By Andrew Kreig / Project Director's Blog

Attorneys for three major book distributors asked a federal judge Feb. 28 to remove them from a libel lawsuit that they described as threatening public affairs book publishing in the United States if allowed to proceed. Despite those threatened stakes, there’s been virtually no news coverage of the case. This is doubtless because the book at issue ─ Barack Obama & Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, and Lies & Murder? ─ is self-published by author Larry Sinclair and highly controversial. Just three writers at most, all for web-based media, were among the seven spectators including this editor for the hearing in Washington, DC’s federal courthouse.

The hearing helped illustrate why the Justice Integrity Project was founded last year for non-partisan legal research and reform advocacy. Our courts continually resolve important and politically-charged issues, often with scant or biased coverage by the traditional media. No matter what one thinks of Sinclair or his allegations, a near-complete news blackout of a significant court case should not be the remedy.

Let’s examine the arguments: No court has ever held a book distributor liable for merely selling a book, Amazon.com attorney Matthew Segal and Barnes & Noble counsel Linda Steinman told U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in arguments echoed by Books-a-Million. Steinman said her client couldn’t continue to do business as presently if it had to research the factual basis of the 30 million titles it sells, including such controversial authors as Michael Moore, Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck. “We rely on the publisher to stand behind the book,” she continued. “That’s where the redress is.” She and others argued also that the Communications Decency Act provides extra protections for Internet distributors of public affairs commentary.

The Department of Defense Thursday announced its choice of Boeing for a $35 billion contract to build the Air Force’s next generation of mid-air refueling tankers. Boeing’s selection, subject to any challenge by the losing bidder EADS, could end a decade-long, scandal-ridden process that became one of the controversial and important in modern U.S. procurement history.

Boeing’s victory over the consortium lead by EADS (European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co.) surprised many industry experts. They believed EADS held the edge over Boeing.

Alabama's powerful Republican Senate delegation fought so hard for EADS that Sen. Dick Shelby, left, put a hold last February on every Obama nomination in the federal government unless the White House promised to give EADS what he called fair consideration. Later in the spring, President Obama promised to provide such fairness also in response to a specific request by European leaders, whose subsidies of EADS have sparked criticism at the World Trade Organization and elsewhere as a violation of fair trade.

In the end, DoD officials under Defense Secretary Robert Gates, right, cited Boeing’s smaller planes among other factors in making this week's award. "What that means is that, in the end, Boeing won on price," Loren B. Thompson, a defense policy analyst for the Arlington-based Lexington Institute, told the Washington Post. "Price consists of the cost of producing the plane, plus the cost of operating it over 30 years,” he continued. “The Airbus plane is so much bigger and burned over a ton more fuel per flight hour."

The Justice Integrity Project has tracked the proceeding closely for a year and a half after learning from reliable sources details about industrial espionage and skullduggery in the contract battle. This went far beyond even the scandals showcased in Senate oversight hearings led by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Those scandals sent a Boeing executive and former Air Force procurement officer to prison on bribery charges and led to DoD revocation in 2005 of the initial award to Boeing.

By Andrew Kreig / Project Director

Connecticut Watchdog's On the Horn Radio/TV News Hour available globally via Internet interviewed me Feb.22 about the consumer implications of my recent column "Spy vs. Spy As Hackers Square Off Over DC Dirty Tricks." The story describes how hackers associated with WikiLeaks exposed a plot by private security contractors to disrupt the computers and social networks of political targets around the United States. Watchdog Publisher George Gombossy, at left below, and contributor Denis Horgan led the questioning. On the Horn Producer Brian Parker provides

Tune in by clicking here for the show, which is available by archive, maintained by network founder Brian Parker, right.  On the show, I disclosed a major new story not yet published anywhere in North America regarding a group effort by major Swedish newspapers to censor reader comments critical of that nation's prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The story is significant because the average reader typically has scant resources to determine why a comment is not posted on a specific website. In Sweden this week, however, Dr. Marcello Ferrada de Noli undertook an investigation and just published his results.

By Andrew Kreig / Project Director's Blog

In a major setback for the U.S. Justice Department and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a federal appeals court last week dismissed federal bribery and conspiracy charges against two New Jersey Democrats targeted in a trap set by Christie. The decision helps illustrate why our non-partisan Justice Integrity Project has repeatedly pointed to the 46-defendant “Bid Rig III” case as one of the nation’s most scandalous political prosecutions of recent years.

On Feb. 17, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Christie’s successors wrongly applied a 1946 federal bribery law when they convicted Jersey City mayoral candidate Louis Manzo and his campaign manager (and brother) Ronald in an elaborate sting that Christie, at right, set in motion before he resigned in 2008 near the end of the Bush administration. The three-judge appeals court upheld the pre-trial ruling of the defendants’ trial judge that prosecutors wrongly charged the Manzos under the Hobbs Act. The appellate judges said authorities have never previously used the law to win convictions against a candidate unelected to office. Judge D. Michael Fisher, a 2003 Bush appointee, wrote the unanimous decision. Democrats Thomas L. Ambro and Marjorie O. Rendell, wife of just-retired Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, concurred. The judges traced the history of language in the Hobbs Act through what they called “centuries” of common law in the Anglo-American system. That review convinced them to decline prosecutors’ request that the court expand the law enough to cover candidates such as the Manzo brothers. The ruling thus upheld a decision last spring by U.S. District Judge José L. Linares, a 2002 Bush appointee. Louis Manzo is at left,below.

