In the News
- Lawmakers slam officials’ handling of Tx Ebola cases
- Obama may name Ebola “czar”
- Airline contacting up to 800 passengers
- Pelosi: Appropriators should return to DC “immediately”
- Obama wants 2015 deals with Republicans
- No surveillance without court order? Well, actually…
- CIA torture report: Bush skates – in depth
- Obama to CFPB: Safeguard “consumers’ financial security”
- Whisper app tracks “anonymous” users
Lawmakers Slam Officials’ Handling of Texas Ebola Cases
• At a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Rep Tim Murphy (R-PA) opened with scathing criticism. “Mistakes have been made. Trust and credibility of the admin and govt are waning. That trust must be restored.” (NYT, Hill, Politico, WaPo, TRNS, Fox, CNN, CBS, ABC, me)
• One sharp line of questioning dealt with travel. Thomas Duncan had flown to Dallas from Liberia, and on Wednesday it was revealed that a second nurse infected at the Dallas hospital had traveled on a commercial flight from Cleveland to Dallas the day before she showed symptoms of the disease
• Rep Paul Upton (R-MI) reiterated calls for a full travel ban from affected countries. About 70 lawmakers now support such a ban. CDC Director Dr Tom Frieden and other public health officials have said such measures would be counterproductive
• In one heated exchange, Frieden said he hadn’t seen a transcript of a telephone call made to the CDC by nurse Amber Vinson as she was about to board a flight from Dallas to Cleveland on 8 Oct. “My understanding is that she reported no symptoms to us,” Frieden said. Several reports suggest the CDC knew she had a low grade fever but allowed her to fly anyway
• Dr Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer for the medical group that oversees Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, said in remarks prepared for the hearing that protocols had been followed, though workers didn’t start wearing full biohazard suits for two days (how did he get out of coming to the hearing? It’s one day. Someone was clever to keep him away)
• Pie chart: Half of Americans fundamentally misunderstand Ebola (WaPo)
• Varga also apologized: “In our effort to communicate to the public quickly and transparently, we inadvertently provided some information that was inaccurate and had to be corrected.” He didn’t say what – and wasn’t there to be questioned about it)
• Frieden said health care workers weren’t following CDC protocols during the first day of Duncan’s treatment. The agency is investigating where the breach occurred and why, Frieden said
• “Screening and self-reporting at airports have been a demonstrated failure, yet the admin continues to advance a contradictory reason for this failed policy that frankly doesn’t make sense,” Murphy said to Frieden
• “If we tried to eliminate travel … we won’t be able to check them for fever when they leave. We won’t be able to check for fever when they arrive. We won’t be able to take a detailed travel history.”
• After the hearing, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) refused to say whether Congress should come back to town to vote on a travel ban. Instead, he said that members are putting the issue “on the president’s desk.” (be a big boy). Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) has called on Congress to return to debate a travel ban
• Vid: Spotted – Clipboard Guy! Man without Hazmat suit helps Ebola patient Amber Vinson onto plane. He works for the air ambulance company and apparently is supposed to be without a Hazmat suit – and with a clipboard – so he has better vision than those suited up
Obama May Name Ebola “Czar”
• President Obama said to reporters Thursday night, “It may be appropriate for me to appoint an additional person, not because they haven’t been doing an outstanding job, really working hard on this issue, but they are responsible for a whole bunch of other stuff.” He spoke after meeting with several top aides working on the Ebola issue (Politico, TRNS, Fox, NYT, TRNS, me)
• The person would “make sure we’re crossing all the t’s and dotting all the i’s” in the long run. Obama said that while he doesn’t have a “philosophical objection” to a travel ban, a ban “is less effective than the measures we are currently implementing,” including testing travelers as they arrive from countries with Ebola outbreaks
• Obama said the current judgment “of all involved is that a flat-out travel ban is not the way to go.” He said that “the risks involved remain extremely low for ordinary folks.” Also, the more workers can do to contain the outbreak in Africa, “the less our people are going to be at risk.”
