1/31/02 - I McAuliffe delivers new Web
We're not supposed to know about this, but Democratic Party boss Terry McAuliffe is finally delivering on his promises to update the party's Web site. The prototype has a fancy new look, issues pages, and the "2002 Countdown to Victory calendar." It's just being passed to members of the "Democratic family" and targeted reporters. Alas, we were not among them. But we did get a bootleg copy of the E-mail announcing the site that includes a link for all of you to see.
The memo:
PRIVATE Subject: DNC
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002
Dear Democratic Friend,
We want to give you an early, private preview of our new website - and we want your help in breaking it. That's right - breaking it.
We are currently testing a beta version of our new website. This website will be presented to the general public in the near future, but for now, you can get to the site by going to http://beta.democrats.org. The best browser to use is Internet Explorer version 5.0 and above.
We want you to go to the site, test it, create login accounts, do everything you possibly can to find where the problem areas are in the site.
And then we want you to tell us what problems you found and where/how you found them. Here are examples of what your comments should look like:
--Clicked on 'Take Action,' page then directed me to 'State Parties,' and not to any action.
--Tried to create login account, but received this error message: "Mason error 4233. Code line 5 is out of loop."
You get the idea. Hit every part of the site aggressively and eagerly. Your input will be invaluable to making the REAL launch of this a success.
ONE IMPORTANT NOTE: DO NOT FORWARD THIS INFORMATION TO ANYONE. THIS IS NOT A PUBLIC WEBSITE YET. Our Press Office has worked hard to get several stories written about the site for next week, but those stories will NOT get written if this information leaks out. Please do not hurt their hard work by distributing this web address. Keep it in our Democratic family.
Thanks and happy breaking.
1/31/02 - II Bush should hire the mob
Who has the guts to swindle Osama bin Laden? Evidently some Russian mobsters do. U.S. intelligence experts now believe that bin Laden's al Qaeda organization may have been fooled into buying bogus radiological weapons instead of the real thing. In mid-January, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested that some weapons seized in Afghanistan appeared to have a high radioactivity count. But analysts now think al Qaeda was duped by Russian organized-crime figures trying to pass off nondescript industrial offal as "dirty nukes." The substance, whatever it was, wasn't in radiationproof containers–meaning anybody who handled it (including the sellers) would have been contaminated. And the scheme matches other known efforts in that part of the world to sell bogus nukes on the black market. "It was a scam that we were familiar with," a U.S. intelligence official tells our Richard J. Newman. U.S. officials are growing skeptical that al Qaeda had obtained chemical or biological weapons either. A number of suspicious cylindrical containers, labeled with a skull and crossbones, have been snatched in Afghanistan and are now in the United States awaiting testing. But the cylinders may be empty or contain nothing more worrisome than everyday poisons. Pentagon officials still stress, however, that numerous al Qaeda documents indicate dead seriousness to obtain and use weapons of terror.
1/30/02 Al Gore’s next chapter
Gone, and almost forgotten, former veep Al Gore is set to return to the
political stage this week. Allies say that on Thursday he plans to announce the creation of a new political action committee that we’re told will be his ticket to the 2004 presidential election. He’ll also announce a new staff. “He’s coming back,” says a former aide. The Tennessee rollout ends on Saturday when he hosts a fundraiser in Nashville. It’s about time, say allies, who note that Gore is being left in the dust of other presidential hopefuls like House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, and Sens. John Kerry and Tom Daschle.
1/29/02 Saudi smooch to Bush
It seems that we can forget all that press blather about Saudi Arabia
angling to kick the United States military out of its desert bases. The
latest evidence comes not only from a new interview with Saudi leader
Crown Prince Abdullah but also from the quarterly on U.S.-Saudi relations published by the Arab nation's embassy in Washington–a journal presided over by a royal family member, Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz. While dubbed the "Fall 2001" edition, it is filled with praise for the U.S. antiterror effort, two pictures of President Bush and four of the American flag. "We have special empathy for the American people," Prince Bandar writes, adding that his government has "expressed its total commitment to the U.S.-led effort to combat and eliminate terrorism." Of course, the quarterly doesn't mention anything about Osama bin Laden's Saudi ties, instead listing the number of times Riyadh has talked with Washington about fighting terror. Still, a long article reciting the history of U.S.-Saudi relations ends with this sentence. "As they have in the past, the two countries will overcome this [the Afghan crisis], the most recent crisis that has tested their friendship, and will emerge with a clearer understanding of the mutual benefits inherent in a close relationship that has endured for some seven decades."