The ruling delivered yet another courtroom loss to federal prosecutors who are trying to vindicate the partisan methods that the Republican Christie used as New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney from 2001 through 2008 on his way to his state’s governor’s mansion campaigning as a crime-fighter and reformer. But the loss by New Jersey's federal prosecutors of their last two jury trials in the case is unprecedented during the past decade, according to an Associated Press report in the state's newspapers. Among the reasons, their chief witness Solomon Dwek committed a $50 million bank fraud and ran a brothel before the government supplied him with vast amounts of taxpayer money to try bribe local politicians and persuade rabbis to launder funds. Moreover, Dwek has had to admit on the witness stand that prosecutors cooperated in paying him between $10,000 and $12,000 a month from court-supervised assets of the victims of his frauds. In contrast to the frugal public image Christie has fostered, the money was to pay for Dwek's services and expertise. The charges, with all but one of the political defendants a Democrat, were announced during the Christie campaign. Some news reports claim the charges were timed by his former staff for maximum impact to improve his standing with voters and news reporters.

By Andrew Kreig / Project Director

We list below a sample of coverage of the major scandal that erupted last week after the WikiLeaks defender group Anonymous hacked 40,000 emails from a government contractor involved in a dirty tricks plot to disrupt Anonymous and critics of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Bank of America. What's new this week are attempts by the mainstream media to cover a scandal that apparently implicates the Chamber, one of its law firms, three government IT contractors and some members of the government. Anonymous published emails from the contractor HBGary Federal suggesting that it planned to try to reach a sales agreement on Valentine's Day with the law firm Hunton and Williams to hurt Chamber critics, including Democrats, bloggers and unions.

“You don’t mess with Anonymous," Anonymous wrote on the contractor's website. "You have blindly charged into the Anonymous hive, a hive from which you’ve tried to steal honey. Did you think the bees would not defend it?  Well here we are. You’ve angered the hive, and now you are being stung.”

The Chamber denies wrongdoing. Critics point out, however, that emails from HBGary Federal suggest that the plot was not supposed to be advanced until sale of the information that HBGary and others were assembling. Some of the data apparently comes from private contractor work helping the federal government enforce IT security measures. The Justice Integrity Project, which has been excerpting coverage of this since late last week, has not been successful in seeking direct comment from HBGary Federal's CEO Aaron Barr, above left, and Hunton and Williams. The sample coverage below includes alternative websites, such Ars Technica, which published some of the best analysis. Appended at bottom is an article from 2008 announcing the formation of HBGary Federal.

Illustrating further the complexities in public policy is the ironic contrast of two Washington Post stories on Feb. 16. In one, Secretary of State Clinton makes a major address warning governments not to interfere with Internet freedom. On the same day, federal prosecutors argued that their unprecedented snooping into personal social network relationships of targets is routine law enforcement.

By Prof. Marcello Ferrada de Noli (Exceprted from his blog Feb. 13):

Naomi Wolf's guest-article in my "Professors Blogg"  – which mentioned (among other matters) Karl Rove’s potential involvement in the Swedish political crusade against Assange – had a huge impact among Swedish blog-readers. The site Bloggosfär picked her column Feb. 12 to be its top-recommended reading on the Julian Assange theme. Knuff.se also cited the article in its front page that day. Yet some in the Swedish media deny the article’s implication that Rove might be relevant to the Assange case, or even to Sweden’s governing Moderate Party. That confirms the characterization by Assange’s lawyers about disregard by Swedish media for objectivity and fair play in this sensitive case. "Professors Blogg" replied to this political threat by republishing the initial controversial column by Andrew Kreig that Wolf cited. Also, we provide Kreig’s updated analysis on Rove. It describes past and current developments, leading right to yesterday, Feb. 12. The author Andrew Kreig is prominent human-rights defender. His second gästblogg is a new update of his article on Rove. This update is being published for the first time in "Professors Blogg."

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By Andrew Kreig / Director's Blog

As indicated by the above introduction, links between Karl Rove and Sweden’s governing party continue to generate controversy. That’s because of implications of Sweden’s all-out effort to capture WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Most recent was an attack Feb. 11 by the Swedish website Makthavare (“Those in Power”) on my reporting and on author Naomi Wolf’s willingness to cite it in her column criticizing Sweden’s police procedures in the Assange case.

This prompts me to reaffirm the original column published by the Huffington Post on Dec. 19, “Rove Suspected In Swedish-U.S. Political Prosecution of WikiLeaks.” You’ll see below how the author of the Makthavare blog, Andreas Henriksson, selectively omits evidence that does not support his defense of Rove. My update here will show how developments since then illustrate how the Assange law enforcement scandal is similar to many Rove-style political prosecutions in the United States. Among the tell-tale signs are using the media to smear a defendant with pre-trial leaks. These foster an anti-defendant climate in the courts and public, helping to ensure that unfair court procedures will not generate effective protest by legislators, the media or general public.