By Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Scott Higham, Washington Post Staff Writers
As a small start-up company in Massachusetts sought to become a major player in the business of homeland security, it hired a lobbyist and attended a fundraiser for one of the most powerful members of Congress.
The company was Reveal Imaging Technologies Inc. The congressman was Rep. Harold "Hal" Rogers (R-Ky.). The fundraiser, held Oct. 22, 2003, brought in $14,000 from Reveal and was the beginning of a mutually beneficial association.
Reveal had just received a government grant to develop smaller, cheaper explosives-detection machines to scan baggage at the nation's airports. Rogers, who chairs the House Appropriations homeland security subcommittee, said he wanted the machines to improve security while saving taxpayers money.
In the end, Reveal received a federal contract from the Transportation Security Administration worth up to $463 million. Rogers achieved his goal of launching the next generation of machines. In the process, he received $122,111 in donations to his leadership political action committee from Reveal executives and associates -- and a pledge from the company to move $15 million worth of work to Rogers's poor Appalachian congressional district.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Osama bin Laden's niece, in an interview with GQ magazine in which she appears scantily clad, says she has nothing in common with the al Qaeda leader and simply wants acceptance by Americans.
"Everyone relates me to that man, and I have nothing to do with him," Wafah Dufour, the daughter of bin Laden's half brother, Yeslam Binladin, says in the January edition of the magazine, referring to the al Qaeda leader.
"I want to be accepted here, but I feel that everybody's judging me and rejecting me," said the California-born Dufour, a law graduate who lives in New York. "Come on, where's the American spirit? Accept me. I want to be embraced, because my values are like yours. And I'm here. I'm not hiding."
Dufour, who adopted her mother's maiden name after the September 11, 2001, attacks that have been blamed on bin Laden, appears in several provocative photos in the magazine.
In one, she is sprawled on a bed wearing lingerie and a feather boa. In another, she appears in a bubble bath-filled tub.
By Jim VandeHei and Charles Babington, Washington Post Staff Writers
After four years in which Congress repeatedly lay down while President Bush dictated his priorities, 2005 will go down as the year legislators stood up.
This week's uprising against a four-year extension of the USA Patriot Act was the latest example of a new willingness by lawmakers in both parties to challenge Bush and his notions of expansive executive power.
Since this spring, Congress has forced Bush to scrap plans for a broad restructuring of Social Security, accept tighter restrictions on the treatment of detainees and rewrite his immigration plan. Lawmakers have rebuffed Bush's call to make permanent his first-term tax cuts and helped force the president to speak more candidly about setbacks in Iraq.
"What you have seen is a Congress, which has been AWOL through intimidation or lack of unity, get off the sidelines and jump in with both feet," especially on the national security front, said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).
What is most striking is that the pushback is coming not just from Democrats and moderate Republicans, who often disagree with Bush, but also from mainstream conservatives.
By Carol D. Leonnig and Dafna Linzer, Washington Post Staff Writers
The presiding judge of a secret court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases is arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges to address their concerns about the legality of President Bush's domestic spying program, according to several intelligence and government sources.
Several members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said in interviews that they want to know why the administration believed secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails of U.S. citizens without court authorization was legal.
By Paul Farhi, Washington Post Staff Writer
The New York Times' revelation yesterday that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct domestic eavesdropping raised eyebrows in political and media circles, for both its stunning disclosures and the circumstances of its publication.
In an unusual note, the Times said in its story that it held off publishing the 3,600-word article for a year after the newspaper's representatives met with White House officials. It said the White House had asked the paper not to publish the story at all, "arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny."
By Dan Froomkin, Washington Post
In a Fox News interview aired last night, President Bush declared that he believes indicted former House majority leader Tom DeLay is innocent of the money-laundering charges brought against him in Texas.
www.awfulplasticsurgery.com
It's unusual for a president in any circumstance to make such a definitive pronouncement about an ongoing criminal case.
But it seemed particularly at odds given Bush's repeated insistence that his obligation not to prejudice a criminal investigation or trial resoundingly trumps the public's right to hear what he thinks or knows about the role of senior White House officials in the outing of a CIA operative's identity.
Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania -- a usually hawkish Democrat who has called for a quick withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq -- criticized Bush's policy again after the address.
"We've got nation building by the U.S. military, and that's not a mission for the U.S. military," Murtha said. "I've said this over and over again: They're not good at nation building. You've given them a mission which they cannot carry out. They do they best they can, but they can't do it."
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Despite a series of recent speeches spelling out the administration's policies on Iraq, the majority of Americans in a new CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll said they do not believe President Bush has a plan that will achieve victory in Iraq.
Fifty-eight percent of those polled said Bush doesn't have a clear plan on Iraq, compared to 38 percent who said they believe Bush does have a plan for victory.
Mini-golfers, calm down and tee up -- Emerald Hills Golfland is off the feds' terrorist-target list.
Or is it?
Some time back, officials added the humble South San Jose theme park -- ``three acres, two mini golf courses, very challenging,'' says Golfland's VP Bob Kenney -- to their National Asset Database. Local officials, figuring plenty of other Silicon Valley sites were richer targets, burst out laughing when they saw it.
The terrorist-watchers at Homeland Security did not return several phone calls. And no one locally seems to know how Golfland got on the list to begin with.
Washington - The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.
The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.
The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have resulted partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations of Qaeda members and others detained as part of American counterterrorism efforts.
Spokane (AP)--Mayor James E. West was recalled from office Tuesday in a special election over allegations he offered jobs and perks to young men he met in a gay Internet chat room.
The campaign to recall him began last spring after the Spokesman-Review newspaper reported that West was a closeted homosexual who visited gay chat rooms using his city-owned laptop computer, and offered internships and other favors to young men he hoped to have sex with.
West, a former Boy Scout executive and sheriff's deputy, was elected mayor in 2003 after serving more than two decades as a conservative Republican in the state Legislature, where he voted against gay-friendly bills.
The recall petition contended West used his political office for personal benefit by offering a city internship to someone he thought was an 18-year-old man he had met in a gay online chat room and with whom he had sexually explicit chats.