When Republicans Get In Trouble..Things Go Missing

[journalist3072]

A definite pattern here! When Republicans get in trouble, things go missing. Or information doesn't get reported in a timely manner.

- Richard Nixon & his 18 1/2 minute gap on the tape

- Alberto Gonzales waits 12 hours after being notified of the Plame investigation, to tell WH staffers to preserve any and all information they have on the matter

- The WH waits 18 hours to report that the Vice President shot a man.

And now, the Department of Homeland Security can't find the transcript or recording of the conference call that took place 5 hours after Katrina's landfall.

Remind me again how is it that Americans don't see this pattern, and wake the hell up?

[Pirate Smile]

1. True. Nominated for GP. We should add any more instances

we can think of.

[journalist3072]

2. Thanks for the vote! And that's an excellent idea!

Let's add examples on all the times that information that might implicate Republicans turns up missing, or doesn't get reported in a timely fashion.

[serryjw]

4. Missing? Bush's Brain

ohhhhhhhhhh I'm sorry, Forgot Rove has it. :sarcasm:

[Lone_Star_Dem]

3. Isn't it amazing how easy it is to "lose" things?

And if you're a republican you can get away with it, too.

K&R For your mention of the lost Katrina transcript.

[journalist3072]

11. More Katrina-related info here...

Senators: White House Stalls Katrina Probe

By LARA JAKES JORDAN

WASHINGTON Jan 24, 2006 (AP)— The White House is crippling a Senate inquiry into the government's sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina by barring administration officials from answering questions and failing to hand over documents, senators leading the investigation said Tuesday.

In some cases, staff at the White House and other federal agencies have refused to be interviewed by congressional investigators, said the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In addition, agency officials won't answer seemingly innocuous questions about times and dates of meetings and telephone calls with the White House, the senators said.


-snip-

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the committee's Republican chair, said she respects the White House's reluctance to reveal advice to President Bush from his top aides, which is generally covered by executive privilege.

Still, she criticized the dearth of information from agency officials about their contacts with the White House.

"We are entitled to know if someone from the Department of Homeland Security calls someone at the White House during this whole crisis period," Collins said. "So I think the White House has gone too far in restricting basic information about who called whom on what day."

She added, "It is completely inappropriate" for the White House to bar agency officials from talking to the Senate committee.

More here: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1538037&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

[babylonsister]

5. I'd like a list of info that's been denied because they can?

How about Abu Ghraib pix the ACLU demanded initially?
How about Part 2 that the Senate was shut down for; so what happened, and why aren't
the Dems pissed off about it? Harry Reid, and the rest of you, find your balls!
Why is our enlightened life, with all of our benefits, missing people who tell the
truth, and why is that so hard to understand?

[journalist3072]

23. I think the Medicare memo fiasco fits that category...

When Medicare Chief Scully said he would release the analyis "if I feel like it."

Posted here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=437393&mesg_id=437594

[tyedyeto]

6. They also claim 'executive privilege'...

to keep anyone from speaking to Congress.

[oldtime dfl_er]

7. and those pesky WMDs...

hmm...now where did they go? (no, they're not under this table...)

http://www.cafepress.com/scarebaby/1207923

[SeattleGirl]

8. Well, missing emails, tapes, etc. are nothing

compared to a stained blue dress! :sarcasm:

[6000eliot]

9. Don't forget the douche bag's missing National Guard records.

[skids]

10. The emails Fitz says were lost. n/t

[VOX]

12. Excellent and concise, journalist3072!

Nominated and kicked.

:kick:

[journalist3072]

13. Information Delayed- Bush suppresses damning CIA report on 9/11

Bush suppresses damning CIA report on 9/11

Intelligence official says a report that is "very embarrassing for the administration" is being withheld from Congress until after the election.

By Robert Scheer

Oct. 20, 2004 | It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."

When I asked about the report, Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she and committee chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., sent a letter 14 days ago asking for it to be delivered. "We believe that the CIA has been told not to distribute the report," she said. "We are very concerned."


According to the intelligence official, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, release of the report, which represents an exhaustive 17-month investigation by an 11-member team within the agency, has been "stalled." First by acting CIA director John McLaughlin and now by Porter J. Goss, the former Republican House member (and chairman of the Intelligence Committee) who recently was appointed CIA chief by President Bush.

The official stressed that the report was more blunt and more specific than the earlier bipartisan reports produced by the Bush-appointed Sept. 11 commission and Congress.

"What all the other reports on 9/11 did not do is point the finger at individuals, and give the how and what of their responsibility. This report does that," said the intelligence official. "The report found very senior-level officials responsible."

By law, the only legitimate reason the CIA director has for holding back such a report is national security. Yet neither Goss nor McLaughlin has invoked national security as an explanation for not delivering the report to Congress.

