posted on February 6, 2004 09:17:41 PM new The following are biographies of the seven people named by President Bush to sit on the independent commission studying intelligence failures on Iraqi weapons:
NAME: Charles S. Robb.
AGE: 64; born June 26, 1939.
BIRTHPLACE: Phoenix.
EDUCATION: B.A., University of Wisconsin, 1961; LL.D., University of Virginia, 1973.
EXPERIENCE: U.S. Marine Corps, 1961-70; law clerk, U.S. Court of Appeals, 1973-74; private attorney, 1974-78; Virginia lieutenant governor, 1978-82; governor of Virginia, 1982-86; Democratic senator from Virginia, 1988-2001.
FAMILY: Wife, Lynda Bird Johnson; three children.
NOTABLE: Robb defeated Iran-Contra figure Oliver North in his 1994 bid for the Senate. He was the son-in-law of former President Lyndon Johnson.
NAME: Lawrence Hirsch Silberman.
No photo available
EXPERIENCE: Army private, 1957-58; undersecretary of labor, 1970-73; deputy U.S. attorney general, 1974-75; ambassador to Yugoslavia, 1975-77; fellow, American Enterprise Institute, 1977-85; executive vice president, Crocker National Bank, San Francisco, 1979-83; member, Defense Policy Board, 1981-85; adjunct professor of law, Georgetown Law Center, 1987-now; judge, U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, 1995-now.
FAMILY: Wife, Rosalie G. Gaull; one son and two daughters.
NOTABLE: In 1982, Silberman was nominated by President Reagan to serve on the General Advisory Committee of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, what may be erroneously referred to above as the "Defense Policy Board".
In 2002, Silberman served on a secret three-judge panel called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approved expanded wiretap access sought by the federal government under the Patriot Act.
EXPERIENCE: U.S. Court of Appeals clerk, 1951-52; associate, Arnold, Fortas & Porter, 1952-53; D.C. Crime Commission member, 1964-65; attorney, Office of Criminal Justice, 1967-68; Washington Neighborhood Legal Service, 1968-70; co-director, Ford Foundation Project on Drug Abuse, 1970; co-director, Center for Law and Social Policy, 1971-72; co-director, Mental Health Law Project, 1972-77; assistant attorney general, Justice Department, 1977-79; judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, 1979-99; judge, International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, 1999-2001.
FAMILY: Husband, Robert L. Wald; three daughters and two sons.
NOTABLE: Wald has received nearly 20 honorary degrees and has authored several books on poverty and drug abuse.
NAME: John McCain.
AGE: 67; born Aug. 29, 1936.
BIRTHPLACE: Panama Canal Zone.
EDUCATION: U.S. Naval Academy, 1958; National War College, 1973-74.
EXPERIENCE: Commander, U.S. Navy, 1958; prisoner of war, Hanoi, Vietnam, 1967-73; captain, Navy pilot, 1977; director, Navy Senate Liaison Office, Washington, 1977-81; congressman from Arizona's first district, 1982-86; Republican senator from Arizona, 1986-now.
FAMILY: Wife, Cindy Hensley; five sons and two daughters.
NOTABLE: McCain co-authored legislation banning soft money donations to national political parties. He ran against President Bush for the Republican nomination in 2000.
NAME: Richard C. Levin.
AGE: 56; born April 7, 1947.
BIRTHPLACE: San Francisco.
EDUCATION: B.A., Stanford University, 1968; bachelor of letters, Oxford University, 1971; Ph.D. in economics, Yale University, 1974.
EXPERIENCE: Chairman of Yale University economics department, 1987-92; dean, Yale University graduate school, 1992-93; president, Yale University, 1993-now.
FAMILY: Wife, Jane Ellen Aries; two sons and two daughters.
NOTABLE: Levin is the longest-serving president in the Ivy League. But not a Skull-and-Boneser!
NAME: William O. Studeman.
AGE: 64; born Jan. 16, 1940.
BIRTHPLACE: Brownsville, Texas
EDUCATION: B.A., University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn., 1962; student, Defense Intelligence School, 1966-67; M.A., George Washington University, 1973; Naval War College, 1973 and 1981.