• Obama on Thursday authorized the Pentagon to call up military reservists to help fight the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. About 540 active duty troops are posted in Liberia, helping agencies fight the outbreak
• As many as 4,000 or more American troops could deploy to West Africa to help fight the Ebola outbreak there, Pentagon press spox Rear Adm John Kirby said Thursday. They’re helping build and support 17 Ebola treatment centers, 65 community care centers, run four mobile testing labs and train health care workers
Airline Contacting Up to 800 Passengers
• Nurse Amber Vinson may have had Ebola symptoms sooner, authorities say, and in addition to her return trip from Cleveland to Dallas, Frontier Airlines is also reaching out to up to 800 passengers who were on five additional flights that used the same plane she flew in from Cleveland (CNN, me)
• Officials said she may have shown symptoms four days before authorities first indicated. Ebola is contagious when someone is symptomatic. Her uncle said she didn’t feel sick until Tuesday morning when she went to the hospital with a temperature of 100.3
• Yet a federal official with direct knowledge of the case told CNN that Vinson said she felt fatigue, muscle ache and malaise while she was in Ohio. She didn’t have diarrhea or vomiting while in that state or on the flight home
• About 50 people from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital have signed a document legally restricting where they can go and what they can do until they’re clear of Ebola, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said Thursday night. Among other things, they’ll be placed on a “Do Not Board list” that would prohibit them from flying commercially
• UN SecGen Ban Ki-moon has launched another urgent appeal for funds to help fight Ebola. He said a $1 billion trust fund he launched in September has received just $100,000 so far (absolutely pathetic) (BBC, me)
Pelosi: Appropriators Should Return to DC “Immediately”
• House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said in a statement Thursday that the House Appropriations Committee must “return to Washington immediately” to approve additional funding for the Ebola response. Wednesday, Democrats who oversee health funding pressed the panel’s top Republican for a hearing – no response, they said (Hill, Roll Call, me)
• House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) said Thursday that the CDC and NIH have “all the funds they need” to respond to the Ebola outbreak, but added if they need additional funds, “we’ll work with them.” However, “Congress has done everything it needs to do.” (nothing expect spout in a hearing)
• Nina Pham, one of the U.S. nurses to contract Ebola, landed in Maryland Thursday night and is being treated at NIH in Bethesda
• President Obama Thursday placed calls to Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). (Not clear why he didn’t call Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
• Rep Dennis Ross (R-FL) said Thursday that he’ll introduce legislation to ban travel between the U.S. and West African countries afflicted by the Ebola outbreak. Ross called on Boehner to call the House back into session to debate his bill. Congress has been out of session since 19 September
Obama Wants 2015 Deals with Republicans
• What? Golly. Beginning in 2015, President Obama will press Congress to replace automatic across-the-board spending cuts with a “balanced” deficit-reduction plan, enact a broad corporate tax overhaul, undertake a major infrastructure spending initiative and approve a series of trade agreements, senior admin officials said Thursday (NYT, me)
• “These are traditionally bipartisan terrains,” one official said of the tax, infrastructure and trade measures. If Obama and Congress “have a moment of productivity, these are the types of legislative proposals that I think could move forward with bipartisan support.”
• That’s the case whether or not Democrats maintain control of the Senate, the official suggested, adding that “we’re optimistic” that Obama’s party will keep the majority. It’s far from clear that Republicans, who have so far resisted nearly every element of the president’s economic agenda, will reverse course and team up with him (pretty clear they won’t, actually)
• A series of fiscal deadlines will test Obama’s ability to work with Congress on economic issues next spring. That’s when lawmakers will have to raise the govt’s statutory borrowing limit, renew authorization for the Highway Trust Fund and potentially reach a deal to keep the govt funded for the remainder of 2015 (fun times ahead, then)
• While Obama’s advisers argue that the “fiscal drama” that has surrounded past budget deadlines has harmed the economy, their plan for avoiding what one called “manufactured crises coming out of DC” amounts to a collective crossing of fingers
• Great vid: Lewis Black says F#%! Voter Suppression! (ACLU)
No Surveillance Without Court Order? Well, Actually…
• FBI Director James Comey on Thursday corrected statements he made on “60 Minutes” that the bureau didn’t “do electronic surveillance without a court order.” (here we go) In a Q&A session after a speech he gave at Brookings Institution, Comey said that he should have provided a more “lawyerly” answer (NYT, me)
• “I gave an answer that I thought was fair and accurate, and people gave me feedback afterwards saying it was insufficiently lawyerly, should have been longer, and what about the exceptions. So I think that’s very fair feedback, actually, and I wish I had thought of it in the moment.” (don’t think “exceptions” is being lawyerly, just straight)
• Comey said that “it remains true that in the over, over, overwhelming number of our cases we have court authority to collect the content of emails or telephones.”
