Journal are grappling with how to cover their boss’s scandal—and their own survival 

By Nick Summers
Jul 14, 2011 10:24 PM EDT

On Tuesday, July 5, bureau chiefs and editors at The Wall Street Journal dialed into a conference call organized by Dennis Berman, the newspaper’s new editor in charge of corporate coverage. He trotted out some numbers: of the more than 1,200 front-page stories the Journal had run in the previous year, only 12 percent had been about corporations—formerly the paper’s bread and butter. 

Since its 2007 sale to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., the Journal had been steadily devolving, old-timers thought, into a general-interest daily—still a fine newspaper, but no longer the essential first read of corporate America. “We have to raise our ambitions,” Berman said, according to someone who listened to the call. And it wasn’t hard to believe that the Journal would. A week earlier, it had won three Gerald Loeb Awards, the highest honors in business journalism, after being shut out in 2010 for the first time in decades. 

At that moment, though, a long-simmering story in the British press was exploding, dictating that the next major corporation the Journal would be covering would be its own parent.
The bombshell admission by the News Corp.-owned tabloid News of the World that its reporters had hacked the voicemail of a murdered teen, giving her parents false hope that she might still be alive, has made the Murdoch company one of the most reviled on the planet, as more allegations of unethical practices at its various properties have surfaced. News Corp.’s hasty decisions to shutter the tabloid, as well as scuttle a $12 billion bid for complete ownership of a lucrative British satellite broadcasting company, have done little to stanch the outcry. In the sprawling story’s latest developments, the FBI opened an investigation into whether News Corp. outlets violated the privacy of 9/11 terror victims in America; Murdoch himself consented to testify before Britain’s Parliament; and Rebekah Brooks, the CEO of his U.K. newspapers, resigned. 

In the last week and a half, reporters and editors at the august Journal have had to come to terms with the fact that they share corporate DNA with publications that have paid police for news, paid large settlements to keep phone-hacking victims quiet, and provided Parliament with incomplete information, among other sins against journalism. The Journal's publisher, Les Hinton, has been widely discussed as a possible fall guy for their malfeasance. For the Journal, covering it all has been an awkward and frustrating challenge. 

“It stinks. It makes our stomachs churn, to be bizarrely held accountable for some dipshit tabloid guys from eight years ago. It’s absurd,” said a staffer who has been at the Journal since before Murdoch bought the paper. Another reporter, also speaking anonymously, described an end to the era of pretending away the Murdoch taint: “This slightly naïve notion that nobody really knows that we’re part of News Corp., that what they do, what Fox News does, what Rupert Murdoch does, doesn’t affect us—when something like this happens, it forces people to recognize that it does.” 

In covering the story, the Journal has walked a fine line. After running articles on page B1 and B3 on its first two days, the News of the World closure made the front page last Friday. The story was then relegated back inside—although Journal reporters Jessica Vascellaro and Russell Adams broke news Wednesday with a report that News Corp. was contemplating the sale of its remaining British newspapers. As the scandal has continued to explode anew each day, the Journal has, indeed, upped its game. Murdoch’s decision to revoke his bid for British Sky Broadcasting was fronted again Wednesday, and yesterday, the paper published the first extensive interview with Murdoch. 

It hasn’t been an entirely smooth process, especially because Journal staffers are acutely aware of who among their ranks might be termed “AM” and “PM”: after Murdoch and pre-Murdoch. Gossip flows freely in a newsroom, and spreading through the Journal grapevine now is the tale of a contentious moment last week between No. 2 editor Gerard Baker—a Murdoch hire—and Bruce Orwall, a longtime bureau chief now in London. During a conference call to plan stories, the journalists were discussing Rebekah Brooks, the News of the World editor at the time of the hacking of the teen murder victim’s phone. Baker, murmuring a word of support for the vilified Brooks, noted that she had been on vacation when the offense occurred. Orwall shot back quickly: “The last I checked, cell phones still work in Italy.” Orwall declined to comment; Baker, through a spokesperson, did the same. Journal Editor-in-Chief Robert Thomson also declined to comment. 

The Journal's competitors say the paper is performing admirably, under the circumstances. “We all know how tricky it is to cover your own company. I think the Journal has played it pretty much down the middle,” Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, emailed The Daily Beast. One Times reporter, who did not wish to be named discussing a competitor, agreed. “I think they’re doing the most they can with a very unpleasant and uncomfortable situation. No one ever wants to write about their boss,” he said. “And when you do, there’s always a degree of self-editing that goes on. Knowing that, it’s pretty impressive how they have been very tough on Murdoch and News Corp. at times.” 

Excerpt:  Read More at The Daily Beast

First time we heard of Rupert Murdoch was when we lived in the San Antonio area and he bought the San Antonio Light which was a very good newspaper -- lot of military news and facts.  The San Antonio Express at that time was more fluff.  Murdoch then got approval behind closed doors to buy the Express News promising the Light employees there would be little change.  That was one big fat lie.  Next thing we know we are down to one paper as he merged the papers and the Light employees were in the unemployment line.  Why was he allowed to buy the Express News to put the Light out of business is a question that was never answered.

Now in NYC he owns the cable Fox News, The New York Post, and now The Wall Street Journal.  The question remains of why he was allowed to buy different venues in the same city.  His aim is to put The New York Times out of business using The Wall Street Journal is failing miserably.  Journal reporters are not too happy being part of News Corp either.

If I don't like what a newspaper has to say, I don't read it and certainly will not buy it. There is Freedom of the Press along with my right to not read a particular paper if I don't agree with them.  The very idea that Murdoch bought the WSJ to put the NY Times out of business goes against everything I believe.  Don't want one sided news and that is what Murdoch seems to be after.  How long would it take him if he could buy the NY Times to merge the WSJ and lay off Journal employees in favor of the Times?  He has a track record that is not good.  Conservatives who buy into Murdoch are setting themselves up for an eventual fall because he is not conservative.  No conservative would hire Geraldo.

Very black eye for News Corp but since it is Rupert Murdoch, I am shedding no tears and consider it the beginning of payback for the San Antonio Light employees and their readers.