1/17/02 Gunning with Justice Scalia
Democrats still gunning for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for joining the majority in 2000 to give President Bush his election victory over Al Gore, beware: This judge knows how to handle a weapon. Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says he is taking Scalia duck hunting Saturday. "I'm especially excited we'll be joined by Justice Scalia. He'll get to see why people fly from all over the world to hunt ducks in the Natural State." It's part of a bet payoff to Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, who will also be hunting. It was set when the University of Arkansas lost to Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl. Had Arkansas won, Keating would have had to host a quail hunt. "You win some and you lose some," says Huckabee. For Scalia, the trip is a welcome break from the politics of Washington. His support for Bush in Bush v. Gore has been blamed for the effort by Democratic senators to block the presidential appointment of his son to a top Labor Department post. Bush installed him this month as one of two recess appointments. Of course, Scalia is also the odds-on favorite to replace Chief Justice William Rehnquist should he retire, and you can just imagine the reaction he'll get from gun-control advocates now that he's been outed as a hunter.
1/17/02–II Have a cup of Enron
Here's another pitiful irony from our Enron files. According to the link below to the eBay auction site, an Enron coffee mug goes for about 250 times the current value of the energy company's stock.
• Click here to go to eBay.
1/16/02 Lost in the translation
Seems our new pals in Moscow are taking a page from the White House playbook. Russian officials have told Washington that they're adding their own version of America's new Office of Homeland Security. It will be a Russian Foreign Ministry office that focuses exclusively on drugs, terrorists, and organized crime. But what a lousy name they've chosen, Washington officials tell our David E. Kaplan. Moscow's counterpart: the Department of New Threats and Challenges, a phrase that perhaps flows better in Russian.
1/15/02 Dual citizenship or dual spies
A September 11-inspired State Department blanket policy of ripping away
security clearances for employees with dual citizenship has been shelved
amid complaints that it treated long-time and trusted workers like common criminals. Whispers learns that the department began issuing letters to workers with two passports requiring them to renounce their dual citizenship or risk revocation or denial of their security clearance. The policy included workers and their spouses. Reason: Those with dual citizenship pose a national security risk. While not a new policy, it had been on the back burner for years and addressed only on a case-by-case basis. For example, many who do hold dual citizenship have a U.S. and a British passport or one with another friendly nation, not a terror sponsor. In some cases that's a plus, especially if the employee has a deep knowledge of the diplomacy and politics of the nation and can help U.S. policy makers. But the change after the terror attacks didn't differentiate. Now, after receiving complaints, the department has reversed course and gone back to the old way of looking at dual citizenship.
1/11/02 It's not easy being boss
They don't call being White House chief of staff the toughest job in Washington for nothing. Just ask the current COS, Andy Card. He tells the scholarly Presidential Studies Quarterly that there are no rules, no directions, no easy days. Which may explain why he got the job: Instead of hiring a rookie, President Bush chose Card because he was deputy chief of staff in the previous Bush administration. Card says you make the job up as you go along. "I don't recall there ever being anything in writing about all that." He isn't big on formal staff charts, either, preferring to supplement in-house-staff ideas with those from outsiders. But Job 1, he says, is to take care of the boss. "How do I protect the guy in there from wasting his time and energy?" It helps to be able to play the tough guy. And Card got plenty of practice when, as deputy for former President Bush, he was given the inglorious job of handling salaries. "I was kind of the bad guy," he recalls. "I would say, 'No, we're not going to pay that much.' "
1/10/02 More Helms than Helms
Her timing might not be the best, with the nation still obsessed with September 11, but North Carolina Republican candidate Elizabeth Dole has kicked off her U.S. Senate campaign with a new fundraising letter. What's really interesting is her bid to convince potential backers that she's a conservative modeled after retiring Sen. Jesse Helms. While she notes that "liberal special interests" have targeted the race, and certainly they have, it's really the new attacks from the right claiming she's not conservative enough that scare her. The right has attacked her for moderating her views on things like gun control during her 2000 presidential campaign, which is why she spends so much time pointing out in the letter to likely conservatives that she's a Jesse clone. "Let me be clear," she writes in the letter provided to Whispers. "I want to continue the tradition of conservative leadership that Jesse Helms started 30 years ago." By the way: Dole says she expects to spend up to $8 million.
1/9/02 The White House 'X'mas
All right, Christmas has passed, now get over it. That was the message heard by federal workers just after Christmas as they watched a garbage truck filled to the brim with holiday trees pull out of the White House. "It seems scroogelike to pull down decorations a day or two after Christmas," one observer told us. "Perhaps Bush's brush-clearing fetish at the ranch extends to the East Room." Reality check: It's typical for the decorations to be removed when the prez is on his Christmas vacation.