"It surely does not involve issues of national security," said the intelligence official.

"The agency directorate is basically sitting on the report until after the election," the official continued. "No previous director of CIA has ever tried to stop the inspector general from releasing a report to the Congress, in this case a report requested by Congress."

None of this should surprise us given the Bush administration's great determination since 9/11 to resist any serious investigation into how the security of this nation was so easily breached. In Bush's much ballyhooed war on terror, ignorance has been bliss.

The president fought against the creation of the Sept. 11 commission, for example, agreeing only after enormous political pressure was applied by a grass-roots movement led by the families of those slain.

And then Bush refused to testify to the commission under oath, or on the record. Instead he deigned only to chat with the commission members, with Vice President Dick Cheney present, in a White House meeting in which commission members were not allowed to take notes. All in all, strange behavior for a man who seeks reelection to the top office in the land based on his handling of the so-called war on terror.

In September, the New York Times reported that several family members met with Goss privately to demand the release of the CIA inspector general's report. "Three thousand people were killed on 9/11, and no one has been held accountable," 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser told the paper.

The failure to furnish the report to Congress, said Harman, "fuels the perception that no one is being held accountable. It is unacceptable that we don't have ; it not only disrespects Congress but it disrespects the American people."

The stonewalling by the Bush administration and the failure of Congress to gain release of the report have, said the intelligence source, "led the management of the CIA to believe it can engage in a cover-up with impunity. Unless the public demands an accounting, the administration and CIA's leadership will have won and the nation will have lost."

[journalist3072]

14. Election- Year Delay in Hunger Report!

Fri, Oct 29, 2004

Kerry Criticizes Delay in Hunger Report

1 hour, 22 minutes ago

By JIM ABRAMS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Kerry campaign on Friday criticized the Bush administration for putting off, possibly until after the election, issuing an annual report that could show an increase in the number of households that either don't have access to enough food or have experienced hunger.


The Agriculture Department report, originally scheduled to be made public either Thursday or Friday, is being reviewed by the department. No new date has been set for its release.


Alisa Harrison, the USDA's press secretary, said the Food Nutrition Service had some questions about definitions and other matters and called the review "a normal part of our process." Kerry's campaign, she said, was "attempting to make an issue where there isn't one."


Kerry spokesman Phil Singer said the delay, coming just days before the election, was an example of the administration withholding bad news from the American people. "It is absolutely unacceptable for the government to hold back information like this from the public," Singer said.


The food security report, compiled by the USDA's Economic Research Service, is based on a survey of some 50,000 households conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau (news - web sites) and generally comes out about a month after the Census Bureau reports on poverty in the country.


The Census Bureau said in August that the ranks of the uninsured and the impoverished grew in 2003 for the third consecutive year, with the number living in poverty rising 1.3 million to 35.8 million.


A rise in people living below the poverty line usually translates into a rise in those who experience either food insecurity — meaning they don't have access to enough food for healthy living at all times — or actual hunger.


But the USDA's Harrison said the draft report now under review shows little or no change from the numbers in last year's report.


The report that came out in late October 2003 found that 11.1 percent of households were food insecure in 2002, up from 10.7 percent in 2001.


Most food-insecure families avoid hunger by limiting the types of food they buy or relying on public or private food programs. But of the estimated 12 million families that were food insecure, 32 percent reported experiencing going hungry at one time or another.


"They clearly have the report finished," said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger. "Some appointee is holding it up until after the election."


Berg, who worked for the Agriculture Department during the Clinton administration and is now involved in the Kerry campaign, said that in 2000, the year of the last presidential election, the department issued the report in September.

[Canuckistanian]

15. I posted about this very subject and I agree

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=435758&mesg_id=436929

Gotta admit, I am jaded.

Edited on Wed Feb-15-06 11:15 PM by Canuckistanian
Especially where it concerns Bushco and missing documents or evidence.

A little list.

1. Missing National Guard docs about Shrub's service.
2. Missing records of past DUI's, possible drug busts.
3. Missing entire driver's license records for Shrub until just before he started run for pres.
4. Misssing docs on Harken and it's scandal.
5. Missing docs on Shrub's SEC investigation.
5. Missing entire record of Cheney Energy Task Force. Not even the subject or the participants involved.
6. Missing "hundreds" of pages from Saddam's Response to the UN about his weapons, materials and programs
7. Missing emails of Cheney's from the WH.
8. etc., etc.

These are just a few that I can rhyme off.

So, yeah, it neither surprises me nor shocks me. And anyways, I'm sure they not absolutely necessary.

This gang of idiots won't be able to keep anything together soon. The truth will out. I'm sure some officials are getting so disgusted that they'll start giving evidence as soon as they're asked.