• Comey acknowledged that there were exceptions. For example, the govt does intercept international phone calls or emails of Americans without warrants if they are to, from or about a noncitizen abroad who has been targeted for intelligence collection
• In response to Comey’s answer on “60 Minutes,” correspondent Scott Pelley said, “You know that some people are going to roll their eyes when they hear that?” Comey responded by going into detail about how the govt couldn’t read your emails or listen to your calls without going to a judge, making a show of probable cause etc that you’re a terrorist etc (except not always)
• Vid: Weird, awkward, not-making-sense-at-all explanation from FL Gov Rick Scott (R) as to why he delayed the gubernatorial debate with former Gov Charlie Crist (D) for 7 minutes over Crist’s FAN (Buzzfeed, me)
CIA Torture Report: Bush Skates – In Depth
• A soon-to-be-released Senate report on the CIA doesn’t assess the responsibility of former President George W. Bush or his top aides for any of the abuses of the agency’s detention and interrogation program (McClatchy, me)
• The Senate Intelligence Committee report also didn’t examine the responsibility of top Bush admin lawyers in crafting the legal framework that permitted the CIA to use simulated drowning called waterboarding and other interrogation methods widely described as torture
• As a result, the $40 million, five-year inquiry passed up what may be the final opportunity to render an official verdict on the culpability of Bush, former VP Dick Cheney and other senior officials for the program, in which suspected terrorists were abducted, sent to secret overseas prisons and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques
• Several panel members have extolled the more than 6,000 page report as one of the most comprehensive examinations of an executive branch agency ever undertaken by Congress. “There are more than 35,000 footnotes in the report,” Senate Intel Committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said after the final draft in Dec 2012
Committee Dropped Demand for WH Docs
• However, the Democratic-controlled committee apparently dropped a demand that the WH surrender some 9,400 docs related to the program, raising questions about Feinstein’s claim. The WH had refused to turn over the records for five years, citing “executive branch confidentiality interests.” The specific details of the docs remain unknown
• The committee tailored the report’s guidelines to focus the inquiry solely on the CIA, including how the agency “created, operated, and maintained its detention and interrogation program.” “The report will show that the CIA did not provide accurate info, and in some cases provided misleading info,” said a person familiar with the report
• The narrow parameters of the inquiry apparently were structured to secure the support the committee’s minority Republicans. But the Republicans withdrew only months into the inquiry. Several experts said the parameters were sufficiently flexible to have included an examination of the roles of Bush, Cheney et al
• The Senate Armed Service Committee had concluded in a 2008 report on detainee mistreatment by the DoD that Bush opened the way in February 2002 by denying al Qaeda and Taliban detainees the protection of an international ban against torture. WH officials also participated in discussions and reviewed CIA interrogation techniques in 2002 and 2003
Report Avoids Bush Admin’s Role
• Cheney and SecDef Donald Rumsfeld relentlessly pressured interrogators to subject detainees to harsh interrogation methods in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, McClatchy reported in April 2009. Such evidence – nonexistent – would have justified one of Bush’s main arguments for Invading Iraq in 2003
• Other accounts described how Cheney, Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, AG John Ashcroft and SecState Colin Powell approved specific harsh interrogation techniques. George Tenet, then CIA director, also reportedly updated them on the results
• News reports also chronicled the involvement of top WH and Justice Dept officials in fashioning a legal rationale giving Bush the authority to override U.S. and international laws prohibiting torture. They also crafted opinions that effectively legalized the CIA’s use of waterboarding, wall-slamming and sleep deprivations
• Even so, the exec summary of the Senate Intel Committee’s report doesn’t examine the responsibility of Bush and his top advisers for abuses committed while the program was in operation from 2002 to 2006, according to several people familiar with the 500 page doc
No Set Release Date for Report
• The reports 20 main conclusions don’t point to any wrongdoing outside of the CIA. Instead, the conclusions only mention the WH once, asserting that the CIA impeded effective WH oversight and decision-making
• The report primarily focused on discerning whether the use of the harsh interrogation techniques gained valuable intel, concluding that they didn’t. The CIA has rejected that finding, contending that the use of the techniques produced vital intel