EXPERIENCE: Advanced through ranks to admiral, U.S. Navy, 1992; commanding officer, Navy Operational Intel Command, 1982-84; director of long-range planning, U.S. Navy, 1984-85; director of naval intelligence, 1985-88; director, National Security Agency, 1988-92; deputy director, CIA, 1991-95.
FAMILY: Wife, Gail Diane Jeans; two daughters and one son.
NOTABLE: Recipient of the President's National Security Medal. Mr. Studeman also serves on numerous corporate and government boards.
NAME: Lloyd Norton Cutler.
No photo available
AGE: 86; born Nov. 10, 1917.
EXPERIENCE: Private attorney, New York City, 1940-42; private attorney, Washington, 1946-now; partner, senior counsel, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, 1962-79, 1981-now; secretary, co-chairman, Lawyers Committee on Civil Rights Under Law, 1963-65, 1971-73; chairman, D.C. Committee on Administration of Justice on Under Emergency Conditions, 1968; executive director, National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, 1968-69; visiting lecturer, Yale University, 1973-79; presidential counsel, 1979-81; senior counsel, President's Commission on Strategic Forces, 1983; visiting lecturer, Oxford University, 1983; member, U.S. Group to Permanent Court Arbitration, the Hague, 1984-93; co-chairman, Energy Department Task Force on Nonproliferation Programs in Russia, 2000-01; member, National Commission on Election Reform, 2001.
FAMILY: Wife, Rhoda Winton Kraft; previously married to the late Louise W. Howe; three daughters and one son.
NOTABLE: Cutler was named last year to an oversight board set up to monitor Pentagon anti-terrorist technology.
posted on February 7, 2004 03:41:56 AM new
86 years old? Hey, with a little luck that one will die serving and then they will have to start over or some such foolishness. Looks like he hopes they will sit around over tea from 1 to 3 in the afternoon and nod off.
Laurence H. Silberman was the conservative right wing judge and friend of Kenneth Starr who participated in the attack against Clinton. Silberman even asked Clinton if he was "declaring war on the United States" when Clinton opposed Starr.
posted on February 7, 2004 09:31:17 AM new
Yeah, there are all kinds of interesting things in most of these people's backgrounds, Helen. I wore myself out just rounding up the pictures...
posted on February 7, 2004 12:59:34 PM newIntelligence Commission Chiefs Are Old Hands in the Well of U.S. Secrets
By Pete Yost Associated Press Writer
Published: Feb 7, 2004
WASHINGTON (AP) - The men put in charge of the Iraq intelligence commission have wide experience with covert information - one in federal courts, the other in Congress.
Laurence Silberman is a blunt conservative who oversaw the highly secretive panel of judges responsible for ruling on government wiretaps against alleged foreign terrorists and spies.
Charles Robb, a former Democratic senator and Virginia governor, brings unique experience as the only senator to sit on all three of the Senate's security committees - Intelligence, Armed Services and Foreign Relations - during his two terms in Washington.
President Bush created the seven-member bipartisan commission Friday. He told members to examine the apparently faulty prewar intelligence that suggested Iraq had chemical and biological weapons stockpiles and an aggressive nuclear weapons program.
The commission also will look at U.S. intelligence on past or present weapons programs in North Korea, Iran, Libya and Afghanistan.
Silberman, 68, sat until recently on the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, where he served up a wholehearted endorsement of the Justice Department's legal tactics in the fight against terrorism. Civil libertarians and many Democrats say those powers are overreaching and have fought to have them rolled back.
Silberman and the other two members of the court ruled that the expanded wiretap guidelines sought by Attorney General John Ashcroft under the new USA Patriot Act law do not violate the Constitution.
The special review court ordered the lower court to issue a new ruling giving the government the powers it was seeking.
The decision "revolutionizes our ability to investigate terrorists and prosecute terrorist acts," Ashcroft said at the time.
Silberman, a former federal appeals court judge and ambassador to Yugoslavia, has been known to speak his mind. He did so memorably in a 2002 speech to the conservative Federalist Society when he criticized the Supreme Court for "ducking" affirmative action cases and following "elite public opinion."
The Republican also had something to say in the perjury and obstruction probe of President Clinton's intimate relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Silberman said the presidents' aides had decided to "literally and figuratively declare war" on prosecutor Ken Starr, a former appeals court colleague of Silberman.
