Group sues to get White House logs (Abramoff visits)

[sabra]

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/politics/13983018.htm

Group sues to get White House logs

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - A public-interest group has sued the Secret Service for access to White House visitor logs that the group says would show how often lobbyist Jack Abramoff met with President Bush and his staff.

Judicial Watch filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington under the federal Freedom of Information Act, claiming that the Secret Service failed to meet a Feb. 21 deadline for releasing the records or indicating how much more time it would need.

Secret Service spokesman Tom Mazur said Tuesday that the agency was unaware of the lawsuit. He had no other comment.

...

The White House logs would answer a basic question about the extent of Abramoff's ties to the White House, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said. The records "may show 30 visits by Jack Abramoff to the White House, or they may show three visits."

Wonder if there was any overlap with the Jeff Gannon WH visits?

[BOSSHOG]

1. Isn't it a shame

that someone has to file suit to find out who visited the people's house? Why the hell are logs kept?

[babylonsister]

8. For historical purposes maybe? That is, unless they're

burned first.

[Bandit]

2. I was under the impression there were over two hundred visits

Probably many more than that even...

[rodeodance]

3. good for them

[SpiralHawk]

4. Republican male prostitute Jeff Gannon visited the Bush White House

200 times, according to the official Secret Service records

Maybe that's confusing the issue

It's difficult to keep track of whether the perverts, or the financial predators have the best access to the culture of corruption in the Bush-Republican White House

[wordpix]

5. head of Judicial Watch used to be repuke---I guess he's changed his tune

now that he realizes what kind of crooks, robber barons and liars occupy the WH.

[TomInTib]

6. Larry Klayman just makes his living barking up trees and...

right now it's georgie's tree.

[sattahipdeep]

7. woohoo

:toast: :bounce: :thumbsup: :applause:


:kick:

[phoebe]

9. don't expect too much - the new computer system installed in 2001 to track

ingress and egress of WH staff, etc. was apparently just like the electronic voting machines - glitch heavy..the interesting thing (or not..) this computer was effectively outsourced to a Russian who claimed Switzerland as his home. The computer was run by Ultrak, Inc. and Niklaus F. Zenger.(Red Cube CEO) It is now owned by Honeywell..

http://www.apfn.net/Messageboard/9-16-02/discussion.cgi.7.shtml

snip

Checking carefully, Insight interviewed current and former Secret Service employees and others familiar with the access-control system and obtained documents that reiterated many of the concerns expressed.

Most were deeply concerned but asked to remain anonymous. One of those who did speak for the record is Bill Castle, a Secret Service officer involved in protecting presidents from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton. Castle became a consultant to the Secret Service on information-technology programs after he retired in 1996. He tells Insight the system was rushed into operation and that there were problems immediately after it was installed in April 2001.

"It wouldn't pull up names of people with White House passes as fast as the old system," Castle says. "The older system would get it in five seconds, and the new system took more than 20 seconds" per name. He says this made the processing of long lines of White House guests much slower.

More importantly, Castle says, the system frequently failed to give accurate information about White House employees, the press corps and others with temporary or permanent passes to enter the White House. "The ladies in the pass-clerks office were really concerned that they couldn't get the hard-copy reports on which passes were active and which had expired, who should have access to the White House and who shouldn't," he says.

Castle left the Secret Service in the fall of 2001. According to sources with knowledge of how the system currently functions, it usually doesn't take as long to process White House visitors through a line. But they say the system still has numerous problems ensuring accurate data about White House guests and employees. They say it also frequently crashes. In fact, Secret Service agents had to rely on a backup system for more than a day in early August.

snip

But the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) reported that, in 1992, Zenger led a delegation touring the nuclear facilities of Arzamas-16, set up under the Soviet Union as its nuclear-weapons command center. Zenger was shown "the technology of making parts using powder and highly durable materials, various ways of using the energy of a directed explosion for dividing bulky metal structures," according to the BBC translation of a Tass report. According to the Financial Times, Zenger also has worked as a consultant to the United Nations and is "a lawyer who is fluent is six languages."

Zenger may be a fine chap, say high-level security experts with whom Insight spoke, but a foreign-controlled company whose CEO has ties close enough to the Russian government to be toured through its nuclear command center should not be anywhere near the chain of authority of a highly sensitive data system at the White House.



or this yet another convenient "fault by design"/propaganda scenario..