• Along with being handicapped by political considerations, the panel confronted two prior DoJ investigations that declined to assign criminal liability to any officials involved in the program – one conducted under Bush admin and one under Obama admin. Moreover, Obama opposed any further inquiry
• The executive branch originally requested that 15% of the summary be redacted. McClatchy has learned that negotiations have reportedly progressed so that now roughly 5% will be blacked out of the summary’s public version, but there’s no set date on when it will be released
• List! Here are the 20 most conservative and liberal first names in America. Victoria isn’t on there… Are you? (Buzzfeed, me)
Obama to CFPB: Safeguard “Consumers’ Financial Security”
• President Obama is scheduled to visit the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Washington this morning to make remarks “on steps the admin is taking to safeguard American consumers’ financial security” (Hill, me)
• The WH is considering requiring that most federal agencies giving out benefits on prepaid cards use ones that come embedded with a microchip, instead of or in addition to a magnetic strip on the back. Retailers must adopt this technology, known as EMV, by 1 October 2015 or they will be deemed liable for fraud (about bloody time)
• WH officials are also considering creating a forum of sorts comprised of industry stakeholders and top admin officials from the Depts of Treasury, Homeland Security and Commerce, according to one source – anonymous
• The change comes on the heels of massive data breaches at JPMorgan Chase and other banks, Home Dept, Target and other businesses that have exposed millions of people’s personal and financial info and raised new concerns about the security of their data
• In response to the recent rash of hacks, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have proposed a host of legislative fix-its aimed primarily at how consumers are notified following a breach. Pols mostly agree that the current data-breach notification laws in each state present a compliance nightmare for businesses – but haven’t agreed on a national law
• “I had both of them that afternoon, and I came to the conclusion that white boys are so delicious. That time back in my dance studio ranks as one of the most celestial experiences of my life. Those two beauties transported me to heaven. I never knew that lovemaking could be so beautiful.” (Eartha Kitt on her threesome with James Dean and Paul Newman – w-wow)
Whisper App Tracks “Anonymous” Users
• The anonymous message-sharing application Whisper allegedly stores information and tracks users that could be newsworthy, regardless of whether they’ve opted out of location tracking services, the Guardian reports (Guardian, Politico, me)
• While two Guardian reporters were at Whisper headquarters last month to further pursue a partnership with the app, they learned that a team headed by Whisper’s editor-in-chief, former Gawker editor, Neetzan Zimmerman, “is closely monitoring users it believes are potentially newsworthy, delving into the history of their activity on the app and tracking their movements.”
• These include users on Capitol Hill, the White House, the NSA, military personnel and one “sex-obsessed lobbyist in Washington DC.” The company’s tracking tools allow staff to monitor which areas of the capital the lobbyist visits. “He’s a guy that we’ll track for the rest of his life and he’ll have no idea we’ll be watching him,” the same Whisper exec said
&&&
• The article includes a screen grab of a map showing the WH, with about nine red icons signifying someone who had posted a message to Whisper while on the WH grounds. The Guardian, Buzzfeed and Fusion, media companies that have used Whisper for stories, said they’re severing ties with the app for the time being
• The Guardian has previously worked with Whisper to find Iraq war veterans who wanted to share their opinions of ISIS and other stories. The reporters were visiting the headquarters to further pursue the relationship. The Guardian said that at no stage during the visit were the reporters told that the info shared with them was off the record
• The app fiercely pushed back against the Guardian article, releasing a lengthy statement Thursday addressing the charges in the piece. Zimmerman also launched a stream of tweets claiming the story is “lousy with falsehoods, and we will be debunking them all.” The story about the lobbyist “is probably the most egregious lie of the bunch. 100% fabricated.”
• Rocking into the weekend with – so new it isn’t out yet – “London Queen” by Charli XCX. – “I never thought I’d be living in the USA livin’ the dream like a London Queen”
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Victoria Jones
TRNS’ William McDonald and Paayal Zaveri contributed to this report
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