And in an odd intersection with Robb's career, Silberman helped write the decision that overturned the convictions of Iran-Contra figure Oliver North, a pivotal event that undercut the criminal investigation then under way.
Robb, 64, won a bruising 1994 Senate election against North, then lost his seat in the 2000 election after an uninspired campaign against a popular ex-governor.
A Marine wed in the White House to President Johnson's daughter, Lynda Bird Johnson, Robb was a bright hope for the Democrats as governor and U.S. senator in the 1980s. But an alleged dalliance with a former beauty queen and the acrimonious contest with North tarnished his prospects.
In the four years since he left the Senate, Robb has taught government and public policy at George Mason University near his home in suburban Virginia and spent a semester as a lecturer at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
North had something of effect on Silberman's career, too.
The first Bush administration considered Silberman for a Supreme Court post but his participation in the North ruling in the Iran-Contra affair would have made him a difficult nominee to get confirmed.
Silberman will be working on the commission with a former colleague with whom he frequently disagreed, Patricia Wald. President Carter nominated her to the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., in 1979.
"They've kind of picked at the two ends of the judicial spectrum," said Marc Rotenberg, who runs the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center.
When Wald stepped aside as chief judge of the appeals court in Washington, she publicly rejected speculation in legal circles that her timing was aimed at denying the post to Silberman.
Silberman and Wald get along well despite being frequently at odds in their judicial views, say people who have dealt with them for many years.
Wald was a judge on the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
As part of the federal appellate panel that refused to hear the administration's arguments to prevent Secret Service agents from testifying last week, U.S. Judge Laurence H. Silberman wrote a scathing opinion that accused Reno of acting not on behalf of the U.S. government, but in the personal interests of President Clinton. Then, using language seldom seen in the federal judiciary, Silberman questioned whether Clinton himself, by allowing his aides to attack Starr, was "declaring war on the United States."
As the shock of Silberman's bluntly worded opinion resonated through legal and political circles in Washington this weekend, presidential allies portrayed the federal judge as a conservative wolf cloaked in judicial robes. When asked for his reaction to Silberman's opinion last week, President Clinton replied pointedly: "You should consider the source."
But among these Reagan judicial appointees, Silberman appears to be first among equals. Described by legal observers as one of the most conservative judges on the federal
bench, Silberman is perhaps best known in legal circles for his bluntness. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who once sat with Silberman on the U.S. Court of Appeals, has called the tone of some of Silberman's legal opinions "disrespectful." A few years ago, amid a heated legal debate after a case that was brought before the court, Silberman angrily warned another colleague, Judge Abner Mikva, "If you were 10 years younger, I'd be tempted to punch you in the nose."
Silberman also has attacked as too liberal a number of respected journalists who cover the federal courts, including Pulitzer Prize-winning Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times and National Public Radio's Nina Totenberg, whom Silberman once alluded to in speech as "the wicked witch of the airwaves." He has publicly assailed the reporting of the Times' Neil Lewis as "obviously distorted and tendentious," failing to mention that Lewis had written about Silberman's threat to assault Judge Mikva.
"He seems to thrive on animosity," Lewis told the American Lawyer magazine after that incident. Lewis added that Silberman had tried to engage him in a debate on another story he had written, but "I found his letters so churlish and loopy that I stopped responding to them."
In his opinion last week, Silberman wrote: "The Attorney General is, in effect, acting as the President's counsel under the false guise of representing the United States ... I am mindful of the terrible political pressures and strains of conscience that bear upon senior political appointees of the Justice Department when an Independent Counsel (or special prosecutor) is investigating the President of the United States.
"Those strains are surely exacerbated when the President's agents literally and figuratively 'declare war' on the Independent Counsel," who "stands in place of the Attorney General and represents the United States in any proceeding within his or her jurisdiction."
Thus, Silberman asks provocatively, "Can it be said that the President of the United States has declared war on the United States?"
posted on February 12, 2004 03:43:09 PM newBush Names Final Two Members to Iraq Intelligence Panel
The Associated Press
Published: Feb 12, 2004
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush on Thursday named the final two members of the commission that will investigate prewar intelligence on Iraq, adding the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former Pentagon official.
Charles M. Vest has been MIT's president since 1990. Henry S. Rowen, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, was an assistant defense secretary from 1989 to 1991 and a deputy assistant defense secretary from 1961 to 1964.
