White House Week
Rebellion in the Senate, but at the CIA, Signs of Compromise
President Bush was pretty combative at his press conference late last week, demanding passage of a bill on treatment of terrorism prisoners that had prompted a revolt by key Republican senators; their committee had approved a more restrictive bill that Bush opposed. Meanwhile, CIA Director Michael Hayden took some heat from Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who said Hayden told them that Bush's proposed legislation is essential to allow the CIA to resume its overseas prison program for terrorist detainees. But Hayden, in a message to the CIA workforce, appeared to allow some room for compromise. "Other language is certainly possible...." he wrote. "At the end of the day, the director-any director-of CIA must be confident that what he has asked an agency officer to do under the program is lawful." The matter will probably go to the Senate floor this week.
If They Take Over, Look for a Blitzkrieg
Democratic leaders are mulling over several swift moves if they take back the House in the November midterms, including a "100 hour" plan to enact new legislation and reverse several GOP laws. The plan is modeled after former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's 100-day blueprint to pass the 1994 Contract With America. "The Democrats are in full planning mode for next year," says a congressional strategist. It's unclear exactly what they would do, but one leadership official says the lightning attack would involve issues like reversing the Bush tax cuts and addressing the war and education.
The Economy That Can't Be Explained
Senior White House officials are puzzled that the public still seems to be deeply worried about the economy-despite favorable reports about relatively low unemployment and high productivity. Most Americans are anxious about the economy, polls show, and give President Bush low marks for handling it. What to do? The fear is that if Bush says the economy is in great shape, he will come across as insensitive to those who feel financially precarious. But if he says the economy's in trouble, he will seem less than totally optimistic. GOP strategists call this one a tough tightrope to walk.
The Agency Where 'Anything Goes'
The way the Interior Department's inspector general sees things, ethical misdeeds and bureaucratic bungling at his agency have cost taxpayers a load of money. The IG, Earl Devaney, sharply rebuked senior Interior officials last week for allowing such a culture to exist. "Simply stated, short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of Interior," he told a House panel. "Ethics failures on the part of senior department officials ... have been routinely dismissed with a promise 'not to do it again.'" Devaney's rebuke came as the panel reviewed Interior's failure to include royalty-payment provisions in some deep-water oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico. That blunder may already have cost taxpayers $2 billion. Meanwhile, knowledgeable sources say, Devaney is pursuing allegations, made by auditors in an Interior unit, of massive underreporting of royalties by oil companies on other leases. The auditors have filed secret whistle-blower lawsuits alleging the underreporting, a development that has some Interior higher-ups seeing red.
PHOTO OP: 10:46 a.m., September 13, the Capitol
In a gathering of "formers," Carter administration National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski gives a hug to former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. They had joined retired U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark, Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi (left), and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (right) to call for a new direction in security policies.
With Kevin Whitelaw, Paul Bedard, Kenneth T. Walsh and Edward T. Pound
This story appears in the September 25, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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