[FreedomAngel82]

16. Imagine if they had a (d) after their name's

[journalist3072]

17. White House Won't Release Medicare Memo

White House Won't Release Medicare Memo

Wed June 25, 6:47 PM ET

By LAURA MECKLER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's top Medicare accountant has calculated how millions of senior citizens would be affected by bringing private managed care into the program, but the administration won't release the information.



An earlier analysis suggested that a Republican plan to inject market forces into Medicare could increase premiums for those who stay in traditional programs by as much as 25 percent. If that's still the case, it could help Democrats who argue that the GOP plan is risky for those who want to stay in traditional Medicare, where they can pick any doctor, rather than move to a managed care plan.


The administration's Medicare chief threatened to fire his top actuary, Rick Foster, if Foster released his calculations to Capitol Hill Democrats who requested the analysis, officials said.


Medicare chief Tom Scully said in an interview Wednesday that Democrats had no right to request the information from Foster in the first place.


"They don't have the right on the Hill to call up my actuary and demand things," said Scully, chief of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. "These people work for the executive branch, period."


Scully said he would release the analysis "if I feel like it."


Medicare spokesman Peter Ashkenaz said Foster is working to update his original memo based on changes being considered by House Republicans so the original version is not relevant.


Scully added that Democrats want the memo in hopes of scoring political points, as Congress debates legislation adding prescription drugs to Medicare and making other changes to the program.


"We're at the end of the Medicare debate," Scully said. "People are looking for bombs to throw."


Officials on Capitol Hill and at the Department of Health and Human Services (news - web sites) said Scully threatened to fire Foster if he released his memo. Scully said that was an exaggeration, saying his comments were just "heated rhetoric in middle of the night."


Democrats responded by pointing to legislative language approved in 1997 that specifically requires the top Medicare actuary to answer questions from Congress.


"While the chief actuary is an official within the administration, this individual and his or her office often must work with the committees of jurisdiction in the development of legislation," said the legislative report.


Democrats suspect the information is being withheld because it will undercut the administration's case for changes to Medicare. Democrats object to a proposal that would set premiums for seniors through competition between private plans and the traditional, government-run program.


Republicans believe it will drive down Medicare spending by directing more seniors to cost-effective plans. Democrats worry that the sickest seniors will wind up in the government-run program, paying more for health coverage than they do today.


"The administration is resisting the release of it because it's not good news for the Republican House plan," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.


The earlier Foster memo, written in 2000, found that a similar proposal would boost premiums for traditional Medicare by 47 percent. But nearly half the increase was attributable to a provision that is no longer on the table. The provision now being considered would increase premiums by 25 percent, Foster said in 2000. Democrats asked for an updated estimate.


Scully has repeatedly touted Foster and his colleagues as the best actuaries anywhere. Just last week, in defending a separate Foster analysis that supports the administration's position, Scully noted that Foster has worked for both Democrats and Republicans and is a professional actuary totally divorced from politics.

[Gregorian]

18. Reagan's Iran hostages. 1981. (Criminals always lie.)

From the beginning of time.

[cyberpj]

19. Add to that list all the info that was removed from government reports.

I seem to remember the environmental reports being changed - but there were others too.

[journalist3072]

21. White House edited EPA's 9/11 reports

Here you go.....

Saturday, August 23, 2003

White House edited EPA's 9/11 reports

By JOHN HEILPRIN
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- At the White House's direction, the Environmental Protection Agency gave New Yorkers misleading assurances that there was no health risk from the debris-laden air after the World Trade Center collapse, according to an internal inquiry.

President Bush's senior environmental adviser yesterday defended the White House involvement, saying it was justified by national security.

The White House "convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones" by having the National Security Council control EPA communications after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, according to a report issued late Thursday by EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley.

"When EPA made a Sept. 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, the agency did not have sufficient data and analyses to make the statement," the report says, adding that the EPA had yet to adequately monitor air quality for contaminants such as PCBs, soot and dioxin.

In all, the EPA issued five news releases within 10 days of the attacks and four more by the end of 2001 reassuring the public about air quality. But it wasn't until June 2002 that the EPA determined that air quality had returned to pre-Sept. 11 levels -- well after respiratory ailments and other problems began to surface in hundreds of workers cleaning dusty offices and apartments.

The day after the attacks, former EPA Deputy Administrator Linda Fisher's chief of staff e-mailed senior EPA officials to say that "all statements to the media should be cleared" first by the National Security Council, which is Bush's main forum for discussing national security and foreign policy matters with his senior aides and Cabinet, the inspector general's report says.

Approval from the NSC, the report says, was arranged through the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which "influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."

For example, the inspector general found, the EPA was persuaded to omit guidance for cleaning indoor spaces and tips on potential health effects from airborne dust containing asbestos, lead, glass fibers and concrete.

James Connaughton, chairman of the environmental council, which coordinates federal environmental efforts, said the White House directed the EPA to add and delete information based on how it should be released publicly.

He said the EPA did "an incredible job" with the World Trade Center cleanup.

Andy Darrell, New York regional director of Environmental Defense, an advocacy group, said the report is indicative of a pattern of White House interference in EPA affairs.

"For EPA to do its job well, it needs to be allowed to make decisions based on the science and the facts," he said.

The EPA inspector general recommended the EPA adopt new procedures so its public statements on health risks and environmental quality are backed by data and analysis.

Other recommendations include developing better procedures for indoor air cleanups and asbestos handling in large-scale disasters.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/136350_epa23.html

[journalist3072]

22. Racial Disparities Played Down

Racial Disparities Played Down

By Shankar Vedantam

A federal report on racial disparities in health care was revised at
the behest of top administration officials -- and a comparison with an
earlier draft shows that the version released in December played down
the imbalances and was less critical of the lack of equality.

Government officials acknowledged and defended the changes yesterday,
even as critics charged that the Department of Health and Human
Services rewrote what was to be a scientific road map for change to put a
positive spin on a public health crisis: Minorities receive less care, and
less high-quality care, than whites, across a broad range of diseases.

The earlier draft of the report's executive summary, for example,
described in detail the problems faced by minorities and the societal costs
of the disparities, and it called such gaps "national problems."

The final report's executive summary interspersed examples of
disparities with success stories and emphasized the role of geography and
socioeconomic factors -- rather than just race -- in producing different
outcomes. It dropped the reference to "national problems."

Government officials agreed that the tone of the report had been
changed, saying the revisions reflected HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson's
strategy of triggering improvement by focusing on the positive.

"That's just the way Secretary Thompson wants to create change," said
Karen Migdail, a spokeswoman at the Agency for Healthcare Research and
Quality, the HHS unit that drafted the report. "The idea is not to say,
'We failed, we failed, we failed,' but to say, 'We improved, we
improved, we improved.' "

The National Healthcare Disparities Report was intended by HHS to be a
comprehensive look at the scope and reasons for inequalities in health
care. A number of studies have shown that even among people with
identical diseases and the same income level, minorities are less likely to
be diagnosed promptly and more likely to receive sub-optimal care.
Documented disparities exist in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, heart
disease, AIDS, diabetes, pediatric illness, mental disorders and other
conditions. They also exist in surgical procedures and nursing home
services.

The report was based on an earlier study by the Institute of Medicine
(IOM), a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, an independent
institution that advises the government on scientific questions.

An IOM report suggested last year that widespread racial differences
in health care "are rooted in historic and contemporary inequities" and
asserted that stereotyping and bias by doctors, hospitals and other
care providers may be at fault -- a much stronger critique than the HHS
report.

"The final report was much more positive and upbeat" than the
draft, said Donald Steinwachs, a member of the IOM committee. The final
version, he said, "does not really help people focus on the major
problem areas."

"One of the missions of public health is to identify public health
problems," said Steinwachs, chairman of the department of health policy
and management at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore. "If you don't identify the problems, then
people don't address them."

The earlier draft of the executive summary was obtained by Rep. Henry
A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who charged that the changes were part of a broad
effort by the Bush administration to politicize science.

"In effect, they whitewashed the issue away, even though they were
told that health care disparities are a national problem and pervasive and
carry a significant personal and societal price," he said. "It's hard
not to reach the obvious result that HHS is wishing the problem away."

The earlier version of the executive summary defined "disparity" and
mentioned it 30 times in the "key findings" section, Waxman said. The
final version mentioned the word only twice in that section and left it
undefined.

In what they called "a case study in politics and science," Waxman and
four other members of Congress said the final version "drops findings
on the societal costs of disparities, and replaces them with a
discussion of 'successes.' "

The final report cited positive examples such as these: that Asians or
Pacific Islanders have lower death rates from cancer; that black and
Hispanic patients are "more likely to report that their provider usually
asks about medications from other doctors"; and that Hispanics and
Asians or Pacific Islanders have "lower rates of hospitalization from
influenza."

Bill Pierce, a spokesman at HHS, said the department is well aware of
the importance of disparities and that the changes made to the
executive summary were only a matter of seeing the glass "half empty" or "half
full." No statistics or tables were changed in the final report, he
said.

Pierce said the Bush administration has launched public health
initiatives in minority communities such as "Take a Loved One to the Doctor
Day," created eight centers to study the issue of disparities, and
started programs to screen low-income women for breast and cervical cancer.

Focusing on the positive was a better approach, he said, "versus
saying, 'We don't do this well, and it is these people's fault.' "

[npincus]

20. how true

... at least Clinton finally owned up to his SEX CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY.